“Oh, but she has been doing something.” Zach was angrily rubbing his palms against the sides of his apron. “I heard your question just now, and I know you’ve been making the rounds. First it was Tim and all kinds of funny questions with him. Real nice. And then on to Reggie. Do you know about how it turned out with Reggie, Ben?”
“It’s not like she…” Ben trailed off.
He couldn’t defend me. Nobody could.
“You’d better leave Winnie alone,” Zach barked. “Do you understand? Leave Winnie alone. There’s nothing you need to ask her. She has enough to deal with right now. She doesn’t need to deal with you, too.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Good,” Zach said. And then he stalked back to Pizza to the Rescue.
“What the fuck, Zach?” Ben yelled after him, but he didn’t follow it up with any further comment.
He looked down at me as I pushed the remains of my lunch into my insulated bag.
“You want to get out of here?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” I said, my voice a whisper now.
Ben waited for me to scooch out of the picnic table and then led me through the narrow aisle between rows of picnic tables, to the walkway that led to the rides area. I tried not to notice all the eyes on me. We were silent until we got close to the Rotor.
“When bad stuff happens,” Ben said, “sometimes people don’t know who to take it out on.”
“I probably deserved that.” I stopped at the Starship 360 and resisted the impulse to look up at the screaming riders. I was grateful to be here where all the other voices could muffle our conversation a little and make it feel more private.
Ben gave my shoulder a sympathetic pat. “No, you didn’t.”
“Did you know I went and saw Reggie last night?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said reluctantly, his hot-cocoa gaze shifting away from me. “I did hear that it was maybe you.”
I didn’t know why his reply felt like a kick in the stomach. What did I expect?
“Jesus. I knew it. Why didn’t you ask me about it, then?”
I knew I wasn’t angry at him, but I couldn’t help myself.
“I figured you’d bring it up if you wanted to talk about it.” Ben shrugged and twisted his hands together. “It’s not like I know Reggie that well. It’s not really any of my business.”
“Well, then you’re smarter than me.” I led him to the Rotor gate. “You know when to ask questions and when to shut up. I haven’t been smart about that at all.”
“It still doesn’t mean you deserve it.” Ben lifted the Closed—come back in a few minutes! sign and unlocked the gate to the ride. Apparently Winnie was too busy helping my dad to be substitute Rotor Lady during Ben’s break.
“You’re maybe too nice for this place,” I said. “You don’t want to be seen with me any more than you already have.”
“Ivy,” Ben said as I started to walk away.
I turned around, realizing it was the first time he’d used my name that I could remember. Instead of my friend. Up until now I wasn’t certain he knew what it was.
“I have to go back to spinning my tin can,” I said. “And so do you.”
TWENTY-THREE
I didn’t get a lot of customers that afternoon. Maybe the parkgoers could tell from my face that I wasn’t in a sugary-sweet kind of mood. Maybe lots of them had seen me being chewed out by Zach and felt awkward approaching me for their refreshment needs.
I didn’t do any more Google searches on my cracked phone. It seemed like each time I asked a question, another person flipped out or started to hate me. I decided to table my research until I could be alone at home with my laptop.
Mostly I just sat with my chin in my hand, watching people go by. Thinking about some of the things I’d learned today.
It was obvious that Zach Crenshaw was still way into Winnie, for one. Or at least very protective of her. Beyond that, I was relatively certain it was Winnie who’d put the tape recorder in my dad’s office. I hadn’t had a chance to ask Ben if one of the duties that Tim sometimes handed off to Winnie was cleaning the main office. But probably I didn’t need to ask. If she was cleaning a men’s room for him, likely she was willing to do any of his duties for him. And she probably had regular access to Tim’s keys.
And I thought about my dad always trusting Winnie with important jobs—closing, the carousel, the fried dough. At least, my dad thought fried dough was important. And then I considered whether he might be a little too trusting, in his overgrown-kid kind of way. Could he have any idea that Winnie was recording him? And why would she want to do that? To capture what a buffoon he could sometimes be? Didn’t we all already know this without needing proof? Did she really dislike him that much as a boss?
And speaking of my dad being a little too trusting—wasn’t it kind of weird, now that I reconsidered it, that he didn’t seem to know what kind of cancer Chris’s wife had? Was he just so distracted by his big doughnut that he didn’t consider this a relevant detail?
I hated myself for being so cynical, but had Dad somehow confirmed Chris’s wife’s situation with Chris in an official way? Asked for a doctor’s note? Probably it would be too cold to ask. And really, there were easier and less shady ways to weasel out of work, if Chris wanted to.
Was it possible that Winnie wasn’t spying on my father, but on someone else? On Chris, perhaps? But again, why?
If Dad wasn’t going to entrust me with his great doughnut experiment, I was going to quietly do some other things for him. Maybe some things he was a little too bighearted to do himself. Like check up on his right-hand man.
I signed out of work an hour early. I knew my dad was probably too busy today to notice.
* * *
• • •
At the hospital front desk was the same lady who’d helped me find Morgan’s room last week.
“I’m trying to find a patient room,” I said. “Her name is Trisha Nealy.”
“Ah. Yes.” The nice lady typed quickly on her computer. “She’s on the second floor, room 215. Take the elevator up one floor and then take a right, then follow the numbers after the small lobby there.”
“Oh.”
I felt disappointed at the affirmation of Chris’s wife’s illness—though not for the right reasons. Some small part of me had expected a different outcome. As crazy as it seemed now, I’d really thought I might catch Chris in a horrible lie. And I felt guilty that this lady had been so helpful and polite, when my motives were so icky.
“Thank you so much,” I managed to say.
I realized then that she expected to see me head in the direction of the elevators, so I walked hastily toward them, took one to the third floor, found a staircase, and came down a different way. Of course I had no intention of looking in on Chris’s wife. I’d just wanted to see if she was really here.
I ended up back in the front lobby, and didn’t turn around or look toward the receptionist as I held my breath and snuck out the front glass door. I was just about to step off the curb in front of the parking lot—and just about to breathe a sigh of relief—when I saw Tim and Winnie Malloy heading in my direction.
“Oh!” I said, panicking.
Winnie looked up from her phone and her mouth fell open. She was apparently as surprised to see me as I was her.
“Are you here visiting Reggie, too?” Tim asked.
“Reggie?” I shook my head. “No.”
We were all silent as they both stepped up, joining me on the hospital sidewalk.
“Hey,” Winnie said quietly. “I heard my blowhard ex was giving you trouble in the Food Zone. Sorry about him. I didn’t tell him to do that.”
I wasn’t sure if I should hide my surprise. Or if I should be skeptical.
“Uh…it’s okay,” I mumbled.
“He t
hinks he’s helping.” Winnie rolled her eyes as if at a toddler trying to assist with a car repair or a cooking project.
I nodded, feeling an unexpected jolt of empathy for Zach. The very same words could be applied to me—to what I’d thought I’d been “doing for Morgan.” To what I’d just done a few minutes ago, even. Telling myself I was doing it on my dad’s behalf.
“We going in?” Winnie nudged her brother’s arm. “I’ve got to get back to Fabuland after my dinner break. And you’ve got your shift at Drake’s.”
I studied her expression. She didn’t seem angry at all. She seemed distracted. And Tim looked like he was thinking. He didn’t look angry either. Just sad. As he had the other day I’d talked to him.
“I think I’m going to stay out here for a second,” Tim said.
Winnie looked at her phone, shrugged, and then paused at the doors. “Meet me in there?”
“Yup,” Tim said, and turned to me.
He waited for Winnie to clear the glass doors, sniffling and then clearing his throat. Once she’d disappeared from view, he said, “I hope you’re happy.”
“Happy…?” I murmured.
“Because we have to tell people now. And we probably were gonna soon. Once Winnie felt ready.”
“Umm…Should we go sit somewhere?”
“Nah. Here is fine.” He stepped a few more feet away from the doors, and I followed. We stood next to a big concrete pot full of petunias. “It’s something I’ve been wanting for us to be able to tell people. Besides, the only other person who knew was Zach, and who knows how long he’d be able to keep his self-important mouth shut. Especially after he heard you say something.”
Tim was scraping his sneaker on the concrete of the hospital walkway, moving a piece of gravel around in a circle.
“What?” I tried not to sound as breathless as I felt. “What is it?”
“Ethan had a problem,” Tim said. “About two years ago he started having grand mal seizures.”
It took me a moment to take this in. “Uh…like…he had epilepsy?”
“I don’t know.” Tim shrugged as he looked up at me. “I don’t know the difference. If there is a difference. I know he had what they call grand mal seizures. That’s what my aunt, his mom, called them. She wasn’t willing to say he had epilepsy. There was a chance something else was causing the seizures.”
I stood there silent. I didn’t know what to say. I glanced down at the pot full of petunias—they were so cheerfully purple and white. It seemed like a lie, to plant these things in front of a hospital, where people generally ended up when things went wrong.
“We think he probably had one on the bridge,” Tim added. “That’s the basic theory.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
We stood there in silence for a moment before Tim started to wipe his eyes with his palms.
“His mom had all kinds of rules for him about working at Fabuland. He could only go on certain rides. The mild ones. But she knew it would be really tempting for him. She was hoping he’d get Fabuland out of his system and find a different job at the end of the summer. She didn’t have the heart to tell him no.”
Tim wiped a tear from the outside corner of one eye. “It was a calculated risk. He’d only had, like, three or four of the seizures in two years. There was a risk of him having one at Fabuland, sure, and freaking everyone out. But we figured it would only be a few months and we’d deal with getting him a new job after that. I was talking to some of the produce guys at Drake’s Grocery about letting him work there.”
Tim paused, wiping both eyes with the shoulders of his T-shirt. “What we didn’t consider was that Ethan might break the rules. What would happen then. Because it’s possible that certain types of rides can trigger seizures.”
So it was true that Ethan had gone on the Laser Coaster because Winnie and Tim weren’t there to police him that night. It was a rare little window he had without them keeping tabs on him. And he took it.
I can’t do it on another day.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
And I really was. I had questions—like whether the police knew about Ethan’s seizures—but decided to keep my mouth shut, for the moment.
Tim had stopped trying to wipe his tears away by now, and they were pouring down his cheeks. “We think that if he had a seizure, it must have happened on his way home. Either right on the bridge or maybe before. If it was before, he was probably disoriented afterward.”
He was trying to catch his breath now. I wanted to reach out to him, but didn’t think the touch of the boss’s clueless daughter would be of much comfort to him.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered again.
A seizure. Not a concussion. Nothing on the ride that Reggie could’ve prevented.
“Zach knows about it, because he and Winnie were together when it started. And Zach told Winnie what you were asking Ben about today. And we wondered if you’d figured it out, or if you somehow had heard. Like maybe Ethan even told you. I know you would sometimes let him make his own cotton candy. Maybe he let something slip?”
I shook my head.
“No, I didn’t know,” I said.
I glanced at the brick building next to me—at the four stories of windows—and wondered which room Reggie was in. Wondered if there was some possibility he and Winnie were looking down on us.
“Déjà vu,” I said. “It’s something people feel right before a seizure.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “I just wish he’d had some of the stronger warning signs. Like being dizzy.”
“I shouldn’t have been asking Reggie those questions,” I breathed.
Poor Reggie. If he’d known about the seizures he wouldn’t have let Ethan on the ride. But he hadn’t known. Certainly hearing this would be even worse for Briony, Anna, and Lucas.
But it was the truth. And it could explain Morgan’s sparkly scorpion mystery. If he’d had a seizure at some point before or after crossing the bridge, he would likely have been very disoriented and could easily have lost his way, taking the wrong path and then maybe backtracking. Dropping the paperweight somehow. The question remained why he would pull the sparkly scorpion out of his pocket in that moment. So that part was still a mystery. But if he was disoriented, maybe it didn’t need to make complete sense. Still, my heart sank at the thought of it.
“I don’t blame you…,” Tim said. “Winnie doesn’t blame you either. I mean, about Reggie. But I wish you’d let us all come around to talking about the seizures in our own time. There’s already a lot of regret about that night, right? Winnie’s still having a lot of trouble. You might not realize it, but it’s been the roughest on her.”
Because it was still unclear why she wasn’t at work that night, I thought, but then pushed it down. Because it was cruel. Maybe almost as cruel as Zach Crenshaw seemed to think I was.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
Tim sniffled and pulled up the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe his face.
“We’re all sorry,” he replied flatly. “I’m going up to see Reggie now. Thanks for talking.”
He turned and walked through the hospital doors, leaving me alone with the lying petunias.
TWENTY-FOUR
I went to my dad’s house, put on yoga pants, and crawled into bed even though it wasn’t dark yet. And I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to get out.
I briefly considered writing to Morgan, since her paperweight mystery had probably been solved. But I couldn’t figure out how not to make such a text sound smugly satisfied. Of course, there was nothing to be smug or satisfied about. It was the saddest news ever, about Ethan’s seizures. And I hadn’t solved anything. Just forced some uncomfortable truths out of people who hadn’t been quite ready to share them yet, and probably almost killed Reggie in the process.
I stayed under the covers an
d wondered what I’d say when Dad came home. I could tell him that I thought Winnie had been recording him in his office. But why would I do that? I still didn’t know what to make of her. But given what Tim had just told me, I felt sorry for her and didn’t want to be a tattletale. Even if I wasn’t sure whether I liked Winnie, I didn’t want to be responsible for her suffering a fate like Carla’s.
After about an hour in bed, I got a text from Jason.
Want to talk now?
I considered the question for a moment, then typed back:
No. And sorry I almost killed your friend.
After that text, the phone rang. I didn’t answer.
I got up, pulled the tape recorder from my sock drawer, and crawled back into bed with it.
I started to listen to the recording again, paying special attention when Chris was on the phone.
I know, baby. I know. We’re going to figure this out. Don’t worry. I’m working on it. I know it’s hard right now. Oh. No. No. Don’t say that. Listen…No. Come on, now. Don’t say that.
No, these probably weren’t sweet nothings between Chris and Winnie. This was very likely Chris talking to his wife in the hospital. Trisha was having a hard time and he was trying to help her feel supported. And struggling to stay positive himself. This was Chris wishing he could be with her when my dad was making him work at the stupid Princess Parade.
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with my brain that I’d wanted to make something else out of what he’d said. And I felt horrible for listening to the recording more than once.
I let the recorder slide down to the carpet.
My room was totally dark now. And my dad hadn’t come home.
I pulled my phone under the covers.
I typed in grand mal seizures, with some difficulty because of the cracked screen. I found out that yes, a feeling of déjà vu was among many symptoms, called prodromal symptoms, that often appeared in the minutes, sometimes the hours, before the actual seizure. I hadn’t been far off, then, when I’d speculated that Ethan might have had a concussion. It was a neurological symptom. I’d just had the wrong cause. For Ethan, it was likely a sign of an impending seizure rather than the aftereffect of a concussion. Grand mal seizures were usually caused by epilepsy, although there were other reasons a person might have them. There was also something called sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, which could cause a person to die from impaired breathing or heart failure during a seizure. But it was rare.
All the Pretty Things Page 21
