moving.
He parked in front of Centennial’s bulletin board at the other end of the hall, and I schlepped down there and stood beside him. There wasn’t really time to fiddle about, but I needed that bulletin board at the moment. Thought if I soaked up all of its colors, it’d take some of the gray away.
I began in earnest with the calendar of events, with its field trips and classes and games. From there, I read Sherri Linley’s list of favorites, which was pinned up with her picture because she was the resident of the month. Beside her smiling face was a picture of Anderson dressed up for Halloween like an egg over easy. Another, of Alice after she won the euchre tournament. One more, of Carl and me, him smiling, me shoveling Thanksgiving dinner into my piehole. I’d complained when that one went up, but truthfully I didn’t mind; this was my life, held up by pushpins. Seeing it made me happy.
It also made me a little depressed. When I looked at it all at once, my existence seemed too small—inside these walls, dictated by this calendar. It was strange to be this old, with your life telescoping to a point, every day worth more but somehow you spent each one doing less.
It could be worse, I thought. Simmons doesn’t even have a bulletin board. Instead it has those dry-erase numbers so the shift change knows your name and what time they need to roll you over.
Beside me, Big Charles let loose a barky laugh and looked up, pointing his fat finger at a newspaper comic strip someone had hung. “Funny,” he said too loud.
“Very,” I yelled back. Then with heavy, deliberate steps, I turned to my room and walked toward it. Again.
6
Genetically speaking, Josie had missed out on her peepaw’s tidiness. Carl cleaned up every day of the week and twice on Sunday, whereas Josie had been here all of four hours and she’d already crapped out our room. Her apron was flung across my bed, wrinkled up like dirty clothes. I walked to it, grumbling about making her trip to Walmart a one-way, and helped myself to her order pad and a pencil so I could write a note.
In the meantime, Carl slept. He had his head lolled to the side and his mouth hanging wide open. Napping like only he could. I was glad he’d settled after our talk, but it would’ve been nice if the Josie problem didn’t feel like it was all mine.
Irritated, I ripped out a blank order sheet and brought it closer to read the header. Then I rubbed my eyes. Read it again. On every pass, it said the same thing: Bates Bar and Lounge. Followed by—would you believe it—a goddamn local phone number.
It sank in slow at first—that Josie had not, in fact, materialized from space. That she was an Everton townie. That all I needed to do was make one little call—an anonymous SOS—and someone would scoop her up and return her to wherever she belonged. Once it all hit me, I moved faster than if I’d had the runs, and this was how I came to be at the nightstand between our beds with the telephone to my ear and my heart in my throat.
Carl slept on, and thank God too, because I was dialing. I couldn’t help it.
On the first ring, I tried to calm down and reminded myself to whisper. On the second, I realized—given my history—that this wasn’t the kind of hot tip I would’ve necessarily chosen for myself. And on the third, someone answered.
The man’s voice was husky, a Midwestern lilt, edges roughed up by tobacco. “This is Bates,” he growled.
His gruffness gave me pause. I hadn’t quite planned on handing over a little girl with a black eye to a man who sounded like the type to hand them out. I’d imagined, in what little thought I’d put into it, someone more soft-spoken. A woman, maybe. But before I could really sort through that, the mirror across the way caught my eye, and suddenly I had bigger worries. Like where the hell Carl’s wedding picture had gone.
“This is Bates,” the man said again, peeved. “Hello?”
Damn