I felt like kissing him. His mom, too.
“You want to ditch the afternoon?” he asked. “We can go downtown, catch a movie. I know this guy who’s a ticket taker at—”
I shook my head.
“I’m going to take a walk, Vin,” I said. I had come to school thinking that if I could just be with people, the ache might fade a little. But Jen didn’t want me and Vin—well, Vin was my best friend and a great guy, but he wasn’t what I needed. “Catch up with you later, okay?”
He didn’t argue with me. He never did.
Going to school had been a dumb idea. I couldn’t concentrate. To be honest, if I had been quizzed on exactly which classes I went to that afternoon—never mind what the teachers had talked about—even if my life had depended on it, I couldn’t have answered. Every time the bell rang, I moved from where I had been to somewhere else. I took a seat. I opened a notebook. I heard voices. But I didn’t listen. I didn’t write. I didn’t understand. I didn’t care.
Mom was gone. Billy was gone. There was only me. It was a weird feeling. Scary. One minute you have a family, the next minute you’re all alone in the world. Who was I going to have Christmas dinner with? Who on the planet could say, Man, I’ve known you since the day you were born? Billy used to say it all the time. Mikey, you can’t snow me, I’ve known you since the day you were born. Who could tell me about the day I had taken my first step or lost my first tooth? Mom probably cared more about those things than Billy ever did, but Billy had known about them, too. He liked to tease Mom that I had walked to him before I had walked to her. Who could tell me, When you do that, you remind me of your father or mother or uncle? Who was going to put up with me when I was in a bad mood? Okay, so maybe Billy used to lose his cool sometimes when I was being a jerk. But he didn’t say, That’s it, I’m outta here, we’re through. He was always there. Because he had to be there. Because he was family. He was all the family I had.
Instead of sticking around after school to meet Ms. Phillips like I had promised, I slipped out a side exit and headed home.
I knew I probably wasn’t going to be able to go inside. Sure enough, yellow crime scene tape was stretched across the front walk. A uniformed police officer stood on the porch. He glanced at me as I walked by, but I guess he took me for what I was pretending to be, just another curious kid in the neighborhood. I walked right past my place, trying to imagine what it looked like inside, what it had looked like when Billy had been found, glad that Billy had left the door open, thinking about what Detective Jones had said, that he’d probably done it for me. He’d probably done it all for me. Billy never was too bright. He should have known that no matter what, I’d rather have him with me. I’d rather not be alone.
I was out of sight of the house when I saw a car slow. It was Lew and Dan. Lew was driving. He pulled over next to me, and Dan got out of the car.
“Hey, Mike,” he said. I don’t think I’d ever seen him look so pale. His face was almost gray, like maybe he hadn’t slept. He put an arm around my shoulder and squeezed tight. I felt like hugging him, but I didn’t. I knew he liked me well enough, but I didn’t think he’d want that kind of scene. “We heard about Billy,” he said. “Jeez, what made him do it?”
I blinked.
“What would make a guy do something like that?” he said.
“He didn’t say anything to you?”
Dan looked practically numb as he shook his head. “I haven’t even seen him since the day before yesterday,” he said. “We were supposed to take a run up to Barrie yesterday, to see a guy about a car. Then he called me and said he couldn’t make it. That’s the last time I talked to him.” His eyes were kind of watery. He and Billy went way back. It made me feel good to know that I wasn’t the only person who would miss him. Who missed him already. “How about you, Mike?” he said. “How you doing?”
I shrugged. What did he think?
“You got a place to stay?” he said. “You need some money or something?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.
I shook my head. What I wanted, money didn’t buy. Then, because I couldn’t stand it anymore, because I had to know, I said, “Were you in on it with him?” I ducked down to look into the car, so Lew would know I was talking to him, too.
“In on what? What are you talking about?” Dan said.
“Chopping up cars. What Billy was doing.”
Dan glanced at Lew, then let out a huge sigh.
“How did you know about that? Billy tell you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s old news,” Dan said. “It’s what Billy used to be doing. That was before.” He said it like I was supposed to know before what. And I guess I did, too. “He smartened up when he had to, right? He looked after you okay when he had to, didn’t he?” If you ignored the absence of groceries and how he left neatness and cleanliness up to me, then, yeah, he looked after me just fine, and I said so. Dan glanced at Lew again and shook his head. “Okay, yeah, so he did this thing.”
“What thing?”
Dan peered at me. “He didn’t tell you?” he said. “’Cause if he didn’t tell you—”
“You mean about the car that killed Mom,” I said.
Dan shook his head again. He looked like he was in pain, and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “You know Billy. Always thinking short-term. Always trying to make a few bucks. But he didn’t know, Mike. And by the time he found out, what was he supposed to do? Get himself into trouble for something that couldn’t be fixed?”
“My mom died, Dan.”
“Yeah, I know. And Billy was sick about it. But the way he had it figured, he had to look after you, and he wouldn’t be able to do that from a jail cell, would he? Besides, he didn’t know who dropped the car. The way he told it—and I believe him—he never knew stuff like that. It was just some supposed-to-be-slick insurance scam. Some guy wants to trade in his car for a newer model. No big deal. He’s paid his insurance premiums all these years and never even had a speeding ticket. He figures maybe the big rich insurance company owes him a little something in return. So he knows a guy who knows a guy who arranges to pinch his car, he doesn’t even know who does the job. He doesn’t know what happens to the car after that. And Billy, he doesn’t know whose car it was or who took it or where everything ended up afterwards. It’s supposed to be that no one gets hurt. Everyone does it, Mike.” He shrugged. “It’s just that, in this case, there was an angle to it Billy didn’t figure until it was too late. I mean, how was he supposed to know that the guy was unloading a car that had been involved in a hit-and-run? It was one big screwup, Mike. One mother of a twist of fate. If you ask me, Billy should have just gone to the cops and told them what happened. Anything would have been better than putting a noose around his neck, right?”
For the first time that I could remember, I found myself agreeing with Dan.
He put his arm over my shoulder again. “Billy was like a brother to me, too, Mike. I loved the guy. But you know how he was. He did the best he could, but he wasn’t the smartest or bravest guy around, you know what I mean?”
Yeah, I knew.
“Come on,” Dan said, “what do you say we all go get a bite to eat? We should probably talk about arrangements, too, right? You’re gonna have to do something.”
Something about a funeral, he meant. I felt my knees buckle. I had never dealt with a funeral before. Billy had taken care of everything the last time. I let Dan steer me to the car. I got into the backseat. Lew glanced at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes dull, not playful like they usually were. As he hit the gas, a little plastic Marilyn Monroe figurine danced at the end of a chain that hung from the mirror. If Billy were here, he would have reached out and flicked a finger at her, sending her spinning—he always did. But Billy wasn’t here. That was the whole point.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dan and Lew took me out for burgers, and we talked about what we should do for Billy’s funeral.
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“We should have a party,” Lew said. “A real blowout.”
Dan kicked Lew under the table and shot him an annoyed look. “He means a wake,” he explained.
“He’s right,” I said. If there was one thing Billy loved, it was a party. And if there was one thing he hated, it was funerals.
Dan chewed on a French fry and studied me for a moment. His voice was low, almost soft, when he said, “I don’t know how to say this, Mike, so I’ll just come right out with it, okay? I mean, there’s no one else to ask. You’re it. Okay?” I nodded, but inside, I dreaded whatever was coming next. “You want to bury Billy, or you want to cremate him?” he said.
I put down the burger that I had been lifting to my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “But there are some things, they’re just impossible to pussyfoot around, you know?”
Things like funerals. It wasn’t his fault. And I didn’t have an answer.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Dan shrugged. “These things, like most things, all come down to dollars and cents. You want to bury someone, you have to get a place to bury them and that costs big bucks. You want to cremate them, you get a little urn. It’s simpler and cheaper. I don’t know how much money Billy had put away and I don’t know if he had any insurance, but—”
We kicked it around, Dan asking questions, Lew coming up with ideas for the wake, and me thinking how glad I was that they were there and were willing to make decisions. It was going to be cremation for Billy and a beer party for his friends, and Dan said, “If you want to, you can forget the age of majority, Mikey. Billy probably would have wanted it that way, okay?”
I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes Billy called me the white sheep of the family to tease me. Sometimes, though, I didn’t think he was kidding. Sometimes I thought he was hoping.
I was glad when the funeral talk was finished and we went back to Dan and Lew’s place. It was the complete opposite of Riel’s house. Their apartment was cluttered, none of the furniture matched, the wood floors were scuffed, and there was more stuff on the kitchen counters than in the kitchen cupboards. But it was relatively clean, and they made me feel welcome.
“I’m gonna grab a beer,” Lew said almost as soon as we got inside. To my surprise, he disappeared out the door at the back of the kitchen.
“Uh, didn’t he overshoot the fridge?” I said.
Dan laughed. “The beer fridge is downstairs,” he said. “That’s where we do most of our work.” He showed me around the place. “Lew’s room is all yours,” he said, “if you want to catch some Zs. You look wiped, man.”
“I don’t want to take Lew’s bed—”
Dan grinned. “Lew won’t mind. Half the time he falls asleep in front of the TV. Isn’t that right, Lew?”
Lew was back with his beer. “Go ahead, Mikey,” he said. “No problem. Just don’t touch Marilyn, okay?”
“Marilyn?” I glanced at Dan.
Dan rolled his eyes. “Five hundred bucks,” he said. “He actually spent five hundred hard-earned bucks on a—” He seemed to be searching for the right words. “A china figurine.”
“An original Marilyn,” Lew said. “Come on, Mikey.”
He led me down the hall and threw open a door. The first thing that struck me was how cluttered the room was. The second was … Marilyn: Marilyn Monroe posters. Marilyn Monroe calendars. Marilyn Monroe pinups. Black-and-white production stills from Marilyn Monroe movies. And, on a shelf over Lew’s messy dresser, a china figurine of Marilyn Monroe, pushing down her dress as it flies up around her—like that famous picture. It was from some old movie.
“It’s a real collector’s item,” Lew said. “It’s worth about ten times what I paid for it.” He lifted it gently and showed me the bottom. “She signed it herself. I bought it off a woman who hated it—said it was her old man’s most prized possession. When she left him, she took it with her.” He sat it back on the little shelf and straightened it so that it faced just so.
I don’t know if it was grief—jeez, Billy was gone, he was really gone—or lack of sleep or the fact that for once my stomach was full, but after Dan and Lew left me, I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the window was black except for the nearly round silver ball that hung in one corner. The moon.
For a moment I just lay there half-awake, thinking how right it felt to be in my old room, surrounded by my stuff, in my own house—and not thinking all that hard about it because it’s just there, like wallpaper, this is where I am and this is where I belong. Then the next minute, alarm, alarm, alarm! It hit me. This isn’t your room, pal. This isn’t your house. This is an alternate reality. The new real deal. What it is from here on in.
I sat up—boom!—and fumbled with a lamp on a small table near the bed and checked my watch. It was past ten-thirty. I buried my head in my hands and tried to stop myself from crying, but I didn’t manage it. Now what, I kept asking myself. Now what?
I heard soft voices somewhere beyond the door. Maybe it was Dan and Lew. Maybe it was the TV. Maybe it was a little of both. Dan didn’t have much patience for TV unless it was sports—a baseball game or basketball or hockey. Lew, on the other hand, could and would watch anything from cooking shows to fifties sitcoms. His favorite show was The Simpsons.
I stood up and drew in a deep breath. First, calm down. Next, stay calm. You can’t go out there and face the guys with tears running down your cheeks. Jeez, when was the last time I had cried? Cried? Make that blubbered. When was the last time I had done that?
I knew exactly when.
I wandered around the little room. It was as cluttered as the rest of the apartment. A chair in one corner was almost invisible under a jumble of Lew’s discarded clothes. The dresser was covered with magazines, CDs, empty beer bottles, videotapes—everything except the stuff you’d normally expect to find on a dresser. Every surface was piled high with things. Even the CD tower beside the door had stuff on top—a can of hair mousse, of all things, and a little basket of loose change. It was weird. All Marilyn, all messy, all the time.
For the first time I thought about the Children’s Aid lady. She was probably wondering what had happened to me. Maybe Riel was, too, although I didn’t care so much about that.
I ran my tongue over my gritty teeth and suddenly wished I’d brought a toothbrush with me. Clean clothes wouldn’t have hurt, either, but all the things that I had from the house were back in Riel’s spare room.
I opened the door and went down the hall. Sure enough, Lew was sprawled out in front of the TV.
“Where’s Dan?” I asked.
“Out,” Lew said. “He’ll be back soon.”
“You don’t know if there’s a spare toothbrush around here, do you?”
Lew looked at me like I was crazy.
“Mind if I check around?” I asked.
I don’t think Lew was even listening. His eyes were on the TV screen. I took that as a go-ahead.
I checked the medicine cabinet in the bathroom first. Plenty of aspirin and soap, a package of dental floss, but no toothbrush. Out in the hall beside the bathroom were three drawers set into the wall and, above them, some cupboards. I checked the cupboards first. Blankets and bedsheets, pillowcases, towels and, up top, a couple of rolled-up sleeping bags. I pulled open the first drawer. Okay, getting closer. A first aid kit. Some half-empty bottles of shampoo and conditioner. A bag of disposable razors. A couple of cans of shaving cream that, from the bits of dried foam around the nozzles, had been used if not used up. A brand new package of toothpaste and a newish-looking bottle of mouthwash. Next drawer—bingo! Not one, but two brand new toothbrushes, still in their packages. It figured. Dan didn’t get that dazzling lady-killer smile of his by not brushing. I grabbed one and made a mental note to replace it with a new one as soon as I could, not that I thought he was going to freak out over it or anything. I was shoving the drawer shut when I glanced at a small pile of envelopes to one side. Envelopes from a pho
to developing place. I picked one up and slid out the pictures.
They were pretty recent and mostly they were of cars. But there were a few of Dan and Lew and Billy together, all smiling at the camera. They must have got someone to take them, maybe one of the girls who were always hanging around one or the other of them. Then there was a picture of Billy, all alone, standing in front of a candy-apple-red Jaguar, leaning against it like he owned it—which he didn’t—looking like he thought he was pretty cool in his black jeans and black T-shirt and black boots, dark glasses hooked and hanging down from the neck of the T-shirt, hair so blond it looked like silver in the sunlight. He looked all right. If I were a girl, I might even have thought he looked cute. I kept that picture out when I put the others back. I was going to ask Dan if I could keep it or if I could get a copy made.
I grabbed another envelope, curious now to see if there were any other pictures of Billy. Since Mom died, neither Billy nor I had taken any pictures of anything. All I had were four years’ worth of school IDs. The only time Billy had had his picture taken was when he renewed his driver’s license. I wanted to remember him the way he was lately, not the way he was years ago.
But the pictures in the next envelope were not as recent. Billy’s hair was long in the back and short in the front, a stupid Billy Ray Cyrus cut he used to have and had stuck with way too long. I remembered when he had chopped it all off. It was the day before Mom’s funeral. He had gone to the barber and had come back with his hair buzzed down to within a centimeter of his head. I never asked why, and he never explained. There were pictures of Billy with Kathy, the girl he’d been going with when Mom died. There were pictures of him with Dan and Lew, and pictures of Dan with a couple of girls, one on each side, with his arms around both of them. I didn’t recognize the girls, which wasn’t surprising considering that I had been ten or eleven at the time and Billy wasn’t living with us anymore. Besides, Mom didn’t like Dan and Lew, so they never came around the house. I’d only really gotten to know them since Mom died, and I had never figured out what she didn’t like about them. I mean, compared to Billy, they were almost reliable, and Dan especially was a whole lot smarter. There were pictures of Lew, also with the girls, but they looked less than thrilled to be in his clutches. Of the three of them, Lew was the least good-looking, the least well-dressed, the one who always had a little B.O. Mostly Dan or Billy had to ask the girls they knew if they could find someone for Lew. It was funny that in all of the older pictures, Dan looked deadly serious. No wild smile. No big smart-ass megawatt grin. Guess he’d lightened up in recent years.
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