“Whatcha looking at?”
His voice makes me jump out of myself. Beside me is a boy about my size. He has very light hair and freckles all over his face. He isn’t looking at me, but up into the air, trying to find what’s so interesting to me.
“Hercules,” I say in a quiet voice.
“Yeah? Like the superhero?”
“No.” I want to get away from him, but I know already there’s nowhere to go. I notice we’re all the way at the end of the motel and that another car has arrived. A young man is walking from it to the same office Jonah used. He looks much like the boy beside me, but a few years older. I hesitate, then answer him. “Hercules, the constellation.”
“Oh.” The boy looks at me now. He’s chewing gum and it cracks between his teeth. “I don’t know much about stars. Except the Big Dipper.” He points to the big square in the sky. “That’s it, yeah?”
I follow his pointing. “Yeah. But it’s actually part of Ursa Major. See those stars like a tail and legs around it? That’s the same constel-lation. When you know how to connect the stars with imaginary lines, you start to see it.”
“Cool.” He smacks his gum. “So where’s Hercules?”
I point to a square of stars a little smaller than Ursa Major and a little bigger than Ursa Minor. “That’s his head, with his body right underneath. He’s supposed to have his leg on his conquest and a raised sword in one hand.”
He searches. “Looks like a bunch of stars to me.”
I smile to myself. “Hercules was a hero.”
“Yeah?”
“When he was a baby, the wife of his father — who wasn’t his mom — sent snakes to kill him in his crib. But he strangled them and lived.”
“Big deal.” The boy puts his hands on his hips. “Thor could crush that easy.”
He’s talking to me like I’m a regular person from the rest of the world. “Well, he killed a lot of people,” I say, playing along. “And he went to the underworld. Which is hell.”
The boy eyes me. I like the feel of it. “Go on,” he says. He looks mischievous, and I try not to smile with relief.
“He found this old sailor,” I say, “who lived on a remote island in the underworld sea. Hercules wanted immortal life and this old guy had the answers. After that, Hercules did all these amazing feats. He conquered a nine-headed snake. He battled the fiercest warrior in the Amazon and took her belt. He wrestled a monster into submission with his bare hands. He amazed everyone because he was always victorious. He only died because his wife accidentally poisoned him.”
“That sucks,” the boy says.
“The thing is, he did get immortal life. See?” I point at the stars. “Because now he’s a constellation for all eternity.”
He chews his gum for a few minutes, thinking. “Not sure it was worth it.”
That makes me want to laugh so hard, I have to cough to hide it. “Maybe not.”
But he laughs easily and his freckles get squished and that makes me want to laugh harder.
“What’s your name?”
I hesitate. “Twelve.”
“Weird name.”
I smile at my shoes.
He puts out his hand. “I’m Daniel.”
I take his hand and we shake hands very slowly and stare into each other’s eyes. I let my smile meet his. It feels so good, as if smiling can pull poison from a heart. I won’t be the first to let go.
A voice calls out — it echoes through the silent darkness and I cringe, my eyes going to Jonah’s motel room door — “You coming, Danny?”
Daniel drops my hand and looks behind him, then back at me. “My brother,” he says, rolling his eyes. His brother is coming out of the motel office with a key. Danny calls back — all of it making me expect the worst — “Yeah, give me a sec, Connor.”
He looks at me again. “So whatcha doing out here, anyway?”
I hesitate. I feel awkward suddenly, and shy. The way I always felt on the island with strangers. I try to fight it.
“Come on,” he says. “Spill it.” He gives my side a poke.
I flinch away.
I want to tell him. I want to be a regular person. But a vision of a family in a house, a mother and child clasping each other in a door-way, comes to me, and I have to shut it out so I can think. So I can speak. “I’m running away.”
“Yeah?” I can see the idea excites him. He points to the room his brother went into, which is about four doors down from Jonah’s. “Need a place to stay?”
The night hasn’t even started and I’m already cold and too thirsty and hungry. But I can’t go with him.
He raises his hands. “I’m not going to rape you or anything.”
“That’s good,” I say. Crimes my hobo friends worried about that remind me how little I know the world.
“But I’d be open to some mutual kissing.”
“What?”
“With your consent.”
“Kissing?”
“You never kissed a guy, right? Could tell a mile away.”
I know that breathing into Scotty’s ear doesn’t count. But I don’t say that to him.
“You thirteen … fourteen, what?”
“Sixteen … in a few weeks.”
“An older woman, huh? I just turned fifteen.”
He also looks and sounds younger than he is. Somehow that makes me feel better.
I examine his freckled, twitching face. A boy my age, or there-abouts. He looks at me too, his eyes glancing around my features.
A whirling starts deep down inside me, familiar because of Scotty and Justin, but also different. I want to kiss Danny very badly. I can almost taste it in my mouth. He must see the hunger in my eyes because he bends in and leans his lips against mine.
At first we’re cautious and just rest our lips together. But then our lips get greedy and start to work on their own, one feeding off the other, feeling around, tasting, and then tasting with our tongues too. He smells sweeter than anyone I’ve ever met. Like soap and something else I can’t remember. I feel light and lighter, lifted up by the whirling inside me.
I never knew there were two ways to love a person: through your heart, and through your body.
“Danny!” Danny’s brother’s voice breaks us apart. My whole body blushes red. Danny looks like he’s in a trance. “Get your butt in here, bro!”
Danny gets his normal look back again. His mouth eases into a sloppy grin. He grabs my hand and says, “Come on.”
Even though I know I shouldn’t go with him, it sounds like the best idea I’ve ever heard. Blushing fiercely, I let him pull me to his room.
Connor looks at us funny when Danny walks me through the motel door.
Danny puts a hand up. “She’s running away from home, Connor. She needs a place to stay.”
Connor looks wary. “Sorry, kid,” he says to me in the older voice Danny might have one day. “It wouldn’t be right, a young girl hanging with guys she doesn’t know. I could get arrested.”
Emboldened by everything that’s happened, I say, “If I could just clean up? Drink some water?” Connor tilts his head, very reluctant. I keep at him — I’ve watched children beg their parents for things — “And maybe if you have a bit of food? I’m so hungry.”
Danny raises both hands. “C’mon, man, she needs help.”
Connor looks at me through narrowed eyes. “Yeah, you can have some food. And use the bathroom. But that’s it. You can’t stay. If someone calls the cops …”
Another possibility that means nothing to me. There are no police on the island. No worries about theft or murder. Still, I’m so relieved that Connor will help me, even a little.
He pulls a small cooler from the ground and sets it on the bed. He passes me a bottle of apple juice and a thick sandwich piled with chicken and lettuce and tomatoes and cheese slices. “Our mom made this for the road. You’re welcome to it.”
I pounce on the sandwich and rip it from the plastic wrap. I can only nod my thanks bec
ause the sandwich is inside my mouth before any words come out. My wolfing makes Connor and Danny laugh.
“Okay,” Connor says to me, getting serious again. “You go clean up. And Danny? You get ready for bed.” Danny scowls, but I don’t wait to be asked twice. I finish the last crumbs of the sandwich and drink the juice and run fast to the bathroom to get myself clean.
Hot, soapy shower water runs over my body and takes away all the sweat and dirt and dust from the last two days. It warms me through.
Everything is so different from what it was supposed to be.
I’m too tired to figure out where my place will be in this other world. That’s a question I don’t want to think about. A question without an answer.
I towel off and change my clothes for fresh ones, choosing my pink hooded sweatshirt to wear, just for now, for Danny.
So many sweet, fresh smells to add to Jonah’s van. I guess I really will be a rose in a shit hole.
When I come out, Danny is in his pajamas lying on one bed, and Connor is lying on the other bed reading a comic book.
I can’t stop myself from bouncing on the end of Danny’s bed. He bounces up and down too, first together with me, then opposite. Connor scolds us and tells us to settle down. He says we’ll wake up the neighborhood, which of course I don’t want. But a strange delirium powers through me, and it makes me feel more and more crazy. Almost happy.
When Connor goes into the bathroom to shower, Danny teaches me about Spider-Man and Batman and other stories I’ve never heard before. And I teach Danny the fighting tricks Chisel showed me. And pretty soon we’re wrestling on the bed and between the beds, rolling around the floor. It makes us laugh so hard, but in a way where no sound comes out — Danny because he doesn’t want to make his brother mad, and me because I know Jonah is only four walls away. We sneak in some kisses while we wrestle, and it goes back and forth like that: playing like kids and kissing like adults.
Connor comes out of the bathroom, which pulls us apart again. He tells us to grow up. Something about that makes us laugh even harder and we try to wrap our legs around each other and flip each other over. Connor wants to ignore us, but he’s mad and finally he yells. And just like that, I stop squirming and Danny does too.
“Okay, guys,” Connor says. “Twelve has got to get outta here. Now. We need to sleep if we’re going to get an early start and make Dad’s party on time.”
Danny explains that his parents divorced and his mom lives down the coast and his dad lives up it. They’re on their way to a family reunion for their dad’s birthday, and it’s a big deal that their mom let them take the car and travel alone.
When they talk about their parents, a rush of feelings comes over me and again I have to push myself against the memory-door to keep it closed. I have to pretend none of what I saw exists.
Danny says their mom is the best. He says she worried a lot after the marriage ended, and that it was hard on all three of them, but now after many years they’ve all adjusted and she owns a catering business and is pretty successful. He says they don’t spend a lot of time with their dad, but he’s pretty cool, even though he’s married to someone else and he and Connor aren’t a hundred percent certain about her. Even so, they’re looking forward to seeing their dad and being part of the family reunion. They’re going to see cousins they haven’t seen since Danny was little. They say as far as they know their cousins are awesome.
When it’s my turn to talk, I make up two parents who are also divorced and a dad who doesn’t ever let me see my mom, which made me run away to be with her. I tell them that when I got to my mom’s, I found out she married another man and they have all these new kids and they don’t want me anymore. I tell them the truth about finding Calcutta and Monique and Justin and Tank and Chisel, especially the part about Chisel and the train hopping, and how I’m running away to be with them in Moncton.
They listen without interrupting much. When I’m done, Connor says I should go back to my dad. So I tell him that my dad is evil and that he hits me. Connor shakes his head. He says he has a friend who gets beat up by his dad and it’s a really bad situation. Even the police can’t do much about it. Again, I have no idea what police could do about anything.
Then I explain how I’m using my dad to sneak back into Canada, and how he doesn’t know that I’m using him. The best part of the plan, I say, is that he isn’t supposed to be in the States and won’t do any-thing to let anyone know he’s here. He doesn’t really care that I’m gone, he just cares that I don’t get to my mom. I say the only problem with my plan is that my dad keeps waiting outside my mom’s house for me to arrive. For all I know, we might be waiting outside my mom’s house for weeks before he finally gives up and goes home.
Connor sits up. “Well, that’s an easy fix.”
I sit up too, and so does Danny. “How?”
“Okay.” Connor gets excited for the first time, like he’s playing with us now. “You wait in the back of your dad’s van. Give Danny that pink hoodie you’re wearing and maybe something else that belongs to you. Danny puts on the hoodie and covers his head — I mean, he’s practically your size — and he gets in the car with me in time for your dad to see. So your dad thinks you’re traveling with me. See? And he follows us for long enough to know: ‘She’s not going to her mom’s house; she’s given it up; I got nothing to worry about.’ Either he follows us all the way to the party, where he thinks you’ve gone to this reunion with, like, a thousand people at it, and I’ll tell my dad and his friends to tell your dad to back off — and those guys are huge, like, insane — so your dad goes, ‘Geez, maybe I should head back to good ol’ Canada.’ But hopefully he sees we’re going in the total opposite direction of your mom and he just gives up and goes home. Either way, bam, you’re back across the border and, well, you got the rest worked out.”
I think about Connor’s plan. I truly can’t imagine having to spend weeks more in the back of Jonah’s van in front of a home I can’t claim. Weeks of peeing in woods and scrounging for food and huddling in a cardboard box. Weeks of closeness with the only person I can’t bear, and of giving up — day after day — the only people I want to be with. His plan sparks up my old determination.
We go over a whole plan, even getting a bunch of metal spoons from their mother’s catering box in the trunk of their car and putting them into a plastic jug. We sneak the jug outside Jonah’s door so he’ll trip on it when he leaves and we’ll hear the clatter and know it’s time to fly.
I give Danny my sweatshirt. We make fun of how gorgeous he looks in pink, but with the hood up, he could be me. Danny jokes that he’s wearing a superhero cape, and I say it sounds like super-heroes spend an awful lot of time interested in fashion. Danny tells me if I have nothing respectful to say about superheroes, I shouldn’t say anything at all.
Then Connor interrupts to ask if I have something Danny can hold that could only be mine. I fumble through my bag, trying not to touch the one thing I have. But the only thing that’s perfectly unique is the ratty old mouse that Aidie always kept with her on the pillow in the closet. A stuffed toy that Jonah knows very well.
When I hand it over, Danny can tell right away what it means to me. “I’ll take care of it,” he says. I can feel a tear coming, but I swallow it back. Danny says gently, “Swear to God, Twelve.”
I nod and give the old mouse a last kiss and nuzzle. It even smells like Aidie. “Thank you,” I say and let it go into Danny’s hand.
Danny stares at me but speaks to Connor. “Can’t we take her with us, man? Let’s just get her out of here.” New hope kindles — because that’s what I truly want.
“She crossed the border illegally,” Connor says, shaking his head. “They’ll arrest her. At least in Canada, they can’t touch her.”
My hope settles again, and Danny’s expression looks settled too. He gets a piece of paper, writes his name and address on it, and passes it to me. I very carefully fold it into my pants pocket. Then he takes my hands and
looks deeply into my eyes. “When you’re safe, you gotta write me, okay?” I promise him I will.
We don’t kiss again because Connor is watching. But we know the possibility is there.
We hug each other so hard it starts another laugh and then we push each other away and then we give each other one last poke in the guts.
I sneak out of their room and creep to the van. Before I climb into the back and into the hole of the cardboard box, I check one last time that the jug of spoons is on the ground by Jonah’s door.
The night is clear and fresh. It’s cool out, but not so cold I won’t be able to catch some sleep in the made-up little cubby in the dark.
Iwake with a shock. The spoons have fallen. I peer through the van window and notice two things. One: Jonah is at the door of his room. He’s swearing at the incongruity of twenty spoons on the ground. He hesitates, confused and angry. Two: it’s pouring rain. I should have known rain was coming. Before I let myself into the van last night, I smelled the dampness and felt that the wind had changed and was stronger. But I didn’t want it to rain, so I pretended to myself that it wouldn’t.
Jonah steps over the mess of spoons and walks through the drizzle toward the motel office with the wooden-leaf key in his hand. By the time he drops the key into a slot in the door and turns around, Connor and Danny are out of their room.
Danny has the hood of my sweatshirt over his head and the sleeves pulled long over his fingers. He keeps his head angled away from Jonah and holds the old mouse by the tip of its tail so it hangs down from his hand as sad and obvious as a teardrop. He stands by the passenger door of his car with his back to Jonah and waits there — I can sense the energy of his anticipation — while Connor pretends to casually bring out their cooler and pack it into the trunk. Rain pours down on them and they huddle against it.
Danny is my superhero, I think. And I am his. And I will write Danny when I get to Moncton. And one day we will see each other again.
The Darkhouse Page 18