Inexcusable (16 page)

“Everything is an option. Nobody has to say or not say anything they don't want to. Don't you know even that much?”

“Of course I do. I was just . . . I was going by what you . . .
I'm trying to work out the way things are done. . . .” The trailing off at the end is the most intelligent part of my response.

“Did the spaceship forget to come back for you?”

“Hnn. Yeah. Very funny. Actually, I'm just out, seeing the world.”

She's underimpressed. “Right, well maybe you should think about going back home,” she says with a drop of kindness that unsettles me. “I'd worry that you're going to struggle at this.”

Home. Where is that?
What
is that? I'm happy to go there, but all I know for sure is that whatever home is, for me it's not
back
anywhere, it's someplace out forward.

“What
this
is it that I'm going to struggle at?” I ask, still undecided about what percentage impressed/offended I am at what she's thinking she's knowing about me.

“Running away,” she says with a dollop of
duh
in her voice.

“I'm not running away from anything,” I say. I hope I sound more like an appalled man than a cornered six-year-old, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

“Okay,” she says, shrugging. “But I'd still be worried that maybe the street could be an unkinder place to an innocent somebody than home. Even a home with an arm-breaking father in it. What does your mother think about it all?”

I am trying to work out how she does this, slipping
multiple provocations into such brief strings of sentences. What would be the
it all
that this
mother
would have an opinion on?
Innocent somebody
, by the way?
The street?
What and where is this street, and what does it have to do with me at all?

“Why would I tell you that?” I say. “I don't even know you. I don't have to answer that.”

She laughs, deep and rich like a hot hearty soup, and I notice her left eyetooth is missing. “Okay,” she says, “so it's possible that you are capable of learning some things as you go along. You might not be quite hopeless.”

Now we're getting someplace. She's already easier for me to talk to. So I go for it.

“You're coming on to me now, aren't you.”

She tilts her head this time at such an unfeasible angle it could possibly twist right off.

“Right, well, I knew this was your first time running away, but I didn't realize it was your first
time
ever
leaving
the
house.”

“It's not,” I blurt far too quickly in my desperation to quash the idea.

She laughs harder this time. “You actually responded to that. That is so cute.”

“It isn't,” I say, tragically persevering.

She turns away from me, from my overwhelming cute
imbecility that might be contagious. She looks like she's addressing me in my original seat way up there at the front and the top of the bus, back in that time when the only fully developed idea I had about proceeding to better things was that the top and the front of everything were what you should always shoot for.

“You're giving me a real dilemma here, funny boy. I should throw you back like the little fish you are, except that you've already amused me more than anybody has amused me in a long time.”

The fact that I have been inadvertently amusing does not have to be a problem for anybody.

“You're welcome.”

“And what little conscience I still have is nagging at me not to let you go out there and get savaged by all the big fish waiting just for you.”

She's doing it again with the provocations.

“Hey,” I snap, or nearly snap anyway, but do enunciate clearly and with vigor. “Who asked you to do anything? I don't think I at any point suggested that I needed you to
let
me or not let me go
out there
, even if such a place as
out
there
actually existed or represented a challenge that I was unprepared to meet.”

She hesitates several seconds, continuing to stare ahead, composing herself, then turns to me, smiling broadly. “Oh, it
does. And you are. And you're doing it again, being kind of adorable and I think I just might be in love.”

I have my righteous scolding finger already poised, and my mouth open to retort when her words themselves finish the long journey to my brain and I jam to a halt.

“Oh,” she says, pointing at my face. “First thing, right away, you're going to have to lose that blushing thing or you are dead meat out there. And God, boy, if that means you took the love thing literally, then man oh man do we have our work cut out for us.”

Ah, crap.

“I'll take the rapid blinking to mean, unfortunately, yes.”

“Grrr,” I say, punching my own thigh with my cast. “How can I possibly have the option not to answer something if my face keeps answering for me?”

“No doubt about it, you've got a conundrum there. A poker face is probably one of those things that you have to grow, over time, like a beard. Hey, maybe grow a beard.”

“Yeah, thanks, but if you look closely I think you'll agree that beard-growing is another thing you could probably do better than me.”

It appears I have said something wrong.

“What?” I say. “What? I was talking about my
inability
to grow a beard, not your
ability
to. Come on, you don't have a beard.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don't.”

“Yes, I do, and thank you for pointing it out, zithead.”

“Ah, so it's my skin now. Very nice. Feels like I'm talking to my sister.”

“So, you have a sister, then.”

“Grrrr. No, I don't.”

“Does she have a beard? Is she in the circus?”

“Can we start over again?” I say, with prayer-hands for emphasis.

“Why? This was just getting fun.”

“Fun is overrated.”

“That's extremely sad,” she says in an extremely sad tone. “Just how bad was your father?”

This one's easy. “I don't want to talk about that.”

“Okay. Then how 'bout, what's your name?” She extends her healthy right hand to me across the aisle.

I happily extend my less-healthy one across to her. Finally, a question I am not only anxious to answer, but one I have prepped for.

“Kiki Vandeweghe.” Because why not, right?

She splutters a laugh right in my face, but still shakes my hand.

“Your name is Kiki Vandeweghe.”

“That is correct.”

“I was going to guess Benedict, or Kenton, or Skippy.”

“Kiki Vandeweghe,” I assure her.

“And you're just gonna go with that, yeah?”

“Because it's my name.”

“Your very red ears wiggle a bit when you lie. Awfully cute. Like how elephants flap away overheating with their ears.”

“Kiki. Van—”

“Where have I heard that name before? Is it some sports—”

“So what's your name?” I blurt.

She laughs. “Well, I was gonna be Kiki Vandeweghe until you showed up. So I guess I'll go with Anastasia Dimbleby.”

“Really?” I say, as if anybody's name should really come as a surprise.

“For you, we'll just leave it at Stacey. Best not to make things any more complicated for you than they already are.”

Right, so it's more mockery. No problem. “Thanks for that, Stacey,” I say, getting a stupid little shot of thrill when I say her name.

Stacey. My friend, Stacey. I made a friend. Already.

“What are you, like a human thermometer or something?” she says. “You need to get that blushing thing checked before your head pops right off.”

I really, really do, dammit.

“Sign?” I say, pulling out the little stubby blue marker that I have been carrying for just this purpose.

“What?”

“I want you to sign my cast. I want to collect signatures as a kind of record of my travels. And then I'll sign yours.”

“Okay,” she says, shrugging, “but no thanks on signing mine. I prefer all record of my travels to be kept inside my head and no place else.” She then goes on to sign “Anastasia Dimbleby” in long sloppy script along the belly of the forearm part. I'm about to pull back when she turns it over and signs “Stacey” across the knuckle part where I can look at it all the time.

“So, Stacey, are you running away?”

“Why would I do that? I don't run away from things, things run away from me. I'm just on a kind of grand tour.”

“That sounds nice,” I say.

“Nice,” she repeats, but in a tone with twelve more layers of everything than the one I used.

“When did the tour start?”

“Two and a half years ago.”

“When does it finish?”

She lets this last one sit there for several seconds, though her face shows nothing along the lines of pondering.

“I haven't given that a single minute of thought.”

That one sounds like a hint that further questions will not be taken at this time. So we both just look ahead for now.

*  *  *

There it is. I can see it coming, and I rush back up through the near-empty bus to my original seat so I can take it all in fully.

Crystal City.

“Don't you want to come up here and have a look, Stacey?” I call back to her. Best seats in the house. She has her eyes closed and waves at me wearily. I return to the view by myself.

Is there a better capsule, a better pod of motion and vision? A space module, sure, I'd be on that right now if it was ever on offer, pointing and laughing at everybody stuck down here on Planet Puke. But let's be real. And real is the front seat on the top deck of a bus going
somewhere.
Everything is in front, everything's forward. Nothing's behind you, no rear window view for you, sir.

The bus station I come into, though, looks just like the bus station I pulled out of. Could just about be the same place. Could be a big fat fast one played on me, and the driver took a big wobbly go-round to get back to the same, same place.

Except why would he do that? Because people don't need reasons. Making believe that people need reasons to be demented and shitty accomplishes nothing other than to make you demented and shitty yourself. Which you don't want. I have to remember to tell Stacey that at an appropriate
moment so she knows that I did in fact learn a little something about life before I met her. A little something.

Except, anyway, I saw it, more than the bus station. I saw Crystal City on the approach. So no matter how much the travel zombie industry wants to disguise their zombie-town depots to look just like each other everywhere, we know better. We won't fall for it, because we have arrived, and we know it.

Why do they want to do that anyway, make your destination look like your departure when they know all you want to do with your departure point is to depart it?

Anyway.

“Anyway,” I say, as the bus hisses into its bay and I return to collect my backpack and my actual friend.

Chris Lynch
is the Printz Honor-winning author of
Freewill
and other highly acclaimed young adult novels, including
Gold Dust, Iceman, Gypsy Davey
, and
Shadow Boxer
, all ALA Best Books for Young Adults. He is also the author of
Elvin Extreme, Whitechurch
, and
All the Old Haunts.
Lynch holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. He lives in Scotland, and he continues to work on new literary projects.

Also by Chris Lynch

Angry Young Man

Kill Switch

Pieces

Shadow Boxer

Iceman

Gypsy Davey

Freewill

Little Blue Lies

Killing Time in Crystal City

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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