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I started out noticing the little things: the notebooks spilling from the closet; the hunk of Berlin Wall sitting on the dresser, crumbling on one side like part had been broken off; the words scribbled on the walls. A picture frame sat on his nightstand. The black-and-white picture was of a man who looked almost exactly like Miles, one eyebrow quirked up, wearing a black flight jacket and standing next to a WWII-era fighter plane.
“He’s not here,” I said. “We have to search the rest of the house.”
“What about Cleveland?” Tucker asked.
“I think he’s gone. His car is gone.”
Tucker didn’t look so sure.
“Come on.” I walked to the door and wrenched it open. A stale smell hit me straight in the face, and I realized how much Miles’s room had smelled like him, like mint soap and pastries.
Tucker followed me out into a narrow hallway lined with doors, all open. The rain and wind howled outside. This place was so cold, so sad, I wondered how Miles managed to live here at all. Tucker walked toward the opposite end of the hallway, where a staircase descended to the first floor. A single lightbulb over the stairs cast a halo on his black hair.
He sucked in a breath. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Oh shit, Alex, oh shit.” He started down the stairs, two at a time. I ran to the top of the stairs and looked down.
Miles sat against the wall at the bottom, slouched over.
One second I was at the top of the stairs and the next I was at the bottom. Tucker was already at his cellphone, speaking to a 911 operator. I knelt next to Miles, wanting to touch him but afraid of what I’d feel. Blood dripped slowly onto his glasses; the extra weight pulled them down until they hung off one ear.
Would he be cold? As dead and empty as the house around him?
This could not be happening. I was hallucinating all of this. I could make it all go away if I tried hard enough.
But I couldn’t. And it was real.
I placed a shaky hand over his heart. I couldn’t feel anything. I pressed my ear against his chest, closed my eyes, and prayed, really prayed, for the first time in my life, to whatever god was listening.
Don’t go away. Don’t go away.
Then I heard it. And I felt the almost unnoticeable rise-and-fall motion of his chest as he breathed.
Tucker dragged me back.
“Is he breathing?” I asked. “Is he really breathing?”
“Yeah,” Tucker said, “yeah, he’s breathing.”
Chapter Fifty-eight
We sat on the front steps as the paramedics took Miles out of the house on a stretcher. The cops found Cleveland’s car not far away, wrapped around a tree, and Cleveland stumbling around in an angry drunken stupor. Connections weren’t hard to make.
Tucker took me back to the hospital. To my surprise, no one yelled at me, but I did pull a few stitches, blow up my blood pressure, and get a couple more days in the hospital under strict confinement to my room.
I was okay with that. Because the next morning, I got a roommate.
Chapter Fifty-nine
“Mr. Lobster. Do you think my hair is more Communist red, or your red?”
Morning sunlight swept across the tiled floor and over the white bed sheets, bathing the room in warmth. The white-noise machine under the window dulled the beeping of the monitors next to the bed. The only other noise came from occasional footsteps in the hallway and a TV somewhere.
“Fire truck.”
I hardly heard it, he said it so quietly. I wasn’t even sure he was awake at first; his eyes barely opened, but he licked his lips.
“Fire truck,” he said again, a little louder. “Strawberry, stop sign, ladybug, Kool-Aid, tomato, tulip. . . .”
He slowly raised his arm and reached out, feeling for the bedside table. “Glasses.”
I had his glasses; they dangled off my right index finger. I gently took his hand and placed them in his palm. He fumbled with them for a moment before finally getting them straight on his face. He blinked a few times and stared at the ceiling.
“Am I dead?”
“Fortunately, no. I know you were pretty hell-bent on it, but it didn’t really work out.”
“What happened to the good dying young?” he said, his voice breaking. I smiled even though it felt like nails were being hammered into the left side of my face.
“We’re not good, remember?”
He frowned and tried to sit up and fell back again, groaning.
“God . . . what happened?”
“You got beaten up and thrown down a flight of stairs. Want to explain what you were doing?”
“I don’t really remember. I was upset. . . .”
“Yeah, I figured that much.”
“It wasn’t supposed to go that way. I provoked him.” He looked around. Saw the other bed. “You’re in this room, too?”
I nodded. “Someone likes us.”
He carefully turned his head, wincing, to look at me. “Your face.”
I smiled again; I was wondering when he’d notice.
“It’s only the left side,” I said. “The doctor got all the glass out. He said when the swelling and redness go down, I’ll look basically the same as I used to. Just with a lot of scars.”
Miles frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Great,” I said. “Concussion, electrocution, scarring . . . nothing I can’t handle, trust me. You should be more worried about yourself. I know how you like to keep people away, but after this I think you might have your own fan club.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, licking his lips again. “Is there any water in here?”
I reached for the glass of water the nurse had brought earlier. As he drank, I explained what had happened to Cleveland after he’d thrown Miles down the stairs.
“They got him. He was pissed. I guess he thought they were going to help him or something, because he told them exactly where he lived and what had happened. There was already an ambulance at your house, so they pieced it all together.” I paused and curled my legs up underneath me. “Anyway, Cleveland’s sitting in jail. They aren’t going to hold the trial until their three star witnesses are ready to testify.”
Miles opened his mouth to say something else, but then smiled and shook his head. I searched for a word for what I was feeling, for this mix of relief and exultation and serenity, but I couldn’t think of anything.
Words were his thing, not mine.
A few moments later the nurse came back to check Miles’s bandages and ask him how he felt and if he needed anything.
