The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(27)

“Nothing.”

“Okay, then why are you asking about my day like some 1950s housewife?”

“I need your advice about something before Mom gets out of the shower.”

He held the door open and waved me inside. “That’ll be in thirty seconds, so you’d better talk fast.”

I strolled into the room as he closed the door behind us. Huh. Laundry Lair was … surprisingly clean. His single bed was pushed up against a wall, and it was unmade, sure. But normally the floor was covered with clothes (which was ironic, since the washing machine and dryer were literally four steps away from his bed), and his curtained-off clothes rack was filled with empty hangers. Today, however, everything was put away, and the stuffed chair in the corner wasn’t piled with books and video-game cases. I curled up on it while he changed shirts.

“What happened to the brimstone wall?” That’s what we called the painted cinderblock above the laundry-folding ledge, where a thousand metal slash punk slash indie band and bar stickers formed a giant collage of fiery, hellish logos. At least, they’d been there a few days earlier. Not anymore.

“I gave it a funeral. Mom was right. Everything was peeling, and all the sticker residue was covered in dust. It was sort of disgusting.”

“O-kay. Since when did you start caring about being neat?” Because he was the messiest guy I knew.

“Are you here to give me a hard time? Because I thought you wanted my advice.”

I sighed. “So, let’s just say I met this guy on the Owl bus one night when I was coming home from the hospital, and we hit it off, but I found out he was on his way to commit a crime.”

“He sounds like a winner.”

“Hush, it was a really minor crime.”

“Minor like scoring an ounce of weed, or minor like illegal parking?”

“Somewhere in between?”

Heath pulled a T-shirt over his head and stared at me, mouth open. “Stealing a car?”

“What?” I practically choked. “That’s ten times worse than buying drugs.”

Heath snickered. “Okay, what, then? He was robbing a gas station, but it was because his grandmother needed the money for surgery? Or was it just something stupid, like egging someone’s house?” When I didn’t answer right away, his eyes widened. “Hold on. Not egging, but something like it? TPing? Oh, shit! No way. Are you kidding? The thing at the museum?”

The blood drained from my face.

“Holy freaking…” he murmured. “It really was for you?”

“Heath—”

He pointed an accusing finger. “That text you sent of the blurry driver’s license—that’s him? You’re seeing the Golden Apple street artist guy?”

“That’s insane,” I said weakly. “It was the egging thing.”

“You are the worst liar in the world.”

“Oh, crap,” I whispered, covering my face with my hands. “You have to promise me not to tell Mom. Swear on your life, Heath.”

“I swear. Jeez, Bex. When you do something, you really go for it. One minute you’re holed up in your room being all existential and throwing out your paints, all ‘I’m done with color,’ and the next you’re running wild with notorious street artists.”

I glared at him over my bent knees. “Do you want to hear, or are you just going to guess the entire story?”

“Fine, go on and tell me your revolutionary story, Patty Hearst.” He glanced up at a pipe squeaking in the ceiling. “But talk fast. The shower’s off, so we’ve only got fifteen minutes of blow-drying and makeup.”

He could hear everything down here.

In a rush of jumbled words, I told him the whole story. Well, half of it. I left out the parts about me swooning and lusting over Jack, and I didn’t admit anything else about the Golden Apple stuff, because I felt guilty enough as it was that I’d failed as secret keeper. But I did tell Heath about Sierra bursting into the tea lounge and about Panhandler Will saying Jack had a lady friend at the hospital. And about the last time I saw Jack, when he was with his father.

“So now I have no idea what’s going on,” I finished.

“He told you his dad’s some rich corporate guy who doesn’t give a damn about his family, but why was he at the hospital with your boy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe something happened to the mother.”

Crap. Jack did say that his mother was “pretty high up there” in his dad’s priorities—it was only Jack who wasn’t. “What if his mom has cancer or something?”

“The university’s cancer treatment center is across town at Mount Zion,” Heath reminded me. “But it could be something else. Maybe she was seeing a doctor at Parnassus for regular appointments, and that’s why Hobo Bill saw your boy all the time.”

“Panhandler Will,” I corrected sourly. Heath had talked to Will just as much as I had over the years; you’d think he’d know his name by now. Regardless, Heath might be onto something about Jack. It was the only thing that made sense. “If Jack’s relationship with his dad isn’t great, his mother’s probably the only person in the family he can depend on. It would definitely explain why he was so frazzled when I saw him.”