Compromised (17 page)

I fold up the letter and put it back in the envelope.

“Wow,” says Nicole.

I nod.

“What's the next letter say? Did she get it on with the giant?”

“That's the last one. The last one dated before—” Before Mom died. What else would Aunt Sarah have had to say? “The only other things that come after this letter are the paycheck stubs.”

“Intense,” Nicole sighs. “You think she's in Boise?” Nicole asks.

I shrug. “I hope so. You think your dad's in Chicago?”

“Probably.” Nicole holds the flower in her hand. “It's all about this flower. This is the key,” she says.

“Maybe.”

Then Nicole and I start short-e words. She knows more than she thinks. She just gets her vowels mixed up. We study until my eyes stop opening after I blink. Klon has been fast asleep for at least an hour.

We lie down in the den, bundled up, warm and full.

“Not all people are shit,” Nicole says.

“No. I guess not,” I agree, and fall into a dreamless sleep.

P
urpose:
Find Aunt Sarah

“I'm not gonna say, ‘Call me if you need help.'”

We stand on her porch, and she hands each of us a sack lunch.

“I don't want to see or hear from any of you ever again, okay?”

We nod.

“The nearest town is four miles south of here.”

The three of us look around. I look toward the mountains and sun and turn around on the porch.

“Lordy, Lordy,” she says. “That way.” She points to the left. “You have problems, tell 'em to the dolls.” She hands Nicole the box of worry dolls.

Nicole cups the box in her palm. She looks up at the lady. “Than—” she starts to say.

“Bye.” The screen door hangs crooked on the hinges and doesn't quite shut. Jan yanks it and it bangs on the
frame, the inside door slamming shut.

“Thanks,” Nicole whispers.

We stand on the porch for a second. I see the curtains in the living room part to the side. Two beady eyes stare out at us behind a veil of cigar smoke.

“Let's go,” I say. But I feel better about things. Funny what a good sleep and food will do. It's like this can really happen. We will find Aunt Sarah, and everything will be okay.

We walk the four miles into a town called McCall. I pull out the map. “Ugh,” I groan.

“What?” Nicole looks over my shoulder.

“We're here,” I point out McCall. “North. And we need to go south. One hundred miles out of the way.”

“Oh.” Nicole shrugs. “The scenic route again.”

“Looks like it.”

We sit down on a bench on the main street, resting our feet on the backpacks. “I guess we can hitch to Boise,” I say.

“Okay. Which way is Boise?”

I look at the map. “This way.” I point down the street. I turn the map around. “I think.”

“You suck with maps,” Nicole says, then looks up and says, “St. Sti. Stib. Stib. Stib. Ah, fuck it.” Every sign she sees,
she tries to sound out. Because of it, she's more tic-y than Klondike. She'll be talking, midsentence stop and try to make out a word, then continue just where she left off. Klon takes advantage of those times to look for road kill. He says he's never seen a dead raccoon and would really like to.

“Stibnite,” I say.

“Oh.” Then she looks at the map. “So where are we? You lost on that thing?”

I sigh. “Kinda.”

Nicole takes the map from me. “Jeopardy, what kind of practical things do you know? Not SAT knowledge. Just stuff that we need to know to get by.”

I think for a while. All my practical knowledge has to do with getting packed and leaving when Dad got caught. But we've never been on the streets. Not like this. I shrug and say, “I can read.”

“Bite me,” Nicole says.

“You asked. And it's practical.” I lean my head back against the bench and close my eyes. So far our reading-for-stealing skill swap hasn't gone well. The short vowels haven't been a problem, but Nicole thinks every vowel should have just one sound. So she gets irritated with long vowel sounds and especially with “y” being considered a vowel at all. And we haven't even begun to look at diphthongs.

As for shoplifting, after my grocery store debacle, I haven't had the guts to do anything except take free fliers from the store counters. Shoplifting isn't as easy as it looks. Nerves of steel. And mine are more like rubber bands.

Before, four miles wouldn't have fazed me, but lately I've been short of breath and so, so tired. Klondike holds his side when he walks. His breathing has become really shallow. Maybe we should wrap his ribs in something. I'm about to ask him about it when he says, “It's prettier than a speckled pup in a red wagon.”

We look around. The trees on the mountains that border the lake are dusted with snow; the lake, a crystal blue, looks like melted ice. Nicole opens up the box of worry dolls. Tucked inside, under the tiny dolls, are two five-dollar bills.

“Look!” She shows us. “Maybe our detour was worth it,” she says.

We walk south.

“Next lesson, Jeopardy.” Nicole stands outside a convenience store. “Stealing with two is easier than one. Like if I go in with you and act all suspicious, then it's easier for you to steal something. It's called being a decoy. Oh, and another one. A good one. But not with your decoy. Slip something in someone else's pockets. Wait till they walk
out first and set the alarm. Then walk out right behind them. It works like a charm.”

“But we don't need anything,” I protest.

“You think these sack lunches will last forever?” Nicole asks. “Plus I could use a cough drop or something. My throat's killing me. We'll do it together. I'll be the decoy.”

I take in a deep breath, so deep it feels like the cold from the air forms icicles on my rib cage.

Klon squeezes my hand. “You can do it.” He coughs.

I
need
to do it. I swallow. My throat feels scratchy, too.

“Okay.” We go inside the store and mill around. Nicole hangs out in a corner, with her back turned and hunched over. Way suspicious. An old man sits behind the counter reading his newspaper, ignoring us because he's more interested in some coup in Africa. I grab a bag of cough drops and exhale. It'll be easy. All I have to do is put them in my coat.

Then I look back at the counter. The man clears his throat; the newspaper rustles as he turns the page, and I drop the cough drops. When I lean over to pick them up, my head hits a shelf and Band-Aids, plastic bottles, and cold-pill boxes fly everywhere.

I pile everything back onto the shelf. The man peers
over the paper, nods, then goes back to reading.

My hands are shaking so hard, all I can do is shove them into my pockets and head to the door. “Thanks,” I say, and leave.

Nicole follows. “Get anything?” Nicole asks. “You sure made a racket.”

I shake my head.

“Christ,” she mutters. “And my throat hurts.”

Klondike looks tired. He leans against a wooden post and cradles his side in his hand. I should've at least gotten him some aspirin. But I just can't seem to go through with it.

Outside of town a man in an old Ford pickup stops for us. He shouts through the window, “Jump in back—I'll take you until we get outside of Boise. This ain't legal no more, so keep your heads down.”

“Thanks!” We jump into the truck and huddle together. Any other day I might've loved the feel of the crisp wind on my face. But today everything aches from my ears to my throat—even my skin. Klondike shivers, and I wrap my arm around him. He coughs. But not his usual cough. A sick cough.

“You okay?” I ask.

He's asleep, though, before he can answer.

“T
his is kinda fun.” Nicole adds another stick to the fire. The man dropped us off at a campground on the outskirts of Boise. We were pretty lucky that he took us all the way from McCall to Boise. That's like a hundred miles. In Nevada, that took Nic and me about three days to cover. We never got real long rides.

The only thing that sucked was crouching down in the back of a metal truck bed for two hours, trying to keep from freezing in the wind. We huddled to cover Klon and tried to protect his chest. I can't believe I didn't steal those cough drops.

The campground is closed for winter, so nobody's here. There's even a bathroom we got into by jimmying open a
window and wiggling through. A real bathroom. Okay. No water or flushing. No toilet paper. But at least it's a toilet.

“I've never been camping before,” Nicole says.

“A million-star hotel,” says Klondike, staring up at the sky.

We all look up. Klondike points. “There's the Big”—he jerks his head and croaks—“Dipper. And Orion.”

“You know about lots of stuff, Klon. Where'd you learn?”

“My pa.” He croaks four times. “Before he died. He loved me more than any of them, and when he died in the fire, Ma said it was okay. But I could tell from her eyes it wasn't. She wanted to exorcise the demons—asswipe, tallywhacker. Fuckit.”

We're quiet. We wait until he settles down and continues his story.

“We were filling the oil lamps for evenin' services. I had Pa's pipe in my pocket and I had to light it. I can't help the demons. Fuckit.”

We watch as the embers glow and fire dances, casting shadows. A spark flitters into the black night, and we follow it with our eyes.

“Pa shouted, and the oil spilled and I dropped the
lighter and he fell on me—hotter than the hubs of Hades. Then he died. I've got the demons. And the scars because of the evil inside.”

“Klon.” I put my hand on his arm. “You don't have demons. It was an accident because of—”

Klon shakes his head. “Had to light it. The demons were talking to me. Tallywhacker, asswipe. So Ma couldn't look at me anymore and sent me to the home. Just for a while, she said. But I knew. She hated me. No one looked at me anymore. So I left. It's the demons' fault Pa died. My fault. I'm a demon inside and out.” He croaks and shakes his head back and forth so hard it makes me dizzy. “Asswipes.”

“You don't have demons. Really.” I take a deep breath. Maybe my earlier hypothesis was wrong. Maybe knowing the truth will be good for him. “I think you have something called Tourette's syndrome,” I say.

Both Nicole and Klon look at me. Nicole finally speaks. “There's a
name
for what's wrong with Klon? Way cool.”

Klon croaks. Then he says, “Tallywhacker. The name is demons.”

I shake my head. “Tourette's. It's a neurological disorder. It's like there's a glitch between your nerves and your brain. You can't help it. There's no cure. Even though lots of people
don't know about it, a bunch of people actually suffer from it. I mean, your mama might not have understood it and thought you had, um, demons. But you don't.”

“No shit,” Nicole says. “Now
that's
practical knowledge.”

“Gee. Thanks,” I say.

Klon doesn't talk for a long time. Tears blur his eyes and slip down his cheeks. “No demons,” he whispers. He looks at me. “Are you sure?”

I nod. “Pretty much. It's something that's part of you when you're born. You can't help it. It's just who you are. Kind of like me having curly hair or Cappy having brown eyes. It's just who we are, you know? It's called a genetic makeup. Lots of people talk about nature versus nurture. But honestly, people are born the way they're going to be.”

“So all those assholes at my mom's house. All of them were born to be
that
way?” Nicole asks. “And I'm born to be
this
way?”

Klon says, “Cappy, there's nothing wrong with you.”

Nicole ruffles his hair. “You're a good kid, you know?” Nicole looks back at me. “What about me? Is everything set? Like, you know,
everything
?”

I pause. I'm not sure what she means by
everything
. “It's not like nature can decide
everything
. We're born with what we've got, right? It's our job to do the best with the good parts and work with the bad parts, I guess. Or else everybody could blame everything they've done wrong on a DNA strand.”

“So what's wrong with your DNA strand, Jeops?” Nicole asks.

I'm the offspring of a con dad and depressed mom. Either I'll end up with a brain that gets so fogged by gray, I'll take prescription pills and live a dry-toast life, or I'll spend my life cheating, stealing, lying, and never having a real relationship with anybody—not even my own kids. But to have kids I'll have to have sex someday, and the likelihood of that is even more remote than me finding a long-lost aunt and her taking in a niece she doesn't even know to live with her.

Nicole and Klon watch me. I sigh and say, “Plenty.”

We're all quiet for a while. Klon looks at me through the smoke in the campfire. “You sure? Tourette's?” He repeats the word several times and croaks. “Tourette's.”

I nod.

“Ma would like to know that,” he says.

“I think she would,” I say. “Do you, um, know where she is?”

Klon doesn't answer. “You're my miracle today.” He comes over to me and taps my arm, making a soft croak.

I don't know if the ache in my throat is because I'm feeling sick or because of Klon. I swallow and blink back my tears. I'm definitely getting way too sentimental.

Klon points up at a falling star.

“Meteor shower,” I say. “You know that scientists estimate up to ten thousand tons of material falls to the earth each day. But there's only one documented case of a woman getting bruised from a falling meteorite.” My voice steadies.

“Somebody actually got hit by a falling star?” Nicole asks. “That's fucking cool. Wicked conversation starter. ‘Hey, why do you have a big bandage on your head?' ‘Got hit by a star last night.' ‘Man, I
hate
when that happens.'”

I laugh and wonder if insurance would cover that kind of thing. Maybe in the small print it says “Head injuries caused by meteor showers not covered.” Dad'd get it covered. Honestly, though, I don't think it would feel too great to get hit by a mass of space rock.

“But if stars keep falling like that, will they disappear—
asswipe?” Klon furrows his brow and looks worried.

“That'll never happen, Klon.”

“How do you know?” he asks, and croaks.

“Because…” I pause. I don't know how to answer that scientifically, so I say, “Because stars are magic, and magic never disappears.”

“Will Tourette's?” Klondike asks after a series of tics and tapping.

I shake my head. “I don't think so. But you'd have to see a doctor to be sure.”

Klondike croaks then looks up again. “Another one! Fuckit. Look up!”

“Make a wish,” Nicole says, and I look up just in time to see the light fizzle.

We're all quiet for a while. I wonder what they wish for. Nicole and I scoot close to the fire, but Klondike stays pretty far away. “You need to keep warm,” I say.

“Not by fire,” he says. He's wearing every extra T-shirt and sweater we had packed in our packs, plus my jacket. “No fire,” he whispers. But there's a calm about him that I haven't seen before. He looks almost happy.

We open up the sack lunches Jan packed for us, having saved them for as long as I could. She made us some wraps
filled with an indescribable meatlike substance that makes bologna look gourmet.

“I think it's got to be soy based,” I finally say. “They're probably vegans or something.”

“What's a vegan?” Nicole asks.

“Somebody who doesn't eat any kind of animal product—not even cheese or eggs or honey or anything.”

“That's dumb,” Nicole says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because only people who've never been hungry would be so picky about food,” says Klondike. He's already scarfed down his share. He rubs his side and croaks, blowing on his fingers.

I hand Klon my last bite. “I'm not real hungry, Klon. Have this.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Theme of—asswipes—the day. Fuckit. Goddammit I can't help it. Tourette's. Tourette's. Tourette's,” he whispers.

“Don't sweat it, Klon. We don't,” Nicole says.

Klondike jerks his head and blows on his fingers.

“So what's the theme of the day?” I ask.

“Judgment Day,” Nicole suggests.

“Judgment Day?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

“What will God say to you when you get to Heaven?
If
you get to Heaven?”

I shrug. “I don't believe in God. So nothing, I guess.”

Klon grabs my arm. “You have to believe. You must.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Look up.” The sky looks like it's bursting with light from the stars. “That's why,” he says.

An explanation of the Big Bang feels pretty empty right now.

We're quiet. “What about you?” I say to Nicole.

“What about me what?”

“What will God say to you?”

“Depends if I get there in time, right, Klon?” She laughs. Hollow. But it's not funny.

Klon and I stare at her through the smoke of the fire.

“C'mon, guys. Just kidding.” She throws a twig on the fire, its bark peeling back burning black. “God won't want me anyway. He'd say something like, ‘Why didn't you call? Why didn't you call?'” She pauses. “I wonder if he sounds like James Earl Jones.” She laughs again.

“Call who?” I ask.

“Nine-one-one,” she says. “What other number do you learn in kindergarten? Forget it. It's nothing.”

I feel something tightening around my chest—a dull ache sets in. Klon reaches for Nicole's hand. Nicole shrugs him off and says, “Lighten up, guys. It was supposed to be a joke. God talking, meeting us up in the clouds. You're both stuck with me; Christmases, birthdays, whatever. Speaking of,” she says. “let's change this topic. Klon, what was your favorite birthday present?”

He doesn't speak for a long time, then says, “I never got one.”

“Huh? That's insane! All kids get presents.” Nicole looks real embarrassed. “Oh. Are you a Jehovah?”

He jerks his head to the side and croaks. “Nope. We just don't celebrate what the Bible doesn't celebrate.”

“But when is your birthday?” Nicole asks.

Klon shrugs.

“No idea?” I ask. Nicole and I exchange a glance.

“Nope,” he says. “Maybe today. Maybe yesterday. Maybe tomorrow. I don't know.” He inches a little closer to the campfire.

“You cold?” I ask. Even though Klondike has my coat, he shivers all the time. He needs more clothes. Somehow we have to get him some good sweaters or something.

“Nope,” he says, and croaks, scooting back.

“Hey, Klon? How come you decided to come with us?” It's something I've wondered about.

He twitches and says, “The Devil got married.” He taps his fingers on his temple, then runs them through his hair. “A million-star hotel.” He looks up at the sky. “The world's too pretty not to share,” he says, followed by an avalanche of obscenities.

“See, I don't think demons like to share,” Nicole says. “You've definitely gotta have that Tourette's thing. No demonic possession here.”

Klon beams. I can't believe people would tell a kid he's possessed by demons. That has to be not only the least scientific, most ignorant approach to life but also the meanest thing you can do. All these years Klon's been running away from nothing.

“Who'd you share it with before?” I ask. “Before we came?”

“Different people here and there. Fuckit. Joe. I liked Joe. He was nice. Older than footprints. But the rain was comin' down like a cow pissin' on a flat rock. He fell down and never got back up. Fuckit. Then—tallywhacker, asswipe—they came for him and took him away. I waited until he was gone. He looked lonely….” Klon lets out a
huge croak and a flurry of tics. He taps my arm. “I never want to be dead alone. You'll wait with me?”

Nicole turns on her side and looks at him. “We'd never leave you, Klon.”

A wet leaf in the fire hisses, its crimson edges curling inward until it burns. “What's with you two?” I finally say. “It's like you're both on some freaky mortality thing. We're fine. We're young. Nobody needs to meet God in Heaven or wait with anybody who's dead.” I try to control the tremor in my voice.

“It's just street talk, Jeops. It's always there, you know.”

“What?”

“Death,” Nicole whispers, like saying it aloud will call it over. “It's always there. You just don't feel it as much sitting in front of a flat-screen TV watching your Discovery Channel reruns. It doesn't mean anything, okay? It's just talk.”

We're quiet for a while. The only thing we can hear is the crackle of the fire and Klondike's raspy breathing. I find three sticks and hand one to each Nicole and Klondike. “Let's pretend we're roasting marshmallows. My dad and I used to roast marshmallows out on the barbecue.”

Klondike grins. “I like that. Pretending.” He scoots a
little closer to the fire, caught up in the game. “I had them once. Marshmallows. Like Heaven. Asswipes.”

Nicole smiles at me. We spend the rest of the evening eating pretend s'mores with roasted marshmallows. Klondike's the best at pretending his stick catches fire and he has to stomp out the invisible flames. Then he acts like his marshmallow is gooey, and he pulls on it and lets the sweet sugar fill his mouth. He shivers and croaks. But at least he's closer to the fire.