Camo Girl (13 page)

Bailey emerges grinning triumphantly. He waves two tickets in my face. I'm duly impressed, but curious.

“So, how'd you do it?”

Bailey shrugs. “You really don't want to know the details,” he says. “There's such a thing as plausible deniability.”

“There's such a thing as
what
?”

“It means if anyone asks you later, you can say you don't know how I got them, and you'll be telling the truth.” He hands me my seven dollars change.

I pocket the cash. We'll need it later, when it's time to come back. “I want to know.”

“Trust me, you don't,” Bailey says. He won't meet my eye when he says it.

I glance up at the big wall clock above the station's front door. There are five minutes between now and when the bus leaves, and I intend to spend them getting information out of Bailey.

What would I have done? “Did you lie and say the other ticket was for your mom or something?”

Bailey glances at me. “Yeah. I started with that. But I had to go bigger.”

A bus pulls into the lot. A voice over a not-very-loud loudspeaker squawks, “That'll be the five thirty-five to Las Vegas. All aboard!”

“Let's go,” Bailey says.

A couple of people disembark. The driver tears our tickets along with the others without giving us much of a glance. We climb up and slide into a pair of seats about halfway back. Across the aisle a man reading a newspaper peers over his glasses at us, then beyond us, then back.

“You kids traveling alone?”

“No, sir,” Bailey says, leaning across me from the window seat. “I don't think they'd allow that.”

“What about you?” I pipe in, hoping to change the subject. I'm suddenly wishing we'd chosen a seat further back. More isolated. The bus isn't empty, but it's not packed, either. “What brings you to Las Vegas?”

“Oh, I like to try my luck every few months,” he says. He chuckles. “Ain't got much of it, though.”

Bailey and I laugh too. “Well, good luck to you,” Bailey says. There's a tone in his voice that says
Nice talking to you, but we're done now
. I couldn't have managed it.

The man nods and goes back to reading his paper. The bus starts moving, and Bailey and I both stare out the window as if we're fascinated by the desert landscape.

As the town rolls by and quickly gives way to scrub
brush and open sky, the hugeness of what we're doing hits me. Getting this far was fun, almost like a game. Now it gets real. My stomach sinks.

We're going to be in so much trouble.

I
t's a twenty-minute ride, but halfway through
it feels like a hundred hours have passed. Miles of desert whip by the windows as my level of dread blossoms. Did it get this real for Z, when the bus doors closed and the engine rumbled? Was he able to imagine his trusty steed stamping and pawing beneath him, or did he panic? I'm scared for him, out here all on his own. At least I have Bailey.

We took a long car trip to California one time. It was after Daddy got sick, because he wanted to see the ocean again. We drove all day and all night, then had a picnic in the sand and danced in the waves for hours before it was time to come home. I remember the ocean, but the best part was all the car riding. I looked out the window and wondered what would happen if we never turned the car
around but just kept going and going. Where would we end up? What would we see? Could we just drive forever? The three of us, frozen in time, frozen in motion, locked in a space where nothing would ever change.

The same fleeting thought crosses my mind now—what if I never went back? What would it be like to pick up and start over in a new place where no one knows me? No Jonathan Hoffman, no Millie . . . no Z. Maybe I could bring Bailey, though. We could go live in Las Vegas, where casino chips would flow in the imported water fountains, and we would never need anything more than that. Would we be happy? Would people learn to look away, to leave us alone? Is the world full of Jonathan Hoffmans, or is there something better out there?

I nudge Bailey's arm.

“You lived a lot of places,” I say. “Where is best?”

“I don't know,” Bailey murmurs. “I don't remember everywhere.” He seems a bit distracted.

“Well, the stuff you don't remember can't be any good. Where was good?” Who knows, after this day is over, we may have to go on the lam. Mom is going to kill me, and I'm guessing Bailey's mom is probably going to do the same.

“Huh?” Bailey stares out the window, not really listening. After a moment he touches his fingers to the glass. A
high fence runs along the sides of the highway. Miles of nothing, and then a fence?

The fence is blocking off a piece of land, with a large building situated on it, well away from the road. So far back, in fact, that it's hard to even tell what kind of building it is, besides large and gray-white, and very secure with barbed wire atop all the fences.

“What is that place?” I wonder.

The man across the aisle glances up from his newspaper.

“It's a hospital,” he says. “For soldiers.”

Bailey drops his hand away. Fast.

My mind closes around something. One of the unspoken things. “Oh, no.”

“Yep,” the man says as if I'm talking to him. He takes off his glasses and dangles them by one stalk. “Not a regular VA, though. This is for the ones that are sick in the head. Wacko.”

Bailey tenses up beside me, whips his head around.

“Some of them come back pretty messed up.” The man taps his temple and shrugs. “No wonder, after the things they seen. Done. Who wouldn't go a little nuts?”

“Shut up!” Bailey shouts. “You don't know!” He leans over me, the glow of rage making him seem bigger than normal. I think if I wasn't sitting there, blocking him in, he'd be leaping into the aisle, trying to start another fight.

I throw my arm across his chest—a reflex—and he falls back, practically panting.

“Whoa, son,” the man holds up his hands, leaning toward us all grinny like he wants to make up.

“Stop talking,” I snap at him. “Just stop it. Leave us alone! We're not supposed to talk to strangers, you know.”

The man looks injured. I've been so nice, and now I'm suddenly not. But I don't care. I glare at him, doing what I can to put the edge back around us. Me and Bailey on the inside. Him on the outside.

“Sure,” he says, sliding his glasses back on. “Well, I hope you're not traveling far. By yourselves,” he adds.

“We're fine.”

“Uh-huh.” He raises the newspaper again.

My arm is still stuck out straight, down across Bailey's middle. I pull it back; it's too weird to be touching so much of him.

Bailey gazes out the window. The hospital is long out of sight now, but I can tell he's still thinking about it. We're both still thinking about it when he reaches for my hand.

We lock our fingers and let them rest on the seat between us. Our palms touch only at the edges. In between is empty air, a little pocket. Just enough space for a secret or two.

Bailey turns his face away from the window after
a minute and leans his cheek against the headrest, like he's going to try to say something, but he doesn't manage anything.

“You don't have to tell me,” I say.

“No?”

I understand everything now. Where he goes on Sundays. Why they might not have to move. Why maybe he wishes they would have to. Why he doesn't want to talk about it. When sad things happen, you build a room in your mind to put them. A safe place to hide the thoughts that make you want to cry. If you try really hard, you can sometimes get the door to lock.

But not always. I shrug. “I mean, you can tell me if you want to. . . .”

He shakes his head. “Maybe later.”

We ride quietly, holding hands.

“I'm sorry,” I say, even though I never really understand it when people say this to me. I guess it's just what you say at a time like this.

“I don't want anyone else to know,” he whispers.

I have to kinda roll my eyes at that. “Who else do I talk to?”

He laughs softly. “Yeah, okay. We still gotta do something about that.”

T
he bus lets us off at the station in
Las Vegas. It's so close to the Strip you can hear the water from the casino fountains rushing. That's good for us. The Mirage will be within walking distance.

“Have you been here?” Bailey says as we make our way toward the center of things. He follows my lead.

“Of course,” I say. Grammie's brought me in a few times to look at the lights, plus sometimes we have school field trips to the museums and places like that.

“My mom and I drove around down here this weekend. We wanted to see everything.”

“There's a lot to see.”

“Yeah.”

Bailey holds my hand as we cross the busy street. It's
funny to try to walk and hold hands at the same time. You've got to concentrate on two things at once—not getting hit by cars and not swinging your arm at the wrong pace.

We pick our way through the maze of traffic and emerge onto the Vegas Strip.

“Wow,” Bailey says. “It looks different when you're not in a car.”

The whole view is a little overwhelming. I glance around too, because no matter how many times I visit, I still think everything here looks way awesome. Giant statues in front of some casinos, fountains in front of others, and the boulevard strip down the center of the street is planted with palm trees.

It's not yet dark, but the sky has gone a dusky blue-gray. The night lights begin to flick on, gearing up to glow with full splendor when the sun goes down.

I can't remember where The Mirage is exactly, but it has to be close by. I start to lead us in the direction I think it is, but Bailey tugs my arm, holding me back. His other hand is warm, below the cap sleeve of my T-shirt. Until he touches me, I haven't realized how cool I am, how the desert breeze whirling around us has already stolen the heat of the day.

“I don't want you to think bad about me,” Bailey says quietly.

I face him, squeezing his hand a little. “I don't. Why would you say that?”

No one else I know would have come on this crazy journey with me. Millie would be too scared. Under normal circumstances, even Z would have shied away from this unknown. I don't even know if I could have managed it by myself. It's bigger than anything I've ever tried to do, and yet Bailey didn't blink.

He's blinking now, though. Gripping my arm like there's no tomorrow. My heart starts pounding.

“What?” I say. If he freaks out now, then I'm going to freak out too. And that's no good for anybody.

Bailey looks away down the Strip. “My dad is sick.” He hesitates.

“You don't have to tell me.”

“Maybe I want to tell you,” Bailey says. “Maybe I always wanted to.”

“Okay.”

“It's called post-traumatic stress disorder,” Bailey says quietly. “He's just sick. He's not crazy.”

I thumb toward the bus depot. “That guy on the bus was crazy.”

Bailey smiles. “Yeah, totally.” His smile fades, and I think I made a mistake by trying to be at all funny.

“He's going to get better,” Bailey continues. “And—and he's
really brave and he was in combat and everything, but . . . he never did the stuff I told the guys. At least, probably not.” He looks away. “I don't know because he can't really talk about that kind of stuff. Sometimes he can't talk at all. . . .” Bailey's voice trails off.

“I get it,” I say. “It's easier to make stuff up.” There are other things I could say. Things that might let him see that I know how he feels. It's hard to be the broken one, the different one, the one carrying secrets and holding things that hurt.

“Yeah. Maybe.” Bailey sighs. “Sometimes it's not so easy.”

I take a deep breath, but it's hard because my heart is so full of him. “Let's go find Z.”

A
s it turns out, my best guess actually
started us walking in the right direction. In a few moments we see the big neon signs on top of The Mirage glowing in the distance. We hurry toward it.

Out front, there's a massive rock volcano–sculpted fountain. The water flows over the wall of stones, then pools around the base in calm, sluicing waves. We follow the sidewalk around the zany decorations, scurrying beneath the canopy of palm trees that complete the oasis effect.

The Mirage itself looms above the coppice of trees like a giant open book. The entryway is beneath an arched dome. Through the glass doors, the hotel lobby gleams. Beyond it, the glint of shiny slot machines adds to the whole effect. It's a little bit blinding.

We plow through the doors, racing toward the casino floor. The
bling
and
ching
of the machines echo off of everything. We're encased in the quiet hum of people winning, losing, and placing the next bet.

We're moving so fast, we nearly bounce off the pair of security guys who step in front of us. Dressed in sleek gray suits, they're like two concrete pillars blocking our path.

“Not so fast,” the tall one snaps. He catches me by the arm. His cohort plants a meaty hand on Bailey's shoulder. “No kids allowed.”

“We're looking for someone,” I protest. “We're not here to play.”

“That's what they all say,” the meaty bouncer mutters. “No parents, no entry.”

“We're staying here,” Bailey says, smoothing his charm over everything. I should have known to let him do the talking in the first place. He smiles. “Our parents are already inside.”

The tall guy smiles back. “Then wait right here. We'll call up on the house phone. Room number?”

I glance at Bailey. His fibbing gears churn, but he draws up short, and so do I.