Clean Getaway Read online

  Scoob will never forget Dad’s look of disappointment.

  “Seems a tad extreme, don’t you think?” G’ma says, plucking Scoob back to the present.

  He shakes his head. “Not really. He used to tell me he had faith in me all the time, but now he acts like I’m some hardened delinquent. It’s like he thinks there’s no hope for me or something. Won’t even look me in the eye anymore. Especially since that other incident.”

  “The one with the computers.”

  “Yep.”

  G’ma doesn’t press further. Which Scoob is thankful for. He really doesn’t want to get into that right now.

  He takes another swig of sweet tea to swallow the little ball that’s risen in his throat. This is the first time he’s spoken aloud about the way Dad’s been to him lately.

  Kinda makes him want to cry.

  But he won’t.

  Though he can totally feel G’ma looking at him, and he knows from the way the hairs on the back of his neck are rising, she’s doing that thing where she tries to see inside his head. If he looks at her now, she’ll see all the other mess—Scoob’s frustration over the fact that Bryce wasn’t punished, his annoyance that all the teachers look at him like he’s a lit stick of dynamite now despite the fact that Bryce is still terrorizing people (though not Drake anymore), his anger over the unfairness of the whole situation—swirling around behind Scoob’s eyes, and she’ll drag it all out of him.

  But he doesn’t want to tell her any of that.

  Right now Scoob just wants to get back in G’ma’s fancy new drivable home and GO.

  Go, and never ever look back.

  He pulls himself up straight and lifts his chin. That’s when he notices an older white man in a baseball cap a few tables over looking between him and G’ma like they’re some alien beings. Yeah, kids at school used to ask questions when they’d see Scoob and G’ma together—he’s black and she’s white—but this feels different. Less about curiosity and more…disdainful.

  And that guy’s not the only one: bouncing his eyes around the room, Scoob realizes a bunch of people are looking at him and G’ma funny. One lady he makes eye contact with openly sneers at him like he’s done something wrong.

  Like he is something wrong, even.

  It’s the same way Dad looked at him when he stepped into Mr. Armand’s office that first time after the fight.

  His hand tightens around his damp glass of tea. Which he’d really like to pick up and lob at the woman. Give her a reason to look at him the way she is.

  G’ma’s warm hand squeezes Scoob’s other one, which is resting on the table in a fist. He locks eyes with her and she smiles. His chest unclenches a little.

  “Whattya say we blow this popsicle stand, huh?” she asks him. “We’ve eaten our fill. Now time to eat some road.”

  Scoob nods and grins. “Sounds disgusting, G’ma. But okay.”

  As they make their way outside, G’ma turns to him and says, “These small towns are really something, aren’t they? Bass ackwards, as your G’pop used to say. But that’s all right…”

  She doesn’t say anything else, and Scoob doesn’t respond. But as they pull away from DamnYankees it hits him: he’s pretty sure G’ma didn’t pay the bill.

  By the time Scoob and G’ma have “set up camp”—aka parked the RV at their “campsite” in the hills of Alabama’s Cheaha State Park and connected G’ma’s fancy water filter and hose to the spigot at their campsite so they won’t run through what’s in the RV’s fresh water tank—the drooping sun has turned the sky the colors of Scoob’s favorite fruit: a sweet Georgia peach.

  In fact, Scoob snagged a few from the bowl on his kitchen table and stuffed them in his backpack while on the way out the door with G’ma this afternoon.

  Come to think of it, that bowl was empty when Scoob left for school this morning. He’d eaten the last two the night before as he sat through a show Dad was making him watch on National Geographic about the fiercely territorial nature of hippos.

  Which means Dad refilled it at some point. For Scoob. Because Dad doesn’t like peaches. Always says they’re “the pits,” and then he laughs at his corny dad-joke.

  When had Dad done that?

  “Ready for a little adventurin’, Scoob-a-doob—whoops!” G’ma giggles as she approaches the picnic table where Scoob’s sitting, drawing pine trees all around the spot where he circled the park they’re at on the map G’ma gave him.

  Well, at least that’s what he was doing before he got all googly-eyed over the peachy sunset.

  “Sorry,” G’ma goes on. “Forgot I’m supposed to drop the a-doob now that you’re practically a grown man.” She winks at him and pats the top of his head.

  “Aww, come on, G’ma.”

  “How about you come on,” she says. “We’ve got a short hike, and I wanna get to the peak of this mountain before the sun disappears. You carry this.” She sets a wooden box on the picnic table in front of Scoob. The hinged lid is ornately carved, and it’s about the size of his school math book.

  He freezes.

  G’ma’s treasure box.

  He looks over the loops and swirls and leaves etched into the top. The box is a reddish brown, and he knows it’s made of rosewood because G’ma told him years ago when he first noticed it sitting up on her mantel.

  It’s the one thing that was always off-limits in G’ma’s house. Scoob’s never even touched it before.

  Okay, that’s a lie. As soon as he was tall enough—age seven-ish?—he reached up and touched the lacquered side just because…well, because he wasn’t supposed to touch it.

  Looking at it now, though, Scoob gets smacked again by the fact that he’ll never see it on the mantel again. Never see the inside of G’ma’s house again.

  “Stick it down in your knapsack,” she says.

  Which…she wants him to carry her treasure box in his backpack? Up a mountain? What if she’s only taking it up there to toss it over the edge or something? Rid herself of it like she did her home. Scoob doesn’t know if he could handle that.

  He gulps. “We’re…uhh…taking it on a hike?”

  “That we are,” she says. “Now scoot your boot.” And she walks off without another word.

  * * *

  So okay. Watching the sun go down all the way from the highest point in Alabama is kinda neat. In fact, Scoob’s looking forward to getting back down to the campsite so he can add a sunset in the margin of his road map. “Well, ain’t that something?” G’ma says from beside Scoob. They’re in the observation room at the top of an old tower, which the pamphlet says was built in 1934.

  “Can you believe Bunker Tower had been standing for nine years by the time I was born?” G’ma says. “It’s magnificent!”

  “It’s something, all right.” Scoob gives a wary glance around the interior. He sure hopes it doesn’t suddenly decide to crumble.

  “I’ve been waiting fifty-one years to see this view, Scoob-a-doob,” G’ma says.

  That gets Scoob’s attention. “Fifty-one years?”

  “Yep.”

  Scoob shifts his gaze back out across the landscape. “Why didn’t you come before now?”

  “Wasn’t ready.”

  No idea what that means…

  “Really not ready now, but the world ain’t slowing its spin.”

  “Okay,” Scoob says.

  “Go ahead and open the box.”

  The box. Scoob forgot he was even carrying it, though, come to think of it, his shoulders are hurting from the extra weight. He takes a deep breath, shrugs the bag down, and drops to a knee. Unzips and pulls out the box.

  Stares at it.

  “It won’t bite ya,” G’ma says. “Well…at least I don’t think it will.” She smiles and pats the top of his head.

  Scoob run
s a thumb over the brassy latch. What if what’s inside isn’t all that exciting? It’ll ruin the whole thing. Scoob would never admit it to anyone, but there are books he’s never finished because he liked imagining all the things that could happen. Knowing what does happen would take the fun out of it.

  Scoob’s mom pops into his mind unbidden. Her name is Destiny, but…well, he’s never met her. He knows she left when he was a baby because she wasn’t ready to be a mom—Dad told him that part—but he doesn’t know much else because the one time he asked about her, Dad made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

  So he just makes things up. Though he’d never tell anyone. In his mind she’s been everything from an astronaut like Mae Jemison—Dad’s an aeronautical engineer and has a picture of Mae in her space suit on the wall in his office—to a brown lady Indiana Jones going on treasure-hunting adventures.

  She’s an unsolved mystery. His personal treasure box.

  And now he’s holding G’ma’s treasure box. He’s imagined it containing everything from his granddad’s ashes to the bones of some beloved pet to heaps of glittering jewels. He imagines the vines carved into the lid coming to life like wooden snakes, lashing at him the moment he tries to lift it.

  “Well?” G’ma says.

  Scoob closes his eyes, flicks the latch, and shoves the lid up. Peeks inside through one barely cracked eye.

  The contents are…unexpected.

  “Voilà. My greatest treasure.”

  There’s an old radio tucked up against the left side, plus some matchbooks and a few postcards. There are guidebooks to places Scoob’s never heard of before, and some newspaper clippings; a series of weathered road maps not unlike the one G’ma gave him, a small photo album, and a little green book called…Travelers’ Green Book. “For Vacation Without Aggravation,” the cover says in bold white letters.

  The Green Book is from 1963. As in not even this century.

  “Wow, this thing sure stirs up some memories,” G’ma says, grunting as she bends at the waist to remove the Green Book. It’s about the same size as the postcards.

  Scoob watches her flip through it like she does a deck of cards before dealing Texas Hold’em. “What is it?” he asks.

  “Somethin’ that helped keep a lotta folks like your G’pop—and me, for that matter—alive back in the day.”

  Scoob zeroes in on the cover. It features an image of two women—he can’t tell what race they are; everything is tinted green (surprise, surprise)—leaning over a small boat beneath a sky full of fluffy clouds. “Really?”

  “Mmhmm.” She sighs and taps the book against her palm. “Hate to tell you this, Scoob-a-doob, but travel around this grand ol’ USA wasn’t always a safe thing for people who look like you. This was a meeeeeean place back when your G’pop and I were young, and that book existed to let Negro travelers know which hotels and such would accept them as customers. There are even some other countries in there. Here.” She hands Scoob the book. “You hold on to it. Might learn ya somethin’.”

  Scoob flips the book to check out the back, then shoves it into his pocket without a word.

  “Now grab the Alabama map, if you will, please.”

  He riffles through the rest of the stuff, looking for what she requested, and finds it beneath a napkin with a circular stain on it. Probably from a cup of coffee. It’s weathered and pamphlet-style, ALABAMA printed vertically in bold letters on the front.

  “Open it up.”

  There’s a route highlighted—broken up by circled spots with handwritten notes scribbled over them—that cuts straight across from the Georgia/Alabama line to Alabama’s midpoint in Birmingham, and then veers southwest to the state’s opposite border.

  “Can you see what’s circled just below and to the right of Anniston?”

  Scoob holds the map a little closer. “Cheaha State Park.” The highest point in Alabama is scrawled above the spot of green.

  In awe, Scoob looks all around him. Then at G’ma. Who nods. Just once. “Fifty-one years,” she says.

  Then she begins to sob like Scoob’s never seen before.

  On the way back down the mountain, Scoob’s so focused on G’ma—that was his first time ever seeing her cry, and she told him a lot about his grandfather—he trips on a tree root and comes down hard on a small rock partially buried in the dirt of the walking trail.

  “My word, are you all right, Scoob-a-doob?” G’ma says, reaching to help him up.

  “I’m fine, G’ma.” Scoob dusts the woodland debris from his clothes and tries to play it off.

  They continue walking, Scoob’s mind swirling. While G’ma sobbed over the sunset, it hit Scoob: his grandfather had needed a book that listed “safe” places to do something as simple as get gas back in the day.

  Because he was black.

  By the time they get back to G’ma’s new sweet ride, there’s a dull ache in his right arm, but all he can think about is the phrase For Vacation Without Aggravation and that boat on calm water beneath those fluffy clouds.

  That is, until they’re inside the RV where the light is brighter.

  “Oh!” G’ma shouts, startling Scoob. “Oh, oh, OH! That needs to be cleaned immediately! Come, come!”

  When Scoob looks at his arm and sees the lines of drying blood that have run down over his hand from a nasty-looking cut near his elbow, the dull ache explodes into a burning throb. “Oh.”

  “Put that bag down,” G’ma orders, and as soon as he does, she’s dragging him over to the kitchenette sink by his good arm and washing her hands. Then she shoves his arm underneath the warm water.

  It takes the force of Thor to keep his jaw clenched so he doesn’t scream like a giant baby.

  In fact, said jaw is aching by the time G’ma finishes with the rubbing alcohol and weird-colored Betadine and bag balm (for chapped cow udders?). By the time the nickel-sized cut is bandaged, Scoob’s exhausted.

  He collapses into the dining booth and looks up at the over-cab bunk where he’s supposed to sleep.

  What if he rolls off?

  “Hot cocoa?” G’ma says.

  Scoob shakes his head. “No thanks, G’ma. Think I’m gonna call it a night.”

  “All right, well, before ya go…” She unzips Scoob’s backpack and pulls the treasure box out. Digs around and stretches a photo out to him.

  “That’s your G’pop,” she says. “Keep that with your Green Book.”

  Of course now he can’t sleep.

  Between the photo and the book, Scoob’s thoughts are whipping around faster than a load of clothes in their front-loading washer during the spin cycle, something he typically loves watching but is queasy about now.

  In the photo, “G’pop” is leaned up against what looks like a white box on wheels with a big green W up under the driver window. Scoob is guessing this is the Winnebago G’ma mentioned earlier, though it’s clearly the great-great-grandparent model of the motor home where Scoob is currently stretched out in his bed, staring at this picture.

  Scoob brings the photo closer to his face. G’pop was tall and string-beany, a shade darker than Scoob, so two shades darker than Dad. Scoob can see his dear old dad all up in G’pop’s face—though Dad is currently older than G’pop was in this picture, so it’s almost like looking at a younger Dad—and it makes Scoob wonder if this is what he’ll look like in a decade and a half or so. People are always telling him he’s the “spitting image” of Dad, which is kinda nasty, but whatever.

  It’s weird, looking at his grandfather. In almost twelve years, this is the first photo Scoob’s ever seen of the guy. He’d never really even heard G’ma talk about the dude before tonight. Which, now that he thinks about it, probably isn’t normal? He never questioned it before because Dad always said the old man had been a “nonentity” since before Dad was actually born.

&nbs
p; But from the beans G’ma spilled all over the top of Alabama, Scoob now knows that James Lamar Sr. was quite the entity. Especially to her, his darling wife, Ruby Jean.

  What G’ma told him through her tears (and a little snot and drool, too): in 1968 she and G’pop bought an RV. They planned to drive from their home in Georgia across five southern states and straight into Mexico. On her maps—which are all in the treasure chest—G’ma marked the stuff she wanted to see along the way. But they’d had to skip most of her chosen sites because G’ma is a white lady but “your G’pop was a Negro, as we used to say back then.”

  Cheaha Mountain had been the first stop she wanted to make, but when they got to the turnoff for the drive to the top, G’pop told her there was no way they’d be able to park up there without people messing with them.

  Scoob puts the picture aside and picks up the green booklet. Reads the words just inside the front cover—Assured Protection for the Negro Traveler—skims the intro page, which outlines state-by-state “statutes on discrimination as they apply to public accommodations or recreation,” then flips to the Alabama section. Scoob knows Anniston is the closest city to where they are now, and it’s not in the book at all.

  Which means there was nowhere safe for black people to stay around here back when G’ma and G’pop took their trip.

  So they drove past.

  This journey Scoob and G’ma are on now? According to her, “It’s my chance at redemption. To finish what your G’pop and I started fifty-one years ago.” And while she doesn’t go into detail, she does tell Scoob they never made it to Mexico.