Inside Passage. Burt Weissbourd

need your help,” she said. “With Billy.” And who was this woman? And what was that? A fucking license plate? “Right away.”

      “What?”

      “They’re setting me up,” Corey explained. “They’re saying I violated the terms of my probation.”

      “Who is this?” Nan asked. “This is my hour.”

      Corey shot her a look.

      Dr. Stein stood up and started talking, kind of formal. “I’m with a patient now.” He looked at his calendar. “Can this wait until one o’clock?”

      She checked her watch—11:30 a.m. Was he kidding? She had to find Billy and leave tonight. “NOMODOE can wait until one. I’m not going back to jail.”

      “I’m sorry,“ he said. “Could you please wait twenty minutes, or come back later? I can see you for five minutes at eleven fifty or for fifty minutes at one.”

      She didn’t know this person. “This was a bad idea,” Corey said, and she walked out the door.

      In the hallway Corey closed her eyes. Her head was spinning. She was lucky, she decided, that he was busy. What was she thinking? That he would help her? All she wanted was for him to be there if Billy got in trouble. Maybe talk with him. She had made up her mind. She had to leave Seattle. Jensen was under Nick’s thumb, and he could send her back to jail. With the false ID, an apparent missed appointment, her so-called “attitude problems,” and whatever else Lester would provide him, it was more than enough. Jensen had told her to come in again in two days. If she was still here, he would cut her off at the knees.

      She would find Billy this afternoon, explain what she had to do. And what he had to do. They would stay in touch by phone. She didn’t think Nick would bother him, and in a month they would be together. Billy would hate the idea of leaving, she knew that. Still, she had to give him the bad news today—whenever, wherever, she found him. Damn. She had lost half an hour coming here. And how had she been so wrong about Dr. Stein? She thought he liked her or at least wanted to help her. So why wasn’t he there for her the one time he could really help?

      She walked out of the waiting room and down the stairs. How could a guy face that sweet-and-sour smell every working day? Corey went out the front door, steaming. At the pet store she stopped to look at this great big turtle in the window, wondering how she had ever become so stupid about men.

      Abe showed Nan out at 11:50 a.m. Over time he had been able to help her be more comfortable with who she was. Days like today he caught himself wondering if that was a good thing. Abe grumbled, a gravelly sound, trying to clear his head. He had handled Corey Logan badly. He knew that, but Nan was a patient, and her needs had to be respected too. The problem was that Corey didn’t understand how a therapist worked, how at certain times he had to be distant, neutral. When she came back, he would explain how awkward it was for him to be talking with both of them at the same time. He would explain why it was inappropriate for him to talk to her when he was with a patient. It was certainly uncomfortable for Nan.

      He heard a noise in the waiting room and opened the door, hoping that Corey was there. She wasn’t. What was there was a very large turtle. A note was taped to its shell. It read: “Hi, my name is NOMOHARDTIME. I can wait as long as you like.” Shit.

      The address Lester had given her was on Federal Avenue. It was a three-story gray house with white trim and a white wrap-around porch. There was a black iron fence in front of a four-foot hedge separating the house from the street. At the gate there was an intercom. Corey wondered how Billy had ever come to be at such a fancy old home. On a school day, no less. Still, she was sure she would find him here. Lester had said she would.

      The western edge of Volunteer Park backed up against the big houses on Federal. She went into the park, climbed a chain link fence, and dropped down into the landscaped backyard. There was a statue with water pouring out of its mouth into a pond with big stones, like this was Italy or France. She knew this yard. Yeah, Lester’s dope-smoking photos. She crept to the back of the house, and looked through the kitchen window. Someone had left a plate in the sink. There were small daylight windows into the basement. She knelt and cupped her hands together to see inside. There he was, half-naked, asleep on an oversized couch amid soda cans, pizza boxes, and clothes strewn on the carpeted rec room floor.

      The window was cracked open an inch or two, and Corey was through it in seconds. Inside, she shook Billy’s bare arm. He raised his hands in front of his face: a frightened, self-protective gesture. When she let go, he rubbed his eyes.

      “Why are you here?”

      “We have to talk. Now.”

      He sat up. “I don’t want to talk. I want you to leave me alone. Okay? I’m doing good. I don’t want your trouble.”

      “You’re already in it. Nothing I can do. I’m leaving tonight. On the boat. If I don’t, they’ll send me back to jail. And, even worse, they’ll send you to jail.” She threw the pictures in his lap. “What are you thinking? What are you doing?”

      Billy looked at the pictures, one by one. “Who did this?”

      “The same man who put me in jail, who do you think? For christsakes, who do you think is supplying your weed?”

      “An older kid, at the foster house.”

      She shook her head. “He works for these people. They tell him what to do. They set you up. Do you see that?”

      Billy fingered the pictures. “Oh man. Shit…it’s because of you, isn’t it?”

      “Yes—” And that would haunt her. But right now it wasn’t the point. “Billy, you’re their best way at me, like it or not. So you have to be smart about this. What are you doing? Selling dope to rich kids? Staying at their houses?”

      “You can lighten up, you know. Their houses are better than any other place I can hang out.”

      “I’m sorry. I really am, but right now we don’t have time to work this out. Here’s the deal. I’m going to get set up in Canada. You have to come join me in a month.”

      “And if I don’t?”

      “It’s not up to you.” She pointed at the pictures. They still scared her. “Billy, they know you’re here. They gave me this address. These pictures could send you back to juvie, or worse. Don’t make it any easier for them. What you have to do is go back to the foster home, work it out with Sally. I’ll call you every night. Where’s the cell phone?”

      Billy took it from a pocket in his Chargers jacket, lying on the floor.

      She waited until she had his eyes. Their problems were real. “Turn it on, okay?”

      He did. “I don’t want to leave here. Things are finally good for me. There’s a girl I like—”

      “And you’re running away from your foster care, and you’re not showing up at school, and you’re dealing dope, and you’re ignoring messages from your mom.” Corey sat beside him. “I’m going to fix this. I don’t know how. But I’m going to fix it.” She let that sink in. “For now you have to stay clean for a month. You can still see your friends, but your dope-dealing days are over. Those pictures are a warning. These people can hurt you. Please be careful.” She massaged his neck. He moved away. “Let’s call Sally.”

      “I’ll clean up. No drugs. I’ll even listen to Sally. But I’m not moving to Canada. Unh-unh. I don’t even want to leave Seattle.”

      “Billy, this is like getting cancer. I don’t expect you to want any part of it.” She didn’t expect him to understand it either, a thing so perverse and humiliating. Corey closed her eyes, rubbed the back of her own neck. “There’s no choice—you’re going.”

      He turned away, faced the back of the couch.

      She tried to imagine how it would feel to start over in Canada at fifteen, on the run. Nothing about it felt good.

      Billy