A Friend at Midnight Read Free Page B

They looked as if they had no children; as if they never planned to have children. Michael flopped down at their feet, flat on his face, and hoped for the best. He felt sick from not eating and his head whirled. Under the seats lay used coffee cups and discarded magazines. He could see the feet of the officer, who was moving on, satisfied.

    How silent the house was.
    Lily put the tuna salad into the refrigerator.
    It was quiet times that bothered her most these days. Michael had been a nonquiet brother.
    Michael was a very busy kid, and most of all, he was busy talking: he talked all the time to everybody. He was busy with sports: hitting balls, kicking balls, pitching balls, dunking balls. He was busy going places: on foot, on bike, on skateboard. He was busy with projects and friends, busy in the cellar, busy in the attic, busy in the yard.
    He was a dirty noisy nosy little eight-year-old.
    One thing that kept him busy was making lists of everything he planned to do next. “I want to learn how to fish,” he would say. “I want to scuba dive.” He loved equipment. You could never have enough equipment.
    Lily remembered Michael sitting by the road with all his equipment, waiting. Silent, because in all those hours, nobody—including Michael—knew what to say.
    And then once Michael was gone, Nathaniel too got quieter, now that he didn’t have to drown out his big brother. Lily almost wanted to wake Nathaniel up just to have company. Then she came to her senses and turned on the television.
    She was setting down the remote when her thumb slid across the number pad, and other numbers filtered through her mind and she recognized the area code of that phone number on the caller ID.
    She clicked off the television. A little prickle of fear entered her heart.
    She had deleted the number from the kitchen phone but Mom’s bedroom phone had a memory bank. Lily never went in there because she didn’t like thinking about Mom and Kells sharing a room. She went upstairs on tiptoe so Nathaniel wouldn’t sense her presence. She crept into the master bedroom and lifted the portable phone from its cradle to take back downstairs.
    She peeked in on Nate. He was asleep in the flung-out way of toddlers—arms and legs all over the place.

    Michael followed a small girl into a big yellow and blue play plane. Inside were little seats. He squashed himself beneath one. I could hide here for a long time, he thought. And then what?
    He decided to check the sidewalk one more time.
    Just in case.
    He didn’t see any of the people who’d shown interest in him before. He passed the ticket counters safely and walked out next to a janitor pushing a cleanup cart. Outside, he pressed against a cement pillar to avoid being mowed down by crossing guards and airplane crews, by suitcases and dogs in cages, sidewalk check-in staff and overflowing luggage trolleys.
    A long thin blue bus arrived. AIRPORT PARKING , said the sign in its front window.
    A woman next to Michael on the sidewalk called anxiously to the driver, “Do you stop at Parking Lot A?”
    â€œWe stop at all of ’em, lady. A, B, C, D, whatever letter you want.”
    The school buses at his new school had been named for letters. Michael had gotten on the wrong bus. It had not been his first failure, just one in a string. Michael went back inside so he didn’t have to think about A, B, C, D and failure. When he found himself in the playroom again, near the wall phones, the one he had used before was ringing.

    Lily let the phone ring. On the seventh ring, she thought, What kind of loser can’t get to a phone in seven rings or else have their answering machine pick up?
    â€œWiwwy,” called Nathaniel. He’d slept fifteen minutes instead of two hours. It was her own fault for putting him down early. He was capable of yelling “Wiwwy” several hundred times before tiring of the syllables.
    â€œI’m on the phone,