Across the Desert: Chapters 1–8

Eva was also an aviator, like Addie. If I had a plane or a car or even a motorcycle (and if I wasn’t twelve and could drive and maybe had some money and food and a GPS and stuff like that), I’d travel to Alamo Lake and explore the whole area where Addie flies.

I already have a few potentially killer pimples on my forehead, and I don’t think I could face venomous snakes. Or even, like, a rabid raccoon.

Looking around the library to make sure no one is watching me, I let my hand drop and hunch down in my seat.

Addie flies over saguaros and palo verde trees; wide, barren sandy washes that will turn into raging rivers during the monsoons; and long, winding rivers of green, towering, full trees like cottonwoods and aspens, which are found in the desert only where the water floods during storms.

“Look at that!” she squeals. “A wild pig!” Addie chases the pig, and I want to shout, Stop! It might maul you to death!

Addie removes her sunglasses and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. For a brief moment, I get a look at her face, her freckled cheeks, her hazel eyes, the wisps of light brown hair coming out of her helmet.

Then she puts her glasses back on and takes a swig from the canteen she always carries, wiping her mouth when she’s done.

“Giant flying barf mess. No, thank you.”
Addie’s words make me feel queasy.

My own hyperventilating drowns out Addie’s faint cries, but I can’t calm my breathing enough to hear her better.

“No, you don’t understand,” I tell her, frantic to get back to the livestream.

The librarian looks down at me, her eyes filled with compassion. “I’m sorry you saw something like that. I’m sure it happened a long time ago.”

The librarian looks around at the people glaring at me for making such a racket.

The overwhelming smell of coffee makes my already sick stomach feel worse.

I’m not sure what I expected—maybe a big open area with firefighters bustling all around and sliding down poles when they heard my pleas for help.

No, I draw maps. It's called cartography.

You need to know a lot of math to be a pilot. You know, rate equations and descent profile and all that.

I grab her clammy hand, tugging on it a little.

I trudge back out to the living room and collapse onto our thrift-store couch.

I pace the dingy brown carpet of our tiny apartment living room.

“Out by Alamo Lake. I can tell you the general, uh, vicinity of where the crash happened.”

This isn’t a perilous three-year sailing adventure. It’s a quick three-hour drive. No. Big. Deal.

I sift through the junk drawer, making too much noise, searching for anything at all I can use, but it’s just a bunch of rubber bands and paper clips and mail, Past Due stamped on some of it in big red letters.

I put Mom’s old sunglasses on, doing my best to look older. Incognito.

Handing it over reluctantly, I tell her, “I’ll scream if you try to steal it.”

I swing my grimy shoes back and forth and kick the chair legs.

It’s such a relief to tell Marty this that I slump down in my seat, letting all my breath out.

Marty scoffs. “A taxi? In Quartzsite? At ten o’clock at night? Have you ever been to Quartzsite?”

Marty glowers. “This isn’t enough. When was the last time you ate?”

Your plan has more holes than your tennis shoes, which, by the way, are not exactly the optimal sort of shoe for hiking in the desert, even if they didn’t look fifty years old.

After a while, bibliophile. That really is a real word, and it means someone who loves books, and you said you like travel books.

The bus reaches our stop, and we both stand and stretch before hobbling down the aisle with the other groggy passengers.

I am scheming, positively scheming, about how I’m going to get out of here and get to Addie. Could I use some kind of decoy? All I have is my water and snacks.

Marty dials, and I listen intently as she talks to the person on the line.

I assume the person is asking why Marty wants this information and if she has something to report because Marty says, “Well, I suspect that a child may have gone missing.”

I spot a door and carefully unlock and step through it onto some rickety wooden steps.