Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  Riss slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Her filmy top floated like a jellyfish across her breasts, almost dreamily. She eyed the news crew on the courthouse lawn.

  “You need to decide how you’re going to explain it, and you’ll want your family at your side,” she said.

  Her feline gaze was depthless and patient. “I called you yesterday during the siege. I wanted to help you get intelligence to the police. The news crew was waiting. You didn’t answer.”

  It seemed to Rory that a claw had begun to scrape down her spine. “The gunmen confiscated our phones.”

  From the backseat of the SUV came a childish voice. “Hot. Out.”

  In the backseat, three car seats were strapped in. Filled with a toddler each. One, a little boy, squirmed and pressed his fists against his eyes.

  Amber spoke over her shoulder. “We’ll get to Auntie Amber’s in a minute.” She smiled again at Rory. “You have to tell us all about it. I mean, every word. My dear Lord, it’s just too awful.”

  Rory tried not to look astonished. “The details might be too much for two-year-olds to hear.”

  Amber ran an ad hoc day-care center in her home, looking after half a dozen preschoolers. As far as Rory could discern, she parked the kids in front of her television while she watched soap operas on a second set in her kitchen. Amber wasn’t callous or neglectful. She simply moved slowly and found any expenditure of energy to be a massive effort of will.

  She laughed. It was a smoker’s laugh, a wet, chesty sound. “Been years since something this exciting happened around here.” She nodded at the toddlers. “I’m giving these little ones a taste of history.”

  One of the little ones squirmed, fighting against the sharp sun in his eyes. Another was asleep, a pacifier hanging precariously from her lips. The third looked hot, her cheeks flushed, her brown hair stuck to her forehead in damp curls.

  Amber patted Rory’s arm again. “You must have been terrified. Terrified.”

  “It was rough.”

  Riss leaned against the side of the Land Cruiser. She seemed annoyed to be chauffeuring her stepmother around Ransom River with a car full of day-care kids. And she looked overtly bored, as if hearing about the siege was a waste of her time. But her gaze cut across Rory’s chest. She didn’t like Rory getting Amber’s full attention.

  And Rory wondered at an envy so powerful, it caused her cousin to anger at the thought of remaining safe while others were threatened at gunpoint. As though Riss considered herself Cinderella, and Rory the evil stepsister who had kept her from attending the ball.

  Granted, Riss had gotten the short end of the stick when her father left town. She was nine when Lee Mackenzie—jack-of-all-trades, man who hated cages—took off to Mexico to work as a roughneck in the Gulf oilfields. He still hadn’t come back. Maybe, Rory thought, that was one reason Riss’s startling eyes either tracked or ignored you. Hard eyes, full of suspicion.

  The claw scratched deeper in Rory’s spine. The danger signs were there.

  Amber held on to Rory’s arm. “Did the terrorists threaten you? Did they torture anybody?” She patted her chest as though she had palpitations. “Did they do anything dirty to the women?”

  Rory said, “No. And I’ll let you get going before these kids lose it.”

  “I can barely stand to imagine it,” Amber said.

  The little girl with the dark curls lost control and began to cry. Amber patted Rory’s arm and released her. Over her shoulder she said, “Okay, Addie.”

  Riss stepped close. She licked her lips and stared at Rory’s feet. Her blue-black hair swung in front of her eyes. “You’re good with that deadpan face. When it’s my stepmom asking the questions. Not so good when somebody tougher confronts you.”

  Rory went cold. The little boy in the backseat wailed.

  Riss stared at the ground. “If you won’t accept any help or take my advice to talk to the media with me, maybe you shouldn’t talk to them at all. Things can go bad real quick.”

  She looked up at Rory through a waterfall of black hair.

  “This is not about you and me,” Rory said.

  Riss slowly tilted her head, as though Rory had said something absurd.

  Riss turned away and got back behind the wheel. Rory’s head pounded so hard she barely heard the car squeal away from the curb.

  22

  Rory stood on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, below sycamores and crimson maples that flickered in the cold sunlight. She felt exposed. She felt like the loose end of a rope that had come untied in a stiff wind and that was unraveling.

  She got out her phone and made a call that two hours earlier would have blown her mind.

  “Yeah,” Seth said.

  “Meet me at the corner of Main and Treacher. By the Dairy Queen,” she said.

  “You sound stressed.”

  She started walking. “Riss.”

  “Five minutes. I’m on my way.”

  It started when they were twelve. It didn’t start with Riss.

  When they were twelve, Seth had blond hair that fell to his eyes and wore T-shirts with skateboarding logos and a wallet on a dog chain that draped from his jeans pocket. When they were twelve, Rory had learned the hard way never to raise her hand in class. On spring days after school they would go to the river. Upstream of the storm drain, they’d climb the chain-link fence that was supposed to keep kids out. They’d catch tadpoles or skateboard down the concrete banks where the river had been paved over.

  The storm drain was three big culverts side by side that ran beneath an entire neighborhood. Eight-foot-diameter concrete pipes that opened like mouths from the side of a reinforced hillside. The winter had been dry, so dirt lay packed along the bottom, with bits of trash and lost things in it. Inside, it was black. The storm drain was a tunnel with no light at the end of it.

  One day Seth stood at the entrance and said, “Wonder where it comes out.”

  “A mile away,” Rory said. “Probably.”

  “Want to find out?”

  Her stomach went queasy. “I saw the news once. When it stormed for a week and the Los Angeles River flooded. And this teenager, he got swept in.”

  Her voice echoed against the walls of the culvert. Seth picked up a stick and poked at the dirt.

  “He was swept so fast, like he was surfing. He got pulled into a storm drain. It was three miles long and the water filled it up to the top. He came out half an hour later, drowned,” she said.

  Seth looked in the culvert and up at the sky. It was so blue they could see jets high up, like silver bullets. Telling her: no rain.

  He threw the stick aside and turned to her with a smile. A spooky one. “I brought a flashlight. And walkie-talkies.”

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  “I’ll go first.” He got out the walkie-talkies and gave her one. “If there’s any problem, I’ll call you.”

  He turned on the flashlight and walked into the culvert. The light tracked ahead of him. She pressed the button on the walkie-talkie.

  “Can you hear me?” Then, because she knew it from TV, she said, “Over.”

  The walkie-talkie fuzzed. “It’s dry. Nothing but dry.”

  “Come back,” she said.

  She stepped closer to the entrance. She couldn’t hear Seth’s footsteps. Then, from the walkie-talkie, he screamed.

  Her whole body turned electric. For a second she stood shocked to the spot. Then she pressed the walkie-talkie button and ran inside.

  “Seth. Seth.”

  He kept screaming.

  “I’m coming,” she said.

  The light faded to gray. The screaming stopped.

  “Seth, where are you?”

  She heard a whimper in her voice. Had he fallen into a pit? Did an animal get him? Or a person? A Freddy Krueger?

  “Seth.”

  From the darkness in front of her, the flashlight flipped on. It was aimed up at the ceiling, and it illuminated Seth’s face like a monster
movie.

  “Gotcha.”

  She jumped, hard. She came down shouting and punching. Swinging like a wild thing, fists pounding his arm. And he was laughing. Laughing so hard he had to grab his stomach.

  “Screw you, Seth.” Spit flew from her mouth. “You stupid ass-face. Butt-clown. You shit-barfing wiener.”

  He put up his hands to stop her punching him. “God, you should see yourself.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “I got you in here, didn’t I?”

  She lowered her hands but the fists wouldn’t uncurl.

  “Rory. Look. Nothing’s dangerous back here. It’s just a tunnel. We’re safe.”

  But she still couldn’t see the end. Couldn’t see light anywhere except from the flashlight. And all that showed was Seth’s face.

  He waited for her to calm down. “Want to keep going?”

  She considered kicking him in the nuts. “No. I don’t want to go any farther.”

  He waited a moment, mischief in his eyes, as though hoping he could get her to change her mind. Finally he shrugged.

  “Okay, cool.”

  They walked back toward the exit side by side. When they stepped into the sunlight they saw the group of kids outside. Three guys were at the top of the concrete bank leaning back against the fence. Standing in front of the storm drain, waiting for them, was her cousin Boone.

  Boone was fourteen and in eighth grade and never let younger kids forget it. He was already tall and sometimes he even shaved. And he never looked at you straight on. He might stand right in front of you, like a door, and keep you from walking around him, but he always looked at something off to one side, with a slitty-eyed look. And if you were the thing off to the side he was looking at, watch out.

  He was standing on Seth’s skateboard. “What do we got here?”

  Threads of cold water seemed to run under Rory’s skin. They were two miles from her house. Four miles from Seth’s.

  “What were you two doing in the culvert in the dark?” Boone said.

  “Nothing,” Rory said. “Get off Seth’s board.”

  “Frenching? Or did you get in her pants, Colder?”

  The cold threads crawled beneath Rory’s skin. “Shut up.”

  Boone gave a sideways look at his friends. “That’s pathetic, Colder. Could you find anything in there?”

  There was no good way around him. And Rory knew if she did get around him, there was always his stepsister. Riss didn’t have to be there in person to be behind him. Riss was sneaky and would find a way to get you later. The question was, how much later.

  Seth said, “Looking in your pants and finding nothing. I bet you’re used to doing that, Boone.”

  It was like a punctuation mark on the day. A sharpened pencil stuck directly into Boone’s face. Her cousin finally looked at them.

  Rory had seen dogs’ eyes when they were angry. Boone’s eyes looked like that.

  Boone was strong and when he got angry he just unloaded. It seemed to him that everything and everybody deserved it. Fail to keep him happy, and you got it. People, computers, even a toilet once, that he smashed with a hammer. He was going to beat the shit out of Seth.

  Seth didn’t wait for it. He threw himself at Boone and shoved him off balance.

  Boone tripped backward and stumbled off the skateboard and fell on his butt. “Shit.”

  Seth grabbed the board. “Rory, run.”

  She was already scrambling up the far concrete embankment. They heard Boone’s friends laughing. That was only going to make it worse.

  They reached the top of the embankment and got halfway up the chain-link fence, clattering and clanging, before Boone grabbed Seth by the back pocket of his jeans and ripped his hands loose. Seth dropped back to the ground.

  Rory got to the top of the fence, ready to swing over. Boone pulled Seth up, hauled back, and punched him.

  It wasn’t like in the movies. It was an unruly swing, just energy and anger. It spun Seth sideways. Rory’s legs turned to spaghetti. She hovered, tentatively balanced, halfway over the fence. Boone held on to Seth, yanked him around, and got ready for the shit-kickery.

  She grabbed the fence tight. “Boone.”

  He gave her one of the sideways looks. And she booted him as hard as she could in the head.

  His head snapped and his hands dropped. That was all the time Seth needed. Rory screamed, “Hurry!”

  They got across the fence and onto the frontage road, and that’s when Rory found out how fast and how far she could run. They didn’t stop for fifteen minutes. Her throat hurt and the light seemed like it was spinning. They ran through the side gate at Rory’s house and slammed it shut and bent over, hands on knees, panting.

  “You okay?” Seth said.

  She nodded. “You have a big red mark on the side of your face.”

  He touched his cheek and shrugged. He smiled. “He didn’t follow us.”

  She stood up straight. She had a stitch in her side but felt crazily great.

  And scared again. “He doesn’t have to.”

  23

  Seth picked her up beneath the giant soft-swirl ice cream cone of the Dairy Queen. Rory slammed the door of the truck and he pulled back into traffic.

  “What happened with Riss?” he said.

  “She threatened me. Vaguely. In her borderline aggressive way.”

  “With?”

  “Trouble. A media backlash if I don’t let her…” She rubbed her eyes. “Exposure. Humiliation.” She breathed. “Or maybe I’m just losing it.”

  “You’re not losing it.”

  She looked at him. “No. I’m not. What does she want? More of me.”

  It took twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours after Boone shit-punched Seth, and Rory left her cousin with a shoe print on his head.

  When the bell sprang the kids at East River Middle School, Rory loaded her backpack at her locker, surrounded by noise. The energy on a Friday afternoon was like helium balloons ascending, a thousand at once. The walk home was a mile through flat suburban streets. Rory’s dad was in the Sierras for the Forest Service and her mom wouldn’t be home from the high school until after five p.m. The day was sunny.

  Across from the campus was a lemon orchard, the trees dark green and heavy with fruit. A dirt path ran through the orchard, but that shortcut was reserved for the cool kids. The dirt path was where wicked magic changed the rules of school. Get fifty feet into the orchard and the vice principal couldn’t touch you.

  Rory never took the dirt path, though the thought thrilled and scared her. She would have been challenged before she walked three steps. Seth could take the path. He could let his jeans sag, let the dog chain drape from his pocket and his hair fall into his eyes, and get away with it. Seth moved between worlds. Even then.

  Boone always took the dirt path. Riss hardly ever did. She usually stayed after school for performing-arts rehearsals or drill-team practice. Amber would pick her up later.

  Rory took the sidewalk along Treacher Avenue at the edge of the orchard. She was a block from school when four girls walked out of the trees and surrounded her.

  Chelly Stasio said, “We know what you tried to do with Boone.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rory said.

  Britiny Glover stepped toward her. “It’s disgusting.”

  Linda Rich got behind her and grabbed her backpack. “You got your diary in here? You talk all about how Boone is your dream lover?”

  Rory spun and tried to shake Linda off, but the fourth girl, Crystal Glass, shoved her.

  She stumbled and they pushed her again, into the orchard.

  “You’re a perv,” Linda said.

  Rory knew she was in trouble, that if they maneuvered her deeper into the trees, she was toast on a stick. She didn’t want to be toast. She didn’t want to fight, because four against one was great odds, if you were the four. She didn’t want to run. Run, and she’d be known forever at school as a coward.

  The girls we
re Riss’s followers. They sat at her lunch table. They walked to class together. Rory had no doubt that Riss had put them up to this.

  Linda was the tallest and the loudest. She looked like some kind of sizzling firecracker. She simply walked forward and butted into Rory.

  “Your cousin. Your own cousin. Eww.”

  Rory pushed her. “Stop it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You got him to go into the storm drain,” Linda said. “You tricked him in there and then you pulled down your pants, you perv.”

  “That never happened. That’s a lie. Boone tried to steal Seth’s skateboard.”

  Linda pointed at her. “Blame Boone—you wuss. Look at you. You’re about to cry. Crybaby.”

  Rory’s face was burning. “It’s a lie, you dumbasses. And if you believe it, you’re idiots.” She thought, Well, that makes me deader than dead to the popular kids.

  Linda grabbed her backpack and wrestled it from her shoulders. Rory hung on to the strap. “Stop it.”

  The other girls tore it from her hands. Linda danced back, unzipping it. She threw out Rory’s math book and lunch box.

  “Don’t,” Rory said.

  Linda found her English notebook. She waved it in the air. “Eureka. The mother lode.”

  Rory reached for it. “Give it back.”

  “Ooh. This must be really good stuff.”

  Clutching the notebook, Linda turned and ran from the orchard. Chelly and Crystal ran after her. Linda laughed and said, “Let’s see her get an A in English class now.” Britiny took the backpack, flung it into the trees, and chased after them.

  For thirty seconds Rory stood breathing hard, needles of humiliation prickling her skin. Don’t cry.

  She stumbled through the orchard and picked up her math book. Found her lunch box. Kept going, looking for her backpack, and heard a girl call, “Rory?”

  She looked up sharply. On the sidewalk, Petra lay down her bike and ran into the orchard.

  “I can’t find my pack,” Rory said.

  Petra knew something had happened, but she said, “Let’s look.”