Chapter 7: The Runaway On Route 9

Paperwork possesses a highly cruel, agonizing kind of timing.

Until the emergency protective order was actually signed by a sitting judge, Diane was still legally Lily’s guardian on every single official form in the Willow Creek School office. Deep concern could slow a bureaucratic process down, but it could not legally lock a school door against a guardian.

Three days later, right before the emergency review was fully complete, the front office received a brisk phone call. Diane was coming to sign Lily out early due to a sudden “family matter.”

She arrived twenty minutes later, quickly scribbled her name on the sign-out sheet at the front desk, and walked rapidly out the main entrance with Lily. Lily’s heavy backpack was strapped securely over both her shoulders.

By the time Grace frantically heard the news and sprinted to the front lobby, the parking lot was completely empty.

Two hours later, at a dingy, fluorescent-lit gas station just off Route 9, Diane’s rusted sedan sat idling at the pumps.

Diane had been driving erratically since the morning. She had spent the entire car ride aggressively telling Lily that they were going to stay with her boyfriend in Dayton for a long while. She coldly informed the child that she would have to switch schools, leave her teacher behind, and help out much more around the new house.

Lily had sat perfectly still in the back seat with her backpack on her lap. She had not said a single word.

“Stay right here,” Diane commanded, slamming the car into park. “I am going inside to pay for the gas and get cigarettes. Do not move.”

Diane slammed the car door and marched toward the convenience store.

Lily watched her aunt disappear behind the glass doors. She didn’t hesitate. She quietly pulled the handle, pushed the heavy car door open, stepped out onto the oil-stained concrete, and kept walking.

She kept her backpack on. Her Velcro shoes were tied tight. There was absolutely no frantic running. She just walked steadily away from the gas pump, slipping behind the building, and she didn’t look back once.

She had exactly eight dollars and forty-two cents in the plastic zipper pouch Grace had once helped her carefully count for a math exercise. And she knew the name of her town.

At the very first bus shelter she found on the highway access road, she waited patiently. When the heavy city bus finally hissed to a stop, she stepped up into the doorway.

She opened her small palm, showing the driver her handful of quarters and dimes.

“Excuse me, sir,” Lily asked, her voice so incredibly soft the driver almost missed it over the engine. “Does any bus go back toward Willow Creek School?”

The driver, a heavy-set man with kind eyes, looked down at the tiny girl traveling entirely alone as the sun began to set.

“It takes two transfers, kiddo,” the driver said gently. “Come sit right up front here behind me where I can see you.”

He let her sit in the front row. When his specific route ended at the transit center, he personally walked her out, pointed her directly to the correct connecting bus, and waited on the curb until she safely crossed the street.

Through the specific, stubborn resilience of a child who has learned to make very little stretch a very long way, she miraculously made it back to the dark borders of Willow Creek well after nine o’clock at night.

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