Drowning Is Inevitable (10 page)

“People are looking for us,” I said. “Shouldn't we just go?” I looked to Maggie and Jamie for backup, but they kept quiet.

Max walked over to me. “We need to get to New Orleans. Obviously this town is too small not to be noticed. The worst thing we could do right now is get on the road in the middle of the day and run out of gas. We'd definitely get caught. At least this way, we
might
not.” He reached for my hand. When he squeezed my fingers, I felt stronger. “It'll be fine. No one's looking for just one guy.”

I knew he was right.

“Y'all will be okay here,” he said.

“Alright.”

Another squeeze, and he picked up the gas can and was gone.

Jamie came to stand next to me. He handed me the note I'd left them. I carefully folded the letter and put it back in its envelope and inside Lillian's shoebox.

“What if Steven watches the news?” I asked Maggie. “It might not be safe for us to go there.”

“I doubt he'd make the connection,” she said. “Besides, Oak Street is mostly full of artists and hippies. They're not usually up on current events.”

She plopped down in the grass.

“But what if my mom is at Steven's?” she asked. “I'm not scared of her calling the cops or anything. It's not like she'd watch the news, but I'm not sure I could handle seeing her.”

“Don't you want to see her?” I asked. “How long has it been again?”

“Three years.”

We each took a different spot on the ground, and no one talked for a long while.

Jamie sat next to me in the grass. My tongue felt thick, and I was regretting not grabbing my toothbrush. “I feel like crap,” I said. “Do I look like crap?”

He gave me a once-over. “Remember that time we went camping and we found out just how allergic you are to poison ivy?”

“Oh my God, my eyes swelled shut.”

“My mom didn't recognize you.”

“I had to sleep with socks on my hands.”

Jamie snort laughed. “You look a little better than that.”

I slapped him halfheartedly. “Well, you look like crap, too.”

“Noted.”

“Will my mom forgive me?” he asked.

The look on his face bent my heart in painful ways.

“Give me your hands,” I said.

I studied his palms. “Yes, she'll forgive you. She'll realize you saved her.”

“You're a palm reader now?'

“Yes.”

“When did you learn how to do that?”

“While you were sleeping.”

“I waste so much time sleeping. What else do you see?”

“I see food. Max is going to bring food.”

“Do you see cake?”

“No, no cake.”

“Let me see your hands,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow.

“I learned while you were talking.” He studied my palms. “Your scars cross over the lines in your hands, like you have two lives.”

“Or one that canceled out the other,” I said.

“No, I see two lives. One to mess up and one to get right.”

“That's convenient. What else do you see?” I was whispering now, in case Maggie heard. I trusted Jamie's sudden psychic ability.

We were sitting cross-legged, facing each other. We used to sit like this on my grandmother's living-room floor when we played gin rummy, or odd one out, or talked about school, music, our families. We'd talked out all of life's problems in just this position.

“I see you happy,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

He nodded. “And I see you.”

When we were younger, Jamie started having this recurring nightmare. In it we were lost together, somewhere in the dark, somewhere we'd never been. In the dream the darkness was so black that I couldn't see him or him me. As in most childhood nightmares, someone was chasing us, and we had to be quiet so we wouldn't be found. Jamie was always afraid that because it was so dark I wouldn't know it was him, and I'd leave him there. So we'd sit like this, and I'd close my eyes and trace his face, reassuring him I'd always know him, even in the dark. Then I lost my name to Lillian's, so Jamie returned the favor and traced my face, too, reassuring me there was at least one person trying to remember me.

My fingers itched to reach out and touch his face, to make sure I'd still know him in the dark.

“I see you, too,” I said.

At dusk Max came down the road carrying food and the gas can. From the look on his face, the can seemed a lot fuller than it was this morning. He put it down and dropped the grocery bags at my feet. He took my hand and walked toward the lake, stopping at the water's edge. He started taking off his clothes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He was standing in his boxers. “I've spent the day loading dirt into the backs of trucks, and I want to swim. I want you to swim with me.”

His hands went to my shirt and lifted, his fingers grazing my elbows. His eyes didn't leave mine. I wasn't the kind of girl to wear matching bra and panties, so when I kicked my shorts off, he smiled at my contrasting choices. He took my hand and led me into the water.

Despite the heat of the day, the water was cold. Once we were in up to our waists, something cold brushed against my leg, reminding me we weren't alone.

“What kinds of fish are in this lake?” I asked. “Are they big?”

Max didn't answer, just dropped under the water and came up splashing. It took my breath away. I splashed back. He picked me up and threw me, and I squealed. I didn't know how it had happened, but we were playing and laughing like this was the end of a normal blue-sky day, with no time for anything but fun and easy smiles.

After a time we circled each other in the water, then got still—too still. He looked at me like he was trying to see inside me. I felt burned by his stare and tried to swim away from him.

“Come back here,” he said.

He grabbed me, pulling me back to him, our legs tangling in the water.

“I'm not ready to let you go yet.”

The water was dripping off his chin, and my eyes were glued to it. He touched the chill bumps on my shoulder, then traced the freckles there.

Even though the water was cool, I was burning up.

“Your lips are blue,” he said. “We should probably get out.”

I nodded, but neither one of us made a move. He leaned in toward me like he was going to kiss me.

“Did you know he was dead before we left town?” he asked, his lips so close to mine. “Is that what you didn't tell me last night?”

“No.”

“It wouldn't have mattered.” His eyes were so sad. “If you'd known. I'd do anything for you.”

That should've made me feel better, but I felt crushed by it. I was scared of the
anything
he'd do. Judging by the look on his face, he wasn't happy about it, either.

“I know,” I said.

I pulled back again. “I'm hungry. Let's see what you brought.”

We set about fixing dinner, hot dogs and chips. We ate the hot dogs cold, because we were scared a prolonged fire might draw attention. It was like summer camp—the dark and twisted version. Max pulled the map out of his truck and showed us we were closer to New Orleans than we thought, less than an hour away. We decided we would sleep part of the night and then get up and on the road in time to get there before the sun came up.

Maggie started her questioning game again.

“Quick: what's your favorite body part?” she asked nobody in particular.

Max answered first. “My right arm.”

Maggie asked, “Why?”

“Because I've broken it three times.”

She looked around to Jamie. “What's yours?”

“My feet, because they get me where I'm going.”

“Olivia, what's your favorite body part?”

I quickly answered, “My belly button.” Jamie and Maggie laughed, which was what I wanted. I got up and walked to the truck for more chips.

Max didn't laugh, but instead said, “Because that's where you were connected to your mom.”

That stopped me, but I didn't turn around. I just shrugged and said, “It's proof I had one.” I stayed on my path to the truck, only coming back when I was sure the mood was light again.

After dinner Max laid his sleeping bag on the ground. We all lay on it together, not really fitting, but no one cared. The others went to sleep quickly, and I pretended to. Maybe they were pretending, too, because there was awkwardness in the air. Some time later sleep did come, though, and it must have knocked us all out like bricks, because the next thing I noticed was this feeling of being baked, the sun bright and beaming down on us, unrelenting.

It was Max who moved first. “What time is it?” he asked.

He jumped up and went to the truck. Jamie and Maggie started stirring.

“We have to go. It's ten o'clock. We overslept by a lot.” He scrubbed his hands over his face.

I felt like I'd been cooked to the ground, my skin tight.

“Let's go,” Max said. He reached down and pulled me up, unsticking me.

We stumbled to the truck. I sat in the back with Jamie. It felt brazen driving in the stark daylight, like we had nothing to hide. Neither Max nor Maggie made a move to turn the radio on, and the silence sat on us heavily. When we saw a sign that said there were only five miles to the city limits, Jamie looked over at me, and I could tell something was wrong.

“Are you okay?” I whispered, careful not to break the silent fog in the truck.

“I'm okay,” he quickly whispered back, but he wasn't. He leaned into me. “There's something I need to tell you. I just can't do it yet.”

“Okay. I can wait.” I didn't know what it could be. I already knew the worst. He nodded, and I scooted next to him so we'd face New Orleans as a united front. We'd find Steven's, and in a little while Max would call his dad and everything would be better. I snuck a quick look at Jamie sitting to my left, and couldn't bring myself to believe it.

W
e drove into the city in a convoluted way, trying to avoid the interstate. We came into the east part of town, where the street corners were full of people and sidewalks dotted with mothers swaying barefoot babies on their hips. They didn't look any older than me. We didn't expect the drive through New Orleans to be hard. We didn't expect a lot of things. We stared out the window watching the scenes change from street to street, some houses completely remodeled with bright paint and new windows, others with cracked paint and no windows. Some of the houses looked like Katrina had just happened, with visible watermarks on the sides of homes still too broken to be lived in. The streets were lined with men, though some of them could have been boys; it was impossible to tell their ages by their faces, because everyone looked old, all carrying scars that couldn't be painted over.

Max rolled his window down, and then Maggie did too, making sure it was all real, not a scene from a movie. Nothing separated us from them, the smells, sounds, and stares. My stomach clenched at the amazing aroma coming from a dive on a nearby corner. I didn't know if it was hunger pains or some other pain, but tears sprang to my eyes, and I felt too young to be in this place.
Welcome to New Orleans.

The roads were all torn up, seeming worse now than right after Katrina. Things still looked to be in transition of some sort, each street at a different level of repair. We took the bumps and detours, no one saying anything. It was easier to walk in New Orleans than to drive because of all the one-ways. Thanks to those and the road construction, we somehow ended up in the French Quarter. Then again, that could all have been a plan hatched by the city officials, because even if you tried not to go downtown, somehow all roads led to Bourbon Street.

Driving through the French Quarter was like entering a new dimension. Everything had been restored to its pre-apocalyptic-hurricane state It was only noon, but people were already in the streets, wearing smiles and beads and carrying ridiculously tall drink cups. It didn't feel real. Somehow we had wandered into some play intended to convince the tourists that everything was back to normal. The shop owners were in on it, with their too-wide smiles, pointing and directing everyone's attention away from anything real.

But we were from Louisiana, and we had just come from one of the places that they didn't want us to see. Downtown quickly lost its appeal, so we exited stage left. We made our way back uptown through back alleys and side streets. My dad hadn't been back to New Orleans since the storm—not that he got out much anyway. He said it was better to remember it the way it was. He didn't care that it was being rebuilt. He said, “Some things you can't get back.”

We parked the truck on a side street uptown. Walking away from it proved harder than I expected—almost as hard as the drive out of St. Francisville. We were leaving one more comfort behind and stepping farther into the deep end of whatever was coming, and no matter how discreetly the truck was hidden, it would eventually be found. Leaving the truck felt like starting a countdown to being caught.

We had taken everything that might be useful out of it—a flashlight, Max's sleeping bag, the map. We walked for a while and then stopped to get something to eat. We spent the last of the money Max had earned the day before. Only in south Louisiana can you buy seafood gumbo from a convenience store and know it will be good.

When we made it to Oak Street, Maggie studied the houses, trying to remember which one might be Steven's. They all looked so similar. Looking around, I decided my dad was wrong. Some things you could get back. Shops were interspersed with shotgun houses with real people sitting on real porches. There was life and creativity everywhere, from the design of the buildings, to the smell of the food, to the sway in people's walks and the sound of their talk, to all the colors of all the different faces. There was even a man painting the scene from a street corner. None of this escaped Maggie, who was standing decidedly taller. A woman with paint splatters on her arm walked by us. Maggie smiled, and I knew these were her people.

Steven seemed glad if somewhat confused to see all of us, once Maggie reminded him who she was. He hugged each one of us tight to his chest like this was a planned visit and we were all old friends. He didn't give Max's bruised eye a second glance, and didn't seem to notice that Jamie didn't hug him back.

“Wow, Vicky's daughter. Look at you. This is amazing,” he said.

We were standing on the sidewalk outside his house, where he'd found us lingering near his mailbox, Maggie still unsure we were in the right place.

He studied Maggie, even turning her all the way around. “I haven't seen you in so long.” He shook his head like he couldn't believe it. “She talks about you all the time.”

Maggie gave him a
really?
look, but he didn't notice.

“Are you here to see her?” he asked.

Maggie nodded, “Yeah, I wanted to see her before I left for school.” Her voice didn't crack, like there was no lie in what she was saying.

“I haven't seen her in a couple of weeks, but she always comes back around. In fact, my band is playing tonight across the street at the Maple Leaf, and she almost never misses a show.”

Maggie had mentioned, on the walk to Oak Street, that Steven was a well-known artist, at least locally, but she didn't say he was a musician as well. It seemed that was a prerequisite for artists, like being talented in just one way wasn't enough. Steven led us up the front steps and into his house, which looked more like an art studio than a living space. There was little furniture, and none of it matched. I was relieved not to see a TV anywhere. A large easel took up most of the living room, and canvases lined the walls. There were paint splatters everywhere, even on the ceiling. Maggie didn't mask her appreciation, walking straight up to the artwork. As for Steven, he sat back and watched Maggie like she was the art.

He offered us the use of his two bathrooms, and we relished the hot showers and toothpaste. I felt bad for the others, who'd have to put on the same dirty clothes as before, so I asked Steven if he had a washer and dryer we could use. I started to explain why the others hadn't brought clothes, but he cut me off immediately.

“Of course you can. You, beautiful friend of Vicky's daughter, can use anything here you need.”

I could tell he meant what he said, like he was used to travel-weary kids stopping by his house looking for people he occasionally let sleep on his couch. It didn't bother me that he was another person who didn't know my name.

As it turned out, Steven opened his home to a lot of people. For the next couple of hours, I watched as an array of visitors wandered in and out, opening doors and disappearing behind them, or opening the refrigerator to take out some food or drink. They were all met with ready smiles from Steven, who only asked them in return if they were coming to the show later on tonight. They all were.

It was easy to pick out the drop-ins from the live-ins. A guy who looked about our age took the seat next to me on the couch. He kept looking at me like he recognized me, and I started sweating.

“I'm Luke,” he said.

He smelled like incense, and it hurt my nose. He put his hands on his knees. His hands looked old. I wondered what had happened to them. Luke was one of those people who you couldn't tell right away if they were good-looking or not. I kept waiting for him to do something that'd reveal what he really looked like.

“I'm Olivia.” I wondered too late whether I should have given him a fake name, but Steven already knew who we were, so there was no point in lying.

Luke reached for the cigarettes sitting on the table next to the couch and pulled a lighter from his pocket. I watched the fire spark from his hand, and as he smoked his cigarette I felt like I was watching something intimate. He brought the smoke slowly into his mouth, then closed his eyes as he released it through his nose. He did this over and over in a way I'd never seen anyone smoke a cigarette, and I blushed.

Looking into Max's face, I could tell he was suspicious of Luke. There weren't boys like this in St. Francisville, and Max was still getting used to the unknown. Max reached for me and pulled me from the couch. He led me out to the front porch.

“I saw some pay phones a couple of blocks back,” he said. “I'm gonna call my dad.”

“And you're sure that's the right thing to do?” I asked. I couldn't stop my voice from coming out high-pitched “We could just find Beth. She could … she might—” I didn't know what I was trying to say. I just knew I was scared of him reaching out to his dad.

“We'll find Beth. We'll take all the help we can get, I promise. But my dad's a defense attorney. This is his job. I won't tell him where we are, just that we need help. Believe me, Jamie needs him. I wouldn't be surprised if my dad can make all this go away.”

I worried Max might be overestimating his father's powers.

“Will you come with me?” he asked.

I looked back into the house. “I don't want to leave Jamie.”

“Right,” he said. “I'll be back as soon as I can.” He leaned in and kissed my cheek, and my hand went to the spot his lips had touched.

A minute later I walked back into the house, just as Maggie asked Luke, “Do you live here with Steven?”

Luke nodded.

“Then you might know my mom, Vicky.”

“Yeah, I know your mom.” He leaned all the way back on the couch, stretching his arms out. “She's a really great person. She keeps trying to talk me into going back to school. She also doesn't think I should live here.”

“In New Orleans, or at Steven's?” Maggie asked.

“Um, both.” He laughed low-like and reached over to put out his cigarette.

Maggie just stared at him. “How old are you?”

He seemed surprised by this question, like he couldn't believe that of all the questions in the world she could ask him, she'd picked this one trivial thing.

“I'm not sure. My parents didn't keep up with that sort of thing.”

I couldn't help myself. “Do your parents live in New Orleans?”

“Um, no … they don't. As it turns out, they couldn't keep up with me, either.”

“Oh.” It was the only thing I could say. Luke's eyes made me sad, so I looked away from him.

Maggie looked pissed all of a sudden, and she stood and stormed out the front door, leaving me alone with the boy with worn-out hands. I realized it bothered her that her mom was mothering this strange boy in this even stranger house.

Jamie came out of the bathroom, and I sighed in relief. He sat down on the couch, on the far end from Luke.

Luke said, “Do I know you from somewhere, man?”

Jamie shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“Where did y'all say you were from?”

“We didn't,” I said. I looked into his face. “We didn't say where we were from.”

I was ready to give him a hard look, or threaten him—anything to get him to stop asking questions. But I didn't have to do either of those things. A boy who didn't know or even care how old he was wasn't one to get caught up in the details of other people's lives. He just nodded again.

“I get it. Where are any of us from anyway? Right?”

“Right.”

An hour later Max still wasn't back. I'd started watching the clock thirty minutes after he left. He'd said the pay phones were only a couple of blocks away, and I was worried about what might be keeping him. Maggie offered to go looking for him.

“No,” I said. “I don't think we should separate any more than we already are.”

“Do you think he was picked up?” Jamie asked.

I should've gone with him.

“There's at least half a dozen bars between here and the pay phones,” Maggie said. “Maybe he got lost in one of them.”

I glared at her. I wanted to say he wouldn't do that. “He'll be back,” I said.

Jamie looked worried.

“Soon,” I added.

The sun was setting, and still no Max. I jumped anytime someone came into the house, hoping it'd be him. My muscles were coiled tight, and my hands were sweating. Steven was in the kitchen cooking supper. He started talking to Maggie from the kitchen, his voice loud. As the day had gone on, he had remembered more about Maggie and her mom.

“You know your mother is so proud of you. She tells anybody who'll listen that you're going to SVA in the fall. Hell, she's told me a few hundred times, because she forgets who she tells what.” He laughed at that, and then stopped suddenly, I guess realizing that Maggie might not think that was funny. “Congratulations, by the way. That's amazing. My nephew went there. He was a sculptor, but he didn't do so great once he got there. New York isn't for everybody. But you … you'll be okay. You've got Vicky in you.”

I looked at Maggie, because I knew it was the Vicky in her she was worried about. Maggie met my gaze, but didn't say anything. The smells coming out of the tiny kitchen were making me homesick. I'd been trying not to think of my grandmother, and I was getting pretty good at it, but at the moment, with Steven not talking anymore, the only sound coming from the kitchen was the occasional clink from a pot, and the smells … the smells took me away. It was no longer Steven in the kitchen but my grandmother, making dinner for my friends and a few odd extras. She was wearing the stained apron she always wore when she cooked, and her hair was pulled halfway back in a messy gray bun with loose hairs around her face. I closed my eyes and I heard her calling to Lillian that it was almost ready.