Laura Lippman - What The Dead Know

“Mind if I put the radio on?” the driver asked one day. He was a substitute, young and good-looking, not at all like Mr. Madison, who normally drove the route. “But you have to keep it a secret. We’re not supposed to play the radio. My father, who owns the bus company, he’s really strict.”

“Sure,” she said, embarrassed at the way her voice squeaked. “I won’t tell.”

Then-not the next time he drove, or the time after that, or even the time after that, but the fourth time, in November, when the weather was turning colder: “Why don’t you move up here to the front seat and talk to me, keep me company? It gets awfully lonely, sitting up here by myself.”

“Sure,” she said, gathering her books to her chest, feeling stupid when the bus hit a pothole and she banged her hip hard against one of the seats. But Tony didn’t laugh at her, or mock her. “My apologies,” he said. “I’ll try to keep the ride smooth from here on out, my lady.”

Another time-the fifth time, or maybe the sixth. Their encounters were frequent enough to blend together now, although she seldom saw him more than two or three times a month. “Do you like this song? It’s called ‘Lonely Girl.’ It reminds me of you.”

“Really?” She wasn’t sure she did like the song, but she listened closely, especially to the final line, about the lonely boy. Did that mean -but she kept her eyes on her notebook, a blue binder. Other girls inked the names of their crushes on the cover, but she never had dared. A few weeks later, she tried doodling a tiny “TD” in the lower right-hand corner. “What does that stand for?” Heather had asked, nosy Heather, always spying Heather. “Touchdown,” Sunny said. Later she transformed the initials into three-dimensional shapes she had learned to draw in geometry.

More and more, Tony talked about himself, over the music. He had tried to join the army, go to ’ Nam, but they wouldn’t take him, much to his mother’s relief and his disappointment. Sunny didn’t know there were people who wanted to fight in the war. Tony had a heart defect or something, mitral valve prolapse. She couldn’t believe there was anything wrong with his heart. He had feathered hair, which he groomed frequently with a small brush he kept tucked in the pocket of his jeans, and he wore a gold chain. He smoked Pall Malls, but only after the other kids had gotten off the bus. “Don’t rat me out,” he said, winking at her in the rearview mirror. “You sure are pretty. Has anyone ever told you that? You should wear your hair like Susan Dey. But you’re already a cutie.”

The wheels on the bus went round and round.

“I really wish we could spend time together. Real time, not just these bus rides. Wouldn’t that be nice, if we could be alone somewhere?” She thought it might be, but she didn’t see how it could be arranged. She knew without asking that her parents, as open and freewheeling as they professed to be, wouldn’t let her date a twenty-three-year-old bus driver. She wasn’t sure, however, what would bother them more-the twenty-three part, the bus-driver part, or the wanted-to-go-to-’Nam part.

Eventually, Tony said he wanted to marry her, that if she met him at the mall some Saturday, they could drive up to Elkton, get married at the little chapel where people from New York got married, because there was no waiting period, no blood tests required. No, she said. He couldn’t be serious. “I am, I will. You’re so pretty, Sunny. Who wouldn’t want to marry you?” She remembered that her mother, her real one, had run away at seventeen to marry her true love, Sunny’s real father, and people grew up faster now. She heard her parents say that all the time. Kids grow up so fast now .

The next time she saw him, the week of March 23, she said yes, she would meet him, and now, a mere six days later, she was on another bus, heading to see him. She was going to go on her honeymoon tonight. She shivered a bit, thinking about that. They had never been able to do more than kiss, and only a little, but it had made her insides flip. Tony’s father knew his schedule too well, questioned him closely if he returned home late, sniffed the interior of the bus and asked if he’d been smoking. It was funny, but being the son of the man who owned the bus company didn’t get Tony any special privileges, just the opposite. The only reason Tony still lived at home, at age twenty-three, was that his mother would be heartbroken if he left.

“But we won’t live with them, after we’re married,” he said. “She won’t expect that. We’ll get an apartment in town, or maybe over to York.”

“Like the Peppermint Patty?”

“Like the Peppermint Patty.”

The wheels on the bus went round and round.

AND THEN HEATHER had to go and ruin everything, following Sunny not only to the mall but into Chinatown , where Sunny was supposed to rendezvous-his word-with Tony. Once they were thrown out, Sunny had fled, not sure what to do. How would she find Tony now? She went to Harmony Hut. Music was their common bond after all, the thing that had brought them together. Eventually he did find her, but he was angry and out of sorts, as if the ruined plan were all her fault. Then Heather had found them , spotted Sunny standing in Harmony Hut, right in front of the Who records, holding a man’s hand. Heather began making a fuss, saying the same man had tried to talk to her by the organ store, that he was a creep. She said she was going to tell. They had to take her with them, right? If they left Heather alone, Sunny told Tony, she would tattle to their parents, and that would ruin everything. They promised Heather candy and money, said she could go home after they were married, that she could be the flower girl, the witness. The flower-girl part seemed to win her over. But out in the parking lot Heather decided she didn’t want to go, and Tony grabbed her a little roughly and pushed her into the car. In the scuffle she dropped her purse, but Tony refused to go back for it, and she had cried and whined all the way up the highway about that stupid purse. “I lost my purse. With my Bonne Belle. And my comb, the souvenir one from Rehoboth Beach. I lost my purse.”

Only there was no wedding when they got to Elkton. The courthouse was closed, so they couldn’t get a marriage license. Tony pretended to be surprised, but he had made a reservation at a motel down in Aberdeen. Why would you call ahead for a motel, but not check on whether the courthouse was open ? Sunny had a sick feeling in her stomach, not at all like the flips she’d felt while kissing. In the room with Tony and Heather-Tony glowering because he couldn’t be alone with Sunny, Heather still whining about her lost purse-Sunny had felt trapped, confused. She wasn’t sure if she was angry with Heather for interrupting her honeymoon or relieved. It was beginning to seem like a stupid idea. She wanted to go to high school and then college, travel through the world as her father had, with nothing more than a backpack. She volunteered to go across the street to a diner and buy them all dinner. She decided not to mention that she would be using the money she’d taken from Heather’s bank.

The diner was called the New Ideal, and it was the old-fashioned kind her father loved best, where everything was made from scratch. Burgers like that took longer, but they were worth it. In fact, diners were the only place her father ever ate burgers. Even a health nut, he said, had to let loose every now and then. He had made them chocolate-chip pancakes that morning, and she hadn’t finished hers. She wished she had. She wished she could go back to this morning, but that was impossible. Still, she could go home. She would go back to the room, ask Tony to take them home, come up with a lie and persuade Heather to back her up, bribing her with her own money.