“Anything else?”
He was being such a pain in the ass, I snapped, “Yeah. I need you to pick up Jenny on your way back.” Too late, I thought of Shayla and the fact that I really didn’t want to spread the word I was permanently responsible for a kid these days.
“From school?” Ainsley asked.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. It wasn’t in me to ask for a personal favor without justification but it felt tricky explaining my motives to Ainsley. “I’m going to check something out at the Jost farm and I may run late. If you get her by six, we can rendezvous back at my place and watch whatever you get at the firehouse.”
Silence.
Conference call went lull.
Shayla tapped her foot.
“You want to talk to Mr. Jost again, don’t you?” Ainsley’s mental wheels were turning. “Don’t go back there, Maddy. He’s going to call the cops or something this time.”
“He might talk now that he’s had all day to think about what I dropped off this morning.” Quietly I added, “And there’s something I need to say to him.”
“Oh, man.” Ainsley sounded worried. “Don’t make me give you the J-school speech.”
“Ha. Funny.”
Shayla stood there watching me with one eyebrow cocked, so I could only penalize the boy with the silent treatment. The conference call droned on. A close-up image of Grace flickered before me on the monitor, waiting. I felt caught in a paused moment, waiting for someone to press the button that would release me from the sameness of it all. Something had to change.
“I’ll pick up Jenny by six,” Ainsley relented. “No problem. Maybe call a pizza, too? Delivery to your place?”
Pizza, the ultimate Prescott peace offering.
All I could say was, “Thanks. I’m hanging up now. Get back to work.”
“Do I rate your attention, yet, Ms. O’Hara?” Shayla drawled.
“Absolutely.” I stood to face her.
The conference call shouted, “O’Hara?”
I tapped the mute button. “Yeah?”
It was the voice of my New York production counterpart. “Are you going to up-link your story for everybody to preview?”
“No.”
“We’d really like to see it,” the shark from Dallas cooed.
“Oh well, in that case, hell no,” I said with a smile. Shayla can vouch for me.
There was a laugh or two and then someone started to argue about how the stories would be previewed and I was off the hook again, for half a second anyway.
“Sorry. This may go on a while.” I waved at the speakerphone. “Can we schedule something later? We could preview tomorrow before the up-link.”
She wasn’t fooled, but she wasn’t a time-wasting moron either. I was hired to do a job, and she’d been doing her job long enough to recognize when to stay out of the way. “Fine. I’d prefer to see what you do for us, before we talk anyway. So, ‘get back to work,’” she mimicked.
I shot her with my pointer finger and nodded.
That I could do.
6:09:16 p.m.
The sun was all the way down and it was really cold now. It hadn’t even been warm when she got out of the car. Jenny pressed farther under the cover of the bushes. She pulled her knees against her chest.
School was really far away. Home was probably closer. Maybe.
She’d lied. She really wasn’t all that sure where she was. Luckily, she’d gotten pretty good at waiting, giving herself time to figure things out.
If she went home, Aunt Maddy would ask her why she wasn’t at school. What could she say? She had to think of something. She had to have an answer. Something bad would happen if she didn’t think of a way to explain.
Her head hurt.
Everyone at school would be mad at her too, now. Worse than when she hid in the bathroom.
She was gonna be in trouble.
Now her stomach felt horrible, too.
Why was this happening? It was all wrong. She didn’t used to get in trouble. She used to believe she was a good kid. Her mom always said it-like every day.
But that couldn’t be true, could it? Because she was the same kid, and now she was always in trouble and everybody hated her. Being a good kid must be when other people thought you were good.
Grown-ups were so tricky.
Why did he do it? Why did he make everybody mad at her? She thought he was nice. He used to bring her stuff, like candy, and tell her mom to order her a pizza with plain cheese, nothing on it. He even gave her a piggyback ride to bed that one time and everyone laughed.
Jenny felt her nose tickle because of another drip. She looked for a dry spot on her jacket sleeve.
Stranger danger was such a joke. The people she knew were the scary ones.
Her fingers were getting stiff. Jenny tried to push them into the front pockets of her jeans to warm them up and touched the square of medicine tablets. She took it out and looked at it. It was exactly like the one that Tonya had. The thought gave her such a rush of guilt and excitement she stuffed it back in her pocket and shut her eyes.
What would it be like to feel no pain?
A tornado started whirling in her stomach. The inside of her throat got all thick and sticky. If she swallowed she might even vomit.
Her mother always told her to use the word vomit. Not puke or barf. Vomit was a medical word. People got sick sometimes; it was normal. People got hurt, too. And sometimes they needed medicine to get better. Her mother told her that, too.
What time was it? The sun hadn’t quite gone down, but it was so low in the sky the tall trees made it seem like night where she sat. She couldn’t even see lights from houses or anything, only trees and fences and road.
Nothing looked the same. A car passed her on the road, fast and loud.
Jenny pressed her forehead to her knees and folded her arms tight around her legs. She sniffed and rubbed her nose on her sleeve again. It burned.
She was in so much trouble she couldn’t even think what would come next. It was like trying to imagine fifth grade. Those kids had hardcover books and homework, like, every day.
How could she ever do it all by herself?
Jenny wiggled her fingers in her pocket and felt the medicine move under fingers.
What would it be like to feel no pain?
That part wasn’t so hard to imagine.
She could try to remember.
Or she could take some medicine.
6:14:46 p.m.
I was on Peg, so there was no hiding my arrival at the Jost farm. Older bikes, like the Super X, had very little covering around the engine and pipes. Peg roared.
I shut the engine down before I turned into the driveway. I left the bike propped on the far side of the road near the cow fence. Yes, Ainsley, I can be taught.
It was third-world dark out there. No street lights. No landscape highlighting. One window in the entire house showed a glow. Anywhere else in the state of Illinois, you’d think the family had gone out, leaving nothing but a kitchen light to guide their return.
In this house it was a sign someone must be home.
I knocked hard on the front door and called out, “Mr. Jost? It’s Maddy O’Hara.”
My metabolism rarely lets me cool down, but tonight my hands felt frozen stiff. I tried stamping my feet to throw off the nervy chill creeping up my back. I knocked again with the side of my fist, bam, bam, bam.
“Mr. Jost? It’s important. It’s about Rachel.”
His face appeared through the small square of window. The white skin around his eyes and the sharp profile of his nose was all I could see.
“What about my daughter?” he said.
“Open the door, Mr. Jost. I’m not going to talk to you through a door.” The ridiculousness of the situation took some of the edge off.
The door opened slowly. He wasn’t wearing his hat or his jacket. His suspenders followed the line of his chest to the forward hunch of an older man’s shoulders. He didn’t step back. Didn’t invite me in. He was being so obvious about it, I almost laughed. Why was I so afraid of this guy?