Mapmaker (9 page)

Thank God he couldn’t see my agonized, contorted expression. Thank God he hadn’t FaceTimed me. Why did saying the truth feel so awkward and crazy?

“I do know,” he said, jumping in just before I plummeted.

“You do?”

“Yeah. Remember I told you I wanted to work for Habit for Humanity?”

“Yeah?”

“My dad was really pressuring me to work for him at
MapOut, he kept using the term ‘family business’ to guilt me into it. When he mentioned you were working there, too … I guess it was part of the reason I said yes. A big part. The only part, really.”

I smiled, blinking rapidly in the darkness.

“That’s all,” he said, and then he was gone.

Connor had hung up
at 2:47. I looked up from my phone into the crowded café, once again searching for him. Maybe he was still asleep. Boys slept a lot, like they could sleep all day. After our phone call
I
could barely sleep. I’d replayed the conversation about one thousand and fifty-seven times in my head. I wondered if he had, too?

It was 9:20. I imagined him asleep in bed, his face in the pillow, the sheet rumpled around him. I decided to send one more text. Maybe he was sick of the phone and would just show up. Or his phone was dead and he couldn’t find a charger. The possibilities were endless. I envisioned a bike crash, the gravel cutting into his hands and face. My thumb twitched over the
SEND
button, and I forced myself to press it.

Hey I’m still here. At common table in the back.

I put the phone down. I closed my eyes, resting them in the palms of my hands. When I open them, I told myself, he would either be here or there would be a text from him. If I didn’t leave in the next five minutes I would be late for work. I stood up, carrying the empty cup to the plastic bin.

Outside, the sun stung my eyes. I wondered if I should call Cleo, but I didn’t want to do it alone. As I walked to my bike, I rehearsed what I would say to her in my head. All versions of the story sounded crazy and seriously paranoid. I hadn’t
seen her in years and now I was going to call out of the blue and say, “Hey, it’s Tanya. What’s up? I hacked into my dad’s personal emails and I’m wondering if you were having an affair with him? And what’s the deal with Alaska?”

Last night, when I was planning to make the call, all my thoughts felt clear, logical—but now standing in the bright sunlight I felt something I’d never felt before, a confusion I couldn’t name. But secretly I imagined that it was what someone like Beth must feel if she were lost. Someone with no direction, stuck without a map. So maybe I could name it “unhinged.”

I arrived at MapOut
at 10:15. The receptionist with the short black hair and powder-pale skin was sipping a can of Diet Coke. She looked up at me, the can of soda in her hand as she chewed on the straw.

I kind of mouthed the word
morning
as I hurried past.

“Hey there,” she called out. Before I even turned around, I heard the sound of her soda can against the desk. She stared intently at the large computer screen on her desk.

“I don’t think we’ve formally met yet,” she said. She had a low voice, not soft, just low and quick.

“I’m Tanya Barrett. I’m just working for the summer.”

“I know. I remember your dad. I’m Alison.”

“Nice to meet you.” I smiled back at her. “Do you know if Connor is here yet?” I felt awkward asking, like maybe she would think I had a crush on him or something, so I quickly added. “He was supposed to show me how to use the Track program.”

She glanced at her screen, her eyes scrolling down what looked like a series of numbers.

“Nope. Not yet.” She smiled a smile that froze in place for at least three seconds or more.

“Okay.” I bit my top lip. “Um, is Harrison in yet?”

“Nope. He’s in Boston. He should be back this afternoon.”

She glanced back at her screen, her eyes following the scroll of numbers. “And your phone number is?”

“My phone number?”

“Updating contact info.”

I told her my number.

“Okay.” She typed in the number. “And you still live at 48 Lincoln Road, Amherst?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said without looking away from the screen. “We’re good.”

One of the top ten most annoying expressions:
we’re good
. I walked past her and into the cavernous office space. Most of the employees had already arrived. The morning sun cast slanted rectangles of light across the wooden floors. All the white cubicles were full of the scruffy college types, inputting data, the keyboards making soft clicking sounds that filled the room.

The kitchen was empty. The coffee pot only had a drop of coffee left. I checked my phone again. Nothing. I poured the dregs of the coffee into my cup and walked to my cubicle. The guy working next to me sort of nodded a brief hello. He had his earbuds in and I could hear the tinny sound of music coming through. The pile of data reports I hadn’t finished yesterday sat beside me. I wanted to scream at it.

I picked up a page from the pile of data info, but could barely focus. At this point I was a combination of mostly
worried, annoyed, impatient, and confused. What time was it in New Mexico? Should I just go ahead and phone Cleo without him? It was only 10:32
A.M.

Calm down
, I thought.
He’ll be here soon
.

At 11:57 I broke
my vow of not checking my phone until 12:30. I pressed
SLEEP
, and the computer screen went black and announced to the three walls of my cubicle that I was taking an early lunch break. I picked up my knapsack, went to the newly renovated toilets, and splashed handfuls of cold water on my face and the back of my neck. My eyes looked puffy and sort of bloodshot. If anyone saw me they would probably think I was a stoner. Of course, half the people who worked here were probably stoners. I smoothed my hair with my hands and pulled it back into a ponytail.

I can get away with taking my lunch break now
.

I took the keys to my bike lock from my knapsack and retrieved the buried phone. As I neared Harrison’s office, I could see it was still empty. The receptionist was talking into her phone headset. I tried to hurry out without her noticing. But just as I was about to walk through the front door out into the sunshine, she looked up from her computer screen.

“Lunch break?” she asked, her eyes popping up.

“Yep.”

“You get forty-five minutes.”

“Yep. I know.”

“All good.” Her eyes flashed back to the screen. The quickness and intensity of her typing was more like a concert
pianist than an office assistant. No wonder Dad and Harrison had hired her.

Outside, the bright sun
glared against the concrete parking lot. I got on my bike and rode down the bike path half a mile away to Silvia’s Polish Café, a small place right off the bike trail next to Trailside Ice Cream and the River Bend Dance School. I left my bike on the crowded bike rack. Now I thought I could turn my phone on. I watched anxiously as the screen lit up. I was sure Connor would have gotten back to me by now—I hadn’t checked my phone in one long hour and thirty-five minutes.

There were two new voice mails.

No texts.

The first one was from Beth.

“Hey there.” (
Hey there
was her way of trying to sound cool and casual even when she was checking up on me.) “You must have gotten back late last night. I didn’t see you this morning. Just checking in to see if you’re okay. Will you be in for dinner tonight? I … anyway, have a good day at work. See you later.”

The next voice mail was from an 802 number I didn’t recognize right away. The only thing I knew was that it was from Vermont.

“Tanya! Hon!” yelled Rebs.

My heart squeezed thinking of her at the Norwich summer camp. I imagined her … swimming, eating in the cafeteria, teaching arts and crafts in the rec hall—where the air smelled of citronella bug spray and sun block, and the floor was always damp from the kids trekking in with wet bathing suits from the lake.

“We barely have cell service up here! It’s like
Little House on the Prairie
. I have to walk to the ‘town’ post office to get any cell reception. That’s why you haven’t heard from me, like, every single day. We’re having a counselor party Friday night we seriously want you to come. Call Blaney, she’s driving up with some of her friends from Smith. You’ve got to come. Luv ya, mean it.”

I nodded as I hung up, forgetting that she couldn’t see me. Blaney was Rebs’s older sister. I would call Blaney as soon as I figured out why the hell Connor hadn’t shown up today at MapOut. Actually, scratch that: I would call Cleo first, with or without Connor. He still had not returned my last pathetic text and now I was in a shame spiral, regretting I’d ever sent it. Obviously I had a semi crush on him. Maybe he’d lost his phone? Maybe he just wasn’t texting me back. It sucked, but sometimes you have to be a realist.

I’d copied Cleo’s phone number from my dad’s old phone into mine the night before. It was a New Mexico area code: 725.

I took a deep breath. I don’t know why I was so nervous exactly. This was one of my dad’s oldest friends. True, I hadn’t seen Cleo since she came to Amherst four years ago. She was tall and thin with long, wavy, sun-bleached hair. She reminded me of the models in the Sundance Catalog my mom used to order clothes from. Plus, she loved horses and was a great equestrian—a nature girl, but also kind of tough talking. She had light brown skin and freckles. I remembered that when we went out to dinner, she always ordered a double bourbon on the rocks. It had never occurred to me that my dad would have an affair with Cleo for the simple reason that Cleo never
showed any interest in him. My dad was fine looking, but when I pictured Cleo with a guy, it was George Clooney.

Now that I thought about it, Cleo had never mentioned men at all, nor had Dad ever mentioned a man in her life.

I dialed the number and pressed my phone to my ear, counting the rings. My phone felt hot. Three rings, then a woman’s voice picked up.

“Hello?” It was Cleo, no question.

“Cleo? It’s Tanya, Michael’s daughter.” There was a pause on the other end. For a moment I thought we’d been disconnected. “It’s Tanya,” I repeated. “Michael Barrett’s daughter. Um, I’m calling because—”

“Please don’t call this number again.”

“What? Cleo?”

She had already hung the phone up.

I felt as if I were falling. I pressed the number again, the phone spinning in my clammy hand. Not even a single ring. The call wouldn’t go through. She had blocked it.

Harrison’s black Audi pulled into the parking lot just as I was locking up my bike.

I wondered if Connor was in the car. I couldn’t see anything through the shaded windows. It was 1:04
P.M.
Was Harrison returning from home or had he driven back to Boston after his late-night meeting at MapOut? Would he have seen Connor? Did he know where he was? I lingered, taking my time clipping my helmet to the handlebars and retying my shoe. Waiting for Harrison to get out of his car. But the car doors remained closed, the engine continued to run, the dark windows sealed. The sun reflected off the black hood. He was sitting in his air-conditioned car with the windows rolled up, talking on his phone.

After a few minutes I gave up and walked into the MapOut office. The cool, overly air-conditioned air reminded me of being on an airplane. I wished I could go back outside. It was a beautiful day, not too hot or humid. My dad was
big into conservation and unless it was boiling he would never turn on the AC. On a day like this he would have just opened the windows.

1:12. I knew the time because Alison, the receptionist, announced as much.

“We really try to keep the lunch break to forty-five minutes,” she commented. “It’s policy.”

“I was only gone an extra eight minutes.” I tried to make light of it, to smile at her.

She continued to look at her computer screen. “It’s policy,” she repeated. “If everyone added eight minutes to their lunch break it would equal X number of hours of lost work over time.” All of a sudden she looked up with a smile and winked at me.

I stared at her. There was no way I could respond to a wink even if I wanted to win this argument. Without another word I made my way back to my desk. The pile of input data next to my computer looked as though it had doubled in height since I was last at my cubby an hour ago. At first I thought it was my imagination. Then I saw the yellow Post-it:
Harrison needs these finished by end of day. Thanks! Alison
. She had signed it with a smiley face.

Was Harrison kidding about these pages? Even if I was on schedule with yesterday’s work, there was no way I could realistically finish by the end of the day. I pulled her Post-it off the pile and crumpled it angrily in my hand.

A text came through on my phone. I immediately checked, expecting a response from Connor. It was from Rebs.

Hi T! Blaney driving up tonight @ 9. Hitch a ride with her! Tote desp. for you to come!