Running Away Read online

  For Robert, who does it on his own

  Thank you to all my family, Brenda Bowen, Cylin Busby, Nöelle Paffett-Lugassy, Karen Riskin, and Richard Tchen

  Angel Talk

  The Little Angel of Responsibility looked carefully through her gigantic basket of yarns. She picked up a ball—too lavender. Another—too royal purple. Oh, yes, there was the violet ball, finally. She twisted together the end of the violet yarn with the end of the indigo yarn that was already on her knitting needles.

  “What are you making?” The Archangel of Responsibility leaned over to take a look. He had to lean far, because he was very tall.

  “It’s a winter scarf.” The little angel spread out the long scarf. It was already three feet long.

  “Hmmm. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, navy . . .”

  “No, that’s indigo, not navy. And the last color, the one I just added, is violet.”

  “The rainbow.” The archangel smiled. “Who’s it for?”

  “The Little Angel of Imagination.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Nothing special,” said the Little Angel of Responsibility. Then she blushed. “Well, actually, it was supposed to be the prize for winning the chess match.”

  “The chess match? That was months ago.”

  “I know. I try to work on it very hard. But you know how it is.”

  The Archangel of Responsibility shook his head. “No, I don’t. How is it?”

  “Well, things come up.” The little angel smiled guiltily. “But the Little Angel of Imagination understands.”

  “That’s because he has a good imagination,” said the archangel.

  “Did you come here for a reason?” asked the little angel.

  The archangel laughed agreeably. “I have a task for you. Something pretty easy, I think.”

  The little angel had been waiting for this. She had all her feathers except for the ones that should go at the very top of each wing. When she earned those, she’d earn her wings. A wonderful bell would ring, and she’d be able to fly with the archangels. “I’m your little angel,” said the little angel. She ran in a circle around the archangel, her arms outspread as though she were flying. “I’m ready.”

  “What about the scarf?”

  The little angel stopped and giggled. “See what I mean?”

  Math Homework

  Mrs. Cronin wrote the math assignment on the blackboard. “It’s not easy, kids.”

  Everyone groaned.

  “So you can take the last half hour of the day to get a head start on it.” She smiled. “Start working.”

  Danielle opened her math book to page 143. She read the first problem. What was a denominator? The word didn’t even sound familiar, but Mrs. Cronin must have taught it to them or she wouldn’t have assigned this. Danielle stared at the problem for a long time. Then she glanced around the room.

  Judy was sucking on the eraser end of her pencil. She did that a lot. With a sudden jerk she sat upright and wrote madly on her paper.

  Kirby turned the page. How’d he get that far so fast?

  Hannah wrote with her right hand while her left hand opened and closed the barrette in her hair.

  They knew what they were doing. Danielle didn’t. The book index—oh, yeah, that would help her. She flipped to the index and looked up “denominator.” Page 141. A denominator was the bottom number in a fraction. All right. These problems weren’t so bad, after all. Danielle copied the first one onto her paper and worked it out. Then she happened to look up.

  Mrs. Cronin was looking right at her.

  Danielle looked back at the book.

  Mrs. Cronin walked down the aisle and stood beside Danielle’s desk. “Danielle?” She talked very softly.

  Danielle gave her a small smile.

  “Do your homework tonight, Danielle.”

  Danielle nodded and turned back to the book. She furrowed her brows and gripped her pencil firmly, so Mrs. Cronin would know she meant business. Tonight she would do her homework, and she wouldn’t let anything come in the way.

  Mrs. Cronin bent over and whispered in her ear. “I mean it. If you don’t do it, I’ll have to send home a note to your parents tomorrow. You started out the year fine. I know you can do well again if you just put your mind to it.”

  The school bell rang.

  Danielle shoved her math book and notebook into her backpack and sprinted out the room, to the sidewalk, and down the block. Her sister, Clarissa, rode by on the bus and waved to her. Danielle didn’t take the bus because running was good training for track. Danielle planned to be the best runner on the team this year.

  She came in the back door of her house, and Rosie jumped on her. “Good dog.” Danielle laughed and threw her arms around Rosie’s back, then pressed her lips together so that they were completely hidden as the dog gave her face a tongue bath.

  Danielle listened hard. She didn’t really expect to hear her mother call out to her like she used to. These days Ma was always totally engrossed in her latest project when Danielle came home.

  Danielle dropped her backpack on a kitchen chair. Then she walked through the downstairs with Rosie right behind her. “Ma?”

  “Danielle, Danielle, we’re here.” Roger held on to the vertical rails around the stair landing on the second floor and pressed his face between them. He smiled at Danielle.

  Danielle loped up the stairs, two at a time. That was good track training, too.

  Ma handed Danielle a big cloth tote. “We’re going to the grocery store.” She didn’t believe in disposable things, so whenever they went shopping, Danielle and Ma and Pa brought along big totes and Clarissa and Roger brought along little ones.

  “We’re buying everything we can find that’s purple,” said Clarissa. “We might stop at the florist, too.”

  Danielle looked at Ma. “Purple?”

  “That’s the color of the birthstone for February—amethyst,” said Ma. “My February show should open with the right color. I always do black-and-white photos—but the first photos you see as you enter the showroom should be special.”

  It was only October, but Ma had been planning for this show for the past few weeks. It was all she thought about. Ma was a photographer and up till now she’d been content to take great pictures of the family. The entrance hall of their home was lined floor to ceiling with Ma’s photos. But last month one of Ma’s photos was printed in the city paper. Oh, Ma had had photos in their little town paper pretty often. But the city paper was different. That changed everything.

  It was just a normal shot of a little girl coming out of the Philadelphia Jazz Festival with her family. But the girl had a barbecued rib clutched in one hand. Ma had told Pa and Danielle and Clarissa and Roger to wait a minute and she had watched while the little girl passed a homeless man who was sitting on the sidewalk begging. The girl walked past him, looking back over her shoulder. Then she turned around and gave the man her barbecued rib. Ma took a picture of the very moment when the girl handed it to him. The girl’s mouth was an open O, and the man’s mouth was a huge smile.

  Anyway, once that photo came out in the paper, Ma got a ton of phone calls. Everyone wanted her to take photos of everything. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries. And a gallery in the city was going to have a show of her work in February.

  Ma had become a celebrity.

  All of them marched down the stairs now. As they passed through the kitchen, Ma glanced at Danielle’s backpack. “Do you have homework?”

  Danielle looked at the empty totes hanging from their shoulders. Ma wanted to fill them now. She needed to. And when they got home, she’d need to arrange all the purple things in at least a dozen different ways. And she’d want Danielle’s help the whole time. Danielle knew how
important all of this was to her.

  Danielle zipped up one of the small outside pockets on the pack. “Mrs. Cronin gave us time to do it in school.” That wasn’t a lie, after all.

  “Oh, how nice.”

  Angel Talk

  I don’t like that mother,” said the little angel.

  “What? Why not?”

  “She made Danielle go shopping with her instead of letting Danielle do her homework.”

  “Now wait just a minute.” The Archangel of Responsibility scratched the very top of his head. When he did that, he looked taller than ever. “You saw the same thing I saw. The mother wanted everyone to help her shop, sure, but she didn’t force Danielle.”

  “But they could have gone shopping later, after Danielle finished her homework. Now Danielle’s going to get in trouble with her teacher.”

  “You’re right about the teacher part,” said the archangel.

  “I’m right about the mother, too,” said the Little Angel of Responsibility firmly. “She’s the irresponsible one.”

  “Come on. The mother asked Danielle if she had homework.”

  The Little Angel of Responsibility looked away in confusion. She’d been wondering herself about why Danielle hadn’t told her mother she had homework to do. Still, the mother’s behavior was what bothered her most. “What’s so important about buying all those things, anyway? Bunches of grapes and plums. Is Danielle’s mother crazy or something?”

  “Sort of. That show she talked about worries her. She’s going to put her photographs on exhibit, and she thinks of it as her big break—her chance to become a professional photographer.”

  “Oh.” The little angel hesitated. “Oh, I get it now,” she said with sympathy. “Does Danielle know that her mother’s worried?”

  “Yes.”

  So that’s why Danielle didn’t tell her mother she had homework. “Well, then,” said the little angel, “Danielle was right to go shopping with her mother.” She nodded her head emphatically. “And there’s really no job for me here. Danielle is being very responsible. Her mother needs her.”

  “She needs her, all right, little angel. But what she needs most right now is for Danielle to do all the things she’s supposed to do. Danielle’s mother is counting on her to have her schoolwork done.”

  “Now we’re back to where we started. The mother shouldn’t make Danielle go shopping when it’s time to do homework.”

  “But she thinks Danielle already did her homework,” said the archangel. “Danielle made her think that.”

  “Danielle didn’t actually lie,” said the Little Angel of Responsibility slowly.

  “Does it matter? Danielle knows what her mother thinks. She does have a problem, little angel, and you do have a job here.”

  “I like the color of those irises they bought,” said the little angel.

  “Are you trying to change the subject?”

  “No, I just thought of how much help Danielle’s mother needs and I remembered those beautiful irises and, well, I got an idea.” The little angel pulled a pair of knitting needles out of her gown.

  The Archangel of Responsibility tapped the tip of the knitting needles. “What are you doing with those?”

  “I carry them everywhere. Just in case. Wait for me.”

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  “You saw all that royal purple yarn I have. I’ll make a beautiful purple pot holder that will look great in the middle of the mother’s photograph.”

  “Hold up!”

  “I’ll be right back,” called the little angel.

  Signatures

  Judy tapped Danielle on the shoulder and laughed. “Did your little brother write that?” She opened a long, thin box, took out a pencil, and went to the sharpener at the back of the room.

  Danielle looked at her math homework. The first problem was perfect. The second and third were messy. She had done them on the bus this morning. She should have run to school, for track training and all, but she figured bus time might be good homework time. The trouble was, the bus was bouncy. Judy was right: Her homework did look like a five-year-old had written it. And she hadn’t finished, anyway. There were still three more problems left.

  Mrs. Cronin cleared her throat. “Does anyone else have homework to hand in?”

  How could Danielle turn in a half-finished piece of junk? She liked to do good work. Or, at least, she used to like to. Danielle crumpled her homework and jammed it into her desk. A small, sick feeling filled her mouth.

  The rest of the day went better. They had recorders in music lesson, and Danielle loved the recorder. They had volcanoes in science lesson, and Danielle loved volcanoes. They had pizza at lunch, and Danielle loved pizza.

  And they had a spelling quiz. Spelling homework was two nights ago. Everyone was supposed to look up the words in a dictionary and write them in sentences. Danielle hadn’t done it because Ma was using the dictionary. She was writing a little “blurb”—as she called it—to go under one of her photographs for the show, and when she wrote blurbs, she kept the dictionary by her side. Danielle hadn’t wanted to disturb her. But it didn’t matter that Danielle didn’t do her homework. She was a naturally great speller. She sailed through the spelling quiz.

  When it was time to go home, Mrs. Cronin handed out the field trip permission slips for everyone to get signed by their parents, and she gave Danielle an extra folded piece of paper. “Give this to your parents, Danielle. I told you it was coming.”

  Danielle kept her face as calm as she could. She nodded.

  “One of them has to sign it.”

  Danielle nodded again.

  Danielle ran home. Rosie greeted her at the back door as usual. And today there was nothing strange going on. Ma and Roger sat at the piano, and Ma was trying to get Roger to understand what an octave was.

  Danielle poured herself a glass of milk and peeled a banana. The note from Mrs. Cronin sat hidden in her backpack. What was the point of that note, anyway? Danielle would do all the rest of her homework assignments right away. On time. Just like she used to. Her parents didn’t really need to read any note.

  Today the only homework was to get her field trip permission slip signed. Danielle would do that, no problem.

  “Don’t come down,” called Clarissa from the basement.

  Danielle went downstairs.

  “I told you not to come down.” Clarissa sat on the floor and glued pieces of paper to the outside of the olive oil jar.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making a surprise for Ma. You know how she says there’s beauty in everything. I’m going to show her the beauty in the olive oil jar. Don’t tell.”

  “I won’t.” Danielle went upstairs and out the door with Rosie. They chased each other around the backyard for an hour or so. Rosie barked the whole time, and Danielle laughed. This was good track training, too.

  When Pa drove up the driveway, Danielle ran to get the two pieces of paper—the permission slip and the note from Mrs. Cronin. She smoothed them both flat and laid them on the kitchen table, with the field trip permission slip on top.

  Pa came in the back door.

  “I need your signature. We’re going on a field trip.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where?”

  “The Franklin Mint.”

  “Sounds good. I remember going on a field trip there when I was a kid. I loved it.” Pa took a pen out of his inside breast pocket. “Where do I sign?”

  “Right at the bottom.”

  Pa signed.

  Danielle quickly pulled the second sheet down just a little, so only the bottom showed. That was the note from Mrs. Cronin. The skin behind Danielle’s ears went tight with anxiety. “You have to sign the second page, too.”

  Pa signed.

  “Thanks.” Danielle folded the two pieces of paper. “And I need a check for fifteen dollars for the Student Activities Fund.”

  “What’s that cover?”

  “I don’t know. Want to read the permissi
on slip?”

  “No. Fifteen dollars sounds reasonable. You’re going to have a great time.” Pa took out his checkbook and wrote the check. “Anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  Angel Talk

  You let Danielle get away without her parents seeing the note from the teacher.” The Archangel of Responsibility shook his head. “Why didn’t you do something about it?”

  “I was just finishing up this pot holder. See how nice it is?” The little angel dangled a bright purple square from her fingers.

  “Danielle’s mother already took a dozen purple photos.”

  “I know. I can’t work that fast. But I’ll stick this in her top drawer so she can find it. Then the next time she thinks about a purple photo, she’ll use it.”

  “Little angel, this mother’s photography exhibit isn’t your problem. The problem is Danielle.”

  “Well, I know that.” The Little Angel of Responsibility lifted her shoulders, then dropped them heavily. “I’ll try to pay better attention from now on.”

  Science Project

  What was in the note? Mrs. Cronin hadn’t said Danielle couldn’t read it. But somehow Danielle had the feeling she wasn’t supposed to. Still, Mrs. Cronin should have told Danielle not to if she didn’t want her to. And what if the note said something important—something Danielle should know?

  Danielle pressed her back against the side of the bus so no one could look over her shoulder. She opened the note and held it close to her face.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. LeFevre,

  Danielle hasn’t handed in her homework for the past three weeks. She did such a fine job on her first marking period, I’d hate to see her grades go down. Would you like to have a conference to discuss this? I can meet with you after school any day next week.

  I’ve told Danielle to ask you to sign this note, so that I can be sure you’ve read it.

  I look forward to hearing from you.