Taking Terri Mueller. Norma Fox Mazer

      

      Copyright © 1981 by Norma Fox Mazer.

      All rights reserved.

      Reissue Edition

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.

      Please direct inquiries to:

      Lizzie Skurnick Books

      an imprint of Ig Publishing

      Box 2547

      New York, NY 10163

       www.igpub.com

      ISBN: 978-1-939601-39-1 (ebook)

       For Gloria Yerkovich and all the other parents who are still waiting for their children to return

      Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Chapter Twenty-One

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      Chapter Twenty-Five

      Chapter Twenty-Six

      Chapter Twenty-Seven

      Chapter Twenty-Eight

       For as long as she could remember it had been the two of them. “Me and Daddy. Daddy and me.” That was a song she sang when she was little. “Me and Daddy. Daddy and me. Oh how nice it be. Daddy and me.” She sang herself to sleep at night. “Daddy and me, Daddy and me. Oh how nice it be.”

       Once there had been a mother, also. Terri, Daddy, and Mommy. She didn’t remember. She had been four when her mother died. She didn’t remember. That was funny. Not funny that made you laugh. The other funny. Sad funny. She didn’t remember what her mother looked like, how she smelled, or if she was tall or short. Daddy talked to her about everything, but he didn’t like to talk about her mother. It made him sad.

       She knew what sad meant. Mostly she was happy. But sometimes she was sad. She didn’t know why. It was silly to get sad. Daddy told her stories about Sally the Mouse who traveled with her father, Mustafa the Mouse, in their Mousemobile. Sally the Mouse was very smart, but sometimes she was sad, and sometimes she had a Bad Temper. But mostly she was a good little Sally the Mouse who made her father Happy and Proud.

       Terri sat on her father’s lap, her arms around his neck. Tell me a Sally the Mouse story.

       Have you been a good girl?

       Yes, yes, yes.

       Did you learn a lot in school today?

       Yes, yes, yes.

       Were you an outstanding first-grade girl?

       Yes, yes, yes.

       Well, let’s find out what Sally the Mouse has been up to.

       Yes, she was a good girl. She was Daddy’s good girl. They liked to travel and visit places. They had a car, a red Pinto. Her name was Terri Mueller. Daddy’s name was Phil Mueller. Terri and Phil. Phil and Terri. Hurry, Terri. I will, Phil. You’re a berry, Terri. You’re a pill, Phil.

       She loved the Pinto. She loved Daddy. They lived in lots of different places. “My, what a memory,” her teacher said. “She learns so fast.” Daddy was Proud.

       Every year she had a birthday in April. Every year Daddy took her out to dinner on her birthday. They got all dressed up. He let her sip his wine and gave her nice presents. One year her present was Barkley. So you never have to be alone again, Daddy said, even when you’re waiting for me to come home from work. Barkley hardly ever barked. She loved him very much.

       She was eight years old . . . she was nine years old . . . she was ten years old. She and her father had fun together. He even made it fun when they cleaned house. Once, cleaning windows in a new apartment, he wrote messages on the windows with spray cleaner. “HELLO, TERRI. DO YOU LIKE THIS PLACE?” “THE MICE ARE HOLDING A CONVENTION UNDER THE SINK.” His best message was written over the last three windows. “HELP! I CAN’T CONTROL MY URGES. STOP ME BEFORE I CLEAN MORE WINDOWS.”

       They had lived in so many places—big cities like New York and Chicago, and little towns like Hap Falls, Amber-ville, and Roarin. She could remember all the cities and towns, and all the different apartments, and all the people she had met.

       She was eleven years old... twelve years old... thirteen years old .. . Her head was full of faces and places and names, but even when she tried very hard she still couldn’t remember her mother.

       ONE

      “Terri, did you see the kitchen?” Phil Mueller’s voice echoed off the walls of the empty room.

      “I’ll be there in a sec.” Terri was checking out the bedroom that would be hers if they took this apartment. “Bed over here,” she said, pacing around. “Bureau here?” And she imagined her posters tacked up, covering every inch of bare wall, including cracks and stains. She liked the long windows that faced on a little bit of a park across the street.

      Her father came into the room. “Nice, very nice,” he said, looking around. “Don’t you think so?”

      “How much is the rent?”

      He shrugged. “Not cheap, but not a killer, either. We can go for it. Looks like a nice neighborhood, too.”

      “I could walk to school from here,” she said. They had passed the junior high on the way from the rental agency. “But there’s no garage, or side parking. Did you notice? That means parking the camper on the street.”

      “Camper’s kind of big for street parking,” Phil said.

      “It’s not that busy a street,” Terri said. “If we still had our Pinto it wouldn’t matter so much.”

      Phil groaned. “You’ll never stop talking about the Pinto, will you, Terri?”

      “It was my sweet little car.” Right up until last year they’d had the Pinto with the stick shift. Red Ryder, her father called it. Whenever they drove at night Terri would climb over the front seat and curl up in back to sleep. Barkley was always very alert and excited in the car and would sit by the back window watching everything and taking up more than his share of space. But even though she had to really scrunch up, Terri never minded and always slept in the car just as well as she did in her own bed.

      In