18. Jackson
CHAPTER 18
JACKSON
I stood stirring my soup, chicken and rice. The kind Dad always made me when I got sick. The stress of the ransom plot had done a number on Hailey, on top of the overall stress of the tour. She’d barely got out of bed since we got to the safe house, and when she did get up, she just watched TV. I wasn’t sure if she was even watching, or staring straight through the screen at something beyond.
I took my soup off the heat and did a lap of the house, checking in with my guys on the front and back doors. It wasn’t a big house. It didn’t take long. We’d spotted a car twenty minutes ago, parked on the corner, the driver not moving. Now when I checked for it, that car was gone.
“When’d he leave?” I said, nodding across the road.
“Right now.” My guy tapped on his radio. “I was about to buzz you, then you came over here.”
“What was he doing?”
“Nothing to do with us. He sat out there a while, just acting nervous, watching the house with the wreath on the door. Then he grabbed some roses from his back seat, got halfway to the door, and some girl ran him off. He left the roses, but, well. You see.”
The roses were scattered across the front yard. Twelve red ones. This guy had screwed up big-time.
“All right,” I said. “Buzz me if he comes back.”
I went back to the kitchen and made up a plate, soup, crackers, apple juice. A folded napkin. On impulse, I went out into the back yard, plucked a flower from the garden, and put it in a vase. I put that on the tray and took it to Hailey.
“Breakfast.” I smiled. “Or, more like lunch.”
Hailey looked at the tray and turned paler. She scrunched herself into the end of the couch.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You need to eat something.”
“Yeah, but the smell…” Her expression turned stricken. “I’m sorry. That’s so rude. I don’t mean your cooking. I just can’t, hot food… Can you take it away?”
I took the tray back and pulled out the blender, and made up a smoothie with yogurt and fruit. The yogurt had been my lunch, but Hailey didn’t know that. And she perked up when I brought out the drink.
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “But that looks really good.” She took a sip and relaxed. “Tastes good, as well.”
“Try to drink all of it. Keep up your strength.”
Hailey sat sipping, watching TV, some old war movie with the sound turned low. Without hair and makeup, I could see her exhaustion, black raccoon eyes. A puff of red frizz. Even her lips were chapped dry from the heat. I couldn’t protect her from the Vegas sun, or from her lifestyle, or the stress that came with it. No one knew, getting famous, what they were in for. They thought they did, from what they’d seen on TV, but the sheer chaos caught them all by surprise.
Hailey set her drink aside and closed her eyes.
“Drink at least half,” I said.
She kept her eyes closed. “I will.”
I watched her for a moment, but she didn’t move. A prickle of déjà vu itched at my brain. I’d been here before, or somewhere like it, but when had that been? What had I been doing? I looked out the window at the bone-dry back lawn, and that’s when it hit me: I’d been seven or eight. Mom and Dad had been fighting, barely holding on. But then I’d got mono and Dad had rushed home, and it’d been the four of us for the next three weeks — me, Mom and Dad, and my brother Nick. That was the longest we’d all spent together, at least the longest I could recall. And it’d been good, even with me so sick.
“Hold on,” I said.
Hailey blinked. “What?”
“Just wait there a moment. I’ll be right back.”
I couldn’t risk going out and potentially being spotted, so I ransacked the safe house, every cupboard and shelf. In an upstairs bedroom, I found a stash of bad movies, weird college comedies and old slasher flicks. In the downstairs hall closet, I found some board games, Ludo. Monopoly. A shabby checkers set. I found a quilt too, and a hot water bottle, and I borrowed them too. I’d put them back later.
“What’s all this?” Hailey said, as I shuffled back through.
“Distractions.” I winked at her. “I’ll be right back.”
I headed up front and told my guys to keep watching, and to alert me if anything changed. I told them, as well, to give Hailey her space. Then I filled the hot water bottle and went trotting back, and found her bundled up under the quilt.
“Yeah? You like that?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Want to watch some bad movies? Play a board game, maybe?”
She pointed at the water bottle. “Put that on my feet.”
I did as she said, and she sighed with relief. “I don’t know if it’s the heat or all the dancing, but my feet are just killing me. And my knees, too.” She rubbed her knees for a moment, then squinted at the DVDs. “You want to pick?”
“You pick.”
“Fine. Animal House . I’ve heard it’s iconic, but I missed it growing up.”
I put on the movie and stood by the TV, wanting to stay with her, not wanting to push. Hailey glared up at me.
“Loom much? Sit down.” She patted the couch next to her, so I took a seat. The movie got going, and Hailey seemed unimpressed, her lips a sour line as the story played out. Then, without warning, she let out a bark, a loud, angry ha that nearly made me jump. Then she did it again, and again and again, and then she was laughing, wiping her eyes. I laughed as well.
“Hilarious, huh?”
“It’s so stupid,” she gasped. “It’s just so, so… dumb .”
“Should I turn it off?”
“No. Leave it on.”
The food fight got going. Hailey choked on her smoothie. She laughed till she sputtered and her face turned red. “I thought this was meant to be some movie classic. It’s so bad. It’s so awesome — so awesomely bad.”
“Make you miss college?”
“I never went.” She laughed till she snorted, which made her laugh harder. “Is it really like that?”
“I never went either.”
“This makes me feel way less dumb for not going.” She sipped more of her smoothie. Her color was back. I got her some crackers, and she nibbled those too. The movie wrapped up and she let out a sigh, and I knew I couldn’t leave her time to think.
“Game time,” I said. “Monopoly.”
“I’m the boot,” Hailey said, and grabbed for the box. She raked through the pieces. “Wait, where’s the boot?”
“I think it’s a T-rex now. Or maybe a penguin.”
Hailey plucked out the Scottie dog. “Fine. I’ll be him instead.”
I noticed pretty quickly that Hailey was cheating, miscounting her squares to land on the good ones. She’d tap her dog on the lines between squares, so it was less clear how many she’d moved. I thought about busting her, but she was sick. She needed a win today, so I let her have one.
“Boardwalk and Park Place? How’d you get so lucky?”
“And the railroads. Don’t forget those.” She slid her piece from Short Line to Pennsylvania Railroad, straight across the free parking stack piled in the middle. I pointed, outraged.
“What are you doing?”
“If you own two across from each other, you can travel between them.”
“What? No, you can’t! You skipped my hotels.”
“Who says I can’t?”
“I don’t know — the rules?” I dug through the box till I found the rule card. “See, there’s no travel. You can’t ride the rails.”
Hailey snatched the card from me and skimmed through the rules. “No way. That’s stupid. Then, what’s the point?”
I picked up her piece and stuck it in jail. Hailey just laughed and popped a Get Out of Jail Free card. Soon, I went bankrupt, and we played checkers instead. Hailey didn’t cheat at that, but she still won. She trounced me hard three games in a row, and then she flopped back with her feet on the couch.
“This is fun,” she said. “I mean, obviously it’s not great, with the ransom threat. But doesn’t it feel a bit like a snow day?”
I glanced out the window, at the wilted back yard, the sun setting orange on the Nevada desert. “I don’t think it’s snowed here since 2008.”
Hailey kicked me, not hard. “You know what I mean.”
I took her foot without thinking and smoothed out her sock. “Yeah, I know. I was thinking that earlier — not a snow day, but more like a sick day. I got mono one time and my dad booked it home, and we did this every day till I felt better. I think we even watched Animal House .”
“Your dad let you watch that?”
I shrugged. “Sick rules, y’know?”
“What are sick rules?”
“Well, when you get sick, and your parents say yes to stuff they normally wouldn’t. Ice cream for breakfast. TV all day. Mom and Dad not fighting — that was the best.”
Hailey looked at me. “They fought a lot?”
“In that last year, yeah, before Mom kicked him out. Every time he’d come home, they’d try to keep quiet, but I’d still hear them fighting. My brother did too. He’d sneak in my room and we’d try and listen, but all we could hear was… Like angry bees.”
“This sounds awful,” said Hailey, “but I wished my dad would leave. I thought without him around, my mom might be nicer. She takes her cue from him, whatever he does. He’d yell at me, she’d join in like ‘ yeah .’ Or when he’d ground me, she’d back him up. It’s like she forgot how to think for herself.”
It didn’t sound awful, at least not to me. I squeezed Hailey’s foot again, and gave it a rub. “I mean, some people shouldn’t be together. Take my mom and dad: they’re both great people. But she’s a homebody. He’s got itchy feet. It was better for both of them when they moved on.”
“I sometimes wonder who Mom would be if she hadn’t met Dad. She loves music too, but she never sings outside church. I sometimes think, did she want to? Did she have dreams?”
“You should ask her,” I said. “She can’t ignore you forever.” I didn’t know if that was true, but my gut said a mom would reach out to her child. One day, she would, hopefully soon.
Hailey stretched. “You know what? I’m actually hungry. I think I could eat, if there’s still any soup.”
I peered through to the kitchen. “I think my guys ate it. But I’ll make something else. What sounds good?”
“Grilled cheese?”
“Then it’s your lucky day. I’m the grilled cheese king.” I wasn’t sure why I’d said that. My grilled cheese was just normal, buttery, stretchy. But I’d always loved when Dad made it for me. I gave Hailey’s foot one last squeeze and peeled myself off the couch.