Lost in the Sun (15 page)

Trying to breathe.

I found her, after a while. After I gave up searching the crowd on the street for an angry hippie girl and finally wised up and went directly across the street into the shop. She must've gone there immediately, because by the time I stepped inside, my mom was on the phone, and I could tell just by the look on her face that I was in for it.

“Where is she?” I asked Ray, who had quit handing out candy for the moment. He was standing next to my mom on her phone, while the trick-or-treaters huddled in the doorway, confused. “Where's Fallon?”

“She's in the stockroom,” he said, pointing to the back. “She locked herself in. She won't come out.” He squinted at me. “What happened, Trent?”

“I'll tell you in a minute,” I muttered, and I left him and Mom wondering on the saleroom floor. I headed to the back.

Sure enough, the door to the stockroom was closed.

“Fallon?” I said softly. I tried the doorknob. Locked. “Fallon?”

“Leave me alone,” she said. I'm pretty sure I heard a sniffle, too.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“No.”

“But—”

“Leave me alone,” she said again. “Your mom said she'd call my parents. I just want to go home.”

“Fallon, can I talk to you?” I was getting angry all over again, hearing Fallon so upset. That jerk Jeremiah, he didn't know how horrible he was. “What Jeremiah said,” I told her through the door, “he's just a moron. Don't listen to him. Ever. He's a moron.”

“I
know
he's a moron,” Fallon said. Her voice was louder then. “You think I'm . . . ?” She trailed off. Another sniffle. “Just go away, okay?”

“No,” I said. And I meant it. I wasn't going away. I wasn't leaving Fallon there, to be sad or angry or whatever she was. I was going to fix it.

“I'm staying right here,” I said, slouching down on the floor so my back was to the door, leaning up against it. “I'm staying right here till you come out.”

And I did. I stayed there, sitting on the floor. I could see straight through to the main room, where my mom was still on the phone, glancing back at me like she didn't know whether to feel sorry for me or furious. Ray went back to the trick-or-treaters.

“Fallon?” I said again through the door.

“I don't want to talk to you.”

I thought about that. There was only one thing to say.

“Why can't you ever get hungry at the beach?” I asked her.

It was quiet for a long time. But then, through the door, I thought I heard a soft padding, and then the
swift!
of a lock, and before I had a chance to stand up, the door flew back, and I thumped down on my back, lying flat, staring up at Fallon straight above me.

She blinked at me, slowly.

“Because of all the sandwiches there,” she told me.

She let me in the stockroom.

•   •   •

“I have this dream sometimes,” Fallon said softly. We were both sitting on the floor of the stockroom, backs against Ray's bookshelves, and she wasn't looking at me. She was playing with the belt on her dress, running her fingers over the woven leather. It had been silent for so long, us two just sitting there, listening to the muffled sounds on the other side of the closed stockroom door, that I'd figured she wasn't in the mood to talk. And then, suddenly, she started talking about dreams. “A lot, actually,” she went on. “Ever since . . .” She dug her fingernail deep into the folds of her belt.

“What kind of dream?” I asked.

She looked up at me quickly, like she was surprised I'd said anything. Maybe she'd forgotten I was there. Maybe she'd just been talking to herself. Her eyes darted back to her lap. “It's different every time,” she said. “Well, it starts out different, anyway. There's usually someone chasing me, or breaking down the door to my bedroom, something like that. Once I had a dream that someone followed me into the locker room at the public pool.”

“That sounds awful,” I said. Because what else was I supposed to say?

Fallon still wouldn't look at me. “I can't scream,” she said.

“What?”

“In the dreams. I always open my mouth to scream, and nothing comes out.” She looked up at me then, and I swear, she looked afraid. Like, really, truly scared. I'd never seen her look like that before. She always looked so confident, like nothing could ever touch her. “I just keep trying and trying and . . .” She blinked, turned her gaze back to her belt. “I have that dream all the time, about the screaming. It's horrible.”

I'd never had a dream like that, but I knew what bad dreams were.

“I'm sorry,” I said. Even though it wasn't my fault.

She shook her head, like she was wiping away the memory. “It's just a dream, right?” she said. And she even gave me a smile, only I could tell it wasn't a real one. She went back to playing with her belt. “Only lately I've started to wonder if maybe it's real, if maybe I actually forgot how to scream.”

“What do you mean? Of course you can scream.”

“Yeah, but how am I supposed to know for sure? It's not like I ever go around screaming in real life. Not like a really, really loud one. Maybe I can't anymore. If I needed to do it, it would come out all scratchy and soft, like in the dream. And the worst part is that I won't even know for sure until something terrible happens, and then tough luck for me.”

I sat forward from the bookshelf. “Scream right now,” I told her. “As loud as you can.”

She let out a snap of a laugh. “Shut up,” she said, wiping at her nose.

“I dare you,” I said. “Scream right now.”

“You're crazy,” she said. “I'm not gonna do that.”

“Why not?” I was serious. Fallon was upset, and I was going to fix it. I put my hands on my knees, rocking slightly. “Come on, it'll be great.”

“Your mom and Ray will run in here and think you're murdering me or something.”

I hopped to my feet. “So I'll just tell them I'm teaching you how to scream. Hold on, I'll be right back.”

“Trent.” She reached out and grabbed my hand before I could open the door. “Don't, okay?” She lowered her eyes again.

“Oh.” I didn't know what to do after that. I shuffled my feet for a little bit, and then finally went back to sitting. But I sat across the stockroom from Fallon instead of right next to her, like before.

I wasn't sure why.

“Sorry,” I said after a while.

She scrunched her mouth to the side. “It's okay,” she said.

There was a thin strip of her right eyebrow, if you looked at her face carefully, that was missing, right where the scar crossed her face. Just a thin strip. And her eyelashes on her right eye, just the half dozen or so that were in the path of the scar, they weren't dark brown like the rest of them. They were white.

“I'm sorry about what Jeremiah said,” I told her. “I know you know he's a jerk. But still. He shouldn't have said that about you, that you were the Bride of Frankenstein, or whatever.”

She looked up at me then. Those big, round, dark eyes. One. Two. Looking directly at me, on either side of her scar.

“Is that what you think I was upset about?” she asked.

“Um,” I said. “Yes?” What else would she be upset about?

She shook her head. “You're kind of a jerk, too, you know that, Trent?”

“What?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “I don't need you to protect me,” she said. “You think people like Jeremiah don't say stuff like that to me all the time? Or worse? I can take care of myself. I do it every day.”

“I know,” I said. “I know you can. But—”

“And I don't
want
you to try to protect me.” All of a sudden, something flashed over her. She definitely wasn't smiling anymore. “I don't want you to get into fights, Trent. Especially not for me.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back into Ray's filing cabinets, even though the metal drawer pulls were poking my back. “You know, it wouldn't hurt you to get angry every once in a while,” I told Fallon. “You don't have to just sit back and listen to everyone being mean to you without doing anything.”

“I think you're plenty angry enough for the both of us,” she said.

And that's when the door opened, and my mom said Fallon's parents were on their way to pick her up. So I didn't get a chance to say anything to that at all.

•   •   •

You can always tell when Mom is angry, because her mouth squinches up so small, it practically disappears. The angrier she is, the less of a mouth she seems to have.

That night, after we'd gotten home from the shop, and Doug had gone to bed (probably listening at his door to me getting in trouble), and Aaron
was still out with his girlfriend, and it was just Mom and me alone in the kitchen, her mouth was so small, you'd've needed a microscope to find it.

“I'm not sure I can do this anymore, Trent,” she said at last, after staring me down for a while. She'd tricked me into sitting at the kitchen table, because I thought she was going to sit, too. But it turned out she was never planning on sitting. Instead she stood at the kitchen counter with her back against the edge of the sink, her arms folded in front of her. Which made her look like she was about two feet taller than me, and way scarier than normal, with her death-ray eyes and her tiny, pinprick mouth.

Nice power play, Mom. Seriously.

“Do what?” I asked.

“This,”
she replied. “I love you so much, but I don't know how to . . .” She ran a hand over her face. “I think it might be best for you to stay with your dad for a while.”

“What?”
I shrieked. “No! Mom!”

“Just for a little while, Trent. I can't . . . I don't know how to help you anymore. A boy needs his father. Maybe it would be good for you. We've talked about it before, but now . . .”

It wasn't fire, what I felt inside then. It was cold. Icicles. The slushy black snow on the bottom of tires.

“You don't want me anymore?” My voice was a whisper.

“Oh, Trent.” Both hands on her face now. She looked wrecked. What kind of horrible kid wrecks his own mother? “Of course I want you here.” She sounded like she meant it. “Of
course
I do. But you're not happy here.”

How could she possibly think I'd be happier at my dad's than I was here?

“I hate him,” I told her.

She pulled her hands down from her face. Rested them on the edge of the sink behind her.

“Since when do you get into fistfights, Trent?”

The slush in my chest began to melt. Just like that. Turned back into fire.

“Jeremiah called Fallon ‘Bride of Frankenstein'!” I told her. Maybe I was shouting.

“You're going to go around punching everyone who says something mean?” she asked me. It was not, obviously, a real question that I was supposed to answer.

“But . . .” I didn't say anything after that. There was nothing to say.

Mom looked at me for a long time, searching my face for answers. Finally she sighed a huge sigh and sat down in the chair next to me. She tugged at the legs of my chair until I was facing her, my knees pressed up against hers, and she smoothed back the hair on my forehead, like she did sometimes when I was sick. Only I didn't exactly feel sick.

“Why did you beat up Jeremiah?” she asked. “I want the real reason.” Her face was calm. No squinched-up mouth at all.

So I thought about it. I really did.

“He hurt someone,” I said finally. Softly. It was the only thing I could think to say that might make any sort of sense to my mom. “He hurt Fallon. And people who hurt someone deserve to get hurt themselves.”

“Trent,” my mom said softly. “You are not in charge of righting the world's wrongs.” I looked up at her. “You are not in charge of
punching Jeremiah Jacobson into being a nice person. That is not your job, do you understand me?”

I nodded at her, because I knew I was supposed to nod right then. But I wasn't sure she was right about that. If someone hurt my friend, why shouldn't I try to fix it?

“Your job,” my mom went on, “your only job right now, is being in charge of yourself and your life and taking care of
you
the best you can. That includes”—she counted off on her fingers—“not failing school.” She glared those death-ray eyes at me. “And not beating people up. And if something important is going on with you, you need to tell me about it. Can you do that?”

“Can
you
do that?” I asked.

All right. It wasn't the smartest thing to say, probably. But I guess the fire that was rolling around inside me just decided to come shooting out in words.

Mom blinked at me. “
Excuse
me?” she said.

Well.

Once I started, I wasn't about to stop, no matter how much trouble I knew I was digging myself into.

“When were you planning to tell me about Ray?” I asked her.

Mom's mouth wasn't a pinprick then. It was a wide-open O. I'd caught her off guard, that was for sure. I could tell she didn't know what to say.

“You are not allowed to talk to me like that, young man.” That's what she finally decided to say. Which is when I knew I'd gotten her good, because that was avoiding the question if I ever heard it.

“Even when I'm right?” I said.

“Go to your room.” Her words were thin, angry.

“Love to,” I replied. And I marched off, just as angry.

•   •   •

I stood in the hall while she called my dad. Even though I knew I shouldn't have. I stood in the hall and listened. I could only hear Mom's side of the conversation, but I didn't really need to hear the rest.

“This is something we talked about, Tom,” Mom said into the phone. “He needs you. I think he really needs you.”