Night Owls (11 page)

HE DIDN’T TEXT ME AGAIN THAT NIGHT, OR ON WEDNESDAY.
By the time Thursday aFTernoon rolled around, my brain was once again conjuring crazy
reasons why. Like, maybe when he said he couldn’t stop doing the Golden Apple graffiti, it was because he was being forced by the notorious local Westmob gang to spray-paint inspirational
words around the city to antagonize their rivals, Big Block.

Or maybe that Sierra chick really
was
the girl he was visiting in the hospital. And even though
he
said they were “just” friends, now I couldn’t stop thinking
about her “more than” correction and what exactly that might mean. I had a vivid imagination, and the more vivid it got, the more jealous I became.

On the train ride to the anatomy lab, I texted him the building number and the time of my drawing session. But he didn’t respond. Not then, and not after I got off the train and headed
along the same pathway we’d walked two nights earlier. But halfway down the path, I spotted his lithe frame striding down a sidewalk that crossed mine.

“Jack,” I called out to his back. When he didn’t stop, I jogged closer and called him again.

He turned his head in both directions. He looked dazed.

“Hey,” I said, stopping in front of him. “I texted you a little while ago.”

“Bex.” His voice was shot to hell and back. Crap, his eyes were red, too. Either he’d developed a very un-Buddhist-like drug habit or he’d been up all night. “My
phone died yesterday, and I haven’t been home to recharge it.”

“What’s the matter?”

He shook his head back and forth several times and scrubbed the crown of his head, mussing his hair worse than it already was. That’s when I noticed how wrinkled his clothes were, and that
he had the faint shadow of unshaved whiskers darkening his jaw and chin.

“Jesus, Jack. What’s going on?”

“It’s going to be . . . I think the worst is . . . I don’t know. I haven’t slept, and I need a shower. I wanted to call you, but no one needs this level of heaviness in
their life and—”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? Tell me what happened.”

“I—”

A deep voice bellowed behind me. “Jackson.”

I swung around to see a middle-aged man in a slate overcoat approaching. He might’ve been handsome, but it was hard to be sure with the dark sunglasses and black baseball cap pulled low
and tight. The only thing I knew for sure was that his clothes cost more than everything I had in my rickety wardrobe.

“The car’s waiting,” the man said, giving me the briefest of glances. Brief enough to let me know that I was inconsequential.

“Dad—”

“Now.” He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder and urged him along.

“Jack!” I said.

“I’ll call you,” he answered over his shoulder, giving me a pained look. A few seconds later, they were yards away, heading toward the drop-off area near the parking
garage.

What in the world had happened?

SKETCHING MINNIE WAS A MILLION TIMES WORSE
that night, partly because I knew what to expect, and partly because I was worried about Jack. But I
didn’t try to hero-up this time: I excused myself halfway through the drawing session to walk around and breathe, using the same in-and-out pattern Jack had shown me. It helped. I managed not
to get sick all over the bushes again.

When I didn’t hear back from Jack that night, I told myself that whatever he was going through, it was clearly serious. And if he really hadn’t slept in that long, I hoped
that’s what he was doing.

The next day, I sent a text telling him to talk to me as soon as he could, no pressure. He texted back immediately:

I’M NOT SURE WHY I THOUGHT THAT MEANT HOURS,
or even a day, but after a week passed, I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s not like I
spent the entire time moping or anything. I dutifully sneaked off to my drawing sessions with Minnie. I worked four shifts at Alto Market. I checked my email to see if the wood-carving shop in
Berkeley that made the artist’s mannequin had responded. And I did my best not to worry about Jack.

Until ENDURE popped up.

Maiden Lane is this alley in Union Square. It used to be filled with sleazy brothels before the 1906 earthquake leveled it—which is sort of funny, because now it’s a fancy-schmancy
street filled with high-end boutiques and restaurants. It’s also a pedestrian-only deal in the daytime. There are these gates that close to block off traffic until 5:00 p.m., when they open
up to allow cars through at night.

However,
somebody
closed the gates late last night after the shops closed, and while the street was blocked off, that somebody painted the word ENDURE in fifteen-foot-tall gold letters
down the middle of Maiden Lane. The letters were designed to look like an old-timey Western saloon sign.

My heart squeezed when I saw the word glittering across our TV screen on the morning news. A reporter interviewed the owner of a café whose tables were set up around the gigantic
E.
Using it as a chance to advertise, he said he “rather liked” the graffiti and encouraged the public to come check it out in person and buy a latte.

ENDURE. Did it mean anything? Was he expressing something about whatever he was going through? Was it a sign that he was ready to communicate again?

Later that afternoon, while Mom was taking a shower and getting ready for her shift, I heard footsteps bounding down the basement stairwell, and I made the instant decision to get some unbiased
advice. So I tugged on fluffy socks and headed downstairs to Laundry Lair.

A door to the right led to the garage. The one on the left led to Heath, and it was closing as I called out, “Hey!”

Heath’s head popped around the doorframe. “Yo.”

“How was work?”

“Umm, fine. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, then why are you asking about my day like some 1950s housewife?”

“I need your advice about something before Mom gets out of the shower.”

He held the door open and waved me inside. “That’ll be in thirty seconds, so you’d better talk fast.”

I strolled into the room as he closed the door behind us. Huh. Laundry Lair was . . . surprisingly clean. His single bed was pushed up against a wall, and it was unmade, sure. But normally the
floor was covered with clothes (which was ironic, since the washing machine and dryer were
literally
four steps away from his bed), and his curtained-off clothes rack was filled with empty
hangers. Today, however, everything was put away, and the stuffed chair in the corner wasn’t piled with books and video-game cases. I curled up on it while he changed shirts.

“What happened to the brimstone wall?” That’s what we called the painted cinderblock above the laundry-folding ledge, where a thousand metal slash punk slash indie band and bar
stickers formed a giant collage of fiery, hellish logos. At least, they’d been there a few days earlier. Not anymore.

“I gave it a funeral. Mom was right. Everything was peeling, and all the sticker residue was covered in dust. It was sort of disgusting.”

“O-
kay
. Since when did you start caring about being neat?” Because he was the messiest guy I knew.

“Are you here to give me a hard time? Because I thought you wanted my advice.”

I sighed. “So, let’s just say I met this guy on the Owl bus one night when I was coming home from the hospital, and we hit it off, but I found out he was on his way to commit a
crime.”

“He sounds like a winner.”

“Hush, it was a really minor crime.”

“Minor like scoring an ounce of weed, or minor like illegal parking?”

“Somewhere in between?”

Heath pulled a T-shirt over his head and stared at me, mouth open. “Stealing a car?”

“What?” I practically choked. “That’s ten times worse than buying drugs.”

Heath snickered. “Okay, what, then? He was robbing a gas station, but it was because his grandmother needed the money for surgery? Or was it just something stupid, like egging
someone’s house?” When I didn’t answer right away, his eyes widened. “Hold on. Not egging, but something like it? TPing? Oh, shit!
No way.
Are you kidding? The
thing at the museum?”

The blood drained from my face.

“Holy freaking . . .” he murmured. “It really
was
for you?”

“Heath—”

He pointed an accusing finger. “That text you sent of the blurry driver’s license—that’s him? You’re seeing the Golden Apple street artist guy?”

“That’s insane,” I said weakly. “It was the egging thing.”

“You are the worst liar in the world.”

“Oh, crap,” I whispered, covering my face with my hands. “You have to promise me not to tell Mom. Swear on your life, Heath.”

“I swear. Jeez, Bex. When you do something, you really go for it. One minute you’re holed up in your room being all existential and throwing out your paints, all ‘I’m
done with color,’ and the next you’re running wild with notorious street artists.”

I glared at him over my bent knees. “Do you want to hear, or are you just going to guess the entire story?”

“Fine, go on and tell me your revolutionary story, Patty Hearst.” He glanced up at a pipe squeaking in the ceiling. “But talk fast. The shower’s off, so we’ve only
got fifteen minutes of blow-drying and makeup.”

He could hear everything down here.

In a rush of jumbled words, I told him the whole story. Well, half of it. I left out the parts about me swooning and lusting over Jack, and I didn’t admit anything else about the Golden
Apple stuff, because I felt guilty enough as it was that I’d failed as secret keeper. But I did tell Heath about Sierra bursting into the tea lounge and about Panhandler Will saying Jack had
a lady friend at the hospital. And about the last time I saw Jack, when he was with his father.

“So now I have no idea what’s going on,” I finished.

“He told you his dad’s some rich corporate guy who doesn’t give a damn about his family, but why was he at the hospital with your boy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe something happened to the mother.”

Crap. Jack did say that his mother was “pretty high up there” in his dad’s priorities—it was only Jack who wasn’t. “What if his mom has cancer or
something?”