July Apple Pies

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

IF YOU WERE TO ASK anyone who witnessed what happened that night during Annual Watermelon Eating Contest, they all would say practically the same thing.

On that Forth of July, while Thom Lorries was about to beat Ed Fulcan for the first time since the year 2003, East Pallow’s main park had been the scene of a robbery.

Nobody knew exactly how it happened, but for a few seconds, Mrs. Jensen had been distracted enough not to see a crazy young girl take four pies from the dessert table.

Nobody saw clearly the girl’s face. Nobody was attentive enough to think of trying to remember what she was wearing. Nobody recognized her profile or her thin silhouette.

The girl was a ghost.

A legend.

What those people did acknowledge, though, where the two boys who were brave enough to go after her and try to stop her. But their efforts weren’t enough, because before they could recover the pies, the girl was riding off in a silver van whose plate no one though of memorizing or writing down.

People in Pallow weren’t used to things like that. The fact that a famous detective thought of the city as an annual three-month vacation place proved that. And that was the main reason nobody had known how to react to what happened that day. Of course, after a while, people calmed down, the contest was restarted, and things went back to normal. The crazy girl had stolen just pies, after all. And people like them could live without four pies.

Someone who couldn’t, though, was the mother of one of the brave kids that had tried to stop the crazy girl.

“What the hell just happened,” he whispered as he stared at the corner behind the one the van had just disappeared.

“I really have no idea,” the other boy who had run after the girl said.

Of course, what nobody in the park knew was that the boys hadn’t tried to stop her. They had been a part of her crazed crew.

“She left,” Ryder said, disbelievingly. “She just left us.”

“Yeah.” His best friend nodded beside him.

“Why?” Ryder asked, still not understanding what was happening.

Jack let out a soft whistle. “I think you might have hit her head a bit too hard.”

Knowing there was nothing else left to do, they began walking in the same direction the car had left in.

“I hope it’s not that,” Ryder said with a worried frown.

“Why? Don’t want to be the cause of the fact we are stranded on the other side of town?”

“Actually, I’m more worried Nora might be having hallucinations. And if that’s the case, she could crash your mother’s car.”

Jack whistled again, but this time he looked worried. “Mama is going to kill me.”

“And there is a big chance Nora might kill herself first.”

***

Nora was an intelligent person. Her parent’s had been saying that for years. They had called her pretty and kind, but most of all, her parents had always called her smart.

The thing was, as she drove dangerously fast through her side of town, going in no particular direction at all, she didn’t feel smart. She felt tired. And scared. And most of all, she felt dizzy.

So even if she wasn’t being her normal self, Nora stopped the car as any smart person would.

“Hi,” she said to the pies that lay in the seat next to her. “What are your names?”

The pies didn’t answer her. But she kept waiting and waiting, until she fell asleep.

“Ry, look!” Jack said as he pointed towards something in a street to their right. “My mom’s car!”

“It’s not moving,” Ryder said. He could feel the color draining from his face as the possibility that the car had crashed into something crossed his mind.

“But it looks fine,” Jack said as both boys began running towards it.

Ryder couldn’t bite back the relieved smile that crossed his lips as he saw the perfectly flawless car and the girl sleeping peacefully inside it.

“She is asleep, right?” he asked as Jack pulled the driver’s door open to check on her.

Jack was holding his breath as he checked for her pulse. When he realized she did have one, he let himself relax.

“Cheer up, buddy,” he told Ryder. “Your girl is fine.”

Just as he said that, Nora woke up and turned to look at them. She was sleepy and she looked like a mess, but she managed to smile at the two boys who stood outside the car.

“You found me!” she said happily, but there was something about her voice and the way she smiled that was off. “You found me! I knew you’d find me.”

“Nora, are you okay?” Ryder asked as he leaned closer to her.

“Look,” she said as she turned to look towards something in front of her. “Bunnies.”

The boys frowned but turned to look in the same direction she was. Nothing more than the street was there.

“Shit,” Ryder muttered. “This is bad.”

“I think we should take her to the hospital.”

“THAT BUNNY FLIES!” Nora screamed.

Ryder and Jack exchanged a worried look.

“I’ll drive,” Jack said.

Ryder nodded as he reached inside the car to take Nora in his arms.

“You are stroooooong,” she said as let out a little giggle.

Jack opened the back door and helped Ryder to get in without letting go of Nora.

“Where are you taking me?” she whispered so softly into Ryder’s ear he almost didn’t hear it. Or maybe it was that her warm breath had completely distracted him as soon as it touched his skin.

“To a hospital,” he whispered back.

Nora frowned. Their faces where so close that he could see every little wrinkle that formed on her purplish forehead as she did that. And the fact that she didn’t flinch worried him a little more.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Nope,” she whispered back. “Don’t let him take me to the hospital, Ry. I hate hospitals.”

Maybe it was the way she was looking at him with her big pleading eyes, or maybe it was the fact that she had called him by his nickname for the first time. Whatever it was, for a few seconds Ryder felt like actually telling Jack to just forget it. But he knew something was really, really wrong with Nora. And he also knew it was his fault.

So as Jack drove outside of town and he tried to keep Nora awake, Ryder realized two things:

They now had fourteen pies.

And a girl who swore she could see flying bunnies.