No Passengers Beyond This Point(14)

“What kind of a sign?” Mouse is shouting now.

“One with our name on it,” India explains impatiently.

“That’s how we’ll know to go with him,” I say. “Remember how when we went to New York, there were people holding signs by the baggage claim?”

Mouse’s legs are like springs. She can’t walk normally when she gets excited. “Yeah, but it’s not New York,” she says.

“Duh, Mouse,” India snaps as we move past the gate into the lonely terminal.

“Not Albuquerque. Not Phoenix. Not Salt Lake City. Not Ukiah.” Mouse keeps bouncing up and thudding down. It must be pretty late or else Denver is a smaller city than I thought, but it’s the capital of Colorado . . . isn’t it? Why is the airport so quiet?

Mouse is still holding my hand, stretching my arm as far as it will go. She’s peering intently at something.

“What is she doing?” India asks me.

I shrug. “C’mon, Mouse.” I gently pull her along.

“Not Tucson. Not Las Vegas. Not Grand Junction,” Mouse mumbles, bumping her suitcase behind her.

We’re getting on one of those moving sidewalks. It’s traveling through a long passageway with mostly blank walls, except now and then a mural. A flock of birds in the air on one side, herons in the marsh on the other. The usual airporty stuff—a cross between a doctor’s waiting room and a tunnel.

The airport is dimly lit. A janitor is mopping the floor by one concession stand. Another stand has a roll-down metal curtain, drawn and locked. The man behind the cash register tosses change into his cash drawer, the coins clinking rhythmically with his count.

“India, what time is it?” I ask.

She gets her cell out again. “Now it says almost midnight. That doesn’t make sense,” she mumbles.

“Maybe it’s wrong.”

“Oh no . . . that’s right,” Mouse says. “That’s what the man with the green socks said.”

India rolls her eyes. “Whoever he is.”

I look around at the deserted airport. “No one flies at night here?”

“Apparently not.” India’s voice doesn’t have her usual bite to it. Her eyes are watchful.

I’m so busy trying not to think of all the bad things that could happen to three kids in an airport at night that I can hardly see straight. I took karate a few years ago, but I’m not even a yellow belt.

The moving sidewalk ends and we walk across a carpet that looks like a thousand birds with interlocking wings and then another moving sidewalk begins. Where are we going to meet this guy with the sign? How long will it take to get to Uncle Red’s?

Mouse looks beat. She’ll probably fall asleep in the car. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me either. I’m in no rush to get to Uncle Red’s house. The only house I want to see is the one we left behind.

Another short moving sidewalk takes us to the baggage area and there up ahead leaning against a wall is a short guy holding a white board that says TOMPKINS in careful capital letters.

“Look! That’s us!” Mouse points, hopping on one foot.

The man has a yellow vest, buttoned-down shirt, and gray suit pants but no jacket. He has a baby face with big bushy eyebrows, a thick mustache, and long sideburns, black like skid marks. He’s wearing a taxi driver’s cap that makes his ears stick out.

The driver smiles as he takes India’s suitcase, sensing she’s the one who would want princess treatment. Or maybe he thinks she’s cute. I’ve had trouble with guys on my basketball team checking her out before. What do you do when the center on your team says your sister is hot? I’m hoping she gets a lot more zits or grows an arm out of the middle of her forehead really soon.

India’s hand combs her long hair, holding it back as if she wants to put it in a ponytail. She can’t like him, can she? This little man is peculiar, plus she’s taller than he is.

“I’m parked thataway,” the driver says, and we follow him across an almost deserted street.

The only vehicles on the airport road are Segways.

“Don’t mind them,” our driver says. “They’re always here.”

“Segway riders?” I ask.

“Yep. They’re waiting for flights that won’t ever arrive.”

“Why not?”

“Not on the schedule.”

I’m trying to make sense of this as Mouse twists my arm like taffy. “It’s going to be a limo. I know it.”

But the car is a shocking pink taxi with silky white feathers stuck to it in even rows as if someone had spent the better part of a month with a glue stick and a bag of feathers, carefully laying them end to end. It has bright pink whitewall tires and a pearlescent license plate that says WHTBIRD. It’s the kind of car you might see down by the boardwalk at Venice Beach where the kooks all live.