Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 2: Escape

"I want to escape," Sophie said.

"A-huh," I said, without looking up. People at Crapper were always saying they wanted to escape.

"I'm serious Ben."

We'd been hanging out all summer and I'd got to know her pretty well. Somehow I was best friends with a girl. Weird. Anyway, I knew her well enough to know when she was serious and when she wasn't. And she was serious now.

"Jesus," I said. The other person I'd been hanging around all summer was Dirty Joe, and I'd started to talk like him.

I looked away to where the sun was going down over the roofs and thought about escaping. Cicadas were going like mad in the grass nearby, and trucks were snoring by on the highway, and seagulls crying far off. I could smell the earth cooling down after the hot day, and I thought I could smell the sea. There was something electric in the air. It was one of those nights when it feels like anything is possible.

"Why?" I said, eventually.

"I hate this place."

"It's not bad."

"Yes it is."

She was right: Crapper was a miserable place. Except for making friends with Dirty Joe and Sophie, and not being killed by Jungle Jim, life was shit. I wondered what the world outside was like. I'd never seen much of it. Surely it couldn't be any worse than Crapper.

So I said, "Okay." Just like that.

"I knew you would!" Sophie cried, and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. Gross.

We laid our plans straight away. Sophie was the master of planning things. I just listened and nodded and said "okay" every now and again. Sophie's plans always started off practical, but as time went on they'd get wilder and wilder. Making plans was entertainment for Sophie.

Escape was the easy part: we were just going to walk out the front gate when nobody was looking. Then we were going to find a house where an old deaf and blind lady lived with her twelve dogs. We'd live with her and she wouldn't know it, because she was deaf and blind. Sophie even knew what the dogs looked like.

That was Stage One.

Stage Two was stowing away on a ship bound for the islands. We'd find one with no people on it, only animals, and we'd live there fishing and swimming and eating mangoes. She already knew what kinds of animals were on the island: kangaroos and elephants and cobras.

In ten minutes we had our escape all planned out.

"We could go tomorrow night," I said. Just saying it made my heart beat faster.

"Don't you know anything about escapes?" she said. "Nobody escapes just like that. You gotta prepare."

I couldn't see what there was to prepare, but I had to take her word for it.

When I got back to bed I couldn't sleep because my mind was full of old ladies with twelve dogs and islands with mangoes. Sometimes the Whistlers took us to the shops or down to the beach, but they never let us out of their sight, and they certainly never took us to any islands. For a whole week I had butterflies in my stomach and jumped whenever someone said my name. I'd say it to myself under my breath: we're escaping, and my stomach would do a funny lurch.