Page 46 of Torch Songs

“I’m on the edge of all the things,” she admitted glumly. “Blood pressure iscreeping up,blood sugar isgetting a little high—but no. It’s bipolar meds. If I don’t take them before I go to bed, tomorrow’s going to be a house of horrors—all of it in my own brain.”

“April needs them too,” he said softly, remembering what April had told him about sneaking two days’ worth of meds from the halfway house so she could get away. “She… she tried to self-medicate with street drugs, but….”

Olivia sucked in a breath. “Oh, that’s rough. That’s a hard thing to kick, then. My shrinks told me that, super concerned that I not try it. The things it does to brain chemistry arebad.”

Guthrie nodded, liking this woman, this family, more with every moment he was in their home, and then to his horror, he saw she was picking up cases of water and Gatorade again. “Oh my God, woman, go put your feet upand put that down!”

She glared at him. “I’m—”

“Doingmyjob, darlin’. I’ve got nothing to offer here but a strong back and my fuckin’ truck! Now go sit down, med up, and rest. Food’s coming.” He toned his voice down for a minute. “You don’t do anybody favors by hurting yourself right now. Go rest.”

“If you insist,” she said, trying to sound snotty.

“I do.” He winked at her, and she smiled, and he got back to work.

He finished with the bedding and the eggcrate—not only enough for the people in the canyon, but enough for some of the people on top of the canyon who were trying to assemble an apparatus that would pull the fallen up without tumbling the canyon edge down on their heads.

FINALLY—FINALLY—he was headed back to Daffodil Canyon, just him and Maureen George. By the time Maureen had shownup with the food, Livvy had been too tired to move, and so had April. With that perfect empathy Livvy had shown him, she’d honed in on the fact that April was absolutely at the end of her rope. When he and Maureen had left them, April was scrolling through the aerial photos on Livvy’s phone, cuddling with the giant blond dog, who had found his date for the night.

Now their destination was up the road, unspooling from darkness under their headlights and the rattle of the pickup. As Maureen directed him to some place called (har, har!) Dropoff Drive, he asked why the gravel pit was called Daffodil Canyon.Hewas imagining wildflowers or pioneers planting bulbs or some such bullshit.

“Fucking yellow pollen,” Maureen said, shaking her head. “This time of year the air is thick with it. You’ll find it in your clothes, your hair. It collects there on top of the rocks like a blanket sometimes. God, Larx—”

“Livvy’s dad?” He still couldn’t figure out why they’d call him that, and he wanted to know. He wasimpressedwith these people, by their sense of community. Nobody was making the pregnant girl go until she dropped because she was the one who could organize shit—and Maureen seemed to regard her as a true sister, in spite of the fact that their dads had hooked up the year before.

“Yeah,” Maureen was saying now. “Larx was the science teacher before this year when he took over as principal. He was… well, sort of the greatest. Took the biology classes to the river to take soil samples and, you know, to do all the outdoor active things that make science not boring words on a page. Built trebuchets with the physics students, made ice cream in chemistry. I hear he hired a geology teacherspecialbecause this area is unique and he wanted to explore that, and then he got the guy a job part-time at Truckee Junior College when he couldn’t give him a full-time job at the high school.”

“Wow,” Guthrie said. “Dedication.”

“Paid off!” Maureen laughed. “The guy is part of the team of people—Larx and Aaron’s people—who put together this little search and rescue deal you’ll see in a few. He’s kept the damned search and rescue department from dragging the mountain down on our guys’ heads about sixty-dozen times today, so, you know. Us grown-ups are buying that guy somescotchwhen this is over.”

Guthrie chuckled. “Put me in for some of that,” he said. “Who else is up there?”

“Larx’s best friend, Yoshi Nakamoto,” Maureen said promptly. “Who mostly just herds fish, because he’s Larx’s vice principal and he’s good at it. My little brother, Larx’s foster kid, Livvy’s little sister, who willfeellike ten people because she’s exhaustingly optimistic, Berto’s little brother who’s like a spun top, Livvy’s husband, Elton, who is damned cute but don’t tell her I said that, and the other physics teacher that Larx recently hired, presumably because Larx is finally going to admit he’s a human being and stick to being a principal instead of trying to do it all.”

“Wow.” Guthrie crossed his eyes. “The more I hear about this guy?”

“You’ve got no idea,” Maureen said, shaking her head. “My little brother overheard the battles he had with the administration over being principal—they had toblackmailhim with somebody both hatedandincompetent before he’d take the job, and then he negotiated terms. In the end, he had to give up the track team to get Yoshi in as VP, and he kept the AP class in order to get veto power over hiring. It was small-town politics at its finest, done by a guy who spent his formative years telling politicians and bureaucrats to kiss his scrawny ass.” She sighed. “It’s a good thing my dad’s marrying him, or I might have fallenin love with him as an adult, and that would have been both fruitless and embarrassing.”

It took him a minute. “I take it you harbored a crush?” he asked delicately.

“Shh,” she said, holding her finger up to her lips. “He made ninth grade bearable. Don’t tell my dad—that’d be weird. Besides”—she shrugged—“it was a kid thing. What my dad and him are doing, that’s grown-up actual love and relationship. A crush in the ninth grade is really nothing.”

“Didn’t feel that way in ninth grade,” Guthrie said, trying to remember whohe’dbeen crushing on. An image of Bruce Springsteen from his 1980’s album covers floated behind his eyes, and then Billy Joe Armstrong and Brandon Flowers. Ooh… and Fitz from Fitz and the Tantrums. Nice!

He shook himself. “Sorry. All I’ve got is a spank bank of celebrities, and since I’m never gonna play with “Born to Run” era Springsteen, I think I’m safe from your situation.”

She laughed hard, appreciating. “Young Bruce wasnice,” she said. “But young Steve Perry wasthe shit.”

He pointed briefly to his own profile. “I got the nose but not the inclination,” he said with regret, and this time she had to cover her mouth with her hands.

When she was done laughing, a melancholy quiet settled over the rattling old truck, and Maureen spoke into the silence. “You’re nice. Can I be your friend as well as Livvy?”

Guthrie blinked. “Why, uhm, can’t I be both?” Were they at friends-for-life now? He thought about Olivia, freaking out about her shirtless father in the middle of a survival wasteland, and recognized the act of will she’d used to pull herself out of her spiral by her bootstraps and shoulder on into the void.

It was sort of the same thing that had gotten him, after three tries, to a place where hefinallyknew where Tad was. Maybe he and Oliviawerefriends for life.

“Olivia was always so intense in school,” Maureen said softly. “I… I wouldn’t steal a friend from her for anything because she’s a lot more guarded about that sort of thing. Not prickly, definitely not mean, but very much finding her way to her own heart with hard work. She relaxed around you in a way I’ve only seen with her family—or with Elton. I-I guess I’m a die-hard meddler. I want her to have all the friends.” She gave a snort. “She and Christie are pretty much my favorite sisters, right?”

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