You did a good thing. A good thing. Well, that’s nice for a change.
I grab my sleeping bag from behind the boulder, stuff it into the pack and swing it onto my back before heading up to join Nessa. I find her right where I left her, sitting cross-legged on the ground, ripping the bark off a dead branch.
“Hank,” she says, nodding as if to reassure herself. “You came back.”
“Of course I did.”
She sighs, a deep inhale and exhale that racks her small body. Then tears start rolling down her face, leaving tracks in the dirt. Damn. I hate to see a girl cry. It just makes me want to go find the person who hurt her and beat him up.
“What’s going on, Nessa?”
“It’s Jack,” she says in a whisper. “He’s hurt, bad.”
“Where is he?”
She scrambles to her feet and grabs my hand with icy fingers. “I’ll take you.”
Holding my hand tight like a little girl, Nessa leads me through the woods and down to the path, then over fallen trees and new spring undergrowth, to a hiding place on the other side of the pond.
“We came to Concord to look for you,” she says, anticipating my questions. “You left us plenty of clues, like your name. Henry David. Jack remembered that. And he remembered the book you showed him, Walden, and how you said it was a clue to who you are. It wasn’t hard to do a little research and find out where Walden is. We figured if we hung around here long enough, you might just show up. Which you did.”
“But why did you steal that guy’s stuff ?”
Nessa’s face is dirty, but a red flush shows through. “I just happened to walk by and saw clothes and thought maybe there was food in that pack. We need clean clothes and we’re hungry. Do you blame me?”
I shrug. Doesn’t matter now. Plus, it’s not like I can judge stealing after all the laws I’ve broken in the past few weeks. “So why did you leave New York? And what happened to Jack?”
Nessa pulls the black hat down over her ears. “Things got bad with Magpie, so we had to get out of there.” She says. “He was really mad after you left, even though Jack told him he tried to stop you from leaving. But he was pissed at both of us. I thought he liked us, that he wanted to take care of us, but he got so mean. He started getting meaner and meaner. He started hurting Jack almost every day. And then, me.”
“Magpie was hurting you?” I ask Nessa. She nods, not meeting my eyes. All I want to do is take Magpie by his proper English neck and squeeze the proper English life right out of him.
“The worst was a couple days ago. Magpie sent Jack to collect a debt from one of his clients. The guy wouldn’t pay. But when Jack came back empty-handed, Magpie didn’t believe him. He got so mad he beat Jack up. I think he broke his arm.” Tears streak down Nessa’s dirty cheeks. “I was so upset, I went to the client myself and made him give me the money.” I don’t even want to know how she managed that, so I don’t ask. “But then Jack and I ran away. There’s no way either of us was going back.”
“You mean, you stole the money from Magpie?”
“The way we saw it, he owed it to us. Every penny.”
“Somehow, I don’t think he’d see it that way,” I say. A realization dawns on me. “Hey, did you come looking for me at the high school? Did you ask a lady janitor about me?”
“Yeah. Jack thought he saw you walk into the school. I didn’t think the guy looked like you, but Jack is not always so clear on stuff these days.”
So it was Nessa, dressed as a boy, and Jack, who came looking for me and talked to Sophie. Not Magpie or any of the scary guys who work for him. I’m safe. Maybe we’re all safe.
“Jack was in so much pain the whole way.” Nessa leads me off the path to push through some thicker underbrush. She swipes at her nose with the end of her scarf. “I had to give him something.”
“Like what?”
“Something for the pain.”
“Jesus, Nessa.”
“They were pills. I don’t know what kind. Magpie gave them to us, and we were going to sell them. But Jack needed some.”
Shit. This keeps getting worse. I have no idea what I’m going to find when I finally lay eyes on Jack.
We skirt around a thick oak tree and see their hiding place under the ledge of a huge lichen-covered rock. Jack is there, and at first, I swear he looks dead lying there on a bed of brown leaves, his worn army jacket laid over him like a blanket. Sleeping with his mouth open, he looks six instead of sixteen. Nessa kneels next to him in the leaves and rests a hand on his shoulder. I drop my pack on the ground and stand looking down at them both, feeling helpless.
“Jack, I found him. I found Hank,” she says softly. Nothing. He doesn’t even twitch. “C’mon, Jack, wake up.” She jiggles his shoulder, but he’s motionless. We lock eyes. Did they make it all the way here to Walden only for Jack to overdose and die here in the woods? Nessa shakes him again, harder this time.
“Fuck!” Jack jolts straight up, his eyes bulging. We rear back, taken totally off guard. “Goddamn, Nessa,” he moans, falling back into the leaves. “That’s my sore arm.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, tears flooding her eyes. “I…I found Hank. I brought him here.”
Jack holds his arm close to his chest like it’s a broken wing, eyes screwed shut against the pain. Then takes a couple deep breaths before looking up to acknowledge my presence.
“Hey, ugly,” he says at last, like the first time we met, and I almost smile. But his voice is weak and slurred, and there’s a purple bruise on his cheekbone.
“How you feeling, Jack?”
He winces. “Terrible, man. I think my arm’s broke. Magpie—”
“Yeah, I know. Nessa told me.”
He needs help. But here we are, way off the path in Walden Woods, too far from the road for a car to get in. And there’s no way I’ll be calling an ambulance or alerting the park rangers.
“Can you eat, Jack? You hungry?”
“Always hungry.”
I reach into my backpack and pull out the food I brought along for breakfast. “Here. You’re even skinnier than the last time I saw you. Eat this.”
I hand him a couple glazed doughnuts and open a container of apple juice. He wolfs the doughnuts down like he hasn’t eaten in days. Nessa eats one and lets Jack devour the rest.
“Okay, Jack, this is what we’re going to do,” I tell him. “Nessa and I are going to help you walk out of the woods, and we’ll find a place for you to sit, closer to the street. Then I’m going to go get help.”
“No, Hank.” Even though he’s sick and hurt, there’s no doubt Jack would attack like a rabid dog if he felt cornered. “We didn’t come all this way for you to get us sent back to our fucking father.”
He scratches at his face like he wants to peel off his own skin, and Nessa starts to whimper again. I pull his hands from his face.
“Jack, relax. I promise that won’t happen. I have friends here, and I trust them. One is a nurse. She helped me when I was sick, and she’ll help you.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Nessa whispers gently to Jack.
“We can’t go back to New York. We have to trust Hank.”
Jack gives me a long look that flickers between suspicion and hope. “Okay,” he says at last.
I stuff my backpack under a rocky ledge and make a mental note of its location so I can pick it up later. Then together, Nessa and I help Jack to his feet. I pull my own coat over his shoulders as he cradles his injured arm. His other arm, I drape around my neck.
The three of us stagger through the woods near the beginning of the path to Walden Pond, not far from the parking area. “Stay here,” I say. “I’ll be back with my friends as soon as I can. Don’t go anywhere. Promise?”
The two of them sit down on a stone wall near the beach area of the pond. Jack stares hollow-eyed into the shallow water, clearly surrendering to whatever might be next.
“Right. Where else we gonna go?”
�
��Sweetie, I’m so sorry, but this is going to hurt,” says Suzanne in a soft voice.
Jack is lying on the green leather couch in Thomas’s living room. Suzanne kneels in front of him with his injured arm cradled in her hands, while Nessa, Thomas, and I stand nearby, feeling useless. Still dressed in the blue scrubs she wore during her overnight shift at the hospital, Suzanne is in total nurse mode.
“The good news is that your arm isn’t broken,” she says. “The bad news is that it’s dislocated, and getting the joint back in place takes some messing around with your sore shoulder. Ready?”
Jack’s face is white and his eyes look enormous in his thin face, but he nods. Nessa buries her face in my shoulder as Suzanne takes hold of Jack’s arm, pulls it toward her, then pushes back. Jack howls in pain, but through gritted teeth, says, “Do it,” so Suzanne does. With a sick, audible pop, his shoulder slips back into its socket.
“Better?” asks Suzanne.
“Yeah,” says Jack in a strangled whisper. Nessa lets out a deep breath into my chest and I feel the heat of it through my shirt.
Suzanne folds a big black bandana into a triangle and knots it around Jack’s neck to create a sling. Gently, she tucks his arm into it and presses it against his chest.
“It’s still going to hurt for a while, Jack. But you should feel better in a few days.”
Jack closes his eyes without responding, and Thomas pulls an afghan off the back of the couch and spreads it over Jack’s body. He looks so small just lying there with the fight drained out of him, but I know it’s temporary. Jack’s a fighter. He’ll be back.
“Get some sleep now, buddy,” Thomas says.
Suzanne turns to Nessa. “So, Nessa,” she says, using her nice-nurse-lady voice, like she’s talking to a five-year-old. “Would you like to take a nap too or maybe a bath?”
After all the sick adult stuff Nessa has been through on the streets, it probably feels good to have somebody speak to her like she’s a child. She smiles and I get a glimpse of the girl she might be if she’d had a normal life. “Both, please,” she says. “Can I have the bath first?”
Suzanne leads Nessa upstairs. We hear them discuss bubbles versus bath salts, whatever those are, and Nessa sounds so happy being normal, just being a kid and a girl.
Thomas juts his chin toward the kitchen. “Coffee?” he asks me.
“Sure.” We go in, and I sit down at the nicked wood table. He pours a cup for me in a blue mug that says The Thoreau Society on the side. Hands it to me with a tight smile.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” I say, low enough that Jack won’t hear me, if he’s even awake enough to listen. “I didn’t know they’d follow me here.”
“Well,” he says slowly, and I can tell he’s being cautious. It was one thing for Thomas to help me out, but another to take in my messed-up friends. “Obviously, they need help.”
“Yeah, they do.” I think of the bruises on Jack’s face, remember Nessa crying in the shack behind the Dumpster that first night. And Magpie’s cruel smile. “They really do.”
Suzanne comes downstairs and joins us in the kitchen. “Poor thing. She’s filthy. I put her in the tub for a nice, long soak. I just hope she doesn’t fall asleep in there.”
After pouring herself a cup of coffee, she joins us at the table, adds a spoonful of sugar to her coffee, and stirs while we watch in numb silence. “So, Hank, we need to call somebody. You know that, right?”
Alarm prickles my scalp. “Like who?”
“Child services.”
“They can’t be sent back to their dad. He was abusing them.”
Thomas’s eyes harden and his big, callused hands flex unconsciously into fists on the table. If he knew the whole story, he’d want to smack more than a few people around. The thought of Thomas in warrior mode is weirdly comforting.
“Would they have to go back home?” I ask. “I mean, if the authorities knew they were here?”
“Not if there’s abuse,” Suzanne says. “They might be placed in a foster home.”
Thomas clenches his jaw and his temple throbs. “That’s not always the best solution either.”
“Not always,” she agrees, and I can tell by the way she covers one of his fists with her hand that she knows at least something about his past. “But it’s better than being on the streets.”
“They can’t go out on the streets again,” I say, thinking of Magpie and all the other potential Magpies out there. “There’s no way.”
Suzanne takes a thoughtful sip of coffee. “There are programs through the hospital to help kids like them. Let me make a few calls.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say, wondering how I could ever fully thank them for everything. After draining my coffee cup, I excuse myself and go into the living room to check on Jack.
“You okay, dude?”
Jack opens one slitted eye and groans.
“So sorry about the shoulder, Jack,” I say. “That really sucks.”
“Hank,” he says through teeth tight with pain. He shoots a glance toward the kitchen and then waves me closer so I’ll lean in to listen to his lowered voice. “It’s not just my arm. Need some pills. Just a little Oxy would do it. Or Xanax. Please, Hank?” He holds out a pleading hand, and I can see how badly it’s shaking. “Something, anything,” he murmurs.
“Can’t do it, buddy.” I feel that familiar dark urge to wrap my hands around Magpie’s neck and squeeze, because I’m sure he’s the one who got Jack hooked. It’s possible Jack was even an addict when I first met him, but I didn’t recognize the signs. “I’m sorry.”
The only thing I can do for Jack now is just be with him and be his friend. So I collapse into an overstuffed chair and watch over him as he shivers and twitches and eventually falls asleep. Laying my head back, I close my eyes and start to doze off too. I’m exhausted after my restless night in the woods and everything that happened at Walden after I woke up.
Funny, I went looking for Thoreau and found Jack and Nessa instead. And that’s good, I guess. But I can’t help wondering if I’ll ever see Henry again.
16
Hailey looks smoking hot when she drives over to pick me up for the Battle of the Bands that night. Smudged black lines around her eyes make them smoky and sexy, and she’s wearing this tight black outfit and black leather boots that make her look like a rock star, or maybe Catwoman. Like I said, hot.
“Hailey, you’re gorgeous.” I give her a kiss. Her lips are trembling. So are her earrings, one a red feather, the other black. “You’re going to kick ass tonight.”
She smiles and reaches over to wipe her red lipstick off my mouth. “You too,” she says. But her fingers, shiny with black nail polish, are shaking as they grip the steering wheel. She pulls the keys out of the ignition and holds them out to me with a pleading expression. “Will you drive, Hank? I’m too nervous.”
Automatically I accept the keys, but my blood turns to ice. The last time I drove a car was that day with Rosie, the day of the accident. Just the feel of the keys forces the bitter smell of brake fluid into my sinuses and I see the gray truck coming for us before the memory shuts down. I’m so dizzy I want to rest my head on the dashboard for a while, but I don’t. Forcing the memories away, I cram them into a closet and slam the door.
Today is about Hailey. I have to pull Hailey through this night before I can consider my own ruined life. So we switch seats and I get behind the wheel like everything’s cool, turn the key, put my foot on the brake, and adjust the rearview mirror. Then I turn up the classic rock radio station—some rocking tune by Aerosmith—and give Hailey a cheesy double thumbs-up to show her all is well. Then, with the car jerking forward as I remember how to work the accelerator, we drive off to school for the Battle of the Bands.
The auditorium has been completely transformed into the closest thing a high school auditorium can be to a dance club. White lights are strung everywhere, silver disco balls and stars hang from the ceiling, and a light machine sweeps multicolored beams around
the room. The first several rows of seats have been pulled out and put into storage to create a mosh pit–dance floor area in front of the stage.
Two performance areas are set up, splitting the stage in half, both with drum kits already assembled, speakers, monitors, and amps all in place. All the musicians need to do is plug in and play. While one band is in the spotlight, the next band can get ready for their turn on the darkened half of the stage.
“Whoa, this is awesome,” I say.
“Duuuuudes.” A deep drawling voice comes from behind us, there’s Sam, wearing a black T-shirt with the word Zildjian across the front in white letters, his drum brand of choice. Drumsticks stick out of his back jeans pocket.
“Nice set-up, eh?” I ask him.
He sweeps the stage with a sleepy gaze and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Sweet.” The guy is so relaxed I wonder if he has a pulse. I wish he could transfer some of his laid-back calm to the girl currently cutting off all circulation to my arm.
“Hey, guys.”
I turn, see Ryan, and do a double take. He’s wearing tight white pants, a black shirt with a white tie, and shiny black ankle boots. If that wasn’t enough, he’s got a black fedora pulled down over one eye and sunglasses with red frames. The three of us stare at him, taking this all in, not sure what to say. Then Sam snorts, and we all start to laugh.
“What?” Ryan pulls off his sunglasses.
“Nice outfit,” I say.
“Dude, are you wearing makeup?” Sam asks.
“Just a little eyeliner. I borrowed it from my sister.
Come on, we’re rock stars tonight, why not look like it?” He smiles, punches me in the arm.
“Better to play like one than look like one,” I say, punching him back.
“Ah, here they are, Carpe Diem.” Ms. Coleman approaches us, clutching a clipboard. She’s wearing huge dangly earrings that look like disco balls and a silvery shirt that reflects the colored lights sweeping the auditorium. “There are ten bands playing tonight. You’re scheduled here.” She jabs a finger at her list, and we circle around to see.
“Next to the last,” Sam observes. “That’s actually a really good place to be. We’ll be fresh in everybody’s mind when they do the voting.”
Being Henry David Page 16