Bones & All (27 page)

“Then who did?”

Instead of answering I took a sip of soda. “Did you ever go back to Sully's cabin?”

He shook his head. “You?”

I nodded. “I wish you had.” Then I told him everything.

“I
told
you family's overrated,” Lee said at last.

I stuck my fists in my jean pockets and kicked at a stone. “I've been really clueless, haven't I?”

Lee shook his head. “I'm just glad you're all right.”

“For now, anyway.”

“How long has it been—a little over a month? Don't you think he'd've been able to trace you in all that time? He didn't have any trouble finding us at the carnival.”

“Are you saying … are you saying I might have killed him?”

He shrugged. “You can definitely kill a person if you hit 'em hard enough on the head. It never occurred to you?”

I shook my head and drew an unsteady breath.

“I wouldn't feel too badly about it, if I were you. It was you or him.” After a pause Lee asked, “Are you going to visit your father?”

I didn't answer him right away. I looked at the man behind the little window at the security gate, and up beyond the fence at the three endless stories of barred windows. I thought of my father sitting in that chair with the ghost of his right hand hidden under the blanket, getting his face mopped by some other orderly who didn't care about who he was or the kind of life he might have had. I'd come all this way back to Bridewell, and yet I'd never had any intention of going in there again.

Lee looked at me and nodded.

 

11

We drove to Laskin National Park. It was getting to be prime camping season, and because there were so many people around, sleeping in the flatbed was less appealing than just paying the fee for a campsite like everybody else. At night, alone in my little tent, I closed my eyes and saw the snapshots from my parents' perfect summer flipping by in the darkness. I wished one of us owned a camera.

Then, toward the end of August, we said so long to Barry Cook's pickup truck.

That morning we'd decided on a trip to Door County for some fishing, and we were only a few miles out of the park when the engine made this weird coughing noise, and Lee had to pull to the side of the road. He spent almost an hour bent under the hood, and when he finally told me what was wrong I didn't understand any of it. Whatever it was, he couldn't fix it on his own, and we couldn't call a tow truck for more reasons than one. “It's not your fault,” I said as we took our stuff out of the back for the last time. Still, he was prickly, and didn't say much as we walked.

Lee held out his thumb to every passing car, but it was half an hour before someone stopped. The car pulled over ahead of us and a blonde in magenta sunglasses stuck her head out the driver's-side window. “Hey there. You guys break down or something?”

We came up beside her and Lee cast a doubtful glance through the backseat window. There were clear storage boxes stacked to the ceiling.

“I'm driving back to school,” she said. “It's all right, I can make room. Where you headed?”

Lee said, “We're headed wherever you're headed.”

She got out of the car and flashed her teeth. “Now that's what I call easy to travel with.”

He introduced us both to Kerri-Ann Watt, incoming senior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She hardly looked at me, and her handshake was as limp as a lasagna noodle. If it had been only me she would've kept driving. Which is why I found myself packed in the backseat while Lee sat in the front. He kept giving me sympathetic looks over his shoulder. Kerri-Ann asked him all sorts of personal questions, and I had to put my hand over my smirk every time he lied.

*   *   *

We got to Madison just after four o'clock, and Lee and I waited in the car while Kerri-Ann checked into her dorm and got her keys. Everywhere there were students in T-shirts and ball caps with badgers on them, everybody laughing and calling to one another across the parking lot, lots of hugs and high-fiving. “You guys don't have a place to stay, do you?” Kerri-Ann asked when she got back. “You can stay with me tonight, if you want. I have a single.” She grinned at Lee. “You just have to help me move in.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “It'll take no time at all between three people.”

We carried everything up the stairs and into the room. I'd never been in a dorm before, but I guessed this one was pretty standard: painted cinderblock walls, gray linoleum floors, fiberboard furniture. We waited while Kerri-Ann hung up her posters—Lee rolled his eyes every time she pulled out another one, Tom Cruise in
Risky Business
or Right Said Fred—and then we went to the campus pizzeria for dinner. Kerri-Ann walked ahead of me along the lakeside path, next to Lee, and touched him on the inside of his arm every time she wanted to point something out. This was getting old. Tomorrow morning we'd have to figure out what we were doing next—and whatever it was, it would have nothing at all to do with Kerri-Ann Watt.

“You're so good with your hands, Lee,” she said when we got back to her room. “Would you mind setting up my loft bed? It should only take a few minutes. While you're doing that I'm going to unpack all my girly stuff. Maren, you want to help me?”

Kerri-Ann closed the bathroom door behind us and began laying out her toiletries and cosmetics along the counter. “This is my favorite part of a new school year,” she said. “Setting up my vanity.”

“You have a lot of makeup.”

She laughed. “You say that like it's a bad thing.”

“I don't know what you need it all for. You're already pretty.”

She didn't thank me for the compliment, she just kept arranging all her pots and wands and bottles. I watched her, and in my mind I curled my fingers around her nail scissors.

After a minute or two she was satisfied, and looked me over appraisingly. “You know, you could be attractive if you made an effort.”

I folded my arms and met her eyes in the mirror. “And now you're going to tell me I shouldn't wear black all the time, it makes me look pale and sullen and deeply unhappy, and nobody is going to want to be my friend.”

“Well, if you've heard it before then don't you think there's something to it?”

“Lee's my friend. He doesn't care what I wear, or what I put on my face.”

“Mmm.” Kerri-Ann pulled at a wisp of my hair and tucked it behind my ear. “That's what I've been trying to figure out.”

“Lee doesn't like me like that.”

“So you say. But guys and girls can't be friends.”

“Nothing's happened. He thinks I'm a baby, anyway.”

“Why, how old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

Kerri-Ann laughed. “And how old is he? Twenty?”

“Nineteen.”

“That's all right,” she said as she drew out a little plastic pot, dipped her finger, and dabbed the pink goo on her lips. “I like them a little bit younger.”

Lee was finished setting up the loft bed when we came out of the bathroom. The clock on the nightstand read 11:33. Here we were, hurtling toward bedtime, and I had no idea where I was going to sleep.

Kerri-Ann climbed into her bed and pointed to a box on the floor by her desk. “The air mattress is in there. Lee, why don't you set it up for yourself? It's electric, so you don't have to blow into it. Maren, I think you'll be more comfortable on one of the couches in the common room down the hall. They're comfy—I used to fall asleep on them watching movies all the time last year.”

Lee gave me a doubtful look. “Here, why don't I blow the air mattress up for Maren and—”

“The air mattress has a hole in it,” Kerri-Ann said flatly. “Don't you want Maren to get a good night's sleep?”

There was no other way to protest without making it into a
thing
. Kerri-Ann tossed me a tatty gray blanket. “We'll see you in the morning,” she said.

The light was off in the common room. From the street lamps I could make out a small kitchenette and refrigerator in one corner, a great hulking television set in another, and a bunch of couches scattered around the room. I chose one and settled in. The cushions smelled like beer and dirty socks.

I pictured Kerri-Ann unbuttoning Lee's shirt and casting it on the floor beside the deflated air mattress. I saw him running his fingers along her bare skin.
You're so good with your hands, Lee.
I rolled my eyes at the dark and tried harder to think of nothing at all. When I fell asleep, I was back running in those zigzagging corridors as Kerri-Ann was losing her lead, stumbling over her pink stiletto heels.

The next thing I knew, someone was shining a flashlight in my face. “You should not be here,” said a crisp but gentle voice. “The common room is closed. Are you a resident of this dormitory?”

I held my hand up to my eyes, and the figure averted the flashlight a moment before the overhead lamp switched on. A security guard stood in the kitchenette area, tall and stocky, with a buzzed haircut. It took me a second to realize the guard wasn't a man.

“I'm a friend of Kerri-Ann Watt.” I almost choked on the word
friend
. “She lives in room two twenty-nine.”

“Have you been signed in as an overnight guest?” She spoke with care; English wasn't her first language.

“Um … I didn't know we were supposed to sign in.”

“Gather your things, please. We will go to your friend's room now.”

I followed the guard down the hall, the blanket trailing behind me.

She knocked sharply on Kerri-Ann's door, waited, and knocked again. Finally we heard footsteps approach.

Kerri-Ann opened the door. I glanced over her shoulder and saw her bed was empty. The air mattress lay in a puddle on the linoleum. “Yes?”

“I found this young woman asleep in the common room. She says she is your friend.”

Kerri-Ann looked me up and down with a blank expression. “No. Sorry. I don't know her.”

I opened my mouth to protest as the guard made her apologies and Kerri-Ann closed the door, flicking me a tiny glance of triumph behind the woman's back.

“It was not good to lie, miss. Now I must report you. You will receive a citation from the campus police.”

“I wasn't lying,” I said tiredly. “
She's
lying because she wants my friend all to herself.” I should have used those nail scissors when I had the chance.

The guard glanced back at Kerri-Ann's door, then at me, as we went down the hall toward the bright red
EXIT
light, and I realized it wasn't a matter of her not believing me. She didn't care about any of this. She was just doing her job, and if I disappeared right now she'd just shrug and continue on her rounds like nothing had happened.

“Now we will walk to the campus police station,” she said as we went down the stairs. “It is two blocks from here.”

I followed her out the door at the bottom of the stairwell, but when she turned the corner on the building I ran the other way. I knew she wouldn't follow me.

I walked a few more blocks to the lake and sat down on a park bench overlooking the water. It wouldn't be light for hours yet. My backpack was in Kerri-Ann's room, I didn't have anything with me but a raggedy old blanket, and I didn't know what to do about it. I'd been homeless for months, but I'd never really felt like it until now.

I must have nodded off, because it was suddenly light out and Lee was sitting next to me. A couple of early morning joggers hurried by, and I felt naked and ridiculous under the old blanket. My throat hurt. “Where were you?” I asked blearily. “You weren't with her.”

“I'm so sorry, Maren. I never should have let it go that far. She was a pest from the minute we met her, but I didn't think she'd be like
that
.”

“Did she tell you what she did?”

“She didn't have to.”

“I left my bag in her room. Do you think you could get it for me?”

“You can get it yourself. But there's no need for us to leave right away.” He let out a breath, and I smelled it then—the stench lurking under the mint. He'd probably used her toothbrush. “Now everything in that room belongs to you.”

*   *   *

I wore every article of black clothing Kerri-Ann had owned, even her underwear, and every day I used her ID card to get into the university library. No one ever checked to see if my face matched the photo on the card. I just flashed the ID to a bored-looking student behind the front desk and passed through the turnstile, into the biggest library I'd ever seen.

After a couple hours of reading I would wander around in the stacks to stretch my legs, and there were always lots of books on the carts in need of reshelving. There never seemed to be anyone around to do it, so I started doing it myself. It soothed me to put somebody else's books away.

I didn't see much of Lee during the day. Wherever he went and whatever he did, he always ended up at McDonald's or Burger King, and he'd bring me a burger and a strawberry milkshake for dinner.

I didn't know how long we'd be able to go on like this, but I kept thinking the time was almost up just because I
liked
it here. I liked this town. I liked the campus. The cafeteria was all done up like a German hunting lodge or something, lots of dark wood and Gothic script, and when the weather was good you could take your tray out onto a terrace overlooking the lake.

The people were friendly too, even if I couldn't talk to them. A few times I saw three girls knitting together on the terrace, and one day one of them looked up and saw me watching her. She smiled and said, “Do you knit?”

I shook my head. “I tried to learn, but I just couldn't get the hang of it.”

“Oh, everybody feels that way in the beginning.” The girl leaned over and patted the seat beside her. “Come sit down, and I'll teach you so it sticks.”