On our drive into Baltimore, we passed the church and I did my best not to look at it. My sister did the same, pushing in her AC/DC cassette and beating her hands on the wheel. Dereck spread his legs east and west as he sat between us, so one of his tree trunks pressed against me, the other against my sister. More than once, Rose stopped singing to say, “Would you close your legs already, Seven? You’re like an old whore!” He did as she said, but soon they drifted, and I’d feel him there, which I might not have minded if I didn’t feel so bothered about what happened back at the station.
Every parking space outside Dial U.S.A. was taken except one with a safety cone in the middle. Rose got out and tossed the cone in the back of the truck before pulling in and cutting the engine. Dereck and I watched her walk toward the building and spin through the revolving door, his leg pressed to mine still. Once she’d been sucked inside, I glanced at the clock on the dashboard, something I’d been trying hard not to do: sixty-five hours and three minutes. The rabbitlike tic-tic-tic of my heart persisted.
“Want to guess?” Dereck asked me. When I didn’t answer, he added, “Our game, I mean. Do you want to guess?”
What I wanted was for him to stop talking. My mind was too preoccupied with the myriad of unthinkable ways things might unfold now. Newspaper headlines would shout from the pages that I had been wrong to accuse Albert Lynch, that because of me, he’d been waiting behind bars all these months without bail. Worse still, Rummel and his men were bound to uncover the lie I’d told about Rose being home that night. Even though I knew my sister was not capable of killing her very own mother and father, no matter how troubled their relationship had become, that’s the way it would look to the world. And it would appear as though I’d been a part of it too.
“Are you okay?” Dereck asked, nudging me with one of his tree-trunk legs.
“Not really.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. Actually, I think I need to go for a walk.”
“A walk? Where?”
I put my hand on the door handle. “Just around the lot. Until Rose gets back.”
Dereck placed his hand on my arm, gently tugged it away from the door. “Hold on. Whatever it is, let’s try taking your mind off it. Besides, selfishly I don’t want to sit here by myself.”
I sighed, doing my best to give him the person he wanted. “A wood-shop accident?” I said.
“Already guessed that.”
“I did?”
“One of your first actually. Not counting the turkeys.”
“A raccoon with rabies?”
“Guessed that too.”
“A rabid possum?”
“I know you don’t want hints, Sylvie. But let me save you some trouble. No humans were harmed by animals in the making of my missing fingers.”
Like a lot of Dereck’s jokes, that one didn’t quite work, but I forced a smile. Normally, the expression came naturally whenever we played the strange game the two of us had concocted in the random moments Rose left us alone. “No animals. No wood-shop or chain-saw accidents. This is tougher than I thought.”
“Lots of ways a person can lose three fingers, Sylvie. You have to think harder.”
“Does my sister know how it happened?”
He used his good hand to reach up and biff a Scooby head he’d given Rose. Scooby hung from the rearview mirror whenever we rode with Dereck. The second he was gone, Rose tossed him on the floor. The abuse had left the dog with a scuffed nose. “Robably,” Dereck said. “Retty ruch reveryone rin rour raduating rass rew.”
Probably. Pretty much everyone in our graduating class knew.
In addition to learning to talk so people would answer surveys, I’d also developed the newfound skill of deciphering Scooby-speak. “How long did you two date back in school anyway?”
“Ra ronth,” he told me, before switching to his real voice. “Maybe two. Not long. It was probably when I was sixteen and she was fifteen, I guess. How old are you, Sylvie?”
The question surprised me. “Fourteen. Fifteen soon. In April. How about you?”
“Nineteen. Last August.”
We were quiet, staring at that revolving door, waiting for Rose to be spit out of the building again. I knew the mood would shift the moment she appeared. Maybe that’s what gave me the courage to say, “Four years. That’s not much.”
The words hung in the air until I felt Dereck’s leg move away from mine. “You’re right. But what a difference they make.”
I kept quiet.
“Trust me, Sylvie. Things are so different than I thought they’d be back then. I mean, where did everybody go?”
“Everybody?”
“The people Rose and I went to school with. After my graduation, they just . . . left.”
“Didn’t you ever think of leaving too? You know, heading off to college.”
“That’ll make sense for you in a few more years. Not me.”
“Why not? Your grades weren’t good enough?”
“Actually, my grades were never a problem. You might not believe this, but I was in the Honors Society.”
“I believe you,” I said in a voice that sounded like I didn’t.
“I can tell.” He laughed. “I’ll show you my yearbook someday and prove it.” His leg drifted against mine once more, and he said, “I have my reasons for not wanting to go to college. I’ll tell you sometime.”
“What about the army?”
“Nahh. Too chicken. And not sure they’d take me. Hard to fire a gun when you’re missing so many fingers.”