Days That End in Y (7 page)

I rush away, trying not to look too eager and hoping they don’t notice that I’m heading toward the parking lot, which is in the opposite direction from my house. I force myself to walk, but what I really want to do is run. The man who might be my dad is not that far ahead of me. He has sort of a bouncy walk. It makes him seem friendly. I watch as he takes his keys from his pocket and presses a button. The lights on a little black car flicker as the doors unlock automatically. I start to jog a little, not caring how I look. I’m not sure what I’ll do when I catch up to him — I don’t want to talk to him, but I’m not ready to let him disappear out of my life.

“Hey, Bill! Wait up!”

My breath catches in my throat as someone behind me calls out and Bill turns around. It has to be him. What are the chances that a man who looks just like my father would just happen to have the same name? I sidestep toward a tree at the edge of the parking lot and linger there. The man jogs past me and catches up with Bill, and the two stop to talk next to the car. As they do, I take the time to study everything about him and the car.

Now I know two things for sure: My dad is back in town, and I have his licence plate number.

After Bill’s car pulls away, I run all the way home. I don’t think I’ve ever run so far before, but I’m so full of adrenalin I do it easily. As I charge up the steps, I hear Mom and Doug doing dishes, and my heart constricts. Partially because of all the running, but also because I don’t know what I’ll say to Mom when she asks how the game was. Instead of facing her, I yell, “I’m going to Benji’s!” through the screen door and run next door before either of them can say anything.

I ring the doorbell, but no one answers. In the semi-darkness, I grope around under the doormat for the key to Benji’s house. I find it and jam it into the lock, my fingers shaking. All my stomping and fumbling must have drawn Benji’s attention, because he is waiting for me when I stumble in. He looks stricken and is gripping the phone in one hand. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Didn’t you hear the doorbell? I rang it like six times!” I don’t mean to sound so angry, but I’m so mixed up it just comes out that way.

“I was on the phone,” Benji says.

“At this hour? With who?”

“Clarissa, are you okay? It looks like you’re having trouble breathing.”

After a few ragged breaths, I’m able to say, “I think I saw my dad.”

“Who?” Benji asks.

I don’t blame him. I can hardly believe it myself. “My dad. Bill Davies, father at large?”

Benji looks woozy. “I think I need to sit down.”

“
You
need to sit down? What about me?”

I follow Benji to the living room. He sits on the couch, and I collapse on the floor, leaning my back against the cool leather of the couch, trying to steady my breathing.

“Tell me from the beginning,” Benji says.

So I tell him about finding the yearbooks and the Google search and seeing Bill at the baseball game. When I’m finished, Benji says, “And you’re sure it’s him?”

“It looked just like him.”

“But those yearbook pictures were old.”

“He looks exactly the same. Older, obviously, but the same.”

Benji pauses. “So you saw pictures of him, and then you saw a man who looked like him.”

“It isn’t someone who looks like him, it IS him. That guy called him Bill.”

“Bill’s a pretty common name.”

“It was him, Benji! Why won’t you believe me?”

“The whole thing is kind of unbelievable.”

I sigh. “I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have to see him again.”

“Are you going to talk to him?”

“I don’t know yet. What would I say? ‘Hi, Dad?’” I laugh even though it isn’t funny. “I think I need to see him and then maybe I’ll know what to do.”

“Are you going to tell your mom?”

“Do you think I’m stupid? Of course not! She’d probably mess everything up.”

Part of me wonders if she already knows he’s here, which
means she deliberately didn’t tell me.

“So what’s next?”

“That’s why I’m here. I need your help. I got his licence plate number at the ball game.”

“What good is that?”

“It was the only thing I could think of at the time.”

***

Brainstorming calls for snacks. You can’t think well on an empty stomach. The Dentonator doesn’t like to cook, so Benji’s house is always full of delicious, ready-to-eat things — unlike my house, which is stocked with carrot sticks and flax crackers and things that need peeling. First, Benji finds us some root beer and a super-size bag of ketchup chips to fuel our brainstorming session. Next, he appoints himself secretary and begins taking notes. After a few minutes I ask him to read me the list from the top.

“Things we know,” says Benji, pausing dramatically. “Suspect looks like Bill Davies; suspect responds to the name Bill; suspect’s licence plate number is BKJR 199; suspect drives a black car.”

“Stop calling him ‘suspect.’ He isn’t a criminal.”

“Sorry.” Benji sucks his can of root beer dry, then chews on the end of his straw. “If he was a criminal we could get the police to run his licence plate number and they could track him down.”

“You watch too much TV. Anyway, if we walked into the police station looking for a car, they’d call our parents in about ten seconds.”

Benji pales a little, probably at the thought of telling the Dentonator that the police want to talk to him. “Okay, so no police.”

“No anybody,” I say sternly. “Promise me Benji: this is just between us.”

Benji nods. “I promise.”

We munch in silence for a little bit. Even though we don’t really have a place to begin, my spirits have lightened. It feels good to be planning this together, like one of our missions. Maybe all the missions we’d been planning and executing the past few years were leading up to this — the mission of all missions.

“So are you going to bike around town, looking for the car?” Benji asks.

When he says it out loud it sounds crazy, but that’s exactly what I was thinking of doing.

“That’s a lot of cars,” he continues. Then his eyes light up. “Unless …”

“Unless what?”

“What if we look up all the Davieses in town and bike by those houses? There can’t be that many.”

“Of course! He’s probably staying with relatives. Who else do you stay with when you come home? Benji, you’re a genius!”

Benji looks pleased with himself.

“But if Bill has relatives here, that means I have relatives here …” I trail off, unable to say what I’m thinking. If my father has relatives here, why haven’t they tried to contact me?

“Maybe we should stop by the hotel, too,” Benji says.

“And the bed and breakfast,” I add, happy for a change in subject.

Benji flips the notebook to a fresh page. “New list!” he announces. “Places to stay in town.”

“And just outside, too. Like the Lilac Motel,” I say.

Benji shudders. “That place is creepy,” he says. “There are never any cars in the parking lot.”

“Perfect! We’ll be able to spot his car right away!”

Benji’s eyes widen. “You mean we’re really going to bike out there? In the dark?”

“Not tonight, Benji! Jeez!”

“Thank goodness. Because there are horror movies that start that way.”

“You really do watch too much TV. Make sure it’s on the list,” I insist.

Dutifully, Benji adds Lilac Motel in his meticulous writing, doodling a thunder cloud and lightning bolt around it. I watch him add a drawing of a car on the bottom of the page. It’s very good, even though Benji doesn’t salivate over cars like some boys do. I guess you don’t have to like something to be able to draw it well. He even writes Bill’s licence plate number in the right place.

“How’s the wedding planning coming?” he asks.

“Fine. Mom still doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. It’s just a casual thing, in our backyard.”

“Who’s coming?”

“Not a lot of people. Mom said I could invite you, of course, and Mattie. And maybe Michael.”

“Is he your date?”

“No, just a guest.”

“Aren’t you supposed to bring a date to a wedding?”

“It’s not
that
kind of wedding. Why, who would you bring? Charity?”

“I was just asking.” Benji blushes, and I wonder if maybe she is the nighttime caller he has been spending all his evenings chatting with. I used to think Benji was maybe just a little in love with Charity, but he swore up and down
it wasn’t true: they were just friends and he admired her. I want to ask more about it, but Benji changes the subject on me. “How is living with Doug?”

“Weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Just weird. Imagine if all of a sudden there was a woman in your house walking around in boxer shorts or singing songs you’ve never heard of in the shower.”

“She probably wouldn’t be wearing just boxer shorts,” Benji says.

“You know what I mean.”

“But you like Doug, right?”

I shrug. “Yeah, doesn’t make it any less weird.”

“Maybe it will always be a little bit weird,” Benji muses.

I throw a pillow at him. “Way to cheer me up.”

Benji laughs as the pillow skims the top of his head. “You could do a lot worse than Doug,” he points out.

“True. Your dad could’ve moved in,” I tease.

“Hey!”

And with that, I’ve started a full-out pillow fight.

***

I wait for Benji outside the theatre, wondering if it is, in fact, possible to sweat to death. I have to remove my backpack, which is hot and getting heavy. Inside are some snacks, my mother’s grade twelve yearbook and our list of places to investigate.

I’m sitting beside my bike in the only shady spot, flipping through the yearbook while I wait. I stop again on the autograph page, trying to figure out the inside jokes behind the weird messages.

Dear Annie, if modelling doesn’t work out, maybe you can be a personal assistant? The next time someone gives me a sunlight surprise, I will say no. Seriously though, you rock! Marilyn

Yo, Beauty Queen! How come you never went out with me? I’m better than a hundred Jacks! Thanks for making English worthwhile! The Greg-meister!

Jack? Who is Jack? Didn’t Greg mean Bill? Is Jack some
sort of retro slang for boy?

I flip to the class photos to look for this mysterious Jack, but then Benji arrives with his bike. I snap the book shut and spring to my feet. “Finally!”

“I said three o’clock; it’s only three-ten.”

“What were you doing?”

“I had to say goodbye to Charity and everyone. Plus, Dean was giving me advice about my song.”

I should probably know who Dean is, but I’ve been so distracted with the wedding and my dad showing up that I can’t quite remember. “Who’s Dean again?”

Benji looks at me like I’m crazy. “The director? He’s a university student? He does, like,
real
plays in the city. He’s running camp this summer.”

“Right. Here, I brought food.” I reach into my backpack and fish out a sandwich that is now more of a squished ball of bread and peanut butter. I hand it to Benji. I guess the food got a bit beat up with the yearbook and the water bottles clanging around in there. “Can you eat and bike at the same time?”

Benji looks insulted. “Of course.”

“Then let’s go. First stop, Mason Street.”

It turns out there are four Davies families in town with listed phone numbers. The closest is on Mason Street.

It’s so humid it feels like we’re pedalling through soup, the thick, split pea kind. Even the breeze we generate by biking feels hot; though it does lift the lank and heavy hair off the back of my neck, cooling it from forty degrees to thirty-nine.

I can’t wait to get my licence. Considering the helmet, backpack, pedalling and the lack of air conditioning, biking has to be the hottest form of transportation.

Mason Street is deserted: no kids playing street hockey or
elderly people hanging out on porches. This makes spying easier. The plan is to bike by 184 Mason Street, laughing and talking, while scanning cars in the area for the licence plate number, which we have both memorized. If we see the car, we have to say, “Cramp!” at the top of our lungs. It’s the perfect code word. Anyone around will think we just need a breather, not that we are staking out a house.