“I’m so sorry, Vivian,” Mrs. Hiroshi said. She was Patrick’s school counselor, a short, brown, solid woman with a high, sweet voice. “And in some ways your separation makes it especially hard.”
Vivian’s eyes were clear, but not steady. “Wondering if it would have worked,” she said, a tiny catch at the back of her throat, like a hiccough, tugging at every word. “The part of me that asked him to leave wants to crawl into a hole and die. I’m sure that in some ways Patrick blames me.”
Mrs. Hiroshi shook her head. “He’s a much better boy than that. Look at him. Little soldier.”
They turned to look at Patrick, who stood in a silent circle of his friends. Destiny had folded her arms around him, her face nestled against his neck.
“I just don’t know,” Vivian said. “I’ve tried. But it seems like every decision I make is the wrong one.”
“You’re doing a wonderful job,” Mrs. Hiroshi said. “Nobody blames you for what happened. Before, or now.”
Vivian watched her son, and the woman’s healing words seemed to wash over her without dampening the flame of recrimination. “I wake up in the middle of the night, and ask myself who I am. What kind of mother would leave her child with people who could even be accused…”
Mrs. Hiroshi shook her head. “A human being,” she said. “That’s all any of us are. And we make mistakes.”
Lee’s mother, Ellie Wallace, had joined them. She was a thin woman, who had the slightly loose-skinned look of one who has lost weight too quickly. She placed her hand on Vivian’s shoulder. “Stop it. If there was anything wrong with that place, those people—it would have cropped up by now. My Lee is a joy. He doesn’t get into trouble. Fact is, he helped us get out of it. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
She and Vivian had never been close, but right now Mrs. Wallace’s eyes brimmed with empathy. “Have the police come up with anything?”
“There’s a man who … might have had something to do with it, but at the time of the mur … of Otis’s death he was getting a traffic ticket on the other side of town.”
Ellie sighed. “If there’s anything I can do, Vivian.”
Vivian nodded. “I hear that you’re moving to Idaho.”
A small smile. “It looks that way.”
“Well—don’t let Lee lose touch with Patrick. Not for a while.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a problem. There’s the web page.”
“You’ll get through this,” Mrs. Hiroshi said. “I promise you.”
Vivian wanted to agree, but through a gap between two mourners she could see Patrick. The five kids were clustered … no, only four of them. Lee had already excused himself, and was heading back to the car, leaving Shermie, Frankie, Destiny and Patrick alone, together.
Patrick’s face was still a mask, but when she looked with her heart instead of her eyes, he seemed to her a wounded, stricken animal.
* * *
Vivian and Patrick slid through the parking lot, passing Cappy’s corner. The giant was on the front porch, leaning against the rail, watching them. Without a smile or any real expression at all, Cap took his cap off and held it over his heart. Sorry, kid.
Patrick saw him, said nothing. His face didn’t twitch. Vivian could feel Patrick’s energy, like a dark storm cloud looming on the horizon, lightning sizzling around the edges. Bright enough to burn the eye, too distant for her to hear the thunder.
He was watching Cappy. She knew it. He thought something. Suspected something. Or did he actually know something?
They parked the car, and she moistened her lips, searching for the right words. “Patrick,” she said. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
He turned and looked at her, the soul of emotional immobility. “No, Mom. Nothing.”
She searched for the words. “Did anything happen between your father and … that man?”
He cut her off. “Mom—if something had happened, I would have told you. What reason could I have to keep a secret?”
Despite his words, there was a wildness in his eyes, and it terrified her. His eyes and mouth were set, utterly intractable.
Then he leapt from the car, and was gone. Vivian looked after him, afraid, but uncertain what she was afraid of.
Vivian entered her house alone, feeling small and cold. She sat heavily in front of her computer, and brooded for almost four minutes before turning it on. Maybe there was an e-mail. Something to lift her spirits, although God knew that on a day like today that might require one of Otis’s forklifts.
That thought brought fresh tears to her eyes, and she almost turned the machine off. Then she clicked the AOL button, and watched while a series of sign-on screens paraded.
“You’ve got mail!”
Her heart raced as she clicked the little mailbox. Her embryonic smile died as she saw that it was all junk, and a pair of sympathy notes from friends in Michigan and New York. She was reading through the second one when a little sign popped on:
Will you accept an Internet Message from RSAND@ Marcusl?
Shocked and delighted, she clicked YES.
Hi, she typed.
Hello back. How are you? I was doing some research, and your name popped up.
It’s been a bad day. My ex-husband died, and the funeral was awful. Why had she typed that? She and Otis were separated, not divorced. She had pressed SEND before she noticed the mistake. It was too late now.
I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?
Now she paused. She wanted to say: Would you fly up here and hold me? But that, or anything close to it, was completely beyond her.
Can you tell me why there is so much pain in life? I think my son is almost out of his mind with it.
I don’t know, he typed. The trite answer is so that we’ll recognize the good times.
Are there going to be good times? I wonder. It’s been so long since anything I would really call a “good time.” She hesitated before sending that one, but finally gave in.
Yes, there will, he said. You have people who care about you. At least one.
She held her breath. Can we be friends?
If you’ll let me be, he typed. I wanted to get to know you. Maybe I was jealous of your husband, but I never wanted anything to happen to him. He seemed to be a very good man.
He was.
Give it some time, he wrote. And if you need to talk to someone, you know where to find me. And when it’s right, when everything is right, I would like to take you to dinner.
She was aware of breathing, of the sensation of her hands on the keys, of a strange and healing heat rolling through her body.
I’d like that too.
42
Claremont Junior High School was closed, empty, deserted in the darkness.
Frankie, Patrick, Destiny and Shermie sat on their bicycles, looking down from the rise above the school’s parking lot and main buildings. They were all thinking the same thoughts. All pretense of squabbling between them was over.
“How did you find it?” Destiny said quietly.
“We’d heard the motorcycles for weeks,” Patrick said quietly. “Every time we had our meeting, we heard them. We knew that Cappy had a piece of land up in the hills. It wasn’t hard to find.”
“I recognized the smell from biology class,” Frankie said. “Didn’t have to get too close. Stayed in the woods and waited for the wind to shift. It was ether.” He locked eyes with them, as if waiting for the significance to sink in. “And more, man. San Jose porker Web site says to watch for a cat-piss smell.”
“It’s a litter box up there,” Patrick said.
“Then we know what they’re doing,” Shermie said.
Frankie was the only one of them whose voice held any emotion. There was something of excitement there, as though the dark potential that always lurked beneath the surface had finally found a vent. “I found Uncle Fester’s Meth Lab book, on-line.”
“How did you do that?” Patrick asked.
“
Went to Dogpile dotcom, did a search on “Ether” and “Meth.” Whattaya think?”
A police car cruised past them, its cold white eye sweeping. A beefy cop leaned out of the window. “You kids all right?”
“Just fine,” Destiny said.
The cop watched them for a moment, as though some instinct had alerted him that everything was not all right. Everything was, in fact, pretty fucking far from all right. In fact, it was all too possible that things would never be all right ever again.
But he cruised on, seeming to ride on a breeze that swept in off the sea, carrying with it a cold, wet scent of dead lost things.
“The rest of this is mine,” Patrick said. “I don’t want you guys involved.”
“Too late,” Shermie said.
Frankie passed over a thin sheaf of papers. Patrick read them carefully. “Can you get this stuff?”
Frankie nodded. “I found about fifty recipes, and kept looking until I found one that we can actually do.”
Shermie looked at them, and his eyes seemed to become calculators. “This stuff is easy—you’re talking any swimming pool supply store. What do they call it?”
“An oxidizer,” Patrick said.
“And the other … let’s see. Brake fluid? Hair oil?”
“We can do that,” Patrick said. “We can do it, easy.”
“What about the other choice? We want to have a fallback.”
“Sulphuric acid is easy,” Sherman said. “But the potassium chlorate … I’m not sure. Look.” His finger traced the printout. “It says you can use potassium per … man…” He stumbled over the syllables, then suddenly sounded it out. “Permanganate. Potassium permanganate can be used the same way. What about that?”
“That I can do,” Destiny said. “Mr. Mackie trusts me. The rest is just glass and aluminum foil.”
For a time none of them spoke, perhaps seeing through the stillness of the night into the enormity of their proposed actions.
“Are you sure you want to do this? Some things you can’t take back,” she said soberly. “Not ever.”
She looked at Patrick, normally the sanest of them, and saw that his face, in the cold overhead light, seemed strained and ashen. “And some things you can’t ever get back,” he said. “Like my dad.”
No other answer was needed.
43
THURSDAY, JUNE 14
Mr. Mackie didn’t look at all like the infamous balloon-headed counselor in the South Park cartoon show. He was a small, compact sort who doubled as the high school wrestling coach, and had a Master’s in Chemistry. He was popular with the kids, at least partially for the speed and facility with which he broke up fights between the largest football players. In fact, half the fun of watching a fight develop was wondering just how fast Mr. Mackie would charge pitbull-fearless into the scene, and throw both offenders for a loop.
But at the moment, he was just teaching the Introductory Chemistry class. Mackie peered out from behind his wire-rimmed glasses as he walked the aisles, watching the kids complete their assignments.
Today’s work was relatively simple, the production of some basic precipitates, and calculations designed to predict the color of a particular reaction.
He seemed generally satisfied with the results of the day’s work, and finally clapped his hands. “All right, class,” he said, “that’s it for the day. We have a minute before lunch. Any questions?”
Destiny raised her hand.
“Yes, Destiny?”
“I’d like to get some extra credit—maybe clean up during lunch?”
The other kids groaned. One made a rude smooching sound against his closed fist.
Mackie seemed a bit put off, but then shrugged. He was unaccustomed to the frequency with which Destiny and a few of her friends volunteered for extra work, but it was a relief.
“Well, I suppose—” The bell rang, cutting him short. He looked up at the clock, as though surprised to see the time. “Remember your homework.…” he said, but the words were drowned in the general rush for the door.
Destiny placed her books in a neat pile, and then began to clean up her immediate area, moving on to sweeping the floor and wiping the counters clean. Mr. Mackie read for about ten minutes, then stretched and looked up. “Listen, Destiny?”
Destiny answered cheerfully. “Yes?”
He stood. “I’m going to the cafeteria for a few minutes. You finish up here, will you?”
She twinkled. “You bet.”
Mr. Mackie puttered about and then left the room.
Destiny waited a minute, then locked the door behind him. She opened the window. Patrick and Sherman climbed in.
Without saying a word, they began rummaging in cupboards and cabinets and the main desk, ultimately yielding nothing.
“No key!” Patrick called.
Destiny jingled her finger. On the end of it was a key ring.
She grinned at them. “It’s great to be a lab rat.”
“Bring on the cheese.”
* * *
Sherman held a flask of something that resembled water, but burned the nose unless held at arm’s length. He poured the fluid carefully into a second bottle held by Patrick.
A single drop went awry, spattering against Patrick’s wrist. He cursed, and his hand trembled, but he didn’t drop the bottle. Only after it was set safely on the counter did he jerk his hand away. “Ow! Damn, damn! Damn!”
“Oh, shit, man, I’m sorry!” Shermie yelled it, scrambling to turn on the faucet. They ran water on his wrist for two minutes, then Destiny poured half a box of baking soda on the wound. Patrick looked at her, eyes bleak but watering.
“Patrick,” she said softly.
His voice was thick in his throat. “Later.”
“Got the permanganate?”
Destiny nodded. Patrick had his tears under control. The acid burn was a raw, discolored spot on his wrist. It could have been far worse. Patrick seemed to have dammed the pain up somewhere inside him. “Destiny,” he said. “Thank you.”
Impulsively, he kissed her cheek. Her eyes widened but there was no time for reaction as Patrick and Shermie scrambled back out the window.
The boys landed heavily on the far side, scanning for witnesses like the conspirators they were, then moved off into deeper shadow behind a row of azaleas. Patrick groaned as his wrist brushed against the side of the building. “How’s that arm?” Shermie asked.
“All right,” he said. “Just a drop. Just a drop.” He looked his friend carefully in the eye. “Maybe this should hurt, Shermie. Maybe pain is the only thing that’s really real.”
“You scare me when you talk like that,” Shermie said.
“You should be scared, Shermie. We should all be scared.”
44
At four o’clock that afternoon the kids headed up to Rev. Dr. Darling’s five-bedroom house off Old Mill Road up in the hills east of the I-5. Carrying their various packages, the kids took their bicycles up Mill Road through about two and a half miles of winding blacktop lined with small package stores, rural schools, and a single fire company.
When they reached the Reverend’s green mailbox they walked their bicycles up the driveway to the top, past the Cadillac with the Jesus is Love bumper sticker. The Darlings had an acre of fenced yard. A black-dappled horse stood looking at them with what Patrick felt was a mournful expression, tail swishing slowly back and forth.
Frankie’s mother was in the living room, performing some light housekeeping duties with an air of focused distraction, as if part of her was very far away. “Hi, Mom,” Frankie said glumly. Her lips twitched up in greeting, whatever slight pleasure she might have taken in his arrival vanishing from her face when she saw Destiny. Mrs. Darling nodded without speaking, and continued to shuffle magazines.
The living room’s wide picture window looked out on the valley below. It was graced with a fireplace large enough to roast a whole hog, and two couches in shades of brown and black. That earth-toned color scheme do
minated through the room: drapes, rugs, chairs, even the abstract print hanging on the wall.
The only break in the monotony was the mantel above the fireplace. There were six pictures of Frankie’s deceased older brother Robbie: Robbie running track, Robbie hitting the long ball, Robbie in a swim meet, his long, smoothly muscled limbs cleaving the water like a young Poseidon.
From where Patrick stood he could see down the hall toward the bedrooms, and glimpsed the corner of a tall redwood trophy case. It too was filled with Robbie relics: trophies, photos, scrapbooks.
Nowhere within easy sight was there any evidence that Frankie lived here at all.
At the back of the hall was Dr. Darling’s study. A thin strip of light under the door suggested he was in there working, as did the Cadillac in the driveway.
Undeveloped woods stretched out behind the house. Once upon a time Reverend Darling had plans to build a guest house, and had already poured the concrete pad when his elder son died. The slab was stained by weather, wet leaves and random animal droppings. No one had been up there for months, but Patrick had always thought it could be converted into a gazebo. Instead it stood as a monument to lost love, and Frankie’s failure to convince his parents that they had another son to raise.
Shermie, Destiny, Patrick, and Frankie spent the first few minutes setting up, getting ready, preparing compounds, hauling water up the hill. All the time Frankie’s attention split between the task at hand and glances back downhill at the house. No one stirred, no one paid any attention. Patrick had a sense that in a wistful way, Frankie wished that he would get caught. Anything was better than believing his parents didn’t give the slightest damn.
Shermie produced a tube of hair oil. Squeezing out a finger-length, he mixed it in an empty tuna can with fluid Destiny had obtained at the sporting goods store. Setting the tin cautiously in the middle of the concrete pad, they stepped back, watching Patrick’s pocket watch, waiting. Ten minutes passed, and nothing happened.
Frankie slapped his forehead. “That’s not working. Maybe the wrong oxidizer?” He picked up the tin cup and dunked it into a pail of water.
“Let’s try this again,” Patrick said. They were all much too nervous, and in a situation like that people make stupid mistakes, silly mistakes, the kinds of errors that get people killed. Next time they consulted the written instructions and mixed more carefully, poured it all into the metal cup and waited.
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