The Incident on the Bridge (18 page)

T
he living sand dollar looks like a disc of sodden purple velvet, and the velvet traps prey for passage to the mouth. Inside the mouth, the sand dollar has jaws and even teeth for chewing plants and animals.
She's stopped rubbing her wrists together, because she's hungry and it doesn't make the tape come off. When she passes out or falls asleep, the sticker on the spine of the library book falls off and becomes a stingray moving gently over rocks. She dreams she is up on the bridge again, and the wind on the bridge is so hard it would take her upward if she were a plastic bag. It flings her hair into her mouth and flays her eyeballs, and the water miles and miles below the bridge is hard. You can tell by the way the ripples catch the light that they have sharp edges, like flakes of broken glass. Yellow taxi, blond satin edge of the stingray,
I don't have my purse,
the man coming out of the shadows and saying,
Julia!

It is not yesterday or the day before, and it never can be again.

She and Ted used to try to hold their breath the whole length of the bridge. Ted almost always won, as she won everything that required friends, balance, sails, or paddles. Thisbe was better only at memorizing, math, and words. When they were eight and eleven, Hugh had promised them perfect little wooden sabots if they could learn all the signal flags by Christmas Eve (not just the letters, either, but the messages each one represented). Thisbe learned them all in three days, not because she wanted a boat but because she liked to ace tests. Ted, on the other hand, had cried nightly at the dining room table as Christmas lights twinkled outside the window, red and green, red and blue, flashing Santa, flashing palm, standing deer. Thisbe bought Ted a pack of nautical playing cards that showed all the flags on one side, their meanings on the other:

I am maneuvering with difficulty; keep clear.

I have a diver down; keep well clear at slow speed.

I require a pilot
.

Still Ted flunked. Flunked again. After the fifth or sixth failure, Thisbe asked Hugh, “Couldn't she just send up a flare or something? I mean, is she going to carry twenty-six flags in the sailboat every time she goes out?”

“It's good for her. It's good for both of you,” Hugh said. “You have to earn the right to be on the water by yourself.”

Their mother went upstairs. She always just went upstairs.

“I am on fire and have dangerous cargo?”
Ted said as Thisbe held up, again, the flag card that meant
All personnel return to ship.
All personnel return to ship! Under what circumstances would a little girl in a sabot need to send that message? Under what circumstances, for that matter, would a girl in Glorietta Bay find her sabot to be on fire? Still Hugh insisted. A-plus or no sabot.

When Ted finally passed the test late on Christmas Day (and they ate their French toast soggy-cold), they all walked down to the yacht club. The world before them was blue and pink, more Easter- than Christmas-colored, the sky dipped in blue Paas dye and the water warm when you stuck your toe in. Ted, her eyes puffy, climbed into her little vermilion sabot and forgot—it was annoying, really—all the crying and slamming of doors. Thisbe posed for a picture in her own sabot, too, but she would hate hers once she learned what it was like to try to steer it. Another way they were different.

Thisbe had told this story to Clay on his boat the night she snuck out. Went down to the yacht club after curfew like she wasn't afraid of anything, and she thought no one had seen her, not a soul except Clay. He'd asked her why she didn't sail and she told him the whole story while they were lying next to each other in the little boat bed.

“So you know what all the flags mean, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said. “If they put them on the SAT, I'm ready. I will
ace
the signal flag section.”

“Say them to me,” Clay said as he undid her buttons. “Recite them to me and I'll give you a prize.”

Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta.

Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel.

As she recited, he turned all the warnings into double entendres.

I am on fire and have dangerous cargo.

Coming alongside.

Man overboard.

But then the very next day, after she kissed him in Spreckels Park,
poof.
“I think this was a mistake,” he said. “I didn't know Jerome liked you.”

“What?” she asked.

Jerome was watching them, and then Clay was running after him. Jerome had liked her when? Had liked her then but didn't like her now? Should she have known? Should she have waited? Was she a different kind of person now? She waited to see if Jerome would talk to her, but he didn't. Clay cut her off completely. She should have put it all out of her mind, but she couldn't. The exams came one after the other and she kept blanking out in the middle. Fell asleep instead of studying. Answered adults' questions with a blank stare.
What's gotten into you?
What indeed?

In the aft cabin of the boat, her toe is naked again, outside the sock, and the gag is wet on the side where her cheek touches the cushion, the low point of her mouth. She can't swallow anymore, just click. It was like when the dentist had two hands and a tool in your mouth to suck out the spit and you kept throat-clicking. Like a bird waiting for a mother that didn't come.
Click click.

T
he cop behind the desk said, “Driver's license?”

Clay kept the real one in the front of his wallet, behind the yellowish transparent panel. The fake one was tucked in with the money.

His hand was trembling a little when he double-checked the age really fast, because how dumb would that be if he handed his fake ID to a police officer? The officer was a big, cranky-looking guy with curly hair and a mustache and freckles all over his cheeks. He didn't act like he noticed the trembling but he did what clerks at skate parks did (and liquor store workers almost never did): he compared the face in the picture to Clay's face. He tapped the keyboard without saying a word.

“Did your car break down on the bridge?”

“No, sir. Like I said on the phone, it must have been stolen.”

“You didn't notice it was gone?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I left it parked like I always do at the yacht club. I don't drive it that much. I ride my bike, mostly.”

“The yacht club?”

“I'm living on our family's boat for the summer.”

He could feel the guy's disgust. Any minute now he'd make some sort of crack about what a hard life kids have these days.
Tap tap
on the keyboard. The cop let his chair rock back a little more.

There was nothing illegal about living on your boat, was there? He was pretty sure you didn't have to be an adult to sleep on your own boat without your parents, but maybe there was some weird rule, so he hoped he wouldn't have to get into that part. He needed to use the bathroom right now because he'd drunk the whole Gutter Water Gush.

“Should I call a lawyer or something?” he said.

“I'm not arresting you, Mr. Moorehead.”

Mr. Moorehead.
Okay, fine. Who cared about attitude as long as he was not being arrested? He was only here in the police station because his car had been found on the bridge, a thing that had been done
to,
not
by,
him. His bladder was going to pop. “I don't mean to be rude, sir, but if we're going to talk some more I could really use a bathroom.”

“Down the hall to the right, Mr. Moorehead. I'll wait right here.”

“Thanks.”

The bathroom was enormous. A lot nicer than the yacht club's, actually. He couldn't see any cameras but he felt like he was on one.

A woman officer in a black uniform and a fancy gun belt, the whole cop regalia, was waiting for him in the lobby when he came back. “Clay Moorehead?”

He nodded.

“Can I ask you some questions?”

“What about?”

“Come on in here,” she said.

It was the same place he'd had to wait on the night of the bad party, the room that was like where you waited to be called into the principal's office, except here they had a glass wall so you could see the cops working on computers and saying stuff about you that you couldn't hear. Renee took like an hour to come and get him and he had to sit there the whole time with nothing to do.

The lady officer looked familiar. Maybe she was the same one from that night. Freckly face, pale eyes, crinkled skin. She walked him into the carpeted glass room with the ugly hotel ballroom chairs and waved him into one. “When will your mom be back?” she said.

“August,” he said.

“How about your dad?”

“Same.”

“Do you have any other relatives who could come over here for a chat?”

“No offense, but why are you acting like I'm in trouble? I'm the victim here. Someone totally stole my car.”

“What about your sister, the one I met before?”

“She's in Mexico.”

Clay's phone vibrated in his pocket. He didn't answer it.

“You know what we found in the car, right?”

Stomach dropped all the way to the basement. Dry lips, wet palms. So they did search it. And he hadn't cleaned it out.

“Pretty serious stuff we've got going here, Clay.”

Clay looked her in the eye and said he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Possession. Intent to distribute.”

“Whoever stole the car must have put it there.”

“That could be. We'll check into that.”

“Did you call my mother?”

“Yes.”

“Is she coming?”

“We haven't reached her yet. Maybe you should call her.”

“Now?” He got out his phone. He was thinking he should really call his father about this one.

“In a minute.”

He waited stiffly in the chair. The screen said
Missed call
.

“Do you have any idea where Thisbe Locke is right now?”

“Why do people keep asking me that? I have no idea.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I don't know. A while.”

“A week, two weeks?”

“More like four.”

“Was she upset for any reason that you know of?”

He knew a few reasons, but they didn't seem like good ones to bring up now. “No.”

“Do you know why her driver's license might have been in your car?”

He thought back. No. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“Did she have a key to your car?”

“No. She knew where I kept it, though.” That was what had happened. He felt it. Thisbe couldn't get him to open the door on the boat so she went to the boat rack and stole his car keys and parked his car somewhere that would get him in huge trouble. To punish him because he said he couldn't see her anymore. “She stole my car,” he said. “And she must have planted stuff in it.”

“Why would she do that?”

“To get me in trouble.”

It was like he was a germ the police lady saw through a microscope. She was pretty disgusted with what she saw.

“Did Thisbe ever tell you that she felt suicidal?”

Something was wrong here and it was bigger than he'd thought. If Thisbe had parked the car on the bridge, how had she gotten down? “What is this about?” he asked.

“What do
you
think it's about?”

He thought about Thisbe staring at him from the patio chair that night. Just sitting there drinking and staring for a long time, and then asking him if he was going to talk to her. No, he wasn't. Jerome liked her, and that was that. Yes, Clay should have told her to go home when she'd snuck out and come knocking at the boat, but she smelled so good and looked so pretty and he just couldn't help himself.

“Do you have any idea what her state of mind was last night?” she asked.

He shook his head. She was looking into his eyes like she could see Thisbe if she looked hard enough, see a tiny movie of her knocking on the door of the boat. “I have no idea,” he said. “I don't know why she would leave her license in my car or why she would take it.”

“You didn't see her.”

“I told you. I didn't. I haven't seen her in a long time.”

“She didn't leave you any messages last night, did she?”

“No.”

She waited.

“What happened to her?” Clay asked. He was very scared to hear the answer to that question.

“It's possible that she jumped off the bridge.”

That's what he thought.

He looked at the floor. The lobby felt hollow and slick and merciless. “Why do you say
possible
?”

“The body's not been found, but she's gone.”

“What should I do?”

“You can call your parents.”

He touched the screen. He felt sick.

“You could do one little thing for me first,” she said.

He wanted this not to be happening and not to be as bad as it seemed. “What's that?” he asked, sick and sicker.

She was folding a clean sheet of paper in two; then she handed it to him along with a pencil. “Write something down.”

He took the pencil. “What?”

“Just a number,” she said. “Write four slash fourteen.”

He could feel her eyes on him as he rolled the pencil on his knee.
4/14.
His little system for numbering the bags. “Four slash fourteen?” he repeated. He tried to look confused.

She nodded, studying him.

“Like April fourteenth?” he said.

She nodded again.

He wrote the numbers, but he made the fours the way everybody and his brother made a four: right angle over a vertical line.

“Funny,” she said when he handed it over to her.

“What's that?”

She looked up from the paper. “When you wrote your address earlier”—she waved the index card he'd written on for the first cop—“and you wrote
714 1st Street
”—she waited a long beat—“you made your four different.”

They stared at each other a long time. She had a sad smile on her face and he tried to smile back but he felt sick about everything.

“So,” she said, “go ahead and call. I'll be in there.”

She pointed to the room where two male officers with expressionless faces were typing into computers.

Before he dialed his father, he saw that he had a voice mail from someone he didn't know, and it was a girl's voice saying, “This is Ted. I need to talk to you very, very much. You need to tell the whole story and help us find her. Okay? Call me back.”

How could he help find her? And after what he'd said at the party, who would think anything but that it was all his fault?

He didn't answer Ted. The only thing he was going to do was call his father and see if he could come and get him and fix things, the way he was good at doing. That was all.