Summer on the Short Bus (22 page)

“Exactly,” I say. “So you really think we're good to go tonight?”

“Yeah, we're good. Colin says these meetings run like clock-work. They start at six-thirty and rarely end before eight. We've got a solid two-hour block from the time she leaves until the meeting ends. I don't think we're going to be in there more than half an hour anyway.”

“We need to plan on that. If we can't get in and out in thirty minutes—we're just asking for it.”

“Agreed. But it's nice to have a cushion if we need it.”

“And what are we going to do about Pete?” I say. “If Pete finds out, you know he'll tell Rainbow. He's a cool guy and all, but he's going to be a doctor. There's probably some oath he has to take about telling the authorities if he witnesses a crime being committed.”

“Pete's going to the meeting, too. He's leading CPR training or something.”

“Okay. What about Sam?”

“Sam always watches movies in his trailer after dinner. Aidan will camp out right under that willow tree behind the mess hall—he'll
be able to keep an eye on the office and Sam.”

“Okay,” I say. “I guess you've got it all covered then, don't you?”

“Pretty much. I did earn a scholarship, you know? There's a lot more going on here than just this pretty face.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, blushing. “I'm very aware of that.”

TWENTY-FOUR

A
fter dinner we assemble the kids for their evening of night fishing and lakeside s'mores. Everyone's thrilled with the plan, except James. Apparently his ideal nighttime activities have less to do with fishing poles and more with his oven-mitted hand traveling under Claire's shirt. Shame, shame, James.

“All right, everybody,” Colin addresses the campers in his booming voice. “Follow the path carefully. There are a lot of gaps in the asphalt and a few loose rocks along the way. For those of you in chairs,
please
take it slowly. We know you're hell on wheels, but you don't need to prove it tonight.”

With their poles, bait, graham crackers, marshmallows, melting Hershey's bars, sweatshirts, and cans of bug spray in hand, the kids follow along behind Fantine while Colin takes up the rear. No one seems to notice that the three of us are hanging back, allowing the parade of the hobbled, wheeled, and wonky-eyed to proceed without us.

“You ready?” Aidan says, when Colin's head finally disappears out of sight.

“Yep,” says Quinn. “Are you, Crick?”

I look over my shoulder for the fifteenth time, confirming that the old pickup is officially off the premises before I answer. “I guess so,” I finally say.

“Sweet,” Aidan says. “Let's get this over with so I can get my s'mores on. I've already checked in on Sam. He's about a half hour into the first
Lord of the Rings
. He'll be good for the rest of the night.”

Aidan is way too eager for my liking. He's practically floating with excitement as he wheels his way up the path toward the small, two-room building that hosts Rainbow's cabin and the camp office.

“Don't worry,” Quinn says as we trail along behind. “She won't have a clue we've been here. We'll be just like the Domino's pizza guy—thirty minutes or less.”

“Except the pizza guy doesn't get thrown into jail if he's late.”

“Nobody's going to jail,” he says, smiling. “But I bet you would look hot in an orange jumpsuit.”

I roll my eyes. “Idiot.”

Aidan assumes his position under the willow tree, while Quinn carefully opens the weathered rear door of the office. As I tiptoe across the warped planks of the tiny porch and step inside the small, dark space, it dawns on me that my anxiety about this quest has less to do with getting caught and everything to do with what I might find.

Being the braver party in our dynamic duo, Quinn heads straight for the two-drawer steel filing cabinet on the far side of the
room, while I take the less obtrusive route—perusing through the small stacks of mail on her desk.

The first stack produces nothing more than a few invoices for medical supplies, a past due Verizon bill, and random credit card offers, and the second even less exciting. There are two envelopes; one is addressed to Mom and has an Edward Cullen return address label in the corner (nice penmanship, Claire), and the other has a little cutout window for an address to show though. The American Electric Power Company will be getting paid this month.

“Anything?”

“Nada.” I look up from where I'm carefully restacking the mail, and find him head deep in a drawer. “What about you?” I ask. “Did you find something?”

“Nah.” He sighs and slams the drawer shut. “It's just a lot of random crap from her college days, which is sort of surprising considering how organized she is. Hopefully this other drawer's a little more encouraging.” He fumbles for a moment with the tiny switch lock on the front of the door before it finally springs open. “Got it,” he says.

“What's in there?”

“The mother lode,” he says proudly. “Personnel files.”

I hurry around the desk and kneel down on the floor beside him.

“Colin Aceti, Analeise Dummel, David Early . . . Wow, a lot of people have worked here,” he mumbles, thumbing his way through the sea of confidential information. “Fantine Marquez, Rochelle
Mendler . . . Ah, here we go. Constance Montgomery.” He pulls a thin manila folder from the stack. Over his shoulder he asks, “You ready for this?”

“Yes,” I say. “Open it.”

“Okay, here goes nothing.” He flips it open and begins to read. “Constance Elaine Montgomery, nickname: Cricket. Date of birth, September seventh. Hey”—he pauses and glances back at me—“you're turning the big one eight next month.”

I nod.

“Good to know,” he says, before turning back to the folder. “Lives on Astor Street . . . Chicago . . . attends Parker Prep Academy . . .” He flips to a second sheet and scans the document like a doctor does before he asks you what's wrong. “There's not much here,” he finally says. “It's all the basics about you, but it's almost like something is missing. . . .”

He begins fingering through the remaining folders before finally pulling the very last file from the drawer. Over his shoulder I see the label: Quinn Youngsma.

“You see how my file has all this extra stuff on the right side?”

I creep closer, and watch as he flips through the stack of papers fastened to the right side of the folder. There are handwritten notes, a newspaper clipping with a picture of him in a soccer uniform, and a report of some kind.

“What is that?” I ask, pointing to the report.

“We had to submit a formal writing sample with our
applications before we were ever considered for employment,” he says, thumbing page by page through the report that's easily twenty pages long. The only thing I've ever written that was twenty pages long was my Christmas list. “God,” he says, “I couldn't write for shit in high school . . . this is pathetic. Good thing I'm not an English major. Did you have to submit a writing sample?”

“No. I didn't do anything,” I say. “One minute I was trying to get stoned, and the next minute I was here. I was practically kidnapped.”

“Hold on.” He sets the folder down and repositions himself so he's facing me. “What do you mean you were
trying
to get stoned?”

“It's a long story,” I say, which is a total lie. The story isn't long, it's just monumentally embarrassing.

“Well then, I guess you better get to explaining since we've got less than twenty minutes left on our timer.”

I don't want to get into this right now (or ever), but I know Quinn, and he's not about to let me off the hook without some kind of response. “Ugh, fine. Let's just say that pot and oregano look really similar to an untrained eye.”

His eyes grow wide and his body begins to shake with silent laughter.

“This is why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you'd make fun of me.”

“Well, yeah,” he says, laughing hard now. “How can you
not
know the difference? You are such a dork.”

“I'm not a dork!” I protest. “It was mortifying! The guys with us were in college. We were trying to impress them.”

“Did it work?”

“What do you think?”

It takes him a minute to compose himself. “In your case, I think being a dork is underrated.”

“Well, you would know,” I say with a smirk. “Now can we please move past my Bob Marley moment and figure this out? It's weird that I don't have any extra stuff in my file, right?”

“Yes and no. It's only weird because the rest of us had to jump through crazy hoops to work here. It makes sense that you don't have anything else in your file—”

“Wait a second!” I silence him with a smack to the shoulder. “What did you say was in that top drawer?”

“Just a bunch of old crap. What are you looking at?” He rises to his feet and joins me in staring at the framed diploma on the wall. Ironically, it's hanging right next to the plaque donated in memory of my mom. “I didn't realize Rainbow went to DePaul.”

“Me, either,” I say. “It says she graduated in ninety-one.”

“Okay . . .”

My heart starts beating a little faster. “My mom graduated from DePaul in ninety-one, too.”

Before I can even ask, Quinn is back at the filing cabinet searching through the top drawer again. “Here,” he says, handing me the first of two, three-inch-wide hanging folders he's yanked
out. “Since we're pressed for time, it's probably better to have both of us looking.”

I rest my butt up against the edge of Rainbow's desk and begin sorting through the file. After just a few minutes, I can tell it contains exactly what Quinn said it did—crap. There are about a hundred alumni pledge cards, an old DePaul campus directory, a pale yellow Post-it with a phone number scribbled in blue ink, a gas station receipt—”

“Holy crap.”

“What?” I say, dropping the Exxon receipt without a second thought. “Did you find something?” He slowly turns to face me. His wide eyes make me nervous.

“You look just like her.”

He holds my gaze for a beat before handing me a photograph. Despite their matching graduation caps and gowns, I recognize both of the smiling faces the instant my eyes land on them. The one on the right is a younger version of the freckled, redheaded woman I've come to hate. The other is the green-eyed beauty I don't remember but miss every day. Mom.

Without warning, my chest tightens, and I feel the unwelcome arrival of that burning, aching pain in my throat; the one that always come right before I cry. I slouch farther against the desk's edge, staring at the picture until the image grows blurry.

“Even Rainbow gets to have memories of her?” I say in a near whisper.

“What?”

“Why does everybody get a piece of her but me? My whole life I've wanted to know who she was,” I say, choking on words I never imagined I'd be saying. “Something beyond the cookie-cutter rhetoric they print on fundraising programs. But nobody tells me anything. I ask . . . but they won't tell me. And now . . . now even
she
gets to have memories of her?”

Sympathy fills Quinn's face as he pulls me tight against his chest.

“Cricket, I'm sorry,” he says, and he presses his lips on my head. “He probably didn't mean to hurt you. Maybe he just thought he was protecting you. But you're right, he had no right to keep her from you.”

Quinn's soothing words are like a balm to my aching heart, and the longer he repeats them, the more I'm assured that for the first time in my life, someone actually understands my loss. It's not about the death of a mother, but rather the complete absence of her memory. And if anyone understands how precious a memory can be, it's Quinn.

“I do actually have one memory of her,” I say a few minutes later, when my tears have stopped.