The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,11
organized this morning for Siobhan.”
“You sprinted off like someone was shooting at you.”
“I had to help a friend,” I said. “But I appreciated it. I just grieve differently than you. I’m not a ‘Let’s all get together and hug it out’ kind of griever, Marn.”
“Yeah, you’re a ‘Keep pushing it down until it rises up and explodes’ kind of griever,” she said. “That’s healthy.”
“I congratulate you on your career choice of psychologist,” I said. “Fifteen might be a bit young to get licensed, but I’m sure your professional colleagues will make an exception in your case.”
“Did you come here just to annoy me?” she asked.
“I want to know if you’ve had anyone approach you with one of these.” I took out the capsule with the smiley face and showed it to her. She examined it and then made like she was going to throw it into her mouth. She started laughing when I grabbed it back.
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“You’re too easy.”
“Have you seen one of these before or not?”
“No, I have not. Why are you asking? Are you the new drug police in Gloucester? And here I was, thinking you’d reached peak lameness. ‘Just say no to the drugs, Marni.’” She crossed her eyes and said in a stupid, lisping voice, “Drugs are bad, m’kay?”
“Now who’s being annoying?”
“Of course there are drugs around.” She looked away. “Gloucester’s not the moon. There’s weed. The boys in the kitchen at work huff nitrous oxide from the whipped-cream cans we use on desserts sometimes. Whip-its. You ever done a whip-it?”
“No. I like my brain cells too much.”
“Well, the boss caught them, so they’ve mostly stopped now. But I don’t blame them. There’s nothing to do here. How the hell are we supposed to spend our free time?”
I knew exactly how Marni spent her free time, and it was worrying enough without the drugs. She fit right in with a posse of similarly badly dressed mopey teens who had body parts dripping with piercings or crisscrossed with free tattoos they got from local apprentices practicing in their mothers’ garages. From what I could tell, they did the kind of things I did when I was their age. Smashed the windows of abandoned houses. Sat around campfires on the beach talking trash. Threw bottles off the break wall into the water. Kids who, in a couple of years, would either straighten right out or flush their futures gleefully down the toilet.
“I’m not talking weed and whip-its,” I told her. “I’m talking about the hard stuff. This here?” I showed her the capsule. “This did about ten thousand bucks’ worth of damage to a lady’s house this morning and almost got me a kitchen knife in my forehead.”
“I don’t know anything about it, man.” Marni waved me off. “I work at a pizza shop. Everybody there is on something. How do you think they don’t go nuts with the sheer mindlessness of it all?” She stuck her chin out, made sleepy eyes. “Thin crust. No anchovies. Double cheese. Thin crust. No anchovies. Double—”
“Not you, though, right?”
“Oh, of course not.” She rolled her eyes. I got an itchy, unsettled feeling in my chest. I wanted to come down hard on Marni, tell her all the things Siobhan would have told her if she were alive: that she was too smart to spend the rest of her life wearing a Dough Brothers uniform by day and wasting her time with losers and washouts at night. But I knew too much of that would only push her away. I decided I would keep a closer eye on her, even if I had to do it covertly. Marni was on the edge, and the smallest breath of wind could blow her into a dark place. I had to keep a grip on Siobhan’s little cousin.
“Well, then, I suppose if you’ve never bought any drugs, you don’t know how to call up for some,” I said, pulling the piece of paper with the phone number out of my pocket. Marni looked at the number with interest, then her big eyes flicked back to me, suspicious.
“I need someone with a young voice,” I said. “You ever take a drama class?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BOY WAS sitting on a wooden ledge outside Dogtown Used and Unusual Books, watching the crowds go by and sucking on a lollipop. A section of Gloucester’s main road had been shut down for a street festival, and the curb was lined with carts selling lobster rolls, corn dogs, and ice