It wasn't that he didn't like Emma. He did, to a point. But for some reason he wanted to run when he saw her coming his way.
"Craig! Where are you going now?" He squinted at her, kept walking. He didn't like this.
"I'm going to art class," he said, and she fell in step beside him.
She sprung it on him, ditching school to go and find her father. To go on some wild hunt for some guy in a yearbook who could be…anywhere. She ran through her list of reasons why she couldn't bring Manny and she couldn't bring Sean.
"How about J.T. or Toby?" he suggested without much hope. He didn't want to admit it but he didn't like doing stuff like this, blatant disregarding of rules. It made him too nervous. His stomach would hurt and his head would ache and he'd have this low level of fear like caffeine fizzling through his blood stream. His own father was dead, but it was like his body didn't know that. He still feared him.
"I thought you'd want to help me," she said, and he looked at the top of her blond head. Thought about Joey. Joey would yell and probably ground him for something like this, if he found out. Joey was a good yeller. A ranter and raver. Craig didn't mind so much, knowing that Joey wouldn't hurt him, hit him, beat him. None of that. Just yelling and taking stuff away and then looking guilty and Joey was almost as happy as he was when he got the video games or the T.V. or whatever it was back.
"Why? Why me?" he said, looking at her. He hardly ever talked to this girl so why was she trying to get him into so much trouble?
"I thought you'd want to go because of, you know, your father," The connection didn't quite make sense to him. Because his father was dead? Because they both had step-fathers? But whatever. She had the balls to bring up his father, that alone was worth going with her. So he smiled wide at her and asked what they were waiting for.
Following her lead, going to one of those brick house/office buildings to see Dr. Shane McKay, and he almost laughed when the old black man opened the door. Emma's face and her comical surprise almost made him laugh. All day he was squashing the nervous feeling, telling himself even if Joey caught him he wouldn't do anything really, he wouldn't hurt him.
Looking all over for her father, some clue as to where he was. Prisons, hospitals, that type of thing. Going to her house and looking at Snake's school reunion database and that's where they found him. The address was in Stoufille. Craig swallowed hard. If they went to Stoufille he'd get in trouble for sure, and he felt that anxiety right in his stomach and it wasn't a fear of Joey but of Albert and he told himself again that he was dead. He's dead, he whispered it to himself. But he had to go now.
Laughing with her, walking to the train station, and he ignored the growing anxious feeling that spread from his stomach to all his cells. It was just a ghost of what he used to feel when he actually lived with his father, when he wasn't nervous about memories of beatings but the very real possibility of beatings, and that look on his father's face he'd never forget.
The train sped toward their destination, and he tossed popcorn into his mouth, watched the scenery fly by in that green blur of pine trees and scrub brush. And when the train screeched to a stop and they got out he saw the restless anxiety fill Emma's eyes. Who would she find? Some snotty doctor who had given her away, given up on her? Would she be abandoned all over again?
The address on the computer led them to a hospital type building and they went in, both feeling out of place. But this was a mission, and looking up at the high ceilings and the marble floors and the stairs that curved up to the second floor, he was glad she had asked him to go.
"What are you doing here?" A stern faced nurse asked them, and Emma blurted it out, that she was looking for Shane McKay and the nurse frowned, said she couldn't just see him without an appointment. Then fate intervened. Bells were going off and people were running and the nurse had to leave, couldn't stay and prevent Emma from seeking out her truth. In the commotion Craig had gone over to the placard with the list of the names of the people who worked here and he found Shane's name and the number of the office.
"This is it. It's up there. Go," he told her, and she looked at him with courage and fear and she seemed rooted to the spot in front of him. He understood that fear.
"Go!" he said, giving her a little shove, and she ran up the stairs. He understood why she asked him to go with her now. She went up those stairs not knowing who she'd find. He was still trying to find his own father, still trying to incorporate what his father did to him with the fact that he loved him, still trying to fit Joey into his father image. He hoped Emma would be able to deal with whatever it was she found up there.