Redemption Prep

by Samuel Miller

  Checking to be sure the lobby was empty, he slipped inside the phone booth.

  There was a slot in the front of the machine where you could feed dollars or coins, below an analog timer that ran counterclockwise, counting back the time you had left on your call. Evan pulled three one-dollar bills from his bag and inserted all three. The timer’s needle swelled up to 180 seconds.

  There was no direct dial on the phone system. Instead, you gave the number to the school’s operator, and she placed the call for you.

  “Operator.” It was the same woman as always; her voice was bright and loud. “Is this a student call?”

  “This is Evan Andrews.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Evan Andrews, student number eight, eight, eight, four, five, two, three, two. I’d like to make an outgoing call.”

  “Oh, hi, Evan! Oh my gosh, it’s been forever.”

  “Five months.”

  “Right, wow. Well, same number as always, or—”

  “Different number.” From his pocket, he pulled the list of names and read the phone number from the top.

  The operator went to work. He hadn’t used the phone system since May fourteenth. He used to sit down in the booth equipped with twenty-dollar bills his mother had mailed him. They would run through nine or ten in one sitting. Even after his mother fell asleep, he would insert another twenty. Just in case she were to wake up and wonder where he’d gone.

  “Okay, I’ve got it for you here, Evan,” the operator said, cheery. “Would you like me to save this number?”

  “No, that’s fine.”

  “Of course. I’ll connect you, just hold on . . .”

  On the wooden table in front of the phone, students etched in pencil markings, absentminded doodles and half-completed pictures, the result of active brains trapped in inactive states, stuck on the phone. In the bottom-left third of the wooden table, the drawings got more concentrated: religious symbols, cartoon drawings overlapping and adding on top of the ideas of the students before them; one particular monster had half the face of a human and half the face of a buffalo growing up from the back of a dragon, the work of three different artists. Near the bottom, curling off the top of the table as the wood rounded at its edge, was familiar handwriting. It was a short sentiment, with small doodles between the letters.

  wait for me, with an anchor around the center o.

  It was Emma.

  “Can I just get your student number, for confirmation?” the operator asked again.

  “You already have it,” Evan said urgently.

  “Looks like I didn’t get it in there right. Sorry. Can you confirm it for me?”

  Evan paused. This was wrong. She’d never gotten the number wrong before. “Alright,” he said slowly. “It’s eight, eight, eight, four, five, two, three—”

  The door to the booth screamed open and a pair of hands grabbed him from behind, ripping him out and bringing the phone with him. He let go just in time to keep the wire from snapping against his face. The two massive hands that had taken control of his arms wrestled them behind his back. He fell to his knees, a stinging pain in his shoulder. He kept his head down, afraid a swing for his face was next.

  It didn’t come. The room settled, and the light from the booth reflected off three pairs of black boots, surrounding him. From the phone, now hanging a few feet from his face, he could hear the outgoing call.

  “Hey, baby, what can I do for you?” a raspy voice answered.

  Yanis, the maintenance man, picked the phone up and clicked it back on its base.

  emma donahue investigation.

  evan andrews—year 2.

  transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.

  YANIS (School Administration) _ Please speak your full name aloud.

  EVAN ANDREWS (Student) _ Evan Magnolia Andrews.

  Y _ Evan Andrews. We’ve met before. Do you remember this.

  EA _ Yes.

  Y _ You were in Emma’s dorm. Getting homework. I remember. I’m starting to think maybe you were not there for homework.

  EA _ I was.

  Y _ So you have this knack. For being places you should not. I am sure you can tell me. Why did you call this phone number.

  EA _ I was calling my friend.

  Y _ Strange friends you have. Tell me this. How did you meet your friend.

  EA _ I don’t remember.

  Y _ Have you made this call before.

  EA _ No.

  Y _ Did you make this call last night.

  EA _ No.

  Y _ Think very hard about answers Evan.

  EA _ My shoulder hurts.

  Y _ You can see the doctor when we finish. You told the operator to call a number that Emma don a hue has called before. Did you know that.

  EA _ No.

  Y _ You’re showing up in her dorm room on the night she goes missing. And you are making phone calls to numbers she used to call. Those are two things I know. They are facts. Can we establish this so at least we come from a common understanding.

  EA _ I . . . Okay.

  Y _ Great. So now that we know those two things to be facts we can answer important questions. Such as why are you showing up in her dorm room and making phone calls to numbers she used to call.

  EA _ I I want to know where she is.

  Y _ Good. Me too. But why do you care so much.

  EA _ Because she is my friend.

  Y _ Were you close.

  EA _ V v v very close.

  Y _ Perfect. Thank you. See. It’s an easy system. Question. Response. Smile. Gratitude. Trust. Relationship. Now we understand each other. So we can have real conversations. Did she tell you to call that number.

  EA _ No.

  Y _ Then how did you know.

  EA _ I I just guessed.

  Y _ How about this. I make you a deal. You tell me how you knew to go to that phone booth. And to call that number. And I will tell you who you were about to call . . . does that sound alright. Evan.

  EA _ O okay.

  Y _ Perfect.

  EA _ Sh she told me she used to talk to someone outside the school. And made me swear not to tell.

  Y _ And where did you find the phone number.

  EA _ I uh wrih. Written in her room. When I was picking up homework.

  Y _ Well. Would you look at that.

  EA _ W what.

  Y _ You told me truth and the world doesn’t end. Now I know something that helps me find your friend. See how easy . . .

  EA _ Who was she calling.

  Y _ What. Oh. Right. A phone sex hotline.

  EA _ What.

  Y _ Yep. That’s the number you called. A service called swingers.

  EA _ What is . . .

  Y _ What is a phone sex hotline.

  EA _ Yes.

  Y _ Oh boy. Well. It’s a phone number for people to have simulated sex over the telephone with a professional on the other end. Phone sex of course. No actual sex. Just sex noises.

  EA _ N no. No that’s not it. She wouldn’t.

  Y _ I have no reason to lie to you Evan. That’s how you know you can trust me. I want to believe the same about you.

  EA _ Okay.

  Y _ Is there anything else you want to tell us.

  EA _ No.

  Y _ You can’t think of anything.

  EA _ No.

  Y _ Okay. I’ll call a doctor.

  Testimonial: Aiden Mallet.

  Year 1995–1996. Day 24.

  LAST NIGHT, EMMA didn’t want to do anything except paint.

  I went over to her room late at night (before curfew, of course) and instead of talking about anything, she pulled out a box of watercolors and gave me a piece of paper and told me to paint whatever I wanted. I painted a horse. It looks like shit.

  She painted the backyard of a farm; I think the one from Kansas. She’s much better at painting than I am, even if she says she’s not.

  She was talking a lot tonight, more than usual. It was one of those days where she want
ed to talk about my life, so I told her about the Mavericks scout, and how when I want something, I picture it in a photograph, and pin it in my head until I have it. I told her the picture of me in an NBA jersey had been in my head since my dad and I put it there twelve years ago.

  She asked what other photographs I had, and where they were now. Behind my desk, I told her, the photos with all my other teams, my AAU teams, holding championship trophies. She asked if I ever looked at them and I said not really, why would I. She asked if I felt any closer to how I was supposed to feel, right now. I said no, but I probably would when I had the NBA picture.

  Emma said that means I’m thinking about my dreams in the wrong way. She said I should shoot for the dreams that aren’t just photographs. She said I should think about dreams as living, breathing things, instead of just checked boxes on a list that would one day get crumpled and thrown in the trash anyway. And I think she’s right.

  On days when she wants to talk, Emma is smarter than anyone I know.

  All she wanted to do was paint and talk. She fell asleep on my shoulder, and I put her into her bed and put the blanket on top of her and left.

  Then, when I saw her today, she didn’t want to talk to me at all. I have no idea what I did. I went to her room before lunch and she said she was going to do an assessment. I tried to find her at dinner, but she spent dinner in her lounge, talking to basically everybody except for me. Then, when I finally caught up with her, she told me that I wasn’t a priority right now. I asked if I did something to hurt her, and she said no, but she still wouldn’t tell me why she didn’t want to be around me.

  Some days Emma needs me. She tells me how happy she is that I’m around, and how I make her feel safe and noticed. Today, she must have forgot.

  Aiden.

  “AND YOU KNOW what you’ll say to the scouts, if they come talk to you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you wanna role-play it? I could pretend I’m one of the scouts, and you could be you, and we could make sure you’re ready for anything they throw at you.”

  “I’m fine, Dad. I’ve talked to people before.”

  “I just wanna make sure nothing you say distracts them from what you do on the court.”

  He held the phone several inches from his ear. His dad hadn’t figured out that telephones transmitted his voice the whole way; he didn’t need to close the distance with volume.

  “How’d those motivation videos go?” his dad shouted. “The ones I sent Coach Bryant?”

  “What videos?”

  “The ones I made for him, pumping you up?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Hm. Must not have used them yet. Well, what I say in there is important—stay focused. Eat, breathe, sleep, basketball. I even asked if you could get out of some classes—”

  “I need to take classes, Dad.”

  “Not when you’re in the league, you don’t. Trust me. This is big for us, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good.” There was a long lull before his dad added, “Anything else going on you wanna talk about?”

  Aiden hung on the line for a second. There were a million things he wanted to talk about. His girlfriend had gone missing, the man the school had assigned to look for her seemed to think he was some kind of a suspect, and wherever she was, she might not even be his girlfriend anymore.

  “No, I’m good. I’ll call you after the game.”

  When he got back to his dorm, Peter Novak was waiting outside, leaning against the exposed stone of the wall. “You look pissed,” Peter said as he approached.

  “I’m not,” Aiden mumbled, going straight for the door.

  Peter followed him in without asking permission. Aiden swapped his warm-up jersey for a cloth Redemption sweater and tucked his book bag in the back of his closet. Checking on Peter over his shoulder, he took the Apex from the front pocket and rolled it into a pair of socks.

  Peter was more focused on the photos above Aiden’s desk. “Holy fuck, buddy. Look at all this basketball. You ever do anything other than basketball? Friends? Girls?”

  “I have a girlfriend, remember?”

  “Right. You should put a picture of her up here.”

  Aiden dropped a few textbooks onto his desk. “Was there a reason you were here?”

  Peter pulled his eyes from the photos and turned to sit on the desk, straight on top of Aiden’s textbooks. “Right. So, I was thinking, about the whole Emma thing.”

  His chest tightened. “What about it?”

  “I know something. That I didn’t tell you. And I think you deserve to know it, now that she’s missing and all.”

  Aiden froze, raising an eyebrow.

  “She was being followed.”

  “What?”

  “By a couple of people, I think.”

  “What?”

  “I know, it sounds ridiculous. But I’ve got two classes with her, and a couple weeks ago, I started noticing these people hovering around, wearing black hoodies with the hoods up—”

  “Everybody wears black hoodies. It’s basically the uniform.”

  “Yeah, but these people were different. They were there for her, I could tell.”

  Aiden thought about it for a minute. “You know, I heard extreme paranoia is a symptom of Apex—”

  “They were real,” Peter insisted. “Not moving, not talking, just lurking around corners, watching her.”

  Aiden pulled one of the textbooks from under him. “I was with her all the time; pretty sure I’d have noticed. I think your brain might be fried.”

  “You were with her. They’d have been hiding from you too!” Peter lowered his voice. “Do you know who Evan Andrews is?”

  Aiden stopped digging through his bag for a second. “Yeah, sure.”

  “I saw him watching you two the other night. From a bench in front of the chapel.”

  Aiden swallowed. He did know Evan, and he had seen him around a lot lately.

  “It’s not just him, though. Something else is going on.”

  Peter reached in his back pocket and unfolded an old newspaper page, cut to a single article. The headline read: Prep school student awaits trial for drug distribution.

  Aiden stared at it for a full minute. The date was September 26, 1995. That was three weeks ago. He tried to read the text of the article, but quickly realized he couldn’t; it was just a series of obscure symbols where the words should be.

  “Is Emma really on trial?” he asked, his voice cracking. “What newspaper is this from?”

  Peter pulled it back. “That’s the crazy part. It’s not a real newspaper. Somebody just made it—I think it’s a threat.”

  “A threat?”

  “Someone printed a fake newspaper, saying this could happen, if she doesn’t do what they want. Look here.” He pointed to the last sentence of the article. It was just two words:

  fifty pills.

  “She’s getting blackmailed?” Aiden asked. “By Evan Andrews?”

  “No way,” Peter said, shaking his head. “It’s definitely more than just him. But he’s got something to do with it.”

  “She would have told me about that.”

  “You think? And risk them finding out?” Peter spoke quickly, without any doubt. “Think about it. Did anything change recently? Did you notice her acting different?”

  Aiden stopped. “When did you say that was?”

  “The date on here is September twenty-sixth. Three weeks ago.”

  Aiden stood slowly and floated to the closet. His testimonial journal was tucked in the back of his sock drawer. He flipped forward a few pages, then back—

  “September twenty-seventh. ‘Emma didn’t talk to me again today. Something’s seriously wrong.’” He looked up. “That was three weeks ago. And she’s been like that ever since.”

  Peter exhaled slowly. “Damn.”

  Warm relief melted in his stomach. It wasn’t about him, or anything he’d done.

 
; They weren’t breaking up; she was getting blackmailed.

  “You’re happy she was being blackmailed, and then disappeared?”

  Aiden hadn’t felt his mouth creeping into a smile. He swallowed it quickly. “No, sorry,” he said. “It just . . . explains a lot. So, what do we do? How do we tell somebody?”

  “Tell somebody, are you serious?”

  “Yeah, I can go to Coach Bryant about it. Or Dr. Roux. . . .” Peter was glaring at him. “What?”

  “I think you may have forgot for a moment that your girlfriend is a drug dealer.”

  “Oh . . . oh.” He hadn’t thought about what might happen to Emma if the school found out about Apex. She’d be gone, before they could even welcome her back.

  “Which I think,” Peter said seriously, “means we gotta find her first.”

  “We? What do you have to do with this?”

  “I don’t know how many times you’re gonna make me remind you of this, man. I buy drugs from her. She gets busted, I get busted, everybody gets busted.”

  Aiden examined him, more critically now. He wore the same oversized coat and a thin black beanie. The hair popping out was curly, and his teeth were large and slightly crooked. Aiden barely knew anything about him. But everything he said made perfect sense.

  “Okay.” Aiden nodded. “How do we do that?”

  Peter slid down into the desk chair on his level, already a step ahead. “First, we’ve gotta figure out who all was following her, or checking on her. The hoods.”

  “So we go talk to the kid, Evan Andrews.”

  Peter shook his head. “If we go to him right away, they’ll know we’re onto them. I’ve got a better idea,” he said, dropping his voice a decibel. “You bought last night, right? Five hundred, you said? For the basketball team?”

  Aiden pursed his lips. “Maybe.”

  “I got a proposition for you. Don’t give it to the team.”

  “What?”

  “Apex is your way in. Whoever was onto her, whoever took her—you’ve got what they want. And you’re the only one.”

  Aiden could already feel his heart racing. “What do we do with it?”

  Peter stood and started to pace. “We gotta draw people out. Have a stakeout. Tell them we’re selling and see who shows up.”