Essential Maps for the Lost (7 page)

“Forget it,” he says.

“Forget it?” She shifts the baby to her other hip. Wait. Baby? He takes in the baby for the first time. She—it's a she, he can tell from the pink shirt with the cat face on it, the ears in quilted yellow—hides her face in the girl's shoulder and then peeks at him. She holds a clump of the girl's hair and then brings it to her mouth and sucks on the ends.

“I thought you were someone I knew.” The lie comes right up, nice and handy and fully formed. Probably thanks to that coffee he had back at the Rescue Center. Maybe that's all this was. A java-fueled hallucination.

“Oh.”

“Is that your baby?” he asks, as if he has a right to know. He hopes J.T. Jones hasn't spawned a kid.

“We were just going for a ride! I was bringing her right back.”

“Hey, I'm not the baby police. I was just wondering.”

“Okay, sure. Of course,” she says. “I babysit her. I thought we'd get out of the house for a while, you know? It's a beautiful day, we were cooped up. . . .” She has brown eyes, but not just brown. Oh, man. He loves soulful eyes like that. “It's complicated.”

“I like complications.”

It's a line from The Book. Jamie says it to Claudia before they run away to New York to stay in the museum. Billy pictures this going differently—tossing off the phrase like they do in the movies, quoting some line from a classic film, or a famous poem. It'd be kind of smooth. But of course, she doesn't know The Book! Probably no one in the world knows it like he does! She turns her eyebrows down. Not in a scowl, exactly, but confused. Shit, it sounds like he's hitting on her, and he sort of is but isn't. It's not even true. He doesn't like complications! He wants way, way fewer complications from here on out.

They just stand there looking at each other. She's staring at him hard, like she recognizes him from somewhere. Shit! He doesn't know what to do, so he silently prays she doesn't recognize him from that day she was spying on J.T. Jones, the day he stole Lulu. Him plus the dogs, she could put two and two together.

Her mouth opens as if she's going to say something. Her lips part the way lips do when they're about to speak the truth.

“Well.”

“Yeah.”

“I better get back. The mom'll be home any minute.”

“I better get these guys back, too.” Bodhi's eyeing a goose, and Billy knows what that means.

“Are they
your
dogs?” She raises one eyebrow. Something passes between them, like a wrapped gift handed over. Maybe it has an explosive inside. He can't tell if she's saying something more than she's actually saying.

“They're rescues.” Jesus! Why'd he say that? Now she's really going to remember him in Mr. Woods's yard, if she hasn't already. He needs to get the hell out of there. “Well, hey.”

“Hey.”

Bodhi's pulling toward that goose, making his usual hecking sound as his collar strangles his stupid neck. Billy acts like this is just a regular part of the job. No problem. It's all easy and fine. He turns to leave. As he does, a voice inside starts yelling at him. It's not the usual doctor in his head but a different tough guy, one who seems to be on his side.
Go back! Say something to her! Do you think a coincidence like that, like seeing her here again, at this bridge, happens for no reason? Don't be a fool!

He keeps walking. He can feel her eyes on his back.
Come on! Turn around! Say something!

He hasn't seen eyes like that since Abby Millicent in the sixth grade. Abby and Billy were best friends. He was in love with her, actually. Even at twelve, he could tell that Abby Millicent was the kind of girl who could make him happy. She wore glasses and read mysteries and collected anything with whales. They kissed, and he gave her that necklace, and his heart was broken when he and Mom moved away from La Conner after his dad basically drank himself to death in that speedboat.

If you ever want to see that girl again, turn around! Right this minute!

Wow, fate has it rough, dealing with us clueless, stubborn humans. We refuse to listen and refuse to listen until we're practically knocked over the head! It's lucky that fate is even more stubborn than we are.

But Billy's mind is not on fate. It's on defeat. He doesn't even look back. Who wants to get their heart broken again? Billy's has been broken so many times, he isn't sure he has one left. He can hear it beating, but that's about all.

•  •  •

He gives the dogs big bowls of water. What a day. There's a note on his desk. Well, it's not a desk exactly, but it's the part of the table near the cubby where he puts his stuff.
Party, Andrew's. Tonight. Be there, would ya?
She doesn't even sign her name, but he knows Amy's handwriting. Billy balls up the note and tosses it in the trash on top of someone's lunch bag. There's an envelope with his paycheck in it on the desk, too. He takes out his wallet to put it inside, and that's when his heart falls.

It can't be.

Oh, no. Please, no.

He checks all his pockets and dumps everything out of his wallet. His chest is caving in. His heart is a rodent being squeezed by a snake. He saw that on a . . . Stop it! Who cares right now!

The map's gone.

He's such a fucking moron. Losing the one thing that's important to him! What kind of an idiot lets that happen? He wants to run right out and retrace his steps. After everything that went on at the park, no wonder he lost it! God, what a moron idiot dumb-shit fool. He could sob like a big damn baby, so instead, he shoves the lost map away in his head, to some place where it doesn't fucking even matter.

The way it matters (so much
matters
) still simmers, but whatever. Just, whatever. Okay? You can't keep someone with you by holding on to some stupid map in a stupid book anyway.

On the way home, Billy makes his usual stop: H. Bergman's house, to check on Casper. He looks around to see if anyone's watching before he says a few loving words. He makes Casper the same promise he makes every day, and then he tosses the beef sandwich from Paseo's over the chain-link fence. He's gotten good at that, for someone who sucks at most sports. He can lob anything pretty much right at Casper's feet. The first time he tried it, he flung a pork chop and it landed just beyond Casper's chain. It still kills him to think about this. He worried, too, what would happen when H. Bergman (that's the name on the mailbox) saw it. But when he went back the next day, it was gone. Casper was still there, though, of course. And this weighs on Billy. It weighs on him heavy. He's got to get that dog out of there, only he has no idea how.

•  •  •

That night, Alex and Drew come over to the houseboat. No way he's going to go to some party with Amy. Drew brings his own controller, which is good because Billy only has two. They play Night Worlds. Gran makes a big casserole dish of macaroni and cheese. She's trying to fatten him up, because he hasn't felt like eating much lately.

When Gran goes to bed, Alex runs to his car and gets the beer. Billy isn't much of a drinker (his father, Daniel Floyd, has pretty much killed any desire for alcohol) but he has a couple. Alex and Drew stay past midnight, quitting Night Worlds after Alex advances from Dragon Disciple to Duelist. You'd think he just won the presidential election. Billy has to tell him to shut the hell up before he wakes Gran. “Do you want me to kick your sorry ass?” he says, which makes Drew and Alex snort and hit each other because Billy's never kicked anyone's ass in his life.

Still, they shut up, because basically they're good guys. Drew has those tattoos across his knuckles that say
Your Next
but they don't mean anything. He tries to hide them now, since Alex's old girlfriend, Leigh, told him it was spelled wrong.

They leave, and after he goes to bed, Billy stays awake for a long time, feeling the houseboat rock. He stares at a beam of moonlight. It shoots through the window and lands right on the Chucks his mother gave him for his last birthday. All his stuff is there now, in Gran's spare room where she keeps her old computer, which is from the days when computers were big enough to anchor ships. There are his Chucks from Mom, and the action figure from a cake Mom made him when he was a kid (it still has the frosting on the bottom, dried to cement), and his clothes, and the lamp he's had forever, made from a big rope. The lost map tugs at his spirit, twisting it like a shirt left on a clothesline in a storm. Still, it's strange. All his shit looks weirdly new. Maybe it's the beer, or the full plate of food, or maybe something else. Yeah, he knows it's the something else.

It's those eyes. Hers, the girl with the shiny hair. He feels changed. He's been carrying this change around since he turned and left the park. It's a quiet feeling, but in this quiet of night, he's more sure it's real. Because of those eyes, his heart has lifted a little, like the corner of a page in a book, right before it turns. His Chucks are magic in that light. The moon sends him luck. He drifts off, and dreams of knights and maps and girls with bad eyesight.

Mrs. Erickson slides her phone over to Mads and sneaks a look at Otto Hermann as if she's going to get into trouble. This is probably what happens after you leave an abusive husband, which is what Mrs. Erickson—
Linda!
—has done. Mads will have to get over the discomfort of calling adults by their first names if she's going to be in business for herself. When she tells clients that their house won't sell for the price they want, she'll have to sound like an authority. Otherwise, she'll get bulldozed, and the property will sit on the market for months, money for flyers and open houses and advertising bleeding Murray & Murray dry. At the word
clients
, she hears the sound of bones clicking and rattling in a grave, but never mind.

Mads looks at Mrs. Erick—
Linda's!
—phone. There's a picture of her little girl sitting in a blow-up pool.

Mads makes an
Aww!
face and slides it back. Listening to Mr. Hermann is like sitting through those movies in AP history about World War II. Same accent, same droning, same low-level dread of the inevitable. Her stomach starts to hurt. She glances down at her flip-flops and her woven bracelet, makes sure they haven't been transformed to sandals with insoles and a Swatch. She's not middle-aged, okay? Even if all those shiny, sunbeams-of-the-future graduation shots her friend Jess posted look like something from long ago. Even if everyone she used to hang out with is starting a summer (the summer before college!) that seems frivolous and mysteriously carefree. Even if her life story is already written, she's only eighteen.

This realization always surprises her, because she feels thirty at least, and some days, fifty-sixty. While her friends drift further away into rah-rah fun-fun, Mads is swooped time-machine style into her mother's office, a few years from now. On the wall above the two desks, there are two paintings of Roman ruins. The clock tick-ticks. Here, in this room, the clock tick-ticks, too. The ogres turn up the heat and spin the room. She might throw up. Or pass out. There's a suffocating feeling, sweaty palms. She hears the rumble of that bridge in her head.

Otto Hermann hands out a work sheet, and Billy Youngwolf Floyd's eyes are on it. Stars turned inside out. A black that's old and that comes from somewhere far away. It's not some sort of a crush. It isn't! That's the last thing she needs or wants. Even people who like complications wouldn't like that one. She'll be back home by the end of September. Those papers the lawyer drew up are thrumming, silently shrieking, same as those special whistles for dogs.

Billy Youngwolf Floyd isn't even her type! Not with those thin arms, with the muscles that look hard and round as baseballs. Not with the shaggy hair and sallow ashtray cheeks and white skin from too much time indoors. Not with all that tragedy, hanging around like an apparition. Not the least bit her type. Cole Fletcher is healthy and bright as a stack of just-washed clothes. He's always ready to go out there and conquer something with energy and good attitude, whether it's a running track or a car repair or Mads herself.

What is love anyway? (Everything.) What's the point of it, even? (All.) Something is burning. The dark eyes are turning that paper to flames, and, too, the map in the pocket of her shorts is all glowing, red heat. She found it after he left. It was folded up flat and waiting on the pavement, like an invitation. She knew where it came from the moment she saw it.
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
, one of her favorite books of all time. She used to stare and stare at that map when she first read that book in sixth grade. She imagined herself in those rooms, sleeping in the museum bed, solving the mystery of the angel statue, same as Claudia. She knew
what
his map was, but she didn't know
why
it was. Ever since the body, it's been that way—the what but not the why. Every morning, though, the
why
is the thing that draws her up from the magnet bed.

Throbbing head, tumbling center, fire. On that work sheet, Mads sees star eyes, but she also sees Ivy in her car seat as they drove home from the failed kidnapping, her hair sweaty and head dropped in sleep. And she sees something else from that day, too, something that's a nagging worry, a potential problem: two familiar bikes pedaling so fast they're a furious haze, a passing comet of metallic blue, helmets white and curved as eggshells, rows of knuckles gripping handlebars. Ten-year-old spies, too far from home—had they seen her and William Youngwolf Floyd? When she got home that early evening, Harrison was nowhere in sight. He stayed the night at Avery's house. The next morning, he smelled like maple syrup, and his hair was wild and exhausted and jazzed, like it'd been at the clubs until all hours.