After I’m done slapping our breakfasts onto the white S&H Green Stamp plates Louise collects from the Red Owl every Wednesday, I know I shouldn’t be doing that famous saying “Counting your chickens before they hatch,” but I just can’t help myself. Besides getting the chance to solve a kidnapping murder that could really pay off, if I can stay two steps ahead of Gert Klement’s plan to get rid of Birdie and me, we won’t have to run away. But because it’s always good to BE PREPARED, just in case I come up a day late and a dollar short and we have to hit the road, instead of wandering around the countryside like two Gypsies who are sure to get their throats ripped out on a full-moon night—in the movies, where there are Gypsies, a werewolf is never far behind—the orange juice I’m pouring into the little glasses is reminding me that it’s one of the chief exports of the final destination I finally came up with that Birdie and me will run away to, if come what may.
After studying TV shows and movies, combing through my geography book, visiting the Finney Library’s travel section, and paying half attention during catechism class, I came up with a list of all the places that I thought might make a nice future home for the Finley sisters. Some of the locations sounded okay with pretty nice weather, which is something Birdie and me would have to take into consideration, because we won’t have a place to live until we can get jobs or get to know everyone in our new neighborhood good enough to start blackmailing the snot out of them for enough money to stay at a hotel:
RUNNING-TO PLACES
France: chief exports: the perfume that my mother and most of the gals in the neighborhood wear, the movie Gigi, and sluts.
Mongolia: chief exports: Attila the Hun, pillaging, and homes for different kids.
The Congo: chief exports: head-shrinking Pygmies, cannibals, and pagan babies.
Lourdes: chief exports: crutches, rosaries, and Holy Water.
Fatima: chief exports: miracles, sheepherders, and appearances by the Virgin Mary.
New York City: chief exports: book writers, the Empire State Building, and crime.
Hawaii: chief exports: pineapples, the hula dance, and leprosy.
Unfortunately, hard work doesn’t always pay off. I ended up having to pull the plug on all those spots, especially France, because everybody over there smelling like Louise all the time would make Birdie too sad and give me a headache. And even though I would love to shake the hand of the man who wrote Modern Detection, I don’t want to live in New York City, either. It’s known on a TV show as The Naked City and that sounds like a good way to pick up a disease. I also gave the boot to the new state of Hawaii—I don’t want to bump into Father Damien and his lepers for Miss America reasons—and Fatima didn’t sound like a whole hell of a lot of fun, ditto for the Congo, and the home of Attila the Hun.
It was just this past Sunday night, when Birdie and me were on the sofa watching the Walt Disney Presents show, that the end-all and be-all of where we should run away to came to me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Eureka! I said to myself. California, here we come! I didn’t mention anything to my sister, because sure, she loves Snow White because that black-haired beauty is also an animal lover, particularly of birds, and her best friends, the dwarves, are all about the same height as my sister, so they’d have that in common, but I’m still not positive that the eight of them are enough to tempt Birdie away from our mother, which is something I should probably add to my SURE SIGNS OF LOONY list. (If we do have to run away, I’m counting on my sister getting over Louise once we’re in California and she feasts her slightly bulging eyes on the Magic Kingdom in living color.)
I hate for any opponent of mine to know what I’m feeling, so I’m very good at playing my cards close to my chest—Daddy taught me. But I must be accidentally smiling at the pictures I got in my head of Birdie spinning around in the flying teacups at Disneyland with Dopey, and Kookie Kookson the Third from 77 Sunset Strip lending me his comb, because when Louise lowers herself down on the chair where our father used to sit at the head of the yellow Formica kitchen table, she doesn’t guess that I’m thinking about the place where you can wish upon a star and make your dreams come true, but she does guess what’s going on in the other part of my mind, which is how we’re going to earn enough money to get us there.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, Theresa. Sister Margaret Mary’s disappearance is none of your business,” she says. “You hear me?”