“Judah,” I whisper. “Why were you waiting for me?”
He blinks slowly, like he’s in some kind of trance, then he looks back out the window.
“I always have.” There is such utter dejection in his voice, I draw back.
He lifts his arm and points across the street. “There, where the blackberries grow in summer…”
I look to where he’s pointing. There is a thicket of bushes across the street. No one ever trims them back so they grow wild around an empty lot.
“I saw you there for the first time, picking berries with your mother. I mean, you’d lived here your whole life, and so had I, but that was the first time I looked. You were real little—missing teeth, scraped knees little. Your hair was ratty and so blonde it looked white in the sun.”
I search for this memory. Blackberry picking with my mother. Yes. She used to make pies. We’d take bowls and fill them up, staining our lips with the purple juice as we ate and picked. She would tell me stories about how she used to do the same thing with her mother. Before she tried to drown her, that is.
“Your skin gets real tan in the summer,” he continues. “In the winter you’re like the snow, but when summer comes you look like a Native American with spun gold hair.” I look down at my arms. It’s too dark to see the color of my skin, but I know he’s telling the truth. I don’t know where he’s going with this. He’s not himself.
“You know what I thought when I saw you? She’s going to fight. You’d reach into those thorns to get the best berries for your mom; it didn’t matter if you got all scratched up. You saw the one you wanted, and you did what you needed to do to get it.”
“Judah…?” I shake my head, but he shushes me. Puts two fingers right over my lips and presses softly. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a kiss.
“I was already in my chair by that time. I couldn’t do that. Not even if I wanted to. It’s funny,” he says, ”it took the wheelchair for me to see you … to see a lot of things actually.”
The candle is dancing, swinging light gently around the room. I study his face, wanting to hurry his words and savor them at the same time.
“I’m half a person,” he says softly. “I’ll always have limits, and I’ll never have legs. Sometimes it makes me want to … quit.”
I swallow his “quit” because I too wanted to “quit,” on many occasions. Namely when I am paralyzed by the thought that there might not be any more to this life than the Bone. A deep hollowness overtakes me, and I have to tell myself that I’m too young to know for sure. Give it a few more years before you quit, Margo. Right now, the thought of Judah quitting makes me panic.
“So what?” I say.
He looks at me. Waiting. I’m waiting too. I don’t want to tangle my words—say something flippant. I’ll never be good enough for Judah Grant, so I want my words to be what he’s thirsty for. Meeting a need makes you feel more rooted. How do I know this? Because I buy my mother cigarettes? Bring her tampons and saltines from the drugstore?
“I have legs, Judah, and I don’t know how to use them. Your life walks, and you’re going to walk out of the Bone and be something. The rest of us, and our working legs, are going to live and die in the Bone.”“Margo…” his voice cracks. His chin dips to his chest, and I’m not sure if he’s crying until I hear the sniff. He grabs me, before I can grab him, and he holds me tight.
“Margo,” he says into my hair. “I’ll save you, if you save me.”
I nod, the words caught in my throat, sticky with emotion. That’s the best deal life has ever offered me.
“DON’T YOU FEEL LIKE WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING?” I say to Judah a few days later. “Like really just jump up and do something.” He is sprinkling green leaves onto a sheet of thin, white paper. I watch, transfixed, at the nimbleness of his fingers as he licks, then rolls.
“Like what?” he asks. “Start our own investigation?”
“Maybe,” I snap. He finishes one joint and sets about rolling another.
“Let me try,” I say, pushing his hands aside. He leans away from the table, an amused expression on his face. My knees press against the wheels of his chair. My fat, bulging knees. I hope he doesn’t look down and notice. The wind picks up, and I can smell the tang of his skin—sweat and cologne.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” I say. I don’t like the way Judah’s smell makes my body react.
“No, it isn’t.”
He’s watching me closely. It makes me self-conscious. My hair is shaggy, and my skin is stained red from the sun exposure. My fingers fumble, and I spill flecks of green across the table.
“Easy there, Slim.” Judah picks up a few pieces and drops them back onto the paper. I glance at him briefly to see if he’s angry, but he’s not even looking at me anymore. He’s watching the trees across the street.
This morning, I got up early and met with one of the search groups scouring the woods on the east side of the Boubaton River. They gave us doughnuts and coffee and neon yellow vests to wear over our clothes as a safety precaution. Some of the police officers brought their dogs—great big German Shepherds wearing vests that said POLICE in bright yellow lettering down the side. We walked a straight line through the woods, looking for anything that might be out of place—a piece of ripped clothing, blood, hair. I grew more breathless with each step I took. Wondering if I would be the one to find Nevaeh.
Children went missing every day, with one percent of those cases making it into national news. People hurting kids. When it’s a kid you know, one who rides the bus with you, and walks down the same shitty streets you’ve been walking down your whole life, it feels black. Evil was allowed to pick us off one by one, starting with the weakest.
“My joint sucks,” I say, holding the fail between my fingertips. It’s baggy. Some of the grass falls out one end and blows off the table when the breeze kicks up. He plucks it from my fingers and begins again.
“You are helping,” he says. “You’re searching the goddamn woods. What more could you do right now?”
“Find her,” I say. “She’s somewhere, right?”
It’s the look on his face that sets me off. He tries to cover it with what I want to see: hope or something equally as pathetic. That’s what I am, I guess—a pathetically hopeful human who wants to believe that a little girl is still alive. And even if she were, what condition would she be in after all this time? I shake my head, and my voice quivers a little when I say, “You don’t have to look at me like that. Like I’m stupid or something.”