Essential Maps for the Lost (23 page)

“That's the key. Keep him there longer.”

“Yeah? How? Mess up his car, or something? I mean, as much as I might want to, I can't take a chance I'd hurt the guy. And I don't know shit about cars.”

“We've got to do something.”

“
We
. You said, ‘we,' Mads. I knew you'd say ‘we.' ” He spins her bracelet again. He grins, even though his eyes are serious. “Maybe we can't rescue a baby, but maybe we can rescue a dog. It's
something
.”

“Padlock, fence, car.” She thinks through the problems again.

“Let's go. I feel like that asshole is looking at me from here.”

•  •  •

This time, he heads straight to the garage of the U-Village shopping center. It's a funny place to park, but Mads doesn't even care. They face a cement wall. There's a sign on it that reads
LOAD, UNLOAD ONLY
. Personally, she'd rather unload. You can hear the screech of tires as they circle around the cement pillars, heading to
MORE PARKING, UPPER LEVEL
. In the side mirror, Mads sees a shopper with lots of bags, hunting for her car.

“I hate this thing,” Billy says. He jiggles the armrest. “Maybe there's a lever.” He searches around down by his seat and accidentally pops the hood. After getting out and slamming it shut, he's back. “Hell,” he says. “Whatever.”

He leans over and presses his mouth to hers, and dear God, Mads forgets about everything: her need to confess, her settled future, the ticking clock on her and Billy. All she can think—no, she's not thinking anymore. Thoughts turn liquid. They just kiss like crazy, and she grabs his hair and he grabs hers, and things get a little out of control.

Someone pulls into the spot next to them, and Billy mutters, “Jesus,” and sits back in his seat, and Mads twists her shirt back down from where it's hiked up.

“We've got to . . . ,” Mads says, but she doesn't know what they've got to do.

“This.”

“What?”

He reaches in his back pocket. He takes out his wallet, and then the map. He lays it on her leg as the driver next to them locks his car with the
beep beep
of his key fob. “We steal Casper. And then we head out of town.”

“You're crazy.”

“We won't hide in the toilets or anything, but we can
go
.”

“Go.”

“Yeah. A different life, right?”

“You're nuts.”

“Why?”

“I can't go. You know that. I've got, like, a month before I have to go back home.”

“It's not what you want.” He looks pissed. Like he could punch something.

“There are legal papers waiting for me. I have to go.”

“Fuck papers. You don't even want papers. Papers are only causing you misery, from what I can see.”

“I want papers more than I want the guilt of not having papers.”

“I'll go there, then.”

She's got no good answer for this. Just, the thought of him there, him and her mom, her friends from her past life, the whole picture—it's so wrong that it makes no sense. “God, Billy, do you know how late it is? We've been kissing here for hours.”

“Not long enough,” he says. “I could kiss you all life.”

•  •  •

Mads creeps up to her room. Her sandals hang from her fingertips, so her bare feet soften her step. It's a guilty hour. That hour says things.

“Mads?” Claire calls softly. “You home?”

“I'm here.” Damn that Claire. She always needs to make sure everyone is in their place before her day is done. It's very motherly. Not Mads's sort of mother, or Billy's, but the kind of mother you imagine.

“It's after one. I was getting worried.”

Mads doesn't want Claire to see her. The kissing, the entire night, has changed her once more. Claire will see that.

Claire waits there in the hall. Mads's politeness wins out as it always does. She cracks the door. Pops her head around it. “Sorry to worry you. We just . . . lost track of time.”

“Did you have a fun night with Ryan?”

“Yeah. We . . . went to the movies.”

“Mads.” Claire smiles. “Are you in love?”

“Oh my God, no.”

“I mean, it's okay if you are!”

“I'm not.”

“All right. No need to bite my head off.”

“Definitely not.”

“It's just . . . You look in love.”

Mads crosses her eyes, makes a scary jack-o'-lantern mouth.

“I mean, you could just
let
yourself, you know. See what happens.”

“No, Claire. He's not really even my type.”

“I don't want to talk you into the guy or anything, but sometimes not our type is exactly our type. You can be pretty similar inside, where it counts. You should have seen Thomas when we first met. He was in a band. You heard of KISS?”

“I think so.”

“Heavy metal? Painted white faces? Garish clowns from your worst nightmare? That's who they were trying to be. And here I was, Miss Prissy, Miss Straight-A. I don't know how to explain it, but just I
recognized
him. Like, our essential selves were the same, if that doesn't sound too paranormaly.”

“I couldn't feel that way about Ryan.”

“Okay.”

“This is just for . . . fun.”
Fun
is definitely not the right word. Not after the body in the water, and all that's happened since. “Plus, you know, he'll have to go back to La Conner by the end of the summer.”

“I thought you said his family was from Cape Cod.”

“Cape Cod! Right. Why'd I say La Conner? I don't even know where La Conner is.”

“Yeah. By the sound of his sister's wedding, I'm not thinking La Conner.”

“Wow, I'm tired. No wonder I'm not thinking straight.”

“Well, I'll let you get to sleep. Good night, sweetie.”

Mads gets into bed and shuts her eyes, and when she does, she sees Anna Youngwolf Floyd in the lake again. She feels the bump of the body against her. She wants to scream and rise from that bed and run, but a ghost needs to be seen and heard. Mads forces herself to imagine the alive Anna instead of that battered one, the Anna who cradled Billy as a baby, and washed his toddler face, and waited with him for the school bus. Anna once held Billy in her hands until she stood at the bridge and let him go. In a way, he's in Mads's hands now, because this is how it is with love. And she isn't holding carefully.

It's so, so late, but there's the curve of headlights turning into the Bellarose driveway. Suzanne or Carl likely drove off in anger, and is now returning. Mads thinks of the dear, sleeping lump of Ivy in her crib—her milky dreams and her satiny hair and her eyes that take in everything. She thinks of Casper. It's so scary, the way we rely on others to do right by us. She thinks about Billy again.
You and me.
That map, spread out.
We steal Casper. And then we head out of town
.

The body bumps her again. Ghosts just don't quit. She squeezes her eyes shut until she sees stars, clenches her fingernails into the palms of her fists.

Mess up his car, or something? I don't know shit about cars.

I don't know shit about cars.

But Mads does.

At least, Cole, who's worked at Rainier Auto Repair his whole life, does, and one day after school, Mads stood beside him in the garage of Rainier Auto Repair, as she did every now and then after school. They stared at an engine under a hood, and she felt like the student doctor during the open-heart surgery.

What's wrong with this one?

Nothing. Not a single thing. Someone swapped the spark plug wires. See here? This guy, and this guy, just like that. Just pull, then switch. Do you know how long it took us to figure it out? Long. Someone didn't want this car to go anywhere.

She opens her eyes, glances at the clock by the bed. Past two now. She shouldn't call. A call at two a.m. says
I can't stop thinking about you.
It says
You
saw
me
, and
You waited for me all day to
hear
me
, and it says
We could be a
team
, me with my violin case, you with your map.

But her phone is in her hand anyway, and she's dialing, and he picks up on one ring.

“I was lying here thinking about you,” he says.

She feels a warm rush. It's all gold lights, a sunrise.

“Get over here,” he says.

“I'm not calling for
that
. I'm calling for a perfectly practical reason.”

“Too bad.”

“Quit it. This is important. It's about Casper. It's about two spark plugs.”

“I've looked at the videos, Mads. I'm afraid I'd kill the guy. I don't know a spark plug from a . . . from whatever else is in there.”

“I do.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“You're kidding me.”

“No. It just hit me.”

“Okay, Claude, when do we bust out of here? And how?”

Of course she knows the line. Jamie says it just after Claudia chooses him to accompany her on the greatest adventure of their lives. She knows what comes next, too.

“Here's the plan. Listen carefully,” she says.

“Don't tell me. You're
in love
.” Gran pours some food into Ginger's dish. At the sound, the dog runs in like she's got the winning lottery ticket. Billy feels sorry that brown crunchy stuff is as exciting as things get for Ginger. If he could, he'd give her a hundred dog butts to sniff, or a steak a day. He swirls the last of his morning coffee in his cup.

“Why do you make that sound like a bad thing?”

“You look like a goon, is all, the way you're smiling.”

He hears it—the jab of the dagger, the vial of poison, the
accusation
. Still, he makes a face. His mother would have been drawn right into this fight. But Billy won't. No way. He only crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue. Here you go, old woman, love looks like this, and this, and this. He rams his fingers in his armpits and gives an apelike scratch,
ooh-ooh-ooh
s like a stupid goon, because he'd rather be the biggest and most hopeful fool than a bitter, hardened person too scared to risk passion. He has his mother's face and his father's lean build, but he'll tell you something right now. He's his own self. His mom and dad dropped an egg on the earth, and it cracked open, and out he came, made from them but different from them. He has to be. He
will
be.

“Well, as you prance around, just remember all the good love did
her
,” Gran says.

She means Mom, in that blue-gray urn on the mantel. Billy's last swallow of coffee suddenly tastes like ass water. Why, why does Gran do this every time he feels okay? The dagger slices now, and he feels his guts about to spill. He could cry, but he also feels fury rise up his throat. He wants to push Gran down, smother her with the couch cushion so he never has to hear another word from her pinched, mean mouth.

And look at that. In spite of his good intentions, she got him. No contest. She's a master. In the past, he only watched this from the stands. All these years, he thought he could do better, just like most spectators.

He was wrong. He gets it now. He's sorry, so sorry, he didn't get it before. And you know what? His mom shouldn't have to stay here, locked in battle with Gran forever. Neither should he. The thing is, if you try and try to drive people away, you shouldn't be surprised when they finally go.

“I thought you told me I should live my life.”

“What are you saying?” Gran looks up from the cupboard where she's fetching a pan to fry up some eggs. He can't believe how indignant she looks. It's funny what happens when you call people on their bullshit. The worst offenders always feel the most wronged.

“I'm saying, you always tell me to live my life, but then you remind me I'm living my life.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It's true.”

“You little shit,” she says. But it's all disbelief, not anger. She looks like she might cry. Bullies always crumple.

The weakness kills him, though. Give him meanness and the blade anytime. Right then, her old eyes fill with tears and for one second, one split second, he understands feeling like such a disappointment, such a worthless ghost-child, that you could walk to the rail of that bridge and fling your legs over. “Gran, I'm sorry. But, come on. You keep . . .” He doesn't even know how to sum up what she keeps doing. It's all strange stuff he can't even describe in regular words. “I'm seeing a girl, so? So, yeah, I like her a lot. So what?”

“I'm asking questions, is all. Who is she? Where'd she come from all of a sudden? You don't even know her. She just
showed up
and now you're all off in your own world.”

“Maybe it's fate, Gran. Maybe God. Maybe Mom.”

She snorts. He should never have said it. Still, none of those things—not fate, not God, not Mom—should be snorted at.

“You think being paranoid about everyone is gonna keep you safe?”

“
You
safe.”

Now
he
snorts. “I gotta go to work.”

“I'm just asking a question. I'm only looking out for you. I don't get why she never comes around here. You never bring her around.”

“Look at you! You gotta ask? My mother is in a fucking
vase
. . . .” Jesus, why did he say that? Why, why, why? He wants to take it back. It makes him hate himself. He wants to slice his arms and gouge his eyes for being so horrible.

He's
got
to get out of here. He can't stand it anymore. At first, he had nowhere to go. Gran needed him. They only had each other. But lately, with her, he can feel the real-life Night Worlds around him, the dark chambers of loathing. Shame and rage duel, and the blood of that ancient pair soaks through the layers of his skin and sinks into his spirit. The creature who emerged from the cracked shell—he has to start walking if he wants to survive.