History of Wolves(30)
Patra was still smiling intensely. “I mean, we’ll be okay with both Leo and me around, for now. But thank you, Linda.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll definitely call.”
“Great.” There had never been any way for her to call me.
Mosquitoes were all over Patra now, flickering at her hands and neck. She was waving at her ears. I stood still and let them get me if they wanted. I could feel a dozen or more probing the hair on my arms, and as they did I felt some measure of relief. It felt right, now, to give in to the mosquito feast, to do nothing to avoid them. “Tell Paul I say hi!” I said, pointing my cheerfulness straight at Patra. Aiming precisely. “Tell him I hope he’s feeling better!”
Did a look of panic catch on her smile? Maybe I’m only remembering it that way now.
“Of course! Sure! He says hi, too!”
But when I turned to leave, Patra stopped me. She took a few clumsy steps forward, nearly tripping on her bootlaces. “Hey, Linda”—she touched my elbow—”there’s something else.”
I waited for her to say what it was. She was very close to me now, chewing her lip, sweating a little. “It’s Drake.” She brushed a mosquito from her eye, waved another from my neck. “Have you seen him?”
I thought of the white cat as I’d seen him last, Friday afternoon, meowing like an alarm clock at the sliding door.
“No,” I said.
9
LESS THAN A WEEK LATER SCHOOL LET OUT. There were four long days of war movies to watch first—Glory, Doctor Zhivago, M*A*S*H—while teachers hunched in the dark back of the class and calculated grades. Lily’s desk still sat empty. All the unclaimed items in the lost and found were confiscated by the student council for charity. All the goose shit was cleared off the football field for graduation ceremony, the bulletin boards in the halls stripped down to exposed pushpins, to itty-bitty holes in the cork. The last day of school began with someone pulling the fire alarm during homeroom, so we went out to the parking lot—and stood for ten minutes on the puddly concrete—then shambled back inside again. When the final bell rang that afternoon, the seniors flung their notebooks out the open windows one story up. We could hear them pushing back their chairs, thudding around. Everyone rushed from Life Science to join them, the freshman hockey players and the Karens, but I stayed put at my desk and watched all that paper come down outside. It fell surprisingly slowly, catching drafts. You could see exams and tests and notes and graphs. You could see years of education sailing down, whirling over parked cars and across Main, landing in gutters and papering fences.
When I stood up, there was just Ms. Lundgren left rewinding Project X on the VCR. “Have a good summer,” she said, crouching in front of the TV console.
“Summer doesn’t technically start for another two weeks,” I told her.
“True,” she acknowledged, glancing up. “Have a good spring, then.”
The days gaped open after that. No school, no job, daylight going on and on like it would never quit. I cleaned two perfect northern pike and did the north-forty wood the first day, then I dithered about in the boat for a few more, catching crappie near the beaver dam. I filled the net without trying, sorted all the tackle one morning, took a comb to the dogs and teased out the mats left over from their winter coats. One afternoon I walked the five miles into town and bought toothpaste and toilet paper from the drugstore. My mom gave me a rubberbanded roll of ones for this purpose, and afterward I went to the bank, where I filled out a pink slip at the counter and withdrew two twenty-dollar bills. The woman at the counter asked if that was how I wanted it, and I said yes. At the market, I splurged on a bag of hard green pears for my mom (“Argentina,” the label said) and a jar of Skippy for my dad. Then I went into Bob’s Bait and Tackle, lifting glittering lures from his bins, unhooking them from my sleeves, leaving with nothing. I paused outside in the sun. After a long moment, I pushed open the door of the diner, where I bought a pack of grape Bubble Yum from Santa Anna before I could ask to bum a cigarette. I stuffed gum into my mouth as I started home, chewing until my jaw hurt.
Twilight and more twilight. By then the stars were already doing their summer bit, the Summer Triangle sliding north, as well as Scorpius, with its splay of pincers and curled hook. After dinner I sometimes took the canoe out and lingered until dark—especially on overcast nights, especially after nine, when twilight finally halved, and then halved again, sliding the sky through epochs of orange, then epochs of blue and purple. Then epochs of violet. The days just never seemed to get done. I huddled low in the boat and listened to the water tut at the hull. Sometimes, at last, a lamp would go on inside the Gardner house. I’d see Patra through the window at the counter, Leo with his arm around her, and not much more. With Leo home, Patra went to bed earlier. With Leo home, Paul didn’t spend time anymore on the deck or the dock, though the water had warmed up enough to go swimming.
I tested it out one evening after the Gardners’ lights went dark. I wadded up my T-shirt and jeans and underpants in the boat, then slipped into the water so fast it was like being gulped. Stirred-up rotten algae from the bottom of the lake congealed around my left leg. I kicked away from the canoe and floated, dismally, on my back, my tiny hard nipples pointing up at Scorpius. Scorpius pointed back at me. I was bright white from six months of winter: my chin and nipples and kneecaps all floated atop the water. After a moment, the moon slunk out from under a cloud, sprouted a tail of light across the lake. It wouldn’t have been hard to look out any window in the house and see me. I was right there to be seen.