I let our cardboard cover back down and put a finger to the little girl’s lips again, but maybe I didn’t even need to bother, because she could tell I wasn’t as scared anymore.
A second later we heard a big whap sound that I figured was the boy hitting or kicking the cardboard box, and it made us both jump, but we didn’t make a sound, because we knew what we needed to do by then.
Then a minute later I heard their voices again, down on the street, and it sounded like they were going away, because I could hear their words getting quieter as they walked off.
“I’m tired,” the dumb guy said. “I just want to go back.”
“Go back? Go back? Do you have any idea how much money this could be? We could buy a car. Maybe even a house. And you just want to go back and rest? What’s wrong with you? After tonight we can do nothing but rest for our whole lives. And you want to give that up because you’re tired? Fine, go back, idiot. I’ll keep the money.”
“No. I’m still in, I want the money, too. But I’m just not sure how we’re supposed to get it.”
“Well, you saw that Amber Alert up on the freeway. So you know the parents want her back.”
“But we don’t know who the parents are.”
I was starting to think the dumb guy was not as dumb as everybody thought. But I only had one quick second to think about that because I had just heard something really important. There was an Amber Alert, which meant she hadn’t been dumped by her parents. They wanted her back.
They were still talking, but in a minute they would be too far away to hear.
“Well, the police know who they are,” the smart guy—who I figured was not as smart as he made himself sound—was saying.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life! You think we’re gonna call the police and tell them we got the kid and then . . . what? You think they’ll tell us who to call? I just don’t know how . . .”
But they were pretty far down the block by then, and I wasn’t sure what it was he didn’t know. It was too quiet to hear, but still I had a pretty good idea of everything they didn’t know, which was a whole lot.
About ten or fifteen minutes later, when I was really, really sure they weren’t coming back, I asked the little girl, “Do you need to go?”
She nodded really fast and really hard.
I know it sounds weird to say, but I sort of fell in love with her in that second, like she was my own daughter or my own baby sister, because I knew she’d been purposely holding it all that time, which was a totally amazing thing for a kid that young to do.
I lifted up the back of our cardboard cover, the side away from the street, and helped her out of our little hole, and we worked together and found the best spot where the pee wouldn’t roll right back into our hiding place. I held up the cardboard with my back so we were still invisible from the avenue, and I helped her take down her red leggings and her little ducky pull-up pants—they had ducks on them—and held her hands while she squatted down so she wouldn’t lose her balance and roll down the hill. She peed a lot. She’d been holding it for a long time, poor little girl.
I didn’t have anything to wipe her with, but I figured it didn’t matter, because the pull-up pants were absorbent like a diaper. I figured she’d be okay.
Then I helped her back into the hole and we just hunkered down in there for a long time. How long, I really have no clue. I was trying like hell to come up with a plan, but every idea just turned into a dead end. I could flag down anybody I saw walking down the street, but at this hour the streets in this neighborhood were completely deserted. And there was no way I could climb up onto that freeway with her in my arms, and no way I was leaving her alone to do it by myself.
And I couldn’t just wander out with her and go in search of help, because those boys were still around somewhere, looking for us, and I had no idea where they were or how not to run into them.
We really had no choice—at least, not a damned thing I could see—except to lie there and hold each other tight and wait for some kind of safe chance to come along and find us, almost by, like . . . sheer luck.
Chapter Five
Brooke: Twenty-Four Hours
Morning came and found me still out on the roof.
I almost fell asleep. I came close to falling off—losing my balance and tumbling down the slope. Then I caught myself and decided to go back to the police station.
No real solid reason except that I couldn’t prevent myself from doing it. I had to stay as close to the inner workings of the search as possible. It was an obsession.
My mother was downstairs in the kitchen fussing over a pot of coffee. Sounds like an odd description, but, believe me, she was fussing. She kept swaying back and forth like some kind of neurotic robot, reaching for something and then changing her mind. Or simply losing the thread of the action.
Toward the stack of filters on the counter. Back toward the pot without picking up a filter. Reaching for the faucet. Back toward the filters.
“Mom,” I said, and she jumped the proverbial mile.
“Brooke,” she said, one hand on her heart. Too dramatically, I thought. “Don’t sneak up on a body like that. You scared the living daylights out of me.”
“Sorry. I’m going back to the police station.”
“They’ll call if they know anything.”
“Don’t argue with me about this. Please.”
I made it clear by my tone that my nerves were currently existing along a very thin thread, and were not to be disturbed. For about the hundredth time since the incident, I resented the fact that people didn’t make these observations about me on their own.
“Well,” she began, “take my ca—” She stopped before the r sound in car had made it out of her mouth, and just stood there looking sheepish and more than a little bit sad. “Call a cab,” she said.
I could not contain my irritation.
“I’m not going to call a cab, Mom. I have a car. And I’m not made of money.”
“I’ll pay for the cab.”
“I have a car. I intend to drive my car.”
“But your car is so dangerous. See, you never believe me when I tell you the world is dangerous, but now you see.”
I lost it. Granted, I was on a thin thread to begin with. But this sort of twisted My-Mother logic set me off every time.
“See? What do I see, Mom? What would you have me see? I didn’t get into a dangerous situation in my car. I got into it in your car. You convinced me your car was safer. But you were wrong, weren’t you? For once in your life can you just admit you were wrong? Turns out my car would have been safer because no one would want it!”
The last few words came up to a full-throated shout.
My mother’s defenses crumbled before my eyes. She stumbled over to the kitchen table. Sank down into a chair. Dissolved into tears.
Then, of course, I felt like eighteen different kinds of human trash.
I settled next to her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to yell. I’m just so . . .”
“No, we might as well get it all out. You think it’s my fault.”
“I don’t think it’s your fault.”