The Great Good Summer by Liz Garton Scanlon Page B

except that when I go for the front pocket on my pack, it’s already unzipped and my money’s gone. It was in there, in a little plastic pouch with a rainbow onit—a birthday gift from Kimmy. It was right there, but now it’s gone!
    â€œHang on a sec,” I say to the woman at the ticket counter. I turn around. Where is Paul? My thoughts speed up again and my hands shake. Where is Paul? Is he still back in the waiting room? How could my money be gone? Did it fall out when I fainted? Did I leave it on the bus? Did somebody take it? It’s a lot of money—more than two hundred dollars—and I need it— we need it, to get out of here!
    I need to go back out to where we got off the bus but there’s a long line of people in the way now, waiting to go through security themselves.
    â€œExcuse me, excuse me,” I say, running past them.
    I hear someone mutter, “There’s a line, girl.” And then the security guard says, “You’re in a hurry. Ticket?” But I don’t have a ticket, obviously, because I don’t have any money! And she’s big and stern-looking and she wears a gun.
    â€œI lost my money,” I say. “I need to get back through here and find my pouch. I . . . I  . . .”
    â€œHow about your last ticket?” she asks.
    â€œMy last ticket?”
    â€œYeah. Your ticket. Your receipt. If you just got off a bus, you must have one. Otherwise, step aside.” For a second I think that maybe I could run past her, but there’s the big sternness and the gun, and everything in my body instantly stops and sticks, my insides and outsides, everything as heavy as rocks. My feet push off the floor in slow motion, and I step aside. The guard turns to the next person in line, a guy who’s shaking his head but not looking at me. Nobody’s looking.
    â€œThe Lord is my light and my salvation,” I whisper, and I swing my backpack around—my heavy-as-rocks backpack—and reach into the front pocket again—the one where my pouch is supposed to be—and there’s the crumpled receipt for the ticket from Loomer to Houston, thank you God and all the angels.
    â€œHere!” I say, a little too loudly. “Hey! Here—I found it!”
    The guard nods and says, “Go on, then,” and I do. I rush past the guard and through the waiting room, looking for a flash of familiar color on the ground—my money, the rainbow pouch—but all I see are feet and bags and empty soda bottles. The door to the outside where the buses wait is open. People are coming both in and out, and I bump up against them till I make it through. But there is just a row of identical Greyhounds out here, and I can’t tell which one was ours. Maybe ours is gone.Maybe our driver, Magdalena, is gone. I look down. I look back and around and down again.
    I back up into the wall of the building and slide down, hard, until I’m sitting on the dirt-black ground. I’m back to being heavy as rocks. And from this angle it’s easy to see my pouch, nearly pushed off the concrete platform. Right there, the shiny rainbow! I push up, first to my hands and knees and then to just barely standing, and I rush to the pouch, my pouch, from Kimmy. And it’s empty. The zipper is wide open and the pouch is completely 100 percent empty. The money—all the money—is really and truly gone.
    My eyes sting and blur, but even still, when I look around, out past the buses and through the high metal fence, I see a street sign that reads MAIN STREET . I’m not even kidding. Main Street. Main Street is supposed to be quaint. And safe. And quiet. Main Street is in Loomer, Texas, which, let’s face it, is where I should be right now.
    I sink back down right then and there in the middle of the pavement and drop my head into my hands. Was it those two creepy guys who took the money? The smell of buses seeps through my