One Week (13 page)

It takes him ten minutes to eat four crackers, but by the end of that time he’s looking a little better. His eyes are more focused, and I don’t have to say his name three times in order to get his attention.

After he’s finished, I help him up to walk it off a little bit. He still seems pretty shaky, but we walk slowly up and down the block until he feels a little steadier on his feet.

“You okay?” I ask, letting go of his arm.

He nods. “Yeah. I will be. Sorry about that.”

I stoop down to pick up my loot of cracker boxes. “What the hell happened?”

Jess flushes. “I’m, uh, hypoglycemic, remember?”

“Yeah, that much was clear. I mean, you said you snack all the time to keep this from happening—so what, you forgot?”

Jess reaches out to carry the boxes, but I wave him off, figuring he should have his hands free in case he trips and falls or something. He still looks a little pasty to me.

“Not exactly,” he mutters.

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

He sighs. “Well, I got distracted when we were leaving, so I was already kind of feeling the warning signs at Mandy’s house. I should have snacked when we were there, but…”

I’m completely confused. “But what?”

“But I hate corn nuts,” he mumbles.

I shift my boxes of crackers to one arm and grab his shoulder. “Do you mean to tell me that I just ran up and down Hastings and broke into somebody’s house to steal some freaking crackers because you don’t particularly like corn nuts? Are you insane?”

“I don’t just not like them. I
hate
them,” he says defensively.

I’m so flabbergasted, I don’t even know what to say. I resist the urge to chuck the crackers at his face. “You’re insane.”

“I’m sorry,” he says humbly. “It was really stupid. I figured I had enough time to make it back to the train before I had an episode. I’m really, really sorry. And I appreciate the, you know, B&E and all. That was above and beyond.”

“Yeah it was! I could go to jail because you hate corn nuts!” I yell.

Jess chuckles, and although at this moment I hate him and want him to choke on a Triscuit, I have to laugh too. “It would have been really funny if I got you some Kool-Aid,” I say, gesturing at one of the Kool-Aid Days banners. “Unless, of course, you hate Kool-Aid too.”

“Everybody over the age of nine hates Kool-Aid,” Jess says.

I pull him by the arm and turn him to look at me. “I swear to God, you forget to snack ever again, and I’m leaving you to die by the side of the road.”

“Fair enough,” Jess nods. “Hey, um, speaking of that…what time is it?”

I stop cold. “I don’t know.” I fish my cell phone out of my pocket, and suddenly I feel as sick as Jess. “It’s late.”

“Like how late?” Jess grabs my phone, and peers at it. “The train left fifteen minutes ago!” he yells.

“Yeah. It’s late.”

“We left Mandy’s in plenty of time! How did it take forty minutes to walk seven blocks?”

“I don’t know, Jess!” I yell back. “Maybe because some dumbass collapsed on the side of the road, unable to help himself, and doing nothing but mumble ‘Crackers!’”

Jess reaches out and grabs me by the shoulders. “Bee, you don’t get it! My bag was on that train! And you idiot, you left your bag—the one with all your cash, and your precious credit cards—everything is on that train! It’s
gone!”

I shake him off. “I
know
that!”

“We should never have gotten off that train! You are the most spoiled—”

“
I’m
spoiled?  You went into hypoglycemic
shock
because the snack made available to you wasn’t your very favorite, and I had to save your stupid ass
again
and
you’re fucking ungrateful
again
, so as far as I’m
concerned this is all
your
fault and your problem, so you solve it!” I throw the boxes of crackers, which I have, ridiculously, been carrying all this time, at Jess’s head. He ducks and avoids most of them, but the corner of the Wheat Thins hits him across the temple.

“Ow! Fuck, Bee!” Jess rubs his head and hands me my cell phone. “Ow. Fine. We’ll just, I don’t know. We’ll find a way to catch up with the train at the next stop.” Jess fumbles around and finally reaches into his front pocket and pulls out his wallet.

“You have your wallet?” I ask incredulously. “You had
money
and I broke into somebody’s house for no reason? And why the hell wasn’t it in your back pocket like it’s supposed to be?”

 “Like it’s
supposed
to be?” Jess asks. “It gives me sciatica when I sit on it for too long, so I put it in my front pocket,” he explains. He pulls out a train schedule and flips through it. “All right, we’ve got to get to Lincoln. Which is, I think, a hundred miles away. And we need to get there by 5:00.”

“It’s almost 4:30 now!” I shout, panicked. “That’s not possible.”

“No. It’s not.” Jess covers his face with his hands and laughs disbelievingly. “You are the worst traveler in the world, Bee. Ever. Disaster just seems to follow you. It’s amazing.”

“This one was your fault,” I snap. “What are we going to do?”

Jess shakes his head, still laughing. “I have no idea, babe. I have—let’s see—thirty bucks to my name, and that’s not enough to get us a Batmobile to get us there in time. I’m all tapped out.”

I throw up my hands and turn away. But the truth is, I have no idea either. That is, there’s a really obvious solution, but I don’t want to take it. Okay, there are two really obvious solutions, and neither of them are good.

One, we go back to Mandy’s house and beg asylum for the night, while we rally and figure out the next step. And duct tape Mandy’s mother’s mouth shut for the duration of our stay.

Two, I call my father. You could make the argument that it’s time, and that Hastings, Nebraska, is far enough away from LA to make a statement about my independence and self-reliance.

Yeah, right. Option One it is.

I roll over and see Jess sleeping on the floor next to the bed. Well, he did get the top bunk last night.

In the end, the only way we were able to really convince Sally that I wasn’t the vanished heiress Bette Gold was by continuing the idiotic love vacation story Jess told Tessa. Other than that, we pretty much stuck to the truth, although Jess said he was allergic to corn nuts, not that he hated them. Herbert didn’t seem to quite buy it, but Mandy and Sally and Martha were all delighted to have us. And I did get to hold Jacob.

It wasn’t until Jess and I were shown into one room for the night that I realized the problem with this plan. I guess I figured it being the Midwest and all that Mandy wouldn’t want to encourage that sort of thing, but then again it is a small house and she’s already putting up her mother and Herbert and Martha. So we were pretty lucky to get the tiny attic spare room, considering.

I had sort of forgotten about last night’s humiliation. I mean, not really, because how do you forget that sort of thing, but I was just…distracted, I guess. Jess and I were getting along, and then there was the hypoglycemia drama, and then dinner with Mandy and everybody, and I just didn’t think about it until Mandy closed the door and Jess and I were alone on the other side of it.

He offered right away to sleep on the floor. Of course. I mean, obviously he wouldn’t want to sleep in the bed with me. Not that I’d ever have offered again. We took turns in the bathroom and I took my pants off under the sheets. Jess’s boxers had cows on them.

As I reached over to turn off the light, Jess said, “I had a really fun day. I mean, apart from the near-coma and all. They’ve all been really fun, actually.”

I bit my lip. “Yeah.” They’ve been the most fun I’ve ever had.

But I switched off the light and neither of us said anything else. I thought I would be awake for a long time, but I slept forever and didn’t dream.

I watch Jess sleeping now. There’s a stream of light
pouring in through the small window near the slanted
ceiling, and it’s filled with sparkling dust motes. What will happen when we finally get to New York? However
it is that we get there? Will we ever see each other again? I realize that I can’t imagine not seeing Jess every day. I
can’t even imagine not seeing him every minute of every day.

I know he doesn’t feel the same way about me. I mean, he said as much. And I don’t know when exactly I started feeling this way, I just know that it is the case. And I hope it goes away really soon.

Jess’s eyes blink open and he looks up at me and smiles. “Good morning, sunshine.”

I rest my chin on the edge of the mattress and smile back. I can’t help it. “Good morning back.”

Jess stretches and sits up so that his face is level with mine. “How’d you sleep?”

“Better than you probably,” I say, nodding at the hard attic floor.

Jess brushes something—dust, I guess—from my cheek, and shakes his head. “Oh, it wasn’t so bad.”

I suddenly can’t breathe—and I don’t want to. Everything feels frozen in place, and I want it to stay just like this. Jess leans forward and gives me a soft, gentle kiss. Just a brush of lips, really. He moves his mouth to the place where his fingers had been a moment ago, and across my cheek down to my neck.

And then he pushes back away from the bed and stands up.

“I guess we should figure out our next move,” he says.

I sit up, drawing my knees up to my chest, keeping the
blanket wrapped around me. “I guess so.”

Jess clears his throat and turns around to pull his pants on. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like my stuff back,” he says over his shoulder. “We should probably call Amtrak and see if they can hold our things for us in Chicago, and then we’ll catch the train to New York from there.”

“Okay, but how do we get to Chicago?” I reach for my pants and start pulling them on under the covers. I suppose if I were more like my namesake I’d just saunter out of bed in my underwear—which in that version of myself would be lacy and sexy—but there’s just no way I’m doing that.

Jess pulls his T-shirt over his head. “Well, that part we might have to, uh, improvise.”

We head downstairs to find Martha wide awake and bustling around the kitchen. Mandy is sitting at the kitchen table and Peter, her husband, is holding Jacob in this weird position where the baby is looking at the floor.

“He likes it,” Peter says, shrugging. “Maybe it relieves gas or something.”

“Coffee, anyone?” Martha asks.

“Please,” Jess says gratefully. Mandy looks longingly at the coffee pot but shakes her head no. Martha lays out a huge breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and fresh fruit, and I swear to God, it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. After days of pizza, train food, and McDonald’s, I think I’ve forgotten what real food tastes like.

Martha only sits down after everyone is served, and even then she keeps jumping up to make sure Sally has milk for her tea, that Mandy has enough eggs to keep her protein up, that Herbert has his medication. No wonder the woman had to have a hip replacement. As we are finishing up, Herbert folds his hands and asks us what we plan to do.

“Um, we don’t exactly have a plan yet,” I say, glancing at Jess.

“We’re going to try to get to Chicago and explain who we are, so we can get our wallets and everything back,” Jess explains.

“But how are you going to get all the way to Chicago?” Martha sounds horrified. She looks pleadingly at Herbert, who sighs and reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out two hundred dollars in cash and holds it out to us.

“This should help make getting there a little easier,” he says.

“Herbert, Martha, we really—” Jess starts.

“We really can’t take it,” I interrupt. “You have all done so much for us letting us stay here last night. We don’t want to take advantage of your generosity.”

“But how are you going to manage?” Martha asks. “I’d feel terrible if something happened to you.”

“We’ll manage,” I assure her. Jess sits back in his chair and doesn’t say anything. “We will,” I insist. 

Herbert shrugs and puts his wallet away.

“How are you going to get there?” Mandy asks, taking a bite of her pancakes.

“Well, uh…” I glance at Jess, but he gestures for me to go on. As if I have any idea. “We’ll take a bus,” I say finally. “I know it will take a while, but we’ll get there eventually.”

Mandy nods and pushes her chair back. She kisses Jacob on the head, and waves a hand for me to follow her. “Okay. Come with me, Bee.”  She walks out of the kitchen and I hurry after her, though I have no idea what’s going on.

She leads me into her bedroom and opens her closet.
“Here,” she says, and hands me a pair of sneakers. “My feet grew when I was pregnant, and these will never fit me now. You should take them.” She glances at my wrecked feet pointedly. “You look like you could use them.”

It’s such a small thing, especially after everything Herbert and Martha and Mandy have done for us, but somehow this last bit of kindness makes my eyes water. “Thank you,” I manage.

“Let me get you some socks.” She begins rummaging in her sock drawer, and I look out the window while I wait for my tear ducts to calm down. “You know,” Mandy says over her shoulder. “I think your father is pretty worried.”

My head jerks up, and my heart begins to race.

“I’ve watched him on those shows, and I think he’s just trying to do everything he can to find you. You should at least call him to let him know that you’re okay.”

“I…” My voice squeaks. I start to explain things to her, and then I look away. “I’ll think about it,” I say.

Mandy gives me a level look. “You do that. Here,” she says, and hands me a few pairs of nice thick white socks. “I’ll get you some band-aids too.”

I never get the band-aids, because Sally calls frantically for Mandy to come and see what’s wrong with Jacob (he needs a new diaper) but it doesn’t matter. I clutch my socks and shoes and walk downstairs to find Jess accepting a ride to the bus station from Peter.