Saving Grace Read online

  “Excuse me. Can you tell me where the bus station is?” I asked Leslie. She was filling the salt shakers from a giant box of salt.

  “Sure,” she said. “Go left when you go out the door and then left again at the corner. You can’t miss it.” She paused. “And the clinic is just up to the right across the street. Like I said, you can see the lights from here.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I gave her a twenty and waited for my change. Then I put on my jacket, gathered all my stuff and tucked the blanket around Brianna.

  “Bye,” Leslie said. “Take good care of that little one.”

  “I will,” I said. “Bye.” By the time the police showed up to ask questions, if they even did, Brianna and I would be long gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brianna started coughing again as soon as we were outside in the cold air. I set the car seat down and lifted her out. For once she didn’t kick or squirm. She just settled in close to me with her head on my shoulder. “Just a couple more hours and we’ll be safe,” I whispered. “I promise as soon as we get to Halifax we’ll find a doctor.”

  I could hear Brianna’s wheezy breathing and it made me think about my mother. I don’t know how old I was, six maybe, and I was sick. It was more than just a cold. I remember she rubbed some kind of awful-smelling stuff on my chest, and she sat by my bed all night. Every time I woke up she was there with a glass of water and a cool cloth for my head.

  I felt a sharp pain stab my chest. Missing my mother hurt the same as thinking about giving up Brianna. Tears filled my eyes and I had to blink hard to make them go away. I didn’t have any time to cry. I hooked the handle of the baby seat over my arm. Left, she’d said, and then left around the corner. I walked down the street with the car seat bumping against my hip.

  I turned the corner. There were two big buses pulled up in front of the bus station.

  And two big police officers at the door.

  I backed up, turned around and started walking fast up the street. Goddamn Justin. I had to stop for a second so I could catch my breath. I pressed my cheek against Brianna’s. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay.” I didn’t need Justin. I could do this without him.

  There was an alley next to the diner, narrow and dark, with a big Dumpster against the wall about halfway down. The Dumpster stank, but not that much, and I’d smelled worse. There were a couple of wooden things stacked against the wall by the Dumpster. They looked like low wooden platforms. I give them a push with my foot, but they didn’t even wobble and they were better than sitting on the ground. I set the car seat down and shifted Brianna from one shoulder to the other. I didn’t have anything to wipe her nose with, so I used the edge of my sleeve.

  I couldn’t believe Justin had ratted me out, but he had, and if I thought about it I was going to be so mad or even cry, and I didn’t have time for that. A couple of tears came from somewhere and slipped down my cheek. I rubbed them away with the back of my hand and swallowed the fear creeping up from my stomach.

  Okay, so we couldn’t take a bus. We could hitch. I’d walk back up to the highway and we’d find a ride—anywhere, just away from here. Off in the distance I heard a police siren. Were they looking for me? I listened. No, it was going away from here.

  Brianna couldn’t seem to stop coughing. “It’ll be okay,” I told her, tucking the blanket closer around her. “Don’t be scared. They’re not going to take you away from me.” I was shaking. Not because I was scared. It was just cold in between the Dumpster and the building.

  I stood up and the baby puked. All over my sweater, down my back, even in my hair there was baby puke. My stomach flip-flopped, and for a second I was afraid I was going to heave too. I closed my eyes for a moment and started breathing through my mouth. Brianna was crying and, I couldn’t help it, so was I.

  I cleaned her up with the blanket and a handful of baby wipes. Then I put her in the car seat.

  There was barf all over my jacket. And there were only a couple of wipes left in the package. I got the puke out of my hair, but I couldn’t clean it off my jacket. I was just going to have to go without it. We’d just walk fast, out to the highway. I could do this.

  I bent down and picked up Brianna again. I stood there, rocking back and forth, and she stopped crying. She smelled like barf, and I could hear every breath she took. And with our faces together I could feel how warm she was.

  My tears fell on her cheek. I wiped them away but they kept on coming. I could hear the sirens again. I wanted my own mother. She would know what to do. But the only mother was me.

  I rocked Brianna, back and forth, until she fell asleep in my arms. The only sound was her breathing. I kissed her, her forehead, her cheek, the top of her head. She was my baby. “Nobody loves you like I do,” I whispered. My hands were shaking. Every part of me was shaking. “I’m your real mother,” I told her.

  I hooked the back pack over one shoulder and walked down the alley. There were no people around, but I could hear the traffic in the distance out on the highway.

  I didn’t even stop walking. I was the only mother there was. I crossed the street and turned right. Down toward the lights of the clinic.

  Darlene Ryan is the author of Rules for Life, an ALA Best Book nominee. Darlene lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

  Visit her website at www.darleneryan.com

  Other titles in the Orca Soundings series

  Battle of the Bands

  K.L. Denman

  Blue Moon

  Marilyn Halvorson

  Breathless

  Pam Withers

  Bull Rider

  Marilyn Halvorson

  Charmed

  Carrie Mac

  Chill

  Colin Frizzell

  Crush

  Carrie Mac

  Dead-End Job

  Vicki Grant

  Death Wind

  William Bell

  Exit Point

  Laura Langston

  Exposure

  Patricia Murdoch

  Fastback Beach

  Shirlee Smith Matheson

  Grind

  Eric Walters

  The Hemingway Tradition

  Kristin Butcher

  Hit Squad

  James Heneghan

  Home Invasion

  Monique Polak

  Juice

  Eric Walters

  Kicked Out

  Beth Goobie

  My Time as Caz Hazard

  Tanya Lloyd Kyi

  No More Pranks

  Monique Polak

  No Problem

  Dayle Campbell Gaetz

  One More Step

  Sheree Fitch

  Overdrive

  Eric Walters

  Refuge Cove

  Lesley Choyce

  Snitch

  Norah McClintock

  Something Girl

  Beth Goobie

  Sticks and Stones

  Beth Goobie

  Stuffed

  Eric Walters

  Tell

  Norah McClintock

  Thunderbowl

  Lesley Choyce

  Tough Trails

  Irene Morck

  The Trouble with Liberty

  Kristin Butcher

  Truth

  Tanya Lloyd Kyi

  Who Owns Kelly Paddik?

  Beth Goobie

  Yellow Line

  Sylvia Olsen

  Zee’s Way

  Kristin Butcher

  Visit www.orcabook.com for all Orca titles.

  More Orca Soundings

  Crush

  by Carrie Mac

  Isn’t she fazed by any of this? Does she do this all the time? Make unsuspecting, seemingly straight girls squirm? Or am I making it all up? But making up what? The butterflies are real. The fact that I want to kiss her is real.

  Would kissing a girl be different from kissing boys? If all I did was kiss her, would that make me queer? Are you queer just for thinking it? Or does doing it make
you queer? And what if I don’t want to be queer? Do I get a say in this at all?

  Because of a moment of indiscretion, Hope’s parents send her to New York to spend the summer with her sister. Miserable, Hope ends up meeting Nat and developing a powerful crush. The only problem is that Nat is a girl. Hope is pretty sure she isn’t gay. Or is she? Struggling with new feelings, fitting in and a strange city far from home, Hope finds that love—and acceptance—comes in many different forms.

  Stuffed

  by Eric Walters

  “So, do we have a deal?” Mr. Evans asked.

  “Unbelievable,” I muttered under my breath.

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Evans said.

  “The whole thing is unbelievable. First you try to threaten me. Then you try to bribe me. And now you do the two together, trying to bribe me and threatening me if I don’t take the bribe.”

  “I don’t like to think of it in those terms,” he said.

  When Ian and his classmates watch a documentary about the health concerns of eating fast food, Ian decides to start a boycott against a multinational food chain. Can Ian stand up for what he believes in? Can he take on a corporate behemoth and win?

  Exposure

  by Patricia Murdoch

  I was happier than I had been for a long time. Everything was crashing down around Dana. Finally I was getting some justice. But I wanted a bigger helping. This wasn’t enough. I had to do something.

  I went into the washroom and dug a marker out of my pencil case. I drew a box and a couple of circles, with lines for a flash going off, on the outer wall of the first cubicle. No one would be able to miss it. It didn’t look exactly like a camera, but it would do. And for the finishing touch I wrote SMILE DANA, with a happy face right beside it.

  Exit Point

  by Laura Langston

  “I’m not dead. I’m still me. I still have a body and everything.”

  “You are still you, but you don’t have a body. What you’re seeing is a thought form.” He points to a tall gold urn up by the minister. “Your body is in there. You were cremated.”

  Thunk thunk, thunk thunk. My heart pounds in my chest. Dread mushrooms in my stomach. Sweat beads on my forehead.“But everybody knows death is the end. That there’s nothing left but matter.”

  “Death is only the beginning, Logan. Hannah knows that. Lots of people do.”

  Logan always takes the easy way out. After a night of drinking and driving, he wakes up to find he has been involved in a car accident and is dead. With the help of his guide, Wade, and the spirit of his grandmother, he realizes he has taken the wrong exit. He wasn’t meant to die. His life had a purpose—to save his sister!