Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (25 page)

He curled up on his seat for a nap.  I smiled--though he couldn't see it--and touched his papery blond hair. 

17

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

There's a split second, I find, between sleeping and waking, where the dream world carries over to the real world and you're not sure which is which.

I felt the battered pillow beneath my head; I felt the starched blanket beneath my back; and immediately I thought, I must be home.

Blearily, I rubbed my eyes.  I sat up, smothering a yawn.  The events of the previous night came speeding back to me.  To begin with, I wasn't home; I was in a roadside motel.  I looked to the bottom of the bed and found Danny with a remote control in his hands, his eyes glued to a bulbous television set.

"We're already on TV," he said, his voice characteristically hoarse.

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched the AMBER Alert scroll across the top of the news broadcast.

"Missing: Daniel Patreya; 10; 4'7''; 79 lbs.  Hair: Brown; Eyes: Green; Skin: Brown.  Last seen wearing: Orange t-shirt and khakis.  Missing: Skylar Sinclair; 16; 5'6''; 110 lbs.  Hair: Blond; Eyes: Brown; Skin: White.  Last seen wearing: Gray turtleneck and jeans."

I kind of thought it was cool that they'd gotten my name wrong.

"I'm hungry," Danny said.

I fished change out of my duffel bag.  I was pretty sure I'd seen a vending machine last night in the motel parking lot.

Danny waited in the motel room while I went outside.  I wasn't worried about cops coming after us.  I thought the cops had a pretty good reason to think I'd jump a train to Wyoming and take Danny with me--specifically that Wyoming was the last place anyone outside of Nettlebush had seen Dad.

I bought cookies and crackers from the vending machine when I heard a crash and a scrape behind me.  I turned around to find three guys junking a parked car.

"What you looking at?" one of them spat at me.

I shrugged. 

"Yeah, that's right," said the guy, and he and his friends strolled off with a battery, an alternator, and a passenger-side door.

Danny ate his breakfast, and then we made a quick trip to the drugstore, where I bought us a road map.  A few minutes later and we boarded our next bus, Danny leaning against the window.

Danny peered at my lap.  "What's that?"

I'd taken a spark plug from the car in the parking lot.  I knew it was theft, but with the state those guys had left the car in, it wasn't like the original owner could drive it anymore.

"Does Marilu talk about me?"

I gave him a soft look and nodded. 
All the time
, I wanted to say; but it would have taken too long to retrieve my notepad, and I was running out of paper.

"She's my best friend," Danny explained, "even if she's a girl.  I hope she misses me."

The beeper at the bottom of my duffel bag whistled loudly.  My heart jump-started.  I'd damn near forgotten about that thing. 

Dad, I realized.  Dad was calling me.

Frantic, I unzipped my duffel bag.  I scooped out bundles of wrinkled clothing until I found the beeper.  I pulled it free and read the message scrolling across the screen.

I frowned.  Dad had only written one word, not even punctuated.

kilgallen

What was a kilgallen supposed to be?  I don't like to admit it; but I was disappointed.  Dad must have messaged me while drinking.

We rode the bus to the end of its route and departed in a decrepit town covered in graffiti.  It was lunchtime, and we visited the supermarket--which wasn't as super as its name indicated--and bought cold cuts, water bottles, and fruit.  The cold cuts were really for Danny; I don't eat meat.  We sat on the curb and ate together while I consulted the road map.

There were no outbound buses; we had to leg it.  We walked for two miles, Danny complaining of the heat.  I lent him one of my shirts to wrap around his head and played the plains flute to pass the time.  I played Ring of Fire and thought of Rafael.

We arrived in a town called Tully and I stopped and consulted the map again.  Relief washed over me when I realized we could follow Route 60 right down to Route 89.  I noticed something else, too, something I hadn't the first time around: Kilgallen was the name of a city.

Was Dad waiting for us in Kilgallen?  My stomach lurched.  The only place where Dad was safe from the law was Nettlebush.

"I don't feel good," Danny said faintly.

I sat him down on a bench outside of a deli, concerned.  I rubbed circles across his back.

He hunched over and vomited water on the sidewalk.

If I wasn't panicking before, I was panicking now.  I had never heard of anyone vomiting water before.  I didn't know what to do; I couldn't take him to a hospital without the staff alerting social services.

We had to hurry back to Nettlebush.  Dr. Stout could take a look at him.  Granny or the tribal council could call his father in Nevada.  Everything hinged on getting Danny to Nettlebush.

Danny clung to my hand as I led him to the bus stop.  We boarded the bus and he slumped against the window when we settled into warm, dusty seats.  I crumbled a banana and tried to feed it to him, thinking it might comfort his stomach.  He wasn't interested.

We got off the bus in a town called Newfeld, Danny looking wan.  It was four o'clock in the afternoon and there were no southbound buses until five.  Nor was I up for hitchhiking, having heard horror stories about friendly-old-men-turned-roadside-killers from my dad.

"I'm tired," Danny said wearily.

I felt his forehead with the back of my hand.  His skin was burning hot.  I wished I had some willow leaves for him to eat.  I settled for the next best thing and gave him a bottle of water and a second shirt to wear over his first.  If we couldn't kill the fever, we might as well sweat it out.

I brought Danny to a diner to get him out of the sun.  He ordered french fries and a root beer float but ate very little.  I wanted him to eat.  I didn't know what had caused his sudden sickness, but I didn't think an empty stomach was going to dispel it.

As soon as we left the diner, he threw up again--more water.

Maybe the problem was that he was drinking too many liquids.  Was that even a real problem?  I made him get on my back for the brief walk to the bus stop.  He was skinny; but then, so was I.  He felt like a brick wall resting on my back.  He fell asleep the moment we boarded the bus.

I didn't know what to do.  I almost wanted to start praying, except that my belief in God was tenuous at best.  I was scared, really scared, that Danny might be dying.  In which case, it was wrong of me to drag him down to Nettlebush.  I had to get him to a hospital.

One last time, I checked my map.  Kilgallen was pretty close.  If Dad was in Kilgallen...  Even if he wasn't, there had to be some sort of healthcare facility nearby.

I carried Danny off the bus when it rolled to a stop, his head on my shoulder, his backpack hanging off his arm.

Kilgallen was a proper city, tall gray tenements crowded together and narrow streets paved with blackened asphalt.  It was oddly quiet, though, like a ghost town, and the whole place smelled faintly of wet, rotted cabbage.  It had an open market and a defunct library and some kind of a metro.  And I had absolutely no idea where my dad was.

Danny woke up and begged to be put down.  My sore back agreed.  He held my hand as we scaled the sidewalk.  What I really needed was a city map, I thought.  Above the skyline I saw a towering complex of gray-white buildings and wondered whether they were the city hospital.  It couldn't hurt to find out.

I gripped Danny's hand tightly while we walked through the city.  And I started whistling.

You don't need your vocal cords to whistle; it's the same premise as blowing air through a flute.  When I was little, Dad and I had developed a system.  If we were in two separate areas in the house, and he wanted to find me fast, all he had to do was give me a shout and wait for me to whistle--a low note and a high note, the same every time.

The pedestrians looked at me like I had lost my head.  I didn't care.  I didn't know how else to find Dad.  Danny and I crossed the street. 

"Where are we going?" Danny asked groggily.

I stopped walking when I heard a dog barking.  That by itself wasn't peculiar; but the barking drew closer and closer; and the closer it drew, the more I thought it sounded familiar.

Balto charged out of the nearest alley.  He leapt at me, his paws on my chest, and knocked me to the ground.

I was much too stunned to retaliate.  I felt his sandpaper tongue all over my face, wet and scratchy, and his cold, wet nose prodding me, just to make sure I was real.  He looked even bigger than I remembered him being.  I thought:  How the heck did he get here? 

I sat up on the pavement, dull pain shooting up my spine.  I started to pet Balto when suddenly he ran away.  I stood up and Danny frowned at me, like I was hiding something from him.

Balto came running back to me, closely followed by Rafael.

For a moment, I thought he was a mirage.  He looked too good to be true, lank, ink-black hair falling down his broad back, blue eyes framed in blue glasses, his arms bare under a black vest.  And oh, was he beautiful--the most beautiful thing I'd seen in more than a month.

He walked toward me, slowly at first, like maybe he thought I was a mirage, too.  I felt the smile tugging at the corners of my lips.  He walked a little faster.

He reached for me, his hands finding my hips; he kissed me, sudden and ravenous, desperate even, and my arms slid around his neck and my hands tangled in his hair, because this was home away from home, because my body, singing with reprieve, begged me to belong to his.

Then, just as sudden, he pulled back and hugged me.

"I love you, too."

I'd heard of the straw that broke the camel's back before, but I'd never understood that phrase until now. 

You silly boy, I thought weakly.  I smiled against Rafael's shoulder.  I closed my eyes, reveling in the feel of him, the feel of his heartbeat, the scent of him.  I wondered if it was possible to want something so much that it had to want you back.  I felt like it was.

We separated, and I reached for Danny's hand.  Danny shook his head and slid to his knees.

I saw the confusion on Rafael's face; and also the worry.  "He's sick?"

Rafael didn't wait for a reply.  He picked Danny up with one arm and lifted him over his shoulder.

"C'mon," Rafael said to me.  "Mary's got the car."

I followed him through the city streets, Balto loping gracefully at my side.  I scuffed my fingers across his sandy-and-silver pelt and he responded enthusiastically by showing me his lazy tongue.  I know, boy, I thought.  I missed you, too.

Gabriel's SUV was parked alongside a bakery.  I didn't see Gabriel anywhere, though; or even my dad.  Just Mary, leaning against the hood and snacking on a cupcake.  Her hair was teased to merciless heights and decorated with delightfully unsettling skull-shaped pins.  She grinned devilishly when she saw the four of us approaching. 

"My buddy's here!" she said, and pulled me into a crushing hug.  I felt like I'd been on the receiving end of a lot of those lately.

"Don't kill him," Rafael said scathingly.  "Anyway, we have to hurry back to the reservation.  This kid's sick."

Mary took a look at Danny.  He peered at her, owlishly, and she felt his forehead with the back of her hand.  Her nails were long and red-black.

"Aw, he's not sick.  He just needs a cupcake."

"What are you even talking about?"

I rolled my eyes and smiled.  Rafael loaded Danny into the back of the SUV and buckled his seatbelt for him.  Mary got into the driver's seat and passed a box of cupcakes back to us.  I sat in the middle row with Rafael, Rafael digging through the cupcake box, Balto comfortably perched on the floor at my ankles, and we took off.

"You want one?" Rafael asked, offering the cupcakes to Danny.

Danny groaned.  "I'll throw up..."

Rafael gave me a dubious look.  He offered me a cupcake, but I shook my head.  "Who is this kid?"

Danny
, I signed. 
He's Paiute.

Rafael took a moment to figure out the fingerspelling.  He scowled.  "They kidnap him, too?"

I nodded.

"I swear to God..."

I pulled Dad's beeper out of my duffel bag.  I showed it to Rafael, my head tilted to one side.

Rafael's face took on an expression of understanding.

"When they first came and took you," he began, "everyone went crazy.  Your grandma kept saying, 'It's my fault, it's my fault.'  Your dad was angry, but in a cold way.  He wouldn't talk to anyone, not even Cyrus At Dawn.

"Then that cop came--she told us you were staying with her.  We started to relax, figured it was only a matter of time before you came back to the reservation.  Well, alright, I didn't really relax.  I couldn't stop thinking about you.  I guess the shaman noticed.  He pulled me aside during the sun dance, said that I was too distracted, that I was gonna hurt someone, and sent me home.  It didn't help, though.  I just kept thinking about you.