Brave Girl, Quiet Girl: A Novel Page 5

  I jumped when I heard it, and that woke the baby, because we were all wrapped around each other, cuddled really close together to keep her warm and not so scared. But when she felt me jump like that, she not only woke up, but she woke up scared to death again, and she started to cry. She started kind of slow, but I could tell the crying was going places, because kids can build up a lot of steam behind a thing like that, and if she got too loud then I knew it was all over. But it made me scared to know that, and she could feel it, being so close and all, so that didn’t help.

  I started whispering in her ear, but so quiet. It was so quiet I wasn’t sure she could even hear me. It was more like making the words with my lips against her ear, but then just this tiny breath of air that was the sound.

  I said, “Brave girl, quiet girl.”

  The noise of the cars on the freeway going over our heads was a good thing, because if we only made little noises, then the thumping of their tires on—actually I have no idea what the tires were thumping on—would drown us out.

  She said it back to me, just as quiet, which really surprised me. She stopped her run-up to that big cry and whispered back to me, “Brave girl, kiet girl,” right in my ear. She didn’t really get the kw sound in quiet—I think she was too young to have gotten the hang of that sound—but anyway I knew what she meant so what difference did it make?

  Then I heard “Molly,” also real long and singy, and then “Bodhi. Where are you?”

  I knew the voice and I knew it was one of the wild boys, the Musketeers. The one who was really smart and actually had a lot of schooling and wanted to make sure you knew it.

  “Brave girl, quiet girl,” I whispered again.

  “Brave girl, kiet girl,” she whispered back, and I was so proud of her it almost made my chest explode. Because I knew she was doing more than just imitating the words like a parrot, she was really working hard to be brave, just like I was asking her to do.

  It hit me in that minute that I would have to give her over to the police as soon as I could—unless those boys took her away from me, which was too awful to think about—and then I’d be alone. No Bodhi, no little girl, and already I knew I would miss her, which was weird because it’d only been a couple of hours, but I could feel how it was that way whether I wanted it to be or not.

  “We’re going to find you,” I heard one of them say, the dumber one. He wasn’t singing. He meant business. But the good news was that his voice came from a little farther down the block, like they had already passed us.

  It was a good hiding place Bodhi had found for us—at least, I hoped it was—but then I wondered how much of a sitting duck I would be if I didn’t have him to figure out stuff like this for both of us.

  I heard some banging noises at the end of the block, so I lifted up the flattened cardboard, but just the tiniest bit you can possibly imagine. Like an inch, like just enough to see under it with one eye. Two of them were crossing the empty street to the next block, and the one I thought was dumb was already across, and he had a big stick that he was banging against a row of dumpsters. Then he flipped their lids open and shouted “Ha!” each time, but of course we weren’t in there.

  There was a billboard on the other side of the freeway that I could see through that little slit, and it had this really nice expensive luxury car on it that probably cost like a million dollars. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. Just a whole lot. There was a light aimed up at the billboard so people could see it in the night, but it kept flickering on and off.

  It’s weird, I know, but when I look back on that night, I always think of that car, and see it behind my eyes. Like, it’s there, it’s gone, it’s there, it’s gone. I think I was stunned by the idea that all over this city—hell, all over the world—people have so much money that you can just show them a picture of a pretty thing like that and they’ll run out and spend a million dollars on it. I mean, somebody must, or they wouldn’t keep putting up the billboards, because they’re not free to put up. I wondered how it would feel to see a thing like that and just go out and buy one, and whether I would ever know how that felt, even once in my whole life.

  The boys turned the corner, and I breathed out a big bunch of air I must’ve been holding in. I waited a minute or two just to be safe, and then I started talking to the little girl.

  “Is your diaper wet?” I asked her, not really expecting she would answer me. It was more like talking to myself.

  But she understood me, and she shook her head no.

  I thought it was kind of amazing that she could hold it so long, but I guess looking back that’s kind of a weird thought because I had no idea how long it had been. I had no idea how long she’d been sitting in that car seat, or how long it had been since I found her there. But a few hours at least.

  “You want some more apple juice?”

  Then I wished I hadn’t asked her that, because the more apple juice I gave her, the more she was going to need to go. But you have to give a kid stuff to drink, because the littler they are, the more you can’t let them be dehydrated. I knew that from the time one of my little sisters was throwing up and had diarrhea. The doctor said it’s really important not to let them get dehydrated, so I figured diaper rash was less dangerous than that.

  She reached right out, and I opened the bottle again, but I had to sort of turn her over so she was more facedown, because you don’t want that juice going down into her lungs and choking her. Well, not choking, exactly, because she could breathe around it, but it would make her cough something fierce. And coughing is loud, but also it wouldn’t be good for her.

  She took about three sips and then we both heard it. We heard those boys coming back, retracing their steps along this avenue under the freeway bridge.

  I could feel her gather her breath in, like gearing up to cry, and I almost panicked and put my hand over her mouth, but I didn’t.

  Because I remembered a story we read in school.

  It’s actually weird how much of it I couldn’t remember, like I didn’t know if it was a true story or fiction, and I didn’t remember if it was from a war, like World War II. I think it was World War II, and I think the people who were hiding were Jewish and hiding from the Nazis, but it could have been a lot of different wars and a lot of different kinds of people, because a lot of bad stuff has happened in this world, let me tell you.

  I just remembered this lady, this young mother, covering her baby’s mouth with her hand so she couldn’t cry and give them away. And then when the soldiers were gone she saw that she had suffocated her own baby, which I thought was just the saddest thing I’d ever heard in my whole life.

  But the thing I think is weirdest to not be able to remember was whether it was a total accident or not. I mean, did she know the baby couldn’t breathe? Maybe in her panic she didn’t know that. But the really scary thing is that maybe she knew full well what she was doing but it was still better than the other way around, because maybe her baby dying on her lap, in her hands, was better than what would have happened if the soldiers had found them.

  Anyway, I know I’m getting off track, but I just had to say that I remembered that awful story, and that’s why I didn’t put my hand anywhere near that baby’s mouth.

  Instead I just held up one finger and put it to her lips, because everyone knows that means “shhh,” even a baby.

  I whispered, barely with any sound at all, “Brave girl, quiet girl.”

  And she whispered back, “Brave girl, kiet girl,” and I swear it was even quieter than when I said it, which I didn’t think was possible.

  They were talking to each other a lot down there, just passing under the freeway bridge again, right near where we were hiding. I figured that was good that they wouldn’t shut up for even a split second, because the more noise they made, the less likely they were to hear us.

  “The problem is,” the dumb one said, “there are just too many places. In a city like this we just sort of have a problem with the number of places. Y
ou know what I mean?”

  The smart guy said, “I never know what you mean. Not once that I can remember in all the time I’ve known you. And that’s such a long time it’s depressing just to think about it.”

  There was also a quiet one, but he didn’t say anything—why do you think I call him the quiet one?—but I swear he was the most dangerous one of all.

  “There’re too many places in the city where someone would hide and we wouldn’t think to look. It’s like they go on forever. There’s a word for that, but I can’t think of it. I can’t think what it is. What’s that word I’m trying to think of? When there’s no end to something?”

  “Don’t try to use big words, idiot. They don’t suit you. Just say there’s no end to it.”

  “But now I can’t think of that word, and it’s driving me crazy.”

  “Ubiquitous,” the smart one said.

  “What?”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is ubiquitous.”

  “No,” the dumb one said. “I don’t think it is.”

  “Infinite,” the quiet one said.

  Which was weird, because I’d literally never heard his voice before. The only reason I’m saying I thought it was him is because I could tell it wasn’t either of the other two.

  “No,” the dumb one said. “That’s not it either. This is driving me cra—”

  “Hey,” the smart guy said. I wish I knew their names to talk about them, but I never did. “We didn’t look behind that box.”

  My blood turned right away to ice, and my gut, too—this really fast, sudden deep freeze, because I figured they were talking about the flattened box we were hiding under.

  “Go up and look,” the smart guy said.

  But I don’t know who he said it to.

  “Me?” the idiot said. “Why should I go?”

  “It’s steep, and my shoes are bad.”

  “Your shoes? Your shoes are bad? Your shoes are heaven compared to my shoes. I would trade you in a heartbeat if your feet weren’t so small.”

  “I’ll go,” the quiet guy said.

  You could tell by the way he said it that he was sick of both of them. Just sick of the whole thing.

  Then nobody said anything, and I figured he was coming up. And he was really the last one of the three of them I would want finding us.

  My blood got even colder, and my heart started pounding so hard that I could hear it and feel it in my ears, and it actually hurt a little because it was throbbing so hard. And it made a lot of noise in my ears, but I could still hear the little girl suck in her breath to cry, so I pressed a finger to her lips again and said, “Brave girl, quiet girl,” with barely any sound, partly just to be quiet and partly because I barely had any breath.

  And she said, “Brave girl, kiet girl” back to me.

  And that was when I knew I couldn’t just sit there any longer. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. If he was coming, I had to know. I had to know the exact moment he was about to get there, so I could fight him. Maybe I could use surprise to beat him, even though he was big, because he wasn’t expecting somebody to jump out and knock him over backwards on that steep hill.

  But then a second later I’d have all three of them on us and I would lose. I already knew I would lose, because I can’t beat three older guys who are all bigger than I am, no matter how important it is to try to win.

  But I still had to do it. I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing and wait for them to come take her away from me. I had to try. Maybe after I bought some time by knocking him down the hill, I could climb up onto the freeway and flag down a car. I’d been thinking about it anyway, earlier that night—climbing up the high side of that bridge onto the freeway, but I didn’t think I could do it with the baby in my arms, and besides, it would’ve been dangerous to take her on the freeway. What if there was hardly any shoulder to stand on? And nobody was going to stop for us anyway, because it was the freeway, and they would only get crashed into from behind if they tried, and how did I know the person who stopped for us wouldn’t be even worse than what we were running from?

  But I had to do something, even if it was something dangerous, because what was headed our way was too dangerous for me to just sit there and let it catch up.

  I decided I had to look out and see how close he was, so I could surprise him and not the other way around.

  So I lifted that cardboard again, only about an inch, so one eye could look out. And what I saw made all the air rush out of me at once, with a sound. But it didn’t matter.

  He was on the other side.

  He was climbing the hill on the other side of the street. There was a big cardboard box sitting under the other side of the freeway bridge, but not flattened—a regular set-up box, and that was what they wanted to look behind. They must not ever have seen the flattened boxes we were hiding under.

  I let our cardboard cover back down and put a finger to the little girl’s lips again, but maybe I didn’t even need to bother, because she could tell I wasn’t as scared anymore.

  A second later we heard a big whap sound that I figured was the boy hitting or kicking the cardboard box, and it made us both jump, but we didn’t make a sound, because we knew what we needed to do by then.

  Then a minute later I heard their voices again, down on the street, and it sounded like they were going away, because I could hear their words getting quieter as they walked off.

  “I’m tired,” the dumb guy said. “I just want to go back.”

  “Go back? Go back? Do you have any idea how much money this could be? We could buy a car. Maybe even a house. And you just want to go back and rest? What’s wrong with you? After tonight we can do nothing but rest for our whole lives. And you want to give that up because you’re tired? Fine, go back, idiot. I’ll keep the money.”

  “No. I’m still in, I want the money, too. But I’m just not sure how we’re supposed to get it.”

  “Well, you saw that Amber Alert up on the freeway. So you know the parents want her back.”

  “But we don’t know who the parents are.”

  I was starting to think the dumb guy was not as dumb as everybody thought. But I only had one quick second to think about that because I had just heard something really important. There was an Amber Alert, which meant she hadn’t been dumped by her parents. They wanted her back.

  They were still talking, but in a minute they would be too far away to hear.

  “Well, the police know who they are,” the smart guy—who I figured was not as smart as he made himself sound—was saying.

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life! You think we’re gonna call the police and tell them we got the kid and then . . . what? You think they’ll tell us who to call? I just don’t know how . . .”

  But they were pretty far down the block by then, and I wasn’t sure what it was he didn’t know. It was too quiet to hear, but still I had a pretty good idea of everything they didn’t know, which was a whole lot.

  About ten or fifteen minutes later, when I was really, really sure they weren’t coming back, I asked the little girl, “Do you need to go?”

  She nodded really fast and really hard.

  I know it sounds weird to say, but I sort of fell in love with her in that second, like she was my own daughter or my own baby sister, because I knew she’d been purposely holding it all that time, which was a totally amazing thing for a kid that young to do.

  I lifted up the back of our cardboard cover, the side away from the street, and helped her out of our little hole, and we worked together and found the best spot where the pee wouldn’t roll right back into our hiding place. I held up the cardboard with my back so we were still invisible from the avenue, and I helped her take down her red leggings and her little ducky pull-up pants—they had ducks on them—and held her hands while she squatted down so she wouldn’t lose her balance and roll down the hill. She peed a lot. She’d been holding it for a long time, poor little girl.

  I didn�
��t have anything to wipe her with, but I figured it didn’t matter, because the pull-up pants were absorbent like a diaper. I figured she’d be okay.

  Then I helped her back into the hole and we just hunkered down in there for a long time. How long, I really have no clue. I was trying like hell to come up with a plan, but every idea just turned into a dead end. I could flag down anybody I saw walking down the street, but at this hour the streets in this neighborhood were completely deserted. And there was no way I could climb up onto that freeway with her in my arms, and no way I was leaving her alone to do it by myself.

  And I couldn’t just wander out with her and go in search of help, because those boys were still around somewhere, looking for us, and I had no idea where they were or how not to run into them.

  We really had no choice—at least, not a damned thing I could see—except to lie there and hold each other tight and wait for some kind of safe chance to come along and find us, almost by, like . . . sheer luck.

  Chapter Five

  Brooke: Twenty-Four Hours

  Morning came and found me still out on the roof.

  I almost fell asleep. I came close to falling off—losing my balance and tumbling down the slope. Then I caught myself and decided to go back to the police station.

  No real solid reason except that I couldn’t prevent myself from doing it. I had to stay as close to the inner workings of the search as possible. It was an obsession.

  My mother was downstairs in the kitchen fussing over a pot of coffee. Sounds like an odd description, but, believe me, she was fussing. She kept swaying back and forth like some kind of neurotic robot, reaching for something and then changing her mind. Or simply losing the thread of the action.

  Toward the stack of filters on the counter. Back toward the pot without picking up a filter. Reaching for the faucet. Back toward the filters.

  “Mom,” I said, and she jumped the proverbial mile.

  “Brooke,” she said, one hand on her heart. Too dramatically, I thought. “Don’t sneak up on a body like that. You scared the living daylights out of me.”