Whatever Doesn't Kill You (14 page)

Sure enough, Emily is leaning on the Dumpster, sucking on a cigarette, her holey, faded parka pulled on over her dingy kitchen whites.

“So this is where you've been hiding out these days.”

She looks startled to see me but not unduly annoyed. “This isn't where your gang usually hangs out, is it?”

I shrug. “I guess I've got a new gang now.”

Emily looks suspicious. “What happened to the old gang?”

Another shrug. I'm not really sure how to answer that. “You know. People grow in different directions.”

“That's a load of horse crap.”

“Okay. So apparently I did something to piss one of them off and now none of them are talking to me. So I'm branching out. Making new friends. You know.”

“Well. Sometimes it's good to get rid of your old friends.” Emily takes another drag on her cigarette, looking philosophical. With her hair all tucked back in a hairnet, she looks older than usual, and the security lighting in the back alley makes long, thin shadows of the lines starting to develop around her eyes. Suddenly I'm sorry for her, a little. It's bad enough that I lost a father I never got the chance to know; Emily actually lost her daddy. No wonder she's so screwed up.

“Are you getting rid of your old friends too?” I ask.

“I guess so. Trying to put my life in some kind of order, you know?”

“That's great. I hope it works this time.”

“Gee, thanks.” She doesn't say it sarcastically, though, so she must know what I mean. She's tried getting her act together more than once, but it would be great for Wex if it finally worked. And for her, too, I suppose. She spends so much time being horrible that it's easy to forget there's a person in there.

“So, um…I didn't just happen to be in the neighborhood, you know.”

“No?”

“No. I, um, wanted to ask you something. About Travis Bingham.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. Jenna, would you let it go already? That was forever ago. He's nobody. He's a ghost. He's sitting in prison somewhere, and he's probably going to die there.”

“He's out. I've met him.”

Emily pauses with the cigarette halfway to her lips. “What?”

“He's out on parole, working for some heating company. He came in to fix the heater at the salon where I got my hair cut.” I decide to leave out the part where I stalked him at his halfway house. In hindsight, that part's probably more than a little creepy.

“How did you know—”

“I've seen his picture a million times, Em. And I talked to Momma; I know he used to live with us.”

Emily narrows her eyes at me, and I recognize the way she tips her head just slightly to one side as a sure sign she's about to let me have it. “With
us
? No, not with
you
. Dad kicked him out when
you
were born. Said he was done feeding other people's kids.”

Of all the reactions I could have gotten from Emily at the mention of Travis's name, this is the last one I would have expected. There's no anger at the idea of Dad's death. She's not worried about Travis roaming the streets. Instead, she seems to be mad at
me
, not for anything I've done, but just for being born and getting Travis kicked out of our house. I take a step back from Emily, stumbling into a dingy snowbank, and soaking my leg to the knee for the second time in as many days.

“So Dad kicked Travis out…and Travis killed him?”

Emily shrugs, takes one last drag on her cigarette, then flicks the butt almost but not quite at me. It lands on the shoveled path in front of me. “I guess so. Look, what difference does it make? Dad's dead, Travis did his time. Life goes on, right?”

“I…yeah. I guess so.” I still have more questions than answers, but it looks like Emily has reached the end of her patience with me. I step out of the snowbank and shake the dirty snow off my pants as well as I can. “Thanks.”

Emily looks surprised. “Sure. Don't worry about it.” She grinds out the still-glowing cigarette butt with the toe of one of her Doc Marten's as I turn to go. “Hey, Jenna.”

“Yeah?”

There's a funny look on her face when I look back at her, like she's thinking real hard about something. “How did he look when you saw him? Travis, I mean. Did he look…okay?”

“I guess so. What do you mean?”

“Did he look happy? Or…healthy? Or…I don't know. Do you think he's doing okay?”

How do I answer that? He looked like an older version of the man who destroyed my family—only somehow I know that's the wrong thing to say to Emily right now.

“He looked fine,” I tell her instead. “Yeah. He looked good.”

So now I know why Travis shot my dad, anyway. Score another one for Jenna Cooper, Girl Detective. If his life at home was as horrible as Momma told me, I can see why he'd have been mad. But if he was such a nice guy, like she'd also said, why wouldn't he have been able to come up with another place to stay instead of resorting to violence?

I come back around the corner of the alley, deep in thought, and run full-on into Ashley. Our heads crack together and we both let out a yell. Funny—in the time I've been talking to Emily, Ashley has almost slipped my mind. I give her a halfhearted smack on the shoulder.

“You scared the crap out of me. Where were you, anyway?”

“I was trying to pay my bill. I had so much junk in my purse that I couldn't find my debit card, and then when I finally found it, I didn't have enough money in that account and I had to use the emergency ten dollars I keep in the secret pocket in my wallet. Then when I got out of the restaurant, I couldn't find you. And by the time I figured out how to get out to the back alley, it looked like you were really deep in conversation and I didn't want to interrupt.”

“Oh.” That was considerate of her, I suppose. “Thanks.”

“So did your sister tell you anything important?”

“I guess. It was weird. She was more reasonable than she usually is. She wanted to know how Travis is doing.”

“Why would she care?”

“I know, right? But when I told her I'd met him, she got all funny. Like…” I search for the word a minute before it finally occurs to me. “Jealous.”

“That's so weird. Do you think maybe she was in love with him or something?”

“Dude, she was, like, eight when Travis killed my dad. Maybe she had a crush on him, but she's probably over it by now.”

Ashley laughs. “Dude, did you just call me dude?”

That strikes both of us as funny and sets us to laughing so hard we actually get a dirty look from an old guy shoveling his sidewalk. We turn a corner and head off down Barton, cackling like a pair of drunken hyenas.

When we get to the corner of Dunsmure and Ottawa, we go our separate ways. It's getting cold again, and the wet leg of my jeans is starting to freeze in the wind. I pass the Tim Hortons—the original one, a little brick building built way back in the sixties before there was a Tim's on every corner. This one doesn't have a drive-thru, or even much of a parking lot to speak of, so people perch their cars every which way on the little ring of asphalt that surrounds it. There are a few scruffy-looking regulars at the table by the big window, sharing a
Toronto Sun
and a box of Timbits, and a homeless guy smoking a cigarette outside by the door with an empty brown-paper cup in his hand, trolling for change.

It occurs to me that I could use a hot chocolate, and I sift through the change in my pocket to see if I have enough. A dollar sixty-three; plenty for a medium-sized hot chocolate, with a few cents left over to throw in the homeless guy's cup on the way out.

I'm about to step inside when something—or rather, someone—catches my eye. It's Marie-Claire, sitting alone at the little table behind the display case of sports memorabilia and pictures of Tim Horton in his hockey uniform. Marie-Claire is nursing a brown-paper cup of coffee and flipping through a book of crossword puzzles, a pen tucked between two fingers. I stop for a second, my hand on the door, debating whether I should go in. I think of Marie-Claire at school today, telling Katie she couldn't hang out tonight because there was a vampire party at the university. Why on earth would she be doing crossword puzzles in Tim Hortons at nine thirty at night if she was supposed to be at a party all the way across town? Did she make it up so she didn't have to go to Katie's house? Has she been making up the parties and guys all along?

I'm still standing with my hand on the door when a guy with a shaved head and a beer gut so big it almost turns the corner ahead of him brushes past me.

“'Scuse me, sweetheart. You're gettin' between a man and his coffee here.”

“Sorry about that.”

I back away from the door and drop my buck sixty-three into the homeless guy's coffee cup. I've had enough probing into other people's deep, dark secrets for one night. I'll leave Marie-Claire to hers for the time being.

FRIDAY

Emily is home when my alarm goes off, sleeping soundly and seemingly unmoved by the blaring Middle Eastern music coming out of the clock radio. She's snoring, but quietly for a change. I didn't hear her come in, which is also unusual. Maybe she really is serious about getting her life together; she seems to have come home sober. I watch her sleep for a minute, her eyes lightly closed. She has changed out of her grimy dishwashing uniform into a faded blue nightshirt with Snoopy dressed as Joe Cool on the front. She lets out a little grunt and rolls over, her long, shaggy hair falling across her face. Maybe I should recommend my hairdresser to her.

I jump a little as she sits up suddenly. “Jenna, stop staring at me while I'm trying to sleep.”

“Sorry, I was just…” What? Trying to figure out if she's stoned? That isn't a conversation I want to have right now. “…getting ready for school.”

“Fine. Get ready and go then. We had a bunch of drunk idiots come in right at closing time and order half the menu. I didn't get home until three fifteen. Let me sleep in, would you?”

Wow. Drunk idiots. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. But I've had more sensible conversations with my sister in the past twenty-four hours than I have in the past six or seven years, which has got to count for something.

There's a stiff breeze blowing as I make the trip to school, and I dig my hands into the pockets of Simon's old coat, shivering as I go. I'm half a block away when I see Marie-Claire ahead of me, hunched up in her thin black trench coat, her shoulders around her ears. I'm tempted to ignore her the same way she's been ignoring me all week, but at the same time I'm madly curious about what was going on last night.

“Hey, Marie-Claire. Wait up.”

She slows and looks behind her. She doesn't stop when she sees me, but she doesn't speed up either, so I jog a little to catch up. “Long time no see.”

She looks a little perplexed. “I saw you yesterday at school.”

“Well, true. But I haven't talked to you in awhile. How is everything?”

Marie-Claire shrugs. “It's the same as it always is.”

“Been to any good parties lately?” I watch her face carefully, but it doesn't give anything away. I wonder what's going through her head. Did she notice me at the locker yesterday when she was talking to Katie?

“Yeah, a couple. You know me—always out someplace.”

“Yep. I know you.” At least, I thought I did.