The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon (16 page)

“Totally. Listen, can I just call you back after I find them?”

“Sure,” Olivia said, “but don’t call before nine, okay? Perry and my mom are watching TV in bed by then. Usually. Perry’s acting weird tonight, really restless, and when he thinks I’m not looking he’s been staring at me. He knows something. Or suspects something, anyway.”

“He definitely
does
,” Albert said, hoping she understood his meaning. “But there’s nothing he can do about it right now? I think I brought my notes from class home—I’ll call you back after I check.” Without waiting for her reply, he disconnected and hurried back toward his bedroom. He was still expecting MacLennan to threaten him again about Lily.

Before he got there, he met MacLennan coming down the hall.

“Thanks, Allen,” MacLennan said, holding up a piece of notebook paper with a few lines written on it. “You saved my ass.”

“It’s Albert.”

“Right.” MacLennan went straight to the door and paused for just a second before leaving the house. “Thanks again.” Now that he had what he wanted, he seemed in a hurry to leave. That was fine with Albert.

Then it was just Albert and his parents alone again in the living room, and Albert’s parents were back to their active and hostile ignoring. They stared at the television and made no comment as he went back to his room. Also fine by Albert.

The door to his room was wide open, and his chemistry notebook lay open in the middle of the bed. A heavy musky scent, probably MacLennan’s aftershave, crawled up Albert’s nose. He wasn’t pleased to have the guy’s smell lingering in his personal space. It was revolting. Waving the door a couple of times to drive away the odor, Albert gave up and shut his door instead. He sat down heavily, brushing the notebook to the floor and wondering how much time he would have to give his parents before trying to call Olivia back.

He reached under the pillow for Lily’s journal. As his fingers searched but didn’t find it, all the blood drained from Albert’s face. He pushed the pillow away. The thick yellow phone directory was there, but the thing he cared about was gone.

He tore the bed apart, peeling away the cover and the sheets and reaching down to feel between the headboard and the wall, in case it had somehow fallen. Panicked now, he checked under the bed and under the mattress and pulled the bed a few inches away from the wall. Nothing.

It dawned on him what had to have happened, if not yet
why
.

Son of a bitch.

MacLennan had gone, and with him, Lily’s notebook.

The first time Lily asked Albert to sneak over to her house at night, he agreed without thinking about it first for even a moment.

After she’d asked and he’d said yes, she added, “Unless you’d rather I came to you?”

“No,” he said quickly, picturing his family’s small house and the extreme likelihood that his parents would bust them if she did. “I mean, how could I let you go sneaking around at night alone?”

“Then I’ll see you tonight at my house, around twelve,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth. “Come to the window and I’ll let you in.” Then they separated to go to their afternoon classes.

Albert had the rest of the long afternoon to daydream about Lily, and after school and during the even-longer evening he suffered through dinner, then prime-time TV, then waiting for his parents to finally go to bed. He also had time to think about the hundred things that could go wrong with the plan—that he might get caught by his parents sneaking out, or even worse, caught by Lily’s parents in her room.

Then he thought about Lily again, and tried to imagine what it would be like to be alone with her in the dark of her bedroom, and the thought made him stop worrying about the rest.

As it turned out, sneaking out of his house was easy. His parents went to bed around ten-thirty, after the local news was over. After that, he gave them an hour—a tedious, watchful hour—to get to sleep before he slid open his window and slipped out of the house. No sirens or dogs or cries of alarm stopped him. There was just a sliver of moon and the shadows to watch him hurry out across the yard to the street.

Little Solace was a quiet town even during the day, something Albert had figured out about the place quickly. When he found he had the streets to himself, Albert relaxed a little. He still had a tight ball of nerves lodged somewhere between his heart and his lungs, pushing, and he had to force himself not to run all the way to Lily.

He was relieved to see that the windows of Lily’s house were all dark. All of them except hers, he discovered when he cut around the dark yard to the back of the house. The shade was up and as he got closer, he could see the glow coming from the bedside and desk lamps. Lily was lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows and facing the end of the bed, a book in front of her. Her bare feet kicked absently at the pillows as she read. Albert stood in the dark yard, leaning against the tall tree that shaded her room and watching her for a moment through the glass.

He was nervous as hell, standing out there all sweaty-palmed and cold, with an optimistic condom in his wallet. Lily, on the other hand, was calm and looked like a princess in a tower to Albert. He felt like he didn’t belong in the scene. But for some reason she actually wanted him here, so here he was. After a moment, he left the cover of the tree and went to the window. He raised his hand to knock but before he could touch his knuckles to the glass, Lily looked up. Getting to her feet in one fluid motion, she put a finger to her lips as she came to the window. She lifted the sash and motioned him inside.

“It’ll be fine as long as we keep our voices low,” she said.

Albert climbed through the window and pulled it down softly behind himself. When he turned around, Lily put her arms around him and pulled him farther into the room.

“Brrr,” she said, trying to peel his sweatshirt from his body. “The cold came in on your clothes.” He helped her with the sweatshirt and her hands were pleasantly warm on his bare arms.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he said. “I wanted to bring you something nice, like flowers, but I didn’t know where to get them this late and I was afraid they’d die before I got here, anyway.”

“Who cares about flowers,” she said. “I’m glad you came.” She pulled the shade over the window, blocking out the night, and switched off the desk lamp. “What do you want to do?”

He sat on the edge of her bed but she stayed where she was, standing by her desk. “I want to kiss you.”

“One track mind,” she said. “How long can you stay?”

“As long as it’s dark, my parents won’t even know I left. Come here.” He leaned forward and caught her wrists, pulling her closer.

She fell forward willingly, knocking them both back onto the bed in a pile. While she had him pinned, she took the first kiss. Then she reached over him toward the lamp.

“Don’t,” he said. “I want to look at you for a while.”

She rolled away from him and sat up. “I don’t want anyone to get up and see the light under the door.” She reached up again to turn out the light.

Then Albert noticed a huge bruise on her wrist, one he hadn’t noticed earlier that day. He put a hand on her shoulder to stop her for a moment. “How’d you get that?” he asked.

She looked down where he was looking and gave an embarrassed-sounding low laugh. “That’s what happens when you take out your frustrations on a chair,” she said.

Turning her arm over gently, Albert looked more closely at her wrist. The spot was a couple of inches wide and an ugly reddish-purple color, with a dark bluish knot at its center.

“Are you going to say anything more than that?” he asked.

“Can’t we just talk about something more interesting? I thought we were going to make out,” she said.

“I won’t be able to think of anything else until you tell me how you got that thing.”

“I told you; I punched a chair.” She looked at the expression on his face and sighed. “It’s just my stupid mother and her stupid husband. They piss me off sometimes, and since I can’t punch them … well, you know. It’s nothing.”

“Why were you pissed at them?” He kicked off his shoes and leaned back against the mound of pillows at the headboard.

She curled up under his arm and rested her head on his chest. “They found out about a couple of classes I blew off, and the D I got on my last English paper—which, by the way, I totally could have done better on if I’d read the book. And so they were lecturing me, you know, teaming up in the kitchen, trading off lectures or whatever, and of course my sister was probably lurking in the hall enjoying the whole thing. So it was bad enough, but not more than I was expecting, you know? But then Perry starts yelling at me about my attitude. And he grabs my chin in his hand and his nose is this far”—she held up her thumb and forefinger with an inch of space between them—”from mine. And he says, ‘You must like high school a lot, since you’re going for a third try at your senior year.’ And he laughed.”

Picturing her parents, Albert felt a hot tingling in his face and neck.

Lily rubbed absently at her wrist, eyes alert and on Albert. “Your face is all red. Please don’t get mad. I just want to forget about it.” Now she did switch out the light, and this time Albert didn’t object. The room went black.

Ignoring her, he said, “I can’t believe he would say that, and that your mom would let him.” He was trying to keep his voice down. “I’d like to squeeze his face, see how he likes it. Maybe I could make his jawbone crack.”

Arms snaked around him and when he heard her voice again, it came from where her face was now cradled in the crook of his neck. Her breath was feathers against his skin. “She probably thinks they’re helping me. And maybe she’s right, at least a little.”

Albert said nothing. Part of him knew there was some truth to what she said, but he didn’t want to admit it. His anger at her parents was pure and he didn’t want it complicated. Picturing her stepfather grabbing her face did the trick to keep it going. His arm tightened around her.

“I think I’m going to try harder,” she said after a moment. “If only because I can’t wait to get out of here.”

He said, “I don’t like anyone hurting you.”

“But I’m the one that did it,” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I could take off now,” she said. “I’m eighteen. Sometimes I think I should just clear out.”

“Great idea. You can be a dropout. Or you can finish school, and then get as far away as you need to from these—”

“—assholes. Whatever.”

“Just don’t do anything stupid that you’ll regret later.” He knew how he sounded, but he didn’t know what else to say. Of course he didn’t want her to leave.

She sighed. “I didn’t ask you to come over to talk about my stupid problems.”

“Then why did you ask me to come over?” he asked.

“I’ll show you.”

And she did, and Albert forgot about his anger and his worry as little starbursts of pleasure went off in his head.

By the time Albert realized, sickly, what had happened, MacLennan was long gone in his truck and Albert was stuck pursuing him on foot. As he hurried frantically down the dark pavement toward MacLennan’s house, he realized two things.

First, that ever since this mess with Lily started—about the time the police started to pretty much accuse him of doing something to her—he’d wanted to punch someone. After he’d found Lily’s journal and had a run-in first with Kogen and then with his mother, that desire had only gotten stronger.

And second, he was planning on finally taking a swing at someone as soon as he had that bastard MacLennan’s face in front of him. When his knuckles connected with MacLennan’s nose and turned it to hamburger, it was going to be the sweetest moment of his life. He was too pissed to worry anymore about the exact reason why MacLennan thought he’d had to butt in. As long as he recovered Lily’s journal and smashed MacLennan one, Albert was going to be satisfied.

Then after that, Albert planned to go straight to the police station. He wouldn’t stop until he forced Lily’s journal into Andersen’s hands and it was officially evidence in the case.

When he was still standing in his bedroom, right after MacLennan had left, the first thing Albert experienced—after the initial shock of discovering the journal was gone—was blind and complete panic. It was all he could do not to scream once he was sure it was really gone.

He couldn’t wrap his mind around it: this guy he hardly knew showed up out of the blue and took the most important thing he had, but why? What did he think Albert was planning to do with the journal except turn it over to the cops? And how the hell had he known Albert
had
it? He couldn’t understand what MacLennan thought he was doing.

The only thing that
was
clear to Albert was that he had to confront MacLennan and he had to do it immediately. All that mattered was getting that book back and getting it to the cops. He cursed himself for losing Lily’s journal—no matter how it had happened—in the first place.

But he couldn’t get to MacLennan unless he could get out of the house first, and he couldn’t leave unless he could sneak past his parents. And though he was willing to find out if it came down to it, Albert was pretty sure his father was still strong enough to restrain him physically. So leaving by the front door when they were in the living room, or even by the kitchen door, since he had to pass through the living room to get to it, was out. That left the old standby, the bedroom window.

Pulling on a heavy sweatshirt, Albert crept out of his room and down the hall to check on his parents. He hung back far enough to stay hidden. He heard a laugh track from the TV and, over that, the sound of his parents’ voices. They were settled in, Albert decided, so he could make his exit and they wouldn’t know he’d gone. That was no guarantee they wouldn’t lift the silent treatment, come to his room to continue lecturing, and find him gone, but he could think about that later. Satisfied enough, he backtracked to his bedroom.

His mind racing, Albert opened a dresser drawer and scooped the contents into his arms. He lumped the pile of clothes under his bedcovers in what he hoped was the shape of his body. As he examined his work, he decided that stuffing his bed was kind of an obvious move, but this was the best he could do. He didn’t have time to make it perfect.

Albert turned off the light. Leaning, tense, against the windowsill, he took a deep breath, then flipped the lock on the window and lifted the sash, wincing at the squeaky groan the glass made. He stuck a leg through the opening and dropped to the ground, landing with a frosty crunch on the grass. Then he reached up and pulled the window closed behind him as quietly as he could.

Now Albert was hurrying away from his own house toward MacLennan’s, with a page ripped from the phone book in the pocket of his jeans. There were only two MacLennans listed, and only one of them in Little Solace. He couldn’t be sure that the address was the right one, or that MacLennan had actually gone home, but he was hopeful—if only because it seemed like it was about time he caught a break. His lungs ached from panting in cold air but he barely noticed, only enough to hope his mild asthma wouldn’t choose now to pop up.

The address from the phone book was on Holly Street, right next to the community college and probably at least a mile from Albert’s house, so he had some time to think as he half walked, half ran through the dark. His thoughts wavered between fantasizing about kicking Patrick MacLennan’s ass and worrying about what might go wrong when he got to Holly Street.

A couple blocks from his destination, Albert slowed from a run to a jog and from a jog to a walk. Now that he was nearly there, he wasn’t sure what he was actually going to do. His breath came out in harsh gusts, a ghostly vapor in the streetlight. It hit him—a dull, surprising blow like an elbow to the forehead—that he could have saved a lot of time and effort if he’d just taken an extra couple minutes to get his bicycle. It was frustrating to think that once again he’d screwed up by missing the most obvious thing. The realization didn’t do much for his belief that he might actually be able to help Lily instead of making everything worse.

The light snow had stopped. He left the street and stepped onto the uneven sidewalks of this older part of town. His mind grasped for a plan as he drew closer to MacLennan’s house. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he tried to walk as if he belonged on this street. He scanned the house numbers in the dark until he saw the one he wanted. Two doors away, he stooped down to tie his shoe, buying himself a moment to think. He couldn’t just stand out here and stare without drawing the attention of someone who belonged in this neighborhood and knew that he didn’t.

Finally Albert straightened up, having untied and tied the same shoelace a ridiculous number of times. He’d been in a major hurry to get here, but now he was stalled out before the actual confrontation.
Just go
, said the furious voice in his head.
Go bang on the door until MacLennan comes out … tell him to give it back
. Heart pumping hard, he held on to his anger, willing it to suffocate any fear he felt over the stand he was about to make.

MacLennan’s house was an old two-story, and even in the dark, from across the street, Albert could see that it was a run-down place with flaking paint and a seedy yard. The lights were off on the first floor even though it was early, and there was a mini-pickup in the driveway. Patrick MacLennan’s pickup, Albert was sure—he’d seen this same yellow truck with its teal racing stripe in the parking lot at school.

There was nothing to do but go up to the house and knock. And if that didn’t work, he would pound on the door until MacLennan came out.

Albert was not a naturally confrontational person. Most of the time he preferred to fade into the background, unnoticed. That’s just how he was built. But nothing in the past few days had been normal, so his stepping out of character—skipping school, breaking into someone’s house, sneaking out to face a thief—made a weird kind of sense. But he wasn’t thinking about any of that. He gave himself the distance between one side of the road and the other to get ready, no hesitation and no excuses allowed.

Just as Albert made it as far as MacLennan’s driveway, the front door opened and someone stepped outside. Instinctively, Albert ducked down behind the first big thing he found—the truck, just a few feet away. Inches from his face was MacLennan’s
Gas, Grass, or Ass: Nobody Rides For Free
bumper sticker. His first thought was a disgusted
Do girls really go for that?
followed immediately by the thought that in this town, they probably did. Most of the girls Albert saw seemed to go for athletic guys and pickup trucks; what was more, any guy in school who wasn’t like that—who was bookish, maybe, or didn’t go out for a team—was a fag. At least, that was the name Albert had been called a few times since his family moved here. MacLennan and his stupid bumper sticker were just a couple of the reasons why Albert hated this stupid town—reasons Lily hated it, too.

Hunkered down behind the tailgate of the pickup, Albert peered around the back tire, trying to see who was coming out of the house and which direction they were going. The figure was coming closer—right toward the truck, in fact—and Albert was able to make out Patrick MacLennan’s face. He was headed for the driver’s side door of the truck, and two thoughts ran through Albert’s head in an instant. First, that he had to confront the guy right now before he got away again; and second, if he didn’t move
somewhere
and quickly, he would likely be backed over.

But instead of getting into the truck, MacLennan just leaned against the door. His cell phone was against his ear. “I can’t,” he said in a low voice. “My parents think I’m in my room and if they hear me start my truck, they’ll be pissed.”

Albert strained to catch the words.

“Yeah, I got it.” Pause. “No, I don’t think he noticed. I gave him a story about homework.” Another pause, then, in an indignant voice, “Why would I want to read it? I’m not a freak like her boyfriend.”

Albert’s ears turned red as he listened to MacLennan talk about him, and he felt a fresh rush of anger.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” There was a soft metallic echo as MacLennan gave the side of his truck a frustrated thump. “I did what you asked, to help her. We’re even now, right? Like you promised?”

There was a pause and whoever was on the other end did all the talking. And loudly, Albert judged, from the way MacLennan shuffled and winced and held the phone away from his face. Finally MacLennan said, “Can’t you pick me up on the corner of—” He stopped. “Fine. I’ll meet you at … where? How about Federated Oil by the stockyards? I’ll see you in a few. But this is the last—” He stopped talking again and jammed his phone into his pocket with an angry grunt.

Albert just had time to roll away from the wheel and into the hedge along the driveway before the engine roared and MacLennan was backing down the driveway. No sooner had Albert pulled himself from the greenery than he was, once again, chasing Patrick MacLennan.

The railroad tracks were two blocks away from MacLennan’s house. Cutting away from the road, Albert made his way straight to the tracks themselves. By moving along them he could make good time, going straight through to where the trains ran by the stockyards across from Federated Oil. Albert’s lungs were exploding as he hurried over the uneven ground, focusing on the movement of his legs and not twisting his ankle.

By now he was past being surprised by anything that happened or that he was doing. In the span of one day, his understanding of Lily had changed and his perception of her had changed with it. So far, everything that had happened today had come on fast, and he hadn’t needed to process things, only to react to them. Like now. He had no idea of the time or how long he’d been gone, or what he planned to do when he got to Federated Oil except maybe wait and see which one of MacLennan’s stupid friends was waiting for him. He wasn’t even sure what day it was anymore … the way this one stretched on and on without ending seemed impossible for just one day. All Albert wanted was to get Lily’s journal back, and though he was exhausted and scared and confused, he promised himself that once he had the little book in his hands, he would go directly to the police station and stop for nothing.

Ten minutes after he began racing MacLennan to the gas station, Albert was almost there. He slowed his run and cut away from the train tracks and down toward the stockyards. A dirt lane cut between two giant pens of cattle, and, at the end of the lane just before the paved road that ran in front of the station, there was a windowless shed. Hunkered down low, Albert scuttled as best he could over the uneven ground, feeling ridiculously conspicuous. He was thankful, at least, that he was wearing dark jeans and a black sweatshirt.

He arrived at the little building with the crazy expectation of hearing angry shouts of recognition from MacLennan, but the only sound was the wind in the Russian olives along the ditch and the lowing of the cows in the stockyards.

The shingled outer wall of the shed was rough under Albert’s palms as he leaned against it, watching the gas station from the shadows. He could see MacLennan’s truck idling next to the gray cinderblock Federated Oil office, which was closed at this time of night. Albert couldn’t see anyone else in the parking lot.

Pressed against the wall, he watched MacLennan with a curiously light head and found he was holding his breath. The sense of “what next?” drew out as nothing happened—MacLennan just sat, unmoving, behind the wheel of his truck, his head down so far his chin seemed to be on his chest. No one showed up to share the stage. The air felt thick and hard to breathe, and Albert felt like the world was paused in this moment. The only proof of reality and time was the cattle, their shifting and bellowing making Albert think they knew he was there. Nothing more happened; the scene was frozen.