Those Who Walked Before - Sample
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Chapter 1. Aunt Maggie
Jordan stomped down the bus steps and exhaled against the gust of hot wind that blew his hair back and made his tee shirt stick to the middle of his back. He squinted at the small crowd in front of the greyhound station and tucked his iPod into a pocket. Beside him, Emily whimpered and clutched his limp hand. He took a deep breath and then coughed out a cloud of gasoline fumes and dust.
The trip from St. Louis to Valley Last, Arkansas had been long and lonely. Seven year-old Emily had slept on his shoulder much of the way and clung silently to his sleeve when she was awake. As he scanned the crowd for the mysterious aunt who was supposed to pick them up, he longed to shake Emily off his sweaty arm, if only for a few minutes. Her blond curls were damp and snarled with the blond curls of her favorite doll. The collar of her tee shirt was moist and unraveling where she had chewed on it. She looked up at him with hollow, hopeless eyes, and he noticed that tear streaks had stained shiny stripes down her cheeks. He gave her hand a squeeze and pulled her toward the station.
Some passengers moved inside to wait for their connecting bus and others greeted family with hugs and friendly back slaps. Jordan flopped his backpack onto the scorching parking lot and pulled the photo out of a zippered pouch. He hid it from Emily. Since the accident that killed their parents three weeks ago, Emily went into hysterics whenever she saw a picture of them. Mom looked so young and happy in the photo. She held a drooling baby boy on her lap and pointed at a crooked Christmas tree that sparkled with the same ornaments Jordan remembered from every Christmas of his life. In the other corner of the photo sat Aunt Maggie. This was the most recent photo Jordan had found of her. Their mother’s sister was chewing on a lock of her reddish hair and reading a book. She had probably changed a lot in the 15 years since the photo was taken.
The laughing crowd gathered luggage and moved toward their cars. No wide-armed, eager, red-headed aunt ran toward them as Jordan had imagined. No one seemed to be looking for two orphaned children.
“Let’s get our stuff,” he said to Emily. She moved robotically at his side, her knuckles white against the doll’s jellybean print dress. Her curls were just a few shades lighter than his own light brown hair, and their ice blue eyes were an exact match.
Near the station door the paper nametags on their luggage flapped in the breeze. When Jordan lifted the bags, Emily let go of his arm and clung to the luggage instead, making it even more difficult to get everything inside.
The station was cool and smelled like burnt popcorn. They sat next to a windowed wall and Jordan pressed his forehead against the glass, watching for Aunt Maggie. Emily slumped against him and went to sleep.
Within a few minutes the rush of people vanished into waiting cars and busses. An elderly man snored nearby and a baby cried while he fought off his afternoon nap. Jordan tucked his headphones into his ears, put his favorite song on repeat, and tapped drum rhythms on the arm of his chair with two unsharpened pencils. He’d found the iPod on the top shelf of his mom’s closet when he packed her things for donation. It was meant to be his fifteenth birthday gift, but she’d died a week before she would have given it to him.
An hour later he was still listening to the same song, and they were the only passengers left at the station. The pencil drumsticks were chipped and dented. Jordan was starving and stiff from sitting all day, and the hard plastic chair was cutting off the circulation to his legs. Worst of all, his clothes were dirty and sweaty, which irritated him more than anything. Jordan always preferred to stay neat and clean. His room had always been perfectly organized, and he changed clothes several times a day.
What he wouldn’t give for a working cell phone. His was fully charged in his luggage, but the phone plan had been shut down in St. Louis. Hopefully he could add the same phone to Aunt Maggie’s plan. All of his friend’s phone numbers and his favorite ring tones were stored in his phone.
The chubby station manager was staring at them again. Jordan watched him out of the corner of his eye, wondering when he would call the police. Aunt Maggie should have picked them up hours ago. A tight fist of fear clutched his stomach and tears sprung to his eyes.
“Orphan children abandoned at the bus station,” he whispered, imagining the small town’s morning headlines.
They couldn’t spend the night in the station and they didn’t have any money for a hotel or return bus tickets. Jordan considered what it would be like to become homeless street children and decided he wouldn’t like eating out of trash cans or going weeks without a shower. He would have to tell the station attendant about their aunt and deal with whatever happened next. The police would probably come. No matter what, no one was going to take Emily away from him. In the past three weeks, as Emily became clingier, Jordan grew more and more protective of her. Even if they had to run away and live in a tree, he would keep them together. They could bathe in a river or something. He stretched in his seat, losing hope even as he gathered courage to approach the plump old man at the ticket counter, when out of the corner of his eye he saw a cloud of dust rolling down the road. He leapt out of the chair. Emily flopped over and woke up when her head smacked his empty seat.
“Ow! Jore, what’s wrong? Is Aunt Maggie here?”
“Sorry Emily, I think that might be her now.” He nodded at the dust cloud then reached back and rubbed her forehead. They stared wide eyed and anxious out the window.
A dented gray car plowed into the parking lot, slipped serpent like on the gravel, and stopped sideways across two parking places. A woman in a dirty pink tee shirt and worn jeans stepped out and looked nervously around, her head bobbing like a strange bird’s. She was tall and very thin with a rainbow colored cap pulled over her ears. As soon as Jordan saw the tangle of brilliant red curls spiraling under the cap, he knew it must be Aunt Maggie. His shoulders slumped with relief, and he grinned at Emily. Her lips smiled back at him but her eyes were still empty.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder, grabbed their luggage, and headed for the door. Emily scrambled out after him but when they got to the car, Aunt Maggie was gone.
“Where’d she go?” Emily asked, bending to look under the car.
“There!” Jordan said. “She’s over by the busses. She must be looking for us.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Aunt Maggie! We’re over here!” He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet.
She turned and stomped back to the car, both hands on her hips like scrawny bird wings. The woman was bone thin and her pasty white skin looked as though it would melt away in the sunlight. She stopped right in front of Jordan, so close that her shoulder was almost touching his forehead. Jordan took a step backward and Emily hid behind her suitcase.
Their aunt looked across the empty parking lot as she spoke, as though something much more exciting was happening over there while she was unhappily stuck here. “Well,” she said in an unnaturally high pitched voice. “I guess you are the children I’m supposed to pick up? Get in. Victor will take us to the house.”
Jordan peered in the empty car. “Who’s Victor?”
Aunt Maggie leaned so close to Jordan that he went cross eyed. Her face was so long and thin it looked like a giant hand had pinched it out of shape. “I always knew you were a slow-minded child. Slobbery and stupid from the start.” She patted the roof of her ugly car. “This is Victor.”
Jordan looked at the car and blinked. He had never heard of anyone naming a car. Part of him really wanted to giggle, but he could already tell that Aunt Maggie wasn’t into humor.
Maggie slid back into her seat and pulled the trunk release. Her narrowed eyes darted from one mirror to the next, watching them without actually meeting their eyes in the mirror. She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel making noise without rhythm. Jordan motioned for Emily to get in the back seat, and then loaded their luggage into the trunk on top of scattered papers and piles of books. He counted to ten and took a deep breath. He wanted to scream at someone, beg the station manager to put them back on a bus to St. Louis. But they didn’t have any other options. This was their new life, their only living family member, their only hope. Maggie was probably as nervous as he and Emily. Maybe they just needed to get used to each other.
He flopped in the back seat next to his sister, and Maggie started backing out of the parking lot before he had closed the door.
“We’re really glad to finally meet you Aunt Maggie,” He said, trying to buckle his seatbelt while sliding across the seat on a wild turn. “Mom told us a lot about you.” This wasn’t really true. Mom had hardly ever mentioned her only sister. She just called her the quiet one, or the bookworm and said that every family had an oddball like Maggie hiding somewhere.
Maggie stared at the empty space between Jordan and Emily in the rearview mirror and scratched at her knitted hat, she didn’t answer. Victor rattled and slid toward their new home.
“How far is it to the house?” Jordan asked.
Aunt Maggie turned the rearview mirror toward the ceiling and gripped the steering wheel with her elbows raised high. She spun the wheel wildly in one direction and then the other, like a preschool child pretending to drive.
Jordan and Emily spread their arms and legs, grasping and pushing to stay balanced on the seat. Despite her cold greeting, Jordan hoped the strange woman would get used to them and someday find a little spot in her heart to love Emily. His sister needed a mother.
By the time Victor plowed to a stop, Jordan was weak with hunger even though the curvy roads and wild driving had made him a little sick. They hadn’t eaten since early morning when Dad’s lawyer put them on the bus in St. Louis.
Maggie marched into the house and slammed the door before the red dust settled over Victor like a powdering of cinnamon over toast.
“Come on Emily.” Jordan tugged his sister out of the car. “Let’s get our bags. Victor probably isn’t going to carry them inside for us.”
Emily didn’t smile. She shook him off and stared at the overgrown cottage. Her mouth fell open and she whispered, “What is this place?”
“It’s home,” he said, avoiding her eyes like Maggie had. The tiny log cabin was covered with wild vines and tree sized shrubs. If the house had ever had a lawn, it had grown into briar bushes and tree saplings long ago. Piles of garbage bags reached to the roof on one side of the house and in the center of the yard an old washing machine lay tipped on its side. The sagging logs were mold-gray and many of the wooden shingles were missing. One window had a torn piece of screen hanging from it, the rest didn’t even have screen over them. It looked like a condemned building.
