She checked the others to make sure that didn’t sound like an exaggeration.
“Blyton Hills was better than home,” she resumed. “Home was where I fought my parents and couldn’t be myself. Your aunt and uncle were family to me. Uncle Emmet taught me how to drive when I was eleven. Your aunt Margo gave me my first tampon. What do you think used to keep me alive in Catholic schools where I was forced to wear skirts and put up with rednecks laughing at my short hair? All the time I was just waiting for the next vacation so I could pack my bags and jump on the bus to Blyton Hills. Even my parents resented all the time I spent with your family, but I guess they were glad I had friends somewhere. If you made me choose between tickets to Disneyland and Disney World with anybody else or Blyton Hills with you guys, I would have chosen you in a heartbeat.”
“Same here,” Nate voted. Then, pushing the newspaper aside, he added, “Although, implying that Blyton Hills was a redneck-free zone…Joey Krantz, anyone?”
The gravitas dissolved into laughter.
“God, everyone remembers that prick!” said Kerri. “Can we please focus on the good people of Blyton Hills?”
“Nah, just kidding,” Nate said. “We had great times.”
Everyone used the honesty moment to sigh, sniff, shift in their seats.
“Shit, I wish Peter was here.”
Kerri said that.
“I always thought if one of us were to take the initiative, it’d be him,” she expanded.
“Well, he took one initiative,” mumbled Nate into the newspaper.
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Offing himself.”
“What? What are you saying? The police ruled it an accidental overdose.”
“Come on!” cried Andy and Nate ensemble. “Kerri, he killed himself.”
“But why? Why would he kill himself? He was the most successful of us—he was the only successful one! While you were trainhopping and you were institutionalized, Peter had a penthouse in Hollywood and was on the cover of Rolling Stone! Why would he want to die?”
“The same reason I was trainhopping or Nate was in the loony bin! Because of what we went through!”
“No way! Peter was…he was okay,” Kerri protested. “He was the one who made it out without scars.”
“He just hid them better than we did,” Andy said bitterly, returning to the violet landscape, biting her knuckles. Mountains and woods were steadily flowing toward nowhere.
“He called,” Kerri said. Her eyes stayed fixed on the lava lamp effect of dusk.
“What?”
“Peter. Before he died, he phoned me.”
Andy and Nate shared a new exclamation.
“When? What did he say?”
“I don’t know. It was late at night and there was a party in my dorm and it was loud and I couldn’t really hear him, so I told him I would call back later, but I drank a lot and I kinda forgot. Then two days later I read his obituary in the paper.”
Everybody fell silent after that.
A scything moon had appeared in Andy’s window.
—
They checked into a motel not uglier than the rest, which is remarkable, road motels being relentlessly competitive when it comes to creating the most depressing atmosphere out of blank walls and PVC. The country-style rooms, furnished in light wood and tasseled curtains and quilts, featured so few amenities that even Tim became bored fifteen seconds after arrival—and this was the same dog that had, on one occasion, spent eight hours straight fascinated by an egg.
Kerri poured some kibble into his tin bowl from his very own travel bag, which fit inside hers, and sat on the bed farthest from the door with a bottle of beer. The motel slept in silence, all the guests probably busy counting stolen money or chopping up corpses in the bathtub.
“Beer?” She offered the bottle across the space between the beds.
“No, thanks,” Andy said.
“Your body is a temple.”
The line “Not one adhering to the moral codes of any major religion I know” took way too long to find its wording in Andy’s mind, so she just smirked.
“You’re enjoying this,” Kerri noticed, dimly amused.
“Enjoying what?”
“This. What we’re doing.”
Andy surveyed the carpet for a good answer, then shrugged. “At least we’re doing something.”
Kerri nodded, glanced over at her. “You don’t seem very scared yourself.”
“I’m fine when I’m with you,” Andy said, shrugging again.
Kerri grinned at the line and left the bottle next to her sleeping pills and Andy’s wallet. The room was cold. She slithered into bed and tucked herself in.
Andy stayed in place, vigilant. “Why did your aunt leave Blyton Hills?” she asked, her voice too shy to dispel the quiet.
“She moved after my uncle died, in ’eighty-five. Business wasn’t going well anyway, because of the depression.”
Andy frowned, embarrassed of her history knowledge. “There was a depression?”
“In Blyton Hills there was. The wool trade went down; most of the town economy resented it.”
The only sound between lines was Tim munching from his bowl, filling the blank seconds Andy spent just staring at the figure drawn by the single bedside lamp, and making her feel self-conscious about it.
“Why did the wool business sink?” she tried, just to extend the moment. “Sheep smugglers?”
“No. The sheep died.”
“Shit. All of them?”
“Most. In spring they used to graze them in the valley downriver. One morning the shepherds just found them all dead. Remember the chemical plant south of town?”
“Yeah.”
“They think it was water poisoning. There’s a big class-action lawsuit.” She turned over. “Fuck, what I wouldn’t do for a warm night.”
Andy responded swiftly by laying Kerri’s parka on top of her. Hundreds of orange curls oohed and aahed under the wool lining.
She sat down next to her on the mattress. Her gaze strayed over the fake wood paneling and the halfhearted attempt at rustic.
“Do you know what this place reminds me of? Chippanuck Camp.”
A scoff came from under the covers. “Shit, what a miserable place that was.”
“Hey, only until we exposed the owner’s scheme for forging Indian craftwork.”
“I bet it’s better now that the children aren’t stitching ‘fair trade’ labels onto hand-sewn Cherokee purses,” Kerri sniffed.
Andy felt warmed up by the mere memory.
“Our very first case, remember? At the end of that camp you invited me and Peter to Blyton Hills.”
Somewhere under her right hand, through the parka and a blanket and the bedsheets, she could feel Kerri’s shoulder breathing. Andy’s eyes had lost themselves in a flame of orange hair, in the way eyes are attracted only by lit fireplaces.
“Do you know what I remember most about that summer?” she said. “I mean, apart from the child labor thingy?”
“Heh. No, what?”
“When I met you. Do you remember it?”
“Uh-uh.”
“There was that dumb counselor with big tits who introduced us.”
“Right, the one who was sleeping with the head supervisor.”
“Shit. She was?”
“Yep, I’m pretty sure.”