Shoppers were watching from both ends of the aisle now, three and four carts deep. The manager signaled toward the far end of the aisle. A uniformed security guard made his way toward them, squeezing though the tangle of carts.
“Just give me a second,” Darby said, his mouth open, fumbling with the spray can, unable to get his numb fingers over the trigger tip.
Someone said, Get him out of here. Get him out of here before he does something.
The manager said, Please, please, everyone take it easy. Please.
“Just give me a second,” Darby said. He had his finger on the tip, his mouth open wide, aiming the can.
A woman screamed, Get him out, get him out, get him out.
A hand on Darby’s arm. Darby thought it was the manager, the manager had laid a hand on him, or maybe the security guard, attempting to drag him out of the store. Darby forced his hand into a fist, what he thought might be a fist, turned, ready to swing. But it was The Kid. The Kid’s hand on Darby’s wet forearm. The Kid standing between Darby and the manager and the crowd behind the manager. He’d got in through the crowd and the carts somehow, his eyes wide, scared.
The Kid wrote something in his notebook, big block letters across two facing pages. He turned and held it up for everyone to read.
EVERYTHING IS OK. THIS IS MY DAD.
Darby dropped the can. The Kid pulled Darby along with one hand, held his notebook up with the other, showing it to the crowd on each side of the aisle, keeping them at bay, moving forward slowly toward the front of the store. The crowd backed up as they approached, unclogging the aisle. They walked past the checkouts, The Kid showing his notebook to all sides, warding off the crowd, pulling Darby through the front doors and out of the store.
T
hey drove home from the supermarket, his dad with no expression on his face, just staring straight through the windshield, not saying a thing. At the house, The Kid got out of the pickup, went on up to the porch. Steve Rogers watched from the corner, wagging his tail, happy to see them. The Kid opened the security door, the front door. His dad hadn’t locked either of them in his rush to get to the supermarket. The lights in the house were still on. The Kid turned back and saw his dad sitting in the truck, the engine still running, the dome light on. His dad’s head was down, looking at his lap. His dad was sitting on his hands. The Kid went back out and opened his dad’s door. Turned the car off, took the keys out of the ignition. His dad said nothing. He took his dad’s arm again, led him across the lawn, up onto the porch.
The Kid took him back to the old bedroom. He didn’t know where else to take him. The bedroom was cold and dark, smelled like dust and stale air. He sat his dad down on the bed, pulled off his boots, his socks. Tipped his dad back until his head touched the pillow. His dad’s eyes were still open, staring at the wall. He tucked the sheet all around his dad, over his feet, in at his sides, pulled it up to his chin. His dad wrapped like a mummy in the cold bed.
He had done this before. This was not a new thing. There had been times when he’d woken up in the middle of the night and heard noises down in the living room, in the kitchen. His dad away at work, the house dark except for the streetlights through the windows. Downstairs, his mom would be standing in the living room, in the kitchen, in front of the desk in her office, unsteady on her feet, swaying in place. Empty bottles and glasses in the sink, sometimes glasses broken in the sink, in sharp pieces on the kitchen floor. Her hands at her face sometimes, holding her face. Her hands up at her ears sometimes, pushing in, like there was something she didn’t want to hear.
He’d take his mom back to the bedroom, sit her on the bed. Take off her shoes, lay her back onto her pillow, cover her up. He’d pick up the glass pieces from the kitchen floor, from the sink, careful not to cut his fingers. Sometimes he was careful enough, sometimes he wasn’t. Red blood from his fingertips, from a slice across his palm. The soft whirring of the VCR in the living room, taping the last of the late-night talk shows. His mom back in the bedroom, not sleeping, just saying,
oh god oh god oh god
. The Kid picking up glass, looking at the clock on the microwave. How long until morning? How long until sunlight through the living room window? How long until his alarm clock, until breakfast, his mom sitting at the kitchen table, normal again, smiling as he came down the stairs? The night before forgotten, the night before a thing of the past. How long until sitting on the couch with the tape of the talk shows playing, that safest hour before school? The Kid making his mom laugh with his impressions of the hosts, of the guests. On those nights, The Kid picked up glass, looked at the clock, did the math trying to see how long.
He stood in the kitchen listening for sirens. He was sure that the people at the supermarket had called the police, that the police were coming and would take his dad off to jail. He listened for he didn’t know how long. He heard plenty of sirens, but the police never came.
He got his backpack and the cassette recorder, the tape he’d taken from the garage. In the kitchen, he packed some cookies and juice boxes. He didn’t want to leave his dad, but he had to bring Michelle some food. He was already very late. She was probably starving. He went out onto the front porch. Steve Rogers was lying in the far corner, watching The Kid, his eyes glinting in the streetlight. The Kid thought that maybe he should give Steve Rogers an order, maybe he should tell him to protect his dad, not to let anyone in the house, not to let the police near, but he thought it would be pretty stupid to write the orders in his notepad and show it to the dog. Instead, he stood on the porch and thought of the things he wanted Steve Rogers to do while he looked the dog in the eye. Finally Steve Rogers looked away and The Kid hoped that maybe this meant he had gotten the message.
He stood across the street from the burned house, slowing his breathing, listening for signs of trouble, looking for faces in the windows of the neighboring houses. After he was sure that no one was watching, he ran across the street, up onto the porch, eased open the security door, stepped inside.
He didn’t want to get hit with a block of wood again, so he knocked his knuckles on the wall just inside the door, the secret-code knock from all sorts of old movies, the tune of an old-time song that his mom used to sing while his dad was cutting his hair on the front porch,
Shave and a haircut, two bits
. The Kid had no idea what that meant, but it was the well-known secret code knock, and he hoped Michelle would hear it and know it was him, put down her two-by-four.
He made his way through the front room, down the hallway. The living room was pitch black, no light from the candles. He knocked on the wall again.
Shave and a haircut
. No response. He listened for breathing. Maybe Michelle was asleep. He didn’t hear anything. He stepped into the room, shuffling his feet across the floor to make noise, to wake her up before he got too close and scared her into action. In the center of the room, he could see some comics and the candles in a ring on the floor. Only one candle was still lit, just barely, the wick burned down to a nub. He expected Michelle to jump out at any moment, knock him to the floor, but nothing happened. The room was empty. He walked back through the house. She wasn’t in the dining room, the kitchen, the bathroom. He stood in the doorway to the bedroom, looking at the burned bed, the charred walls. There was nobody in the house. The Kid couldn’t believe it. She had gone to Minneapolis. She’d been telling the truth. Her real dad had sent money and now she was sitting on a bus, riding across the night-world of the map, the empty highways from The Kid’s dream. Free, away from here.
The word search book was gone. She must have taken it with her, something to do on the bus. He looked across the floor. The rabbit was gone. His dad’s rabbit. He’d placed it there as some kind of protection, something to ward off trouble, but he didn’t think that she’d take it with her when she left. He didn’t really think that she was going to leave.
How long would it take for her to get to Minneapolis? A week? A month? Would she be on the bus when Y2K happened, when the planes fell, when the missiles shot up? Rolling along a farmland highway at night, streaks of white light in the sky, some going up, some coming down. She’d never get a chance to monkey with the computers at school now, to try to convince them that the year 2000 could really exist. The Kid still had her money from that bet, the five dollars she’d taken from her mom’s bedroom. The retainer. The Kid guessed that this meant he’d won the bet. He’d lost the rabbit but won the bet.
He blew out the last candle, gathered up his comics and walked back through the dark house.
Darby woke in their bed for the first time in a year. Dusty sunlight streaming around the edges of the blinds, golden slats on his outstretched arm, the sheet beyond.
He thought of arms around her, holding her. Not his arms, but at least she wouldn’t have been alone. The alternative was worse. The thought of her not surrounded by something, held and protected in those last moments. The thought was too much, but it would not leave him. He imagined Greene’s arms holding her and he wanted to smash Greene, he wanted to thank Greene.
It should have been him. He should have been there, somehow. But it wasn’t him. This was the truth, this was something that would not leave him.
He stood in the motel parking lot, the row of orange doors before him. He knew why he was there. He knew why he was there in the way certain essential things were ingrained in his muscles, in his bones. Something so obviously true that he could not let the thought form completely. Knowing that if he let it out, if he tried to release it from his body, then everything, every other certainty, would collapse in its presence.
He didn’t know where his pager was. He’d lost it somewhere. The supermarket, maybe. Maybe that hadn’t been a dream, the supermarket, cornered in an aisle by angry strangers, The Kid leading him out by the arm.
The newspaper clipping was gone, but there was a napkin in his pocket with a name and a town and he knew that a truth would be there, waiting for him in the desert.
Of course The Kid knew her real name. He’d heard Miss Ramirez say it many times, heard other kids in class call her by it. He’d seen her write it in large blue letters on the dry-erase board, had seen it on the tops of quiz papers. But the name did not stick to The Kid, did not stay with The Kid. When he thought of her, he thought of the name he had given her. It seemed more right, it seemed more true.
Arizona sat alone two lunch tables away. Rhonda Sizemore and some of the girls from Arizona’s old table were looking at her and whispering among themselves. Brian was suspended. Matthew was still staying home. The Kid didn’t know how long he’d be gone, if maybe his parents had pulled him out of school or something. The Kid chewed his sandwich, watched Arizona, tried not to get caught looking. He’d made his own sandwich that morning, packed his own lunch, his dad still back in the bedroom, sawing logs.
He had to finish the angel. He knew this. Not just before Y2K when the whole world went crazy, but now, before things got any worse with his dad, before the police came and arrested his dad for what he’d done at the mall, what he’d done at the supermarket. He had to get his mom home now. He would finish the angel and she would send the signal and his mom would come back and make things right again. There was no more time to waste. Now Michelle was gone, Matthew was gone.
He looked at Arizona, tried not to get caught looking. He thought about how she had come to visit him and Matthew at their lunch table that first day. How she’d come to be interviewed on Halloween. He thought about her hand on his arm when he’d made those jokes, when he’d made her laugh.
She looked up when he sat across from her and her expression didn’t change. He couldn’t tell if she was happy for the company or if she wanted to be left alone.
“How do you feel?” she said.
The Kid shrugged. He shrugged again when she asked him how Matthew was feeling.
“I hope he’s okay,” she said. She looked like she was going to cry. “I really, really hope he’s okay.”
The Kid opened his notebook, turned to a blank page.
How long is Brian suspended for?
“I don’t talk to Brian anymore,” she said. She looked at Rhonda’s table. “I don’t talk to anyone over there anymore. I’m sorry I was ever friends with them.”
The Kid stared at his lunch bag. When she didn’t say anything else, he looked up and saw that she was watching him, waiting for something. He realized finally that she had said that last thing to him, she’d meant it specifically for him.
The Kid nodded. He didn’t want her to feel sorry.
She looked back down at the table and The Kid could see her eyes filling, her bottom lip trembling.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said. “I want to go home. I want to go back to my old school. I was wrong about this place.”
The Kid turned back in his notebook, looking for an earlier page. Something she had asked him at lunch, what seemed like years ago now. He finally found it, the blank space between two lines he had written, the time she had asked how long they’d have to be friends before he would tell her his secret.
I need your help,
he wrote in that space, and then he slid the notebook across the table so she could read.
They planned to meet outside
Gift 2000
right after school. The Kid thought they should meet at night so they wouldn’t be followed, but Arizona told him that there was no way she could leave her house after dark. Her father locked the doors at eight o’clock and that was it. The Kid would have to show her whatever he wanted to show her right after school.
The Kid stood in the parking lot, waiting. He was still worried about Brian and Razz. Just because they were suspended didn’t mean they had been removed from the world. A long white truck pulled into the parking lot, stopped with a sigh. A man hopped down from the front of the truck, unlocked the big back door, rolled it up. He lifted out a red dolly cart, pulled some boxes down and stacked them on the cart. The Kid wondered what was in the boxes. More word search books, maybe. Y2K supplies, bottled water, batteries, clean underwear.
“I’m here, Whitley.” Arizona was standing beside him, wide-eyed, excited, maybe a little scared. They walked across the parking lot, then down through one of The Kid’s alternate routes. Arizona talked the whole way, telling The Kid about where she used to live, her old school, her old house. Telling him about her old friends. She said that it was possible they were going back there, her family, that her dad would be transferred back. She said she thought that would be a good thing, she thought she’d prefer that to staying here.
The afternoon was cool and humid after all that rain the day before. They turned down side streets, came back around by way of others, a long, winding route, The Kid trying to throw any pursuers off their trail but also glad just to hear Arizona talk, just to walk and listen. He wanted to walk as long as they could, wanted to make the route as long as possible. He felt like they were in some kind of alternate dimension while they walked, just the two of them, shifted out slightly from everyone else, from the rest of the world, an alternate timeline where everything was different, where everything was okay as long as they walked, as long as he could listen to her talk.
They finally reached the sidewalk across the street from the burned house. Arizona stopped talking, looked at the face of the house, the black-hole eyes, the charred, jagged roof.
“What happened to it?” she said.