Suddenly—we stop moving.

Bob leans down and kisses Mom.

Baby me watches Bob and Mom kiss—baby me smiles.

Now, I know that there is no way I could remember this moment because I was only a few months old when my dad took off, and he probably wasn’t so in love with Mom before he took off, because why would he take off if they were actually in love?

So maybe I made the memory up?

It’s still my number two—regardless.

Back in the present moment, while I was trying to remember, while I was cleaning up puke, BBB has been hiding on one of the back seats, because I have been sobbing the whole time, and that scares him.

By the time I am finished, I reek of throw-up, and since there is no sink or anything around, I’m going to smell like puke for the night unless I wash with the dirty black slushy snow in the bus parking lot, which would make me smell like gas and bus emissions. I don’t even have a water bottle tonight. Nothing.

When I go back outside to throw the puke towels into the woods, BBB follows and starts his jumping routine—and I just can’t take it right now, so I scream, “Stop jumping!”

He stops.

He looks up at me with his little ears pointing straight up—like I hit him or something.

And then he starts whining, as if he is crying too.

So I throw the puke towels over the fence, into the woods—erasing Mom’s mess—and then I pick up BBB and give him a kiss on the lips.

“I’m scared, Bobby Big Boy. I’m scared. I can’t keep doing this.”

“Rew!” he says in agreement before we walk back to my mom.

“I have to go out,” Mom says, exhaling mentholated smoke.

“Where?”

“I’m going to get medicine for my stomach.”

“Where?”

“At the drugstore.”

“The Childress Rite Aid?”

“Yes.”

“Let me come with you,” I say. “It’s late.”

“You have school tomorrow. I’ll be fine.”

“Mom. Are you going to get more vodka? You can tell me the truth. I won’t try to stop you. I just want to know the truth.”

Mom will not look me in the eyes. “Going to the drugstore. I just need some Pepto-Bismol. I’ll be back in a few minutes. You just go to sleep,” she says before she starts walking away from me, staggering a little.

I know that I should stop her, that I should maybe follow her to make sure she is okay, but I’m only seventeen—I’m still a girl, just a stupid confused chick—this is nothing new, and I have nothing left in my tank. I’m on empty, and so I go back into Hello Yellow and cry myself to sleep without even praying first. Sorry, JC.

CHAPTER 12

When I wake up, the streetlights are off. “Mom?” I say.

Silence.

“Mom?”

Somehow I know she is gone.

My heart is pounding.

I stand.

Slowly, as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I feel every seat in the bus with my hands and keep on saying, “Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?”

BBB sniffs the entire bus floor.

Mom is not on Hello Yellow.

I know it is after eleven, because there are no streetlights on, but I have no idea how late it is. Mom goes out to the bars all the time, but for some reason, I have this very bad feeling that something horrible has happened. I can’t really explain it—I just instantly know, or maybe I just feel it in my gut.

“Come on, B Thrice,” I say, and then we leave Hello Yellow.

I know Mom went one of two places: Charlie’s Pad, which is the bar on the edge of town, the first bar in the ghetto; or the liquor store next to Father Chee’s church, where they sell big plastic bottles of vodka for very cheap—less than half the prices charged in Childress, plus the store in the ghetto is open later.

I’m not thinking too clearly right now—granted. I just know that something bad might have happened to my mom, so I’m sorta on autopilot—walking super fast.

I go right by Private Jackson’s house, walk a few more blocks, and then I am in the ghetto, trying to open the metal front door to Charlie’s Pad. The neon beer signs behind the high windows—which are covered with mesh wire to keep out burglars—those signs are off and the door is locked. “Hello?” I yell. “Hello?”

No one answers.

“Hello! Anyone in there? Mom? Mom!”

“Shut up, bitch!” someone yells, but when I turn around no one is there.

I don’t see anyone on the streets.

Just trash swirling in the wind.

If the bar is closed, it must be well after midnight—I know this much. And since the bar is closed, the liquor store is definitely closed, but for some stupid reason, BBB and I start walking toward the liquor store very quickly, as if we might actually find my mom there.

I’m desperate.

I’m a little loopy tonight.

I’m alone.

I’m scared.

I’m stupid.

I pass a crazily bearded insane-looking homeless man who throws an empty beer can at me and yells, “Catch a cat by the tail ’till you spin around and drown! Catch a cat by the tail—”

BBB and I start running.

The icy wind cuts my face.

I hear car alarms going off in the distance.

When I get to the liquor store it is closed and the doors are chained shut. No one is around.

For some stupid reason I bang on the doors, yell, “Mom?” and then I bang on the doors of the Korean Catholic Church, and yell up to Father Chee who lives above the church, but no lights go on.

Then I remember where I am and what time it is.

I start to get really scared, especially when this crappy-looking car—with silver rims and tinted windows and booming bass and neon-pink lights that make the road under the car glow—this crazy car pulls up and idles right next to me.

I start to walk down the street, back toward the town of Childress.

The car follows, going only as fast as I can walk.

It follows me for an entire block—rap music blasting—before BBB and I start to run.

When I get halfway down the next block, the car speeds up and turns, and then screeches to a stop, cutting me off at the corner.

The door opens and this tough-looking white dude with a blond spiky haircut and too many gold chains gets out.

“Where’s the fire? Where you going so fast, little girl?” he says, smiling at me.

He’s wearing a white tracksuit that is very baggy.

Because I am so tired and confused and worried, I start to cry again—like a wimp.

“Don’t cry. It’s okay,” he says, taking a step toward me, moving very slowly. “What’s wrong?”

BBB is now barking at this man skeptically. Like Ms. Jenny, B Thrice is a good judge of character, but for some reason I want to believe that this guy is not evil—that maybe JC is sending me some help.

Blondie’s actually kind of handsome, if I’m being truthful, and almost innocent looking—like Billy Budd.

“I’m trying to find my mom,” I say, because it’s the truth, and I’m so very tired.

“Get in—I’ll help you look,” he says. “You’re very pretty, you know.”

When he calls me pretty, something in my stomach begins to churn, and the man begins to look more like Claggart than Billy Budd. “I think I’ll just walk, thanks for the offer, though.”

“Bad things happen to girls like you when they stray out of their neighborhoods in the middle of the night,” he says. “You should come with me.”

“Amber!” a voice yells, and when I look over my shoulder, Father Chee is running toward me in slippers through the cold night and wearing only his black pajamas, making him look sorta like some crazy martial arts ninja or something.

“Who are you supposed to be?” the blond man asks FC when he reaches us. “Jackie Chan?”

“Amber, come,” FC says, and then takes my hand.

“Is he your pimp or something?”

“He’s my priest,” I say.

“Well, maybe another time then,” the blond man says, smiling kind of funny, chuckling. He gets into his car and drives away.

“Come,” Father Chee says, and then we sorta jog back to The Korean Catholic Church.

“Please tell me what are you doing here in this neighborhood at night?” Father Chee asks when we are inside with the doors locked.

I’m scared for my mom, so I come clean.

As I tell him everything about Mom and our living on Hello Yellow and Mom’s not coming home tonight, the adrenaline rush wears off, and I start to get seriously nervous and upset and worried.

My voice becomes all tiny and whiny, which makes me feel like I’ll never be as brave and strong as Donna—like I’ll never get into Bryn Mawr College.

When I finish, I am crying again, so FC gives me a fatherly hug, patting my back very gently, which is cool of him. He’s a good man.

“We should call the police so they will start looking for your mother,” Father Chee says.

“Do you think I should consult my attorney first?” I ask.

“You have an attorney?”

So I tell him all about Donna, and then we wake her with a phone call, using the pay phone in Father’s Chee’s church, after which FC puts on his penguin suit.

We take a cab to Ricky’s house, where I tell Donna the whole story as Father Chee makes coffee.

I can tell that Donna is mad at me for not telling her how bad things were with my mom and my living on Hello Yellow for months, because, very loudly, she says, “Months?”

And when I nod, she asks me why I didn’t tell her earlier, and I start to cry again because I am so weak and stupid—even though I’m sorta mad at her for not figuring it all out earlier. Why else would I need to take a shower at her house every morning?

Father Chee serves us coffee, and then Donna makes a few phone calls.

I hear her talking to the police, and then to some sorta private detective.

At one point I hear her say, “Money is not an issue.”

Donna’s young assistant shows up without makeup and without her hair done, making her look less intimidating.

“You’re getting a raise,” Donna says to her assistant.

“Are you okay?” Jessica says to me, and I can tell that she is sincere. I remember thinking how much I hated Jessica in the past, so I start crying even harder now because I’m such a little girl.

“If we’re not back, don’t tell Ricky anything when he gets up in the morning,” Donna says to Jessica. “Tell him I had to go to trial early, let him eat whatever he wants for breakfast, and then take him to school. Oh, yeah. Feed the dog a can, and then let him out. Okay?”

Jessica nods, and then FC, me, and Donna are in her Mercedes driving back to Hello Yellow.

We call Mom’s name and search the parking lot with flashlights.

Mom’s not in the parking lot.

Mom’s not on Hello Yellow.

“Grab your things,” Donna tells me, so I get my trash bags from under Hello Yellow and Father Chee takes them to Donna’s car. “Where else might she have gone?”

“She might have met a man?” I say hopefully, because it’s better than any alternative of which I can think. “She was always trying to find a man with an apartment so we’d have a home.”