“Stop it,” she said, and wriggled out from under him. “Put on your man-pants, Blakie.”
“H-Huh?”
She didn’t answer. She was looking at the two phones lying beside the terrible station wagon. One of them looked broken, but the other —
Rachel edged toward it on her hands and knees, never taking her eyes off the car into which their father and mother had disappeared with terrifying suddenness. As she was reaching toward the good phone, Blakie walked past her toward the station wagon, holding out his scraped hand.
“Mom? Mommy? Come out! I hurted myself. You have to come out n kiss it bet—”
“Stop right where you are, Blake Lussier.”
Carla would have been proud; it was her she-who-must-be-obeyed voice at its most forbidding. And it worked. Blake stopped four feet from the side of the station wagon.
“But I want Mommy! I want Mommy, Rachie!”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the car. “Not now. Help me work this thing.” She knew perfectly well how to work the phone, but she had to distract him.
“Gimme, I can do it! Gimme, Rache!”
She passed it over, and while he examined the buttons, she got up, took him by the back of his Wolverine tee-shirt, and pulled him back three steps. Blake hardly noticed. He found the power button of Julie Vernon’s cell phone and pushed it. The phone beeped. Rachel took it from him, and for once in his dopey little-kid life, Blakie didn’t protest.
She had listened carefully when McGruff the Crime Dog came to talk to them at school (although she knew perfectly well it was only a guy in a McGruff suit), and she did not hesitate now. She punched in 911 and put the phone to her ear. It rang once, then was picked up.
“Hello? My name is Rachel Ann Lussier, and—”
“This call is being recorded,” a man’s voice overrode her. “If you wish to report an emergency, push one. If you wish to report adverse road conditions, push two. If you wish to report a stranded motorist—”
“Rache? Rachie? Where Mommy? Where Da—”
“Shhh!” Rachel said sternly, and pushed 1. It was hard to do. Her hand was trembling and her eyes were all blurry. She realized she was crying. When had she started crying? She couldn’t remember.
“Hello, this is nine-one-one,” a woman said.
“Are you real or another recording?” Rachel asked.
“I’m real,” the woman said, sounding a little amused. “Do you have an emergency?”
“Yes. A bad car ate up our mother and our daddy. It’s at the—”
“Quit while you’re ahead,” the 911 woman advised. She sounded more amused than ever. “How old are you, kiddo?”
“I’m six and a half. My name is Rachel Ann Lussier, and a car, a bad car—”
“Listen, Rachel Ann or whoever you are, I can trace this call. Did you know that? I bet you didn’t. Now just hang up and I won’t have to send a policeman to your house to paddle your—”
“They’re dead, you stupid phone person!” Rachel shouted into the phone, and at the d-word, Blakie began to cry again.
The 911 woman didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, in a voice no longer amused: “Where are you, Rachel Ann?”
“At the empty restaurant! The one with the orange barrels!”
Blakie sat down and put his arms over his face. That hurt Rachel in a way she had never been hurt before. It hurt her deep in her heart.
“That’s not enough information,” the 911 lady said. “Can you be a little more specific, Rachel Ann?”
Rachel didn’t know what specific meant, but she knew what she was seeing: the back tire of the station wagon, the one closest to them, was melting a little. A tentacle of what looked like liquid rubber was moving slowly across the pavement toward Blakie.
“I have to go,” Rachel said. “We have to get away from the bad car.”
She dragged Blake to his feet, staring at the melting tire. The tentacle of rubber started to go back where it had come from (because it knows we’re out of reach, she thought), and the tire started to look like a tire again, but that wasn’t good enough for Rachel. She kept dragging Blake down the ramp and toward the turnpike.