Jason was about to head back inside when he saw Darrell pull into the lot, his motorcycle making an odd popping noise every few seconds. Jason took a couple steps toward Darrell as he slid his motorcycle into a parking spot and switched off.

"I thought you were headed to Birch Springs with the missus," Jason said, shielding his eyes from the sun. It was a hot, cloudless day, as it almost always was there in the Great Victoria Desert. To the horizon, in every direction away from town, the rust-colored landscape was carpeted with clumps of spinifex and short, twisted eucalyptus trees.

Darrell gave a small smile. "Still am." He dismounted and pulled off his helmet. His fair complexion was tanned just shy of a sunburn. "She went on ahead to make sure the cabin was open for the fam. But my spark plugs decided to get old suddenly, so here I am."

Here was the Wilson-Campbell Garage, affectionately known as the WCG, or just the Garage, a large one-story light tan building. It sat on the edge of Rochester, a town of about 15,000 people in the middle of nowhere, which was its appeal and its curse. For anyone going west out of Rochester on the town's only highway, the Garage was the final sign of civilization before they were swallowed by the endless desert.

The Garage was a combination auto parts store, auto repair shop, and meeting place for the local motorcycle club, the Grey Ghosts, so called because most of them were pushing retirement age. It was their favorite thing to joke about. Darrell and Jason were both members, and indeed, both were starting to get a little grey-haired. The Garage was partially funded by the store and the repair businesses, and partially by donations from club members.

"It's not your spark plugs, mate," a girl said. "That's your carburetor."

Jason and Darrell turned to the girl with pigtails, sitting on a bench further along the covered porch. Both men had seen her around a few times, but neither knew her name. Twelve, blonde, and confident, she was new in town, but already had a reputation for going out of her way to let you know just how little you impressed her.

Darrell was amused. "Sure about that, Miss? I replaced the carburetor just six months ago, but the plugs are pretty old. I was hoping they'd last another few months, but..." He shrugged.

"Oh, your plugs may also need replaced," the girl said, with simple conviction. "But those pops are your carburetor."

Jason and Darrell glanced at each other with a smile, then turned back to the girl. "Well, if it is, it's still under warranty," Darrell said to her. "So I'm good either way." The men strolled inside.

 

Ted Acton looked at the man sitting on the other side of his desk, and sighed. "Look, I'd love to help. I understand your situation. But the simple truth is, I got no work for you. I got one full-time mechanic and one part-time mechanic, and they're all I need. My wife, daughter, and I run the store. The club maintains their space on a volunteer basis. All I can promise you is that if we ever get swamped, or if the situation changes, I'll certainly keep you in mind."

The man across from him was clearly dejected, but unsurprised. He nodded, stood, and held out his hand. "I appreciate that. Thanks for meeting with me, sir."

Ted stood and shook the man's hand warmly. "It's no problem. I hope it works out for you."

The man nodded and left the small office. He walked through the store and out the front doors, onto the porch.

The covered porch existed as a courtesy, almost a necessity, considering the blazing sun which poured down its heat almost every day of the year. It extended all along the front and one side of the building. It held a few wooden benches along its length, and the newspaper vending machine next to the front door.

The man forced a smile as the little girl stood and joined him. "Any luck?" she asked.

He shook his head.

She grimaced, but tried to remain cheerful. "We'll find something, Dad."

His heart almost broke at her optimism, and at the way she said we.

He ruffled her hair. "I sure hope so, Kiddo." He sighed. "And I'm sorry, but...I don't know that I'll be able to get you much of a birthday present this year." His voiced almost cracked with emotion at having to admit that. She was one day from thirteen.

But the girl's face broke into a beautiful grin. "Daddy, I'm stoked you remembered! You usually forget my birthday! I'll take the win."

He laughed.

"But I do want a present." She looked at him meaningfully, indicating she had something specific in mind.

"Well, if I can get it, I will." I won't be able to, he thought.

"Teach me to ride Thelma."

He grunted in surprise and admiration. "Seriously?"

She nodded. "My legs are long enough. I measured them."

He chuckled. "All right." He looked around, and said, "I don't think these fine folks will mind if we use their parking lot." The Garage's main parking lot section, on the west side of the building, was a rough square about forty meters along each side, and almost deserted. It was completely open and flat, with no wheel stops, and its painted lines had almost faded into obscurity. "We'll start an hour before sundown, when it's cooler."

"I can't learn everything in an hour!"

"Who said I'd only give you one lesson? No, if you're gonna learn to ride Thelma, we're gonna have a series of lessons, and we're gonna do it right."

Darrell stepped out the doors, looked left and right, saw the girl, and approached. "Hey," he said with a smile. "I owe you an apology and some admiration. The plugs weren't the problem. Carburetor was cracked."

The girl just smiled. She looked neither embarrassed nor smug. Just happy.

Darrell took in the sight of the man with his hand on the girl's shoulder, and stuck out his hand to him. "Darrell Wyckoff."

The man shook his hand. "Terry Chadwick. This is Rikki."

"Well, you've got quite the little mechanic, there, Terry."

"Yep, she's pretty smart." Terry looked at his daughter. "Though you wouldn't think so from her grades."

Rikki scowled at him.

"So, did you move here recently?" Darrell asked.

"Yeah. I'm basically wandering from place to place until I can find a job. I need one bad. You know of anything?"

Darrell grimaced apologetically and shook his head. "I don't. And in a small town like this, few folks are probably hiring."

"Yeah, Rochester seemed bigger on the map than it does in reality," Terry said.

"I don't doubt it!" Darrell said. "Well, listen, my extended relatives are all waiting for me to join them at our annual reunion, and I'm already late, which means the wife's gonna be mad, so I gotta get going. But it was good meeting you, Terry. I hope you find what you're looking for."

They shook hands again. "Thanks, it was great meeting you, too," Terry said.

With a nod to Rikki, Darrell turned and left.

 

Wearing her little pink helmet, Rikki sat on the back of Thelma with her arms around her father as he drove them home. Thelma was a fine, vintage, kick-starter Harley-Davidson, at least twenty-five years old. Home was their motorhome, parked about fifty meters off the highway a few kilometers west of town, hidden as well as it could be behind a small clump of eucalyptus trees.

Terry intentionally drove past their motorhome twice because other cars were in sight. Each time, he drove another half kilometer or so (Wasting petrol! he thought with anguish) before doing a U-turn and returning. He did this because he didn't want anyone to see him pull off the road, and come back later to rob them. Or worse.

Once inside the relative coolness of their home, they had a light lunch. He and Rikki ate a sandwich each, and split one more.

Rikki rinsed the dishes as quickly as possible to conserve water. As she did, she curiously eyed the motorhome's cab. She shut off the water and went to stand by the driver's seat.

"Oh, no," Terry said. "That's a different animal entirely."

Rikki sat in the driver's seat. Her feet could touch the pedals, but no more. She could operate them only if she sat so far forward that the steering wheel practically touched her chin.

Terry smiled. "Even if you were tall enough, driving this thing is a beast. You'd knock over half of Rochester. Let's learn one vehicle at a time."

Being goofy, Rikki made a funny face and bumped her forehead against the steering wheel, in mock frustration. "Two more inches, and I'd conquer this beast."

"Who says you'll keep growing?" Terry teased her.

Rikki swiveled her head to mock-glare at her father. "I say."

"Yeah, you probably have another three inches in you somewhere." He motioned her out of the seat. "Come on. I need to head into town to fill out more applications. You nap."

Terry was big on making sure that until they got through this desert, and if she wasn't in school, Rikki should nap each afternoon to conserve energy. There was little else for her to do, and the desert was blistering hot. In fact, as far as Terry was concerned, the only good thing about the desert was the free energy they got from the solar panels he'd installed on the roof the previous year. And even that idea was nothing but his weak effort to put a positive spin on things, as they didn't need a desert to catch rays.

Rikki got out of the driver's seat and went to her bunk. Their bunks were next to each other, in the tiny bedroom at the rear of the motorhome. Hers was on the right, as one stood in the doorway. She climbed in, and started a little fan which pointed at her face.

"You good 'til I get back?" Terry asked.

She gave him a double thumbs up.

Terry nodded and left, locking the door behind him.

 

"All right, make sure your fuel's on. No, you won't need the choke, the engine's still warm. Now stand. No, on the pedal. Stand on the pedal, and put your whole weight into it, all forty kilograms, or whatever you are. Push down hard, really crank it. And again. One more time. There you go!"

Rikki was a fast learner, as her father expected. Over the next hour, he taught her how to shift, how to brake, how to sit while the bike was idle. And yes, her legs were long enough – barely. During this first lesson, he only let her drive in a straight line. He wouldn't let her go fast, even if there had been room to do so, which there wasn't.

Terry kept them at the far end of the parking lot. Every now and then, someone entering or exiting the Garage would stop and gaze at them a moment, approving of this father teaching his little girl to drive a motorcycle.

"When do I really get to goooo?" Rikki asked eagerly, gripping the handlebars.

"Depends on what you mean by goooo. I can't let you drive on the road."

"I could do it." The confidence could have moved mountains.

"The fact that you think so scares the bejeesus outta me. After one hour?! No, Pumpkin, you are nowhere near road ready. And even if you were, one accident or one ticket, and our lives would be a million times harder than they already are. Come on, off."

"We're already done?!" She stayed right where she was.

"For the day. Tomorrow, we'll see how much you remember. And for your birthday, I'll teach you to take curves at low speed."

"We could do that now! There's still light."

"I'm tiiiiired, Pumpkin." He motioned her off the bike.

As she dismounted, he asked, "Hey, do you like Dairy Jester?" Dairy Jester was a national fast-food chain.

She shrugged. "They're not bad. I hate their chips, though."

"So you like their burgers and chicken sandwiches? And their breakfast sandwiches?"

"Yeah."

"Great, because you'll be getting a lot of them soon. I get an employee discount."

Her eyes lit up. "You got a job!"

He laughed, pleased that his surprise had the intended effect. "I sure did! I'm an old fart working with a bunch of high schoolers. But yeah, we're gonna make it."

She affectionately punched him on the hip. "I knew you could do it!"

He climbed on the bike, she climbed on behind him, and they went home.

 

Emptying his pockets at the end of the day, Terry glanced at his phone. Its minutes were gone, so it was a useless hunk of metal until he got paid. No point carrying this around for a while, he thought. He set it on the tiny table beside his bunk and headed for the door.

Yawning, Terry stepped outside to chain Thelma and found Rikki sitting on her, leaning on the handlebars and looking at the stars.

"Time for bed, Kiddo."

Rikki didn't move. Without taking her eyes off the sky, she softly asked, "How long this time?"

Terry knew what she meant. Rikki knew perfectly well he had no desire to plant his flag in Nowheresville longer than he had to.

"As long as it takes, like always." He spoke simply, trying to conceal the fact that he was not in the mood for this subject. He nudged her off the bike so he could move it, and she dismounted.

"Daddy," she said, still speaking softly. "I've been thinking. I know you expected your last job to get us all the way to the coast, and what happened blew that to smithereens."

He grunted. He really, really didn't want to talk about this. He wheeled Thelma to the back corner of the motorhome, which was near a tree.

"But at the same time, isn't it a good thing you had all that money right when we needed it?" she asked.

"I suppose." He wove the chain around Thelma, through the rungs of the motorhome's rear ladder, and around two tree branches. His motions were fluid, that of a man who had done this many times.

"It's just...I wanted to give you a brighter way of looking at it," she said. "That's all."

He forced a small smile. "I understand, Kiddo. And I get what you're sayin', I really do. And maybe one day I'll appreciate it. But right now...it still hurts too much." He secured the chain with a heavy padlock.

Rikki looked at the sky. "I know you hate the desert. I'm not wild about it, myself. But I will say one thing about it: the stars. Nighttime in the desert, the stars, they..." She pursed her lips, trying to find words which could do justice to the universal grandeur of sparkling color spread before her, from horizon to horizon. "They hold beauty," she finally whispered. "So much."

Terry didn't look up. He didn't have the energy. He put his arm lightly across her shoulders. "Come on. Bed."

"But don't you think so, Daddy?"

He sighed. He didn't know how to put it in a way she'd understand, or without bringing her down. "I think beauty will be this godforsaken desert in the rear view mirror. Sweetheart, I'm tired. Come on."

On the cusp of thirteen, Rikki was just barely old enough to grasp that when her father said he was tired, he wasn't just talking about the weariness at the end of a long day.

She kept quiet, and let him usher her inside.

 

Rikki began her first day as a teenager, a Monday, enrolling in a new school.

Terry often wondered if their itinerant lifestyle affected Rikki's grades. This was her fifth or sixth school – he'd lost count – and it wouldn't be her last, by far. Each school had slightly different curricula, so there was no real consistency to her education.

She didn't even bother trying to make close friends. She knew she'd be leaving in a week, a month, or a year. This also bothered Terry.

Rikki didn't apply herself, yet she was phenomenally bright. Terry knew this without a doubt. She was brighter than he was, so it must have been something on her mother's side. He refused to believe Year 7 classes could possibly be that hard. The kids weren't learning rocket science, they were reading Charles Dickens and calculating the area of a rectangle. So what was it? Was their nomadic lifestyle really any excuse for Rikki to constantly hover just above failing?

He didn't know. He only knew she resisted putting any real effort into school. He sometimes wondered whether punishment or encouragement was the answer. He shamefully acknowledged to himself every single day that he wasn't very good with either.

He was convinced he was a terrible father. Yet he soldiered on. What else could he do?

He felt that shame more acutely every time he sat across from a school counselor, like now. This time, it was Mrs. Beale, who was old enough to know a good, but poor, wandering single father when she met one. Whether she approved of such seemed to be a different matter.

They spoke alone. Rikki waited in the hall, kicking her legs in boredom.

"May I ask, Mr. Chadwick, if you have plans to stay any length of time in Rochester?"

"I'm just here long enough to refill the coffers. I have no debt, so even a fast-food paycheck can take me a long way. I don't want to create a life in a small desert town. My ultimate goal is to get Rikki to a city, preferably on the east coast, in time for her to attend a nice, upscale senior secondary school. Something to give her a chance for a better future, more than she's got at the moment. She's really bright. She can go far. Money's the only obstacle. I've got to earn it along the way, or we'd already be there."

"If all you wanted was a nice coastal city, Perth is closer."

Terry kept his anger bottled and well hidden. "I have my reasons for going east." Why is this woman mucking in my business?! he thought. She's a school counselor, not my psychiatrist!

"Do you know how long you plan to stay with us?"

Inside, Terry wanted to scream at having to answer questions like that. He knew he had to, but it was still frustrating. His conversation with Mrs. Beale was practically an exact repeat of the one he'd had the day before with the Dairy Jester manager. It was another downside of being on the move: re-earning trust everywhere he went.

"I have no plan at all. I move on when I feel it's right, that's all."

"So it could be next week?"

Terry gave her a small smile. "No, it wouldn't be like that. I anticipate staying a few months, at least."

"And why did you feel it was right to move on from wherever you were before?"

None of your effing business! he wanted to scream. That is entirely irrelevant!

He answered anyway. "I had a nice job cleaning up and organizing a large estate after the owner passed away. The executor hired me as overseer, to do all the little, tedious things he couldn't be bothered to do. It was a temporary job, about six months. Once the estate was settled, my job was finished. It felt like a good moment to move on."

It had been a great moment to move on. It had been the sweetest job he'd ever had, netting him thousands of dollars, more than enough to let him and Rikki aim straight for the coast and a better life.

He didn't tell Mrs. Beale that seven days after moving on, the motorhome suspension repair had wiped out ninety percent of everything he'd made, utterly destroying his plan. That had been a sudden emergency; he'd had no clue that was coming.

Rikki had been correct to point out that it was fortunate he had the money for the repair, which was the rosy viewpoint. Terry knew that he was also correct to be bitter almost beyond consolation that the repair had wiped him out, singlehandedly knocking his plan back by anywhere from six months to two years, trapping them in this hellish desert for the foreseeable future.

Nor did he tell Mrs. Beale how badly he'd overestimated the ease with which he would find the next job. After the repair sent him straight back into poverty, he'd assumed he could find employment again within a couple weeks. That had been six weeks ago. The job fairy had not been kind over the last eight hundred miles of desert.

"I see we have no contact information other than your employer," Mrs. Beale said. "Is that correct?"

Terry fought the urge to sarcastically reply, If that's what I effing wrote, then yes, it's correct. He merely said, "Yes."

"You have no address or phone of your own?"

He wanted to bang his head against a wall. He had literally described his situation on the form. The form which was sitting directly in front of her. She works in a school, yet somehow, she can't read! he screamed inside.

With a monumental effort, he maintained a pleasant demeanor and repeated the same facts he had so carefully written on the form she was ignoring. "I cannot open a bank account because I have no address, as I am in the middle of a very long cross-country move in a motorhome. I can't use a proxy mailing address because I'm only going in one direction; I would never go back to check the mailbox. With no bank account, I cannot subscribe to a normal cell phone service, so I use a prepaid service. I used up the last minutes I had taking phone calls from job applications, and until I receive my first paycheck, I cannot refill the minutes. Therefore, yes, for the time being, my employer is the only way to contact me. Upon receiving my first paycheck, I will purchase more time on my SIM card, and you will then be able to contact me more easily."

"Hmm," was all she said.

Then came the point during these interviews Terry hated the most. He could always tell it was coming from the heat of its approach. He braced himself. He despised this moment with a burning, flaming passion.

Mrs. Beale glanced at the transcripts before her, obviously unimpressed. "You say Rikki is bright, yet her grades don't reflect that."

That moment. That one right there. Terry wanted to scream in this bitch's face.

He smiled. "Yeah, she only applies herself when she wants to. I do my best to encourage her to study harder, but she lacks motivation if she's not interested in a subject."

Please end this! Terry thought desperately. Just enroll my daughter and let me go. Just. Stamp. The effing. Paper.

Mrs. Beale pursed her lips, giving him a very prim look. "Well, we'll do our best to present the education your daughter needs and deserves. But if she fails to apply herself...we rely on you to address that."

He nodded. "Understood."

Mrs. Beale sighed, stamped a few papers, and held out another paper. "Here is her schedule. Welcome to Rochester, Mr. Chadwick. I hope your stay is a pleasant one."

Terry smiled and took the schedule.

 

Almost every Dairy Jester employee was a teenager in school, which was precisely why Terry was such a great hire for the day shift. The manager, a man in his fifties by the name of Alex Hardin, had almost no one else to cover that time. Mr. Hardin had wanted Terry to start immediately, but Terry had to spend Monday morning enrolling Rikki, so he would start the next morning.

While Rikki attended her first classes, Terry hit the grocery store.

Luckily, Dairy Jester paid each Friday. Unluckily, it was always for the previous week's work, which meant Terry was still eleven days from his first paycheck. He was down to his final $116, but he needed some of that for the laundromat, and to purchase petrol for Thelma and water for the motorhome. Typically, he'd need to buy water twice before payday, but if he and Rikki conserved, they could lower that to once.

The motorhome burned diesel on its way to and from the station for the water refill, but that wasn't an issue. The motorhome, at least, had enough fuel to last until payday.

But everything else was a problem, and Terry was too proud and ashamed to ask Mr. Hardin for an advance, which he probably wouldn't get, anyway.

Terry was an old pro at buying the barest essentials and doing math in his head as he shopped. As poor as he'd always been, it was second nature. After agonizing over a series of potential purchases, he was down to his final choice, which wasn't really a choice at all. He splurged money he absolutely did not have on a single cupcake, a package of small candles, and two party hats. He only wanted one candle, but they were sold in packs of ten, which was part of the agony. It all meant he'd have to go without breakfast the next two mornings, but Rikki didn't need to know that. It already looked like he would be skipping several meals in the next eleven days, anyway, so what was two more?

He desperately wanted to purchase phone minutes, but couldn't. The phone had been crucial while waiting to hear from job applications. But now that he was employed, he only needed it for emergencies, such as if Rikki's school or Mr. Hardin called. All he needed was two or three minutes, which was less than a dollar. But minutes were sold in set quantities, and the minimum to purchase was ten dollars. So that was a clear no. He'd just have to trust to luck until payday.

Trust to luck until payday. One of the most common and exhausting phrases ever, felt by millions – perhaps billions – of people every day.

Terry took the groceries home. It was 10:30, and Rikki was in school until 3:00. On a gamble, he drove to Dairy Jester to see if he could work right away. Surely I can help with the lunch rush, he thought.

Mr. Hardin appreciated Terry's enthusiasm, but he wanted to spend a few hours training him, first, before dumping him in cold during a lunch rush, so he told Terry to stick with the plan and begin the next morning, as scheduled.

It was a fair answer, but it meant Terry had lost that gamble, because every trip he took burned petrol. Motorcycles got great mileage, but he knew he'd have to refill once before payday, and he dreaded that moment. It was going to hurt.

And it was petrol he wouldn't have had to burn if he could have just used his phone.

 

As soon as Terry brought Rikki home from school, she sat at the dining table and grinned as he placed a party hat on her head, the elastic string snapping under her chin. Then he put his own party hat on. Rikki schnorted at how ridiculous he looked.

Terry pulled the cupcake from the refrigerator and grandly placed it in front of Rikki. He lit a candle using the stove, and carefully stuck the candle in the frosting.

"Lucky thirteen!" he exclaimed as he sat across from her, grinning like a maniac. "Happy birthday, Rikki."

She bunched her shoulders and smiled, overcome with joy.

"All right. Make a wish, and do the thing!"

She closed her eyes for about ten seconds. Then she suddenly opened them and quickly blew out the candle.

"Yeah-hay!" Terry shouted. He put up his hand, and they high-fived. Then Rikki devoured the cupcake, enjoying every bite.

Seeing her happiness, Terry knew he wouldn't mind missing those meals at all.

After she finished her cupcake, Rikki said, "Dad, I have a bit of news." She sucked some frosting off her thumb.

"Did you get in trouble already?"

She stifled a laugh. "No. But I got my first period today."

He spent a moment recalling her schedule. "Your first period's math, right?"

With her head down a little and her eyes up, she gave him that appraising look only teenage girls can really give. "No. Not a school period. My period period. I menstruated today, Dad. It came on suddenly just after lunch."

"Oh." He stared for several seconds. Stupidly, he grasped for something to say. "Were you scared?"

"I freaked out at first, but then I realized what was happening. I had sex ed two years ago, so I knew this was coming someday. First time school's ever taught me anything useful.

"So, happy birthday to me, I guess," she said, with a mildly sarcastic grin. "My pants are black, so no one really knew, and the stain's really small. One of the teachers helped me. She gave me a pad and told me what to do, so I'm okay. But I need a box of pads."

Terry nodded slowly. This development had absolutely not been on his bingo card. With shame, he realized he'd been living in a hope that Rikki's puberty would continue to exist in some vague future he didn't have to worry about yet. Well, surprise, he thought. The future's here, whether I like it or not.

"Aaaaaaand...I need them tonight." She gave him an apologetic look. "And every month from now on. Apparently."

He nodded again. "Yes, ma'am," he was finally able to say. "I'm on it."

While Rikki did homework, Terry burned more petrol on a return trip to the store to buy one more unplanned essential item he absolutely could not afford.

He wondered how many missed meals he was up to now.

And he reflected on how lucky they'd been that a female teacher had been available to help Rikki right when she'd needed it. Again, he felt the shame that he had not properly prepared either of them for this.

Another failure, he thought. Just toss it on the pile with all the others.

 

An hour before sundown, they began lesson number two in the Garage's parking lot. Terry began by making sure Rikki remembered everything from lesson number one, which she did, as he expected.

True to his word, he walked her through taking curves at low speed. He stressed to her that curves at high speed would be very different, but they'd tackle that when they got there.

She'd learned to ride a bicycle when she was seven, and had ridden her little heart out, but a year later, someone had stolen her bike. Still, that one year of bicycle riding meant that balance, steering, and leaning weren't foreign concepts to her.

As the lesson went on, Terry felt more and more frustrated that Rikki kept trying to drive faster than he wanted. She kept accelerating hard, then braking hard because she had nowhere to go.

About halfway through the lesson, she drove the width of the lot, away from him, once again braking hard at the end. Then she slowly turned the bike around and began to head back toward him, a grin on her face.

Then she gunned the engine a little and tried to pop a wheelie.

It did not go well. Terry knew exactly what she was trying to do, but he could only watch, horrified, feeling as if everything happened in slow motion.

Rikki had no clue what she was doing. Like any untrained beginner, she pulled on the handlebars, like she would have on a bicycle. But arm strength doesn't lift the front end of a hunk of metal into the air. On a motorcycle, yanking up on the handlebars only makes the rider lunge forward in their seat, and this is what Rikki did, much to her shock and dismay. She'd just throttled up, so now she was out of control. The bike wobbled all over the place, and Rikki somehow couldn't apply the brake. She shrieked, panicked, and jumped off the bike as it fell. Girl and motorcycle slid across the asphalt, side by side. The bike's engine stalled.

Terry didn't remember running. The next thing he knew, he was by Rikki's side.

Her shirt was torn. Skin from her side and lower back had been scraped off, and she was bleeding. The cuts weren't deep, but they were wide. Her helmet had protected her head.

Tears ran down her face. Not from pain, but from shame. Shame that she had failed, and shame that she had failed him. Without even looking, she knew he was enraged.

No strangers came running to their aid, so it seemed no one had witnessed the incident, for which Terry was grateful. Nothing bad would have come of it, but he didn't need the extra complications.

He contained his emotions. First things first.

"Come on," he said tightly, quietly. The both knew the lecture would come later. "Can you stand?"

Awkwardly, she got to her feet. She was shaking a little.

Terry hugged her tight, but only for a moment. She buried her face in his shirt.

He thought briefly about using the Garage's restroom to clean the wound, but he didn't want the owners freaking out about liability.

"Lift your shirt," he said, and took off his own shirt.

Rikki raised her shirt enough to expose the wounds. Terry tied his shirt around her midriff.

He walked a few paces to the motorcycle, and righted it. He gave it a quick once-over, saw nothing but scratches.

"Stay right there," he told Rikki. She did exactly as he said, standing with her feet planted, sniffling, filled with dread and shame.

Terry mounted the motorcycle, started it, drove it around the parking lot. The handlebars felt different somehow, though it was hard to say exactly what was wrong. But it seemed to run fine.

He pulled up to Rikki. "Get on."

"Daddy, I'm sorry-"

"Get on!"

She climbed on behind him and held tight.

He drove them home.

 

Neither spoke as he cleaned her wounds, applied antiseptic, then bandages. Self-reliance was a big part of their lives, so he was always well-stocked on first aid items.

When he finished, he pointed to a chair at the dining table. "Sit."

She sat. He sat across from her. A mere five hours earlier, they'd been in these same chairs high-fiving and celebrating her birthday.

That frivolity was gone.

Terry clasped his hands and rested them on the table. He looked at his daughter for a long, long moment, but she couldn't look him in the eye. It was deathly quiet in that motorhome. The tension was stifling.

Finally, he spoke. Softly, but firmly. "Do you know why I'm angry?"

Rikki immediately started weeping, a tiny bit. "Because I damaged Thelma-"

He slammed his fist on the table. Hard. In the stillness, it sounded like a cannon shot. The table rattled. She jumped.

He clasped his hands and rested them on the table once more, and spoke calmly. "Try again."

She swallowed hard, desperately trying to think. "Because I should have known you didn't want me to do that-"

Another fist slam on the table. Another cannon shot around that little home. Rikki began crying openly.

Terry clasped his hands and rested them on the table once more, and spoke calmly. "Try again."

"Daddy, I don't know what you want me to say!" She was too upset to think clearly. All the swagger was gone. She was just a child now, just a thirteen-year-old child.

He reached forward and took her hands in his, raised them, kissed them both. Then he set his hands on the table while still holding hers. He looked at her, his face working with emotion.

"I...am...furious with you, because I want to celebrate your fourteenth birthday!"

She looked at him with only the dimmest comprehension, tears streaming down her face.

"Don't you get it?" he asked. "You are my whole world. You are precious. I love you. And you go and do something boneheaded and hurt yourself! And for what?

"I don't give a rat's ass about Thelma, except as a tool which helps us live our lives. Thelma's just a machine. You are my daughter. My one and only daughter.

"When you operate a motor vehicle, of any kind, you have a responsibility! It's not about fun and games, unless you're truly experienced enough to know what you're doing, which – news flash – you are not! You have a responsibility to yourself, and to the people around you! It's a quarter-ton hunk of metal traveling at speed, Goddammit! It can kill! As you just found out, it can wound! You pull a stunt like that on the road, just for fun, you could hurt an innocent person who never asked to be roped into your tomfoolery! You never, ever, ever treat a hunk of metal which can kill like it's a walk in the park!

"When I drive Thelma, and I have you sitting behind me, I drive like someone else would if they were carrying the freaking Crown Jewels! And you're worth more than any set of Crown Jewels.

"I'm angry with you, in exactly the same way you'd be angry with me if I ran out to the road and tried to get run over just for the fun of it."

Now that she grasped the reason for his rage, Rikki was a bit calmer, but still wept.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I'm really sorry."

He held her hands more firmly, trying not to squeeze so hard that he would hurt her. He looked her dead in the eyes. "Driving a motorcycle is not a game. It's a responsibility. Have you learned this?"

"Yes." She nodded enthusiastically.

"Okay, then. Tomorrow night, we'll put this behind us and resume lessons. But you will do as I say, and only as I say. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Okay." He let go of her hands and stood, and motioned her out of her chair. "Give me a hug, bug."

She stood, and he wrapped her in his embrace. She held him tight, weeping silently.

"I want to see you turn fourteen. Then fifteen. Then sixteen. And all the other numbers after that. All right?"

"I love you, Daddy! I'll never do it again!"

He tilted her head back and looked her in the eye. "Yes, you will. One day, you'll pop a wheelie. Successfully. I'll teach you. But at my pace, and under my instruction, and only when I say you're ready. Which won't be for a while. Got it?"

She nodded.

"Okay." He let out a deep, deep sigh. "We gotta be up super early, so take a shower quick and get to bed."

She hugged him again. He hugged her back, then ruffled her hair. "All right, Kiddo. Get washing. Let me know if I need to re-dress your cuts after you're done."

Still sniffling, she grabbed her pajamas and entered the bathroom.

While she showered, Terry went outside with a wet rag and looked at Thelma. As he expected, Rikki's lacerations had bled on the bike during the trip home. He wiped it off, then inspected the bike more closely.

Paintwork scratched, handlebars ever so slightly bent. He could fix all that relatively easily, eventually. The frames around the wheels were still in place. It was a sturdy bike, and all it had done, really, was fall over at about ten or fifteen kilometers an hour.

Terry sighed with relief. We got lucky tonight, he thought.

 

Fate handed the Chadwick family another huge stroke of luck: Rikki's school was just five blocks from Dairy Jester.

Father and daughter benefitted from this luck and quickly fell into a routine. Rikki accompanied her father to work each morning at five and slept the remainder of the morning in a booth, then walked to school. If Terry was still working when school let out, she walked to Dairy Jester and waited for his shift to end. If Terry's shift ended before school let out, he was there to meet her when she walked out the school doors.

Terry was keenly aware of the possible awkwardness, and difficulty, of having his child hang around his employment. It reeked of using one's employment as a day care, essentially. Many managers would frown strongly on such a thing. Terry had always been a good and conscientious worker, but Rikki's presence on site led him to go way above and beyond, excelling himself. He learned the job quickly (it wasn't that difficult), and made sure he helped every customer courteously. He cleaned the lobby once an hour, which was more often than required, taking pride in keeping it sparkling. He kept the utensils neat and tidy, and took a keen interest in preparing anything he could ahead of time. He even cleaned the restrooms twice a shift, which was way more than required. Terry never once wanted to see Mr. Hardin glance at Rikki sleeping in a booth, then give him an ugly side-eye.

As it turned out, Mr. Hardin was a laid-back, kind, and understanding man. Seeing Terry's work ethic, he was pleased as punch, and didn't mind Rikki's presence one bit. Especially as she never caused trouble or got in the way.

As promised, Rikki's breakfasts were always from Dairy Jester.

 

Terry discovered a pleasant upside to the motorcycle lessons: he now had a distinct leverage over Rikki. "No lesson until all your homework is finished. If you have a test coming up, I want to know about it, and I want to see you study for it."

She tried to wriggle out from under that, but only once. "You can't hold my lessons with Thelma hostage like that. It's a birthday present, remember?" She was joking, though. Her wheelie stunt was still fresh on her mind, so she didn't feel entitled to anything regarding her lessons.

"You know what else is a gift more precious than gold? Knowledge. Education." He tapped her textbooks. "Get busy."

 

True to his word, Terry began Rikki's third lesson with a clean slate. The only reference to the previous night was when Terry asked Rikki if driving Thelma was bothering her bandages or her wounds. She said no, and that was that.

Terry spent about ten minutes reviewing lessons from the previous two nights. Rikki demonstrated a reasonable mastery of what she had learned so far. She no longer tried to go too fast, nor braked hard.

Satisfied, Terry set up a miniature slalom course. He wanted six large rocks, but he was in a desert; large rocks weren't really lying around. He and Rikki searched for items they could use, and eventually created turn points out of a pile of small rocks; a rotted tree branch; an old sock they found half buried in the sand; and another small pile of rocks. Terry wanted six turn points, but they were out of things, so he settled for four. He made a mental note to bring things next time.

As they were finishing the final pile of rocks, Darrell drove past on the highway, on his own motorcycle. Evidently seeing the Chadwicks, Darrell pulled a U-turn about a hundred yards down the road. He came back to the Garage and pulled into the parking lot. He swung in their direction, circled around, and pulled up next to them just as Rikki mounted Thelma.

"Good evening!" Darrell said with a grin.

"Hiya!" Rikki said

Terry shook his hand. "How was the reunion?"

"Still goin' on," Darrell said. "I'm just runnin' some errands. It's a week-long event, and it's equal parts agonizing and fun, like always. There's always those nutjobs in the family tree you avoid the rest of the year for a reason, you know? But that's fine, I'm sure they think the same about me. Hey, did you find work?"

"Mornings at Dairy Jester," Terry said. "I know it's not glamorous, but it suits me just fine."

"Hey, whatever works!" Darrell said. "That's awesome, man. I'm glad you found something." He looked at Rikki, sitting patiently on Thelma. "A classic kick-starter Harley. Nice! Teaching Rikki to ride, are we?"

"We are," Terry said. "She turned thirteen yesterday, and said this was what she wanted for her present, so here we are. Her legs are long enough, so how could I say no?"

"Ha!" Darrell said. "Well, happy birthday, Rikki!"

"Thanks!" Rikki said.

"How ya likin' it so far?" Darrell asked.

"It's fun. Harder than I thought it would be, I admit. But Dad's a good teacher."

"And no spills yet?"

"Just one," Terry said smoothly, instantly glossing over any awkwardness he or Rikki might feel. "But I've found you never truly learn to ride unless you burn some asphalt at least once."

Darrell laughed. "You know, that's probably true!" He looked at the piles of stuff laid out in a zig-zag. "Can you handle this?" he asked Rikki.

"We're about to find out," Rikki said with a smile.

"Well go on, then!" Darrell encouraged her.

"This is the first time, so slower than you think," Terry told her. "What's the number one rule?"

"Where I look is where the bike's gonna go," she said.

"All right," Terry said. "Slow and steady."

Rikki nodded and eased forward. She obeyed her father and drove more slowly than she would have chosen on her own, but was soon glad she did. The constant turning back and forth led her to wobble a bit. She completed the slalom, but almost certainly wouldn't have if she'd been going as fast as she had wanted.

But she sped up a bit on the return trip, and handled it more smoothly. She pulled up next to her father and stopped flawlessly.

"Very nice!" Darrell said, giving a little applause, bringing a smile to Rikki's face. "Hey, if either of you are interested in the Grey Ghosts, you're more than welcome to join. We meet the first Saturday night of each month, right here. First time free, as our guest."

Terry nodded. "We just might do that. What are the dues?"

"Seventy-five a year, plus we expect you to spring for coffee every once in a while. We take turns."

Terry smiled. "That's fair."

Motioning to Rikki, Darrell said, "We've never had a child policy because we never needed one. But I think I have enough political sway to come up with one on the spot, so I hereby say that if you're too young to have a license, you're too young to be required to pay dues in the Grey Ghosts. I think the others won't have any problem with that."

Terry chuckled. "And that sounds more than fair."

"Speaking of a license," Rikki said. "Dad won't let me drive on the road because it's illegal-"

"Among other reasons," Terry interjected.

Rikki continued as if he hadn't spoken. "-but eventually, we all know I'll outgrow this parking lot. Is there anywhere I can drive faster, when I'm ready? A track or something?"

Darrell grimaced. "No track around here, just miles and miles of open road and only about a dozen policemen in the whole territory, half of whom might not even care. You could try the strip mall on Yarberry, but if the owners find you there, they might get upset and kick you out. Plus they've got speed humps, so you'd have to watch out for those." Darrell scratched behind his ear. "Yeah, that's a good question. I'll noodle on that. If I think of any place, I'll let you know."

"Cool, thanks," Rikki said.

"All right," Darrell said. "Well, I need to hurry up. The wife sent me out to get a private dinner because she can't stand Aunt Josephine's cooking, but don't you ever tell Aunt Josephine I said that. And the wife gets cranky when she's hungry."

Terry laughed and shook his hand. "All right, be seein' ya."

"Bye!" Rikki said.

 

On Terry's third day at work, late in the afternoon, Mr. Hardin told him to dump a couple of chicken sandwiches which had been sitting in the warmer for about four hours.

"They go bad that quickly?" Terry asked, surprised.

Mr. Hardin shrugged. "Eh, it's a judgment call, but I'm sure the bread's hard by now, at least. I wouldn't feel comfortable handing them out. This was a call-in order no one picked up, and no one's ordered any since then, so they're a loss at this point." He scowled. "That's why I hate call-in orders. But we have to take them. Franchise policy."

Terry was torn. He was a deeply proud man...but he was also hungry.

"Well...sir, I normally wouldn't ask, but...if they're destined for the trash bin...would it be okay if I just..."

"Oh, hey, yeah, help yourself!" Mr. Hardin said. He wasn't blind, he wasn't a fool, and he wasn't mean. He intuitively understood Terry's situation. "You have at it."

"It's just, if I'd ordered one intentionally, I'd still have to pay for it."

Mr. Hardin waved that objection away. "Nah, it's no big deal. I trust you, Terry. You're a good and honest man, and I know you'd never falsely trash food just to take it. Any food that's honestly destined for the trash bin is free for the taking."

"You're sure?"

He nodded and smiled. "I'm sure! In fact...I'm glad they'll be of use! The trash can isn't hungry. It won't miss them."

Terry chuckled.

And, though he could never prove any intention, he found it interesting that Mr. Hardin mysteriously needed an extra sandwich or two "dumped" almost every day for the next week. It was strange how those pesky call-in orders which were never picked up suddenly became an almost daily occurrence.

 

That same afternoon, as Terry left work with Rikki by his side, he picked Mr. Hardin's brain.

"A straight level place you could drive a motorcycle on?" Mr. Hardin asked, not quite understanding why Terry would ask about such a thing when plenty of roads existed.

"Something that isn't a public road," Terry said.

"Somewhere I could drive without breaking the law," Rikki said.

"Oh, I see," Mr. Hardin said, and came up with an answer almost immediately. "The Runaway Runway might be a good place."

Terry blinked at him. "What's that?"

Mr. Hardin chuckled. "Oh, just a local debacle about ten...gosh, no, it was fifteen years ago, now! We had a hotshot businessman come to town, said Rochester was sitting on a gold mine. Literally. He brought soil samples, and was all set to start mining. He courted the mayor and the town council. Everyone believed him. And why not? There are a number of gold mines in the desert, though most are hundreds of miles west of here. We all thought we'd hit it big, had dollar signs in our eyes! We even started building this guy an airfield, so he could fly in supplies and equipment! Ha!

"Then we found out the guy was a crook. There was no gold. When the town council cornered him, he claimed he'd been had himself, that the real crooks were the geologists who'd strung him along. We pointed out that his geologists didn't exist. He said, of course they didn't exist, they were using fake names and had gone into hiding!

"Oh, it was a real clusterf..." He glanced at Rikki and modified his language. "It was awful. The guy went to jail for fraud, and Mayor Cranston was so humiliated, and so besieged with ridicule and scorn, he resigned and fled town. Which was really unfair; lots of people got taken in, but when everything hit the fan, somehow, only the mayor was a gullible fool while everyone else was just an innocent victim. Different rules for different people, and the town needed someone to blame, I guess. It was a huge kerfuffle.

"Anyway, a couple kilometers east of town, somewhere near the highway, you can find several hundred yards of concrete sitting there in the middle of the desert. The airfield we started but never finished. For a while, they called it Cranston's Failure. But after Cranston took off, someone called it the Runaway Runway, and that name stuck."

Terry laughed. "Gotta say, I'm sorry we missed all that. How far off the highway is this concrete?"

"I don't know, I've never been. Heck, it might even be buried by now."

"Is there anywhere else you can think of?" Rikki asked.

Mr. Hardin shook his head. "Not off the top of my head. If I think of anything, I'll let you know."

"All right, sir, thanks," Terry said. "Good night."

"See you tomorrow!" Mr. Hardin said.

Father and daughter walked out the door and approached Thelma. As they put their helmets on, Terry said, "I'm gonna give you a partial lesson on the way home. I'm gonna show you how to take a curve at high speed, and I want you to watch closely. You're about to learn what countersteering is."

"Countersteering?" Rikki asked, puzzled.

"Daz what I said." He mounted the bike. "Countersteering, or push steering. You probably already know how to do it from riding a bicycle, but we'll make sure."

As they drove home, Terry demonstrated to Rikki how, at high speed, one didn't steer into a curve so much as lean into it. And the way one leaned into it was to turn the wheel slightly away from the curve. It was counterintuitive, yet oddly natural. Though Rikki didn't understand the physics, she grasped the principle easily. She was able to stretch her arms forward and feel the handlebars as he did it.

Terry also taught her to take double curves outside-inside-outside. "This gives you the straightest, smoothest line possible," he said loudly. They had to speak up because of the wind whipping past.

She said, "So, inside...wait, is it outside first?"

"Outside-inside-outside. OIO. Sounds like Ohio, doesn't it? Just remember it sounds like Ohio." Then he sang the letters as three notes, the I a fifth above the other two. "OIO."

She sang it, too, mimicking his deeper voice. "OIO."

He laughed. "That's it! Outside-inside-outside."

When they got home, Rikki asked, "Can we look for the Runaway Runway tonight?"

"Sorry, Pumpkin, but petrol for Thelma is really tight right now. We'll have to wait 'til I get paid."

She screwed up her face in confusion. "But we burn petrol during my lessons."

"The Garage is just a few kilometers away, so it's no big deal. The Runaway Runway, if we can even find it, is beyond the other side of town, and we'd have to spend time off road just looking for it. I'm afraid that will have to wait."

Rikki nodded. She understood and did not complain.

 

Terry started feeling the pain Friday morning as he drove to work, but he really started feeling it early Friday afternoon. It was an ache on the lower right side of his back. When did I pull a muscle? he thought. He grimaced, looking forward to some Aspro when he got home.

He powered through the rest of the day, then through the drive home with Rikki behind him. The motorcycle vibrations aggravated the pain extensively. He was in agony when they got home.

As soon as he shut off the bike, he said, "Rikki, there's no way we can do your lesson tonight. I pulled something somehow horrendously, and I need rest."

"Okay," she said, then became alarmed at seeing just how much pain he was in. He could barely dismount.

"Here," she said, supporting him. She helped him walk to the door, took his keys, unlocked the door, and helped him inside.

"Water and Aspro," he whispered, and sat at the dining table. She quickly brought him what he wanted.

After he took two pills and gulped down some water, he sat still with his eyes closed, breathing slowly. After a moment, Rikki asked, "Dad? Did you want to lie down?"

Without opening his eyes, he shook his head. "Lying down would make it worse," he whispered. "Just gonna sit here a while."

"Okay," she said quietly, a little scared. "Let me know what I can do."

He gave a tiny nod. "Just...do your homework."

She opened her mouth to protest that she had all weekend, so she didn't necessarily have to do homework right then, but stopped. Something told her that would not have been the right thing to say.

She lay on her bunk and opened a textbook. She'd fully expected to be done with school today, but apparently not.

Ten minutes later, she heard a thud.

She whipped her head around and craned her neck to look back down the motorhome.

Her father lay on the floor, still.

"Daddy!" she shrieked, and ran to his side.

His breathing was shallow, and he was sweating. She felt his head. It was hot.

She panicked, but only a moment. She ran to where she'd seen the phone. He'd placed it on the table next to his bunk. The phone had no minutes, but she knew it would still call emergency services.

She flipped it open and dialed 000.

Nothing happened.

With horror, she realized the battery was dead. Her father, assuming the phone was useless, hadn't plugged it in since Monday, and now it was dead!

Phone charger. Where is it?! she thought frantically. She tore through the motorhome, searched every drawer. Where is it?! she screamed inside. She couldn't find it.

Breathing hard, letting out a slight moan with every breath, Rikki tried not to panic. Do I go for help or continue looking for the charger?! She didn't know. If I find the charger and plug the phone in, how long will it take until I can call someone?! She didn't know.

Rikki looked at her father, and suddenly did the only thing she possibly could.

She grew up a little.

Father and daughter had been self-reliant for a long time, and that kicked in. Take care of things.

She ran to her father and knelt. "Daddy, I love you!" She kissed his cheek. "Stay strong, it'll be okay! Hang on! I'm getting help!"

She grabbed his keys and her helmet, and burst out the door. Locked the door behind her. Ran to Thelma while putting her helmet on.

She'd never driven Thelma on the road. She'd never driven Thelma faster than ten kilometers an hour. She'd never leaned into a curve except by example when she'd had her hands on the handlebars the previous day.

She had no choice.

Shaking, she tried to start the bike three times. I'm panicking and overworking it! she thought. She took a deep breath, calmed herself, and kicked normally. It started.

She carefully maneuvered through the grass and trees to the road. Was there a passing car she could flag down? No. Should I wait for a car?! she wondered. She didn't know.

So many questions which had no clear answer! Why is it so hard to know what to do?! she thought wildly.

She looked both ways, still waiting for a car. The highway was still empty.

Carefully, she put Thelma into gear and pulled onto the road.

One major thing Rikki had going for her was that she was absolutely whip smart. And she needed her quick brain now more than she ever had.

The speed limit was 100 KPH, but anything faster than about 40 felt too scary. If I wreck, no one will ever help Dad! she thought.

Her first curve came at her. It was a double. "Countersteer," she whispered. "OIO. Outside...inside...outside." She handled it flawlessly.

After a couple of minutes, she became comfortable enough to go 50. She still saw no one else.

It's like riding a bicycle, just a little more powerful, she thought. It'll be okay. I don't have far to go. It was bright daylight with the sun behind her, and she could not have asked for better visibility than that on a desert highway. Based on the practice she'd had, on a lifetime of riding on the back of Thelma, and on her experience riding a bicycle, she quickly adapted to the road relatively well. But she still made mistakes.

She forgot to check her mirror – practicing in a parking lot, it had never been an issue – so she never saw the car behind her until it whooshed past. She shrieked.

The passing driver stuck his hand out and flipped her the middle finger. Her punishment for driving too slowly. In seconds, the car was almost out of sight.

Rikki didn't care. Her dad was all that mattered. She accelerated a little, eventually reaching 60.

Finally, the Garage came into view. As she drew near, she thought, Where I look is where the bike's gonna go. She locked her eyes onto the parking lot entrance, braked, started to turn into it.

This meant crossing the opposing lane. Rikki was so focused on where she was going that she never checked opposing traffic, never saw the car bearing down on her.

The other driver slammed their brakes and their horn.

Rikki screamed in terror and frustration, and burst into tears. She had no capacity to care, she just wanted the bad things to stop! She was now in the parking lot, that was all that mattered. She pulled up to the building, kicked the stand down, turned the bike off, grabbed the keys, ran inside.

"Help!" she screeched, scaring the hell out of Ted Acton, who was manning the store. "Please call an ambulance! Help me!"

 

Twice, Ted explained to the 000 operator that the ambulance only needed to stop at the Garage long enough to pick up a passenger, who would then direct them to the patient, in a motorhome.

Somehow, someone along the line didn't listen, for when the ambulance reached the Garage, the medics rushed inside to treat a patient who wasn't there, wasting precious seconds. Rikki was crying, so Ted had to explain a third time that no, they were there to pick up the girl and go where she told them. For some reason, it took the medics several more seconds to grasp this concept.

Finally, they sped west. "So, is this a wreck?" the driver asked.

"No, my dad collapsed!"

"What, on the side of the road?"

"No, we live in a motorhome!"

"Okay," the driver said.

After a minute, Rikki pointed. "There! Turn there!"

The driver was baffled. He'd assumed this motorhome was parked on the shoulder, but he saw only desert. "There's nothing there."

"It's back that way!" Rikki hysterically pointed off the road.

The driver pulled off the highway, but struggled to find a path through the spinifex which dotted the landscape. "How far?"

Rikki couldn't take it any more. "Just grab your stuff and come on!" She hopped out and ran.

The medics followed on foot, and achieved understanding when they saw the motorhome, hidden behind a few trees. Rikki was already inside.

"He's still alive!" she shouted. "Hurry!"

 

Lying in the hospital bed, Terry was weak, but perfectly awake and cognizant. Rikki held his hand.

"It's just your standard kidney infection," Dr. Fenwick said, scanning his clipboard. "Fluids, antibiotic, and a painkiller should make you right as rain. Fortunate. We're a small hospital. Anything too complicated, we'd have had to send you somewhere else."

"My kidney. I thought I'd just pulled a muscle."

"Common mistake," Dr. Fenwick said.

"How long until I'm back on my feet?"

Dr. Fenwick gave a slight shrug. "I can't answer that after just a couple of hours. Depends on the severity of the infection and how much gumption you got, really. I mean, it was strong enough to knock you on your ass, literally, yet you've responded to treatment very quickly. Ask me again tomorrow, and I'll have an answer that's a little less glib and a little more helpful. Do you have any other questions?"

Terry shook his head.

"All righty. If the pain returns, buzz the nurse." He left father and daughter alone.

"So, am I to understand it's still Friday?" Terry asked.

"About seven-thirty, yeah."

He nodded. "That's good. My next shift's not until Monday."

"I'll call Mr. Hardin, tell him you might not be in."

"Don't do that. If he knows I'm in the hospital, he'll tell me to take the whole week to recover. He'd insist. He's that nice of a man. I'd rather just recover fast and show up to work."

"What if you don't recover fast?"

"Then we tell him Sunday night. I have his number."

"With you?"

He grimaced. "No."

"And what if you try to recover too fast and keel over at the register?"

"You leave that to me." He sighed. "What's the state of our home?"

"I locked it before we left. Your wallet was still in your pocket, so I took it before the medics came in, and hid it in my sock. I still have it. Thelma's at the Garage. Someone could steal it from their parking lot, I guess, but it's probably safe for the moment."

Terry gave his daughter a funny look. "What's Thelma doing at the Garage?"

Rikki's heart skipped a beat. Oh, right, she thought. He doesn't know!

She pursed her lips. She tried not to be annoyed with him, and failed. "Because the phone was dead, you goofball! You tossed it aside and didn't bother charging it. I couldn't call the ambulance! I didn't see any cars passing on the highway, so I drove Thelma to the Garage to get help."

Terry blinked at her. His face was filled with equal parts horror and admiration.

He adjusted to this news quickly, though. "Did you have any trouble driving to the Garage?"

She shook her head. "Nope."

He narrowed his eyes. "What trouble did you have driving to the Garage? Tell me even the tiniest thing."

She sighed. She'd never been able to lie to him very well.

"Just two things. Someone passed me really fast, and scared me. And flipped me off because I was going too slow. Then, when I got to the Garage...I turned in front of someone and they almost hit me. I didn't see them. But that was all! I did everything else right!" She looked at him with a tiny bit of pride.

He smiled. "Come here."

She leaned in so he could give her one incredible hug.

"You're amazing, did you know that?" he asked.

She smiled with pure joy, tears at her eyes. "Just remember that the next time I do something boneheaded."

He laughed.

"And you," she said, getting choked up. "You need to take better care of yourself. Because I want you to see me turn fourteen. And fifteen. And sixteen. And all the other numbers after that."

They held each other for a long, long time.

 

Rikki went to the nurse's station. "I need to make a phone call, and I need to use your directory, please."

They provided both. Rikki couldn't remember the Garage's real name, but she found it in the yellow pages and called. Ted Acton picked up.

"Hello, this is Rikki Chadwick."

"Oh, hey, Rikki! How's your dad?"

"He's gonna be fine. It was just a kidney infection."

"Oh, thank God. I'm so glad!"

"And Mr. Acton, thank you so much for your help."

"Hey, that's no problem. I'm just glad everything's okay."

"I have another favor to ask. I left my dad's motorcycle there, but he's in the hospital for a few days."

"We already wheeled it inside. And we have your helmet. You left it here."

"Oh, thank you! You are such a big help!"

"Hey, again, no problem! We'll keep it safe as long as you need."

"Thank you so much, sir!"

"You're welcome. Say hi to your dad, and you take care."

"You, too! Thank you! Bye!"

Rikki hung up and handed the phone directory back to the nurse.

The nurse asked, "Ma'am, do you have another relative or family friend to stay with, or to pick you up?"

Rikki just shook her head.

 

The hospital staff really didn't know what to do with Rikki. There was no need to call Child Protection, as she was in no danger, and her father would likely recover in just a few days. Temporarily, Rikki simply had no one else to help her, nowhere to go, and no way to get there. The staff couldn't send her home to be alone, especially outside of town with no phone or transportation; yet they couldn't give her a room or hospital food because she wasn't a patient.

The hospital director, Eileen Valentia, had already gone home for the day. The nurses called her to ask for direction. Upon hearing all the details, she told the nursing staff to put Rikki in a room, feed her, and let her use the shower facilities, and Mrs. Valentia would figure out the paperwork later somehow.

A medical technician volunteered to take Rikki home so she could get changes of clothing, toiletries, and (her father insisted) her textbooks so she could do her homework.

Rikki sighed deeply upon hearing this. Apparently, not even a medical emergency could get her out of doing schoolwork.

Just before she left to visit their home, Rikki asked her father, "Do you know where the phone charger is?"

"I'm pretty sure it's in the cabinet above the sink."

She blinked at him, trying not to fume. "Why would it be there?"

"Because that's where I put it!"

"Why?! It's not a kitchen thing!"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time!"

Rikki mock-glared at him.

Terry gave her an apologetic smile. "Lesson learned. Keep the phone charged at all times, no matter what."

Rikki gave an exaggerated nod.

 

The antibiotics were clearly doing their magic, because the next afternoon, Terry had visibly improved. Rikki sat cross-legged in the chair beside his bed, doing her homework.

Rikki tilted her head and gave her textbook an odd look for a long moment.

"Dad," she said. "Is this where we're going?" She passed him the textbook and pointed to several photos. One was a wide shot showing boats moored at a marina. Another showed a beach full of people having fun. A third showed newly-hatched sea turtles crawling for the ocean. The photo credits said they were all taken on the Gold Coast.

"Yeah, or somewhere similar," Terry said. He flipped to the book's cover to see what the subject was. "Society and Urban Development?" He gave her a funny look. "This is what they teach in Year 7?"

Rikki shrugged, with a yeah-but-what-are-ya-gonna-do? look on her face.

What happened to Charles Dickens and rectangles? Terry thought.

Terry flipped back to the pages Rikki had shown him. The photo of sea turtles, juxtaposed with the photos of a marina and a beach, was an example of mankind's need to balance its own needs and desires with ecology and the protection of endangered species.

"Huh," Terry said. "But yeah, that's where I'd like us to be. Why?"

Rikki put her hand on the pages, and got that odd look on her face again. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I just got this strange feeling when I saw these pictures." She closed her eyes for a moment. "It's like I can already see myself there. I feel like this is where I belong, somehow. Like my future's there. Like...I don't know...like my soul is already there, just waiting for my body to catch up to it."

Terry gazed at his daughter as she continued staring at the photos in an almost dreamlike state.

"Sweetie, are you okay?" he asked.

She looked at him, and slowly smiled. "Yeah." She looked back at the photos. "I guess I'm just as ready to get out of this desert as you are."

No, that wasn't it. Terry didn't say anything, but he hadn't imagined what he'd just seen. The photos of a life on the coast had obviously affected Rikki in a way which seemed almost spooky. Certainly in a way he couldn't understand.

Rikki took the book back and resumed her homework.

 

Early Sunday afternoon, Darrell appeared in the hospital room doorway. "Knock, knock," he said with a grin.

Father and daughter greeted him with a smile. "Hey, how ya doin'?" Terry asked.

"Better than you, at the moment," Darrell said. He walked in and shook Terry's hand. "Ted told me you had quite a scare."

"No, I was blissfully out of it," Terry said. "Everyone around me had quite the scare."

Darrell laughed. "How are things now?"

"Much, much better than they were 48 hours ago," Terry said.

"Good," Darrell said. "I'm really glad to hear it." He turned to Rikki. "How are you holdin' up?"

"I'm bored out of my gourd."

"That's probably good," Darrell said. "As you found out, adventure can be overrated."

"An adventure?" Rikki asked. "Is that what happened?"

"Oh, whenever I experience a bad time, that's what I call it," Darrell said. "It helps me deal with it. Perspective's a wonderful thing. It's so flexible. I understand you were quite the hero!"

Rikki shrugged. "Didn't feel heroic."

"Heroic things never do when you're doin' 'em," Darrell said. "But you came up aces in a difficult situation. You should be proud!"

Rikki smiled in appreciation.

"That she did," Terry said. "And I'm certainly proud of her. But speaking of Rikki and her motorcycle knowledge, what do you know about the Runaway Runway?"

Darrell's eyes widened in recognition. "Oh, wow! I'd forgotten all about that thing! Where'd you hear about that?"

"My boss. I asked him about places to train Rikki, and he mentioned it. He told me all the juicy details."

Darrell laughed. "Yeah, that was quite the rodeo. The Runaway Runway! Yeah, it should still be there. Might be buried by now."

"My boss said the same thing. He told us generally where it is, but not specifically. You wouldn't happen to know better?"

"'Fraid not. If I ever visited it, I don't remember. It's been a while."

"Well, when we get some time, maybe in the next couple weeks, I'll go looking for it," Terry said.

"We'll go looking for it," Rikki said.

"Yes, ma'am," Terry said. "We'll go looking for it."

Darrell laughed, and asked Terry, "You know how long you'll be stuck in this room?"

"I've already had one mild argument with the doctor about that," Terry said. "They want me to stay one more night. I want to leave this afternoon."

Darrell tilted his head and pulled a moue. "I won't take bets on how that'll turn out."

"Fair enough," Terry said with a smile. "Did your reunion reach a conclusion?"

"It did. We mostly had a good time. There was only one argument about politics the whole week, and I'll call that a win. The moment it started, I went and played horseshoes, got as far from it as I could."

Terry laughed. "Smart man!"

"Is there anything you need?" Darrell asked. "Anything I can do?"

"Actually, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, we could use a ride back to the Garage when I get out of here," Terry said.

"I can do that for you, no problem," Darrell said. He gave Terry his number. "Just call me when they're about to set you loose."

"You have a car, right?" Rikki asked.

"No," Darrell said. "I'm putting you both on my motorcycle."

He managed to keep a straight face for about two seconds, then burst out laughing at Rikk's look of astonishment. "Yes, Rikki, I'll take you to the Garage in a good, old-fashioned automobile."

Rikki grinned and her face grew red, appreciating how well she'd just been had.

 

About six in the evening, Terry won his argument to be released, mostly because the hospital couldn't force him to stay. He compromised by promising Dr. Fenwick he would come by after work the next day for a checkup.

Medicare paid for the hospital stay. Normally, Terry would have had to pay about five hundred dollars for the ambulance ride, but due to his low-income status, he held a concession card, which spared him that expense. The concession card also meant he only had to pay about seven dollars for his antibiotics.

Rikki managed to stuff everything – her clothes, toiletries, the phone charger, and her textbooks – into her school backpack. Barely. She somehow made it work, then she was ready to go.

True to his word, Darrell picked up Terry and Rikki in a sedan and took them to the Garage. Ted wasn't there, but his wife, Polly, greeted them warmly and presented Thelma, safe and sound inside the clubhouse. Rikki's helmet rested on the seat.

"Thank you both, so much!" Terry said, shaking Polly's hand, then Darrell's. "I can't tell you how much we appreciate it."

"You're welcome!" Polly said.

"Hey, it's no problem," Darrell said. "We all gotta look out for our own, and I'm just doin' my part! You two take care, all right? I'll see you around!"

When Rikki had collected her things from the motorhome Friday night, neither she nor her father had thought about grabbing her father's helmet, so he would be riding without one for one of the few times in his life. But home was just a few minutes away on a sparsely-traveled highway, and they had plenty of daylight, so he wasn't too worried. And the ride was, indeed, uneventful.

But while he drove himself and his daughter home, Terry pondered Darrell's odd farewell. We gotta look out for our own.

Rikki didn't seem to have picked up on it, but Terry was troubled. He'd heard language like that before. He didn't want it to mean what he was pretty sure it meant.

 

When father and daughter arrived home, they high-fived and hugged hugely.

Rikki set the phone, in its charger, in a prominent place on the kitchen counter, and declared, "This is where it stays."

Then she set her father's medicine in a second prominent place on the kitchen counter, made sure he knew it was there, and made sure he knew when he was supposed to take it.

"You know I've taken medicine before, right?" Terry said with a grin. "I do know how to do it."

She gave him a slow, playful punch on the shoulder. "I can never be too careful with you."

He laughed.

But Rikki had even more on her mind, and she let him know all about it while they ate dinner.

"It's really weird how things turned out for the better," she said.

"Oh? Do tell."

"I had to drive Thelma to get help. A week ago, I wouldn't have been able to do that. Heck, I wouldn't have been able to do that just two days earlier! It was just the very day before that you taught me how to take curves on the highway! If that's luck, then it's really bizarre, stupid dumb luck. I would have had to wave down someone on the highway, and hope they weren't a kidnapper."

"Well...yes, all that's true. You learned to drive Thelma just in time."

"And that was only because I requested it. But there's more. Even though it was a big scare, we got free meals and showers in the hospital. You try to hide it from me, but I know how bad our situation is. That was a blessing in disguise."

"Mmm, I'm gonna dispute that one."

"Why? It's true."

"Yes, but a true statement isn't really a truth if it excludes other pertinent facts. It's similar to a lie of omission."

She gave him a puzzled look.

He said, "In this case, the pertinent fact is: you could have been seriously hurt or killed while driving Thelma on the highway. Or, as you say, kidnapped by someone who stopped, pretending to help. If God came down on a cloud and said, Terry, you can have free meals and water usage for two days if your daughter risks her life, what do you think my answer would be?"

She nodded, conceding he had a point.

"So, in no universe will I ever call what happened a blessing in disguise," Terry said.

"Okay, fair. But me learning to drive Thelma just in time..."

"Absolutely was a blessing, in every way. No doubt about it."

She frowned, working something out in an adolescent brain which was only beginning to really understand the world. "We're in more danger than most people."

He gave her an odd look. "Danger?"

She thought hard. "Risk."

"Ah," he said, comprehending. "Yes, you're correct. It's because we don't belong to a community, and that's actually one of the things I want us to have. But I want us to have that community in a place where you can go to a nice school. Until we get there, we lack a community.

"People in a community have each other to rely on: to check on them if they're ill, or to help when any other of life's troubles hit, and when they get old and infirm. Mostly, you and I form a two-person community, and we're able to help each other, but two people – one of whom is a minor – is not really much of a community. Here in Rochester, we've found a little bit of a community. Darrell, Mr. Hardin, and the Actons have become a small, temporary community for us, and our lives would have been a lot harder the past few days without that community.

"But if I lived in this motorhome alone, and I pulled in behind these trees, hidden, and died the very next day, it may have been years before anyone ever found me, because I would have had no community. No one to look for me, or to miss me. Of course, that's an extreme example, because I don't live alone. I have you, and you have me.

"But yes, we're at greater risk than most, because we lack a real, long-term community we can truly be a part of and believe in. In our particular situation, that's just part of the high cost of being poor."

She gave him an odd look. "The high cost of being poor." She said it slowly. It seemed to her a powerful phrase, containing a lot of corridors to explore. In that moment, her mind expanded, just a bit.

"Yep, that's an actual thing. If there's something you absolutely have to have – like paying an electric bill, or a car repair – and you don't have the money, but you do have a credit card, you can use the credit card. But then you pay more in interest. But a wealthy person who can pay for the same thing out of pocket pays no interest. The poor person ends up paying more for the same thing, and it contributes to their continued poverty.

"Or, living in a more unsafe section of town because that's all you can afford, then getting robbed. Like the time someone stole your bicycle. Probably would never have happened in a nice upper middle class suburb. And the way I burn petrol to drive past our home sometimes, so no one sees me pull off the road; wouldn't happen if we lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. These are just a few of many, many examples.

"I mean, heck, earlier this week, I burned petrol to ask Mr. Hardin a question, when I could have called him if I'd just had one more minute on the phone, or the money to purchase minutes. The lack of money led to that greater expense. And lost time."

Rikki thought hard. "Or like...that time my school backpack broke, and you had to buy a crummy one from the op shop that we knew wouldn't last long..."

"Because it was all I could afford at the moment, yeah. I bought a ratty backpack, which lasted just long enough until I could buy you a nice, new one. Whereas, if I'd had the money to buy the nice one in the first place, I wouldn't have had to spend extra on the poorer one. And extra time and petrol, too, for the extra shopping trip!"

Rikki gasped, realizing something else. "And not only that, but remember my textbook we had to replace?!"

He gave a mild snort. "Oh, yeah."

"Yeah! It was raining! That crummy backpack had a hole in the side, and I didn't know it was getting bigger throughout the day. It got so big, my math textbook fell out, into a mudpuddle. You had to pay to replace it. But if we'd been able to afford a nice backpack in the first place, that wouldn't have happened!"

"That's exactly it, Kiddo. You're catching on. It's a vicious, downward cycle. One of the hardest downward cycles you can possibly try to break.

"I'm sure you don't remember this, but a little over ten years ago, your mother and I had to pay all sorts of emergency expenses to move house when we shouldn't have had to. We lived in a duplex in a poor section of town, and the neighbor on the other side of the wall started a fire while smoking pot. The landlord didn't have fire insurance, so guess what? The very next day, we had to shell out money for a motel room and a storage unit, and move at our own expense!

"We absolutely could not afford to do any of that, but we didn't have a choice! The motel room and the storage unit were so expensive, we couldn't put together a deposit for a new place to live, which forced us to continue living in the motel and renting the storage unit, which forced us to continue not having the money for a deposit for a new place to live! We couldn't get government homeless assistance because we were both employed, and together, we made too much money to qualify! It was pure hell!

"Your mother's parents loaned us money for three months straight, enough to stay in the motel, but not enough to break the cycle. Without their help, we would have been homeless, despite the government's income chart, because of the bizarre trap we'd become caught in. We finally got a deposit to live in a new place when your mother's coworkers literally passed the basket around the office to take donations.

"After we moved into the new place, we couldn't get ahead because your mother's parents said, now that you're in a new place, pay us back immediately. Which we did as best we could, but with a child of our own, we simply couldn't repay them fast enough to make them happy. It took almost a year to pay them back.

"So that was basically a year-long trip through hell. A year! Because of some dumbass pothead and a negligent landlord. Suing would have cost too much money and time. We were both working full time jobs, in addition to taking care of a small child, and we doubted the landlord or the pothead had anything to pay us, anyway, even if we'd won! None of it was our fault, but the universe didn't care. And that's something that would never, ever have happened to someone with enough money to live in a nicer place."

"The high cost of being poor," Rikki whispered. Her entire world had just expanded considerably, and Terry's heart almost broke. He could practically see her innocence dying.

"Yeah." He grasped her hand. "But someday, somehow, I swear, I'll break out of it. I almost did it a couple months ago-" He actually started to get choked up. "-but like always, the universe just slapped me right back down. But I still swear to you, Rikki: somehow, we'll make it!"

She nodded, and clasped his hand right back. The ferocity in her eyes could have moved stars. "I know, Dad. We will."

 

That night, Terry indulged in some extra hot water during his shower, as the extra water usage wouldn't make a difference at this point. He also made absolutely sure to get plenty of rest, going to bed half an hour early. The next morning, he felt about ninety percent.

Rikki made sure he had his medicine and phone with him. Instead of irritating him, it actually touched him that she cared so much.

While driving to work, Terry did a lot of cold hard math in his head.

During his grocery trip the week before, he had bought food for evenings and for the weekend, all the way to payday, knowing those were the times he wouldn't be working. The hospital had fed him and Rikki over the weekend, which meant the food at home would stretch a little longer. But because he had bought enough food to last until payday, stretching that food a little longer would help after payday, not before. And before payday was when he needed the help. He couldn't take 48 hours worth of food back to the grocery store and say, Please refund me, I didn't need it.

Living at the hospital for two days had conserved water in the motorhome, but he still needed to purchase water once before payday. This was unchanged from what he'd budgeted.

The bottom line was that, financially, the hospital stay had saved him nothing significant, and had cost him. He hadn't expected to spend a single cent over the weekend, yet he'd walked out of the hospital seven dollars poorer than when he'd gone in. Seven dollars for medicine was nothing...unless you were so poor that literally every dollar was a difference between eating and starving.

In addition to the water, he also needed petrol for Thelma, and to do laundry. None of these things could wait. They all hit just a few days before payday.

He despised borrowing money, but it looked like he might have to pawn something. Probably his wedding ring, which he kept buried deep in a dresser drawer. That was always the final, absolutely last resort, because the interest was excruciating. That's when the high cost of being poor became the exorbitant cost of being poor.

He pulled into the Dairy Jester parking lot, and a new work week began.

Terry clocked in and Rikki slept in a booth, using a little pillow she kept in her backpack. Two hours later, he bought her her usual breakfast sandwich and juice, and woke her. He took no breakfast for himself.

Terry suspected that Mr. Hardin had noticed how often he went without breakfast. That afternoon, when no one else was in the restaurant, his suspicions became much stronger when Mr. Hardin bluntly asked, "Terry, would you like an advance on your paycheck? I don't often do it, especially with the kids, but with you, it'd be no problem."

Pride and need battled briefly through Terry's soul. In the end, raw need won. "And I don't often ask, sir, but...fifty to get me through payday would be a godsend."

Mr. Hardin pulled fifty dollars out of the back till and handed it to him. "For tax purposes, I won't deduct anything from your check. Just hand the fifty back in cash after Friday."

Terry was deeply moved. "Thank you, sir. I appreciate it more than you can say."

Mr. Hardin just smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and got back to work.

Sometimes, the world just reminded you that good people exist.

 

Fifty dollars was indeed a godsend, but Terry was still paranoid. Life had hit him with one emergency after another for seven days straight, so he took no chances. As soon as he got off work, he filled Thelma's tank only halfway. That would be enough to get him to payday.

He picked up Rikki, then swung by the hospital to fulfill his promise. Dr. Fenwick took five minutes to declare him in good health. He impressed upon Terry how important it was to finish the antibiotics even though he felt fine, and asked to see Terry once more when the antibiotics were gone. Terry agreed.

After Terry and Rikki got home, Terry told her about the paycheck advance. Normally he wouldn't have, but Rikki's admission that she knew their situation much better than he'd thought she did had rattled him. It had been another reminder that she was growing up, and her quick brain didn't miss much. The fact that she knew their situation meant that anxiety must have been eating at her, so he told her about the advance to alleviate her worry, which it did greatly. But he also told her he would be miserly with it, as too many recent unexpected things had spooked him deeply.

Plus, it was probably time Rikki started learning the ins and outs of handling the household money, anyway.

That night, they resumed her motorcycle lessons, but it quickly became clear Rikki had largely mastered everything Terry could teach her in a small parking lot. She ended up just riding around the lot's perimeter, eager for bigger things.

At the end of the lesson, Rikki dismounted so Terry could get on. "We may not have to wait until Friday to look for the Runaway Runway," Terry said. "But we can't do it tomorrow night, and maybe not Wednesday night, either. Tomorrow we need to refill the water, and we need to hit the laundromat."

 

Tuesday night, Terry mounted Thelma onto the back of the motorhome. Then he cranked the motorhome up and set it in motion.

He could either drive the motorhome to a station to fill the water, or he could purchase water in large containers and tote them home on Thelma, a few at a time. Neither option was very efficient, so he often chose the easier one, which was to drive the motorhome. If he was in a town with a full motorhome service station – and Rochester had precisely one of those – then driving to the station made it much easier to empty the sewage, also. Mounting Thelma and driving the "lumbering beast," as Terry called it, was a major operation.

There was no U-turning the motorhome to evade prying eyes. Each time he pulled the motorhome onto or off the road, people could potentially see it, and any of those people could turn out to be robbers. Also, Terry flattened some clumps of spinifex as he drove across the desert sand, which marked a trail for a few days until the grass perked up again. But there was no getting around these things. He could only do the best he could.

He reparked the motorhome in their same hidden spot, with its tank full of fresh water, about 6:30.

"I'd rather do laundry tomorrow night," Terry said. "That okay with you?"

"Yep. Did you take your medicine tonight?"

"Yes, Mother."

Rikki schnorted.

 

Wednesday evening, Terry hit the laundromat. This was something he had to do alone, because there wasn't room on the motorcycle for both Rikki and the laundry bags.

When he got back, he and Rikki put away their clean clothes.

Rikki held up a pair of pants against her body. "I'm growing again."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that. Make a list of what you need and your new sizes. Also, whenever you start needing bras, or any other adult clothing, don't be embarrassed. Just let me know. We'll find a nice lady at Target to measure you and get you what you need."

She nodded and started making a list.

 

Thursday evening. Terry finally breathed a sigh of relief. He would be paid the next day. About three hundred dollars after taxes and after repaying Mr. Hardin, but that would easily keep them alive for another seven days. He'd only worked four days that first week, so future paychecks would be higher, and they would come weekly.

Slowly, he could rebuild. Again.

After work, Terry and Rikki swung by the Institute, which doubled as the public library. After much explaining, repeatedly being sent to see the next person, and digging, a clerk was finally able to tell them the Runaway Runway's location. It was approximately two kilometers east of the Rosefield Motel, and about two hundred yards south of the highway.

Due to Terry's rule about homework before motorcycle lessons, Rikki did her homework as fast as possible the moment they got home. In fact, she did it so fast, Terry had her review it with him to make sure she'd done it correctly, and hadn't skipped anything. But she'd done everything fine.

After dinner, Terry packed antiseptic and bandages into Rikki's school backpack. Rikki put it on, and he and Rikki drove across town.

Terry marked two kilometers past the motel, then turned off the road. They found the Runaway Runway in less than a minute.

It was about five hundred yards long and fifty yards wide. The ever-present spinifex grass and eucalyptus trees kept the desert soil largely in place, so the runway was covered with only a dusting of sand. The concrete was cracked in many places, but still level. Spinifex grew in the cracks, but not as high or as thick as elsewhere.

Terry drove the runway's length several times, taking a different line each time, and found that neither sand nor cracks offered any problems. The grass growing from the cracks would be bumpy at high speeds, similar to a poorly paved road, but not unmanageable.

He drove to one corner, and he and Rikki dismounted. He left the motorcycle idling.

"All right, Pumpkin," Terry said. "The moment you've been waiting for."

Rikki had stars in her eyes.

"You can go faster than you could at the Garage, but not as fast as you want. In fact, you will only go as fast as I say you can. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"I know you drove fast when you drove to the Garage for help, but I'm going to ignore that and start you out at certain speeds. For now, just drive the perimeter at about fifty, to get a feel for the surface." He pointed into the distance in three directions. "Even if the concrete is covered by sand, you can see where the corners are by the absence of any eucalyptus, so make sure you slow down in time to turn those corners. Those are ninety-degree turns at slow speed, so they'll be normal turns. All right?"

She nodded again. "I'm ready."

"I sure hope so. Get on it."

Rikki took off her backpack, set it on the ground, and mounted Thelma. She slipped the bike into gear, and set out.

Terry watched with that unique combination of pride, excitement, love, and terror which only a parent has when watching their child grow up and learn new, potentially dangerous, life skills. He'd witnessed Rikki's birth; held her in his arms as a baby; watched her take her first steps; watched her grow over the past thirteen years. Now here she was, riding a motorcycle at faster and faster speeds. He couldn't protect her, and he knew that was the way it had to be, the way it should be. He could only teach her, and prepare her.

He wiped a few tears from his eyes, and swallowed the lump in his throat.

It took a couple of minutes to make it all the way around. Rikki followed her father's instructions to the letter. She pulled up next to him and stopped, a grin on her face.

"Any problems with the surface, the sand, or the grass?" he asked.

"Nope! It was all good."

"Did you get a good feel for how far ahead of the turn you needed to start braking?"

"Yep."

"You think you can go faster, and still have a feel for how far ahead you need to start braking?"

"Yes!"

"All right. Do the same thing, but a little faster. I want you feeling comfortable with higher speeds in straight lines before we do any leaning at high speed."

"Yes, sir!"

"Just make sure you're always careful. Wiping out at high speed can result in broken bones, or worse. I know you're having fun, but be mindful of the danger, and the responsibility. If nothing goes wrong for a long time, that can lull you into a false sense that nothing will go wrong ever, and I will not let you indulge in false confidence like that. Do you understand?"

She nodded solemnly. "Yes."

Terry wondered if her wheelie debacle hadn't been a blessing in disguise. She had learned a hard lesson that night, but he got the powerful feeling that if she hadn't learned it that night, she wouldn't be listening to him so closely right now; that she would be too eager to brush him off and push past her limits, at a far more dangerous speed than she'd been going when she took her wheelie spill.

"All right," he said. "Let's try sixty, around the perimeter again. Go the opposite way around, this time, just for variety."

They proceeded like this for an hour. Near the end of the lesson, Rikki actually went as fast as one hundred kilometers an hour, though she could only sustain that speed for about ten seconds before running out of real estate. Overall, she only had a few wobbles, and a couple of moments in which she braked too harshly because she'd misjudged how close the end of the runway was. But she always recovered quickly, and got better as the hour went on.

After she dismounted at the end of the lesson, Terry high-fived her. "Did you enjoy that?" he asked.

She suddenly hugged him hard. She let that be her answer.

 

The next day, Terry got paid. After work, he left Rikki at Dairy Jester for a few minutes while he ran to the bank the check was drawn on. When he got back, he proudly handed Mr. Hardin fifty dollars. Terry thanked him again, and Mr. Hardin said he'd see Terry Monday.

As they left the restaurant, Rikki asked, "So Mr. Hardin doesn't schedule you on weekends?"

"Nope. He wants the teenagers working day shift on the weekends. But there's a town festival in a couple months, on a Saturday. He'll have me working that day, at least, because it'll be so busy."

They drove home, and stayed there. There would be no lesson for Rikki that night because a thunderstorm moved in. The Great Victoria Desert actually received one or two thunderstorms a month, and they were always brief.

Terry suspected this was the only type of rain, here. Never a light mist, nor a simple, pleasant rain. Just brief thunderstorms, as if nature took a while to build enough pressure to finally conquer the desert, and the rain overran its defenses in a mad rush, expending itself quickly.

Rikki ran out into the downpour, shrieking, laughing, and dancing.

Terry stood in the doorway and grinned. "What are you doing, you goofball?"

Rikki laughed, and turned her face up to feel the rain. "It's so warm! Rain should be cool and refreshing, but this is warm! Like the sun, if it was water."

Terry shook his head. "You're nuts! Please never stop being you."

"Oh, I don't think I ever want to be someone afraid of the rain!"

 

The next morning, the sky was clear once more, and normal desert life resumed.

That afternoon, Terry went to the grocery store. He had to go alone because he couldn't carry Rikki and groceries at the same time. He splurged a bit and bought himself a six-pack of beer. He wasn't usually a beer drinker – or a drinker at all, really – but he felt the urge.

That evening on the runway, Rikki handled curves at high speed. From that point on, she simply practiced each evening, getting better and better.

Wednesday evening, Terry had a surprise for her. When they arrived at the runway, he told her to get off the bike, but he remained mounted.

"I'm gonna show you something new we're gonna tackle tonight," he said. "Watch carefully."

Puzzled, she watched as he drove away from her, circled around...

And popped a wheelie.

Rikki's face lit up like the brightest Christmas tree ever.

When he pulled up to her, she was jumping up and downing, clapping, and shrieking. "Are you for real?!"

He laughed. "Yep. I think you're ready. But, you have to understand something."

"I know! I'll be super careful!"

"Yes, you will, but that's not what I was going to say. What you have to understand is, you will not conquer this skill tonight. You might barely learn it in a week. You might conquer it in a couple of months. It's a lot harder than you think, because there's a lot of moving parts, things you have to do all at the same time. We'll both learn how much patience you have, and whether you can master that patience.

"I hope I'm not teaching you this too early. My hope is that the more you practice this harder skill, the more you'll subconsciously be practicing the easier skills that you'd quickly get bored with, anyway."

Rikki listened solemnly. She absolutely did not take this opportunity for granted. When he finished, she nodded, and said, "I'm all ears."

"Hi All Ears, I'm Terry."

She fumed, and visibly resisted the urge to hit him. He just cackled. Then, seeing she wasn't cackling with him, said, "Ah, you'll find that funny some day!"

She glared at him.

"All right," he said. "You ready, All Ears?"

She wagged a finger at him. "Is the price I have to pay to learn how to pop a wheelie?"

He laughed for about thirty seconds, so hard he could barely form a sentence. "The look on your face is priceless!" he finally said, wiping tears from his eyes.

"Okay. Dad. Whenever you're ready!"

"Yes, Rikki, my sweet daughter. Okay, listen."

For fifteen minutes, Terry lectured and demonstrated, taking his time with each point. Use your body weight, a burst of speed, and a bounce of the forks to lift the wheel. Since Rikki had hardly any body weight, she'd have to rely heavily on the speed and the forks. Leaning backwards should be okay, as Thelma's seat curved up at the back, providing a bit of a brace. Both the shocks and the forks were of the highest quality, so they should be able to take any extra strain. Never pull on the handlebars to lift the wheel, even though you're holding onto them while doing all these things. The easiest way to achieve a burst of speed was to pull the clutch in, rev higher, then let the clutch out, and there was an art to that which you could only master through practice and a feel for the bike. You can't lift too quickly, and you can't lift too slowly. If you don't find your center of gravity immediately, set the wheel back down immediately and start over; never try to fight or chase a bad lift. The brake is your best friend during the maneuver, so never lose contact with it; if anything goes wrong, slowing will put the wheel back down. Always put the wheel back down in the direction of travel, or terrible things will happen. You can steer while popping a wheelie, but only a little bit, and it's super hard, so save that for later; just never pop a wheelie unless you have a long, clear, straight path in front of you. Always keep your arms bent as you come back down, so your elbows can absorb the shock; straight arms will hurt. The faster you go while the wheel is in the air, the easier it is to maintain your sideways (lateral) balance, but it's okay to shift your body around if you have to. Now, did Rikki have all that?

Rikki felt like her eyes were spinning in her head. "I had no idea there was so much to it!"

"Rikki, sweetheart, the older you get, the more you'll realize that almost everything in this world, even something which looks like a cakewalk, is usually harder than it looks, and requires more knowledge than you think, and you never know what you don't know. A motorcycle is a quarter ton of metal arranged into intricately moving parts, so yes, lifting half of that into the air while traveling at speed on a single wheel is not an easy thing to do, nor should it be. And it's not an easy thing to learn. It will take you weeks to become comfortable with the coordinated movements necessary to pop a wheelie, and it will take you months to master this."

Rikki smiled with determination. "But I'm gonna have fun every single moment!"

He laughed. "Unless you spill."

"Nope! Even if I spill!"

"Well, okay," he said, and dismounted. "Hop on. The first thing you're gonna do is practice getting the wheel only a foot or so off the ground. This whole process will be a lot of baby steps, but that's the way to learn."

Rikki climbed onto the bike, determined to learn this complicated skill patiently. Determined to do it right. Determined to listen to her Dad, and not to let him down.

And it was hard. The urge to pull on the handlebars was immense, and she had to let go of that urge and trust the physics. Revving with the clutch in and then letting it out, bouncing the forks without pulling on the bars, and throwing her weight back, were three parts of a single fluid movement, and there was simply no way to get a feel for this movement, and conquer it, except through endless repetition.

At the very end of the lesson, Rikki finally performed all three actions correctly and in synchronicity, raising the front wheel a little bit. It was a tiny start.

After that night, she got better. The learning curve was exactly as slow as her father had warned, but she didn't care. She had exactly as much fun as she'd predicted, and even a little more.

 

Saturday evening, Terry and Rikki took Darrell up on his earlier invitation, and attended their first meeting of the Grey Ghosts.

Terry wasn't expecting to become a member, but he kept his options open. A month from now, he'd be able to afford a single $75 luxury, if he wanted. But he didn't expect to be in Rochester an entire year. His job was nice and steady, but he was anxious to be on his way.

He had to admit that having the runway to let Rikki practice her motorcycle riding was a luxury they might not find anywhere else. That opportunity for her to learn, and to ride in a safe space, could very well influence his decision to stay longer. Driving a motorcycle was not just a life skill she needed to master; it made her happy. And seeing her happy made him happy. He would probably move the motorhome to a new position east of town, very near the runway.

They walked into the clubhouse to find padded folding chairs scattered in no particular order. To one side was a ratty pool table which needed its felt replaced. A nice recliner sat against one wall, and everyone was too polite to be the one to sit in it. Along another wall were two tables and a bulletin board. On one table were two coffeemakers, labeled Regular and Unleaded (because what else would you expect?). The other table held a tray of home-made chocolate chip cookies, still soft and warm from the oven.

Ted and Polly Acton were there, and they greeted Terry and Rikki warmly. Darrell arrived just minutes after the Chadwicks, and introduced them to Jason, the man Rikki had seen Darrell talking to the day they met. All in all, there were about twenty people there.

It quickly became apparent that there was no actual motorcycling involved, at least at the meeting. It was really just a social gathering, allowing everyone to catch up with friends and unwind. The chairs were scattered because people simply gravitated into various random groups and chatted away. Ted and Polly's daughter was minding the store, but occasionally, either Ted or Polly would step out to help her if she had another customer waiting.

Rikki, who had been expecting some kind of motorcycle activity, asked, "So do you guys actually ride together for an event or something?"

"At least once a year, usually twice," Polly said. "There's the Dust Devil Festival every autumn. Sometimes we call it the Destival. We ride in the parade. And sometimes we'll organize a group ride to someplace fun, like Birch Springs, which has a spa and some cabins."

"But still no casino, which is why Jason doesn't like to go," Darrell said with a smile, obviously repeating a running gag.

Jason shook his head. "A single slot machine is all I ask. I don't know why they can't put one in."

"Because you'd never leave, and they'd like to maintain some decorum!" Darrell said, to much laughter, including from Jason himself.

At one point later in the evening, Darrell and Terry found themselves chatting alone, sitting in a couple of chairs next to the wall. Terry related to Darrell his plan to make it to the coast to provide Rikki a much nicer senior secondary school, and his recent woes with the motorhome suspension repair.

"Ah, so you won't be staying with us all that long, then," Darrell said.

"No, unfortunately. I'll be here a while. A few months, at least. Beyond that, I really don't know. I'm torn between staying and taking in as much money as I can, and getting a move on. I really don't like the desert; it's not for me."

"Terry, if you don't mind my asking...and forgive me if you do...where's Mrs. Chadwick?"

"The ex-Mrs. Chadwick is in Perth, and she's toxic as all hell. I'm going east because I literally want the entire continent between her and us. I tried living in Perth, but it just didn't work. Even after asking her to butt out of my life, she kept coming up with excuses to come around, and I don't want her to have any contact with Rikki. So I lit out without telling her a thing. Every kilometer I travel east decreases the chance she'll stick her nose into Rikki's life again. If Rikki wants a relationship with her after she turns eighteen, that's her business. But while I'm raising Rikki, we will be on the east coast, as far from her as possible. I am completely unmovable on that."

Darrell nodded sympathetically. "Understood."

An hour-and-a-half after Terry and Rikki had arrived, the gathering began winding down. As the handful of remaining people stood near the door having their final conversations, an Aboriginal man driving a motorcycle pulled into the parking lot and entered the store. He made a quick purchase and went back outside.

Seeing him mount his motorcycle, Rikki said, "Hey, Darrell, there's a new recruit for the Grey Ghosts."

Darrell, and a few others, were strangely silent for a moment. "Eh, we like the Grey Ghosts as they are," he said casually. "We're just a bunch of old geezers who've known each other a long time."

Before Rikki could reply, Terry casually squeezed her shoulder, harder than he usually did, enough to divert her attention. At the same moment, he said, "A bunch of old geezers, and a thirteen-year-old to provide some balance!" This brought chuckles all around.

Rikki opened her mouth, but Terry squeezed her shoulder again. He caught her eye and very, very subtly shook his head.

Everyone said their farewells, and was offered one final cookie on their way out the door. Rikki took one, with a very sweet and heartfelt, "Thank you!"

Rikki held her cookie in her mouth as she mounted Thelma and put her helmet on. The cookie was so chewy that it started to fall apart. She expertly finished strapping her helmet just in time to catch the cookie as it fell. It was a mad skill, and she was proud of it. She waved goodbye to Darrell and the others as Terry pulled out. Going down the road, she wrapped one arm around her father as she finished the cookie, slowly enjoying every bite. It was really good.

As Terry drove, he debated with himself what to tell Rikki. This was one of those billions of parenting moments there was no manual for. If he told her, there was no telling how she would react, and her anger might put them in an awkward situation someday. If he didn't tell her, she remained innocent, but also ignorant, and her ignorance could put them in an awkward situation someday. Like she'd almost just done.

As he pulled up to the motorhome, he decided Rikki needed to know. If nothing else, it would be a teaching moment.

As it happened, Rikki brought it up before he did. As they walked inside, she asked, "Are you gonna tell me what the heck that was about?"

"Yep," he said. "Let me chain Thelma, first."

He stepped outside with the chain and was back in a less than a minute. He sat on the motorhome's small sofa and patted the seat beside him. Rikki sat.

Terry said, "When Darrell gave us a ride to the Garage, do you remember something he said when he left?"

Rikki thought a moment, and shrugged. "He said bye?"

"He said, 'We all have to look out for our own.' Remember?"

She gave a funny face and shrugged. "Not really, but I'll take your word for it."

"Well, I'm a lot older than you, a little wiser, and a lot more experienced. I've heard people say things like that before, and it's only ever meant one thing. It's racist."

Rikki blinked, processing this. After a few seconds, she said, "But he's nice."

Terry nodded. "When you think of a racist, what do you think of?"

"I guess...people marching with signs and yelling. Or those guys with black clothes and crew cuts." She shrugged.

"Well, that's true. That's what gets on the news. But far more often, racism is a thing people keep hidden, and express only in subtle ways. In all other respects, they're normal people: friends, family, neighbors. Friendly, even charming, when they want to be. And Darrell is very friendly and charming. But when he said, 'We all gotta look out for our own,' it triggered an alarm bell in my head. Because, like I said, I've met people who used that phrase, and similar, and they all turned out to be racist. Really, when you think about it, there's no other reason to say something like that. It only has one meaning. Racists are the only people I've ever met who use that phrase. It's not a natural thing other people say."

Terry sighed. "And then, tonight. What did you notice about the Grey Ghosts?"

Rikki thought a few seconds. Hesitatingly, she said, "Everyone was white?"

Terry nodded. "That's it. Now, by itself, that means jack diddly. The town is mostly white, and only twenty people showed up. It wasn't a huge cross-section of humanity. But, in light of Darrell's comment when he dropped us off, noteworthy. And again, tonight. The man in the parking lot. When you suggested Darrell make a new friend and a new recruit to the Grey Ghosts, did you feel the shift in the room?"

"He said they were a bunch of old geezers and they liked themselves the way they were."

"Only after he spent a few seconds like a deer in the headlights trying to figure out something he could say which didn't sound racist."

She pursed her lips and thought about this.

Terry said, "And you were about to point out that, if that were true, then why did they invite us to join? I didn't want trouble or awkwardness, so I stopped you and made everyone laugh, instead."

Rikki was silent for a long time.

"So all the Grey Ghosts are racist?" she finally asked.

"I have no idea. Maybe only some of them. Maybe only Darrell, though I strongly suspect he's not alone, or he wouldn't have been able to say what he did. I don't go through life judging without evidence. It's hard enough to go through life being judged like that. But Darrell, at least, is definitely racist. He hides it well, behind plausible deniability."

"What's that?"

"Plausible deniability means you can deny what everyone pretty much knows is true about you, because you disguised your words or your actions sufficiently that no one can prove what everyone pretty much knows is true about you. A kind of social smokescreen, and it's cowardly."

"Darrell's nice to us. He came to see you in the hospital. He gave us a ride."

"Yeah, that's true."

"But only because we're white?"

"I believe so. But I can't prove that."

"Are you ever going to say anything to him?"

"Are you?"

She pursed her lips again. That wasn't the answer she expected.

"There's a wise old saying," Terry said. "Choose your battles. If either of us said anything to Darrell, it would accomplish absolutely nothing. We wouldn't change his mind, Pumpkin. And there's an even chance he'd deny it, anyway, say we were imagining things. And I'm sorry, but principal is sometimes a luxury. We're not in a position to make enemies in this town, and we're certainly not in a position to launch a crusade. We're just not, and that's the sad truth of it. Maybe in another moment, in a heavier situation, one of us could speak up if something similar happens. If it feels like the right moment to do so. But tonight...the right thing to do was just to say good night as fast as possible and get away. And if we ever see Darrell again, that will usually be the way things go."

Again, Rikki was silent for several moments. Terry gave her all the time she needed.

Then, very quietly, she said, "I want out of this town."

"You and me both."

 

Terry had Rikki get ready for bed first, then he took his time doing the same. Rikki was half asleep when he crawled into his own bunk. He purposefully lay awake. Fifteen minutes later, Rikki was snoring gently.

He got up quietly. Very carefully, he pulled one of their two folding chairs out of the hall closet. Very carefully, he opened the front door and set the chair outside. He snagged a beer from the refrigerator, stepped outside, and very carefully closed the door.

He wasn't doing anything bad or wrong. He simply had some thinking and talking out loud to do, and he didn't want Rikki to bother him, or to hear him.

Terry unfolded the chair, sat, popped the beer, took a swig, and stared at the desert for a while. The night stared back, waiting, indifferent. The eucalyptus trees ignored him. A soft breeze stirred the spinifex a tiny bit. A half moon in the western sky bathed the desert in a soft, low light.

He let out a deep, deep sigh and took another swig. He sat a few minutes with his eyes closed, letting his thoughts drop their masks and finally make themselves known, whenever they were ready.

"You know, God," he finally said, in a hoarse whisper. "I don't know if you're there. If you exist. If you care. Maybe I'm talking to you. Maybe I'm just talking to the wind. I don't know, and I'm not sure it even matters.

"But if I can ask something...if a loser like me, who never amounted to anything and never will, can ask something..."

Tears pricked his eyes.

"...I'd ask...please...watch over her."

Two tears ran down his face.

"Just...watch over her. Keep her safe. Give her a good life. A better life than I've had. A better life than I've given her. She deserves it. Her heart...her heart is so good. So pure. She sees the goodness in this world, when I can't any more, most of the time."

He was weeping openly by now.

"And when she sees the bad in this world, she wishes she could do something about it. She's special. I don't say that because she's my daughter. I say it because it's true. If you exist, and if you care, then you know it, too. So please...I'm begging you...if not for my sake, then for hers...please...help her. Whether I'm in the picture or not, doesn't matter. Whatever's best for her. All the way. Just, please...help my little Rikki. Help her grow into the amazing woman I know she can be. And please...just never let her go."

The beer slipped from his hand. He broke down and sobbed, for a long time.

When the tears had finally run their course, he wiped the last ones away, and took several deep breaths.

The night was unchanged. The eucalyptus trees were still indifferent. The grass still twitched a little in a breeze so light, it was merely a caress.

He felt better. And did he feel like someone had listened?

Maybe. Just...maybe.

For the first time since entering the desert, Terry looked up. He took in the splendor of a galaxy of stars, arrayed across the heavens, in the way that only the desert can truly show them.

He smiled, just a little.

"Pumpkin," he whispered. "You're right. The stars. They really do hold so much beauty."

 

Afterword

I have never been to Australia. I had to research a number of things to write this story. Apologies if I got any facts wrong.

"The Stars Hold Beauty" is Story 2 in the "Changing Tides" series. Story 3 is "Ascension." In the afterword to "Ascension," I talk extensively about writing "The Stars Hold Beauty."

The reason I talk about this story in the afterword of the next story will be apparent if you read them both.