Overnight (8 page)

All her life, Gray had obeyed the rules of grown-ups. The rules were work hard, finish homework, be polite, volunteer, and play fair, and all the future rewards—happiness, safety, and a nice college—would be hers to enjoy.

Under these rules, Gray’s entire life until her mother got sick had made sense. And even after the sickness, there were rules. New rules, some not as easy, but they existed just the same. They existed along with old rules, these new rules such as don’t upset Mom and don’t cry and be brave for Robby and keep it down and please no more crying and we all have to pull our weight around here, Gray! were harder to follow.

She did try, even though she wanted her old mom back. The livelier, more fun mom that she used to have. The mom who took Gray and Robby to SpaceRollers restaurant on Sunday nights, the mom who turned raking leaves in the backyard into a family game. That mom always wanted Gray and Robby to experience things. Taste this soup, Gray. More pepper, do you think? Listen, Gray. That’s a jaybird. Look, look, Gray, up at the skywriter! Oh, Gray, can you smell that awful factory smoke? Peee-yew!

Before she got sick, she had been more radiant with life than any mom. Always she had led the way, waltzing ahead and doubling back, circling and coaxing Gray and Robby into the enchantment of what she saw and heard and knew.

Gray missed her old mom, but she respected the new rules.

Not one single rule in her life had prepared her for this night.

Gray looked from Drew to Katrina and back again. The two of them seemed to shine with a jittery energy. Gray could not see if these people had
RIGHT
or
WRONG
stamped across them. They were mixed-up and smeary. They blurred.

If a real grown-up were here, the grown-up would know what kind of danger might flood this house. Gray could not tell. She tried but she could not grasp it.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Drew pointed to the bathroom door. His eyes remained on Katrina.

“I can’t believe you went out,” he said. “I can’t believe you took the car and went out. After what I told you. Did you run into anybody? Anyone you know?”

“No, nobody. I’m sorry I went out,” Kat answered. “I didn’t think you’d be mad.” She did not sound very sorry. She sounded as if she were speaking to finish up the conversation.

Gray looked from Drew to Kat and back again. Searching for clues and rules.

Would they take her home? Would they hurt her?

She didn’t know. She escaped to the bathroom and locked the door.

She stayed in the bathroom for a while, searching. There was nothing to find. In the medicine cabinet was a bottle of mouthwash, dental tape, a bottle of pills to stop burping. On the windowsill was an abandoned spiderweb in which was trapped a husk that might once have been a small fly. On the toilet tank was an air deodorizer in the shape of a sleeping unicorn. In the shower was a piece of soap worn thin as a tongue.

These people no they are not bad no because if these people were bad shouldn’t there be more dangerous clues lying around?

She could lock the door and stay in this bathroom all night. She could sleep in the tub. Shut her eyes and wait for her parents to find her. Maybe they were already on her trail!

She climbed in the tub and hugged her arms around her knees. Closed her eyes and tried to transport herself to somewhere else.

Right at this moment, she bet Martha Van Riet was saying awful things about her. That’s what Martha did whenever one of the group was not around. Last week, it had been Zoë who was absent, and Martha spent the whole day slamming her.

All those terrible things she said! Like, “I could put a leash on Zoë’s eyebrows and walk them as pets, ha ha ha!” And, “Have you ever noticed how know-it-all Zoë talks like she’s got a stick up her butt, ha ha ha!” And, “You know, once I heard a rumor that Zoë French-kissed a dog on a truth-or-dare last year at camp!”

Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

Everyone laughed and said no way and that’s so gross, Mar, and everyone sort of came to Zoë’s defense, but not really.

Now Martha was probably slamming her. Caitlin would be over-ready to laugh about Gray, too, since Gray had wrecked her birthday party.

The bathroom was beginning to feel cramped and suffocating. From behind the door was silence. Had Drew and Katrina left the house? Left her behind? Was it safer that way, to be here in this house without them? Alone?

Gray emerged from the bathroom. She saw Katrina lying on the couch, the remote control in her hand. Drew was standing behind her, staring sulkily out the window and biting the edge of his thumb.

“I’m hungry,” said Gray.

Katrina nodded. “Me, too.”

“No, I mean, I’m really hungry.”

“Me, too. I’d like some chickpeas and feta cheese.”

“You don’t understand. If I don’t eat something, I might faint,” said Gray.

Although she had never fainted in her life, not even when she stepped on a glass bottle on the beach and was taken to the hospital, where she got five stitches. That afternoon was scary. She’d thought she might faint plenty of times. When she saw flies land on her blood that spattered dark across the sand. When the doctor, meaning to be helpful, showed her the black stitching thread. When she caught sight of the metal butterfly clip that pinched the skin back into place.

But she had not fainted. Not once.

She was not about to faint now, either. But if Drew and Katrina refused to give her something to eat, then she might deduce some clues about them. That they were criminals or something.

“There’s no food here,” said Katrina.

Drew was making a slow lap of the room, peering out each frost-smudged window. “If they came by and didn’t see the car, I guess they’ll be back,” he said.

“Do you have a cell phone?” Gray asked Drew politely. She tried to imagine what was happening at the Donnelley house. It was cake time, maybe. Or presents. She wished she had put on her watch this morning.

“Why, who do you want to talk to? You can’t call anyone right now. I don’t need to add you to my problems.” Drew dismissed Gray with an impatient glare. “What are you saying, there’s no food left, huh, Kat? There’s gotta be something.”

“Nope.” Katrina shifted. “I looked already. Hand me that blanket?” She pointed to the blanket Gray had left on the floor by the front door.

Drew picked up the blanket and walked over to Katrina and dropped it on her in a heap. “What’s that junk all over your face?”

Katrina touched her cheek and spoke in her baby-girl way. “The ladies made me up at the department store. They did it for free, for my party. They gave me a free lipstick, too. Mango Tango, it’s called.”

“Kat, for crying out loud! There is
no party!”

“Well, I think that’s a shame.” Katrina pulled her arms over her head and yawned. “You know what? I’m going back to bed.” She shook off the blanket, stood up from the couch, stretched, and touched her toes.

“I could go see if there’s some food in the kitchen,” Gray offered.

It was as if she had not spoken at all.

It was just like that mean game Martha and the others played against her.

Drew returned to looking out the window, and Katrina shuffled away to the bedroom.

Gray slipped into the kitchen and snapped on a light that popped and blew. Now the trickle from the living room was the kitchen’s only illumination. She opened the rust-edged refrigerator and inside found a sandwich furry with mold, a sandwich bag filled with carrots and celery sticks, and a couple of cans of beer.

“Whatcha got?”

Gray jumped. Drew had crept up behind her.

“Nothing.”

He reached past her and hefted a beer. “Kat wasn’t joking,” he said. He swiped the sandwich bag, too. “This’ll do us.”

Gray nodded. Together, they sat down at a table-and-chairs set that looked better suited to ornament a pool or patio area. The chairs were padded with spongy cushions, and the plastic-topped table was thin and frail enough that Gray might have picked it up and moved it anywhere else.

“Check the cupboard.” Drew cracked open the beer. “This is my, uh, buddy’s place and they’re out of town for the week. Which is why it’s lean on supplies.”

Gray thought Drew might be lying to her. Aside from the spiderweb and dead mouse in the trap, she had noticed a lot of dust around the house, too, in places where people who lived here would have wiped clean. Also, the rooms all had a mushroom smell. An odor of things that have sat too long in closed air.

She did not contradict, though. She did not want to make Drew angry. She stood on her toes to open the cupboard. She saw baking powder and chili powder, salt and pepper, vinegar, and a dented box of crackers. She pulled down the salt and vinegar and crackers. Maybe she could use the crackers to make a version of salt-and-vinegar potato chips? That might taste good. In another cupboard was a saucer that looked useful for dipping. She returned to sit at the table and she unscrewed the top to the vinegar.

“You want some crackers and dip?”

“Ymm,” Drew said as he sipped his beer. He set the can on the table and studied her. “Gray Rosenfeld, right? Rosenfeld. That’s Jewish. I got a couple of Jewish friends. But you don’t look like any Rosenfeld I met.”

“I was adopted,” Gray answered promptly. She had been told and had told others that she was adopted ever since she could remember. “Jewish people come in all shapes and colors,” she added. Someone had said this to her once. She pooled the vinegar into the saucer’s center and floated a cracker like a small white raft on swamp water.

“Yeah, and you don’t look like any Gray I know, either.” Drew put a hand over one eye, then the other, studying Gray as if she were an eye chart. “Nah. I never met anyone named Gray. But if I did, she wouldn’t look like you. Nope, no sirree.”

“What do I look like, then?” she asked, although she was not sure if she was ready to know. Besides, she did not like Drew’s tone.

“I dunno. Maybe like a half Chinese? Or Mongol? It’s your eyelids, see. How they bend funny.”

“They do not!” She could not resist touching her fingers to the outer corners of her eyelids, which felt the same as always.

“You’re small, too. Like maybe you’re stunted, huh? Where were you adopted from?” Drew leaned in on his elbows. “Some malnourished country?”

Gray used her pinkie to flip over the cracker. It was soaked with vinegar and its shape bloated. She could tell that it was not going to taste very good. “I don’t know. Not from very far away. Not from another continent or anything. I’m American.”

“You sure?” Drew took another sip. Gray wondered if he was trying to provoke her on purpose. “You were adopted in America,” he continued, pointing his finger at her. “That’s all you know for certain. Right? But you could have come from anyplace else. Originally.”

“My birth mother lives in America, in the Southwest. I’m allowed to contact her when I turn eighteen,” Gray explained. “And, for your information, practically everyone in the United States comes from someplace else,
originally.”

“Everyone comes from someplace, sure. But
you
could come from anyplace.” Drew sat back and winked. “Chew on that.”

“I know who I am,” said Gray. She was not upset, not really—Drew was being a bully, like how Topher sometimes acted to Caitlin and Ty—but she felt her eyes sting a little, as if to remind her that she could be sad if she wanted. “What about you? What’s your last name?”

“Doe.” Drew smiled as if this were a joke. “Brothers, sisters?”

“I’ve got a younger brother. He’s seven.”

“He’s adopted?”

“No.”

“Yep. That happens all the time.”

“What? What happens?”

“You know, folks try to have a kid and they can’t and so they adopt and then they’re relaxed and that’s when they end up having the kid they want. Their real kid.”

“I’m their real kid.”

“Okeydoke.”

“I am!”

“Whatever you say. Whatever you say, whoever you are, Gray Rosenfeld.” Drew smiled. His teeth looked mean. They were too square, each one identical to the next one over, like teeth soldiers at attention against her.

Gray decided she did not want to talk to Drew Doe anymore. He was sort of a jerk. Also, he was a stranger. She shouldn’t be talking to him at all as a rule.

She lifted the dripping cracker and balanced it on the flat of her hand. Then she shook a little bit of salt on top. The cracker dissolved on her tongue. When she swallowed, it was as if it had never been there.

“How is your snack, by the way?” Drew asked. “Looks retarded.” After a second, he said, “Oh, you’re ignoring me now?” He sounded annoyed.

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to anger Drew.

“No. It tastes okay.” She would be nice, but calm. Drew did not need to know that she was too-scared of him. “What’s wrong with Kat?” she asked.

The question startled Drew more than she thought it would. “What did she tell you?”

“I’ve been around lots of sick people since my mom got cancer,” said Gray honestly.

“Sorry to hear.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.” Gray disliked when people said they were sorry and made pitying eyes at her. “She’s getting well. She’s in remission.”

Drew opened his mouth to say something. Then he seemed to decide against it. He took a carrot stick and twirled it like a pen in his fingers.

“Kat’s been my girlfriend so long that I can’t remember when things were different with her, or even if they were. She’s a nice girl, a normal girl, you know? I’m tired of everyone telling me what’s wrong with her. Everyone’s a critic. Let me tell you—there’s a million things right with her! The situation is never black or white. I’m good for Kat. I take care of her.”

“Has she been in the hospital? Is that why her hair’s so short?”

“Naw, she’s not sick that way. She tangles it when it’s longer. Twists it in her fingers and before you know, she’s got a knot in there the size of a rat. I bought her that wig for fun, see. To show it doesn’t matter to me. ’Cause long or short, she’s always my girl.”

Drew eased back in his chair. He was speaking to Gray and yet he seemed to have forgotten she was there. “When I visited her last time, we put on the radio and danced. She loves music. That’s when it hit me, how right we are, us. She’s always better when she’s with me.” Drew pointed a finger on Gray. “I got what we need for a fresh start. Away from the critics.” His hand winged the air. “From now on it’s me and Kat and nobody standing in our path. We’re taking off.”