Chapter Thirteen

I’M NOT SURPRISED WHEN LYLE DOESN’T SHOW up for school the next day. I feel a twinge of guilt when I look at his empty chair in the morning. I got him chased and then kept him cold and wet on his back porch. But I’m full of so many emotions these days that the feeling of guilt is like one more splatter of paint on a Jackson Pollock painting. I don’t think about it, or him, for the rest of the school day.

I do think about him when I stop by Tabitha’s on the way home from school. I find the key under the flower pot on the back porch, but when I stick it in the back door’s keyhole and pull on the knob, nothing happens. The cats’ meows from inside grow louder each time I rattle the door. Even Frida looks disappointed, eyeing me from her perch on the porch rail. It’s not until I’m about to give up that I remember Tabitha explaining to Lyle that the door doesn’t always open easily. I shake the handle again and push against the door. After several more attempts, it gives with a low moan.

“Sorry, kitties. I thought that Lyle was listening to the directions so I didn’t need to,” I explain from the doorway to the pile of cats on the couch. They’re not interested in my excuses. The whole chorus of them follows me into the kitchen, mewing plaintively at my legs until I find the alizaram crimson bin full of food.

Filling their water bowls is no easy task either. It’s challenging enough to walk through a maze of cat bowls without the floor being slick with water. The cats don’t appreciate the water on the floor and continue to mew, lifting their front feet and shaking them dry in disgust. The bowls are heavier than I would’ve expected and it isn’t until my arm begins to ache that it occurs to me to use one of her watering cans instead of picking up each bowl.

When I finish my cat feeding duty, I sit on the porch for a while. Frida pokes her head out of the cat door and then joins me by curling up on my lap. Warm and purring, she’s nice company, but I have to admit that I miss Lyle. Despite all of the stress that he has caused me, I’ve gotten used to having him around. It wouldn’t just be easier at Tabitha’s if he were with me—it’d be more fun.

At home, I climb up to the tree house and study the painting again. I have very few pictures of myself as a baby. Walt never thought to take any, so the only pictures are ones that Carmen took on outings with Walt and me. The image in my mind from the night Walt found me is clearer than any photograph, but only from my perspective. I couldn’t see my own gray eyes staring up at Walt, or at whoever left me there. I look at the baby in the painting. Lyle thought it could be anyone. How many gray-eyed, black-haired babies are left on a stoop in the cold? I trace my hand over the baby’s pink blanket and then notice the word LAZOS written in small black print in the bottom right corner of the painting. I don’t know how I missed it before. Who is Lazos? And why did Lyle’s mom have this painting? The questions repeat themselves in my head like a riddle, but I find no answer.

At dinner, Walt pushes his pasta around his plate and doesn’t eat. He looks so sad that I can feel the ball of anger at him crumbling inside of me.

“I love you, Laney,” he says when I finish eating. I put my hand out and he covers it with his own. Questions about the painting and that night on the stoop clog my throat, but I bite my lip and swallow them down. Then I clear the dishes and go to my room to do some homework. When I turn out the light, Walt’s still sitting at the kitchen table with his untouched food.

The next day, Lyle’s seat is empty again. I find myself peeking over at it all morning, as if Lyle might suddenly appear. He must be pretty sick to miss another day of school. I don’t have his phone number so calling to check on him is out. I’d have to stop by his house. I imagine knocking on the door of his house again, only this time Lyle answers it. He’s healthy enough, just a bad runny nose and maybe sneezing a little more than usual. His mom is standing behind him and, seeing me, changes her mind about avoiding other people. She urges me to come in, saying she has something she needs to tell me. Something about a painting in her shed.

I’m imagining this turn of events when Mrs. Whipple interrupts my thoughts: “Aren’t you going to join the class, Laney?”

All of the desks around me are empty.

“They’ve gone to gym,” she says, shuffling through papers on her desk as she talks. “You should join them.”

I nod and stand up.

“Oh, and Laney?” she says as I’m walking to the door. “Take it easy on the new kid, okay? He doesn’t need kids teasing him. In fact, he could probably use a friend.”

Trust me, I get it, I think. “Okay,” is all I say.

I run my hand along the wall in the hall, taking my time to get to the gym. I pause when I pass the school’s front door. My fantasy about my conversation with Lyle and his mom felt so real that it almost seems possible. Maybe I will run out the door and keep going until I reach Lyle’s scrubby lawn.

Instead, I keep walking until I hear Ms. Fontane’s voice. She’s explaining the waltz, something she’s been trying to teach us since first grade. In six years, none of it has stuck. The only thing I know about the waltz is that it means sweaty palms and squashed toes. I push open the gym door just in time to be assigned my dancing partner. Axel.

He smiles at me when Ms. Fontane calls our names. For some reason he’s going to enjoy this, though I can’t imagine why.

“Hi, Art Freak,” he says, walking toward me. I roll my eyes and don’t reply.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” he asks, his breath hot on my face. He smells like Doritos and body odor. It’s not a pleasant combination but I resist the urge to comment, knowing that I already pressed my luck on the hill the other day.

“Are you going to freak out when we start dancing or do you only do that with your boyfriend?” he asks, grabbing my hands. I tense for a moment and am relieved when no future flash comes to me.

Axel’s grip is too hard, though. I wiggle my hands, but he holds on tight.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Sure looks like it to me.”

“Shut up, Axel.”

“Well, how sweet. You two even sound alike,” Axel sneers.

“What are you talking about?”

“Shut up, Axel,” he imitates, only in a high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like me or Lyle. “That’s what Lyle said to me the other day, too.” He sniggers and I breathe in another blast of Dorito breath.

My stomach clenches.

“What other day?”

Ms. Fontane interrupts us. “Axel and Laney, three steps. Left, right, left.” She watches as Axel and I make a feeble attempt to follow her instructions. Axel steps on my foot twice and then pushes us both back so that we bump into another set of dancing partners.

“Move back, Axel and Laney. And smoother, you need to work together.” Ms. Fontane says, her right hand tapping out some sort of beat on her left hand, though it has nothing to do with the music.

“What other day?” I hiss when she turns around to focus on another inept pair of dancers.

“The other day when Lyle and I were hanging out.”

“Left, right, left!” Ms. Fontane yells to the class.

“When were you and Lyle hanging out?”

“Oh, we’re good friends. We hang out all the time,” Axel says, smiling again. Parts of his teeth are coated with an artificial orange film. “Why do you look so concerned? Let me guess. You’re jealous. You don’t like the idea of your boyfriend having other friends.”

I picture Lyle on the ground next to his bike, blood on his chin and a trickle of water running down his cheek.

“What did you do to him, Axel?”

His jeering tone lowers to an angry whisper. “Nothing that little spying punk didn’t deserve. And come to think of it, he wasn’t by himself on the hill that day, was he? You better watch yourself Laney.”

“You—you better watch yourself too, Axel,” I tell him. It makes no sense coming out of my mouth. Axel stands over a head taller than me and the lack of blood in both my hands at the moment is a blatant reminder of his strength.

He laughs, another blast in my face.

“I’m really scared, Laney. Really, really scared.”

“Left, right, left!” Ms. Fontane yells again.

I look down at my feet so I won’t have to look at Axel’s face. His Dorito breath is making me nauseous. I concentrate on our shoes, my cat-covered Converses and his black high-top sneakers, clumsily moving back and forth. Axel intentionally stomps on my right foot. His shoe leaves a dirty smudge over my drawings.

“Everyone against the wall! You are all still bumping into each other. Ava and Jack will show you all how it’s done!” Ms. Fontane yells, pulling aside one of the couples. I gladly let go of Axel’s hand and walk over to the wall with his words echoing in my head. Nothing that little spying punk didn’t deserve. How did he get to Lyle if Lyle’s been home sick for the past two days? If Lyle’s mom wouldn’t open the door for me, there’s no way she’d let in the school bully. Maybe nothing happened. Maybe Axel is doing nothing more than trying to scare me. Unfortunately, it’s working. My earlier daydream of Lyle opening the door of his house for me has been shattered, replaced with the image of him lying bloody on the ground.

The rest of the day creeps by. Once again, the clock’s hands seem to be stuck in one place. Only when I look at them today, I feel a combination of relief and frustration. I dread going to Lyle’s, but I need to know if anything happened. I can’t bear to wait until Monday to find out.

When the last bell rings, I resist the urge to run outside. I wait to gather my books and fill my backpack, giving Axel plenty of time to head out a good distance ahead of me. By the time I leave the building, no one is in the school yard except for the small gray-and-white cat waiting for me.

“We’ve got a job to do before I feed you,” I tell Frida and then jog down the road, taking the quickest route to Lyle’s. It’s a windy afternoon, the air colder than it’s been this fall. It must be a downslope wind, blowing the cold air from the Rocky Mountains into town. I lean against the wind and have to jog backwards from time to time to avoid dirt blowing into my eyes.

The first thing I notice at Lyle’s house is his bike, lying on its side on the lawn. It was probably propped up against the side of the house but then blown over by the wind. The tire has been fixed.

I walk to the front door, not daring to pause to think about what I’m doing, and knock lightly, nothing like the way I banged on the back door the other day. I can hear a car in the distance and the wind slamming a door open and closed somewhere. The house is quiet.

“Lyle!” I yell, knocking on the door harder. Frida meows from the bottom of the steps, reminding me that I should be at Tabitha’s feeding the cats. I knock a few more times. They have to be home. His mom’s car is parked in the driveway and with his bike here, Lyle can’t have gone far. I try the doorknob but it’s locked.

I sit on the stoop and wait. I’ve been waiting all day. Waiting for the clock at school to strike three, and now waiting on Lyle’s front stoop. I wrap my arms around my body, cold in my cotton hoodie. It’s not my usual sweatshirt, but another black one. My favorite sweatshirt is now in a ball in the back of my closet. Even though it’s clean, I can’t wear it without thinking of Lyle’s bloody chin.

“It’s cold out here!” I yell to the house. No answer.

I arrived determined to wait on the stoop for as long as it took for someone to open the door, but after five minutes I give up. If Lyle’s home, he’s not budging.