But instead the cop looked up, twisting his mouth into a frown. “Son, I’d like to see you take nine steps along that line right there,” he said. “Do you think you could do that for me?”
Peter stared at the faded white line that ran beside the metal median of the highway, then looked back at the policeman. “Um, sure.”
“Wonderful,” he said, nodding as if by answering, Peter had just correctly completed the first stage of the test. “And then I’d like you to turn on one foot and walk right back, okay?”
Peter opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it and instead turned to begin the walk. His face was burning as he held his hands out unsteadily at his sides, trying not to look at Emma, who was still sitting inside the car. He squared his shoulders and set a foot down on the line just beside a ladybug, which scurried away and disappeared onto the other side of the highway. He toyed briefly with the idea of just turning himself in—rather than going through this particular kind of humiliation—but forced himself to thrust his arms out, place his heel in front of his toe, and begin to walk. At the end of the nine steps, he spun on one leg like a graceless flamingo, then made his way quickly back to the car.
“Fine,” the officer said, looking unmistakably disappointed.
“I don’t drink, sir.”
“You’re sixteen,” he said, as if that meant something. “Anyway, you were driving pretty haphazardly.”
“The car’s old,” Peter said miserably. “It can be sort of … tricky.”
Officer Hurt looked unmoved by this. “Tricky?”
Peter watched as he began a slow circle of the car, considering it with an appraising eye and making little grunting noises here and there, his boots clicking on the pavement. Even if Peter himself weren’t flagged on some kind of police network, he was sure the car must be, and his mouth went chalky as he waited for the verdict.
“And the dog?”
Peter stifled the urge to groan. Of course, he thought; of course we’d dodge everything else and get caught because of a stupid stray dog.
The back window was open a crack, and they could see the dog’s black nose snuffling along its edges as he twisted his head to get a better whiff of the world outside. After a moment, he set about licking at the window, his great pink tongue covering every inch of glass as if it were a giant ice cream cone.
“It’s yours?”
Peter hesitated, glancing at the car, where Emma was nodding through the window. “Yes, sir?” he said, unable to help it from emerging as a question.
The cop peered into the car once more. “He’s got no collar or tags.”
“No, sir,” Peter agreed with a sigh.
Suddenly, Emma was out of the car too. She let the door hang open as she jogged around to the other side, her flip-flops slapping against the pavement.
“Miss, you can’t just …,” the officer began rather futilely. “Please get back in the—”
But Emma had already sprung into action. “It’s a funny story,” she was saying, half laughing at the sheer comedy of it all, and Peter struggled to imitate her, attempting to arrange his mouth in a way that might suggest he was also carefree and endlessly amused.
Officer Hurt chewed on the end of his pen and waited for Emma to continue.
“Well, we’ve been driving a convertible, right?” she said, motioning to the blue car, where the dog was now pacing the small confines of the backseat. “And it’s been hot, so we usually keep the top down. I mean, you know how it is in the summer.” Peter looked on, mortified, as she patted the now dumbfounded policeman on the arm. “So we got to a stoplight yesterday morning, and he decided to jump right out of the car—the dog, not Peter,” she clarified. “Anyway, we took him to the vet, just to be sure he was fine, because he had an accident as a puppy, which is why he only has three legs in the first place.” Here she lowered her voice conspiratorially, leaning in toward Officer Hurt. “If you’ve got a three-legged dog, you need to be very careful about other injuries in case anything happens to another leg, you know?”
The cop just barely managed a nod.
“We had to take his collar off at the vet so that he could examine him properly,” Emma continued, unfazed. “And it wasn’t until we left again that we realized it, and by then we were a hundred miles away.” She rocked back on her heels with a satisfied smile. “We’re on our way to visit my grandparents in DC, and we don’t want to be late for dinner. So we’ll have to get him a new collar once we get there.”
“Uh, yeah,” Officer Hurt said, once Emma had finally fallen silent. “Yeah, just … be sure that you do. And tags, too.”
“Of course, Officer,” Emma said with an overly bright smile. “We really appreciate the reminder.”
Peter thought this last part was a bit over the top, but Officer Hurt flushed at the show of gratitude and began backpedaling toward his car.
“Well, then,” he said, bobbing his head. “Drive safely, okay?”
“Uh, my license?” Peter asked, and felt a rush of relief once the little piece of plastic was back in his own hands. They stood and watched as Officer Hurt sank back down into the driver’s seat of the police car, lifted his hand in a wave, and peeled back out onto the highway.
Emma turned to Peter with a triumphant grin. “Not bad, huh?”
“I can’t believe he bought that,” Peter said, shaking his head as they walked back over to the convertible.
She shrugged, sinking back down into her seat. “He wouldn’t have cared about the dog, anyway. I mean, who gets busted for something like that?” she said, pushing the dog’s nose away as he attempted to lick her ear. “But you were acting so fidgety and nervous about the car thing, it would’ve been a shame to let something as stupid as giving a ride to a stray dog be the thing to get us in trouble.”
“Is that what we’re doing?” Peter couldn’t help asking as he pulled the car back onto the road, his hands firmly on the wheel as he navigated cautiously down the exact center of the slow lane. “Giving him a ride?”
“I don’t know what we’re doing with any of this, really.”
Peter gave a humorless little laugh. “That’s always good to hear.”
“Yeah, well, things like this always work out in the end.”
“Do they?” he asked doubtfully, still shaken, but Emma only grinned at him.
“Well, if not, then at least we’re not stuck being bored at home. At least we’re having some fun, right?”
“ This is your idea of fun?” he asked. “Lying to the cops?”
“It wasn’t lying,” she said. “It was just pretending.”
“There’s a pretty important difference.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “I’m sure the police have better things to deal with than stray dogs.”
“What about stray kids?”
“You don’t really mind,” Emma told him with such certainty that Peter glanced over at her. “This is just about your dad.”
“What?” he said, his voice coming out in a telltale squeak. He tried to laugh it off, but this too sounded strange and forced. “No, it’s not.”
But he knew, of course, that it was true. They were almost to Washington now, with nearly three hundred miles of highway behind them, conspicuous as the sun in the blue car and toting a lame dog who drew attention wherever they went. But nobody had stopped them, and even once someone had, there had been no sign of recognition, no dramatic arrest or abrupt ending to the trip.
And it was only now dawning on Peter that this was no coincidence. They hadn’t been lucky to scrape by, and he hadn’t been fooling anybody. The fact was that no one was looking for him. And he understood now that this was a choice his father had made—this decision to await his return rather than chase after him—one that Peter knew was no small sacrifice for him to make.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Emma asked, twisting to face him. “That’s why you’re acting all jittery? Because of your dad?”
He hesitated, about to brush
away the question as he always did, hedging his bets that despite what she said, Emma wouldn’t really be interested, or at least not for very long. But when he looked over, he saw that she was now watching him with her head tilted, an expression on her face that fell midway between affection and concern, and Peter wondered if maybe—just maybe—he’d misjudged her.
He turned back to the road ahead of them, feeling somehow lighter. They passed another police car, parked along the side of the highway, half hidden by a length of overgrown bushes so that just its headlights flashed in the late-day sun. But this time Peter drove past confidently, feeling almost invincible.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I think I’m okay now.”
Emma sat back and smiled. “I think so too.”
chapter fifteen
It wasn’t long before they reached the outskirts of Washington DC, the sprawling brownstones and colonial houses that bridged several surrounding states. Peter swung the car lazily onto an exit for the city, and Emma resisted the urge to remind him of her sister’s address; he seemed so pleased at the challenge of finding it on his own, apparently reluctant to refer to the needlessly large pile of maps in the back.
The sun was low in the sky ahead, draping the trees in honey-colored light, and the roads were busy with commuters returning home after work. At a red light Peter looked at her sideways.
“Do you ever wonder what he would’ve been like?”
Emma yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Who?”
“Your brother.”
“Oh,” she said, sitting up. “I don’t know. Not really.”
This, of course, wasn’t the least bit true; she had, ever since she found out about him, been pondering that very question. And what she’d come up with was a wide assortment of theories and possibilities, a hypothetical resume that accounted for everything from what kinds of foods he would have hated as a baby right on up to what his grade point average might have been this year. But even to Emma this all seemed a little bit much—just a tad on the wrong side of crazy—and so she only shrugged at Peter’s question.
“C’mon,” he said, his voice insistent. “You must’ve thought about it a little bit. I mean, he was your twin. I wonder if you guys would have been very much alike.”
“Two of me,” she said with a grin. “Scary, huh?”
But Peter only smiled. “Not the worst thing in the world.”
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I mean, how many geniuses can fit into one family, right? It’s nice to think he might’ve been more like me.”
“A genius at other stuff,” he said. “Like talking your way out of things.”
“And wandering off.”
“And avoiding people.”
“And not really listening.”
“Oh, yeah,” Peter said, laughing now. “You’re brilliant at that.”
Emma smiled, sitting forward as they caught their first glimpse of DC. It wasn’t anything like New York in size or scope, but there was still something about driving into a city at dusk, the lit buildings rising like silhouettes against a pale sky, a kind of glowing energy that came from leaving behind the stark emptiness of the highways. When she glanced over at Peter, she saw her own reaction mirrored in his face, and Emma realized this was all new to him, that strange and wonderful feeling when you first crest a hill and look out across a concrete landscape pulsing with shadow and light.
“Think he would’ve been a city mouse or a country mouse?”
“Country,” Emma said. “But he wouldn’t have really known it.”
“Popcorn or candy at the movies?”
“Popcorn, definitely. With extra butter.”
“Obviously,” Peter said with a firm nod. “Dogs or cats?”
“Dogs,” she said, reaching behind to give the sleeping dog a pat on the head. “Especially funny-looking ones.”
“Think he would’ve been good at directions?”
“Better than me,” she said, “but worse than you.”
Peter was quiet for a moment. “Do you think …” He lifted one hand from the steering wheel and rubbed at the back of his neck. The red taillights from the car ahead of them reflected off his glasses. “Do you ever feel like maybe he’s sort of looking out for you?” he asked, glancing over at her quickly as if to gauge her reaction. “Not in a really obvious way; I don’t mean like a ghost or angel or anything like that. But just …”
“Just sort of out there?”
“Right,” he said. “More like a feeling.”
Emma nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes?” he repeated, looking surprised. “Not maybe, or possibly? Just … yes?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s like one of your maps. There’s never just one way to get somewhere, right? There are a bunch of different possibilities. Some of them take you where you want to go, some bring you home, and others go somewhere else entirely. You can be really certain about really uncertain things.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Well, isn’t that kind of the point? It would be pretty hard to believe in any of that stuff—ghosts or angels or anything else—if it all made sense.”
“Yeah, well, maps are different. They’re logical.”
They were nearly to Annie’s by now, and they made the rest of the trip in silence, Peter frowning out at the road with a look of deep concentration. Emma didn’t blame him; after all, she’d insulted his entire system of beliefs. But how were you ever supposed to get anywhere if you always stuck to the same route? He spent so much time charting out the world that he barely had a chance to get lost in it.
And even now he was doing it again, proving himself better than an atlas in getting to Annie’s. In spite of herself Emma couldn’t help being impressed with the way he zipped around the mixed-up alphabet of streets in the heart of the city, taking shortcuts as if he did it every day.
“I guess it’s a good thing that one of us is logical,” she said. “You’d give one of those electronic navigational thingies a run for its money.”
“GPS.”
“Whatever.”
“It’s short for Global Positioning System.”
“Don’t you know how to take a compliment?” she said, though she could tell he was pleased.
They found a parking spot near Annie’s house, on an orange-tinted avenue lined with streetlamps, just beside a mostly empty pub. As Emma collected her things, she could feel the low buzz of her phone ringing inside her bag, and she knew it was her parents calling again, as they’d been doing with impressive regularity since she left Patrick’s, the phone lighting up nearly every hour like clockwork, though she still hadn’t worked up the nerve to pick up.
Peter stood beside the car, his arms raised skyward in a mighty stretch, and Emma held the door open to let the dog hop out, realizing for the first time that they didn’t even have a leash. She crouched beside him, taking his face in both hands.
“You’re gonna have to be on perfect behavior if we want to pull this thing off,” she told him sternly. He wagged his tail and licked her nose.
“Should we wait to bring our stuff in later?” Peter asked, casting a nervous glance up the street. “Maybe we should try calling first? Or maybe you should go up alone?”
Emma straightened and grabbed her backpack from the trunk. “Relax,” she said, starting down the block. “It’s not like we’re planning a robbery.”
But when they found the right building—a weathered brownstone with curved windows and a hanging plant beside the door—the voice that came rasping over the intercom was about as friendly as if they had been planning some sort of heist.
“No solicitors.”
“We’re not—,” Emma began, but was cut off abruptly.
“We didn’t order any food, either,” he said. “You’re probably looking for the guy in 4A.”
“No, we’re looking for my sister.”
There was a brief pause.
“Emma?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry
,” he said, the words drowned out by a loud buzz that made the door vibrate. Peter grabbed the handle. “Come on up.”
“It’s Charles, her boyfriend,” Emma explained, breathing hard as they climbed the stairs, the dog bounding ahead of them, zigzagging along the echoing stairwell like a misguided ping-pong ball. “He’s a little bit …” She searched for the right word, but most of them seemed to describe Peter nearly as well as Charles, and so she just trailed off, pulling herself up the banister as if it were a rope.
When they reached the fourth floor, Peter whistled for the dog, who had climbed up ahead of them. He came trotting down again, his tongue lolling out, his tail fanning the air, and took a seat beside Peter, who hung back as Emma approached the door.
“Sorry about that,” Charles said, sticking his head out before she had a chance to knock. “Wasn’t expecting anyone, and I’m on a deadline.”
Emma waited for him to move aside or invite her in, but he was staring at the boy and the dog waiting beside her in the hallway, seemingly dismayed at the idea that they might belong to her.
“Uh, I heard you’ve been on the run,” he said, his feet still planted squarely in the doorway. He had shocking red hair and too-pale skin and a serious look that rarely failed to disappear.
“Yeah, just call us Bonnie and Clyde,” Emma said, and Charles seemed uncertain whether or not she was humoring him. She tilted her head. “Get a lot of visitors here?”
“Some, why?”
“Because it’s normally polite to ask people in.”