Not Suitable For Family Viewing (15 page)

Tuesday, 8 p.m.

Radio Mimi

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” How far would you go for your man? Mimi discusses her own personal limits.

The bike is toast. I leave it there.
I’m
toast. I need help. I wave and I scream but a lot of good it does me. There’s no one around to hear me.

I grit my teeth and ease my backpack off as gently as I can. I’m looking for my cellphone, but I know right away it’s not there. The zipper’s wide open and the pocket’s empty.

I try not to think about some crazy person coming after me to finish the job. I just pick up my backpack and hop like some dying bunny until I make it to the hostel.

Kay actually screams when she sees me. Before I know it, she’s called a doctor and I’m propped up on the couch.

The doctor treats me as if I’m about six years old but otherwise he’s pretty good. He says I don’t have a concussion or any broken bones or any cut big enough for stitches. I just sprained my left wrist and my left ankle and “gave myself” a fat lip and a black eye. (
Gave myself.
Please.) He keeps saying, “Don’t worry.
You’ll live!” and I keep wondering why someone doesn’t want me to.

Who? Who would want to kill me? I don’t even know anybody around here!

The whole time Kay’s icing my ankle she’s going, “I can’t fathom someone clipping you with their car and not even stopping to see how you are. That’s just not right. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that. We should call the police!”

Police.

That’s all I need. They’d find out I’m Mimi’s kid, then next thing you know the media would be here, snooping around, taking pictures, figuring out the whole Port Minton–Rosie Ingram thing. Wouldn’t be long before Mom’s secret was plastered all over the Internet.

I start backpedalling like crazy. “What can the police do? There were no witnesses. Even if somebody did hit me, they’re not going to catch the guy now. And I’m not even sure he actually hit me. He might have just come close and I got spooked or something…”

Kay is shaking her head and making these big angry sighs. I can tell she wants justice. “Perhaps you’re right but I
still
think we should—”

I cut her off. “Kay. I really just want to have a bath and go to bed. I couldn’t face talking to the police right now.” I try to sound as pathetic as possible. It works.

She stops sighing and just looks at me. Those butterscotch eyes of hers go all soft again.

She says, “All right. I can understand that, I guess.”

She drapes my arm over her shoulder and helps me up the stairs. She’s trying to take all my weight but I still wince at every step.

“Boy,” she says, “I wish Levi were here right now.”

“Yeah, me too” I say.

She winks and goes, “I bet you do.”

I’m hoping my face is beat up enough that she can’t see me blush.

She runs me a bath and tells me to holler if I need any help.

I say, “No, I’ll be fine”—and I will be. Personally, I’d rather drown than let anyone help me in and out of the bath. I wouldn’t even let Anita do that…

I miss Anita. I want to talk to her. I want to tell her what happened. She wouldn’t call the police. She’d track down whoever did this and kill them with her bare hands. Little Anita Martin, Vigilante Killer. That sort of makes me laugh, but my face hurts too much so I cry instead. Not big sobs or anything—I don’t want Kay barging in—just tears. The salt stings my face. I look in the mirror. I cry some more. The only good thing in my life at the moment is Levi. He’s not going to find me so pretty now.

It takes me forever to get my clothes off. Every time I move I find something new that hurts. I eventually manage to pull my jeans off the regular way, but in the end I have to cut myself out of the shirt with Kay’s nail scissors. I cut off the label too. It’s probably crazy but I don’t want Kay finding out I wear Armani. Only rich kids wear shirts like this and I don’t need one more reason for anybody to hate me.

I lower myself into the bath. The pain is terrible at first but it goes away. The water makes me hurt more where I’m cut but less where I’m bruised. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to take.

I lean my head against the rim of the tub and try to chill. I wish I had some of that fancy bubble bath Mom got her perfume guy to make for me. (He called it “Birdie Bath” and put a little robin on
the label, which even I had to admit was pretty cute.) Something about the smell of it could make me feel so good, even when I was feeling bad. It made my skin really soft too.

I think it’s remembering the bubble bath that makes me feel better, but then I realize it’s not. My brain hears “smell” and “skin” and “soft” and even though his skin isn’t soft (at least on his hands where it’s kind of beat-up), I’m thinking about Levi again. That’s why I’m feeling good.

Then I remember my face and my big swollen lips and my black eye and I think of him looking at me, then turning away and running right back to that stupid, skinny, little Krystal. Just like that, my life sucks as bad as it ever did.

I only feel sorry for myself for a second because suddenly there’s something else on my mind.

Krystal.

Who else hates me around here?

Wednesday, 1 a.m.

The Broken Doll
(film)

Mimi Schwartz stars in this stinker of a film noir as a broad with a strong attachment to a man and an even stronger attachment to violence. No stars.

I toss and turn all night. There are two new people at the hostel—two new weird sets of noises to get used to—but that’s not what’s keeping me up.

It’s not the pain either. I took a bunch of Advil, so I can pretty much handle that. I keep the bottle beside me in case I need more.

It’s not even—
really
—that someone tried to kill me.

It’s that I don’t know what to do about it.

I know why Krystal did it. She’s a jealous psycho. Rachel saw Levi and me kissing in front of the hardware store. She acted all relaxed about it, like it was no big deal—but I bet she ran right off and ratted us out to Krystal.

I know how Krystal did it too. After she got the word from Rachel, she must have driven around until she found us. It’s not that hard to track someone down in a little place like this. She must have seen us in the park. She hung around until Levi left, then
followed me back. She waited until the time was right—no cars, no houses, no witnesses—and then just gunned her motor and went for it.

I know she’s capable of it too. I still get the shivers when I remember her screeching to a halt at the fish-and-chips joint. She was about a nanometer away from me. She no doubt would have run me over then if she’d thought she could get away with it.

I should do something, but what? I can’t call the police.

I can tell Kay. No. What good would that do?
She’d
just call the police.

I can confront Krystal, I guess. Tell her I know it was her. That could scare her off. But it could also backfire. It might make her even crazier than she already is. She’d kill me for sure then.

I can act like nothing happened.

No, I can’t. It’s not like she forgot to ask me to her birthday party. She ran me off the road. She could have killed me. This isn’t one of those things where you just go,
Oh, well,
and, like, carry on. I’m always going to have to watch my back now.

I can go home. Krystal couldn’t hurt me there—not with Anita baring her fangs and ready to lunge at any moment.

That’s what I should do.

I go round and round and I always come back to the same conclusion: get out of here. But I just can’t. I’ve come this far. I’ve done this much. I can’t go now before I find out what’s up with Mom.

That’s what I tell myself, and it’s sort of true.

Not as true, though, as the fact I can’t go now because of Levi. I couldn’t stand to leave him—or the “hope” of him at least. Part of me is still scared that he’ll look at my face and go, “I’m out of here.” But the other part of me wants to believe that he’ll see my big, fat
lip and say “ya pur girl” with that ridiculous accent of his, then he’ll go out and track Krystal down and, I don’t know, teach her a lesson or something. It’s such a stupid, girly, “rescue-me” thing and I know I’m not supposed to think that way but I do, and it works. I relax. I snuggle into my pillow and I go to sleep and have the best dreams.

Wednesday, 9 a.m.

You, You and Mimi

“Instant Makeovers.” Only got a couple of minutes to pull yourself together? Mimi and her “beauty brigade” show you how to go from ick to incredible in minutes.

I wake up. I feel like a junkie. That’s how bad I need the Advil. I try to choke a pill down dry but it gets glued to the roof of my mouth. I hobble to the bathroom for a glass of water.

There’s no glass.

I take a big breath and start down the stairs. It kills me to step on my bad foot but hopping down on my good one makes my face hurt.

Kay comes running out of the kitchen, waving her hands and going, “Oh my land, Opal! Stop! Stop!” She runs at me as if she’s trying to keep me from hurling myself off a bridge or something. She gets her bony little shoulder under my armpit and practically carries me the rest of the way into the kitchen.

After some painkillers and some tea and a few spoonfuls of mushy cornflakes, I feel a bit better. Kay sits at the table, looking at my face and shaking her head. She must be thinking,
What did I do
to get stuck with this girl?
How many days have I been here? Three? Four? Whatever. This is the second time she’s had to look after me. It’s a lot to expect for twenty bucks a night.

“Listen, Opal,” she says. “I got a call from Mrs. Hiltz this morning. She must have been talking to Dr. Ross, because she heard about your little ‘accident.’ She’s offered to have you come and stay with her until you’re better. She has a guest room on the main floor with a double bed and its own bathroom.”

She must see my face sort of crumple at that because she goes, “I said no, of course—you’d be fine here. But now I’m not so sure. It’s going to be hard for you, climbing those steps for the next week or so.” Her eyes look really pained at the thought of it. She can’t be too thrilled about having to get me upstairs again.

I should say something—I should let Kay off the hook—but then I’d have to stay with Mrs. Hiltz. She’s nice and everything but, I mean, it would be so awkward. She’d probably want to talk all the time and I’d have to have dinners with her and there’d be nothing good to eat, just old lady stuff—creamed chicken and peas, things like that—and she’d fuss over me and I’d never have any time alone (i.e., with Levi). I’d rather just drop by some time and ask her a few questions.

Kay is looking over at the living room. She says, “You could sleep down here on that sofa maybe…I don’t know, though. You might be too tall. It might just be better to grit your teeth and take the stairs…”

Her face gets all worried again. She chews on her thumbnail.

“I could try the sofa,” I say. “I don’t mind. For a couple of nights it wouldn’t be so bad.”

Kay almost smiles. She knows it’s not going to work. “Okay, sure.
Why don’t we decide about that later? I told Levi what happened. He said he’d be by in about”—she looks at the clock—“oh dear, any minute I guess.”

I jump up. The pain in my leg goes right into my teeth. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing compared to the agony of letting Levi see me like this.

Kay goes, “Wait! Wait! Wait! Let me help you.” She sets down her half-full teacup, gets out of her chair and starts helping me up the stairs.

Wednesday, 10 a.m.

Radio Mimi

“Talk a Good Fight.” Dr. Morgan Wagner, world-renowned psychologist, introduces Mimi to her easy five-step process to winning arguments—and converts.

This look of horror passes over Levi’s face when he sees me and I realize just how ugly I am. It feels so much worse than getting hit by that car. I can’t help it—my eyes fill up with tears. Levi groans as if I just broke his heart, then puts his arms around me. That only makes me cry more, but at least now it’s in a good way.

Levi goes into some shtick about trying to find a place he can kiss without causing more pain. He finally plants one on a spot just above my left eye. It doesn’t hurt, but smiling when he kisses me does. I feel like I just flew back and forth to Europe on some supersonic jet or something. I’ve got emotional jet lag. I’m laughing. I’m crying. I’m happy. I’m sad. I’m a mess.

That’s why he says I should stay with Mrs. Hiltz. It would be easier on me, he says. I’m not so sure. By the time he’s talked me into it, he’s got my bags packed and waiting downstairs for me. He
comes up again, slings my backpack over his shoulder and gets me downstairs too.

I thought Kay would be relieved that I’m going but she looks worried. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea. Mrs. Hiltz might not be able to look after you. She’s quite elderly, you know. Levi, couldn’t you take one of the beds downstairs for Opal? That wouldn’t be much trouble. As far as the bathroom goes, I could find that old chamber pot—”

Levi cuts her off. “Kay…Kay…please. You’re not seriously thinking of denying the girl a chance to stay at Hotel Hiltz, are you? When’s she going to get another chance to sample the good life?”

I almost laugh at that. If he only knew. I’m going to the Hôtel du Cap Eden-Roc on the Riviera for the Labour Day weekend. It’s a tad nicer than what I saw of Mrs. Hiltz’s place.

There’s this silence for a while. Kay opens her mouth to say something. Levi goes, “Yes?” but she just smiles and shakes her head.

“You’re right. I’m being selfish…I’d get myself knocked off the road too if I thought I could get a room there for a couple of nights.”

Levi says, “Who wouldn’t?” and hustles me out the door before Kay changes her mind.

He helps me into the truck and then climbs in. He pulls onto the road with this big grin on his face. I know he’s up to something.

I go, “Why’d you talk Kay into that? Why do you care if I stay at Mrs. Hiltz’s anyway?”

“I just think it would be better for you.”

“Liar,” I say.

“That’s nice.”

“Okay, you’re not, like, a total liar. But there’s something else too, isn’t there?” I’m so loving this. I forget about the pain.

“Yeah, of course there is,” he says. He does this sleazy Latin lover thing with his eyebrows. “Basic geography, my dear. You bill be close-air to mee.”

This hot little fountain of something whooshes up inside my body. It feels so good it kind of hurts. I know this is gross but it does something to my spit glands too—I have to swallow. Is he doing this to me on purpose?

He says, “This thing at my uncle’s is bigger than I thought it was going to be. I’ve got about a week’s work there and it’s just a few blocks from downtown. If you’re at Mrs. Hiltz’s, I can meet you for lunch, drop by the library, see you at my break. Why, heck, we could maybe even squeeze in a little hammer-shopping if you got the time…”

I smile. It just about kills me but I keep smiling. I can’t help it. Even my ears are smiling.

“There’s another thing too,” he says. “Frankly, I can’t trust you getting back and forth to the hostel on your own any more.”

I can’t tell if he’s joking. “What are you talking about?”

“Hmm. Let’s see. One time, you head out in the hot sun with no food in your belly and practically pass out. Another time, you get run off the road. I’m serious, Opal. I’ve never seen anyone get in more trouble than you do.”

He’s making it sound like it’s my fault. I’m not mad but I just have to tell him.

“Levi…”

“Yeah.”

“This wasn’t an accident.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“I mean someone hit me on purpose.”

He stares at me. He takes his eyes off the road so long I’m worried we’re going to crash.

“Why? Who? Who would do that?”

He doesn’t really believe me. I can tell. There’s a moment when I don’t think I can say it, then it just kind of spills out of me.

“Krystal,” I say.

He almost loses control of the car. He goes, “Wait. Stop.”

He pulls over on the shoulder and turns off the engine. He looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Krystal
Parker?
” One side of his face is all crunched up like tinfoil. “You mean, the girl I used to go out with?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Her.”

He pulls back his neck and shakes his head as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Why would she do that?”

I say, “I don’t know. I guess because she’s jealous of me—like, I mean, us. You know.”

“You saw her do it?”

“No,” I say. “I didn’t see anything. But that’s because she hit me from behind. By the time I got up, she was gone.”

“So how can you say it was her, then?” He sounds like he’s taking her side.

“I just
know.
The person driving the car came at me on purpose. There was no reason to hit me otherwise. There was tons of room. It was light. The car even sped up right before it slammed into me!”

He leans his back against the door and stretches one arm across
the dashboard. He taps a finger. He chews on the inside of his lip. He looks right at me the whole time.

He finally says, “Okay. All right. Say someone did do this to you on purpose. Nothing you’ve told me proves that it was Krystal. I mean, she can be a jerk but she’s not insane or anything. It’s a pretty serious thing you’re accusing her of, you know.”

“Well, who else would do it?” I’m getting mad now. He’s supposed to support me.

“I don’t know. Maybe a drunk? A bunch of stupid kids? An old guy who doesn’t see so good any more? How about just some psychopathic maniac? You were all ready to believe the place was full of them before.”

“No!” I say. “It was Krystal.”

“No,” he goes. “It was not. I know Krystal. I know why you don’t like her. And I’m sure she
is
jealous. But she wouldn’t do this. She’s just some silly kid, not a killer.”

I won’t look at him any more. I’m so mad. I’m so insulted! I want to cry. I want to run away but I can barely even walk.

“Opal,” he says. He touches my arm.

I turn my head just a tiny bit but I don’t look at him. I’m not stupid enough to do that.

“I’m not saying someone didn’t do this to you. You were there, I wasn’t. But you didn’t actually see Krystal. It could have been someone else, couldn’t it?”

He’s sort of teasing me, sort of pleading with me. I can tell he just wants me to drop it. He takes my hand and looks at my palm. “Boy,” he says. “You really got messed up. That’s some major road rash there.”

I can feel myself giving in. “She’s the only one around here who has anything against me.” I try to sound firm.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he says. “I can think of
at least
one other person.”

“Who?”

“Embree Bister wasn’t so happy about you ‘making your water’ on his property.”

I go, “Ha-ha. Very funny”—then my mouth flies open. I turn and look at him. I can tell by his face that he was just doing that Levi thing again—trying to make me laugh—but it backfired, big-time.

“Embree,” I say.

“Oh-oh. What? That was a joke, Opal.”

“Embree could have done it.”

Levi laughs. “Oh, please! Embree? For one thing, Embree can’t even drive. I hate to admit it, Opal, but you were closer when you thought Krystal did it.”

I don’t know about that. I picture Embree with the gun, that look on his face. He’s not a silly kid. He’s crazy and he’s dangerous and he doesn’t like me either.

“What about Gershom?” I say. “Does he drive?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“What’s he? Embree’s son or something?”

“No. His nephew. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“They see each other?”

“I don’t know. Probably. So what?”

“Gershom saw us together at the hardware store yesterday. He goes and tells Embree and…” I’m trying to figure this out.

Levi’s shaking his head. “And then what? Embree says, you got to ‘kill’ this girl for me?…Why? Why would he do that? You can
say a lot of things about Embree but I don’t think he’s the jealous type. And anyway, we only went out for a little while. I’m pretty sure he’s over me by now.”

I don’t say anything. He shouldn’t be joking around. Not about this.

“Sorry.” He wipes the smile off his face. “I just don’t understand why you think Embree would want to do something to you.”

“I don’t know! He’s nuts, that’s why! Remember…in the woods…he said something like, um, ‘I’ve got a long memory’…And then…when we were leaving, he went, ‘It’s the others that have to worry.’ Something like that. You heard him. He was threatening me. That was a threat.”

“He was just talking, Opal! Trying to sound big. It didn’t mean anything—he just wanted to scare you.”

“So maybe that’s what he was trying to do last night! Scare me again. Maybe he told Gershom just to knock me over, rough me up a bit, you know. That’s what happened, after all.”

Levi’s trying to look as if he’s actually considering what I say. He’s got his lips pushed together and he’s nodding, but I’m not falling for it. He’s just stalling.

He says, “Okay. Could be. But why? Why would he want to scare you? Believe me, there are a lot of people around here who’ve done way worse things to him than threaten to pee on his property.”

I know what Levi’s saying makes sense but the look on Embree’s face makes a lot of sense to me too. The guy took an instant hate to me. Why?

“Maybe…” I say. “Maybe it’s about me doing research on the area. You told him that’s what I was doing.” I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. “Maybe he, like, thinks I’m going to—you know—expose
the Bisters or something. Open up that whole can of worms again. Embarrass them somehow.”

Levi looks down at his knees and then back up at me. His voice is really calm. “Opal, I don’t think you could possibly embarrass the Bisters any more than they’ve been embarrassed. Embree’s way past that point.”

He reaches out and puts his hand on my leg. I look at it and those big white cuticles and it totally takes all the fight out of me. I don’t want to fight with him. Why am I fighting with him? I don’t want him to go away. Who cares if somebody hit me? I lived. I’m here with him. He’s got his hand on my leg. Just shut up, why don’t I?

“Can I make a suggestion?” he says. “I think we should go to where the accident happened and take a look. I can’t help thinking we’re missing something here. Maybe there was an oil slick on the road or something. That could make a car swerve.”

That wasn’t what happened. I know that. But I don’t like Levi thinking I’m crazy. I don’t want him to give up on me. I just shrug, and let him take me there. I’ll figure this out myself.

We drive along in silence until we get to the place where I went off the road. You can still see my tire tracks running straight along the shoulder, swerving, then suddenly ending. The bike is lying all twisted in the ditch like some mangled bug skeleton.

There’s no oil slick.

Levi goes, “Hmm. There was a bit of rain last night. That could have washed it away.”

“How come you can still see the bike tracks, then?” I say. I’m doing it again.

“Okay,” he says. “Must have been something else.”

“Like what?”

He opens his eyes really wide. “I don’t know. Glare on the guy’s windshield, a bird, roadkill. Lots of things could have made him lose control.”

“If it was just an accident, why didn’t he stop to see if I was okay?”

He thinks about that for a second. “Maybe he didn’t notice.”

I turn and look right at him. Who wouldn’t notice running someone off the road?

He puts his hands up in surrender. “Okay,” he says. “I don’t know, Opal. It’s a mystery.”

He wanders over and looks into the ditch. “Why don’t I get the bike? See if I can fix it.”

As if that piece of scrap metal can be fixed. He just wants to pretend this is nothing, forget about it, move on. I should too.

He slides down the embankment and comes back up with the bike over his shoulder. “Well, this looks like it’s going to be a project I can really sink my teeth into!” he says, all cheesy Mr. Fix-It.

I try to smile but he’s bugging me. It’s like I’m a dog and he thinks he can just distract me with a new squeaky toy or something.

We get in the van and he goes, “Oh yeah. I found this beside the bike. It yours?”

I figure this is just another one of his little jokes. I turn and look at him like
Okay. Now what?
He hands me an old torn-up envelope. It’s so dirty I don’t recognize it at first. Then I see the corner of the picture sticking out and the lump of the ring.

I’m startled. How did that get here? Then I remember just stuffing it in the outside pocket of my backpack when Joan came up the library steps.

“Yeah,” I go. “It’s mine.” I get this little panic attack. What would have happened if I’d lost it and Mom looked in the chair?

Has Mom looked in the chair yet?

Maybe she never looks in the chair. Maybe she’s totally forgotten about the stuff she put there.

Maybe it’s not even hers.

No. I know that much at least. It’s hers.

“What’s in it?” Levi says.

“Um,” I say. “It’s just a ring and an old photo from a church picnic.” I want to tell him all about it—but I don’t too. It’s like I’m tiptoeing into a room I’m not sure I should be in.

“Oh yeah?” he says. “Can I see them?”

“Uh, sure.” I hand them to him. There’s nothing the matter with that. I haven’t said anything yet. I’ll just see where it goes.

He looks at the photo. I can tell it doesn’t mean much to him. It’s just an old snapshot. His eyes, though, go a little bigger when he sees the ring.