A Friend at Midnight

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “That works!” cried her sister brightly. “You guys stay here.”

  Lily was crushed. “Let’s divide everything in two cars,” she offered quickly. “Mom drives one car, Kells drives one. No fair leaving me and Nate behind.”

  How pleadingly her older sister looked at her. Reb, like Michael, wanted to enter a new world. She didn’t even intend to use her nickname from now on. Michael had left forever, and now Reb would turn into some college woman named Rebecca, while Lily would be abandoned in a swamp of dirty diapers and educational toys.

  Their house was chaotic in the best of circumstances, because not only did Mom drop everything everywhere, using the dining room table to match socks and the living room rug for stacking catalogs, but she piled her concert band’s music on the stairs and left broken school instruments she needed to repair on the kitchen counter and lost whole series of CDs under the sofa. Lily even saw a cell phone peeking out from under a sloppy heap of paper napkins. Had to be Mom’s—everybody else held tightly to essentials, or they would vanish forever in Mom’s chaos. It was hard to believe that their messy mother easily controlled a four-hundred-student band program. Today the house was strewn with stuff Reb wasn’t taking after all. Styrofoam packing peanuts lay like snow, and under all this was the debris of a toddler.

  Lily had only one gift for a sister who wanted out. She managed a smooth smile for Reb and Mom. “Nate and I will be fine on our own. You guys drive safely.”

  Mom was anxious. “It’s such a long time, though. It’s a six-hour drive, more if there’s traffic. We can’t be back till after midnight. What if something happens?”

  “Then I’ll handle it,” said Lily. She decided not to tell Mom about the cell phone under the paper napkins. A phone in her purse would mean Mom calling twenty-five times to check up on Lily. What could possibly happen that Lily couldn’t handle?

  Yet the sight of her family driving away had been awful, as if they were being sucked down a tube, never to return. Then of course Nathaniel wanted to play Jump Off the Back Step, a game that involved jumping off the back step. Lily’s job was to applaud and cry, “Wow!” with lots of emphasis on the w, and Nate would whisper “Wow”—a good word for him, since he had w nailed. They played Jump Off the Back Step until Lily figured that even losing Reb and Michael wasn’t as bad as playing Jump Off the Back Step one more time, so she coaxed Nate in for a very early lunch of tuna salad. Nate loved tuna salad. He always had cat breath because he did not love having his teeth brushed.

  Now he was down for his afternoon nap way too early because she was the one ready for a nap.

  Lily reached the kitchen. The stingy tart smell of the Magic Marker with which Reb labeled her boxes mixed with the fishy scent of tuna salad she’d forgotten to refrigerate. On the kitchen phone, the caller ID showed some out-of-state number. Undoubtedly a sales call. Kells was polite to telephone salespeople. “I’m so sorry,” he would say, “we don’t purchase items over the phone, but thank you anyway.” Mom handled it differently.

  “Stop phoning me!” she would shout. “I’m never going to want it, whatever it is! Hang up! You hang up first, do you hear me?”

  Neither approach worked. Neither, apparently, did signing up for Do Not Call.

  Lily deleted the number.

  Michael continued to hold the receiver. Even though he was connected to nothing, he felt safer hanging on.

  A shadow fell across him. He looked up to see a uniformed officer standing over him. Michael was not allowed to watch shows like COPS because of the violence, but of course he watched them all the time anyway, and he knew what police did in situations like this. They went after the dad.

  “Hi,” said Michael. “Is that a real gun?” Michael knew perfectly well it was a real gun. This was a cop. What would he have—a cardboard gun? “Have you ever used it?” said Michael. “My mom doesn’t like guns. She won’t let one in the house.”

  The officer smiled. “It is real and your mom is making a good decision.”

  Michael turned to the phone, hoping the officer would leave.

  No such luck. “Where are your folks?” said the cop. His voice was pleasant and warm.

  Michael gestured vaguely. “I just called my sister,” he said. “She’s leaving for college.” He was seized by horror. When was Reb leaving? What if they had already left? All of them? What if his house was empty? What if he called and the phone rang and rang and rang and rang—and nobody came? What was he going to do?

  “Well, it was nice to talk to you,” he said to the cop, letting go of the comforting phone. It was like letting go of York in the dark. “Bye.” He was only steps from the parents on toy wagons. He needed parents so the cop would forget about him. But all the parents were paying close attention to their children and would speak up if he tried to look like theirs.

  There was one couple kissing and smooching over by the windows. They looked as if they had no children; as if they never planned to have children. Michael flopped down at their feet, flat on his face, and hoped for the best. He felt sick from not eating and his head whirled. Under the seats lay used coffee cups and discarded magazines. He could see the feet of the officer, who was moving on, satisfied.

  How silent the house was.

  Lily put the tuna salad into the refrigerator.

  It was quiet times that bothered her most these days. Michael had been a nonquiet brother.

  Michael was a very busy kid, and most of all, he was busy talking: he talked all the time to everybody. He was busy with sports: hitting balls, kicking balls, pitching balls, dunking balls. He was busy going places: on foot, on bike, on skateboard. He was busy with projects and friends, busy in the cellar, busy in the attic, busy in the yard.

  He was a dirty noisy nosy little eight-year-old.

  One thing that kept him busy was making lists of everything he planned to do next. “I want to learn how to fish,” he would say. “I want to scuba dive.” He loved equipment. You could never have enough equipment.

  Lily remembered Michael sitting by the road with all his equipment, waiting. Silent, because in all those hours, nobody—including Michael—knew what to say.

  And then once Michael was gone, Nathaniel too got quieter, now that he didn’t have to drown out his big brother. Lily almost wanted to wake Nathaniel up just to have company. Then she came to her senses and turned on the television.

  She was setting down the remote when her thumb slid across the number pad, and other numbers filtered through her mind and she recognized the area code of that phone number on the caller ID.

  She clicked off the television. A little prickle of fear entered her heart.

  She had deleted the number from the kitchen phone but Mom’s bedroom phone had a memory bank. Lily never went in there because she didn’t like thinking about Mom and Kells sharing a room. She went upstairs on tiptoe so Nathaniel wouldn’t sense her presence. She crept into the master bedroom and lifted the portable phone from its cradle to take back downstairs.

  She peeked in on Nate. He was asleep in the flung-out way of toddlers—arms and legs all over the place.

  Michael followed a small girl into a big yellow and blue play plane. Inside were little seats. He squashed himself beneath one. I could hide here for a long time, he thought. And then what?

  He decided to check the sidewalk one more time.

  Just in case.

  He didn’t see any of the people who’d shown interest in him before. He passed the ticket counters safely and walked out next to a janitor pushing a cleanup cart. Outside, he pressed against a cement pillar to avoid being mowed down by crossing guards and airplane crews, by suitcases and dogs in cages, sidewalk check-in staff and overflowing luggage trolleys.

  A long thin blue bus arrived. AIRPORT PARKING, said the sign in its front window.

  A woman next to Michael on the sidewalk called anxiously to the driver, “Do you stop at Parking Lot A?”

  “We stop at all of ’em, lady. A, B, C, D, whatever lett
er you want.”

  The school buses at his new school had been named for letters. Michael had gotten on the wrong bus. It had not been his first failure, just one in a string. Michael went back inside so he didn’t have to think about A, B, C, D and failure. When he found himself in the playroom again, near the wall phones, the one he had used before was ringing.

  Lily let the phone ring. On the seventh ring, she thought, What kind of loser can’t get to a phone in seven rings or else have their answering machine pick up?

  “Wiwwy,” called Nathaniel. He’d slept fifteen minutes instead of two hours. It was her own fault for putting him down early. He was capable of yelling “Wiwwy” several hundred times before tiring of the syllables.

  “I’m on the phone, Nathaniel!” she yelled, and while she was yelling, somebody picked up at the other end. They didn’t say anything. They just breathed. Lily got irritated. She was pretty nearly always irritated at how other people conducted their lives. “Who is this?” she demanded.

  There was a long jagged intake of air at the other end and then sobs spurted out of the phone. Raw sobs, like cuts, like opening a can and slicing your palm with the lid.

  I knew, thought Lily. I knew from the area code.

  Except her brother Michael didn’t ever cry. He didn’t cry when a baseball hit him in the face. He didn’t cry when he fell off his bike and ripped open his knees. He didn’t cry when he got shots. He didn’t cry when their parents’ marriage ended and he didn’t cry when their mother went into a new one. Michael didn’t cry.

  “Michael?” said Lily.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what’s happening. Where are you? What phone number is this? Why didn’t you let it ring when you called a minute ago? What’s wrong?”

  There was another sob, drier this time; shallower.

  From his crib, Nathaniel heard her say “Michael?” and since Nate loved Michael, he stopped shouting “Wiwwy” and started shouting “Miikooooo!”

  Lily said, “Mom and Kells took Reb to college, Michael, and there wasn’t enough room in the car for Nate and me, so we’re here by ourselves. There’s nobody around to butt in, Michael. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Lily,” he whispered.

  Lily waited. But Michael had nothing else to say. “I love you,” Lily told him. She never said things like that. Even when he’d left forever, she had not told Michael she loved him.

  She could hear the little huffs of his breathing, his effort to still the sobs.

  Her heart was crumpled newspaper and kindling. Fear for her brother was the match. Flame charred a corner of Lily’s heart.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  When he’d left, Michael had done his own packing.

  Mom had been beside herself about the whole thing because Michael’s choice was a personal defeat, an assault. She seemed to think if she didn’t pitch in, it wouldn’t happen.

  Michael didn’t care. When Mom wouldn’t help, he hiked a mile to the nearest strip of stores, collected cardboard boxes and carried them home, stacked inside each other. He did this five times. He filled them with his belongings and sealed them with strapping tape. He wrote his name and the precious new address in large fat black letters on all four sides, with big arrows pointing up.

  On the day Dad was to arrive and take him away for good, Michael was up before dawn. Actually, Lily was pretty sure he’d never gone to bed. By the time the sun was up, Michael had dragged everything he owned to the road. Not the porch, not the back door, not the driveway—but the road. He was disowning the rest of them. He propped his fishing poles and baseball bat and bike against the boxes.

  He had forgotten to pack clothing. Nothing that sat in a bureau drawer or hung on a hanger mattered to Michael. Mom gave up and dragged out two large suitcases. She folded every shirt carefully. Paired the socks. Replaced a broken lace on a sneaker.

  Silently, the family moved through the house, finding things Michael had forgotten. Reb brought his baseball glove.

  Mom brought his toothbrush, toothpaste and orthodontic appliance, which he had never worn and never would, but he let her drop the stuff into his duffel along with a book (as if Michael planned to do any reading again in this life) and an apple for a snack (as if he planned to choose apples once Mom wasn’t supervising).

  York lay in his usual box. The box wasn’t marked because Michael could not possibly confuse York’s box with ordinary boxes. Lily had a bad feeling about letting their father see York. She got her own backpack and silently transferred both York and box into that. It was the closest she came to telling Michael she loved him. When she slipped her backpack onto her brother’s thin little shoulders and adjusted the straps, Michael hugged her, and this was new for both of them and they ended it quickly.

  And then the hours passed.

  Dad did not come. He did not call to say where he was, or when he was coming. Or if.

  Mom brought Michael a bagel with cream cheese, but Michael shook his head, eyes fixed on the road.

  The morning ended. Michael did not move. Michael who was nothing but movement—an eight-year-old whirlwind.

  Neighbors phoned, asking for updates. Mom tried to be glad she had concerned friends, but she hated the appearance of this. If Michael himself knew the appearance of this, he didn’t say so.

  Reb made him a peanut butter and Fluff sandwich for lunch, just the way he liked it, crusts peeled off instead of cut, but Michael didn’t glance at it.

  Midafternoon, their stepfather sat down on the curb next to him. If you had to have a stepfather, Kells was adequate. That was as far as Lily would go. He was not the sort of stepparent any of them had dreamed of. (If any kid dreams of stepparents.)

  “I was thinking—” began Kells.

  “He’ll be here in a minute,” said Michael fiercely.

  Nobody had anything to say after that.

  Lily thought, It will kill Michael if it doesn’t happen.

  She went back in the house and up to her room. She was skeptical of prayer, never paid attention at church and referred to the minister—Dr. Bordon—as Dr. Boring. But into the quiet air of her bedroom, she said, “God?”

  He wasn’t listening. Lily could tell. She spoke more sharply. “God, Michael needs this. Make it happen. Don’t give me that stuff about free will, how people make their own choices, how your choices don’t always intersect with the choices of others in a pleasing fashion and how responsibility lies with the individual. Get down here and make this happen.”

  He was listening now. Lily could tell that too. “Now!” she said fiercely to God.

  At exactly that moment, Dad arrived.

  Even Lily was impressed.

  Into his end of the telephone, Michael whispered, “I’m at the airport, Lily. Dad drove.”

  Lily came quickly, easily and often to wrath, so she arrived at smoking fury instantly. In the same car, she thought, that he was driving two and a half weeks ago when he came ten hours late to get his own little boy, the little boy who begged to live with him. A car without room for a bike and fishing poles and ten boxes and two suitcases. “What do I have to do here?” Dad had said irritably. “Pay to ship this stuff? What is this stuff, anyway? Does it matter?”

  “No,” said Michael quickly. “None of it matters.”

  Kells had said in his bland pudgy way, “I think we can pack most of it if we’re careful,” and their father said, “Whatever,” and Kells got everything except the bike and the fishing poles into the trunk and the backseat, and Michael didn’t care; he didn’t care about one thing except driving away with Dad. Michael could hardly even be bothered to say good-bye. Who were they, anyway? Sisters, mother, stepfather, half brother—so what?

  Dad had come.

  “Let me talk to Dad,” said Lily.

  “He isn’t here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He left.”

  “What do you mean—left?”

  “Don’t tell,” said Michael. “Promis
e you won’t tell, Lily.”

  More of Lily’s heart burned. Michael did not have secrets. Michael blatted everything to everybody; he was the sharing-est person out there.

  Upstairs Nathaniel abandoned saying “Miikoooo” and returned to “Wiwwy.” He was sobbing between syllables.

  “I promise,” said Lily.

  “He was mad at me,” said Michael, in a voice too soft and flat to be Michael’s.

  “But what’s going on? Why are you at the airport? Where is Dad? Is he having a hard time parking the car?”

  “I don’t think he parked.”

  “Where is he, then?”

  “I think he went back to his house.”

  “But who’s with you?”

  “Nobody,” said Michael.

  “You’re alone at the airport?” she said, unable to believe it.

  “Don’t tell, Lily,” said her brother. “I don’t want anybody to know. Just come and get me.”

  “You’re eight years old and he—” Lily didn’t finish the sentence out loud—he threw you out on the sidewalk like a paper coffee cup? If she took a deep enough breath, the oxygen in her lungs would ignite. She would go up in smoke. That worthless lowlife pretend father! How dare he! I’ll kill him, Lily decided. I’ll have him arrested and jailed and tortured to death.

  “It was my fault, Lily. Don’t tell anybody. Especially Mom or Kells. Promise. You have to promise.”

  “I promise,” she said, although she could not imagine how this could be kept a secret. But to keep it a secret, she couldn’t ask a neighbor to drive her to LaGuardia. It wouldn’t be too hard to get there by bus. She’d never done it, but people did. She could get the details from LaGuardia’s Web site. Nate loved the bus, he’d be good. Driving herself wasn’t a choice; Lily wasn’t old enough to get a learner’s permit, never mind weave her way to LaGuardia.