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She’s like, “Uh, yeah, right, we already went shopping.”

She’s about as convincing as a politician promising to cut taxes. So I tell her maybe me and Gillis will head back to Mona’s house again.

She doesn’t think that’s such a good idea. Mona wouldn’t be back yet, she tells us. She had some more shopping to do. “Don’t mention it to Rick,” she says. “She’s looking for a gift to surprise him with.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” I say. She just shrugs, and I’m like, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna find out what it is one way or another.”

“Knock yourself out.” She stands up. “I’m going in. My show’s coming on.”

Back in the car, Gillis is like, “You know she’s lying out her ass, don’t you?”

“No doubt. She’s covering something up, but I just can’t believe it’s really about Bobby. He wouldn’t come back without telling me. No, I’ll bet Mona’s running around on her husband, all right, but there’s about six other guys I can think of off the top of my head she could be doing it with.”

“I guess we go home now then, huh?”

“No way, leprechaun man. If Mona’s got herself a boy toy, I know exactly where she’d take him.”

When Bobby was in high school, I don’t know how many times I walked into the house in the afternoon and caught him and Mona going at each other. And I didn’t have to barge into his bedroom either. They did it all over the house, the living room couch, the kitchen, even on the washing machine—while it was running! Bobby told me later Mona liked how the vibrations felt.

Finally, I told him he better start going somewhere else before Mom or Dad caught him. Actually, Mom wouldn’t be so bad since she’d probably just act like she didn’t really see what was plain in front of her face, but Dad was likely to grab him by the ear and pull him out the front door by it. Give him a kick in the butt for good measure.

Bobby said maybe he’d just go downtown to the
Laundromat, screw on top of one of the professional washing machines—and I wouldn’t have put it past him—but he ended up becoming a regular over at the rattiest motel in town. That became their place, and I’m sure Mona hasn’t forgotten it.

“Okay, Detective McDermott,” says Gillis, “where to now?”

“The Tip-Top Motel. And hurry it up, leprechaun.”

The Tip-Top is a single-level motel next to the truck stop out by the highway. When we get there, Gillis asks how we’re supposed to tell if they’ve checked in. The motel clerk isn’t likely to give us any names, and we don’t know what car to look for since Mona’s known to drive a different car about every six months. I don’t figure it’ll be too hard to figure out, though. All we have to do is look for the most expensive car in the parking lot.

Sure enough, most of the cars at the Tip-Top are run-down rust buckets, but around the back, there it is—a brand-new gold Escalade. I couldn’t be more sure it’s Mona’s if it had a personalized license plate saying
GOLDDIGGER
on it.

I guess I should be pleased with my detective work, but actually my heart sinks. I’m like, Could it be true? Could Bobby actually be in that room, just a crappy thin motel wall between us?

For a while Gillis and I sit there next to the Escalade playing stakeout, but that gets old pretty fast. Since there are no other cars within three parking spaces, we’re pretty sure which room Mona must be in, so we decide to check it out. A narrow gap between the drapes is just wide enough to give us a peek inside. Not that I’m exactly crazy about going all Peeping Tom, but it’s time to take action.

Gillis reaches the window first, and I have to elbow him out of the way. There’s not much to see. The light’s dim and the angle’s bad, but I can make out a purse sitting on the table right
in front of the window—an expensive Coach purse. Just the kind Mona’s likely to spend Rick’s money on.

“Come on,” Gillis whispers as he nudges me out of the way. “Let me have a look.”

“There’s nothing to see,” I tell him, and he’s like, “Not even a little tittie?”

I grab his shirt and pull him away. “Jesus,” I say. “You really do have a sickness, you know that? You need to go to the doctor and get a sedative for your hormones.”

He just grins his leprechaun grin.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get in the car and wait. They can’t stay in there all night. She has to get back to Rick and his platinum MasterCard sometime.”

“Screw that,” Gillis says, and walks over and pounds on the door. “Maintenance!” he yells. “We need to take a look at your air conditioner.”

“What are you doing?” I can’t believe that idiot. The last thing I want is to get caught spying.

“Just speeding this deal up,” he says. “I don’t want to scrunch down on the damn floorboard all night.” He knocks again. “Maintenance! We think your wiring might be loose.”

This time, I’m pretty sure the curtain moves. “Crap, Gillis,” I say, grabbing his arm. “Get back in the car. You gave us away, you moron.”

“We also have to restock your toilet paper,” he hollers as I drag him away.

Back in the car, he’s like, “I guess we’ll have to give it up and go home. If they saw us, they’ll never come out.”

“We’re not going home,” I tell him. “Not on your life.”

Instead, we park behind the truck stop next door, where we still have a view of Mona’s Escalade and the motel room. Gillis goes in to get a burrito, and when he comes back, there’s
something too irritating about the way he wolfs his food. “So,” I say, watching a chunk dribble onto his shirt. “You were a real asshole last night.” Obviously, he could’ve gone forever without bringing it up, but I’m not going to let him off the hook so easy.

“What do you mean?” he says, putting on the dumb act. It’s not much of a stretch for him.

“You know what I’m talking about. You try something like that again, and I’ll bust you somewhere worse than your eyebrow. I mean it. I’ll kick you so hard it’ll hurt to even think about sex for the next ten years.”

“Yeah, right, I’m scared.”

“You better be. You better be one hundred percent scared.”

“I don’t know what you’re whining about anyway. You ought to take it as a compliment.”

“God, I hate you.”

He just laughs. But the weird thing is I know he feels bad. He wouldn’t have driven me around all day doing everything I told him to if he didn’t. But can a guy just come out and admit it? Not in this lifetime.

We’ve been waiting behind the truck stop for twenty minutes before we get any action. First, the light brightens in the motel room, and then about five minutes later the door opens, but only one person steps out. It’s Mona, all right. Her hair’s cut different from the last time I saw her, but she still has the same bouncy walk from high school days.

“Damn,” says Gillis. “I guess Rick’s construction money can’t buy everything.”

Nobody walks out with her, though. I’m like, come on, dude, whoever you are, show yourself. My stomach twists into a knot. Mostly I don’t want it to be Bobby, but in some ways I do. I mean, it’d be great to have him back, but at the same time,
I hate the idea that he’s been hanging around town and not getting in touch with me. I could understand that he might not tell the parents, but me and him are thick.

Mona gets in the car, but still no one else comes out. Only after she pulls away does the door to that motel room finally close.

Gillis is like, “I guess her dude’s going to stay and keep the bed warm.”

“Looks like it.”

“So, what do we do, follow her, wait to see what he does, or go home?”

There’s no use in following her. She’d just head back to Rick Nichols and the big fancy house. For a second, I consider going over to the room and pounding on the door and yelling, “Hey, Bobby, it’s Ceejay. It’s Ceejay. Come on and open up. Let me in. I have to talk to you. I have to touch your face and prove you made it back in one piece.” But that would just be pathetic. It has to be someone else behind that stupid locked door.

“Let’s go,” I say. “No way could that be Bobby in that room. No way.” And I keep telling myself that all the way home.

That night, I’m lying in bed, but my mind is too busy to let me sleep. I roll over onto one side, then the other. Neither is any good so I switch to lying flat on my back, staring up into the dark. The evening replays in my head. At first, I feel stupid for running all over town searching for Bobby when it doesn’t make sense that he could be anywhere but where he said he’d be—Germany. Then I feel frustrated, thinking I should have tried harder to see who was in that motel room with Mona.

Trying for something more positive, I remember this time when we went to the lake. I was eleven, but still Bobby let me and Brianna tag along with his group of friends. At one point, Bobby decided to swim out into the lake where one of his buddies was drifting in his parents’ boat. Not wanting to be
left behind, I tried to follow. I wasn’t nearly as strong as Bobby, though, and pretty soon my arms started to give out, so I turned over on my back and just kicked with my legs. Then my legs got tired and I started floating, biding time till I got back some energy. But when I looked around, I realized I was headed out into the wide part of the lake instead of toward the boat. I totally lost my sense of direction.

I guess I panicked. I kicked my legs and splashed my arms, probably screamed like an idiot too. Then I felt it—Bobby’s arm wrapping around me. I must have kept thrashing, because he pressed his head to mine and said, very calmly, “Be still, Ceejay. Be still. Be still.”

I did what he said and clung onto him as he took me back to the shore, one arm around me and the other paddling. When we got to dry land, we sat on the bank, quiet until we got our breath back.

“Crap,” I said. “I thought I was going under for sure.”

He put his arm around my shoulder. “No way,” he said. “Not while I’m around. I’ll never let you go under.”

Lying in bed, I close my eyes against the dark and listen to those words over and over in my head, hoping they’ll lull me into a long, silent sleep. But instead of silence, a dream comes. It’s not the lake but the ocean. And I’m not swimming. I’m walking along the ocean floor, feeling like I need to get somewhere but I don’t know where. Then I see it—a huge pink octopus with a giant head and long tentacles waving up and down.

As I get closer, I see a couple of the tentacles have hold of something. It’s Bobby! But he isn’t panicked or anything. In fact, he looks kind of bored. I try talking to him, but no words come out, and he turns away, like I’ve interrupted him in the
middle of something more important, and the octopus pulls him farther and farther away.

It’s crazy. I feel like I’m supposed to save him, but how can that be? He’s the one who’s supposed to save me.

I start to yell at him, but just then I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around, and there stands Bobby, his face pale gray, like a drowned man. Then all of a sudden, I’m back in my room, lying in bed, staring up.

And this is the really, really, really strange thing. Bobby’s face is still in front of me and his hand is still on my shoulder. He’s right there—I swear—leaning over me, nothing but the small lamp on the dresser to light his face. I start to shout out his name, but he clamps his hand over my mouth.

“Shhh, Ceejay,” he says. “Shhh. Don’t wake up the others. Nobody else knows I’m here.”

He takes his hand away from my mouth, and I hug him as tight as I can, making sure I’m not still dreaming. “Is it really you?” I ask, my heart in my throat.

“It’s me.” He peels my arms away and backs off, pulls the chair out from my desk and sits a few feet away.

“How can you be here?” I ask in a barely contained whisper. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Germany?”

“Things changed.” His voice sounds weary, old, but at the same time he’s bigger now, muscled up, his neck nearly as thick as his head. His deep brown eyes look older too. No uniform, just jeans and a black T-shirt, but that doesn’t matter. With his close-cropped hair and the way he carries himself, he still looks like a soldier. Or a hit man. I want to grab hold of him again anyway, but something about his attitude tells me to give him space.

“But how can you just show up like this?” I ask.

He glances around the room. It used to be his. “All my stuff’s gone, huh?”

“It’s in the garage, boxed up.”

“The room looks smaller somehow. Everything looks smaller, the house, the town, everything but you. Look how big you are.”

“It’s been a while since the last time you came home on leave.”

“Like a million years.” He scans the walls, the floor, the curtains. “So much happened in this room. Now, it’s like looking at an old friend who doesn’t know me anymore.”

I guess I know what he means. I remember this room when it was his—jeans and T-shirts draped over the chairs, posters of rockers and rappers on the wall, a pirate flag for a curtain. So many nights I used to come in here and talk. I’d tell about what was going on in school, and he would explain what to watch out for when I got into the higher grades. Like boys. He was the one who taught me how to do the perfect head butt.

He also told stories, made-up stories about a girl hero who traveled around to different galaxies and never took crap from anyone. Cirrilean Surreal was her name. She had her own kind of beauty. It was a magic beauty that only the most special people in the universe could see. I felt huge when I was with him in here. After he went into the army, I begged Mom and Dad to let me have his room. Now he’s back in this weird way and the feeling is all mixed up.

“I don’t understand,” I tell him. “I can’t believe you didn’t at least call me to say you were coming home. How could you do that?”

“Listen.” He looks down at the floor, then back at me. “I just came by because I know you were looking for me. I don’t
want you telling Mom and Dad I’m back yet. I’m not ready to be here.”

“But you are here.”

He shakes his head. “It just looks that way. But I don’t want to talk about that. Just promise me you won’t tell the parents.”

I promise.

He walks over and touches my cheek. “You and me, we were always the most alike, weren’t we?”

I nod. For some reason, it feels like tears are ready to burn into my eyes, but I can’t let that happen, not in front of Bobby.