Free William S. and the Great Escape by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

wasn’t crying anymore, but her eyelashes were still wet. “I won’t be mad at you anymore,” she said, “if you tell me what you and Clarice were talking about.”
    So he did. At least he told her the part about the police cars Clarice had seen in Crownfield, and how he’d decided they better not try to catch the bus tomorrow morning. But that was all. He didn’t mention what Clarice had told him about running away. That could wait until he’d found out more about it himself.

CHAPTER 11
    T he next day was Thursday, and just like the day before, they had to wait until Clarice’s parents left for work before they went up to the kitchen for breakfast. The only difference was that while they were eating, Trixie kept asking why they weren’t going to ride on the bus like William said. Of course that got Buddy started on the “why” thing too. From
why
weren’t they going on the bus, he went on to
why
did they have to stay in the basement all day, and
why
did Clarice have so many toys, and
why
couldn’t they pick out three toys to play with instead of just two, and
why
didn’t everybody in the world have their own playroom with lots of toys? And a lot more.
    At first Clarice seemed to think all the whys were amusing, but after a while she began to get glassy-eyed, and she interrupted Buddy’s whys long enough to tell him that he could pick out three toys today, if he didn’t say
why
one more time until he’d finished his breakfast. It worked. Both Buddy and Trixie ate silently and so fastthey almost choked themselves, and it wasn’t long before they were all back in the kitchen, loaded down with toys, and Clarice was telling Jancy it was her turn to babysit the kids in the basement while William helped do the dishes.
    While he carried the dishes to the sink, William was feeling, along with some eager curiosity, a certain amount of uneasiness about having promised Clarice that he’d tell her why he’d been planning to run away. Things like how long he’d been planning to. For instance, the fact that as soon as he started school he’d begun to realize that most people lived in places that were cleaner, and quieter, and a lot more peaceful than any of the places he’d ever lived. And that most kids didn’t get picked on and slapped around as much as he did. He’d never told anyone how he felt about being a Baggett, except, of course, Jancy. Not even Miss Scott, although he had a feeling that she knew about it without him having to tell her. Like how she seemed to know not to ask him if his parents were going to come to watch him being Ariel in The Tempest .
    Miss Scott. Now, that was a topic he’d rather talk about. Maybe he could start out by asking Clarice if she had Miss Scott for English last year, and go on from there. Go on to talk about how Miss Scott had picked him to be in The Tempest , and taught him a whole lot, not only about Shakespeare , but about stage presence and projection and a lot of other stuff about being an actor.
    He knew it might not sidetrack Clarice. What she obviously wanted to hear was not just what happened to Jancy’s Sweetie Pie, but also a lot of other stuff about the Baggetts. She’d probably love to hear things like how Big Ed never had a steady job because of his “bad back” and how his limp always got a lot worse whenever the welfare people came around. And how when he got drunk he yelled and hit everyone he could get his hands on, except the ones who were getting big enough to hit him back. And how the Baggetts had always moved around a lot because Big Ed hardly ever bothered to pay rent.
    He was pretty sure those were the sorts of things Clarice wanted to hear. He didn’t know how he knew, except the excited way her eyes started flickering whenever she started asking that kind of question. And he also knew that it was a subject he didn’t particularly want to