My sweatshirt came off right away—I was burning. I dabbed my face with a towel, trying to take off some of the sheen both my bike ride and the warmth had caused. If ladies don’t sweat, then I was doing a pretty damn good impression of whatever did.
I tried to run a brush through my hair, which ended in tugging painfully at a number of thick snarls until my eyes watered. I growled, grabbed an old blue baseball cap, and shoved it over my head. I pulled the rest of my hair through the hole in the back of the hat, trying to look intentionally sporty. It wasn’t half-bad.
I glanced in the mirror on my way out of my room. I didn’t look like hell anymore, but I didn’t look great. I’d fit alongside my exhausted dad. Besides, anyone who looks great at a take-out Chinese food joint at ten o’clock at night isn’t a good person anyway.
My dad’s car idled in the driveway—I ran across the grass and hopped into the open door. I slammed it shut behind me, snapped the belt buckle, and slumped in the seat. Only when I got outside, into the cold night, did I think of the man-in-white again. That ugly Lincoln of his was probably still prowling the streets, looking for me. I slid even further toward the floor.
Apparently Dad noticed.
“Too embarrassed to be seen with Daddy?”
I glared up at him from underneath the brim of my baseball cap. He flashed a roguish grin, turned the car around, and pulled out of our street.
Stupid fathers.
One minute you wanted to strangle them for being a suffocating jerk, and the next minute you wanted to strangle them for being an insufferable…
boy
.
I breathed a little easier when we pulled into the brightly lit parking lot of the Ralphs. We crossed the parking lot, and I tried my best not to look over my shoulder every three to five seconds.
We made it to the Chinese food place unmolested, and I was surprised when, after my dad ordered my usual, and he ordered his food and told the lady at the counter that it was, “For here, thanks.” He handed me my little plate of food on a bright red plastic tray, took one just like it, and lead me to one of the booths up against the wall.
I glanced around now—I hadn’t really processed the place when we’d walked in. To be honest, I had kinda zombied-out. Now that we were staying, I took a second to look. Only two other people—an older couple, around forty, sitting in one of the tables close to the window.
I set my tray down and slid into the booth. Dad slid across from me.
“For here?”
Dad shrugged. “I guess I fear the wrath of Mom. You know how she is about my salt intake.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom left us to fend for ourselves. We can eat what we want.”
“Hear hear,” he said, clinked his plastic cup of Pepsi against mine, and took a swig. I joined him.
We ate in silence for a while, trying to avoid any dangerous small talk. Dad had to go on and ruin it anyway.
“Since when do you bike-ride, Luce Armstrong?”
I shrugged. “Just…I just wanted to get out. Get breathing. Get thinking, I guess, too.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Dad said, unhelpfully. The look on his face made promises of probing questions to come.
“Mom already gave me the anorexia talk,” I said, and poked a finger into my stomach. I wasn’t anything like fat, but I wasn’t anything like skinny either. “Trust me, I’m okay.”
Dad laughed. I made a face—his laughter made me suspicious of its source.
“What?”
“Please,” Dad said. “My daughter loves food
way
too much to be anorexic.”
“Hey!”
He waved a pacifying hand, “Relax. I’m not calling you anything, I’m just saying. Check out your plate. Check out mine.”
I glanced down. My plate was practically clean, and his was still half-piled with food. I blushed and made the
keep going
spinning finger gesture. He flashed me a sympathetic smile and went on.
“I just…I know you don’t want to talk about it, Lucy, but maybe…maybe you should.”
“Dad—”
“Not me,” Dad said, and held his hands out. “But maybe…somebody.”
“Like Mom?”
“Do you want to talk to Mom about it?”
I shook my head vigorously. I really frapped my brain a little.
“I didn’t think so,” Dad said. “But if you want, we can arrange something with a shrink.”
“Dad!”
Dad held his hands up and nodded slowly.
“Just if you change your mind—”
“D-A-D.”
“Okay, okay.”
I held onto my withering stare for as long as I could, but he returned nothing that even approached anger or offense. After a long moment I reached over and began forking chunks of his orange chicken onto my plate.
“Hey.”
I pointed my fork at him and growled. Thankfully, he didn’t laugh too hard.
We finished our food in very relieved silence and headed for the door.
The couple sitting near the door were engaged in a near-silent fight. They were casting stony looks at each other and whispering in short, harsh bursts. When we passed them, the lady looked up at me and gave me the
everything is totally fine here
look, which is only necessary when everything isn’t. I grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.
“Luce—” Dad said, panic in his voice.
I glanced back at him, “What’s—”
Something grabbed my shoulder from the front and vised the opposite arm. I yelped and spun around, my entire body spiking with fear and adrenaline. I gargled something unintelligible at the long, thin face in front of me. It was a mixture of surprise, fear, and recognition. Luckily my dad only caught on to the first two. He grabbed my assailant by his wrists, pried his hands off of me, and shoved him back. My dad outweighed the guy by at least fifty pounds, and most of it looked to be solid muscle.
The man staggered, and when I caught a better glimpse of him, I yelped again.
Tall and thin, wearing an old brown suit with a bright red scarf dangling around his neck. He hadn’t fallen, merely stumbled after my dad’s shove, but when he turned his face up I knew. Long, thin, full of wrinkles but with eyes like two little jewels. They seemed to catch and hold the light rather than bouncing it away. His shaggy gray hair stuck up at angles.
Puck.
“Get out of here,” Dad said, stepping between me and Puck. When I was behind Dad, I mouthed, “I’m sorry” to Puck. He caught the expression, but pretended like he wasn’t looking at me. Probably didn’t want to set my dad off too much.
Puck held up his hands—the
I’m sorry
gesture. He took another step back, his face in a hang-dog expression.
“Get the fuck back,” my dad said, louder. “Go!”
Puck recoiled and nodded furiously. A blanket of shame smothered me. Puck had saved my life and made me feel like I wasn’t completely out of mind. Seeing him here, now, made everything seem all the more real, and yet at the same time more dreamlike. Did he live here? Had he been looking for me, or did he just happen to run into me? Even without my dad here, it would have been difficult to get those answers from him.
Dammit.
“Come on, Dad,” I said, and grabbed his upper arm. “I think we just scared him. Let’s go. Come on.”
I tugged at him, but my dad was a brick.
“Dad, please,” I said. “He just looks freaked out.”
That looked like the truth, at least, and my dad must have recognized that.
Puck’s droopy-dog expression vanished the instant my dad turned around. He flashed me first an apologetic smile, then a grin, then a look of relief. I held up a hand to give him a covert wave, but my dad caught me and tugged me back around.
“Don’t provoke him, Lucy,” Dad said. “Just some crazy old guy.”
Dad made a point of opening the passenger door for me and tucking me in. He even guided the back of my head like a cop tossing a perp into the back of his car. The door slammed shut next to me. He slid into his seat, gunned the engine, and squealed out of the parking lot.
Puck’s eyes followed us the rest of the way, his face blank, but his eyes wide. He needed something. Or I needed something.
We disappeared around the corner. I couldn’t sneak out again, I knew—my parents were on high alert already, and I didn’t need to be sent to boarding school or something. My dad’s talk of a shrink, no matter how jovial in appearance, was dead serious. They had a problem daughter and something
had to be done.
I lay in bed that night, all night, with my eyes closed, pretending to sleep.
I thought of Puck, out in the cold, that man-in-white still on the loose.
I’d figure out something, I told myself. Or Puck would find me.
Chapter Ten
Girl Problems, and Other Complications
When I felt suitably
slept
, which is to say that I’d finished reading
Sabriel
and then surfed the internet for a couple of hours, I went downstairs. One nice thing about a total inability to sleep—I’d never had more free time in my entire life. I thought summer vacation was bad—without sleep, I had more hours than I knew what to do with. The thought of learning piano or biology or becoming Batgirl all flitted through my mind, but I had a feeling it would just end up with me being ridiculously well-read.
How
would
it end up? I tried not to think about it.
Dad was at the breakfast table, reading the paper. Mom stood behind him, forking sausages from a pan onto his plate. It was the image of everything suburban. I made a face at my Mom, and God bless her, she recognized the absurdity.
“I know, June Cleaver, party of two.”
Dad smirked, just at the corners of his mouth, but said nothing. I assumed he knew better.
“I don’t suppose there are some sausages for a hungry daughter in there, too, eh?”
She smiled and gestured to the stove. Sausages. Scrambled eggs. Pancakes—wow. I wasn’t hungry, but after eating the Chinese food last night, and feeling half-normal just by doing it, I thought breakfast wouldn’t hurt. Plus it would go a long way to allaying Mom’s fears of anorexia.
When I finally scooted my chair back across the floor to go get ready, my mom cleared her throat. I glanced up to see her looking pointedly at Dad. I sat back down.
Here we go.
“Lucy, honey,” Mom began. “Whose birthday party is it?”
My head reeled. Whatever drug talk I’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. In fact, I’d let thoughts of Benny’s party and thus, Zack, run completely out of my head. I thought about lying, going with girl instead of guy, but I shrugged and told her.
“Benny,” I said. “Zack’s friend.”
“Uh-huh,” Dad said, not looking up.
“What?” I asked him, staring at his down-turned forehead.
“Babe,” Mom said. “Be reasonable.”
“I’m not reasonable,” Dad said. “I’m suspicious.”
I sat back in the chair, “Of what?”
“Boys,” he said, leveling his gaze at me without turning his head up.
“Oh come on,” I said. “It’s just a birthday party. It’s not a…bacchanalia.”
My mom’s face twisted in confusion, but my dad’s left eyebrow flicked slightly. Ha. I’d impressed him.
“The first bacchanalia were all female,” Dad countered.
“Bah,” I said. “Seriously?”
“He has a point, Lucy,” Mom said. “A stupid point, about an ancient Roman cult.”
Dad’s victorious expression soured somewhat at that comment. I enjoyed it, I’m gonna be honest.
“I just want to go and be…normal.”
Both Mom and Dad squirmed at that one. It was a cheap shot, invoking my disappearance. It had only been a week ago to the day, and I can’t imagine they’d gotten over it. I had, or at least I felt like I had. Maybe the pressure of my immediate, freaky concerns had shunted thoughts of my attack out of my mind. I couldn’t be sure.
Dad sat up and pointed an accusatory finger at me.
“Parents?”
“I think so—”
“
Know
so. Alcohol?”
“Well, I imagine one without the other—” I tried.
They didn’t look amused at my joke. I continued on.
“No.”
“Sex?”
“Dad!”
“Sex?”
“No!”
“Smoking?”
“Of course not.”
“Home by ten?”
“That is unfair,” I said. “It’s a party on a Friday night.”
Dad shrugged, “Could be nine.”
“Whoa,” Mom said. “How about eleven?”
I scrunched my fists together. “I’m fifteen now—”
“Exactly,” Dad said. “You’re
only
fifteen. You don’t even have a car.”
Well, that backfired.
“That means I can’t drink and drive. Eh? Eh?”
This time my mom’s face cracked a little. She tried to hide her smile, with only moderate success.
“Here’s the deal, Lucy,” Dad said. “It has been a week since—”
“Dad.”
“It. Has. Been. A. Week. You don’t know what your disappearance did to us, young lady. I am sitting here, terrified, every ounce of me screaming the word no. By all rights you should be grounded for a year and a half.”
I couldn’t hide the red glow of anger on my face, but at the same time, I could hear Dad’s voice straining. This wasn’t bluster anymore. He really was scared. For a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of what it must be like on his side.
“10:30,” I said, finally, after a long pause. “And I’ll call home every half an hour.”
Dad sighed, deeply, and he looked exhausted. Mom traded glances between him and me, and I couldn’t tell who she was more concerned for.
“Fine,” Dad said. “But I want to talk to you after school, before you go. Do you understand?”
Daddy-anger welled up in me, but I fought the urge to shriek like a harpy at him. 10:30 wasn’t bad. I’d had to come home much earlier on other Friday nights, and none of those outings had been preceded by my near-death experience.
Post-death experience
.
“Okay,” I said. “Fine.”
“Go get ready, honey,” Mom said. “You’re gonna be late.”
School went by in a blur. Once the anger at my dad faded, and I told the chicks about me going to the party, the day brightened considerably. Wanda and Sara and Daphne had similar curfews and regulations, and Morgan wasn’t allowed to go at all.