Scam

by Lesley Choyce

  She didn’t answer her phone or return my calls again for two days. I talked to Darren for some advice.

  “When people grieve, they tend to shut others out of their lives. Sounds like she had already shut her parents out. And that’s not good. But keep at it. Don’t give up.”

  I’d been holding back, giving her space, but after that I figured I better do something. I went back to her house and rang the doorbell. Her mother answered.

  “Can I see Lindsey?”

  “She isn’t here. Who are you?”

  “Josh. I’m a friend.”

  “She never mentioned you.” I knew Lindsey didn’t communicate much of anything to her parents, so it didn’t surprise me that she hadn’t mentioned me.

  “I know about Caleb,” I said. “I wanted to see if I can help.”

  Lindsey’s mom looked me in the eye with suspicion, but then she looked down and let out a sigh. “You could help find Lindsey. We haven’t seen her since…” But she didn’t finish the sentence.

  “She hasn’t been home?”

  “No. We’re very worried.” Now Lindsey’s mom started to cry.

  “I’ll find her,” I said. “I promise.” And I turned to go.

  Lindsey’s mom grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back. “The funeral is tomorrow. It would be a terrible thing if she wasn’t there.”

  “I’ll find her,” I repeated.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I walked downtown and went to the coffee shop where we had once sat. I asked the people working there if they’d seen her, but no one had. I wished I had a picture of her to show them, but I didn’t. The thought made me open my wallet and look at that old beat-up photo of my mom. I looked at it and silently asked her what to do. I could swear I heard her tell me to keep looking.

  Lindsey was smart, and she was resourceful. And she was also stubborn. If she really wanted to make herself disappear, she would find a way to do it. But this wasn’t one of her scams. This was real life.

  I walked the streets for hours. There were a lot of tourists out and about. Lindsey would have had a field day with this. Easy pickings. I went to the park. I went to the church hall where we had stolen the wedding cards. I talked to any kids our age that I saw. I came up with nothing.

  I felt like all I could do was make the same rounds again. It seemed hopeless. Was she just going to disappear from my life as mysteriously as she had come into it? Damn. I was sitting on a crumbling low wall by the library when I looked up and realized I was across the street from the church where we had first sat together at my mother’s funeral.

  It seemed like the least likely place to find her. But I was desperate. I walked across the street and tried the door. It was unlocked. I went in. The place was completely empty. At first I hated being there. The pain of it all. That stupid ceremony for my mom with all those strangers. But as I walked forward down the aisle, I looked up and saw light pouring in through the stained-glass windows. There was something about that light. Something that made me keep walking toward the front.

  And then I saw her. Lying in a pew. Curled up in the fetal position.

  I slipped into the pew and quietly sat down beside her. I sat like that for maybe five minutes—watching her sleep, watching her breathe, realizing how important this girl was to me.

  And then I touched her shoulder. She gasped, sat up, looked at me. And then she reached up and hugged me.

  When we walked out into the sunlight, we both had to shield our eyes. We hadn’t even spoken a word.

  “Your mom says the funeral is tomorrow,” I said.

  “I’m not going,” she said resolutely.

  “I understand,” I said. “But you should be there for your parents.”

  “Screw them. My parents were never there for me when I needed them.”

  “But they’re still your parents,” I said, knowing that sounded lame. “You should at least go home. Let them see you’re okay.”

  “I’m not going home.”

  “Then come with me,” I said.

  As we walked to the group home, we went past the old warehouse wall that Caleb had tagged. I tried to distract Lindsey so she wouldn’t see the balloon letters of Yo-Yo, but she stopped, stared up at the name for a minute and then looked away. I took her hand.

  Darren must have seen us walking up the driveway. In an instant, he must have read the riot act to Kyle, Noah and Connor, because they were all sitting in a kind of stunned silence in the kitchen as we walked in.

  “You must be Lindsey,” Darren said.

  She nodded.

  “You need a place to stay?”

  She nodded again.

  “Why don’t you take over Josh’s room?” Darren said. “Noah can bunk with Connor, and I’m sure Josh wouldn’t mind sleeping on the sofa.”

  Connor glared at Noah, but he didn’t say a word. Noah nodded agreeably, but Kyle looked a little shell-shocked that I had brought a girl to the house.

  Lindsey and I sat in the backyard for a long time, but we didn’t say much.

  I thought maybe she was settling down, but I was wrong. “Everything about being around this town is just too painful. I mean, you saw me back there. I’m not gonna be able to go hardly anywhere without my brother calling out to me from some wall. I’ve got some money. I could just pick up and go. Go somewhere else and put this all behind me.”

  I had a lot of things I wanted to say, but I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I had her here now. I wouldn’t say too much, but I wouldn’t let her slip away.

  Later, I asked her if it was okay for me to call her parents and let them know she was all right. She said no, but after I pushed, she agreed that I could call them as long as I didn’t let them know where she was. Just that she was okay. I called and was relieved when I got their voice mail. I told them Lindsey was okay and would call the next day. In the evening my roommates were quiet and respectful, even Connor. Whatever threat Darren had made must have been a good one.

  I got up about twenty times from the sofa in the living room during the night to make sure she was still in my room. In the morning everyone else left the house to go work at the summer day camp. Lindsey and I sat alone in the kitchen, drinking some truly awful coffee that Darren had made. Today was the day of Caleb’s funeral. I didn’t know the time or the place. But today was the day.

  “You saved me that day, you know?” I said.

  “What day?”

  “The day you stole my wallet.”

  “How did that save you?”

  “Well, if you hadn’t stolen my wallet, I wouldn’t have run after you. And you wouldn’t have gone to the church with me.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I don’t know. Like you, I was thinking about maybe just going away.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “So you understand?”

  “Yes. But I also understand that I owe you.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “It won’t work. If you go away, everything back here will seem like crap to you. You won’t be able to let it go, and you won’t be able to put it behind you. It will always be there. It will always be unfinished. And you’ll be unhappy.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No. No bullshit. It’s true. Today is the funeral. One phone call, and I’ll know where and when.”

  “No way,” she said.

  “Do you care about me at all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then trust me on this. Do this one thing. If you decide it’s wrong, that I’ve somehow betrayed you, I’ll go away too if you want. We’ll go together.”

  Lindsey stared down at the table for a solid minute. “Find out where it is and what time,” she said. “Then I’ll decide. But don’t tell them I will necessarily be there.”

  We arrived at the funeral home ten minutes after the service had begun. A minister was reading from the bible. Unlike m
y mom’s service, there was a casket at the front, and it was open. The chapel was maybe half full. We walked up the aisle. I watched as Lindsey’s mom and dad turned and saw us as we were sitting down. Her mom closed her eyes and squeezed her hands together in front of her face. Lindsey sat staring at the casket in the front. I don’t think she was expecting it to be like this. Almost as soon as she had sat down, she stood back up and began walking to the front of the chapel.

  The minister stopped reading as he noticed her approaching. The chapel was dead silent. I held back. I wondered if I had it all wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her here. She slowly approached the casket, leaned over. She kissed her brother on the forehead and then took his hand. Some of the people in the chapel began to weep. No one moved. And then her parents got up and walked forward to stand beside her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lindsey and I both began our final year of high school that September. Because I was living at the group home, I got transferred to a new high school, the same one Lindsey went to.

  I can’t quite explain what happened next. We had been with each other almost every day for the rest of that summer. She’d helped me at that day camp. She’d liked the kids, and they had liked her.

  One day we even came across one of the twelve-year-old boys from the camp while we were downtown. The kid’s name was Duke—at least, that was his nickname. Duke saw us walking down the street and came up to us. “Josh, can you spot me some money? My mom gave me bus fare, but I lost it. I can’t get home if I don’t have bus fare.”

  Lindsey leaned over. “Did you really lose your money?”

  “Yeah, of course I did,” the kid said. “Would I lie to you?”

  Everyone at summer camp knew Duke was a little scam artist. He wasn’t that good at it, really, but then, he was just starting out.

  Lindsey held out a five-dollar bill. “You can have it if you tell me the truth.”

  Duke blinked and looked at her. “Truth is, I want to go to McDonald’s and get a snack.”

  Lindsey almost handed him the money then but pulled it back. “Promise you won’t try to con anyone again?” she said.

  “Maybe,” he said. And she gave him the money.

  It had been a sad summer for us both. But we moved on.

  And that was part of the problem. We moved on. Both of us. By the end of September, Lindsey had fallen back in with some old friends from the previous year. I don’t know if they didn’t like me or if maybe they just didn’t know what to make of me. I had decided to really try hard and do well at school that year, and with a little help from Darren, it was working out. And then Lindsey and I just drifted apart. We both tried to keep what we had, but something had changed that we could not change back. Each time we were together, it seemed we both felt the pain of our losses creep up on us, and we’d fall silent.

  I guess it can happen like that. It’s sad but true. I still feel bad that what we had is gone. All I know is that while we were together, it was real. Very real.

  Lesley Choyce has written many books for Orca, including the recent Off the Grid. A poet, author and publisher, Lesley is also an avid surfer. He lives in Nova Scotia.