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In which a New Coke reference will likely be lost on younger readers.
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Hornby wasn’t big enough for a Starbucks, or any coffee shop for that matter, so Parker and I sat in a booth at McDonald’s waiting for the fourth-period bell at J. P. Hornby when we could slip back in to school unnoticed. Neither of us had said much since leaving Morningview Arbor. Parker sipped her coffee and tapped her nails on the table, and I stared at a Coke I didn’t want and checked the time on my phone every two minutes or so.
“When do you think you’ll have an answer?” Parker finally asked.
I took a deep breath and said, “I already have one, I’m just trying to think of a word that means the same as ‘no’ since you and Garland both have trouble taking no for an answer.”
“You promised Garland you’d think about it,” she snapped.
“I have thought about it. It’s the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. New Coke, Jar Jar Binks, only having twenty lifeboats on the Titanic—those all look brilliant compared to this. Look, I’m sure he’s promised you a bunch of money or something, but I don’t think that man is in his right mind.”
“Oh I wish you could have seen him,” Parker said, apparently changing the conversation midstream. “I’ve been researching Garland’s time in the Army, for a good deed I’m working on, and he found one of the books I’d been reading in my backpack. He started flipping through it, and he came across that photograph of the woman he knew, and he just lost it. He tore the page out and started crying and saying, ‘That’s her, Parker, that’s her. They told me she died but that’s her.’ He hasn’t stopped talking about going to France ever since. We’ve got to help him.”
I sighed and said, “Look, it’s sweet and all, but his family put him in that nursing home for a reason. If you sneak him out you could get in a lot of trouble.”
“He doesn’t have any family,” Parker said, “if that’s all you’re worried about.”
“That’s one of an infinite number of things I’m worried about.”
Now Parker looked pissed off again, and I braced myself for whatever verbal or physical assault she was about to unleash, but instead she rubbed her eyes. Was she crying? Surely not. Not Parker Haddaway. I cursed under my breath. I didn’t want to upset her, but if helping her sneak an old man out of the country was my only alternative she’d just have to be mad at me. I tried reasoning with her. “Look, you don’t need me at all. People who don’t speak French go to France every day. I’ve seen this app you can download that translates anything you say into like forty different languages. It even has a weird talking mouth you can hold over your real mouth. French people will love it. And you don’t even need a car. Take trains, or hire someone to drive you around with some of that money Garland promised me.”
Parker wiped her eyes and looked at me. “It won’t work,” she said. “We’ve got to be so quick and discreet once we get there. When Garland’s lawyer finds out he’s gone he’ll have half of France looking for us.”
“So his lawyer wouldn’t want him to go?”
“No.”
“Another good reason for us not to take him.”
Parker picked up her coffee, shook the empty cup, and abruptly changed tactics again. “Edwin Green,” she said, her eyes bright and smiling again, “I can tell you’re all about the Benjamins.”
“You can?”
“Fifty thousand dollars. Don’t tell me you couldn’t find a way to spend it.”
Garland wanted me to keep his ten thousand dollars while I thought things over, but I refused, since holding that much money would have definitely influenced my thinking. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it though. My mom was a nurse, and my stepdad just lost his job at a nonprofit in Birmingham, and though they never talked about their finances in front of me, I knew we weren’t exactly flush with cash. More than once I’d overheard one of them say to the other, “... and then we’ve got to somehow pay for college,” to which the other would let out a defeated sigh. Fifty thousand dollars would be life-changing, but then again so would going to prison for the international laws we’d certainly be breaking.
“He really would give you the money,” Parker said.
“I’m sure he would,” I said. “Come on, let’s get back to school.”