“And then she left.”
She stirred her coffee again. “I gather there are still some hard feelings?”
“None, it’s just that she’s a scum-sucking idiot.”
Someone knocked gently before I could slap my own mouth for blabbing.
Benedetti got up and listened briefly to the person at the door. “I’ll just be a minute.”
A few leaves spiraled down from the maple tree at the back of the parking lot. Six years I lived with Trish, it said that on her computer. Truth? I barely remembered it. I’d get flashes here and there, like fireflies, gone before I could get a good look at them. The years before Trish? Clouds strung on a necklace, the smell of lemons, the sound of bees in a garden. The years of Trish? Nada. Méi shén me.
The years after?
After she left, we drifted back and forth across the country in a dented eighteen-wheeler—Dad steering, me navigating—stopping every once in a while in tiny towns that seemed like islands in the middle of an ocean of corn or snow or sand. We’d stay a month or two, until the past caught up to him and blew us out the door again. The miles under the tires helped fade everything we didn’t want to remember into a vague pattern of loosely knit-together shadows that stayed just out of reach, where they belonged.
My heart suddenly revved, then raced, and no, no, no. Not going there. No need. Don’t want to. Not going to. Just breathe. It’s all good. I’m good. Dad is fine. Focus, focus.
Orange tree.
Lines of cars. Sun bouncing off windshields.
Asphalt. Lines of tar filling in the cracks.
Just breathe.
The girl next door had stopped crying.
* * *
Benedetti came back in and sat down. “Right, where were we?” She took a long swig of coffee and set the cup next to her keyboard, the rim stained with beige lip gloss. “Your stepmother is concerned about you and your father. She told me a few things that contradict what your father said when he enrolled you. That’s another reason I need to talk to him.”
“She’s not my stepmother.” I stood up. “She’s a cheating, alcoholic asshole who can’t open her mouth without lying. She . . . You can’t talk to her about me. Can I go?”
She nodded slowly. “I hear what you’re saying and I understand. But I still need to talk to your father. If he doesn’t want to call me, I can stop by your house.”
“He’ll call,” I said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“One more thing.” Benedetti opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a sealed envelope. My name was written on the front in black, spidery ink, familiar handwriting.
“She sent this.” Benedetti set it on top of my books. “The woman who apparently was not your stepmother. She asked me to give it to you.”
I opened my precalc textbook and shoved the envelope inside. “I’m not going to read it.”
“Your choice. Oh, and don’t forget to sign up for your SATs. You’re running out of time.”
9
Instead of heading for precalc, I detoured around the technology pod, looped through the music wing, behind the cafeteria, and through the back entrance to the library. I flashed my late pass at Ms. Burkey, the last librarian left standing after the school board fired the rest of the staff, and hurried to the far end of the nonfiction stacks like I was on a mission, the way Gracie taught me. When Ms. Burkey turned her attention to a loud group of guys in the computer room, I emerged to hunt for something real to read so that I could distract my brain from imploding.
A small table covered with a red paper tablecloth had been set up next to the new books display. A cardboard sign with GENOCIDE AWARENESS written on it was taped to the front edge of the table and a banner reading ONE WORLD, hung on the wall behind it. A bulk-sized box of Snickers and a Tupperware container of homemade brownies had been placed on the table next to laminated photos of mutilated bodies. Dark blood pooled on the dirt and ran in slow rivers from the dead toward the photographer. In one picture, a child’s hand clutching a rag doll poked out from underneath a heap of broken adults.
An index card showed the price of the snacks: Brownies $1, Candy $2.
A tiny girl with rings on all of her fingers sat behind the table reading a tattered paperback.
“Is this a club?” I asked. “A genocide awareness club?”
“One World is more than just genocide.” She stuck a scrap of paper in the book to mark her page. “We build schools in Afghanistan and dig wells in Botswana.”
“Do members of the club get to travel to those places, you know, to do the work?”
“I wish,” she said. “We try to raise awareness. And money. The candy bars are the best sellers. Do you want one?”
“I’d rather have a brownie.” I reached in my pocket and sorted through the change while she put a brownie in a plastic bag for me. “Thanks.” I handed her the quarters and she handed me my lunch.
“We meet every Wednesday,” she said. “Ms. Duda’s room, 304, next to the stairs.”
I took the brownie. “Do the pictures ever gross anyone out?”
She shook her head. “People don’t really look at them.”
10
My math teacher noted the precise time that Benedetti had marked down on my late pass and calculated that I had blown off one-third of his class. He scolded me for so long that I had to hustle to make it to English. I was in luck; Ms. Rogak was still standing in the hall, deep in conversation with the technology teacher who always wore a huge, blue UNION button on his shirt. I scooted past them and through the door.
My usual seat, back row, center aisle, was already taken by Brandon Something, a tennis player who constantly misused the word literally. I needed that seat. It had the best view of the door and a solid wall to lean against. If trouble walked in, I’d have plenty of room to maneuver. Yes, I was being paranoid. I knew that Trish was not going to storm my English class with a commando team, but hearing her name, knowing that she was snooping around and could show up to make life even worse had driven me perilously close to a three-alarm anxiety meltdown. Sitting back row, center aisle was not an option. It was a requirement.
“You’re in my seat,” I told Brandon Something.
“Sit on my face,” he said.
“Move,” I said.
“What’ll you give me?”
A couple of heads swiveled to watch us.
My adrenaline turned up a notch. “How about a swift kick in the balls?”
Before he could respond, Ms. Rogak click-clicked in on her stiletto heels, shutting the door hard enough to stop all snickering and conversation.
“Up front, Brandon,” she said. “I don’t need you scheming back there today. Books open, everyone. Attention on me.”
Brandon bumped into me as he carried his books to the empty seat in front. “Bitch,” he whispered.
* * *
Ms. Rogak had Melody Byrd read a passage: Circe trying to bewitch Odysseus:
“‘Now you are burnt-out husks, your spirits haggard, sere,
always brooding over your wanderings long and hard,
your hearts never lifting with any joy—
you’ve suffered far too much.’”
I stared at the page until the letters melted into the paper. Trish’s envelope waited in my math book. Ticking. Sweat trickled down my neck and soaked into my shirt. I kept breathing, slow, slow, steady, but my hands would not stop shaking. Why did she call Benedetti? How did she even know where we lived?
The page started to dissolve into the desk and I closed my eyes.
A knife ripped through the veil between Now and Then and I fell in . . .
ripping . . . Daddy holds my hand. A strange woman steps in front of us. She is Trish and I have to love her now . . .
ripping . . . Trish screams louder than sirens, louder t
han a helicopter . . .
ripping . . . Monsters crawl out of the video game. Daddy’s blood fills the couch and drips on the floor . . .
* * *
Ms. Rogak’s voice pitched up an octave. “Don’t any of you understand what Homer is saying? Please, I’m begging. Anybody.”
Had she been emailing Dad? Had she twisted his head around again, was that why he was getting worse? What if she was at the house, manipulating him, lying to him, breaking his rusted heart into pieces?
I have to get home. Now.
11
Finn was at his locker, just like Topher said he would be.
“Hey.” I tapped his shoulder.
His head snapped around, surprised.
“Um,” I said. “This is awkward, but I don’t have a choice.”
He grinned. “Sounds awesome already.”
I swallowed hard. The panic was getting worse. “No jokes, please. I need a ride. Home. I desperately need a ride home.”
“Okay. Meet me here at two thirty.”
“I need a ride home right now. It’s an emergency.”
“But I have physics.” He frowned. “Are you okay? Do you want to go to the nurse?”
“Yes, no, yes, I mean . . .” I pushed the palm of my hand against my forehead, trying not to lose it in front of this guy and the three hundred strangers in the hall. “Nothing is wrong with me. My dad is sick and I need to get home and you have a car and I thought, maybe . . .”
The bell rang so loud I jumped, and then it rang and rang and rang, the halls emptying. Finn said something, his mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear him.
“Never mind,” I said, hurrying away.
* * *
I walked as fast as I dared; don’t run, don’t want them to notice. Down the halls, past open doors that all sounded the same; teachers launching into a lesson, kids restless. Past the auditorium, out the heavy metal doors. Cut straight across the grass around the flagpole, right through visitor’s parking and into the student lot.
“Miss Blue!” someone shouted.
I started jogging.
Every step closer to home made me more anxious. Is she at the house? What does she want? How do I stop this?
“Hey.” Finn grabbed my elbow to stop me, two rows from the pumpkin orange tree. “I’ll drive you.”
I turned. “Thought you had physics.”
“I already know it. Ever heard of Maxwell’s demon? Second law of thermodynamics. Cool as shit. Give me those.”
“What?”
“You’re shaking. Give me your books and put on your hoodie.”
He did not mention the fact that there was no wind and the sun was warm. I handed over my books and set my backpack on the ground, then struggled into my sweatshirt and tried to stop shaking, stop sweating, stuff down the explosion that was clawing its way up my spine.
I poked my head through the neck hole and fumbled my hands into the sleeves. “You don’t mind if you get in trouble?”
“Trouble is my middle name.” He stood soldier straight and bowed. “Finnegan Trouble Ramos, at your service, Miss Blue.”
“Stop calling me that.”
12
I didn’t notice too much about his car. It had a windshield, doors, steering wheel, seat belts; that was all I needed. He put the key in the ignition, the engine turned over. He shifted into gear and the wheels rolled.
The gray closed in on me as he was pulling out of the parking lot, right after I gave him the directions. I fought the gray with Dad’s tricks: Say the alphabet. Count in Spanish. Picture a mountain, the top of a mountain, the top of a mountain in the summer. Keep breathing. It took a few minutes but I won. The gray pulled away from my eyes in ribbons and whispered that it would be back soon.
“You zoned out a bit,” Finn said.
“Can you drive faster?” I asked.
“I’m doing the speed limit.”
“Nobody does the speed limit.”
“I do because I am a good driver,” he said. “I’m so good that when I drove my mom to her podiatrist appointment last Saturday, she fell asleep.”
“Why couldn’t she drive herself? Did her foot hurt?”
“That’s not the right question.”
“What?”
“You were supposed to ask ‘Why did she fall asleep?’ The answer was ‘Because I was a good driver.’ Get it? I was so good she was bored.”
“Oh,” I said. “Was that a joke?”
“I thought it was.”
“Not really.”
“Damn.” He put on his turn signal, checked all of his mirrors twice, and eased into the next lane. My right knee bounced up and down as I fought to keep myself from grabbing the wheel and slamming the accelerator to the floor.
The light ahead turned yellow. Finn braked so that the car came to a stop a full second before the yellow turned red. The streets in all directions were empty.
Home. I had to get home.
“No one is coming,” I pointed out.
“What?”
“There’s no traffic.”
“So?”
“So you can go.”
“The light’s red.”
“It’s stuck. Malfunctioning. You can go because the coast is clear.”
“We’ve only been here two seconds.”
“More like two minutes. Go.”
“I get it.” He turned to look at me. “There’s a warrant out for your arrest. You’ve got the FBI, CIA, and Interpol tracking you. What was it—jewel heist? Smuggling pandas?”
“I’m not in the mood to joke around. Even if I were, you are not a funny person.”
The light changed to green.
He accelerated slowly. “Are you sure you feel okay?”
“I’m fine.”
We drove in silence. I dug my fingernails into my palms as we were passed by three cars and a wrinkled old lady riding a pink moped. A block after he turned right (turn signal activated way too early, every mirror checked and checked twice more—for a right-hand turn, for crying out loud, a right-hand turn made from the far right lane) he eased to another slow stop at a yellow light and nodded to himself as it turned red, as if he were some kind of genius for having predicted that occurrence.
“See?” he asked.
“See what?”
“See what a good idea it was to slow down instead of blowing through that light, the way you wanted me to?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it loudly. The words Just go! appeared above your head in neon-blue smoke.”
“Whatever.”
“No, really. Aha! Look! Cop car just rolled out of the gas station back there and pulled up behind us.”
I looked in the side mirror. The cop’s sunglasses stared at us. His mouth was moving.
Threat
“He’s getting ready to pull you over,” I said. “Are your taillights out? Have you ever been arrested? You don’t have any weed in here, do you? I don’t want to get busted. I can’t get busted. I have to go home.”
“Don’t freak out. You’re not going to get busted.”
My mouth went dry. “Could we be arrested for leaving school?”
He laughed. “Are you kidding?”
I didn’t answer. The light changed. Finn drove with both hands on the wheel, his speedometer slowly crawling up to twenty-nine miles per hour.
“Speed limit is thirty-five here.”
Assess
I turned around and looked over my shoulder. The police car was six feet behind us. “He can pull you over for driving too slow, you know.”
“Not going to happen. We didn’t run any lights, nor are we speeding. There just happens to be a police officer driving behind us. He’s probably on his way to a diner.”
r /> I watched in the side mirror, waiting for the cop to hit his lights and siren. “Don’t say ‘nor.’ Makes you sound like a dweeb.”
“Makes me sound like a smart dweeb.”
“Really smart people don’t flaunt it. Besides, ‘nor’ is arcane.”
“‘Arcane’ is arcane.”
Finn stopped at another light. The cop pulled up so close I could see the grill that separated the front seat of his car from the back, where they stick the suspects. My heart started hammering against my ribs.
“I’ll get out here.” I tried to swallow the bitter taste flooding my mouth. “It’s close enough.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I came up to you in the parking lot.” I unfastened my seat belt.
“What are you talking about?”
“If that cop pulls you over, you don’t know me. I don’t go to your school. I bummed a ride from you in the Byrne Dairy parking lot. You were taking me to the bus station, but then I changed my mind. Understand?”
“I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”
“Thanks for the ride. I’ll write that article for you. I just . . .” I opened the door. “I have to go.”
Action
13
My father’s legs stuck out from under the front end of his pickup. The toe of his right boot pointed to the sky. The other boot pointed so far to the left it was lying on the ground, like he was asleep, or . . .
My heart skipped a beat, two beats.
He started to whistle. Badly. “Hotel California” by the Eagles.
I was so relieved I almost barfed.
Spock woofed and Dad rolled out to see why. He sat up and shaded his eyes, his greasy hands marking his forehead and the gray buzz cut above it.
“That you, princess?”
I bent down to scratch Spock’s ears. “Hey, Daddy.”
The dark blue smudges under his eyes were from lack of sleep, not a fight. He’d woken up screaming three times the night before. He stood up and pulled a rag out of his back pocket to wipe his hands. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”