Whatever Doesn't Kill You (12 page)

“Yeah, well, some boxes fell over. I had to pick them up.”

“Okay. So, are you just going to be cranky and snippy for the entire rest of the night, or should I be prepared to enjoy this treatment for the rest of the week?”

“I haven't decided yet.”

There's nothing hanging on the top of my door, so the sound when I slam it this time is much more satisfying. I turn the computer screen so I can see the knitting pattern from my chair in the corner and set to work casting on stitches. Soon I'm lost in the rhythmic clicking of the needles, the feel of the wool between my fingers. I don't know where to put this new information in my head: that my brother, the only constant and reliable person in my entire stinking life, was apparently best friends with the man who killed my father.

WEDNESDAY

I wake up to Simon knocking on my door. “You gonna sleep all day?”

“Hmm?”

“It's nine thirty. Are you planning to get up at some point?”

I look at the clock and panic. Did I forget to set my alarm? I must have. It's my own fault; I was up late, stewing and knitting. On the bright side, I'm nearly done the doggy sweater. But I'm sure missing school entirely one day and then being late the next is going to set Simon off on another lecture session. I roll out of bed and hop down the ladder to the floor. “Can you drive me to school? I don't know what happened to my alarm.”

“I can drive you, but there's not going to be anybody there. It's a snow day.”

I blink, wondering if I'm missing something. “Then why are you waking me up if I don't have to go to school?”

He shrugs. “I don't know, you don't usually sleep in this late. I just thought I'd check and make sure everything was all right.”

Forgetting for a second that I'm already mad at him, I get mad all over again. “That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Could you
be
a bigger jerk? Seriously.”

“Well, excuse me for being concerned.”

“You don't need to be. I can take care of myself.”

He lets out a weird little sigh. “Yeah, I know you can.”

I open the curtains, have a look out at the street. It's still snowing, but nothing like what it was yesterday. The snowplows are out, and the blue-and-yellow-on-white HSR buses are slogging their way through the slush.

I shove Simon out of the way to get to my dresser, where I grab one of my new shirts and a pair of jeans. “I'm going to shower, and then I'm going out for a while.”

“Where to? None of the stores are going to be open, and I thought all your cronies weren't speaking to you.”

“I'm going to see Momma.”

He lets out a barking laugh that sounds like a wounded seal. “You're kidding, right?”

“Why would I be kidding?”

“Because every time we go there, I practically—and sometimes literally, come to think of it—have to drag you there kicking and screaming.”

“Well, today I want to go.”

Simon looks baffled, but he doesn't ask for an explanation. “Do you, um, want me to drive you?”

“No thanks. I'll take the bus.”

As soon as I get outside, I almost regret not accepting a ride, although having Simon along on this trip would be most inappropriate. The snow is up to my knees in the parking lot, and my old sneakers certainly aren't built for this weather. There's usually a bus along this route every ten minutes or so, but with the snow I guess they're running behind, so my feet are soaked by the time one finally comes. I sit with my feet against the heater, willing my shoes to dry. I'm not one for superstition, but I spend most of the bus ride with my fingers crossed, hoping against hope that, first of all, Momma is having one of her more lucid days and is not a raving lunatic, and second, that the bus doesn't spin out and careen all the way down the Mountain, killing everyone on board.

By the time I get up the hill, it's almost noon, I've been on three different buses, and I'm soaked to the knee. I sign in at the visitors' desk, then duck into the public bathroom and take off my jeans and socks to wave them under the air dryer. It takes awhile to get my clothes to the point where I'm willing to put them back on again, and I use the time to think about how best to approach Momma. She's not much on answering direct questions, so getting information out of her is tricky at the best of times.

Momma is having lunch when I finally get to her room: tuna salad on whole-wheat bread and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Most of the residents eat in the dining room, but Momma isn't much for mixing. She throws such a fit whenever they take her out of her room that I guess they finally just decided to bring her meals to her. She's out of bed, though, which is unusual, and sitting at a little table in the corner.

“Hey, Momma.” I perch on the edge of her bed. “That soup looks pretty good.”

“Oh, hello.” She looks up at me, her eyes wide and unblinking, and I know she has no clue who I am. “It is very nice soup. Would you like some of it?”

“No thanks.”

“All right.”

She's not doing too well with the spoon, dribbling soup all over the place, and finally I figure I should give her a hand. “Here. Let me do that.” I spoon the rest of the bowl into her, then break her sandwich up into quarters and hand her a piece.

“I'm sorry, I don't remember your name,” Momma says.

“It's Jenna.”

“Oh, that's a lovely name. I have a little girl named Jenna.”

Ordinarily I'd kick up a fuss at this, maybe yell at her. I don't get why she knows who Simon is—and sometimes Emily—but never recognizes me or Wex. But this time I bite my lip, figuring diplomacy is the order of the day. “I know,” I tell her. I brace myself for a second, then figure it's best to dive right in. “Hey, do you remember Travis Bingham?”

“Oh, yes. Travis. A lovely boy. So handsome. He has the kindest eyes. A beautiful bright green. Almost yellow, like a cat's. Very unusual. He's Simon's friend.”

The knot in my stomach tightens. Up to this point, there has still been a chance that this is all a mistake on my part—it was some other Travis who signed Simon's yearbook, some other T. Bingham who took all those pictures. But Momma seems pretty sure of herself.

I shift my weight, steeling myself for whatever comes next. “Tell me more about Travis.”

“Oh, such a terrible family he came from. So much fighting, and his father drunk all the time. That's why we invited him to come and live with us.”

I blink. There's no way I heard that right. “I'm sorry, what?”

“It was only supposed to be for a few days at first, but I suppose all told it wound up being close to six months.”

“Travis Bingham
lived
with us?” I think that over for a second and realize it's not entirely accurate. This would have been before I was born. “I mean, with you?”

Momma gives me this weird blink, like her internal computer has gone into screen-saver mode. “I'm sorry, dear. I didn't catch your name.”

And that's all I get from her. I ask her half a dozen other questions, but she suddenly goes off on a rant about how the family in the next room is trying to kill her, which of course is ridiculous because there's obviously not a family living next door to her. In fact, the guy who lives in the room next to her is a quadriplegic who can't even wipe his own butt, let alone carry out a murder plot. After ten or fifteen minutes of this nonsense, I tell Momma I have to go.

Momma grabs my hand as I stand up to go, and for a second I think she might be about to give me one last tidbit of information—like why Travis was so angry at my dad that he resorted to murder—but I have no such luck.

“Nurse,” she says. “Can you tell the housekeepers not to put the blue sheets on my bed anymore? The green sheets are much softer.”

I pat her on the hand. “Sure. I'll let them know.”

I stew over what Momma has told me all the way home. It's not like Travis killing my dad has ever been a secret: I remember Momma telling me the story way back when I was in kindergarten. We had a substitute teacher the day we were making Father's Day cards, who seemed annoyed when half the kids in the class told her they didn't have dads.

“You must have one,” she told us. “He might not live in your house, but everybody's got a father somewhere. Maybe you can mail it to him.”

So I made my card and brought it home to Momma, and asked when we could go see my dad to deliver it. That's when she first pulled out the green folder with all the newspaper clippings to show me what had happened.

“Your daddy was a great man,” she told me. “But sometimes there are bad people in the world, and it was a very bad man named Travis Bingham who took your daddy away from us.”

I lean back against the bus window, feeling the condensation on the glass making my hair damp and clammy. So now Momma's telling me Travis Bingham wasn't such a bad man after all. At least, not when she invited him to live with them. I wonder what could have gone so wrong that he'd want to kill my father.

If only there was someone I could ask, someone who was there at the time. Simon's made it pretty clear that he's not interested in talking about any of this, and Emily— “Emily.” Once again I find myself speaking out loud on the bus. Emily was ten when my dad died. If Travis lived with my family when he was in high school, she would have been five or six at least. She probably remembers part of it. I wonder if I can get her to make any more sense than Momma did.

Simon's vacuuming the hall outside our apartment when I get in, and I dodge him before he can say anything. He'll be another hour, at least, vacuuming all the hallway carpets and then washing the tile floors. Not that it'll make much difference. You can clean it up all you want, but this place will always be a hole.

For once I'm actually hoping to find Emily crashed out on the couch or her bunk, but of course I have no such luck. Wex is plunked in front of the
TV
as usual, blasting away at spaceships on his PlayStation.

I head to my room, where I kick off my soggy sneakers and put them against the baseboard heater to dry, then peel off my socks and replace them with a pair of fuzzy knitted slippers. I'm about to flop down in the corner chair to knit when it occurs to me: Wex might know where Emily is. I haven't seen her in a couple of days, which usually means either she's got a new boyfriend somewhere or she's in jail or the hospital. None of those things would be a surprise.

“Hey, dude.” I perch on the couch beside him. “Whatcha playing?”

“
Colony Wars
.” He looks at me suspiciously. “Why do you want to know? You're not watching
TV
right now, Uncle Simon said I could play PlayStation.”

“That's fine. I don't want to watch
TV
. I just wanted to know if you've talked to your mom in the last couple of days.”