Last Safe Place, The by Ninie Hammon Read Free Book Online Page B

goodbye. And the second thing he knew for sure was that something was eating at Ty that didn’t have nothing to do with that crazy fool who wasn’t no more The Beast of Babylon than he was the Tooth Fairy. He looked over at the boy in the next bed. Ty was sleeping soundly, not like last night.
    Theo had been awake, in his robe and house shoes, when Gabriella came for Ty because he hadn’t been able to go back to sleep after the boy woke him up screaming. Ty was fighting the covers, crying out how he was sorry and he didn’t mean for it to happen, saying crazy stuff about killing his father. Stoney’d died in prison! When Theo shook Ty awake, the boy had curled up in a ball in the bed and told Theo to leave him alone. And all that was before the Ghost of Christmas Past showed up. Theo was planning to talk to Gabriella about it, but that conversation got hijacked—and might never happen now that they was leaving.
    This wasn’t what I had planned, Lord. Just so you know.
    T Y STARED AT the puke green motel room wall as he listened to the rise and fall of voices in the next room. He couldn’t understand what they were saying but figured it had something to do with their trip to New York to see a Broadway show.
    Who cared about some dumb play! The only thing Ty wanted was to vanish quickly and quietly so the Boogie Man wouldn’t come looking for him again and hurt his mother. Now, he’d have to wait until they got back home from—
    Wait a minute. New York City. Millions of people. He could run away there! Just get up to go to the bathroom during the show and never come back. New York City was full of homeless people; nobody’d notice one more stray kid.
    And after he ran away he would … what? Get a job washing dishes or sweeping floors, he supposed. That’s what he’d seen orphans do in themovies. He didn’t know how long the $300 he had saved would last, but he didn’t think it would be long enough. When it was gone … well, he’d figure that out when the time came.
    * * * *
    Gabriella, Theo and Ty sat dawdling over dessert in the TGI Friday’s in the Pittsburgh International Airport, killing time before their flight to JFK in New York.
    “This coffee tastes like rat puke,” Theo said.
    “There’s a Starbucks in the food court, Grandpa Slappy,” Ty said. “I could get you a—”
    “I’m a gone get me some coffee from that Starbucks I seen in the food court!”
    “I just said I’d—” Ty started but Theo ignored him again and started to rise. Gabriella touched his arm and cut her eyes to P.D., lying peacefully on the floor at his feet. “Take Puppy Dog with you. You’re supposed to be visually impaired, remember.”
    The big golden retriever—almost 85 pounds of him—was a trained assistance and service dog. When Ty was five years old, their busybody neighbor had convinced Smokey the boy needed a puppy. Since Smokey hated dogs, he’d been a soft sell when the lady proposed they volunteer to raise a puppy and then give the dog to an agency when he was 18 months old for training and placement with a handicapped person. It had sounded good on paper—no dog, just a puppy. It didn’t occur to anyone—Smokey included—how attached they’d all become to the animal in a year and a half. When they had to give him up, the whole family went into a meltdown. Smokey held out for six months before he tracked the animal down through the agency and paid the owner $20,000—double the cost of a service dog—to get him back.
    But P.D.’s training carried a bonus they hadn’t considered at the time. Being a service dog meant he could go along with them wherever they went. Put his harness and sign on him and he was welcome anywhere.
    “I don’t want that animal nowhere near me,” Theo said. He pointed down at the blond glaze of dog hair on the leg of his black trousers. “If I’s to collect all the hair that fur factory has left on my clothes I’d have enough for a whole new dog.”
    Theo hobbled