the corner and called on the pay phone there, no one answered the phone. They had heard it ring, and they were sitting quietly in the living room. But it had been such a nightmarish twenty-four hours for them that they couldn't take any more. John thought that maybe they should answer the door. But Lionel disagreed.
“If it's one of the guys coming home early, they've all got the key. It's probably my father drunk again.” They'd been through enough. They both agreed about that. They didn't even look out the window to see who it was. And downstairs she fished a pencil out of her coat pocket, and tore a piece of newspaper off the garbage can, scribbling a note to Lionel. “I love you, Li. I always will, A.” Tears filled her eyes. She had wanted to see him again before she left, but maybe it didn't matter now … she slipped the piece of paper into the mailbox. That was all he needed to know. She didn't want him to think she had turned on him too. He had to know she never would. But she couldn't stand it anymore. It had been unbearable ever since he moved out, and now it would be worse. She would never see him. She had only one choice, and she was surprised at how relieved she felt.
That night as they all slept, she quietly packed a small duffle bag, and slipped out her bedroom window, as she had done when she had gone to see Li. There were easy footholds all the way down the side of the house. She had used them before, plenty of times. And she slipped quietly down now, wearing sneakers and jeans, her hair in a long blond braid, a warm parka on. She knew it would be cold up there. And she had everything she cared about in the one small bag. She didn't even look back as she left the house. She didn't give a damn about any of them, any more than they did about her. She stealthily crept down the road, and walked all the way into L.A., and there she hitched a ride on the freeway heading north. She was surprised at how easy it was. And she told the first driver that she went to Berkeley and had to get back after the Christmas holiday. He didn't ask her anything else, and drove her all the way to Bakersfield before dropping her off.
And by then, Faye had found her note. She had left the door unlocked, and the note on her bed.
“That makes two of us you're rid of now, Dad. Goodbye, Anne.” No word to anyone else. Nothing to Faye. Her heart almost stopped when she found the piece of paper left on Anne's bed, and they called the police immediately. She called Lionel too, and he had found the scrap of newspaper by then. It was the worst time in her life Faye could ever recall, and she wondered if she'd live through it, as she waited for the police to arrive. Ward was sitting, stunned, in a chair in the den, the note still in his hand.
“She couldn't have gone very far. She's probably at a friend's.”
But Valerie took care of that hope. “She doesn't have any friends.” It was a sad statement about Anne, but they all knew it was true. Her only friend had been Lionel, and her father had banished him. Faye sat watching him with unspoken rage, as the bell rang. The police had come. She just prayed they would find Anne before something happened to her. There was no telling where she had gone, and she had already been gone for hours.
CHAPTER 22
After the first driver who picked her up left her in Bakersfield, it took Anne several hours to catch another ride, but this one took her straight up to Fremont, and she caught another ride easily from there. It took her a total of nineteen hours to get to San Francisco, but on the whole she was surprised at how easy it was, and all of them had been nice to her. They thought she was just another college kid, “a flower child” two of them had teased. None of them would have guessed that she was a few weeks shy of being fourteen years old. And when she reached San Francisco, she walked down Haight Street, feeling as though the streets were paved with gold. There were young