Essential Maps for the Lost (22 page)

“Name?”

“Billy Youngwolf Floyd. Need help spelling that?” It takes Harrison like five years and two pages to write it out.

“Mind if we get a picture?”

“Honestly, kid?”

Harrison takes his phone out of his sock. “You got a sandwich in there?” Billy says. “I'm starving.”

“Smile,” Harrison says.

Billy leans on the window frame, tries to give him a casual, confident-guy-in-a-booze-ad-without-the-booze look.

“Nuts,” Harrison says.

“Not working? No surprise. That phone is a hundred years old, my friend.”

Harrison holds it up, tries again. “Ughhh!”

“You probably dropped it in the toilet,” the other kid says. He starts cracking up, and then he accidentally farts, which sends him into hysterics.

“Gross,” Harrison says.

“Bathroom humor won't get you anywhere, okay?” Billy says. The little man seriously needs lessons in how to be socially acceptable.

A woman gets out of the car in the Bellarose driveway. Must be Suzanne. She rests her back against the car door, talking on the phone.

“You need some help?” Billy says to Harrison. “Lemme see.”

Harrison hands him the phone. It's all hot and slick from his small, sweaty hand.

“This thing weighs a ton.” Billy examines the old screen. It's funny about devices—what seemed so great back then is now mostly lame.

“We can conduct the interview, regardless,” Harrison says.

“Fire away.”

“Do you know a Miss Madison Murray?”

Billy looks up for a sec from the blocky green letters on the screen. Suzanne's heading inside.

“Yep, I do.”

“Where did you meet Miss Madison Murray?”

“I first saw her outside my old house.” Wow. Technology sure has improved. The graphics alone. The icons on the screen look like cartoonish fuzz blobs.

“Your old house.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know what she was doing there?”

“Yeah, I think—”

“
I
do.”

“
I
do,” the other kid mimics.

“I think it's working now,” Billy says.

“Give it,” Harrison says.

“
Please.
Buddy, you've got to remember your manners. Give it, please.”

“Give it, please.”

The front door of the house opens. Mads is out on the porch, and he can see Suzanne, blab, blab, blabbing at her.

“You want to try that again?” No harm letting him take his picture.

“Yeah.”

“And you can tell me all about why Mads was on my street.” He shouldn't use the kid like this. Mads never said much about J.T. and her. He kind of likes that. You don't want someone to go on and on about another guy, but he does want to know what she ever saw in someone like that. He and J.T. are pretty different people.

“Smile.” Harrison lifts the phone, steps back.

And then, right at that second, Mads flies down the street, and he means
flies.
Things are practically jumping out of her purse, and her sandals slap the street hard and she's out of breath. She yells Harrison's name, and it throws the kid off, because he's not looking at what he's doing, and he takes another step back and falls over his bike. His ass lands right on the handlebars, and that's got to hurt. The second kid starts laughing. He's cracking up and holding his crotch like he might wet his pants. Billy forgot how much boys that age are all about poop and farting and peeing and other people's bad luck.

“Harrison,” Mads breathes. Man, she's fuming right then. She grabs his arm and twists. It's kind of harsh. He's just being a kid, and falling over that bike seems punishment enough. Still, when you're in the dark corners of Night Worlds like Mads is, everything's out of proportion. He's had years of that kind of stuff with his mom. She'd drop an egg or burn a pot of rice and she'd be
pissed
. Even in her car, her
capsule of freedom
where she was usually happy, she'd honk or hit the accelerator with fury because someone took her parking spot or cut her off. She'd zoom past the person, just so she could give the
I've got to see how stupid you look
look.

“I. Will. Kill. You,” Mads says.

“I'm not doing anything!” Harrison cries.

“If you so much as say another word to a single person, if you so much as look at me or follow me or use that stupid phone or notebook—I will. Kill. You. Understand?”

“Ow.” He yanks his arm back.

“Do you hear me, Harrison? You, too, Avery. This is not funny.”

“Come on, Mads,” Billy says. “It's no big deal.”

Mads gets in his truck. She's still puffing and panting. She closes the door, jabs her finger out the window in warning. The kid is trying to get his bike up, and the other one's examining his own elbow, like he fell, too. Ten-year-olds are always banged up. For a few years in there, you always have holes in the knees of your jeans.

“Let's get out of here,” Mads says.

•  •  •

“So you don't want to go somewhere to talk.”

“I'll go somewhere. I don't want to have some big, deep conversation, though.”

“I'm not gonna let this go.”

He's been driving around the lake, thinking of places they could stop. Somewhere nearby, where he doesn't have to look at that freaking bridge, or any bridge or any lake or body of water. Where is that around here? Maybe some parking garage at U-Village or something. You start to realize how much water is in Seattle as soon as you don't want to see water.

“I'm fine! I went to a doctor. I'm not planning anything. I'm just, I don't know. I'm in my own head all the time and I hate my own head and I don't see how to get
out
.”

“There're options. Ones you haven't seen yet.”

“I don't want to do the life I'm supposed to.”

“Then do a different one.”

God! He gets how wrong it sounds, how stupidly simple, even if it's right.

“I thought you had something you wanted to show me.”

“I do.”

“Well, then let's move on to the showing part of this evening's program.”

“Okay. I've got to get something first.”

He stops his aimless driving around. He heads for the red, lit cowboy hat in the sky.

“Arby's?”

“Action, a plan, a map. Doing something about something.”

A little smile plays at the corner of her mouth. He leans over and kisses it as he waits for the voice to come over the drive-through intercom. It's another reason he believes in her. She'll rescue herself because she kisses back, she lets love in, and love is one of the only weapons that has half a chance in the dark.

“That is one heck of a lot of roast beef sandwiches in shiny orange foil,” Mads says.

“You'd do the same for a friend.” Billy closes the top of the bag so the steam won't escape. “You practically have. Or, at least, you've wanted to.”

“Given a friend an enormous amount of roast beef?”

“Tried to save them.”

The sun has gone down. Billy's profile is serious in the passing light of streetlamps. Some clouds have moved in. The night looks and smells like it might rain. The truck is a snug vessel. Mads wishes they'd take all that roast beef and ditch this place.

Earlier, Mads sent a text to Claire saying she'd be out tonight with Ryan, the mysterious Ryan, who now has a complicated story line. Ryan is a little of Billy, a little of Cole, and a little of this romantic comedy she watched a while back. All those lies—they looked like a possible escape, magic beans that might grow into a stalk she could climb to flee the ogres and her mother and Anna Youngwolf Floyd. But now the lies have grown and grown and grown so high, there will be no way down without falling. Did she say Ryan's favorite food was pizza or burritos? Were his parents accountants or artists or did his father have an auto repair shop? Private school (that was from the film), or small-town high (Cole)? Sister getting married (also from the movie), or an only child, save for a half brother he'd only met once (Billy)?
Have fun!
Claire texted back.
Bring him over after!

Mads is
building
a fall. Constructing it on purpose, unable to stop. The fall might destroy her, but the only problem is, it might destroy the boy next to her, too.

She has a guess where they're going—to visit that white dog, only she can't admit she knows about him. See how precarious it's gotten? Two hours ago, the tipping structure of secrets could have crashed, thanks to Harrison and his big, fat mouth.

The air-conditioning is broken, and so the windows are rolled down. Billy takes Mads's hand, gives it a little shake like she's the champion. She can see his chest muscles under his T-shirt, the dark hair on his arms that likely came from his mother. Desire fights its way up over the sadness, offers itself like a small boat on a lonely island. Billy looks over at Mads, and the car swerves a bit. Is there such a thing as half a bomb? Can she blow up everything in her life except this odd boy with his sunken cheeks?

Of course, when she tells him the truth, this will all be over. The way he pulls over to the side of the street right then and turns off his engine. The way his dark eyes look shiny as sabers in the streetlight. The way he takes her bracelet in his hand and turns it in a circle.

The way he grabs the bag of sandwiches and pulls her across the seat and says, “Come on.” She has to climb over the armrest, but it's okay, because the gesture says
now
.

She feels the tiny tip-tap of promise. No, it's more of a baby flutter. You shouldn't look to another person to save you, but maybe she and Billy could save themselves, together.

“Shh,” he says, though Mads has not said a word. She steps like a thief, hush-hush. There's a sliver of a moon, and the smell of damp cardboard and dewy evergreen boughs. Down the street, a couple of car doors slam. Mads hears dinner party voices. A few porch lights are on. Mads sees the house a block away. It's small and white, with a cyclone fence. Two-bedroom, max. Maybe 1,700 square feet. Good neighborhood, but the price of the house would come way down because it has zero curb appeal. The yard is all sad scrub and one overgrown tree that casts a deep shadow. The windows are dark, except for the blue-red flicker of a television.

Now Mads hears the slink of chain against cement as the dog stands and walks toward Billy as far as he can. He starts to whine and whimper.

“Hey, buddy,” Billy whispers. “Mads? This is Casper. Casper, Mads.”

He doesn't need to say it—Casper is his Ivy. He sets the bag on the ground, opens it quietly. “It's not just that he doesn't feed him,” he whispers some more. “He's chained up day and night. He practically has to sleep in his own shit.”

They need to climb that fence right now, Mads thinks, but she also immediately understands the impossibility of it. You could get
in
that way, but how to get the dog
out
? Billy tosses the sandwiches one by one over the fence, this time lobbing them neatly. The dog gulps them down.

Billy throws the last sandwich, wipes his hands on his pants. Mads and Billy stand beside each other and look at Casper like the worried parents of a sick newborn. A fat drop of rain hits Mads's head, and then her cheek, and then her foot in her sandals. Billy sets one hand out, palm up, as if inviting a drop to land in it.

“Rain,” he says.

“Rain,” she says.

“You're a good dog, Casper. You're a good boy,” Billy says, and then he takes Mads's hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Mads says over her shoulder as they run.

They slam into the truck. Rain splatters against the windshield now. She wants to get that dog and run away so bad she can barely stand it. “He'll be out there in this.”

“Better than no water. I worry about that. I think a lot about water.”

He doesn't just mean the kind in Casper's empty bowl.

“Billy,” Mads says. The words gather up. They wait to order themselves. Once they do, she will open her mouth and they will come out, finally.

“I can't help him,” Billy says. He scrunches up the empty bag, throws it to the floor.

“You are, though.”

“I can't get him out.”

“There's got to be a way.”

“Do you see why I brought you?”

“I think so.”

“You and me. We're pretty much the same.”

“You want to kidnap him.”

“Better believe it.”

“You know he's screwed where he is.”

“Yep.”

“But you can't do it.”

“Hell, no, I would. I'd do it in a second.”

“I mean, you can't because of that
fence
.”

“Right.”

“You and me,” Mads says. Who'd have thought it? A guy whose parents destroyed themselves; a guy who works at a dog rescue center, and who plays Night Worlds. Who only read one book for fun in his life, but who carries a piece of that book wherever he goes. It's true. They are so much alike they could be siblings, Claudia and Jamie, only without the sibling part. Only without the perfect childhood and the hot fudge sundaes.

“No wonder we're sitting here together, is what I'm saying.”

“We can't get him over that fence?”

“How? I've thought about it a million times.”

“What if we cut our way in? Wire cutters.”
We
. A plan. The rising feeling of
act
.

“I don't want to get arrested. I've been looking at videos, you know, online? How to open a padlock? All you need is a couple of paper clips and some time. But that asshole, H. Bergman. He barely ever leaves. He goes to the Quik Mart for, like, five seconds. And every two weeks, he goes to Fred Meyer. I followed him, to see where he goes. But he's barely in there twenty minutes.”