by Sara Beitia
“The thing with my parents and you is, like, a turf war. They don’t want anyone else to mean anything to me. They don’t want me to think more of you than of them.”
“Thank god you’re their son and not their daughter,” she’d laughed, the crease between her eyebrows finally smoothing out. “They’d have you in a veil and a chastity belt. And good thing for my parents I’ve already set the bar so low. ‘Lily’s not in jail? Super!’”
“Don’t say things like that.”
“So you do like me the best?”—as if she didn’t already know the answer.
Albert did like her the best, and he could see that it drove his parents nuts. They told him he was too young to know his own heart, that he was too young to be so set on the first girl he’d been serious with, that they’d only known each other for such a short while. Sometimes he recognized the truth of what they said, but he never admitted it to them.
Because even if they were right, even if he was stupid, it didn’t matter.
On a normal weeknight, Albert would have hurried through his dinner so he could get away—either borrow the car to go see Lily, or shut himself in his room and talk with her on the phone for hours at a time. On a normal weeknight, his parents would be grumbling and banging on the door, sometimes yelling, and usually riding him, too, about whether his homework was done … On a normal weeknight, Albert and his parents sure wouldn’t have been having such a deadly slow and polite dinner.
They’re probably enjoying this, was Albert’s thought as he scraped the last rubbery bit of egg and pie crust from his plate and into his mouth. They don’t care where Lily is or wonder what might have happened to her. They don’t want to hear about it from me—all they want is for me to cooperate with the police and get it over with fast. And forget about her.
“Did you hear me?”
He looked as his mother and realized that she’d been talking to him yet again, and yet again he’d missed it. Damn. “No. What?”
She shook her head, really irritated now. Her voice shook a little. “I wish just once that we could have a pleasant meal in this house. I really do.”
“You know what I wish?” Albert said suddenly, the words coming out loud and abrupt before he knew he was going to say them. “I wish you’d ask me how I’m doing and actually want to hear the answer.” He thought of the sideways call for help Lily had sent and the thought prodded him to go on. “I wish you’d say something about Lily.”
“Don’t start,” his mother said, her diction becoming emphatic and her tone shrill, like it did when she was working herself into a real temper. “We’ve been walking around on eggshells all week, trying not to upset you. Have we pressed you about your chores? Have I made you clean up that disgusting pigsty you call a room? Have I mentioned how much I detest that vulgar shirt you’re wearing, even though I’ve asked you a dozen times to get rid of it?” She paused for a breath. “And I should know you wanted to talk about Lily? I would think that’s the last thing you’d want to talk about!”
“Whatever,” Albert muttered, knowing he was pushing his luck.
She wasn’t done. “Not to mention the position it’s put you in! Have you forgotten being questioned by the police? Have you forgotten that you were out sneaking around when all of this happened?”
“All you care about is how things look!” Albert shouted before he could help himself.
“That’s about enough out of you,” his father said, and this was as far into the debate as he was usually willing to go. Two red patches had developed on his cheeks.
Albert pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I’m going to my room.”
They ignored him, which he took as a frosty signal that he was totally and gladly excused from dinner.
At the last moment before his fingers left the edge of his bedroom door, Albert resisted the urge to slam it shut behind him. He went over to the tiny TV on the desk across from his bed and turned up the volume high enough to hear, but not so much that it would be distracting or grounds for an angry pound on the door. After a moment, he swept a pile of CDs from the chair at his desk and carried the chair over to the door, jamming it under the doorknob as quietly as he could. If his parents tried to come in without knocking they were going to be pissed, but at least they wouldn’t get the door open in a hurry.
A chill worked its way from his scalp, down his back, and all the way through both his legs, as Albert finally did what he’d been dying to do: he went to the bookshelf and shook Lily’s envelope from its hiding place. The little paper rectangle fluttered to the floor, the envelope and the postcard coming apart as they fell, and the letter landing a little apart with the writing side up. The fragment but I’m going to the last good place. Don’t tell anyone caught his eye.
He hadn’t understood this line when he read it, but like a switch flipping from off to on, it made sense to him now. Suddenly he was sure he knew where she was—sort of, anyway. “The Last Good Place” wasn’t just some metaphor, but a real place from the last happy summer of her childhood. He imagined her there, hiding like a scared rabbit, probably trying to decide whether to stay put or keep running … and if to run, where to find her next hiding place.
The image of Lily as a frightened animal was an unpleasant one, and Albert blinked, as if this would erase the picture from his head.
His brain working, he stretched out on his bed with the letter in his hand, staring at it. He wasn’t even reading the words anymore. He had them memorized. The paper was a talisman, as if staring at it long enough would give him an idea.
A plan.
The TV droned. Random sounds from the other rooms in the house, a voice or a door or a toilet flushing or steps in the hall, made Albert’s pulse race. He set the letter on his pillow and went over to check that the chair was wedged firmly under the doorknob. Then he sat heavily on the edge of his bed and rubbed his face with his hands. Something bothered him as he tried to put together, in some meaningful order, Lily and her accident and her stepfather and her disappearance. He couldn’t quite see the whole picture.
He ran over the facts as he understood them. About a year ago, Lily ran with a party crowd and they frequently got into minor trouble—they were caught smoking, ditching school here and there, and once got busted at a kegger and cited for underage drinking. One night, for some reason, they decided to do something different and break into Lily’s stepfather’s dental clinic—not too difficult, since Lily knew where to get the keys and the alarm code—and huff some laughing gas. Obviously things got a little wild at some point, based on the destruction found later: files dumped, broken glass, instruments scattered.
What the cops put together from the scene, since Lily had no memory and none of the other kids had stepped forward, was that Lily had OD’d on the gas and her friends, probably in a panic, had left her. It was lucky for her that someone had seen the light through the plate-glass windows and called the police. The police called Lily’s stepfather and they all arrived on the scene to find the office wrecked and empty, except for an unconscious Lily. Later, at the hospital, the doctors informed Lily’s parents that in addition to the damage from the gas, she’d hit her head on the way down and had “some pretty awesome head trauma,” as Lily put it later to Albert.
“I was a veg for nearly four months,” she’d told him, as if this was a normal thing. The only good thing about it, she said, was that her stepfather had declined to press charges against her for the break-in and the major damage.
Then after her release from the hospital, Lily had cleaned up her act. She ditched the old crew and was working through a couple of kinds of rehab and giving her senior year of high school a second shot.
By the time Albert moved to Little Solace, the story had mellowed from juicy gossip to a local legend along the lines of “Don’t you know the deal with that family?” The Morales clan had first heard the story from their Realtor when Albert’s parents were buying the house.
Then Albert had met Lily
, and they were happy … and then Lily split without warning, maybe because she and her stepfather were still not OK about the break-in after all this time, and they’d had a fight, and she was afraid.
Sighing because his head hurt, Albert shut off the TV and the lights. In the dark, he put the letter with the postcard back in the envelope, the envelope back in the book, and the book back on the shelf, and then he unwedged the chair from the doorknob and crawled into bed.
He closed his eyes, and the lines of Lily’s handwriting were tattooed on the insides of his eyelids. He wondered what Lily thought she remembered about her accident. He also wondered if she was losing her mind. Maybe the danger was coming from herself and her half-remembered lost months. Drain damage.
Except, said the part of his brain that wouldn’t let him give in to the easiest explanation, except there’s the argument the neighbors overheard. The argument the police seem to think was between me and Lily but which she now seems to be trying to tell me was with Kogen. Kogen, the guy who lied about me and Lily fighting.
Lily really was in trouble. They both were, maybe more than he had first realized.
While he slept, a plan started forming.
The next morning, Albert’s parents acted as if nothing had happened the night before at the dinner table. He was too preoccupied to care, or wonder why. When it was time to leave for school, he set off in the usual direction with his backpack slung over his shoulders.
After about six blocks, when he was sure he was far enough from the house, Albert took a right where he would’ve normally gone left. He had a vague idea of heading toward a park on the other side of town, and a more specific idea about cutting school for the day.
It was a fine, sunny morning, an unusual February day that hinted at a spring still at least two months away. Despite all that was on his mind, Albert enjoyed the simple activity of walking with the warm sun baking the top of his cold head.
By the time he arrived at the park, Albert had come to a couple of conclusions. Neither conclusion made him too happy, but it felt good to have made any decision at all. He felt more in control now that he had a clear plan of attack. First, he decided, he needed to get into Lily’s room and search it for clues. “Search the room for clues” was the way he phrased it to himself, and it felt idiotic, but there was no other way to put it when he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He just needed something to satisfy himself that there wasn’t some piece missing.
The reason he had to be sure was because of his second conclusion: that he had to find Lily, and then convince her to go to the police.
The fact that the first part of his plan was illegal still wasn’t as frightening as the second part, the idea of just picking up and leaving to track Lily down. What he was thinking about was usually called “running away,” although Albert felt like there were major differences between his reason for leaving and some juvenile delinquent’s. Still, he doubted his parents would give a crap about how he rationalized it. The police probably wouldn’t care, either.
“Doesn’t matter,” he muttered aloud to himself, sounding like the occasional drifters who slept in this park when the weather was nicer.
Albert sat on an empty bench, outwardly so that he could eat the apple from his lunch but really to gather his courage. He had the rest of the day ahead of him, when everyone was either in school or at their job—or seeing patients at their successful dental clinics. It was an excellent time to put the first part of his two-part plan into action and let himself into Lily’s house while it was—probably, hopefully—empty. He hoped he remembered it right, that she’d told him neither her mother nor her stepfather was ever home during the day.
He should’ve felt faint just thinking about it, but in spite of what his father liked to say, Albert was not a drooping flower. He was going to do this crazy thing. He closed his eyes and was able to visualize the flat stone in the garden where he’d seen Lily retrieve the key to the house’s back door. Then he saw himself with that key, slipping easily inside the empty house, stepping down the hall and into her bedroom.
Nothing could be easier.
He opened his eyes. Now all he had to do was leave this bench and go do it for real.
After several more minutes, Albert’s legs got the messages his brain was sending and he stood up abruptly, hurrying back out of the park and toward Lily’s house before he could change his mind. Or come to his senses.
At the far edge of the park was a duck pond, though this time of year the water was drained out and the paddleboats were all locked away somewhere until spring. At one edge of the empty pond was the unoccupied boat rental and snack shack, and beyond that was a small parking lot. There were only two cars in it. Albert had to cross the lot to leave the park. He scanned both cars without much interest, keeping an eye out for the mostly harmless panhandlers this park was know for. The first car, a beat-up orange VW Beetle, was empty. The tan Saab near it wasn’t.
Albert’s eyes happened to meet those of the man slumped in the driver’s seat, and the shock of recognition locked their gazes.
Shit. It was the cop, Andersen.
Knowing it was probably useless, Albert ducked his head and walked faster. But Andersen was out of his car quickly and easily closed the distance between them. There was nowhere for Albert to go, so he stopped.
“I’m pretty sure school is currently in session,” Detective Andersen said when he was almost on top of Albert, by way of greeting. If he was upset at being spotted following Albert, he wasn’t showing it.
Albert shrank, feeling like a naughty child. The idea that this guy had been following him—and might have caught him at something worse that ditching—made him cold all over. But trying to be cool, he said, “You mean it isn’t Saturday?”
“What are you doing off school grounds, Morales?” Andersen asked, ignoring Albert’s smart remark.
“I got lost,” Albert said, resuming walking.
Andersen fell into step with him. “Shall I call your mommy to come pick you up at the station, then?”
Albert stopped again. “What I mean is, I was actually on my way to school.”
“You’re a little late. Why don’t I give you a ride?” Andersen said, jerking his head back toward his car parked behind the empty duck pond.
There was nothing Albert could do but follow the detective across the parking lot to his car. It sucked and Albert didn’t trust him, but it was better than having Andersen call his mother like he’d threatened to do. Once there, Andersen unlocked the car manually and held the door open for Albert, shutting it for him before walking around to get in on the driver’s side.
Andersen started the car and rolled slowly out of the park and onto the main road. Neither of them spoke. Finally, Albert couldn’t stand it any longer. Even though he knew this was a game and by caving in first he would lose, he asked, “How did you know I was there?”
Andersen glanced at him, then back at the road. He pursed his lips, but said nothing.
“Or was it just my lucky day?”
They were just a couple of blocks from the school now. The cop said, “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a person of interest to me and my case and we’re keeping a nice, cozy watch on you.”
“Gee, that is a cozy thought,” said Albert absently, his heart only half interested in goading the guy. His plan for the day had quickly gone into the toilet. Here he was, nearly back at school instead. And with the added bonus of being in more trouble with a guy who already didn’t seem to like him.
“I’m not a truant officer,” Andersen said, “but I think you’d better be in school when you’re supposed to be in school. Don’t make things harder on yourself than you have to.”
Albert nodded. “I already missed my math test, so I’m good. Anyway, I like to wait until it’s at least seventy outside before I start skipping hardcore.” They’d coasted to a stop in front of the school. “Thanks for the ride.”
Albert unfolded himself from the car before
Andersen could say anything else and nudged the door shut behind him. Heading up the steps toward the wide front doors of the school, he felt Andersen’s eyes on his back the entire way. He made himself walk slowly.
It was a weird feeling to know that this changed nothing: he was going to skip school again on Monday and break into Lily’s room, just as he’d planned. He would just have to be more careful this time not to get caught.
“W hy are we stopping?” Olivia asks. “I recognize that gas station up there. We’re almost to the turnoff.”
Albert sinks to his knees, holding up a hand to tell her to give him a moment. He can’t speak, because his asthma is acting up again. He’s annoyed and alarmed … this came on when they hadn’t even been straining. Ignoring the slow transformation of Olivia’s expression from impatience to concern as she watches him pull for air, Albert tries to concentrate on his breathing alone. The crappy part isn’t just the slow constricting of his chest as he struggles for air, but the fact that the more he has to fight the harder it is not to panic, and the more he panics the harder it is to breathe. Not having an inhaler adds an extra negative psychological effect. It’s as if his body knows there’s no help if he can’t get this under control.
“Are you okay?” Olivia asks, bending to bring her face closer to his.
He ignores her question and tries to relax, willing the bad moment to pass. After a while, it does.
“Sorry,” he says when he can speak again. His voice is weak. “Give me another minute and I’ll be fine.”
“Take your time,” she says, turning to look up the road ahead.
“It’s never been this bad. Normally I only use my inhaler about three times a year. Must be the …” He gestures at the trees and the overcast sky.
“Stress?”
Not bothering to explain what he really means, Albert nods his head. Whatever. Then he gets to his feet. “I’m ready. Where are we?”
“I don’t remember the name,” she says, stamping her feet to keep warm. “But after this, we take another jog, north and east, I think. There’s a turn-off, and just a string of those wide-spot-in-the-road tourist stops—food and gas and a motel, I think—before we’re at the lake itself.”