The liars child, p.23
The Liar's Child, page 23
CHAPTER 38
Cassie
CASSIE WAS PRETTY sure the kids she found standing outside the convenience store were the same ones she’d spotted the night before when they drove into town. It didn’t matter. There were four of them—two girls, two boys—all dressed in dark colors, slouching in the sheltering doorway of a building down the block from the store, and sharing a cigarette. Cassie had walked right up to them and one of the boys had nodded at her. She’d nodded back.
They weren’t that much older than she was, she decided. Maybe fourteen? It was hard to tell beneath the droop of their hoods. She huddled in her raincoat, keeping her distance beneath the wide overhang. They didn’t say anything to her, but she didn’t mind. The street gleamed. Cars pulled in and out of the parking lot between them and the store, tires sucking the wet pavement. People got out of the cars and hurried through the downpour into the store. A little while later, they came back out, hurried to their cars, and drove away.
One of the girls started complaining about a party they’d been to. It had been lame. She couldn’t wait to get out of this crap town. The other three agreed. There was nothing to do around here. Too bad fat, old Mrs. F was working today. She always came out from behind the cash register and followed them around. Just because she’d caught them before. One of the guys tossed the cigarette into a puddle. “But not you.” He was asking Cassie.
Cassie had shoplifted plenty of times. “Sure.”
She pushed herself away from the wall. Another car jolted into the parking lot, headlights sweeping, and braked to a stop. The window rolled down. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Get in the car.” It was the Bitch, leaning across the seat.
“No!”
“I’m not playing, Cassie. Get in.”
“I don’t want to. You can’t make me.”
Sara narrowed her eyes. Then she reached for the ignition key. The engine silenced. She got out and marched over. Sara wasn’t wearing a coat. She was drenched in seconds, but her gaze was locked on Cassie. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You don’t even know these kids.”
They were all watching. Cassie lifted her chin. Sara looked like a freak, standing there letting the rain pour down on her. She sneered. “What’s your problem?”
“You. You’re my problem. Get in the car.”
“No.”
“Fine. Stay here. I don’t care. But I need your phone.”
Everything was on her phone. It was hers, and hers alone. “No way!”
“Where is it? Your pocket? Your purse?”
Sara grabbed her arm. Cassie tried to twist free. “Get away, you psycho!” She slapped at Sara, but Sara jammed her hand into Cassie’s raincoat pockets, reached for Cassie’s purse. “Help me!” Cassie yelled to the kids, just standing around staring.
The guy who’d handed her the cigarette shook his head. “Sorry, dude.” He peeled himself away from the doorway. The others followed. The four of them turned the corner and disappeared.
Sara dug out Cassie’s phone. She held it up high.
A white-hot rage churned up inside Cassie. No one ever listened to her. Her mom, her dad. Sara. She curved her fingers into claws. She lunged.
Sara’s white, shocked face, falling away.
Cassie pressed her hands to her mouth. She couldn’t breathe. “No no no no no no no no.” She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t. No way. No.
Sara looked dazed. “I’m fine. Jesus. Calm down.” She got to her feet carefully.
Cassie wrapped her arms around herself. She swayed, hiccuping and gasping for air. She couldn’t stop sobbing. She couldn’t slow her thundering heart.
“Hey. It’s okay.” Sara put her hand on Cassie’s sleeve.
Cassie jerked free, horrified. “Don’t touch me!”
“All right, all right.” Sara glanced to the store on the corner, its windows bright with light. “Look,” she said, in a lower voice. “I was hoping to tell you in a better way. But the reason I want your phone isn’t because I’m an asshole but because your dad’s been arrested. It was on the news this morning.”
This was a bad dream. This wasn’t happening. “No. You’re lying. You’re nothing but a liar.”
“The police are going to be looking for you. They can track you through your GPS. They’re probably on their way right now. I want you to get that phone right now. It’s under the dumpster.”
Cassie felt dizzy. All her thoughts tumbling around. She couldn’t make sense of any of them. The police were going to come for her. “But I already turned it off…”
“When?” Sara’s hair was plastered to her head. Her shirt was sopping, showing the narrow straps of her bra. Her jeans were muddy.
“Yesterday.” It had come to her suddenly, maybe the second or third time Sara told her to call her dad. They were halfway across the bridge and Cassie had been reaching for her cellphone to do exactly that when she stopped herself. She didn’t want to talk to her dad. She found herself pressing the power button and watching the screen go black. Just for a little while, she’d promised herself.
“It doesn’t matter.” Sara looked impatient. “Someone finds your phone, they’ll turn it back on. You’ve got five minutes, Cassie, then I’m out of here.” She limped to her car, opened the door, and climbed in.
Icy rain tapped Cassie’s bare head, her shoulders, slid down the back of her neck. The sky was dark. The air smelled of lightning.
She walked over to the dumpster. She got on her hands and knees, and peered underneath. She lay on her side, stretched out an arm. Her fingertips nudged smooth plastic. She wriggled forward, closed her fingers around her phone. She pushed herself up, swiped her gritty palms on her shorts, and sloshed across the parking lot to where Sara’s car sat. She opened the door and climbed in. Every inch of her was waterlogged. She showed Sara the black screen. “Happy now?”
Sara held out her hand. “May I?”
She didn’t believe her. Cassie gave her the phone. Sara examined it, dropped it into her bag.
Cassie watched in disbelief. “You can’t have that. It’s mine.”
“I’ll get you a new phone.”
Cassie didn’t want a new phone. She wanted her old phone. She wanted to pick up her life exactly where she’d left it. But that life was gone, wasn’t it? Her dad was in jail. What would happen to her and Boon now? She crossed her arms tightly, stared out the window at the gray world, but she couldn’t stop shivering.
“You know,” Sara said, after a moment. “My dad got arrested, too. It sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. You’ll be fine.”
No, the end of the world had already happened. This was just what it looked like, after. A man walked past carrying a huge black umbrella. He stopped in front of the convenience store, snapped his umbrella shut, and went inside.
“Cassie? You haven’t asked what your dad was arrested for.”
Sara thought she was so smart. She thought she had it all figured out. But Cassie wasn’t going to tell her a thing about what happened that night. Only Cassie and her father knew. And Cassie would never, ever tell. Especially to someone like Sara.
Sara sighed, then turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. The car wouldn’t start.
CHAPTER 39
Sara
SARA AND CASSIE waited in the car for the town’s only mechanic to show up. Rain drummed the roof. Cassie sat slumped in the silver raincoat. She was quiet now, lost in her thoughts. What the hell had just happened? The girl had been completely hysterical. Sara had slowly climbed to her feet and been stricken with the awful thought This has happened before to Cassie.
Cassie glanced over Sara’s shoulder. “He’s here,” she said, and Sara turned to see the tow truck pull up beside them.
Sara climbed back out into the downpour to talk to the guy. She was cold and wet. She’d twisted her knee and scraped both her palms. He raised the hood and took a look at the engine, then reached in and fiddled with a few things. “Here you go,” he said. “Looks like you need a new alternator.”
Sara had heard of alternators, though she didn’t know what they did. “That’s not a major repair, is it?”
“Nope. I can take care of it first thing Monday, soon as the part arrives.” He lowered the hood, let it clang shut. Raindrops pelted his shoulders, dribbled off the brim of his baseball cap.
“I can’t wait until Monday. I have to be on the road.”
“Well, I could charge your battery for you, but there’s no telling how long it’ll hold. Could be hours, could be minutes. Use your radio, turn on your headlights, it’ll all drain the battery. You’ll end up right where you are now.”
Sara could keep the radio off, drive as long as possible without turning on her headlights, but she needed working wipers. She didn’t want the car to break down on the side of the road. A trooper might pull over to offer assistance. He’d run her plate, see that the FBI was looking for her. She started to push her cold hands into her jeans pockets, stopped at the stinging pain.
The mechanic glanced at her, then at Cassie sitting in the front passenger seat and watching them both through the windshield. “Maybe I could call around, see if someone in the next town over has it in stock.”
“Now?” she asked, hopefully.
“I’d have to send someone to get it.”
Sara understood. “I’ll cover the expense.”
When he offered to drop her and Cassie off at the Step On Inn so they wouldn’t have to walk in the rain, Sara had to accept. It was the normal thing to do. She didn’t want to stand out any more in the man’s mind than she already did. Besides, she needed to rest her knee, which was throbbing. She couldn’t afford to make it worse, not now.
Sara had no idea what was going on in Cassie’s head. The girl didn’t want the police to find her; she didn’t ask why Sara didn’t, either. Sara couldn’t make sense of any of it.
* * *
—
Boon greeted them as though they’d been gone weeks instead of hours. He hugged Sara, then he threw his arms around Cassie, who elbowed him away. “I have to take a shower,” she announced crossly and took possession of the bathroom before Sara could claim it. The shower jetted on.
The TV was playing. Sara had turned it off before she left. If Boon had seen the news about his parents, she guessed he was old enough to have understood something if not everything, but he showed no sign of it. Did she really want to spend all afternoon stuck in this motel room with two kids and nothing to entertain them? The mechanic needed four hours, minimum, he’d said—and that was only if things went smoothly. He’d try to have her car back by midnight at the latest. Eight hours. She heaved a sigh. “Sorry,” she told Boon and switched off the TV.
He stared at the blank screen, then at her. Wolf drooped from one hand. “But why?”
“You’ve watched enough TV.”
“It’s okay.”
“Don’t argue.”
His shoulders slumped. Then he crouched and upended his backpack. Plastic action figures and blocks rolled out. “Okay, but Cassie’s gonna be mad.”
But Cassie didn’t get mad. She exited the bathroom, pink-cheeked and subdued. She perched on the bed and painted her fingernails shiny black. She was starving, she said. Sara realized she was, too. Sara found the diner menu Hank had given her that morning. Cassie wanted chicken nuggets and a milkshake. Boon insisted he wasn’t hungry.
“You have to eat something,” Sara told him. “You didn’t have any lunch. How about a cheeseburger?” It was what he’d ordered the day before.
He hunched a shoulder. He pushed Wolf around on the vehicle he’d constructed.
Sara took that for a yes. She called in the order, and when there was a polite knock an hour later, she opened the door to rain and a woman—mid-thirties and pregnant—holding out a paper sack. Sara stood so the woman couldn’t peer into the room and spot the children. She paid her, adding a nonmemorable tip, closed the door, then locked it.
She spread everything out on the small table and told the kids to eat. Boon crawled over reluctantly and climbed into the chair Sara pulled out for him. He propped Wolf on the table and frowned at the burger nestled in its Styrofoam compartment. “Do I have to eat that?”
The burger looked fine to Sara. It had come heaped with steak fries, and a dill pickle wrapped in waxed paper. “Just try a bite.”
“Okay.” But he didn’t reach for it.
Maybe he was homesick, Sara thought. Maybe he’d overloaded on cartoons, or was coming down from that morning’s pastry sugar high. Cassie was tearing open ketchup packets with her teeth and squirting ketchup across her nuggets. She, at least, was eating. Sara carried her container of chili over to her bed and sat down with her laptop. She tapped and scrolled and spooned chili into her mouth while the kids ate, or in Boon’s case, jumped Wolf around the small table. There had been no updates. Maybe everyone thought the kids were still at the Paradise, where Whit had left them. The police would check, as soon as they could. And then all hell would break loose. “Cassie,” she said. “Did you talk to anyone today while you were out?”
“Like who?”
“Like anyone. Did you tell anyone your name, where you live?”
Cassie set down her milkshake. “Oh. Right. I stood in the middle of the street and shouted.”
“Those kids I saw you with. What about them?” The girl had to understand how serious this was.
“No! I didn’t tell anyone anything! Why don’t you ever believe me?”
“Because you’ve lied to me before.” Because you’re a liar.
“Whatever. I don’t care.”
Sara closed her laptop. Her knee had stopped throbbing and her palms felt fine. She stood to look out the window. The parking lot was glazed with rain. What about the mechanic—Sara hadn’t called Cassie by name in front of him, had she? She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Can I turn on the TV?” Cassie was already reaching for the remote.
“No.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”
Cassie glared at her with incredulity, then stomped over to the bed. “You are such a bitch.” She opened her backpack and pulled out her silver makeup bag. Boon lay curled on the floor, murmuring to Wolf.
Forty minutes later, Sara saw the wash of bright light sweep through the crack between the drapes and was at the door before the mechanic had turned off his engine. He apologized for taking so long but he’d had a tow. “Not a problem.” Sara shivered in the wet air. She hoped the guy had done a decent repair job, but how could she know? Better to take things as they came. Swivel. She’d tell the kids she was going out for a drink, and that she’d be back soon. “How much do I owe you?”
He cited a figure, then splashed through the rain to the back of his truck to release the chains attached to Sara’s car. It was more than she’d expected. She wouldn’t have much left, but she really only needed gas money. She thumbed through the bills in her wallet, frowned, counted them again. She calculated what she’d spent on dinner just now, the motel room the night before. The guy had come back around and was standing there patiently waiting. Sara tugged the bills free and handed them over. He gave her the keys and wished her a good evening.
Sara stepped back into the room. Boon kneeled on the floor, surrounded by action figures. His dinner sat untouched. Cassie was brushing her hair. She glanced up and saw Sara’s expression. “What?” she challenged.
“Give me my money.”
“What money?”
“You’re not fooling anyone. Give it to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t appreciate being called a thief.”
“Don’t be mad, Sara.” Boon tugged on her shirt. “Please don’t be mad.”
“Stop it.” She smacked his hand away. He looked up with horror, as though she’d actually hurt him. She turned her attention back to the girl, standing there with her arms defiantly crossed. She was so convincing, the look of righteous indignation on her face, but Sara saw right through it. “I thought we had a deal, Cassie. We help each other out. We don’t steal from each other.” Forty dollars was nothing in the larger scheme of things, but right now, forty dollars meant getting out of here. It meant freedom.
“I didn’t steal from you!”
“Jesus, Cassie. You steal from everyone. The barista. That beach house you broke into. You don’t even have the balls to admit the truth when you’re caught.”
“You’ve been spying on me? You some kind of pervert?”
“You can either give me my money, or I can take it.”
Boon started to cry.
“Shut up, Boon!” Cassie yelled.
He ran to the closet and shut himself inside.
Sara wanted to shake the girl. What if Cassie had already spent the money? How the hell would Sara get to the bank then? She reached for Cassie’s purse lying on the bed.
Cassie jumped into motion. “Stop!” she said, and grabbed her purse. She thrust the money at Sara. “Here, Sara. Like that’s your real name.”
Sara looked at her, stunned.
Cassie sneered. “You think you’re so smart. Sara Crewe? Mary Lennox? Why do you have a fake name? Are you some kind of criminal? Why don’t you want the police to know where you are?”
Sara felt something crack open within her. The girl had pawed through her things, held them up and inspected them. Had she fingered the keys dangling from her key ring? What about the photograph of Sara’s father—the one thing from her past she couldn’t bear to part with—carefully snipped from the newspaper when Sara was about this girl’s age? Had she laughed at the headline citing his crimes? Sara was surprised to find she was trembling. Sara pictured herself slapping the girl, the pleasure she’d take in wiping that self-satisfied smirk off her face. Instead, she sucked in a deep breath, snatched the bills, and folded them into her pocket. She picked up her bag. The car was fixed. The kids could find their own way. She wasn’t responsible for them anymore. She was leaving.
