The Beautiful Lost

by Luanne Rice

  “Billy, we can’t,” I said, flooded with fear and adrenaline.

  “We have to,” he said. “Talking about my father last night—I don’t want to do it his way, illegal and sneaky.”

  “But our pact, to never go back.” I held up the sand dollar.

  The car ahead of us moved along; there were two big trucks ahead of us, and we were number five in line. I craned my neck out the window to see ahead. The Canadian officer looked about my dad’s age, with graying sandy hair, aviator glasses, and a badge stuck to his jacket.

  “Think about it, Billy,” I said, pulling my head back into the cab. “It will all be over. If we cross here they’ll catch us and send us home.”

  The next car inched ahead, and Billy decided. He backed the truck slightly, and then made a slow U-turn out of the line. I looked over my shoulder, to see if the officials would chase us. But they didn’t. They seemed intent on inspecting a fish truck.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I promised I’d get you there.”

  He reached for my hand. We locked fingers and squeezed. It lasted only a second, but it made me feel we were really together, pulling for each other in a new way.

  I pored over the atlas page that showed the way north. As the sun rose higher we drove along paved roads as far as we could, through woods, past farmhouses and pastures, with glimpses of a wide stream on our right. We came to a dirt fire road heading due east. It had a metal gate across the entrance. I looked at Billy.

  “If we go that way we’ll be in Canada,” I said.

  “It’s locked and chained,” he said. “It’s private property.”

  “There’s no one around,” I said. “We can cross here, and no one will know.”

  I could see him weighing the options in his mind. Then he nodded.

  “You’re right,” he said. We both got out of the cab. He climbed into the truck bed, opened the toolbox, and found the bolt cutters. The chain was wrapped around a rusty post and through a big padlock on the gate’s latch. I held the chain while Billy cut it. It slid to the ground like a dead thing.

  “We could leave money for it,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  We got back into the truck and drove through. He stopped, got out of the truck again, and did his best to wrap the chain around the fence post, tucking a ten-dollar bill from our dwindling funds through the lock’s shank.

  We drove down the rutted road and didn’t say anything for a long time. I thought of his father and how he didn’t want to be like him. We’d just broken through a locked gate and become trespassers; I swallowed hard. We crossed a narrow stone bridge, over the rushing stream into Canada, and I tried to tell myself it was worth it.

  The fire road ran through a pine forest. Sunlight penetrated the branches and needles and speckled the truck. We emerged onto a paved road. Luckily there wasn’t another chained gate. Eventually we crossed a covered bridge over the Saint John River and were in Hartland, New Brunswick.

  I spotted the Canadian flag, a bright red maple leaf on a white background, and knew we had made it. We were getting low on fuel. We passed a station where the prices were in Canadian dollars, and fuel came in liters, not gallons.

  “Okay, we don’t have the right money,” he said.

  “Maybe they’ll take American.”

  “That’ll make us stand out,” he said.

  “Billy, we have Connecticut license plates.”

  “They might not look if we pay in Canadian dollars.”

  We drove toward town looking for a bank. Before we came to one, we saw a sprawling and turreted Gothic brick building surrounded by a sharp and pointy black wrought-iron fence and a big sign:

  THE BEAUNE FOUNDATION KINSHIP HOME

  School buses were parked out front and children were filing out the door, down the wide granite steps, onto the buses.

  “They’re everywhere,” Billy said.

  “They?” I asked.

  “Group homes. And kids to fill them.”

  The sight of the home seemed to darken his mood. We drove on, and finally found a bank. Billy went inside and changed our money. Tim Hortons, a brightly lit donut shop, was next door. After Billy was done at the bank, he and I went inside. I got a booth for us while Billy ordered at the counter.

  He came back with two coffees and two glazed donuts. He was still quiet, and had barely said a word since the fire road.

  The coffee was hot and bracing, and it gave me a jolt.

  “Are you upset about seeing those kids?” I asked.

  He shrugged, sipping his coffee.

  “Or is it because we cut the chain?” I asked.

  “On the road with my dad,” Billy said, “he showed me how to get around everything. We broke into a house for food, and he stole stuff to sell. He never thought about the people who lived there—all he cared about was that there weren’t cars in the driveway. That showed they probably weren’t home so we could get in and out without, as he put it, ‘having to restrain someone.’ He never thought they would miss what he took, or have to spend money to fix the window we broke.”

  “Restrain?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “He said it like it was no big deal, but all I did was pray no one would be there.”

  “What we did was different. It was just a chain,” I said, trying to convince myself. “And you left ten dollars.”

  “The money isn’t the only point,” he said.

  “Still, you did something to pay for it,” I said.

  “You know what happened at that house, where my father broke the window?”

  “What?”

  “There was a cat inside. It was yellow. It scooted away from us when we walked in; we’d scared it. While my dad was stealing clocks and silver and whatever else he could stuff into a pillowcase, I tried to find the cat, to pet it and let it know everything would be okay. There were cat toys all over, a bowl of food in the kitchen. Those people loved that cat.”

  My stomach clenched, waiting for the next part.

  “It jumped out the broken window,” he said, “and ran away. I didn’t know if it was an indoor cat, if it was used to being outside. I ran after it, to bring it home, and my father stopped me, yelled that we had to escape. Then he laughed. He called me ‘a little jerk’ for caring about the cat.”

  I thought of how awful it must have been for Billy, in shock about his mother, and being dragged along with someone like that.

  “What happened to the cat?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We drove off and I didn’t see it again. I don’t know if it ever made it home. When you do something wrong, you start a whole chain reaction. It’s not just the one thing. It’s everything that happens next.”

  We finished our coffee; I left half of my donut. I’d been so hungry from not eating last night, but now I’d lost my appetite. I felt uneasy, wondering what we’d unleashed by unlocking that gate.

  We went back to the gas station, and Billy pumped the tank full of diesel and replaced a quart and a half of oil. He handed me the rest of our cash to count—the pile looked dangerously small. And then—

  Billy turned the key, and the engine made a sputtering sound. It didn’t whine like a dead battery; it sounded more serious.

  “Not good,” Billy said, getting out again.

  The gas station guys rallied around—they had a small repair shop out back—and I watched Billy and them with their heads under the hood, tugging on wires.

  “Do you mind if I find the library?” I asked.

  “No, go ahead,” Billy said, his head still buried in the engine.

  I walked through town. The river was brown with spring mud, logs, and branches pushed downstream by melting ice. Even if Billy had been here I knew he wouldn’t hear any lobsters in the fresh water. I meandered around until I found the Dr. Walter Chestnut Public Library.

  It was the coolest old place: fieldstone with graceful curved windows, a sweeping staircase, and a clock tower. It felt familia
r. That’s the thing about libraries: no matter where they are, they feel like home. I said hello to the red-haired librarian wearing round black-rimmed glasses, then went straight to the computers.

  Since fixing the truck would take a while, and I had plenty of time, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to DM with Gen and Clarissa. I told myself that if I didn’t tell them where I was, they wouldn’t feel bad about not telling their parents.

  As soon as I logged into my email, I saw the subject heading:

  FROM DAD.

  I’d expected that. I’d answer him, then start messaging my friends.

  I read my dad’s email:

  Dear Maia,

  You don’t know how relieved I was to hear from you. I was so afraid you had hurt yourself.

  We found your mother’s car at Hubbard’s Point. The Coast Guard, including some old buddies of mine, searched the area—they dragged the shallows around the beach, looking for you—for your body. It was the worst day of my life, sweetheart.

  The only reason we found the car at all was because of Helen Lessard, an old friend of William Gorman. If not for Helen, we wouldn’t have found the car at all. She warned us what kind of boy William is. Of course I knew what the newspapers said when he first entered your school, your class. But the papers made him sound like a victim.

  Helen says he went willingly with his father, a fugitive, and helped him hide from the police. She told us that he had money hidden, and that the two of you might have taken the train to New York City, a place he knows well.

  I have another theory and assume you are somehow heading to see your mother. I called her, and it took forever, because she is deliberately un-findable and can only be reached by satellite phone. She left us—it was her choice. I don’t mean to hurt you, but I think you’ve figured this out for yourself by now.

  She said she has not heard from you. I don’t know whether to believe her or not. Whatever your wishes about her—they won’t come true. I am afraid for you, if you get your hopes up. She is not capable of giving you what you need.

  Nothing, no one in life, is more important to me than you. No matter what you think about Astrid, she knows that you come first, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. She really cares and wants you to come home. Maia, this is hard to say, but she has been more there for you than your own mother.

  Just tell me where you are. I’ll be right there.

  Love,

  Dad

  I stared at my father’s email for a long time. I cringed to think of the pain he must have felt, watching the police and Coast Guard dragging the bay at Hubbard’s Point. Waiting for them to find my body.

  But his words about my mother stung most. Had he forgotten that Mom had left us to save her own life? She’d been dying in the suburbs and didn’t HAVE a choice. I totally got that. Astrid could never begin to comprehend how whales and fjords and climbing onto the roof in the snow were more important than a white Mercedes and cashmere.

  I reread what Dad had written about “William.” Of course Helen would say bad things about Billy—she was against him now. My dad didn’t understand any of it.

  It made me feel sad, but also defiant and powerful. Dad had no idea I was in love, that I had stopped taking my medication to feel again—to be alive, to be real, not encased in chemicals. I could do this on my own. It wasn’t like the last time I went off meds, when I was still depressed. I felt great now.

  And obviously Dad and Astrid didn’t know we’d taken the rusty red truck.

  Finally I hit the REPLY button, confronted the blank screen, and wrote:

  Dear Dad,

  You asked me to email and tell you I’m safe.

  I am. Please don’t worry.

  Love,

  Maia

  P.S. Billy is wonderful. Don’t listen to anyone who says he’s not.

  That was all I could manage for the moment. And somehow, after that, I didn’t feel like messaging anyone, not even my best friends.

  * * *

  When I got back to the garage, Billy was still working on the truck. The distributor was shot, and so were the points. The garage owner told him he could pick through used parts. I pitched in, and it took us a while to find what we needed. As our repairs began to work, a little at a time—one wire connected, then another, a distributor cap, although really old and oily, that fit—I could tell he was in a much better mood. We were saving a ton of money, fixing the truck ourselves.

  Just as we finished, the sky filled with clouds and it started to shower, then pour. He glanced at me and his eyes brightened. Our hands were covered with grease, our heads under the hood. The metal clanged, pelted by rain.

  Billy stepped out from under and looked up. He stuck out his tongue to taste the raindrops.

  “Try it,” he said.

  So I did. I tilted my head back and opened my mouth. The drops tickled my lips. It made me laugh, and Billy, too. I felt as if we were six years old with nothing to worry about.

  “You know what we need?” he asked. “Ice cream.”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  We went into the restroom and washed the oil off our hands with the grittiest soap I’ve ever felt. It smelled like oranges and made my skin burn. But by the time we thanked the garage owner and drove away, we were clean.

  The Black Cat ice cream stand was a mile out of town; the guys at the garage had given us directions. Small and white, it had red shutters with cat silhouettes cut into them, a red awning with black polka dots, and a small line of people at the open window. Billy got a cup of chocolate and I had raspberry swirl. The rain had stopped, but the picnic tables were still wet, so we stood under the overhang. The clouds were breaking up, blue sky gleaming in the spaces between them.

  Without asking me, Billy reached out a spoonful of his ice cream toward my mouth, and I tasted it. It was delicious. Then I gave him a bite of mine.

  “How much do you think we saved, fixing the truck ourselves?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  He kept eating his ice cream, seeming to add things up in his head. “The parts would have been fifty, sixty dollars. And labor could have been, I don’t know, another fifty?”

  “That’s a lot,” I said.

  “I was thinking, with some of the money we didn’t spend on the truck, we could buy extra ice cream.”

  “I’m pretty full now,” I said. “And if we get it for later, won’t it melt?”

  “It’s not for us,” he said. “I want to give it to the kids at that place we saw this morning, the Kinship Home.”

  I loved the idea. He went to the window, and I saw him peeling a few bills off our shrinking wad of cash. Then he gestured me over, and we walked away laden with three half-gallon tubs—vanilla, chocolate chip, and raspberry swirl—and a bag full of wooden spoons.

  We’d spent so much time fixing the truck, the afternoon had flown by, and school buses were already returning to the Home as we parked in the driveway. We got out of the truck and stood there with our bag of ice cream. The kids had started walking inside, but when they saw us, they first hesitated, then came closer. There were about twenty, ranging in age from very young—kindergarteners, first graders—to teens, about the same age as Billy and me.

  Even before they reached us, Billy was pulling the lids off. The ice cream had softened a bit, and a few drips ran down the side of the cardboard tubs.

  “Wait, shouldn’t we give it to the administrators, or whatever you call them?” I asked Billy. “For them to serve after dinner?”

  “Nope,” Billy said. “These guys need a treat that’s just for them. From someone who actually cares.” He looked up, beckoning everyone to come forward, and he started passing out wooden spoons.

  “What’s this?” one boy asked, staring at the open tubs. He looked like the oldest, with long dark hair and tattoos on his arms. He had a black eye half-swollen shut, and he squinted with suspicion out of his other eye.

  “Ice cream,” Billy said, a
n edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  “What do we have to do for it?” a tall black boy about our age asked. He stepped forward, in front of the other kids, as if protecting them.

  “Nothing,” Billy said.

  “What if you poisoned it?” a girl asked. She looked to be a few years younger than me, and in spite of her freckles and braided red hair, her turquoise plaid shirt and cool-looking torn leggings, she sounded tough.

  “We’re not supposed to take food from strangers,” a younger girl said, standing close to what had to be her sister—she had the same freckles, same russet-colored hair.

  “I’m not a stranger,” Billy said. “I’m one of you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘one of us’?” the tattooed boy said, looking ready to fight. “We don’t know you.”

  “Yeah, you do,” Billy said.

  “He lived in a place like this,” I said.

  “A place like this?” the older red-haired girl asked.

  “A group home,” Billy said. “Foster care. The Stansfield Home in Connecticut.”

  The two older boys still looked suspicious, but the younger kids couldn’t hold back. They grabbed their flat wooden spoons and dug into the ice cream. The red-haired girls hung back for a minute, then both went for the chocolate chip.

  “Why’d you get this for us?” the tattooed boy asked, finally grabbing a spoon.

  “Because I know what it’s like,” Billy said. “The same food on the same days of the week, none of it good, mystery meat and watery pasta, and it’s spring, and everyone should have ice cream.”

  “Old Whistler’s going to love this; we left him out of our treat,” a black girl who must have been eleven said, laughing. She wore a pink hoodie and faded jeans, and she pushed a young boy I thought must be her brother right to the front of the pack.

  “Who’s Old Whistler?” I asked her.

  “He’s on duty today,” the girl said. “He’s probably watching TV in his room right now. He can’t be bothered to wait for the little kids getting off the bus, but he whistles for us whenever he wants us to do something.”