by Deb Caletti
“Come on, Mads,” Billy says. “It’s no big deal.”
Mads gets in his truck. She’s still puffing and panting. She closes the door, jabs her finger out the window in warning. The kid is trying to get his bike up, and the other one’s examining his own elbow, like he fell, too. Ten-year-olds are always banged up. For a few years in there, you always have holes in the knees of your jeans.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mads says.
• • •
“So you don’t want to go somewhere to talk.”
“I’ll go somewhere. I don’t want to have some big, deep conversation, though.”
“I’m not gonna let this go.”
He’s been driving around the lake, thinking of places they could stop. Somewhere nearby, where he doesn’t have to look at that freaking bridge, or any bridge or any lake or body of water. Where is that around here? Maybe some parking garage at U-Village or something. You start to realize how much water is in Seattle as soon as you don’t want to see water.
“I’m fine! I went to a doctor. I’m not planning anything. I’m just, I don’t know. I’m in my own head all the time and I hate my own head and I don’t see how to get out.”
“There’re options. Ones you haven’t seen yet.”
“I don’t want to do the life I’m supposed to.”
“Then do a different one.”
God! He gets how wrong it sounds, how stupidly simple, even if it’s right.
“I thought you had something you wanted to show me.”
“I do.”
“Well, then let’s move on to the showing part of this evening’s program.”
“Okay. I’ve got to get something first.”
He stops his aimless driving around. He heads for the red, lit cowboy hat in the sky.
“Arby’s?”
“Action, a plan, a map. Doing something about something.”
A little smile plays at the corner of her mouth. He leans over and kisses it as he waits for the voice to come over the drive-through intercom. It’s another reason he believes in her. She’ll rescue herself because she kisses back, she lets love in, and love is one of the only weapons that has half a chance in the dark.
Chapter Seventeen
“That is one heck of a lot of roast beef sandwiches in shiny orange foil,” Mads says.
“You’d do the same for a friend.” Billy closes the top of the bag so the steam won’t escape. “You practically have. Or, at least, you’ve wanted to.”
“Given a friend an enormous amount of roast beef?”
“Tried to save them.”
The sun has gone down. Billy’s profile is serious in the passing light of streetlamps. Some clouds have moved in. The night looks and smells like it might rain. The truck is a snug vessel. Mads wishes they’d take all that roast beef and ditch this place.
Earlier, Mads sent a text to Claire saying she’d be out tonight with Ryan, the mysterious Ryan, who now has a complicated story line. Ryan is a little of Billy, a little of Cole, and a little of this romantic comedy she watched a while back. All those lies—they looked like a possible escape, magic beans that might grow into a stalk she could climb to flee the ogres and her mother and Anna Youngwolf Floyd. But now the lies have grown and grown and grown so high, there will be no way down without falling. Did she say Ryan’s favorite food was pizza or burritos? Were his parents accountants or artists or did his father have an auto repair shop? Private school (that was from the film), or small-town high (Cole)? Sister getting married (also from the movie), or an only child, save for a half brother he’d only met once (Billy)? Have fun! Claire texted back. Bring him over after!
Mads is building a fall. Constructing it on purpose, unable to stop. The fall might destroy her, but the only problem is, it might destroy the boy next to her, too.
She has a guess where they’re going—to visit that white dog, only she can’t admit she knows about him. See how precarious it’s gotten? Two hours ago, the tipping structure of secrets could have crashed, thanks to Harrison and his big, fat mouth.
The air-conditioning is broken, and so the windows are rolled down. Billy takes Mads’s hand, gives it a little shake like she’s the champion. She can see his chest muscles under his T-shirt, the dark hair on his arms that likely came from his mother. Desire fights its way up over the sadness, offers itself like a small boat on a lonely island. Billy looks over at Mads, and the car swerves a bit. Is there such a thing as half a bomb? Can she blow up everything in her life except this odd boy with his sunken cheeks?
Of course, when she tells him the truth, this will all be over. The way he pulls over to the side of the street right then and turns off his engine. The way his dark eyes look shiny as sabers in the streetlight. The way he takes her bracelet in his hand and turns it in a circle.
The way he grabs the bag of sandwiches and pulls her across the seat and says, “Come on.” She has to climb over the armrest, but it’s okay, because the gesture says now.
She feels the tiny tip-tap of promise. No, it’s more of a baby flutter. You shouldn’t look to another person to save you, but maybe she and Billy could save themselves, together.
“Shh,” he says, though Mads has not said a word. She steps like a thief, hush-hush. There’s a sliver of a moon, and the smell of damp cardboard and dewy evergreen boughs. Down the street, a couple of car doors slam. Mads hears dinner party voices. A few porch lights are on. Mads sees the house a block away. It’s small and white, with a cyclone fence. Two-bedroom, max. Maybe 1,700 square feet. Good neighborhood, but the price of the house would come way down because it has zero curb appeal. The yard is all sad scrub and one overgrown tree that casts a deep shadow. The windows are dark, except for the blue-red flicker of a television.
Now Mads hears the slink of chain against cement as the dog stands and walks toward Billy as far as he can. He starts to whine and whimper.
“Hey, buddy,” Billy whispers. “Mads? This is Casper. Casper, Mads.”
He doesn’t need to say it—Casper is his Ivy. He sets the bag on the ground, opens it quietly. “It’s not just that he doesn’t feed him,” he whispers some more. “He’s chained up day and night. He practically has to sleep in his own shit.”
They need to climb that fence right now, Mads thinks, but she also immediately understands the impossibility of it. You could get in that way, but how to get the dog out? Billy tosses the sandwiches one by one over the fence, this time lobbing them neatly. The dog gulps them down.
Billy throws the last sandwich, wipes his hands on his pants. Mads and Billy stand beside each other and look at Casper like the worried parents of a sick newborn. A fat drop of rain hits Mads’s head, and then her cheek, and then her foot in her sandals. Billy sets one hand out, palm up, as if inviting a drop to land in it.
“Rain,” he says.
“Rain,” she says.
“You’re a good dog, Casper. You’re a good boy,” Billy says, and then he takes Mads’s hand.
“Nice to meet you,” Mads says over her shoulder as they run.
They slam into the truck. Rain splatters against the windshield now. She wants to get that dog and run away so bad she can barely stand it. “He’ll be out there in this.”
“Better than no water. I worry about that. I think a lot about water.”
He doesn’t just mean the kind in Casper’s empty bowl.
“Billy,” Mads says. The words gather up. They wait to order themselves. Once they do, she will open her mouth and they will come out, finally.
“I can’t help him,” Billy says. He scrunches up the empty bag, throws it to the floor.
“You are, though.”
“I can’t get him out.”
“There’s got to be a way.”
“Do you see why I brought you?”
“I think so.”
“You and me. We’re pretty much the same.”
“You want to kidnap him.”
“Better believe it.”
�
��You know he’s screwed where he is.”
“Yep.”
“But you can’t do it.”
“Hell, no, I would. I’d do it in a second.”
“I mean, you can’t because of that fence.”
“Right.”
“You and me,” Mads says. Who’d have thought it? A guy whose parents destroyed themselves; a guy who works at a dog rescue center, and who plays Night Worlds. Who only read one book for fun in his life, but who carries a piece of that book wherever he goes. It’s true. They are so much alike they could be siblings, Claudia and Jamie, only without the sibling part. Only without the perfect childhood and the hot fudge sundaes.
“No wonder we’re sitting here together, is what I’m saying.”
“We can’t get him over that fence?”
“How? I’ve thought about it a million times.”
“What if we cut our way in? Wire cutters.” We. A plan. The rising feeling of act.
“I don’t want to get arrested. I’ve been looking at videos, you know, online? How to open a padlock? All you need is a couple of paper clips and some time. But that asshole, H. Bergman. He barely ever leaves. He goes to the Quik Mart for, like, five seconds. And every two weeks, he goes to Fred Meyer. I followed him, to see where he goes. But he’s barely in there twenty minutes.”
“That’s the key. Keep him there longer.”
“Yeah? How? Mess up his car, or something? I mean, as much as I might want to, I can’t take a chance I’d hurt the guy. And I don’t know shit about cars.”
“We’ve got to do something.”
“We. You said, ‘we,’ Mads. I knew you’d say ‘we.’ ” He spins her bracelet again. He grins, even though his eyes are serious. “Maybe we can’t rescue a baby, but maybe we can rescue a dog. It’s something.”
“Padlock, fence, car.” She thinks through the problems again.
“Let’s go. I feel like that asshole is looking at me from here.”
• • •
This time, he heads straight to the garage of the U-Village shopping center. It’s a funny place to park, but Mads doesn’t even care. They face a cement wall. There’s a sign on it that reads LOAD, UNLOAD ONLY. Personally, she’d rather unload. You can hear the screech of tires as they circle around the cement pillars, heading to MORE PARKING, UPPER LEVEL. In the side mirror, Mads sees a shopper with lots of bags, hunting for her car.
“I hate this thing,” Billy says. He jiggles the armrest. “Maybe there’s a lever.” He searches around down by his seat and accidentally pops the hood. After getting out and slamming it shut, he’s back. “Hell,” he says. “Whatever.”
He leans over and presses his mouth to hers, and dear God, Mads forgets about everything: her need to confess, her settled future, the ticking clock on her and Billy. All she can think—no, she’s not thinking anymore. Thoughts turn liquid. They just kiss like crazy, and she grabs his hair and he grabs hers, and things get a little out of control.
Someone pulls into the spot next to them, and Billy mutters, “Jesus,” and sits back in his seat, and Mads twists her shirt back down from where it’s hiked up.
“We’ve got to . . . ,” Mads says, but she doesn’t know what they’ve got to do.
“This.”
“What?”
He reaches in his back pocket. He takes out his wallet, and then the map. He lays it on her leg as the driver next to them locks his car with the beep beep of his key fob. “We steal Casper. And then we head out of town.”
“You’re crazy.”
“We won’t hide in the toilets or anything, but we can go.”
“Go.”
“Yeah. A different life, right?”
“You’re nuts.”
“Why?”
“I can’t go. You know that. I’ve got, like, a month before I have to go back home.”
“It’s not what you want.” He looks pissed. Like he could punch something.
“There are legal papers waiting for me. I have to go.”
“Fuck papers. You don’t even want papers. Papers are only causing you misery, from what I can see.”
“I want papers more than I want the guilt of not having papers.”
“I’ll go there, then.”
She’s got no good answer for this. Just, the thought of him there, him and her mom, her friends from her past life, the whole picture—it’s so wrong that it makes no sense. “God, Billy, do you know how late it is? We’ve been kissing here for hours.”
“Not long enough,” he says. “I could kiss you all life.”
• • •
Mads creeps up to her room. Her sandals hang from her fingertips, so her bare feet soften her step. It’s a guilty hour. That hour says things.
“Mads?” Claire calls softly. “You home?”
“I’m here.” Damn that Claire. She always needs to make sure everyone is in their place before her day is done. It’s very motherly. Not Mads’s sort of mother, or Billy’s, but the kind of mother you imagine.
“It’s after one. I was getting worried.”
Mads doesn’t want Claire to see her. The kissing, the entire night, has changed her once more. Claire will see that.
Claire waits there in the hall. Mads’s politeness wins out as it always does. She cracks the door. Pops her head around it. “Sorry to worry you. We just . . . lost track of time.”
“Did you have a fun night with Ryan?”
“Yeah. We . . . went to the movies.”
“Mads.” Claire smiles. “Are you in love?”
“Oh my God, no.”
“I mean, it’s okay if you are!”
“I’m not.”
“All right. No need to bite my head off.”
“Definitely not.”
“It’s just . . . You look in love.”
Mads crosses her eyes, makes a scary jack-o’-lantern mouth.
“I mean, you could just let yourself, you know. See what happens.”
“No, Claire. He’s not really even my type.”
“I don’t want to talk you into the guy or anything, but sometimes not our type is exactly our type. You can be pretty similar inside, where it counts. You should have seen Thomas when we first met. He was in a band. You heard of KISS?”
“I think so.”
“Heavy metal? Painted white faces? Garish clowns from your worst nightmare? That’s who they were trying to be. And here I was, Miss Prissy, Miss Straight-A. I don’t know how to explain it, but just I recognized him. Like, our essential selves were the same, if that doesn’t sound too paranormaly.”
“I couldn’t feel that way about Ryan.”
“Okay.”
“This is just for . . . fun.” Fun is definitely not the right word. Not after the body in the water, and all that’s happened since. “Plus, you know, he’ll have to go back to La Conner by the end of the summer.”
“I thought you said his family was from Cape Cod.”
“Cape Cod! Right. Why’d I say La Conner? I don’t even know where La Conner is.”
“Yeah. By the sound of his sister’s wedding, I’m not thinking La Conner.”
“Wow, I’m tired. No wonder I’m not thinking straight.”
“Well, I’ll let you get to sleep. Good night, sweetie.”
Mads gets into bed and shuts her eyes, and when she does, she sees Anna Youngwolf Floyd in the lake again. She feels the bump of the body against her. She wants to scream and rise from that bed and run, but a ghost needs to be seen and heard. Mads forces herself to imagine the alive Anna instead of that battered one, the Anna who cradled Billy as a baby, and washed his toddler face, and waited with him for the school bus. Anna once held Billy in her hands until she stood at the bridge and let him go. In a way, he’s in Mads’s hands now, because this is how it is with love. And she isn’t holding carefully.
It’s so, so late, but there’s the curve of headlights turning into the Bellarose driveway. Suzanne or Carl likely drove off in anger, and is now returning. Mads thi
nks of the dear, sleeping lump of Ivy in her crib—her milky dreams and her satiny hair and her eyes that take in everything. She thinks of Casper. It’s so scary, the way we rely on others to do right by us. She thinks about Billy again. You and me. That map, spread out. We steal Casper. And then we head out of town.
The body bumps her again. Ghosts just don’t quit. She squeezes her eyes shut until she sees stars, clenches her fingernails into the palms of her fists.
Mess up his car, or something? I don’t know shit about cars.
I don’t know shit about cars.
But Mads does.
At least, Cole, who’s worked at Rainier Auto Repair his whole life, does, and one day after school, Mads stood beside him in the garage of Rainier Auto Repair, as she did every now and then after school. They stared at an engine under a hood, and she felt like the student doctor during the open-heart surgery.
What’s wrong with this one?
Nothing. Not a single thing. Someone swapped the spark plug wires. See here? This guy, and this guy, just like that. Just pull, then switch. Do you know how long it took us to figure it out? Long. Someone didn’t want this car to go anywhere.
She opens her eyes, glances at the clock by the bed. Past two now. She shouldn’t call. A call at two a.m. says I can’t stop thinking about you. It says You saw me, and You waited for me all day to hear me, and it says We could be a team, me with my violin case, you with your map.
But her phone is in her hand anyway, and she’s dialing, and he picks up on one ring.
“I was lying here thinking about you,” he says.
She feels a warm rush. It’s all gold lights, a sunrise.
“Get over here,” he says.
“I’m not calling for that. I’m calling for a perfectly practical reason.”
“Too bad.”
“Quit it. This is important. It’s about Casper. It’s about two spark plugs.”
“I’ve looked at the videos, Mads. I’m afraid I’d kill the guy. I don’t know a spark plug from a . . . from whatever else is in there.”
“I do.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. It just hit me.”
“Okay, Claude, when do we bust out of here? And how?”
