Wherever You Go (10 page)

Aldo lets out a sigh of understanding.

The front door opens, and Holly's mother comes in carrying a reusable grocery sack from her work. She sees what's going on in the kitchen and her face falls. "It's your birthday tomorrow, Lena Beena," she says with a sigh.

"Yep!" Leena proudly holds up her frosting-covered spatula. "See?"

"Hi, Mrs. Mullen," says Marisa.

"Hi." Her mom then turns back to Holly. Kck talked to"You didn't have to—"

"It's fine," Holly says, waving her off. "You're home early. I didn't expect you until late."

Mrs. Mullen sets the grocery bag on the counter. "You could have called me at the store. I would have picked up something," she says. "Maybe you could have given me a gentle reminder about Lena?" she adds in a whisper directly to Holly.

Holly doesn't bother pointing out the calendar, on which Lena's birthday is circled in red pen. Your heart swells for Holly. She doesn't deserve this.

"So you do care about my granddaughter," Aldo says, giving a low whistle.

"What's wrong with Grandpa?" Holly's mom moves quickly to Aldo's side. "Papa?"

"He's been mumbling awhile now," says Lena.

"Nice of you guys to fill me in," her mom says, frowning.

"I'm gonna go. I don't want Holly to get in any trouble," you say.

Aldo gives a little wave. "Until we meet again, Roberto."

And you fade out of the room, heading to your old neighborhood, to something familiar, even if it lacks the flicker of warmth you felt in Holly's kitchen.

***

The house was quiet. Jason had waited until the last minute to do his world history essay on the Code of Hammurabi and was on-line, immersed in the laws of ancient Sumer. The laws were supposed to protect the weak from the strong, but they had all these parts about slaves. Somehow that didn't quite jibe with the whole equality thing.

He took another swig of soda and leaned back in his chair, glancing out at the shadows deepening on his lawn. The driveway was empty, his mother out on some kind of a girls'-night-out date with her friends from the club. If he'd had a brother or a sister, maybe they'd be hanging out, watching TV or whatever normal families did, but he was an only child. For the longest while, Rob had been like a brother to him—they'd hung out so much that Rob's mother called him her second son.

Was it normal to miss a friend so much? He had no other explanation for Rob being on his mind so often lately. Well, missing Rob and being around Holly. That definitely had him thinking of his best friend. There were so many things to remind him.

He was about to get back to work when he heard a scratching sound. He didn't jump out of his chair, but he was startled. He turned and saw Mark at the window, pointing and laughing.

"Got you good," Mark said, lifting the unlocked window and climbing in.

"Yeah." Jason leaned back to click save on his Word document.

"What? You g K>"Whisot homework, Mr. Honor Student?" Mark said, pulling two light beers from his bag.

Jason took one of the cold cans. "Dude, does your phone not work?"

Mark grinned. "Thought I'd surprise you. Not much happening around here, huh?"

"Not really."

Mark cracked open his beer. "Actually, man, I need a little help."

"You want my help?"

"Um, yeah," he said sheepishly. "So, the thing is, Rob used to always help me edit my English midterm papers. I was going out with that chick Cindy for the last one, but this time I'm on my own."

"Cindy, the girl from Blanchet?"

"Yeah. She was pretty smart."

Jason remembered Cindy. She'd been cute, bright—not Mark's regular type.

Mark lay back on Jason's bed, setting his beer on the night table. "It's due tomorrow."

"I know. I'm done with mine."

"Well, I kinda put it off," Mark said in an exasperated voice. "I suck at grammar, and the last time I trusted the software's grammar check, I got a D. Rob never mentioned it to you, huh?"

"Nope."

Mark said, "Well, that was pretty cool of him, I guess. He was never the type of guy who wanted you to feel like a dumbass. And he was smart as hell."

"Yeah." Jason set the sweating can in his hands onto his desk. The beer made a perfect, wet O on the printed-out picture of Hammurabi's tablet. "He
was
smart."

Mark sat up and took a swig of his beer. "It's not fair," he said. "I can think of a whole bunch of idiots I'd rather see six feet under than Rob."

"I know, man."

"What you said the other day," Mark said. "About Holly. You don't think she had something to do with it? I mean, there she is just around puke level and Rob has to leave the party early to take her home. If he hadn't been driving her that night..."

Jason held up a hand. "I don't want to talk about Holly. I know you know it's not her fault."

"But if it's not her fault, then it's—"

"Rob's. He was the one who was driving."

Silence fell between them, and Jason turned back to the computer for a moment, to save his document. To do anything other than look at the pain on Mark's face. It was easy for him to blame Mark, in a way. M K, ive ark's party. Mark's connection getting the booze. But he was sure there was more to it. There was more to the whole end of the summer. More that they didn't talk about.

Maybe it was because they'd always seen each other the same way. Mark's job was to be the ass. His job was to be the shy guy. Rob's had been to be the popular guy—the guy everyone else wished they were. It was unspoken but clearly defined. And it was like they all had a stake in pretending that nothing was different if one of them changed. Even with Rob dead, people, including Mark, still saw him as perfect. Maybe it was safer that way.

Mark rolled the can between his palms. "You said—it was my party. That's what you said the other day. You blame me. Admit it."

"Can you just show me your English paper and let's forget this."

Mark's eyes were glassy.

Jason didn't say anything for a moment. "Give me your freaking essay."

Mark grabbed his bag. He held out a few rumpled sheets of paper.

"You bring your laptop?"

Mark shook his head.

"Idiot." He threw his pencil at Mark, who ducked. "All right, let's make some changes on paper, and then you can e-mail me another version later, okay?"

"'Kay." Mark reached for the beer.

"Dude, you've got a paper to finish," Jason said.

Mark took a swig of his beer.

"Idiot," Jason repeated.

"Fine." Mark set the beer back down.

"Let's go work out at the table."

"Thanks, man," Mark said.

Jason led the way out to the perfectly clean kitchen, where a casserole dish of Rosie's baked manicotti stood waiting on the counter. Mark eyed it as they passed.

"Yeah, I could eat, too," Jason said.

Mark gave him a grateful look, and Jason didn't know if it was for the dinner, the company, or the help, but it was the first time he'd glimpsed how Mark used to be a few years ago. Freshman year, he'd thought Mark's jokes were pretty funny, and Mark had seemed less cocky, more normal. They'd all been pretty tight back then.

Jason set down some plates and got out a spatula, scooping out a big helping for each of them.

Mark dug into the pasta. "This is good," he said, around a mouthful of meaty filling.

"Yeah, Rosie's food is decent," Jason said.

He watched Mark devour his dinner, and then the two of them got to work. It was almost like old times. Old times minus Rob. Neither one of them mentioned it.

As Mark took off down the driveway a little while later, edited paper in his bag, Jason felt the emptiness of the house again. The emptiness of everything around him. He reached for his phone and punched in Holly's number—then realized it was after eleven and hung up. She was probably asleep by now if she lived with a little kid and an old guy. He wondered what her life was really like over there—what Holly was r
eally like when no one else was around. He wanted to know her. And he couldn't avoid the truth, that somehow she'd become more than someone to ask for forgiveness, more than someone who'd been on the receiving end of a wrong that needed to be righted.

He crushed the longing down and turned back to Hammurabi's Code. The battle of the weak versus the strong. He didn't know which he was anymore.

The old guy has a point. Where is the freaking light? You wander down the stairs of your house and move out into the cul-de-sac, concentrating hard on lightness, on tunnels of light, on strobe lights, on starlight, on the buzz of the pinkish streetlights above. You think of any light that comes to mind, hoping that this will somehow draw the tunnel closer.

Nothing happens. It's you and an endless maze of suburbia. How freaking clichéd. You should write a punk rock song or something. Actually, you never thought your family was that well off, but the niceness of the house you lived in, of the houses on your street, seems more apparent in the dark. Many of them have fancy lighting systems out front, the ubiquitous security system signs that are supposed to ward off crooks, the shiny new cars in the driveways, and in the backyards the pools and hot tubs surrounded by custom rockery and landscaping, or at the very least cedar decking. You walk by house after house, seeing now the things that make them alike. The sameness is stifling.

A fluffy white cat darts out from behind a green recycling bin, making you jump. If that's what it's called when your non-body reacts and your non-heart races in your non-chest. The bodiless thing—the body with no body thing, that is—has been weirding you out lately. How do you keep sensing and hearing and seeing everything? How are you there but not there? The quantum physics of being a ghost mystifies you for a second. Then you realize the cat is staring at you, her green eyes a flash of reflection.

"Of course, you can see me, right?" you say with a sour laugh.

The cat takes off across the street, ducking into the rhododendron bushes. The street is quiet again, the neighborhood probably absorbed in TV shows and answering e-mails. It's going to be another long night.

You think of Holly's place, and you are suddenly walking outside her stucco building, as far from the houses in Lake Heights as you can get. Aside from a few trees and a small planting bed out in front of it, there is nothing homey about it. This part of Seattle is a commerc Nt="0e roial zone—a neighborhood of apartment buildings that hug busy roads not far from the high school. A minimart's bright lights cut into the gloom at one end of the block, and at the other end, a small strip mall with a nail salon, a Thai restaurant that once gave you and Holly food poisoning, and a check-cashing place with a flashing neon green Open sign. If you could smell anything, you'd get hints of burnt garlic and fish sauce in the air from the Thai place, along with the cigarette smoke coming from the two greasy-looking white dudes hanging out on the bench in front of the minimart. Tweakers, probably. Holly has never liked the neighborhood, but she's good like that, putting up with stuff way more than you would.

Inside the minimart, the owner is watching an Ultimate Fighting match and scanning the classifieds for a used car for under $1, 000. At the back of the store there's a gray-haired white lady wearing a pink cardigan over a green house dress. She's reading the soup labels one by one, turning each can and facing it ingredients-out so she can compare them. A young black kid is counting the coins in his pockets at the counter, trying to give exact change for the half gallon of milk he's picked out.

You stand there, whispering to the boy, "one more dime," even though you know he can't hear you. You ease over and point at the third shelf of canned soups, trying to help the old lady find the split pea soup without MSG that she's mumbling about. You are the angel on the shoulder of the store owner, willing him to flip to the foreign section, where you're sure he can find a beater Toyota to fix up. You look up at the closed-circuit television security monitor, hoping to see yourself—but you're not there.

The front door swings open and the two greasy dudes roll into the minimart. One goes back to the beer case. He loads up his arms with a case of Budweiser. The other guy stands at the counter and watches the kid leave with the milk carton, carrying it like he's cuddling a baby.

And then you see the gun.

You are helpless to stop what's happening. You watch the guy pull the weapon on the store owner and demand he hand over all the cash in the drawer.

"
Dios Mio!
" says the owner, backing away, his hands in the air. "Don't shoot!"

The old lady screams, and the guy with the beer comes up to her and pushes her over, into the cans of soup. She stays down on the floor wimpering at his feet. Meanwhile, the pasty white guy at the counter starts to pistol-whip the owner. There is blood.

You think of Aldo. You zoom to his room, which used to be Holly's.

"Dial 9-1-1," you tell Aldo, who's sitting in a chair near the bed, dressed in his pajamas. "Please. It's an emergency, Aldo." Frantically, you point at the pink telephone on the nightstand.