Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe (27 page)

Mrs. Moore’s upper body convulsed, as if she were trying to keep from throwing up. “Yeah, fine.”

Recalling Duncan’s movements from a few weeks ago, I took out the frying pan and spatula, then started digging ingredients out of the refrigerator. Had it been only a few weeks since Duncan started wreaking havoc with weird body parts, including my heart?

Mrs. Moore shot a crooked stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “Do you know where he is?”

I dropped a pat of butter in the frying pan, where it sizzled and popped. “No, I was hoping you would.”

She’d smoked the cigarette to the filter, which she dropped onto the table, missing the small glass plate I’d set in front of her to use as an ashtray. She reached for another cigarette and this time managed to light it on her own. “Is it true?” she asked with trembling, puffing lips. “Did he sleep in that storeroom when things got out of control around here?”

“Yeah.” I cracked an egg and dropped it into a bowl. “The staff made it kind of homey. He didn’t seem to mind.”

“Duncan’s a great kid.” She puffed and puffed, and the line
of ash on the end of her cigarette grew into a long, gray, powdery worm. “He makes do with so little. Always has. He was always thankful for everything. One Christmas all he got was this red butt-ugly plastic bear I think I got from the dollar store. You know what he did? He hugged me and said it was perfect, that he always wanted a red butt-ugly plastic bear.” She looked at her cigarette with loathing and smashed it in the dish. “Duncan had nothing to do with the fire. He wouldn’t hurt the radio station. He loved that place.”

“I know. The police aren’t looking for him because they think he started the fire. They’re more worried about his safety.”

My vivid imagination kicked into high gear: Brad the love scribe storming into the station seething with anger at me. Duncan trying to calm him, to fix the mess I made. Brad hurting Duncan.

I cracked three more eggs, then whipped. With the eggs officially dead, I poured them into the sizzling butter and made toast.

“You need to eat,” I said when I set the sandwich before Duncan’s mom.

Her mouth quirked in an attempt at a smile. “You sound like Duncan.” Her trembling fingers clutched the sandwich. Clumps of eggs spilled onto her lap. Cheese oozed onto the table. She clutched the sandwich tighter. The toast crumbled, egg clumps falling onto the ash worm. “I can’t stop.” She glared at her hands. “Dammit! I can’t stop.”

I took the remnants of her sandwich from her shaking hands and set them on the plate. “You don’t need to.” I knelt next to her
and put my arms around her shoulders and started to rock. Back and forth. Together.

Sometime later the back door swung open. I turned, expecting Hetta.

“Chloe?” Duncan walked through the door, that deep vertical line bisecting his forehead as he set a bunch of bags on the kitchen counter. “What are you doing here?”

A happy cry clogged my throat. This was my nice, sexy, broad-shouldered Duncan, who was clearly safe. As I rocked with his mom, lyrics joined our rhythmic swaying.
Dune’s okay. Dune’s okay. Dune’s okay
. I gave him a smile meant to outshine any sun in any universe. I’d changed, but not entirely. Need a friend? Call Chloe. How about a laugh? Enter Chloe with joke book in hand.

“I’m talking with your mom,” I said.

Mrs. Moore looked up. Her eyes didn’t meet his but strayed to the bags on the counter. She pressed her bird-thin body into mine, then pushed off. “You up to trying again?” Her reedy voice quaked.

Duncan swallowed. Three times. “Yes.”

She stood. “Okay. Let me get my stuff together.”

With Duncan’s mom shuffling down the hallway, I threw myself across the kitchen and into Duncan’s arms. I ran my hands over his beautiful face and broad shoulders and strong back. “You’re okay? Brad didn’t hurt you? You escaped the fire?”

“I’m fine.” He cupped my face with his hands, my cheeks heating in a warm-sizzling-butter kind of way. “What’s going on? Who’s Brad, and what’s this about a fire?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“About the station.” He shook his head, and I told him about the fire, the investigation, and the suspicions about Brad.

“The poet guy?” Duncan asked. “They’re blaming him for the fire?”

“Technically, everyone on the staff is blaming me.” I unwound myself from his arms, picked up the frying pan, and took it to the sink. “And you know what? They’re right. It’s my fault. I invited Brad to share a piece of his heart. I encouraged him to give his crush the poem. I—”

“Shut up.” Dunc snatched the frying pan from me and tossed it in the sink. “Am I to blame for my mom’s addiction?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why would you blame yourself for Brad’s actions?”

“It was my show, my stupid advice—”

“You didn’t tell him to burn down the station.” Duncan placed both hands on my shoulders. “You may be the queen of the universe, but you can’t control the way the minions act. If Brad really did burn down the station, then it’s his fault, not yours. Just like it’s not Clem’s fault because she’s the GM or Mr. Martinez’s fault because he’s the sponsor or the underwriters’ fault because they’ve kept the station on the air the past month. Got it?”

I breathed in his words, took comfort from him just being close. “You know, Dunc, for someone who doesn’t know how to communicate, you’re doing a lot of talking.”

With a grin, he pulled me into his arms, and I rested my cheek
on his chest and matched my breathing with his. I thought about his words, and, yes, he was probably right. I wasn’t to blame for Brad’s actions, but I would have a hard time living with myself until the rest of the staff accepted that, too.

“The fire investigators need to talk with you,” I told Duncan when I finally pulled away. “They want to know if you saw Brad that night near Portable Five.”

“No. After we kissed and you drove off”—his finger slid along my lips—“I couldn’t make myself go to work. I didn’t want to be alone with my toasters or garbage, so I decided to check on Mom. I found Stu in the driveway, and he was mad as hell, because Mom had thrown him out and threatened to call the cops. And you know why? Get this. Stu broke one of the toasters on the kitchen counter. He got pissed off and chucked it across the room. Hetta said Mom came unglued. Anyway, last night Mom said she was ready for rehab. So Hetta and I spent all day checking into inpatient rehab facilities, and we found one in San Diego.”

Duncan looked so little-boy hopeful.

“You believe this time it will work?”

“I have to.”

Duncan’s soul was way too old. It had seen too much, but I couldn’t undo it. Instead, I wrapped him in my arms and let him feel the pounding of my heart.

A few minutes later Mrs. Moore walked in with a plastic grocery bag filled with clothes. On top sat a picture of Duncan hugging a red butt-ugly bear. “Did you get enough?” she asked Duncan.

He shifted me to his side and looped his arm around my waist. Perfect fit. He pointed to the five bags he’d set on the counter. “Hetta said you could make at least five scarves.”

“Five?” She raised her hands, the trembling so bad I could hear her bones clacking. “I think I may need a few more skeins of yarn.”

I pointed to my own little pathetic bag of yarn I’d left near the kitchen table. “I got six and an extra set of needles.”

Duncan looked like he wanted to kiss me and never stop, but that wasn’t an option. Mrs. Moore picked at the oozing sore on her arm.

“You ready?” Duncan asked his mom.

“You . . . you found a place?”

“Yeah. In San Diego. Supposed to be a good one.”

“And we can afford it?”

“They’ll work with us.”

Hetta, who’d been standing in the kitchen doorway the whole time, walked in and took Mrs. Moore by the arm. “I’ll get her in my car.” Hetta stared at me hard. “You take care of things in here.”

Duncan brought me into his arms and rested his chin on my head.

“What about you?” I asked. “Where are you going to go?” Duncan couldn’t stay at the radio station anymore. He was seventeen, a minor, and the police knew about his situation.

“I’m taking the bus to San Diego with Mom. I’ll stick around for a few weeks until I’m sure she’s not going to run off to Stu.
Friends and family aren’t part of early in-house rehab, but I want to be close by.”

“To make sure she doesn’t run?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. I need to be there for her. For me. Does that make sense?”

When people you cared about needed fixing, you wanted to be close by. I thought of Grams on the porch swing and Mom on my old play gym. At least they were on the same property now. “Yeah, it makes sense, but that doesn’t mean I like it.” I stood on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on his lips. “I’ll miss you.”

His face fell.

“What?”

“Valentine’s Day. Our date. I’ll miss it.”

“We can celebrate when you get back.” Go with the flow. Keep rocking.

He didn’t look reassured, but his gaze softened. “At least I can give you your Valentine’s Day present before I go.”

That melted butter feeling zinged through my veins again. Duncan was beyond nice, and he was mine.

He ran down the hall and came back with a small box covered in wrapping paper with pink cabbage roses and tied with pink yarn. “I borrowed the wrapping stuff from Hetta.”

“I can tell.” I slipped off the yarn and pictured Duncan’s grumpy, frumpy neighbor. “She’s the one who taught your mom to knit?”

“Yeah, she’s kind of been there for both of us.” Someone in his corner.

With the yarn off, I tore the wrapping paper and found a Velveeta Cheese box. “In case I need some eggs and cheese on toast while you’re gone?” I asked.

“Ha-ha.”

I took off the lid, and my teeth caught my bottom lip. Duncan had given me one of his treasures. “I love it,” I said when my mouth agreed to work. “Let’s plug it in and give it a try.”

He dug through a kitchen drawer, bowed, and handed me a pencil stub as if it were a royal scepter. I stuck it into the best Valentine’s Day present in the universe, a pencil sharpener painted with a glittery crown, one fit for a queen.

As it whirred, I pictured his hands taking the broken sharpener out of the garbage, those same hands fixing it and carefully painting it with gold and red glitter paint. Duncan did the best with what he had. He went with the flow. He rocked with life’s punches.

“She’s ready,” Hetta said from the doorway. “You better get going before she changes her mind.”

In the driveway Mrs. Moore sat in the front seat of Hetta’s old car. She looked like she wanted to jump out of her skin. Something told me it was going to get worse before it got better.

“You going to be okay?” I asked Duncan.

Duncan paused before he nodded. “I already talked to my first-period teacher, and she’s going to make sure I get my assignments and talk to Lungren about doing my JISP when I get back.”

I nodded. “She likes to help.”

“Yeah.” He reached for his scarf, but it wasn’t there. “Tell everyone at the station I’m okay.”

Nod.

“Man, Chloe, I’m going to miss you.” He grabbed my hands, holding tightly as if we were standing in crashing waves. He studied our intertwined fingers, and I knew what he was thinking. Getting close to someone and giving them a piece of your heart made letting go that much harder. Each time one of my brothers left for college, I had another gaping hole. As our hands melted together, I realized the perfect gift to give Duncan, something to show I cared. The first day of kindergarten Grams had given it to me, and this past August, I’d given it to my brother Zach when he left for med school.

I raised Duncan’s hands to my lips. First I kissed one palm, then the other. “When you feel lonely, I’ll be there.”

Duncan stared at his palms and wrapped his fingers around my kisses.

THE DEL REY SCHOOL’S STUDENT POPULATION INCLUDED TWO
Brads, fourteen Bradleys, two Bradfords, and one Bradshaw, and according to the fire investigator, each claimed to know nothing of the fire that raged through the radio station. What’s more, the investigator had made samples of all of their voices, and when he played them for me, I shook my head.