Camo Girl (14 page)

“Local brats,” the meaty guy murmurs. They walk us to the door, briskly, roughly, spinning us out onto the concrete.

“It's getting late. Go home,” the tall one snaps. The
glass doors slide shut behind us. We stand looking in, at the plush carpet, all the bright and flashing lights. So close and yet so far. On the other side, Tall and Meaty stand with arms crossed glaring down at us. There are a good six more of their buddies roaming in the background. These panes of glass might as well be the Great Wall of China.

Bailey and I glance at each other. Secret agent stealth or no—there's no way Z got past these guys.

“Where would he go?” Bailey says.

“This was your genius idea,” I snap. How nuts am I being? I raced off to Vegas based on Bailey's random hunch. Z's probably been hiding in the automotive section eating stolen Pop-Tarts all this time. We are in so much trouble.

“Well, we can't keep standing here,” Bailey says. He's right. Meaty raises his wrist to his mouth and speaks into his sleeve, still glaring at us.

“Let's go,” I say. We retreat toward the fountain. “I can't believe I let you talk me into this.”

Bailey cuts his eyes toward me. “I just had an idea,” he says. “You were the one who ran for the bus station.”

He's right, and I know it. I lean against the trunk of one of the decorative trees. “He said he had a mission. I should know where to look.” My stomach starts to ache. Z's out there somewhere, alone. Maybe scared.
I'm
scared, and I'm with Bailey.

Bailey pulls the casino chip out of his pocket and flips it over, then strides toward the street. I push off the tree and follow. “What is it?”

Bailey gazes up and down the Strip. “They're all different,” he says, “but kinda the same. If all he saw was a chip . . .”

“Okay, yeah.” I get where he's going with this. A casino is a casino is a casino. If you strike out at one, you try another. I squinted my eyes, straining to put myself inside Z's head. Where would he go?

I scan the façades, thinking like Z. “That one.” I point to the next casino along the same side of the street. Z wouldn't cross the boulevard if he didn't absolutely have to. Plus, it had a stony, classic look about it. Kind of like a castle.

“Okay, let's try that,” Bailey says. We cross in front of the volcano, pushing past a small crowd that's gathered to gaze upon the attraction.

Bailey nudges me, chuckling. “Check it out. Rent-a-cop is talking to a bush.”

Sure enough, several yards away, smack in the middle of the volcano's oasis, a Strip security guard stands with his fists planted on his cargo-belted hips speaking sternly toward a small shrub. He shakes a finger at it. Without warning, he reaches down, arm extended as if he's going to rip it out of the ground by the roots. The shriek that
emanates from the bush is all too human, and all too familiar.

I run toward it.

Bailey was right all along. The Mirage.

“Don't touch him!” I shout. “Leave him alone.”

The cop jerks back. I fly past him, and sure enough, there is Z. Hunched in a tiny ball with his backpack all askew at his side. Clutching his Altoids box with the rubber bands, his special secret box. Out in the open. Tears are streaming down his face.

I kneel in front of him. He flinches away when I try to touch him. “Hey, it's just me,” I whisper, drawing my hand back. “Zachariah?”

I wait for the usual “Milady,” but it doesn't come.

“Hey, girlie,” the rent-a-cop says. “You know this kid?”

“We know him,” Bailey says. “He's our friend. He wandered away from the group.”

“What group?” The cop reaches for his walkie-talkie.

Bailey puts up a hand to delay him. “Our school group. We've been at the museums all day. We were just headed back to the buses when this one wandered off.” Bailey rolls his eyes and rambles on about the museum and the teachers and the “day” we've had in town.

I'm shocked by Bailey's tale. It swirls over my head, and I'm glad the cop is drawn into it, so I don't have to try to
explain anything myself. I press my hand on the curb while I move my legs to get more comfortable.

“Zachariah, it's me. Eleanor. The quest is over. It's time to go home. Our horses are waiting in the stable.” I whisper the story to him.

Z's crying doesn't seem to be slowing down. I thought, once he saw me, he'd know everything was going to be okay. But I'm not sure he's seeing me or knows it's really me.

Bailey talks on and on. “Anyway, our teachers are coming. Any second now.”

The cop looks down the street, uncertain. “You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bailey says smoothly. “They're right behind us. We ran ahead 'cause we were worried about our friend.”

I narrow my eyes at him. The lies that bubble up seem to come easy. But I don't have time right now to wonder about Bailey's tales.

“You don't even have to wait with us,” Bailey continues. “Really. We're fine. We have supervision.”

The cop glances at me. I smile, which I hope he will take as confirmation of Bailey's story.

“Sure, okay,” he says after a moment. “No problem. You kids take care now.” He claps Bailey's shoulder and takes two steps back, then turns to leave.

Bailey grins at me, triumphant. But I shake my head.
As he walks slowly away, the cop reaches for his walkie-talkie. He mumbles something into it.

Bailey may be a smooth talker, but he's no kind of miracle worker. We're not out of the woods just yet.

“W
ell, this is a full-on snafu,”
Bailey says, moments later.

“What?” I whisper. The last ninety seconds were easily the most terrifying of my entire life. I'm still trying to recover.

First the volcano erupts. Flashing, hissing, red flowing lava explodes onto the sky all around us, rushing in rivers where moments before the cool fountain waters had been lapping calmly. Z screams. I scream. Bailey dives on top of us like he can protect us with his body, but all that happens is we all three end up ground into the mulch under Z's bush.

Then The Mirage security team appears, four huge gray columns of them. Tall, Meaty, and their friends BuzzCut and Knuckles. Plus the original rent-a-cop, who must have thought he was so clever, walking away to call for backup
just before the volcanic light show began at its appointed hour.

When the eruption's over, the crowd gathered around the volcano bursts into applause. But their cheering stalls when Z's shrieking continues in earnest, no longer covered by the explosive entertainment display. The security guys bear down on us. Two lift Bailey up off us. One grabs me and another scoops up Z, who curls into a ball in his arms like a baby. Bailey struggles against their hold. I don't see the point. They have us good.

“Congratulations,” Meaty mutters over my head. “You just bought your ticket inside.”

Bailey fights it all the way. They've got him by the arms, and he drags his feet like he's being hauled to his execution. “You can't do this!” he shouts. “Just 'cause we're kids. We still got rights!”

We're through the lobby in a matter of moments. They sweep us right past the glitz, through a dingy, cement-lined hallway, into a small receiving room with chairs.

The second room they open is small and maybe soundproofed. When they put Z inside and close the door, his cries fade to almost nothing.

“No,” I blurt. “I need to be in there with him.” Meaty glances at BuzzCut and shrugs. They open the door and push us inside.

The door slams. It's the three of us, alone.
Trapped somewhere in The Mirage. With no way out.

“Situation Normal All Funked Up,” Bailey murmurs in explanation. “Snafu. In the army they don't say ‘funked,' but I'm not supposed to curse.”

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. We're about to die at the hands of the gestapo and he's worried about foul language?

Z sobs from the middle of the floor, huddled where Tall must have deposited him. His distress takes precedence over our little imprisonment dilemma. Together, we approach him.

“What are we going to do?” I say.

“I don't know,” Bailey says, “but we have to try something.”

Z rocks back and forth, cupping his ears. He's a tiny ball of terror, and I don't know how to touch him.

Bailey sits down on the carpet.

“Hey, man.”

I kneel close to Z. I wish I knew what had happened to him today. Then maybe I would know what to say. Maybe I could find the right words to help him pretend it was all better.

“Zachariah?” I reach for his hand. He flinches.

I drop my head onto my knees. I should have been with
him. If I'd been paying attention, I would have been there. I would have gone with him, held his hand while his world fell apart. I owe him that.

“Do we know what's in the box?” Bailey asks. It's trapped between Z's thighs and belly.

“Not that one. No, don't—”

But Bailey reaches for it, manages to free it. My heart pounds hard and harder. It's wrong, all wrong. Z doesn't let anyone touch his boxes, ever. But he's frozen, staring at whatever horror is in front of him. Wrong, all wrong.

“What happened to him?” Bailey says. “What happened to make him like this?”

“It's just who he is,” I say.

Bailey shakes his head. “He's . . . broken.”

“Don't say that!” I shout. “You don't know him. You don't know us. We're fine.”

“Yeah,” Bailey murmurs. “This is so fine.”

It's not, it's not, but I've been protecting Z for so long, I don't know any other way. “I thought you were different,” I say. “I thought you weren't like the others, always saying there's something wrong. Sometimes people are just different. Did you ever think of that?”

“Ella.” Bailey looks tormented. Z's whimpers are pitiful and loud. “He needs help. We have to help him.”

“We're fine.”

“What happened to him?”

I shake my head.

“I know you know. Just tell me.”

I see Z, huddled, crying. And I know Bailey's right. It's not a game anymore. It's not a moment in a tree house. It's not a gift to me or a fantasy to pop in and out of. It's become everything to Z. And it's eating him up.

“His dad left,” I blurt. “They lost their house. It was horrible for him.”

Z suddenly falls silent. The air echoes with nothingness. He's been listening. He hears me.

Bailey nods at me to keep talking. He tugs off the rubber bands and pops Z's box open, sifting through whatever's inside. Part of me wants to look too. But I don't.

“His mom works at Walmart. I'm pretty sure they sleep there now. They don't have anywhere to go.”

After a while Bailey closes the lid.

“They need money,” I tell Bailey. “I think he saw the chips and realized they were money. I think he wanted to steal some.”

“No,” Bailey says. “He's looking for his dad.”

“What?” That doesn't make any sense.

Bailey tips the box toward me. The contents are a jumble, but they answer the question. Photographs of Z and his dad. A postcard from Seattle. A tie clip with a horseshoe.
A marble. A pocketknife. A book of matches. A Universal Studios keychain. Small objects that speak of Z's dad and all that they shared.

I slide aside the photos and draw a slow breath. Three casino chips from The Mirage. Z's dad used to gamble, like Grammie, but a lot more often. Did he give these to Z? Did he come to The Mirage? Was this where he lost the money that should have paid for their home? The pieces fall together in my mind.

“There are more where these came from.”

“The quest begins today.”

Bailey's right. Z's looking for his dad. Looking for the answers that aren't coming.

“It's hard,” I say. “When someone you love leaves and you know they're never coming back. You start to forget things about them, and it's terrible. You just want to go somewhere else.”

I'm talking about Z. And I'm talking about me. Bailey sits, listening, and somehow I know I'm talking about him, too. I keep telling him he doesn't know us, but maybe he does.

“It's really sad,” I say. “People who leave . . . they don't come back.”

“Don't tell him that,” Bailey says. “It's not true.”

His voice is firm. He believes what he's saying.

What if his dad gets better? Then he'd get out of the hospital and they could keep moving. Bailey will be happy, but he'll have to leave. And what if Z's dad comes home? He'll move to a new house and won't need to pretend anymore. Then I'll be all alone.

I've tried to get Z to understand what I do—that when people leave they don't come back. Still, he believes. He believes hard enough to run here, looking for his own kind of perfect.

Mine is never coming back. I want to go back to the time when everything was right around me. Back before I figured out that the way my face looks equals ugly. Back when Millie wore braids, and Z knew the difference between the real world and a dream, when Mom lived at home seven days out of seven and Dad kissed my cheeks every night at bedtime. When Z's magic was just magic and not something so horribly wrong.

My eyes are crying and my heart is crying. Three years ago today I started forgetting him. But you're not supposed to forget. You're supposed to remember. Forever.

When nothing is perfect, it's just easier to hide.

“You lied,” I say to Bailey. “You made me believe we're the same.”

“I didn't lie to you,” he says. “I didn't have to. We are the same.”

We sit there, and I just look at him for a while, because I simply don't see it. And then, out of nowhere, I do.

I am Camo-Face. Invisible in plain sight. Not wanting to be seen. Hiding from the sad truth of things. That Daddy is gone. That Z is broken. But these things I hide from are huge now, so huge that they can't be hidden, not even by a giant lava-spewing volcano.