The Vow (17 page)

I lean over, rest my chin on my palm, and stare at the grout between two tiles. Grout is way less likely to make me cry than Annie’s eyes all full of sympathy and worry. “I didn’t think it was going to be this hard. Saying good-bye, I mean. But I can take care of myself.”

“I know.”

“Not that you’d believe me based on the state of this place an hour ago, but I’ll do better.”

“I believe you. But I need you to be
okay
okay. Like not too depressed to shower or eat or talk to humans.”

“Annie.”

“Mo.”

“My family just left.
Left.
They did it. It’s over. My childhood, everything, I’m—” I stop myself just short of saying what I really mean:
I’m completely alone.
It’s too pitiful. “I’ll be okay.”

“You’ve got me.”

I run both hands through my hair. It’s still wet and I feel the water drip down into the collar of my shirt. “I know. But my sister had to leave, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what I’ve done to deserve to be sitting here, while she’s somewhere learning how to wrap up her head so nobody sees hair.”

“So don’t waste it.”

I look up from the grout into Annie’s eyes. Sometimes she says the most brilliant things. “Okay.”

She pulls out her cell, to check the time I assume—of course, the prison guards will be waiting for her—but then she puts it up to her ear and turns to face the cabinets, as if this prevents me from hearing her conversation.

“Hi . . . Yeah, I know, but I’m going to be late . . . With Mo . . . Can’t you just tell Dad I can’t make it? . . . Because . . . Mom . . . his family left two days ago. . . . Maybe. . . . I’ll ask him. . . . I’ll call you back.”

She hangs up. “Do you want to come over to my house for dinner?”

I pretend to think about it for a couple of seconds. She pretends to believe that I’m thinking about it. And then I shake my head no.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to dinner at the Berniers’, but I’m pretty sure it hasn’t changed. Good food, bad feel. Bloodless and brittle. Lena must’ve been the heart that pumped life into those people, the walls, the air. I don’t understand where Annie fits into all of it or how she even survives, but it’s dry and colorless and fragile, and I’d rather eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch on my couch and have another staring contest with Satan’s Cat.

She nods, understands. She takes out her phone, dials her mom again, and turns back to the cabinets. “Hi . . . No, he’s got a lot to do here. Actually, I’m going to stay and help him. . . . I know. . . . I don’t care. . . . Yes, I am. . . . Tell him I’ll be back by midnight. . . . I’m eighteen. . . . Just because. . . .”

I get up and walk back into the living room. Satan’s Cat is perched on a single box in the corner, the one I wouldn’t let Annie unpack. Back when the cat was Duchess, Sarina played games with her every evening, hid her catnip toys, actually stroked her fur.

I wonder what Sarina’s doing now. I’m assuming Jordan has a plethora of nasty cats to love, but I can’t imagine she’s adopted one already. She’s probably lying in bed clutching a stuffed animal, worrying about whether or not I’ve remembered to read Duchess a bedtime story. I check my inbox to see if she’s responded to the email I sent yesterday. Nothing.

“TV?” Annie asks, flopping down on the couch.

“Sure. Don’t get in trouble over me, though. I’m okay if you have to go.”

She purses her lips and examines the remote. “I know. I’m exerting a little independence. You know, being my own woman and all that crap.”

“But they just bought you a brand-new car. Maybe you shouldn’t piss them off.”

Satan’s Cat hops off the box and onto Annie’s lap. “If I was going that route, I’d have told them I got married last week.”

“Good point,” I say, and sit down beside her. “But I don’t want them hating me any more than they already do, on the off chance they do find out and your dad is deciding whether to kill me or only cut my testicles off.”

“Do you want me here?” she asks.

“Of course.”

“Then shut up.”

“Okay.”

We watch a double episode of
COPS
, then stop to make dinner, which consists of grilled cheese sandwiches—possibly the best I’ve ever tasted—and a pear she finds in her purse. We split it bite for bite, and it’s the first fruit or vegetable (excluding Crunch Berries) I’ve had in days, so it tastes pretty incredible. Next up, a reality show about an animal stuffer with a shop called
Xtreme Taxidermy
, which completely captivates Satan’s Cat, which reaffirms that my name choice for her was a good one. And the last show I remember is
Access Hollywood
, but I fall asleep in the opening sequence, vaguely aware that I’ve got my feet on Annie’s lap and that I’m not miserable for the first time in days.

* * *

W
hen I wake up at seven the next morning, Annie’s gone. But the cat is asleep on the couch directly above my head, either keeping sentinel or plotting to smother me. Either way she fell asleep and failed to accomplish her goal.

The note on the coffee table says:
Pick you up at 8:00.

I check the clock. 7:15.

In the next forty-five minutes I take my second Wisper Pines shower, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, iron a dress shirt in case I’m supposed to look presentable, and lose another staring contest to Satan’s Cat before I decide to go wait outside.

Outside is weird. I haven’t been outside in days. The sun feels slightly abrasive, to the point of making my skin itch, and I’m hearing an uncomfortable number of sounds. Not particularly loud, but too many little ones: birds, cars, wind, bicycles and their bells, leashed animals, chatty walkers—it seems excessive. I’m turning to go back inside when Annie rolls up. The glossy new car surprises me. I wonder if in my mind she’ll always be driving the old truck.

“I forgot how in-your-face this thing is,” I say, climbing into the passenger seat.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That it looks like an obsidian chariot from outer space.”

“I see you’re feeling more like yourself,” she says. “That’s probably a good thing. Would you rather take your car?”

I scan the parking lot for my dad’s Camry. I haven’t exactly driven it around yet. I think it would make me miss him. “No, I just miss the good old days in the truck.”

“Sure. The truck with no AC and a broken door that you couldn’t stop complaining about. Of course you do. How’s Wisper Pines this morning?”

“Aside from the unconscionable bastardization of the English language I have to be reminded of every time I see Wisper without an
h
, it’s fine.”

“So yes, feeling more like yourself. Do I need to tell you to chill out, or are you going to get there on your own?”

“I’m good.” I put the address my dad gave me into the navigation system and inspect the map it produces. “I don’t trust this map.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You just don’t trust the car,” she says. “The navigation system hasn’t been wrong yet.”

“Is this the first time you’ve used it?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome. Let’s drive.”

* * *

T
he navigation system, not surprisingly, is as fan-freaking-tastic as the rest of the car. It practically drives us there, and by there I mean to a squat, turd-colored apartment building three blocks from the University of Louisville Law School.

Annie and I sit, neither of us speaking, neither of us moving to get out.

“What are you thinking?” she asks finally.

“I’m thinking I hate that question. And I’m thinking it’s stupid that my dad set this thing up when I obviously need a real attorney. I feel like one of those newborns abandoned on the fire station porch by a fourteen-year-old after being given birth to in a bathroom stall at a school dance.”

“Lovely. Let’s go.”

Annie opens her door first. I follow her.

Inside is less than impressive—not a dorm but dusted with that same institutional aura. “I feel like I should be wearing an orange jumpsuit,” I mumble.

“Did you say third floor?”

“Yeah. Do you suppose the inmates here go by their names or numbers?”

“I’m ignoring you.”

“Okay.”

The third floor smells like beer and cotton candy, probably because there’s a girl sitting on the floor outside the elevator consuming both. Her lips are bright blue and silently mouthing the words as she reads the mammoth textbook in her lap.

“This is the face of higher education in the United States of America?” I whisper to Annie as we move past her.

“Keep moving.”

We find the apartment halfway down the hall, and Annie knocks before I can vocalize one of the many reasons not to.

“Come in,” a male voice calls.

Annie opens the door, and the beer-and-cotton-candy smell is instantly gone, replaced by a moldy-carpet-infused-with-sulfur aroma. A curly-haired guy eating egg salad out of Tupperware is sitting on a couch, staring at his watch.

“Hold on,” he whispers, putting up a hand. We hold on. Apparently Sam Cane is still learning to tell time. I look at Annie, but she refuses to look back at me. “I’m timing something,” he says, still whispering.

Timing something. Like the amount of time it takes egg salad to turn? And why the whispering?

“Done,” calls a female voice from another room.

“Liar,”
he shouts, and slams the container of egg salad down on the counter. The plastic fork bounces out and onto the floor.

“How long?” asks the same bubbly voice, and then a girl appears. Or not a girl. A woman, probably midtwenties, wearing about a pound of makeup. Or maybe the pound of makeup is wearing her. She looks a little like Annie—a fuller, older, color-enriched version. The hair is darker blond and a bit red. The eyes are a couple shades darker blue. “How long?” she repeats. She has a folded newspaper in one hand, a pencil in the other hand, and a crazy-competitive smile gripping her face.

Curly-top rolls his eyes and mutters, “A minute thirty-three.”

“Ha!” She whacks him on the arm with the newspaper.

“Here, let me check it. I don’t even think I believe you.” He squints at a little corner of the newspaper, while she turns back to us and grins and shakes her head like we’re old friends.

“Excuse him. He’s a sore loser.”

“I’m not a sore loser.”

“You are, but it’s okay. I might be a sore loser too if I just lost the Jumble for the ninth time in a row. It is nine now, isn’t it?”

He’s still squinting at her answers, ignoring her.

“But seriously,” she says, “not everybody can be good at the Jumble. You’ve got other talents.”

I grip the scrap of paper in my hand a little tighter, wishing I could make it disappear or just not have printed on it the name of this dufus who has lost the Jumble to Miss America here nine times in a row.

He looks at me with sleepy eyes.

“No,” I mumble, “I think we’re in the right place. We’re looking for a Mr. Cane.”

“Then you are in the right place,” the woman says.

“Super.”

“That would be me.”

I wait for the punch line.

She gives me a pageant smile. Apparently there is no punch line.

I shove the paper into my pocket. “Mr. Sam M. Cane?”

“Yeah,” she says, and holds out a hand to shake. “Everything but the mister. You must be Mohammed.”

“Mo.” I shake her hand, feeling strangely disoriented. I’ve had entirely too many carbs and not nearly enough protein in the last couple of days. “You’re Sam?”

“Yeah. Samantha takes too long to write. And you must be Annabelle?”

Annie just nods, so I say, “It’s Annie.”

“Cool,” Sam says.

Cool?

“You two want to sit?”

Annie pushes me toward the couch. Curly-top gets up, mumbling something about having to go to work, and shoves the folded newspaper in the trash on his way out.

“Sorry about him,” Sam says. “He has a delicate ego, but he does most of the cleaning around here so I put up with him.”

Annie and I sink into the couch, while I consider whether Sam and the sore loser are a couple or just roommates. She certainly outranks him in the looks department, but maybe he has one of those lame talents chicks fall for, like writing depressing poetry or playing the guitar.

Sam takes the chair on the other side of the beat-up coffee table, sitting with her feet pulled up, arms wrapped around her knees. Maybe professional decorum is something you get when you graduate from law school. Or maybe she’ll sit like that in court someday. “So I’m told you guys need some help,” she adds.

“Uh, yeah.” We do need help. That government website my Dad directed me to nearly made my head explode, but I’m pretty sure Law School Barbie is not going to be the one to clarify things for me. “We just got married and now I need to apply to become a permanent resident. I think I need a work visa too.”

“Before we start, I should tell you I don’t really know anything about immigration law,” she says.

I fight the colossal urge to roll my eyes and yell,
Then why are we here?

“But it’s easy enough to figure out which forms you need,” she adds. “I went on the CIS website last night and—”

“Yeah, I’ve looked at that,” I interrupt. “No offense, but I think we might need to get a real attorney.”

Annie pinches my arm.

“
Ow.
What? I said no offense.”

“None taken,” Sam says. “You can definitely get an immigration attorney to file your applications for you if you don’t mind spending the money, but you don’t really need one. Not for this situation. I mean, the information is confusing, so it helps to have someone show you which forms you need and how to fill them out, but I can do that.”

“Thank you,” Annie says. “That’s exactly what we need.”

“I mean, technically I’m not supposed to be practicing law before I’m admitted to the bar.” Sam stops and waves her hand in the air, like the detail is a hovering mosquito. “But this isn’t really practicing law. It’s more like giving you friendly suggestions.”

“Sure,” Annie says.

“Seriously?” I ask, but nobody’s listening to me. Annie’s gazing at Sam like she wants to ask to be adopted.