Read Online A Friend at Midnight by Caroline B. Cooney - Free Book Online

plane land? Oh, Lord, now I have to worry about plane crashes.”
    â€œI have to go, Mom,” said Lily.
    â€œWait! Do you have any money? How are you getting back and forth?”
    â€œI raided your desk drawers and stuff. Don’t worry. Everything’s under control. See you. Bye!” She hung up.
    â€œYou didn’t tell any lies,” said Michael, marveling.
    The plane took off.
    Lily fell into a useless, terrible sleep.
    A dream crept up on her. It began with a smashed telephone, but in the horrid way of dreams, the phone kept getting up and throwing itself at Lily while her father’s voice crawled out of it, like spiders. The phone stuck to her fingers and she couldn’t peel it off. She ran through the dark web of an endless terminal filled with sneering gawking people while the phone clung to her fingers and a terrible roar filled her ears. The roar of the nightmare was her own voice, dragged up from such depths that her lungs bled.
    You are not a father. I will never use that word “father” again.

    When they finally got home, the house might have been some ancient sanctuary or temple. Lily wanted to be inside it as she had rarely wanted anything in her life.
    In the front hall, she turned on the light and stood on the old strip of rug. The same old watercolor hung over the same narrow table, cluttered with the same old music and catalogs and library books and pencils and pieces off things.
    All her life, Lily had yearned for a neat and tidy house, and never had she seen anything as welcoming as the chaos of home.
    Because the dumb flight went south in order to go north, and because of a layover, even though Lily had spent her last dollars to hurry home in a taxi, it was almost midnight.
    Nathaniel disintegrated into sobbing exhaustion. Ignoring him, she poked the messages on the answering machine. Four from Mom. All earlier in the day, when she had not been able to reach Lily.
    We’re talking panic here, thought Lily, and remembered that she personally had not panicked.
    There was no message from Dad.
    Did my little boy get home okay? Tell him I’m sorry. Tell Lily I was wrong. Tell my kids I love them.
    No. There were no messages like that.
    Michael walked through each room of the house, staring, as if maybe in
that
room, he would understand.
    Nathaniel moved from sobbing into screaming. Lily had the passing thought that if anybody should be abandoned at an airport, it was a cranky two-year-old.
    â€œWiwwy.” Nathaniel chinned himself on the waistband of Lily’s pink trousers.
    Michael hoisted Nathaniel and kissed him. “Come on, Nate. I’ll give you a bath. That’ll make you feel better. Then we’ll both go to bed. Remember how we share a bedroom?”
    â€œWiwwy come too,” Nathaniel demanded.
    â€œNo,” said Lily. “I’m taking a shower.”
    In her bathroom, she tried to wash the whole day down the drain, but she couldn’t get it off her skin. She put on her summer pajamas and went to check on Michael and Nathaniel. They had tubbed together and were squeaky clean and wrinkled like prunes.
    Still to come was Nathaniel crying himself to sleep.
    Lily reminded herself that good sisters did not throw their little brothers down the cellar stairs but were patient.
    Michael put Nathaniel in his crib and tucked a blanket around him. “Don’t do any crying, Nate. You’re too old. Grow up.”
    â€œOkie, Miikooo,” said Nathaniel. He closed his eyes and went to sleep, a recruit taking orders from his sergeant.
    Lily dragged herself downstairs, wrapped the smashed cell phone in old newspaper, as if it were particularly disgusting garbage, and even took it outside to the trash barrel and fastened the lid tightly.
    The kitchen phone rang.
    She tottered back in to answer.
    â€œDarling?” cried her mother. “We’re almost home! We’re on the Whitestone Bridge! Did you get Michael? Is