1. Camouflage. Best is Open Secret Variety
2. Secret exit
3. Explosives
4. Safety rope
5. Back-up plans make you weak
I’m not sure I can endorse all of those, Sadie thought.
Ford replaced the card in the box with the other maps and returned it to its high shelf in the closet but put the BUCKY map in the bag he took to work. If Bucky had left the file, Sadie heard him decide, then Bucky must know something and must be nearby. He’d revisit their old hideouts and find him.
On Tuesday after work Ford went to an old boat that he entered from a secret tunnel beneath a picnic bench, and a fort made out of a decaying camper entirely engulfed by bushes. On Wednesday he rode to a completely deserted tree-lined residential block in the middle of the city, where he stopped at an abandoned house with a secret room through the fireplace. There was no sign of Bucky.
By Thursday he was a tinderbox ready to explode. He was on his way home from work when his phone buzzed with a text. It said, “I HEAR YOU’VE BEEN ASKING ABOUT ME. I’LL BE AT THE CANDY FACTORY TONIGHT AFTER 10:30. YOUR NAME IS WITH THE VIP HOST. PLUM.”
Boom! thought Sadie.
CHAPTER 9
His mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Ford walked in the door that night. She was wearing a faded blue sweater, jeans, and a gold locket. Sadie hadn’t seen her dressed and out of bed before, and although she still looked frail, she seemed more substantial. More real.
She marked her place in her word jumble with a pencil, folded her hands over it, and looked at him with a smile. “We had a visit from our Roque Community Health Evaluator today.” Her tone made Sadie think of Jell-O, artificially bright and sweet. “It went very well.”
“Oh, good,” Ford said, matching her artificial cheer. He pulled the two cans of Spaghetti-n-Meatballz he’d bought on his way home from his bag.
“They offered to send someone over to help Lulu feel more comfortable leaving the house again. We just need to set up a time.”
“Can they also bring James back to life? Because I actually think that’s what it would take.” Stop it, Sadie wanted to tell him. Why can’t you just listen to your mother instead of having to remind her constantly that James is gone?
Her brightness dimmed a little. “Why do you always have to be so negative?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are,” Lulu said stepping into the room. She was wearing a pair of purple corduroy pants that were three inches too short and a gray men’s Henley shirt.
“That’s my shirt,” Ford said. “Who said you could borrow it?”
“The fairies that live on the floor of my room, where I found it.”
“Copernicus must have put it there.” Ford looked sternly at him and said, “Bad dog.”
Lulu said, “It’s not his fault you failed Drawers in school.” She stood on her tiptoes to peer into the pot and made a face. “Spaghetti-n-Meatballz again?”
Ford said, “There’s also nothing. We’ve got plenty of that.”
Lulu rolled her eyes. “Why is it spelled with a z?”
“It stands for zee good stuff,” Ford explained solemnly. “It’s Italian.”
For the first time since Sadie had been in Ford’s head, the three of them had dinner together. That meant that Lulu and Ford ate like savages while Mrs. Winter pushed her food around on her plate. “I’d hoped you would be here when the Evaluator came,” she said, arranging her Ballz into a pyramid.
“This new one is nice,” Lulu put in. “She knows fun games.”
“It’s the fifth visit you’ve missed,” his mother went on. “But she’ll be back Tuesday.”
Sadie felt the muscles in Ford’s back tense. He kept his eyes on his plate, concentrating on holding back his rising anger. “I’m sure you kept the Roaches entertained.”
His mother knocked over her pyramid. “Please don’t call them that. They’ve been very helpful to our family.”
“Have they?” Ford looked up, like he was interested, but Sadie knew it was only sarcasm. “As far as I can tell, they come and spy on us—”
“Check on us,” Mrs. Winter corrected.
“—to make sure we’re not doing drugs, just because one member of our family, who’s not even here anymore, did drugs. I’m not sure how much I trust people who think drug addiction is a communicable disease.”
Mrs. Winter sighed. “They come to see if we need support. If there’s anything they can do to make our family life easier.”
“There is,” Ford said, and Sadie felt as though he wasn’t just leaning into a door to keep the anger from coming through, he was bracing an entire wall. “They could leave us alone. Can you point to one thing they’ve actually done?”
His mother looked away. “They paid for James’s funeral.”
Dots of blues and yellows streaked with black coalesced into a churchyard with patches of snow on the ground, a man in a suit speaking, people, more than a hundred of them, crowding close to listen. Finally Lulu in a dress three sizes too big for her, dropping crystal stars on a coffin. Sadie felt whole new registers of anger blossom in Ford as the images faded.
“May I be excused?” Lulu said.
Ford glanced at her plate. “You hardy ate anything.”
“Copernicus doesn’t feel good,” the girl said.
Ford looked at her hard for a moment then said, “Go on. I’ll come in to say goodbye before I leave.”
Lulu nodded and ran down the hall to her room, slamming the door.
His mother said, “You upset your sister.”
“Yeah, it was all me.” Ford got up from the table and began to clear the dishes. Sadie noticed the deliberateness of his movements and sensed how much he’d like to smash every plate against the floor.
His mother lit a cigarette, took a short drag, and said nervously, “You’re going out?”
He leaned against the counter, drying his hands. “Yep.”
Don’t do it, Sadie said, sampling the anticipation he was feeling. It was impure, mixed with a little malice and a lot of pain, and it was designed to do only one job.
He said, “I’m going to meet James’s girlfriend.”
There was a long silence. And then, “You selfish boy.”
His mother’s words set up a relay in Ford’s mind, pinging around his memories like a pinball. His father in a janitor uniform smelling of bleach, the man’s face clear, teeth yellow, eyes furious. “You selfish shit, I work to put food on the table, a roof over your head, and you thank me by running away?” His face in Ford’s face, the image slightly less clear, Ford’s saying, “I wasn’t running away, sir, I was at my friend Buck—” interrupted with a growled “Shut up.” The man’s voice yelling, “Do you know how upset your mother was? Do you know how much pain you caused her?” The dots bigger, images blurrier as though harder to see since the situation made less sense to the child, his mother’s arms covered in bruises. “Look how much you hurt your mother when you don’t obey. Tell him, Vera.” Large dots combining into hypnotic smears making a woman with no face, just a voice that says, “Please, Ford, please, can’t you just behave? Why can’t you stop upsetting your father?”
Sadie was knocked backward by the memories. The scent of bleach was overpowering. Betrayal, Sadie realized. That’s what bleach meant. The deepest, most fundamental form of betrayal.
Poor Ford, she thought. No wonder he and his mother have so little to say to one another. It was incredible to Sadie that they communicated at all, even in their stunted way.