“I’m at CCV now,” she said, referring to the community college. “And I’m a waitress at Leunig’s.”
“Where are you living?”
“I have an apartment on South Union Street with another girl. It’s small—one bedroom. But it’s nice. My parents are helping out with the rent.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. And you? What’s your deal?”
“Just hanging out.”
“And Cameron is your …”
“He’s my nephew.”
She seemed to think about this and then decided I was lying. I could tell. “I’m working tonight,” she volunteered. “My shift starts at five. Why don’t you two come by? The food’s good.”
“I don’t know.” There was no way I could afford Leunig’s.
“Don’t sweat it. I’ll take care of you. The manager tonight is pretty excellent—the kind of dude who plays Santa Claus when they light the tree on Church Street. Come by early—before it gets crowded.”
“Okay. Maybe we will.”
“Hey: Wanna know something?”
I waited. “Sure,” I said finally.
“I got a new phone.”
I waited. She was grinning and I couldn’t read her expression at all. I wasn’t sure where this was going. Suddenly I was afraid she was going to out me. I feared at the very least she was going to call me “Emily,” and I had no idea how I would explain that to Cameron.
“Yup,” she continued. “But I made sure that all the numbers and calls were deleted from the old one before I got rid of it—even the calls made by other people to, I don’t know, the Northeast Kingdom. I made sure I had wiped it clean.”
“Thank you.”
“No biggie.” She reached into her purse and got out a pad of pink Post-it notes shaped like hearts. She scribbled her phone number on the top sheet and handed it to me. “You never know,” she mumbled, patting me awkwardly on the shoulder. “See ya.”
“See ya,” I said.
Then she turned and left us alone. She probably figured that Cameron and I would never call her or make it to Leunig’s. Still, it was nice of her to offer. She was right: you never did know.
I never thought I was going to live forever—even before Reactor One exploded—and I sure don’t think so anymore. One time for an English class I made this chart of when all these important people in Emily Dickinson’s life died. Her dad in 1874. Samuel Bowles in 1878. Charles Wadsworth in the spring of 1882; her mom in the autumn that year. Her nephew in 1883.
She herself suffered from something called Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder, the last two years of her life. Some of the symptoms of Bright’s disease and radiation sickness are the same. Vomiting. Fever. Weakness. Of course, those are also the symptoms of practically everything, so maybe I shouldn’t read too much into that.
Still, I really want to be sure you know that I was never one of those teens who thought she was going to live forever. It’s okay. It really is.
The only good thing about March in Vermont is the sugaring season. Everything else about the month sucks. I know that makes me sound like a surly teen, but even the adults who live here know that the month is a total train wreck. It rains or it sleets or it snows. Then you get this day where it’s fifty-five degrees and sunny and you think spring is coming … and then the next day it snows. The dirt roads become car-sucking swamps. Somehow, there’s mud everywhere. It used to make my mom bonkers. (I mean it: she and my dad were just never meant to live here. They just weren’t.) Plus, the school breaks are always in February and April, so you can’t even get away from here on a vacation with your family. Seriously, the whole month is one long buzzkill.
And that year, March came in February. We had those sugar runs that I told you about just after Valentine’s Day. We had March mud in February. And we had March warmth in February.
And if you’re living in an igloo, March warmth in February totally sucks. It is, quite literally, a home wrecker. The long thaw we had in the third week of February completely wrecked Cameron’s and my igloo. The igloo could survive one or two warm days in the middle of winter just fine—like the day of the anti-nuke rally and march up the hill. But I saw quickly that two warm days in a row was the max. The ice was the glue. The igloo would start to sag and buckle on day three. I tried to prop it up with tree branches and a couple of ski poles I found in a dumpster, but they were no help. Cameron tried to duct tape it together, but everything was just too wet. I tried to make a structural skeleton beneath the trash bags with a grungy piece of plywood and this crappy card table—it only had two legs and the plastic covering on the top had big gashes like a serial killer had taken a knife to it—but then the bags just slid down the sides instead of collapsing in the center. What it needed was an architect or a builder and an expense account at the building supply store down on Pine Street. It was a goner.
And it was pretty clear that my neighbors were going to be absolutely no help. They were great if someone started screaming I’m going to blow your house down and fucking kill you! in the middle of the night, wrecking their sleep, but otherwise they didn’t have a whole lot of interest in being my surrogate parents. Maybe if Cameron and I were cats Patrice would have wanted to look out for us. But these were not what you might call nurturing people. They were, like me, kind of fucked up. I mean, they were grown-ups living in trash bag igloos in the middle of winter, right? What does that tell you?
When I realized that my igloo was going to collapse, I did go to them to see if they had any miracle solutions. But while I was struggling with my ski poles and card table, the war vet had split. Just packed his things and peaced out, leaving behind what looked like nothing more than a pile of moldy-looking garbage bags stuffed with leaves. Patrice and Rick were still there, but they were about to leave, too. Their shopping cart was already filled.
“Oh, Abby, you don’t want to come with us,” Patrice said when I asked where they were going.
“No, probably not,” I agreed, though in fact I kind of did. I really wasn’t sure what was next. “But where are you going?”
Rick looked at me and then looked at Patrice. And then he shook his head. (It dawned on me that in all the weeks we had been together down by the waterfront, I’d heard his voice maybe six times. Not a big talker, that Rick.)
“Really, even we’re not sure,” she said, and it was obvious she was lying. She gave me this halfhearted sort of hug, and I must admit I was kind of glad it was halfhearted because Patrice always smelled sort of like cat urine and sort of like your basic homelessness. Then, because the ground was becoming mush, she and Rick lifted their grocery cart and carried it the two hundred or so yards to the sidewalk that ran near the lake. I almost screamed something nasty at them because inside I was totally bitchcakes that everyone was leaving and no one was going to help. I know I would have popped a couple of Oxies if I’d had any. And I had an incredible desire to take my X-Acto and just start whaling on my thighs. But I didn’t say a word because I felt Cameron taking my hand. I looked down and he was just watching the two of them carry away their cart. Then he pointed out a jet high in the sky over the water. This one was climbing and about to bank to the south. Neither of us said a word. I think he wanted me to see it because he was hoping it might cheer me up.
Life on the streets is fucking exhausting. It really is. There’s nothing harder.
Obviously I found a new place for Cameron and me to crash.
But the change in the weather was kind of a pain in the ass and both Cameron and I got sick. I didn’t think it was the flu because, believe it or not, I had gotten Cameron and me flu shots at the Rite Aid one day in January. But now we were both wobbly and weak and our noses were running like glaciers. The problem—and I guess this was the beginning of the end—was that only I seemed to be getting better.
Chapter 16
Sometimes I felt like I had disappeared without a trace. Sometimes I wondered if either of my grandparents was still alive. Obv
iously my grandma with Alzheimer’s would have been in absolutely no condition to lead some kind of search for me. Was she even aware that Cape Abenaki had exploded and her daughter was dead? I had no idea, but I doubted it. On the other hand, my grandpa in Phoenix probably knew of the meltdown and the fact that his son had been killed. He probably knew that Bill Shepard was the guy the nuclear power industry had decided should take the fall, and so now the whole world kind of detested that little boy he’d raised years ago in Arizona. But given how badly my parents always said my grandpa was doing adjusting to the colostomy, he might have died by now, too. Maybe the simple pain of watching his son’s memory get abused day after day on CNN and Fox News had broken his heart and killed him back in the summer.
But sometimes I wondered whether Lisa’s librarian mom was going all Nancy Drew on her computer or talking to the police. Or maybe Ms. Gagne, my old English teacher. Or maybe even Edie from the shelter. Edie had struck me as very smart; maybe she’d figured out who Abby Bliss really was.
And I was positive that people somewhere had to be looking for Cameron. A lost nine-year-old foster kid? Someone in the state’s DCF—Department for Children and Families—must have been getting smothered in whole mountains of shit over that little debacle.
Still, even seven and eight months after Cape Abenaki, it seemed like everyone had way better things to do than worry about what the hell had happened to Emily Shepard. For all I knew, everyone assumed I’d just killed myself and my body would be found when all of the snow finally melted. Or maybe they figured I’d killed myself and my body was decomposing somewhere in that actual no-man’s-land called the Exclusion Zone. With so many people relocated, lots of people were still unaccounted for.
And, the truth is, I really might have killed myself if it hadn’t been for Cameron. I’m not kidding. But as long as I was responsible for that little guy, I was going to keep putting one foot after another and see what happened.
One of the therapists here said she thought I didn’t want to be found because I had issues with my self-image. I didn’t say anything back, but I remember thinking, People pay you for this? Seriously: file that little observation in your manila folder where you keep the Unbelievably Obvious.
Eventually my curiosity did get the best of me, and I went to a vacant computer kiosk at the library and looked myself up. It was a few days before the igloo would collapse. I googled my family and I googled Eric Cunningham and I even looked at the pages for some of my friends on Facebook before it got too much. And it got too much pretty damn fast. After a few clicks, I thought my head was going to explode. In some ways, it was worse than I’d thought. There were lawsuits and criminal prosecutions: people my dad and mom worked with, people I knew, were going to be defendants in a court case later that year. Criminal negligence. And it looked like whole boatloads of people were suing the power company. As for my dad? As for my mom and dad? It didn’t matter that they were dead. They were like war criminals. I was nauseated by the things I was reading about them, the stories ranging from pure snark and lies to “responsible” time lines that claimed to show my father’s “habitual” incompetence. His “apparent” alcoholism. The power company’s failure to discharge him.
And as for little old me? I had, it seems, run away months ago. But based on the fact that there hadn’t been a single mention of me in any newspaper since July, no one seemed to care. I really had managed to disappear.
When I rejoined Cameron in a second-floor corner of the library, I must have looked a little pale because he asked me if I was all right. I said I was and sat back against a bookcase with a novel in my lap, but I was unable to read a word for the rest of the day. It would be a long, long time before I would open up a computer browser again.
I considered my options once Patrice and Rick were gone, including just pretending that my legs were cooked spaghetti and collapsing into the melting snow or falling back into the trash bags that had been my home. But, apparently, I really am weirdly maternal. I couldn’t let Cameron down. He was still holding my hand. He had his skateboard in the other. He was, I am happy to report, still wearing the gloves I had lifted for him at the Outdoor Gear Exchange.
So I forced myself to get my act together. I took a couple of slow, deep breaths and then I looked down at him. I shrugged and tried to offer him a little smile. “You ever heard the term ‘Plan B’?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Well, it means finding a new plan when the first one doesn’t work. So, give me a minute and I will figure out our Plan B—where we’re going to go next.”
“I don’t want another foster home,” he said, and he motioned up toward his eye with the tip of his skateboard. It was healed by now, but obviously I knew what he was referring to. “I’ll just run away again.”
“I know. But we’re not that desperate. Not yet, anyway.”
It seemed to me that we had at least two options: I could eat some crow and return to Poacher’s. I didn’t believe he would turn Cameron in, if only because it would mean drawing attention to himself. But I had spent enough time with Poacher to know that Cameron was going to be a deal breaker long-term. A missing nine-year-old foster kid? A minor? Not good. You get serious jail time for that kind of shit. Remember, Poacher thought I was eighteen. But I thought he would let us spend a night there, assuming he had room. And maybe while we were there I could find a lead on another posse or a person my age with a little crash pad where we could chill for a while.
Our other option? There were a couple of cheap motels on a strip a few miles from the downtown. They still wanted fifty or sixty bucks a night, but I guessed I could become a regular at the gas stations by the interstate. Or I could for a couple of days, anyway, just until I really did find that Plan B.
But, I must admit, as crazy as it seems I am and as bad as my judgment really is sometimes, I wasn’t ready to go that route yet. It was one thing when I was with Andrea and it was one thing when it was kind of a once-in-a-while thing to get Cameron a skateboard. But it was another to make hand jobs and blow jobs the only line items on my résumé. I guessed that might happen eventually, but I wasn’t all in yet to become a full-time prostitot.
So I gave Cameron a kind of abridged, PG-version of what Poacher’s was like and who might be there. I probably made it sound more like MTV’s Real World than the putrid rats’ nest that it really was. But it was a place where I figured we could get some rest. So he packed up his mummy bag and we filled our backpacks. (He was no longer using a trash bag as a suitcase, thank God.) I decided to leave behind the skuzzy and moldy quilt I’d used to keep warm in those long winter nights. Not a great loss: it was buried somewhere beneath the remains of the igloo. Then we said good-bye to the waterfront and started up the hill to the North End.
But, of course, Poacher was gone. Perfect, I thought. This is just perfect.
The front door to the apartment was unlocked, the way it usually was, but I didn’t recognize anything inside the place. Oh, it was still disgusting: there was a sticky layer of floor juice across the linoleum in the kitchen, and the windows were shadowed with dots of black grime. But the bedroom where the posse had crashed when we weren’t sardining in the living room actually had a bed instead of mattresses pressed side to side on the floor. It was a crap bed—a queen, like my parents’—with a headboard that was nicked and chipped, but it was still a bed. And the other bedroom had a desk and an okay-looking Mac and printer on it. There was different furniture in the living room, too, and some of it I could tell was brand-new from the unfinished furniture store in the North End. It had that new wood smell and was still waiting to be stained. I saw a Bible on the table that also held a little flat-screen TV on a stand and a cable box.
But if someone lived here now who wasn’t a total loser like Poacher, why was the door unlocked? I couldn’t figure that out. But then I heard footsteps on the stairs below us, and so I grabbed Cameron by the hand and pulled him with me back into the entry-way. I saw a heavyset g
uy in his late fifties or early sixties trudging up the steps with an empty plastic wastebasket in each hand. He was wearing a blue denim shirt with the sleeves cut away, and he had some serious tats on his arms and his neck: An eagle. Some eagle wings. A motorcycle made out of flames. But he was also wearing tortoiseshell eyeglasses, which made him look kind of like an overweight science teacher from the chin up.
By the time he got to us, he was puffing a bit.
“Can I help you two?” he asked, and then he pushed past us into the apartment.
“We used to live here,” I said.
He put down the wastebaskets in his front hallway and rubbed the back of his neck. “I hope not with that drug dealer who lived here before me.”
“No. It was a couple years ago,” I lied. I had to restrain myself from asking him exactly what had happened to that drug dealer, because I really wanted to know. I really wanted to know where everyone was.
“I moved in two days ago. I wanted to scrub the place with Purell—floor to ceiling. You’d think the landlord would have done that. Nope.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it was like when you lived here, but it was a pit when I moved in. Only good thing about this place is the rent, which isn’t much, and the view, which is actually pretty nice.”
“And it’s light,” I said.
“Yup. It’s light.” He put out his hand. “My name’s Andy.”
“Abby,” I said. His fingers were kind of moist and clammy, but it had been a long time since anyone had wanted to shake my hand. “This is Cameron—my brother.”
He leaned over a little bit and shook Cameron’s hand, too. “Hello, little man.”
Then the three of us stood there awkwardly for a long moment. He was eyeing our massive backpacks and Cameron’s mummy bag. Finally I said, “Well, I guess the place is still here. Thank you.”