Free A Sudden Silence by Eve Bunting Page B

moving now, picking up speed.
    I was just as glad to see the hospital as I'd been to see Dad's car. I helped Chloe out, fished her sweat shirt from the big, white bag, held her as she struggled to get her arms into the sleeves. Printed across the front were the words CALIFORNIA, WHERE LIFE'S A BEACH . It didn't quite come to the top of the bikini pants. I put my own sweat shirt on, too, so I'd look a little more respectable.
    They took us right away in the emergency room, though there were people ahead of us.
    "Bleeders first," the nurse said cheerily. "What happened here anyway? Were you at that riot on the beach?" She brought over a wheelchair and eased Chloe into it. "Bunch of rowdies, those surfers," she said.
    "It wasn't the surfers." I touched Chloe's hand. "Are you OK? Does it hurt a lot?"
    "Not too much. And Jesse—thanks."
    "Do you want me to come with you?" I asked.
    The nurse butted in. "Are you her husband? Her father? Maybe you're her grandfather?" This nurse had wiggly eyebrows and a sense of humor.
    "No."
    "Sorry. Boyfriends don't count around here."
    Chloe's eyes met mine.
    "I'm actually not her boyfriend either," I said. "She's actually ... she's ... she was my brother's girl."
    "Oh.
Was?
" The eyebrows wiggled again and the nurse grinned and swung Chloe's chair in a sort of wheelie. "She won't be long. You can wait."
    I waited.

10
    C HLOE HAD THREE stitches in her foot, a pad, and strapping. She carried my bloody T-shirt in a plastic bag.
    I eased her into the back of the car, and she sat with her leg along the seat. That's probably where she should have been on the way in.
    The Fourth of July traffic was bumper-to-bumper on Coast Highway, with pedestrians on the crosswalks and straggling across the street headed for an afternoon on the beach.
    I spoke over my shoulder. "Does it hurt a lot?"
    "Some. The doctor gave me a prescription for painkillers if I need them."
    We were stopped at a light in the center of town right across from Main Beach Park with its picnic tables and swings. Guys leaped and jumped, smashing a ball back and forth across the volleyball net. They could all have been in suntan lotion commercials. Spectators jammed the tables and benches.
    "One thing about Laguna Beach," I began, "there's always something going on." And then I saw it: the new restaurant that had opened on the bluff overlooking the beach. For some reason restaurants up there don't do well. They're too expensive, maybe because the rents so high. This one had a new black glass sign, riding high on wooden stilts, THE WINDMILL . There was an etching, a white windmill on the black glass. I stared at it, seeing the back of the guy's black jacket. Not airplane propellors after all.
    Behind us a car honked impatiently.
    "He works there," I said softly.
    "Who? Where?" Chloe struggled to lean across the front seat.
    I pointed. "The restaurant."
    "Jesse! I bet you're right. Pull around. See if he's there."
    "I can't. That's a one-way street. And I've got to get you home."
    "You do not. I'm OK."
    "Your foot!"
    "The heck with my foot. If you could only find somewhere to park."
    There wasn't anywhere, of course. Not within a five-mile radius of the center of Laguna, not on the Fourth of July.
    The blaring behind me was an angry chorus that stretched back and up the hill.
    "Move it, man! Get that crate out of here!" In the rearview mirror I saw a bunch of girls in a convertible.
Blam! Blam!
That was one of them leaning on the horn.
    "Hold on!" I told Chloe, and swung the car into a space by the curb clearly marked red for no parking.
    "Chloe? Honest now, can you handle it for a couple of minutes while I check the Windmill? You see, if I find him it'll start getting easier. It won't bring Bry back, but I'm going to feel so ... so vindicated!"
    "Go, Jesse!"
    I got out and ran back, past the summertime shops, pushing through tourists with their mounded ice-cream cones, throwing "sorry's" and "excuse me's" to right and left as I jostled