Essential Maps for the Lost (10 page)

“Mission accomplished! You have your map, and my job is done!” She's so superconfident that she's done with him, he's sure. “Wow, what time is it? I'm probably already late! I've got to babysit.”

“The baby in pink.”

“The baby in pink. Nice to . . . you know. I was going to say meet, but we already did sort of meet, though . . .”

“Billy.” He holds out his hand. “Officially Billy.” It sounds like a brand of jeans or something.

“Billy? Right! I guess that's short for William.” Her hand is small and, truthfully, a little sweaty.

“Hey, thanks so much for bringing this.” He waves the little folded square. “It belonged to someone I knew,” he says again.

“No problem.”

She inches away from him. She's trying to get the hell out of there. He hopes his breath isn't bad.

“See ya!”

“See ya.”

She tries to wiggle the key in the lock of her car. It looks upside down to him. In a second, she'll be back inside, driving off, and all he'll have is her name.

Idiot! Stop her!

The voice is back—it's turned deep and Mafia, so he knows it means business. He shoves his hands in his pockets, heads back down the stairs and through the gate to the dock. Whatever. His mom hasn't been dead long enough. You don't go hit on some girl.
This is not just some coincidence!
The Mafia voice has a point. You have your regular old coincidence-coincidence, like when one of his friends, Evan, actually does his Algebra II homework on the one day Billy doesn't, saving his butt, or when some guy starts a fight right as they're checking IDs at Corazon, so they get in. But this—seeing her after seeing her after seeing her, it does seem like a sign. Maybe his mom . . . Stop! He doesn't like to think all woo-woo and stuff. If she wanted to give him some guidance, she should have stayed around. You're not supposed to be critical of people who do what she did, but try being their kid.

You're gonna lose your chance!

Who even believes in love? Fine, fuck. He does. A person
should
.

He turns. He's a blur; he's a heroic streak of long-shot passion as he runs up the stairs. “Wait!” he calls. But no need to worry. She hasn't gotten far. Her truck is having trouble starting or something. She's sitting in the seat with the windows rolled down, her head in her hands.

“Hey,” he says. She looks up. “Is it the battery?” It's his only guess. He doesn't know shit about cars.

She seems surprised to see him. “Kind of starts when it wants to start.”

He chuckles. The truck has a big, smiley hood that makes you smile back. Or maybe he's just suddenly feeling really good. Singing bluebirds kind of good. Dancing penguins good. Ladies running around Alpine mountains good.

“I was thinking,” he says.

One of her hands rests on the wheel with that bracelet around her little wrist. It's delicate and determined, like the wing of a bird.

“Maybe we can . . .”

She waits. Her eyes are brown and deep as Jasper's.

“Meet for coffee or something.”

“Sure.”

“What's today?” Stupid! Like he has a full calendar or something. Like he's a CEO whose days are full of meetings!

“Wednesday?”

“How about Friday?”

“I babysit until seven. Maybe we can . . . I don't know. I'm never very good at this part.”

“Um, pick up food? Take it somewhere?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want me to pick you up? In case your truck . . .” What's he saying? He has a flash of meeting some father at the door. He's never met a father at the door. Mariah, she picked him up for that dance and the few times after, and he and Zoe always met somewhere. Zoe, well, you know it's not right when her mouth feels wrong.

“No. No, no, no! We can meet! How about somewhere like . . .”

He's supposed to fill in. “Okay, let me think. Agua Verde? Mexican? By the Montlake Cut?”

“I can find it. Seven thirty?”

“Yeah. That'll work. They make great burritos.” He never realized it before, but
burritos
is the least romantic word there is.

The truck starts up. Blasts his eardrums. She drives away, gives a shy wave. Her arm is tan as caramel, and oh, no, she's going the wrong way, unless she wants to get on the express lane of the freeway heading south.

Outside the houseboat, Gran's still watering those plants. Probably trying to listen in with her eagle ears. “Who's that girl?”

“No one.”

“You didn't go running after her like it was no one.”

“Mind your own business.”

He's giddy. He's suddenly starving. Gran's down-turned mouth is just a mean pebble in a nice shoe.

“Fine sight, I'll tell you that.”

“What?”

“A smile. You smiling.” She makes it sound bad. No, she makes it sound
mixed
. It's confusing. The words say one thing, the tone another. Choose which to believe, and the other will slither under your skin.

Gran sets her watering can down. She pinches dead stuff off flowers. Her silence jabs him with shame. Her silence tells him what a bad, disappointing person he is. He just doesn't get what she wants from him. The dock rocks as a boat passes, and he hears the clang of Glenn and his husband Craig's sailboat. They have the biggest house on the dock, and it's pitching and rocking. He doesn't feel too well, all of a sudden. It's anti-magic. He can feel an Ability Drain, levels turning to red.

“Buzz?” Gran says.

Shit! A Breath Weapon, Devil Chills, a Red Ache, Mind Fire. His stomach clutches up and his chest squeezes. Gran is right about him. What was he thinking? His mom is dead, and he's going on some date?

God, just like that, he's sobbing like a baby. It comes out of nowhere, an invisible creature. He is felled, and he clutches his bony little gran and cries into her shirt, and it's pathetic. You never know when these things will happen. One time, he was just brushing his teeth, looking at his frothy mouth in the mirror, when all of a sudden, bam. Grief clutched him in its fist, and he banged his head over and over and over into the bathroom wall. There's a crater in the plaster still, like a meteor struck.

“Buzz.” She sighs. “It's okay. It is. You can be happy.” Now that she has what she wants from him, now that she's dragged him down into feeling like shit, she changes her tune. Her voice is all soft and loving, yanking him back up again. He can see how Gran operates, but it doesn't matter. You can understand a volcano, but it'll still burn and bury you. You'll still give it thanks if you're not entirely destroyed.

“I can't.”

“You need to.”

“A few months is all it's been.”

“So much longer. Years. It's been
years
.”

Poor Ginger is losing it inside. She hates when people get upset. She's scratching at the door and whining, and Gran lets her out. Ginger jumps around his legs. He feels her little toenails, trying to say
It's okay! I'm here!
Dogs just give and give. No matter what's happening in their own life, they look after you.

He picks up Ginger. He gazes at her white shag rug face. “Stupid dog,” he says, but he means it with so much affection, his heart hurts. One thing he knows, he can love like you wouldn't believe.

Mads is lost. She realized that already, but now she is actually, literally lost. She got on the wrong freeway entrance and has ended up here, in some industrial graveyard. There are big warehouses and chain-link fences. There are huge, mysterious metal parts, the knuckles and knees of iron giants. An airplane swoops low and there's a shuddering roar. She should never have turned off on that exit. Everyone gets confused down here. Night will fall by the time she finds the freeway again.

She's late. So late. See what trouble that boy has caused already? He distracted her like crazy, and now look. She pulls over into the parking lot of a huge, blank building labeled CTC. Anything could be going on in there. Mads's phone won't connect to the Internet. She hunts in Thomas's glove box for a regular old map, but only finds a pair of winter gloves and a stack of Burger King napkins. Mads calls Suzanne. She tells her she's having car trouble (true), that the truck has stopped (true) and that she'll be right there (mostly true). Suzanne is pissed. People who are always late are the least understanding about you being late.

Mads ventures back into the vast dystopian land of cranes and bridges and manufacturing. She chooses a street. To her new eyes, the sign says
EUROPEAN PAINTINGS
and not
1ST AVENUE
SOUTH.
She drives through
DUTCH AND FLEMISH 17TH CENTURY
and decides to turn down
AMERICAN PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE
(
S. SPOKANE
STREET
), which leads her neatly to the freeway. A person needs a map, is all.

Thomas's truck shudders over sixty-five. Mads arrives at the Bellaroses', sweaty and out of breath. Suzanne basically shoves poor Ivy into her arms and then takes off, tires screaming. Suzanne always speaks through objects. Tires and doors and Ivy.

“It's good to see you. It is so, so good to see you.” Mads says this to Ivy, but in her mind's eye, she is also saying it to Billy Youngwolf Floyd, the moment he runs up to Thomas's truck, the moment he speaks four words she never knew were magic:
Is it the battery?

•  •  •

“You can just go out with him and see what happens. Having a date doesn't mean you're marrying him. You can take it slow.” Mads sits on the edge of the bed in her room at Claire and Thomas's house. It's their former office/spare room, where they put in a twin bed for her. There's a big oak desk, too, and on it, a picture of Claire, Thomas, and Harrison standing near a fountain. Also—Harrison's first-grade school photo in a frame. In it, he looks serious and responsible, like he's about to come fix the air-conditioning unit in the apartment complex.

“He's so short, he's up to my eyebrows! His wife cheated on him. That's why he's divorced. He
wanted
to stay married. He's not the type to just up and leave, like some people we know.”

Mads likes that room, but right then, listening to her mother on the phone, she feels as if she's somewhere else. In a lake, where water-words are drowning her. In a desert, where her mother's voice rolls over her like waves of heat as she slowly melts.

“Good, then,” Mads says.

“Well, I'm in no hurry to be with a man. I like things the way they are, with you and me. Us girls. Boys just bring complications.”

I like complications
, Mads thinks.

There's a rap on the door, and Claire pokes her head in. “Dinner,” she mouths.

“Gotta go, Mom.”

“We barely got to talk.”

“Dinner's ready.”

“You hardly have five minutes for me anymore.”

Mads's chest squeezes with the bad/ungrateful/guilty feeling. She can be so selfish, she thinks. Selfish = bad person. She should be more generous. Even this guy, Jim Beam, will be gone soon enough. She knows this. Her mom will pick at him; she will jab and belittle. One day, he'll strike back, because he doesn't understand the rules, how you're supposed to keep the waters calm, and then it will be over. Everyone leaves Catherine Jaynes Murray, which means Mads never can.

On the other end of the phone, their home sounds empty and abandoned. Of course, Mads worries about
abandoned
. She's seen what it's done before. It turns her mom into all of the fairy-tale characters at once—the small, scared Gretel lost in the woods, and the angry, consuming witch with the oven and the house of candy.
She's a grown woman
, Mads's father would say, Claire would say, Thomas would say. But she isn't really. Mads understands that even the witch is just having a very large tantrum, even if it's hard to say what's worse, the small and scared or the angry and consuming.

“We'll talk tomorrow.”

“I wanted to tell you about a new listing I got.”

“Claire's calling.”

“I think it can go for over four hundred. It's got a view. The seller's a bitch, though. You know what she said?”

“Mom, I've got to go.”

Mads's mom sighs. The wind whistles through the desert. “Well, I'm off. I have work to do.”

“Love you.”

“I love you. I miss you so much. We'll talk tomorrow.”

•  •  •

“Mads, you barely ate anything,” Claire says. She slides the casserole dish of vegetarian lasagna toward her. “Thomas, give her another scoop.”

“I'm fine, Claire. It was delicious, thanks.”

“She's fine, Claire,” Thomas says. “A person gets to say whether they're hungry or not.” Thomas and Claire catch eyes, like television parents. Mads likes that.

“I'm just worried about you, sweetie. Not worry-worry—I know you can handle yourself. Just, you've gotten a little thin.”

“Lean and mean,” Thomas says.

“Bean and green,” Harrison says. “Weenie and peenie. Weenus and penis.”

“Harrison.”

“I just want to get to the library so I have enough time before it closes.” Mads pushes her chair back. She stacks Thomas's empty plate onto hers, gathers the utensils.

“I'm going, too,” Harrison says.

Claire shakes her head. “No, buddy. You and me, spelling words.”

“
C-O-N-C-E-R-N.
Extra-credit word. I don't need to practice. Mads said I'm the copilot.”

“Not
every
where,” Claire says.

“I take a really long time in the library,” Mads warns from the kitchen as she lines up the dishes in the dishwasher.