Don't Let Me Go Page 24

  “Sometimes she forgets when she has a lot on her mind,” Billy said.

  Grace threw the door wide, blocking his view again.

  “It’s Rayleen! Billy! She wants to talk to you!”

  Billy sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that day. He could feel how little energy he had to get up and walk to the door. He did it anyway.

  “I have to talk fast,” Rayleen said. “I have to get ready. I’m taking you up on your offer to watch Grace. Here. Take this twenty.”

  She pressed a bill into his hand.

  “You don’t have to pay me to look after Grace.”

  “No. I know. It’s not that. It’s that I know your food supply is kind of tight, and I thought you guys could order a pizza on me.”

  Wow, Billy thought. When Rayleen said she was going to talk fast, she wasn’t kidding. He’d never heard so many words per second tumble from her lips.

  In the background of his apartment, he heard Grace piping about the joys of pizza.

  “Grace can come over to my place and order it on my phone,” Rayleen rushed on. “If I’m already gone by then, she has the key. But here’s a piece of advice. Don’t tell her to get whatever she wants. Tell her she wants cheese and pepperoni, period. Otherwise it’ll never fit into that twenty. Her bedtime is nine o’clock. So probably I’ll be home by then, but if for some reason I’m not, maybe you could just put her to bed on your couch and I’ll come get her in the morning. OK?”

  But before he could even say whether it was OK or not, she had grabbed him into a bear hug and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Gotta go,” she said. “Thank you. I think.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he said as she disappeared into her own apartment.

  Billy pulled a big, deep breath and shut the door. Grace looked up at him expectantly.

  “Are they going out on a date?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Yea, yea, yea,” Grace sang, jumping up and down and swinging her arms over her head in a dance-like way. “We get a pizza and they get a date, and I’m happy, and this is my Happy Grace Dance,” she sang, just before slipping and falling on her butt.

  “And that last move was your Sad Grace Dance, right?”

  “Got that right,” she said, still down and rubbing her butt. “You’re magic, Billy. Not magic magic, but like Jesse is magic. Because you make stuff happen. Like you made that date happen.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I just listened. She just needed to talk it out.”

  “So? That’s how you made it happen. It’s still magic.”

  • • •

  “We studied the stars in school,” Grace said. “Like space, and the solar system and black holes and stuff. It was freaky. It was really weird.”

  They lay on their backs on Billy’s tiny front patio, looking up at the stars. At least, the dozen or so that could be seen in spite of the smog and the city lights.

  “What was weird about it?”

  His exhaustion had mellowed him, making him feel deliciously sleepy and almost safe. He savored the feeling of the night air on his face, and his own lack of panic.

  “Well, first of all, my teacher said space goes on forever. But that’s impossible.”

  “How do you know it’s impossible?”

  “It just is.”

  “Maybe it’s possible, but it’s one of those things our brains aren’t good at grasping. Look at it this way. You’re in a space ship. And you’re traveling out and out and out. Looking for the edge of space. For the place it stops.”

  “Right. And there has to be one. Somewhere.”

  “So what’s on the other side? When you find the place where space stops, what’s on the other side of it?”

  They lay quietly, side by side, for a minute or so.

  “Nothing,” Grace said, around the time he thought she might have dozed off.

  “But that’s all space is. Nothing. So if nothing ends, and there’s nothing on the other side of it, then that’s really just more space on the other side.”

  “Aaagh!” Grace shouted. “Billy, I think you broke my brain. OK, let’s say space goes on forever, even though it doesn’t really make any sense. My teacher said there’re supposed to be billions of stars. Or trillions or something. So, look up there. Where are they all?”

  “The city lights wash them out. If you’re out in the desert or up in the mountains you can see a lot more.”

  “I’ve never been out of the city. Have you? Have you ever been up in the mountains or out in the desert?”

  “Yes,” Billy said. “Both.” He could hear distant music. He’d heard it all along, he realized, but had only just then become conscious of it. It sounded Middle-Eastern. Someone was having a party somewhere. Everyone, everywhere was having a life. Even him. Even Billy. “When I was dancing, I used to travel all around the country.”

  A long silence. Billy listened to the music and felt warmer than he should have on a cool night like this.

  Then Grace said, “What happened, Billy? What happened to you?”

  And he didn’t even feel the urge to fight it. It was bound to find him sooner or later, and tonight seemed as good a night as any.

  Still, they lay in silence for a long time.

  “It’s a little hard to explain,” he said at last. “But I’ll try. I’ll try. I’ve just always had panic attacks. And I know you want me to tell you why, but I don’t know why I have panic attacks and other people don’t. I’m not sure if anybody knows that. I grew up in a weird, scary house, but other people did, too, and they don’t all have panic attacks. But I’ve had them ever since I was…oh, I don’t know…maybe even your age. Maybe first or second grade. But then they just kept getting worse. For years I could keep them away by dancing. Or keep them at bay, anyway. As long as I danced regularly. But then after a while I had to literally be in the very act of dancing to stop them. So I’d have panic attacks when I traveled, and on the way to the theater. And then during curtain calls. So I started going to fewer auditions. But when I was inside, I was always OK. So I just started staying inside. Like I told you before, it gets to be an addiction. You want to be OK right now, so you trade that for having a good life in the long run. It’s a bad trade, but people do it all the time. That’s all addiction really is. It’s trading away the future so you can feel OK right now. That’s what your mom is doing. And that’s what got me. There’s really quite a lot of it going around.”

  Billy wondered if Grace had understood any of that. But she was a smart kid, so he figured she probably understood enough. As much as she needed to.

  Billy heard her snore lightly, so he scooped her up and carried her in and laid her down on the couch, covering her with the afghan, which had never been put back on the bed.

  He looked at the clock. Ten fifteen.

  It brought a little pang of pain to his gut to think of Jesse and Rayleen out together, talking, or looking into each other’s eyes, or whatever they were doing. But he brushed it away again. They had a right to find happiness, if indeed it was there for them. It benefitted Billy nothing if they failed.

  Just as he was climbing under the covers, Grace spoke to him from the living room.

  “Billy?”

  “You OK?”

  “Yeah. I just wanted to tell you something.”

  “All right. What?”

  “You can’t tell anybody.”

  “OK.”

  “I’m going to be a dancer when I grow up.”

  Billy breathed three times, consciously. As much as he could bring himself to believe in prayer, he prayed that the life would not wound her beyond repair.

  “Why wouldn’t you want anyone else to know that?”

  “Because they wouldn’t believe me. They’d think I was just being a stupid kid. But you believe me, right? You believe I can really do it, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I do. But, like I said last time you asked, you’re going to have to work incredibly hard. But I believe you can, if y
ou want it badly enough.”

  “I do. I want it bad. And it’ll all be because of you. You’re the one who taught me to shine.”

  “There’s a lot more to it than I’ve taught you so far.”

  “I know. But you’re not done teaching me. Are you?”

  “No,” Billy said. “I’m not.”

  Grace

  “Someone is knocking on Rayleen’s door,” Grace said. “Billy, do you hear that?”

  Grace paused her dance rehearsal to listen, standing balanced with one leg in the air. Her balance had gotten a lot better since she’d started with all the dancing. Still, she hoped she didn’t look too much like one of those bird dogs you see in the movies and on TV, helping hunt pheasants. Or…then, on the other hand, those were really pretty dogs.

  “Maybe we should go see who it is, so we can tell them Rayleen won’t be home till five thirty.”

  “I’ll go along,” Billy said, lifting the cat up off his lap.

  “Why? I can open a door, you know.”

  “But we don’t know who’s on the other side.”

  “Some protection you’ll be,” she said as they approached the door nearly elbow to shoulder.

  “Hey.”

  He sounded hurt.

  “Sorry.”

  It was so natural to take those little shots at Billy, and he was around so much of the time, that Grace had to keep reminding herself that it was easy — too easy — to hurt his feelings.

  Billy undid the locks and Grace opened the door, a team effort.

  There was a lady at Rayleen’s door, and Grace remembered her, but just for a second she couldn’t remember from where. Then the lady turned around and smiled at her, and Grace’s tummy did a little flip-flop. It was that lady from the county. The one who’d come already, once before, to check on her.

  “Oh, there you are, Grace,” the lady said. “Do you remember me?”

  “Yeah.” Grace was surprised by how little her voice sounded. “Just not your name.”

  “Ms. Katz.”

  “Right. I wonder how I forgot that. Because I really like cats.”

  “It’s not spelled the same,” the lady said, still smiling that smile that didn’t seem real. It looked more like something she might have put on earlier that morning with her make-up.

  “Doesn’t matter how it’s spelled,” Grace said.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Billy ripping at a thumbnail, but she wasn’t sure how it would look to slap his hand in front of Ms. Katz. She wasn’t sure about any of the things you were or weren’t supposed to do in front of a county lady, and that was just the problem. Somebody should have given her lessons, but they hadn’t, and now it was too late.

  “I don’t think I’ve met you,” Ms. Katz said, looking up at Billy.

  Grace thought how it was a good thing Billy was dressed right now, and not in his raggedy old pajamas. Then again, he was almost always dressed these days, unless he was trying to take a nap, and Grace felt bad that she had only just now thought to notice.

  “Billy…Feldman,” he said, and held out his hand for her to shake.

  Too bad it was his right thumb he’d been chewing on, and now it had a little blood on it. Grace hoped Ms. Katz wouldn’t notice.

  He opened the door wide and motioned the county lady into the apartment. Grace wished he wouldn’t. But, then again, she sort of figured Billy wished he wouldn’t, too, but probably he just figured he didn’t have any other choice. Grace wondered if Billy knew what you did and didn’t do in front of the county, or if he was just making it up as he went along, too. He looked scared.

  Ms. Katz sat down on Billy’s couch and Mr. Lafferty the Girl Cat jumped right into her lap.

  “She likes you,” Grace said.

  “That’s nice,” Ms. Katz said.

  She ran one hand down Mr. Lafferty’s fur, and the cat did that little “elevator butt” move that some cats do, raising her back end just as the hand got there. It made Grace like the county lady a little better, how she petted the cat instead of just shooing her away or something.

  “That’s my cat,” Grace said. “She used to belong to Mr. Lafferty upstairs, but then he shot himself, and now she’s my cat.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Billy start back in on the same poor thumbnail.

  “So she comes with you when Mr. Feldman babysits?”

  “Mr….who? Oh. Right. Billy. I always forget his name is Feldman. I just call him Billy. Or Billy Shine, if I need a last name. No. The cat doesn’t come anywhere with me. She lives here.”

  “Your cat lives here?”

  “Yeah. My mom doesn’t want me to even get one. Cat, I mean. But I already got her. But she lives here.”

  Billy jumped to his feet.

  “Coffee!” he shouted, and it came out way too loud, and then he looked embarrassed about it. “Shall I make us a pot of coffee? I have real cream.”

  “No, thank you,” Ms. Katz said. “I won’t be here that long. So. Grace. Do you live here?”

  Billy had started to sit again, but then when Ms. Katz asked that question he just froze in mid-air, not standing, not sitting, his knees bent.

  “Um. No,” Grace said, and Billy’s spell broke, and he sat down. “No. I don’t live here. I just come here after school for two hours.” She watched Ms. Katz nod and write notes to herself in a folder. “Unless Rayleen has a date, which for the last week or two is almost every night. Then I’m here for a lot longer. But mostly I live at Rayleen’s.”

  A long silence. Long and also…not good. Grace ran back over what she’d just said in her mind, all fast and panicky, trying to figure out where she’d made a wrong turn. It had all seemed like reasonable stuff to say, but they were in a bad place now, and she could feel it. And somehow it was all her fault.

  “You live with Ms. Johnson? You’re not living with your mother now at all?”

  Grace’s throat closed up, making it hard to talk.

  “It’s just for a little while,” she said. “Just till she feels better.”

  The words squeaked a little on their way out, and it was very embarrassing.

  “From her back injury,” Ms. Katz said. She didn’t make it sound like a question.

  “Her what?”

  “Ms. Johnson told me she’d had a back injury, and that’s why she has to be on so many medications.”

  “Right! The back injury! Yeah!”

  Ms. Katz sighed, and set down her folder, and looked right into Grace’s face. Grace felt all the blood, and probably the color, drain out of her own face, leaving it tingling and cold.

  “Here’s where we run into problems, Grace,” Ms. Katz said. She was talking that way grown-ups do when they want kids to know they care. “I just had a talk with your mom. Well. I saw her. I asked about the injury. And she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.”

  Grace glanced over at Billy, whose face was so white it looked like he might’ve died since she last checked. Nobody said anything for a scary-long time.

  “The other problem,” Ms. Katz said, being the only one who wanted to talk, “is that I was told this was a babysitting arrangement. But if you’re living here or at Ms. Johnson’s, that’s a very different situation, because neither of your neighbors are registered as foster families. When will Ms. Johnson be home?”

  Grace opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out.

  “About five thirty,” Billy said. “Unless one of her clients ran a little late.”

  He sounded normal, and Grace marveled at how hard it must have been for him to say a normal, reasonable thing to the county at a time like this.

  “All right,” Ms. Katz said, gathering up her folders and swinging the strap of a briefcase over her shoulder. “All right, that’s fine. I have another visit to make, and I’ll come back. Just tell her I’ll come back.”

  Billy rose to walk her to the door.

  “Grace is thriving here,” he said.

  He sounded desperate, and
it reminded Grace that he was scared, and that they both were, and that they both had plenty of reasons to be.

  Ms. Katz smiled as if smiling made her sad, and started to say something, but Grace never gave her a chance. It was begging time, and she knew it. She got that from what Billy said, and it came through loud and clear.

  Grace jumped up and begged.

  “Please, you can’t take me,” she said. “You can’t take me away from here. It’s good here. I get to be near my mom so that way I’ll know if she gets clean — I mean, better — and besides, I get to dance at my school, in, like, two months, and if you take me away now I won’t get to do my dance, and it’s the most important thing ever. And I’m a good dancer, too, and before I came over here to Billy’s every day I didn’t know how to dance at all, not even one little step, and I was all pudgy and everything was terrible. And now look at me. Here, I’ll show you.”

  She shuffled fast over to her plywood dance floor.

  “I’m afraid I have to—”

  But Grace refused to let her finish. There was too much on the line here to give up now.

  “No, you have to see this,” she said. “You have to see me dance, so you’ll know how important this is.”

  She tapped her way into the center of the plywood.

  “Now watch. You’ll be impressed. You will.”

  She closed her eyes. Pictured the first few steps. The way Billy had taught her to do. Counted to three. Started with a time step.

  It was perfect. Billy was right. You start with something simple and perfect and it calms you down for the rest of the dance. But the Buffalo turns were coming up, and they had to be perfect, too. The whole future of the world depended on those turns being perfect.

  Then it hit her, what she was forgetting. She relaxed her upper parts and felt her shoulders drop. And she smiled.

  And the turns were perfect. The best she’d ever done.

  She looked up at the county lady, who really was watching, and really did seem impressed. Maybe it was working! How could Ms. Katz watch this, and then take her away from the very people who’d made it happen?