Wanted! by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online

authority yell.
    A truck backed out almost on top of her. Alice had to brake as if she were a car.
    It was a Ford pickup, not the cute little suburban kind, but a big solid V-8 work truck. It was not new, and the back was filled with stuff. A tarp, a barrel, some tools, a ladder, several cement blocks, empty white buckets. The tailgate was gone.
    The driver could not see behind him. His interior rearview mirror was blocked and he was backing in that slow way of people who are hoping immovable objects will move out of the way.
    Alice threw her purse and shopping bag behind the cement blocks, put her two hands on the bed of the truck, and jumped in. Turning on her fanny, she pulled up her feet and skirt, crawled up against the junk and yanked the tarp over herself.
    The truck changed gears painfully and slowly. Then even more slowly, it drove forward. Had the driver seen her get in his truck? Had the security guard seen? Was any of this really happening, or had her imagination split like an atom, causing a bomb of made-up nightmares?
    The tarp was brilliant blue plastic, very thin. She felt outlined. The truck bed was filthy with spilled oil, paint, gunk, and food wrappers.
    The truck turned, and turned again. Were they heading out of the mall or toward the guard?
    The truck lurched and then leaped out into traffic, the driver ramming through gears as if he were hours late for the most important event of the year. Alice braced herself on the corrugated floor of the truck. They drove for a minute and stopped dead. Alice and the junk tipped, and then fell back in place. They must have hit a red light.
    When this had happened twice more, Alice took the tarp off. Her truck was in the third, interior lane, completely surrounded by cars and vans and other trucks. A very curious driver in a Mazda was watching Alice.
    She twinkled her fingers at him and he grinned, surprised and interested, and waved back.
    The light changed, and this time Alice’s truck drove straight for perhaps a mile. Buildings emerged from the wrong direction, because she was sitting backward. She saw every fast food chain in America—Dunkin’ Donuts and Taco Bell and Ruby Tuesday’s and Burger King. It made her hungry even while the thought of food also made her sick.
    At each red light, Alice told herself to get off.
    But it was dangerous. Right here in the midst of vehicles and idling engines and turning trucks? Just slide off hoping nobody would run her over? Dart through several lanes of traffic?
    Alice was not a danger-seeking kind of person. She used seat belts. She put waterproofing on her winter boots. When she did homework on the computer, she always made a backup.
    It was too late, anyhow. Abruptly, they left the city behind and were among large yards and houses set way back off the road.
    Alice tried to think through the geography of this. Westtown Mall was about five miles from Mom’s house, and about five miles the other direction from the city itself. She wasn’t familiar with this road, so were they heading back out to the country? Or was this a diagonal, and merely another way through the suburbs that ringed the city?
    Now there was nobody behind them, and Alice had time to be afraid of the driver of her truck. The driver she had not seen; did not know the gender or age of. What would he/she do about Alice when the drive was over? Where would they be? What would Alice do?
    Her brain was capable of questions, but not answers.
    When the truck stopped again, Alice hung onto her plastic shopping bag and her purse, scooted to the edge of the truck, and slid off. She walked away, trying to look like a person who had been on the edge of the road all along.
    The light changed. The Ford moved on.
    She could not stop herself from checking. She turned and looked, and incredibly, the driver’s hand was sticking out of the window, waving at her.
    She could not wave back. It was too casual.
    Had it been a teenager, delighted to have a sudden hitchhiker? A