Dead Ends (6 page)

While I sat there stunned and half admiring the kid's confidence, he dragged his backpack over to the sandbox and pulled out his atlas. He sat on one of the cracked wooden railroad ties framing the sand with his legs crossed, the heavy book open in his lap.

I tried to sit back and enjoy the temporary silence, but the longer Billy searched the pages, the more I wanted to know
what the hell was so interesting about a bunch of maps. I moved to sit next to him on the railroad tie. “What're you looking for in there?”

Billy didn't look up. “My dad.”

I shot him a sideways glance.

“Strange place to be looking for a dad,” I said. “Unless he's a paper doll, I don't think you're gonna find—”

Billy stabbed one of the pages with a stubby finger. “Truth or Consequences!”

I pulled back at the volume in his voice. “Dude, don't get all heavy on me. I was just making conversation.”

“No, look. Truth or Consequences.”

He moved his fingers, and I saw the words printed there in the dent he'd made on the map of New Mexico.

“That's the name of a town?” I asked.

“Yep. That's an easy one, because it's on the map.” He thumbed through the soft, worn pages of the atlas. “But there's lots of towns with funny names that aren't on the maps.”

“Yeah, but what's that got to do with—”

“See.” He let the pages fall open. “In Oregon, where I used to live, there's a place called Boring. But it's not in the atlas, so I had to write it down.”

“But, Billy—”

“And there used to be a town called Idiotville.” He laughed as his fingers traced a line from the handwritten
Boring
to a dark scribble where he'd crossed out
Idiotville.
“But it's not there anymore. And there's lots of Borings. There's one in Maryland and Tennessee and—”

“Billy D.!” I had to shout it to get his attention.

He lifted his eyes from the atlas like he was coming out of a daze, and I made the universal symbol for “time-out” with my arms.

“That's all cool, man, but you said you were looking for your dad.”

“I am.”

“Yeah, I'm not getting it.”

Billy spread a chubby hand across the map, smoothing out the page.

“My dad told me all the names of the towns. He made lists, and I'd find which state they were in and where to put them on the map.”

“And?”

“And he's in one of them. I just don't know which one.”

I studied Billy's face, but his expression was far away, lost in Hooker, Oklahoma, or some other place.

“When's the last time you saw him?”

“At home,” Billy said. “A couple months ago. Or …” He screwed up his face, thinking. “Maybe a lot of months ago.”

“Didn't you just move here?” I asked.

Billy went back to flipping the pages of his atlas. “We went some other places first.”

“So your dad's not back in—where did you say? Oregon?”

Billy shook his head. “No. I called our old house. I memorized the number. But it's someone else's number now.”

“Cell phone?”

A faint shade of pink filled Billy's cheeks. “I don't have it anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Mom deleted it from my phone.”

“Oh! Nasty divorce or something?”

I'd had a buddy go through that in junior high. His dad wouldn't pay child support, so his mom stopped letting him see his dad on the weekends. He was the first of my friends to get booted from Twain over to the alternative school after the warden busted him with drugs.

Billy picked at the corner of the atlas, ignoring me.

I crossed my arms and tilted my face up to the sky. “Man, I know you want me to help you with this dad-hunt-whatever, but you have to at least give me a place to start.”

Billy held up the atlas and finally met my eye. “Start here.”

“Makes more sense to start in Oregon,” I said.

“He's not there.”

“You're so sure—”

“Even Mom says he's not there. She says he moved. And I know he would only move to one of
our
towns. But it wouldn't be Boring, because Dad said he'd
never
live somewhere called
Boring
—”

“What's your dad's name?” I asked.

“Paul Drum.” He twisted his head to look at me, his eyes squinted. “Why?”

“Because we can look him up on the Internet—find out where he is.”

Billy rolled his eyes. “Duh. I tried that.”

“Dude, I told you to stop saying ‘duh.'”

“There are, like, a billion people named Paul Drum,” he said. “And they're all in Detroit or San Diego or places you've
heard
of. My dad would never live anywhere you've heard of.”

“So you haven't even tried to call—”

“No. He's not in those places.” Billy snapped the atlas shut and hugged it to his chest. “He's in one of these places.”

He rocked back and forth, hunched over the book.

Instinctively, I reached out to pat his back. It was an awkward gesture, and my hand wasn't used to it, so I hit him a little too hard, and he had to kick out a foot to keep from going headlong into the sandbox. I gripped the back of his shirt to pull him upright.

“Okay, Billy D. If you say he's in one of those funny-name places, that's where he is.”

When Billy looked up at me with a small smile, I didn't regret lying to him. If it made the kid feel better, then let him think his dad was hiding in that atlas.

It had been a long time since I'd scoured old photo albums looking for shots of me as a baby in some guy's—
any
guy's—arms and even longer since I'd entertained silly dreams of a dad showing up to claim me, but I still remembered what it felt like. And I couldn't deny—back then, if I'd had an atlas, or any sort of treasure map that might help me find my dad, I would've clung to it, too.

• • • X • • •

The walk home felt longer after the fighting lesson, so about halfway between the playground and our street, we parked our butts on a bus stop bench, agreeing to let wheels carry us the rest of the way. A smelly drunk was slumped in the corner of the bus stop shelter, snoring loudly. I stared at him—like I stared at a lot of strangers—searching for something familiar.
I always looked harder at the bums and thugs, afraid one of them might be the man I was supposed to call Dad.

The bus squealed to a stop in front of us, and we climbed on. It was crowded with nine-to-fivers on their way home from work, and there was nowhere to sit. I grabbed onto a metal bar, but Billy didn't have to. A woman in a cheap-looking suit got up from her seat and motioned for Billy to take it. She gave him a patronizing smile as he took the seat, and he smiled back. There were a few other smiles of pity around us—more people who would have given their seat to Billy as if he couldn't stand up like anyone else, like his unusual face somehow meant his legs didn't work.

The woman who gave up her seat smiled at me, too—a silent “atta boy” for being such a Good Samaritan, hanging out with the Down syndrome kid. I returned her smile with a scowl.

We got off the bus at the end of our street, and my feet were barely on the sidewalk before I told Billy, “That's not cool, man.”

“What's not cool?”

“You shouldn't have taken that chick's seat.”

“Why not?”

“Because of why she gave it to you.”

Billy's expression flickered confusion.

I sucked in a breath and tried to figure out how to explain delicately.

“She gave it to you because she thinks you're retarded.”

Delicacy was apparently not my thing.

Billy frowned. “No, she's just nice.”

“Billy D., do you ever notice people being nice to only you and not anyone else?” I asked as we walked.

Billy thought for a moment. “Maybe.”

“Doesn't that bother you?”

“Why would it bother me?”

“Because … because they're only being nice to you because they feel sorry for you.”

Billy looked up at me in surprise. “Why do they feel sorry for me?”

I caught his eye. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Dude, because you look different. Obviously.”

“Oh.” Billy looked down at his feet.

I rushed to explain. “I mean, at least they're nice, y'know? Better to be nice to someone different instead of mean or something. But still … they're judging you. They're making a decision about you based on how you look … like—” I snapped my fingers. “Like people think I'm a jerk just because I don't go around grinning at everyone all the time.”

“Yeah.” Billy's eyes lit up with understanding. “And like that piece of hair that sticks up on the back of your head.”

My hand flew to my head automatically. “What?”

“People probably think you don't brush your hair, but I bet you do, because I've seen you try to push that hair down, and it won't stay, no matter how much you brush your hair, I bet. But people don't know that.”

Slowly, deliberately, I pulled my hand from the clump of hair in question and felt my scalp tingle as the hairs stood back up, one by one.

“Yeah, that's not—I didn't mean … the point
is
, Billy …” I
took a breath. “People shouldn't treat you different just because you look retar—” I choked on the word. “Because you're—whatever—challenged or something.”

Billy stopped. We'd reached our houses. “You treated me different,” he said.

“What? No, I didn't.”

“Yeah, you said you wouldn't beat me up—because of how I look, right?”

He stared at me, his expression empty. He wasn't judging me—just stating the obvious.

“Shit,” I said. “I guess I did. I'm sor—”

“Who else won't you beat up?”

We were standing in the middle of the street between our houses, and it was getting dark fast. I backed up toward my curb, to get out of the road. “Girls,” I said as I walked backward. “I don't hit girls.”

“Why not?”

“Dude, because it's just not cool to hit girls.”

Billy thought about that for a minute, then nodded. “Who else?”

“I don't know, Billy. I'm tired, okay?”

“Okay.” He stomped away to his own curb but turned back before he hit the front stoop. “Hey, Dane.”

“Yeah?” I could barely make out Billy's silhouette under his dim porch light.

“Your mom's the blond lady, right?”

“Right. Why?”

“You don't look like her.”

“I know.” I hesitated. “I don't know who I look like.”

“I bet your mom knows,” Billy offered.

“What?”

Billy shrugged. “You don't look like her. But she probably knows who you
do
look like.”

Of course I'd thought before that I must look like my dad, but how had it never occurred to me that that would mean my mom knew who he was? I smiled in the dark.

Whatever people thought about my mom … whatever
I
had secretly thought about her … I was sure now that she was not those things—that she knew who my dad was and probably always did.

Billy's shadow moved toward his front door.

“Billy D.!”

“Yeah?”

“Walk to school tomorrow?”

I could almost see his face spreading into a smile. “Okay, then.”

“Okay, then.”

“And how is Dane treating you?” I asked Billy, doing my best impression of the warden.

“Fine,” Billy said in a bored voice.

“Is he showing you around school?”

“No.”

I grabbed Billy's arm, turning him around. We stood toe to toe on the sidewalk halfway to school.

“No, Billy, you say
yes
.”

“But I don't need you to show me around school.”

I threw my hands up. “Not the point.”

I'd been coaching him on what to say to the warden ever since we'd stepped off our street. So far, I was sure a suspension was right around the corner.

“Whatever,” I said, walking again. “Just tell him I'm helping you, okay?”

“I will.”

“Good.”

“When you start helping me.”

I wheeled on him. “What do you mean? I'm teaching you to fight, aren't I?”

His sour expression told me that wasn't the favor he was referring to.

“Dude, I'll do what I can to help you track down your old man, but that's going to take time. You need to make sure the warden thinks I'm helping you
now
. Besides,” I said, lowering my voice, “If you don't keep me out of trouble at school, you won't be holding up your end of the bargain, and I won't have to help you find your dad at all.”

Two could play at this game.

“That's—” Billy huffed and turned a little red in the ears. “That's—”

“Blackmail?” I said. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

I should have won that round, but the way Billy's eyes and mouth turned down at the corners sent an uncomfortable little wave of guilt through me.

“Fine, let's try this again. You're sure your dad's not back in Oregon?”

“I'm sure,” Billy said.

We moved down the sidewalk.

“And he didn't tell you where he was going?”

“Nope.”

“He just moved and didn't call you?”

Billy's smile faltered. “He doesn't have our number.”

“Why not?”

“Because Mom keeps changing it.”

Wow, that woman had really been burned.

“Hey, what's she doing?” Billy pointed ahead to the corner of the next street.

I followed his finger to a car parked right in the middle of the intersection. A woman in a tight skirt was kicking her tires and shouting curse words at no one in particular.