“Are you and Ted still taking a break?” I said.
“I really don’t want to talk about it, Robyn.” She shoveled another spoonful into her mouth.
The thing was, I wanted to talk about it. “Did Ted break up with you, Mom?” I couldn’t think of anything else that could make her this miserable.
She reached for the remote and turned off the TV. Then she snapped the lid back on the ice cream container and went into the kitchen. I followed her.
“Is that what happened, Mom? Did he dump you?”
She put the ice cream back into the freezer before turning to face me.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Robyn, and I mean it.” She sounded annoyed that I had interrupted her ice cream and TV extravaganza. She sounded like that more and more often lately. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t see why I should have to put up with it.
“I’m going to Dad’s,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
“I can go to Dad’s whenever I want.”
“You were at your father’s all weekend and a couple of days after school this week so far. You should spend more time here with me.”
“Why? So I can watch you mope around and whenever I ask you what’s going on, you can tell me you don’t want to talk about it?”
She relented a little. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Look, why don’t I get dressed and we’ll go out to dinner, just the two of us? We haven’t done that in a while. What do you say?”
I said okay. I agreed because I thought it would make her happy, not because I thought there was a chance she would tell me what was going on. Good thing, too.
Nick called my cell phone while I was out with my mother, but I’d left it at home. I didn’t want anything to interrupt our time together, even though it turned out that any interruption (gale-force hurricane, house-sucking tornado) would have been welcome. My mother was not in the mood to talk about anything. Nick’s message said he had to make a stop downtown after school tomorrow, on his way back to Somerset. He told me where he was going to be and asked if I could meet him. He said if I couldn’t make it, it was no big deal. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
. . .
The next morning, I had a dentist appointment, which meant that I didn’t have to go to school first thing. By the time my teeth were gleaming, it was almost noon, so instead of going directly back to school, I stopped by my father’s place. I was pretty sure Mr. Jarvis had said something to him about Nick. I wanted to ask him what it was. I wanted to do it in person so that I could see his face if he started to get evasive.
When he didn’t answer the buzzer, I let myself in. He wasn’t there, so I made myself some lunch. He still hadn’t appeared by the time I finished eating, so I went back downstairs. As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, a man got out of a car parked at the curb. Carl Hanover. He forced a smile, but there were dark lines under his eyes and he sounded tired when he greeted me. I pictured him sitting beside the telephone with his sick wife, both of them waiting for it to ring.
“Hi, Robyn,” he said. “I talked to your father the other day. He told me you were going to ask around at school to see if anyone had heard anything from Trisha or had any idea where she might be. I can’t tell you how much Denise and I appreciate that.”
I said that I hadn’t been able to find out anything. I didn’t tell him about Kenny because I’d already struck out twice and I didn’t want to get his hopes up.
“Still, we appreciate your help,” he said. He pulled an envelope from his pocket. “I was just going to drop these off for your father. I gave him a picture of Trisha, but it wasn’t a very good one. She never gets her picture taken at school. These are some snapshots her mother took. I thought they could be useful.”
“He isn’t home,” I said. “But if you want, I can give them to him later.”
A genuine smile appeared on his sad, tired face. “Would you?” He handed the envelope to me. “Her mom can hardly sleep. She keeps hoping that Trisha will call, but so far nothing.” He shook his head. “I bet you never give your parents anything to worry about, do you, Robyn?”
I said I wasn’t so sure about that.
. . .
I looked for Morgan and Billy when I got to school. I had called Morgan a couple of times the night before, but she hadn’t called me back. I wondered if she was still mad at me. I had called Billy too, with the same result. I felt even worse about him. I was used to Morgan doing her drama queen thing. But I was not used to Billy looking so humiliated. I wanted to reassure myself that he was okay.
I couldn’t find either of them.
I was thinking about Morgan and Billy while I stood on the corner where Nick had said he’d meet me after school. I had arrived a few minutes early and was scanning the crowded streets for a tall, good-looking guy with his arm in a sling. Instead I spotted Kenny Merchant sauntering down the street toward me. After talking to Alison, I was sure that if anyone had an idea where Trisha was, it would be Kenny. He was close enough to touch now, but he still didn’t notice me—until I stepped out in front of him.
“Hey,” he said, annoyed to find an obstacle in his path. Then he recognized me. He shook his head.
“I need to talk to Trisha and I think you know where she is,” I said.
He kept walking, as if he hadn’t heard me. I grabbed him by the arm.
“Come on, Kenny, it’s important. If you don’t—”
“If I don’t, you’ll do what?” he said. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he looked like the kind of guy who didn’t mind getting physical, who maybe even enjoyed it. “You’ll call the cops? Be my guest. I’ll tell them the same thing I already told you. I don’t know where she is. And you know what? They won’t care. They’re not even looking for her. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
I’d been going to say,“If you don’t, her mother will be devastated.” I’d been going to tell him how sick Trisha’s mother was, in case he didn’t know. I’d been willing to assume, based on what Alison had told me, that he was capable of compassion. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“You know that for a fact, right, Kenny?” I said. “You know all that about somebody you say you don’t know anything about.”
His eyes looked sharp and cold. It reminded me of the way Nick used to look when he was angry. Then Kenny did something that Nick would never have done. He grabbed me, hard, and yanked me toward him, so close that I could feel his breath hot on my face.
“Stay away from me,” he said. “You got that?”
He shoved me away so hard that I lost my balance. My hands flew out, feeling for something to grab onto. As I pitched backward, I curled a little so that when I hit the cement, it would be my butt and maybe my back that made contact, not my head.
But I never hit the cement. Someone grabbed me around the waist and suddenly I wasn’t falling anymore. Whoever had caught me put me back on my feet and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” Nick. His question was directed at Kenny, not at me.
“What’s it to you?” Kenny said.
Nick kept his arm around me, but I felt it tense up. Kenny backed up, but only half a pace.
“She was bugging me, okay?” he said. “Not that it’s any of your business, D’Angelo, but she’s a real pain.”
Well, well. Nick had told me he didn’t know Kenny. But Kenny sure seemed to know Nick.
“When you push my girlfriend around, it’s my business,” Nick said.
Girlfriend! I pulled away a little so that I could look at Nick. He was still holding me tightly around the waist. Even with his left arm in a sling, he looked fierce. He was taller than Kenny and had a little more weight to him. He was staring at Kenny as if he were daring him to try something.
“I’m okay,” I murmured to Nick.
“See?” Kenny said, stepping forward, cocky again. “She’s fine. So there’s no problem.”
“If you ever touch her again, there’ll be a big problem,” Nick said. His eyes locked onto
Kenny’s for a few seconds. Kenny was the first to look away. He glowered at me, maybe trying to scare me since it was obvious he didn’t scare Nick. “You hear me?” Nick said.
“Yeah. I hear you.”
They stared at each other a little longer before Kenny blinked, then turned and walked away. Nick watched him go before relaxing his grip on me and looking me over.
“You hurt?” he said.
I shook my head. I was thinking about what he had said. Girlfriend. He had described me as his girlfriend.
“Come on.” He slipped his good arm around my waist again and led me to a coffee shop. We went inside, ordered hot chocolate for me, regular coffee for him. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he had said, about that one glorious word that I wanted to hear him say again. He might have too, if I had been willing to let things be. Instead I said, “I thought you didn’t know Kenny Merchant.”
Nick didn’t look guilty or embarrassed at being caught in a lie. He didn’t avert his eyes this time, either. Instead, he looked directly at me and said, “I owe him. When you owe a guy and someone starts asking about him, you don’t talk about him, you don’t talk about his business.”
“What is that?” I said. “Some kind of guy code?”
He shook his head and sighed, as if we lived in completely different worlds. Which, I guess, we did.
“There were a couple of guys at the place I was in before Somerset,” he said. “Tough guys, you know? Real bullies. When I first got there, they gave me a hard time. A really hard time, you know what I mean, Robyn?”
Based on his intensity, I had a pretty good idea.
“What about the staff?” I said.
Nick laughed, but there was nothing jolly about the sound.
“The staff were okay,” he said. “But they can’t be everywhere all the time. They can’t be in all the rooms all night. They can’t be in the bathroom all the time. They can’t be in the laundry room all the time. You know?”
I was getting the picture.
“Kenny helped me out,” Nick said. “He knows Joey, through his cousin.” Joey was Nick’s stepbrother. He was doing time after stealing a car and then doing a hit-and-run during the joyride. “Kenny didn’t have to help me, but he did. And when a guy puts himself out for you like that, you owe him.”
“I think he might know where Trisha is,” I said.
Nick shook his head.“You can’t keep messing around in other people’s lives,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Everybody doesn’t need you to get involved in their business,” he said. “Me, that was one thing, and I guess I appreciate that.” I’d helped him out of trouble—serious trouble —a couple of months back.
“You guess? And what do you mean, everybody? You make it sound as if all I do is meddle.” I had done as much for him as Kenny had—maybe more. But it was obvious that he didn’t feel he owed me the way he owed Kenny.
He reached for my hand. I yanked it off the table and put it in my lap. Nick shook his head again.
“You kept me from doing something stupid, and I’m grateful. I really am,” he said. “But you have this tendency to want to get involved in things that are none of your business, like with this girl who’s missing or the thing with Glen.”
“Glen, who twisted your arm or hit you or did whatever it took to put your arm in a sling? Glen, who probably put that bruise on your arm too? Is that the thing you mean?”
He stared at me for a moment.
“A girl is missing,” I said.
Not a flicker.
I reached in my bag for the envelope Carl Hanover had given me, pulled out a picture of Trisha, and slapped it down on the table in front of him. “Here,” I said. “She’s the girl I’m talking about, just so we’re one hundred percent clear. She’s a real girl with real parents who are worried sick about her.”
Nick looked down at the picture. “You mean parent,” he said without looking up. “Singular. Her mother. The guy, he’s not her real dad, right?”
“So what?” I said. “You think only biological fathers care?” Knowing Nick, based on his own experience, that was probably exactly what he thought. “Wait, how do you know that? Do you not know Trisha Carnegie the same way you didn’t know Kenny Merchant?”
Up came those purple eyes of his, away from the picture and back to me.
“Your dad’s a great guy,” he said. “And I don’t just mean because he’s successful and funny and fair, you know, the way he looks at people. I mean because of how he cares about you. He really loves you. And your mom? She’s smart, and she can be pretty tough, but she loves you too. I don’t think there’s anything she wouldn’t do for you. You know what that makes you?”
“What? You’re trying to tell me I’m spoiled?”
“I’m trying to tell you you’re lucky. You’re lucky that you have two parents who care more about what happens to you than they do about what happens to themselves. A lot of kids I know, kids at Somerset, for sure the kids at the youth center, they’re not nearly so lucky. A lot of them left home because one or both of their parents don’t care what happens to them, or just plain don’t want them around. Some of them don’t even have parents. Some of them have been bounced from foster home to foster home their whole lives. Nobody cares what happens to them.” He reached for my hand again, and again I refused to let him have it. “Robyn, you ever stop to think that maybe this girl you’re looking for had a good reason to leave home?”
“Do you know where she is?”
He looked me straight in the eye and said, flat out, “No. But to tell you the truth, if I did know, I don’t think I’d tell you. At least not unless she told me I could.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Have you ever run away, Robyn?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, I have. Plenty of times. I usually ran when I was too afraid to be at home, you know, on account of the guy my mother was living with.” Nick’s stepfather. The guy who had given Nick the scar that sliced diagonally across the right side of his face. The guy who had made him an orphan. “I ran away and stayed gone as long as I could. And, Robyn? If anyone I knew had ever told my stepfather where I was. . . .” He shook his head. “You don’t know what really goes on at Trisha’s house, just like you don’t know what really goes on at my aunt’s house. But you have to respect people and their privacy. You have to respect their reasons for doing what they do.”
“What about her mother? She’s really sick.”
“Her mother,” he said, “not yours. That makes it her decision.”
“Come on, Nick. You know Kenny. And I’m pretty sure Kenny knows something. You could help me find out.”
He shook his head.
“There’s another reason I need to find her, Nick. A personal reason.”
That’s when I saw Beej. She entered the restaurant just as Nick turned his head to look out the window. She adjusted the ratty backpack on her shoulder and started toward our table, her eyes jumping from me to Nick and back to me again. As she reached out to touch Nick on the shoulder and get his attention, her eyes went to the photograph of Trisha lying on the table between us. Her hand froze in midair. She stared at the photo, her mouth hanging open a little in surprise. She knows her, I thought. Beej knows Trisha Carnegie. But how?
I remembered the first time I’d met Beej. She had been sitting outside the youth center and someone had whistled. When I’d looked around, I’d seen someone I recognized—Kenny—on the other side of the street. He’d stood there for a moment, munching on a hot dog, and then he’d walked away. At the time, I hadn’t made a connection. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he had been the person who whistled. But right after Kenny had moved on, Beej had said that she had to go.
Trisha knew Kenny.
Kenny had spent some time on the street.
Beej spent a lot of time on the street.
Did Beej know Kenny too? Had she been dashing off to meet him? Had his whistle
been a signal?
Nick had just become aware that someone was standing behind him but hadn’t yet seen who it was. He started to turn in his chair, but by then Beej was staring at Nick and shaking her head slowly, as if she didn’t want to believe whatever she was thinking. The look she gave me made it clear that she held me responsible. She started to back away as Nick slid out of his chair.
“Beej?” he said. He looked confused when she continued to back away. He followed her gaze to the pictures on the table and his eyes went wide. “Hey, Beej!”
She turned and ran out of the restaurant. Nick got up and raced after her. They had both vanished by the time I got outside. I stood there and waited for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, sure that Nick would come back. He didn’t.
. . .
I was sitting in the living room area of my father’s place when he got home. He looked mildly surprised to see me.
“Did you have a fight with your mother?” he said.
“No. Why?”
“I know that face, Robbie. Something’s wrong.”
I gave him the envelope of photographs that Carl Hanover had left with me. Delivering them was one of the reasons I had come to my father’s place.
He glanced at the photos. “You sure everything is okay between you and your mother?”
“Dad, I already told you. We didn’t have a fight.”
“So she’s okay then, right? Because it sure looked like something was bothering her the other night.”
“She’s fine,” I said. And then I couldn’t help it: I looked away from him, just for a split second. He caught it—he always catches it—and he knew what it meant. But he didn’t say anything, I think because he understood that I had promised to respect my mother’s privacy.
“So if it’s not about your mother,” he said, “what is bothering you, Robbie?” He looked genuinely concerned. When I still didn’t say anything, he didn’t push me. Instead, he said, “It’s getting late. Are you hungry? I’m going to start dinner.”
You Can Run Page 8
