Lizzy Gardner #2_Dead Weight (16 page)

“I can’t remember the last time I had a cupcake,” Hayley told Jessica.

“Do you really know how to make them?”

Jessica looked skeptical until Brittany jumped on the band wagon. “I guess I am sort of hungry. Do you know how to make bran muf ins or some sort of healthy cupcake?”

Jessica snapped her ingers. “I know just the thing. Do you guys mind if I run to the store? I’ll only be a minute.”

“It’s okay with me,” Brittany said before she turned back to whatever show she was watching on television.

It took Hayley a minute to realize Jessica’s gaze was focused on her, as if Hayley would care if she disappeared for the rest of the night.

Although Hayley was eager to take off, despite telling Lizzy she would stay in, she shrugged and said, “Knock yourself out.”

After Jessica was gone and the house was quiet again, Hayley sat on the other end of the couch from Brittany and stared blankly at the television screen. She had too much on her mind right now to focus on what show was on or what the actors were saying. Judging by the fake audience laughter it was a comedy. But then why, she wondered, did Brittany look so sad?

Although she’d never been the touchy-feely-talk-about-your-problems sort of person, Hayley found herself saying, “Everything okay at school?”

A few seconds passed before Brittany glanced her way. “Yeah, why?”

“You’ve been quiet lately. And now that jabbermouth is gone, I thought maybe we could talk.”

Brittany picked at a thumbnail. “I wish you didn’t move out.”

“I didn’t want to,” Hayley said. Lizzy didn’t know she was living on the streets. Cathy thought she’d moved in with her aunt, a well-thought out fabrication on Hayley’s part.

“Mom said you’ve been up to no good.”

Silence.

“Is that true? Are you up to no good?”

Hayley refused to lie to Brittany. They had been through too much. “I don’t sleep well. And when I can’t sleep, I need to get outside and breathe in fresh air. I almost always end up walking too far. Before I know it, it’s three in the morning and I’m still out wandering the streets.” That much was true.

“I can’t sleep either.”

Hayley turned all the way toward Brittany, her right foot tucked under her left leg. “Maybe it will help if you talk about it.” Hayley didn’t believe that, not for a minute, but that’s what Linda Gates, the therapist, always said. Besides, talking about things probably couldn’t make matters worse.

“I climb into bed,” Brittany said, “shut my eyes, and most nights I see blood. Lots of blood. Your blood.”

Brittany wasn’t looking at her and Hayley had to strain to hear every word. She wasn’t sure if Brittany was inished, and she didn’t want to stop her from getting it all out, so Hayley waited.

“Do you remember when Spider—I mean HE was going to slice off your middle inger?” Brittany asked, glancing at Hayley to see if she was listening.

Hayley nodded. She knew Brittany didn’t like to say or hear the name Spiderman because Cathy had told Lizzy, who then told Hayley. Hayley liked Cathy Warner. She had a good heart, and she meant well, but Cathy wasn’t a say-it-like-it-is kind of person like Lizzy. That was Hayley’s favorite thing about Lizzy. She never held back. She said what was on her mind, didn’t make everyone guess what she was thinking or feeling. If Lizzy didn’t like something, you knew it. If she was proud of you for a job well done, she told you.

“When he put the knife to your inger,” Brittany went on, her voice a little louder than before, “I screamed as loud as I could. I remember squeezing my eyes shut as tight as possible. I didn’t want to see him hurt you just to get to me. I thought he’d done it, too. I thought he’d cut off your other finger.”

H e
had
cut Hayley’s middle inger, but not clean through, only enough to make it bleed like a motherfucker. The doctors had been able to save her middle inger, so now she was only missing her pinky.

“And that’s what I see,” Brittany said, “every single night after I shut my eyes.”

“You see the blood?” Hayley asked.

“No, I see your bloodied, sliced off inger lying on the loor. That’s all I see. Just a bloodied finger.”

“My finger has healed incredibly well. You’ll be glad to know that it’s in perfect working condition and I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it in the past few months.” Hayley held up her hand and lipped Brittany the bird. “It’s not pretty, but it does the job.”

Brittany gave her a tight, slightly forced, smile. Not the laugh Hayley had been going for.

“I’m not trying to make fun of your nightmares, Brittany, but I think you need to understand that WE—me and you,” she said, waving a inger between them, “are the lucky ones. Spiderman was evil. And now Spiderman is dead. I’m not going to tell you to just ‘let it go’

because that’s too fucking easy to say and too fucking hard to actually do. But just between ME and YOU and nobody else, I’m telling you to forget about him. That asshole could have taken all ive of my ingers and I’d still be sitting here telling you the same thing. Every single time you shut your eyes and see my bloodied digit, I want you to think about your Aunt Lizzy. For months, she watched that asshole torture innocent people. Those girls weren’t lucky like us. Don’t you see? It’s up to us to live for them. Otherwise, we might as well be dead too. Life is too fucking short, the biggest cliché in the book of cliché’s, but it’s the one I tell myself every time the bad thoughts start loating to the top of my brain. Eight ingers, nine ingers, it doesn’t matter. Don’t let Spiderman take anything away from you. Absofuckinglutely nothing.”

A few moments of silence passed between them before Hayley said, “I didn’t plan on having this talk with you tonight, but I did ind something a few weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to give you.”

Hayley went to where her backpack lay near the door. She shuf led through the contents and pulled out a picture she’d cut out of a magazine. She walked back to the couch, handed the two-inch by two-inch picture to Brittany and waited for a response.

Hayley had expected to see a confused look, maybe even a hurt look, but she never expected to see the smile that she got in return when Brittany finally looked up at her.

“I heard that that was your favorite movie before all of the shit hit the fan around here.”

Brittany nodded, her gaze once again pinned on the Spiderman picture—the real Spiderman with Tobey Maguire hanging in the middle of nowhere right before the famous kiss scene.

“The next time you think of Spiderman,” Hayley said, “I want you to think of that picture. Don’t let the asshole take anything away from you. Those memories you have of Peter and Mary and that stupid upside down kiss, no matter how lame, are yours to keep. We’re smart people, Brittany.”

Brittany looked at her again.

Hayley smiled. “So, let’s be smart.”

***

“I didn’t know we were going to hike,” Lizzy complained.

Cathy chuckled. “I sort of igured it out when I saw ‘hiking boots’ on the list of what we were supposed to bring.”

“Well I guess that explains why you’ve always been called the smart one in the family.”

Cathy looked over her shoulder at Lizzy. “Good thing that woman hired you to look for her missing sister. Otherwise you’d still be sitting in your of ice sucking down pastries and Rice Krispies Treats. It’s a wonder you never gain any weight.”

Lizzy’s attention fell on Melbourne as he waited for them to catch up to the group. He was in his element today, Lizzy thought. “Your body is a temple,” he was saying as they approached. “This hike today will determine if you have the drive to succeed in life.”

“Is he serious?” Cathy whispered.

Lizzy nodded.

Standing ram-rod straight, Melbourne wore a pair of lightweight nylon cargo shorts with lots of pockets and a dark polyester T-shirt that fully outlined every hard-earned muscle on his body. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him.

A bandana circled his large neck and on his head he wore a beige hat with an up-turned brim and chin-strap that made him look much too serious to be leading a beginner’s group.

“Everybody has their water?” Without giving anyone a chance to answer he waved his hand onward. “Come on, people, it’s time to go. I hike at my pace, so try to keep up if you can.”

A woman raised a hand. “This is my irst hike. If I lose sight of you, how will I know which way to go?”

Good question, Lizzy thought.

“Follow the markers,” he said matter-of-factly, “and watch out for rattlesnakes.”

Cathy’s eyes widened.

Another woman began to run to keep up with their fearless leader.

It wasn’t long before Lizzy and Cathy were trailing behind. With every thigh-burning step up the mountain, Lizzy could feel her resolve melt away like snow on the far away mountaintops. She was out of breath. “Can you believe that guy?”

Cathy shook her head. “He expects way too much out of people. He’s lost half the group already and I don’t think he cares.”

“It’s a good thing Andrea Kramer is paying me big bucks to get in shape,” Lizzy said, “since I’m obviously not going to get a chance to talk to the man today. What a joke.”

Cathy waited for Lizzy to catch up. “There isn’t one person you’ve talked to that has any clue where her sister might be?”

Lizzy paused to catch her breath. “Nope. It seems Diane hardly has any friends. Nobody knows where she might have gone. How sad is that?”

“It’s horrible and it makes me think of Hayley. Good thing Hayley has people like you and her aunt who care about her.”

Lizzy drank some water. “What are you talking about?”

“Hayley said she talked to you about moving in with her aunt.”

Lizzy shook her head. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.

Hayley isn’t living with you?”

“She moved out on Wednesday. She said she was going to stay with her aunt for a while. She made the decision less than twenty-four hours after I told her I had a problem with her disappearing in the wee hours of the night.”

“She doesn’t have an aunt. What were you thinking?”

Cathy arched a brow. “Don’t even think about putting this on me. I took Hayley in because she helped Brittany. I am pinching pennies right now, but I loaned her my car and I bought her clothes and food. I still loan her my car whenever I’m not using it. I rarely asked her to help out around the house, other than unloading and loading the dishwasher every once in a while. That’s it. And then I talk to her about her wandering the streets in the middle of the night and she tells me a day later she’s moving out. I asked her if she talked to you and she said she had. I asked her to leave me her aunt’s name, address and telephone number, too.”

“Did she give you an address?”

Cathy nodded. “It’s at home in the kitchen drawer where I keep my address book.”

“Crap.”

“What is going on? I thought you were going to talk to her.”

Lizzy sighed. “I was, but things have gotten out of hand lately.

Between Jared letting the neighbor name our kitten and exercising every day and having too much to do, I’m feeling overwhelmed. And now Hayley. And this,” she said, plopping to the ground and waving her hands toward the hills. “I have piles of paperwork at the of ice, and yet here I am.”

“Look around you,” Cathy said. “It’s beautiful. We should have done this a long time ago.”

Lizzy looked out at the wilderness. They had spent the morning hiking through lush forests and now they were on a ridgeline overlooking a lake and meadows covered with wild lowers. “You’re right. It’s beautiful. But I’m not here to enjoy the beauty around me, or breathe in the fresh air, or to ind myself. I’m here because there is a young woman missing. She’s out there right now, possibly wondering if anyone is looking for her. Her sister is up to her elbows in kids and a husband. Right now it seems I’m all Diane has. How fucked up is that?”

Cathy wore a large-brim hat, long-sleeved shirt and heavy backpack.

Her stance was that of a true hiker as she looked out over the mountain ridge. She inhaled deeply and then gave a subtle nod of her head. “It’s not fucked up at all,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m the one who has my priorities all messed up. You have a purpose in life, a calling. And you’re good at it. You’re the most caring person I know.

You care about everyone you’ve ever met. You see the good in everybody. I’ll never understand you, but don’t ever stop caring, Lizzy. If I was the one missing, I’d feel pretty darn safe knowing you were out there looking for me.”

Her speech was followed by a long pause. It wasn’t often that Cathy complimented or praised Lizzy.

“Come on,” Cathy said with a wave of her hiking stick. “Let’s do this.

Let’s get to the top of Mount Tallac and ind out what Melbourne knows about Diane Kramer.”

Chapter 24

Babysitters Suck

Brittany Warner decided that having two babysitters was even worse than being stuck at home under the watchful eye of her own mother. “Did my mom give either of you the password to my computer?” Brittany asked her babysitters.

Both Hayley and Jessica shook their heads.

Hayley was staring at the television, but Brittany was pretty sure she wasn’t watching whatever was on. She thought of Hayley as a big sister, but Hayley lived in her own little world for the most part. She was smart; so smart, Brittany figured, that she was a genius, the sort of genius that was borderline insane. “Can one of you drop me off at my friend, Kristin Kilarski’s house?”

Hayley didn’t bother responding this time.

Jessica held her cell phone to her ear, shook her head again and mouthed the word NO for good measure.

“I thought you two were cool. Well, at least I thought Hayley was cool,” Brittany amended.

Jessica scowled and put her phone against her chest so whomever she was talking to couldn’t hear. “I’m cooler than her.”

“Then prove it by dropping me off at Kristin’s house.”

Jessica told the caller she would call them back. Then she crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re a tricky one, Brittany Warner, but it’s not going to work. I’m not going to lose my job just so you can hang out with your friends. For one weekend, Hayley and I are the best friends you’ve ever had, so grab a bran muffin and have a seat.”