that anyone with a brain could have figured out why.
This meant two things to me. First, Anderson continued to prove he was the cat’s pajamas. Second, he’d be a shitty supplier if I needed one.
I couldn’t believe I was even thinking this way. I shook my head, like it would help. What was happening today? First, there was Josie climbing through our window; next, Carl was telling me about his secret life; and now, I was thinking about drinking in a way I hadn’t in years.
The bus rattled to a stop under Centennial’s porte cochere. Carl sat in a rocking chair on the porch, looking only a little calmer than before. He certainly didn’t look ready for what I had to tell him, and seeing him pushed everything to the surface. I suddenly became acutely aware of the bullet in my pocket, the picture in my tin, and the chip on my shoulder. I was glad to see him alive, but I also wanted to kill him, so for the time being I resolved to split the difference.
The exiting process for the bus took a while, except for Josie. She jumped out and breezed past Carl, who smiled for the briefest of moments until he realized she wasn’t stopping. He looked after her like an abandoned puppy.
By the time I reached him, he was in the midst of trying to pull himself out of the rocker, which he knew better than to sit in.
“What are you doing, Carl?” I held his walker to keep it from skidding.
“I thought we’d sit here.”
I glanced at the empty rocker next to him. “I can sit there.”
“Not you.” He pulled himself up. “Her.”
“I know,” I said, taking her place anyhow. I gave the chair a few pushes. “But she’s not here.”
“I’m sure she needed to use the powder room,” he said.
I sighed, watching the bedlam that always seemed to go with getting Clarence Riley’s wheelchair off the bus.
“Now you’re in her seat,” Carl complained, “and I’m not in mine.”
I motioned next to me. “Sit back down. I’ll move when she gets back.”
Carl’s brow furrowed. “No. I’ll wait in the living room. It’s not so hard on my hip. I’ve been sitting there for over an hour waiting, you know. Why were you all so late?”
I broke my stare from the bus as it pulled away and looked at Carl. “Traffic.”
“At this time of day?”
“There was an accident,” I said, believing this was not altogether a lie.
“Hmm.” He straightened his shirttail. “Well, if somehow I miss Josie and she makes it out here, tell her where to find me. I have something I’d like to give her.”
“Of course,” I said, watching him shuffle away. Before he made it inside, I called his name.
He turned.
“Feeling better?” I said.
We studied each other, and my normal insight into him was worth spit now. I typically knew when he was skeptical by the way his lips dipped, or pleased by the way his eyes lit. I knew he got slower when he was thinking and mouth-breathed when he wasn’t. I knew all these things, but at present, I could tell nothing.
“Better,” he said finally, then hobbled inside, head hung, saying with his body something else entirely.
9
The heat and the dead air outside were suffocating, but I rocked for a bit because the quiet helped me think. And I had a lot to think about. Actually, there were so many things going on in my head that most of it amounted to nothing at all. But I did keep wondering why I’d offered to help the very girl who could ruin me. Josie had Carl choking on sorrow by the spoonful, she had me parched and seeing Simmons around every corner, and still I’d thrown out my services like she was some special Sharon-approved project.
Which was ridiculous, because if there was anything harder than hiding a girl at Centennial, it was hiding a vomiting one. And that was coming for her. Soon. Unless, of course, I somehow found her something to drink.