Carly knew the word impulse mostly as a concept, but also as a vocab word in English. It had only been a short time that she’d thought of it as anything self-descriptive. She was the good one, the one who used her head. She was careful. She was courteous, which was only another kind of careful. She was the kid who still asked permission for sweet snacks at home, the one who always said please.
No one ever used the word impulse and meant it as a good thing. What was accomplished impulsively was a cautionary tale. Bad. Sometimes ruinous.
But to Carly, the idea of it had gotten hooked to the pulse syllable of the word. Impulse. A lurch of the heart that set something off like a starting gun. The thing was, starting guns were never aimed and they weren’t guides. Just bang and you’re off, and therein seemed to lie the problem.
When she’d seen the video of the thing, the one element she could solidly match up to the unclear memory was the pounding of her heart and the way it had somersaulted in her chest just before she’d flipped the whole scene to her advantage. She did remember the leap of NO! under her sternum, and the yank of the impulse that had spurred her to do what she did. And it had worked.
After that one moment, all-head Carly, Miss Please and Thank You of the Twenty-First Century, wondered if impulses were always bad, if they always led to trouble. Now she had precedent.
She was shocked by all she hadn’t talked herself out of lately.
She’d been basically spying on everyone she knew since the day after the thing—rummaging around in their voices, rifling through the words they chose, pickpocketing all they hadn’t said out loud. Both thrilled and a little ashamed by it, it was automatic now to ransack people’s postures and expressions to steal what they didn’t want you to know. She’d taken it all the way to really spying: tracking, lying, scheming, stealing. And today. This morning. It was hard to think past the panicked wow.
Standing in the library, she’d been trembling so hard she’d had to clamp down on the shakes to scroll through her contacts to find Marcelline’s number after having impulsively hung up on her stepfather.
At least Marcelline wasn’t laughing at her. She wasn’t acting as if Carly were stupid. She was taking it seriously. She would help.
“I took it.”
Carly heard Marcelline make a little sound. An “Oh”-like gasp knocked out of her, instead of sucked in.
Carly didn’t want to be in trouble with Marcelline. Defense came tumbling out. “I know! It’s crazy. I’m sorry. But I wanted to show it to you anyway. I mean, before. I was just going to take a picture of it, but Mom said he got rid of it. And it’s weird that he made such a big deal out of hiding it. Isn’t it? I thought it was really weird. So I took it. Do you want to see it? But it can’t be about that dead guy? There’s no way, right? Can it?”
“Carly, where are you?”
“At the library. The bad thing, though, is John’s superpissed that I took it. I don’t think it’s about the suit.”
“He knows you have it?”
“Yeah, he saw me on the camera. He’s really mad. I’m kind of scared.”
“How long have you been in the library?”
“I just got here.”
“Honey, you can’t stay there.”
A spike of ready-to-run bolted through Carly, but also a blaring Why? zipped up her spine. She’d come by herself, but now she felt truly alone. “Can you come get me?”
“I’m on my way. But I don’t want you to stay there.”
“Should I go wait at the school?”
“No. It’s Saturday. You won’t be able to get inside. You’ll be out in the open. He’ll probably look for you at Ada’s house and the library, but then maybe the school.”
“I could walk to the Y?”
“It’s too far. Okay, I know. Go to the back of the library, by the other parking lot. Cross over to the gas station. Go into the ladies’ room and lock yourself in. Don’t answer your phone, even if it’s your mother or Ada. Not just now. Okay? Promise me. And don’t open the door for anyone but me. If someone calls to you while you’re in there, make like you’re puking. Just say you’re sick. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Is this bad? Did I do the wrong thing?”
“No. It’ll be okay. Go now, sweetheart. Go fast.”
• • •
At the back of the gas station, the ladies’ room seemed like a terrible place to hide. The heavy, rust-flecked door was kicked in at the bottom corner, bent like someone else had gotten the same idea once and it hadn’t gone well. The metal collar on the doorknob spun and clattered when she turned it.
Things weren’t much better on the inside. A brass latch and a ragged do-it-yourself hole drilled into the jamb took the place of the bolt that no longer lined up to its slot. It looked like it had been salvaged from a boat wreck.
Carly slid the latch home and twisted the little tab lock in the handle, but wasn’t sure it caught on anything. She retreated to the middle of the tiled floor. And waited.
The air was humid and vivid with the smell of wintergreen over plumbing problems. The ceiling pressed down like a low lid and held everything tight under its seal. No sound got back into this corner of the thick-walled building. She could hear herself swallow and breathe, and nothing else.
The painting made the bag heavy and lopsided. The floor was gross enough that she thought all the way to how she would feel about picking the bag up again if she set it down. Instead, Carly hugged it to her chest, redistributing its awkwardness. Her bare arms sweated against the slick fabric.
Her phone rang. The bag slid down from her new one-armed grip as she scrabbled for her pocket. The corner of the painting inside the bag scudded along her shin and jabbed the base of her big toe as it settled.
Her mother was calling. The longing to talk to her seared through Carly like pain. She didn’t know what John had told her. Carly didn’t know if her mother was mad at her. Or worried. Maybe she should answer, just to at least tell her side of the story. But she couldn’t. She’d said she wouldn’t. She wanted to. No.
There was a muted jingle and someone turned the doorknob and the door thudded against the clattery latch. The phone stopped ringing.
Whoever it was pushed on the door again.
Carly’s eyes went hot with tears and her lungs burned on the expired timer of her overdue next breath.
A voice called out, faint to louder as it came closer. Marcelline.
“Sorry! Sorry. I think that’s my girl in there.”
There was a shuffling of position in the narrow hallway outside, then a soft tap on the door. “Carly, honey, it’s me.”
Carly unlocked the door and Marcelline smiled at the unsmiling woman in the hallway, who looked back and forth between them, taking score on how long it would be before she got her turn in the restroom.
Marcelline held up a finger as she squeezed through the door that she didn’t open all the way. “We’ll be out in just a second.”
She slipped in and latched the door behind her.
Carly’s face felt splotchy hot under the wet streaks.
“Oh, honey.” Marcelline pulled her into a hug. “It’s going to be okay.”
“My . . . my . . .” A sputtering sob overran her words. Just too much. Everything all at once. “My mom just called. I . . . didn’t . . . didn’t answer it.” She coughed and hitched into Marcelline’s shoulder.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I know that was hard. You did fine. We’re going to get this all straightened out, okay?”
Marcelline unwound her arms from Carly to take her face in her warm hands. She did the serious eye-to-eye thing that usually felt so high drama, but it actually helped this time. The volcano swell of crying surged down in Carly.
“I know everything’s been crazy. Too crazy. But it’s going to be all right.”
Marcelline pulled some toilet paper off the roll and Carly dried her face with the shreds of it as it dissolved in her tears.
They both looked at the bag crumpled in a heap and leaning against Carly’s legs.
“May I?”
Carly nodded.
Marcelline didn’t hesitate to kneel on the grimy floor. She unzipped the bag all the way to the bottom. She pushed the suit off the painting and worked its corners free.
She made the little reverse-gasp sound again.
She smiled and shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes were shiny. “In a gas station bathroom,” she whispered.
She looked up from the floor, glowing.
“What?” said Carly.
The door clanged in its frame. The voice from the other side was muffled. The mood, though, came through just fine. “Hello? There are people waiting out here.”
“Let’s go,” Marcelline said.
• • •
Marcelline carried the bag out, and Carly couldn’t help but notice that she held it as if it were glass. She put it in the footwell first, checked it over, shook her head, went into the trunk for a blanket, and moved the whole bag onto the seat. She bunched the suit under the painting and wrapped the whole thing in the blanket, tucked up tight like a baby in bed. She buckled the belt over the bundle of it.
“Wow,” Carly said. “What’s with all that?”
“Hop in.”
Once they were in their own seats and as secure as John’s suit, Marcelline turned to her.
“Okay, this is where I’m going to ask you to trust me.”
“Okay.” It was a strongly not-okay okay, but Carly couldn’t think of anything else to do but agree. Why was everyone so freaking weird?
“I don’t want to take you straight home.”
It felt like a bubble rising in Carly, the worry that she’d gotten something very wrong. “What, like later? Like tonight?”
“Maybe.”
“But maybe not?” Carly’s voice slipped up on the bubble.
“Hang on. Listen. Everything’s going to be okay. Remember the other day, when you looked at my scars, when I said I could keep a secret? When we found that guy?”
Carly nodded.
“This is going to sound weird, but these scars, the guy, and even why I’m here at all is because of—”
Marcelline looked confused. “Yeah, but—”
Carly pointed out the window, bouncing in her seat. “He’s here! John’s here!”
“Shit!”
Marcelline started the car, hands and feet frantically working the wheel and the pedals. She jerked the car out of the parking space, backward and around, flinging them over the blacktop. Carly shut her eyes over a blur of people, posts, and gas pumps speeding toward them.
Marcelline drove them to the opposite exit, with John coming up through the parking lot. They raced past the pump islands, banged over the tank covers, and screeched out into the street.
Marcelline’s car made it through the intersection, while John’s got held up by cars turning into the road between them. The street stretched straight ahead with a bend looping off in the distance.
Carly looked back at the traffic light. “He’s coming.”
“Okay.”
Marcelline went a little faster. When the road curved to the right, she hit the gas and the car dove in.
“He must have seen my car. Can he still see us now?” asked Marcelline.
Carly craned farther around to check the back window. “I don’t think so.” Carly felt the swooping pull of the long turn and tightened in her seat to keep from leaning.
“Okay. Hang on.”
The gentle swell of gravity lunged for full tilt as Marcelline cranked the wheel over hard to take a violent right turn onto a narrow road they’d all but passed. The tires whined through the floorboards and Carly grabbed for the door to keep from pitching into the center console.
“Sorry!” Marcelline called to Carly and to the car. She patted the dashboard like a good horse.
“What are you doing? What is going on? Why are we running away from John? Why is he chasing us? I don’t get any of this.”
Marcelline didn’t answer her and kept checking the rearview mirror until Carly couldn’t suppress the eyeroll and the sound that always came with it in the back of her throat.
Marcelline looked over at her. “I know. Hang on.”
Carly’s imagination was faster than the minute Marcelline needed to get to a point where she could talk. By the time Marcelline finally started, Carly was prepared for news of the zombie apocalypse.
“This is all going to sound really strange. And I hate doing it while we’re driving. But I want you to understand. And I don’t want you to be afraid. Not of me, anyway.”
“But you think I should be afraid of John?”
Carly looked for the answer on Marcelline’s face to measure it against whatever words came out of her mouth.
The scar pulled tight as Marcelline nibbled at the corner of her lip. “I don’t think Jonathan would hurt you.” She stole a quick glance at Carly. “I really don’t. You’re not going to hear me say anything good about him. And it might ultimately be way more about you than it is about him, but I don’t think he would do anything to you.”
“You know him.”
“Huh?” Marcelline was genuinely puzzled.
Carly felt sick. “You came to my house last night. You said you wanted to meet him, but you already knew him. I missed it.”
Marcelline nodded. “He hadn’t seen me in a long time. In fact, he thought I was dead.”
“This whole time, you knew him? Is that why you talk to me? Is that the reason we did the art stuff?”
“Yes and no. I wanted to know something about his life before I saw him again. Yes. That’s why I found you, and why I struck up a conversation with you. And, yes, that’s why I suggested a reason for us to talk more. But the work we did together, all the time we spent, that was because I wanted to. It was great. It is great. Because you’re pretty great. Carly, I hope you believe me.”
She didn’t answer. How could she have missed it?
Marcelline had tricked her with bait—with the art talk, with kneecapping Dylan in the doughnut shop, with showing her what being in control of hard-to-control things looked like.
Flinging the car all over the road, and them all over the car, while they were being chased was hardly what being in control should feel like, though.
Marcelline had baited her with the idea that all of it could fill in the gaps that had been blown into Carly’s life after the thing. And Carly had taken in every bit of it. Every weird thing to see about Marcelline would have been buried under the obviously weird thing that Carly had done by voluntarily laying out her whole life for Marcelline’s approval.
Carly’s own shadow had gotten in the way. A surge of embarrassed tears burned her eyes, but faded. She wouldn’t get caught out again.
“Why did he think you were dead?” Carly looked at the scar as if it would suddenly be an obvious story that Marcelline didn’t have to say out loud.
Marcelline cleared her throat. “Not all of this is worth going into right now.”
“Right. Not that I deserve an explanation or anything. You just don’t want to tell me.”
“I don’t want to tell you everything, no.” Marcelline cast a hopeful, sad smile at Carly.
But she didn’t lie. Not even about the hard stuff. And she didn’t hold back that she was holding back. It didn’t fix everything, but it was something. Carly didn’t feel like crying anymore right now, but that made her feel as weird as everyone else.
Marcelline steered around another bend with a little extra pepper on it. Carly didn’t feel much of anything more than wide-awake. “How do you know him? Was it from a long time ago? From before he and my mom got together?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Ooooh, boy. Whew. Okay. Where to start?” Marcelline was watching the road and her own past, too. “It will make more sense to start in the middle, but you have to understand, none of this is your fault.”
“My fault?”
“What happened to you when you were attacked, I don’t want you to think that anything attached to it after the fact—anything—makes what happened to you less of a big deal. Everything in life ends up being part of a bigger story, but it’s not more important than you. Or what you did. You were amazing. I don’t want this to upset you.”
“What do you mean?” None of the puzzle-piece edges matched. The zombie apocalypse might actually end up making sense.
“The video. It kicked off something more than just what happened to you that day.”
“Pffft. Tell me about it.”
“Now, what do you mean?”
“It changed everything. Just seeing it. I got to see what I did. I got to see how I beat him. It was just weird. Nobody gets to do that.”
“That must have been very strange.”
“It was kinda great.”
Marcelline looked over at Carly, checking for a joke.
“No, seriously. It’s like all this stuff happens in the world and we just have to guess how. You’re doing it, but then it’s over. And then it’s just gone. But not me. I don’t have to guess. I can see it anytime I want. I know, like in slow motion, how I did it. People can do all these things, but they don’t know it, because it goes by so fast that they can’t understand. I just can. Now. A little bit.”
“Yeah, cool story, right? But why do you care about the video?”
“Oh, shit. How?” Marcelline yelled. She was looking in the mirror.
John’s red car was streaking up behind them.
Marcelline sped up. A lot. Carly pulled her seat belt at the hip the way her mother did when John drove too fast. Carly turned in her seat to watch him coming.
“Do you know where we are?” Marcelline was looking from the road ahead to the road behind in the mirror so fast, Carly didn’t know how she was seeing anything at all.
“No!”
“Can you look? Pull up a map or something? We need to go where there are lots of people.”
Carly did. They took a left. Not far down, Marcelline took a right and another right and, like stepping through a door into a party, there was traffic. People everywhere. And no John.
Carly felt the absurdity of her question before she said it, like they were in a movie. “Did we lose him?”
“I think so.”
But a few blocks up, his car nosed up to an intersection ahead.
“Oh, come on!” Marcelline smacked the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch!”
A sheriff’s cruiser turned in from the left a few cars ahead of them.
“Hey, hey! Look!” Carly flapped and pointed.
Marcelline laid a calming hand on her arm, gently pushed it down, and also eased her foot off the gas. “I see him.”
The cop passed John. They passed John. Carly looked over at his straight silhouette behind the windshield, but Marcelline didn’t.
“No, speed up!” Carly said. “Catch up to him! Flash your lights or something!”
Carly looked behind them. John let two big gaps pass him by before he turned.
“I can’t,” said Marcelline.
The cold bubble of fear slipped up through Carly again. “Why not?”
“Ask me later. I cannot do all of this at the same time.” Marcelline checked the mirrors a lot and slowly maneuvered them behind the police officer.
Carly watched John fall farther behind until the red flash of his car streaked off onto a highway ramp.
“He’s gone.”
A green arrow lit up above the left lane. “I’ve got to get off the road,” Marcelline said.
She swerved into the left lane, without a lot of room to spare. Marcelline hissed at the tight fit. Carly winced and saw that they looked together, automatically, to the cop ahead to see if he’d noticed. He hadn’t. They sighed in unison and Marcelline looked over. Her in-it-together smile pushed down the fear in Carly.
The story was bigger, whatever it was, but her part in it and Marcelline’s were crossed now. And Carly could deal with it. Was dealing with it. Look at me go. She could do things.
They took the left and ducked straight into the parking lot of a bustling supermarket. Marcelline turned into a spot shielded from the street by a pennant-festooned van, covered with blue and gold wildcat decals and thoroughly soaped windows urging the Cougars to game-day victory. Number Eight was apparently the star player these days. Three number-eight-wearing, blue-wigged people in gold face paint unloaded bags of groceries from a piled cart into the back of the van, filling all the spaces between the tripod legs of a grill and a massive cooler.
Marcelline ignored the sideshow and rested her lips against prayer-folded hands that were shaking. “Oh, this is crazy,” she whispered.
“Where should we go?”
Carly tried to look at the map, but the focus was hard to catch. Her hands were shaking, too. “What do you think he would do? I mean, if he finds us.”
Marcelline swiped her hand over Carly’s forearm. “I don’t want you to worry. I just need a minute. I’m wrecked. He keeps popping up like the damned Terminator.”
A wash of chills rushed over Carly’s back and scalp in a gust of discovery. “Oh, no! I know how he’s doing it. The app!” Carly held up her phone, gripped in her fist as if it would jump away if she’d let it. “John must have Mom’s phone. The app. It’s a tracker on this one.”
“Oh, hell.”
Marcelline looked for Jonathan out of her side of the car. Carly scanned the parking lot from hers.
“Silence your phone and give it to me.”
“Turn it off?”
“No. Leave it on.”
Carly did and handed it over.
Marcelline got out. “I don’t know if you’ll get this back.”
Carly shrugged. “I don’t have bad stuff on there, so it’s all in the cloud. Duh.” She smiled bravely into her trembling cheeks.
“Right.” Marcelline smiled back.
She walked around her car, head down like she was looking at the tires. In one smooth sweep of her arm, Marcelline slid Carly’s phone into one of the tailgaters’ remaining shopping bags.
She hurried back to her seat, dropped the car into gear, and pulled away from the van. “Go, Cougars.”
• • •
“So what will you tell me about this?” Carly asked.
They’d caught their breath in exhausted silence.
“The short version is that it’s about the painting. In some circles, it’s famous. It’s worth millions.”
Millions. Carly looked at the blanket-wrapped lump buckled in behind Marcelline and realized that millions was a concept in the same category as light-years. She didn’t really know what that was equal to in real life.
“And it’s stolen.”
“He stole it?” Carly went goggle-eyed at the image in her mind of her stepfather as a cat burglar.
“No. Jonathan didn’t steal it. I mean, not the original theft. But he ended up with it. People got hurt.”
A list of reasons waded into the tears that finally sprang up in Carly’s eyes—all of it changing John in her memory into something else, something that pulled so many things in her life out of their happy shape. “Did he do that to you?”
Marcelline clenched her teeth, and the ruined side of her face jumped grotesquely. “Not exactly. But he let it happen. He caused it. And he . . .” She sighed. “Let’s let that be enough for right now.”
The awkward pause cooled off.
Marcelline took a deep breath. “Anyway, I can’t understand how Jonathan would risk hanging it in your house. What a crazy thing to do. But there it was in the video. Just the corner of it. I saw it online. It’s what brought me here.”
“He didn’t do it. Hang it up, I mean. My mom found it and really liked it. She hung it up when we were unpacking.”
Marcelline laughed. “Poor Jonathan. He must have just about crapped his pants. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost. ‘Poor Jonathan’ is not a thought that sits very well in my head.” She laughed again.
“You always call him Jonathan, but it’s just John. It’s not shortened or anything. I mean, not on his driver’s license and the bills and stuff. Just John. But you know what’s weird? This big huge guy who came to the house the other day called him that, too. When they were talking, he always called him Jonathan.
Carly replayed the guy filling up their doorway, flirting with her mother, menacing Carly by not trying too hard not to. “Wait. He kept looking at the wall. Marcelline! He kept looking at the place it was hanging before. He knew about it, too! I knew he must have seen it in the video. But he was looking for the painting.”
Marcelline hadn’t said anything during Carly’s moment of revelation. In fact, she’d gone like a hole in the air, dead silent. Staring at Carly, openmouthed.
The driver behind them tapped his horn as a friendly reminder that the light had turned green.
Marcelline ignored him. “A huge guy came looking for Jonathan?”
• • •
They parked by a playground buried in a neighborhood miles from Carly’s house. At the end of the story, Marcelline leaned back in her seat, hands folded over her lips, deep in thought. “He’ll come looking for the painting. The first place is your house. Shit.”
“But my mom . . .”
“I know.”
When Marcelline reached for her phone, Carly felt a pang for her own. Not having it was like not having her hair. She knew she could live without it, but it felt really weird.
So she stared out the window, listening to Marcelline’s side of the call.
“S? Hey, it’s me. Sorry I hung up on you. . . . Yeah, I’m fine. Fine-ish anyway. . . . I don’t know.” She smiled at something the other person said. “Yeah. I know. Um, I need you to do something. You’re not going to like it. I think I might need you to get in touch with Owen Haig for me.”