Free Ask Him Why by Catherine Ryan Hyde

yours?”
    “I forgot it at home.”
    “Whatever,” she said. “But you owe me the minutes if I run out.”
    “This’ll be quick.”
    I called directory assistance for the number of the cab company.
    “That’s two dollars extra,” Ruth said when she heard what I was doing. “Dad’ll demand it from my allowance. You owe me.”
    Then I let the automated service autodial for the cab.
    It arrived in just a matter of minutes. Two or three. It beat the bus.
    Ruth gave me the strangest look. But she said nothing.
    I decided I loved her for that.

    I had no choice but to pay the cab driver with a hundred-dollar bill. He gave me back mostly ones and fives. A ridiculous stack. I gave him a tip which he must not have liked. It must not have been enough. Because he frowned at it.
    I wanted to say, What do you expect? I’m thirteen . How am I supposed to know how to tip a cabbie? Who ever taught me stuff like that?
    I said nothing.
    I climbed out of the cab. Stuffed the ridiculous wad of bills into my jeans pocket. It made me three or four times more sure that everyone would know. Everyone would see. Everyone would be willing to hurt me for that money.
    I followed the street numbers.
    Marshall Kendrick had an office that, on first glance, was just a glass door. It sat between a furniture store and a dry cleaner. Through the glass I could see stairs. Nothing more.
    I tried the door. It was open.
    I marched up the stairs and through another door. This one said “Marshall Kendrick” in neatly stenciled paint. And, under that, “Private Investigations.” It opened into a sort of front office. The kind with a desk for a receptionist. But it was tiny, and there was no receptionist. I could hear him talking to someone behind the closed office door.
    I sat. Waited. For what, I wasn’t sure. If there was someone in there with him, they’d come out. Eventually. If he was just on the phone, he might never come to the door.
    I’d guess I waited about ten minutes, my knee bouncing up and down. It exhausted me, because it reminded me how much tension I had to vent. But I couldn’t stop.
    Then the office door swung open. An old couple walked out. Walked through the outer office where I sat. They looked sad. They looked the way I felt.
    Kendrick came to the door to walk them out, and he seemed surprised to see me. Startled, in fact. Then again, I hadn’t bothered to tell him I was coming.
    “May I help you?” he asked as the old couple made their way through.
    “I need to see you about a . . . what you do.”
    His face twisted in a way I couldn’t quite make out. But I didn’t like it. One eyebrow was slightly up. Like he was asking me with his face if I was for real. Like maybe my very existence was only a joke.
    “How old are you?”
    “Fifteen.”
    The eyebrow inched up higher.
    “Okay, thirteen. But I have money. I have thirteen hundred dollars. Well. Minus the cab fare. I have about twelve hundred and eighty-five. Four.”
    Kendrick sighed. Dropped his head and shook it.
    “I guess there’s no law against hearing you out,” he said. “You’re lucky I have a fifteen-minute break before my next appointment.”
    I walked into his office feeling numb. Sat on the edge of a wooden folding chair in front of his desk, which was piled with books and files and papers. He walked around and sat in a chair much more comfortable than mine. Leather, and the kind you can lean back in. With arms. The window behind his head looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned for years.
    “I want you to find my brother,” I said.
    I took all the money out of my pocket. Spread it on the only blank space on his desk. He just watched me, looking halfway amused. At my expense, apparently. I thought better of giving it all to him and took back twenty. For a cab back to school.
    Then I just looked up at him. Waiting.
    “That’s not quite how it works,” he said.
    “Oh. How does it work?”
    “Put your money back in your pocket and I’ll tell