The Night Visitors(27)

I lean closer to Fake Scott and shout right into his ramen-stinking beard. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE!!!” He’s so startled he jumps, and I use that moment to push past him and open the door, behind which I find a flight of stairs. I can hear Oren’s voice coming from above. I take the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding. Oren’s voice sounds happy, but I know that he’s able to pretend to be happy when he’s not. I’ve taught him that, after all.

I find Oren sitting cross-legged on the floor with Mattie and another woman. He’s got a toy Yoda in one hand and a Luke in the other. The Luke toy I recognize, but the Yoda’s unfamiliar. He lost his Yoda before Thanksgiving when he left it in his cubby at school and someone took it. He looks really happy, not faking-it happy. And Mattie is glowing. The other woman—a skinny librarian type with dark curly hair—looks a little more reserved. She’s the only one who looks up when I come in.

“You must be Alice,” she says, getting stiffly to her feet. “We talked on the phone last night.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Doreen, right? Thanks for your help and all, but we gotta go.” I hold out my hand for Oren and he looks up at me.

“Look who I found,” he says, holding up the Yoda. “Remember I said he had gone back to Dagobah? He was waiting for me in the swamp all along!”

He’s beaming at me, not mad anymore. It’s like finding his lost toy—or one like it—has made up for everything that happened.

“That’s great, buddy. Let’s pack up your things now. We’ve bothered these nice ladies long enough.” I’m trying to calculate how much time we have. The number from the pharmacy would have shown up on Scott’s phone just now. And even if it didn’t, all Davis would have to do is call back to find out that I’d called from a CVS in Delphi, New York. He could be driving here right now . . . in fact, he sounded like he was already on the road.

I look at Mattie and see her wipe her eyes. What’s gotten into her? Doreen is also giving her a strange look, but then she looks back at me. “No bother at all. It was a treat to take a break from all this boring paperwork”—she waves her hand at a very messy desk—“but I did have time to look up a shelter west of here in Oneonta.”

“How far is that?” I ask. “Can we take a bus there?”

“It’s about an hour more on the same bus you were on. I think there’s one leaving at four thirty.”

“Sister Martine has already made arrangements to have them moved tomorrow,” Mattie says. Her voice is strange—flat somehow—and she keeps her eyes on Oren and that silly green Yoda toy.

“I think we’d better leave before that,” I say. “We’ve taken up enough of your time. Only . . .” I feel sick when I realize what I’ve got to ask. “I—I don’t have the bus fare.”

“We can get you a voucher for the trip,” Doreen says. “Can’t we, Mattie?”

Mattie tears her eyes away from Oren and blinks at Doreen. What’s wrong with her? She looks like she’s high.

Before she can answer, Oren chimes in. “I don’t think the buses are running anymore. On account of the storm.”

“What storm?” I say, but when I look out the window I see what he means. Curdled gray clouds are massing over the mountains to the west.

“We are supposed to get a storm tonight,” Doreen says, putting on a pair of glasses that dangle from a beaded chain around her neck. “A nor’easter. Let me call Trailways.”

She takes out a cell phone and taps at the screen. While she’s doing that Mattie leans toward Oren. “Tell me again how you found Yoda.”

Really? I want to demand. That’s what you want to know while we’re running for our lives? When Davis could be driving up the Thruway right now?

“I told you,” Oren says, his voice edging toward impatience. “I used the Force.”

I roll my eyes. Ever since we watched those movies that’s been Oren’s explanation for everything. How did you get away from those bullies? I used the Force to distract them. How did Davis’s beer bottles all explode in the cooler? I used the Force to break them so he wouldn’t get drunk again.

Mattie seems to be taking him seriously, though. “And how does that feel?” she asks. “When you use the Force?”

Oh, for God’s sake. I go over to the window, where Doreen is listening to her phone. I hear Oren’s answer, though. “Sometimes I just feel like a . . . tingle and things . . . happen. Or sometimes I hear a voice.”

I feel a tingle myself, but it’s only the chill leaking in through the old wooden window casements. It’s gotten colder since this morning. The thought of getting on a bus and heading west into those mountains, under that leaden sky, makes me want to crawl into a hole.

“Did you hear a voice telling you where this Yoda was?” Mattie asks.

My ears prick at the question. Is she asking Oren if he hears voices? Does she think he’s psycho? I look down at the cluttered desk, at the titles of the books stacked there. Mental Health First Aid USA. Choosing to Live: How to Defeat Suicide Through Cognitive Therapy. These women have been trained to detect mental illness. They probably spend all their free time just hoping to make a juicy diagnosis. Does Mattie think that Oren is crazy?