Essential Maps for the Lost (27 page)

“Billy.”

Her skin is so soft.

“You know, earlier? When you said . . .”

“I love you,” he says into her neck and then into her shoulder. “When I said I love you.”

“Billy. Before we do this . . .” Her hand is on his chest.

“I have something, don't worry. We're fine.”

“I need to tell you something.”

Her skin smells like sweat and almonds and brown sugar. “You smell so good.”

“I need to tell you something.”

“Jesus, Mads. I can't think about talking—”

“Billy.”

“I want you so bad.”

She shoves him hard, because Ginger is barking again. Mads's whole body has gone rigid and she tries to sit up, and he can hear it now, too, footsteps, the rattle of the door handle. Oh, shit! Shit!

“Oh my God,” Mads says. His shirt is off, somewhere in there he's taken it off, and now he can't find it. Mads's own shirt is half undone, and one sleeve is hanging and she's trying to get it back on. Her hands are shaking too hard to get the buttons.

The door opens. Ginger has it all wrong, with the joy and excitement. The dog quickly realizes her error when Gran says
What the hell
in that tone. Ginger speeds off to hide in Billy's room.

“What. The. Hell.”

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.” Mads's face is red, and red blotches break out along her chest. She's managed a few buttons, but they're done up funny.

“Bereavement group?” Billy manages to say. He's in a panic, but he's also suddenly pissed.

“I had enough of it! And now look. Came home not a minute too soon, if you ask me.”

“Come on, Gran.”

“I think you and Amy need to leave.”

“Amy?”

Shit.
Shit!

“What, you're not Amy? If you're not Amy, who are you?”

Why did he say her name was Amy? How can he ever explain this now? No matter how he explains it, it's going to sound bad. Mads looks like she might cry. She's hunting around for her purse, which has half-spilled into the couch cushions in their hurry to get to each other.

“Who are you, I asked.” Gran sounds like a hissing snake, a viper. Fuck. It's all ruined now; it'll be like Jacob and the weed, he's sure of it. A person doesn't forget that kind of venom. You can't explain to other people how Gran is lots of different things. How, sure, she's a paranoid bitch, but how she's loving in her own way, too. How behind all that hardness she's someone who'll do anything for the people that love her.

“I'm sorry,” Mads says again. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”

“This is rich, Billy. This is really rich. First your uncle calls to say he's
returning your message
, and now look. I mean, get a room, for Christ's sake.”

Mads jams the stuff back into her purse. She heads to the door.

“Mads,” he says. “Mads, wait! Let me give you a ride home.”

“Mads?” Gran says. “Who the hell is Mads?”

Everything is fucked up. It was going to be a perfect day, the stealing Casper day. But now Mads is running out of there, and he runs after her, feet pounding the dock.

She stops. Turns to face him. He reaches out, grabs her wrist. “I need to be alone, Billy. I need to
be alone
.”

Her car is still at Green Lake, for one. It's getting dark, for two. She's this upset, for three, four, five. He can see she means it, though. He stands there helpless and stupid and he watches her go.

Her bracelet has come off. It's lying in a broken circle on the dock. The sight of it makes his heart break, too. He's scared. He's scared of all of the things broken, breaking. Back inside, Gran is in her room with the door shut. There's a lip gloss still in the crack of the couch. He twists off the lid and smells it—peach. It's possible that these are the things he'll have left of her. He holds the bracelet and the lip gloss up against his face. And then he takes the map out of his back pocket and he folds the bracelet inside.

Her phone begins to ring somewhere after Fifteenth Street. Billy and Billy and Billy again. Mads runs all the way home before she remembers that Thomas's truck is still parked at Green Lake. As if she doesn't have enough to feel bad about, there's the thought of it—that loyal pile of metal sitting abandoned in the lot. She imagines it shining faithfully underneath a streetlight, its round headlight eyes ever open and unwavering.

She tries to sneak into Claire and Thomas's house without being seen. It smells like popcorn in there. It must be a sleepover, because Thomas and Claire are still up, watching some scary movie with Harrison and Avery. Mads hears ominous noises like door creaks and suspenseful music, and Harrison says, “Don't do it, don't do it!” and Avery says, “They always do it, stupid,” and Thomas says, “Avery. Don't call Harrison stupid.” It's dark in the family room, but the TV shoots bolts of colors.

Mads needs to get to her room, because things are falling in on her, and she needs to take cover.

Just tell me you're okay
, Billy texts.

I'm okay
, she replies, just so he doesn't think she's on a bridge somewhere. The idea of a bridge seems almost comforting. The ogres shove and huff. Their putrid breath blows on her cheeks. She hates herself. She is such a horrible person that she understands why they want to snuff her out. She turns the sound off on her phone and shoves it under her pillow.

There's a rap at the door.

God! Why does Claire persist so? Just because Mads needs her to persist, it doesn't mean she has to persist every single second! Why do the people who love you keep on loving you even when you don't deserve it?

“Mads? You home? I didn't hear the truck.”

“I . . . I left it . . .”

“Are you all right? Can I come in?”

“No, Claire. No.”

“Did you and Ryan have a fight?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, damn, honey. Are you okay?”

“I'm okay.”

“All right. Well, we'll figure out the truck tomorrow.”

“I'm sorry.”

“One time I left Thomas at a Wendy's drive-through. Walked right out of the car. It wasn't even because of the chili.”

Mads feels too awful to laugh. She pushes her palms against her eyes so she doesn't cry. She wants to go home. She wants to go home so bad she'd leave immediately if Thomas's truck weren't stuck in the Green Lake parking lot. She needs her mother. What she doesn't have right then (and never had at all, really) makes her feel so lost.

“We're right here, got it? I love you, sweetie.”

“Love you, too,” she says, because she does. Oh, hers is a failed love, a flawed love, a complete-disregard-for-their-trust-in-her love, but it's love nonetheless. And theirs is a stumbling love, a tumbling love, a trying-hard-and-getting-it-wrong-anyway love, but, look, it's there, too. Love isn't always beautiful, but the beauty isn't what matters anyway. The steadiness is.

“I wish you'd come join us. It's me against the boys out there.”

“Thanks, Claire. But I'm okay here.”

She is okay if being terrified is okay; she is okay if being a coward is okay; she is okay if being a liar is okay; she is okay if making mistake upon mistake is okay.

Mads thinks about her hand around Anna Youngwolf Floyd's arm, an arm that was hard and slick and cold as a seal. She thinks about Anna's eyes, the ones in her yearbook photo that are so similar to Billy's own eyes. The flashback slaps her. She might throw up at the memory. The ogres—they are mean, mean, mean, with the way they twist the truth. Because instead of remembering Anna's own struggles and failings, instead of remembering that most people in the world are compassionate and that the rest can go fuck themselves, Mads can only think about how disappointed Anna must be in her now.

•  •  •

Mads finally gets to sleep just as the sun comes up. In the weighty blur of a dream, she hears the doorbell. She thinks it's Avery's dad come to pick him up. The glowing numbers of the clock, though, read 6:02. Six? In the morning? Her sleepy head can still calculate: Saturday plus sleepover plus six a.m. does not equal Avery's dad. Bad night plus Saturday plus six a.m. can only mean Billy.

Billy,
here
.

Mads flings off the covers, hoping to reach the door before Claire does. Claire can be woken by a soundless fever or the sense of someone missing. The doorbell will be a siren.

She flies down the stairs. She hasn't brushed her teeth, and she's wearing only her underwear and Thomas's Grateful Dead shirt, which barely reaches her thighs. She pitches open the door.

He isn't on the front porch. No. Instead, Billy stands on the lawn. He looks like hell. Clearly, he hasn't slept, either, and he's in the same clothes as yesterday, and he has dark stubble cheeks from not shaving. One Converse is untied. Inexplicably, he holds an old record player on his shoulder. The cord hangs down. Its arm swoops back and forth as the turntable wobbles up there.

“Billy?”

Nothing. He just stands there, staring at her intently.

“What are you doing with that turntable?”

“Honestly?”

He hauls it down from his shoulder. Holds it in his arms. He looks sad. So does the turntable. “You don't get it?
Say Anything
? You don't know that old movie? Where the guy has the boom box on his shoulder and he's out on the girl's lawn and he's showing how crazy he is for her, and playing their song . . .”

“We don't have a song.”

“And I don't have a boom box. This is Gran's old record player. She's going to kill me.”

“I never saw that movie.”

“Oh, hell. Just erase this from your memory, then. Pretend you don't see this record player, okay? I thought . . . Never mind. Mads, come here.”

“You stay there, and I'm staying here. Don't come any closer.
Amy?
”

“Mads, I'm sorry. I want to explain. About Gran, Amy, the whole fucked-up mess . . . Come over here.”

“I can't. I haven't brushed my teeth.”

“We need a song, Mads.”

“You've got to keep it down. You're going to wake the whole neighborhood.”

“Mads? Wait a second. What are you wearing?”

She yanks the shirt down. Tries to cover more of herself than it's covering.

“Don't look.”

“No, I mean it! Come here! What is that? Is that what I think it is? Is that Grateful Dead Summer Tour, 1987?”

She gazes at that upside-down skull. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“I have that shirt,” he says.

“It's Thomas's.”

“It was my
dad
's. Jesus! Don't you see? Don't you see what this is?”

“Not exactly.”

“A book, a T-shirt, objects through the
ages
? Bridges are meant to be
crossed
, Mads! Maps are meant to be
followed
!” His voice is hoarse, cracking. He's been up too late, and the lack of sleep is getting to him, likely. But so is all that he's lost, and all that he's sure he's found.

This is not how she has ever imagined telling him, right there on Thomas and Claire's own dewy front lawn, Billy with his grandmother's record player at his feet. But this cannot go on a minute more. He needs to know the truth. Mads can only hope she'll be forgiven.

“Ryan?”

No.

Please, no.

“Ryan Plug?”

“Ryan?” Billy asks.

Claire's hand is out. “It's so great to finally meet you!”

Claire is heading toward him. She steps across that wet morning lawn. She's thrown on some clothes, but her feet are bare, and she looks down to see where she's walking.

She looks down, and then she catches sight of his shoes.

His Converse.

She stops right where she is. She
freezes
.

“I don't know any Ryan,” Billy says. His face is all questions. He can tell something large is happening, only he doesn't know what.

Harrison and Avery are also awake now, and they push past Claire and spin out onto the lawn, rays of a zip gun, fueled up by the lawlessness of a sleepover. Avery lets out a war cry and Harrison in his spaceship pajamas chases Avery in his alien ones. Avery stops abruptly, lifts up one bare foot to examine the bottom.

“Eyuw,” he says. Ned Chaplin's cats, probably.

Harrison stops, too, long enough to see who's there.

“Hey, Billy,” he says.

And then it is over.

“Billy! Wait! Come back!” Mads runs down the front walk in her/his-Thomas's/his dad's Grateful Dead shirt with the skull on it. She makes a grab for Billy's own shirt, the stealing Casper shirt, the joy and triumph shirt, the passion and blue balls shirt, the loss and leaving and staying up all night shirt, and now the betrayal shirt. He knows it's betrayal by the look on Mads's face, only he doesn't exactly get what the betrayal is. How one T-shirt could live through all of this is beyond him. It should disintegrate on the spot, like an attack by a Breath Weapon.

He's exhausted. Energy Drain, level: red. He wants to cry. Something else is happening—Slimy Doom Attack. Where the victim turns into infectious goo from the inside out. This can cause permanent Ability Drain. Yes. Every bit of him is useless. He's deep into Night Worlds, lost in the maze, and if he ever finds his way out, it'll be a miracle.

“I need to be alone, Mads. I need to
be alone
.”

She looks shocked. Shocked he's this angry, shocked he's taking that tone with her. As shocked as if he just lit his underwear on fire or started speaking in Latin. Well, hell. What does she expect? Who the hell is Ryan Plug? Is this an actual guy she's also with right now, another J.T. Jones, or is she hiding Billy? Is
he
Ryan Plug? The thought makes him sick.