Don't Breathe a Word (2 page)

Chapter 3

My life was broken into three parts: before Asher, after I met him, and after I left.

Everything changed that night last summer, when my mom was down with the flu and my dad took me to the Woodland Park Zoo's fundraiser party instead. My dad still had his job then, culling donations for nonprofit ventures. No one discussed what would happen to me once Jesse left for college.

Even in her weakened state, my mom had given Dad the riot act before we left.
Don't you leave her for one second, Peter. Do you have her emergency inhaler? Are you sure you two will be okay?
No one could forget the ambulance rides, or the times I'd stopped breathing. The fact that I'd almost died—twice—hovered over our family like a dark shadow, and I'd been hospitalized more times than I could count. My dad knew what would happen to him if he didn't bring me home in one piece.

The theme this year was For the Birds, because of the zoo's new pink flamingo exhibit, where a dozen of them slopped around in the muck and dazzled everyone in the drizzly Northwest. The zoo hoped to renovate the penguin exhibit from a fake island to a veritable penguin palace, if only the guests could part with some funds to help out.

I kind of felt sorry for the penguins. They had wings, but they couldn't fly. Tonight, I would be nothing like them. Anything could happen when I felt light as a feather, free as a bird.

The back lawn of the zoo had sprouted a chic village of tents—three full bars, three or four tents with bird-shaped pastries or plumed salmon bruschetta, another one housing silent-auction items, and the big tent: dinner for five hundred, where guests would drool and bid over fabulous prizes to keep those muddy flamingos and penguins afloat.

I wore Neeta's red silk sari, sufficiently birdlike but not over the top. Neeta made me promise not to let anything happen to it, or she'd never let me borrow anything again. The sari top plunged in the front, and I imagined what it would be like if I had an asthma attack and a crew of EMTs had to tear through the beads and delicate silk. I could use a little drama. The thought sent a dangerous thrill through my chest.

Dad and I checked in and each got a paddle with our bidding number—235, the perfect number to represent our family: two parents, three kids, five voices of mayhem and chaos.

“Don't go too crazy,” Dad said, “but you can bid in the silent-auction tent.”

“What's my limit?”

“Hmmm. How about a hundred? If you want to go over, come find me and we'll discuss it.”

I knew “discussing it” would most likely result in a “sure,” unless it was totally outrageous. A spa day at the Salish Lodge. Dinner for ten at the top of the Space Needle. Wine collection from Bill Gates. Whatever.

I got drinks for both of us—a gin and tonic for Dad and the featured drink, a Yellow Bird, for myself (“With just the tiniest bit of rum and brandy,” the bartender promised me). Dad discussed the finer points of philanthropic fundraising with the VPs and their wives, who all wore pink boas.

It was strange to see them in person, after hearing about all of their secrets—affairs with students; money-laundering charges; children in rehab. Each one of them looked as numb as if they'd taken a shot of Botox to the heart.

“I'm going to check out the silent-auction tent,” I whispered as they started an impassioned discussion of fund funneling, or something like that.

Dad surveyed me with concern. “Are you sure?”

“
Dad
. There are a thousand people with cell phones standing around. If I'm about to die, I'm sure one of them can call 9-1-1.”

I could tell he was replaying Mom's warnings in his head, but the veeps' conversation pulled him in like a tractor beam. “Just make it back in a half hour for the animal encounter.”

Thankfully, we hadn't gone for the flamingo tour and instead opted for feeding the giraffes, one of my favorite zoo activities. At the south end of the park, a handful of them roamed around Seattle's version of Africa. The zoo had planted trees and bushes to look like the real savannah, only they were actually northwest plants that could survive ten months of rain and still feel like home to the animals.

I sipped my mostly-orange juice and started to feel a little tingly. My heels sank into the damp grass with the sound of a kiss.

It was easy to cruise from one silent auction item to the next. A spice collection from Café Shiraz; animal books from a local author; glass earrings for a flowy-linen Grandma type. I stopped at a vintage collection of Kurt Cobain memorabilia from the Experience Music Project archives—a signed first-edition CD, a T-shirt from the early days, a signed picture of Kurt and Courtney. My stomach fluttered a little just looking at it. There were already six bids, up to $540.
Oh well, whatever, nevermind
.

I skimmed along past the manicure packages, the clay elephant sculpture, dinner for two at Coastal Kitchen. If I had someone to take there, I might have bid. It was still well under a hundred dollars for a night of regional food and mystique. The Cranium games caught my attention. Jesse and I could play Hoopla before he took off for Western and I could play Hullabaloo with Jonah, who was about to turn four. I put my number down, 235, and wished I wasn't lost in the three or the five for just one moment.

I sensed a warm presence, and not from the space heater I passed. More like heat mixed with a chill.

His eyes were the first thing that hit me: intense and pale grey, watching me. A dangerous power crackled around him, the force of it nearly burning my skin.

He was trim and rough somehow, though impeccably dressed in a button-down shirt and light pants. His eyes skimmed my body down to the hem of the sari, silky and red around my legs, and I felt the chill again. His hand rested on the Nirvana T-shirt like he already owned it. Then he slipped back into the stream of bodies jostling for space in the tent.

I moved to the other side of the table, feeling those eyes follow me as I went. I stopped at a bracelet with hand-painted saints and looked up. The boy was across the table at the Cranium package, writing down his number. He looked up at me—not quite smile, not quite smirk. I wrote my number down on the saints bracelet.
Take that
.

Moving on to the next row, I couldn't help but peek back. There he was, at the saints bracelet. Memorizing my number? Trying to steal my bid? Well, I wasn't about to lose. I looked around wildly while his back was turned and hit upon—an evening of drinks and music at The Cloud Room. No matter if it was twenty-one and over, somehow I would sneak in with

Neeta and a couple of others, and we'd have a wild night on top of the Camlin Hotel.
235
.

If I was going to lose the Cranium package, I would have to find something for Jonah. A party at Bouncing Castles. Of course.
235
. The boy gave me a dark look while everyone else seemed to be blurring around us.

My knees were shivery where the silk touched them. Every thread seemed to cup my body in the strangest cool-hot way. He wrote his number after mine in a move both infuriating . . . and totally sexy.
101
. One him and one me.

Finally, I bid on a set of handmade tea cozies. That would be the test to separate
coincidence
from
stalker
. Worst-case scenario, I would present them to my mom as a gift for coming to the zoo party in her place. The question now: Would he bid?

I turned the corner on the last row of tables. More art. More dinners. More jewelry than could be worn by a tentful of zoo ladies. He was moving toward the tea cozies, glancing at me and then coolly looking over his shoulder at the hoi polloi, eating, drinking, and being merry. My dress was sticking to me in places where silk should never stick. He reached the tea cozies and squinted at them.

He mulled them over. Flowered. Hand sewn. Flattering for even the fattest tea pot. Machine washable. Really, the ideal gift. He looked up at me, reading the question on my face. By choosing the tea cozies, was he choosing me?

And then, it was over. He dropped the pen. Wrote nothing at the tea cozy stop. He turned and strode out of the tent without a word. I stood alone, only a few feet away from the heater. But I didn't seem to need it anymore as I burned with wonder and humiliation. Was it the tea cozies? Did I make a bad choice? Was I just imagining him following me and maybe even flirting with me? Did I offend him?

I took a gulp of my inhaler.

Someone on a loudspeaker announced the upcoming animal encounter tours, and I broke out of my cocoon of rejection. Dad would be waiting for me, and the only thing I'd managed to place a bid on was a trio of tea cozies. He would question not only my taste but also my sanity.

Our group gathered around the zoo woman holding up a giraffe sign. Each of the wives had a Yellow Bird drink in hand, and they giggled like they may have already had two or three. If my mom were here, I couldn't imagine her joining in. When she wasn't obsessed with the minutiae of meds and refills, she managed accounts for some of the biggest funds in Seattle—she couldn't afford to giggle. I set my Yellow Bird on one of the empty tables.

We were about to head off when
he
appeared—crisp in his white shirt and linen pants but still looking somehow dark, like these clothes weren't the real him any more than my silky red sari was the real me. He spoke to the zoo woman: Could he join our group?

“Asher. Oh, yes. Of course.”

Asher
. A fitting name. He stood close to me, like we were together. I could smell the faint scent of cigarettes on him.

He was giving me that intense look again—palpable, as if his eyes were somehow capable of sending waves of adrenaline through my body. Fight. Flight. Melt, right there on the zoo path. My dad looked up.

“Asher,” he said brightly. “You know my daughter, Joy?

” My dad knew him?

“Actually, yes. We met in the tent a few minutes ago, but I wanted to continue our conversation.”

I didn't realize we'd been having one.

Chapter 4

Thunk.

My head bumped against the bus-stop window for the second—no, third—time since I arrived at the Bellevue transfer station three hours ago, and I startled awake. Greyish haze lit the sky uniformly, making it almost impossible to tell whether today would be cloudy or clear. Cold pricked my skin through Asher's flannel and the thrift-store hoodie, threadbare and damp with dew.

The faux-antique clock overhead read 5:23, less than twenty minutes before the first Seattle-bound bus would lumber past and head into the city with a bellyful of early risers. I'd only been on this route once, when Neeta's car was getting leather seats and she, Ellerie, and Ari wanted to go to Nuemos for a show.

I pulled the hoodie closer around me, straddling the universe of the visible and the invisible. A trickle of courage surged through my veins like the cold air in my lungs.

In a matter of hours, my parents would find my room in chaos. They'd call a state of emergency, not realizing that state had been building for a year. They would comb through the evidence, declare it a kidnapping. They could keep their lives and I could escape mine. To save us all, I would completely disappear.

My parents would call Neeta first, but she wouldn't have anything to tell. Since I'd been with Asher, we'd seen less and less of each other—at first, because I couldn't get enough of him. Later, because he wanted me all to himself.

She'd witnessed the tension between Jesse and me when we went to see him at Western. He opened the door, surprise and then a scowl on his face. But that could mean anything. On the way home, she said I'd changed, though she couldn't say why.

When Neeta didn't have any answers, they'd call Asher.

I only care if you know, Joy
.

The memory burned. They didn't know the kind of power Asher had over me in the real world, or the way his words singed even my thoughts. I could only hope the trail I left would be enough.

My phone was in my pocket, though I'd turned it off so no one could track my signal. Stealth research on GPS and cell technology told me that.
Thank you, Wikipedia
.

In the last twenty minutes, commuters had come out of the woodwork, most of them wearing some variation of the programmer's uniform—khakis and a T-shirt. A woman made a call, looking straight at me. “We have an emergency,” she yelled into her phone.

How could she know? Had I ever seen her before? Did she work for Asher's dad? I tried to look away, my heart pounding in my chest. But would she recognize a profile better?

“The McConnell account is in deep doo-doo,” she continued, “which means you and I are . . . ”

Of course not,
I thought. And I was going to have to get over my jumpiness if I was going to make it out here. To become invisible, I would need a power of my own.

When my bus finally reached Capitol Hill, I was starving, cranky, and had to pee. I had plenty of Clif Bars in my stash, which ought to hold me at least a week—maybe two, if I could train myself to need less.

The streets were relatively empty except for the Starbucks on the corner. The aroma of a double-shot skinny latte called to me like a cartoon cloud of temptation. But if I wanted to make the funds last, there were things I would have to give up.

For the last few days, I'd been taking money out of my account a few twenties at a time. Borrowing more from my mom. Raiding my dad's quarter collection. Altogether, I had over two hundred dollars rolled in my backpack, in my shoe, in my pockets. You never knew who might be watching when you pulled out your stash.

The one good thing about buying a latte, though, was the restroom key. Neeta always had to go, so we knew every bathroom on Broadway. The only public one was a tiny metal stall on the street near the Dick's Drive-In, usually smeared with nastiness and toilet paper and littered with needles. At least there was the drugstore—I could only hope they wouldn't remember me.

I peered through the Rite Aid window on the corner of Broadway and Olive. The girl behind the counter couldn't have been much older than me, thick eyeliner rimming her eyes and body straining against the blue store vest, plinking coins into the till. The sign on the door said it would open at seven—nine minutes, according to the flashing First Washington Tech clock. Six fifty-one, sixty-three degrees. It would be a warm day in Seattle.

The bathroom was through the door in the back corner, past a few boxes, and to the right. Neeta and I had been here tons of times on the way to Urban Outfitters, her favorite store. Neeta would buy the cut-out tees, screen-print them with birds and cherries, and wear them with skirts. I would buy the boy shorts, knowing only one person would see them besides me.

I remembered the last time we'd gone there—Neeta and I were looking for Asher's Christmas present, one of the few times we'd been out since I started seeing him.

“Do you think he'd like this one?” Neeta had said, holding up an ancient-looking leather jacket with crackling brown texture.

She was trying, I knew. But she didn't know what Asher could be like. He was brutal about things not fitting into his aesthetic. My clothes, for instance. In the six months since we'd been dating, the color had drained from my wardrobe. Shapes went from loose to sleek, even though I was always pulling at my hemlines—alien to me but beautiful to him. It had gotten even worse since my dad started working at Valen.

“He's not going to like it,” I said.

Neeta sighed. “Well, what
is
he going to like?”

“Forget it,” I said, then smiled like an offering. “He's impossible. We should just go to Trophy Cupcakes and be done with it. I'll find something for him later.”

“You sure?” I could tell she was teetering. The force of cupcakes was strong with this one.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm sure.”

In the end, I gave him the latest cell phone from one of my mom's clients.

“Ah. Personal,” he said, then handed me a tiny box, the exact shade of Tiffany blue that could be mistaken for nothing else.

I opened the box carefully, cautiously. It was too big to be a ring box, too small to be a porcelain vase or lamp. It was exactly the right size for an ID bracelet, white gold, its flat plate engraved with his pet name for me.
Little bird
. A charm dangled from the side, a bird with red ruby eyes. When I looked closer, it was unmistakably a crow.

“Charm bracelets originated with the ancient Egyptians,” he said. “They acted as identification to the gods of the underworld—who you were, your status, who you belonged to . . .”

I stared at the bracelet, a half-smile frozen on my face. Everything Asher did had a meaning. This was his way of marking me. If it hadn't been smooth metal, I would suspect it had a homing signal so he'd always know where to find me.

The bracelet still jangled on my wrist, tucked up under my sleeve. If I'd left it, they would know immediately. I never took the bracelet off, even to sleep. I would have to escape its hold some other way.

A bird's savage caw startled me. The Rite Aid girl finished putting the money into the register and came to unlock the glass doors. She watched as I entered and made my way past the row of candy bars, magazines, and makeup. I looked over my shoulder to see her eyes follow me while she spoke into the phone in a low voice. Whatever. I wouldn't take long. I turned back around and nearly collided with a blue-vested chest.

“What do you think you're doing in here?” It was a tall, balding man in his forties who looked like he might play Scrabble when he wasn't harassing teens.

“I uh . . . uh . . .”

“Well?”

“I just . . . had to use the bathroom.”
What does anybody do in a Rite Aid?

“Right,” he said. “After you pocket some Max Factor and cough syrup.”

“Huh?” I backed away.

“What have you got in your backpack?” He started to reach for me.

“Hey! Don't touch me!” I spun around, and the girl was reaching for the phone again. Were they calling the police on me? “You don't have to—I'm not doing anything, I swear!”

Mr. Scrabble Bouncer was still coming after me, towering over me like a shadow. “No, you're not doing anything, because you're going to
leave
.” I bumped into a tangle of bells at the door and practically fell through it. “And tell your friends to quit coming in and stealing everything!”

When I was back on the street again, my hands were shaking and my bladder near bursting. If I was addicted to anything, it was my stupid water bottle.

Starbucks,
Neeta would say,
you're my only hope
.

I trudged back to the café. I could swallow my pride. I could ask for the key and hope for the best.

The place spilled out with students and hipsters with laptops, crushing into the communal warmth and smell of roasted coffee beans.

I stood in line sandwiched between a guy texting and a woman listening to voice mail with a scowl on her face. Everyone in the café seemed to be umbilically connected to some form of technology. The hum was more from the collective tapping of keys than from any kind of verbal communication.

When I got to the counter, the barista gave me the onceover—appreciatively, I thought. He was tallish and golden brown, with auburn hair flying every which way and matching the frayed shirt on his narrow frame. He looked like an art student, maybe, over at Cornish. His name tag, slightly askew, read
BACH
.

“What can I get for you?”

“Uh . . . just the bathroom key.”

His face darkened, a weird contrast to his Adam's apple as it bobbed up and down. “Oh. You're one of those.”

“Wait,” I stammered, mentally counting my change. “I'll get something when I come out.” What did J1 say a homeless person could live on? A dollar a day, if I'm careful? And I'd be blowing three-fifty on a clean bathroom?

“Look,” he said in a slightly louder voice, “restrooms are for customers only.” But he slid the key in my direction. “Just no shooting up in there, okay?” he whispered. “You'll get me fired.” To the girl steaming the milk, he said, “Single tall latte, shot of almond.”

So he was telling me to shoot almond and not something else.

“Thanks,” I muttered, and slipped away with a key and almond anticipation. I could do this, if I had allies.

I thought of the boy I'd seen on Capitol Hill, of his music piercing me to the heart.

If anyone could help me, it would be him.