The Light (Morpheus Road) (14 page)

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who normally eats that stuff up. About halfway through I saw Cooper get up and walk to the lobby. If the movie had been better, I might not even have noticed. A few minutes later he came back and that was that.

Until he got up again to leave. I figured he had to go to the bathroom or get popcorn, but he came back the second time without any food. I focused back on the movie and the evil industrialist bad guy who nobody in the movie suspected was a villain but was so obvious that it was laughable. When the bad guy's evil self was revealed, Mooch actually whispered, "Whoa! Didn't see that coming!" Great insight.

Cooper got up again to leave. That crossed the line into being strange. This time he didn't come back. Five minutes went by. Ten minutes. I couldn't take it anymore and slipped out to go see what the deal was. It was an old-fashioned movie theater on the Ave. I loved going there because it was like stepping back in time. There was only one screen, which was framed with heavy curtains. The lobby had a dark, threadbare carpet that gave off a sour smell that probably came from decades of spilled golden popcorn topping. When I stepped out of the dark into the lobby, Cooper wasn't there. Nobody was. I checked the concession area. No Cooper. I asked the sleepy kid taking tickets at the door if a guy had just walked out. Nobody had. The only other place Cooper could have gone was the bathroom.

That's where I found him. In the last stall, on the floor, doubled over in pain.

"Are you all right?" I asked. (Why is it that you always ask somebody if they're all right when they're obviously not all right?)

"Man, I'm dying," Coop answered through clenched teeth. "Those tacos were bad. My stomach feels like it's gonna explode."

Cooper looked horrible, though I can't imagine anybody

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looking good while they're writhing in pain on the floor of a dirty public bathroom. He was soaked with sweat. His eyes couldn't focus. His hair was wet and plastered to his head.

"I'll call your parents," I declared.

"No, don't," he said. "If I could just puke, I'd be okay."

"Coop! You're a mess!"

"What'll my parents do? Take me home and tuck me into bed? I'll still feel like crap and I don't want to miss the rest of the movie."

"The movie sucks!" I shouted. "You gotta get outta here."

I reached under his arms to lift him up. Cooper grunted in pain.

"This isn't from bad tacos," I said. "I ate 'em and I'm fine."

"Tacos," Cooper repeated. I think sending his mind back to those greasy treats put him over the edge. He looked at me with a blank expression and declared, "Trouble Town."

He didn't make it to the toilet and blew lunch all over the wall. The tension in Cooper's body made the pain even worse as he grunted in agony with every heave. I managed to pull him around to the toilet, where he clutched the rim and continued to hurl. It was scary. I grabbed my cell phone and punched in 9-1-1.

The sleepy ticket taker wasn't sleepy anymore. He heard the gruesome sounds coming from the bathroom and came charging in. After one look at the carnage, he nearly lost it himself.

"What's wrong with him?" the guy said, choking back his own retch.

"Bad tacos" was the only answer I could come up with.

Cooper finished and sat back against the wall. The tension in his body was gone.

"Talk to me," I said.

"I'm okay," Coop mumbled while holding up the double okay sign. "You think Megan'll still give me a good-night kiss?"

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He said it with a smile and a wink. Didn't matter that Cooper felt like dirt. Anything for the joke.

I was afraid he might pass out or lose it again, so I stayed with him. The stall was a mess and it reeked, but I couldn't leave. Five minutes later the ambulance showed up and they took him to the hospital. Turned out Coop's problem had nothing to do with tacos. His appendix was on the verge of bursting. They took it out that night and he was fine.

Besides the horror of it all, one of the things that stuck with me about that night was what happened when I went back into the movie to tell the others about Coop. I knelt down at the end of the aisle next to Megan and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, "Coop got sick. The ambulance took him to the hospital."

Everyone's eyes stayed focused on the screen like they were actually engrossed in the lousy movie. The most reaction I got was a couple of nods of acknowledgment. Even from Megan. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they didn't hear or register what I had said because if they had, I'm sure they would have been worried about Cooper. It's not like they were jerks. They all went to visit him in the hospital the next day. But none of them were there for Cooper that night like I was. That's what friends do.

I'm not sure why that story came back to me while I sat huddled in Sydney's car on the way to the lake. It had happened so long ago. I guess maybe it was because it gave me the assurance that when things got bad, there were certain people you could always count on. I would have been more comforted by the idea if I knew Cooper was all right. I couldn't say for sure if I was going to the lake so that he could help me or I could help him. Either way I was on my way there . . . and out of my house.

I slept for the first two hours of the drive, which was

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great because I didn't have to deal with the awkward silence, and as long as I was sleeping, I couldn't see anything scary. When I started to come around, I had the fleeting hope that everything had been a dream and I'd been asleep since Dad left for Vegas.

That was blown away the moment I smelled Sydney's perfume. Reality flooded back in a mad rush.

"You awake?" Sydney asked.

"Yeah."

"Are you finished acting crazy?"

I didn't have an answer for that.

"Tell me what happened to Mikey," she commanded.

Mikey? Who cared about Mikey? Compared to everything I'd seen, Mikey flipping out was barely on my radar.

"Am I allowed to speak?" I asked.

I don't think she knew how to answer, so she ignored the question. I sat up and squinted against the bright sunshine. We were flying along a winding, two-lane highway about a half hour south of Thistledown Lake. Sydney liked to drive fast. Ordinarily it would have scared me and I would have asked her to slow down, but I was beyond caring about something as simple as careening off the road and dying in a fiery car wreck.

With her big sunglasses Sydney looked like a model. Her long black hair and perfect features probably helped the impression. The jean shorts and creatively torn T-shirt didn't hurt either.

"Was he kidding?" she asked. "I mean, he went totally off."

They were the first words she'd spoken to me that weren't some form of insult.

"I don't know" was all I could manage to say.

She gave me a quick glance. I looked straight ahead.

"You're a mess," she declared.

I guess there was no mistaking
me
for a model.

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"I mean, not just the way you look," she continued. "Your whole being. You're messed up."

"Thank you," I said. I wasn't being sarcastic. Why bother? She was right. I
was
messed up.

"No offense, but what is your deal?" she asked. "How old are you now? Fourteen?"

I gave her what I hoped was a dirty look.

"Your brother and I have been in the same class since kindergarten," I said flatly.

"Oh. Right. You just seem so much, I don't know, younger than him."

"Or maybe he seems older than me."

Sydney smiled. I saw it. It wasn't huge and lasted barely a second, but it was there. I had cracked the shell of the ice queen. It felt like a huge victory, so I pressed my luck.

"So why don't you guys get along?" I asked.

All traces of the Sydney smile disappeared.

"Better question," she said. "How come you
do
get along with him? I mean, you're nothing alike. He's all popular and has girls buzzing around him like flies on ... whatever, and you're ... you're ..."

"Not and don't," I said, finishing her thought.

"It's true. You two are in, like . . . different leagues. Doesn't that bug you?"

"Coop and I don't compete, so it's not a problem," I said. "But it sounds like maybe you do."

"Me? Compete with Cooper? Please."

I shrugged. "Just sayin'."

She laughed, maybe a little too hard. "Why would you say that? I'm going to be valedictorian. I'm going to Stanford. I have more people who want to be friends than I have time for. That's not a competition."

"Not for him it isn't. He doesn't care about any of that stuff."

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She snapped a look to me. I didn't dare look at her. I'd said too much already.

Sydney sped up. I started to care.

"I thought I was the one who wanted to get there in a hurry," I said, trying not to let my tension show.

"What?" she replied with fake innocence. "You don't like going fast?"

I wanted to come back with something funny that would put her in her place and show that I could match wits with her.

"No" was all I could come up with.

Sydney laughed like I was an annoying little boy and eased off the gas. I almost wished she hadn't. Slowing down was further proof that I wasn't playing on her level.

We didn't say another word for the rest of the drive, which was thankfully short, because we soon hit the town of Thistledown. Driving through reminded me of the great times I'd spent there with Cooper. His family bought the house when we were in first grade, and we spent many weeks up there swimming and hiking and playing board games and basically enjoying summer. I missed those times. I hated the idea of creating new memories of the place that wouldn't be so warm and fuzzy.

We hadn't heard anything about Cooper since the call Sydney got that morning, almost six hours before. As we drove closer to the Foleys' lake house, the thought hit me that Coop might have turned up since then. I imagined pulling up to the house and seeing him standing on the dock with a fishing pole, waving to us. It wouldn't have surprised me at all.

The gravel driveway was off the main road. If you didn't know it was there, you'd miss it. The only sign that marked it was an ancient marine light that hung from a wooden post that was mostly covered by tree branches. As we approached

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the turn, a car was coming out of the driveway. A police car.

"Oh, great," Sydney said under her breath.

She assumed it was bad news, but I hoped the cop had brought Coop back to the house. Sydney turned into the driveway and we made the long trip to the house. It was exactly a quarter of a mile from the road to the house; Coop and I measured it once so we could time ourselves running it. Our car broke through the trees into the clearing where the yellow house sat not ten yards from the shore of Thistledown Lake. Sydney pulled up to the back door and stopped. I jumped out and looked around the side of the house to the dock.

Cooper wasn't there.

The back door opened and Mrs. Foley stepped out. One look at her face told me that Sydney was right. The cop hadn't brought good news.

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Chapter 11

"I am so glad you're here!" Mrs. Foley declared as she walked toward us with her arms open wide.

I thought she was talking to Sydney, but she blew past her daughter and gave me a big hug. It was awkward, but it didn't seem to bother Sydney.

"What did the cop say?" Sydney asked, bored, as if she didn't really care.

"It's been two days, so it's officially a missing-person situation," Mrs. Foley answered, sounding tired. "They'll put his picture out to the various authorities. But I'm not worried. I'm really not. He's done this before and he'll do it again."

She may have said that she wasn't worried, but her eyes were red as if she'd been crying or hadn't slept much. Or both. Mrs. Foley was one of those moms that everybody liked. I think it was because she didn't act like a typical

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mom. She joked around and wouldn't stress if you didn't eat all your vegetables. Actually, I don't think she cooked vegetables. Or anything else, for that matter. She mostly played tennis and volunteered at school. She seemed to like being with young people and dressed kind of like the girls in our grade. It wasn't sad or anything because she looked pretty good. In fact, she looked like an older version of Sydney, which really hit me as I looked at Sydney standing at the back door, clearly wishing she were somewhere else. They both had long dark hair and wore cutoff jeans, Ugg boots, and T-shirts. Mrs. F. was a lot nicer than Sydney, though.

Sydney opened the back door. "I'm going to my room," she announced.

"Let's give Marsh your room," Mrs. Foley called out. "He's our guest."

Sydney stopped short and turned around slowly. If looks could kill. . .

"What?" Sydney said softly but with scary intensity.

"That's okay," I declared, heading off the argument. "I'll take the lower bunk in Coop's room. Like always."

"We got rid of the bunk beds," Mrs. Foley said. "There's only Cooper's single bed now."

"Then I'll take the couch," I said quickly. There was no way I was going to put Sydney out of her bedroom. She'd probably murder me in my sleep. And I expected Coop to be back any second anyway.

Sydney didn't comment on my decision. She stormed inside, letting the screen door slam.

"Thank you, Marsh," Mrs. Foley said as if to apologize for Sydney being so obnoxious, but I could kinda get why Sydney didn't like her mom offering up her room so fast. I went to get my pack out of the car. As a peace offering I grabbed Sydney's bag too.

"What am I supposed to do with Cooper?" Mrs. Foley