by Tish Cohen
But tonight is different. The moon isn’t looming quite as large now but it still has the land lit up as if dawn were about to break. Which, seeing that it’s nearly 4 a.m., I guess it is. I head out on a narrow trail across the grassy slope with plans to cross the oil fields below and, well, I don’t have much of a plan beyond that.
It was stupid, storming out so fast. My T-shirt and jeans are too thin to offer any warmth against the cool night air. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d have at least popped into Joules’s room for the dead soldier coat. It would have served two purposes: keeping out the damp air and offering a sturdy layer between me and the dry grass and weeds I will eventually curl up on if I ever give in to the bone-weariness that has penetrated Joules’s body.
Joules. All this time I thought she was such a spoiled little witch. I thought that I—who’ve known Nigel, what, a couple of days?—with my sensitive upbringing and experience dealing with broken souls, was better able to see his character than his own daughter.
I’ll admit now, it’s possible, likely even, that Joules knows more about her father than I know.
Equally possible and likely is that I know almost nothing about him at all.
I reach into my back pocket and finger the policeman’s card. Officer Carl Beasley. The right thing to do would be to flip open Joules’s phone and make that call. A mother and a father are lying in hospital beds, without their daughter, because of Nigel. It isn’t right that his PR babes shush this one up as well. Nigel must be made to pay for what he’s done.
Taking hold of a branch from a dead bush, I pick my way down a small, dusty overhang, then stumble at the bottom and sit there a moment, overwhelmed by exhaustion. I need to stop. Stop thinking. Stop feeling. Stop caring. If I had the energy, I would run back to the wall beside the bridge right now and dig up the gloves. If I had the energy, I would wish myself out of this situation and back into the life I would now kill to be part of.
But I don’t have the energy. I’m depleted.
The wind picks up, and everywhere around me leaves and grass rustle. At least I hope it’s the wind. It could be the cougar. The thought of meeting the big cat face to face drives me forward. I walk on.
Naturally, State College is empty when I happen upon it. Who in their right mind would be headed anywhere at four in the morning? I trudge across the road and take the sidewalk to the top of the hill. As if propelled by remote control, I turn right on Mountain Ridge and wind down to the place where I feel safer than any other on earth—my parents’ house.
The side door to the garage is, as usual, unlocked. Even after the break-in no one has thought to bolt it shut at night. There’s no window in this garage, no moonlight to help me find my way around, but I don’t need it. I pull two rolled sleeping bags down from Dad’s tidy shelving unit and spread them out in the corner; the downy fabric isn’t nearly thick enough to protect me from the concrete floor below but I’m too tired to care. I curl in a ball and cover myself with the second, unzipped bag. I’m home.
Sort of.
Before I drift off, I decide this: I can’t go back for the gloves just yet. Nigel must turn himself in, and his daughter must be the one to encourage it. I cannot trust Joules to enforce a thing like that. And if I call the police as her, Nigel will be devastated. No. He must do the dirty deed himself. It will elevate him in his daughter’s eyes, that he at least had the decency to own up to his crime rather than beg Clara and Sue to get creative.
I’ll go back and insist. I’ll talk about responsibility and atonement and being able to walk about this earth with your head held high. Coming from Joules, the message might penetrate. To please his daughter, he might follow through.
But not now.
Fully aware that Nigel must be inside-out with worry for Joules, feeling guilt but not enough guilt to tempt me off the cement floor and back into his house, I sleep.
I’m awakened by the feel of someone staring down at me. My eyes fly open to see Dad’s face—my dad, Gary’s, face. He’s squatting down beside me with toast wrapped in paper towel and a cup of steaming coffee. Without a word, he holds it out to me.
I sit up and take his offerings. “Thanks.”
“You could have knocked on our door,” he says with a sad wink. “If nothing else, my wife and I know troubled kids.”
“I’m not troubled.”
He nods and hands me a card—Child Services, Lilith Parcelle, the woman who comes by the house to check on the kids. The flowered pants lady. “Just in case you ever are … troubled.” With that, he stands up and heads to the door. Looks back. “I’ll leave the garage unlocked, but if you have real problems you call that number.”
“I don’t. But thanks.”
And he’s gone.
After rolling up the sleeping bags and parking them on the shelf, I take my coffee and toast and head back to Skyline, to what will be the biggest confrontation of Joules’s life.
Or is it mine?
chapter 22
The Panel of Undoers awaits me in the kitchen—Sue and her perky sidekick, Clara, Nigel and his agent, plus the Hendridge boys, who may or may not be his managers. From the looks of the wine bottles on the island, the pizza boxes, the empty coffee cups and the state of Nigel’s hair—standing on end—it’s been a long night.
Nigel sees me first. He stands, crosses the room and takes me into his arms, whispering “Jujube” into my hair, kissing the top of my head over and over.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel guilty. Or if I said I thought Nigel was a terrible person. He isn’t. He’s scared and flawed and spoiled and childish. He might understand right from wrong but no one in his inner circle lets him suffer the natural consequences that arise from poor life choices. All he knows is the way out.
“You don’t have to tell me where you were,” he says. “That you’re here now is all I need.”
The way out.
“Dad. We have to talk.”
“Nige has a terrific plan for the two of you today,” Sue says, spreading a few brochures across the island. I look closer to see they’re from car dealerships—fancy car dealerships. “He’s been thinking it might be time for you to get your own set of wheels, and I’ve booked you appointments at three different dealerships.”
Perky sidekick grins. “I wish my dad had surprised me with something like this when I was seventeen.”
So this is the plan. Appease me through distraction. A nice, subtle, pearl-black convertible bribe to keep my mouth shut.
I look at Nigel. “Nigel. We can’t just move forward like nothing has happened. It isn’t right. That couple is suffering because … well, because of you and—”
Nigel squeezes my shoulder. “Sweetness, let’s not put a damper on the day. You let us work that out—we’re the adults here.”
No, I want to say. You aren’t the adults. Adults don’t try to buy their way out of trouble. Adults avoid it in the first place and confront it with honesty if it happens. “I just think we need to call and report what—”
A bell goes off and Nigel opens the oven. More croissants. “Let’s have ourselves some breakfast and talk about it in the Model T, okay? Sue here will call the school to report your absence, I’ll hide away in the back, and once we get far enough away from the leeches with the cameras we’ll have a day to ourselves. Drive up the coast or something.”
“No. I’m not going. You need to make the call. If you ever want me to respect you, you need to stop slinking around like this when you mess up, or—here’s a wild thought—stop drinking and driving in the first place! This world isn’t a … a playground for you. It’s not your right to just plow through it without ever once suffering a consequence. Don’t you get that?”
You should see Nigel’s face. It nearly folds over itself with pain. Like I’ve punched him so hard I’ve shattered all the bones that shape it.
Sue stands up. “Now, now, that’s enough.”
I knock her arm off my shoulder. “You have to convince h
im,” I say to her. “He can’t just go on like this. If he doesn’t do anything about it, I will.”
The manager says, “Let’s settle down, Julie. This is not tenth-grade ethics class, this is real life—”
“It’s Joules,” I spit. “Joules.“
It’s as if I haven’t even spoken.
“You can’t just walk into a police station and make some outlandish claim about a man like Nigel Adams because you’re ticked off,” he says. “You need to have proof. It’s a case of ‘he said, she said’, and your dad has a rock-solid alibi for that night.”
I can’t take it any more. I stomp out to the garage and fling the door open. There, where the tarp-covered SUV was just six or seven hours ago, is nothing but a folded piece of canvas. The car is gone.
I stand there a moment, stunned.
A few years back, I had a foster sister for less than ten months. She was this tall girl with bad skin who slumped down to appear the size of everyone else but, of course, failed and wound up looking like a girl who hated her height. It made me crazy, all that hunching. It was as if she wanted to disappear. Tatiana was her name. Thirteen years old but taller than Dad. She was only with us temporarily, she kept saying. Because the aunt who took care of her—nobody knew where her actual mother was—needed surgery. Once her aunt was better, she’d be gone. But the surgery came and went and the aunt had all these excuses. Eventually Mom found out there was no surgery at all, just a new boyfriend who didn’t want a kid hanging around and an aunt who said she’d done more than her share already.
Nice family.
There’s something about the randomness of who we’re born to. As lousy as things seem when you really examine them, as random as our births all appear, there may be a sense of order I’ve missed.
It’s called love.
People like Lise and Gary Birch are here to make sense of what would otherwise be sheer madness. They’re part of the system, these generous people who open their doors to soothe and care for the ones who haven’t been so lucky. They, and others like them, are here to make sense of all the dreck, even if their influence is only temporary. They’re here to undo the damage inflicted by people who should never have been allowed to have children in the first place.
Their own daughter was too selfish to really see it. And just might have been the luckiest one of all.
I pull Joules’s phone from my pocket. She picks up right away. I can hear the Ks gurgling in the background.
“Meet me at the bridge,” I say. “Now.”
chapter 23
The train didn’t work. The rainstorm didn’t work. But neither of those things were sold to my grandma by the crystal ball witch of Africa.
Joules doesn’t look pleased as I make my way up the gravelly slope beneath the bridge.
“Your mom made pancakes.” She picks up a handful of pebbles and watches them trickle between her fingers. “You couldn’t have waited another half hour? I’m starved.”
“Let’s just get this done. One more hour in your life might just finish me off.”
She scoffs. “Yeah. Like yours is so great. What’s with those white sandals your mother wears? She looks like a fifty-year-old baby.”
I shove my hands into my back pockets because I’m afraid I might slap her. “Let’s not get into the differences in our bloodlines right now, okay?”
“And why don’t you show her how to shave her legs? I can’t even eat in that house. Oh, and I found an ad for the overseas foster kids. I left it on her kitchen table as a hint.”
Yesterday, I’d have jumped into the whole “Why do you treat Nigel like garbage?” thing. Today I know better. That Nigel thinks he can sanitize his daughter’s image of himself by spiking her coffee and making croissants. It’s so pathetic, so sad, I can hardly stand it.
“Yeah, well. I refuse to discuss who has the better parent. I’m not sure there’s any contest.”
She eyes me closely. “Does this mean you’re over the whole I-don’t-fawn-enough-over-my-rock-star-dad thing?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not the bitch you make me out to be, you know. I used to be a better daughter.” She shrugs. “There was even a time I bought into the whole rocker lifestyle. Not any more.”
“Believe me, I—”
“My dad isn’t as generous as he seems.”
Is it possible she knows? I decide to test her. “Well, he does give to that family—Tyler Glass’s family. That’s pretty generous.”
“Wake up. He doesn’t do that from the sweetness of his heart. He does it out of guilt.”
I could throw up from where I think this is headed and hope this is not headed. Nigel couldn’t have. He couldn’t have.
She moves closer. “My father has a problem. He drinks. He drives.”
“I know.”
“Yeah? Well, did you know this? Nigel killed Tyler Glass.”
Behind me traffic roars past. I don’t look away from Joules but I can hear one of the cars has a muffler dragging on the ground. I can’t believe it. I mean, the news reports have speculated it could be the same driver, but this … that he actually killed a child?
“Oh God.”
“What a guy, right? What a freakishly fantastic guy.”
“Nigel killed Tyler Glass? He really did?”
“Are you deaf?”
I don’t answer.
She stares at me. “And then there’s more recent developments. Have you been in the garage lately? Have you peeked beneath the tarp?”
I drop to the ground beside her and let out a long breath. “He caught me looking. Sorry. He knows you know about the Disneyland couple.”
She shrugs. “Whatever. He knows I know about Tyler, too.”
“How?”
She looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “I was in the SUV with him. Screaming at him to stop. Go back. But he was drinking champagne. The SUV was full of evidence. He said he’d make it up to them. He said he’d write a song for Tyler. That single was never for me.”
All the money he donates publicly to that family. “Rockabye.” All out of guilt.
We’re quiet a moment. The modest house Joules and Nigel live in—it makes more sense now. He forks over most of his paychecks to undo the damage he inflicts upon the world.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that the little girl who’s been sleeping in my bedroom next to her is the Disneyland couple’s child. Instead, I stand up and motion toward the cement sound barrier. “The ruby slippers are over there.”
“Andie?”
Even at such a moment, I like the way that sounds.“Yeah?”
“I’m not sure I want to go back.” She stares up at me, a tear inching down her cheek. “Isn’t that crazy? I don’t know if I want my stupid life back. Maybe I want yours.”
I pull her up to standing and laugh sadly. “If I’d heard that a few days ago, I’d have been shocked.”
“Want to be more shocked? I wished for this too.”
Too tired to tell her I know this already, I try to arrange my face into a surprised expression.
“That night I was with Will and you were here. I saw the way he spoke with you in the music room earlier that day. It was so different from the way he treats me, and I was jealous. I wanted to be you and have him talk to me all respectful like that. Plus, the big family. You seemed to have it all.”
I did have it all. I just didn’t know it.
“So, it’s not all your fault,” she says, “this wish thing.”
I nod but say nothing.
“He’s different with you. Even when you’re me. It’s so obvious when I see you two together. Will and I … we’re wrong.”
It’s true. The way he is with Joules might look intense from the outside, but it’s more about admiring her physical self. With me, I don’t know, with me there’s something deeper. But I’d never tell Joules that.
“No,” I say. “Not wrong.”
She shakes her head and looks away. “It’s okay. What am I go
ing to do? Force him to like me more? I can’t do that. Anyway, whatever. There’s always Shane in the bushes, right?”
I’m not sure if she’s joking or not, but when she laughs I join her. “He is kind of cute.”
She nods. “Right? I’ve always been a sucker for the surfer dude look.”
A blue jay cries out from the trees to our right and we both look. It flies toward us, but the bridge blocks it out as it passes overhead.
“Hey.” Joules stares at me. “I got Michaela to laugh this morning. We were brushing our teeth together in the bathroom and I was goofing around. My toothbrush fell in the toilet. She looked worried for a second, then when she saw I wasn’t upset, she totally started to giggle.” She smiles. “It was good to see.”
Joules’s previously impenetrable shell is starting to crack. The fosters are getting to her.
“Pretty wild for both of us,” she adds. “To see how the other one really lives. My life isn’t quite what you read about in the tabloids, is it.”
Still holding her wrists, I say, “You won’t be alone with it all any more. I’m tough to get rid of.”
We walk across the grass in silence. At the wall, I drop to my knees and fling the serial killer hose out of the way, then start to dig.
“They’re not really shoes we’re digging up, are they?”
It hasn’t rained since the other day and the ground is unforgiving. “They’re rubber gloves.” I can feel dirt packing itself deep beneath my fingernails. Joules bends down to help. The digging is tough, so we both reach for sharp rocks, sharp sticks to help penetrate the earth. Eventually we hit red clay.
I never saw red clay the first time, which means we’ve dug too deep. I look around to check my landmarks. The crack in the cement wall. The dead bush about a foot to the left. This is definitely the place. So where are the gloves?
