A Friend at Midnight (5 page)

If Lily got the bill when it came in the mail, and neither Mom nor Kells ever saw it, and she paid it off out of her savings account, she could actually buy Michael's ticket for him. One good thing about the divorce—the children got Christmas and birthday checks from three sets of grandparents. Reb spent hers on big-ticket items like a kayak. Michael frittered his away on little things like popcorn at the movies. Lily put hers in the bank.

“Here's what we do,” she said to Michael. “I phone the airlines. I get you an e-ticket. You fly back alone. Kids fly alone all the time. It'll be an adventure. Meanwhile, Nate and I grab a bus to LaGuardia and meet you. We'll be back home long before Mom and Kells are back from Reb's college. While you wait for me to make my calls, get something to eat.” This was because Michael didn't waste time on meals (all that sitting around) and ate just enough to take the edge off, which meant he was starving to death ten minutes later. “Have a Happy Meal,” she ordered him, “and call me back in twenty minutes.”

“I don't have any money.”

Lily no longer believed any of this. She summarized the situation, because she must have gotten it wrong. “He opened the car door and drove away? And didn't give you even a dollar? Or a ticket? Or let you pack York?”

Lily had ripped off his cheerful front by mentioning York. Michael let out one jagged weep.

“It's okay,” said Lily quickly. “I'll call Dad and tell him to airmail York right now. I won't let him do anything to York.”

She had just resolved never to speak to the snake again, or admit that he even existed, and now she had to call and beg. She couldn't wait, because a man willing to throw out his kid would drive straight home to throw out the stuffed bear.

Nathaniel was beginning to cry now too. He hated raised voices, which he rarely heard and which frightened him. Lily shoved the high chair next to the refrigerator. Nate loved to peel the magnets off.

“Don't call Dad,” said Michael urgently.

“He's got York, though,” Lily pointed out.

“Lily?” whispered Michael.

“Yes?” she whispered back.

“Dad threw York out the first night. He made me watch the garbagemen take him in the morning. He said I had to grow up.”

Lily felt herself growing up with such speed she might have swallowed a magic potion. “Okay,” she said. “It's a deal. I promise. I don't call Dad. I don't call Mom. I get you a ticket, you fly home, I pick you up. Call me back in twenty minutes so I can tell you about your ticket. If I don't hear from you, I will call the airport police myself. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Michael, and once more, his voice was full of faith.

Faith in Lily.

chapter
3

“Y
ou can't buy a ticket at your end,” said the airline clerk, “and have a little boy use it at his end. An eight-year-old is permitted to travel alone, but his parent or guardian has to sign him in. He can't pick it up at the ticket counter himself! Anyway, how would an eight-year-old get to the airport alone?”

“Good point,” said Lily. “Have a good day,” she added before she hung up, because somebody might as well have a good day. I can't get Michael a ticket, she thought.

“Wiwwy?” shouted Nathaniel.

“I'm right here.”

Nathaniel came around the corner, thrilled as always to find her on the other side of a wall. “Michael's on the other side of a wall, too,” she told him.

Nate beamed at the mention of Michael. “Okie, Wiwwy,” he said happily.

Another brother with complete faith in Lily.

Her mother, now, did not have complete faith in Lily. Mom was always worried that Lily would make some massive mistake, or a series of minor mistakes that would add up to a massive mistake, so Mom was always giving detailed instructions to prevent this from happening. Her mother was going to be justified.

Mom would just splatter this story everywhere.

It was the kind of thing Mom and her support group loved to talk about. It nagged at Kells that he had been married to her for three and a half years and still she went once a month to her divorce support group. But even that wouldn't be enough telling for Mom. Next she'd tell Michael's classroom teachers, so that they could “intervene”—a favorite pastime of teachers.

Perhaps Michael would be sent to a therapist. Maybe Lily, too.

Michael would be in one room playing with action figures, his psychiatrist watching to see if Michael ripped the heads off the grown-men dolls. Lily would be in the next room with colored pencils, her psychiatrist expecting Lily to draw a family with a dead father, the corpse studded with knives she had thrown.

Lily pressed Nate's hot little body against her eyes so his cute little sailboat shirt would soak up her tears.

The grown-ups would want Michael to “get past” this event, and they'd make him talk for years in therapy. But who could “get past” a thing like that? A thing like that was always present.

Lily had never been to a therapist or a group session or a support group or even a guidance counselor. The closest she had ever come was church, where Dr. Bordon's sermons frequently dealt with the pain we all carry and how to handle it with the Lord's help. Lily's theory was that she would be in less pain if he skipped the sermon. Or at least condensed it. She would look at the congregation around her and think, Nobody here is in pain. They're having the time of their lives. You can't buy a house in this zip code unless you make more money than God anyway. The people here do have everything.

Mom might even tell Dr. Bordon about Dad's airport choices. Lily and Michael would have to sit in his study and pray, for heaven's sake.

Nathaniel was getting twitchy. Lily set him free and he took off, eager to explore the downstairs, as if he had not just seen it prior to naptime, and every single other day for twenty-two months.

Meanwhile, Michael would have to face Jamie, his best friend. Jamie lived two miles away. What an event in Michael's life when Mom said he could ride his bike to Jamie's. Jamie's mother said she was never letting
her
son take such risks. Michael loved that ride, always hoping it would turn out to be risky, but it never did.

When Michael had made up his mind to live with his dad, he hadn't cared about Jamie any more than last month's weather. He was going to have a real dad. But now the whole town would know what kind of father Dennis Rosetti had turned out to be—and plenty of them would always wonder what kind of flaw the little boy must have, to be discarded like that.

Lily was so puffy and spongy with rage she thought she must look like somebody on chemo.

If Michael can't fly up here by himself, she decided, I'll fly down and get him.

She needed picture ID. She didn't have any. She rummaged in Mom's horribly messy desk until she located Reb's passport, which had been obtained for a class trip to Spain when Reb was sixteen.

I look a lot like her, thought Lily. Same hair, same eyes. “Hi,” said Lily to a pretend ticket agent. “I'm Reb Rosetti.”

“Reb Rosetti” sounded like a mud wrestler. No wonder her sister planned to be Rebecca from now on.

“Good afternoon,” she practiced. “I'm Rebecca Rosetti!”

What did they do to people who falsified their identities at airports? Nothing good.

If they caught her, she'd probably be responsible for ten delayed flights and possibly an airport evacuation. But how would they catch her? They didn't know there was somebody named Lily, so they wouldn't wonder if she was Lily masquerading as Reb.

It was half past twelve. Mom and Kells and Reb were probably halfway to Rochester. This was also in New York State, but Lily tended to think of New York in three parts: New York City, the suburbs and the rest of the state—an unknown hinterland in which anything could happen and where nobody went except on weekends.

“Wook, Wiwwy!” cried Nathaniel, triumphantly holding Mom's cell phone. Lily swiftly substituted the television remote and Nate searched joyfully for Volume Control. “What am I supposed to do with you during this rescue?” she said to him.

“Watch TV,” said Nathaniel, happily clicking.

Lily got on the kitchen computer and went to the travel site bookmarked by Kells, who bought his business tickets online. She filled in the right blanks. The choices were few. There was exactly one flight nonstop to Baltimore and it was leaving in two hours. The return trips—every one of them—involved detours to Raleigh or Atlanta or Boston. She was furious. “This is New York!” she yelled. “You ought to be able to fly nonstop to New York from any place!”

It took seven minutes to use the fraudulent credit card to buy the tickets, and even though Nathaniel, if he sat on her lap, didn't need a ticket, it cost a fortune. Fifteen years old and bankrupt, she thought.

At the LaGuardia Web site she got directions for public transportation. Then she studied her cash position. She personally had eight dollars. She emptied the jar where Mom threw one-dollar bills and change, and found two twenties in the middle, which was excellent. But she didn't dare take a taxi. It could easily be twenty dollars, and she might need that cash. Buses were okay, just slow. There wasn't a moment to waste. She stuffed the baby's insulated tote bag with diapers, juice boxes and a Baggie of Cheerios.

Would airport security notice that the two-year-old called her Wiwwy instead of Reb? Would they ask why she bought the tickets minutes before departure? Would they wonder why she had no luggage?

Michael was fine until the delayed flight of the schoolkids around him was suddenly boarding and the kids were leaping up, tossing their stuff into backpacks and discarding leftover snacks.

Michael was so hungry he almost asked a girl if he could eat her pizza crust. She threw it into a wastebasket, the kind with small round holes in the top. Michael stood on tiptoe to see if he could reach the crust, but he couldn't.

And then he was alone.

He walked purposefully for a few steps, as if he had a destination, but he was approaching security, which wasn't good, so he swerved toward the men's room, pausing for a sip at the drinking fountain. He had no watch but he could see the digital time on one of the many monitors in the building. Okay, he told himself. Four more minutes and I can call Lily back.

His little brother said okay all the time. “Okie, Miikoooo” was what Nathaniel actually said. If Michael shouted “Leave me alone!” or “Don't touch my stuff!” or “Shut up!” Nathaniel said meekly, “Okie, Miikoooo.”

Nathaniel loved Michael.

That had been its own reason to leave: the suffocating, maddening love of Nathaniel. How could one person, especially such a small person, repeat the same name so often in one day, play the same stupid game, mash the same cookie, hug the same hug, joyfully greet that same brother?

Nathaniel made him crazy.

But now Michael knew what it was
not
to be loved.

Nate, I promise, thought Michael. I won't have better things to do when I get home.

Although he knew he would. Two days home—two hours—given how annoying Nate was, possibly two minutes—and Michael would be sick of him again.

Several men were leaning on the wall next to the ladies' room, waiting for their wives, so Michael leaned there too, and slid slowly down the wall until he was cross-legged on the gray carpet.

When he glanced up again, a whole new set of men was leaning against the wall.

And he had killed the four minutes and now he could phone. He ran all the way to the wall of phones near the playroom.

He was too excited to pay attention and got the digits wrong, and the call didn't go through. He tried again and got the digits wrong this time too. His hands got cold and the back of his eyes hurt. What if he had forgotten the numbers? What if he couldn't reach Lily after all? What if—

Slowly, carefully, he tried a third time.

“You're one minute early,” said his sister.

Michael wanted to gallop through the phone line to be with her. “Hi.”

“Here's the deal. I can't just get you an e-ticket and have you pick it up at the gate because you're a kid and they don't let kids do that.”

Michael's heart sank.

“So Nate and I are coming for you. We're taking a flight out of LaGuardia at two-forty. We land at BWI at three-fifty-one. Then all three of us fly home together. I'm going as Reb because I'm using her passport for ID, so you have to call me Reb. Whoever picks you up has to be a grown-up, so I'm eighteen. Don't forget that. But you're coming as you and Nate is going as himself.”

“Like spies,” said Michael.

“Exactly. Now, remember that spies get shot if they're caught. So don't goof this up.”

Michael was overwhelmed with horror. On TV news there was always a city in a distant country where people shot each other or blew each other up. He couldn't catch his breath, thinking of Lily getting shot.

“Joke,” said his sister. “We aren't spies, nobody gets shot.”

“Oh.”

“Keep phoning me. Not this phone. My cell. You know my cell phone number by heart?”

“I know it by heart,” said Michael, and his heart actually hurt, pierced by the numbers of his sister's phone, as if those numbers had bitten him.

“Meet us at the baggage claim. Do you know where that is?”

“No.”

“You have till three-fifty-one to find it. It's twelve-fifteen. Can you manage almost four hours?”

Four hours. Michael was stunned. He had hardly managed twenty minutes. Where was he going to sit for four hours? “Yes,” he said.

“If airport security does pick you up, be polite. Tell them your eighteen-year-old sister Reb is on her way. Tell them what plane. Tell them you don't know how things got messed up but Reb will solve things. Give them my cell number.”

“Okay. What will they do then?”

“Nothing,” said Lily. “I'll still land and we'll still fly home.”

Reb could lie like a rug; she was the best fibber there'd ever been. But Lily was like Michael. Lies were so much trouble that she generally told the truth and accepted the consequences. He knew when Lily was telling a lie because her voice got forceful and loud, as if she was shoving it into being real.

If security found Michael, it would not be all right.

They might not fly home.