by Deb Caletti
This realization always surprises her, because she feels thirty at least, and some days, fifty-sixty. While her friends drift further away into rah-rah fun-fun, Mads is swooped time-machine style into her mother’s office, a few years from now. On the wall above the two desks, there are two paintings of Roman ruins. The clock tick-ticks. Here, in this room, the clock tick-ticks, too. The ogres turn up the heat and spin the room. She might throw up. Or pass out. There’s a suffocating feeling, sweaty palms. She hears the rumble of that bridge in her head.
Otto Hermann hands out a work sheet, and Billy Youngwolf Floyd’s eyes are on it. Stars turned inside out. A black that’s old and that comes from somewhere far away. It’s not some sort of a crush. It isn’t! That’s the last thing she needs or wants. Even people who like complications wouldn’t like that one. She’ll be back home by the end of September. Those papers the lawyer drew up are thrumming, silently shrieking, same as those special whistles for dogs.
Billy Youngwolf Floyd isn’t even her type! Not with those thin arms, with the muscles that look hard and round as baseballs. Not with the shaggy hair and sallow ashtray cheeks and white skin from too much time indoors. Not with all that tragedy, hanging around like an apparition. Not the least bit her type. Cole Fletcher is healthy and bright as a stack of just-washed clothes. He’s always ready to go out there and conquer something with energy and good attitude, whether it’s a running track or a car repair or Mads herself.
What is love anyway? (Everything.) What’s the point of it, even? (All.) Something is burning. The dark eyes are turning that paper to flames, and, too, the map in the pocket of her shorts is all glowing, red heat. She found it after he left. It was folded up flat and waiting on the pavement, like an invitation. She knew where it came from the moment she saw it. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, one of her favorite books of all time. She used to stare and stare at that map when she first read that book in sixth grade. She imagined herself in those rooms, sleeping in the museum bed, solving the mystery of the angel statue, same as Claudia. She knew what his map was, but she didn’t know why it was. Ever since the body, it’s been that way—the what but not the why. Every morning, though, the why is the thing that draws her up from the magnet bed.
Throbbing head, tumbling center, fire. On that work sheet, Mads sees star eyes, but she also sees Ivy in her car seat as they drove home from the failed kidnapping, her hair sweaty and head dropped in sleep. And she sees something else from that day, too, something that’s a nagging worry, a potential problem: two familiar bikes pedaling so fast they’re a furious haze, a passing comet of metallic blue, helmets white and curved as eggshells, rows of knuckles gripping handlebars. Ten-year-old spies, too far from home—had they seen her and William Youngwolf Floyd? When she got home that early evening, Harrison was nowhere in sight. He stayed the night at Avery’s house. The next morning, he smelled like maple syrup, and his hair was wild and exhausted and jazzed, like it’d been at the clubs until all hours.
Now, though, there is only the sound of a waiting classroom—a cough, a rustle. Linda, Linda, Linda! kicks Mads with her wide-buckled sandal. Otto Hermann has asked her a question, and he stares down at her as if she’s a misbehaving soldier in the German youth army. His mouth is moving, but all she hears is You’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’, which is what Harrison sang as he passed Mads on the stairs this morning, bumping her on purpose. Thomas says this when he’s about to scoop up Harrison for a tickle attack. But he also says it in warning when Harrison’s mouth gets smart with some daring comeback, like Big whoop or Make me.
That kid could get her into a whole, whole lot of trouble.
“I’m sorry.” Mads pushes her chair back. “I’m not, my stomach . . .”
“That flu can last a long time,” Linda says.
Mads bolts.
Goldberg Depression Screening, number eight. I am agitated. I keep moving around. Not at all. Moderately. Very much. Outside, spring is officially turning to summer, and the air smells sun-soaked, and students sit on benches in a redbrick square, talking and looking at books with little white headphone buds in their ears. The scene is so different than her gray, tumbling insides that she suddenly wants it for herself, and oh, so badly.
Mads’s phone rings in her purse. She doesn’t answer. It’s got to be her mother. Across the miles, Catherine Jaynes Murray feels Mads’s betrayal, Mads is sure. She can sense it, like some people can sense an attacker in an empty parking garage. Sometimes—she’s said it before, but it’s true—her mother is the best friend Mads has. Her mother may need Mads, but Mads has always needed her, too. She can tell her mom almost anything, but not how happy she’d be if she never saw Otto Hermann’s classroom again.
Scratch the smooth, cinematic running off. Mads forgets where she parked. Hopefully, they cut this scene in the movie of her life. She wanders around for a long time, and then she has to go up and down every row in the area. When she finally finds Thomas’s truck, she’s mad, like it’s the truck’s fault. She dumps her stuff inside, listens to her mother’s message. She has to. Her mom might be checking up on her, but she also might be struggling with, or curled up on the bathroom floor like the famous people. There was that time when her mother stayed in her dark room on Christmas Eve, under the covers, unwilling/unable to come out, and it was all so scary, Mads had no idea what to do. She plugged in the tree lights and tried to cook a chicken, but she was only ten and didn’t know you had to defrost it first. It was pink and cold when she put it on the two plates.
False alarm. Her mother’s voice is the highest car on the roller coaster. I got asked on a date! You know that guy from Windermere? We saw him at the broker’s open with the pool? Remember, last April? He does all the east valley. James Beam. Don’t say anything about his name, he gets that all the time. Call me. I need your advice. I think he’s too short for me. I can’t decide if that’d be a thing or not. It could be a thing.
Mads throws the phone onto the passenger seat and then sticks her purse on top, and then her backpack on top of that. She thinks: I hate her. The words are so clear. Crisp, even. And then comes the sucking mud of wrongdoing. Number eleven. I feel that I am a guilty person who deserves to be punished. Just a little. Somewhat. Quite a lot.
“Go,” she says to Thomas’s truck.
• • •
Puget Sound Rescue and Heartland are the only two animal shelters within walking distance of the bridge. Mads learns this one night when she can’t sleep. Can’t sleep again. Ogres love to keep you awake with their chanting. Insomnia bonus fact: She can tell you exactly when the streetlamps click off—4:45, just before the sun lifts.
She checks her pocket—yep, the map’s still there. Two days ago, she parked in the PC Fix lot across from Puget Sound Rescue and sat there for a good few hours before she decided it was the wrong place. She tells herself she’s not a creepy stalker lurking in her car. She’s more a private eye, solving a case. A head case, maybe, but still.
On the other hand, the body of Anna Youngwolf Floyd floated to the very spot in a 571-square-mile lake (Mads looked it up) where Mads had been swimming. This is too large a happening for mere coincidence. Coincidence is seeing your friend at Target when you both like Target. Coincidence is your boyfriend calling right when you’re thinking about him because you think about him every couple of minutes. What happened in that lake was meant.
A why without an answer is the worst kind of lost thing—a lost thing you never had to begin with. You will endlessly, futilely try to find it between the couch cushions and in the pockets of the coat you last wore. You will retrace your steps and retrace your steps, and still nothing. You will toss and turn at night. You will run stop signs and put your keys in the refrigerator and wear mismatched shoes from distraction. You will shout why into a canyon and only get a why why why back again.
You will go to Heartland Rescue and park across the street at a Wing Dome. You will sit way longer in a Wing Dome parking lot than anyone eve
r has in the brief history of fast-food chicken. Long enough to worry that someone might call the police. Long enough that your hair will smell like smoke and hot sauce after.
But there—his truck. What a relief to see it! He hasn’t disappeared forever after all. Mads feels the surge of victory. Great detective work! Well done, stalker!
She expects to park there for a good while, until she heads to the Bellaroses’ to babysit. Step one is finding the right shelter, maybe communing with William Youngwolf Floyd’s truck, and trying to learn about his life and his mother’s life from the outside of the Heartland Rescue building. Giving him the map is another step altogether.
Mads still has lots of time. She rolls down her window, because it’s warm out. A crowd of smells marches in, garbage and barbecue and city. She can hear the dogs barking from across the street. Stupid Wing Dome is actually making her hungry. Toe food (Harrison’s name for tofu) can starve a person. Sadness can steal hunger. Mads takes her flip-flops off. Settles in for the non-show.
But then there’s a rustle of activity. Mads shoots upright and then slouches down again with a confused jolt of energy. It’s supposed to be a boring stakeout, and now here’s some real action.
The front door opens, and there he is. It’s the actual him, and it’s crazy to say, but Mads never expected this. He’s with a girl. A really beautiful girl, the kind that can pull off an exposed midriff, her hair the shade of blond that makes you think of money and beach volleyball and confidence. Exposed midriffs make Mads feel like she’s shrunk stuff in the wash. She’s not sure her own body is meant to be seen. It should stay hidden, she thinks. A girl’s story about her body always involves her mother.
The blonde tugs on William’s sleeve and then ruffles his hair. He moves his head away, but he grins. It’s not a grimace, but a grin, right? She doesn’t have her glasses, so she can’t tell. But, you know, of course. Guys love that kind of thing. Mads wonders why the girl doesn’t just throw him to the ground and climb on.
With all the fabulous amazing fun he’s having, Mads is safe behind the Wing Dome Dumpster, she’s sure. She never pictured him with a girlfriend for some reason, or at least, not with one like that. The girl gives him a little push before he gets into his SUV.
He’s leaving! The girl heads back inside. He watches her go, checking out her ass likely, that’s what usually happens. He looks in his rearview mirror, sticks his chin up, and examines it. He starts the car.
Mads stays a discreet distance behind. She follows him to the Lazy Boar, a brewhouse with a big copper tank in the window. He disappears inside, comes back out again a short while later with a square Styrofoam container. He’s probably taking his lunch back to Heartland Rescue.
No. Instead, he winds through the center of Fremont, away from Heartland. He drives up Troll Avenue, past the huge cement troll statue with its long cement fingers. Mads stays a couple of blocks back. They’re in a neighborhood now, and he’ll surely see or hear her if she gets too close.
He pulls over. Mads stops. Veers behind a row of parked cars. They aren’t too far from his old house.
He jogs down the block a bit, nicely in Mads’s view. He reaches a tall cyclone fence. The small yard beyond it is all has-been grass, dried, heartless grass, grass that has given up green dreams long ago. It’s brown and pebbly. Mads sees a gate with a padlock. And she can see a dog. A big white dog on the end of a chain. A dog that’s also seen better days. At least, he’s scrawny for his size, and he’s dirty, and he has the rangy look of the forgotten. The house makes her think of cans of soup and faucets that spill rusty water before the clean comes out.
William Youngwolf Floyd pops the top of the Styrofoam. He lifts a thin steak and steps back as if he’s the pitcher and the meat is the ball. It’s a little awkward to watch. He attempts to fling it over the fence, but on the first try, the beef hits the chain link with enough force to make it clatter. He catches it on the bounce back as the white dog gives a halfhearted wag, as if he isn’t sure what might happen next.
William tries again. The meat clears the top of the fence but lands for a split second on the dog’s head. The poor creature wears it like a silly wig. Mads feels embarrassed for him, but luckily that fashion statement lasts only a moment. The dog shakes it off and then has the meal of his life from the looks of it. He gulps it down in three bites, and then over the fence come a baked potato and a roll.
Now William’s talking to the dog. Mads rolls, rolls, rolls her window down and tries to stick only her ear out, but she can’t hear what he’s saying. There’s a crooning rhythm, though. And something is happening in Mads’s chest. Her heart splits in half, like an atom. The story—Anna’s story, William’s, their family’s—is larger than she ever imagined. The details tell her this. There are his black Converse shoes, and the careful closing of the Styrofoam container. There’s the half-wave to the dog, the saggy-assed jeans, the trot back to the SUV. There are thousands upon thousands of these details, she realizes. He’s a real person, and so was his mother. She’s not two seconds of news, or a cold wrist, or the lumpy object under the thick green plastic with the zipper on top. She’s not just a body in the water, or a suicide.
It takes great effort for me to do simple things. Get up to go to class, yes. Answer texts from friends at home, yes. Have a conversation with Claire about her day, yes. Turn the key, put Thomas’s truck in gear, follow William Youngwolf Floyd to his next destination, no.
This is how the world saves you. This is how it shows its love. One small thing. One reason.
Where is he going now? Are there more deliveries to make? A list of dogs? Is this part of his work for Heartland Rescue? Bringing aid, like the Red Cross for canines? Or does William Youngwolf Floyd have an obsession of his own?
He backtracks. Goes down through the neighborhood, back past the troll on Troll Avenue. Mads loses him for a second when she gets caught behind a biker by the Fremont Branch Library. She has to stop at a red light. She glimpses that SUV, turning by Sustainable Sandwich.
Now only the disappearing back end of the SUV is visible on the other side of the Fremont Bridge. It drives off, just as the maddening red warning lights begin to blink and the arm of the bridge gate folds down. Great. Terrific. Just Mads’s luck—she’s lost him for sure. She is stuck there, right in the shadow of the bridge his mother jumped from. How can he even bear to pass it? Mads waits, dum, dum, dum, tra-la-la, as the bridge slowly, slowly rises. A sailboat passes beneath, and then the bridge lowers again. A few eons pass.
The cars are set free again, but there’s no way she’s going to find him now. Stupid to even try. He could be anywhere. Thomas’s truck is pointed over the bridge, though, and so over the bridge she must go.
She ends up on a fast and confusing road that hugs the lake, so she pulls into one of the parking lots by the water to turn around. There’s a marina, and a place that sells yachts; there’s a bookstore with boaty-looking books in the window, and there’s a set of wooden stairs heading to the shore.
Turning around is tight. And, then, shit! Oh, man, really? Thomas’s truck dies when Mads puts it in reverse. A car waits to pass, and Mads gets all panicky. She gives it too much gas, which makes the situation worse. Flooded—she knows that much from Cole, who’s worked after school at Rainier Auto Repair since he was like twelve. The other car backs up, shoots away in anger. Mads swallows another dose of guilt-fury. It swirls around, blends with the memory of the blond girl in the crop top, and with Mads’s entire past, and probably with hunger of all kinds, and now she’s in a bad, bad mood.
“Thanks, truck,” she says. “Thanks a whole lot.”
She tries to start the damn thing again. She is refraining from smacking her fist against the steering wheel. And then she sees it. The SUV. William Youngwolf Floyd’s SUV! The SUV should have God rays coming down on it, it’s such a miracle. She didn’t see it at first, because it’s parked by this monster of a restaurant called China Harbor. It’s one of those places that probably ha
d packed tables back in 1977. She’s sure there’s a big, sad aquarium in there.
The truck’s in a slot marked RESERVED FOR RESIDENTS OF DENNY COVE.
“You crafty little devil,” Mads says to Thomas’s truck. “I owe you an apology.” What a big hunk of metal goodness. What a true friend.
Mads gets out. She’s nervous, but that weird boldness is with her again, too. She listens like a good detective. A seaplane lands with a roar, so that’s all she can really hear. She sees that set of stairs, but not what’s beyond them. It’s an excellent way to get caught.
The stairs lead down to a swinging wood gate. There’s a sign: PRIVATE. RESIDENTS OF DENNY COVE ONLY. No one is around. She’s a person who always turns her homework in on time, who mostly drives the speed limit, and comes home by curfew. The kind of kiss-ass, honestly, who always cares if the teacher likes her.
Fuck Private.
Everything is different after you find a body in the water. Everything is different with a pounding, pulsing why.
She pushes open the gate. On the other side, there’s a dock of houseboats—small shingled shacks and larger two-story homes all angles and skylights. Pots of flowers and hanging baskets decorate nearly every porch. At the end of the dock is the lake, with its choppy waves and boats. Straight across, nearly exactly, is the dock where Mads took her swim.
She hears voices. She stops; closes her keys in her fist so they won’t jingle. Yes, two people are talking somewhere down the dock. She recognizes one of the voices, all right. It’s him. She ducks into the entryway of a blue houseboat with white trim. A cat stares out from a window, bored and unmoving, as if he sees creeping intruders on a regular basis.