Crash (4 page)

“Yeah. My parents do.”

“Well, this Powell guy thinks there might be something not right going on here.”

“Everything's cool here,” I said. I held up my anthology, as if the fact that I had been reading Shakespeare somehow made everything on the level.

“Your landlord says the rent hasn't been paid. He thinks you might be living here on your own.” He scratched his jaw again, and I could tell he didn't like confronting me like this. “And he thinks there might be drugs.”

“No drugs,” I said. “I swear.” There was an awkward silence, and I heard Ozzie scratching at my bedroom door. I also thought I could hear something else. Another door opening and closing.

The young cop put his hands together in front of him. “Right. Maybe the guy's just paranoid. But if you haven't paid the rent, he can evict you.”

“My dad said he was getting that all sorted out. He's had a bit of bad luck, but now things are coming together.”

He nodded. “Sure. Let's leave it at that. I'll check in with the landlord, and I'll check back here in a couple of days to talk with your folks.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Take care.”

I stood there for a minute as he walked back to his car. My brain couldn't get a grip on what we needed to do next. I let Ozzie out of the bedroom and gave him a hug. Then I went to talk to Mackenzie, but when I knocked on her door, she didn't answer. After the third knock, I broke one of her rules and opened it.

She was gone, and so was her famous suitcase. I ran to the back door.

It was partly open, and Mackenzie was nowhere in sight.

Chapter Eight

I put Ozzie on his leash, and we spent three hours looking for her. She wasn't in the park. She wasn't at the coffee shop. I asked other kids on the street, but no one had seen a girl with rolling luggage. I was cold and tired by the time ten o'clock rolled around.

I went home—or the place that had once been my home. I lay down on my bed and drifted into a restless sleep. I kept hoping I'd hear the front door open and she'd be back. But it didn't happen.

I cut school the next day and went searching again.

The day ended with another failed attempt and another fitful night's sleep. I felt alone and deserted. And scared.

I knew that if Mackenzie didn't want to be found, I wouldn't be able to find her. So I went back to school, heartbroken, tired and already feeling like the old Cameron—pissed off at everything.

I came home that day to find a padlock bolted onto the door, a lot of stuff from the house out on the lawn and Ozzie tied to the railing. I sat down on the front steps beside him, put my head between my legs and took a deep breath. I felt like I was going to puke. I guess I could have tried calling my mom—or Nick, even. Or my dad's cell phone. But they were the ones who'd gotten me into this mess. At this moment, I hated them all.

Anger replaced the fear, I guess. Ozzie was nervous. He was actually shaking, and I'd only seen him like that a couple of times before, when he was threatened by some big nasty dogs. I gave him a good hug and told him it was all going to be okay. Then I emptied my backpack of schoolbooks and rooted through the piles on the lawn until I found some of my clothes and a flashlight, and I stuffed them into the pack.

If I'd had a cell phone, I would have taken a picture of me and the junk scattered on the front lawn. A portrait of what it looks like when your life falls apart. When everything goes down the toilet. But my phone had stopped working awhile back, and I didn't have the money to get a new one. All I had was a five-dollar bill in my pocket. That was it. My backpack with some stuff, my dog and me.

Maybe I should have broken a window at the back and crawled back into the house. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I only had one thought.

I had to find Mackenzie. Maybe she'd given up on me, but I hadn't given up on her. And now I needed her more than ever.

Ozzie looked worried. Worried about me. “It's okay, boy. Now it's just you and me.”

My legs felt funny as we began to walk down the street. It would be dark soon, and I'd have to figure something out. But I couldn't stay here. This was no longer my home. And, as far as I was concerned, I no longer had parents.

Ozzie seemed to know where we were going—to the park, then to the street that led downtown. I hit the coffee shop where I'd found Mackenzie sleeping and then went and talked to some of the kids I'd seen panhandling.

Most were pretty wary of my asking questions about Mac. I couldn't tell the ones who might actually know her and lied about it from the ones who really didn't know her. Then, as it got later, I realized I needed to start figuring out where I was going to spend the night. I doubled back to the coffee shop, but it was empty. I asked some of the kids on the street where I could crash for the night, but they didn't know. I guess they didn't trust me. I didn't look or act like them. And they were used to all kinds of weirdos asking questions. Some of them didn't trust the dog.

So Ozzie and I kept walking, away from the bright lights and stores, until we came to an empty storefront that had once been a bakery. It was dark and empty. The front door was locked, but a side door into the basement was open. Someone had busted the lock. It was pitch-black as Ozzie and I walked inside. I dug out my flashlight and looked around.

The place had been royally trashed. There were crumpled beer cans and broken liquor bottles. I wondered if the partiers would come back, and that made me want to get the hell out of there. But where would I go?

I had Ozzie. I'd have to take my chances. I saw an old mattress in the corner and a blanket. I lay down and folded my body into the fetal position. I was scared, yeah. And I lay there wondering if Mackenzie was holed up in some place like this. Alone and cold and scared.

Chapter Nine

It was a long, cold night. When I woke up in the morning, I could see my breath. I looked around the basement. It was not a place I wanted to spend another night in. I was starving. I had no plan. I thought about going to school and bumming some money for cafeteria food, but I had a feeling it would go badly. Besides, I looked terrible. And what would I do with Ozzie?

All I could do was head out onto the street. I walked downtown, and though I'd been here many times before, it looked different to me now. Busy people all going somewhere. Jobs, school, stores. I wasn't one of them. I was going nowhere, and I felt like the biggest loser on the planet.

I walked a few blocks more, back to the coffee shop. Outside the place, I bumped into Ethan Sparks, a kid I knew from school.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“It's a long story. Have you seen Mackenzie?”

“Not recently. She's been gone for a while, and some of us are worried.”

“Us?”

“You know.” It sank in. The rumors about Ethan, that he was pretty much on his own.

“She was at my house for a while,” I said. “But I got kicked out.”

Ethan looked shocked. “Wait a minute. Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“I'm not sure what you think I mean, but yeah, I've been booted out. I've got nowhere to live. Me and Ozzie.”

Ethan looked more than a little concerned. “You going to school today?”

“Looking like this?”

“Yeah. You do look like something your dog hauled out of the garbage. No offense.”

I was beginning to see Ethan for what he really was. A lifeline.

“Ethan,” I said, “I'm in a messed-up place. Got any advice? Got anything?”

He looked intently at me. I read genuine concern. “Yeah. Go home. Say you're sorry for whatever you did. Kiss ass. Do whatever. You don't want to be here.”

“It's not that easy. Besides, I gotta find Mac. She ran off from my house when the cops showed up.”

“And I'd like to see you find her. She's a good girl.”

“Then tell me what to do.”

Ethan didn't say anything at first. Then he looked me in the eye. “A few of us have been crashing at an apartment owned by a guy we call Crazy Eddy. Eddy
is
crazy, but he's fairly harmless. I've been sleeping on my cousin's couch this week, but that's not gonna last long. He's got a new girlfriend moving in. So if there's room, Eddy'll take me in. Hell, he'll take in just about anyone. You can only crash there from midnight to six in the morning, but it's better than the street. You've got to be clean. No drugs. Eddy used to have a habit, and he kicked it after he got busted. But he wants twenty bucks a night from whoever he takes in.”

“I don't have that.”

“Well, then, you do what you have to do.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you see kids panhandling for money. Learn to work it.”

“I've never done that.”

“It's no fun, believe me. Look, here's ten bucks. All you have to do is scrounge the rest. I gotta go, but I'm around. You got a cell?”

“No.”

“Man, you are desperate. Eddy's just above the coffee shop. Apartment five. Tell him I sent you. Me and Eddy are tight. But you'll have to have the twenty bucks, and don't ask him for food or anything. He hates that.”

“What about the dog?”

“Hard to say with Eddy. Could go either way.”

Ethan walked off, but then turned to look back at me. The look said he was worried. He was a good guy, and it was comforting to know I had at least one person on the street worried about my sorry ass.

Chapter Ten

I couldn't do it at first. Beg for money. I really couldn't. I hung out behind a donut shop and waited to see what came out the back door, hoping there was food headed for a Dumpster or something. My instincts were good. Around noon, the unsold baking from the day before was tossed. I can't tell you how good they tasted. Chocolate donuts. Blueberry muffins. Enough for me and Ozzie, and I stashed some in my pack. Not exactly health food, but it was a start.

In the afternoon, I knew I had to get up my courage to talk to strangers. My line was lame, and I felt like a really bad actor. “Get a job,” one guy in a suit said. “Get off the street and stop bothering people,” one finely dressed woman said. When I saw cops coming my way, I held my head up and walked on by. The best I could do was mumble something to people passing by, and once in a while someone would hand me a quarter or a couple of dimes without making eye contact. It was brutal. Sometimes it was just nickles. Who the hell gives a homeless person nickles? But it was sinking in. I was homeless. And pretty helpless when it came to bumming money from people.

By six o'clock I had $23, but it had taken me almost all day to get it. And ten of it had come from Ethan. I headed to the coffee shop, tied up Ozzie outside and went in for a coffee and sandwich. Yeah. Kids hung out here because you could get coffee and an egg-salad sandwich for $2.99, and they didn't charge tax. I was afraid to leave Ozzie alone, so I took my meager meal outside and sat down on the sidewalk, my back against the wall. I tried begging some more but had no luck. I just didn't have it in me.

At 11:45 I went in the door beside the coffee shop and up the stairs. I knocked on the door of apartment five. Crazy Eddy was wearing a bathrobe and had a shower cap on his head. He was maybe thirty-five and had a bulging stomach and kind of bugged-out eyes.

“Ethan said I might be able to crash here tonight,” I said.

“You got twenty bucks?”

I showed him a baggie with the ten and a bunch of change.

“Okay,” he said. Then he looked down at Ozzie, who was sitting quietly beside me. “Who's this?” Eddy asked.

“His name's Ozzie.”

“I don't usually take dogs.”

“Ozzie's the sweetest dog you'll ever meet. I promise.”

Eddy bent down, grabbed Ozzie's muzzle and put his face right up to the dog's in a pretty aggressive way. But Ozzie didn't flinch. Eddy stayed like that for a couple of seconds, and I almost thought he was going to hurt Ozzie. But then he patted Oz on the head and stood up. “Sleep on the floor—you and the dog. Not on the furniture. And no eating my food.”

I followed Eddy into the apartment, and he pointed me toward the living room while he traipsed off to another room and slammed the door. When I walked into the living room, I saw three other kids there. Two were already in sleeping bags and conked out. A third, a girl, was sitting with her back to me, reading in the dim light.

“Hey,” I said.

She turned. It was Mackenzie. “Cameron.”

I didn't know what to say. Ozzie recognized her and licked her face. “I thought I'd lost you,” I said.

I sat down beside her. “You did,” she whispered. “I was scared. Sorry I split like that. I had to. I can't believe you're here.”

“Ethan told me about Eddy.”

“I hate this place. But it's all I've got for now. We can't sit here and talk though. He'll hear us, and these guys are trying to sleep. We'll talk tomorrow.”

I nodded, settled my pack by the wall and curled up beside her, with Ozzie at our feet.

The next day I couldn't bring myself to go to school. I was afraid of losing Mackenzie again. At six AM, Eddy started banging pots together and shouting, “Time to get up and out on the street, people.” And of course he meant it.

Mac left her suitcase behind. “Eddy said it's okay,” she said. “But I think he goes through it when I'm gone.”

“Is this place safe?” I asked. “I mean, for you?”

“Eddy's never touched me.”

Which was good news. But after she'd said it, I realized her answer implied that other men had. Mac read the worry in my face. “Come on. We gotta go.”

Mackenzie showed me where to score some better grub. We went inside a busy McDonald's and scavenged food from trays on the tables after people had left. We downed hash browns and half-eaten Egg McMuffins until we were found out and politely asked to leave.