Free The Daring Escape of Beatrice and Peabody by Kimberly Newton Fusco Page A

the pen. I reach back through the fence and give Cordelia one last hug. The only thing that pulls me away is the thought that Ellis will soon be up.
    Our travelling show is quiet this early in the morning. Only the crows fighting over specks of popcorn and bits of taffy make any noise. I look past Eldora’s Museum of Mystery to the Tilt-A-Whirl and the Ridee-O and the Ferris wheel.
    Without Bobby to say get ready, set, go, Peabody and I just look at each other. I turn and see Cordelia’s sweet piglet face poking through the fence. I know her tail iswiggling on the other side. My heart throbs. You can only take so many goodbyes in life. So I do the only thing a twelve-year-old girl with love in her heart can do. I go over and lift Cordelia out of the pen and set her on the ground.
    ‘Ready, Peabody?’ I whisper.
    He wags his stumpy tail. That is my answer.
    ‘Let’s go.’
    Peabody shoots out in front, and my little pig follows. I let them take the lead. It is hard to get excited about running when you cannot see the finish line.

 
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    I do not have much of a plan except we need a home that will take a girl with a diamond on her face, a funny-looking dog with a stumpy tail and a little pig.
    We run down the main road past all the big houses with the porches out front and the gingerbread trim that looks like frosting dripping down over everything. Once upon a time I told Pauline a house like that was waiting for us. We just had to find the right one.
    Now I make myself watch my feet instead of looking at dreams. A house on the main road would not offer enough protection. I keep looking over my shoulder for Ellis. I would not want to be looking for him all the time.
    It is a good thing I brought a pocketful of corn because it is the only thing that keeps Cordelia from running after butterflies. Cars and trucks hurry past, and sometimes they beep because it is not every day you see a girl, a dog with hardly any tail at all and a baby pig all running down Main Street. They slow down and yell at me like I don’t know how to keep my dog and my pig out of the road, and I make sure my hair is tight over my face so they don’t see my diamond.
    It is very hard to hold your hair over your face when you are running. I am so out of breath I tell Peabody it is time to walk. A boy hoots out of the window of his truck. Peabody notices a squirrel running and he leaps after him, and it turns out that where Peabody goes, Cordelia wants to go, too, and that’s how we turn onto a smaller road.
    The houses are smaller here and everyone has a victory garden with tomatoes big as melons hanging over their fences. I breathe deeply and try and get myself calmed down. There are many flower gardens along this road and that means many bees and Peabody is very interested in their buzzing. He keeps trying to stop and watch them and I pull at him and tell him to get his head out of the clouds and to stop acting just like Cordelia.
    We pass three girls playing hopscotch and I am very careful to hold my hair tight and I have to pull Cordelia when they start saying things like ‘Oh, what an odd-looking pig,’ and she gets herself all puffed up and wants to stop and be all friendly because she doesn’t know that they are making fun of her. All she hears is the tone of their voices, sugar-sweet, thick as maple syrup.

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    Each house on the next road is all wrong. One has a yard too small for Peabody to play in, one doesn’t have a shed in the back for Cordelia, another has a lady snipping her roses who says, ‘Shoo, shoo,’ as soon as she sees my little pig.
    Just as we turn onto another road I think maybe I see the lady in the orange flappy hat limping ahead, but as we turn a corner she vanishes and I know I am just fooling myself. We start running again and I follow Peabody and Cordelia down another road and I am trying to make sure we are following the general direction of the main road, which I reckon is heading south. Pauline is south.
    My