Tell the Wolves I'm Home (43 page)

“Toby?” I said.

“June? It's late. Are you all right?”

I didn't say anything at first. It felt awkward to talk to him after last time. Nothing had changed for him, but for me everything had. I'd become transparent, naked. The girl with the see-through heart. The stupidest girl in the world. A pulse of anger shot through my body.

“You know how we're supposed to be there for each other? If we need anything?”

“Of course. Of course I know. What is it? Are you all right, June?”

“I'm okay. It's not me. It's Greta.”

“Greta? What's happened?”

“I'm scared. I don't know. I'm grounded. I can't get her home. I …” My voice was rising higher and higher, the words rushing out.

“June?” my father called up from the living room.

“It's okay.” I yelled back down, trying to sound calm and happy. “Just singing to myself. It's okay.”

“Shhh. Slowly,” Toby said.

“Okay.” I let out a long breath. “Okay.”

I told him about the parties again, and Greta, and how I'd found her the last two times.

“She was waiting for me there. And she'll be there again tonight. I know she will. She said she wanted to talk. And she had no idea I'd be
grounded or anything. There's lightning out there, and thunder. She was already drunk in the play. She was completely wasted. I could tell. There's more, but there's no time.”

“Why are you grounded? It isn't me, is it?”

“No, no. Later, okay? Just this now.”

“All right, all right.”

“So where is she? Exactly.”

“Remember where you parked when you picked me up at the school that time? That day we went to Playland? Remember how that parking lot wrapped around to the back of the school?”

He did, and from there I described exactly where to cut into the woods. How to follow the river and find the maple where Greta would be. I told him once, and then he asked me to tell it to him all over again, twice.

“You'll need a flashlight, okay?”

Toby didn't say anything for a few seconds. “June?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I'm a bit concerned. I'm probably—I'm bound to frighten Greta, aren't I? She doesn't know me. Your family … well, they hate me. You know that. I don't know …”

“Well, if you don't want to … I mean, you said
anything
, and first you say we can't go to England and now …” It made me feel bad to play on his guilt like that. And I wish I hadn't done it, but I did. It's the truth. I made him feel as guilty as I could.

“All right. Okay, then.”

“If she wakes up, tell her I sent you. Tell her this, specifically, and she'll believe you: Tell her our parents saw the portrait, okay? Tell her I was grounded because of the portrait and I called you to get her. She might not even wake up. In that case, just get her outside our door. Park down the road a little. I'll keep checking the back door. I'll bring her inside. It'll be fine.”

“I'm sorry, I don't know about this, June.”

“Don't worry, Toby. Don't be afraid.”

He didn't say anything. Then he sighed. “Okay. All right. I'll go. For you.”

“You will?” And I realized I was surprised. Maybe I'd been testing him. Maybe I expected him to fail.

“For you. Don't worry. I don't want you to worry. I'll be there soon.”

I hung up, and right away I felt a shiver hit every part of my skin at once. I should have just told my parents. I should have just let Greta get in trouble. I sat there on my parents' bedroom floor, letting what I'd done sink in. Then I grabbed the receiver back up and dialed the number again. My fingers fumbled, and when I finally got the number right it didn't even matter. The phone rang and rang. Toby had already left. I can't say what I would have said if he'd been there. Would I have begged him not to go? I don't know. I don't know my heart that well. All I knew was that Toby's promises were good. He'd dropped everything, just like that, and came when I called.

Downstairs, my parents were laughing at
Saturday Night Live
, and I slipped into the living room. My mother was all cozy in pink sweatpants and a huge oversize sweatshirt. They were on the couch, and her head was leaned up against my dad's shoulder. I sat cross-legged in the recliner.

Dennis Miller was on the show, doing that comedy news thing he did. Both my parents were laughing at some stupid joke about Gary Hart. A commercial came on and I looked over at them.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

My mother glanced over at my father. Then she looked at me for a long time, her lips pressed together tight. Her face hard. Finally, she seemed to lighten a little bit and she nodded her head very slightly. “It's good to hear you say that, June.”

“I mean it. Really. I am sorry.”

My mother patted the spot next to her on the couch, and I slid off the vinyl recliner and snuggled up next to her in a way I hadn't done for years. It felt warm and good.

When the commercials were done,
Saturday Night Live
came back on and there was a sketch with Jon Lovitz about a package-delivery service called Einstein Express, where, because of Einstein's theories
about the space-time continuum, packages could actually arrive before they were sent out. It was a good idea but, like most stuff on that show, the skit wasn't all that funny.

But I didn't care. This day would be over soon, and my mother's shoulder was soft and the couch was soft and Suzanne Vega had come on and she was singing “Luka,” about that sad boy who lived on the second floor, and it was soft and soothing and just right.

The minutes seemed to pass in slow motion that night. My mother's body shook when she laughed, just like Finn's, and my father snored lightly. After
Saturday Night Live
, my parents went up to bed and I went into the kitchen to watch for Toby at the back door. Everything would work out fine. Of course it would. That's what I told myself. I would thank Toby for doing this for me and everything would be back to normal. The rain pounded the kitchen window and I stared into the darkness of our backyard, at the skeletal shadow of the swing set, at the rhododendron bushes whipping around in the storm. I stood there for a long time, staring out, waiting for the shadow of Toby to arrive.

Then the front doorbell rang.

Fifty-Eight

The two policemen stood in the doorway. I knew one was Officer Gellski. He'd been coming to our school once a year since I was in kindergarten, to tell us about stranger danger and the third rail and bike safety. He was older than my parents. The other one was young.

Between the two of them, looking small, was Greta. She stood stiff, staring down at the ground. She was still in her grass skirt, her Bloody Mary costume, and she was soaked. Her hair was plastered with mud and leaves, her face filthy with smeared stage makeup. The rain pounded down behind the three of them, but my father just stood there, one hand on the edge of the door, and stared.

“Greta—what on earth?” he whispered. “Is she okay?”

“May we?” Officer Gellski asked.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Come in.” My father opened the door wider and the three of them stepped into the front hallway. The younger cop looked down at his muddy shoes, then over to my mother.

“Don't worry about it,” she said, shaking her head. “Come into the kitchen. In here.”

The police walked ahead. Greta hung back. My father put his arm around her and guided her into the kitchen. He pulled a chair out for Greta and sat her down. The two policemen made the kitchen seem tiny. Their navy uniforms and their bulky pistols made everything in our house seem flimsy.

“Take a seat,” my mother said to them.

“It's okay. We're fine standing,” Officer Gellski said, forcing a smile. The younger cop held out a plastic bag.

“Your daughter's coat,” he said. “It was soaked.”

She took the bag from him and held it out, away from her body.

“Throw it in the bathtub, please, June,” she said without looking at me.

I'd been standing in the kitchen doorway, and I went over to my mother and took the bag. I walked as close to Greta as I could, nudging her arm as I went past, trying to get her eyes. But she wouldn't look at me. Not even for a second.

“June, move it,” my mother said. “It's dripping all over the floor.”

As I left the room, I heard both my parents frantically questioning the two cops about Greta. All I could think of was Toby. What had happened to Toby? Did this mean he hadn't made it to Greta? Was he lost in the woods? Was he too late? Would he spend all night out there searching for her, trying to keep his promise to me? I ran up the stairs two at a time, then flipped the light on and dumped the coat out of the bag and into the tub.

I barely looked at it at first, eager to get back downstairs, but as my hand reached for the light switch, I turned. The coat wasn't black. Greta's coat was black. I stared at the wet lump in the bathtub for a few seconds, not quite registering what I saw. It wasn't Greta's coat in the tub. Slumped in the bottom of the bathtub like some kind of dead animal was a big gray coat. Finn's coat. Toby's coat. The one he'd worn to the zoo.

I ran down the stairs two at a time.

“Tell us what's going on,” my mother was saying.

I stood in the doorway watching. Trying to catch Greta's eye.

“Well, first of all, we think Greta's just fine,” Officer Gellski said.

“Where did you find her?” she said, wringing her hands together.

“Behind the school, Mrs. Elbus. In the woods. Kids throw parties back there sometimes. We like to keep an eye on it.” He stretched his arms out across the kitchen counter. “It looks like she's had a bit too much to drink. Partying a little too hard, that kind of thing, but we're not too worried about that right now.”

Look at me, Greta. Look at me
. I was thinking at Greta as hard as I could, but still nothing.

“You're not?” my father said.

The young cop kept shifting his weight from left foot to right. He seemed uncomfortable, like he had no real job to do now that he'd handed the coat over.

“No. That's not what's worrying us right now,” Officer Gellski said.

“Well, what is it, then?”

“There was a man, Mr. Elbus.”

My stomach felt like it had turned to stone. Heavy and cold and too much for my body to hold.
Look at me, Greta. Please look at me
.

My father's voice sounded alarmed now, louder, higher pitched. “A man? What kind of man?”

Then Officer Gellski described exactly what they saw. He said he and the young cop were sitting in the cruiser in the school parking lot. Some people who lived on the street had called in, complaining of noise, which, he said, was not unusual for a Saturday night. What was a little bit different was that the neighbor had reported a scream. Not only the usual party noise, but also a girl screaming. So the two of them were sitting in the cruiser with the headlights off, watching, looking for any movement in and out of the woods. Anything to indicate that there was a party.

“We got out of the car, about to walk in a ways, and it started raining. Hard. We looked at each other, thinking that it wasn't worth getting soaked over. The rain was bound to get everyone out of there anyway.”

My thoughts were wild. All over the place.

“We were about to leave. I'd just turned the key in the ignition, just switched on the lights.” Officer Gellski mimed starting the car up. “We were backing out. The car was facing the woods so the lights were shining right into the trees, lighting the whole place up, and that's when he came out.”

“I don't understand,” my father said.

The younger cop stepped forward. “The man in question was coming out of the woods, holding your daughter, Mr. Elbus.” He put his arms out in front of him, like he was holding firewood, demonstrating.

“To tell you the truth, at first we thought he was holding a dog or something. A dead dog.” Gellski held up a hand. “No offense.”

“It was that big coat,” said the young cop.

As Gellski described what had happened, I could see the whole thing in my mind. Toby, like that lanky Ichabod Crane, running through the woods, cold and wet, cradling the bundled-up Greta. Charging along, faster and faster, his good heart pounding. I could see him so clearly, trying to do right by me, by Finn, his eyes squinting as he stumbled out of the woods, shocked by the headlights aimed right at him. Clutching Greta tighter, both of them drenched.

“We put the two of them in the back of the car, cuffed the man. We haven't been able to get a word. From either of them.”

“The man,” my mother said, looking between the cops and Greta. “Greta, who is this man? What are they talking about? The cast party was at the Reeds', wasn't it? I don't …”