Pieces of Me (20 page)

I shook my head. “No.”

Both hands were clenched at his side. “I can do this, Maddie,” Leo said.

I kept shaking my head. “I don't care if you can do it. You're not going to a poker game with a bunch of scummy people. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.”

Q stood up and touched my shoulder. “Let him talk, Maddie.”

I whirled around to stare at him. “Let him talk? Why, Q? We're not doing this. Did you forget you won Leo in a poker game? Won him like he was a bag full of quarters?”

Q exhaled slowly. “This is different.”

I folded my arms around my body, hugging myself, because all of a sudden I was cold. “No, it's not. Poker's not our way out. It's just not.” I bent down and pulled off both my boots and held them out to Q. “And I don't have any more money for you to steal.”

He didn't say anything, but even in the dim light I could see his face getting red. I dropped my boots back on to the floor and turned to Leo. “We'll figure something else out. No more poker games.”

Leo looked away. His mouth moved, but he didn't say anything. He just turned and went back inside.

Q slid his hands over his head, squeezing it between his forearms. “I'm not fighting you on this, Maddie,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “There has to be some other way.”

“Yeah,” he said. He reached over and slid a finger down my cheek. “You look tired.”

“You too,” I said.

He swung his arm over my shoulder, and we went inside.

Leo was quiet the next day. If he wasn't watching me, he was watching Dylan, but he said very little.

Q came home with leftover pizza and root beer. The cards and the poker book had disappeared. Still, there was part of me that remembered how he'd taken the money from my shoe and taken off, so I watched him. And he knew it.

He came up behind me while I was checking to see which bananas had the biggest squishy spots and quickly kissed the top of my head. “Want me to wash Dylan's hair?” he asked. “There's hot water, at least for now.”

“Please,” I said.

He caught Dylan around the waist with one hand and made slurpy fart noises on his arm to drown out Dylan's protests about the hair washing. Q kicked off his shoes and somehow managed to get his socks off without letting go of Dylan.

I felt myself start to relax. Q had offered to wash the squirt's hair. He hadn't left it for me and then taken off with Leo. When he'd said he was sorry about before, he'd meant it.

Dylan was wired by the time he was clean. “I'll wipe up the bathroom,” Q said. “There's no point in two of us being wet.” He'd rolled up his sleeves, but there was a big wet spot on the front of his jeans.

Leo started playing a game with Dylan and Fred. The teddy bear was either in the jungle or the circus. I wasn't sure which. There was a lot of climbing, and Fred kept squeezing into places and jumping back out again to the sound of clapping. I pushed all the air mattresses against one wall and started sweeping the floor.

“Maddie!” Dylan suddenly wailed.

I spun around. Dylan pointed at the window with a shaking hand, and tears were sliding down his face. “Fred fell out the window,” he managed to choke out.

I put my arms around him and looked at Leo, who looked stricken. “He pushed him through one of the holes,” he said. “It's my fault.”

Instead of a screen, the old window had three holes in the bottom for fresh air, covered by a piece of wood that swung up and down. I looked through the glass. The bear was lying in the street.

Q came to the bathroom door. “What is it?” he asked. He was still barefoot.

“Fred fell out the window,” I said. “I'll get him.”

“You sure?” Q asked.

“Yeah, you don't have any shoes on.” I gave Dylan a squeeze. “Stay right here,” I said. “I'm going to go get Fred. He's tough. He'll be fine.”

I ran down the stairs praying some car wouldn't come and run over the stupid teddy bear before I got there.

No one did. Fred was just sitting there on the pavement, none the worse for wear. I grabbed him, brushed a bit of dirt from his furry backside and went back upstairs.

Dylan was sitting on his mattress. His face was blotchy and his nose was running. I held out Fred, and he wrapped the bear in, well, a bear hug. Then he threw an arm around me. “I love you, Maddie,” he said.

The hairs came up on the back of my neck. Dylan was the only one in the room. “Dylan, where's Q?” I said. “Where's Leo?”

He looked up at me with his runny nose and dirty face. “Q had to go and Leo had to go with him and they couldn't wait, so Q said for me to sit on my bed until you came back up with Fred, and I did because I'm a good boy, aren't I, Maddie?”

My legs gave way, and I slumped to the floor with a sound like hundreds of bees buzzing in my ears. They lied. They tricked me. They planned it.

Dylan was staring at me, and I forced a smile, or at least I hoped that was what it looked like. “Kiddo, how did Fred fall out the window?” I asked. There was a lump in my throat I couldn't swallow away.

He hesitated. “Leo said it was okay if Fred put his head through that hole to look outside. Are you mad?”

I felt the sting of tears, but I blinked them away because I couldn't cry in front of Dylan. That would scare him. “I'm not mad,” I said. “But don't let Fred do that again, okay?”

He nodded and wiped his nose on his sleeve. How could Q do that? How could he use a little kid? Did he think if they came back with a bunch of money that everything was going to be all right with us?

I took a couple of shaky breaths, and then it hit me. Where did they get the money? I didn't have anything else hidden anywhere. Had Q somehow managed to borrow some or get some? I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and looked around the room. All the food was still there, and the cooler was under the table, along with my backpack.

I caught the skin on the back of my hand between my front teeth and bit down hard so I wouldn't scream. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I crawled across the floor until I could reach the strap of my bag and pull it over. I felt in the front pocket with one hand. The iPod was gone.

I pulled Dylan onto my lap and held him tightly, my cheek against the top of his head. I didn't realize I was crying until I saw the tears falling onto his hair.

Somehow, I got him to sleep. He had to know something was wrong, but he didn't ask any questions, so I didn't have to lie to him.

sixteen

I sat by the door in the dark, leaning against the boxes to wait for Q and Leo. I didn't know what I was going to say, or what I was going to do. I didn't think that far ahead. I just waited.

How much time went by, I don't know, hours for sure. It had to be. Finally I heard a sound outside in the hall. I got up.

The door swung open, and Q was framed in the dim light from the one bulb burning in the hallway. One sleeve of his jacket was torn, his lower lip was split and bleeding, and he smelled like vomit.

And I didn't care. Whatever I'd felt for Q was gone. In the hours I'd spent sitting in the dark, everything had changed. I'd changed.

“Where's Leo?” I said. My voice sounded husky in my ears.

“I don't know,” Q said flatly, starting to push past me.

I stepped in front of him and put a hand on his chest. “What do you mean, you don't know? What happened?”

He looked past me, not at me. “What the fuck do you think happened? We lost the money.”

The shaking started in my legs and spread through my body. “Is Leo hurt?” I said.

Q shrugged. “He took off.”

I looked frantically around the room. Where was my sweatshirt? Where were my boots? Panic made me want to race out into the street and start screaming for Leo. “We have to find him,” I said. “Where were you?”

He pushed my hand away and tried to get past me again.

I grabbed the front of his jacket. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I said. “We have to find Leo. He's out there, and he's probably hurt.”

Q looked at me finally. “No,” he said with a slight shake of his head.

The panic felt like a wave that was going to roll over my head and push me under. Behind me, Dylan made a noise in his sleep and rolled over. I pulled Q into the bathroom. He stumbled over his feet, banged into the bathtub and swore.

“Look,” I said. “I don't care what happened. I don't care about the money. All I care about is finding Leo and making sure he's okay.” I didn't know what to do with my hands. I couldn't seem to keep them still. They were in my hair, touching my face, pushing up my sleeves. “We'll wake up Dylan and take him with us and then, and then we can split up.”

Q shook his head again. “It's over, Maddie,” he said in a flat, dead voice. “All of us, we're nothing. It's finished.” His hands hung at his sides.

“We are not finished,” I said hoarsely. “We'll find another way to make money. We can get out of here. We can do anything. We're a family. You, me, Dylan and Leo. That's why we have to go and find him.”

“Give it up, Maddie,” Q said. There was something that looked a lot like pity in his red-rimmed eyes. “It was a fantasy. It wasn't real. We were never a family.”

I launched myself at him, beating on his chest with my fists, punching, hitting, pushing. He just stood there and took it while I beat out my rage on him until I sagged against the sink and started to cry. Then he moved past me without touching me, without speaking, without even looking at me.

I wanted to curl up into a little ball on the bathroom floor. All I could think about was Leo out wandering around the streets, and Dylan, asleep on the floor a few feet away. I didn't care what Q said. We were still a family.

When I came out of the bathroom, Q was gone. So was some of his stuff. “Fuck you,” I whispered into the darkness. Then I pulled on my sweatshirt and my boots and woke up Dylan. “Get dressed,” I told him. “We have to go out.”

“Maddie, it's dark. I don't want to go out,” he whined.

I put a hand on either side of his face. “I know you don't,” I said. “But we have to go. Leo is lost and we have to find him.”

He pulled himself up straighter, and I could see the determined gleam in his eyes that usually meant I was in for some grief. “I can help find Leo,” he said. “I'm good at finding things.”

I blinked away tears that I'd thought were gone. “I know you are, kiddo,” I said, kissing him on the forehead. “Hurry up and get your things on.”

I tried to think of where Leo might go. I had no idea where the poker game had been and no way to find out, with Q gone. Before, when Leo had run, he hadn't run very far. I was hoping that, like then, he was somewhere close by.

When Dylan and I stepped into the hallway, part of me hoped Leo would be sitting on the stairs or hanging around on the sidewalk by the outside door. He wasn't. I didn't even know which direction to go or where to look first. “Which way?” I said to Dylan.

“That way,” he said, pointing up the street.

It was as good a place to start as any. I touched my pocket. The long shard of broken glass was back where it belonged. If we had to walk all over the goddamned city, I was going to find Leo.

I walked for hours until it got light, pulling Dylan on his little cart. We looked in alleys and behind Dumpsters. We checked the convenience store where I bought milk and the gas bar where I used to go to brush my teeth before I met Q. We went to the playground, and as the sun came up, we walked along the riverbank behind the hotel where we had collected bottles.

“Maddie, I'm hungry,” Dylan said. He'd been so good, doing his best to help me find Leo.

“We're going to go home and have some breakfast,” I said. My arms ached, and there was a gnawing pain in my stomach. Beyond feeding Dylan, I didn't know what I was going to do.

We were almost home when I felt this strange sensation. It was almost like someone was behind me, standing way too close. I looked over my shoulder. There was no one there. But…It wasn't that I actually saw movement across the street. It was more like I felt it somehow. I stopped and listened. Nothing.

I started walking again, but the feeling didn't go away.

This time I didn't stop to listen. I didn't even stop to think. I turned around, crossed the street and headed for the narrow walkway between the brick building on the corner and the next one up. A few steps into the alley, I stopped. “Leo, are you here?” I said.

There was a sound, a movement of some kind from behind a metal Dumpster filled with cardboard. I bent down and picked up Dylan so I could run like stink if it was a drunk, or a hungry rat.

But it was Leo, squeezed into the space between the wall and the end of the Dumpster. Dylan struggled to get out of my arms, and threw himself at the older boy. “Leo, we found you!” he shouted.