TWELVE

Roy was exhausted. It seemed like a hundred years ago that Dana Matherson had tried to strangle him inside the janitor's closet, but it had happened only that afternoon.

"Thanks. Now we're even," Beatrice Leep said.

"Maybe," said Roy.

They were waiting in the emergency room of the Coconut Cove Medical Center, which was more of a large clinic than a hospital. It was here they'd brought Beatrice's stepbrother after carrying him upright for almost a mile, each of them bracing one of his shoulders.

"He's going to be all right," Roy said.

For a moment, he thought Beatrice was about to cry. He reached over and squeezed her hand, which was noticeably larger than his own.

"He's a tough little cockroach," Beatrice said with a sniffle. "He'll be okay."

A woman dressed in baby-blue scrubs and wearing a stethoscope approached them. She introduced herself as Dr. Gonzalez.

"Tell me exactly what happened to Roy," she said.

Beatrice and the real Roy exchanged anxious glances. Her stepbrother had forbidden them from giving his name to the hospital, for fear that his mother would be notified. The boy got so agitated that Roy hadn't argued. When the emergency room clerk asked Beatrice for her stepbrother's name, address, and phone number, Roy impulsively had stepped forward and blurted his own. It had seemed like the quickest way to get Mullet Fingers into a hospital bed.

Roy knew he was also getting himself in trouble. Beatrice Leep knew it, too. That's why she had thanked him.

"My brother got bit by a dog," she told Dr. Gonzalez.

"Several," Roy added.

"What kind of dogs?" the doctor asked.

"Big ones."

"How did it happen?"

Here Roy let Beatrice take over the story, as she was more experienced at fibbing to adults.

"They nailed him at soccer practice," she said. "He came runnin' home all chewed up, so we brought him here as fast as we could."

"Hmm," said Dr. Gonzalez with a slight frown.

"What-don't you believe me?" Beatrice's indignation sounded genuine. Roy was impressed.

But the doctor was a cool one, too. "Oh, I believe your stepbrother was attacked by dogs," she said. "I just don't believe it happened today."

Beatrice stiffened. Roy knew he had to come up with something, fast.

"The wounds on his arm aren't fresh," Dr. Gonzalez explained. "Judging by how far the infection has progressed, I'd estimate he was bitten eighteen to twenty-four hours ago."

Beatrice looked flustered. Roy didn't wait for her to recover.

"Yeah, eighteen hours. That sounds about right," he said to the doctor.

"I don't understand."

"See, he passed out right after he got bit," Roy said. "It wasn't until the next day he finally woke up, and that's when he came running home. Then Beatrice called me and asked if I'd help get him to the hospital."

Dr. Gonzalez fixed Roy with a stern gaze, though there was an edge of amusement in her voice.

"What's your name, son?"

Roy gulped. She'd caught him off guard.

"Tex," he answered weakly.

Beatrice nudged him with her elbow, as if to say: That's the best you can do?

The doctor crossed her arms. "So, Tex, let's get this straight. Your friend Roy is mauled at the soccer field by several huge dogs. Nobody tries to help him, and he remains unconscious all night and most of the next day. All of a sudden he wakes up and jogs home. Is that right?"

"Yup." Roy bowed his head. He was a pathetic liar, and he knew it.

Dr. Gonzalez turned her steely attention to Beatrice.

"Why was it left for you to bring your stepbrother here? Where are your parents?"

"Working," Beatrice replied.

"Didn't you call and tell them there was a medical emergency?"

"They crew on a crab boat. No phone."

Not bad, Roy thought. The doctor, however, wasn't buying it.

"It's hard to understand," she said to Beatrice, "how your stepbrother could go missing for so long and nobody in the family got concerned enough to call the police."

"Sometimes he runs away from home," Beatrice said quietly, "and he doesn't come back for a while."

It was the closest thing to a true answer that she'd given and, ironically, it was the one that made Dr. Gonzalez back off.

"I'm going to go check on Roy now," she told them. "In the meantime, you two might want to polish up your story."

"How's he doing, anyway?" Beatrice asked.

"Better. He got a tetanus shot, and now we're loading him with antibiotics and pain medication. It's strong stuff, so he's pretty sleepy."

"Can we see him?"

"Not right now."

As soon as the doctor had gone, Roy and Beatrice hurried outside, where it was safer to talk. Roy sat down on the steps of the emergency room; Beatrice remained standing.

"This isn't gonna work, cowgirl. Once they figure out he's not you…"

"It's a problem," Roy agreed: the understatement of the year.

"And if Lonna hears about this, you know he'll end up in juvie detention," Beatrice said gloomily, "until she finds a new military school. Probably someplace far-off, like Guam, where he can't run away."

Roy didn't understand how a mother could kick her own child out of her life, but he knew such tragic things occurred. He'd heard of fathers who acted the same way. It was depressing to think about.

"We'll come up with something," he promised Beatrice.

"Know what, Tex? You're okay." She pinched his cheek and went bounding down the steps.

"Hey, where you going?" he called after her.

"Fix dinner for my dad. I do it every night."

"You're kidding, right? You're not really leaving me here alone."

"Sorry," Beatrice said. "Dad'll freak if I don't show up. He can't make toast without burning off his fingertips."

"Couldn't Lonna cook his dinner this one time?"

"Nope. She tends bar at the Elk's Lodge." Beatrice gave Roy a brisk little wave. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Don't let 'em operate or nuthin' on my brother."

"Wait!" Roy jumped to his feet. "Tell me his real name. It's the least you can do, after everything that's happened."

"Sorry, cowgirl, but I can't. I made him a blood promise a long time ago."

"Please?"

"If he wants you to know," Beatrice said, "he'll tell you himself." Then she ran off, her footsteps fading into the night.

Roy trudged back into the emergency room. He knew his mother would be getting worried, so he asked the desk clerk if he could borrow the phone. It rang a half dozen times on the other end before the Eberhardts' answering machine picked up. Roy left a message saying he'd be home as soon as he and Beatrice finished cleaning up the mess from the science project.

Alone in the waiting area, Roy dug through a stack of magazines until he found an issue of Outdoor Life that had an article about fishing for cutthroat trout in the Rocky Mountains. The best thing about the story was the photographs-anglers wading knee-deep in blue Western rivers lined with tall cottonwoods, rows of snowy mountain crags visible in the distance.

Roy was feeling pretty homesick for Montana when he heard the approach of a siren outside. He decided it was an excellent time to go find a Coke machine, even though he only had two dimes in his pocket.

The truth was, Roy didn't want to be in the emergency room to see what the siren was all about. He wasn't prepared to see them wheel in somebody who'd been injured in a serious wreck, somebody who might even be dying.

Other kids could be really curious about that gory stuff, but not Roy. Once, when he was seven years old and his family lived near Milwaukee, a drunken hunter drove a snowmobile full-speed into an old birch tree. The accident happened only a hundred yards from a slope where Roy and his father were sledding.