The Vanishing Game (22 page)

The small overhead light in the garage door opener shut off, plunging me into darkness. I sat listening to the wind
and breathing in the scent of fast food growing stale. Noah didn't come back right away. I tensed, wondering if Gerard really was all powerful. What if he somehow knew Noah might come here? I opened my door. The car light dispelled some of the gloom and I stepped down. I shut the door and darkness returned. With some irritation I told myself that the next time Noah said “stay here” I'd slug him on the arm.

A flashlight beam preceded him as he stepped through the doorway. “It's clear.” He opened the back end of the Cherokee. “Grab what you need and let's go inside.”

We packed a bunch of stuff through the door, the beam from his flashlight leading the way. “There's no electricity or furniture, but at least it gives us a place to rest for a while. The bathroom is around the corner.”

I used the tiny LED on my keychain to make my way there. Afterward I found Noah in the empty front room. He was eating one of the chicken sandwiches we'd ordered and tossed me mine. I opened the wrapper and took a bite, surprised by how hungry I was. Glancing around the room, I saw that the flashlight gave off just enough light to see the corners. Nothing was hiding in this small place, and if the carpet was old at least it seemed to have been recently cleaned. There was also the faint scent of new paint, but it wasn't too bad.

“Whose house is this?”

“Just someone I know.”

“And he won't mind us crashing here?”

“She won't care, no.”

I thought this over, wondering if Noah was talking about one of his old girlfriends he broke up with because he found her boring. After we were done eating he went into the hall and rummaged around in a linen closet. His flashlight sent jiggling beams back at me. He returned with several old quilts. “It's good the painters didn't throw these out. They won't be much to sleep on, but at least they'll give a little padding.”

Noah tossed me two, both timeworn and smelling slightly of stale smoke. He unfolded and layered his blankets, making a padded cot. Grabbing a couple of shirts from his duffel bag, he fashioned a pillow. “Better do the same. The batteries in this flashlight aren't going to last all night.”

I untied the scarf from around my neck and exchanged my jacket for a comfortable sweater. Then I did as he suggested, making my own place to rest and finally stretching out. Once this was done, he doused the flashlight and darkness engulfed us. Staring at the ceiling I said, “No way I can sleep.”

“After everything you've been through, I figured you'd want to crash.”

“I keep thinking about the fire. And Georgie's body, just tossed there like that.” A slight shiver passed through me. “Then there are the clues. I want to figure them out, but my brain is too fuzzy. I know I can't.”

“Wait till tomorrow.”

“Yes, you're right.” I felt discouraged and in need of
reassurance. “You know, in spite of everything, I still believe Jack is alive. Do you?”

“Honestly, Jocelyn, I don't know what to think. After the first clues it seemed you were right. But this has gone on too long. I just don't see why he'd be leading us on like this.”

A car drove down the street, its engine a low purr and its headlights briefly changing the darkness to a muted gray. I turned on my side, trying to get comfortable in this unfamiliar place. I studied Noah. He must be homesick.

“So, since neither of us is sleepy,” he said, “how about you tell me what you've been doing this last year?”

It secretly pleased me he was interested. “Not much to tell. Going to school in the morning and doing an internship in the afternoon takes up a lot of time. Plus my foster family likes to plan outings on the weekend. I help with the younger kids when we go. Jack used to come a lot of the time too.” Sadness washed over me, but I didn't want Noah to see. “And if I get a chance, I also like to hang with my friends.”

“What are they like?”

“Cool, in their own way. Mostly tomgeeks.”

“Tomgeeks?”

“Not tomboys exactly, but girls into geeky computer stuff. Get it?”

He smiled. “Yeah. You'd fit right in with that. Any guy friends?”

“A few. There's a group of us. I was supposed to go camping with them.”

I wondered if they were having fun roasting marshmallows and talking about their favorite computer games. “Sometimes we have what we call geek-togethers at one of their houses. A couple of the guys network their computers for multiplayer games. Except we won't have a chance to do that for a while. After the break we'll all be busy getting ready for graduation. Between senior projects and finals coming up, we won't have any free time.”

Noah studied me.

“What?” I said.

“You've changed a lot since the days we were together. I mean, in some ways you're the same and I see the old Jocey. But you're different, too. More self-confident.”

I smiled and shrugged. “It helps being able to live in one place. I guess some of the things I'm happy about would be small stuff to other kids. I like eating dinner at the table with a normal family, even if they're not really mine. I like having my own room. Clean clothes and decent shoes when I need them. And not being on the free lunch program. I don't mind being in foster care, as long as it's with someone like the Habertons.”

“Can I ask you something I've always been curious about?”

“Sure.”

“How did you and Jack end up at Seale House? I never asked when we were together. Back then no one wanted to talk about why social workers put them in foster care. It was something I wanted to bring up with Jack when we were chatting, but the timing never felt right.”

Swirling patterns of light slid across the wall as another car drove by. Finally I said, “It was because of Erv.”

Noah slowly sat up, staring at me through shadows. “Jocey, you're not telling me that Erv was a real person, are you?”

“Noah, don't go in there,” Georgie warned, “'cause Juliann just Erved all over the bathroom floor.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Noah looked at Jack and me and said, “This flu keeps spreading, we'll be mopping up Erv five times a day.”

We laughed and he couldn't figure out why we thought vomit was funny. To Jack and me, and soon the rest of Seale House, the grosser something was, the more Ervy it was
.

Slimy cafeteria stroganoff: “Ugh! It makes me want to Erv.”

The mold growing in the fridge: “That's just Ervy!”

Dog mess on the sidewalk: “Careful, don't step in the E-r-v!”

A chewed-up three-legged tomcat: “Oh, look at that poor little Erv.”

Nessa's new perfume: “Did somebody pass an Erv?”

I could feel Noah looking at me in the dark. Jack and I had never explained our inside joke. “But I thought Erv was a word you two made up. Now you're telling me it was someone's name?”

“Yeah, well, I guess it was just our way of getting revenge on a guy we despised.”

“Who?”

“Melody's boyfriend. The reason we ran away.”

“What happened?”

“It's a long story.”

“I've got time.”

Through the shadows I could barely see the line of his jaw and cheek. He didn't say anything else, and I appreciated him not pushing me.

“Before we came to Watertown, we lived outside Boston. We stayed in this tiny apartment and didn't have much, but it was okay. I liked my teachers, and so did Jack. We had some nice friends.”

A mental image of my brother from back then came into my head, his shaggy brown hair and eyes almost too large for his face. At twelve, his knees were always skinned. He could look so solemn, until he smiled in that mischievous way of his.

“Back then, Melody worked as a waitress. Until one day after she had a huge fight with her boss. When he wasn't looking, she stole money from the cash register and took off. She picked us up from school, dragged us home, and told us to pack in a hurry. We never got to say good-bye to our
friends and teachers. Or even get the stuff out of our desks. Then she drove to New York, just one of the many places she took us. Once we finally got to Syracuse, she left Jack and me with Cheryl, her cousin.”

“What was that like?”

“Not bad. Cheryl was single and worked as a legal secretary. I remember she lived close to the library and cooked lasagna, and she had a cat named Minkie. She was nice and didn't mind having us around. We hoped we could stay. While she was at work we dusted and vacuumed, and made sure the dishes were always done. It seemed like it was going to work out. But Melody came back for us like an unwanted boomerang. She always came back. Until the last time, when Jack and I were fourteen.”

I brushed the hair from my forehead. Talking about my mother always made me angry. “Melody was excited because of this new guy she met. Erv. She'd say stuff like, ‘Wait until you meet Erv. He's really handsome. He drives a black Jaguar and has a French accent.' She blathered that way the whole trip up to Gatineau, Quebec.”

“Is that the city we could see from the Peace Tower?”

“Yeah. It's where he lived. But before we met Erv, Melody said she wanted us to look nice. At least that was her lie to us. Being stupid kids, we believed her. She started out by buying us some new clothes. Jack and I got the same kind of jeans and T-shirts. Then she took me to the hair salon.”

I paused, uncomfortable. “Do you really want to hear all this, Noah? It's kind of boring.”

“Sure I do.” His tone was kind and showed he knew the story was deeper than I wanted to go. That helped me keep talking.

“Back then my hair was down to the middle of my back. I knew it was kind of scraggly, so at first I didn't mind getting it trimmed. But then my mother told the hair guy to cut it really short, like a boy's. I tried to say something, but Melody gave me this icy stare. She'd knock my head off if I didn't just sit there and shut up. The man asked if I was okay with cutting it short, and I only nodded.”

I could still see the long pieces of my hair dropping to the floor and feel the sadness at being so powerless. “Even though I felt like crying, I didn't. Melody sat there watching, nodding and smiling like it was great. ‘How cute!' she kept saying. I knew she was lying.”

I stared into the darkness and wondered why the sharp edge of that memory still sliced away at me.

“You used to hate your short hair. I remember you couldn't wait for it to grow.”

“That's why I wear it long now. Anyway, after we met up with Jack and he saw what she'd done, he pretended my haircut looked okay. But I saw his first reaction. He was just trying to make me feel better.”

“Why did Melody cut your hair like that?”

“Because Erv, her new guy, was on parole. He wasn't allowed to have little girls in his house. So she told him she had twin boys and started calling me Josh.”

Noah swore. Just then I sensed that he hated her almost as much as I did.

“Thanks,” I whispered, for the first time not objecting to the colorful words he used to describe my mother.

“Did this Erv guy figure out you were a girl?”

“No, so I guess one good thing came from getting my hair chopped off. Except I think his parole should've forbidden him from being around all kids, not just girls. He was mean. We'd never seen any of her guy friends have such crazy eyes.” I paused, recoiling from the prickly memory. “We were there only a couple of days when he got furious at us for eating the last of the Kix cereal. Erv knocked Jack across the kitchen.”

“And, of course, your hag of a mother didn't do anything.”

“Nothing. We knew we had to get out. Melody wasn't going to leave him, and we couldn't stay. We got our stuff together and climbed out the bedroom window. Our plan was to go back to Cheryl, her cousin. But we only made it to the border, where we got stopped. The Canadian officers handed us over to the authorities in New York.”

“Because you had US passports?”

“Yes. They questioned us for a while. We had no intention of telling them why we were in Canada or that we'd come from Gatineau. We were also afraid to give them Cheryl's name, in case she had Melody's phone number. Since they couldn't find any current info on our mother, a social worker came and took us to Seale House.”

I stared into the dark and listened to the quiet settling sounds of the house. “No matter how long my hair is or
how much makeup I wear, when I look in the mirror I still see Jocey with her boy haircut. I don't know if I'll ever lose that ugly part of me.”

Noah made his way over to me. “You listen to me. You're the most remarkable person I've ever known. Since you've grown up, you're beautiful, yes, but I don't really care about your looks. Never have. It's your head and heart that's always gotten under my skin like nobody else could. Understand?”