The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon (3 page)

Olivia struggles to undo the latch, and the door flies open and into her the second the catch comes undone. The form of a woman—not old, but definitely a lot older than her teenage coworkers behind the counter—fills the doorway. She glares from one to the other with narrowed, darting eyes.

“I’m sorry,” says Olivia. “We were just …” But she doesn’t know how to finish the sentence she’s begun.

The woman saves her the trouble. “Out,” she commands. She points at Albert. “You too, Romeo. I know what you little freaks do in here.”

“No, you’ve got it wrong,” says Albert. Olivia kicks him to keep him from going on.

“Save it!” says the woman. “Just get out of here before I call your parents. Bet they’d love to know what you’ve been up to in a public restroom. This is a family restaurant!” At this point, everyone in the place—which is just the man at the table, the homeless man still digging in the trash, an old couple seated near the front, and the two people behind the counter—is looking at them as the woman leads them to the front exit.

In the parking lot, Albert zips up his coat as he walks. “Come on. She’s watching us.” He points at the bright front window. In fact, the faces inside are all turned to Olivia and himself.

“I wish we had a car.” She gestures up as they begin to walk. “Look at how clear the sky is. It’s going to be cold tonight.”

Whether they’re rested or not, cold or not, frightened or not, it’s time to move, and quickly. The idea that Olivia’s cell phone might be tattling on them is unsettling, and they both want to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the thing. So leaving the bright glow of the restaurant’s neon sign, they head back into the night, following the dim line of the black highway. They each keep their own thoughts to themselves, letting out only faint puffs of breath in the cold, the roadside scrub crunching under their shoes.

She was really gone.

Even after awaking alone in the house and seeing the empty garage for himself, Albert couldn’t believe that Lily would just take off without saying anything to him. He spent the next couple of hours searching her neighborhood on foot. He tried to go unnoticed as he spiraled farther and farther from her house down the sidewalks and alleyways, not sure what he was looking for except some sign of Lily. The darkness had turned dim gray, which meant dawn wasn’t far off. When he found no trace of Lily or her car, he went back to the house—her house—and back to her room. He kicked off his shoes and sat on her bed, pulling the blankets up around his shoulders. He wasn’t sure what to do next, and he couldn’t shake the nightmare feeling that he was moving through dense fog in a dream scenario that made no sense.

It would’ve been nice, he thought, if this were just a very realistic nightmare, something he could wake up from. People didn’t usually disappear like that—there one minute, gone the next. He kept coming back to his certainty that Lily would not have left him alone in her house, now a trespasser instead of a guest, confused as to what had happened and feeling like he was at the edge of some disaster. He wanted to lie down and fall asleep again, so he could wake up with everything back in place and the nightmare over, but his heart wouldn’t stop thumping. He was too aware of the seconds and minutes slipping by until he would have no choice but to do
something
.

Then Albert had another thought. He hadn’t yet tried the simplest thing—getting an explanation from the girl who was causing all this anxiety in the first place. Feeling hopeful for the first time since he’d awakened in the empty house, he shrugged off the blankets and left Lily’s room to find the phone. He remembered seeing one in the kitchen and he sprinted through the house to reach it. Probably just a misunderstanding, he told himself, relief already pouring in as he dialed Lily’s cell. He was sure now, already starting to feel stupid for panicking, anticipating her voice on the other end of the line. She’d gone out for doughnuts or for some other slightly crazy whim; she was probably already on her way back and when she saw him she would be unable to understand his distress and probably laugh at him for being so worried over nothing. Her unpredictability, the way she gave in to her impulses, was part of what drew him to her—there was nothing boring about her.

Does it take several hours to buy doughnuts?
asked a voice in the back of his head, but Albert stubbornly shut it down.

The phone rang several times and then went to voice mail. Albert hung up without leaving a message. Just as he disconnected, he thought he heard a sound from somewhere in the empty house. Curious, he dialed Lily’s cell phone again, slowly making his way back to her room as it rang and rang without answer. It was still ringing when he got to Lily’s room, and by then he had the
brr-click
of the phone ringing in one ear, and the faint tinny tinkling of an electronic ringtone in the other.

Albert hung up, then dialed Lily’s number a third time, dropping the handset on the bed and letting it ring. Listening hard, he moved around her room, tracking the sound of the familiar electronic ring until he found Lily’s bag on the floor in the corner. Her cell phone rang from inside it.

He picked up her bag and dropped it on the bed, then hung up the telephone. The house was still and silent again. Feeling guilty, he dumped out the bag’s contents. A bunch of Lily’s junk rattled out and settled into the folds of the blankets. What Albert saw was what he figured were the usual things found in a girl’s bag, but the sight of her phone and her little pink fuzzy wallet made his heart pound for some reason. After a moment of just looking, he picked up Lily’s wallet and opened it. Inside was her driver’s license and six dollars.

“Why would she leave without her phone or her purse?” Albert asked aloud of the room. As if the strong sense of her presence, among all her things, might be enough to force an answer.

If this had been a hypothetical situation, a what-if and what-would-you-do kind of thing, Albert would have said that of course she wouldn’t leave without any of the basics like her license and money. But she was gone, her car was gone, and everything else, including her boyfriend, was still here. So the fact was, no matter how improbable: she
had
left. And he was completely in the dark as to why.

Now Albert finally noticed that the sun had fully risen and it was actually surprisingly high in the sky. It was morning, early for a Saturday but very late for him, since he still needed to get back home and into his room without being seen by his parents.

So he had a decision to make.

Sitting there with Lily’s empty bag and its contents, junk that had taken on extra weight, in his lap, Albert decided that sneaking home, and soon, was the only reasonable thing he could do at the moment. If he could just get into his house and into his own bed until at least noon, perhaps things would work themselves out without him while he slept off a bad night.

He pushed away the little voice in his head that was now shouting
Find her! Tell someone! Something’s wrong! Something’s bad! She’s gone!
He really wanted Lily to just be cutting loose because her mother, stepfather, and sister were out of town and she had a bit of temporary freedom.

And you know that’s all it is
, he thought, slamming the door on the worry-voice that had been tormenting him.

If he told someone … and who would he tell? What would he say? If he raised some alarm about her, it would only get Lily into trouble when she showed up again, with no clue about the way she’d made them worry.

If Albert was honest with himself, he didn’t want to cause trouble for either Lily
or
himself, or worse, trouble between them because he’d overreacted. He wondered if Lily was trying to start some trouble, and his irritation began to elbow out his worry again as he was leaving the empty house. It was as simple as walking out the back door and shutting it behind him, but the thud of wood on wood and the click of the latch sounded so final. Once through the door, he made his way home by side streets, cutting through a few back yards.

Hadn’t he known something like this was going to come up, sooner or later? Lily was sweet and smart and he was crazy about her, but he knew she had a wild streak. He hadn’t been in town for two weeks before he heard the stories going around George Washington High School—and one story in particular. Lily’s version of this story was called “The Bad Thing,” and it was a short story because she remembered very little of it. The legend, though, went by the longer title of “That One Time Lily Odilon and Some Other Juvenile Delinquents Broke into Lily’s Step-Dad’s Dental Practice and Lily OD’d on Laughing Gas and Almost Died.” This second version was surprisingly short on juicy details (since no one who’d been there had come forward to share them), but even so, the popular version of the story had an ugly, gossipy sting.

He could kind of understand why her parents kept their thumbs on her, but he felt guilty for the thought. She probably thought the same about him and his strict parents. Both of them had done things in the past to burn what trust their parents had in them, and both of their parents seemed unwilling to let them earn the trust again. Though maybe Lily wasn’t trying very hard.

By now Albert was almost home and tired of the struggle going on inside his head. He wished that Lily would finish her little joyride or whatever and just call him. He promised himself he wouldn’t even be too much of an ass to her when she finally
did
call. He would be willing to let the whole thing go—unlike their parents. Forget it like a fading nightmare, if only she would pick up a phone and call him.

But he was still unwilling to share his worry with anyone else. The fear of what the consequences might be if he let his worry send him like a baby to the adults kept him in check. He was afraid Lily would dump him for being a pansy if he ratted her out and ruined her fun. Still, until he heard from her, it was like holding his breath. He wasn’t sure whether he was doing the right thing.

A few minutes later, Albert was letting himself in through the back door of his own warm, silent home, being careful not to make a sound. He was thankful that at least his parents didn’t seem to be awake yet. He was able to creep to his bedroom and into bed. He dropped his clothes in a pile on the floor and pulled the covers over his head, wanting to think of anything but Lily but unable to push her out of his brain. Within minutes, though it would’ve seemed impossible, he was dead to the world.

Still, he had to wake up eventually. The rest of the weekend was unbelievably long as Albert waited for the phone to ring and for Lily to put him out of his misery. But she never called; his vague fear kept growing even though he didn’t know exactly what he was afraid of. Mostly he stayed in his room, unable to focus on his homework or pay attention to the TV, just staring at the ceiling or out the window, waiting. It sucked.

Monday morning was the worst day yet. As Albert stumbled around his room getting ready for school, he couldn’t believe the new week had somehow arrived without Lily. And he still wasn’t sure if he should say something to someone. As he walked alone to school, it was harder to convince himself that Lily was off on some weekend joyride. Her parents had to be home from Philadelphia by now, and her sister from wherever Lily said she’d been, and they would find that she had gone. Albert was now sure that something was very wrong.

So, unable to leave it alone, he aimed his path toward Lily’s house instead of straight toward school. He thought he could see some activity from a block away, and when he got closer, what he saw sent a jolt of alarm through him. He felt an irrational desire to bolt in the opposite direction before anyone saw him. Mostly, Lily’s house looked the same as it always did, except that there were two police cruisers parked outside and people standing in the front yard on the frosty grass. Giving in to panic, Albert quickly turned the corner and began heading back in the direction of the school. He looked over his shoulder and saw Lily’s mother and sister standing a little apart in the yard. They seemed to be talking to a cop, and Lily’s mother seemed to be crying.

Albert didn’t remember arriving at school or much of anything that happened all morning. All he could do was obsess about what might have been going on at Lily’s house. That is, until things got worse. The tipping point—when everything went from vague to a horribly real, actual situation—was right around the time Principal Gherdt pulled him out of third period U.S. History.

Crouching down next to Albert’s desk while the whole class stared at them, Mr. Gherdt said in a loud whisper, “Some gentlemen want to speak with you, Mr. Morales.”

Albert had no choice but to follow Mr. Gherdt out of the classroom and down the empty halls to the school’s main office. The principal walked a few paces ahead, and Albert noticed for the first time that the man walked like he had an itch he couldn’t scratch in public. When they went through the glass doors, the secretary behind the counter glanced up at them and did a double take, and Albert hated that other people knew something about him before he did. Gherdt led Albert through the main office and down a short hall into the small conference room that the guidance counselor used as a place to “rap” with troubled students. Just as Albert was wondering if he and Mr. Gherdt were going to “rap,” he saw that the room wasn’t empty. Besides himself and the principal, there was Mrs. Patel, the guidance counselor herself, and two men Albert had never seen before, one tall and one not, both wearing droopy sport coats. The four adults looked at Albert silently as he came into the room, and Albert saw Gherdt and one of the men exchange a look. The two men were standing against the far wall as Albert and Gherdt lingered just inside the door. Only Mrs. Patel was seated—at least sort of, with one haunch resting in a pretend-casual way on the edge of the desk.

Gherdt pushed Albert into the room and closed the door behind them. “Take a seat,” he said, gesturing at the plastic chair in front of the desk.

Albert sat as he’d been told, and asked, “What’s going on?” He knew this had something to do with Lily. He hadn’t cheated on any tests, hadn’t stolen anything or gotten into a fight—there was nothing else it
could
be.

One of the men said, “We’re hoping you can tell us that, Mr. Morales.”

The guy addressing Albert was the taller one, who seemed older than the other guy. He wasn’t super-big, but Albert noticed prominent muscles on his forearms where his jacket sleeves were pushed up, and his neck was thick. He looked like a guy who never hit the gym, but instead got his muscle from his daily activities. Some big dogs had the same look.