It was after two when Brad dropped me off, more like three. My aunt doesn’t wait up or anything, so I didn’t think it mattered. Brad was sort of amazed at where I live, but seemed okay with it. When I got in the house, I could hear Aunt Trish getting up, which was pretty unusual and made me wonder right away what was up. In the little hallway to the bedrooms in her nightgown, half asleep, she looked irritated, like she’d been lying there trying to stay awake, waiting for me. It made her seem old.
“Where’s Kristen?”
“She always has to be home by midnight,” I said.
“Well, she’s not there and her parents are really pissed. They’ve called about every hour, even though I told them I’d have you call when you got home. You’d better talk to them.”
It took me a while to answer.
“What do I say to them? I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her since before midnight.”
“You’d better tell them what you know. They were ready to call the police an hour ago. They’ve probably already done it.”
I needed to think fast. Kristen’s parents are really anal, very narrow and strict. Certain realities even about Kristen’s careful life tend to make them go off and get all hysterical. Kristen’s friendship with me scares them and they wish we didn’t hang out, but they’re nice enough to me. I know it’s insincere, and that I needed to be careful what I said, because before she dropped me off Kristen and I were at a party over by Skyline in Anacortes, but her parents thought she was at a movie at the mall.
Sterling answered. He’s not even her real dad. She doesn’t remember her real dad. Actually Sterling is her second stepdad. She says she has vague, foggy memories of her first stepdad, but the guy on the other end of the phone line has been around for a long time and she goes by his last name and thinks of him as her dad. He’s this business guy, real estate or something, pushy in this fake polite way. Right off, he tells me he’s called nearly every other kid in the Valley and he knows about the party, so I don’t have to lie about that. Everyone says the last person they saw her with was me. It’s clear he assumes I’ll lie and he’s right, I would to help Kristen. He says now he’s really worried and just wants to know she’s safe. I can tell that at least some of what he’s feeling is genuine concern, so I tell him about her dropping me off at the gas station, and I fib a little by saying I knew Brad already and that we’d talked on our cells, and since he was heading home from Bellingham, he’d decided to swing by and take me out to Denny’s for a snack where we could talk for a while. Since it turned out good, there’s no point in anyone knowing what really happened.
He asks if she said anything about where she was going, so I thought hard and realized she hadn’t said much at all, that she had hardly said a word between the party and the gas station. She never actually said she was going home. I was on the phone and just assumed she was pissed about her curfew, and a little jealous that I didn’t have one. I was trying to avoid stepping in a milkshake puddle when I got out of the car. Then she drove off. Kristen always has to go home before I do. I didn’t even wave or look up. I didn’t think I needed to, because we would talk again Saturday afternoon, after the nap I always take when I get home from work on weekend days following late nights.
When I was in middle school, Aunt Trish tried setting curfews and doing the parent thing, but I pretty much did what I wanted and she got tired of fighting it. There was this incident at the beginning of my freshman year, and we had this big blowout and she told me it was up to me to figure it out and I could ruin my life if I wanted. She couldn’t stop me. She said I should know from my mom and a lot of other people we know what happens when you drink too much or get caught up with drugs, so she wasn’t too worried about that, but I’d better not come home pregnant because she was already stretched thin, just getting by and helping me.
She says she loves me and I believe her. It’s not the kind of love you fantasize about from parents, the kind I’ve hated my mom for not giving me, but it’s something. Aunt Trish’s got my back. She couldn’t have any kids of her own. She had a hysterectomy when she was pretty young because they said she was getting ovarian cancer. In some ways we’re like sisters, only she’s a lot older. She just doesn’t have the resources. She’s having a rough life herself. Like the car, for example. I think she’d let me use it, but it’s all she’s got. She needs it to get to work and if something happened to it, we’d both be screwed. I mean she doesn’t even have insurance, so if she got a ticket, it would be a disaster. We live on the rez in an old HUD house but we’re not Native. They just keep letting us live here for cheap rent even though my uncle, who is Native, hasn’t stayed here for a long time. The house is in his name and I guess, legally, they’re still married.
So I didn’t get to tell Kristen about Brad–that’s his name, Bradley Morgan Stanfield the third, Mister Mercer Island–and the scare he gave me out there by that ditch and that barren field. My night had turned out okay, and I was looking forward to her reaction. I kind of assumed her night would end well too, and she would have a story to tell me. Kristen likes hearing my stories. That’s probably why we’re friends; our lives are so different. I think it’s cool how she asks a lot of questions and wants to hear every detail about some of the dumb-ass stuff my relatives pull. She seems amazed, like I’m living this exotic life, so sometimes I play the story for its effect.
Her life seems exotic to me. I mean she lives in this cool house. It’s huge and has a view of the bay. She has her own computer and a TV in her perfect girly room. They gave her a car when she first got her license. True, it was her mom’s old Taurus, red, not the perfect color, but it’s not that old, maybe five years, and it has a CD player and still smells new.
Brad and I stopped at a restaurant to talk more on the way home. That’s why I was so late. He’s really a pretty nice guy for a rich kid, and he’d had a rotten day. We probably won’t become a thing or start going out, but we got to know each other a little.
I didn’t sleep that night, and I don’t think Aunt Trish did either. In the morning, I went to work dog-tired, wondering if Kristen had come home and where she had gone. This was really unlike her, so I was a little worried; I was worried even before I called Sterling, but I hadn’t let it sink in. I thought about what had happened with Brad and how scared I was, and it made it easy to imagine disaster. I knew Sterling wouldn’t think to call me, especially if she was okay, because to him my worry didn’t count, and he probably thought I was in on whatever she was up to, so I would have to wait for her to get access to a phone which might take days, considering how much trouble she would be in. I assumed Monday at school would be our first chance to talk. I only wish.