Down With the Shine (16 page)

A
s we come around the side of the house, we run into Dyl and W2 and . . . the odd hairy man they’re talking with. As if sensing my gaze, the hairy man turns and waves at me in a friendly way, and that’s when I recognize him as the guy I met at the bar last night. Rabbit. The one who “takes care of” things for my father.

“Hello, hello!” he says, coming at me with an arm outstretched and ready for a hearty handshake. After pumping my hand up and down a few times, he finally releases me and folds his hands on top of his rounded little stomach. “What luck to run into you! I was just asking these two where you might be.”

“Yeah, this Rabbit guy is gonna take us to your daddio,” W2 interrupts. “
And
let us do a group selfie with him if at all possible.” He looks around to the rest of us.
“That would be sick, right?”

“No way,” I say, having no problem with bursting W2’s bubble. “I’ve got enough shit to handle right now, I’m not adding him to the mix.”

Rabbit smiles in this strained way. “Well, yes, that’s the thing. You see, your father has become aware of your, erm, problems and thinks he may be able to offer some help.”

“And if I say no, you’re gonna drag me there anyway, right? You’re not the first of my father’s friends to hunt me down today, you know.”

“I do know, and I apologize for such tactics. Dragging you,” Rabbit shudders. “And bringing you to your father, against your will. No. I would never do such a thing. Lennie, you may recall I put you in a cab the other day. Had he known, Cash would’ve preferred that I’d detained you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Well, Cash never gave specific orders on what to do if you were to show up at the bar soaking wet and . . . Ahem. Excuse the presumption, but drunk as a skunk as well. So I used my own judgment and decided that kidnapping you hardly seemed an auspicious way to kick-start a father-daughter reunion.”

“Right,” Smith says, bleeding skepticism. “Tell that to the two psychos who broke into Lennie’s house a few hours ago.”

“Stay away from us,” I add, as Smith and I start to make a detour around Rabbit, all the while making sure to stay out of snatching range—just in case.

“Of course, I respect your wishes . . . er, bad choice of words—that is to say, your desires, and I would leave it at that,” Rabbit calls after us in his gratingly ingratiating way. “But the thing is, your father has a way to break wishes. One hundred percent guaranteed to work as long as the original wish granter is present and recalls more or less the wording of the original wish.”

“More or less?” I ask, intrigued despite myself. My footsteps stall even as Smith attempts to keep tugging me along. “I was totally wasted, or you know, drunk as a skunk, when I granted all those wishes. What if I can’t remember exactly how the wish went?”

Rabbit shrugs. “You’ll have to ask your father for the exact details. I’m afraid that I’m merely the messenger.”

I glance over at Smith, wanting to know what he thinks and if I’m totally crazy for even considering this. “It’s something,” he says, which is pretty much what I’d been thinking, but then he adds, “Or a bunch of bullshit so your father can get his hands on you.”

“And give you a great big hug,” Rabbit interjects.

Smith and I ignore him.

“I still think it’s a total badass move,” W2 chimes in.

We ignore him too.

For better or worse, Smith and I are connected, and this is our decision to make.

“Okay,” Smith says, leaning in close and shutting everyone else out. “If this Rabbit guy hadn’t shown up, what was your next move?”

“Um . . .” I chew on my lip, waiting for something to come to me. Nothing does. “Go back to my house and try to think of an idea?”

Smith says nothing in response. He doesn’t need to. We have no options except for this one really shitty one. If Larry wasn’t injured, if Michaela wasn’t Cheetos’d, if none of those horrible wishes had been granted in the first place . . . But they had. I’d done something stupid and maybe that meant I needed to do something even more stupid to correct it.

As if reading my mind, Smith says, “I’ll be right there beside you.”

“Okay,” I say, turning to Rabbit. “Is he at the bar?”

“You’ll come, then?” Rabbit claps his hands gleefully when I nod. “Excellent, excellent. Cash will be thrilled. You don’t even know.”

“We’re coming too,” Dyl announces, jerking her thumb to indicate W2 beside her.

I expect Rabbit to object, but he just grins. “Wonderful!
The more the merrier, is what I always say!”

As if that settles everything, Rabbit scampers off, promising to meet us at the bar, while the rest of us climb into the Jeep. The bar is on the outskirts of town, but we still get there sooner than I’d like.

The idea of having to face my father makes me more than a little sick, and the only thing that keeps me from turning and running is my connection to Smith. He’s the anchor holding me here, but more than that, his hand fused with mine seems to lend me some of his strength. And right now, I need it.

I look over my shoulder at Dyl. She sits with her arms wrapped around herself, staring through the back window, watching an empty corner of the parking lot.

How could I have forgotten for even an instant? No matter how wrapped up I am in this train wreck of a day, how has it not even crossed my mind that this is where Dyl was last seen and where her remains were found weeks later. In that suitcase, in the trunk of a car, in this parking lot. Perhaps it was left in that very same parking spot she has her gaze locked on.

Rabbit knocks on my window, making us all jump. “Why are you all just sitting around? Come on inside!”

Now that we’re here, looking at the dingy building, which is oddly empty and quiet for ten o’clock on a
Saturday night, we all hesitate.

“Came this far,” W2 says at last, swinging his door open and trotting behind Rabbit into the bar.

And for some reason, we all decide to follow the lead of the biggest idiot in the group, perhaps even the biggest idiot in the world.

The interior of the bar is dark and musty. Despite the sprinkling of cars in the parking lot, there isn’t a single person inside. The parking lot lights filter through windows thick with grime, and the tables are covered in a sticky layer of residue. If I hadn’t been here last night and seen how packed the place was, I would swear from the broken-down and neglected ambiance that it had been shut down and left to slowly rot away years ago.

Behind the bar, Rabbit fills four cups with a sprayer thingy. “Who’s thirsty?” he calls when he’s finished.

Again W2 eagerly leads the way and the rest of us reluctantly follow. The glasses, in keeping with the rest of the décor, are greasy to the touch and something that looks like a roach floats at the top of mine. Without taking a sip, I quickly set it back down again.

“Look, Rabbit,” I start, “I don’t have a lot of time—”

Rabbit claps his hands together. “Of course, I understand completely. We’ll just let your friends stay here and enjoy their refreshments, while we go seek out your
father.” Turning toward Smith, Rabbit gives him a strange little bow. “Young man, if you would hand the young lady over to me, I assure you I will take excellent care of her.”

Smith smirks. “I bet you would.” He holds up our linked hands. “But right now where Lennie goes, I go. We’re stuck. See?”

“Oh.” The friendly smile that had been on Rabbit’s face since he found us fades away. “Oh, I do see. That’s not . . . Oh, dear.” His little eyes dart between us nervously. “And I suppose that’s the result of a wish?”

“Yeah,” Smith answers.

“I wonder if you might be able to share with me the exact wording of that wish?”

“It was sick!” W2 jumps in. “I wasn’t there, but everyone was talking about it. It was a total burn. No offense, Lennie, but Smith totally slammed you. He was all, ‘I wish I could see you in hell, bitch.’ See what I’m saying? Buuurrrrnnn. And then she was all like, ‘Um, well, uh, you can hold my hand all the way there.’ I . . .” W2 shakes his head. “Sorry, Lennie, but that’s a super lame comeback. You know?”

“W2,” Smith says while giving W2 a physical shove out of the conversation. But apparently the conversation is already over, as Rabbit is taking several little hopping steps backward.

“I just remembered. The storage room. A delivery from earlier today. I need to get it put away. It’s a mess. A messy mess. Wouldn’t want you to think we run a slovenly establishment, Lennie. Let me see to that, after which we’ll um, well, hmm . . . Okay?” By the time the last words exit his mouth, he’s halfway across the room, and upon finishing he turns and scurries away until he disappears behind a swinging door.

“That dude is a freak,” W2 announces as soon as Rabbit’s out of sight. I expect him to rag on Rabbit’s appearance or his generally weird deportment, but W2 surprises me by not really surprising me at all. “As if we’re gonna drink ginger ale like a bunch of first graders when we’re at the most legendary bar in the state—hell, maybe even in the whole country.” W2 clambers over the bar and grabs a bottle. After dumping our glasses of pop, he refills them to the rim with vodka.

I push mine away. “No thanks.”

W2 shrugs. “More for me.” Bringing my glass to his lips, he drinks half of it down in a few thirsty gulps.

Dylan makes this disgusted sort of noise and I prepare myself to applaud as she finally rips him a new one, but instead she grabs her own glass and drains it. Then she grabs my glass from W2 and finishes that too. She turns to Smith with that dangerous sparkle in her eyes. “Your turn.”

I don’t expect him to hesitate. I’ve spent enough years around Smith to know that he drinks like a fish who likes to spend a lot of his time drunk. And I especially don’t expect him to shake his head and say, “Not feeling it.”

Dyl continues to stare at him in that I-might-explode-at-any-moment kind of way. If it were me on the receiving end, I’d be nervously trying to talk her down, but Smith just shoots a nearly identical expression right back at her. They’re having some sort of twin showdown, and despite being only inches away I can’t say with any certainty what it’s about or even who’s winning.

W2, realizing that no one is paying attention to him, lets out a loud belch and chucks a piece of ice at Smith. “Dude, you worried Lennie’ll pull more of her voodoo shit on you if you take a drink?”

“Hey, that reminds me.” Dyl breaks the showdown between her and Smith to focus on me. “I wanna make a wish. Sounds like everyone got one except me.” She leans closer, breathing in my face, and instead of getting a big whiff of alcohol fumes, I smell something else instead. Something worse. Death. Decay. Rot.

“Dyl,” Smith says, that one word a warning.

She reacts like it’s a curse, spinning away from me and back toward Smith. “Tell me again what you wished for, Smith. ’Cause I’m confused. I thought you wished to bring
me back, but now W2’s story seems to say otherwise.”

His jaw tightens. “You heard him. He wasn’t even there. And neither were you.”

“No.” She laughs and the sound is so bitter and angry. “I was busy being dead.”

“Guys, stop this.” I try to step in, to defuse things a bit. Neither of them even looks my way.

“I remember,” Dyl says, and with those words the fire dies. She trembles, closes her eyes, bites her lip. I can see the struggle. A blind man two miles away could see it. She loses this fight too, as a single tear slides down her cheek.

Everyone cries, of course. Except that Dyl doesn’t. Or she doesn’t anymore. It’s part of some oath she made after her dad died in Afghanistan. She said she gave him all her tears and would never shed another for anyone or anything. Seeing as how she promised that when she was twelve I don’t think anyone in their right mind would expect her to stick to it for the rest of her life. But Dyl’s never been in her right mind. And as soon as that tear escapes, she hisses as if it burns her cheek. As if she’s betrayed her dead dad and herself.

My hand that’s attached to Smith is locked down at my side, as stiff and unmoving as the rest of him. Clearly, no comforting hugs are coming from him anytime soon. It occurs to me that he doesn’t know how to deal with
this sad and broken version of Dylan. Their dynamic is to keep each other tough by constantly throwing shit at each other. That’s why he was goading her just now. Or why he never did something so simple as kiss and hug her when she woke up. An angry Dyl he knows how to handle. But this version of his sister has left him shaken.

Since Smith is useless and W2 is . . . well, since W2 is W2, I take a half step forward and reach out with my free arm. I’m not really a touchy-feely person and I obviously didn’t grow up in a hug-and-kiss type of family either. But even a robot can see that Dyl needs some sort of response other than shuffling feet and nervous titters (the latter from W2, of course).

I get my arm halfway around her back when Dyl jerks away. “Don’t,” she says in a choked voice. And then she runs out the door.

“What’s her deal?” W2 asks.

“Go after her.” Smith points at W2, so there is no mistake. “Make sure she’s okay. And don’t let her go too far.”

W2 sighs and gulps down another drink before climbing back over the bar. “You owe me, man,” he says before jogging with a slight side-shuffling sway to the door.

As W2 exits, Rabbit returns. And he looks terrible.

Earlier he’d seemed a little jumpy, but now his darting eyes and full-on trembles are paired with a case of the
sweats so bad that his shirt is soaked through in several places. He looks fully freaked out.

Since I have a suspicion that he was just talking with my father, this worries me more than a little bit.

“Okay.” He claps his hands together as he hurries over to us. “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I’m afraid only Lennie will be allowed on the tour. The good news is that I’m going to help get you two kids separated. How does that sound?”

“We already tried to pull apart. It’s impossible,” I say, and Smith nods in confirmation.

Rabbit’s pasted-on smile only gets bigger, though. “Nothing is impossible if approached in the right way. It may be painful, but not impossible.” Turning, he waves his hand at the lineup of liquor bottles behind the bar. “And with that in mind, you’ll need some anesthesia, my friends. Pick your poison.”