A Friend at Midnight Read online

  I wanted what Dad did to me to be a secret, more than I wanted to bother with my little brother.

  They fanned out.

  They covered front yards, backyards, around the block one way, around the block the other.

  “What friends of his live nearby?” asked Freddie, when they had all collected in the front yard again.

  “He’s three,” said Mom. “He doesn’t go anywhere. We take him.”

  Kells said, “Dial nine-one-one.”

  “Wait,” said Lily. “He might go to Amanda’s. He loves the walk. He likes a yard around the corner that has plastic gnomes and pink flamingoes.”

  “He might go in Amanda’s swimming pool,” agreed Michael.

  “He might be alone at a swimming pool?” cried Kells.

  Freddie wore his cell phone on a hook attached to his amazing khaki shorts. Lily ripped it out of his hands and called Amanda.

  The dialing of a phone is such a short space of time. The slightest fraction of a minute. Two heartbeats. One deep breath. But in that time, so many prayers can be heard.

  Please, God, don’t let the pool gate be open.

  Please, God, if Nathaniel opens the gate, don’t let him go in the pool.

  Please, God, if he goes in the pool, let him be okay.

  I’ll do whatever you want if you just protect Nathaniel.

  “Oh, hi,” said Amanda. “I was just about to call. Nathaniel’s here, all upset from the screaming and yelling, and he wants to live with me and I said of course, forever, I love you, you’re perfect and he said, Then can I have ice cream? The thing about three-year-olds is, Lily, they’re honest. It all comes down to ice cream. Who dishes it out and who doesn’t. I,” said Amanda with satisfaction, “am a disher-out.”

  Kells sagged.

  Mom wept on his shoulder.

  Reb went limp against Freddie.

  “How long has he been there?” Lily asked.

  “Who knows? I found him asleep by the pool, wrapped up in my towels with my rubber duckies lined up beside him. He didn’t go in the water without me, he’s such a good kid.”

  We’re all good kids, thought Lily.

  “We’ll be there in a minute, Amanda,” said Lily. “Mom, Kells, Rebecca, Freddie, Michael and me.”

  “I get to meet Freddie? Is he as cute as his pictures?”

  “Cuter,” said Lily, and not only did she love Freddie, she loved Reb again, could even remember that nicknames were for when you felt affection.

  Kells ran for his car keys and brought the van around and they piled in, Michael and Freddie in the back, Reb and Lily in the middle, Mom and Kells in front. Kells backed out of the driveway so fast that if any three-year-old had been passing by, he’d have been mushed flat.

  Michael talked fast and loud to get it over with. It was easier because everybody’s back was to him and he didn’t have to meet their eyes. “I lied. Nathaniel knew what happened, but he’s so little you didn’t believe him. He was telling the truth. Here’s what happened. Last summer I never wanted to come home. I wanted to be with Dad. But I wasn’t good enough for him. He didn’t tell me what we were doing. I didn’t have anything with me. We just got in the car and he dropped me off at the airport and said, ‘You’re not the son I had in mind,’ and then he drove away. He never even bought me a plane ticket. I didn’t have York because Dad threw York in the trash to make me grow up. I didn’t have any money either, or my watch, or even breakfast. I called Lily and she bought plane tickets with her Christmas money and she and Nathaniel flew to the Baltimore/Washington airport to get me and when we flew home, I made her promise never ever ever to tell you because—” Michael had to stop. Not because he was crying. Because everybody else was crying. Michael raised his voice. “Because it was not what I thought would happen. I thought Dad and I would play catch.”

  “Oh, Michael!” cried Mom. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I love Dad,” said Michael simply. “Lily doesn’t love Dad, but she loves me.” He said to Lily, “I’m sorry.”

  “Michael,” whispered Rebecca, “I didn’t know.”

  Kells was taking the corners very hard. Lily thought it would be totally crummy if they all died in a car accident on the way to get Nathaniel, who was perfectly safe with Amanda. Crummy, she thought. She looked at Freddie.

  He put out his hand and covered hers. “I’ll be proud to be your brother, Lily.”

  “I had to hide out in the airport for four hours,” Michael said, “because it took Lily that long to come and get me. I didn’t want the security people to pick me up, but they almost did. And then I didn’t even get to the baggage claim to meet Lily when I was supposed to because I was holding a teddy bear at a store and the police thought I was shoplifting and Nathaniel came and saved me and Lily bought the bear.”

  Mom was weeping. But it was Reb who got angry. “Wait a minute,” said Reb, in her dangerous voice, the one she had inherited from Mom. “Let me get this straight, Michael. Dad put you in the car, without breakfast, without your stuff and without a dollar and without York, and he dropped you off at a major airport and drove away and he had not bought you a ticket or made plans for you to get home or called Mom that you were coming or anything?”

  “Right. Good thing Lily was home.”

  “Give me your phone, Freddie,” said Reb. She snatched it away from him before he could give it to her and began stabbing at the tiny number pad. Lily remembered a few phone calls she’d made like that. “How dare he!” said Reb. “How dare Dad behave like that? He’s not a father! He has no right to pretend he’s a father! I will never use that word for him again!”

  Lily took the phone away from her sister.

  Kells pulled into Amanda’s driveway, shoved the car into park, vaulted out and ran through the swimming pool gate.

  Lily gave the phone back to Freddie. “See, here’s the thing,” said Lily to the family she loved. “You say terrible things to somebody, and they come true. If you tell him he isn’t your father anymore, Reb, then he won’t be. You and Michael can still love him, Reb. I don’t think I can. I’m not willing to try, anyway.”

  Her sister’s eyes met hers. The look between them was not a truce. It was love.

  “I was wrong, Lily,” said Reb.

  “You were wrong about everything! I want a list. I want to spend at least an hour while you admit all the ways you were wrong.”

  “I was wrong ten ways to Sunday. But I’m right about this,” said her sister, and they put their arms around each other, twisting over the seats and getting their tears mixed when their cheeks touched. “I want you to be my maid of honor, and it will be my honor.”

  After such an exciting day, Nathaniel couldn’t stay awake through dinner, but after such an exciting day, Kells couldn’t bring himself to put Nathaniel down for bed, so instead, Kells held his sleeping son in his arms while the rest of them ate. They didn’t do any yelling, in case it woke Nathaniel up, but they argued and wept and accused and made peace. Various suggestions for killing Dennis were passed around, which Lily found very satisfying, but everybody stopped when they saw how Michael was taking it. During dessert, when people were spooning really good ice cream into their mouths, Kells spoke up.

  “It sounds as if everybody, including Michael, thinks Dennis shouldn’t be part of the wedding.”

  “It sounds as if everybody except Michael wants Dennis arrested or else assassinated,” said Freddie.

  There was a round of applause. Michael put down his spoon. The ice cream didn’t taste so good after all.

  “In the end,” said Kells, “this isn’t about punishment. It’s about love.”

  Reb glared. “Oh, brother!”

  “Exactly. Lily knew all along that it’s Michael who pays if we go after Dennis. So let me speak as a stepfather and a person very fond of everyone at this table.”

  Reb had the decency to blush.

  “After the wedding, Rebecca, why don’t you and Freddie take at least a few days and go on
a honeymoon? Surely your company will grant you that. Then, since you and Freddie like to camp, and you’ve gone camping twice with Dennis, let’s arrange a camping trip. Rebecca and Freddie and Michael and I will go, and Dennis will come. Michael will get to be with his dad and Freddie will make sure we all have fun. But I’ll be in charge. Dennis won’t be in trouble with the police, but he’ll always be in a certain amount of trouble with me. It was such a wrong thing to do. We can’t trust Dennis, Michael, but that doesn’t mean you can’t love him. I have a cousin who’s a heroin addict. I can’t trust him, but I love him. And that way, Lily doesn’t deal with Dennis at all. Maybe someday she’ll want to. But not now.”

  “I like it,” said Freddie.

  “I don’t!” said Rebecca. “I want to make Dennis admit every single disgusting thing he did. I want him punished. Somebody somewhere has to tell Dennis where to go!”

  “This isn’t about somebody somewhere,” said Kells. “It’s about Michael.”

  Michael looked desperately at Reb. His eyes were huger and sadder than Nathaniel’s had ever been.

  “Okay. Fine,” said Reb irritably. “If Lily can give everything she has, I guess I can give one thing I have. I promise, Michael. We’ll all go camping and—Wait a minute! Not say anything? Pretend Dennis is a decent person? For what—two or three days? Kells, are you serious? That’s impossible!”

  “Lily did it.”

  Rebecca looked at her sister. “I can’t believe this is happening to me. I have to follow my little sister’s example.”

  “Then we can do it?” said Michael. “We can go camping with Dad?”

  Lily’s heart was torn to pieces all over again. She looked at her mother, who was silently trying to understand all that had happened, all that she had not seen. She looked at her future brother-in-law, engineer that he was, taking out his calendar to find honeymoon and camping dates. But mostly she looked at her sister, who was going to have to handle Dennis in person, in a tent. “We can go camping with Dad,” promised Reb. “I’ll be nice.” She looked at Kells. In all these years, she had never really wasted time looking straight at Kells. She said, “At the wedding, Kells? Would you walk me down the aisle?”

  “I’m giving a pool party next Saturday night, Lily,” said Amanda. “I’m inviting everybody. You first, then all our friends, my parents and your parents. I’m totally in love with Kells. I want to marry a dusty blue recliner kind of guy. Then I’m inviting all the Mahannas, because if you’re not in love with Trey yet, you should be. And Dr. Bordon. If I knew their names, I’d invite the guy at the ballpark who didn’t make Michael pay for the spilled drinks and the airport people who worried about him.”

  “A celebrate Michael party?” said Lily. “That’s so sweet.”

  “No, you dope. A friend at midnight party for you.”

  “Me?” said Lily.

  “Of course for you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the friend at midnight.”

  Lily stared at her.

  “If you had a friend, would you go to that friend at midnight?” Amanda said. “Because he is your friend, he will get up and give you everything you need. Jesus.”

  “I never heard you swear before.”

  “I’m not swearing. I’m calling on Jesus to make a dent in your hard head, Lily. It’s Dr. Bordon’s favorite text. The whole church is totally sick of it. Don’t you ever listen? The friend comes downstairs anyway. Even grumpy. Even over something stupid, like they need a loaf of bread to make sandwiches. And here you are crushed and furious and betrayed by your father, your sister and your brother—and still, you came down the stairs to open the door and give.”

  I’m the friend at midnight? thought Lily. All this time I was yelling at Jesus to pitch in? And He was making sure that I was pitching in?

  “And finally,” said Amanda, “Trey. He’s always adored you, Lily. He sits behind you in church so he can watch you during the sermon. Talk about a guy who forgives seventy times seven! I’m going to shove you both in the pool at the same time, and for once in your life, be nice to the guy. And don’t ask Jesus for help. Boyfriends you handle on your own.”

  And friends, too, thought Lily. Friends at midnight, friends at any hour of the day—for friends, O Lord, we give you thanks.

  Caroline B. Cooney is the author of Diamonds in the Shadow; Hit the Road; Code Orange; The Girl Who Invented Romance; Family Reunion; Goddess of Yesterday (an ALA Notable Book); The Ransom of Mercy Carter; Tune In Anytime; Burning Up; The Face on the Milk Carton (an IRACBC Children’s Choice Book) and its companions, Whatever Happened to Janie? and The Voice on the Radio (each of them an ALA Best Book for Young Adults), as well as What Janie Found; What Child Is This? (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults); Driver’s Ed (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Booklist Editors’ Choice); Among Friends; Twenty Pageants Later; and the Time Travel Quartet: Both Sides of Time, Out of Time, Prisoner of Time, and For All Time. Caroline B. Cooney lives in Westbrook, Connecticut, and New York City.

  ALSO BY CAROLINE B. COONEY

  The Janie Books

  The Face on the Milk Carton

  Whatever Happened to Janie?

  The Voice on the Radio

  What Janie Found

  The Time Travel Quartet

  Both Sides of Time

  Out of Time

  Prisoner of Time

  For All Time

  Other Books

  Diamonds in the Shadow

  Hit the Road

  Code Orange

  The Girl Who Invented Romance

  Family Reunion

  Goddess of Yesterday

  The Ransom of Mercy Carter

  Tune In Anytime

  Burning Up

  What Child Is This?

  Driver’s Ed

  Twenty Pageants Later

  Among Friends

  Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2006 by Caroline B. Cooney

  All rights reserved.

  Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

  Cooney, Caroline B.

  A friend at midnight / Caroline B. Cooney.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After rescuing her younger brother abandoned at a busy airport by their divorced father, fifteen-year-old Lily finds her faith in God sorely tested as she struggles to rescue herself from the bitterness and anger she feels.

  [1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction. 3. Christian life—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C7834Fr 2006

  [Fic]—dc22 2006004598

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-84909-1

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