“Too much work. After that story, people came in here from all over, all hours of the day and night. Nearly drove me crazy. I really had no choice.”
Just in case you think you don’t get it, let me tell you, you do: the General Store’s chocolate cream doughnuts were so good, and people liked them so much, they decided not to make them anymore.
“But weren’t you making a lot of money from them if they were so popular?”
The woman waved me away like this question was so stupid she wouldn’t even answer it.
“Do you sell anything like doughnuts?” I asked hopefully.
“I’m mostly just hardware now. And eggs.” She pointed to the egg cartons stacked on the cooler behind me. “I got some chickens a couple of years ago and thought, ‘Why not?’ Won’t find any better. Yolks are orange.”
Was that good? I opened one of the cartons. The eggs looked like something out of Dr. Seuss, some green, some blue, some brown, all different sizes, including one no bigger than a marble. “Where are the white ones?”
“Different chickens.”
“Oh,” I said, pretending to understand. “Okay, I’ll take these then.”
They weren’t doughnuts, but they had to be better than anything I’d find at the gas station.
6
Rain was hammering the windows of the General Store, but I didn’t think I should wait till it stopped. I’d been gone a pretty long time already, and there was a good chance my parents were up now, calling the local sheriff or ranger or whoever it is you call out here when kids go missing. So I put the eggs under my sweatshirt, tucked the sweatshirt into my jeans, and ran out into the rain.
Just as I reached the traffic light, lightning split the sky. Crack!
I jumped, then swerved. I managed to keep the bike under me, but I was still wobbling when I hit the hill on the edge of town. In seconds, I was flying…blind. The faster I went, the harder the rain came at me and the less I could see. I tried to slow down, but the brakes weren’t holding because of all the water.
Suddenly, the bike stopped, and what I mean is, only the bike stopped. Me and the eggs, we kept going. We flew right over the handlebars and landed with a splat, the sound of some number of eggs being crushed under me as I fell into freezing cold water.
Somehow, since I’d ridden into town, a pond so big it deserved its own name had formed at the bottom of the hill. Lucky for me too, because landing in the water was way better than landing on the concrete would have been. I wasn’t even hurt, just wet and cold.
When I stood up, I couldn’t believe how high the water was, up past my knees. My bike was gone.
Just then, a horn honked, and a white truck pulled up next to me. The window rolled down.
“Need a ride,” said the driver, a man with a tangled mop of brown hair and a beard that had taken over most of his face.
“Uh, no thanks,” I said. “I’m okay. My parents are just behind me. They’ll be here in a second.” According to my mother, only kidnappers pull over their cars and offer kids rides.
The kidnapper laughed. “Uh, okay, kid, but I just came from behind, and there’s nobody back there.”
My face went hot, which was kind of amazing since I’d started to shiver.
“Look, it’s no skin off my back if you want to drown in a flash flood. I was just trying to help,” the man said, rolling up his window.
Did kidnappers give up this easily? It seemed unlikely. “Hey, wait, what did you say this is?”
“A flash flood. It’s rained so much so fast, the ground can’t absorb any more of it.”
“I was on a bike. It’s here somewhere.” I waded back to where I thought I’d fallen.
“Ever heard of The Weather Channel?” He laughed as he got out of the truck. He went around to the back, pulled a long pipe off the bed, and began sweeping it back and forth through the water.
“There it is,” he said a short time later, slapping the end of the pipe in the water.
I dove in and pulled up the bike. The seat was turned the wrong way, but otherwise it looked okay.
“You know you can’t ride through this,” he said.
“Yeah, I think I figured that out.”
“Okay. Good luck then,” the kidnapper said and got back in his truck.
“Hey, wait! Can I still get a ride?”
“I stopped to offer you one, didn’t I?”
The first thing I did when I got into the truck was slide the carton of eggs out from under my sweatshirt. Amazingly, only three had broken, but I was covered in egg slime.
“Here.” The kidnapper passed me a roll of paper towels. “Those from Winnie?”
“What?”
“The eggs. Did you get them at the General Store?”
I nodded.
He started the truck. “I love those eggs. Yolks are orange.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said, dabbing at the egg with a balled-up paper towel.
Even though the kidnapper drove really slowly, the truck kept sliding from one side of the road to the other. I gave up cleaning off and quickly put on my seat belt.
“Hydroplaning,” the kidnapper explained. “Know what you’re supposed to do when the car does that?”
I shook my head as the truck began to slide left.
“Gotta turn into the spin,” he said, slowly turning the steering wheel to the left and then straightening us out just before we ran off the road.
I held tight to the seat belt with one hand and the door handle with the other.
“I’m Jim, by the way.”
“Uh-huh.”
“This is where you tell me your name.”
“Oh, right. Jax,” I said without missing a beat. I was taking the ride. He was going to see where I lived. No reason I had to give him my real name.
“Jacks, huh? As in more than one Jack?” He
