Essential Maps for the Lost

by Deb Caletti

  Billy might throw up right then and there. It’ll be the grossest arrest the guy ever made. Billy faces a choice. Confess now, or come up with some story when he’s clearly been caught red-handed. Don’t they go easier on you when you confess? No one ever gets caught stealing the painting from the art museum or the money in the safe or the computer chip with the data that will take down the major corporation with government ties, so he has no idea what to do.

  “Yes, sir,” he says.

  The cop drums his nails on the window ledge of his patrol car. He gazes for a while at Billy and that dog.

  “Carry on,” the cop says. “I didn’t see a thing.”

  • • •

  It’s so hard to drive, but who cares. Billy’s heart is soaring. Soaring! When he gets to Green Lake, the post-kidnapping meeting spot, she’s already there. His Mads, his very own partner in crime and adventure, his own Claudia, but without the sibling part. He can barely reach the brake, but he manages. She lets herself in, because it’s too hard to do anything with such a big dog on your lap.

  “Billy!” she breathes. “Casper!” She has big sweat stains on her shirt. Billy never knew before that sweat stains could be so fantastic.

  “We did it!”

  She gets right in there, next to him and Casper, who doesn’t seem to mind. She kisses Billy, and it’s the three of them, him and her and Casper, and Casper’s hot breath smells like ham, and the rest of him doesn’t smell that great, either, but who cares. Billy can feel the big beast’s chest going up and down right next to him and the dog is panting loud in their faces and there are her soft lips, and the three of them are squished and smushed together, but they are here.

  “I have never been so happy,” he says, practically into her mouth. He wedges one arm out from around Casper and grabs her and pulls her closer.

  “Oh my God, I was terrified! I almost didn’t make it! I couldn’t find his car at first, and—”

  “I love you, Mads,” he said. “I fucking love you.”

  “Oh, Billy.”

  “I do.”

  “I’ve got to tell you what happened!”

  “So tell me, but know that I love you when you’re telling me.”

  She tells him her story, and he tells her about the cop. He loves cops so much right then, too, he wants to sloppy kiss every one of them. And crows, even. Crows are awesome. He wouldn’t kiss them, because it’d give him nightmares, but anyway! And sure, she didn’t say she loved him back, but so what! It’s a hurdle, that’s all. When they’re done talking, they start making out again. Casper hasn’t budged. Billy’s leg is falling asleep. Casper’s big breath steams up the window, and so does theirs.

  They pull apart. Mads holds his face in her hands, and then he can feel her lips in his hair. Those lips are saying something. Not out loud, but still. Her mouth forms the o of love, and the oo of you. Heh heh, he’s a lip-reader! He knows exactly what those lips just said! Add hurdles to the things he loves. They can seem so cold and mean, you know, but then you’re on the other side of them, and you see what a thing of beauty they are. In the distance, those hurdles stand for everything you’ve learned and everything you now are and everything you had the balls to overcome.

  • • •

  It’s kind of a special moment. Not just walking into Heartland Rescue with Casper, but standing at the counter with Mads. Mads and Jane Grace, there in the same room, meeting. Two of his most important people and one of his most important dogs.

  “Mads, Jane Grace. Jane Grace, Mads.” He sounds like an idiot.

  “It’s so good to meet you.” Mads puts out her hand, and Jane Grace takes it in both of hers. It’s more of a hand-hug than a shake.

  “And who is this?” Jane asks.

  “No collar,” Billy says.

  “Hmm.”

  “I think he looks like a Casper.”

  “Casper,” Jane Grace says. The dog’s ear twitches.

  “We just found him wandering around.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Lost,” Mads says.

  “Well, not anymore,” Jane Grace says.

  • • •

  One thing’s for sure—he’s sick of kissing in his mom’s truck. Right then, Mads says, “Ow ow ow,” as he leans down and catches her hair on the armrest. Now, trying to right the situation, his elbow clanks on the window, but hell. They kiss some more. Who cares about pain when you want someone that bad?

  They shift. The windows are all steamed up again, and the light outside is dusky perfect.

  “We should drive by his house. I’m dying to know what happened next,” Mads says, just before his mouth is back on hers again.

  Billy pulls away briefly. “I can tell you what happened next.” Billy’s voice is husky from kissing and want. “He towed the car someplace. Got a ride home. Probably didn’t even shut the gate. That’s the thing—you wish they’d hurt a little, but they don’t.”

  “Okay,” Mads says. Actually, she just says the O part before his mouth takes the rest of the word and makes it his. Her fingers are on the buttons of his shirt. This is flowers and fireworks, yeah, like the movies, but it’s also majestic ice caps and surging seas and protons and neutrons and the everlasting meaning of the everlasting universe. If he weren’t in that car, if there weren’t a roof over the top of them, he’d zoom right into the air. He’d hold her hand, and up they’d both go.

  Jesus, he needs his secret Plan A. He needs it now. But he doesn’t have his own house and his own bed yet, and they’ve got to get out of this car. It’s crazy and heated here, and even though they’ve gone to the farthermost spot in the Gas Works parking lot, people are walking past.

  “Let’s go.” He doesn’t even button the top of his pants back up; he just rises off her and shifts in the driver’s seat and starts the truck.

  “Where?” Mads’s cheeks are big circles of red.

  “Just trust me.” It sounds good. But what he’s thinking makes him nervous as hell. Gran, well, she doesn’t exactly go out with friends or go to movies or anything like that. She doesn’t have friends. But for the last three Fridays, there’s been this thing at Swedish Hospital, some bereavement group, some suicide thing. She’s there now. It’s dangerous. Still, if he doesn’t do something quick, their first time is going to be in the front seat of a car, and that would just be wrong.

  Of course, it’s pretty damn wrong to bring Mads home to have sex when his grandmother is at a bereavement group. Billy can barely stand what an awful, fucked-up picture that is. Sex, death, rightness, wrongness—it’s one big buzzing, stinging hive. Will I ever just plain be happy? he thinks. The answer is no. Happy is never a just. It’s not a destination you reach, a place to finally set down your bags. There are large happys and a million small ones and a bunch of awfuls and daily smashups and successes and droughts and rainfalls and perfect, dewy spiderwebs on a sunny morning and creepy, sticky spiderwebs in your hair in a dark attic. Life is always everything, all at once.

  Prepare for the all at once, two lovers in a car.

  • • •

  He’s driving like a maniac. Mads even squeals a little, and so do his tires as he takes that corner. He gets there in all of five minutes. Gran probably left a good half hour ago; he’s going screaming fast because he wants them to have as much time as they can.

  Billy yanks the brake next to the big China Harbor restaurant. Good news—he can’t see Gran’s Torino anywhere. It’s hard to miss, because it’s red with a black hood. It used to be Billy’s dad’s car, but his mom would never drive it and neither would Billy. It might have looked awesome, but it was unreliable, same as Daniel Floyd. It also smelled disgusting, but that was another story, involving his dad and a deer and a gun; a story that’s an animal lover like Billy’s worst nightmare. Forget it. It’s Gran’s now because she never really goes anywhere. It can be trusted for about ten minutes, which was also true for Daniel Floyd.

  “Here?” Mads asks.

  “Come on,” he
says.

  Billy takes Mads’s hand. He runs her down the steps to the dock. He speeds past Glenn and Craig’s big sailboat, practically trips over the neighbor’s cat. He’s hurrying like there’s a fire, because it’s true; he’s all heat.

  Ginger is barking her head off. “Shut up, okay?” Billy says through the door. He pats his pockets for his keys. Oh, Christ, don’t tell me. He may have just locked them in the truck back there. No matter. He upends various pots of flowers until he finds the hidden key. It’s black from dirt and kind of rusty, but he jiggles it into the lock.

  Mads looks around, taking it all in, as Ginger jumps on her legs. Billy worries it might smell a little like frying burgers in there. Still, he knows that even with Gran’s ancient plaid couch and that painting of a leaping whale, people always like the place. There is water right outside the windows, and boats, and little lights blinking on, and shimmery sunset colors reflected from the sky.

  They kiss. He walks them backward. They fall onto the couch. His hands are everywhere. Mads seems to have distanced herself a little, cooled down in this new location. The more they kiss, though, the more she returns. He undoes buttons, his, hers. But then he has to hop up for a second. He grabs a nearby pillow, yanks off its case. The case is decorated with a seagull, who’s suddenly gone limp. Billy tosses the pillow case over the urn on the fireplace. They should go to his bed, but he can’t stand the thought of changing places for what feels like the hundredth time.

  “There,” he says.

  He lies on top of Mads again. Her face is so beautiful, and he leans back down and puts his mouth on her neck and starts to reach into her shirt.

  “Billy.”

  Her skin is so soft.

  “You know, earlier? When you said . . .”

  “I love you,” he says into her neck and then into her shoulder. “When I said I love you.”

  “Billy. Before we do this . . .” Her hand is on his chest.

  “I have something, don’t worry. We’re fine.”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  Her skin smells like sweat and almonds and brown sugar. “You smell so good.”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Jesus, Mads. I can’t think about talking—”

  “Billy.”

  “I want you so bad.”

  She shoves him hard, because Ginger is barking again. Mads’s whole body has gone rigid and she tries to sit up, and he can hear it now, too, footsteps, the rattle of the door handle. Oh, shit! Shit!

  “Oh my God,” Mads says. His shirt is off, somewhere in there he’s taken it off, and now he can’t find it. Mads’s own shirt is half undone, and one sleeve is hanging and she’s trying to get it back on. Her hands are shaking too hard to get the buttons.

  The door opens. Ginger has it all wrong, with the joy and excitement. The dog quickly realizes her error when Gran says What the hell in that tone. Ginger speeds off to hide in Billy’s room.

  “What. The. Hell.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Mads’s face is red, and red blotches break out along her chest. She’s managed a few buttons, but they’re done up funny.

  “Bereavement group?” Billy manages to say. He’s in a panic, but he’s also suddenly pissed.

  “I had enough of it! And now look. Came home not a minute too soon, if you ask me.”

  “Come on, Gran.”

  “I think you and Amy need to leave.”

  “Amy?”

  Shit. Shit!

  “What, you’re not Amy? If you’re not Amy, who are you?”

  Why did he say her name was Amy? How can he ever explain this now? No matter how he explains it, it’s going to sound bad. Mads looks like she might cry. She’s hunting around for her purse, which has half-spilled into the couch cushions in their hurry to get to each other.

  “Who are you, I asked.” Gran sounds like a hissing snake, a viper. Fuck. It’s all ruined now; it’ll be like Jacob and the weed, he’s sure of it. A person doesn’t forget that kind of venom. You can’t explain to other people how Gran is lots of different things. How, sure, she’s a paranoid bitch, but how she’s loving in her own way, too. How behind all that hardness she’s someone who’ll do anything for the people that love her.

  “I’m sorry,” Mads says again. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “This is rich, Billy. This is really rich. First your uncle calls to say he’s returning your message, and now look. I mean, get a room, for Christ’s sake.”

  Mads jams the stuff back into her purse. She heads to the door.

  “Mads,” he says. “Mads, wait! Let me give you a ride home.”

  “Mads?” Gran says. “Who the hell is Mads?”

  Everything is fucked up. It was going to be a perfect day, the stealing Casper day. But now Mads is running out of there, and he runs after her, feet pounding the dock.

  She stops. Turns to face him. He reaches out, grabs her wrist. “I need to be alone, Billy. I need to be alone.”

  Her car is still at Green Lake, for one. It’s getting dark, for two. She’s this upset, for three, four, five. He can see she means it, though. He stands there helpless and stupid and he watches her go.

  Her bracelet has come off. It’s lying in a broken circle on the dock. The sight of it makes his heart break, too. He’s scared. He’s scared of all of the things broken, breaking. Back inside, Gran is in her room with the door shut. There’s a lip gloss still in the crack of the couch. He twists off the lid and smells it—peach. It’s possible that these are the things he’ll have left of her. He holds the bracelet and the lip gloss up against his face. And then he takes the map out of his back pocket and he folds the bracelet inside.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Her phone begins to ring somewhere after Fifteenth Street. Billy and Billy and Billy again. Mads runs all the way home before she remembers that Thomas’s truck is still parked at Green Lake. As if she doesn’t have enough to feel bad about, there’s the thought of it—that loyal pile of metal sitting abandoned in the lot. She imagines it shining faithfully underneath a streetlight, its round headlight eyes ever open and unwavering.

  She tries to sneak into Claire and Thomas’s house without being seen. It smells like popcorn in there. It must be a sleepover, because Thomas and Claire are still up, watching some scary movie with Harrison and Avery. Mads hears ominous noises like door creaks and suspenseful music, and Harrison says, “Don’t do it, don’t do it!” and Avery says, “They always do it, stupid,” and Thomas says, “Avery. Don’t call Harrison stupid.” It’s dark in the family room, but the TV shoots bolts of colors.

  Mads needs to get to her room, because things are falling in on her, and she needs to take cover.

  Just tell me you’re okay, Billy texts.

  I’m okay, she replies, just so he doesn’t think she’s on a bridge somewhere. The idea of a bridge seems almost comforting. The ogres shove and huff. Their putrid breath blows on her cheeks. She hates herself. She is such a horrible person that she understands why they want to snuff her out. She turns the sound off on her phone and shoves it under her pillow.

  There’s a rap at the door.

  God! Why does Claire persist so? Just because Mads needs her to persist, it doesn’t mean she has to persist every single second! Why do the people who love you keep on loving you even when you don’t deserve it?

  “Mads? You home? I didn’t hear the truck.”

  “I . . . I left it . . .”

  “Are you all right? Can I come in?”

  “No, Claire. No.”

  “Did you and Ryan have a fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, damn, honey. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “All right. Well, we’ll figure out the truck tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “One time I left Thomas at a Wendy’s drive-through. Walked right out of the car. It wasn’t even because of the chili.”

  Mads feels too awful to
laugh. She pushes her palms against her eyes so she doesn’t cry. She wants to go home. She wants to go home so bad she’d leave immediately if Thomas’s truck weren’t stuck in the Green Lake parking lot. She needs her mother. What she doesn’t have right then (and never had at all, really) makes her feel so lost.

  “We’re right here, got it? I love you, sweetie.”

  “Love you, too,” she says, because she does. Oh, hers is a failed love, a flawed love, a complete-disregard-for-their-trust-in-her love, but it’s love nonetheless. And theirs is a stumbling love, a tumbling love, a trying-hard-and-getting-it-wrong-anyway love, but, look, it’s there, too. Love isn’t always beautiful, but the beauty isn’t what matters anyway. The steadiness is.

  “I wish you’d come join us. It’s me against the boys out there.”

  “Thanks, Claire. But I’m okay here.”

  She is okay if being terrified is okay; she is okay if being a coward is okay; she is okay if being a liar is okay; she is okay if making mistake upon mistake is okay.

  Mads thinks about her hand around Anna Youngwolf Floyd’s arm, an arm that was hard and slick and cold as a seal. She thinks about Anna’s eyes, the ones in her yearbook photo that are so similar to Billy’s own eyes. The flashback slaps her. She might throw up at the memory. The ogres—they are mean, mean, mean, with the way they twist the truth. Because instead of remembering Anna’s own struggles and failings, instead of remembering that most people in the world are compassionate and that the rest can go fuck themselves, Mads can only think about how disappointed Anna must be in her now.

  • • •

  Mads finally gets to sleep just as the sun comes up. In the weighty blur of a dream, she hears the doorbell. She thinks it’s Avery’s dad come to pick him up. The glowing numbers of the clock, though, read 6:02. Six? In the morning? Her sleepy head can still calculate: Saturday plus sleepover plus six a.m. does not equal Avery’s dad. Bad night plus Saturday plus six a.m. can only mean Billy.

  Billy, here.

  Mads flings off the covers, hoping to reach the door before Claire does. Claire can be woken by a soundless fever or the sense of someone missing. The doorbell will be a siren.