The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five) by Abigail Padgett

one of those pills from the hospital tonight?" he suggested. " And you can sleep out here on th e couch so I can stay with you right here in this chair. You're not going to be alone tonight. I'll be right here. Scott can come by tomorrow."
    "Okay," Janny said, relieved. "I'm really scared."
    Bo noticed the battered doll tucked under the girl's arm, but said nothing. Questions about Jasper Malco l m and his expensive creations could wait .
    "I'll walk out with you," she said, smiling at the boy named Bierbrauer.
    The chilly air outside reminded Bo that she'd been sweating profusely in her successful attempt to impersonate a social worker. The gray silk dress was drenched beneath her blazer.
    "By the way, who lives in the Schroders' downstairs flat?" she asked the boy.
    "Nobody now," he answered. "They fixed it up years ago for Mr. Schroder's mother to live in. But then she got Alzheimer's and they had to put her in a home. She died three or four years ago, before Janny came. The flat's like a r ec room now. My dad and Mr. Schroder play pool down there, that kind of stuff."
    "Oh," Bo said.
    The experience with Alzheimer's could account for the Schroders' fear of eve n minor dementia. Undoubtedly th e couple had been through some exhausting and painful times before making the difficult decision to find twenty-four-hour care for Howard's mother. They would wish to avoid any similar experience.
    "So what's wrong with Janny?" Scott Bierbrauer asked as Bo scooped Molly from the Pathfinder and set her on the ground in a swirl of fallen sycamore leaves.
    "I don't know, but you may be able to help. Tell me a littl e about this Goth business. I assume you picked Janny's name, Fianna. And what are the vampire teeth, the skull jewelry, and black leather wrist cuffs all about?"
    "Gothic is about what a joke the whole middle-class scene is, you know? Everything's a lie. The politicians lie, the corporations lie, and religions are the biggest li e of all. It's like, there's nothing. They tell you to go to school and then get some job all day every day, and then you get old and you're dead and that's it. It's like everything they tell you is just this big commercial for something that doesn't exist, you know?"
    They were walking slowly in the leaves near Bo's car. Christmas in San Diego felt more like Halloween in Boston, she reflected. And Scott Bierbrauer's remarks were both typically adolescent and impenetrably philosophical.
    "So what does exist?" she asked, going along. Generations of philosophers had fallen short of an adequate answer to that question, but she was sure the boy would nail it with ease.
    "Nothing," he said, smiling at Molly's wagging tail. "That's pretty Gothic, that nothing exists. And death is nothing, so we dress like vampires and people you see in old pictures. People who are dead. The whole Goth scene is like just saying screw it to the lies and accepting the truth."
    As Molly sniffed the base of a cement-block ledge bordering somebody's yard. Bo congratulated herself on her choice of jobs. Commodities trading would have provided vastl y more income, but not the opportunity to stand in leaves under a streetlight discussing existentialism with this bright, serious boy who had undoubtedly never heard of existentialism.
    "And Janny understands all this?" she went on.
    "Nah, she just likes the clothes. For a lot of them it's pretty superficial. You know, just someplace to hang out and feel accepted. A lot of Goths work in computers like I do. I guess you could say we aren't exactly truly wild. And we like the manners, the rules. A Goth won't just go up and hit on some girl. You have to be introduced."
    "What about the doll Janny carries? Is that a statement about nothingness, too?"
    "Well, yeah, in a way. I mean, Janny's past is kind of nothing, isn't it? She doesn't even know who her parents are, all those foster homes since she was really little. She said she's always had the doll. And she's always had nothing.