by Darlene Ryan
If he tried anything, I was going to cut him up good with that piece of glass in my pocket, but for some reason I didn’t think he would. “As long as you don’t try to save me from my sins,” I said.
“Did I forget to mention there will be a small service?” he joked as I fell into step beside him. “Just a little hellfire and damnation and a few hallelujahs.”
“Well, if there’s just a little, I guess that’s okay,” I said. I couldn’t keep a straight face.
He caught my smile and gave me back one of his own. I’d forgotten how good it felt to just talk to someone. I hoped I wouldn’t be sorry when tomorrow came.
two
I wasn’t. Q and I walked up the hill to the All-mart. In the side parking lot, there were maybe eight or nine campers—a couple of big RVS, some fifth wheel trailers being pulled behind an suv or a half-ton, and even an old camper van. There was a white Honda Civic in between the camper van and a huge brown RV. I figured the car belonged to the RV people, but Q headed across the parking lot toward the Civic. He unlocked the passenger side and then went around to the driver’s door.
The inside of the car was a faded gray color, and it was very clean. “That seat goes all the way back,” Q said. “I’d give you the back but I don’t exactly fit over there.”
I looked at the backseat. I was surprised Q’s long legs even fit there. I’m five foot six inches, and I was guessing he was more than half a foot taller.
“I’ve got a blanket we can hang up between the front and the back to give you a little privacy,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he said. He reached behind my seat and pulled up a large piece of folded cardboard. “This goes up against the windshield. It keeps a lot of the light out.”
There were lights on in the RV next to us. “You parked here on purpose, didn’t you?” I asked. “So it would look like your car went with that RV.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I saw them this morning. I’m pretty sure they knew I slept in the car, but they were cool about it.” He pointed over at the department store. “We can use the washroom in there right before they close. I’ll get you a couple of blankets.”
Q got three blankets from a box behind the backseat, stretched a cord between the two clothes hooks just behind the car doors and draped one of the blankets over it, dividing the car into two tiny halves.
“You don’t have to do all this, Q,” I said.
He climbed back into the front seat. “You didn’t have to give that woman your sandwich,” he said.
“Is that what you do?” I asked. “Go around rewarding people who don’t want all their lunch?”
He held out both hands, palms up. “Busted.”
“Seriously, why are you doing this?” I had one hand around my backpack and the other behind me on the door handle. I could be gone in seconds, if I needed to.
Q leaned his head back against the headrest. “You’re right, you know,” he said.
“About what?”
“There’s an awful lot of people who are just out for what they can get. And they’re not all on the street. Sometimes I just want to be around someone who’s not that way.” He turned his head to look at me. “That’s all, Maddie.” He stared out the windshield. The silence spread around us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
“How long have you been on your own?” I said finally.
He didn’t answer right away, and I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me. “Months,” he said after awhile. “I kinda lose track. What about you?”
I shifted the bag on my lap. “A few weeks.”
“What’s your plan?” He turned his head back toward me again. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
I leaned back in the seat. “I don’t know exactly. Get some money. Get a room. Get a job, maybe go back to school.”
He nodded, like that sounded good to him.
“What about you?”
He reached up and pulled off the knit cap, running both hands through his dark, curly hair. “Pretty much like you. Get some money. Only I want to live in the country, grow my own food. Be independent.”
“That sounds good,” I said.
He tossed the hat up onto the dash. “Yeah. Feels like a long way away sometimes, though.” He sat up abruptly and reached between the seats into the back, grabbing something off the floor.
“What is that?” I said. It looked like a cross between a flashlight and one of those hand-crank food processors they advertised on late-night infomercials.
“It’s a radio,” Q said. “Hand-powered.” He turned the handle, and it made a faint whirring sound. After he’d cranked it for a minute or so, he adjusted the volume and set the radio up next to his hat. “Is oldies stuff okay?” he asked. “It’s the only station I can get here.”
“Very okay,” I said. My dad had loved old rock ’n’ roll music. He died when I was six, but it made me feel closer to him when I heard any of those old songs.
Q and I listened to the radio, taking turns cranking the handle. About nine thirty, we went into the mall to use the washrooms. I brushed my teeth and waited until no one else was around to wash my face. Then I stared at my reflection in the wide mirror. Was I crazy spending the night with a guy I didn’t know in a tiny Honda Civic? Except Q didn’t feel like a stranger. I’d slept in worse places, I reminded the face looking back at me. And it was only for one night.
I pulled the elastic out of my hair and brushed it loose around my shoulders. And I didn’t look at myself anymore.
Back in the car, Q showed me how to tip the seat back. “Are you sure you’ll have enough room?” I asked.
He patted one thigh. “Oh yeah. Didn’t I tell you? These things come off at night. I just fold them up into their own convenient carrying case.” His lips were twitching.
I punched him lightly on the arm. “I’m serious.”
He let the smile loose. “Yes, Maddie, I have enough room.” He got out the driver’s door, tipped the seat forward and climbed into the backseat, pulling the car door shut behind him.
I got the one blanket I had out of my backpack and wrapped myself up in it and the other two Q had given me. I could hear him moving around in the backseat.
“Did you lock your door?” he asked.
I felt behind me to check. “Yes,” I said. There was more movement, then nothing. I stretched out in the seat. It was a lot more comfortable than I’d expected, a lot better than a filthy floor in an old building, that was for sure, and with the cardboard screen covering the windshield and the blanket wall between the front and backseat, it felt kind of cozy. I didn’t want to think about it, but it almost felt…safe.
“Good night, Maddie,” Q whispered from the backseat.
“Good night,” I whispered back.
The light coming through the side window of the car woke me up. I sat up, letting the blankets fall, and stretched.
“Maddie, are you awake?” Q said quietly.
“Yes.”
He pushed the blanket aside and poked his head around. “How did you sleep?”
“Good,” I said. Considering I’d been sleeping in the front seat of a car, I had. I was warm, and it had been quiet. Nothing with more than two legs had crawled over me in the night—no bugs, no rats.
“Mall washrooms open at seven,” Q said. “Bring your stuff, it’s almost that now.”
We used the bathrooms at the far end of the mall. There were maybe a couple of dozen people walking a circuit in the building. Some kind of exercise group, I guessed.
Q was waiting for me in front of a store that sold video games. “Wanna split a cup of coffee and have some breakfast?” he asked. He pointed to a set of double doors at the end of the mall. “If we go out those doors, there’s a Tim’s just around the corner.”
I didn’t have anywhere else to go. “Okay,” I said. “But I have some change. I’m buying.”
He tipped his head to the side and grinned at me as we st
arted walking down to the doors.
“Yeah, I know, splitting a cup of coffee with you doesn’t mean you’re going to sleep with me,” I said, keeping my face serious.
“You’d have to at least buy me a donut,” he said with an equally straight face.
I bumped him with my backpack, and he laughed.
We got a large Double-Double and walked back to the car with it, passing the paper cup back and forth the way we’d shared the cake the night before. We ate the cheese biscuits from both of our bags, and I split a banana I had in my backpack.
After breakfast, I shook out my blanket and then rolled it up and stuffed it back in my pack.
“So what are you going to do?” Q asked.
I pulled an elastic off my arm and put my hair into a ponytail again. “I don’t know,” I said. “Probably go to the library for a while and then go over to Pax and see if I can have a shower.” I didn’t mention that I’d kind of gotten to be friends with Hannah, who ran the Pax shelter, and that she’d let me in to get cleaned up even before people started lining up for the hygiene bays. I tried not to take advantage of Hannah. And I didn’t stay at Pax House very much. Hannah was always gently trying to persuade me to go home. Or at least call home. She couldn’t conceive of a mother who cared more about herself than her kid.
“Why don’t you stay here again tonight?” Q said as he brushed biscuit crumbs off the front of the heavy blue sweater he had changed into.
“I can’t.”
“Why? Is the atmosphere at Chez Abandoned Building better than this?”
“Because…because…” I didn’t know what to say. Because I felt like I was using him? Because a part of me was still waiting for there to be a catch?
He slid his fingers along the top curve of the steering wheel. “I’m not trying to pressure you, Maddie.” His eyes shifted sideways. “Okay, I am. It’s just that I liked having someone to eat with, and I liked knowing I wasn’t alone last night. And I knew I wasn’t going to wake up in the middle of the night with a knife at my throat.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Why don’t we team up, just for a while, until we each get some money and we can go on with our plans?”
“You don’t even know me,” I said, fiddling with the zipper on the backpack.
“I know all I need to know,” Q said. “What have I got to lose?”
“What have you got to gain?”
“Company.”
“Uh-uh.” I gave my head a quick shake. “I have to do more than that. I mean, if I did decide to, you know, hang around.”
“Laundry,” Q said.
“Laundry?”
“Yeah.” He pulled the sleeve of his shirt down below the cuff of the blue sweater. The shirt was pink.
“Pretty,” I said. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.
“It’s not supposed to be pretty, Maddie,” he said, stuffing the material back up his arm again. “It’s supposed to be white.”
I laughed.
“See? My laundry ability is laughable. You help with my wash, and that’ll more than make up for sleeping in that seat and some lasagna that’s going to go into the garbage otherwise. Please.” He pressed both hands together and looked at me over the top of his fingers. “Pink is not my color.”
I probably should have said no. But I didn’t. “Okay,” I said. “For a while. To see how it works.”
Q dropped his hands. “Good,” he said. “I’m going to have to move the car today because the RV people are moving on. But I think I have a couple of days’ work lined up, cleaning out an old warehouse, and we might be able to park there for two or three nights. Can you meet me back here about six?”
It meant walking down the hill and back up again, but that wasn’t really a big deal. “Six,” I said. “I’ll be over there by the doors, under the big A.”
Q handed me the paper bag that still had two raisin biscuits in it. “Lunch,” he said.
I stuffed it in the top of my backpack and looked around to make sure I had everything. “Okay, so I’ll see you later,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
“I’ll be here, Maddie,” he said.
I nodded and got out of the car. All the way down the hill, I kept asking myself what the heck I had gotten myself into. I’d spent the night with some guy I’d only known a few hours, and now I was going to hook my life to him? As I walked in the cool morning air, it didn’t make quite as much sense as it had in the All-mart parking lot.
I told myself that just because I’d said I’d be there at six didn’t mean I had to be. Then it hit me that it didn’t mean Q had to be either.
three
I had an hour before the library opened, so I decided to walk over to Pax House and see if Hannah was there. She was just coming along the sidewalk as I turned the corner. She saw me and waited.
“Hi, Maddie. How are you?” she asked. She tried not to be too obvious as she checked me out, but I knew she was looking to see if I was clean and if I was getting skinnier. I stuffed both hands in my pockets. Hannah was a hugger, and I really wasn’t. “I’m okay,” I said.
“Do you have time for a visit?” she asked, shifting a canvas shopping bag from one hand to the other.
“Umm, yeah,” I said. I reached for the shopping bag. “Let me take that.”
Hannah smiled. “Thanks. It’s heavy.” I peeked in the top of the bag. “Potatoes,” she said.
We walked around to the side door, which was for staff only. Hannah used her key to let us in. We put the potatoes in the kitchen, and then I followed Hannah down the hallway to her office. She put away her briefcase and then studied my face more closely. “Have you had breakfast?”
I nodded.
“How about some hot chocolate?” she asked.
“Sounds good,” I said. I never turned down chocolate.
“I’ll be right back.”
She came back with a tall mug of cocoa for me with a marshmallow floating on top, and coffee for her. She pushed her glasses up her nose and leaned against the desk instead of going to sit in her desk chair, and I knew what that meant: the talk.
“I haven’t seen you for a while. You haven’t been coming here to sleep.”
“I was over at St. Paul’s,” I said, bending my head over my cup to take a drink.
“Doesn’t seem like your kind of place.”
Hannah wasn’t stupid, and she’d gotten to know me when I’d been staying at Pax and helping out wherever I could.
“It’s okay,” I said, licking marshmallow off the corner of my mouth.
Hannah took a long sip of her coffee. Something was going on behind the steadiness of her expression. “If you came back here, you might be able to go back to school,” she said, casually.
There it was. I was the mouse, and school was a big piece of cheese, because Hannah knew how much I missed school. I hadn’t made the mistake of letting anyone else know so much about me. “How?” I asked. “I don’t have any records. I don’t have a parent.”
Hannah shrugged. “Those kinds of things can be handled,” she said. “You could stay here for a while before you make the transition to somewhere else.”
Somewhere else was back with my mom. Part of me kind of admired how Hannah wouldn’t let go of the idea of Mom and me having a happy family reunion. You’d think, working in Pax House, she would have lost that fantasy about loving moms and happily ever after. But she hadn’t. But part of me also felt pissed off because I just couldn’t make Hannah let go of the idea of that happy ending for Mom and me. For one thing, I couldn’t see how Evan was going to fit into that picture, assuming he was still around.
I took another drink of hot chocolate to buy some time. I wasn’t going home. I wasn’t calling my mom. If that meant I couldn’t go to school right now, then that’s just how it had to be. And I didn’t want to tell that to Hannah for the four hundred and seventeenth time. “I’ll think about it,” I said, and I gave her a small fake smile over the top of my cup.
She smiled back, and I could tell that she thought she’d won some sort of victory. We talked about stuff that didn’t matter after that. Pax House was going to be painted; a bunch of do-gooders from some community group were coming to do it over a weekend next month. The fact that it meant people would have nowhere to sleep for at least one night, probably two, hadn’t seemed to occur to them. Or that the building had just been painted about six months ago. Painting the shelter was a way to say you were helping the homeless without actually going anywhere near the homeless. No smell of bodies that hadn’t been washed in a month. No puke. No piss. No crazy people who talked to their invisible friends. Just cans of white paint that covered up all the things no one wanted to look at.
I didn’t say any of that to Hannah. She would have told me I was too young to be so cynical.
Finally I stood up. “I should get going,” I said. My face was starting to hurt from all the fake smiling and swallowing things I knew I shouldn’t say.
“Do you want to use one of the hygiene bays before you go?” Hannah asked.
That was the whole reason I’d come there. I hated using the clean stations when there were a lot of people around. They didn’t open until noon, but Hannah had let me in more than once in the morning. “Would it be okay?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “C’mon.”
I grabbed both cups so I could put them in the kitchen and followed her out. After she’d unlocked the door to the clean stations, Hannah wrapped me in a hug and I hugged her back, because even though I was never going to do what she wanted me to do, she was good to me, and I felt bad sometimes that I was never going to be who she wanted me to be.
“Think about school,” she said, nudging her glasses up her nose again. “Come back in a couple of days and we’ll talk more about it.”
“Thank you, Hannah,” I said.
I could see from the expression on her face that she thought that “thank you” meant that she’d convinced me. At least my face wasn’t giving away that she hadn’t.