“You’ll have to find someone to get his credit record for you,” she said without a sign that she had noticed Jamie’s rude tone. “Do you know anybody who works in the loan office of a bank?”
Jamie did not. But she called Ian, and Ian did.
It took some doing. Just the name, Jamie Lee Bridger, was not enough. Jamie had to call Silver Valley High School and persuade a secretary to search the old school records for the other Jamie’s birthdate and Social Security number.
Then she had to go around whispering, “Please” to the sky for what seemed like forever.
Only a few hours, actually. Ian called her back the same day. “Jackpot,” Ian sang. “Aren’t fax machines wonderful?”
“You found him?!”
“Just an address. Looks like Jamie’s in the Big Apple. New York City.” Ian read the address to her. Jamie made her spell everything and read everything twice. Then she thanked Ian, hung up the phone and stood taking deep breaths to try to calm down. She was trembling.
This was it. Closer than she had ever been.
She tiptoed upstairs and checked on her grandmother. Lily sat leaning against one wall of her closet, staring at the other wall and tunelessly humming. She would stay that way for hours. Jamie tiptoed back to the phone again. Picked it up with a hand that shook.
“Hello, information?”
A minute later she was shaking even harder, this time with frustration and rage. There was no listing for any Jamie Bridger in New York City or vicinity.
“I can’t believe it!”
It was time for Kate to come home from school. Jamie stomped out to meet her, not caring that she let the door bang.
“I can’t believe after all this he has an unlisted number!”
“What? Who?” Kate stood wide-eyed on the sidewalk.
“Jamie Pain-in-the-Butt Bridger! He’s in New York City somewhere. Kate, can you stay with Grandma this weekend?” Jamie’s tone veered from furious to pleading. “She can’t get much worse than she already is. I have to go find him.”
“Jamie, are you crazy? In New York City?”
“Kate, please! I have to! Look, all I have to do is take a taxi from the bus station and go to the address. If I don’t find him, I’ll just turn around and take a bus home. I won’t stay overnight. I won’t get into any trouble. Kate?”
Kate stood looking at her with worried eyes.
“Please, Kate?”
“As if I could make you not do it,” Kate grumped. She blew out a long breath. “All right. But you be real careful, Jamie, you hear?”
Chapter
8
The bus trip to New York was a long one, six hours, and Jamie sat hunched forward the whole time, clutching between her knees the tote bag Kate had insisted on in case she got stranded, chewing her nails and trying not to think. If she let herself think, she would be sick right in her lap; she knew it. Don’t think.
Could she find him? Would he answer her knock at the door? What would she say if he did? “Listen, I’m Jamie Bridger too, and I think you’re my—”
Don’t think.
In the city the crowds and traffic and noise made the knot in Jamie’s chest pull yet tighter. There were dirty white flutters of trash everywhere—that bothered her. At home Mrs. Leweski would have picked it all up, no matter how long it took. Under the trash everything looked gray to Jamie, and there was a gray buzzing feeling in her head from exhaust fumes. Even the birds were gray. Sparrows. Pigeons.
I don’t belong here.
And people seemed to know she didn’t belong. She must have been doing something wrong, or else being an out-of-town kid with a tote bag was wrong, because the taxis would not stop for her. Once one finally pulled over, the driver barely spoke English. She had to tell him the address twice, then sit with her fists clenched and hope he knew where he was going.
The traffic moved unlike any traffic Jamie had previously experienced, not in lanes but in blobs and stops and stampedes. Inches from another taxi her driver gestured and cursed—in a foreign language, but Jamie could tell it was cursing. The meter muttered and mumbled to itself the whole time whether her taxi was moving or not, doing its sums.
Abruptly the driver pulled over at a corner. “Here go,” he said.
He meant—was this it? Rattled, Jamie got out, pulled her money out of her jeans pocket and paid him the unbelievable amount that was winking on the meter. The taxi driver sat looking at her a minute, but she was not paying attention; she was staring around at a bewilderment of buildings. She was just about to try to ask the taxi driver which one it was when he made an angry noise in his throat, then roared away.
The names on the street sign seemed unrelated to the address she wanted. Jamie had no idea which direction to walk but started walking anyway, trying to look more like a New Yorker and less like a hick from the sticks. This seemed like a quieter section than the crowded area around the Port Authority. There weren’t many people on the sidewalks here, and the ones Jamie saw were hurrying and scowling. There were no shops, no shopkeepers Jamie could ask for directions, just blocky buildings that must be office buildings and—apartments, one of them the other Jamie Bridger’s apartment building. So close. Jamie was too nervous to think straight. The few building numbers she saw seemed to be about right, but where was the street?
Jamie came to another street sign. The street numbers seemed to be getting farther away from the one she wanted. Feeling very lost, she turned around and started back the way she had come, hurrying now, scowling with worry. This city was too big, too gray, and where were all the people when she needed them?
But half a block past the corner where her taxi had originally left her, she began with a surge of relief to understand. There was construction, the road torn up, her taxi would not have been able to get through. The number street she needed would be the next one. And the building, judging by the building numbers she had seen on the other streets, would be—there. Looking up ahead and off to her right, Jamie could see a brick apartment building that might be it.
Across a vacant lot from her.
A vacant lot surrounded by a high plywood fence. But there were boards torn off to make an entry, and a path worn into the weeds and rubble on the other side. People went through here.
Instinctively Jamie ducked in to go that way, not so much because it was a shortcut as because it was a space in the city, and her chest needed space, air, green. There were plantain and dandelions making soft hills of the rubble where something had been torn down. There were sumac bushes. Dime-sized yellow clover heads blooming around all sorts of trash. Chicory growing through somebody’s dead shirt matted onto the ground.
Her mind on her destination, Jamie did not so much observe any of this as sense it—a hint of country, even here. Wildflowers insistent, like hope. Jamie’s shoulders unhunched for the first time in hours, opening like wings so that she breathed more freely. Eagerly she strode toward where she hoped to find the other Jamie Bridger.
Broken bricks underfoot, amid daisies. A corner of what used to be a brick gas station or something still standing. The path went around it. Jamie followed the path—
“Hand it over,” a hard voice said. A narrow-faced man in dirty jeans stood glowering at her, blocking her way.
Kate stood looking out Mamaw’s living-room window, watching the real estate agent put up a FOR SALE sign on the Garibay front lawn, wishing she could go rip it out and throw it in the garbage and that would make a difference. This was one time when talking with her parents for hours hadn’t helped; they felt they had to move away, but Kate just didn’t want to. Mostly because of Jamie. Even if Jamie hadn’t been in sixteen kinds of difficulties, Kate would have felt that way.
She sighed, not looking forward to the moment when Jamie saw that stupid sign. Kate had put off telling Jamie and put off telling Jamie, but now she would not be able to put off telling her any longer. It was all settled. Her mother and father had found a place in the rich eastern Pennsylvani
a farm country not far from the state capital. Moving date was coming up in less than a month.
Jamie ought to be in New York by now. Kate sighed again, this time with worry. Being afraid of the big city was so small-town, so uncool, but still—Kate hoped Jamie was okay.
The phone rang.
Kate jumped, then ran to answer it, her heart thumping. Jamie had promised she would call when she had news.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Jamie, this is Ian,” said a bright and breezy voice.
“Oh, hi, Ian. This isn’t Jamie, this is Kate.” As if Ian knew who Kate was. “I’m taking care of things here while she’s away,” she added by way of explanation, feeling herself cloud up with worrying about Jamie again. “Jamie went to New York to try to find her father.”
“She did?” Ian sounded surprised, but not as anxious as Kate. “I thought she’d write him first. Well, I’ve got a letter from him.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh. He wrote the high school a couple weeks back asking them to get him in touch with his class, and they just now forwarded his letter to me. Those birdbrains at the school office had his address and phone number the whole time.” Ian sounded more bemused than annoyed. “They could have given it to Jamie when she called.”
Kate was neither bemused nor annoyed—she was furious for Jamie’s sake. Jamie could have had the information she needed a couple of weeks ago. Jamie was blundering around in New York when she could have just phoned—but Kate forced herself to be calm. “Why don’t you give me the phone number, and I’ll see that she gets it.”
“Okay, certainly.” Ian read it off while Kate wrote it down. “You’ll be sure to tell her I called?”
“Sure.” As soon as she could get rid of Ian, Kate picked up the phone again and dialed the number Ian had given her, with no idea what she was going to say. She couldn’t tell this man things Jamie should tell him herself, but she felt like she had to do something. Maybe Jamie would be there already, and Kate would be able to stop worrying. Or maybe she would just tell the other Jamie Bridger that Jamie was on the way to see him about something important, and he should stay close to the doorbell. That was it. She would make sure he stayed home and waited for Jamie.
Three rings, four, five. Please, somebody answer. Eight rings, nine, ten. Somebody pick up the phone? Please?
But nobody did. There was nobody home. Oh damn, double damn, triple damn, nobody was going to be there when Jamie got there.
“Hand it over!” the narrow-faced man said again, louder and harder, keeping one hand in the pocket of his dirty jeans as if he had something there—a knife, a gun?
Used to walking by herself in the woods, Jamie had seldom in her life thought about predators. There just weren’t that many in Dexter, but now—stunned by surprise, taken off guard, she had not reacted, and the man in dirty jeans was getting upset. Hand it over? One moment she had been finding a father and the next minute this angry stranger was in her face, frightening her, she couldn’t think, nothing made sense, and the only thing in her hand was her tote bag—he wanted it for some reason? She held it out to him.
He snatched it with his left hand, keeping his right hand in his pocket. He tossed it up, caught it by the corner and dumped it. A plastic bag of animal crackers, a ham sandwich wrapped in wax paper, photocopies of yearbook pictures of Jamie Bridger, spare T-shirt and undies, all tumbled down and lay amid bricks and daisies. The man in dirty jeans kicked aside the clothing, the sandwich, the papers.
“Bitch! Where’s your money?” His right hand jumped out of his pocket, empty but curled into a fist. He punched her in the face.
Jamie screamed. She had never in her life been a screamer, but she had never in her life been so shocked and hurt and furious either. Even more furious than scared. Screaming with fury, she tried to hit him back. But he was stronger than she was. He punched her again, in the eye.
“Hand it over! Now!”
She could see nothing but black-and-red special effects, but she could hear him yelling in her ear, and she could hear herself screeching like a wildcat, and no way was she handing anything over. Who the hell did he think he was? Just because he was bigger than she was, he thought he could hit her, take the money she needed to get home? Jamie was so mad she didn’t think what might happen, just flailed out blindly at him. And she kicked, feeling the toe of her sneaker connect where she hoped it hurt.
Maybe it did, because he yelled, “You crazy slut! I’ll kill you!” He swung again.
“Let her alone!” somebody shouted. Blurrily Jamie saw another man running across the vacant lot toward her. Then Dirty Jeans walloped her a nasty one. She fell to the brick-strewn ground.
But Jamie did not mind, because it was the last time he hit her. And looking up past a tuft of daisies she had quite a dramatic view as Jamie Bridger stepped over her and punched the mugger, nice and hard, in the jaw.
“Ow,” Bridger complained, mocking and scorching mad. “You hurt my hand.” He punched again, a solid uppercut. He looked older than his yearbook pictures, of course, and a lot tougher, bending the bad guy double with a gut punch. But Jamie knew him. She would have known him anywhere.
“Get out,” he said to Dirty Jeans, giving him a shove. The mugger took the hint and scuttled away toward the hole in the fence. Somebody else, a curly-haired bear of a blond man, was bending over Jamie, but she hardly looked at him. Her whole attention was fixed on Bridger, Jamie Bridger, standing there tall and spraddlelegged, his shoulders lifting as he took in a long breath, settling as he blew it out to blow away his anger. His hands relaxed, no longer curled into fists. He turned around.
Jamie struggled to sit up, making it only halfway. “Wait,” Bridger told her. “Don’t move.” He started toward her.
“Jamie,” she said to him.
For a moment everything just stopped. He froze, staring at her. The blond man, picking up Jamie’s things from the ground, froze with a sheet of paper in his hand.
Arms braced to steady herself, Jamie said in a voice that was not quite working smoothly. “You’re Jamie Bridger. My name’s Jamie Bridger too.”
“Bridge,” said the blond man, “look.” He was holding up one of Jamie’s yearbook photocopies. “She knows you. She was probably coming to see you.”
Bridger glanced wide-eyed from Jamie to his own teenage photocopied face to Jamie again, stunned, bewildered—his mouth opened without speaking. Jamie wanted to get up and go to him and tell him it was all right. She tried to heave herself off the ground. But Bridger exclaimed, “Whoa!” and strode over to kneel beside her. “Lie still,” he said. “First things first.”
She liked his voice, quiet and gruff, but she had her own ideas of first things. Her thoughts were moving like Shirley’s turtles, slow but intent on what they wanted. She said to Bridger, “Are you my father?”
“Shhh. Don’t try to talk.” With one hand he reached out and lightly touched her head, tilting it a little, looking her over for injuries. “Your nose is bleeding.” He turned to his friend. “David, you got any Kleenex?”
“Like I carry Kleenex?”
Bridger rolled his eyes and reached for something cottony and pink lying on the ground, but when he tried to dab at Jamie with it, she pulled back.
“That’s my spare underpants.”
“Good lord, I’ll buy you more underpants, okay? We better get you inside. Can you walk?”
Jamie held the makeshift hankie to her nose as Bridger lifted her under one arm, David under the other. On her feet she swayed like the daisies. Still hanging onto her, Bridger scooped up her tote bag and steered her forward. He and his friend supported her between them as she walked none too steadily across the vacant lot, around a corner, through a doorway, into a vestibule. Time had blurred. Standing in the elevator required concentration. She heard low-voiced conversation without really listening: Damn lucky the guy didn’t have a gun. Should we call the cops? What good would it do? Suppose she’s a runaway? Let me talk with her
first. Some time later she blinked with surprise and discovered that she was no longer standing in the elevator, but lying on a sofa in Bridger’s apartment. It was a classy-looking place, decorated Art Deco style, with lots of pink and gray and shiny surfaces. But Jamie did not remember walking in.
Bridger came out of what might have been the kitchen and hurried across the room to her, carrying wads of cotton and a bag of crushed ice. He sat on the edge of the sofa beside her, packed her nose with the cotton, felt at it to make sure it was not broken, then carefully positioned the ice on it. “You took a couple of really nasty shots,” he said.
“I’m okay.”
“Don’t try to move. Is your vision blurry?”
“No.”
“Follow my finger with your eyes.” He moved it from side to side, then down and up. Jamie had no trouble tracking it. “Do you remember what happened?” Bridger asked her.
“Sure. Mugger slugged me.”
Bridger smiled. It was a beautiful smile, wide as sunrise and warm as sunshine. “You’re okay.”
David came and stood beside Bridger, handing him three different kinds of antiseptic. Bridger leaned over Jamie and began cautiously to dab at the damage. He was very gentle for a guy who could punch so hard. “Just relax and close your eyes,” he said in that gruff voice of his, and it sounded like a wonderful idea. Jamie closed her eyes, lay still and breathed deeply through her mouth, letting him take care of her. Being taken care of felt good. After everything that had been happening, it felt like the first time anybody had taken care of her in the history of the world.
“Jamie?” she whispered after a while.
“Nobody calls me that anymore,” he said quietly, removing the cotton from her nose. “There, you seem to be done bleeding. Call me Bridger. Or Bridge.”
She opened her eyes to look at him. “Bridge—my name is Jamie Bridger too.”
Looking for Jamie Bridger Page 7