Hit and Run (14 page)

I don't know what I thought would happen, but I thought something would. I sat in history class, trying to ignore my pounding head and the queasy feeling in my stomach. I kept checking Riel's expression, sure I'd see some hint in the way he looked at me, or that he'd call me over after class to give me some big news. But I didn't see anything, and he didn't call me over. At the end of class I started up to his desk to ask him what was going on, but Vin grabbed me before I got halfway there.

“Party tonight?” he said.

I turned to him automatically, then swung around to find Riel. He was gone.

“Huh?” I said.

“Party tonight?”

“Aren't you grounded, Vin?” The way he had told
it, he'd be lucky to get out of the house again before he turned twenty-one.

“What's grounded mean when your parents aren't around to enforce it?” he said. “That's like getting spanked by a guy with no hands. My cousin Frank is having some people over. Melinda's going to be there.” He must have read the lack of recognition in my eyes. “That girl I was telling you about. Jeez, do you ever listen to me? Come on. You've got to meet her. Maybe she has a friend.”

I shrugged. Why not? I had nothing better planned. The way things were going, I had nothing planned for the rest of my life.

I almost backed out at the last minute. My headache faded, but my stomach started to feel jumpy.

“It's stress,” Vin said, like all of a sudden he had a medical degree. “You've got to meet this girl. You've just got to.”

So I went to the party with Vin. Sal wanted to come, but he was grounded, too, and his dad was home to enforce the punishment. Melinda was there, and Vin was right about her being gorgeous. As for having feelings for Vin, though, well, if you count the way a girl feels when she rolls her eyes every time a guy asks her to dance, then, yeah, I guess she had feelings. Which almost made me laugh, because if you looked at it in the right light, Jen had feelings for me too.

Melinda's friends were all there with guys, which left Vin and me pretty much out in the cold—not that this prevented Vin from trying to catch her attention. I hung
around the food table, eating chips and dip, drinking Coke, trying to look like I was into the music and didn't care that no one was paying attention to me. Then, like a volcano erupting, it happened. I tried to get to the bathroom, but I didn't make it.

“Eeew!” said one girl. Melinda, I think.

“Jeez,” Vin said. “I've never seen anyone puke up that much stuff.”

Vin's cousin Frank got mad.

I felt dizzy. I threw up again. Then, I'm not sure how, Billy showed up with Dan and Lew. Billy shoveled me into the back seat of his Toyota. We'd only gone a few miles when I felt like more stuff was about to come up. Billy hit the brakes and hauled me out headfirst onto the side of the road.

“You're gonna puke, fine,” a voice said. Billy sounded ticked off. “But you're not gonna puke in my car, Mikey. No way.”

Someone laughed, but I didn't have time to see whether it was Dan or Lew. I was too busy throwing up.

“You done?” Billy said after a few minutes. His nose wrinkled in disgust, but his hands were gentle as he guided me back to the car. “There's some mouthwash in the glove compartment,” he said to Dan. Billy was always interested in being fresh for a girl. “Hand it to me, will you?”

Dan handed out the bottle. Billy unscrewed the cap and shoved it at me. “Rinse and spit,” he said. “You'll feel better.”

I did. Then he opened the car door and helped me get back in.

“You got a lot to learn, Mikey,” Dan said. “When he was your age, Billy could do a twelve-pack, no problem.”

“I wasn't drinking,” I said. I don't even like the taste of beer. “I don't feel so good.”

“Mike's a good kid,” Billy said. “The white sheep of the family.” Usually when he said that, he was teasing me. But he didn't sound like he was teasing tonight. Tonight he sounded more like he was defending me.

“If you don't count robbing a bakery truck,” Dan said with a shrug. “Or that bike thing.”

He laughed, then he and Billy got in the front. I got in the back again with Lew.

The car lurched forward. So did my stomach. I had to fight to keep from spewing again.

“You feel like you're gonna be sick again, you let me know, right, Mikey?”

“I want to go home.”

“Not gonna happen, Mike. Not yet, anyway. I got plans of my own. You just close your eyes and try to sleep. You just got a little bug, but you're gonna be fine.”

When I closed my eyes, my head started to throb. Then the car started to spin. Finally the whole world was revolving around me, like I was the sun and the universe was wheeling out of control. I scrabbled for the window, got it down, and hung my head out.

“Jeez,” Billy groaned, slowing the car to a stop again. “Mikey, you're barfing all over the side of my vehicle.”

“Could be worse,” Dan said. “He could be ruining a decent paint job instead of that home-done patch job of yours.”

“Courtesy of the Rembrandt of automobiles, I suppose,” Billy said.

“Quality workmanship,” Dan said, “even if I do say so myself.”

“And you do,” Lew said. “All the time.”

I must have fallen asleep, like Billy said I would, because the next thing I remembered was waking up in the backseat with sun streaming in through the streaky window. Someone had thrown a blanket over me. I was the only person in the car, which was parked in an alley somewhere I didn't recognize. I sat up slowly. My head didn't ache anymore, but my stomach still felt rocky. My tongue felt like a big wet sock, but the inside of my mouth was as dry as old paint. I would have traded Billy's car for a bottle of water.

I sat up for a few moments, and when that didn't make me feel any worse, I edged the car door open and slid out. Where was I, anyway?

The alley ran for a couple of blocks in either direction. The buildings that backed onto it were all low-rises, none of them more than three or four stories high. I didn't recognize any of them, not from the back, anyway. And I had no idea where Billy was. So I did
the only thing I could think of—I circled around to the driver's door, opened it, leaned in, and honked the horn a couple of times.

Nothing.

I tried again. This time I heard someone swear. A door opened, and Billy's head poked out. He was fully dressed, but I knew from the look on his face and the way his hair was sticking out in a hundred different directions that I had just woken him.

“I want to go home,” I said.

“So, jeez, go then. You don't have to wake up the whole neighborhood.”

“I don't have any money, Billy. I don't know where we are. And I don't feel good.”

“You can be such a pain,” he said. Then, there it was, that crazy old Billy smile. He pressed a palm against my forehead. For a flash, he reminded me of Mom. “You're not hot,” he said. “I guess that's good.” He glanced back at the door he had just come out of and sighed. “I was out here maybe five or six times last night,” he said, “checking on you. I wanted to bring you inside, but Dan didn't want you barfing and ruining the party.”

“Where are we, anyway?”

“Dan and Lew's place.” When I looked lost, he added, “Their
new
place. They moved in a few months ago.”

As I got into the car, I peered at the building. “What is it, a house?”

“It's a garage, Einstein,” Billy said. “A garage with an apartment on top. Dan owns the garage—does wicked
paint jobs on his own now. He and Lew live in the apartment. What a setup. Someday I'm going to have a place like that.”

Billy drove me home. After he let me out, he sat in the car for a minute. Then he swore under his breath, got out, and slammed the door.

“I'm too tired to drive all the way back there.” He punched me, but not hard. “Next time you don't feel so good, don't go out, okay, Mike? I got things to do. I can't be picking you up from parties all the time.”

All the time.
Like he had ever picked me up from a party before.

I followed him into the house. He went straight upstairs. I heard two thumps—his boots hitting the floor—then a thud—his body hitting the mattress. I went into the kitchen and fumbled in the little corner cabinet where Mom used to keep her spices. Most of them were gone now or dried out and tasteless. Up on the top shelf was a plastic bottle of acetaminophen. I shook out a couple of tablets and swallowed them down with a couple of tumblers of water. Then I went into the living room and sprawled on the couch.

By noon my headache was gone and my stomach no longer felt like it would explode any minute. I lay on the couch, still feeling a little queasy, when suddenly my brain clicked into gear. Riel had promised to look into things. He had said he would talk to some of his friends. Did that mean someone was going to talk to Mrs. Jhun? Had they talked to her already? I showered, changed my
clothes, drank another glass of water, and headed over to her house.

She was sitting on her porch, a sweater over her shoulders, a teacup in her hand. She didn't look at me, even when I was climbing the steps right in front of her.

“Mrs. Jhun?”

She stared straight ahead.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Jhun?”

She turned and studied me a moment, and I got the feeling that she wasn't wondering
who
I was so much as
what
I was.

“Michael,” she said at last. “Please, come and sit down.”

I pulled up a chair beside her.

“Are you sure you're okay, Mrs. Jhun?”

“What can I do for you, Michael?”

“I was wondering if the police had been here to speak to you.”

“The police? Why would the police want to speak to me?”

That answered that question. They hadn't visited her yet, which meant that either Riel hadn't got around to talking to his friends, or his friends hadn't got around to talking to Mrs. Jhun.

“It's about the night Mom died. You saw her that night, remember? You told me about it.”

Mrs. Jhun nodded.

“She came to say good-bye.” A lopsided smile sat on her lips. Her eyes seemed to be focused on something far in the distance. I wondered if she was seeing something I wasn't, or if she was just remembering.

“You were leaving the restaurant for the last time,” I said, “and Mom came by and you spoke to her, right?”

She nodded again. Slowly up, slowly down, as if her head weighed a hundred pounds. I realized I wasn't the only one who didn't feel well.

“Do you remember anything else about that night?” I asked. “Did you see anyone on the street? Did you see Mom talk to anyone or notice anyone following her?”

“She bought a comic book for you,” she said. “She showed it to me.”

“That's right!” Great, she remembered. She remembered details from that night. “What else, Mrs. Jhun? What else do you remember?”