“Hey, Queen,” the boy said to Camilla. “How ya’ doin’?”
“Queen” was Camilla’s street name, given apparently because of her regal bearing. Street kids shunned the use of given names or titles of any kind, preferring to reduce everyone in their world to a single level. They knew little about the everyday lives or backgrounds of the volunteers who helped them, and didn’t care. Nothing really mattered to them except the harsh realities of their own lives. They’d tagged Camilla with the name at once, and in the beginning it hadn’t been particularly friendly.
But now, after more than five years of volunteering at the hostel almost every weekend, Camilla was a favorite with the kids. She never pried, never acted judgmental or disapproving. Instead, she listened quietly, sympathized and helped whenever she could.
“I’m doing fine,” she told the boy. “Who’s your friend?”
He put his arm around the girl to support her more firmly. “This is Rosie. She’s not feeling too good. Ate something that made her sick. But Queen, there’s real bad stuff on the streets tonight. So you’ll be seeing some kids sick from bad drugs.”
Camilla looked up, suddenly alert. “What kind of stuff? Where’s it coming from?”
“Dunno. But people are going down all over. It’s a bad scene.”
Camilla sighed and looked at the papers on her desk, knowing she’d probably have a busy night.
“Tell the kids I’m here if anybody needs help. Shouldn’t Rosie see a doctor?”
“Are you kidding?” he asked in disbelief. “A doctor?”
Camilla rummaged in her pocket and handed ten dollars to the boy. “Well, see if you can get her to at least drink something. Or maybe get her some clear soup, okay?”
The boy pocketed the bills gratefully and made his way back onto the sidewalk, supporting his woozy friend. Camilla watched them through the cracked window, then returned with an angry frown to the stack of English papers she was marking.
If she could do anything personally about the people who poured drugs onto these streets, she’d have no compunction about condemning them to life in prison. The volunteers at the hostel saw firsthand the results of the dealers’ greed. They saw the damaged young minds and bodies, the wrecked hopes and heartbroken families.
But they couldn’t intervene. A private operation without formal mandate, public funding or governmental support, the hostel was simply a final resource for homeless youth. Camilla could only wait here in the shabby, poorly equipped little room until the kids came to her for help.
Camilla pushed her hair back wearily from her forehead and returned to the essays.
Eventually she came to Steven Campbell’s impromptu treatise on personal goals, and looked at it with quickened interest.
“My goal is to be a modern-day Robin Hood,” the boy wrote. “I want to steal from the rich—people like my parents—and give to the poor who really need help. I see nothing morally wrong with criminal activity as long as it results ultimately in a fairer distribution of wealth.”
Nothing morally wrong with criminal activity…
Camilla thought about the boy’s handsome face, his moody, withdrawn look and the stubborn set to his mouth, and wondered if perhaps Jon Campbell was having some serious problems with his elder son.
Not that it was any of her business, of course.
But the twins…
Camilla smiled wistfully and nibbled on her marking pen.
The twins were a different matter, baffling, intriguing and funny.
It was a rare experience for Camilla to enter the world of these small children. In fact, she was beginning to realize, as she spent more time with Ari and Amy, that she’d never really had a childhood herself.
And the twins had never had a mother. Camilla knew their mutual needs and yearnings made the three of them a potentially explosive combination, but she couldn’t resist the charm of these brilliant, winsome children.
If only they didn’t belong to Jon Campbell, who posed such a terrible threat to her own safety…
“Queen!” A girl clattered down the hall and tumbled through the door, breathless and pale. “Thank God you’re here.”
“Hi, Marty. What’s up?”
The girl wore denim coveralls with one strap hanging, a filthy plaid shirt and a pair of men’s running shoes, riddled with holes.
“Is it Chase?” Camilla asked.
Marty nodded and rubbed her eyes with blackened fingers. “He’s in terrible shape. He…got some really bad stuff.”
“I heard there was bad stuff around tonight. How is he, Marty?”
“I think…God, Queen, I think he’s dying!”
“Let’s go. Hurry!” Camilla got up from the desk, grabbed her cellular phone and box of medical supplies and ran out of the room. She followed the girl through dark alleys piled with garbage, heading for a row of fire-damaged, abandoned warehouses.
CHAPTER FIVE
CAMILLA STOOD ALONE on the windswept street, watching the flashing red lights of the ambulance as it screeched off into the darkness.
The ambulance attendants hadn’t wanted to take Marty with them. Only Camilla’s passionate insistence had finally convinced them that the girl should be with Chase when he was admitted to the emergency room.
People tended to look on street kids as less than human, somehow lacking in the emotions that other people had. But Marty was a nice girl, and Chase, too, was a decent person, shy and pleasant, with a rare talent for music. He’d been supporting himself and Marty for more than a year now, playing his guitar on downtown-street corners while people dropped coins into a bowl that Marty held as she sat crosslegged on the sidewalk nearby.
Camilla often wondered where the boy had come from, and what he might have become if drugs hadn’t claimed him. She’d never know, of course. Street kids kept their pasts to themselves. Every young face was a secret, a closed book.
Probably that was why she felt strangely comfortable in this grim environment. The streets were a place where nobody shared their childhood memories or discussed the past at all.
Never look back, that seemed to be their motto.
And until now, Camilla hadn’t looked back, either. She’d kept the door firmly closed on all those dreadful images from the past.
But the sudden reappearance of Jon Campbell in her life was changing all that. Camilla knew he was responsible for the painful flashes of memory, the trauma and the nightmares.
At some level, of course, she understood that she needed to find a way to talk about these things. As long as they were hidden inside her mind, unspoken and darkly powerful, her memories would continue to shadow her life and make it impossible to trust anybody or form any kind of close relationship.
She should probably go into therapy, find a selfhelp group, develop enough confidence in somebody to confide the truth about herself and her past. But she couldn’t. The very thought of talking about those things made her feel ill.
Camilla sat down on the curb and hugged herself, still shaken by the memory of Chase’s frantic white face, his enlarged pupils and convulsed body, and Marty’s terror.
It was well past midnight, with little traffic moving in the city core. A few people wandered past, ignoring Camilla as she huddled on the curb. The autumn wind tugged at her hair and chilled her shoulders. Scattered drops of rain began to fall, pattering lightly onto the dirty pavement.
Camilla buried her face in her hands, shivering. With the rain, memories came flooding back and she couldn’t hold them at bay…
July 1977
I’M ON THE BACK of his motorcycle. The wind whips at my hair and roars in my ears. I’m so weak that it’s all I can do to hold on to him. I have no idea where he’s taking me or what’s going to happen.
I try to remind myself that it doesn’t matter what he does to me. But I’m still scared…
He pulls up at a shabby building just off the highway. It looks sad and deserted in the morning light. A couple of pickup trucks are parked
outside, and tumbleweeds bounce across the parking lot. He lifts me down and sets me on the curb like a little kid.
“I’ll be right back,” he says. “Don’t go away.”
He must be joking, because I can’t even stand up. I hug my knees and put my head down so I don’t have to look at the glaring sunshine and the litter of garbage in the vacant lot next to the motel. The strong light is making my head ache.
He’s back almost right away, holding a key. He unlocks one of the rooms, then picks me up and carries me inside.
I have a confused impression of lurid colors, of old furniture, a dirty brown carpet and a little bathroom behind a half-closed door.
It’s not much, but it looks a whole lot better than the place I’ve been living.
He puts me on the bed and goes into the bathroom. I can hear water running. Now he’s back. He strips off his leather jacket, then starts to tug at my clothes. Instinctively I fight him, try to grab his hands. But he’s too strong.
Soon I’m completely naked. It’s almost a relief to have all those filthy clothes gone from my body. Still, I curl on the bed and try to hide myself from him. I don’t even know who he is.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers in my ear. “I’m so sorry to do this to you. But I promise it won’t take long.”
I brace myself for the invasion, the searing pain and horror of it. But instead, he lifts me again and carries me into the bathroom, lowers me carefully into a steaming tub of water.
It feels like heaven. I’m so shocked that I forget to be terrified and stare up at him. He’s flushed with embarrassment under his tan.
“I’ll just go away now,” he mutters, “and let you…” He edges out the door.
The water helps to revive me. For a long time I revel in the steaming bliss, scrubbing my arms and legs, washing my hair with the shampoo he’s left on the floor. Finally, reluctantly, I climb out and wrap myself in one of the towels, then try to dry the rest of my body.
But heat and hunger have made me really dizzy. I stumble and bump my elbow against the door. He’s there in a second, looking at me in concern. He takes the towel and helps me.
When I’m dry he carries me into the other room, pulls the covers back and tucks me into bed, then crosses the room to open his knapsack. He takes out a white T-shirt, neatly folded, and pulls it over my head. It smells like him, clean and sunny, faintly masculine.
I lie back against the pillows, my wet hair in tangles all around me. He comes back with a hairbrush and raises me, then begins to brush my hair, taking care not to pull at the snarls. When it’s smooth, he braids it and fastens an elastic in place.
This whole situation is so weird. We’re complete strangers involved in this homey, intimate act. But I’m too tired to think about it very much. By the time he finishes with my hair, I’m drowning and the world is spinning around me in multicolored flashes of heat. I feel as if I’m going to pass out.
He tucks me down among the pillows and draws the covers up around me. For a moment I luxuriate, warm and safe and marvelously comfortable. Then I tumble down into sleep like a person falling off a cliff.
A CAR SWERVED near the curb. A beer bottle smashed at her feet, spraying bits of broken glass over her shoes. Camilla looked up in confusion, still lost in the depths of her memory. The car drove past, full of young men, all of them laughing raucously.
It was a bright yellow, sporty model. Camilla recognized a couple of the boys inside the vehicle from the years she’d been working with street kids, although these particular youths had long since been banned from any contact with the hostel.
After the vehicle pulled away she got slowly to her feet, picked up her box of supplies and made her way down the street toward the hostel, fighting a dizzying sense of unreality.
Twenty years later, the face in her memory was still vividly clear to her, the handsome boy who’d knelt beside her to lift her out of the mud on a long-ago summer morning.
But just moments ago, in the sudden glow of a cigarette, Camilla had seen that same face behind the wheel of the yellow car.
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, two weeks after the start of classes, Enrique got home from the convenience store at about one o’clock. Because he didn’t have to go to his job at the service station on weekends, he’d spent an extra half hour cleaning the floors and tidying the storeroom. He was exhausted, covered with greasy dirt from a pail of water that he’d accidentally spilled on himself.
Late at night was the best time for a shower since he shared the bathroom with four other tenants and there was usually somebody pounding on the door in the daytime. After midnight, there was even a chance for some hot water.
He sighed in anticipation, thinking about those steaming jets of water, and began to unbutton his jacket. But all at once a strange thing happened. The lights flared, then gradually darkened. Enrique found himself lying on the floor, feeling the gritty hardness of the linoleum under his cheek.
This isn’t right, he thought in confusion. I shouldn’t be lying here with all my clothes on. I need to have a shower and then cook something to eat. I need to get up.
But try as he might, Enrique couldn’t heave himself to his feet. It was as if his body was some huge, inert mass, far too heavy to move. Nausea flowed over him in huge, smothering waves.
After a few moments the world began to darken again.
CAMILLA HAD A three-hour break after her first class on Monday. She took advantage of the time to work in her office, grading assignments, planning lectures and putting the finishing touches on an article she was writing for an American scholastic journal.
Toward noon the secretary knocked, then popped her head in the door. “Dr. Pritchard, one of your students is here. Do you have a minute?”
Camilla glanced at her watch and ran a distracted hand through her hair. “All right, Joyce.”
The secretary vanished and Jon Campbell appeared in her place. He closed the door behind him, approaching Camilla’s desk while she watched in startled, wary silence.
Camilla’s mind began to race, assessing her situation.
The two of them were alone in a room behind a closed door. Perhaps he’d remembered everything. Now he was about to make his move, tell her what he planned to do with all that damning information he possessed.
But he said nothing, merely folded his long body into one of the leather armchairs and gave her a courteous smile.
“Hello, Mr. Campbell.” She looked down at the papers on her desk. “How may I help you?”
“I’m having some trouble with this assignment on modern and nineteenth-century British novelists.”
Camilla felt a brief surge of hope. “Well,” she said carefully, “if you’re finding the course too difficult…”
“It’s not too difficult,” he said. “In fact, it’s really interesting. I’m just having a hard time getting hold of some of the books, that’s all. I wondered if you had any idea where I could pick up a few of the modern novels.”
“Could you show me your list, please?”
He handed the sheet across the table, and Camilla checked the books he was missing. For a moment, her sense of academic fairness warred with the urgent need for self-preservation. Ultimately, professionalism triumphed.
“I can loan you those books,” she said without looking at him. “But please be careful with them. I’d hate to lose them.”
“That’s very generous of you, Dr. Pritchard.”
Camilla got up and moved to the wall of books at the far side of her office. As she searched the shelves, she was conscious of his gaze resting on her back.
Don’t look at me, she wanted to shout. Don’t sit there thinking about my hair and posture, the shape of my body, your memories…
“Here they are.” She handed the books to him and retreated behind her desk.
“Thank you.” He opened one of them to read the name inscribed on the title page. “Camilla Pritchard,” he said. “That’s a pretty name.”
She continued to look d
own at the papers, wishing he would go away.
Callie, he’d whispered long ago. That’s a pretty name…You’re so sweet. Give me a kiss, Callie…Let me touch you…
The silence lengthened.
“Are you…progressing with the assignment?” she said at last.
“I’m reading a lot and making some notes. At the ranch last weekend, I stayed up working until about three o’clock every night.”
“Where is the ranch?” she asked without looking up.
“In Saskatchewan, just across the border. We run about fifteen hundred cows and calves over near the Great Sandhills.”
She knew that, of course. He’d told her about the sprawling family ranch more than twenty years before. Besides, the twins talked about it all the time. They loved the ranch.
Camilla felt a pang of guilt. “You must miss it.”
“I do. But luckily I fly my own plane,” he said casually. “It just takes an hour to get there. And the place I’ve bought on the western outskirts of town is not exactly a ranch, but there’s enough room for my family to spread out a bit.”
“The twins…” She paused, then, “They seem to miss the ranch a lot.”
“I gather they talk to you quite a lot. In fact, you seem to have made a big hit with them. They’re usually kind of shy with strangers.”
“They’re very unusual children. I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered such advanced intellects in seven-year-olds. And yet…”
“Yes?” he prompted.
“Despite their intelligence, they seem quite natural in their reactions. Not at all spoiled or selfconsciously precocious like some of the children in our program.”
He glanced at her with interest. “So what does all that mean?”
Camilla smiled. “I suppose it means you’re doing a good job.”
He smiled back, his face creasing with humor. The smile was so warm and pleasant that she felt herself being drawn to him again, and had to fight her reaction.
Memories of You Page 7
