You Can Run (7 page)

I said it was.

She smiled at me in that way teachers do when they are satisfied in their hearts that you are wrong and they intend to let you know precisely how.

“The modern workplace has embraced the team concept,” she said. “Disparate groups of people, each with their own strengths and, er, areas needing improvement, team up to produce results that no single team member could produce on his or her own.”

“But, see, that's the problem,” I said.

She kept smiling; her lips looked as if they were frozen in place.

“The grading for this assignment includes a team component,” she said. “I advise you to work it out.”

I tried. I really did. The next day, Trisha and I got together, during class. Ms. Lewington was very generous about letting us use class time to work on our assignments.

“So,” I said to Trisha, “let's see your notes.”

Trisha did what Trisha would have been awarded a gold medal for if it were an Olympic sport: she stared down at her desk.

“We're supposed to be a team, Trisha,” I said as patiently as I could. “Teamwork implies two or more people working together toward a common goal,” I said. “In this case, that means—”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

It was nice of her to say so. It would have been nicer if I hadn't heard it a few dozen times already.

“Trisha,” I said, “when we divided up the work”— actually,
I
had divided up the work; I had done everything so far—“I thought we agreed that we would share it equally. But so far—”

“I'll go to the library right now,” she said. She got up and left the classroom.

Well, okay.

I gathered my things and headed for the library too. I admit, I was curious. Was Trisha finally going to work on our assignment?

When I got to the library, she wasn't there. Of course, that didn't mean that she wasn't working somewhere else. And to be fair, she hadn't explicitly said that she was going to the school library. For all I knew, she could have been at the local library, maybe even the main library downtown, beavering away on the assignment. If you're going to dream, dream big, right?

Trisha didn't show up for the next three classes. I found her in the second-floor hall on the day before we were supposed to do our presentation. I hadn't been looking for her, but she was impossible not to notice. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a bank of lockers, her eyes closed, her crystal in her hand. I only noticed her because some freshmen near me were pointing and giggling.

I looked at her. I considered my options. Then I walked down the hall, stood in front of her, and said her name. And got no answer.

So I said her name louder.

She raised her eyes and tipped her head back to look at me.

“We present tomorrow right after homeroom,” I said.

If there was a thought, any thought at all, reflected in those blank eyes of hers, I didn't see it.

“Trisha.”

“I did the work,” she said. “I did what you said.”

If I knew Trisha, it was probably too little.

“We have to present tomorrow.”

“I'll bring my stuff,” she said. “I'll meet you here at eight o'clock, before school starts.”

Don't ask me why, but I said okay. I'd like to say that I said it because I believed her. I'd also like to say that I didn't go home and stay up all night doing both my work and hers. I'd like to say that I didn't plan to show up at school and hand her part of the presentation to her and tell her, “Just read it, okay?” I'd like to say all of those things, but none of them would be true.

I was there at eight o'clock.

She wasn't.

She wasn't there at eight-o-five or eight fifteen or eight twenty either.

The warning bell—the five-minutes-to-homeroom bell—rang at eight forty-five, approximately the same time that Trisha appeared, her face as white as milk.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“Forget it,” I said.

“No, really, I'm sorry,” she said.

“No, really, forget it,” I said.

“It's my mother,” she said.

Right. Her mother.

“She's sick,” she said.

Uh-huh. Well, I figured I had to give her points for being slightly more creative than “the dog ate my homework.”

“Whatever,” I said. I was so angry that it was all I could trust myself to say.

“I did the work. I can show you,” she said. She pulled off her D&G backpack and started to rummage through it. Her pale face became paler and her small eyes grew wide.And she said (all together now. . .),“Oh my god—”

“Forgot to pack your part of the presentation, huh?” I said.

She stared at me. She even managed to make her eyes water.

“I'm—”

I held up my hand to silence her. I did not want to hear one more lame apology.

“I'm so tired. I was up all night. My mother's really sick and—”

That's when I said what I'd been hating myself for ever since, maybe the meanest thing I've ever said. Maybe the thing that had sent her running.

“I don't care,” I said. “Nobody cares. Maybe if you weren't so weird, people would care, but they don't.”

She stared at me, a stunned expression on her face.

“I did the work,” she said. “I just forgot. . . I'll go and get it.”

“Trisha? Never mind, okay? I took care of it. All you have to do is show up and read what I wrote for you. You think you can do that? Or is that too much for you to handle?”

The final bell rang. I shook my head and turned away from her. I had done every last scrap of work. I had produced an A+ project for sure, and Trisha was going to get the same grade even though all she'd done was coast. Life can be so unfair.

I went to homeroom. Then I went to history class.

Trisha did not show up.

I did the presentation alone. Before I began, Ms. Lewington said, “Where's your partner? Um. . .”— finger on the seating plan again—“Trisha?” When I said I didn't know, Ms. Lewington grunted with what I can only assume was disapproval—as if it were my fault that Trisha hadn't shown up, as if I had failed to “work it out” with Trisha, as Ms. Lewington had told me to. Which is why I did what I did next. I lied. I told Ms. Lewington that when I said I wasn't sure where Trisha was, I meant that I wasn't sure if she was at home or at the doctor.

“You mean she's sick?” Ms. Lewington said.

I told her, yes, that's what I meant. I also told her that Trisha had given me her part of the assignment and that I was going to present it for her. In retrospect, it made me feel a little better. But like Trisha's work, it was too little, too late.

"I
n other words,” my father said when I had finished my confession, “you're afraid it's your fault she ran away.”

I nodded.

“You're being too hard on yourself, Robbie. Maybe she didn't do her work because of what was really bothering her, and what was really bothering her is what made her run away. Maybe it has nothing to do with you at all.”

Maybe
. Not a comforting word under the circumstances.

“Still, I could have been nicer to her, especially when she told me her mother was sick.”

My father didn't argue with that. Instead he looked at me with his gray eyes. I have the same eyes, the color of slate. “So,” he said, “it looks like you were the last person at school to see her.”

I nodded. I wasn't proud of myself.

“You saw her, the bell rang, you went to homeroom, then you went to your history class, but she didn't show up. Right?”

“Right,” I said.

My father took a few more bites of his dinner. Then he said, “You know a kid named Kenneth Merchant?”

“I know who he is,” I said.A stringy kid with chewed-up fingernails and a semi-permanent scowl on his face. He had transferred to my school partway through the final semester of last year. I sort of knew him—everyone sort of knew him. He was the kind of person who kept the rumor mill grinding. Everyone had heard at least one story about where he had been before he transferred to our school—a juvenile detention facility, a boot camp, a psychiatric hospital—and why he had been there. All of the stories were sketchy on details, so it was hard to tell what was true. I had never spoken to him, and he had never spoken to me.

“Did you ever see him with Trisha?”

“I've never seen him with anyone. He isn't in any of my classes. Why?”

“I got the impression that he knows Trisha.”

“Got the impression?”

“One of the teachers mentioned seeing them together a couple of times. She remembers because she was surprised—‘two loners,' is how she described them.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“I tried to. But he wouldn't open his mouth.Wouldn't look me in the eye, either. Just shook his head a lot.”

“You think he knows something about Trisha?”

“That's what I'd like to find out.” He fiddled with his coffee, stirring it even though it was probably lukewarm. “You know, in a situation like this, normally what I'd do is send in an investigator.” Maybe like he'd sent in that woman who had gone undercover as a maid to grab back the two kidnapped kids. “Someone young enough to pass for a student. Have them go in, establish a presence, ask around, see what they can find out.”

“Normally?”

His smoky gray eyes hadn't left mine for a second.

“First of all, it's hard to find someone who can pass for fifteen or sixteen. Second. . . .” He paused for a heartbeat. “You're already there, Robbie. People either know you or have seen you around. You're part of the landscape.” Somehow that didn't sound flattering. It was like being compared to floor tile. “And,” he said, “from what I've been able to gather, people don't make an automatic connection between you and me.”

That was probably because, as far as I knew, he had never set foot in my high school before the previous morning.

“You want me to talk to Kenny?” I said.

“He might say something to you that he wouldn't say to me.” He raised a hand to catch the waiter's attention. “But maybe you don't want to mention it to your mother,” he said.

“Sure.”

He reached across the table and put one of his hands over mine.

“I would never ask you to do anything if I thought it was dangerous or would get you in trouble. You know that, right?”

I knew.

“Carl Hanover is an old friend. And you're already there.”

“Dad, it's no big deal. I'm happy to help.” And I was, too. Maybe it would ease my conscience. Despite what my father had said, I still felt partly responsible for Trisha running away.

He squeezed my hand. “Come on. Let's get you home.”

We zipped home in Dad's black Porsche with the sound system blaring vintage rock ‘n' roll. My father played AC/DC at ear-splitting volume all the way. My mother would not have approved. She's more of a Celine Dion kind of person.

 

. . .

My mother was coming out the side door when we pulled into the driveway. She had a bulging black garbage bag in one hand. She turned and looked at my father's Porsche. He switched off the engine.

“Dad,” I said. I gave him a pleading look. What I really meant was, “Don't. Don't get out of the car. Don't try to go into the house. Don't do anything that will bug Mom.” But I don't think he heard me. He flung open the car door and stepped out onto the driveway. I hurried out the passenger side.

My father grinned at my mother. “Patti,” he said, “you look fabulous.”

I waited for her to correct him the way she does every time he calls her anything but Patricia. Instead, she looked at him with blue eyes that seemed warm, even affectionate, although I knew I must be misreading her. She said, “Hi, Mac.” She looked at him, really looked at him, instead of dismissing him the way she usually does. She gazed at him for so long that I checked him out too, to see if she was seeing something that I hadn't noticed. But no, it was the same old Mac Hunter—a tall guy with thick dark hair speckled with just a touch of gray. A good-looking guy with dimples when he grinned. A guy who was fit and trim for his age. There was no paunch on my father. He worked out at the gym four or five times a week and ran a 10K regularly. Women were always looking him over, checking out his left hand for a wedding band—which, of course, he didn't wear.

My father reacted to my mother's non-frigid greeting the same way that I did. His grin slipped a little. He took a step toward her. When she didn't retreat or tell him to back off, his expression grew serious.

“Is everything okay, Patti?” he said.

She shook her head, not to say no, but as if she were coming out of some kind of daydream.

“Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn't it be?” She looked at me. “Do you have homework, Robyn?” I nodded. “Then you'd better come in and do it. It's getting late.” She looked at my father again. “Good night, Mac,” she said. She walked up the path to the front door and went inside.