The Waiting Sky Page 12

  “You drink?” Victor says, his black eyes finding mine.

  “Me? No.”

  “Ethan then? Maaaan, I knew he couldn’t be that much of a Boy Scout.”

  “Not him either,” I say unlocking the room. “This is your place, right?” I know it’s the right room, but I ask anyway to keep him distracted.

  I flip on the light, and we both take in the unmade bed, the spare change scattered on the floor, the damp towels on top of the shabby dresser. In one corner is a suitcase that looks like it erupted clothing.

  “Yup, this is right,” Victor says, and walks in to sit on the bed. He looks dazed, like he doesn’t know what to do next.

  “Do you have aspirin?” I ask. “Maybe in your suitcase somewhere?”

  He scrunches his brow. “Adfil, maybe.”

  Advil. Right. I open the top zipper of his suitcase and, next to his razor and some hair gel, spot a small white bottle. I shake out two pills and hand them to him.

  “Take these with one of the bottles of water. You’ll thank me for it in the morning.”

  Victor lifts the bottle in a mock toast, then swallows the two pills while I watch. “Anything else, Nurse Ratched?” he asks.

  “Who?”

  Victor gives me a lopsided smile. “Nurse Ratched. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nes’. Tell me you’ve seen it?”

  “Sorry,” I say, glancing at the same ancient clock radio on Victor’s nightstand that’s on mine—3:12 A.M. “Let’s take your shoes off and call it a night.”

  “No, really,” Victor says, as I unlace his dust-covered Converse. “You gotta see this movie. ’S amazing. Jack Nichols’n is sick. I mean, sick like awesome. Not sick like sick. Which is sort of the point.” He pauses as I wrestle with his second shoe. “Movies are so badass. I love them more than anything.” I set his shoes by the bed. “Except one movie,” he continues. “You know the movie I hate? Twister. I fucking hate that movie.”

  My stomach sinks. I have a feeling I know where this is headed.

  “More than that,” Victor says, his dark eyes shining, “I hate storms. Fuck storms forever. If we play the vortex game and you put something up against a storm, I’ll take the other thing every time. A pile of dog shit. A rotting corpse. Drowning. I’ll take it. I’ll never choose the storm. Never.”

  “Okay, Victor,” I say. “It’s cool. We won’t chase again for a while, so—”

  “No!” he says. “Don’t you get it? I’m a chaser and piss my pants about storms. I’m goddamn afraid of them.” He sets down the water and presses his palms against his brow.

  I sit in the ratty chair next to the bed. I can’t leave now, with Victor in full rant. “And then I just left that Patchy Falls lady,” Victor continues. “I can’t shake it, you know? And I’m mean to Hallie just because she’s a girl, and I shit all over Ethan when I can. Just because . . . because I’m so unhappy.”

  “So why do you chase if you hate storms?” I ask.

  Victor won’t raise his head. “Polly. She’s our meal ticket. All the grant money’s ’cuz of her. Something happens in the field, and she breaks, who’s going to fix her?”

  “Mason could probably handle it.”

  “Mason’s all right, but I’m the one who built her. And now? Now we’ve got this bet. Alex Atkins called me out, so no way I can leave the team. I leave, and they get Polly anyway.”

  I’m still trying to figure out what to say when Victor lurches off the bed and stands above me. The scar on his face is suddenly deeper, angrier. I pull myself into the chair, my insides quaking. What if he’s a raging drunk? What if he’s about to hit me and I never saw it coming?

  But instead, Victor fumbles in his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. “Here,” he says, yanking out a battered photo, “lookit.”

  He shoves the creased image at me. It’s a picture of Stephen around twelve years old. He’s wearing cutoff jean shorts and a striped shirt, and his lanky frame is standing in front of a long, white tornado that’s snaking across an ebony sky. The photo is straight-on, no nonsense. Accurate, not artistic. “You know who took that picture?” Victor asks, tapping the image over and over with a long finger. “Me. I did. I was there, but you’d never know it, would you?”

  Victor’s staring at me and I realize he wants an answer. “No,” I reply honestly. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Stephen’s the weather boy wondurr who’d chase storms on his bike, for God’s sake. All while I’d be riding along with him, trying to pull him back every time he got too close.” He snatches the picture and shoves it back into his wallet.

  I open my mouth, then close it. Victor sits back on the bed.

  “Not that it was so bad. I liked mechanics. Parts. Stephen would get us to the storm, and I’d figure out a way to documen’ it. I’m not a chaser. I’m an engineer. Always have been. But when we started the Torbros, that line got blurred. I wen’ along with it, probably because deep down I was still thinking I had to keep my little brother out of trouble. He tol’ me one time he wouldn’t chase if I wasn’t there with him.”

  Victor looks so crushed. If I were braver, I might reach out and pat him on the back or something. But I don’t dare.

  “I bet everyone would understand,” I offer, trying to fill the silence. “If you had to quit—”

  “No way. ’Specially not after last season, when Stephen had to save the whole van full of us because of me. Talk about ironic. I fucked them once by putting them in danger. How can I sit here and think about fucking them all over again by giving Polly away?”

  “But you can’t stay in this life if it makes you unhappy,” I protest. “I mean, does Stephen know how you feel?”

  Victor shrugs. “He figures I’ll snap out of it.”

  “You have to tell him all this,” I insist. “Sticking around isn’t good for you or the team. And you can’t live your life for someone else. You need to—”

  I stop. The rest of the words are stuck in my throat.

  “What?” Victor says, looking at me with weary eyes. “Whaddew I need to do?”

  I’m about to tell Victor to do the same things that everyone is telling me to do.

  Live your own life. If you leaving means Stephen and the rest of the team have to struggle for a bit, so be it. It’s all for the best.

  The blood drains from my face. Is it possible that I really am just like Victor? Is it possible that we are nearly the same person, only instead of acting like a douche on chases and putting people in danger during storms, I’m acting like a douche and putting people in danger in the middle of intersections, inches from getting rammed by semis? All because I can’t see the plain and simple fact that I have to stop living my life for someone else?

  I think back to my recent phone call with Cat. Without even meaning to, she’d connected the dots between Victor and me. Just like nothing good could come of Victor living his life scared of storms for the supposed benefit of Stephen and the Torbros, nothing good could come of me working day and night for the supposed benefit of my mom.

  Except that Stephen doesn’t have a drinking problem, I think. And Stephen won’t be living in a van down by the river if Victor no longer goes on chases. So it’s different.

  Except why does it feel the same?

  Victor lies back on the bed and closes his eyes. “Fine if you don’t want to tell me,” he mumbles. “’Sokay. I’ve been a jerk. I s’pose I deserve it.”

  Victor’s breathing slows, and I know he’s inches away from a deep, drunk sleep.

  “What if we have to hurt the people we love?” I ask. “What if that’s the only way out?”

  Victor just lets out a little snore. I pull the comforter over him as best I can and make sure the second bottle of water is on the bedside table. I am Victor. Victor is me.

  I shake the thought and pull the door closed.

  19

  I launch out of bed the second I realize I’ve overslept. “Crap,” I mumble, pulling on my work clothes from the day before. My mind is b
arely functioning, thanks to the late night with Max and Victor. Maybe with some coffee and food, I’ll feel better.

  I trot to the breakfast lounge to grab a granola bar and a to-go cup of joe before heading to town. I assume Hallie is on Jersey Street already, probably pushing a broom along the sidewalk, sweeping up debris. Which is why I’m surprised to see her nursing a glass of orange juice at one of the motel tables.

  “Jane,” she mumbles, tapping the glass with her fingers. She’s wearing sunglasses indoors. “Yo.”

  I get a whiff of booze coming off her. “Are you—hungover?” I ask.

  She nods. “In a bad way. Things got pretty wild at the bar last night. You know how it goes.”

  Actually, I don’t. “How long were you there?”

  Hallie shakes her head, then groans slightly. “Until closing.”

  Not wanting to stand there and pepper her with questions, I walk a few feet to the coffeemaker and pour myself a cup. Just to be nice, I get Hallie one too. I bring them both back to her table and sit.

  “Are you going to go to Patchy Falls today?” I ask. “To work?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, I will if I can figure out how to stand up for five minutes without puking. But I was more hoping to talk to Ethan first. Things got a little weird last night.”

  I stiffen. “Weird how?”

  I can see Hallie’s eyebrows rise from behind her sunglasses. Like she just remembered that Ethan’s not just a fellow chaser—he’s my brother, too.

  “Not weird weird. Just, you know.”

  It needles me that this is the second time Hallie has said “you know.” Like I drink. Like I know what it’s like to get wasted and wake up with a hangover. Like I understand what it means to pound back so much, I let stupid things happen with other people.

  “Whatever it is,” I say, “I’m sure Ethan will want to talk about it too.”

  “I hope so,” Hallie agrees. “I mean, God, I hope he even remembers. We were both so wasted.”

  The coffee turns to ash in my mouth. I have to work to get it down. “Ethan doesn’t drink.”

  “He let loose last night,” Hallie says. “And then, I mean, I know he’s your brother and all, but—I figure I’ll just tell you—we made out in my room. I’m sorry if that’s awkward. He’s this amazing guy, and I never thought about him that way before, but now I don’t know. I think I might like him. But I don’t want to act like a dumbass if he doesn’t like me. So I was hoping to feel him out this morning. Not literally of course. Just, I mean, see where he stood on things.” She pushes her orange juice away with a frustrated sigh.

  My blood is pounding so hard, I can practically feel it in my fingertips. “You got my brother drunk?” I ask. “Then made out with him?”

  Hallie pulls off her sunglasses and stares at me. The skin around her eyes is puffy and irritated. “Excuse me?”

  “My brother doesn’t drink,” I say. “Not even a little. So if he was drunk, you must have done that to him.”

  “Done that to him? Jane, listen to yourself. What are you talking about? You think I forced shots down his throat, then took him back to my room or something?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, standing. “But this isn’t a game. We have—problems with this stuff in our family. So when I hear about my brother drinking, then doing stupid things, I get worried.”

  Hallie stands too. She rubs her temples. “Can we just take a step back for five seconds? Look, I know about your mom, and I understand things are fucked up with her. But that doesn’t mean Ethan can’t have a drink ever. And I don’t appreciate you accusing me of ‘doing things’ to him, then also implying that any time he might have spent with me is stupid.”

  I clench my fists. I want to punch Hallie in her stupid scientific head if she thinks she understands anything about my mom, or how dangerous alcohol is to Ethan. Or me. The last thing I need is Ethan going off the edge too.

  “Stay away from Ethan,” I say, pushing back my chair, “and stay away from me.”

  Before she can reply, I march out of the breakfast room, hoping she spends the rest of the day bending over the toilet and throwing up her stupid hungover guts.

  * * *

  The day improves when I spot Max on Jersey Street. “What, no barn building today?” I ask.

  “Hey, you,” he says, leaning against the shovel he’s using to pitch debris into a pile. “I was hoping I might catch you down here.”

  “They’ve got you on cleanup duty, huh?” I don’t know how words are even coming out of my mouth, because my brain just wants to focus on the memory of kissing Max last night.

  “Glamorous, I know.”

  “Things around here look good, though,” I say, and mean it.

  “Like a different place, right?” We gaze down Jersey Street together. I stand closer to him—but not too close, in case other chasers are watching us—and take in how much has been done in such a small amount of time. The fallen trees are all but gone, the stray shingles and debris have been picked up, and a blue tarp is already covering the gaping hole in the roof of the Good Shepherd.

  “Hope you’ve said your prayers recently,” Max says, “’cuz we’ve all been asked to help out in the House of the Lord after this. From what I hear, the money they raised at the Pig & Spit last night bought the supplies the Blisters and Torbros need to clean up their hallowed ground. Though, personally, I’m worried that if they put me on the job, I might burst into flames the minute I step over the threshold.”

  “Why, what have you done that’s been so bad?”

  Max grins at me. “The Max Vaughn files are sealed, but I can tell you right now, it’s not as bad as what you’re probably thinking.”

  “I’m picturing you helping lost kittens find their way home.”

  “Okay,” he says, “it’s a little worse than that.”

  “Let’s get over to the church, then,” I say. “I’ll keep the fire extinguisher close.”

  20

  I definitely don’t expect to see Ethan when I pull open the heavy wooden doors to the sanctuary. After my conversation with Hallie, I figured he’d be as bad off as she is, holed up at the motel and trying to recover.

  But to my surprise, he and Mason are just inside the door, carrying buckets of plaster down the aisle. “Heya, Jane!” Ethan says, catching sight of me. “I’d wave, but my hands are a little full.”

  “No worries,” I reply, ignoring my urge to run up and ask what in the world went down with Hallie last night. There are just too many people around—not to mention Weather Network cameras.

  “Yar, fine day to ye, wench,” Mason says by way of greeting. I look at Max, unsure, exactly, how to explain the talk-like-a-pirate thing. Instead, I just shrug.

  “They need help in the sanctuary here,” Ethan calls, mounting the stairs near the front altar, “but if you get bored with that and want to do some heavy lifting, come to the second floor. The damage is worse there.”

  “We’ll be on the lookout for scallywags in the crow’s nest!” Mason says, taking the stairs behind Ethan. “Come up—if ye dare!”

  I move to follow them both, but stop when I realize I’m standing on the shredded pages of books. It takes me a second to figure out it’s just one book. The Good Book. And so many of them were blown to bits in the storm that the entire floor is littered with pages of scripture. I look down and see snippets:

  Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife . . .

  Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you . . .

  After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea . . .

  I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its food supply and send famine upon it . . .

  Something about walking on the Bible feels wrong. Like picking flowers in a graveyard. “Um, Max, are you seeing what we’re stepping on?”

  “Totally,” says Max. “And I’m legit creeped.”

  “If it makes you feel better, you could help put the papers in th
is trash receptacle.” A plump woman with flower-patterned gloves—I figure her for a church employee—holds out a plastic bag to me, and I take it. “And, if you wanted, you could send your friend upstairs to help the other men,” she says, looking from me to Max.

  “Er, okay?” I try to read Max’s expression.

  “Sure,” he says to me. “I’ll be with the menfolk doing manly work, and hopefully I’ll see you at lunch when you wear a dress and we talk to each other through a curtain.”

  I snort, but the flowered-glove lady doesn’t think it’s funny at all. “We appreciate diligent labor,” she says. “We’re hoping to have services going again by Sunday. Please commit all your efforts here to God.”

  I’m not sure, but I think that’s the Good Shepherd’s way of saying work super hard, or else.

  With a final wink, Max takes off for the upstairs. The flowered-glove lady leaves, and I begin crumpling thin Bible pages in my hand, one after the other, stuffing them into the garbage bag.

  Unfortunately, I don’t get very far before my cell phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out, and when the caller ID says “Mom,” I duck out of the church and hide behind some nearby lilac bushes. I want to be triple sure the Weather Network cameras don’t film or record whatever it is that happens next.

  “Hi, Janey. How’s my girl?”

  Of course the one time I find the perfect place to talk privately, she sounds fine—like she wasn’t at Larry’s until all hours last night. I stare at leaves made translucent by the sun. “I’m okay. What’s going on?”

  “I FedEx’d you something, and it looks like it went to the wrong place. It’s important, so I need the address of where you’re staying right now so I can get it rerouted.”

  My mind is racing. What in the world could it be? “Are you in trouble?” I ask.

  “No. There’s just some things you need to know.”

  My heartbeat speeds up. “So just tell me now.”