“What’s that?” Kaya asked, following my eyes.
“Nothing,” I said.
Kaya stared up at me and her eyes flashed wide and filled with tears, but I really truly did not care.
I was not going to tell my sister that Dad was in that urn. I didn’t even want to think about it myself. Flashes of bubbling, melting flesh and cracking bones erupted in my mind, and no mental effort seemed to stop them. A proper coffin with a body in it would be much easier somehow. I didn’t listen to the minister or to my uncle, and I only mouthed the words to the songs.
Later we stood with Mom, and all the people walked past us in a line and hugged us one by one. There were a number of strangers, so I didn’t think much of the tall, dark-haired woman and the elderly man with a cane and a British accent. I let the woman kiss my cheek and express her sympathy.
“I’m Jennifer,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I let the man take my hand in his. “And I’m Mr. Grimsby,” he said. “Alan Grimsby.” His hand was cool and dry.
Behind us, my twelve-year-old sister was spread out on the floor with her paper and her coloured pencils. She must have seen Mr. Grimsby in the line, but I didn’t see how she reacted. I do remember looking back at her at one point. I was furious at her for getting out of the line, for being a kid.
She was drawing a swan. It was huge, crooked and smudgy, taking up a whole sheet of paper, which she had unfolded to fill the space in front of her. When I looked at her, she refolded the paper.
Later, in the car, she held the wad of paper in her lap, along with the box of coloured pencils.
My hand lighted on the paper, almost without my willing it, my thumb sliding underneath to take the sheets from her. “Can I see?” I said casually.
I yelped as her arm came down hard on my hand.
“Girls,” Mom said, her voice strange, thick.
I leaned toward Kaya and dropped my voice to a whisper. “You don’t have to show them to me. I’m just curious what sort of pictures a kid draws at her father’s funeral. You’re not a baby anymore, you know.”
She clutched the drawings, refusing to look at me.
“Mom said I didn’t even have to come,” she hissed. “You heard her.”
She angled her face away from me and clenched her jaw. Mine was clenched too, but I held my gaze on her—and she knew it, even if she wouldn’t look.
Unlike Kaya, I had to help out at the reception we held at our house. Food had to be unwrapped and put out, drinks offered. When I went into the living room later on to put out dishes of nuts, I found Kaya perched on the end of the couch, watching the front door. There was an intensity about her that bothered me, but then, everything about her was bothering me that day.
As I hovered in the doorway, Mom crossed the room and bent over Kaya, gathered her into a hug and buried her face in her hair. Kaya raised her arms politely and placed them on Mom’s back. I watched Mom’s shoulders heave. At last two of Mom’s friends gathered round her, pulling her off Kaya and into their arms, where she cried some more. Kaya shook herself off and looked, once again, at the front door. I put the nuts down and headed back to the kitchen, but Kaya shoved past me before I got there, and I watched her head out onto the back deck, where the smokers were.
After that, I don’t remember noticing her until later, on the stairs. She was on her way up, cheeks flushed, hair extra curly with damp ends, and she was holding two orange rosebuds on short stems.
She couldn’t get past me, so I had her captive for a moment. “Where’d those come from?” I asked. “You went out somewhere, didn’t you. Where?”
She looked up at me. “I was here,” she said.
“But who gave those to you?”
“Nobody,” she said.
“Did you take them?”
“No. They’re mine.”
She was clutching them tight, and her whole face was gathered up into pure possession.
Something in me must have been equally determined. “Then who gave them to you?” I asked again.
“Mr. Grimsby,” she said.
At the church, I hadn’t recognized the bent-over man leaning on a cane, but when Kaya said his name, I found myself back on the corner of Discovery and Fourteenth, letting him take my hand in his. I’m Mr. Grimsby, he had said.
“I didn’t think he came to the house,” I said as Kaya tried to wedge herself past me up the narrow stairs.
“He gave them to me at the church,” she said. “Let me by.”
And I did. I let her and her roses pass me on the stairs. I abandoned my curiosity and went back to resenting her as I said goodbye to guest after guest and helped Mom clean up.
Two years have passed since then. Another funeral. Shoplifting. Juvenile detention. Running away. Drugs, I’m pretty sure. The word prostitution keeps floating into my mind.
Mr. Grimsby’s the key to all of it, I know it, but he’s dead, and Kaya’s gone, and Mom’s posters and midnight searches seem to be getting us nowhere.
I need a plan.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kaya
Mom gives you a run for your money. So do the police, since you’ve broken your probation, which makes those first couple of weeks kind of tricky. Not to mention the bloody, brain-spattered nightmares.
The worst moment, though, the one that sends you straight into oblivion, is the poster.
You plan to go straight for Sarah when you get down there. You’re ready to tell her the whole story, or big parts of it. She’ll help you once she knows. She won’t just shove you onto the next bus.
Before you reach Princess Avenue, though, you run into Jim.
He takes one look at you dragging that silly suitcase covered in lambs and chickens, and he knows you’re easy pickings. Next thing you know, you’re back in his room with a needle in your arm. He climbs on top of you, paying himself back, you suppose, but you hardly care, you feel so good. That’s the thing of it: people can hurt you; people can reject you, neglect you, die on you; people can even blow their brains out without thinking of you—and if you can get your hands on some heroin, none of it matters. It all floats away, even a heavy unwashed body right on top of you, a grubby hand yanking your clothes out of the way … even that doesn’t really matter. Not all that much.
Jim keeps you close this time. He brings the men in. He tosses greasy McDonald’s takeout bags of food onto the bed.
When you ask about Sarah, he shrugs. “Sarah who?”
He doesn’t lock you in, though, or handcuff you to the bed, and one afternoon when you’re alone, you dig around in your suitcase for some clean clothes, get dressed and head out. You’ll come back within an hour, you think as you open the door to the street—before he gets back, long before you start shaking and puking.
The crisp air brings instant tears, as the world, the real place where you’re standing—Earth—compels you, woos you with a stunted tree, a few red leaves still hanging on, with the blue sky, when you look up, with a dog’s face in the window of a car, tongue lolling.
You gulp, and take off down the street at a good clip. Candy, you’re thinking, some of those Pocky sticks would be so good. And a Coke. You managed to scrabble together almost five dollars. The closest store is right on Hastings, on the corner. The man behind the counter does not smile at you, but he’s not exactly rude either. He nods as he takes your money, gives you change. You step around the corner, off Hastings, and open your Coke, enjoying the fizzy sound, anticipating the first cold, sweet swig. You have your head tilted back, the can to your mouth, when you see her.
Sarah.
She is staring out at you, smiling brightly, from a small white poster behind the bars in the store window. Missing, the poster says. You stand there looking for a long time.
Then you shove the Pocky sticks in your pocket, drop the Coke in a garbage can and start walking east down Hastings, past Main. You’re breathless by the time you arrive and your body is starting to long for a fix, but you
ignore it.
When you turn onto Princess, you stop, awestruck. The grey house, rundown as ever, is all garden now. Two huge sunflowers rise from pots on either side of the never-used front door, and between the two houses, some sort of vines are strung up. You stare. Beans. A couple of enormous beans still hang from the plants. Another sort of vine with roundish leaves and red and yellow flowers trails along the ground. Nasturtiums. You feel a moment’s pleasure at your knowledge of the name, before you remember that you learned it from Mr. G.
You duck and weave round the house, through the bean plants, and climb the steps. This time you don’t hesitate. You bang away with all your strength.
“Charlie!” you call out.
He comes. The door opens.
He looks at you. “Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?” he says, but not in a mean way.
“Where’s Sarah?” you ask, your voice sharp.
He stares for a moment, and his crumbly body crumbles a little more. Then he starts to close the door in your face. “Hey, take yourself off, kid,” he says.
“Where is she?” you say again, softening your expression and your voice.
“I don’t know,” he says. “A lot of people have been asking. The police were even here last week.” He pauses. “Took them long enough.”
“How long’s it been?” you ask, reaching up to wipe a sudden sheet of sweat off your forehead.
“Couple months,” he replies. He seems to take pity on you. “Hey, come on in. I can give you a little something.”
He doesn’t seem to expect anything from you in exchange for the drugs, though really it’s a pretty small hit. It just stops the sweats and the shaking.
“Come here,” he says. “I want to show you.”
You find yourself in the battered living room, where some guy is on the nod on the couch, with that same scrawny kitten, now larger and scrawnier, curled up on his back. Those prowling ghostly cats in the park flash into your mind.
In front of you is a door with an open padlock hanging off it: Sarah’s room, where you slept that one night. Charlie opens the door and ushers you in. You have visions of Bluebeard’s chamber, awash with blood and hung with dead wives, but you step through the doorway and look around.
“I showed the cop,” he says, “but he wasn’t all that interested.”
The room is a mess, jammed with stuff, clothes mixed with junk. They are shoved onto shelves, heaped on the bed, the floor. A closet at the end of the room stands mostly empty, just a few metal hangers, a dressing gown trailing crookedly from one of them.
“I don’t know what to do with all this,” he says. It doesn’t sound as if he’s annoyed. He sounds kind of lost. “She hadn’t really been living here for a while,” he adds. “Listen, do you think there’s anything here you might like?”
Dread, black and bitter, floods your belly. You know it’s naive, but you say, “It’s hers. She’ll want it when she gets back.”
He stares at the wall and nods slowly. “Well. Yes.”
You know what he’s thinking. And you kind of know he’s right.
A week later, in early October, you wake up against the wall in a tumble of dirty sheets and ratty blankets. Three other girls are crammed into the bed with you, one of them along the bottom, so you have to keep your feet tucked up out of her face.
You got away from Jim, suitcase in tow. You didn’t go home, though. You will not go home.
You’re lucky to have a room at all. Most won’t rent to kids without an adult around, even one night at a time, but you can usually find someone who knows your money’s as good as anyone else’s, someone willing to take the risk. And the four of you have been sharing, saving on rent and keeping each other safe.
“Rise and shine,” you say.
Within an hour, the bunch of you are taking over the corner table by the window in the nearest McDonald’s, Egg McMuffins, hash browns, coffee and orange juice for all, the manager watching you from behind the counter.
You gulp at your coffee and burn your tongue. Look around. You’re getting tired of being out here. The grind is wearing at you. And the more time goes by, the more you know that there is something that you have to do, though you do not want to do it.
It’s been weeks since that night when you took off from home. It’s fall now. It rains a lot. And you find yourself thinking, more than you used to, about how worried they must be. Mom and Beth. You called once, got no answer, and hung up without leaving a message. You’ve seen more posters, of Sarah. Pictures of other girls too. And a couple of you. You’re not missing, though. You just have a really, really stubborn mother.
Is that where you belong? That house, with Beth stuffing herself and Mom learning every little thing about the human psyche … Not yours, though. She doesn’t know a damn thing about yours.
You dip your golden hash brown into ketchup and take a small bite. Your heart beats in your chest.
Breakfast done, you go back to your room to get ready for work, which is quite a production, especially with the sickness kicking in, the price you pay for sleep and relaxing over breakfast. Still, you look good when you’re done. One of the girls—it’s Amber, actually, the one you punched way back in the spring—comes with you, and you head down to the back streets by the tracks, where you can stay out of sight of the police. They’ll pick you up just because of your age, which is so unfair.
You stand kitty-corner to each other on what people call the kiddy stroll. Kitty. Kiddy. You smile, feeling strong, kicked up by the chase. Amber breaks first—a bald guy in a pale blue hatchback. You stride back and forth on your corner, oozing confidence. A couple of cars slow as they pass, but they don’t stop. Amber doesn’t come back. Two girls in the back of a loaded Honda jeer at you, and your stride slows. You kick at a post and stub your toe, swipe at the tear that’s suddenly there on your cheek. Bitches.
That’s when the red pickup slows down beside you. You approach. It’s small, a bit battered but clean, and the guy behind the wheel looks youngish, clean-shaven, kind of good-looking, with short blond hair, a smile with no leer to it. He cocks his head at you.
“Going my way?” he says.
Wow. Original.
You shrug your shoulders and get in. Which is stupid. You know that. You’ve learned to negotiate through car windows. How much? What? Where? And while you’re negotiating, you scope out the guy and the car. You check in with yourself. What do your instincts tell you? You glance in the back. Could someone be hiding in there? Are there weapons or anything at all that could be used to hurt you or to restrain you? Not that any of that guarantees safety, but jumping in with no check at all is just plain dumb. And today that’s what you tell yourself over and over again.
You have lots of time to berate yourself because the car keeps going, east. He ignores you when you say you don’t want to leave the neighbourhood.
“Hey, I know a place,” he says, and that quiets you for a few blocks, though your gut is anything but quiet.
Your gut shouts at you. Get out. Get out right now. But this guy’s instincts are way better than yours because just as you reach for the door handle to jump at the next red light, you hear the click. He’s locked the doors.
And somehow you’re on a highway now, going fast, no lights in sight, nobody to call out to for help. Would they help if you did? you wonder.
“Let me out,” you say.
“I know a place,” he says again.
“I’ll call the police,” you say.
And he scoffs, half laugh, half damp clearing of the throat.
You go quiet, thinking hard, waiting for your chance. Either it will come or it won’t.
You think about all you’ve been through. You think, for a moment, about Beth and Mom. Push those thoughts away. You’ll escape, and they’ll never need to know about this.
Mr. Grimsby flashes into your head and you shove him out again. Now is not the time for whining and moaning about your past. If you don’t think of something fast, you
’re not going to have a future.
Well, he does know a place: a gravel parking lot along a logging road, just up the rise from a suburb of some sort.
Your first strategy is a weak one. As soon as he clicks the doors unlocked, you’re off, running for the bush in your high heels. Of course he catches you. What happens next is bad, but through it all you’re on the alert, and as he shifts from beating to rape, you take your chance, fingernails clawing at his right eyeball, knee coming up into his balls with all the force you’ve got.
He shouts and thrusts you away, and you add your own momentum to the thrust and hurtle into the thick brush at the downhill edge of the parking lot. He’s after you fast, but you’re a lot smaller than he is: you can push through the bush more easily. You find yourself on a steep slope, and you kick off your shoes and head down, running, walking, tumbling, letting gravity work in your favour. He’s thrashing around behind you, shouting nasty stuff.
When the distance between you grows, you stop and listen. You don’t hear anything, and for a moment you feel something like relief. Then you realize he’s quiet because he’s listening too. So you move silently, easing yourself off to the left, against the slope, looking for a spot to hide and wait him out.
After a while, he shouts again. You hold your silence. He ventures farther down, loud and mad. And stops again. More silence.
Your back is braced against a tree. Your knees are pulled up to your chest. You’ve got bare, scraped-up feet; bruised ribs, maybe broken. A battered face. One of your nails is ripped back from your finger. Your clothes are torn. It’s getting dark, but at least you have your jacket.
You breathe deep, ignoring the pain in your side. Minutes tick by. Maybe hours. You don’t know how much time passes, but you do know that you don’t want to spend the night huddled against a tree in the bush.
At last a wild commotion of movement and sound arises from the man’s hiding place. You can’t see him, but you can hear him and you can sense him, on his feet, a tsunami of fury pouring off him down the slope. More obscenities.
“I’ll find you!” he shouts. “You think you can go back to your life, but I’ll be there. I’ll come after you!”
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