The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon (2 page)

“Are we crazy?”

“Yes,” Albert says through a bulging mouthful of grayish, greasy, fast food hamburger. He swallows. “But I don’t think your stepfather or MacLennan—or the cops, either—have left us much choice there, Liv.”

“Don’t call me Liv,” she says automatically, but without much force. She picks up her own burger, which only has a couple of small bites taken from it, then drops it back on its slick paper wrapper. “It’s amazing how fast everything can go to crap, though, isn’t it?”

Picturing the last time he saw Lily, the way the night had started and the way it ended, Albert nods.

“It’s only been two days, but it feels like we’ve been gone for years,” she adds. “And Lily—it’s as if she’s been gone forever.”

“We’re going to fix this,” he insists. Even in the short time they’ve spent together, he’s found Olivia’s almost constant pessimism a drag. It’s true that things have gone to crap, and quickly, but if he lets himself dwell on it too much he’s afraid of becoming too overwhelmed to keep going forward. “We’re all she’s got.”
And she’s definitely all I have,
he thinks,
or else I’m likely to end up in jail for murder.

“Right. So neither of us has much of a choice. We have to try to find her, even if—”

“Never mind the note she sent us—”

“—you, she sent it to
you
,” Olivia interrupts.

He ignores her, knowing that this is a sore point with her, continuing, “And never mind that we have to find her because she’s the only proof left of what really happened, that we have to get to her before your stepfather does. Not to mention that if we can bring her home it will prove that she’s alive.” He stops, his voice beginning to rise toward a shaky squeak.

“Please,” Olivia hisses, though there’s no one at the neighboring tables. “Keep your voice down!”

He drops his voice to just above a whisper, but doesn’t stop hammering at his point. She needs to hear it—
again and again
, he thinks,
and again, until she gets it
. “He’s looking for all of us, because the three of us are the only ones who know what he did. So we don’t have a choice—we have to find her and make sure she’s safe, and we have to do it without getting caught.”

Then they are both quiet, blending into the background of the too-bright, too-quiet fast food restaurant. Both of them are worn out, catching snatches of sleep when they can, and Albert has a lost feeling. The brightness makes him long for a nice, dark place where he might curl up in deep, dreamless sleep until everything is over.

“Eat, why don’t you?” he says roughly, gesturing at her uneaten food. He’s seventeen and barely weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, so he’s aware that trying to get all paternal and commanding with this girl he’s only known well for about a week is pretty much a joke. They’re the same age and both juniors, and though she’s kind of a runt, besides being the younger sister, it’s not like she would take orders from him; she probably wouldn’t take orders from anyone. Knowing this doesn’t stop him. Their cash flow is low and the girl needs to eat something. He feels protective of her because she’s Lily’s sister, but also because she doesn’t have anyone looking out for her, doesn’t even think she needs it. He can’t guess what’s around the next corner, or how bad it will be. Better to face whatever it will be with a little something in the stomach.

“What are you smirking about?”

Albert realizes he’s actually smiling. “I was just thinking how my manly interior dialogue sounds a lot like it’s coming from my great-grandmother Hawl.”

Olivia manages a thin smile. Albert studies her face, a pale smear under the fluorescent lights, fringed by unnaturally black hair. They’re sitting across from one another in bright yellow molded plastic benches, the kind that are attached to the table between them. They’ve ordered a burger each and taken their tray around the corner, away from the doors and the main window, and away from the homeless man digging through the trash bin near the front entrance while no employee interferes or even seems to notice, to the back of the restaurant. Their table is the nearest to the bathrooms and a bank of pay phones. Albert resists the urge to command Olivia again to eat.

“Are you about ready to go?” she says after a while. “I’m exhausted and if we don’t get moving soon, I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep right here.”

He looks pointedly at her food, which after sitting out is pretty unappetizing, but she takes the hint and has another bite. “Yes, Daddy.”

He flinches. “I prefer ‘Grandma.’” He stares off into space, letting his mind wander a little. After a bit, he says, “What are we, about halfway?”

“I’d need a map to be sure, but yeah, we’re probably halfway between home and Yellow Pine Lake. Why?”

He shrugs. “Equidistance.”

She crumples her napkin into a ball, worrying it slowly to shreds. “That’s not a word.”

“Maybe not. But I think Lily would like it. X marks the middle spot on the ley line that runs between the two significant locations of the Cult of Lily Odilon. And we’re its only followers.”

“Vestal virgins?” Olivia suggests.

They both knew they were talking nonsense, playing some word game aimed at conjuring Lily.

“Not quite,” says Albert. “Has she been talking to you about sacred geography, or was that a new thing?”

“She hasn’t, no, but Lily always has a new thing. What is it this time?”

“Sometimes, late, late at night, she would just lay things on me. You know, cosmic questions, the kind that wakes you up in a cold sweat, or keeps you from sleeping in the first place.” He pauses. “And this bit with Yellow Pine Lake, it just makes me remember something she said to me not that long ago, something about certain physical locations and the power of place, or whatever.”

“She was—” Olivia stops, consciously correcting her tense, “
is
, full of crap. She doesn’t believe in that new-agey garbage, in places of power or whatever. She ran because she didn’t think she had a choice, and she went to the lake because she knew you and I could find her. The rest is just wishful thinking to give it some meaning.”

“I don’t blame her.” He picks up the shredded napkin Olivia has dropped and turns it over in his fingers.

“Wishful thinking,” Olivia says again. “It means nothing, it just
is
.”

“Add it up: Kogen, the journal, the accident, her memories, the night she left—it all comes together. Or keeping with Lily’s way of thinking, we could call it profane geometry.” Albert knows it’s crap, but he likes the way it sounds.

Olivia snorts, apparently done with the game, but he isn’t ready to give up. It’s all silliness, finding patterns because you’re looking for them, but Albert feels like he’s defending Lily, not just her quirks. “Look, you of all people should understand that sometimes people need—” But there’s an interruption and Olivia is saved from hearing the rest of his speech.

The electronic chirp of her cell phone comes from her purse and they both jump, Albert giving his knee a painful bang on the underside of the table. They stare at each other. With the second chirp, Olivia shoves her hand into her bag and pulls out the phone.

“Don’t answer it,” he says. Maybe it’s the conversation getting to him, but he’s afraid.

She glares at him. “I’m not a moron. I’m just checking to see who it is.”

“Wait, what if it’s her?”

“It’s not,” she says in a strangled voice, her eyes flickering from the screen to him and back down again. “I think it’s our friend the detective.”

“Andersen’s calling?” Albert’s tongue is thick and dry, as if it might fill his mouth and choke him. “How can you tell?”

She holds the phone out to him, but he refuses to take it, like it might burn him if he touches it. “Caller ID. Heard of it?”

“Why is he calling you?”

She switches it from ringer to vibrate and drops the phone back into her purse. “You’re their top ‘person of interest,’ and you’ve suddenly disappeared, and so have I. They must have figured that out by now.” She sighs and rubs her eyes, hard. “I’m just going to ignore it until he gives up.”

After a few more rings the phone stops buzzing, to their mutual relief. This relief doesn’t last long, though, because after about thirty seconds, the phone begins to buzz again in Olivia’s bag.

“Damn it,” she says softly, reaching in to make sure it’s Andersen again.

Albert opens his mouth to speak, but shuts it when his eyes meet a stranger’s at the table behind them. Sometime in the last few minutes, a middle-aged man, alone, had intruded upon their scene and they hadn’t noticed. Albert tries to remember what they’d said, wondering if this man has been eavesdropping. He puts his hand over Olivia’s and gestures with his chin at the new guy.

She turns to look, then leans forward and says softly, “Meet me in the ladies’ room.” Without waiting for his reply, she leaves the table and heads into the short hall that splits into two doors, women on one side, men on the other. After a moment, Albert gets up and follows. He avoids making further eye contact with the man at the other table.

The restroom is a little windowless room with two stalls, but there’s a lock on the door. Olivia turns the deadbolt and presses her back to the door like someone is out there planning to knock it down.

Albert leans against the sink. “Why are we hiding in the bathroom?”

She gives him an irritated look. “It was so quiet in there, and even with the ringer off, the buzzing on this thing is loud. I just didn’t want that guy to get suspicious, or take a good look at our faces.”

“Yeah, there’s nothing suspicious about going to the bathroom together.”

“Shut up, okay?” She holds up her purse, which is buzzing again. “Think. What are we going to do about this?”

“Ignore it? Turn it off?”

She slaps herself on the forehead. “Turn it off! Why didn’t I just turn it off?”

Albert doesn’t know, but since in his panic he didn’t think of it either, he doesn’t say anything. “I still don’t get why he’s calling. Does he think we’re just going to give up, turn ourselves in?”

“Maybe he thinks you’re holding me captive, another victim of your bloodthirsty rampage,” Olivia says.

“That’s helpful. Really.”

“It’s reflex.” She looks sorry.

“Maybe he’s not expecting either one of us to answer. Maybe it’s something else entirely.” Albert chews his lower lip, thinking. “What do you know about tracing?”

She just looks at him.

“I mean, cell phones run through satellites, right? Can’t they do a thing—is it triangulation?”—he grasps at barely remembered ideas—“where they use your phone’s coordinates to pinpoint where you are? Can they trace our location that way?”

Olivia pulls the phone out of her bag, turning it off mid-buzz and dropping it on the counter by the sink. “I don’t know! Is that real? Can they really do that?”

“I think they can.” He doesn’t actually know for sure, but he’s afraid, a sensation he’s getting used to.

“Does it even have to be on, or connected, for them to do that? What if they already did?”

They stare at the phone as if it had suddenly grown fangs.

Then Albert says, “We should get rid of it.”

“Agreed.”

“Where?”

Olivia points to the trash bin next to the door, overflowing with paper towels. “Why not there?”

After they make sure the ringer is off, they wrap the little device in paper towels until it’s an unidentifiable ball of paper refuse, then Albert takes off his coat, pushes up his sleeve and reaches into the can of he-prefers-not-to-know-what and buries the balled up phone in the middle of all that trash.

“Well, thanks, Lil. I sank pretty much all of my cash into that stupid phone,” Olivia says when Albert is done burying it. “That model cost me twenty bucks extra, and it has an MP3 player …” She shrugs, but her eyes sweep the trash can regretfully as she does. “So we should probably jet.”

Grossed out by digging in the garbage, Albert washes his hands and up his arm with hot water and a ton of soap, trying to do it fast. “I’ll get you the money for a new one. Let’s go.”

Just then the door thumps and there are several insistent raps on it, more like pounding than knocking. Albert accidentally splashes water all over the counter and Olivia lets out a little scream. “What the hell is going on in there?” a gravelly female voice demands from the other side. “Open the damn door!”