Ex-mas (5 page)

"Ha-ha," Lila deadpanned, suddenly glad that Cooper had her phone, so Beau couldn't hear that her ringtone was the latest Justin Timberlake song.

Not that she cared what he thought, but she couldn't handle a lecture about what constituted good music according to Beau right now.

"No answer," Beau said, punching the off button. He crossed his arms over his chest and cocked an eyebrow at her. "What now?"

She loved how he did that--threw the bal squarely in her court. Like it was up to her to figure it out because
he
couldn't watch two kids for a couple of hours. Not that this surprised

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Lila in the least. She'd always had to initiate everything during their relationship. She'd even instigated their first kiss!

Not that this was the time to be thinking about that.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Beau asked, puzzled.

"Like what?" It was like when faced with this much exposure to Beau, she reverted to the last time they'd had this much sustained interaction: freshman year. When al she'd wanted to do was scream at him until he changed his depressing downward trajectory.

"Like you want to yel at me."

"I don't want to yel at you," Lila lied. She rubbed at her temples, fighting off an impending Cooper and Beau-related headache. "I don't care about you enough to yel at you. I just want to find my brother and go home and read about the party I'm supposed to be having via other people's Tweets okay?"

But when she looked back at Beau, there was the oddest expression on his face, almost as if she'd hurt his feelings. Then his phone beeped and the

usual mocking look returned.

Lila glared at the iPhone.

"Is it him?" she demanded. "He total y stole my phone, didn't he?"

"Uh, yeah," Beau said, his attention on the screen. He shook his head. "And that's pretty much the least of our problems right now."

He held out the phone so Lila could read the text Cooper

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had sent: WE'RE GOING TO THE NORTH POLE TO SAVE SANTA--BACK IN TIME FOR XMAS.

"I'm going to kil him!" She snatched the phone out of Beau's hand. She punched the buttons to redial her own cel phone, her anger mounting with each ring.

"Um, hel o?" came a voice, high and giggling.

"You're dead, Cooper," Lila snapped at him. "Do you understand me? Tel me where you are!"

"Good idea," Beau said sarcastical y, standing right next to her. "Threaten him. That should do the trick."

Lila turned her back on him. "Cooper!" she yel ed. "I'm serious!"

But al she heard in reply was laughter.

Beau reached over and plucked the phone from Lila's fingers. "Cooper," he said into the phone. "Put Tyler on" He paused. Then, in a much friendlier tone than the one he'd been using on Lila, he said, "Tyler, man, where are you guys? Mom's going to freak"

Lila couldn't stand the fact that she couldn't hear what Tyler was saying, so she moved closer to Beau, sticking her head next to his so she could hear.

He threw a startled look her way, but tilted the phone toward her.

"You took a cab, huh? But you can't take one al the way to Santa's. The North Pole is far away, especial y for two little guys," Beau continued, reasonably. "Don't you think?"

"It's okay," Tyler piped up. "We can do it."

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"We can take care of ourselves!" Cooper said in the background. "Santa needs us!"

"Santa real y does need us," Tyler said very seriously. "Someone has to help him."

Lila could feel the glare that Beau leveled at the side of her head. She raised her chin in defiance, but didn't respond.

"If you tel us where you are," she said in a cajoling voice, "maybe we can help you help him."

"We
don't need your help!" Cooper cried, and then there was more laughter. Lila was about to lose it and start screaming when another noise sounded in the background.

It was a PA system, and it was very distinct: ALL ABOARD! "Gotta go!" Tyler said with a giggle, and the line went dead. Lila and Beau stared at each other for a frozen moment, each waiting to see if the other had heard.

"They took a cab to--" Beau began.

"The train station," Lila finished, hope and relief exploding in her chest.

"Let's go," Beau said at once.

Lila fol owed him through the house and out the back door into the garage. She was so focused on finding Cooper and putting an end to this nonsense

that she barely noticed Beau's beat-up old Escort, complete with the sorts of bumper stickers you'd expect from an angry hipster dude intent on alienating himself from the rest of the world.

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She slid into the passenger seat and eyed Beau, who was, after al , the exact sort of scruffy guy you'd expect to be driving this car. She wondered

which obscure band he'd tattooed on his back or around his calf in the last few years, and was only mildly surprised that he wasn't sporting more piercings. He stil had only the one--a silver hoop in his left ear, attached in the middle instead of the lobe.

She leaned back into the bucket seat and closed her eyes. She just needed to get her hands on Cooper, and then she'd be done with al of this--crappy

car, pissy ex-boyfriend, and everything else so typical y and annoyingly Beau.

Soon,
she thought,
just like our relationship, it will be like none of this ever happened.

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Chapter 6

***

LOS ANGELES

DECEMBER 22

3:47 P.M.

***

Lila flicked a look at him but didn't answer. His tone did not bode wel . It reminded her of many past conversations in which Beau dissected her seemingly endless character flaws.
Yay.
She belted herself into the passenger seat and tried to get warm by rubbing her hands together. The temperature was fal ing, and the wind was kicking up outside, making the trees sway and rustle. The houses on Beau's street were decked out in Christmas lights, with fake snowmen on the green lawns and reindeer posed beneath the palm trees. It was the start of the holiday weekend, and everyone was preparing to

enjoy themselves.

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Everyone except Lila.

"I mean, did you even think for five seconds what Cooper might do?" Beau continued. "When you basical y told him Santa Claus was in mortal danger?

"

Oh, right. She should have guessed immediately. The Beau Hodges Blame Game.

"I don't know," she said, pretending to think it over. Beau drove way too fast down the residential backstreets of their town, headed for the train station at a speed that would get them a hefty speeding ticket if clocked. "I guess I thought that maybe it would be cool to ignore two eight-year-olds for two hours and then act al shocked and surprised that something happened to them while they were unsupervised." She looked at him. "Oh no, wait. That's you."

"I'm not the one who provoked them!" Beau barely halted at a stop sign and then floored the gas pedal through an intersection. Lila's head rocked back against the headrest like they were on a rol er coaster. Why was she not surprised that he was a crazy driver?

"Maybe not," Lila said, "but you did ignore them, didn't you?"

Beau turned his right signal on and gunned it around a corner. "Cooper and Tyler have played together, without incident, at least ten mil ion times while I played a little guitar downstairs. Why was today any different? Because Cooper got hit with Hurricane Lila."

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"Hurricane Lila," she echoed derisively. "Cute. You have names for me, stil . After al these years."

"You didn't think before you dropped the global warming thing on Cooper," Beau said. He was vibrating with tension al of a foot away from her, clearly fighting for control. "You just wanted to hurt him."

"You're right," Lila snapped. "I did. Better he learns now that if you mess with people, you might get messed with in return." She sniffed. "It's practical y a public service."

"What about the part where you're
ten years older
than him, and should maybe figure out how to be the bigger person?"

She suddenly remembered their shared art class in sixth grade, when they had to make papier-mâché animals for a class project. Lila's pig had been

lopsided and soggy, and in no way resembled a pig of any kind. She thought it was hilarious, and named the lumpy thing Gerald. Beau, on the other hand, had painstakingly constructed a life-size, anatomical y correct rooster. Even then, he thought he was better than her.

"Ever considered the possibility that watching the kids might mean, you know,
watching them?"
Lila asked with acid sweetness. "Instead of hiding in your basement pretending someone cares if you can play al of 'Jesus of Suburbia'?"

"You know what, Lila?" Beau's voice was angry and tight. Lila knew she'd scored a direct hit, and wished that felt a little more satisfying. "I think maybe we should both just shut up."

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Lila pursed her lips but didn't say another word as Beau careened into the train station parking lot. They leaped out of the car as soon as it screeched to a stop, and sprinted toward the station doors. Beau ran ahead of her, his lanky legs taking long strides. He wasn't even a little breathless when they got inside. Their eyes wildly searched the nearly empty terminal. The long rows of plastic seats were dotted with only a few commuters, most reading the

newspaper or quietly talking on the phone.

Lila scanned and re-scanned the scene, seeing only the same handful of people, none of them two mischievous little boys. "I don't see them," she said angrily. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," he replied in a similar, clipped tone. He jerked his chin in the direction of a nearby Amtrak worker. "Maybe somebody noticed them."

Lila fol owed him over to a woman in an Amtrak uniform, with the biggest, roundest, red hair she had ever seen. It skyrocketed off her head and was

hair-sprayed into a glossy bouffant. Lila had to force herself not to stare openly.

"I'm sorry to bother you," Beau said, with an easy politeness. Lila gaped. Since when was Beau charming? "But have you seen two little boys running around here, by any chance? Al alone?"

"They're both about this big," Lila chimed in, holding her hand just above her waist. "One wears Harry Potter glasses, and the other one has a mess of freckles and was wearing a bright green sweatshirt."

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"I was wondering who was supposed to be with those two," the older woman replied, shaking her head. Her gaze turned faintly accusing. "They had online tickets, but they seemed a little young to be traveling to Seattle al by themselves."

"Seattle?" Lila could not possibly have heard that right. She ignored the accusing look and matching tone from Mrs. Red Round Hair, and focused on the part that did not make any sense at al . The part that
could not
make any sense. "Did you say they were going to
Seattle?"

Beau closed his eyes for a moment. He ran his hands through his hair, which Lila remembered he did when he was agitated. Like when his dog had

run away back in the sixth grade and he'd maintained a tense nightly vigil for two weeks until Fender had come back. Or when she'd demanded he explain
why
he refused to go to Carly's birthday party in the ninth grade, and
I hate zombies
didn't count. He'd looked her straight in the eyes and said,
Because
I'll hate you, too.

"They got on the Coast Starlight service headed north," the woman said, looking back and forth between Lila and Beau. "Final destination is Seattle. It runs daily"

"Seattle," Lila said again, as if saying it out loud might change the end result somehow. "As in, Washington state. That Seattle."

"Thank you," Beau said to the Amtrak worker, giving her another polite smile. He turned to Lila when the woman walked

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away and raised an eyebrow.
"
'That Seattle'? Is there another Seattle that I don't know about?"

"There's no time for mockery!" Lila snapped at him, her mind racing. If Cooper was going to
Seattle,
how could she possibly keep that from her parents? He was on a
train!
Anything could happen!

She ran over to the big display of train schedules near the information booth. She scanned the colorful pamphlets and snagged one that read
Coast

Starlight
across the top. She glanced at it quickly, then took off toward the train station's tal front doors, headed for the parking lot.

Beau fol owed.

"What exactly are we doing?" he asked, stil not breathing heavily.

"Simi Val ey is the next station," Lila replied, puffing a little bit. And she actual y ran a few miles every other day. She didn't know why it was suddenly so important to her that she be more athletic than Beau. "If we hurry, maybe we can catch them there"

She made it to the passenger side of his ratty old car and waited impatiently for him to unlock it. He had to climb inside and reach across the seat to do so by hand.

"I'm not sure chasing a train across the Val ey is the best idea here," Beau said, resting his palms against the steering wheel. What he was notably
not
doing was driving his car.

"Beau!" Lila stomped the floor of the car, wishing she could

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move it forward herself, like the Flintstones' Stone Age car--which was probably better-made than this wreck of a vehicle. "Come
on!"

Beau started the Escort and backed out of his parking spot, but he was frowning.

"I think maybe we should face the fact that this is out of control," he said as he started to drive through the side streets that surrounded the train station.

It was stil the afternoon, and the real L.A. traffic thankful y hadn't kicked in. Yet. "We're talking about two eight-year-olds. This isn't, like, a Disney movie or something where a talking dog wil lead them to safety"