Essential Maps for the Lost (11 page)

“I'll stay in the kids' section,” Harrison says. “You won't even have to watch me. I'll make sure no one kidnaps me. Someone tries to snatch me—”

“Put that down,” Claire says.

Mads hears the
Ha-hoo
that is Harrison getting the bad guy with his samurai sword/butter knife.

“You can't follow me around,” Mads calls.

“I wooon't!”

It's still light out. As they drive, Harrison announces every license plate from another state until Mads tells him to shut up. He rides with his wallet on his lap. He loves that wallet, but there's not much in it, Mads knows. A couple of dollars, and his library card, and an old movie ticket to
Space Fighters
.

Mads strolls around the kids' section with Harrison for a while. “You don't have to stay,” he says. “Who's following who?”

“All right.” She's already found what she came for anyway. “Be free, big man.”

Mads collects a few other books. This time, they're camouflage, the way guys in teen movies buy Red Vines and car magazines along with their condoms.

“God, Hare,” Mads says. “How can you even carry all those? Do you need help?”

“I'm done. Let's get outta here.” He sounds like a gangster after the holdup. The library always makes Mads feel like she's just pulled off a big score, too.

At home, Harrison lays his stash out around him, same as Mads used to when trick-or-treating was through. Thomas pats a spot on the couch and Mads sits with him and Claire as they watch some show. She's being polite. She laughs when they laugh and grimaces when they groan, but she's not paying a bit of attention to that TV. The book is calling to her, as books do. As stories do. As Billy Youngwolf Floyd's story does, especially.

She makes her escape as soon as she can. Now that she's finally alone with the book in her room, she takes her time. Anticipation is a warm bath to soak in. She tucks her knees in just so. She reads the back of the book, then the front pages where the reviews are. Finally, the first lines.
To my lawyer, Saxonberg: I can't say that I enjoyed your last visit. It was obvious that you had too much on your mind to pay any attention to what I was trying to say. . . .

Then:
Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back
. Mads loves how it's written with a God voice, a voice with all-knowing wisdom. In this case, God is Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but still. These are E. L. Konigsburg's words (and what is
she
like? The book says she lives in Port Chester, which sounds like a perfect town with perfect green lawns and definitely, most definitely, television parents), but they're not just her words anymore. They belong to Mads now, and to Billy, and to a million other people. It's strange, because the story seems to have stayed exactly the same since Mads read it last, but it has changed, too. It's new again, read with older eyes. It's strange how a book is both steady and mutable.

Mads stops reading, looks at the black, chicken-scratch pictures. And, then, finally, she opens the book to the middle. She squinches—her glasses are here somewhere, but whatever—and makes out the tiny words.
French Impressionists
. Where is Billy's own map right now? she wonders. Back in his pocket? Set on a nightstand? In his own hands? Could they be gazing at
Far Eastern Art
at the same time, like distant lovers with the moon? He said the map had belonged to someone, and Mads can guess who. She is certain it was his mother's. She studies it for what it might have meant to them.
Greek and Roman Art. Great Hall. Arms and Armor
.

Mads can almost hear the tap of her own heels on the floor.
American Wing. Art of India.
She feels the cool hush of history, the secret tales of jeweled swords and necklaces in the shape of tigers and oil paint so real that you're sure a king's eyes follow you. She's filled with a longing to
be
there. A map can make you want things, and a book can open a door—a door to the main staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which leads to a long hallway with a velvet rope, heading to an angel statue that might transform you. Like Anna Youngwolf Floyd, like Billy himself, Mads wants to stay there for a while. In that place, there are no parents and no guilt. No ogres are allowed in. There is only a boy and a girl who become a team, whose ordinary lives fall away because one day they decide that it will be so.

Oh, Billy Youngwolf Floyd and his mother have gotten inside her, settled right in to disturb her soul and rustle her heart. They are there to cause some trouble, big trouble. Map or no map, fate or no fate, trouble has a job to do.

Wreck stuff. And wreck it good.

He should have picked her up. Just because he didn't want to meet some father in a tie, it was chickenshit not to do it. Billy's not a tie-type person, and he doesn't know tie-type people, so the whole neckwear idea makes him nervous. His dad wore one only once, in that box, which is a pretty bad place to finally try to straighten up, in Billy's opinion. Billy's glad he didn't have to see his mom all waxy and
gone
like that. Better to remember her the way she was, at least, the way she was when she was doing okay. Like that day she got the job at the rental car place and she brought home burgers and shakes from Dick's and said,
Life is funny
, in a way that meant it was good. Like when she'd hug him hard and he'd say,
Mom, stop
, even though he didn't really want her to. Or when she'd do something silly like sock him with a pillow or pat his head or tell him,
You're the best, that's what you are
, and he knew, no doubt, how much she loved him.

The only guy he knows who wears a tie is Uncle Nate, his dad's half brother. At least, he wore one in that newspaper article about him and the software company he started. Billy doesn't really know him. Couple times he's called to see if Billy needs anything, like a job. He seemed like a really nice guy. But Billy never called “Uncle Nate” back because it feels disloyal. His mom could get almost jealous about his dad's side of the family, and Gran doesn't trust his uncle, says he's up to something. She says,
Blood may be thicker than water, but what do you want when you're thirsty?

These particular thoughts make Billy more nervous than he is already. He pretends to study the menu in the plastic box outside Agua Verde. He tries to look casual. He used some of that cologne in the bottle with the horse-head cap that Gran got him one Christmas, but now it's all he can smell. He tastes it, even. It's going to give Madison Murray a headache. He tried to splash it on his cheeks, but it got all over the front of his shirt. The cap always makes him think of the
Godfather
movie, with the horse head in the bed. First time he watched that, he cried his eyes out, like some big-ass baby. He was eight, okay? The babysitter let him watch it, and his mom was
pissed.

Tonight, no matter what, he's going to tell Madison about seeing her stalking J.T. Jones. It feels like a lie otherwise. It's funny, but he's got this weird thought: He wants to do everything right with her. He doesn't even know her. Maybe she's lazy or thinks she's hot shit or maybe she's a cat person. He doesn't think so, though. It's dangerous to
hope
like this. Already, there's a little flame of it, and he wants to cup his hands around it so it doesn't blow out.

She's coming. He hears that truck two blocks away. He acts like he doesn't notice. He's calm and casual, just looking at that menu. He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels, like some young Hollywood mogul. He feels Hollywood; things are going his way. His hair turned out good. He's all Charm Spell.

Billy's been looking at that menu so long, he can tell you that you can add chicken, steak, or pork to the taco ensalada for four bucks, and shrimp for five. She's walking across the parking lot now. Even if he didn't see her coming, he bets he could feel it.
She's
the one with a Spell-Like Ability. She probably doesn't even know it. She
should
know it. If you can use a Spell-Like Ability at will, it's limitless.

She's hurrying, breathing funny, in and out, in and out, like Mom did after she signed up for that mindfulness course they gave at the hospital. He hated that class, because his mom would chew her food real slow, and gaze out at some cloud like she'd never seen one before. Jesus, it was annoying. Thankfully that lasted about two weeks. It would have been great if it was some amazing cure, but staring too long and chewing too slow didn't look all that different from her bad days, only with the fake-ass smile of fake woo-woo bliss.

Stop! No more of these thoughts. This is his night. A person who jumps from a bridge goes out making sure you know how unhappy they are, and you'll never forget it. They have the final say, and you'll always remember how you let them down and weren't enough to stay for. But what they did shouldn't wreck everything even if it wrecked everything.

“Hey,” Madison Murray says. “I'm sorry I'm late. I hate being late. It's so rude.”

“Hey, no worries.”

She wears a blue skirt and a flowered top and sandals and that bracelet. He really likes that bracelet. Maybe it's his favorite piece of jewelry a girl ever wore, if you can even call it jewelry. It's just leather strands woven in a braid. It makes him think of tree branches and nests.

Madison takes a pinch of her shirt and waves it in and out. “Whew. That was crazy. The people I babysit . . . Man, sometimes . . .”

“Yeah?” Wow, she smells good. Even over all his own cologne, he can smell it. Tangerines, or something else that's summer.

“Big fight. I didn't think I'd get out of there.”

“Other people fighting is the worst.”

“Really.”

“I'd rather be fighting myself than not fighting and hearing other people fight.” Ugh! Mouthful of moron.

She laughs. “Exactly.”

The restaurant is packed. It's a casual place, stuck out over the water. You order at a counter, then bring your own drinks to your table. He starts to worry. Plastic cups, someone's napkin on the floor . . . He hopes she can see past how regular it is. He's a plastic cup guy, not some thin-stemmed wineglass guy. Is it possible she doesn't want a thin-stemmed wineglass guy? Maybe he'll be that when he's forty, but probably not. The food is great, that's the point.

“This is great,” she says. They've carried their food to one of the outside tables by the water, and now napkins are piling up, because the burritos are good and messy. She's talking with her mouth full, and this makes him so happy he can barely stand it.

“Isn't it?”

“Fantastic.” At least, he thinks that's what she says. He can't really tell. She's downing that thing like she hasn't eaten in days, but so is he.

“I could eat five of these right now.”

“Mmphh,” she says.

They sit near the path off Boat Street, which curves along the narrow channel of water in front of the University of Washington. A couple passes, pushing a stroller, and two girls ride by on bikes, their wheels going
zzzz
. It's the perfect time to tell her that he knows all about her and J.T., so he'd better snag it. Perfect times are always numbered.

“You go to school?”

“Community college. Bellevue.”

“You trek over to the Eastside, huh? That's a bitch.” He's trying to work it into the conversation, but it's not easy.
So, I saw you stalking some guy, and hey, it's fine. I get it.

“It's not too bad.”

Just be natural!
Acting natural is hardly ever natural, that's for sure.
Come on!
“Did you go to Blanchet?”

“Blanchet?”

“I mean, I'm guessing. I never saw you around Roosevelt.”

“Oh! A school! I thought maybe, I don't know. A store or something. I'm not from around here.”

“You're not?”

“Eastern Washington. I've only been here a couple months. I'm staying with my aunt and uncle while I do this real estate licensing course. I'm going home in September.”

He doesn't even hear this at first, the true and most important point, the declaration of The End. He can only think what a fast mover that asshole J.T. Jones is. Make a girl fall in love with you practically right when she sets foot in the city and then ditch her so her heart breaks before she barely gets a chance to fucking unpack . . .

“I think you might know someone I know,” Billy says.

Madison knocks over her drink. He always gets too many napkins, so no problem. He pats and soaks, and she's half-standing and red-faced. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I'm so sorry.”

“Hey, it's okay.”

“I should have said something before.”

“You couldn't have known I knew the guy.”

“The guy?”

“J.T.! What a douche.”

Her eyebrows bow down like two caterpillars being introduced. “Such a douche,” she says. She looks shocked. Shit! He doesn't want to make her feel bad. Everyone falls in love with an asshole at least once in their life. Look at his mom. More than once. People who think they're above that—they're idiots, if you ask him. He hears people, girls, say it all the time. I
would never . . .
Oh, yeah? Congratulate yourself all you want, but you don't know what you might do when you look at someone and they look at you and they're everything bad you've ever secretly wanted. Humans are human, even the ones who think they're so smart.

“I saw you a couple times. Outside his house. I used to live near there.”

“Oh my God! I feel awful. . . . I have to explain.”