18

I was worried they might've already left the park, so I ran to the front gate. And sure enough, the purple van was pulling away. I KNEW that family was bad news from the beginning, but I never thought they were capable of THEFT. Dad used the phone at the front desk to call the police, but the cops said that without a license plate number it would be really hard to track down our stolen stuff.

If there was any GOOD news about our situation, it was that the key to the van wasn't in the locker, because it was back at the mechanic's. So we walked to the auto repair shop, where the mechanic was getting ready to put in a new radiator. He told Dad it was gonna cost almost three hundred dollars, but Dad told him he couldn't pay because his wallet just got stolen. Dad told the mechanic he'd mail him a check the second we got home, but the guy said he couldn't take an "I.O.U." He said what he COULD do was put some sealant on the busted radiator, which would last a day or two before it wore off.

But the mechanic said we'd have to run the heater inside the van at full blast to keep the engine from overheating. He said it might sound crazy, but it actually works. Mom and Dad talked it over and decided we should just drive the van all the way home. We didn't have any money or a phone, but we DID have a full tank of gas. Dad figured if we drove straight through, we'd get back at about 3:00 in the morning. Mom seemed pretty sad the trip was getting cut short, but to be honest, I was kind of relieved. When we got in the van, Dad turned up the heat just like the mechanic told him to, and within about thirty seconds it was a hundred degrees inside the car.

Mom opened all the windows up front, but it was like a FURNACE where I was sitting, since the windows back there don't open. I told Mom I didn't think I could make it all the way home without dying of heatstroke, but she said I'd be fine as long as I stayed hydrated. Then she got two cases of water out of the boat and brought them into the van.

We headed out onto the highway, and I went through four bottles of water in the first hour. I tried to fall asleep to make the trip go faster, but I got woken up when somebody started honking their horn. The people in the car next to us were waving their arms and trying to get our attention. When I looked behind us, I was surprised to see that the tarp on the boat was loose and flapping around in the wind. And everything INSIDE the boat was flying OUT.

Cars were swerving left and right trying to avoid our stuff flying through the air. By now, Dad had seen what was going on in the rearview mirror, and he pulled over to the side of the road. We spent the next two hours walking down the highway trying to recover all of our stuff. But we had to give up when it got dark.