The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon (7 page)

She went back to eating her sandwich and they were quiet.

After a bit, she said, “I love how those guys stand up for my sister
now
. You should have heard some of the crap they said about her after the accident. Even Pat, who I thought was different than that. Some of them were there, everyone knows, but no one came forward and no one helped her. They were her friends, until they weren’t.” She paused. “Lily told you about her accident, right?”

This girl didn’t waste time dancing around what she wanted to say, Albert had to give her that. “That’s not what she called it, but yeah.” Albert knew about what Lily called “The Bad Thing That Happened” because she’d told him about it on their first date, since, as she’d put it, someone else was bound to tell him about it if she didn’t first.

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Well, she didn’t mean to overdose on nitrous and end up with severe brain trauma, right? So it
was
an accident, no matter how it started. Partying or whatever.”

Albert was acutely uncomfortable. He barely knew Olivia. They didn’t have any classes together, and he’d only been in their house a couple of times when he was actually supposed to be there. On those rare occasions, he’d gotten the feeling that Lily’s family didn’t approve of him any more than his family approved of Lily. He could barely identify any member of Lily’s family, he’d seen them so little. Of all of them, only Lily had made an impression.

“I wonder …” Olivia began. She was staring off into space as if seeing something that wasn’t there. “I wonder if Lil is just off on another patented Lily Adventure. You haven’t known her very long, so you don’t know how it is with her.”

“How is it with her?” he asked, too sharp.

Olivia sighed. “You really don’t know, dude. Ever since we were kids, things would be going along, nice and normal, and then out of nowhere, she’d have to shake things up. Like she couldn’t stand the quiet, you know? Her randomness is actually pretty predictable anymore. But our parents won’t listen to me. And Jesus, you should hear what they say about
you
. So, what do you think?” she asked Albert. “Do you think Lily’s just jerking us all around?”

“I … I don’t know,” he said, which was true. Then something in her face made him add, “But I don’t think so. I think it’s something more.”

“Yeah?”

He shook his head in the negative. “You don’t think I … ?”

“No. You’re not that guy. It’s totally obvious.”

“Thanks,” he said. “You’re the only person who seems to think so.”

Olivia sighed again. She looked as if she wanted to ask another question, but she didn’t break the silence. A few moments later, Albert couldn’t stand it anymore and left to go find a dry shirt. He looked back once at Olivia, and she was staring off into space again.

When school was finally over, Albert left the grounds at a sprint. He felt like a coward but he wanted to get a head start, just in case Dave Jensen was looking to finish what he’d started at lunch.

Once he was clear of the school and pretty certain no one was following him, he slowed his pace from a jog to a shuffle. The late-winter wind was sharp as a knife. He was sweating from the jog and the cold didn’t bother him, except in his lungs. He worked to control his breathing. The street he walked down was quiet and empty and his footsteps echoed dully on the pavement. There were no places with this kind of almost-perfect silence back in his old town, and even now, almost six months after moving here, he was still getting used to it. But today the silence and solitude was a relief. Behind him was hostility and accusation at school, and in front of him was his claustrophobic house, where they all mostly pretended to each other that none of this was happening. But of course it was all he thought about, and here on the empty street, he could think about it without distraction.

Still, even shuffling as slowly as he was, eventually Albert found himself on his street and in front of his house. He grabbed the mail from the mailbox and went inside, planning to start his homework instead of giving in to the now-constant desire to just go to bed and forget everything. In the still house, Albert dropped the mail on the dining room table and leaned his backpack against the table leg.

He looked at the clock. There were still a couple of hours before one of his parents came home from work. Two short hours left in which he didn’t have to act some role.

He sat in one of the chairs and pushed aside a pile of the table’s constant clutter of papers and bills and unopened junk mail, clearing a spot where, theoretically anyway, he might actually do his homework. He pushed today’s mail in the other direction to keep it from being eaten by the older pile. As he did so, something caught his eye, and he focused his attention on the stack of envelopes he was shoving aside. He ruffled through them with his fingers until he’d found the one that had interested him.

The envelope itself wasn’t anything special—just a dull white rectangle, the blue crisscross of the security lining bleeding through just a little, like veins under a paper skin. There was no return address, but he recognized the small black handwriting addressing the envelope simply to “Albert.”

He slit the envelope with his finger and saw that there was a postcard inside. He plucked it out and held it up. On the front was a grainy photograph of a large, freestanding arch with a city behind it. Yellow, bubbly letters cried “Greetings from St. Louis” along the bottom of the picture. It wasn’t a remarkable postcard at all, except that Albert had seen it before.

The last time he’d seen it, it had been tucked into the frame of the mirror over Lily’s dresser. A souvenir, he thought he remembered her saying, that she’d picked up years ago on some family vacation.

Turning the card over, he saw a folded piece of lined notebook paper clipped to it. He unclipped and unfolded the paper to see more of Lily’s dense, back-slanted handwriting.

His pulse raced as he read:

A.—

I’m in a hurry and I don’t have a lot of time to say what I need to say. I don’t even know how much I can say. Who else might be reading your mail?

First off, I want you to know that (a) I didn’t plan to leave that night and (b) I’m okay for now. I know they’re looking for me, though, so I don’t know how long I’ll stay that way.

After the bad thing, I didn’t remember anything that happened—the days before it or the months after and obviously not the accident itself. But I’ve started to remember now. Mostly about Perry. And this is the thing: he knows it. I don’t know how, but he does.

The night I left, he thought I was alone in the house, so he came back with bad ideas and I had to get away from that asshole. He didn’t know you were there, so at least I knew you were safe. If he knows now that you were there, he might think you know other things, too. What I’m saying is, Perry’s dangerous. Please believe me.

I didn’t know what to do the night I left, but I’m going to the last good place. Don’t tell anyone—when they come for me they’ll believe him over me and there won’t be anyone left to protect me.

I need time to figure out what to do next. I’ll try to stay there and wait for help as long as I can (should the Machine of God decide I deserve it).

Love,

L.

It was a halting, odd little letter. He read it several more times, quickly at first, but then more carefully, trying to understand what she was circling around so indirectly. With each read he hoped it would make more sense, but it didn’t. His heart continued to thump, and he tried not to think about what would have happened if one of his parents had seen the envelope first.

He tried to understand what she was trying to say to him. Perry had come for her that night, thinking he would find her alone—and then what? It had been loud, a fight over something … something connected to the break-in and Lily’s accident, maybe, and loud enough to wake the neighbors … and then she’d just vanished.

Albert had the realization that Perry Kogen was the only person who knew, at least in part, what had happened to Lily. He knew more than anyone else about it, anyway. He knew, yet he was letting people worry and search for her and think the worst.

Kogen was sitting on some pretty damn relevant information, Albert thought to himself as he held Lily’s letter gently in his fingers. Sitting on it while Albert was twisting in the wind without a clue, getting questioned by the police, his parents fielding phone calls from the local newspapers and the local TV stations, too, all wanting their take on the Lily Odilon story.

But putting the Kogen question aside for a moment, at least this note showed that Lily was okay for now. In trouble, but okay.

Still, Albert was disturbed by the thought of Kogen’s secret knowledge, as well as by Lily’s grim, cryptic tone—which was maybe her intention. He turned the letter over and over in his hand. If Kogen really was still angry with Lily over what had happened, and really was after her now because of it, maybe he should take this to the police. Even though Lily would object. But she had made it explicitly clear that she didn’t trust the authorities to protect her from her stepfather’s anger. And there was no question but that Albert would believe Lily’s take on things. If she said she was in trouble, she was in trouble.

That last conversation with Detective Andersen came to his mind.
I’ve known him for years. I’ve known you for about ten goddamn seconds.

So for now, Albert wouldn’t trust the cops, either. He definitely had no reason to. What he needed was time to think it over before he decided what to do. Perhaps Lily’s paranoia was catching, because suddenly Albert was almost afraid the police were going to burst into the dining room right now, confiscate the postcard and letter as evidence, and grill him about every word until they found Lily and delivered her to her worried family. Her mother. And her stepfather.

Still, Albert had a few questions himself that he wished he could just ask Lily right now. What had gone on between Kogen and Lily the night she’d left, what was Lily afraid he would do if he found her, and what could Albert do about it? He had no influence over Lily’s “Machine of God,” and he had no idea how to help her, though help seemed to be what she was asking for, in her Lily-esque way. He wondered if Kogen ever got violent.

I’ll wait for help as long as I can
… He understood now the fact he’d been trying to ignore since this mess had started: it was up to him—not the police, not her parents—to help Lily.

Albert folded the paper in half again and tucked it and the postcard back into the envelope, smoothing the flap as he thought about what to do. For now, he knew he had to hide Lily’s letter away somewhere, somewhere his parents wouldn’t see it, until he had a chance to think and come to some decision. At the thought of his parents, he looked up at the clock in a sudden jolt of panic—and he saw that less than fifteen minutes had passed since he’d arrived home from school. It just felt like a lot longer. His parents wouldn’t be home for a while still, yet he couldn’t shake the idea that in an amazing bit of bad luck, one of them would arrive home early today and somehow just know something was up. He knew he was broadcasting guilt as much as if he were standing in the dining room with a carton of cigarettes and a stack of porn. For his sanity, he needed to hide the lifeline Lily had thrown him right now.

Even under the weight of its responsibility, holding the envelope from Lily gave Albert some small comfort. He was holding a physical link to her, and that, at least, was proof she was still there. For the moment.

By the time Albert reached his bedroom, some of the initial shock had worn off. He went to the small bookshelf that ran along one wall under the window. On the front edge of the shelves were random stacks of CDs and books and papers; behind them, his childhood books were still in neat rows, buried and untouched for years. Kneeling in the careless jumble of dirty clothes and more books and CDs on the floor in front of the shelf, he read Lily’s letter over once more, then pulled his old copy of
Treasure Island
from the back of the shelf and tucked the envelope inside. He wished for the thousandth time that he had just one person he could talk to.

Then he thought about the way Olivia had studied his face at lunch, as if she’d been trying to read something there.

Olivia is certain that Kogen is following them, even after they’re past the city limits and back out into the black wilderness that borders the highway. Albert is doing his best to convince her that she’s wrong, but he can’t change her mind. Olivia’s constant glances behind them, and her gasping double takes every time a twig snaps or a car buzzes past them, are beginning to work on Albert’s nerves, too, until he himself starts to believe Kogen just might be on their trail.

For his sanity and hers, Albert keeps reassuring Olivia that it’s impossible, that Kogen hasn’t seen them, and that she’s probably mistaken about even seeing the guy at all. And as he keeps talking her down from her panic, he hurries them both on as quickly as possible.

Which isn’t actually all that fast. First, it’s too dark to see very well where they’re going. Besides that, they’re moving so far from the highway—at Olivia’s insistence—that the ground is uneven and littered with sticks and rocks and gullies that trip up their feet, tired feet that are already dragging. Albert’s so tired he feels like he might doze off while he walks; from the droop of her shoulders, he figures Olivia is feeling the same way. The whole thing reminds him of a story he once read about a guy—his own age, he seems to remember—who entered a walking race. The rules were simple: whoever kept walking the longest, won. Anyone who stopped walking was shot or killed or something. He can’t remember what the point of the race was—why the kid had entered the race in the first place, what prize made it worth the danger. But once you were in the race, the point was incredibly simple: to keep walking until the end, or else. There was no turning back, no backing out.

Albert’s meandering train of thought is interrupted when Olivia trips over a fallen branch at his left and, losing her balance, falls. She curses under her breath and stays on the ground. Without a word, Albert reaches down and pulls her up by the elbow, and they keep walking. And as they do, they continue to look over their shoulders every time they hear a bat fly overhead, or the wind rustling a tree branch.

It’s midnight and they’re in the middle of nowhere, not even sure they’re right about where they’re going, with cops behind them and maybe in front of them, too—and Albert feels like he can’t judge anymore if they’re doing the right thing. Going to Lily
seemed
right a few days ago—Lily herself is the only evidence left, and they have to get to her before Kogen does or things are going to get even worse for all of them.

But he can’t help doubting.
Is this all pointless? Can we even find her?

Are he and Olivia crazy to think the two of them, alone, can fix the mess surrounding Lily?

Yet Albert also knows there’s nothing else to do but at least try. And so here he and Olivia are, heading on foot upstate in late winter like a couple of fugitives, hiding their whereabouts from the cops and their families. They’re both scared, and they’re in a hurry, and they’re dying for just a few hours’ rest.

But like in the story he’s remembering, the only thing to do is to keep walking, or else.

The steady effort of walking warms Albert, and, lulled by the rhythm of their steps, he slips into a mixture of memory and daydream about Lily.

It was November and Albert and Lily were at the reservoir, wrapped together in a denim-squared comforter and leaning against the back of her car, pulling in air that tasted of frost but was still a few weeks away from the real thing. They were parked in some empty afterthought of a picnic area on the high side of the dam overlooking the low water. The sun was a hard, cold ball of light in the gray sky and they’d just kissed each other for the first time.

So clear is the memory, Albert can almost smell the burned fields and frost in the air and the warm cinnamony scent of Lily’s skin.

Her hand found his under the blanket and gave it a squeeze. “So how do you like living in Little Solace?” she asked.

“I hated it when we got here,” Albert said. “But I’m starting to think I was completely wrong.”

“Really?”

He leaned down and kissed her on the temple, a new privilege that felt exciting and weird at the same time. Her face was pointed down or he would have tried for her lips again. “Being here gives me a jittery, trapped feeling—like I just have to run or I’ll suffocate. You ever get that feeling?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m kind of known for that. That, and breaking and entering.”

He laughed.

She shifted her weight and leaned against him. He put a shy arm around her shoulders. She said, “I don’t even remember that night. I only know what they told me—that I broke into my stepfather’s office and almost burned it to the ground. I’ve lost a lot of memory of what happened before that night, too … there’s just this blur, then a long blank space, and then it picks up a few months after everything happened. I don’t even remember why I was there, or who I was with.”

“Does it matter now?” he asked. He felt her body stiffen.

“Maybe. I feel like maybe it does, yeah. There’s … something … just kind of hovering on the edge of my mind, and I can’t quite catch it.” She looked up at him and smiled a wet-lipped, wide smile that reminded him of his dirtier thoughts. “I wasn’t always the girl everyone gossiped about, you know.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“I know, right? But before my mom got remarried, it was just her and Liv and me. I know I’m romanticizing it or whatever, but life was pretty good then. That’s how I remember it, anyway. Like every summer, the three of us would go to this dinky little cabin on Yellow Pine Lake and spend, like, all of August there.” She went on in a dreamy voice. “I remember that even in late summer it was always windy and cloudy at the lake. Liv would stay inside when it got rainy, but I wanted to be outside all the time, so when she was too much of a wuss to come outside, I’d go off on my own. Then I started to like it better that way, when I would be by myself for a while. One time that last summer I went off alone when Liv and my mom were sleeping. I found a secret place and stayed there all day, just exploring. I remember I had this sandwich and I fed it to some fish and some birds. By the time I left to come home it was almost dark and my mom was super pissed at me for making her worry. Liv made me show the spot to her later, but I never went there again.”

He could imagine such a place. “Sounds awesome.” His words came out wistful.

She laughed. “Didn’t you ever have a place like that?”

When he was younger, they’d hardly ever left the city, and definitely never stayed at a lakeside cabin during the summer. “Not really. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to hide from, anyway. I wish I had.”

“A summer place, or a sibling?”

He shrugged, but he sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a brother.

“By the next summer, our mom was remarried and it wasn’t just the three of us anymore. We moved out of our house and I—” She stopped, giggling nervously. “Never mind. It’ll sound stupid.”

“Say it,” he urged.

“Okay, but don’t laugh. I just never felt like I belonged in this new idea of a family. I wanted it back the old way. You know how little kids are—I didn’t want a new dad. After that, we didn’t go to the lake anymore, either. It was the last good place, before everything changed.”

“Maybe someday we can go there together,” Albert said. It came out corny and awkward-sounding and he felt like a moron when he heard the words in his ears.

But she seemed to understand the way he meant it. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe we’ll find a new good place that’s only for us.”

And then she kissed him and he was glad, after all, that he’d said it.