Blood on My Hands

by Todd Strasser

  “I wish I could be like that,” Jodie said with a wistful sigh.

  “Like what?” I asked uncertainly.

  “Just not having to worry,” she said. “I mean, about the future.”

  I was about to argue that I did have to worry about the future, but then I caught myself. She was right. I wasn’t that worried about the future. I was too caught up in the present—busy thinking about Slade’s recent announcement that he’d signed up for the Army National Guard and would leave on May 21 for three months of training, and wondering whether my mother could cope with taking care of my father, and whether there was still a way to appeal the judge’s decision that had put my brother in prison for eight to fifteen years.

  “You know, maybe if you were with the right kind of guy …,” Katherine said, then pretended to catch herself. “I mean, maybe if you were with a different kind of guy … Someone more goal oriented.”

  “Slade is goal oriented,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” Katherine said, dabbing some white cream filling off her lip with a napkin. “Construction.”

  “Drywall,” I said. “It’s what’s in most houses and buildings unless they’re really old. Slade and his dad install it.”

  “Manual labor,” Katherine said with a snarky and superior little smile. It was one of those moments when another girl might have backed down and pretended to ignore the insult. But I resented the insinuation.

  “It’s honest work,” I said, jutting my chin forward.

  Katherine’s eyes sharpened, and she leaned toward me, as if accepting the challenge. “No one said it wasn’t.”

  For a moment we stared at each other as if it were a contest. Katherine was right. No one had said that what Slade and his father did wasn’t honest work, but she’d made it obvious that she thought it was the sort of honest work only a moron would do.

  “I’m just curious,” I said. “What does your father do?”

  A pall swept over our table. Zelda stared down at her caramelmeringue cupcake, and Jodie suddenly seemed fascinated by the pedestrians passing. Katherine gazed at me, appearing unruffled, although I thought I detected a tic under her left eye.

  “He’s”—she hesitated, then continued—“between jobs.”

  I was just about to ask her how long her father had been unemployed when Zelda suddenly said, “Katherine’s family is in real estate.”

  There was nothing wrong with being unemployed. It happened to lots of people. But it certainly didn’t put Katherine in a position from which she could look down on people who were at least doing something, even if it did involve—God forbid—manual labor.

  Chapter 7

  Sunday 1:05 A.M.

  MOM HAS GIVEN up trying to reach me. Slade either hasn’t gotten my messages or has decided to ignore them. So now what? I can’t hide in this playhouse forever. What am I going to do? How am I going to fight this? There is no way I’m going to turn myself in, like Mom suggested. I saw what almost happened to my brother thanks to an inexperienced public defender. You may be innocent until proven guilty, but sometimes you’re guilty in people’s minds long before you set foot in a courtroom.

  And I will not allow that to happen to me, or to my mother, or to what little is left of our family.

  The phone vibrates. I flip it open and look at the number. It’s Slade! My heart leaps.

  “Where are you?” he asks.

  Oh my God! How many nights have I cried myself to sleep, yearning to hear his voice? I try to answer his question, but what comes out is a choked gurgle followed by sobs as I’m overwhelmed by a flood of feelings.

  “Cal?” Slade says.

  “I … I … Just give me a minute.” I try to catch my breath and calm myself. I’m happy and sad and scared and stressed. “Just don’t hang up. I have to talk to you. Don’t go away.”

  “I won’t.”

  I have to focus, get ahold of myself, stop trembling, breathe steadily. Finally I feel like I can speak again. “Thank you for calling me back. I know you didn’t have to. You probably didn’t even want to. I’m so sorry for what I did, Slade. You don’t know how many times I wanted to tell you. And now you probably never want to see me again.”

  “No, that’s not true,” he says, but his voice is clenched like a fist.

  Still, that’s all it takes for my filter to fall away and allow me to blurt, “I still love you.”

  First there’s silence. Then he says, “Don’t say that, Cal.”

  It would have been better if I hadn’t told him so soon, but now it’s too late. There’s no backing away. “Slade, I want to explain why I broke up with you. It was such a stupid, idiotic reason, and I’ve regretted it every second since. But I don’t have time now. Because … you won’t believe what happened tonight. Slade, I need to talk to you. I need your help. I … I—” When I think about the enormity of the task I’m faced with, tears start to bubble up and the shaking returns.

  “Okay, stay calm,” he says. “Take a breath and tell me where you are.”

  I do what he says and feel the cool air fill my lungs before I exhale. “Up in the Glen. In someone’s yard. In a kids’ playhouse.”

  “What street?”

  “I don’t know. The first one on the right when you drive in. A couple of houses down. I’m so sorry, Slade. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. I just wish it didn’t have to be like this. Please, believe me.”

  “Cal, I can’t—” he begins, his voice suddenly anguished. I hear something bang in the background; then he curses under his breath.

  “What is it, Slade?”

  He ignores the question. “I’m coming. Just promise you won’t go anywhere, okay? Just be there when I get there.”

  A surge of grateful relief floods through me. “I will, I promise. Thank you so much.”

  We met at a football game when I was in eighth grade. I’d never been to a high-school game before, and my friends and I thought it would be daring and exciting to sit in the stands with the older kids.

  At one point my best friend, Jeanie, and I decided to go get something to drink. Neither she nor I was a big football fan, and thus far, we’d been underwhelmed by what we’d seen. The snack bar was across the field and Jeanie suggested we cut across rather than walk all the way around.

  “I don’t think we should,” I said.

  “Oh, come on, don’t be a wanker,” she said, using one of her funny British words. “They’re all the way down at the other end. Everyone’s looking that way. They probably wouldn’t even notice us.”

  I agreed reluctantly, but no sooner did we set foot on the field than a blond guy standing with some people near an EMS truck waved and shouted at us: “Hey! Get off the field!” While I hesitated, Jeanie, who had been experimenting lately with bold rebelliousness, said to ignore him and keep going. Meanwhile, the guy started jogging toward us, still waving his arms.

  “Hey! You can’t just walk on the field!” he called.

  “Yes, we can,” Jeanie called back. “They’re all down the other way.”

  “One loose ball and they could be on top of you in an instant,” he yelled.

  I started to jog off the field. Jeanie made a big show of rolling her eyes and then began strolling slowly, clearly letting him know that she was going to take her time. Just then a loud roar came from the crowd and we turned to see a horde of brutes in helmets and jerseys stampeding toward us. The one in the lead had the ball cradled in his arms.

  In a flash, Jeanie and I were running for our lives. We’d just gotten off the field when the roar turned to cheers and the ball carrier crossed the goal line not ten feet behind us.

  “See?” The blond guy chuckled and grinned. He had nice teeth and a thin but athletic build. “What are you, like fifth graders or something?”

  Jeanie was medium-size and slender. But I knew that the reason he’d asked was that I was so small. “Beg your pardon,” Jeanie huffed with annoyance, and pointed at the brick high-school building. “We’ll be here next
year.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The blond guy looked surprised, and I couldn’t help noticing that his gaze was mostly on me. “That really true?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, Shrimp, see you next year.”

  I might have minded being called shrimp if I hadn’t been so used to it. Jeanie and I got our drinks at the snack bar, and to be honest, I didn’t give any more thought to the blond guy, who was obviously older and no doubt dated older girls.

  But later, after the game, my friends and I passed the EMS truck, and there he was. Our eyes met and I had the strangest feeling that he’d been waiting for me.

  “Enjoy the game?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I answered truthfully. Our eyes stayed on each other.

  “Hey,” he said, “you guys want to see what the inside of an EMS truck looks like?”

  My girlfriends and I shared curious looks. None of us cared about the truck, but we were all interested in attractive older boys, especially the ones who paid attention to us. The blond guy opened the back of the truck and pointed out the stretcher and medical kits and oxygen tanks.

  “What’s the oxygen for?” I asked.

  He seemed glad that I’d asked. “Smoke inhalation,” he said. “For people in fires. Firefighters, too. They get overcome by smoke.”

  “Have you ever saved anyone?” asked a girl named Mary.

  “I’m not old enough to be an EMT, but my dad’s the captain of the squad, so I get to hang around with them.”

  A moment later a man came around behind the truck. “Close it up, Slade, we’re leaving.”

  Slade said he had to go, and my friends and I headed home.

  “He likes you,” Jeanie said to me as soon as we were out of earshot.

  “How do you know?” I asked, even though inside I was thrilled, as this confirmed that it wasn’t all in my imagination. “You could tell,” she said.

  A few days later Slade was outside on the sidewalk after school. He asked if he could walk with me. Even though he was two years older, he had an easy, relaxed way that wasn’t threatening. He was there the next day and the next, and soon we were texting and calling and doing things together.

  A month later we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I was the only girl at Soundview Middle School who was seeing a sophomore from the high school. To me it didn’t matter how old Slade was, but a lot of my classmates were in awe.

  Chapter 8

  Sunday 1:13 A.M.

  MY PHONE VIBRATES. It’s Slade. I leave the playhouse and sprint across the yard and to the street. A pair of headlights is rolling slowly toward me. I grab the passenger-side door and get in. Slade starts to drive. I’m too overwhelmed to speak. Overwhelmed by what’s happened, overwhelmed by suddenly being close to him, by again sitting in this seat where I spent so much time when we used to drive to parties and keggers and secret hiding places.

  “Thank you so much,” I manage to croak.

  “It’s okay.” He’s got alcohol on his breath. It’s not surprising for a Saturday night, but should he be driving? I’m in no position to ask. The memory of Katherine’s body keeps coming back. Knowing her, I’d suspect that it was a ruse, a nasty trick. But it wasn’t. I felt for her pulse; I saw those wounds and all that blood. Unless it’s some kind of crazy dream I’ll wake up from at any moment, it’s real. I take a deep breath and force myself back to Slade.

  “I … I meant everything I said on the phone.”

  He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t look at me. Just drives.

  So I tell him what happened tonight. How I found Katherine.

  “You picked up the knife?” he asks, surprised.

  “It was dark and I wasn’t sure what it was, and the next thing I knew, they were taking pictures.…”

  “Of you holding the knife?”

  “Uh-huh.” And I tell him how I thought of Sebastian and what everyone was bound to think and how Dakota said to call the police and I got scared and ran away. “That’s when I called you. I didn’t know what else to do. What do you think I should do?”

  He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Go to the police, Cal. Tell them what happened.”

  “They’ll never believe me.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “After what happened with my brother? And with my fingerprints on the knife? Are you serious?” I feel myself getting worked up.

  “Calm down,” Slade says.

  I take a deep breath. We ride along in the dark, and thank God he’s driving straight and at a steady speed. I don’t know where we’re going, but I know why he wants me to turn myself in. Because he’s honest and forthright and does the things you’re supposed to do.

  “I won’t stand a chance. It’ll kill my mom. I can’t do that to her.”

  Ahead, a police car with flashing lights screeches around a corner and races toward us. Panic seizes me and I duck below the dashboard and watch the red and blue lights illuminate the inside of the pickup’s cab. The police car zooms past. Back in the seat, my pulse still racing, I tell Slade, “We can’t drive around like this. People know about us. It won’t be long before the police start looking for you.”

  He drums his fingers against the steering wheel. We go over a bump and the pickup rattles. I flinch, impatient and jumpy. This is a small suburban town and I feel like we’re a moving target. “Talk to me, Slade. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he says, “You said you wanted to explain why you broke up with me.”

  “I do, but not driving around like this. Make a left, okay?”

  “The old EMS building?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Just before the bridge over the train tracks, Slade turns into a driveway. The ride gets bumpy. The asphalt has broken up and there are ruts and potholes. Ahead is the old EMS building, empty now that emergency services has been transferred to the new town center.

  Slade drives to a far corner of the parking lot, where trees block the moonlight and it’s almost as dark as it was in the playhouse. I lower the window and hear the distant hum of traffic from the thruway. Across the lot the old EMS building is dark and empty. Sometimes Slade and I hung out there with the EMS crew, playing pool or just talking and passing the time.

  Cool night air drifts in through the open window. Slade is waiting for my story.

  “What about Alex Craft?” Katherine asked one day at lunch. It seemed like the more I resisted her suggestion that I could find a better boyfriend, the more intent she became on proving it.

  I rolled my eyes at her. A hush rippled through the other girls at the table. No one else dared roll her eyes at Katherine the Great. But while she might have beheaded another girl for it, Katherine tolerated it from me. Almost as if she knew that the more I needed her approval, the more I had to demonstrate my independence.

  “Brianna, go ask Alex if he’d like to go out with Callie,” Katherine said to one of the far-end-of-the-table girls.

  “Don’t,” I said, but Brianna was already rising. She was new at school that year, wore her long black hair in a ponytail, and was tall and athletic and played on the girls’ basketball team. But despite her size, she was quiet and unassuming, and sometimes you almost forgot she was there.

  As Brianna started across the cafeteria to the table where Alex sat with some friends, I pretended to be embarrassed. But to be honest, I was a little curious. Alex was a major cutie. Not that I would ever go out with him. Everyone knew my heart belonged to Slade. But just the same, all of us watched. All of us, that is, except Katherine. I glanced in her direction and discovered that she was watching me, and that she’d no doubt seen the curious, almost excited, anticipation on my face as I waited to see how Alex would respond. Now instead of faking embarrassment, I truly did feel my cheeks grow hot as I realized that the whole thing had nothing to do with how Alex might answer, and everything to do with how I felt about his being asked.

  Chapter 9

  Sunday 1:36 A.M.

 
IN THE PICKUP I’ve just finished telling Slade about how Katherine relentlessly worked on me, how it seemed to have become her personal mission to get me to break up with him, how foolishly dazzled I was by the life she was offering, how it got to the point where I felt like I had to choose between her and him. And Katherine was there every day, while he was far away.

  “It was just a sick game to her, Slade. Seeing if she could get people to do whatever she wanted them to. And I was scared. I was afraid you’d get called up to active duty and have to go away for years, and I didn’t know how I’d manage to wait that long. Or that you’d be horribly wounded and you’d come back … you know … different.”

  I expect him to get angry, but instead, he nods. “Every soldier’s worst nightmare.”

  “What is?”

  “That he’ll be on the other side of the world, fighting a war that makes no sense, risking his life for his country, and the girl he’s left behind won’t be there for him when he comes back.”

  I stare into the darkness. “I heard your unit was called up.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going.”

  “How?”

  He pats his right knee. “Separation without benefits.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A week ago the medical review board DQ’d me. I’m not in the Guard anymore.”

  Then he won’t be sent overseas! “That’s great! It’s fantastic!”

  He just nods, tilts his head back against the headrest, and closes his eyes. Despite everything that’s going on, all I’ve wanted to do since I got into the truck is kiss his cheek, feel his arms around me. I reach over and touch his shoulder.

  “Don’t!” Slade’s eyes burst open. His sudden gruffness startles me and I jerk back, surprised. “It’s too late!” he snaps. “I mean, you can’t just say you’re sorry!” He closes his eyes again and presses his forehead into his palm.