The Impossible Knife of Memory(80)

“Excuse me, sir?” I called. “I took a picture of their license plates. Would that help?”





_*_ 83 _*_

In the end, they reviewed all the paperwork for Dad’s guns and to my amazement, they were all legal. Dude even complimented him for securing them properly. In the end, they looked through all the photos on my phone and sent themselves the one with the motorcycle license plates. Brown Eyes put the plate numbers in his computer and found something that he talked to his partner about.

In the end, they called an ambulance because Dad was so dehydrated. They put an IV in his arm, strapped him on a gurney, and loaded the gurney in the ambulance. Daddy asked Trish to follow the ambulance in her car. He made her promise not to bring me.

In the end, I was alone in a house that had holes in the walls and bloodstained carpet. I choked on the words stacked up floor to ceiling, all of them charred black, held over the fire too long, so many words that I could barely breathe.

I made a cup of tea, but when I poured the milk, it came out in sour clumps. We were out of bread and bananas. I ate a spoonful of peanut butter, then I mixed the rest of the jam into the peanut butter jar and ate it until my stomach hurt. I walked the house from one end to the other, back and forth, Spock following close behind me. It felt like the building grew smaller with every step, or maybe I was growing bigger, Hayley in Wonderland, maybe I’d shoot up twenty feet and my head would bust through the roof and my arms would stick out the windows.

Spock got tired of following me and lay down on the carpet in the same spot where Dad collapsed the day he found out that Roy was dead. I stretched out next to Spock and let him lick my face before he fell asleep. The carpet was itchy so I crawled into bed, but couldn’t get comfortable.

He was alive. I’d been afraid of a day like this forever, but he was alive. At a hospital, getting help. This was a good thing, right? It was all that mattered.

Except.

What now?

I closed my eyes, pretended I was twenty thousand feet in the air, high enough to be able to see where we came from and where we were headed. Borders didn’t come painted with lines, but it felt like we’d crossed one. This was a new place with no signs or landmarks. In a land with a million questions, I only had one answer.

In the end, I stole Daddy’s pickup truck.





_*_ 84 _*_

By the time I got to school, found the only set of doors that were still unlocked, and made it to the swimming pool, the boys’ practice was ending. The swimmers each put their hands on the deck at the edge of the pool and vaulted out of the water like seals. Finn was in a bathing suit, too, but he was dry, walking around the pool collecting kickboards as the team filed into the locker room teasing one another loudly, shoving until the coach blew a sharp note on his whistle.

“Can I help you?” the coach asked me.

“Um,” I started. “I’m waiting for him. The guard.” “Ramos!” shouted the coach, before he, too, went into the locker room.

Finn lifted his head and finally saw me. I wanted to bolt for the door, but was afraid I’d slip on the wet concrete and land on my face. He set the stack of kickboards by the door to the office, took off his glasses, put them on top of the stack, and walked over to me.

“Do you always break the rules?” he asked, squinting a little.

“What?”

He pointed to the sign that read no shoes in pool area.

“Oh, sorry.” I kicked off my left sneaker, peeled off my sock, and stuffed it in the toe. I stood on my left foot to take off my right sneaker, but slipped and would have crashed in an undignified heap if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed my arm.

“Thanks.” I kept my gaze down as I finished removing the sneaker and sock.

I’d driven to the school with the windows rolled down even though it had dipped below freezing outside. The cold wind numbed me from all the nightmares that popped up every time I replayed the image of Dad in the back of the ambulance. But here, instantly, I was sweating.

I unzipped my jacket. “They always keep this place so hot?”

“When the principal isn’t paying attention,” he replied.

The team was still hooting and hollering in the locker room. Showers were running, too. The loudspeaker crackled with static as an announcement was made, but I could not understand what the voice said.

“You need a ride or something?” Finn asked. “Wait, were you even in school today? I didn’t see you.”

“I have Dad’s pickup.”

“Hayley, you don’t have your license yet.”

“Oops.”

He looked ready to make a smart-ass comment, but instead he twisted sideways and dove into the water. He swam all the way to the far end, turned around—still underwater—and surfaced, his arms moving like paddle wheels as he swam butterfly back to me, creating a wave that sloshed over the pool’s edge and soaked the bottom of my jeans.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He bobbed under the water briefly, arching his head back so that when he came up, his hair was slicked back. “What are you doing?” he echoed.

The speech I’d memorized in the pickup melted into the chlorine-scented fog. “Um, how’s it going?” I asked. “I mean, how’s your sister and mom? And everything.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he pointed out.