Too late for that, isn’t it?That’s what I wanted to ask.
But what would have been the point? He obviously felt bad enough. No sense rubbing it in.
Which is not to say I wasn’t glad he felt bad. Heshould feel bad, after what he’d put me through. I wasn’t about to mention the fact that waking up an hour ago knowing where his sister was, after more than a year of not being able to find my shoes, let alone another human being, had thrilled me beyond words. I mean, that didn’t have anything to do with HIM, really. It just meant that I was finally beginning to heal, after everything I’d been through. That was all.
And that maybe Mike was right. About the fact that since I’d started working with those kids of Ruth’s, I’d started to dream again, instead of tossing around all night, lost in the throes of a never-ending nightmare.
“Look,” I said to Rob in a hard voice. Because I wasn’t about to let him know any of this. “Do you want your sister back or not?”
“I do,” he said, nodding vigorously. “Of course.”
“Then don’t question,” I said. “Just do.”
“Sure,” Rob said, reaching for the phone. “Sure, I’ll call and book you a seat on the same return flight I’ve got. We’ll go right after I’ve had a shower.”
“Great,” I said.
And watched as he dialed, asking myself (for the thousandth time that morning) what the hell I thought I was doing. Was this really something I wanted to get myself involved in? I mean, the progress I’d already made, just by being able to come up with an address for Hannah, was incredible. The shrinks back in Washington would have been throwing their hands into the air with joy if they knew, calling it a breakthrough. Why was I trying to push it, by going WITH him to find her? I mean, I could just give Rob the address and be done with it. Wash my hands of it. Go to work with Ruth, teach some more kids that there’s more to life than video games and pizza by the slice.
But for an hour last night, before I’d been able to fall asleep, I’d lain there thinking over what he’d said. The part about me being broken, I mean. What if he was right? I was pretty sure he WAS right. Part of mehad come back from overseas…different. Broken, I guess you could even call it.
And not just the part of me that knew how to find people in my sleep, either.
Maybe I HAD been a little hasty to condemn him for the Boobs-As-Big-As-My-Head girl. Clearly we had never worked as a couple, Rob and I. First the age difference, then the cultural difference, and then finally, the fact that I’m a huge biological freak had come between us.
But we could still be friends, like he’d said.
And friends help each other out. Right?
Rob didn’t, I notice, ask me any questions on the way to the airport. He was following my advice to a T: doing, not questioning. Once we got through airport security, he bought me an egg-and-sausage biscuit—breakfast of champions—and an orange juice and himself some kind of waffle thing, which we ate in silence in the crowded, noisy food court at LaGuardia.
Maybe,I thought to myself,he still isn’t quite awake. Maybe he doesn’t know what to make of my sudden change in attitude towards him and his problem.
Which wasn’t so odd, actually. I didn’t quite know what to make of it myself.
Ruth had seemed to think she did, though. She’d rolled over at six, when our alarm went off, took one look at me, lying there staring at the ceiling, as I’d been doing since I’d wakened at five, and went, “Oh, crap. It’s back, isn’t it?”
I hadn’t taken my eyes off the ceiling. There’s a crack up there that looks a lot like a rabbit, just like in those books I’d loved when I was little about a badger named Frances.
“It’s back,” I’d said quietly, so as not to wake the boys.
“Well,” Ruth said. “What are you going to do? Call Cyrus Krantz?”
“Um,” I’d said. “Trynot .”
“Oh my God.” Ruth rose up on one elbow. “You’re going home with him, aren’t you? Rob, I mean.”
I tore my gaze from the ceiling and blinked at her. “How did you know?”
“Because I know you,” she said. “And I know how you operate. You can never leave well enough alone. You can’t just save the world. You have to micromanage every aspect of its rescue. That’s why,” she added wearily, swinging her legs from the bed and sitting up, “you’d make a crappy superhero. You’d stick around after the big save to make sure everybody’s okay with what you just did, instead of just flying off into the sunset, the way you’re supposed to.”
It was good to know I had the support of my friends, I’d said sarcastically. To which Ruth had replied, with her usual early-morning cheerfulness, “Oh, shut up.”
“Will you tell the kids I’ll be back in a few days?” I asked her.
“You won’t be back,” Ruth said.
I’d stared at her. “What are you talking about? Of course I will. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“You won’t come back,” Ruth said again. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. For you, it probably isn’t. But just face it, Jess. You aren’t coming back.”
“What? You think I’m going to DIE tracking down Rob Wilkins’s runaway little sister?”
“Not die, no,” Ruth said. “But you just might let yourself get rescued after all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll figure it out,” she said darkly.
I didn’t let her negativity towards the whole thing bother me. The truth is, Ruth’s never been much of a morning person.
There are flights from New York City to Indianapolis every few hours from LaGuardia. Rob managed to get me onto the one he’d been planning on taking home. It wasn’t a big jet, like the kind they used to shuttle people from New York to LA. After 9/11, the airlines downsized, and now when you fly to Indiana from New York, it’s on one of those small planes you walk out onto the tarmac to get into. They only seat about thirty people, at most. And the quarters are cramped, to say the least. Rob had gotten us seats together—without, I’d like to point out, asking me if that was what I wanted. The flight wasn’t full, and there were plenty of empty rows behind us where I could have gone and stretched out. Well, sort of.
But I told myself we were friends now, and friends stick together. Right?
It was a quick flight. I’d barely finished the in-flight magazine before we were landing. Rob just had a carry-on, same as me, so we didn’t have to wait for our baggage to get unloaded. We walked straight out to where he was parked.
And I saw that he’d traveled to the airport on his Indian.
“Sorry,” he said when he saw my face. “I didn’t think you’d be coming back with me. We can rent a car, if you want.”
“No,” I said. It was stupid that the sight of that motorcycle should freak me out so much. “No, it’s fine. Do you still have the spare helmet?”
He did, of course. The same one he used to loan me back when we—well, whatever we were doing back then. I put it on, then straddled the seat behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and trying not to notice how good he smelled—like Hilton Hotel shower gel and whatever laundry detergent his mom—I mean,he —was using these days.
It was weird to be back in Indiana. The last time I’d been there had been over spring break. Buds that had only just been starting to show back then had now burst into midsummer bloom. Everything was lush and green. Everywhere you looked, you saw green. There’s green in New York—trees line almost every street. But the overall color is gray, the color of the sidewalks and streets and buildings.