Essential Maps for the Lost (18 page)

She doesn't get far. She begins to stroke to the end of the pool, and then she opens her eyes. There are limbs, kicking legs, floating arms, flashes of color and swoops of hair. Mads starts to feel funny. She manages to find a spot to kick-turn back, but just before she reaches the end, the inevitable happens. She bumps a body. It's a girl, maybe fourteen, wearing a two-piece with stars on it, and she's only back-floating, gazing at the sky and the tree branches above, flapping her arms by her side and fluttering her feet, but it's enough. There's flesh against her flesh.

Mads panics. Flurries upright. She tries to walk. The water pushes against her, an impossible force. This was a wrong move, a bad decision. The water had belonged to Mads for years, swimming had, it was hers, but she's not the same person anymore. The moment she collided with Anna Youngwolf Floyd, she became someone else.

So, you're feeling better already, are you?
the ogres chuckle. Um, no.
They
are the bosses here. They will allow or not allow. Mads reaches the stairs. Only kids and middle-aged ladies and old men use the stairs, but she grips the railing, stumbles to the lawn. She sets her forehead against the trunk of the tree where her things are. She tries to breathe. She can't breathe. There's this crushing, stabbing. The red-suited female lifeguard is beside her. She is the former Mads, looking at who Mads is now and wondering what's gone wrong.

“You okay?”

“Just a cramp.”

“Okay. Stretch it out.”

Cold flesh, bloated body, battered by the fall. Blank eyes. Eyes that are forever gone. This is how desperate you might get, if you couldn't release yourself from the things that could drown you.

Something is pressing hard on her chest. She fights for air. In her bag, her phone begins to ring. Just as she is thinking so hard about his mother, there is Billy Youngwolf Floyd himself, as if he can read her mind.

“Were you
ever
going to call me?” he asks.

I did
, she wants to say.
I just did, and you answered.

Mads sounds strange. She's out of breath or something. He told himself he wasn't going to be some weird stalker, but, Jesus, the whole weekend passed, and now it's Monday, and he thought he'd never hear from her again. Not that he just sat there all weekend checking his phone or anything. He saw Casper both days, and on Saturday, there was this bonfire at the beach at Golden Gardens, and Sunday was his mother's birthday. He and Gran walked around sad all day until he wanted to run away and join a fucking rock band or something.

Still. Every time he looked at his phone and there was no call, no text, nothing, he wondered if he'd gotten it wrong. That Friday-night call—it seemed like something important had happened between them. He just feels this
pull
toward her. Maybe it's only his pull and not her pull, but that's not usually how it works with pulls like that. Not that he has a lot of experience, but it seems like a pull is fate and fate is mutual.

“Are you all right? I can barely hear you.”

“I said, I didn't want to give the wrong idea. By calling.”

“We're friends, right? That means you can call anytime.”

“I don't know, Billy.” She sounds like she might cry.

“Is this okay? I mean, I don't want to be pushing you into something you don't want.”

He remembers the time Leigh broke up with Alex. Quentin brought over this stupid book about dating and knowing when to move on. He thought he was doing some intervention. He read parts out loud until Alex got pissed, and then they just played Night Worlds, and Alex used Barbarian Rage to wipe Quentin out. But Billy never forgot what that book said about girls who don't make any moves back. Man, love drives you crazy.

She says something he can't quite make out. The barking dogs in Heartland aren't helping. He heads outside. “What was that again?”

“I said, I just need you to be the one to call.”

He tries to make sense of this. He sits down at the curb in front of the Rescue Center. He watches a garbage truck pass; a couple of guys swing off and bang some cans around. One of them shouts something bossy. “You need me to call so it's kind of like my idea and not yours?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I can do that!” He sounds way too eager. He needs to bring it down a notch. “You know, whatever.” On her end of the phone, he hears a bunch of kids screaming and running around. She's probably at the park with Ivy. Her voice still seems different, though. Like she's bent over, upset. “You sure you're all right?”

“Better now. A lot.”

Amy's at the window, watching him. She looks mad, probably because of the big smile on his face. The
Better now
makes him feel pretty damn great. It isn't just any old
Better now.
It means better now because of him, and this plus Amy's pissed-off look . . . Well, you can't blame him if he's suddenly shot full of confidence. “You were just waiting for me, huh? Admit it. You were counting the minutes till I called.” He doesn't tease like this with many people. Mom, Gran, Alex, and not even always him.

“You think so?”

“You're practically crying tears of joy now that you heard from me.”

“Maybe I am.”

That sits there between them for one beautiful second. One beautiful freckle-nose, tan-arm, leather-bracelet, goodhearted, bad-eyesighted second.

“Hotshot,” she says.

•  •  •

He doesn't mind being the one to call, are you kidding? He calls, and meets her and Ivy for a stroller walk around Green Lake. He calls, and they go to see
Rio Rialto
at the Grand Illusion. He calls, and they get dinner at Uneeda Burger. He calls, and they talk and talk and talk on the phone until it's late. He calls, and on that Saturday, they meet in Fremont and drop her car off, because he has a surprise.

He can't wait—she's going to love this. It's a great idea because of the map. He drives them downtown in his mother's truck. It's strange, Mads being inside it. He's with a person his mother never met, in a place where he still smells his mother's hand lotion if he concentrates hard. He's maybe in love with a person his mother never met and never will meet. It makes him sad for himself, but even sadder for his mom. Right now, Mads holds the little beaded doll that his mother kept in her ashtray. Mads doesn't ask about it, and she doesn't comment on the seventies music blaring from the radio, either. She just turns the doll in her palm and puts it back. The lotion smell, the doll, the music—it makes Billy feel like his mom and Mads are together in some way.

He heads down the big hill by the waterfront, crosses the downtown streets full of tourists and shoppers. He makes her shut her eyes until they get there.

“Open,” he says.

She does. “Really?” She stares up at the tall glass building with its bold sign,
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
, and at the iron man statue with his slowly swinging hammer.

He just grins like crazy.

“This is so sweet.”

She gets it. She understands. It isn't
the
museum, but it's as close as he can get. He doesn't know shit about art. He even shaved and dressed up a little, put on one of his good shirts and his good shoes, because he doesn't know what people wear to places like this.

The floors are really shiny. His dress shoes tap against the wood. He pulls at his cuffs, since this is the only nice shirt he has besides the funeral one, and he got it a few years ago for a holiday thing at school. People sit on benches and look at the paintings like they understand what they mean, though they're probably faking it. Mads seems giddy. He catches her running her fingertips along a velvet rope. She jokes about where he could hide his violin case.

“Perfect!” She points to a large sixteenth-century Chinese vase. “How about here?” Inside a Tlingit canoe.

“I like this place, but we need the real thing,” Billy says.

“Definitely,” Mads says.

Mads doesn't know it, but he's leading her to Decorative Arts. He looked it up online. There are no giant beds in the museum, mostly just chairs and cabinets and settees, so he decided to bring her to the Italian Room instead. He'd never even heard the word
settee
before, but now he knows it's just a fancy name for a little couch.

“Wow,” she says.

It's all warm, glowing wood, ceiling to floor. They're surrounded by it, just like in the picture. No one's in there but them. The room is mostly empty—it's just chiseled wood columns and swirled wood arches and an ornate wood ceiling. There's a huge, carved mantel and frosted windows made of circles of glass that look like the bottoms of old Coke bottles.

He has not touched her since he kissed her that day at Agua Verde. Except for a hug good-bye after the movie, they're friends, and friends don't kiss the way he wants to. But now, in the Italian Room, he takes her fingers in his. He pulls her toward him.

“You know what?” he asks.

“What?”

“Don't get that look.”

“What look?”

“That rolling eyes look. I'm being serious.”

“Exactly. That's why you're getting the rolling eyes look.”

“I think it's time.” He yanks her hand. Sometimes you need to be serious. Especially when you're going to kiss someone again.

“Time for what?”

“To stop being friends.”

He leans in, and she turns her head. Their chins bump, and it gets awkward with his mouth suddenly next to her face. He goes to Plan B, hugs her instead. He can feel the warmth of her. It's driving him crazy. Her heart beats against his chest.
It's enough
, he thinks.
Better than nothing.

A guard wanders past. They step away from each other.

“This is where I'd put that cool bed,” Billy says.

“Yeah. It's perfect.”

“We need to see the real thing,” he says again.

It's like his mind has a plan.
Like?
Ha. He has a plan, and he knows it.

•  •  •

He's got to tell her about his mom. The longer he waits, the weirder it's getting. He's been keeping this secret, and he doesn't want it between them anymore. He doesn't want anything between them. She should know who he really is.

It could ruin everything. If he tells, if he doesn't tell—either way he's screwed. It's a confession. The minute he says it, she'll see the stain on him. You aren't supposed to think like that, but you can't help how it feels. She'll hear the story, and she'll feel sorry for him, but maybe she'll want to step back, too. His own mother destroyed herself and he wasn't able to stop it, and he wasn't enough to stay for. What then? You just offer your broken self to someone else and say,
Here
?

It's a weight, and like all weights, you get tired of carrying it, if you're lucky. Billy and Mads walk down by the waterfront. They pass the docks with the shops, and even the aquarium near the spot where the big cruise ships come in.

“Why don't we ever meet at your house?” he asks her.

“Why don't we ever meet at
yours
?”

“My gran can't mind her own business.”

“Same with my aunt.”

“I don't want to be some secret.”

“You're not.”

“No?”

They stop talking, just walk and walk, and she looks out toward the sound like she has things on her mind, too. They're all the way down at the sculpture garden. They collapse by the statue of the enormous typewriter eraser.

“I can't move,” she says. She's flat out on the grass, her body an X. He wants to lie right down on top of her, kiss her, feel every bit of her, make babies and marry her and be with her forever. A kiss would be good to start. He looks down into her flushed face and she sits up.

“Billy.”

“I have something I have to tell you.”

“Me too,” she says.

“It's about my mom.”

“I know.”

“You know?” Well, he's been hinting. He tried a million times to tell her without telling her. “I didn't want to say it. She's only been gone for a few months. Jesus.”

His throat gets all tight. He drops his head across his folded arms. He feels her small hand on his back.

“I know she . . .”

“Yeah, she . . .” He talks into his sleeve. In some ways, he hopes she can't hear him, even though he doesn't want to repeat this story ever again. He just keeps his head bent, lets the words sink toward the ground.

“You can tell me. It's okay.”

“She . . . I was at work. A few months ago.” He could be sick, just remembering it. “I was in the dayroom with all the dogs, and they were running around, and I was tossing a ball, like nothing. And then Jane shows up, and she says, ‘Billy. Sweetheart.' ”

He's not sure he can finish. His voice starts to wobble, just thinking of Jane standing there. You do what you can to keep it all away so that this very thing doesn't happen, this rushing in, this tsunami wave. (First, the ocean appears to drain, then comes the hundred-foot swell, he saw it on a nature show.) Billy doesn't realize—grief is every person's natural disaster.

“As soon as I saw Jane, I knew. I knew it was terrible. Only, I didn't know how terrible.”

“Oh, Billy.”

Fuck. Fuck! He's crying. He's sobbing, and this is why he didn't want to say anything. He's all crushed wreckage now. “Jane says, ‘Sweetheart? It's your mom.' And we'd been through this so many times, but I could tell it was different. She, you know, she was depressed for years. Years, before me, even.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“She . . .” He's blubbering. His voice is high, strangled, and he sounds like a big damn baby. “They just laid her off, and I guess we were having more money problems than she ever said, but I could've helped! I have a job. I just bought shit with that money.”