by Deb Caletti
“Whatever,” Billy says.
He doesn’t want to go home, but he doesn’t want to be here, either. He should have taken his own car. A bunch more people arrive, and a guy sets another case of beer on the table. Bags of chips get thrown on top of other bags of chips, stacking up like bodies in a war movie.
The door is open and cool night air shoots in, and suddenly arms circle his waist from behind. They shove his T-shirt up, and icy hands press against his skin.
“Oh my God! Wolfie, you’re here. Warm me up,” Amy says.
He doesn’t push her away, but he doesn’t exactly encourage her, either. She rubs his bare skin for a minute and then gives up, tugs his T-shirt, gives him a little shove.
“Get me a beer,” she says, even though they’re right in front of her. She’s the kind of girl who expects you to do stuff for her.
He hands her one. She hands it back. He unscrews the top. She grabs it, takes a drink. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you at work in a week. I swear, Jane’s putting us on different schedules on purpose.”
“Nah.” Yeah.
“Look around. It’s a baby party. We should get out of here.”
“You’ve been here two seconds.”
“Long enough to know I have a better idea.” She takes another long swallow, displays her neck like he’s a vampire.
Now she meets his eyes, draws close. She sticks her hand in his back pocket. “Show me that thing you don’t want me to see.”
Yeah, double meaning, whatever. He can feel her fingers wiggling against his ass. She has the wrong pocket, and he’s glad. He pulls away.
“Don’t you know what secrets do?”
He’d never tell her about the map. She’d never understand. No way. Not in a million years.
“You want to dance, or something? People are dancing.” She’s right. The music’s gotten louder. He can see through the kitchen and out the open back door to the patio, where guys and girls and girls and girls dance. Leigh and Alex are out there. Drew stands on the deck of the hot tub, lifts off his shirt. Jesus. How much time does he spend at the gym?
Amy grabs Billy’s hand and leads. They pass through the kitchen—there’s a row of cookbooks, a fancy mixer, a microwave with its door swung open and something recently exploded inside. The parents are gonna love that. Just as they reach the back steps, Billy’s phone vibrates in his pocket.
“Just a sec.”
“You’re going to get that right now?”
You don’t just let a phone ring. After his dad and all the times with his mom, he always looks, at least.
His stomach flips, right as—Jesus!—Drew takes his pants off.
“I gotta get this,” he says to Amy.
“Wolfieee. Ugh!”
She stomps away. Drew gets into the hot tub. His bare ass descends like the setting sun.
“Hello?” Billy ditches his beer on the kitchen counter, plugs his ear with his finger to hear better. The music’s so loud, it’s like being beat up around the head.
“Mixed-message phone call.” Mads’s voice doesn’t belong here. It’s like an angel in a head shop.
“Hey, it’s you.”
“Where are you? Sounds like a party. Of course you’d be at a party. I mean, it’s Friday night.”
“I can’t hear you. Let me get outta here.”
He passes the food table, spots packages of hot dogs and buns. Some naïve high schooler thought this was a barbecue. He grabs the dogs, elbows past a couple making out by the front door. More cars pull up; more kids pile out. “Hang on, I’m almost—”
“Wow, what was that?”
“Just this girl. Whistling.” Amy’s on the front lawn, hands on her hips. The whistle is pissed.
“It sounds like a car alarm. Like someone’s stealing something.”
Ha—Amy seems to think so. He jogs the hell out of there. The party retreats, and the street gets quiet. God, he’s glad to be just walking under the streetlamps with Mads. It’s just him and her, and a raccoon that skitters behind some garbage cans.
“So, you called.” It comes out wrong, like he wants her to get to business.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take you away from your party.”
“No, I mean, I’m surprised. I’m glad.”
“I was just thinking. There’s no reason we cabefu.”
“Cabefu?”
“Sowwy. It’s the carmwa.”
“Caramel? Are you eating—”
“Chocolates.”
“Oh.” He pictures her: She’s wearing some cute soft pajamas, and sits on her canopy bed with the yellow box on her knees. She’s adorable.
“Friends. We can maybe be friends, even if I have to leave. Is there anything wrong with that? Not really.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with it.” Friends. He’s okay with whatever she wants to call it. His heart is already doing a little dance.
“Do you have to get back to your party?”
“I’m outta there.” Who needs a car? He can walk home. He can fly home. “I don’t even like parties.”
“You don’t?”
“You sound so surprised.”
“I just thought you would.”
He likes that, how when you meet new people, you can be anyone. You can be a regular guy who likes parties. Something about that makes him feel good. He swaggers down that late-night street holding the package of hot dogs like it’s a briefcase full of money.
“Nope,” he says. “Not a party person.” The moon is out, reminding him that there are permanent things. The night smells like dark sky and dewy earth, and he wants to know everything about her. He wants to know her first memory and what she’s scared of and what she looks like when she’s sleeping. Where do you begin, when a whole new person awaits? “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No,” she says. “I guess that’s another thing we have in common, right? I forgot about that. We’re both only children.”
He doesn’t remember talking about this before, but maybe they did. He repeats himself all the time. Probably because he sticks to the few safe topics he’s got. “I’ve got a half brother. But I only met him once.”
“Oh, wow. Your mom had another kid?”
“Dad. Some high school thing. Made my mom all insecure.”
“That must be weird.”
“Nah, whatever. What about pets?” They have a lot of ground to cover. But, hey, he could walk all night. He could walk until daylight, he could walk to New York, because love is fuel, and his is burning.
“We used to have a dog, Mimi. But when my dad left . . .”
She doesn’t want to say more. At least, she stops right there. “What?”
“This sounds bad. I’ve never even told anyone this before.”
“It’s okay.” Are you kidding? If she only knew about his dad and his mom, she wouldn’t feel embarrassed about much.
“When he left, he took the dog. He didn’t think my mom could take care of her.”
She waits to see if he understands without having to say more. He does. He wants to punch that asshole in the face.
“Sucks.”
“Yeah. I still love him, though.”
“I’m sure.”
“We kind of look alike. I take after his side of the family. I used to spend time with him in the summers, before he moved so far.”
They’re silent for a while. He can hear her breathing. He can hear her trying to love, when love is hard. He tries to think up something fast to make her laugh. He says, “Okay, Mads, when do we bust out of here. And how?” If she doesn’t get it, he’ll just sound like an idiot.
“Just stuff some clothes in your violin case, and I’ll stuff some in mine, and I’ll meet you after school tomorrow.”
He’ll never tell a living soul this, but when she says that, he skips. He actually skips a little, he feels so good. Every day since . . . Don’t think about it! Well, let’s just say he never thought he’d feel happy again. But he cou
ld spin around a freaking lamppost right then, like the guy with the umbrella in that old movie. It’s possible that he loves her already. People who say you can’t fall in real love that fast, poor sad suckers, it’s never happened to them.
The minute he grabbed those hot dogs, he knew where he was heading. He keeps walking as they talk. He learns that she’s afraid of being buried alive and of leeches and home invasion robberies, and he tells her he’s not afraid of anything, until she forces him to admit he’s scared of crane flies.
“Crane flies?”
Crane flies, with their thin, threadlike legs. “No matter how carefully you pick one up, you know you’re breaking its legs.”
He thinks he hears her shudder. They move from fears to dreams. She tells him about filling out those college applications in secret, but how she never sent them. How she was going to use the money she earned as a lifeguard to apply. A lifeguard! This distracts him for a sec. He imagines her in one of those red suits, sitting up high and unreachable in one of those tall chairs. Holy shit, he wants to see that. He’d put his hand—
“I wanted to go so bad.”
The longing in her voice stops the mouth-to-mouth he was just performing in his head. “You’ve got to go.”
He’d be in her corner. He’d carry her books and help her study. He’d hold the flash cards. Probably there would be flash cards. He tells her about registering for community college, how he had his schedule and everything, but then his mom was doing bad and things were messed up and he never went. She tells him about wanting to be an English teacher. Man, she loves books. You’d never think it, him in love with a bookworm, but there you have it.
Billy arrives. Casper stirs. There’s the slide-clink of his chain.
“I can’t quite hear you,” Mads says.
Well, he has to keep his voice down. Usually, he waits until that asshole, H. Bergman, makes his daily trip to the Quik Mart at the end of the block to buy cigarettes. Billy’s got the timing down perfect. He rushes over from Heartland instead of taking a lunch hour. H. Bergman leaves only to go there, or to make his biweekly outing to Fred Meyer. Either way, he’s never gone long, which is exactly the problem. Billy can’t rescue Casper, because he’ll never be able to break through that fence before H. Bergman gets back with his TP and frozen dinners. But now, tonight—love has made him brave. Here he is in front of the house, with H. Bergman’s car right in the driveway.
Casper looks like hell. Food is one thing, but Billy can’t be around all the time for whatever else H. Bergman does to him.
“It’s wrong,” he whispers. He means the whole real estate thing, but so much more, too. Mads and her mother, Casper and H. Bergman, all the shitty things people do. He opens the package with his teeth, flings those hot dogs to Casper, one by one. In his mind, they rain down like valentines.
“Billy, I should go,” Mads says.
Never, he thinks but doesn’t say. “Okay.”
“Man, chocolate sure makes you thirsty.”
He starts to laugh. And if H. Bergman hears him, too bad. So what, he’ll fight that asshole now, on this sidewalk. He’ll take Casper then and there. Because tonight, his life is starting.
“Yeah, it does.”
“I’m really glad we can be friends,” she says.
“Me too.”
Friends. Heh heh. Right.
He hears what’s in her voice. It’s a risk to hear it, but love is always a risk. Life is. You could step into the street and get hit by a car, but then again, you could step into the street and get to the other side.
Chapter Thirteen
Mads needs water, bad. Water, or something else to help her swallow her mixed emotions. Why did she call him? She had her chance for a tidy ending at the ferry dock, but she just couldn’t let it be. There’s something she needs to see. Needing to see is what gets humans into so much trouble. Then again, you might find out that you haven’t sailed off the edge of the earth after all.
Billy sounded mad at first, and who could blame him? So, you called. No one likes, no one deserves, some push-you-away-pull-you-close kind of person. He especially doesn’t deserve that.
Mads has to tell him. She can’t tell him. The more she goes on like this, the worse she’ll need to confess about his mother and her, and the more impossible it will be to confess. Secrets only grow larger over time, and don’t let anyone tell you different.
It was such a great night—talking, sitting in that bed made up with Harrison’s race car sheets, wearing Claire’s old drawstring shorts and Thomas’s Grateful Dead T-shirt (she forgot to pack her pj’s). Billy’s so funny, too, way funnier than you’d think. Mads cracks up on the way to the kitchen, just remembering how he said a person didn’t have to be afraid of home invasion when you had a dog like Ginger. She might be small and white, but she could take a squeaker out of a rubber steak in two seconds flat. If you were ever attacked by a fake steak, she had your back. And when he told that story about getting a crane fly out of his room by chasing it around with his T-shirt, whacking at the ceiling while he stood on his bed . . .
“Well, you’re having fun,” Claire says.
Mads puts her hand to her chest. All that talk about home invasions. “Jeez. You scared me.”
“Who was that on the phone?”
Mads scowls. This isn’t like Claire, not at all. Claire has warm hands, kind eyes, and, sure, maybe a firm word or two. She doesn’t usually huff like this, shooting we both know what I’m talking about looks.
Well. They both do know what she’s talking about.
“A friend, Claire! God! Can I not have friends? I’m sorry if I woke you.” Mads sounds like a quote-unquote teenager.
“Of course you can have friends. But of all the millions of people in the world you might be friends with, this is who you choose?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Who was on the phone?”
“A guy from class.” Her mind hunts for a name. Come on. Come on! “Ryan. Ryan Plug.”
“Ryan Plug.”
“Can you imagine having a last name like Plug? You got to feel sorry for the guy! I mean, it could be worse, it could be Phlegm or something, but who wants to live your whole life being called Plug.”
“Madison.”
“I told him, you know, you can do something about that. Go to court, whatever. He’s very sensitive about it, but we had this whole open discussion . . .” They’re at the bottom of the stairs. The front door is right there. Mads could make a run for it, but probably wouldn’t get far with no money and no phone, and no shoes even, for that matter. As it is, she has to bunch Claire’s shorts around her waist as she walks, even with the drawstring. Fleeing in those would be a disaster.
“Madison, look at me.”
Why do people always make you look at them when it’s an Important Moment of Confrontation? Oh, yes. That’s why. Claire’s eyes send a message that begs for honesty. Holy hell. Now those eyes are having the midnight showing of the mess that will be Mads’s future.
“Harrison said . . .”
“Harrison said what?” Righteous indignation is her only option.
“That boy. Her son.”
“Her?”
“The woman who . . . Don’t make me say it.”
Even Claire—enlightened, tolerant, progressive Claire—avoids the word: suicide.
Depression, too, is a term she steps around and eyes carefully, like an unattended piece of luggage at the airport. Is it a harmless backpack or does it have a bomb inside? Certainly, the bag must be avoided, reported to authorities. The words feel dangerous because they are dangerous. Something might be tipped over, and then terrible things could happen. To lots of people, not just one.
“Harrison said he saw . . .”
“He saw what?”
“The two of you. You and her son. Together.”
“How would he even know who he is?”
“He looks stuff up. He looks everything up. Everyone
looks everything up! He saw some picture of him online.” Mads knows the one. Two guys on a snowy hill. No, Harrison probably uncovered images she didn’t even find.
“He’s on the computer way too much, Claire.”
“He said that same guy, the son, was out front. Here. At our house.”
Claire hands her Harrison’s phone. It’s Thomas’s old one, so it weighs a couple of pounds. Harrison’s supposed to use it only for emergencies. But now it’s flipped open (that’s how old it is), and there’s a tiny picture.
“It’s a foot. It’s just a foot and some sky. You can’t even tell who that is. That could be Ned Chaplin.” Ned’s the neighbor with a bunch of cats.
“In a Converse? Ned Chaplin wears dress shoes with tassels, even when he goes to get the mail.”
“It could be anyone’s Converse! What, are those the shoes of guys with suicidal mothers or something? Come on. You know Harrison has an overactive imagination. He should be in a summer program or something, Claire. What are those pretend astronaut things? When you’re an only child, you can get into trouble if you don’t have lots to do.” Take it from me, Mads should add.
“If I got this wrong, I’m sorry.”
“You got this wrong.”
They’ve migrated to the kitchen. Claire pulls out a stool from the center island and sits.
Mads folds her arms. She’s really getting into the whole outrage and unfairness thing. She practically forgets she’s lying. And then Claire sighs, and Mads remembers. She starts to feel bad. She waits for lightning to strike, but nothing happens. “Can you make him stop following me?”
“Of course. Yes. I’m so sorry, Mads. Sometimes, Harrison just weirdly knows things. . . . And I’ve been . . . We’ve been worrying about you. I mean, after the thing at the lake, and then all that research you were doing . . . I thought—I just saw you getting more and more wrapped up in this whole idea of her, and what she did. . . .”
The kindness strikes, worse than any lightning. Damn it! She can deal with an angry person. Angry people only make you angry. Your own anger is power, and it’s distance. Kindness, though. Softness, sadness, anything even remotely pathetic—those are the things that hunt Mads down and spear her heart.