On the Run Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Original French text copyright © 2009 by Editions Pocket Jeunesse, Department of Univers Poche.

  Translation copyright © 2012 by Y. Maudet

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Chris Sheban

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in France as En Cavale by Éditions Pocket Jeunesse, an imprint of Univers Poche, Paris, in 2009.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bourreau, Clara.

  [En cavale. English]

  On the run / Clara Bourreau; translated from the French by Y. Maudet.

  — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  Originally published as En cavale. Paris, France : Éditions Pocket Jeunesse, c2009.

  Summary: Fourth-grader Anthony has always been told that his father is traveling, so when he finds out that he is in jail awaiting trial Anthony is upset and confused—but when his father escapes and takes Anthony with him life becomes really complicated.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-97706-9

  1. Children of prisoners—Juvenile fiction. 2. Children of criminals— Juvenile fiction. 3. Escaped prisoners—Juvenile fiction. 4. Fathers and sons—Juvenile fiction. [1. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 2. Fugitives from justice—Fiction.] I. Maudet, Y. II. Title.

  PZ7.B66833On 2012 843.92—dc23 2012010898

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1. The Postcard

  2. The Story of the Cantes Men

  3. The Visiting Room

  4. The Escape

  5. The Journey

  6. The Policeman’s Daughter

  7. The Pyrotechnician

  • 1 •

  The Postcard

  I got a postcard from my dad this morning. So did my sister, Lise. And my mom got a letter so long there were three stamps on the envelope.

  There’s a holographic image of birds on my postcard, so when you tilt it, it looks like the birds are flying. On the other side, my dad writes that his trip is going well. But I can’t make out all the words because his handwriting looks like chicken scratch. The U looks like an N, the M like a W. It’s hard to make sense of it all. So I ask Lise to help me. She won’t let me read her card, though. It’s always the same thing: she lets me look at the picture, but she refuses to tell me what Dad writes to her.

  My dad travels for work, and he’s been gone a long time. Two years, I think. I was in second grade when he left. He goes around the world, taking photographs of animals for magazines. We never see him anymore. I wish he’d come home. Two years is a long time to be without him.

  I try to read Lise’s postcard before we head to school. I sneak into her bedroom while she’s brushing her teeth, but I’ve barely turned the card over when she comes in and smacks the top of my head with her hairbrush. She’s smart, my sister. As soon as you touch her things, she has a way of appearing out of nowhere. Her mouth is full of toothpaste, but that doesn’t stop her from shouting.

  “Let go of my card, shrimp! It’s personal. I don’t go through your things, do I?”

  My sister is always calling me shrimp. But one day I’ll be taller than she is. Stronger too. Then she’ll find out exactly how a shrimp takes revenge.

  “But I let you read mine. It’s not secret,” I say. “You can look at it again. And I’m not a shrimp.”

  “I don’t care about your card!” she says as she spins around and goes back to the bathroom.

  On the way to school, I start telling my mom what Dad wrote to me this time, but she doesn’t pay attention. I guess she’s not interested, just like Lise. I’ll talk to Hassan about it during recess. Hassan is my best friend. He has three sisters, so he knows firsthand that boys and girls don’t act the same. Maybe he can explain to me why my mom and sister don’t care about my postcard when I’d give anything to know what my dad told them.

  Hassan lives in an apartment building at the end of my street. It always smells good at his place because his mother’s a great cook. On Sundays, he and his father do jigsaw puzzles together. Hassan started one that had a thousand pieces, most of them just a lot of blue sky, which made it hard to finish. Sometimes I do puzzles with them and afterward Hassan and I play video games at my house. I’m way better at those than at puzzles because I play them a lot. Still, I wish I could do jigsaw puzzles with my dad.

  We always have math first at school. This morning I hurry to finish the problems, then sneak a peek at my dad’s postcard. It’s really nice. Lise told me the birds were seagulls.

  At recess, we head to the playground and I show my postcard to Hassan.

  “You’re lucky your dad travels,” he says. “Mine never goes anywhere, just back to Tunisia. What does your sister’s card look like?”

  “It’s ugly,” I say. “There’s a strange drawing in black-and-white. I like my birds a lot better. And it’s in color.”

  Hassan nods. “You’re right, it is nice,” he says.

  That’s what I like about Hassan: we always agree on everything, except when it comes to Stephanie. She’s a real pain. Plus she has ugly hair and her face is as pink as a pig’s. But Hassan has a crush on her.

  After lunch, the whole class goes to the track to run hurdles. I don’t like the hurdles much, probably because I’m no good at them. Either I run too fast and knock them all down—and I get penalty points—or I manage to clear them but it takes me longer than any of the girls. It’s a total drag.

  To get out of running, I pretend to have a stomachache. I tell the teacher I ate too many baked beans at lunch, mine and Hassan’s. The teacher asks if I want to go home. I hesitate. My mom’s a nurse and she works during the day. I’d have to go to my grandfather and Yaya’s (Yaya is my grandmother but we don’t say grandma in my family, we say Yaya). I’d rather stay in school and look at my postcard. So my teacher puts me in a fifth-grade class for the afternoon, where the students have a history lesson on the French Revolution and how the people killed the king.

  When my mom has to visit patients at night, Lise and I stay home alone. Well, not exactly alone … If it was just the two of us we’d pig out on gummy bears, huge slices of cake, and fruit juice, and we’d watch TV instead of doing our homework.

  But whenever Mom works late, my grandparents come over. Grandpa and Yaya are my dad’s parents. I don’t know my mom’s side of the family; they don’t speak to my mother and I’ve never met them. At least, not that I can remember.

  I keep saying that I’m old enough to walk home from school alone, but my mom won’t let me. I don’t know what she’s afraid of. I don’t mind so much when Grandpa comes to pick me up. He waits for me far away from the school door like I’ve told him to. But Yaya waits right in front, and she even talks to my teacher. Totally embarrassing! On top of that, Yaya dresses like an old lady, which I hate. The only good thing is that she usually buys me a huge raisin muffin on the way home, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

  During afternoon recess, my classmates are still at the track, so I’m alone in the school yard. I sit on a bench and pretend I’m reading a book, but I’m just waiting for the end of the day.

 
Today, Grandpa picks me up.

  I show him my postcard with the birds on it and he tells me that he got a letter from Dad this week too.

  When I was in the fifth-grade class this afternoon, I had time to think about my sister’s postcard. I decided that if I’m fast enough I’ll have time to read it before she gets home from school. It’s Wednesday, which means she’ll be home soon, in about twenty-five minutes, so I have to hurry if I want to find where she’s hidden it. I snoop through her things often enough and Lise knows it, so she constantly shifts things around.

  When we get home, I don’t bother grabbing a snack. I tell Grandpa I have homework and head upstairs. I go to Lise’s bedroom and try to find her stash of mail. I have fifteen minutes left. It takes me a while but I find the postcard—right there, in the second drawer of her desk. There’s also a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. I didn’t know she smokes.

  I’m careful to keep all the postcards in order as I start to read the first one. Something doesn’t seem right: my dad doesn’t talk about his latest trip. Not one word about it. Then I hear footsteps on the stairs. I have just enough time to stuff everything back in the drawer.

  Then I dash to my room and pretend I’m reading. Yaya comes in without knocking (like always) to give me a kiss. She usually takes a yoga class on Wednesdays, so I didn’t think she’d be over this early. She wants to know if I need help with my homework.

  “No. I just have a math problem and a geography lesson,” I tell her.

  “You can go over your geography with me,” Yaya says.

  I sigh. I’m never left in peace for two minutes in this house. I’d like to watch my favorite cartoon, but now I have to do my geography lesson with Yaya. Great! There’s no use arguing with her or I would. No TV for me today, I guess.

  When Lise comes home, she and Yaya have a fight. My sister is fourteen years old and everyone says she’s going through a rebellious phase. She swears a lot, which everybody thinks is normal. I’d like to be a teenager too, because when I happen to say a bad word my punishment is no after-school snack. And I love my afternoon snack.

  I don’t know what Lise and Yaya are arguing about, but they’re shouting in the kitchen. Then I hear Lise stomp up to her room, and I hear her sniffling, like she’s crying. I almost feel bad that I snooped around in her things.

  I go out in the hallway and knock gently on her door.

  She mumbles something and I open the door.

  “Why are you crying?” I ask as I go in.

  “No reason,” she says with a shrug. “Everyone just gets on my nerves around here. We’re a crazy family. We can’t ever talk to each other like normal people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s exactly the problem. You’re not—”

  Suddenly Yaya barges in (without knocking, of course) and gives Lise a hard look. Lise starts to shout again.

  “Is it too much for you to knock? I’m talking to Anthony!”

  “Enough, Lise! That’s no way to speak to your grandmother.”

  “It’s better than lying to Anthony!”

  Yaya yanks me out of the room and slams Lise’s door behind her. Lise may be going through a phase, but it’s the first time she’s talked back to Yaya like that.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “What is Lise talking about?”

  “Nothing, sweetie pie. You want to watch a cartoon?”

  We head downstairs and I turn on the TV but I don’t pay attention to the screen. I’m usually allowed to watch cartoons after I finish my homework, and sometimes on Sundays I watch sports with Grandpa. He loves explaining the rules of each game because he knows them all.

  What made Yaya change her mind so fast? I wonder. She leaves and goes to talk to Grandpa. They always speak in Catalan when they don’t want me and Lise to understand their conversation. When I’m in high school maybe I’ll be able to learn Catalan and understand all their secrets—and there sure seem to be a lot of secrets in my family.

  For instance, at night, when Grandpa and Yaya come over for dinner and I’m in bed, I hear them and my mom and sister arguing. Lise usually clomps up the stairs to her room to let everyone know that she’s hopping mad. Once I tried to go to her room and find out what was going on, but Mom heard me and came up to check that I was in bed.

  Strange men also come to visit my mom sometimes. She always sends me out to the backyard before she speaks to them. I know they’re not her friends: she only has girl friends, who bring us gifts or books. These men look at me and smile, but I don’t like them. They smell like fish and never bring us any presents. In fact, they scare me a little; they aren’t like other men I know. They’re weird.

  I can’t fall asleep. In my head, I make a list of all the things that aren’t normal in our family. At my grandparents’ place there are pictures of my father everywhere. Here at home there are none. When I ask my mom why that is, she gives stupid answers like “Pictures gather dust and I don’t have time to clean them” or “I have some but I keep them in an album. No need to show them to everybody.”

  There’s something else. While I was waiting for my mom to come up and say goodnight tonight, I read my dad’s postcard again. I wanted to compare this one to the others he sent me. I took out the special box where I keep all his letters. It’s an old cookie tin Lise gave me after she decorated it with decals and photos of the two of us.

  I never noticed it before, but each postcard has the same postmark—an image of a lake with windsurfers. It’s strange. If you’re traveling, the postmark should be different from place to place. Except, what if my dad is a nonmoving traveler? I fall asleep as soon as that thought occurs to me.

  I wake up during the night from a nightmare. I’m scared, so I call my mom, but Lise comes in. She seems sleepy.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I had a bad dream. Where’s Mom?”

  “In bed. She just came home.”

  “What about Dad?” I ask. “Where is he?”

  “Traveling.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “What’s wrong, Anthony?”

  “Nothing, I just had a nightmare.”

  “You want me to sleep with you?”

  “Can we go to your room?”

  “Okay. Bring your pillow.”

  I go to my sister’s room and slide under the covers. Lise crushes me with her legs but it’s not too bad. Her feet are ice cold, so I put mine against hers to warm them up. We call it playing hot water bottle. I never have cold feet, so I’m always the hot water bottle. I love doing this, except when Lise scratches me with her nails.

  Next day, I wake up in Lise’s room. It takes me a second to remember what happened: the letter, the cigarettes in Lise’s desk, the postmark with the lake and windsurfers, the nightmare …

  I want to ask Mom about the postmarks, but she says she’s running late and that we’ll discuss it later. On my way to school, I decide to talk things over with Hassan. He collects stamps from Tunisia and maybe he knows about postmarks too. But we play during recess and I forget to ask him.

  When I come home that afternoon, I go straight up to Lise’s bedroom. There’s something weird about these postmarks that I want to check out. I open the drawer and take out Lise’s bundle of postcards. The cigarettes are no longer there. She probably took them to school, or maybe she changed the hiding place. I try hard to decipher the words my dad scribbled. Only when he writes to me does he try to write a little more neatly.

  Not only are the letters mailed from the same place as mine, but Dad doesn’t mention his travels at all. He only talks about the last time he and Lise saw each other. And it wasn’t too long ago.

  I don’t understand. Why has my dad seen Lise and not me? Why didn’t she tell me?

  At that moment I notice that Lise is standing in the doorway. She’s probably been watching me for a few minutes. Normally, she’d have yelled and hit me. She takes boxing lessons, and I can tell she’s making progress by the blows she gives me whe
n we fight. I bite; she hits. It’s about equal: I get bruises and she gets tooth marks. But now, she’s silent as she watches me with Dad’s letters in my hand. I feel my face get hot, the way it always does when I get caught doing something I shouldn’t.

  “I didn’t want to search your stuff, I just wanted to check something,” I tell her.

  “So? Did you find what you wanted?”

  “Dad doesn’t mention his travels.”

  “No.”

  We stay quiet for a while; then Lise puts a CD on and we listen to the music, resting on her bed, not singing. I still have the postcards in my hands. She’s the one who talks first.

  “Is that all you have to say?” she asks me.

  “Do you mean about the cigarettes?”

  “No, who cares about that. I’m talking about Dad.”

  I nod. “The postmarks,” I say, “they’re all the same. Shouldn’t they be different?”

  She doesn’t answer. I ask her again.

  “Ask Mom,” she tells me.

  “She won’t say. If you know, why don’t you tell me?”

  “I’m not allowed to tell you, shrimp. You’re too young.”

  I bite the inside of her arm, where it hurts the most. I’ve had it with being called shrimp: my name is Anthony!

  Lise cries out (she’ll have a big mark tomorrow) and then she shouts, “Dad’s not traveling. He’s in jail! You know what that means?”

  Yes, I know what it means. But it can’t be true. My dad’s not in jail, he’s a wildlife photographer and he travels around the world. I bite Lise’s arm again; then I run to my bedroom and lock myself in. Lise slams her door.

  It can’t be true. My dad’s traveling, taking pictures of animals for magazines. Jail is for bad people. For thieves and murderers. My dad is no criminal. Or maybe it’s like in the movies: sometimes good people are sent to jail, but it’s all a mistake, the police got it wrong.

  This is real life, though, not a movie. It can’t be true. Lise is lying. Besides, my dad always initials his postcards CR—C for Cantes, his last name, R for Rafael, his first name—just like the letters next to his pictures in the magazines.