My best hope was that he’d hurry up and fall asleep, and once he had, I’d grease the door hinges with salad oil and slip deep into the woods. But Henry’s light stayed on and on. My eyelids grew heavy as stones. I sat up taller in the window seat, jerked myself awake, and pinched my cheeks till they burned. It wasn’t any good. Sometime around one-thirty, I fell sound asleep.
It seemed like seconds later when I sat bolt upright in my bed. Henry must’ve found me in the window seat and put me under the covers. Why couldn’t he be like the others? Let me keep up my own schooling? Do as I liked?
My clock said four-thirty. It was still dark out, and Henry’s lights were finally off. I dressed quickly in my old clothes. I said good-bye to my room and took a long look at the bookcase Fred had fixed for me, my new outfits still in their bags, and all the books Henry had let me borrow. I’d run off for a day, maybe two, three at the outside, just till he learned he wasn’t the boss of me. The others had learned. He’d come around in time, and when he did, I’d come back. I stared up the stairs at the third floor, threw one leg over the banister, and slid soundlessly down.
I hugged the walls, keeping to the less creaky part of the floor next to the baseboards. Ever so quietly I moved a kitchen chair to stand on, greased the front-door hinges with olive oil, and worked the door open inch by inch till the oil sank in. Then I slipped silently outside.
I stood on the porch for a minute, pleased at my success. The autumn nights had turned cooler, and I shivered a little, missing the warmth of my bed. I walked as far as the crate and saw both of the cat’s bowls still full of food and water. I didn’t feel him near. I crept toward the weeds, hoping to catch sight of him. But his napping spot was bare, the weeds tamped flat. The big trucks coming and going all week to load Henry’s sculptures had likely chased him off, I hoped not for good. Lately he’d let me get closer. If Henry stayed pigheaded about school, the cat and I could live in the woods together, happy, wild, and free.
I followed a faint trail through the blackberry brambles down toward a little footbridge that crossed the creek. Even in the dark I smelled cedar and the musk of dry leaves under my feet. This was how the cat knew the world, what he studied to live and make his way. He didn’t need schools or teachers or other cats. He read the wind, took his lessons from the woods, studied the chapters of the moon and stars, needing nobody and nothing, living the life I wanted for myself.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of freedom. As I did, something stirred in the woods behind me. I spun around and stared. Not twenty feet ahead, a ghost stood on the creek bridge, staring back at me—at least what seemed like a ghost. There, nearly close enough for me to rush forward and touch her, stood a snow-white deer, slender and small—a yearling, to look at her—with a pink nose, pale eyes, and hooves as gray as ashes.
Either I was seeing things or the moonlight was playing tricks. It had been a long night and I hadn’t had much sleep. But the deer stayed put, taking me in as though I was a vision every bit as strange. Maybe she was a spirit, I thought, the wandering shade of some uneasy soul. Lester had told me ghost stories about the restless roamings of the unquiet dead, what he called haints, eerie stories I’d loved. But as soon as I had that thought, the pale creature shook her head as if she’d heard what I was thinking. She stamped and pawed the bridge planks, four solid hooves knocking against solid wood. Then she lifted her pink nose and sniffed me on the air.
She seemed more curious than afraid, and by the way she kept looking back over her shoulder I gathered she wasn’t alone. Her attention was split between me and something else—another animal, I thought. An owl in the woods hooted once, twice, then a third time, and finally the deer turned to the woods and bounded off toward the sound. I took off after her as fast as I could.
I quickly lost sight of her, and followed her sound. Her light running barely stirred the leaves, but I heard the other, heavier animal catching up to her, then both of them running full out ahead of me. I kept my arms raised to push back the branches, but twigs lashed my face and hands and slowed me down. I ran deeper and deeper in, the woods growing denser and darker, the moonlight barely shining through the treetops. The deer and her friend ran like the wind while I stumbled and snagged my sweater on every bramble and branch.
Finally I stopped to listen and didn’t hear them at all. For a few minutes I moved ahead toward where I’d last heard them, but it wasn’t any good. Either they’d run beyond earshot or they’d stopped to keep their hiding place hidden. They wouldn’t be found unless they cared to be. I heard only the wind in the treetops, the far rushing of the stream.
5
The next thing I knew, it was morning. I woke up in my bed, dressed in my escape clothes, without the first idea of how I’d gotten back. I remembered getting lost in Henry’s woods, pausing
