Will looked at Jonah and Jonah shook his head.
“Okay,” said Will.
“And then we’re gone,” said Jonah. “There’s a science test this afternoon, and I need to go over my notes.”
Back Outside at the foot of the towering elevator, the boys halted beside a rusted-out car near the shore, in which, judging by the blankets and cardboard pad, people were recently camped. Beside the car the lake water foamed slightly with a rainbowish film.
“Let’s just use this,” Jonah said, dipping the bucket the Wheezing Man gave them.
“I think he meant pure, Jonah.”
“You think he can taste it?”
“You think he can’t?”
“Whatever,” said Jonah, dumping the liquid from the bucket.
The boys continued down the shoreline, lowering their gazes when they passed a mean-looking man hanging a slippery skinned animal from a leafless tree, then an Indian couple locked unconscious in each other’s arms beneath a torn tarp propped up by some old skis stuck in the dirt.
When they returned to the elevator an hour later with water from at least a mile up the shore, the man was asleep. They set the bucket beside him and left.
Will approached his house from the creek and snuck in through the back door. His stomach stewing with hunger, he tiptoed into Paris to fix a snack. At the table sat his mother, both palms pressed against a steaming mug of tea, beside her Constable MacVicar.
“And look who it is,” said the constable, as though speaking to a girl who’d had her birthday party canceled. “Out for some overnight mischief, like I said.”
Slowly his mother looked up from her mug, her face blanched and drained. “Is that you, Will?” she said, her voice croaky. “You’re here?” For the first time Will noticed white strands surfacing in her hair. But her eyes were still leaf-green, and he resisted another sudden boyish urge to crash into her arms.
“In the flesh,” said the constable. “And where were you, Will?”
“Jonah’s,” said Will. “We fell asleep watching horror movies. Sorry, Mom.”
“Jonah Turtle?” asked the constable, quickly.
“Yeah,” said Will. “His phone wasn’t working, so I couldn’t call.”
“Okay,” MacVicar said, perturbed for a second, before he reattained composure. “Well, you’re fine now. Home. Safe. That’s what matters.” He clapped. “Anyway, Diane, I’d better be going. See me to the door, Will.”
After the constable pulled on his zippered boots, he set a big hand on Will’s shoulder. “I want you to steer clear of that Indian boy, Jonah. That Turtle family is no good. I know you’ve been riding those boards of yours around downtown, trespassing and damaging property—”
Will kicked into his best surprised routine, “What do you mean?”
“Save the act. That boy’s dangerous, son. A magnet for calamity. Most Indians don’t know how to conduct themselves in a city. Jonah and that Marcus are cut from the same cloth. You need to make sure you don’t turn yourself into one of those kids I haven’t much interest in finding.”
Then he gestured gravely to the kitchen. “That woman in there has had enough distress in her life,” he said. “She doesn’t deserve any more grief from you. Look, I know you lied to me in my office. Your mother hasn’t left this place for years. But if she slips any further down, I’ll have to ask Social Services to step in, Will. And I don’t want that. Which means your job is to prevent me from making that call. Do I make myself clear?”
Will mumbled something to get him out the door, then retreated to New York. He lay on top of his comforter on his back, his room darkened by blankets he’d plastered over his windows, studying the ghostly pages torn from Thrasher that wallpapered his room as completely as they did his imagination.
Some time later came a soft knock on his door. With his head buried in the pillow, Will felt the bed cant under her weight. “You don’t have to go to school today,” she said from beside him. “You can stay home with me. I’ll slow-cook us a lasagna.”
“Sure,” he said, his voice muffled.
She snapped on his bedside lamp and let out a tiny cluck when she saw the scars on his arms that he’d forgotten to cover with a long-sleeved shirt. “Oh, honey,” she said, turning his elbow, “do they hurt?”
“They’re fine,” he said. “Scars don’t hurt Mom. They’re healed.”
“They don’t look fine,” she said.
Suddenly he couldn’t tolerate her hands on him. He tore away and rolled to his side. “It’s just skateboarding,” he said.
“But you’ll ruin your career in elbow modeling,” she joked, but Will didn’t laugh, because there was still guilt stashed somewhere in it.
“My skin is mine to ruin,” he said. “Or did you only loan it to me?” He reached and angrily clicked off his light, wreathing them in near darkness.
“Will,” she began again after a while, “when you didn’t come home last night, I called Jonah’s place and no one answered.”
“I told you their phone was broken.”
She took a deep breath, then drew back her elastic and let it go. “And the constable mentioned you’d been down to visit him at the station? Down at the harbor?” she said, her voice gaining in pitch. “Asking about the boy who had … who had disappeared? Is that true?” She sobbed out the last word.
Will said nothing.
She wept then for some time, the bed jiggling like the ride you put coins in at the mini-mall where he and Jonah skateboarded at lunch. He could sense her soggy face hung above him, as dangerous to behold as a solar eclipse.
“How am I supposed to trust you now that you broke your promise?” she said, regaining some composure. “After you’ve been lying to me about where you and Jonah go all day?”
“Not nearly as much as you’ve been lying to me, Mom. Like why you’re so afraid of the harbor? But you know what? It’s fun down there. I like it.”
“It was dangerous then, and it still is, Will,” she said. “Maybe worse.”
“That’s where Charlie died, right? Of a heart attack? Right? Constable MacVicar told me he died in an accident.”
She shut her eyes. “Oh, Will,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
He scoffed. “And there’s nothing wrong with my heart, is there?”
He watched her take five slow breaths. “It was a metaphor,” she said.
“A metaphor for what?”
“Our family, Will. The Cardiels. Your grandfather, your uncle, me—we don’t have the best luck. I wanted to tell you that you need to be especially careful, but didn’t know how …”
“My friend Angela,” Will said, “she’s actually going to die, Mom, like for real. There’s nothing anyone can do. And you know what? She’s not even scared. She enjoys the time she’s got left.”
“Will—”
“So what. I’ve lied to you like crazy since I’ve been going Outside. I’ve nearly died more times than I can count. And there are going to be more. There. Now we’re even.”
They sat again in silence, and Will fought against synchronizing his breathing with hers, waiting to breathe in when she breathed out.
“I feel so far away from you now,” she said, her voice emptied out.
“That’s how it’s supposed to be, Mom,” he said.
“I suppose so,” she said. “Just please let the constable do his job. That’s all I ask. You work on growing up. That’s dangerous enough.”
Will waited until Relaxation Time to go spelunking into the most neglected cupboards of Paris for dusty-lidded cans that his mother wouldn’t notice missing: beets, herring, coconut milk, water chestnuts (whatever those were), fruit cocktail comprised mostly of soggy, tasteless pears, as well as a bag of uncooked oatmeal and some past-stale hunks of bread she kept for croutons.
“Are you going back to the harbor?” she said while he was putting on his skateboard shoes, an unimpressive sternness to her voice.