The Opposite of Everyone: A Novel

  “Oh, sorry. You look like you might have a—be a thing.” Julian was flushed, as pink-cheeked as a maiden auntie who had caught her Pomeranians canoodling.

  “You came in at the end of the end of the story. You’re seeing credits roll,” I said, brisk. “Can we get to business? Show Birdwine the map.”

  “Map?” Birdwine said, turning to Julian.

  “You didn’t tell him? How could you not tell him?” Julian asked, then turned excitedly to Birdwine. “We know where Kai was taking Hana. I mean, we know where they’ll go next. I mean where they would have—where they went. Or gone.”

  He’d wound himself around in the verb tenses, but Birdwine picked up on the meaning.

  “No, Paula didn’t mention that,” Birdwine said, shooting me an oblique look. It occurred to me that he was angry back. But with what cause? He could have defended himself, but he had taken a hard pass. He was still talking to Julian, though. “You picked up Hana’s trail from my file? How?”

  Julian looked to me, but I turned deliberately and went to get more coffee, saying, “Julian, why don’t you catch him up?”

  “Yeah. Okay. Well, last night, Paula figured out where Kai was going. Sort of,” Julian said, looking uncertainly back and forth between us. He got the map out of the file and spread it out on the kitchen table. Birdwine came to stand beside him, casually closing his laptop and moving it back, out of the way. As if it was convenience, and the boy pictured on the screen had nothing to do with it.

  Now Julian partially blocked my view, and I hoped the kid would hurry. Cold as the air was now between me and Birdwine, Julian could die of hypothermia if he got wordy.

  “You went to Austin, and you traced the car to Dothan, Alabama,” Julian said. He pointed at the line of orange highlighter, traveling their route via index finger. “That’s where Kai grew up. Paula was born there.” He trailed his finger along the line. “Next, they head for Montgomery.”

  Julian was taking too damn long already. I wanted out of this house, so I chimed in.

  “We moved to Montgomery with Eddie. Then we lived in Jackson, Mississippi, with Tick.” Julian kept track with his pointing finger as I talked. Kai and I had traveled all over, sometimes gypsy lifing it for weeks between boyfriends. We’d city hop, changing names and modes of transportation, especially if the relationship behind us had ended ugly. But this route she’d taken with Hana ignored our brief pauses, the men who didn’t last or matter, all our winding roads. She’d taken Hana only to places where we’d lived a year or so. All the places where we’d had a home address and an approximation of a family. “New Orleans is where we met Anthony. You see?”

  “Holy shit,” said Birdwine, seeing.

  Julian said, “It’s her life. She was taking Hana on a tour, the main stops of her life, in order. Birth to—something.”

  I said, “Next is Asheville with Hervé, and that’s where you lost her.”

  Birdwine was shaking his head. “Dammit. I should have texted you her movements.”

  I couldn’t fault him for this. It was standard to give a PI a list of known associates, but I hadn’t a clue about any of Kai’s current people or places. I’d been thinking about brain cancer, delusions, heavy meds. I’d imagined some crazy flight from Texas child protective services into a murky future—not into our own ancient history.

  “That’s my bad. I told you to call me only when you had results,” I said, but it was an icy absolution.

  Julian shifted his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. “Do you think it’s possible she’s still alive?” he said into the silence.

  Birdwine shook his head, and his gaze on my brother was both sad and very gentle. “The guy who bought the wagon in Dothan said”—he paused, but Julian still had that baby bird look on his face, like he was hoping to be filled with something lovely—“that she looked like the walking dead. He barely recognized her from her picture. He said the Kai he met could have been November Kai’s grandma. I’m sorry.”

  Julian swallowed, looked away.

  Birdwine filled the silence. “From Dothan, they went Greyhound. In Asheville, they stopped taking the bus. She got a ride or bought another car. Not at a dealership. I checked all over. She could have found one on Craigslist or passed some junker with a For Sale sign in the window.”

  “Or stolen one. Or gotten a man to give them one,” I said.

  “Worst-case scenario, they started hitchhiking. At any rate, I lost them,” he said, flipping through the notes I’d printed out last night. Kai was touring Hana through her past, but it had been my past, too. I’d written it all out for him and traced it on the map in blue. “But now, see, I know her destinations.”

  The search radius had narrowed from “anywhere in the world,” to a journey from fixed point to fixed point. She was visiting every city where there had been a different boyfriend, a different Kai, a different me. How expurgated or invented was the tour that Kai gave Hana? So far, the geography matched Kai’s real history, which in itself was shocking. The truth was not a story that my mother told.

  Julian said, “After Asheville, Kai moved west of Atlanta with Dwayne. Then downstate.” He flushed. “That’s where I was born. But Paula thinks she might leave that part out. The prison part, and the me part, too. So it was Asheville, to Paulding County—”

  “To here,” I finished for him. There was no other destination possible. Kai didn’t know Ganesh’s new name, and she’d never left a lover without burning every bridge behind her. She’d meant to bring Hana here. “To me.”

  Birdwine was nodding. He remembered Kai’s note as well as I did. Death is not the end. You will be the end.

  She’d meant it literally, exactly as written. She’d had a plan for Hana, after all. To bring my sister to me. It was a desperate move, but all the gods knew that I owed her. I would have taken Hana in, no questions, had I truly been her journey’s end. She’d miscalculated, though. Somewhere on her wobbly path from Asheville to Paulding County to my place in Atlanta, my mother had run out of time.

  “I’m on it,” Birdwine said.

  “Great. Julian, let’s go. Your car is still parked by my office.”

  Julian was looking back and forth between us, bewildered. “But, wait, what happens now? We can’t go home. We’re so close!”

  “We’re closer,” Birdwine said. “But I’ve got a crap ton of phone calls and database searches to do now. Every hospital, every police department, every wrecking service along every route that she could have taken. A terminally ill woman traveling with a little girl will have left a footprint, but realistically, it will take days or even weeks of grunt work to find it.”

  “So you aren’t going back to Asheville,” Julian said, thoughtful.

  “I’ll be more effective here. My PI license gives me access to search engines that would blow your mind, kid, and I know how to work a phone. If that fails, then, yeah. I’ll run her possible routes in person, with pictures. I’ll canvass, asking everyone with eyes. I hope it won’t come to that.”

  I hoped not, too. I’d have to make a much more comprehensive list. Would Kai have taken Hana to the Dandy Mart, shown her the row of pay phones I had used to break our lives? Did places still have pay phones? Maybe they’d been ripped out, and all my mother could show Hana was the hole where they’d once been. That was the journey itself in a nutshell—looking at the holes where we’d once been.

  “If it’s phone calls and computer stuff, I could stay and help,” Julian offered. “It will go faster with two.” He looked back and forth between us, eager.

  “What about your car?” I asked, buying time to think.

  Our shared mother had died indigent, traveling under a name only the gods knew. The narrowed search radius had upped our odds of finding out what had derailed them, but Hana’s fate itself was still in play. She was still that famous cat in its closed box, dead and alive at the same time. I wasn’t sure that Julian should be the one to open it.

  “I’ll get it l
ater,” Julian said. “Although I need to borrow a charger. My phone is—it’s almost out of juice.”

  “I could use the help, but I can’t begin to guess what we’re going to find,” Birdwine said in cautious tones. He understood that Hana was a coin spinning in the air.

  “I’m not stupid. But even if Hana’s had a hard time, finding her can’t be anything but good news,” Julian told him, bristling. “She’s alone right now, and we’re her family.”

  I fought the urge to trade a speaking glance with Birdwine. I was off his team. I said gently to Julian, “We know we’re her family. But—”

  He turned to me, eyes overly bright. “When we find her, she’s going to know it, too. Last night, after you fell asleep, do you know what I did? I got on your laptop, and I started filling out a transfer application to Georgia State. I trolled Craigslist, too, looking for roommate ads here in Atlanta. I want her to know that even before I met her, I was changing my life for her. That I wanted be a real big brother to her, before I ever saw her face, or anything.”

  I recognized the righteous temper. This boy truly shared my blood. Then I did look to Birdwine. It was inadvertent. I found him looking back, thinking the same thing. I turned away, fast. It would be too easy to fall back into our old rhythms, especially as we worked to find my sister. I could feel our connection, tenuous but living, under all my anger. It would take more than simple rage to kill it. I couldn’t join up with him for anything, even a simple try at giving Julian an out. The kid wasn’t going to take it, anyway.

  I’d been trying to feed Julian reality in little sips, but the idea that we could get this close and not retrieve a Hana who was alive and well, one who wanted to be in our family—it was a bitter gulp, and it would not go down. This kid, who had recently lost his parents, was not ready for any more losses. Even imaginary ones. Hell, when he was asking for a charger, he wouldn’t even say his phone was dead.

  Birdwine tried again. “All I’m saying is, you need to be prepared. This story might not have a happy ending.”

  “I’m not looking for the end of a story,” Julian said, firm. “I’m looking for a little girl.”

  Whatever Kai-created train wreck was raging toward us, he was bound and determined to stand in the middle of the track with his arms spread wide. No, more than that. I was waiting to get hit by what was worst, and Julian was planning for a best. I was bracing myself for impact, and he was actively preparing for a future.

  Maybe I was getting schooled, again.

  For the first time, I indulged in Julian’s game of what if. Best case, Kai had taken Hana to her bio dad, and he was a happy, invested, stable sort. I thought that was about as likely as finding her cheerfully colonizing Mars. Real best case, she was living with some kindhearted friend or lover Kai had picked up on the road or in the foster care system with a decent placement. Worst case? She’d fallen hand in hand into the black with Kai and Joya; there was no plan needed for that contingency. Next worst case? She was living on the streets, or someone in the range of indifferent to awful had made her into baggage or prey.

  In every case but “magic, loving bio dad,” if she was alive, then I was going after custody. So why wasn’t I making best-case plans, like Julian? There were things I should tack onto my to-do list: Look for a house in a good school district. One with walls, that said I have room for you. Call a meeting with my partners, let them know all the ways my life was about to change.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m going in to work. I have a difficult negotiation starting up on Monday, and I have to go in prepped. If”—I stopped myself and looked deliberately to Julian—“when we find Hana, I’ll need some time off, so I need to bank goodwill with my partners now. Julian, can you send me updates, every hour on the hour?”

  Julian grinned at me. “Absolutely!”

  I spent the day drafting a settlement proposal for Winkley v. Winkley, and I was in quite a mood. It was weighted so heavily in Oakleigh’s favor that it was not a true proposal. It was the opening salvo in a war, and it promised that the war itself would be long and dark and bloody. When Dean Macon saw it, he might well crap his pants or recuse himself.

  Julian kept me in the loop, texting me all day. Perfect. I wanted my fingers on the pulse of the search, but I didn’t want to hear from Birdwine. Not even a four-word text. Not even a sorry-faced emoticon. Not until whatever sweetness I had discovered at his bedside was ashes, cold and light, easily blown away by any wind.

  I went home and fed Henry. I scratched his belly until he’d had enough and batted at me. Then I got in the shower, set the water hot as I could stand it, and scrubbed the day off myself. I stepped out mother naked, and as I dressed, it felt more like I was readying for a battle than a good night out. Maybe I was.

  I left my hair to dry naturally, hanging in long shaggy loops and spirals down my back. I chose jeans cut to frame the good ass my mother gave me, paired with a fitted T-shirt that said LUCKY on the front. I traded my diamond studs for long bangles made of a multitude of delicate, free-swinging chains, each with a tiny garnet near its end. I went easy on the makeup: fresh skin, brown mascara, and a pale, glossy mouth. The only part of daytime Paula left was my shoes, their red soles now an invitation, not a warning.

  I shook out my drying hair. The little garnets swung on their chains to ting and chime like bell song in my ears. I was going out, and if any god who walked above the earth or under it had mercy, I was getting myself laid.

  CHAPTER 10

  I have a scoop of eggs, a biscuit, two floppy strips of bacon, a canned peach half with a maraschino cherry resting on it like a nipple, and no place to go. I don’t hesitate or look around, though. I walk to the eight-top table nearest the kitchen and take my usual seat on the end. Two of the four Hispanic kids are already there, eating, but there is an empty chair between me and them. Joya’s former chair is across from me. There’s a third open chair catty-corner to me, so that I am surrounded by absence. The empty spaces are a circle drawn around me, making me the center of a bull’s-eye.

  Shar, Karice, and Kim saunter through the door before I take my first bite. They pause, scanning the room, and then Shar finds me. She sets the pace, eye-locking me and strolling slow toward the breakfast line. Karice and Kim flank her, one behind each shoulder.

  I’ve settled arguments and ended grudges in the wooded parts of parks or behind the temporary buildings at school. I’ve done fine, thank you, both by myself and backed by Joya. I’m tall and strong and mean. But this? This is a pack. I have to go in smart or it will end very, very badly. They have hyena faces, chins down, eyes bright with heat over smiles so wide I see their red tongues.

  I look back, very serious and calm. If a pack smells fear, they come in faster and harder. I don’t even blink, not even when Shar pauses, breaking stride to run her tongue over her bottom lip. She’s got a wide mouth with a host of big, white teeth all snaggled in it.

  I lean toward her, show her all my teeth in answer. I am not going to be a punching bag for bitches until my mother comes. It isn’t in my nature.

  I see Candace scuttling with her tray right past me, head ducked down, heading for her regular table. So much for last night’s There, nows. Once she sits, she gives me the side-eye, folding a tissue-thin strip of bacon into her mouth, accordion style.

  After the pack sits down, I’ll let them eat most of their food. Then I’ll leave, making sure to pass right by their table. If they don’t follow, I’ll cast some shade to spark them up and after me. I will lead them down into the basement of this building. There’s a hallway after the stairs, leading past unfinished storage to the laundry. It’s long and narrow, so they can’t surround me. I’ll retreat down it, try to knock one of them all the way out of the fight before we get to the laundry room. I can make a final stand there, between the shelves and the big machines. Even if I lose, I have to hurt them enough to kill their thirst for repetition.

  I know my plan, but I am not prepared for theirs; Shar swerves, bypassing
the line to come straight at me. Kim and Karice wheel with her, holding the formation. I feel my spine elongating. I sit tall in my seat. Shar pulls back Joya’s old chair and sinks down into it, her two lieutenants standing behind her, one at each shoulder.

  “Good morning,” I say, to Shar and only Shar, as if this fight is one on one. In some real sense, it is.

  “How long you think till Joya’s mama go back on that pipe?” Kim says to Karice over Shar’s head. She speaks theatrically, like they don’t see me there, trading the evil eye with Shar across the table.

  “Joya be too busy trickin’ herself to worry about that,” Karice says.

  They don’t know Joya and I fell out. Still, I find my temper rising to it. I don’t like her name in their mouths any more than I liked hearing it from Candace.

  I ignore them, looking for Shar’s weak spot. Except for those snaggle teeth, she is pretty. She’ll try to protect her face. Behind her, I can see the other two Hispanic kids have come out with their trays. They see us and pause, uncertain, milling by the silverware cart.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kim agrees, “Joya’s mama gonna turn her out.”

  Shar wears her hair short, in little rings, but not so short that I can’t get a good hold on it. Her ears peek out from under, and I can see the places in her lobes where Joya jerked her earrings through. They’ve healed split, each edge sealing itself, so that her lobes are doubled.

  When I don’t react to Kim and Karice’s bait, Shar reaches fast across the table and snatches the top of my biscuit. She licks it with her tongue, a big, juicy lick, taking half the jam out. Then she sets it back in place. She gives me an eyebrow quirk, like she’s asking what I’m going to do about it, luxuriously licking my jam off her fingers.

  “I never see you this up close, Shar,” I tell her. “I didn’t realize how much your earlobes look like butts. It’s like you have two old-lady sag-butts hanging off your ears.”

  Shar stands so abruptly that her chair scrapes back along the floor. Now she’s looming over me, and Kim and Karice lean, too. For a single, breathless second I think it’s going down right here, right now. I find my body rising, too, readying to improvise.