“Seat belt,” he says tersely.
I click my belt and we’re off across the garage with an almost silent whir of electric motors. The tires on the painted concrete floor make more noise.
“Lower the sun visor and put your head down,” he orders. “Cameras.”
There’s an automated checkout. Solo pulls a plastic ID card from his pocket. I can see the picture is not of him. The name on the ID is Wanda Chang.
“Funny, you don’t look Chinese,” I say.
He swipes the card past the reader. The gate goes up.
And for the first time in forever, I am outside.
“They’ll never know?” I ask, looking anxiously back at the receding outer gate of the campus.
He shrugs. “I can’t guarantee that. They know I escape from time to time.”
“Escape?” Even though I’ve been feeling the same way, it seems overly dramatic.
“What else is it when the monkey gets out of his cage?”
“You’re not a monkey,” I point out. “You’re strange, but you’re human.”
“Mostly,” he says with a slim smile.
“But you can leave, right?”
“Yeah. But where would I go, exactly? I don’t have wheels”—he takes a sharp right—“not unless I get them this way. And Spiker’s out in the middle of nowhere.”
It’s twenty minutes to the Golden Gate Bridge, which, as usual, is shrouded in fog. I call Aislin to tell her I’m on my way, but she doesn’t answer.
When we reach Aislin’s townhouse, I text her that I’m outside. She appears a moment later, running down the steps. She’s upset. Her nose is red and mascara rings her eyes. But she still has time to do a double take when she sees Solo behind the wheel.
“Sorry I couldn’t pick up when you called. I was talking to Maddox.” Aislin slides into the backseat. She sighs dramatically, but the effect is ruined by the fact that she’s really worried, not just playing at it.
“Thanks for coming.” She manages a smile for Solo. “And you brought me a toy to play with on the way. How thoughtful.”
“So what’s wrong?” I ask.
“Maddox. Of course,” she says. “He’s trapped.”
“Trapped where?”
“In the park.”
“And he’s trapped there why?” I ask.
“Some guys. They think he owes them money. He’s in the park and they’re after him.”
“Can’t he call the police?” Solo asks.
“That would be … embarrassing.” Aislin digs through her purse and retrieves some lip gloss. She slides it on expertly, no mirror required. “They might decide to search him.”
“Ah,” Solo says. “He’s carrying…?”
“Some weed. He has to sell it to get the money he needs to pay off the dudes chasing him.”
Solo stares at me, expressionless. I smile feebly. Shrug.
He’s going to turn the car around and take us straight back to Spiker, and I don’t blame him.
Solo pulls into traffic. “I can’t believe your mom thinks Aislin’s a bad influence,” he says. “I think she’s kind of fun.”
– 16 –
There aren’t a lot of roads inside Golden Gate Park. The park is huge, bigger than Central Park in New York. It’s a long rectangle with one end up against Haight Street—hippie town—and the other end right up against the Pacific Ocean. From weed to waves, you might say.
“Where is he in the park?” Solo asks as he takes a tight turn, narrowly missing an old woman on a wobbly bike.
“He’s in a lake,” Aislin says.
“Of course he is,” I say under my breath.
“In a lake?” Solo repeats. “In the water?”
“On an island.”
I pull out my phone. “I’ll Google a map of the park.” When the map glows on screen, I groan. “There are a lot of lakes. Like twenty or more.”
Solo streaks through a yellow light. “Any with islands?” he asks.
We’ve reached the edge of the park. “Is it a big island or a small island?” I ask Aislin. “A lot of them have islands.”
She fires off a text as Solo pulls onto John. F. Kennedy Drive, the road that runs the length of the north side of the park. Traffic is light. The sun is dropping from view and shadows are lengthening beneath the trees.
“He says how big is big?” Aislin reads from her phone.
“That’s an excellent philosophical question,” I say. “Ask him how long it would take for him to walk across it.”
It takes several minutes of texting—Maddox is not, shall we say, academically gifted—before we decide he’s on an island in something called Mallard Lake.
I set the GPS on the dashboard.
“Make a U-turn,” a female voice instructs, in a tone that suggests we’ve already disappointed her.
Solo brakes. “I don’t think it’s legal to.”
“Now make a U-turn,” the voice commands.
Solo pulls the car into a tight U-turn.
“Turn right in a hundred yards,” says the voice.
“What do we do when we get there?” I ask Aislin. “These guys, the guys after Maddox—”
“Now turn right.”
“—they’re not like people who would have guns, right?”