Runaway

Told entirely through journal entries, the story follows Holly, a twelve-year-old orphan who runs away from her fifth foster home and travels across the country alone. Holly's journal is addressed to Ms. Leone, her sixth-grade teacher, who gave her the journal and encouraged her to write as a way to cope. Holly is angry and resistant at first, insisting that words cannot fix her life.

Holly's mother died of a drug overdose two years earlier, and Holly has since cycled through foster placements. Her current home is with the Benders, where Mrs. Bender is cruel and Mr. Bender is sexually predatory, touching Holly inappropriately when his wife is away. Holly knows from a previous foster father, Mr. Fisk, that reporting abuse will not be believed. The Benders confine Holly to a laundry room as punishment. When she arrives home late one day, they accuse her of buying drugs, strip-search her, and lock her up without supper. On a Sunday, Mr. Bender barges into the bathroom while Holly is using the toilet; she sprays him with Lysol, and he retaliates by shoving her face into the toilet, which contains Sani-Flush chemicals, and flushing repeatedly.

Holly resolves to escape. She raids the school's lost-and-found for a jacket, mittens, and money, and takes a box cutter, lighter, twine, and flashlight from the janitor's room. She rides the bus past her stop and never returns. Heading west toward warmer territory, she tells a stranger she lost her fare money to get a bus ticket, then stows away in a horse trailer to a small town called Aaronville. She has a firm rule against hitchhiking, a promise her mother made her swear after a driver attacked them. Holly calls herself a gypsy rather than homeless, reclaiming a sense of identity.

In Aaronville, Holly shoplifts survival supplies and discovers train tracks. Her first attempt to board a freight train nearly kills her when she trips on a railroad tie. After hiking west for two days, she finds a tree branch overhanging the rails and drops from it onto an open car of potatoes on a passing train, landing hard but alive.

Holly falls ill and camps under a bridge with homeless adults. An old man named Frankie pressures her into panhandling, then tries to steal her money. When others grow hostile over her journal, accusing her of being an informant, Holly flees. At a bus station, she finds Louise K. Palmer, a woman with a mental health condition, and pretends to be Louise's daughter to enter a shelter that requires minors to have a parent present. Holly cares for Louise tenderly, bathing her and combing her tangled hair. Over several days, she drafts "The Ballad of Lady Louise," a narrative poem imagining Louise's life and her first sustained creative work. When Holly later learns Louise has died, she grieves but finds comfort composing a final stanza imagining Louise boarding the angels' ship.

Holly hides in a high school locker room, where a police search reveals she has been identified by name as a runaway from foster care. She narrowly escapes by hiding inside a full-length locker. At the Greyhound station, she sets fire to a trash can for a distraction and climbs into the luggage hold. After enduring extreme heat crossing the Arizona desert, she reaches Los Angeles roughly 26 hours later.

The city overwhelms her. Holly is robbed on her second day and spends days lost and eating from trash cans. Along the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River, she finds a camp under an overpass where a kind woman shares food. Holly thinks of the camp as her "safe house," recalling the Underground Railroad Ms. Leone taught about in class. She eventually locates The People's Church, an underground shelter run by Reverend Raynaldo and a woman named Shanana, where she receives meals and a place to sleep without questions.

Throughout her journey, Holly processes painful memories. Her father died in a tractor accident when she was young, and her mother could never keep up with rent while cleaning hotel rooms. After her mother was arrested for stealing, they lost their home and lived in a van until a man named Eddie introduced her mother to heroin. Eddie died in a crash, and nine-year-old Holly led her injured mother away from the wreck. Her mother's addiction worsened until Holly became the caretaker, unknowingly funding the habit by stealing valuables. Her mother died of an overdose, and Holly does not know where she is buried.

Holly walks west toward the coast, evading police by pretending to speak only French. She reaches the beach and meets Venus, a girl about a year older, at a rescue wagon that distributes free sandwiches. Venus invites Holly to stay at "the manor," a condemned house occupied by squatters, but Venus steals Holly's journal. Holly fights to reclaim it and leaves. She writes several poems during this period, including "Neon Is My Night-Light." A police sweep clears the homeless from the beach town, arresting the rescue-wagon woman and shutting down Holly's primary food source.

A farmer named Walt Lewis catches Holly eating produce from his fields and takes her home, where his wife Valerie feeds and bathes her. Holly bonds with their border collie, Chia, and fantasizes about becoming their foster child. The next morning, she overhears them discussing a social worker's impending visit and escapes through a window, regretting she never asked to stay.

Holly drifts through temporary shelters and discovers a soup kitchen near a junior high she nicknames "Bullfrog Junior High." She watches students play softball and imagines belonging. She articulates a dream of becoming a veterinarian, builds a home from a refrigerator box near a dry riverbed, and begins studying a stolen science textbook. A girl named Sammy follows Holly from the soup kitchen, and after a tense confrontation they form a truce, each agreeing to keep the other's secrets.

A man named Martin, who has been watching Holly with predatory intent, attacks her at the camp. Sammy arrives and drives him off with an umbrella, but the cardboard house is destroyed. Sammy leads Holly to an apartment above a dog-grooming shop belonging to Vera, an older woman, and her daughter Meg. Holly breaks down, admitting she is twelve and begging them not to call social services. A tiny poodle named Lucy jumps into her lap and licks her tears. Vera and Meg agree to let Holly stay.

Holly enrolls at Bullfrog Junior High, helps in the grooming shop, and begins to feel at home. Meg grows maternal, calling "Holly's home!" when Holly arrives after school. On Thanksgiving, Vera and Meg each express thankfulness for Holly during grace. Meg shares her own journal, which recounts her engagement to Randy, an air force pilot whose plane was shot down, and her years of grief over never learning his fate. Holly's arrival has filled a long-empty place in Meg's life. Holly gives Meg her own journal; after reading it, Meg tells Holly she is proud to know her.

Meg advises Holly to send a copy of the journal to Ms. Leone. Holly reflects that the journal helped her sort through pain, gave her strength, and may have saved her life. She admits she has come to appreciate poetry, calling it "the raw heart of the matter." She writes "Scraps of Love," a poem comparing her new life to a patchwork quilt. In her final entry, Holly decides to send the journal, thanking Ms. Leone for helping her "turn the page," the same phrase Ms. Leone used when she first gave Holly the journal.