Essential Maps for the Lost (14 page)

Still, the honking seems to require some action, so she swerves over into the first place she can, an adjacent restaurant lot, same as you might for an ambulance. The gas gauge, she notices, has returned to half full. Her heart is pounding. Who's honking like that?

She checks her mirrors, cranes her neck.

No.

It can't be.

She thinks she's seeing things. Is she imagining this? She could swear that's Billy Youngwolf Floyd's truck barreling down the hill, honking like something's on fire.

It's him, all right. This is crazy. He pulls up right beside her, his tires spinning in the gravel. They're in the parking lot of the Fog Horn Grill. Out her open window, Mads smells fish frying and the sunken, mysterious odor of kelp and deep water.

This—this is a coincidence definitely too strange to ignore. Billy leaps out of his SUV. He runs around it, leans right down into Mads's window. She is speechless. His face is right close to hers. His eyes are a little wild. They look just like his mother's in that yearbook photo from 1976.

“What are you doing!”

“What do you mean, what am I doing? What are
you
doing? What are you doing here?”

“I was just . . .”

“Just?”

Wait. He looks awfully guilty. Like he's been caught. What was she thinking? This is no coincidence. It's about as much of a coincidence as her seeing him at his own house. See? There's fate, and there's agency, dancing together beautifully, like a couple in sequined costumes.

“The baby is with you,” he says.

“Of course the baby is with me. I'm babysitting. Are you
following
me?”

“No! Jesus, come on. I mean . . .”

“Who is that?” A tall dog with shaggy bangs sits in Billy's passenger seat. The dog gives her a quick glance, as if he's too polite to stare.

“Rocko.”

“Rocko?”

“Look at him. It's a fucking shame.”

“What?”

“He's starting to get bald patches, see? By his—”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“He looks familiar.”

Ivy stirs. One thing about Ives, she wakes up like a champion. She opens her eyes and beams like the sun, and then she looks right at Billy Youngwolf Floyd and—clear as day—she says, “Dog.”

“Dog! Did you hear that?” Billy says. “She called me dog! She remembers me! You're right,” he says to Ivy. “Wow, you're amazing.”

Ivy chuckles. Mads does not know what's going on here. She hunts around in one of the bags, finds Ivy's bottle of juice, and hands it to her. Ivy sucks a little and then smiles and says
dog
again, through the squeak-suck of the bottle.

Mads narrows her eyes. “That dog lives in my neighborhood. I've seen him. I recognize his bangs.”

“Every day for a week, that owner—”

“Every day for a week?”

Billy rubs his forehead with his palm, runs his hand through his hair. Then he reaches into the open window by Rocko. “I wanted to leave you this. Like, a surprise.”

It's a Whitman's Sampler box. It's yellow, and there are flowers in the corners of it and there's a bird and a basket that look embroidered on. Chocolates.

“They're my gran's favorites, and I thought . . . Shit.”

“Chocolates?”

“I tried to leave them a few times, but once your uncle was mowing the lawn, and then there was this kid . . .”

“Harrison, my cousin.”

“He took my picture.”

“He did? I'm sorry. He's a little protective.”

“And when I was on your street, I saw Rocko, you know? Pretty obvious what's going on with him, the state he's in . . . And so today—”

“You stole him.”

“I wouldn't say stole exactly.”

“Kidnapped.”

“Fine, kidnapped. I don't like to call it that, but whatever. And just as I'm getting him in the truck I see
your
truck pulling out of your street, and I thought—”

“You thought you'd follow me.”

“You make me sound like a creeper.” He's right. Who is she to talk?

“I mean, you could have just called.”

“I tried!”

“You did?”

“I thought maybe you gave me the wrong number on purpose.”

“Let me see your phone.”

He digs it out of his pocket and hands it over. Ivy sucks her juice bottle and watches like Billy and Mads are Bert and Ernie in a riveting episode.

“Four five four
eight
, not seven. I'm an idiot. I'm so sorry.” She's still astonished that he's standing here in front of her now, but all at once, she's relieved, too. Relief washes over her, pours and pours like a waterfall. She wants to tip her chin up to it in gratitude.

“Sometimes girls do that, the number thing. . . .” He blushes.

Ivy slurps the last of her bottle, flings it to the seat. “Duh,” she says.

“Do you want to get out of this car? Go down there?” He crooks his head toward the beach. “Walk, or something? Rocko probably has to pee.”

She shouldn't. She remembers in a rush why even spending time with this boy is wrong. All that remembering pushes in and shoves at her conscience. But the relief is so great, and she's just really so happy to see him. “Sure. Let me change Ivy first.”

“I'll get Rocko on a leash.”

Mads changes Ivy and then slathers her with sun lotion. Ivy's hair is stuck up all sticky and sweet-smelling. Mads pops a hat on over it, ties it underneath Ivy's chin. Ivy grins like she's having the best day ever.

Billy and Mads and Ivy and Rocko cross over the tracks, to a soft sand beach. Kids dig and build castles and fetch water from the shore in pails while moms unwrap snacks and keep a watch out. Mads puts Ivy in her pack.

“Want me to carry her?” Billy asks.

“Okay. Thanks.”

He lifts her to his shoulders.

“Want me to take him?” Mads asks.

“Sure. Appreciate it.”

He hands Mads the leash.

They walk. Ivy's floral hat bobs as she checks it all out. Rocko sniffs coils of seaweed on the sand.

Mads doesn't even really know where she is. She's far from home, and everything around her is unfamiliar. At home there are farms and vineyards and pastures rolling out like seas, and here there's the real ocean. At home, there's her mother and her friends and a boy who still loves her, and here there are strangers, and an unusual boy with a stolen, long-limbed dog. But in this strangeness and in this
away
, some part of her sighs. The sigh is very nearly
rest
, such a needed rest that it's almost a potion, and the ogres sit their big bodies down and get a little sloppy. The sun and salt air make them sleepy. They loosen the ropes around her wrists.

A ferry pulls away from the dock. There it goes, leaving for Canada. Billy Youngwolf Floyd slips his hand into hers. It feels both shy and bold. Mads will have to break it off with him. She knows this. Right then, though, she accepts the hand that reaches.

Now a train is coming after all. The arm of the gate turns stern and folds down. Red lights flash, and the train rumbles through. Ivy points out the astonishing sight with one chubby finger. Even from the beach, the train seems to shake the earth. Mads and Billy grip hands and watch it pass. As it does, Mads does not imagine that train smashing into anything or anyone. Instead, she imagines the places it could go.

Billy's palm is getting a little sweaty, but so what. So the hell what. He wishes he were on that train with her right now, and he wouldn't even care where they were going. It could end up in Tacoma even, right at the smelter, and he'd feel fabulous.

“I love you!” Mads shouts. Okay, she doesn't actually shout this. He can't even tell what she's saying, because the train is freaking loud. He can only see her mouth move, and she's smiling, so he nods and smiles back.

He's just so relieved, he can barely stand it. Relief's like a spell of Fast Healing. His Ability Points practically pour back in. All week, he's been in agony, thinking she gave him the wrong number on purpose. It didn't make sense, not after that kiss. And now—he was right! It was a misunderstanding! He never knew misunderstandings could be this awesome. And he was wrong, too, about the truck and the train tracks. The minute he saw the baby, he knew he'd been wrong. She loves that kid. That day at the bridge, he saw how she put their cheeks together and how she pulled up the baby's little socks.

Relief throws a party in his whole body.

He was wrong about the train, but still, he's glad she's walking right next to him as it passes. He anchors her down by holding her hand. When he saw the truck stopped at those tracks, he thought the same thing he did that day at the bridge. The doctor in his head, the one with the idiot box of Kleenex, tells him he'll see his mom in every girl, but he's not that stupid. This is more than a head game. Mads has those tan arms and those adorable freckles, but he sees the spell she's burdened with, the secret coat she's wearing. Once you know about the secret coat, you can spot another person wearing it. Mads is sweet and cheerful, but she buttoned her sweater wrong during their date when the night got cool, and her eyes have those thumbprints of dark circles under them. It's something out of Night Worlds. He'd call it a Despair Spell. The weight of the coat would slowly drain your energy before killing you off.

But this is
not
why his heart cracks right open every time he sees her, he tells the doctor in his head. It's the possible joy, not the sorrow, that draws him, asshole. This is no freaky mother-thing, you loser. He is not attracted to the coat, but to the real person under the coat.

The train disappears into the distance. “Where's it going?” she asks.

He has no idea. “New York. Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

She laughs. “Yeah. That's exactly where it's going.” The baby pats the top of Billy's head as they walk again. Rocko pees on a boulder and then on a washed-up tennis shoe.

“Rocko's walking funny,” Mads says. She's already getting a little sunburned. She put lotion on the baby but not on herself.

“It's a sign? That he's been abused. Hair loss, too. That sore by his ear . . . He's got another one under his front leg. Our vet will take care of that. Right, Rocko? You're gonna have a new life, friend.”

Rocko's ear twitches at the sound of his name. “That's so sad.”

“Sometimes they won't even walk around like he's doing. They don't play. Or else, right away they bond to you. They don't want to leave your side. You should have seen Jasper.” Billy's talking a lot. Something about that girl just makes his voice pour out.

“Was Jasper with you the other day?”

“Yeah. He's my buddy. You saw him, the big golden? He wouldn't get off my lap for like three weeks when we first got him. Jasp, I'm going to take him when I get my own place.” The words
my own place
come out like nothing, but they're not nothing. He uses those words on purpose, because saying them to her, saying them in all this
light
, might make them okay again. In spite of what those words now mean to him, he feels a graze of desire for them, too. God, it'd be so great. A place with a yard for Jasper and Casper. Freedom. It's the first time he's let himself imagine it again.

She has no idea about any of this. She just sits down so cute, doesn't even see him fighting off the slam throw-up feeling, doesn't even see that he
wins
. He wins, because he lets
the future
in. They sit on a big piece of driftwood, and then the baby, Ivy, gets squirmy in her pack, and they take her out, and Mads walks her around holding her little seashell hands. She keeps heading for Rocko, which makes Billy slightly nervous.

“I don't think he's aggressive. But she probably shouldn't pet him or anything.”

“Okay.”

“He needs some time to just, you know, be himself.”

“What's going to happen to him?”

“My boss, Jane—she'll make sure he gets a good home. We're a no-kill shelter, so however long that takes . . . Sometimes she'll bring charges against the asshole. And generally I'm not supposed to just—”

“Steal them?”

“Not steal them exactly. Remove them from the situation. Without permission from the owner.”

“Steal.”

He doesn't know how to explain it. “I can't help myself.”

“I get that.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

“It feels so great out here,” Mads says. “It makes me just want to—” In one sudden move, she picks up baby Ivy and runs like hell down the beach and then runs like hell back. Ivy bumps along on Mads's hip, and the baby's laughing so hard, you can't see her eyes. Mads's face is so happy and open that Billy's heart just busts. It cracks, because whatever is in it has made it crazy-full. It hasn't felt that full in so long.

“Come here,” he says when she's back again, panting. “You come right here.” He wants to lift her right up off the ground, but he can't. Not with Rocko on the leash and Ivy on her hip. He yanks her hand instead, pulls her toward him.

They grin at each other like idiots and then she says, “I'd live there.” She points to a small white house on the bluff.

“Not there?” He indicates a big damn mansion.

“Too much vacuuming.”

“You can come here and sell a bunch of real estate and buy it.”

“No way. It might look small, but I'm guessing three bedrooms, with an attic and a basement. Twenty-seven hundred square feet, at least, and with that view? Practically waterfront. Okay, there's the train, but still.”

“You sure love real estate, huh?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Rocko's a dog and Ivy's a baby, so they don't even know what real estate is.”