Outcome (2 page)

"Mrs. Higgins will see you in just a minute," she said in a low tone, glancing across the empty lobby, as if afraid the security guard would hear his shame.

"Where's Dee?" Chip said. "Cooling her heels?"

"Something like that."

He nodded, gritted his teeth, and took a seat. He'd been too wound up about Dee to remember a book. He was a voracious reader—of the heirs of Tolkien, mostly; anything with elves and inns and wizards and stew, although he could get lost just as easily in the word puzzles on the back of a box of Lucky Charms, and had gotten in trouble more than once for staring at the chests of women wearing slogans on their t-shirts—but the lobby was devoid of any reading material besides a few signs about school safety. Chip stared at the wall and tried not to think about what this would mean for Dee.

Fifteen minutes later, Terry directed him down the hall. Principal Higgins rose from her desk to meet him, offering a condoling smile that made him want to turn around and hop the train straight home.

He pushed his palm against his forehead and pulled his hand down his eyes. "Where are we at?"

"Perhaps we should discuss what happened before we turn to outcomes."

"Does it matter?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Does it matter what happened?" he said. "I mean, unless she pulled a gun, or tore out some girl's heart and showed it to her, does it make any difference how things went down?"

Mrs. Higgins was stout in the way a nine-volt battery is stout. Under normal circumstances, she carried the same charge and verve as one, too. As he'd asked whether it mattered, she seemed to power down, her cheeks going slack, her eyes lowering gently toward the surface of her rich brown desk.

"If the circumstances were extenuating, and this weren't part of a larger pattern of behavior, it could matter. Our protocols aren't entirely inflexible."

"But the circumstances are tired old schoolyard BS," Chip said. "And the pattern's the pattern."

"Unfortunately."

"So let's skip the past and get to the future."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather yell at me for a while first?" Mrs. Higgins smiled wryly. "It's what most parents do."

"She's my girl. My responsibility."

"How refreshing. In that case, assuming your lawyer has no complaints—"

Chip scrunched his brow. "My lawyer?"

Mrs. Higgins glanced up from the paperwork she'd been gathering, mouth pursed, then laughed lightly. "Sorry. More habit. Mr. Billips..."

"Chip."

"Chip, we're looking at a one-week suspension, applicable immediately. This will be accompanied by emergency probation, which will last the rest of the school year, along with mandatory counseling, which Dee may receive from either our school psychologist or the therapist of your choice."

"And if she messes up again?"

Her mouth became a regretful line. "Then her enrollment at White Peaks ends."

Chip tugged the hem of his shirt, failing to smooth out the wrinkles. "Got it."

"Most students wouldn't get a fifth chance at all."

"I know. You don't owe me anything, Principal Higgins."

She smiled, eyes creasing. He believed she was genuinely sympathetic. "Mary."

"Mary." He stood, grimacing at the old twinge in his knee. "Now where's this reprobate daughter of mine? Am I going to need to buy my own straitjacket, or will the school provide me with one?"

She laughed and stood. "Right next door. Follow me."

Mary Higgins showed him to an unmarked door beside her office, gave him another smile, and touched his shoulder. Inside, Dee sat on a chair by the wall, arms barred over her stomach, gazing at nothing. Chip was taken aback once again by her hair—shoulder-length on the right side, clipped goatee-short on the left. For once, she didn't have her iPod earbuds in, but she still didn't look up.

"Well, come on," he said. "School's out early today."

Dee dislodged herself from the chair and picked up her graffitied backpack. With low-level exasperation, Chip noted he could still make out the swear word whited out beneath the pack's logo. He walked in silence down the hallway's shiny floor. He no longer had a strategy with her. Wherever their arguments started out, if they lasted long enough, they always wound up on the adoption.

He opened the door for her. The day had grown warm by the standards of March in New York, which meant the marine wind was minimal, carrying no hint of snow. Almost warm enough to start sweating. Well, that would be one more thing, wouldn't it. The return of that miserable, smothering, ball-stickying New York heat. Heat that seemed to drive all five boroughs mad. Heat that kept the ambulance busier than any taxi. Out on a call in the full flush of summer—siren howling, lights splashing the clifflike towers, a man bleeding and gutted in the back of Chip's bus—no relief at night, when the heat baked off the asphalt just as hot as day—well, it felt like something out of actual hell, like driving around in the devil's own hot and drunken mouth.

"I'm sorry," Dee said, unprompted.

"You're sorry?"

"That's what I said."

"Well, I don't know what I'm supposed to say," Chip said.

"I know."

"Is that a dig?"

"No." She glared at the gum-spotted sidewalk. A streamer of what was no doubt dog urine striped the sidewalk, trickling from the black iron grille around a tree. "I mean I know there's nothing more to say."

Chip rubbed his mouth. "I don't get how you know that but you don't know it's not okay to fight the other girls."

"It wasn't a girl," Dee said.

He grabbed her shoulder and scanned her face. "You fought a boy? Did he hurt you?"

She grinned, sheepishly at first, then impish, prideful. Her defiance was one of those double-edged swords. If she could keep out of trouble, he knew it would make her a hell of an adult, but the way she was going, she might not make it through high school.

"I'm totally fine, Dad," she said. "He hit me first. I didn't give him the chance to hit me twice."

"That's my girl." He instantly regretted the encouragement. "Dee. No fighting. Do it again, and it's back to P.S. 34."

"Maybe you should embrace it, Dad. Get me boxing lessons. I'll make us millions."

"You can't be a boxer."

"You always told me I could be whatever I want."

"So long as it's a president, an astronaut, or the first lady shortstop. Not a boxer." His stomach rumbled; he hadn't had time for lunch before hopping the train. He stopped at a crosswalk. Cabs and cars gushed down Park Ave. He gazed up the street. An early spring haze hung on the horizon, smudging it gray-yellow. "You want a falafel?"

She frowned at him, eyes steady, as if this were somehow a trap. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Come on." He turned north. Most restaurants up here were utter ripoffs, even the pizza joints, to the point where he couldn't understand how the managers could charge that much and not hang themselves, but he knew a place up here you could still feed two people for less than ten bucks. Ellie had shown it to him years ago. She'd just come back from Lebanon or some damn place and had been on a real Middle Eastern kick. They grilled like champs, Chip gave them that, and after his fourth or fifth meal, he came around on the chick peas and eggplant, too.

Ellie's spot was a narrow-shouldered place with just four booths smothered in a rich atmosphere of cumin and paprika. Chip bought two falafels and two cans of Sprite. He hated to buy soda—water was free, and had done mankind well enough—but the walk had left him sweaty, and he knew Dee would appreciate it. She had a real sweet tooth. Just because she was about to lose her ritzy uptown classrooms didn't mean she had to lose out on what was shaping up to be a perfect day of early spring.

He took her outside to eat on the stoop of a quiet brownstone tucked between Park and Lex. He had a lot of thoughts but he didn't speak any of them. Come in too hard and too fast and she'd just wall up with that teenage BS. Dealing with Dee was like getting close to a squirrel. You had to just sit there for a while. Wait for it to know you weren't going to bite it. Maybe feed it a few treats. Squirrels or thirteen-year-olds, it was all the same thing. The only things that worked were patience and peanuts.

He wiped his mouth, tossed their wrappers in the trash on the corner, and walked with Dee to the subway. A couple dozen people waited with them on the platform. Coughs rattled down the tunnel. After a few minutes, a soft wind buffeted the platform, signaling the arrival of the 4.

They squeezed inside. A prerecorded and frankly pretty damn dorky voice warned them to stand clear of the closing doors. The train lurched forward. It was two stops before Dee spoke.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she said. "Really."

"Okay," he said.

"So what?"

"So you were sorry last time, too."

She scowled at the dark tunnel flashing past the windows. He let her simmer. The train braked; she swayed, bumping him. "Dad, he hit me first."

He read the ads lined up below the ceiling, Lasik eye surgery (just $500 per eye!) and extolling the wisdom "Si Ves Algo, Di Algo." For the millionth time, Chip wished someone had handed him a Map to Parenthood the day he picked up Dee from the home. Having a kid was like having a drunken mess of a friend who could never hang on to a girl: they required constant advice, yet no matter how wise your counsel, you knew they would rarely if ever take it. If doing good meant leaning on your shoulder, they'd rather screw up on their own.

He opened his mouth and was clawed by a tickle deep down his throat. He coughed, booming, covering his mouth with the inside of his elbow. His eyes watered. Dee rubbed his back. He smiled, blinking, coughed again, patted his chest, and swallowed. Across the train, a man in a green cap and a transparent surgical mask stared at him blankly.

"Under normal circumstances," Chip said, hoarse, "I say hit him right back. But when you already been in three fights this year? When they're ready to drop the hammer on your pretty little head? Dee, you got to
think
."

She pressed her lips into a skeptical line. "You mean I got to tattle."

"Beats expulsion, doesn't it?"

"And gets me in a new fight next week. You don't understand at all, Dad."

"Yes," he said, "I do. I know it makes you so angry sometimes you want to knock down the walls. To squeeze the other kids' throats until their eyes pop from their heads like champagne corks. They probably deserve it, too. But you know what else I know?"

She rolled her eyes. "What's that?"

"That the only chance they have to destroy you is if you get sucked into their games. If you fight back the way they want you to fight back. You want to beat them? You got to be
smarter
than them. You got to think long-term."

The train slowed, screeching. Chip leaned into his hold on the rail above his head. Dee blinked, cheek twitching, several emotions struggling for control of her face. Chip saw frustration plainly enough, as well as the highly specific new-teen glint of raw contempt for a parent, but he thought he saw curiosity, too. Maybe even understanding.

He left it there. His advice had likely spooked her. Patience. Let her come sniffing back.

The train rocked and whined and clattered and juked. Dee resumed her contemplation of the floor and its grimy, dried footprints. Chip let her be. If he decided he needed to yell at her later, he'd have a whole week. The train pulled into Astor Place and he tapped her shoulder. She looked up, dazed, and followed him to the soiled platform.

On his way to the steps, the man in the green cap cut around him and stopped in his path. Chip swerved instinctively, long used to dodging drunks, panhandlers, guys passing out fliers, and the general crush of pedestrian traffic, but the man sidestepped, blocking Chip's way again.

"Sir," the man said, lifting his palm midway between them, "I need you to come with me."

"Come on." Chip tried to angle around him. The man's hand leapt toward his belt. His windbreaker bulged just above his hip. Chip's skin prickled. He stopped cold. "What's going on?"

"You're not in any trouble, sir." He flashed a badge. "I'm with the city."

Chip moved in front of Dee. "I'm with my daughter."

"She'll need to come with us as well." Behind the odd, clear mask perched over his nose and mouth, the man smiled at Chip, then at Dee. "Don't worry, you're not in any trouble," he repeated. "But for your own safety, I need you to come with me."

Chip took a step back. Dee's face was creased, worried. Pedestrians flowed around them, ceaseless, paying them no mind at all.

3

They had people in Denver, so she booked the first leg from Boise to Sea-Tac. It would leave that afternoon, connecting her to a redeye to LaGuardia. Before heading to the airport, she picked up a 100-pack of disposable latex gloves, a twelve-pack of disposable surgical masks, and large, rattling bottles of echinacea, zinc, and vitamins B and C. She swallowed two of each and headed to the Target down the street, where she bought a high-collared coat and a thin pair of gloves.

The Boise airport was a one-terminal strip on the south end of town. She'd seen busier In-N-Outs. She parked, put on a pair of latex gloves, and pulled her new black gloves over top. Without her gun—not even a knife—she felt strangely light. Civilian. The airport was too small for self-check-in. Her pulse rose as the woman behind the counter examined her ID. The woman smiled and handed Ellie her boarding pass.

She stood in the corner of the terminal, one eye out for signs of Rawlings, the other out for coughing. She knew her precautions, such as they were, were ludicrous. She was about to lock herself in a metal tube with sixty-plus strangers on a two-hour flight to Seattle, then repeat the process with two hundred
other
strangers on a six-hour flight to New York. If anyone on those flights were sick, and this virus were half as infectious as the numbers indicated, the gloves and mask could well be meaningless. If she picked up the disease on the way, she could arrive in the city, find Chip, and promptly infect him.

But that was defeatist thinking. If she were right about the plague, and she didn't move now, Chip was dead. That was the short and the long of it. Driving cross-country would take too long. She couldn't call. He'd never accept a call from her, let alone let her explain why she was making it—that if he didn't do exactly as she said, he'd be dead within a month. If she called from a payphone or a burner, he'd hang up. And then he'd be on his guard. Considering her resources were now quite limited, a vigilant Chip could make it much harder for her to track him down.