I didn’t cry. But I may as well have.
I looked at myself in the mirror, standing there not crying, with my hat on the ground. I looked small. And weak. I looked alone.
I hated myself.
The camera hung waiting around my neck. I held it low in front of my chest and took a picture of my ugly reflection in the mirror. I didn’t smile. My skin looked even paler than usual under the flickering fluorescent lights.
“Come on, Beau,” I said. “It’s time to …” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I picked up my hat and slipped it back on my head. Beau’s claws skittered on the tile floor as he turned with me toward the door. I knew what I had to do. I blew out a tired breath and opened the door and almost ran right into a singing lady walking toward the alley with a garbage bag in her hand. She was tall, with her hair pulled up under a hairnet.
We both stopped. Her voice cut off in mid-song. Her eyes and mouth got big.
She shouted something in Spanish. It didn’t sound mean, or angry, or scared. Just alarmed.
She shouted it again, even louder.
The other angels stopped their singing. Then they were there in the crowded little hallway with us. Their surprised eyes took me in, up and down, and then Beau.
I could have run. I should have run, probably. But I was frozen. By my hunger and my hurting. By my loneliness. By the sound their voices had made while they were singing. By the friendly, round shapes of their faces, even when they were surprised by a crazy kid and his dog in their kitchen. By their warm brown eyes that reminded me of Jess.
They whispered to each other in words I couldn’t understand. Then the tall one reached forward, slow and easy, and touched the bruise on my cheek. I didn’t pull away. Another one stretched out her hand and touched the cut over my eye.
They talked back and forth to each other, their voices rising. They nodded their heads and said kind words into my eyes, words I didn’t know.
It felt good. Good to be touched. Good to be cared for.
Then I heard one of them say a word I did know.
Policía.
The word threw cold water on the warmth that I’d been slipping into.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No police.” My brain struggled for the few words of Spanish I’d picked up. “Por favor.” That meant please, I was sure. “Por favor, no policía.”
Their faces wrinkled in confusion, and they did more urgent whispering back and forth to one another.
I saw the office behind them, across the hall.
I pointed at it, then held my hand up to my ear like a phone.
“Telephone?” I said. “¿Teléfono?” I licked my cracked lips. “I want to call — I need to call — my parents. Mamá.” I said it with the Spanish accent at the end, like Jess did. “Mamá y papá. Teléfono. ¿Por favor?”
The worried lines in their faces softened. There was a little more whispering, then they stepped to the side. The tall woman who’d first found me put her arm around my shoulders and guided me toward the office.
“Sí,” she said. “Sí.” She smelled like flowers and warm food.
I slipped into the little office, Beau coming with me but looking up at them and grinning as he passed, tail slapping back and forth. He’s always friendly with people in kitchens.
I closed the door on their watching faces, blocking out their curiosity and the smells of the kitchen. My mouth was watering and my stomach grumbled angrily, but I turned toward the phone on the messy desk.
I fumbled in my pocket for the napkin with the phone number on it. The one from the TV screen in the diner. I picked up the phone.
The dial tone hummed in my ear. In my other ear I could still hear the radio playing. The angels were silent, waiting. I bit at my lip and tasted blood.
With a trembling finger, I started to dial the numbers.
I thought of how sick I felt, how hurt. I thought of the fists and the feet the night before. I thought of all the money that was gone.
I thought of how small and weak I’d looked in the mirror. And I thought of how far I still had to go. My headache was a growling grizzly with sharp claws.
“Washington State Law Enforcement Tip Hotline,” a voice blared in my ear. It fought with the aching for space in my head.
“Yeah,” I said. My voice barely made it out of my mouth so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Yeah. That missing kid? The one from Wenatchee?”
The next words waited to be said. They waited with the angels’ still-silent voices.
“Yes?” the man said into my ear. “Yes? Do you have any information about the missing child?”
“Yes,” I said. And I opened my mouth.
But then. But then Beau barked.
Beau almost never barks. He almost never barks. Unless he’s mad. That’s the truth.
His bark was loud in the little office. I blinked and looked down at him. His ears were pointed up at me, but his tail wasn’t wagging. He twisted his head to the side and looked at me. And he whined, just once. I looked into his green eye, and then his brown one.
My head cleared.
Here’s what I don’t get: why giving up always sounds good until you do it.
Yeah, I was sick and hurt. So what. That was nothing new.
Yeah, most of my money was gone. But I still had some.
Okay, some wolves had torn me up the night before. But then angels woke me up.
Sure, I was all alone. But I had Beau with me. And one Beau was worth more than a whole world full of alone.
I looked up at the clock on the wall. I still had time.
“Excuse me? Do you have any information about the missing child?”
“Yeah,” I answered, dropping the napkin into the garbage can. “He’s in Moses Lake. I saw him. I’m sure of it.”
I hung up the phone.
Beau still stood, looking up at me.
“Thanks, buddy,” I said. He wagged his tail and flopped his tongue out of his mouth in a wide smile.
The angels were waiting in the hall when I opened the door. The tall one reached out and pressed something into my hand. It was a warm paper towel, all bundled up. I peeked inside and saw a fresh tortilla, stuffed with rice and beans and onion and red salsa and green cilantro and grilled chicken. The smell that wafted up to me almost made my knees buckle.
Tears burned up into my eyes. Probably from all the spice in the air. I blinked them away like I had in the bathroom.
“Gracias,” I said to the women. And once was not anywhere near enough so I said it again, holding the warmth of their food in my hands. “Gracias.”
They smiled and nodded.
“I have to go,” I said, pointing with my chin toward the back door. “My mamá … she’s coming. I have to go.”
Even when you’re talking to someone who might not know what you’re saying, lying to good people just feels bad. But it had to be done. So I did it.
They said some words, most of which I didn’t know, and rubbed my shoulders, and bent down to pet Beau. One of them offered him a couple of warm tortillas, which he scarfed down in a few snapping bites.
In the alley outside, I tightened the backpack straps over my shoulder and picked up the empty duffel bag. I held the taco in one hand and knew I’d have to eat it at a jog. I looked down at Beau.
“Come on, Beau. We’ve got a bus to catch.” I took a deep breath, then smiled. “And a mountain to climb.”
Scared. A morning walk.
A question needs an answer.
Knuckles on the door.
Mark’s mom answered. She looked like she hadn’t slept all night. Jessie rubbed Mark’s note between her fingers in her pocket.
“We haven’t heard anything, honey,” his mom said. “I’m sorry.”
“Why did Mark run away?” Jessie asked the question quick, before she lost her nerve. There was no time for “good morning.” And it wasn’t a good morning, anyway.
His mom’s eyes flicked to the side, then back to her. One
hand went up to her neck. She licked her lips. And Jessie knew, at that moment. But she still wanted to hear it.
“I know this is hard, Jess. But right now we’re just focusing on getting him home safe.” Her voice was tired.
“No,” Jessie said, shaking her head. “Tell me. I have to know. Why did he run away?”
His mom closed her eyes for longer than a blink. Then she looked out past Jess, out into the daylight world. She sighed out at the sunshine. “Come in, sweetie,” she said.
Mark’s dad was at the table. Just sitting there, with the phone on the table next to him.
Jess sat down and, after a few false starts, Mark’s mom told her everything. She told her about the last call from the doctor and what he’d told her. She told her about how Mark had taken it.
Sometimes crying is easier when someone is crying with you. But sometimes that only makes it worse.
Mark’s mom sat looking down at her hands, at her fingers tied tight together. They were a mom’s hands, soft, with only small wrinkles, and chipping polish on the nails. They were empty, with only themselves to hold.
Jess sat with her eyes full and down. She hurt. She wanted to stop breathing, because her breaths would not come smooth. They came like tearing paper. She felt, like a broken little bone inside, the loneliness of her best friend. She missed him with the kind of missing that almost feels like anger.
Yes. She knew exactly where he was going. And now she knew exactly why.
He trusted her not to tell. She wanted to reach out and pull him close and slap him across the face.
She felt pinned. Like a butterfly in a case. The eyes were on her.
Before she could try her wings, the phone rang. Mark’s dad picked it up. His words were sharp, short. His eyebrows were screwed up tight.
“Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. Really.” He looked over at Mark’s mom and shook his head, half yes and half no.
“All right. Yes, of course. Thank you.”
He set the phone down and reached out to take Mark’s mom’s hand.
“Someone called the tip line a few hours ago. Said they saw him in Moses Lake.”
His mom gasped. “Well, good!” Her voice picked up new life. “Was there more information? Do they know where to start looking?”
He shook his head. “They don’t think it was a real tip. It sounded off. It was a kid’s voice. A boy.” He squeezed her hand. “A dog barked in the background.”
Mark’s mom sat with her mouth stuck halfway open.
“Mark,” she said at last. Mark’s dad nodded.
“They traced the phone call.
“A restaurant. In Seattle.
“They’re on their way now.”
I counted my breaths as I watched Seattle slide away out the bus window. I was panting, and I didn’t want anyone to notice me. My legs were still jelly from the run to catch the bus. My body wasn’t used to exercise. It didn’t like it. The headache was sharpening its teeth on the inside of my skull.
I stretched the fingers of my right hand. They burned from carrying Beau in the duffel. He was still in there, on the seat next to me, between me and the window. I rested my elbow on him softly so he’d know I was right next to him.
“Why you breathing so hard?” A face had popped up over the back of the seat in front of me. All I could see was curly red hair, a freckled forehead, and curious green eyes. I looked around. No one else was watching.
I shrugged. “Just tired, I guess.” I looked back out the window, hoping she’d leave me alone.
“Tired from what?”
I pretended I didn’t hear her. She leaned farther over the seat.
“Tired from what?”
I blew my breath out through my nose and looked at her.
“From running to catch the bus.”
The girl nodded.
“I’m gonna ask my brother if I can sit next to you,” she said, and before I could argue, her head disappeared.
The kid sitting next to her looked about sixteen and he pulled his earphone out long enough to say, “Yeah, sure, whatever.” In a flash she was squeezing into my seat. I didn’t have a chance to fight it. I slid Beau over against the side and pressed in next to him. The girl flopped in beside me, so close I could smell her Doritos breath.
“I’m Shelby,” she said. “I’m six.”
“Okay.”
“What’s your name?”
I almost said it, then remembered. My brain scrambled and spat out the first name that came to mind.
“Uh. Jess. Jesse, I mean.”
“You going to see your daddy, too?”
“Huh?”
“On the bus. You going to see your daddy?”
“No.”
“Oh. I am. It’s my first time.”
“Your first time seeing your dad?”
“No. It’s my first time seeing him at his new house.”
“Oh.” I looked back out the window. The city was gone now. There were only warehouses and smokestacks and the other cars on the highway.
“My mom and dad got divorced.”
“Oh.” I didn’t want a conversation. I wanted to sleep.
“Jesse?”
I licked my lips and rolled my eyes, then looked at her.
“Yeah?”
“Are your mom and dad divorced?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
I looked out the window again. Against me, Beau wiggled and tried to scratch at himself in the duffel. I quietly scratched at him through the material. I wished the stupid kid would leave me alone so I could let him stick his nose out and get some fresh air.
“What happened to your face?” Her fingers reached up toward my black eye.
“Nothing,” I said, pulling away. I locked my eyes on the whole bunch of nothing out the window. I could feel her still watching me. I clenched my jaw. Maybe leveling with her would shut her up. I turned and leaned down and looked her right in the eye.
“A group of guys beat me up last night,” I said in a low whisper. “They beat the crap out of me and took almost all my money.”
Her eyes widened. “Why’d they do that?”
I blinked. “Because I kept asking them too many questions.”
She thought about that for a minute. “I would’ve stopped asking them stuff,” she said.
I fought it, but a little smile pulled up at the corners of my mouth. “I don’t think you would’ve,” I said.
She smiled back. “Prob’ly not. I like talking.”
“I noticed.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I rubbed a hand up and down Beau’s side. He sighed, a sleepy doggy sigh. The sound of the road humming under the bus covered it up.
“If they took most of your money,” she asked, “then how’d you get a bus ticket?”
“I already had the bus ticket. I bought it on the Internet.”
“Oh.” She scratched at a scab on her knee. “My mom and dad got divorced. They just did. We live with just my mom now, because my daddy moved out. This is my first time to go and stay with him at his own house.”
“I need to do some work now,” I said. I pulled my notebook and pen out of my backpack. The last words I’d written were the ones from the diner, back before the wolves and the angels. I felt like I should write something about the angels. Even if they were only cooks in a noisy kitchen.
I remembered the angels’ voices waking me up that morning. I felt for the words, then counted in my head. I started to write.
Waking from nightmares.
“What are you doing?”
“Homework,” I said without looking up. I thought, and counted on my fingers, then wrote the next line.
Angels’ voices pull me up.
“Why are you counting?”
“Shhh.”
I remembered the phone call. I remembered almost giving up. I remembered my sadness turning into anger, and then my anger turning into something else. Something better. I knew what the last line should be.
&
nbsp; Leave the wolves behind.
I put the pen down and reread the words. I checked my counting and nodded. God, I was tired. And that weird kind of hungry that doesn’t want to eat.
“Why are all your words in bunches of threes?” Shelby asked. She pointed at what I’d just written, and the three lines I’d written in the restaurant.
I was too tired to lie. Too tired to fight. This kid wasn’t giving up. And maybe it wasn’t that bad to have someone to talk to who wasn’t punching me in the face.
“It’s a kind of poem,” I said, “called a haiku. It’s always three lines.”
“Why?”
“It just is. And the lines always have the same number of syllables.”
“What’s a syballul?”
“A syllable. It’s just a sound. Like this. The first line of a haiku always has five syllables.” I read the first line and clapped softly with each sound. “ ‘Wak-ing from night-mares.’ Five syllables.” She nodded her head. “The second line always has seven syllables.” I read the second line, and she clapped with me this time. “ ‘Ang-els’ voi-ces pull me up.’ ”
“Seven!” she said with a big smile.
“Uh-huh. And then the last line goes back to five. ‘Leave the wolves be-hind.’ It’s five, seven, five.”
She smiled and ran her finger over the words on the page.
“I like hockey poems,” she said.
“It’s haiku. And I do, too. They’re my favorite kind. My friend and I —” My voice stopped when I thought of Jessie. I swallowed and kept talking to fight the burning in my eyes. “My best friend and I love them. Our favorite teacher, in third grade, taught us about them. We use them like a kind of … code, I guess. We write notes in haiku. We even talk in haiku sometimes. It’s kind of … just kind of our thing. Our special thing, hers and mine.”
Shelby scrunched up her eyebrows. “Your best friend is a girl? Like a girlfriend?”
“No. Just like a friend who’s a girl. We’ve been best friends forever.”
“Oh.”
The bus rumbled and shivered around us. I closed my notebook. A man in the seat behind us started snoring.
“When I get there,” Shelby said, “I’m not gonna talk to him. Not for the whole weekend.”
The Honest Truth Page 4
