Eddie wasn’t at dinner. Rosa, Trevor, and Brad ate together, which seemed strange—it had never been just the three of them. They were eating butterscotch pudding and talking about their favorite books when Reg came up and sat at their table. He leaned forward on one elbow.
“You seen Eddie?”
They looked at one another.
“Not since lunch,” Rosa said.
“What’s going on?” Trevor said.
Reg tapped the tabletop for a moment, thinking. “Look, his dad was here, okay? He left the compound, but Eddie doesn’t seem to be here now.”
“Maybe they ate out,” Trevor said.
“Or went shopping,” Rosa said.
“Yeah,” Reg said, “that’s not what happened. We want to keep them apart, but we don’t know where Eddie is. If you see Mr. Toivonen, let me know right away, okay?”
“What does he look like?” Brad asked.
“Like Eddie on steroids, only thirty years older and a hundred years meaner.”
“Ouch,” Brad said.
Reg tapped the table again and stood. “We’re concerned about Eddie,” he said. “I want you to take this seriously.”
“Of course,” Rosa said.
“Have you checked the rec center?” Trevor said.
Reg looked at his watch. “He can’t be there. It’s closed.”
“Hmm,” Trevor said. “We’re gonna need the key.” Reg pulled his head back and squinted at him. “If we find him, he may need some Hoosier therapy.”
Reg thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, there’s a key in the office. One of you can pick it up.”
“I’ll get it,” Brad said. “I’ll leave it on top of the mailboxes.”
They nodded. Reg left and they dumped their trays, then Brad took off for the office.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Rosa said.
“Yeah,” Trevor said, sighing. “And my butt already hurts.”
Rosa hesitated. “Should we take Brad?”
Trevor shook his head. “The fewer people who know we’ve been off campus the better.”
They made sure they’d lost Reg and Brad, then walked to the place where they’d crawled under the compound’s electric fence the night they went to the pharmacy. Rosa went first, and Trevor gave her sad cow eyes as he dropped to his belly.
“Keep your butt down,” she reminded him.
He grunted and pushed forward with his toes, inch by inch. Finally she got fed up and grabbed his wrists and pulled him through. He stood, brushing himself off.
“Last time we did this it was dark,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s get moving.”
If Eddie was off campus, he had probably walked into town. It was the only place they knew to go, which meant it was all he knew, too.
They’d walked a couple of miles—long enough for the light to soften—when they saw him ambling down the road toward them. He was wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt and he had a fist wrapped around the neck of a bottle in a paper bag. He was singing.
“This is not good,” Trevor said.
“At least we found him. We didn’t have to check every alley in town.”
Trevor grunted.
“Don’t matter how far I travel, I can’t get awaaay,” Eddie sang with a bluegrass twang, then he saw them and raised his bag in greeting. “He’s the one who done the crime, and I’m the one who paaays.” When he got close they stopped, but he kept walking, so they turned and flanked him.
“This,” he said, waving the bottle in the air, “is classic. A brown paper bag!”
He put it to his lips and took a gurgly swig. Rosa looked around him to Trevor.
“Um, can I have a drink?” Trevor asked.
Eddie passed him the bag, and Trevor took the opportunity to pull the bottle out. His eyes widened, and he held it up to show Rosa. Vodka. Not full. He took a swig, coughed, and spat it on the road. Eddie tried to take the bottle back.
“So help me drain the bottle, help me hoist a glass,” he sang.
“Maybe you’ve had enough,” Trevor said.
Eddie wrenched the bottle away from him.
“The earth will spin around the sun, but this will never pass.”
“Hey, Eddie?” Rosa said, not sure she was doing the right thing. “We heard you saw your dad today.”
“Yes,” he said, turning to her. “He has come to take me home.”
“Home?” she said. “You can’t stay?” She felt sick.
“No,” he said, his breath washing over her. “All I have here is a chance at meaningful work and a respectable life. There I can evade the police and sleep in the back of a truck with chickens.” He took another drink and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “My old man killed a guy in a carjacking—Lamar Sensenbrenner.”
“Who was that?” Trevor said.
Eddie shrugged. “Just some guy who was unlucky enough to run into my old man, and get run over by his own car.” He pointed a finger at Rosa. “Have you ever slept in a truck with chickens?”
“No,” she said.
“Don’t ask me why I’m drinking, don’t ask me why I’m drunk—the old man showed back up today and now my future’s sunk.”
“You live with your grandma, though, right?” Rosa said. “The cool one?”
“Yes!” Eddie said, and took a long drink. He raised the bottle high. “To Grandma, may she rest in peace!”
“What?” Rosa breathed. “Oh, Eddie, no.”
“She died a month ago,” he said. “She signed the first waiver, but this second one we had to do? I forged it.”
They didn’t say anything.
“And the old man looked at it, and he didn’t even think about the date. He didn’t even notice that she was buried when I signed it, because he wasn’t thinking about her.”
“Or about you,” Rosa said, then bit her bottom lip, because maybe that wasn’t something to say out loud.
“No,” Eddie agreed amiably, “definitely not about me.”
Then he started crying. He pulled the T-shirt up over his head and walked that way. Trevor tried to take the bottle, but Eddie yanked it back, and between sobs he took a long swig under the shirt. A dribble of vodka ran down his stomach and into the waistband of his jeans.
“I’m so sorry,” Rosa said.
They were almost to the IA compound when he said, “I really miss her.” His voice was muffled and boozy and miserable.
“Could your mom—” Trevor said.
“No.” Eddie cut him off. “She’s not in the picture.”
“We should go around,” Rosa said. “We can’t just walk through the guard booth.”
“Why not?” Eddie said. “You know they’ve got cameras, right? They know either way.” He pulled his shirt down, then wiped his face on the tail, exposing his muscly stomach again. Rosa thought that under the circumstances, it was really, really wrong of her to notice. Eddie headed straight for the guard booth. Trevor put a hand on his bicep.
Eddie stopped and held very still for a moment. “You realize,” he said, slurring his words, “how embarrassing it will be to get beat up by a guy as drunk as me?”
Trevor took his hand off Eddie’s arm. Eddie sauntered up to the guard booth and stood, swaying, peering at the guard with his blurry red eyes.
“I am Eddie Toivonen, reporting for duty,” he said. “Sir!”
Rosa and Trevor sidled up behind him.
“Um, Reg Davis wants us to bring him back in,” Rosa said, making an effort at a smile.
“Yeah,” the guard said, looking them over. “We were notified about this. You need any help?”
“No, sir,” Rosa said. “Thank you.”
He waved them through and they walked down the sidewalk.
Once he’d succeeded in going into camp through the main entrance, Eddie didn’t seem to care where he went. Rosa steered him toward the rec center, and Trevor ran off to the apartments to get the key Brad had left. By the time Eddie and Rosa got there, Trevor had the place unlocked. There were emergency lights at the ends of the halls, but the place was dim and absolutely silent save for their footfalls. Trevor heaved open the gym door and they walked in. The emergency lights were on there, too, glowing dimly in cages on the walls. It was a full court, and there was a metal cart with two rows of basketballs by the wall. Trevor rolled it out to the half-court line.
“This,” Eddie said, “is heaven.”
Trevor held his hand out, and Eddie passed him the bottle and staggered to half court. Trevor stashed the bottle in the hall so Eddie wouldn’t see it. Eddie chose a ball, gave it a trial bounce, then carried it under his arm as he walked toward the basket. He stopped ten feet away and stared at the rim.
“Traditionally,” he said, “the basket holds still. I believe that’s one of the rules.”
He swayed, took a step back, turned around to see if the other basket might be closer, then pivoted and sank the shot.
“That went in, right?”
“Yeah,” Rosa said. “You done good.”
Eddie wailed for whiskey in a spot-on Janis Joplin imitation.
“That is one drunk Hoosier,” Trevor said.
Eddie shot from the left, but stumbled backward and missed. “I don’t know what good drinkin’ can do, Janis,” he said. “Let’s find out.” Rosa got his rebound and bounced it to him. Trevor moved under the basket, and Eddie walked to the free throw line.
“You know what sucks about this?” Eddie said.
“What?” Rosa said.
“I did this. Getting in here—that was me. And he gets to take it away because I’m not eighteen yet?” He shot. The ball made a pretty arc and dropped with a swish, never touching the rim. Trevor whistled, and Rosa bounced the ball back to him. “I’m more responsible than he’ll ever be.”
“Maybe he won’t come back,” Rosa said. “I mean, he left, right?”
Eddie spun the ball between his hands. “Won’t matter. Once people get a whiff of him, they look at me different. This one time I was supposed to meet the track coach in the school office. Nobody else was there, and when the secretary came back in and saw me, she went to her desk and checked her purse. Right in front of me.”
“That stinks,” Rosa said. “But you earned your spot, Eddie. Nobody is going to take it away from you.”
“Yeah?” he said, tilting his chin up. “That’s what Trevor and Brad are here for. Because of my anomalous, overaggressive test results.” He shot, got the swish, and Trevor snagged the ball. “I was on the bubble before. Congratulations, Trevor. You’re in, and you didn’t even have to screw me over to get the job. The old man did it for you.”
Trevor stood holding the ball.
“Where is my only friend in this world? What did you do with it?” Eddie stumbled in a circle.
“Do I want a spot here?” Trevor said. “Of course I do. But I’m not trying to get rid of you.” Eddie snorted. “That bottle’s not your friend, and I am. The more time you spend with it, the less there is of both of you. That’s not a friend.”
“You,” Eddie said, pointing at Trevor, “have a future teaching Sunday school.”
Trevor flushed.
“He’s right,” Rosa said. “We are your friends.”
Eddie staggered away from the free throw line, heading toward the door. “What do you know about it? Your daddy runs the Los Alamos National Goddamn Lab. Until recently, mine was a valued worker in the laundry room at Pendleton Correctional.” He stumbled across the floor, then turned in circles, looking for the vodka Trevor had stashed outside. Eddie started to cry again. He crouched by the wall and pulled his shirt back over his head. His stomach shook with his sobs. “I’ve lost everything,” he said. He sank against the cinder block and sat there, crying under his shirt.
Rosa and Trevor went over and sat beside him.
The wall was hard against Rosa’s spine, and her sneakers squeaked when she shifted positions. Eddie cried for a long time. Trevor knocked the ball sideways with his straight leg, rolling it past Eddie. Rosa tapped it back to him with her ankle. It reminded her of tempting her cat to play by dragging a string past her. Finally Eddie stopped crying, pulled his shirt down, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. That sleeve was getting seriously snotted.
“This is so embarrassing.” He didn’t look at them.
“No it’s not,” Rosa said. That got him to peek sideways at her. “I’m sorry, but you have real problems. You can’t live with your grandma, and you don’t want to live with your dad. So if you get dropped from IA, what happens to you?”
“Oh wow, Eddie,” Trevor said. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“And you’re worried he’ll take your place?” Rosa said. Eddie almost smiled.
“You were under way more pressure than the rest of us,” Trevor said. “At the tryouts? Holy crap. You had to make it.”
“That,” Rosa said to Eddie, “is why you are only runner-up at embarrassment.” He shifted to look at her. “You’ve got reasons. Nobody begrudges you one bottle and some surprisingly good drunken shooting. I, on the other hand, had to wake up two guys to help me get accessories for my lady parts.”
Trevor flinched and looked away.
“You think you’re embarrassed?” Rosa pointed past Eddie to Trevor. “He thinks my vagina wears a hat.”
“Oh my god,” Eddie said, rolling away from her. “This day keeps getting worse.”
“I can’t believe she said the word,” Trevor said. He stood and extended a hand down to Eddie. Rosa stood, too, and together they hauled him to his feet. “I’m proud to know both of you. You’ve both got weaknesses,” Trevor said earnestly, “but you’ve got such great strengths, too.”
“Wait,” Eddie said, raising his index finger.
“We both have weaknesses?” Rosa said, arching her eyebrows. “What’s mine?”
“Um, needing tampons?” Trevor said.
“And there,” Eddie said, dropping the finger like an ax. “You know I’m not gonna be sober enough to bury you until tomorrow, right?”
Rosa gave Trevor a kill-you-later stare, and they shuffled Eddie out of the rec center. Trevor slipped back in to throw away the bottle under the guise of locking up. They hauled Eddie to the apartment building, and he insisted on climbing up on the retaining wall but couldn’t coordinate his feet well enough to make the jump. Trevor clambered up and threw his hand down. Eddie shook his head.
“I am the lone wolf, howling at the moon.”
“If you took my hand you could howl five feet closer,” Trevor said.
Eddie threw himself at the wall a half-dozen times before he pulled himself up, knees bruised, but counting it a victory. He threw his head back and howled. Rosa and Trevor exchanged a look and then hustled him into his apartment. Trevor warmed a washcloth and tossed it over Eddie’s head, and Eddie wiped his face. Rosa walked over to the photos his friend had sent, lying facedown on his dresser.
“Do we want these up?” she asked.
He hesitated a second. “Yeah,” he said.
She tilted the frames up and stood back to look. One was a photo of Eddie at about three years old, sitting on the back of a pony. The second one was of him and his grandma. She had shoulder-length gray hair and was standing on a barn roof holding one end of a homemade rocket launcher. One hand rested on Eddie’s shoulder, and they were both grinning. “I miss your grandma,” Rosa said. “And I never met her.”
Eddie nodded.
The last photo was of Eddie and an even taller guy with dark hair. They were wearing orange vests and holding sticks to pick up garbage with one hand, and flashing peace signs with the other. Both were smiling. “Um …,” Rosa said.
“Community service,” Eddie said blearily, following her gaze. “Bruce’s mom is a nurse at a GI clinic. He stole a bunch of stationery and we sent out notes all over town telling people it was time to get a colonoscopy.”
They stared at him.
“Dude, that’s epic.”
Eddie nodded. “Thirty-seven people got butt scopes in response. Two of them had early colon cancer.”
“You saved two lives,” Trevor said.
Eddie fell onto his bed. “Probably. And we picked up a lot of trash along a highway.”
Rosa laughed and propped a pillow up behind him.
“No,” he said. “Eddie go night-night.”
“No,” Rosa said. “Eddie get hydrated, and fast. You can’t eat or drink anything after midnight, remember? Tomorrow is the simulation.”