Essential Maps for the Lost

by Deb Caletti

  She needs to stop and think. Stop a minute and think. Sure, running off is an understandable plan, but it’s not a good plan. They’ll arrest her, and she’ll be a terrible prisoner. She’ll be terrified and she’ll cry every day. Jumpsuits are a bad look for anyone. This whole thing made her feel good for all of five minutes.

  Mads gets out of the truck. She unbuckles Ivy from her seat. She carries her to the grass by the water. From where she stands, she can see two bridges, the friendly, blue-towered Fremont right beside her, and the high, intense Aurora Bridge beyond.

  “Boat,” she says as one chugs past. She jiggles Ivy on her hip. Her mind is not on boats, though. She knows where she is, of course. She knows exactly what she’s looking at. Anna Youngwolf Floyd jumped from that huge bridge, and her body floated across the lake to where Mads swam that day. It was all too horrible, and it’s too terrible for Ivy to see. She isn’t sure why Thomas’s truck led her here. There’s a park with a few geese walking around and gawking, and there’s a guy eating his lunch, and a mom with a pair of twins tossing rocks into the water, but there’s that bridge, too.

  “Tell me,” she says. Who knows who she’s even asking. Or what she’s even asking. There are just questions and more questions here. That’s the way it is a lot of the time. No one tells you how often you just have to sit in the not knowing.

  “Ives, I’m sorry,” Mads says. “We’re going to have to go back. I forgot your sunscreen at home. And Kitty is there. And I didn’t bring Blankie.” Mads feels a crush of failure. She isn’t sure how anyone ever saves anyone.

  And then . . . she sees something. When coincidence is that beautiful, you might as well go ahead and call it fate. Because, just before she crosses back over that goose-pooped lawn, she glances up at the Fremont Bridge, and she swears it’s him. William Youngwolf Floyd. She’s not sure. Her eyes are bad. She should wear her glasses all the time, but she doesn’t.

  It seems crazy. Is it even possible? It’s a fast-pass of rebel hair that gets her attention, and a bunch of dogs. Tons of them! She shields her eyes with her free hand so she can see better, but then she stops all the hesitating and wavering and heads for the stairs. She hurries, walking with intent, because he’ll be gone in a second, and if it’s him, it’s the most important coincidence of her life. Sure, we’re talking about a ten-mile radius circling William’s life and Mads’s, but never mind. Cynicism is for cowards.

  Mads wants to see if it’s him, but also, she has to see. Ivy grabs a handful of her hair and tugs, but Mads barely notices. Wait. He seems to be looking her way. Is he? Is it even him? She still can’t tell. With eyes like that, she should never drive without her glasses! If she doesn’t get a move on, he’ll disappear.

  But look. He’s changing direction. Suddenly, too. He’s running! Rushing toward the stairs like there’s some kind of emergency, and with all those dogs. One of them is as big as a sheep. What a disaster. It’s a bloody mess, as her London-born father would say.

  The guy is at the top of the stairs. The leashes are wound around his legs, and the dogs are barking their heads off, and he stops to untangle everyone. One of the dogs squats right there, and the guy has to dig a plastic bag out of the back pocket of his jeans. There’s the briefest pause to take care of business, and then they descend. Why he’s in such a hurry, she can’t begin to say. It’s calm at the park. One of the twins chases a goose who hops away, bored with that old game. As the guy and those dogs barrel down the steps, though, everyone stops to look. The twins, the goose, the man eating his lunch, who watches the chaos with half of his sandwich stopped midair.

  How they make it down without him breaking his neck, Mads has no idea. She is busy being frozen in place. There are three reasons for this: One, anyone would be shocked at this commotion. Two, it is most definitely William Youngwolf Floyd barreling in her direction with a cyclone of dogs. Three, it has suddenly occurred to her that she is the reason for his haste. He must know who she is. The girl who pulled his mother out of the water. The girl outside his house. The crazy, obsessed stalker, who he’s about to confront.

  Ivy’s eyes are huge. A glossy stalactite of drool drops from the corner of her mouth. “Dah?” she says.

  “It’s okay,” Mads says, though she doesn’t know if this is true. Maybe she should run.

  But she is too compelled to run. They are coming toward her, this unruly gang. William Youngwolf Floyd has one arm raised, and at the end of it is a fistful of leashes, as if he’s hailing the most important taxi of his life. His T-shirt has come untucked, and there are rings of spooked sweat around his underarms. He’s thinner up close. Those dogs could pull him right over, but Mads notices the muscles in his arms, too. His mouth is open. He’s shouting something. She can’t hear him, because it’s loud near that bridge.

  He stops in his tracks. It’s the sort of sudden halt that the phrase is made for, a cartoon slide, which causes all the dogs to ricochet back in a humiliating way. The one in the lead makes a little heck-heck choking sound from the rapid yank of the leash. They bump into each other like a five-car pileup.

  They’re all winded. The big dog has an enormous tongue that lolls out his mouth. William Youngwolf Floyd is right in front of her now, breathing hard. Up close, his dark eyes are something from the universe, a star in reverse, deep and old, black-intense.

  He leans down to catch his breath. One of the dogs sits. He’s a sweet boy, with fur the color of a gingersnap.

  Mads is speechless. She doesn’t know what to do. She is saying silent prayers that he doesn’t know her identity. Her guilt (guilt for the stalking, guilt for her role in such a private family matter) is making her face burn red hot.

  “Can I help you?” It’s the very first thing she says to William Youngwolf Floyd, which is funny when she thinks about it later.

  Well, it’s funny to him right then. His face twists up, and Mads wrongly thinks he’s about to cry. Anna Youngwolf Floyd’s son stands near the bridge where she jumped, and he is now going to burst into tears. It’s what Mads expects, to see the way he’s wrecked. But then he starts to laugh. He’s laughing so hard. He shakes his head as if he can’t believe himself and tears roll down his face, all right, the kind from the shock of the ridiculous. He wipes them away with the back of the hand still clutching the leashes. The biggest dog flops down and causes earth tremors in Central America as the boy gasps and tries to speak.

  Mads doesn’t know what’s right in front of her. He is a laughing mess of tears, and she is a stunned mess of confusion. Two strangers gaze upon each other’s real and fucked-up selves. Somewhere in the universe, a couple of stars collide. They aren’t fancy stars, or even ones with names. Just regular old stars. Two of millions. Still, just like that, some of the best things begin.

  Chapter Six

  “I thought . . . ,” he sputters. Jesus, he needs water, bad. His stomach hurts from laughing so hard, and from twisting something on that last step. Shit, maybe it’s his back.

  He doesn’t know the last time he’s laughed like that. Maybe the day Alex went with him to Gran’s to pick up her old TV. Alex misjudged the corner of the houseboat dock and fell right in the water. It was hilarious, and Alex was pissed. He was dripping wet, but Billy just stood there pointing at him and cracking up. That was, what, last year?

  But, wow, talk about a first impression. Way to go. Great job. He’s even holding a plastic bag of dog shit, which he attempts to hide behind his leg.

  “You thought . . .” She’s trying to help him. Her eyes are kind, though when he ran toward her, they were squinched and her nose was squinched, too, like she was trying to see better. But, yeah, it’s the same girl, all right. He’d recognize that shiny hair anywhere.

  “Forget it,” he says.

  “Forget it?” She shifts the baby to her other hip. Wait. Baby? He takes in the baby for the first time. She—it’s a she, he can tell from the pink shirt with the cat face on it, the ears in quilted yellow—hides her face in the girl’s shoulder
and then peeks at him. She holds a clump of the girl’s hair and then brings it to her mouth and sucks on the ends.

  “I thought you were someone I knew.” The lie comes right up, nice and handy and fully formed. Probably thanks to that coffee he had back at the Rescue Center. Maybe that’s all this was. A java-fueled hallucination.

  “Oh.”

  “Is that your baby?” he asks, as if he has a right to know. He hopes J.T. Jones hasn’t spawned a kid.

  “We were just going for a ride! I was bringing her right back.”

  “Hey, I’m not the baby police. I was just wondering.”

  “Okay, sure. Of course,” she says. “I babysit her. I thought we’d get out of the house for a while, you know? It’s a beautiful day, we were cooped up. . . .” She has brown eyes, but not just brown. Oh, man. He loves soulful eyes like that. “It’s complicated.”

  “I like complications.”

  It’s a line from The Book. Jamie says it to Claudia before they run away to New York to stay in the museum. Billy pictures this going differently—tossing off the phrase like they do in the movies, quoting some line from a classic film, or a famous poem. It’d be kind of smooth. But of course, she doesn’t know The Book! Probably no one in the world knows it like he does! She turns her eyebrows down. Not in a scowl, exactly, but confused. Shit, it sounds like he’s hitting on her, and he sort of is but isn’t. It’s not even true. He doesn’t like complications! He wants way, way fewer complications from here on out.

  They just stand there looking at each other. She’s staring at him hard, like she recognizes him from somewhere. Shit! He doesn’t know what to do, so he silently prays she doesn’t recognize him from that day she was spying on J.T. Jones, the day he stole Lulu. Him plus the dogs, she could put two and two together.

  Her mouth opens as if she’s going to say something. Her lips part the way lips do when they’re about to speak the truth.

  “Well.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I better get back. The mom’ll be home any minute.”

  “I better get these guys back, too.” Bodhi’s eyeing a goose, and Billy knows what that means.

  “Are they your dogs?” She raises one eyebrow. Something passes between them, like a wrapped gift handed over. Maybe it has an explosive inside. He can’t tell if she’s saying something more than she’s actually saying.

  “They’re rescues.” Jesus! Why’d he say that? Now she’s really going to remember him in Mr. Woods’s yard, if she hasn’t already. He needs to get the hell out of there. “Well, hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Bodhi’s pulling toward that goose, making his usual hecking sound as his collar strangles his stupid neck. Billy acts like this is just a regular part of the job. No problem. It’s all easy and fine. He turns to leave. As he does, a voice inside starts yelling at him. It’s not the usual doctor in his head but a different tough guy, one who seems to be on his side. Go back! Say something to her! Do you think a coincidence like that, like seeing her here again, at this bridge, happens for no reason? Don’t be a fool!

  He keeps walking. He can feel her eyes on his back. Come on! Turn around! Say something!

  He hasn’t seen eyes like that since Abby Millicent in the sixth grade. Abby and Billy were best friends. He was in love with her, actually. Even at twelve, he could tell that Abby Millicent was the kind of girl who could make him happy. She wore glasses and read mysteries and collected anything with whales. They kissed, and he gave her that necklace, and his heart was broken when he and Mom moved away from La Conner after his dad basically drank himself to death in that speedboat.

  If you ever want to see that girl again, turn around! Right this minute!

  Wow, fate has it rough, dealing with us clueless, stubborn humans. We refuse to listen and refuse to listen until we’re practically knocked over the head! It’s lucky that fate is even more stubborn than we are.

  But Billy’s mind is not on fate. It’s on defeat. He doesn’t even look back. Who wants to get their heart broken again? Billy’s has been broken so many times, he isn’t sure he has one left. He can hear it beating, but that’s about all.

  • • •

  He gives the dogs big bowls of water. What a day. There’s a note on his desk. Well, it’s not a desk exactly, but it’s the part of the table near the cubby where he puts his stuff. Party, Andrew’s. Tonight. Be there, would ya? She doesn’t even sign her name, but he knows Amy’s handwriting. Billy balls up the note and tosses it in the trash on top of someone’s lunch bag. There’s an envelope with his paycheck in it on the desk, too. He takes out his wallet to put it inside, and that’s when his heart falls.

  It can’t be.

  Oh, no. Please, no.

  He checks all his pockets and dumps everything out of his wallet. His chest is caving in. His heart is a rodent being squeezed by a snake. He saw that on a . . . Stop it! Who cares right now!

  The map’s gone.

  He’s such a fucking moron. Losing the one thing that’s important to him! What kind of an idiot lets that happen? He wants to run right out and retrace his steps. After everything that went on at the park, no wonder he lost it! God, what a moron idiot dumb-shit fool. He could sob like a big damn baby, so instead, he shoves the lost map away in his head, to some place where it doesn’t fucking even matter.

  The way it matters (so much matters) still simmers, but whatever. Just, whatever. Okay? You can’t keep someone with you by holding on to some stupid map in a stupid book anyway.

  On the way home, Billy makes his usual stop: H. Bergman’s house, to check on Casper. He looks around to see if anyone’s watching before he says a few loving words. He makes Casper the same promise he makes every day, and then he tosses the beef sandwich from Paseo’s over the chain-link fence. He’s gotten good at that, for someone who sucks at most sports. He can lob anything pretty much right at Casper’s feet. The first time he tried it, he flung a pork chop and it landed just beyond Casper’s chain. It still kills him to think about this. He worried, too, what would happen when H. Bergman (that’s the name on the mailbox) saw it. But when he went back the next day, it was gone. Casper was still there, though, of course. And this weighs on Billy. It weighs on him heavy. He’s got to get that dog out of there, only he has no idea how.

  • • •

  That night, Alex and Drew come over to the houseboat. No way he’s going to go to some party with Amy. Drew brings his own controller, which is good because Billy only has two. They play Night Worlds. Gran makes a big casserole dish of macaroni and cheese. She’s trying to fatten him up, because he hasn’t felt like eating much lately.

  When Gran goes to bed, Alex runs to his car and gets the beer. Billy isn’t much of a drinker (his father, Daniel Floyd, has pretty much killed any desire for alcohol) but he has a couple. Alex and Drew stay past midnight, quitting Night Worlds after Alex advances from Dragon Disciple to Duelist. You’d think he just won the presidential election. Billy has to tell him to shut the hell up before he wakes Gran. “Do you want me to kick your sorry ass?” he says, which makes Drew and Alex snort and hit each other because Billy’s never kicked anyone’s ass in his life.

  Still, they shut up, because basically they’re good guys. Drew has those tattoos across his knuckles that say Your Next but they don’t mean anything. He tries to hide them now, since Alex’s old girlfriend, Leigh, told him it was spelled wrong.

  They leave, and after he goes to bed, Billy stays awake for a long time, feeling the houseboat rock. He stares at a beam of moonlight. It shoots through the window and lands right on the Chucks his mother gave him for his last birthday. All his stuff is there now, in Gran’s spare room where she keeps her old computer, which is from the days when computers were big enough to anchor ships. There are his Chucks from Mom, and the action figure from a cake Mom made him when he was a kid (it still has the frosting on the bottom, dried to cement), and his clothes, and the lamp he’s had forever, made from a big rope. The lost map tugs at his spir
it, twisting it like a shirt left on a clothesline in a storm. Still, it’s strange. All his shit looks weirdly new. Maybe it’s the beer, or the full plate of food, or maybe something else. Yeah, he knows it’s the something else.

  It’s those eyes. Hers, the girl with the shiny hair. He feels changed. He’s been carrying this change around since he turned and left the park. It’s a quiet feeling, but in this quiet of night, he’s more sure it’s real. Because of those eyes, his heart has lifted a little, like the corner of a page in a book, right before it turns. His Chucks are magic in that light. The moon sends him luck. He drifts off, and dreams of knights and maps and girls with bad eyesight.

  Chapter Seven

  Mrs. Erickson slides her phone over to Mads and sneaks a look at Otto Hermann as if she’s going to get into trouble. This is probably what happens after you leave an abusive husband, which is what Mrs. Erickson—Linda!—has done. Mads will have to get over the discomfort of calling adults by their first names if she’s going to be in business for herself. When she tells clients that their house won’t sell for the price they want, she’ll have to sound like an authority. Otherwise, she’ll get bulldozed, and the property will sit on the market for months, money for flyers and open houses and advertising bleeding Murray & Murray dry. At the word clients, she hears the sound of bones clicking and rattling in a grave, but never mind.

  Mads looks at Mrs. Erick—Linda’s!—phone. There’s a picture of her little girl sitting in a blow-up pool.

  Mads makes an Aww! face and slides it back. Listening to Mr. Hermann is like sitting through those movies in AP history about World War II. Same accent, same droning, same low-level dread of the inevitable. Her stomach starts to hurt. She glances down at her flip-flops and her woven bracelet, makes sure they haven’t been transformed to sandals with insoles and a Swatch. She’s not middle-aged, okay? Even if all those shiny, sunbeams-of-the-future graduation shots her friend Jess posted look like something from long ago. Even if everyone she used to hang out with is starting a summer (the summer before college!) that seems frivolous and mysteriously carefree. Even if her life story is already written, she’s only eighteen.