Chapter 8
Jordan flinched as her dad threw his whiskey tumbler across the room, causing it to hit the wall and shatter.
"THAT STUPID FREAK! I SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE!" he bellowed.
"Jeez, Dad, who peed in your Cheerios this time?" Jordan asked, poking her head into the living room to see what all the fuss was about. The news was blaring on the TV with the headline DANGEROUS CRYPTID ESCAPES FROM ZOO. Her eyes widened as a still shot of the manacled Lincoln (thankfully only from the waist up) was shown on the screen, with the reporter telling the story of how this "mysterious creature" was delivered to the Royal County Zoo by an anonymous donor three days prior, only to escape under the cover of darkness. "Dad...how did Lincoln end up in the zoo?" Jordan asked, anger creeping into her voice.
"Ain't it obvious? I caught him with the help of a few buddies of mine," Rick said with a shrug.
"And it was my idea!" Jesse said, smiling wickedly as she walked in from the kitchen.
"ARE YOU INSANE?! LINCOLN'S ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS!" Jordan screamed at her parents.
"No he's not! He's a walking abortion who never should have been born!" Jesse said. Jordan finally lost it. She was done!
Openly weeping, she walked to her bedroom, pulled her gym bag out from under her bed, and crammed as many sets of clothes inside as she could. She walked out to the living room and set her bag down by the front door so that she could put on her jacket and shoes.
"And where do you think you're going, young lady?" Rick demanded.
"I'm staying with Cookie for a while, until someone finally knocks you down a few pegs," Jordan replied through her tears. "For what it's worth...Lincoln may be half alien, but he's more human than either of you ever will be!" Ignoring her parents' threats to ground her and cut off her credit card, Jordan walked out the door, slammed it behind her, and never looked back.
...
When Lincoln woke up, it was dark inside the van, and the van was moving. It must have been moving for quite some time, because he could feel that it was moving very fast, at least seventy-five miles an hour. The Santiagos, then, must have finished packing and started the three-hour drive to Great Lakes City, all without ever discovering his presence. Until they arrived at their destination, all he could do was wait.
While he waited, he thought about how he was going to survive in the big city. He didn't want to be a burden to his best friend and her family, especially after they'd been through so much already. He could live in the shadows, pilfering what edible food he could find from Dumpsters and resorting to pickpocketing if he absolutely had to.
Then again, the Santiagos had never turned him away before, and they probably still wouldn't, especially if Lana had told them he would be stowing away in their van.
He must have dozed off again at some point, because the next thing he knew, the van was coming to a stop. The pulldown door at the back slid open, filling the interior with light.
"I know you're still worried about Lincoln, Mija, but can you cheer up for at least one day? Your cousins are gonna be so happy to see you!" Lincoln heard Maria's voice. Lincoln slowly sat up and peered through a gap between boxes. Maria and Ronnie were unloading boxes one by one and stacking them on the sidewalk. Bobby, who was likely a victim of Cabin Fever from the long drive, was aimlessly running in circles nearby.
"Your mother's right, Ronnie," said Arturo, who'd transitioned from a wheelchair to a pair of crutches and was standing off to the side, looking like he desperately wanted to help unload. "I still can't believe your parents had an empty apartment waiting for us, just in case," he said to Maria.
"They've been saving it since my nurse pinning ceremony," Maria answered. "I even lived in it until I moved in with you. I always thought city life was a little suffocating, especially since my parents owned and operated a whole apartment building and a convenience store. With any luck, all of my old furniture is still there!" The whole family moved out of sight and earshot to move the boxes on the sidewalk inside.
Lincoln couldn't believe his ears. Ronnie's grandparents owned an apartment building! Buildings had basements, and basements sometimes had places to hide! Before the Santiago family had a chance to return, Lincoln slithered out from between the boxes and dashed over to an alleyway. Peeking around the corner, he watched the door of the building the van was parked in front of to make sure this was the building they would be living in. Sure enough, Ronnie and Maria came back outside along with a tall, thin man with glasses and an argyle-patterned sweater vest.
"You didn't have to help us with this, hermano," Maria was saying. Lincoln knew from hanging out with Ronnie that hermano was Spanish for brother, so this man must've been Ronnie's uncle.
"It's really no trouble, Maria. You are my favorite sister, after all!" the man said with a chuckle.
"I'm your only sister, and you know it!" Maria protested, playfully punching his shoulder.
Like mother, like daughter, Lincoln noted, trying to hold in a snicker. When the trio went inside with more armloads of boxes, he ran to the opposite corner of the building and spotted a window close to the ground that led to the basement of the complex. He jimmied the window, crawled inside, and found himself in a wide room full of exercise equipment and three washer/dryer pairs against three of the four walls, no doubt for the tenants to use for their laundry. Most of the fourth wall was taken up by a steel staircase with a closed wooden door at the top. The gap under the stairs was blocked off with plywood planks painted the same shade of gray as the stairs, which gave Lincoln an idea.
Working as quickly as he was able, he used his claws to pry out enough nails to turn one of the planks into a makeshift door. He slipped inside and slid the plank back into place to wait for nightfall. There was enough space for Lincoln to live comfortably for the time being. He just hoped Ronnie's extended family would forgive him for stealing some essentials from their convenience store.
...
Back upstairs with Ronnie, she was relaxing on a temporary air mattress in her own room in her family's new apartment, playing games on her phone. That's right: no more sharing a room with her adorable but obnoxious little brother! She still needed an actual bed, due to the fact that her and Bobby's bunk bed wouldn't fit in the moving van and had to be left behind, but other than that, all of her belongings were lying around the room, waiting to be unpacked from their boxes.
Suddenly, she got an incoming call. The number looked vaguely familiar but wasn't in her contact list, as the caller ID read Unknown Caller. Possibly against her better judgement, she decided to answer.
"Hello?"
"Hi. Is this Ronnie Santiago?" asked the female voice on the other end.
"Yeah, that's me. Who are you? And how did you get my number?"
"My name's Lana. I'm Lincoln's older sister. Your number's on an index card taped to my fridge." Truth be told, Ronnie knew how many sisters her best friend had, but she'd only met a few of them personally. Lana was one of the ones Lincoln hadn't introduced her to yet.
"Okay then, Lana. What can I do for you?" Ronnie asked.
"I found Lincoln." Ronnie sat up, her interest having been piqued.
"Keep talking."
"So, I have this part-time job at the zoo, see? Well, I checked into work yesterday, and there he was, about to be put on display as a new attraction. My boss told me to help calm him down, cuz he was going berserk. We talked for a few minutes, and he told me his plan to bust out. I told him to stow away in your van when he did. I hate to say it, but Royal Woods just ain't safe for him anymore."
"Whoa, whoa, back up," Ronnie Anne demanded incredulously. "He's been hiding in the van this whole time?!"
"Yeah. If you've already been in the big city for a while and nobody's found him yet, he probably got paranoid and found a hidey-hole somewhere. Most likely in your general vicinity."
"Good to know. I'll, uh, keep an eye out for him, then." There was a pause. "So, when you said he was going berserk..."
Lana giggled and said, "Oh, you're gonna get a kick outta this! They had him all manacled and whatnot, and a whole bunch of my coworkers were trying to wrangle him with ropes and cattle prods. He just stood there and tossed 'em around like rag dolls!"
Ronnie and Lana shared a laugh and continued to talk until Maria called Ronnie to dinner.