People probably think I don’t think much, because I don’t talk much. But they would be wrong. So very, very wrong. I think about everything, from every angle, over and over again until it’s like I’ve eaten three meals at once and would practically want to barf my brains out—if I could only get myself to move. I feel like that now, waiting for Rod, watching the rain through the screened in breezeway that attaches the main house to the six-car garage, wondering if the water will be too high to get across to the land Anna says her sister lives on.

Anna. That’s the big mind jam. Ever since leaving her in what now feels like an abysmally lifeless nursing home room, with her playing  out her hidden identity (dulled eyes, slumped back, and mumbling nonsense like a pro), I’ve been Rubik’s-cubing my brain to try to make sense of each and every aspect of what she said, including what she didn’t say.

What could she have meant, I wonder for the billionth time, that if anyone could help Scottie, it was her sister?  How, if she’s not a vet?  She talked about magic, but does she really expect me to believe in that?  I mean, hocus pocus is all well and good, but it’s fiction, right? With Scottie’s life is at stake, I need a little more than that. And anyway, how could the magic keep us safe?  From what?

What does it mean her sister, Bea, will smell me coming?  Why did Anna blow her scent into my hands—I mean, seriously? What could that possibly do?

And what could be too dangerous to take Scottie across the water when I go?  And why wouldn’t Bea want to help me, just because I’m ‘not in the family?’ Is this some magical mafia? And why does chanting out her ancestors names and birth years give her power?   

And how did she know about Rod? Or did she—just a good guess? And her seeing me with a boyfriend, a real one, just another guess? Why would she want to have something to say in the matter?  Why should she care?  Even so, that one gets my heart racing. A magical boyfriend, or even just a boyfriend that came by way of magic, that could be very cool.

Best not think of that one right now.

Maybe the biggest why of all—why is she there, pretending to be sick, when she’s not?  How does she stand it, how has she been able to stand it for more than a year? It must be important. Really, really important. I mean, for that, it must be life or death important. Right?

“Hey,” Rod says, out of nowhere, making me jump a mile.

“Where did you come from?” I ask, frowning, embarrassed, and spooked. I don’t normally think in terms of life or death.

He turns and points to his car just outside the garage, which I did not notice him drive up in even though we have a nearly half mile long driveway. “Alabama,” he jokes, supposedly with an Alabama accent. I give him a smirk. He’s not from Alabama. He was born right here in Annapolis, Maryland, same as me.

“What’s this about?” he asks. “Is it really a Code Lilly?”

Lilly was the code word we used back at the nursing home when we needed each other to do something truly important, usually a cover up, without asking questions. Named after Lilly, the woman who made us crazy with rules that were so not important. We watched out for each other, like the time I stole my dad’s ID to get into his private office to see if he really was talking to a private school in Switzerland about my junior high school career, which his second wife told me just before she was booted out the door. I didn’t want to ask him, but with her I didn’t totally put it past him. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if someone hadn’t….

“Yo, Julie,” he insists, loudly, “what’s the Lilly?”

“Sorry,” I say. “Like I said, it’s a Lilly. Can’t tell you.”

“What’s wrong with Scottie?” he asks, poking a finger through the travel cage. It’s not good if someone can see the problem even through the mesh. Not that I don’t know it’s not good. I just don’t know how to face it not being good, so I keep pretending it can’t be that bad, even though it is. And then someone like Anna, and now Rod, remind me.

“She’s sick. That’s part of it. I need you to take care of her while I do something…and then I’ll come get her.”

“What? This is cat duty?” he protests.

“Hey—how long has it been since I’ve called a Lilly?” I ask, leaning in to him with attitude. “And how many times have you called me with a Lilly in the past six months alone?”

“Okay, okay, you’re right. That’s fair.”

“It’s more than fair.”   

 “Okay,” he agrees, this time more emphatically. “So where are we going?”

“Just drive, I’ll direct,” I say, covering Scottie with a towel.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper to her, even though I don’t know that. I just know it has to be, somehow. And if it does turn out all right, it will be a miracle—using magic or not. I’ll owe Anna everything.

Rod’s car is spotless, and I can tell the idea of a cat, even a caged one, is making him nervous. If only he knew about the rest of it.

I point the way and he tells me all about his life. I don’t really listen. Nothing much I don’t already know, probably about a girl, and if you just substitute Linda with Lydia or Linnea or Lori you’ll get the message. She’s wonderful, hot, totally into him. He’s cool, interested but not too much. Keeping it real, which is to say being the player. The kind of guy I would never go for, nor would ever go for me.

But friendship is like that, I think as he rattles on, and the rain begins to truly hammer down. If you get in when you’re young, you hang with all the BS that comes later, and just hope they outgrow it. After all, Rod outgrew putting his dirty socks in my face to make me mad. Which is very good, though I liked the part about the socks that made me think I had something really close to a real brother.  

It makes me wonder about Anna, and Bea. Eighty-eight-year-old sisters. They must have seen each other through a lot of dirty socks and BS. And now, knowing their time is at an end, like Anna said. And being okay with that?  How could you be okay with that? What would it be like if one died before the other, which is most likely…

“So I was thinking,’ Rod says after making a sharp turn, “maybe, you and I ought to go out sometime.”

His words jar me to the conversation, enough to also make my jaw drop and my tongue practically hang out of my mouth. There’s no way I heard that right. “What?”

“I was just thinking, we know each other. We like each other. You’re hot, I’m hot.”

I totally have to work to not laugh. First, I am not hot. Second, he is not hot. Well, he is, but not my kind of hot. Third, us, together?  Suddenly, I can’t help it. I bust a gut. “You…” I can’t even finish the sentence.

“What? I like you. You like me. And you know you want a boyfriend.”

“I…I…I can’t even begin to say why that would be so not workable.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t date girls because you like them. You date them to say you’re dating them. And dating me would be nothing to tell anyone. Already your friends don’t get why you hang with me sometimes.”

He looks at me like I’ve insulted him. But it’s over the top. He knows how wacked this idea is. He has to.  

“Don’t give me that look,” I say. “I’ve got a Lilly and you are messing with my brain.”

“My mom and dad are getting a divorce,” he blurts out.

Suddenly, I feel like I’m pinned to the back of the seat. Like the air bag just smacked me back and I don’t really know what hit me. I look at Rod, really look, while he now just looks ahead. He’s not kidding. But his dad, his mom?  I know them. They know me. They love me.

“They can’t do that,” I say with what little wind is left in me.

“Yea, I know. But they say they are.” You can see this is killing him. Really, really killing him.

“They love each other,” I insist. “It’s not like my dad. You expect him to get married to bimbos and get divorced a few years later. Your parents are different. You’re a family.”

“I guess not anymore,” he says, soft but angry.

I don’t blame him, but I also don’t know what to say. I just want this feeling in my chest to stop squeezing the life out of me. I just saw his dad yesterday, and now it’s like, it’s been going on all this time, it must have, because things like this don’t happen overnight, and I didn’t even know. I stare at Rod, who stares at the road. It hits me he’s messed up, right now, like I’ve been even with the bimbos when things changed out from under me. But I know how to get through it. You learn.

“Look, you don’t want to date me. You just don’t want to be alone… or, I don’t know, something. But I’ll be here for you. Really, I will. This is it, turn here.”

“The pier?” he says, pulling into the small dirt parking lot.

I look out at the end of the pier, going straight out into the bay water and also branching off with a side pier that reaches toward the land beyond to the left. Then I look at the ten feet of water I’ll have to cross. With the rain, I’m going to get wet either way. I wonder if Bea will come out in the rain, and if she doesn’t, how far in I’m willing to go to look for her. Suddenly, it’s spooky. Hansel and Gretel spooky.

I’m torn between talking, actually being there for Rod like I just said, and doing what I have to do for Scottie.

Rod seems to get it, because he unlocks the doors for me. “Go ahead.”

“Okay, we’ll talk more later.”

“Sure,” he says, almost like he regrets saying anything. My brain wants to scramble, but it can’t. Not now.

“So I have to cross the water, and go into the woods. I’ll be back for Scottie as soon as…as soon as I can.”

“Why don’t you just go in from the other side?”

I can’t exactly say it’s because an old lady might catch my scent too close to the road, and that would be too dangerous. But I can’t think of anything else to say.

“Code Lilly,” I remind him, still feeling that sinking, pinned back feeling, and all the worry about Scottie. Rod will make it through, that much I know for sure. But Scottie…

I look to the land, and see something. Just a flash of something dark that catches my eye. Through the trees, just a few feet into the woods. Someone is already watching me. They are low to the ground, hiding, I think. Or maybe it’s some wild animal… Could I possibly describe the chill going over my body?

“Any guidelines here,” Rod asks, “like ‘if I don’t come out in five minutes’ kind of thing?”

“No,” I reply flatly. “I’ll just be back for Scottie as soon as I can.”

I get out of the car, putting my jacket over my head. It is both to protect me from the rain and protect the jacket from the steadily flowing stream. I follow the pier out, feeling the water beneath me giving just a hint of sway to my footing, then take the offshoot to the end. I look down, feeling nothing but doom. No way to really know how deep it is, given the rain and mud. But I can swim, if I have to. If I had a handful of leaves, I’d toss them to see how fast the current is going. But really, how fast can it be?

I take off my shoes and start to make my way down the few steps at the side of the pier ladder, grateful I don’t have to jump and comforted that people use this as a platform to swim from, which means it’s not like I’m going where no one has ever gone before. The water is cold and no more clear up close. My jeans get heavy quick. I feel for the bottom, and when I find it, I’m in up to my chest. Guess the tide is high. But the current isn’t bad. Nothing I can’t brace. No, really, this is fine.

It’s not long at all before the worries of the water disappear. But in their place, the worries of what will or won’t be found on land begin to come into far greater clarity. I put out my hands as best I can, to let Anna’s “scent” ride the rain-dampened breeze. Maybe it’s total crap. But maybe it’s not.