“I’ll wait for you outside.” I was already halfway to the door. I didn’t want to be there when he kissed her good night.
His hand beat mine to the doorknob. “That’s not necessary,” he said sharply. “Good night, Gena,” he grumbled. “And thanks a lot.”
“Ten cuidado, mi hermano.”
I didn’t speak Spanish, but she winked and smiled wryly. He gave her an admonishing look as he bent down to peck her cheek, then he pulled the door shut behind us.
“Drop me off here.” The bike rumbled through Sunny View, stopping a block from my trailer. Mona’s shift was eight to four. She wouldn’t be home for at least an hour, but I didn’t need the neighbors ratting me out. Reece killed the engine and waited for me to get free of the helmet. My hair was wild with snarls and I smoothed it down with filthy hands, cringing as I imagined what I must look like to him. He was staring at me.
“What were you doing in that park tonight?”
I thrust the helmet at him. “Aside from rescuing you?” He caught it against his sore ribs and clenched his teeth. Then
fisted it like he wanted to throw it. “That’s not what I meant.” “I could ask you the same question.”
He lowered his voice. “You know exactly what I was doing.” “Yeah. I saw the whole thing. And it scared the hell out of
me!”
“I just need to know . . . were you there to meet Lonny?”
He looked hard into my eyes, waiting for my answer as
though a life hung in the balance. Why did I feel like that life
was mine?
“I was looking for you.” I blushed, grateful for the darkness. “I saw your bike. Thought you might be here . . . you
know . . . picking someone up . . .”
“Picking someone up?” It sounded ridiculous hearing him
say it out loud. Seeing the stupefied expression on his face.
“And you thought it would be okay to follow me?” I winced. “I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought
you might need . . . help . . . or something.”
“That was stupid,” he muttered.
“You’re right. It was stupid. It was stupid to care if you’re
getting yourself killed. Stupid to think you might need my
help.”
He hung his head, stared at the helmet clenched to his chest,
as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t. I had that crumbling feeling again and for a minute I wished it was me he was
holding.
“Whatever.” I ran home, sprinted up the stoop. The baseball bat was propped against my front door.
18
We all fall down. The tower will point the way.
It’s 68 ft. higher than three times a side of its square base. If the sum of these two is 1,380, at day’s end you’ll know where to find me.
I was on the chartered bus on the way to our class trip to Kings Dominion. I leaned against the bathroom sink for balance while the narrow walls rocked and rolled. The enclosed space smelled like a sewer, and the fumes weren’t helping my motion sickness. I copied the numbers and tested a few equations on my palm.
Height = (3x + 68)
(3x + 68) + x = (4x + 68)
(4x + 68) = 1380
x = 328
Height of tower = 1052 ft.
Something didn’t add up. These numbers were as meaningless as the one on Marcia’s arm. I was tired—exhausted after the late night with Reece and three hours of fitful sleep—but there was no possible way I’d screwed up the calculation this badly. I checked the equations. Cross-checked them against the numbers in the ad.
The math was infallible, but the solution was impossible. A tower more than one thousand feet high didn’t exist in the state of Virginia, or anywhere in Washington, DC, for that matter. The closest tower over a thousand feet was in fucking France.
I crumpled the page. Let it go, I’d told myself. The answer to this whole thing was so simple. Just leave the newspaper in the bathroom and walk away.
I smoothed it flat. Ran the numbers again.
Someone banged and jiggled the door handle. I tore out the crinkled ad and shoved it in my back pocket, folding away the rest of the Missed Connections for later.
Back in the seat next to Jeremy, I sniffed my sleeve, hoping I didn’t smell like a hot bus bathroom.
“You feeling okay?” he asked.
“Just a little queasy.” It wasn’t a lie.
“What’s all over your hand?” Jeremy scrunched up his face and reached for me. I pulled away.
“It’s just a test problem I’m working on.”
“I wasn’t talking about the numbers.”
He was talking about the other ink—the newsprint smudges all over my fingers.
“Were you reading the personals in there?” His voice rose in disbelief.
“No,” I said defensively.
“Seriously? You were looking for him in a bus bathroom?” He looked disgusted. “That’s completely unhealthy.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll wash my hands when we get there,” I said, trying for levity.
Jeremy shook his head. “It’s been five years, Leigh. Are you ever going to just let it go?”
“I can’t. What if he comes back?”
“He’s not coming back, and you’re wasting your life waiting for him. The guy’s not worth it.” He sounded like Mona. If I closed my eyes and touched him, he’d probably taste just like her. I scooted closer to the window and crossed my arms over my hands.
“Just because your dad’s an asshole, doesn’t mean everyone else’s is too.”
“No, yours is a deadbeat. He left you.”
“I’m sure he had his reasons.”
“Yeah, like two hundred forty-seven thousand of them,” he muttered.
My head snapped up. “What did you say?”
Jeremy turned away. “Forget I said anything.”
The number was too specific, his tone had been too certain. I reached for his arm, certain there was more he wasn’t saying. When I touched him, his alarm was a hot spark against the tip of my tongue and he tried to pull away. His emotions were all over the place, fleeting scents I couldn’t quite catch. He was hiding something.
“What aren’t you telling me, Jeremy?”
The sadness in his eyes wasn’t his. It was for me. I felt him make a decision. Tasted it, a crisp bite of resignation.
“You know how you asked me to set up those search engine alerts? I created an alert for each of the names on those driver’s licenses you told me about. Every few weeks, an alert will pop up, but they’ve always been pretty random. Until the last three months, when I started to see some patterns.” Jeremy pulled his arm from mine to reach in his backpack. He set his iPad in his lap and swiped the screen a few times, pulling up a page of search alert results. He scrolled through them, pointing out names that matched the ones on my father’s fake IDs. “But that’s not all. Check out the posts the names were found in.”