The Night Visitors(23)
“I only had two cavities,” Oren says as soon as Mattie’s out of the car. “The third was just a ‘spot’ we were going to watch until my next checkup.”
I’m tempted to tell him that eating bear claws is the surest way to turn a spot into a cavity, but I don’t have time to argue. This might be my only chance to call Scott. “I’m sorry about your arm, buddy, but look, I just have to go run a real quick errand while Mattie’s in the Stewart’s.”
He spins around and looks at me suspiciously. “You just told Mattie you didn’t need anything.”
“I need a girl thing I didn’t want to have to tell Mattie about,” I lie. When Oren makes a face I add, “I’m just going to pop into that CVS down the street. I’ll be back in a second. Okay, honey?”
He shrugs and faces the front of the car. “It’s a free country.”
He’s clearly not ready to let me off the hook yet. I don’t have time to win him back right now, though. “Just stay put,” I say, and get out of the car. “And lock the doors,” I add before closing the door.
I hear the clunk of the locks as I jog away from the car—and then they clunk a second and a third time. He’s messing with me, but that’s okay. He’ll forgive me eventually. He has to. And he’ll be happy when he sees Scott. He likes Scott and Scott likes me. He thinks I’m a “good caretaker.” And Scott will be a good role model for Oren. I should have thought of calling him sooner, if only to tell him that we’re okay.
When I get to the CVS I have a moment of panic because there’s no pay phone, but then the cashier tells me there’s a “courtesy phone” back by the pharmacy for people calling their doctors. How civilized, I think, walking down the aisles of mouthwash and brightly colored bottles of cough syrup, maybe living in the country isn’t so bad. Maybe Scott can help us settle in some little town like this. He said once that he wanted to live in the country. I said I’d be bored stiff, but that was because when I got stuck in a foster home in the country it was always worse because we couldn’t go anywhere. But that would be different now: I’d have a car, for one thing, and for another boring doesn’t sound so bad.
The phone is next to the prescription pickup counter, where an old man is asking a million questions about the drugs he’s getting. The pharmacist, an Indian lady, keeps smiling and repeating the same damn thing over and over again. I stand with my back to them so they won’t see my face and punch in Scott’s number, praying that he’ll answer. Scott’s one of those rich kids who’s so used to smartphones that he texts everything instead of calling. I picture the number showing up with an unfamiliar upstate area code. He’ll think it’s some telemarketer . . . and then I hear a muffled voice, almost inaudible over the background sound of traffic, say hello.
“Scott!” I cry. “It’s me. Alice.”
There’s a pause and I’m afraid he’s going to hang up. What has he heard? Have the police questioned him? Then I hear a laugh. “Alice. I figured it was just a matter of time before you called.”
The plastic receiver slips greasily from my fingers. The Indian pharmacist and the old man look up when it clanks against the counter. I jam it back into the cradle and turn around, the drugstore spinning queasily around me, all those brightly colored bottles smearing into a multicolored mess like the time Oren ate too many Skittles and threw up.
I stumble from the store and find my way back to the Stewart’s. Oren must have fallen asleep and slid down in his seat because I can’t see him. I run the last few yards to the car only to find it empty. I spin around in the parking lot searching for Oren’s red jacket, his Star Wars pack, his blue cap, but I see only Mattie coming out of the store carrying a tray of hot drinks and a plastic bag.
“Where’s Oren?” I demand.
Mattie looks at me as if I’ve lost it. “Isn’t he in the car with you?”
I spin around again and the whole parking lot revolves. The world has been turned on its head. Davis is alive and I’ve lost Oren.
Chapter Ten
Mattie
ALICE IS HYSTERICAL. I’ve been worried about her since that scene back at the convent, wondering if it’s really safe to leave her alone with the boy—and what do I do but go and leave her alone with the boy! Has he run off, or has she done something to him while I was in Stewart’s? I’d spent longer than I meant to inside, trying to reassure Atefeh and doing the opposite. She’s scared, now that I’ve brought her to Frank’s attention, that she’ll get deported. I can’t seem to do anything right today.
This is what comes of sticking your nose in other people’s business.
Not now, I practically say out loud, which is just what Alice needs to hear: me talking to myself. She’s already stomped through Stewart’s, looked in the restroom, and cross-examined Atefeh as if she thought she was holding Oren in the broom closet.
“Did you see him come in here?” I ask Alice for the second time.
“No,” she says, her eyes darting back and forth, looking anywhere but at me. “I—I didn’t see where he went. I—I just closed my eyes for a second and fell asleep. When I woke up he wasn’t in the car.”
She’s lying. I can tell by the way her eyes shift up to the left, a tell Doreen taught me about. “Were you fighting?” I ask.