Dead Ends (30 page)

The windstorm had ripped up the street pretty good overnight, and I had to jump over a huge tree branch lying across the road to get to the moving truck. The sun was still too low to be seen, and only sharp rays of light poked through the houses, casting spotlights, making one side of the street look like a stage and the other like the dark audience. The moving van was in the shadows, but with our moms' eyes on us, I felt like Billy and I were standing in one of the spotlights.

“Do you know where you're going?” I asked.

“No,” Billy admitted. “I hope it has a cool name.”

“Yeah, as long as it's not Monkey's Eyebrow.”

Billy lowered his gaze. “I don't want to go there anymore,” he whispered.

“Nah, you probably want to go to
Detroit
, right?” There was acid in my voice, and I wished I could start over. This wasn't how I wanted to leave it with Billy, but I was so pissed.

I'd been up all night trying to figure out who to blame—Billy's mom for being paranoid, his dad for being a monster, myself for giving a damn. But I kept coming back to Billy D. I wished he'd never called his dad—wished he'd never even
mentioned
his dad.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm not going to give you any shit, okay? I just … I think maybe you should stop looking for your dad.”

“One of those doctors—the ones Mom made me talk to—says I'm not really looking for my dad.”

“Oh no?”

Billy looked up. “He says I'm looking for
answers.
”

“Sounds like a smart guy.”

“I don't think so.” Billy wrinkled his nose.

“Why not?”

“Because how can I be looking for answers when I don't know the questions?”

Not questions
, I thought.
Question. Singular. Just one: Why do people hit?

Billy had been asking me that in his own way practically since we met. It'd just taken me a long time to figure it out. And apparently, Billy still hadn't.

“Then what do
you
think?” I asked.

Billy shrugged. “I think the doctor wears funny glasses.”

“Well, um …” I coughed and looked at my feet. “I'm going to miss your ugly mug.”

“I'm not ugly,” Billy said. “I'm handsome. Everybody says so. They say, ‘Oh, he's
so
handsome.'”

“Dude, when old ladies say it, it doesn't count.”

“Billy, hurry up,” Mrs. Drum called. “You're going to make Dane late for school.”

I started to let out an empty laugh, but it died on my lips when I saw the expression on her face. She was beaming.

“Dane's back in,” she said, more to Mom than to me.

“What?” Mom and I said at the same time.

Mrs. Drum bounced a little on her toes, looking so much like Billy and so unlike herself that I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

“I wrote a letter to the school board, and I spoke personally to Principal Davis. I explained the trouble Billy had caused trying to run away.” Her smile faltered for a second as she shot Billy a look he shrank under. Then her face turned to mine, and her expression melted into something apologetic. “And I explained how you skipped school because you were trying to protect him. Principal Davis says the board was very moved.” She looked now at Mom. “I meant to tell you yesterday. I wanted to surprise you, but I got … distracted. The school is supposed to call you sometime today.”

Mom threw her arms around Mrs. Drum, and I didn't have to see her face to know she was crying. When she pulled back,
she held Mrs. Drum's arms tightly in her hands. “You won't reconsider?”

“No.” Mrs. Drum's smile disappeared, and she looked again like the worried, frazzled woman I'd come to recognize. “I should have never come here to begin with. So close to home—stupid—I just thought—”

“Shh.” Mom wrapped her in another hug, and now they were both sniffling.

It was obvious to me now that Mom was losing a friend, too. But I wondered if they would have become friends without Billy and me getting into so much trouble—what everything would have been like if we'd never gone looking for Billy's dad. Billy and I could have played video games and watched movies and made fun of Mark and hung out with Seely. Then again, would we have ever hung out with Seely if we hadn't needed her computer for the dad hunt? Would Billy and I have even been friends if he hadn't needed
me
for that search? There was no way of knowing, and I was too selfish to really wish I could go back. Somehow, I had come out ahead. Now Billy was leaving empty-handed, while I got to stay and hang out with Seely and get a job and watch Mom finally spend those lottery tickets. Billy was losing everything, and all I was losing was Billy.

But at the moment, that
felt
like everything.

“Will you be able to call me?” I asked.

Billy's face lit up. “I have your number,” he whispered. He reached down to his backpack, which was lying open at his feet, and pulled out the atlas. He moved, putting my big frame between him and the moms so they couldn't see, and cracked
open the back cover. I saw he'd resealed the torn paper with tape, save for the corner. He folded that corner back now in a triangle, and two edges of folded paper peeked out from underneath.

Billy inched the two bits of paper out and unfolded one. Inside he had printed “Dane Washington” with my phone number below it. I smiled.

“I have Seely's, too,” he said.

He tucked my number away carefully, then pressed the second slip of folded paper into my palm. I started to open it, but Billy stopped me.

“Don't look yet!”

“Why not?”

“Because you might not like it, and I don't want to know if you don't like it, because I really, really,
really
want you to like it.”

“Okay, okay.” I laughed. “I'll look at it later.” I stuck the paper in my back pocket. “I have something for you, too.”

From another pocket, I pulled out a slim plastic case with a DVD inside. I handed it to Billy.

“
The Karate Kid
,” I told him. “Sorry I don't have the original box. It's just the disc, but it still plays and all—”

“It's awesome!”

Billy dropped the atlas back into his pack and grasped the DVD case in both hands. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said. My cheeks felt hot. “Just remember.
You
are Mr. Miyagi,” I said.

Billy tore his eyes from the case to meet mine. “No,” he said seriously. “You're the Miyagi.”

The first curve of the sun appeared over Billy's roof, signaling it was time to go. I started nodding like an idiot and backing up with my hands in my pockets.

“Well …,” I drifted off.

“Yeah,” Billy said.

We locked eyes for one more second.

“Okay, then,” I said.

Billy grinned. “Okay, then.”

Not five minutes later, the moving van was pulling away with Mom and me in the middle of the street waving like you see people do in the movies. I dropped my hand and stuffed it back in my pocket, feeling stupid.

• • • X • • •

Walking to school alone sucked more than I thought it would. I mean, I'd been walking to that damn high school by myself for three years. There was no reason it should suddenly bother me now.

But I guess it doesn't matter how long you walk alone; once you get used to someone traveling next to you, you sort of come to count on it. And once it's gone, no matter how hard you try, you can't remember what it felt like to have no one there. Now, instead of just me, it felt like me and the big empty space next to me.

The sun beat down on me as I walked, and for the first time that whole stormy spring, I wished it would rain. I was about to take the turn to cut through the gardens when a horn honked, startling me out of my own thoughts.

Somehow, I expected to see a red Mustang with some asshole behind the wheel and maybe across the street a slightly stooped-over kid with a blank expression who would watch while I taught the asshole a lesson. But what I saw instead was surprising enough to chase the memories away for the moment.

“Get in!” Seely said, leaning over the passenger seat to call out the window.

“What is this?” I smiled, despite my sour mood.

This was no Mustang, and there was no asshole behind the wheel—only a beat-up, old Cadillac and the girl who reminded me I hadn't actually lost everything.

“
This
,” Seely said, opening the door from the inside and waving me in, “is
all mine
.”

I dropped into the passenger seat. “You finally settled?”

“Well, Dad said if I made any more money, he wasn't going to be able to afford to match me dollar-for-dollar, so it was time. Picked her up this morning.” Seely caressed the dashboard. “Like her?”

“Love her,” I said.

An awkward moment of silence followed, which I covered up with a cough and stammered, “Um, so … anyway … uh, how did you know to pick me up or—”

“Billy said you might need a ride today,” she said softly.

“Oh.”

Seely put the car in motion while I stared out the window at the sidewalks moving slowly past. I thought of the tread Billy and I had worn in those sidewalks over the last few months. I hoped wherever he wound up that he wouldn't be lonely. I
hoped he would find a doctor who spoke his language and could help him figure out both the answers
and
the questions. I hoped he'd meet someone with a skateboard and someone else who could walk him to school. I chuckled to myself thinking of who that person might be and how the poor sucker had no idea what he was in for. I almost pitied the guy—and envied him.

I shifted in my seat and felt a crinkle in my pocket. I reached back and pulled out the little folded piece of paper from Billy.

“What's that?” Seely asked.

I opened it without answering and read two short lines followed by a name and an address.

Dane,
This is your dad.

I was in the homestretch.

Only one more week of keeping my fists to myself and making it to class on time. The doctor Mom had set me up with helped with the fists, and Seely got me to school by giving me a ride every morning.

On this morning—the last Monday before summer break—we were in her car, idling at a stop sign for longer than necessary. Seely was waiting for me to make a decision. She checked her rearview mirror to make sure no cars were behind us, then she looked back at the slip of paper in my hands.

Billy had taken a lot of care to make sure the words were as neat as possible. I didn't know how he knew—what research he'd done, who he'd talked to, or how he'd found him—but I knew Billy wouldn't make it his parting gift if he wasn't sure.

I'd carried the paper around for two weeks, but I hadn't opened it again until today. It sat heavy in my back pocket, a physical weight pulling me down, and I wanted to be free of it before summer. Plus, I expected to hear from Billy any day, and he would want to know what I'd found.

“Are you ready?” Seely asked quietly.

I looked out the window, down the road to the place where Billy and I always veered off the sidewalk to cut across the ball fields—a turn I'd probably never make again, now that I had a girl with wheels and possibly my own car coming in the future. Just past that turnoff was the entrance to the parking lot, and beyond that—only a few blocks away—the street that Billy had printed on this piece of paper.

Seely tapped the clock on the Caddy's dashboard. “We still have time before school,” she said. “But we have to go now.”

I nodded, thinking how much Billy would have wanted to be on this stakeout. “I'm ready.”

Seely passed the school and picked up speed. It only took a few minutes to find the house, and too soon we were parked in front of it.

“Back up!” I hissed. “You're being too obvious.”

Seely backed up calmly and killed the engine. And just in time, too, because right then the front door opened up, and a man in a suit stumbled out looking like he was in a hurry. There was a woman, too, leaning out the door and saying something, and a little girl toddling down the steps after her dad, but I didn't notice them much. I was too focused on the man in the suit—the hard line of his jaw, the dark skin and hair, the way he smiled at the little girl.

The way he kept reaching up to flatten the chunk of hair that sat up on the back of his head.

Something stuck in my throat.

“He looks just like you,” Seely said. But it wasn't necessary. Anyone with eyeballs could see this man was like a crystal ball into my future—exactly what I would see when I looked in the mirror in sixteen years or so.

The man ushered the little girl back to her mother, who he kissed in a hurry before rushing to his car.

“You want me to block the driveway?” Seely asked, her hand on the gearshift and a fierce tone in her voice.

Right here the whole time
, I thought.
Right here in town, right by school. Right here with a wife and a kid and a decent house and a life.

“Dane?” Seely moved her hand from the gearshift to my arm.

I looked at the name on the paper, trying to remember if it was one we'd pulled from the pictures in the yearbook. I couldn't recall.

I lifted my eyes back to the scene, to the man getting held up one more time by a last-minute something-or-other shouted by his wife in the doorway. I watched him, waiting to feel something—anger, excitement, maybe …

Nothing.

Well, not nothing—just nothing about this guy. I was feeling a little bit sorry for Mom, that she could have had this house in a nicer neighborhood, and a little bit defensive of her, that she was prettier than the woman in the doorway. I was
feeling grateful for Seely's hand on my arm and still feeling depressed about watching Billy drive off in the moving van—but feelings about this guy?