I laugh uncomfortably. “I didn’t rat to your mom about what really happened to her blender in fourth grade, I’m not going to rat now.”
“You’ve got nothing to rat about.”
“Right. But if I did. I wouldn’t.”
He nods. “Okay, then.”
“I’m gonna go.”
“See ya,” he says, turning his back on me to fasten the feed bin. He doesn’t turn to watch me leave.
Eight
“Is this my niece?”
My aunt Ruby’s ability to call only when my mom’s in the shower or not home is starting to border on annoying. There’s only so much of her weird conversation skills that I can take.
“Yep, it’s me,” I say, trying not to groan out loud. I just got home from school, and all I want is a giant bowl of cereal, preferably something artificially flavored. I want to call Pilar too. Even though I see her all the time, it’s always with other people. We haven’t hung out alone together in weeks. Cate and I, though, have our morning rides to school, and more and more afternoons hanging out at my house.
“What are you doing, child?” Aunt Ruby asks, and all of a sudden I feel like a little kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“Um, nothing,” I answer. “Sitting on my couch. I just got home from school.”
“How’s the weather out there?”
“Still raining,” I answer. I tap my fingers against my knees. “Yep, still raining.”
“I thought it was supposed to snow on that mountain of yours?”
“It is. It’s just late this year. Auntie, I have to go,” I say. My stomach rumbles in agreement.
“Okay, darling, you go, then. Tell your mama I called.”
“Okay. Bye, Auntie.”
The phone rings again as soon as I hang up. It’s Pilar.
“Are you watching this?” she asks with an almost hollow voice.
“What?”
“Turn on the TV.”
It’s a press conference. Sheriff Dean is standing next to the sheriff from Salvation, who is leaning into a microphone podium, answering a question. Behind them are Deputy Pesquera and a bunch of other cops that I don’t recognize.
“The metal fibers seem to be a match to the ones found eleven years ago on Pine Mountain, excuse me, Paradise Mountain.”
The television camera is filming from the back of the room, showing five full rows of reporters with notebooks and tape recorders.
“Do you know what the metal shavings are from?” a woman in the front asks, holding out her tape recorder for the answer.
The Salvation sheriff looks to Sheriff Dean, who steps up to the microphone. “We believe they are from a machine shop of some kind, one that manufactures finely detailed objects made from light metals.”
“Like what?” the woman asks. “What sort of finely detailed objects?”
“We don’t know,” Sheriff Dean says, stepping away from the microphone.
“Can you believe this?” Pilar asks. “I don’t believe this is happening. We were just talking about this!”
“I know,” I say. “I can’t believe it.”
“The Drifter could be on the mountain right now!”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know!” Pilar snaps. “Say something real, Dylan. I’m freaking out over here. Say something real.”
“I doubt he’s up here,” I say. “Too much heat.”
She laughs. “Too much heat. I said real, not crime-drama.”
“Well, it’s true,” I say, muting the TV. “There’s no way that guy is ever coming back up here.”
“You really think that?” she asks. “That he won’t come back?”
“Sure I do,” I say. The call-waiting tone is actually a relief to hear. “Pilar, that might be my mom. Hold on.”
“Okay, but come back and talk to me. Don’t hang up.”
When I switch over to the other line, it’s Ben’s mom, Mrs. Abbott.
“Dylan, is your mom home yet?”
“Nope, she had a late meeting. She said she’d be home around eight.”
“Oh. Are you watching the news?”
“I just turned it on.”
“I just … I hate the idea of you up there by yourself. I’m sending Benji up to get you and you’ll eat here with us and the twin tornadoes. How’s that sound?”
“That actually sounds really, really nice,” I say, running my hands over my arms, trying to calm the goose bumps that seem to be rippling over my entire body. “Can you hold on a minute?”
I switch back over to Pilar.
“Professor, I’m going down to the Abbotts’ until my mom gets home. You’re coming too, okay? You and Grace. I’ll get his mom to come pick you up.”
“Thanks, Professor,” she says, and then she’s quiet for a second. “Really, thank you. But my mom and dad are pulling in now, so I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Ben’s coming over to walk me down to his house.”
Pilar snorts. “Your knight in flannel armor. Okay, I have to go unbarricade the door so my mom and dad can get in the house. Call me tonight, okay?”
“Okay. I love you, Professor.”
“Love you too. Be careful.”
I switch back over to Mrs. Abbott and tell her I’m ready to go.
“Great. Ben’ll be up in a few minutes. Keep the doors locked till he gets there, and wear your boots, the rain’s starting up again.”
“Okay, I will.”
My cell phone rings. It’s Cate. I don’t pick up, and I hold my breath till it stops ringing. Already I’m dreading seeing her tomorrow morning, knowing she’ll be hopping from foot to foot like a little kid, asking in her breathless voice if I knew about those metal shavings, and if I did, why didn’t I tell her?
I leave my mom a message on her cell phone and a note on the kitchen table, and then wait until the doorbell rings. When I get to the door, I look out the window but don’t see anybody in the wet darkness outside. My stomach flip-flops. I turn on the porch light and press my forehead against the window.
“Jesus!” I yell when Ben stands up from tying his shoe, appearing suddenly in the window.
“Dude, are you coming or not?” Ben says through the door.
I go outside, locking the door behind me. “You scared the crap out of me,” I say.
“Sorry. You okay? My mom said you were kind of freaked out.” We circle around to the front of the house and start down the trail.
“I’m all right. Just sort of … stunned, you know?”
He nods. “It’s messed up.”
“You got that right.”
We walk in silence for a while, our shoes slushing through the wet grass.
“The boys set you a place at the table already,” he says. “But I’d avoid using the butter knife they gave you.”
I laugh. “I’m not going to ask.”
“Good, because they swore me to secrecy. Is that snow?” he asks, stopping and looking up at the cloudy blue-black sky. I do the same, and scream louder than any of us expected when JJ and Tye jump out of the dark woods in front of us. I actually fall over backward and kick out my legs, a move that the boys, including Ben, imitate for their mom as soon as we get inside their farm-house.
“I’d tell you their torture means they love you,” she tells me, taking my coat, “but I think it might just mean they’re evil.” She pulls me into a hug and whispers into my ear, “Don’t use the fork they gave you.”
My mom comes in as we’re finishing dinner. JJ and Tye’s disappointment at the fact that I wasn’t using any of the silverware they set out especially for me totally disappears when I teach them how to eat spaghetti without a fork, using only their fingers and slices of bread.
“Did any of that get in your mouth?” my mom asks, laughing at my spaghetti-covered face.
“Dylan, come play Fart Breath!” JJ says, grabbing my hand and pulling as hard as he can.
“Yeah,” Tyler says. “You have to close your
eyes and guess if somebody’s breathing on you or if they’re—”
“I get it, I get it.” I laugh. “How about I read you a bedtime story instead?”
They answer with an earsplitting “Yes!”
Mrs. Abbott sends them upstairs to change into their pj’s and brush their teeth, and I go into the downstairs bathroom to wash the spaghetti off my face. When I come out, my mom and Mrs. Abbott are sitting next to each other at the kitchen table, both of them with wet eyes.
“Ben’s gone on up to help you,” Mrs. Abbott says.
“Okay,” I say, hesitating by my mom’s chair.
“We’re okay, darling,” she says. “We just need to do some talking.”
“About the Drifter?” I wonder if, in my own head, my voice will ever sound older than five years old when I say his name.
“Go on up,” my mom says. “We’ll talk when we get home.”
But we don’t actually talk when we get home. Mom says she’s tired, asks if I’m all right, but she’s already closing the bathroom door behind her before I can answer.
“Scoot over,” I whisper to her later that night, nudging her with my knee until she makes room for me under the quilt on her bed. I just can’t take a visit to the desert tonight.
She takes one of the pillows from under her head and pushes it toward me. “Your feet are freezing!”
“Aunty Ruby called,” I whisper.
“When?”
“Tonight, before I went over to Ben’s.”
Mom yawns. “What’d she say?”
“I don’t know. Why’s she so weird, Mom?”
“She’s not weird, honey. She’s just Ruby.”
“You don’t think she’s a little strange?”
Mom sighs. “I know, darling, I know,” she says, reaching out to try to pat my shoulder but poking me in the nose instead. For some reason this makes me laugh really hard, which makes my mom laugh really hard, and we don’t fall asleep for a long, long while.
Cate barely waits for me to close my front door the next morning before she asks, “Did you know about those metal shavings they found?”
“Is that your question of the day?” I ask darkly. I don’t feel like doing this with her today. I want my secret back; I want it to be my own again.
“Um, I guess. Yeah. Did you know?”
I don’t answer her till we’re standing at the end of the driveway. “Yeah, I knew.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“But we’re supposed to be friends. We’re supposed to tell each other everything!”
“But why, Cate? Why do you want to know about this stuff? It’s awful, and I don’t know why you can’t just let me forget about it!”
“Because,” she says, “I just want to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“You.”
“Cate.” I’m almost begging. “Don’t you see? Everything is going to change now. He’s back. Maybe not here, but he’s close. And this whole mountain is going to freak out, just like last time. You don’t know what it was like, everybody suspecting everybody else, waiting for an announcement that some other kid’s been taken,”
“But what if you could stop him?” she asks. “What if you could figure out who he was?”
“How am I going to do that, Cate? I’ve never seen him. I don’t see him!” I’m crying now, thinking about all those nights in the desert, all those nights spent trying to turn around and see who’s behind me. I know now that it’s him, and that no matter how hard I try, I can’t see who he is.
“Okay,” she says, patting my arm. “It’s okay.”
“No, Cate,” I say, pulling out of her reach. “It’s not okay. Everything’s going to change now. Everything.”
Nine
When we get to school, the Drifter is all anyone can talk about. There’s this sort of giddy fear that’s overtaken everyone, their conversations sounding less like they’re discussing a serial killer and more like they’re discussing the prom. Cate heads for her locker at the other end of the hall, and I find Thea sitting on the floor, next to my locker, her head tipped forward as she bites her nails.
One night a few years ago, when we were maybe twelve, Thea showed up on our front porch. It was early spring, still cold enough for me to be wrapped in a blanket in front of the woodstove, drying out from the heavy cold rain that had started on my walk home from the Abbotts’ barn. My mom was the one to answer the door when Thea knocked. I remember the feeling of standing up, still wrapped in the blanket, and taking a few steps so that I could see who my mom was talking to. I stopped when I saw Thea, soaked and shivering, haloed by our front porch light, her arms crossed tightly across her chest, the tendrils of her then long hair plastered against her face. I was afraid. Not of Thea, but of the chaos she brought to our doorstep. I was afraid it would rip out the anchor that held my mom’s and my life in place, the anchor of having a schedule, a way of doing things that became as much a shelter to me as our house did. We had closed ranks after my dad left, managed to clumsily seal the rupture of his leaving with stitches made from always having chicken on Wednesday nights and cleaning our rooms on Saturday mornings. I spent the next hour sitting on our couch, staring at Thea’s back where she sat wrapped in my blanket, in front of the woodstove. Thea slept over that night, ate our Wednesday chicken, and helped my mom with the dishes. She slept on the air mattress in my room, wishing me a good night but saying nothing else. She took the bus to school with me the next morning, and we never talked about it again.
“MayBe’s late,” Thea says, not looking up from her nails.
“Pilar, too,” I answer, sitting down next to her.
“You need another haircut,” Thea says, pulling my head toward her, looking closely at my scalp, and then pushing me away. “You should let me shave it this time.”
“Maybe for summer. Too cold now.”
Thea shrugs and goes back to her nails. “Whatever.”
“Seriously,” I say, grabbing her hand before she can peel off what’s left of her nails. “Summertime we’ll shave it.”
A cluster of first-year girls passes by us, a confused knot of shoulders and elbows pressed together, hurrying down the hall. One of them declares in a hushed voice, “The older kids call him the Drifter.”
“God, it’s like hearing people talk about a movie,” Thea says after they pass. “Like it’s not even really happening.”
“It’s not, really,” I answer. “I mean, it’s not happening to them. Not the way it is to us.”
“You’re right. Lucky bastards.”
“Seriously lucky,” I agree.
“I’m glad you were here this morning,” she says, getting up and offering me her bit-down hand. I take it, and let her pull me up.
“Me too.”
Cate shows up at my locker as the homeroom bell rings. A moment later Pilar and MayBe come hurrying down the hall with a crowd of kids from their bus route.
“Our stupid bus was late,” Pilar says.
“Superlate,” MayBe agrees.
“Are you okay?” All of us, except for Cate, ask it at the same time. Cate asks the question a moment after, rushing out her words so they sound like an overanxious echo.
Pilar answers for everyone, “I’m freaking out.”
We all agree. “Me too.”
“I mean, he’s back, right?” MayBe asks. “That’s basically what Sheriff Dean was saying on the news last night … the Drifter’s back.”
We hear Frank before we see him, his heavy footfalls running toward us and making us jump. He grabs Thea around the waist and spins her. “Drifter, Drifter’s gonna gettcha!”
“Not funny!” Thea says, shoving Frank away, just in time for Mr. Mueller to step angrily into the hall and warble, “Ladies and gentlemen! Do not make me give you detention!”
We file into homeroom, followed by Ben and Cray.
Mr. Mueller waits until we’re seated. “Due to the … cir
cumstances, we are having extended homeroom this morning to ensure that roll call is properly reported by each homeroom. Please raise your hand and say ‘here’ when I call your name.”
After roll call Mr. Mueller picks up the classroom phone and calls down to the office. He tells us to work quietly at our desks until the bell rings.
“Pesquera better hope she catches the Drifter before we do,” Frank whispers as soon as Mr. Mueller opens a book at his desk. What Frank says works as some kind of cue, and in a moment we have all turned our chairs to face one another, a crooked and broken circle. Cate doesn’t turn her chair at first. She bites her lower lip and flips through a notebook. After a moment, though, she shifts in her chair so she is facing us.
I know what we are about to do, and I have the same jumpy feeling in my stomach I got before the first time we all played spin the bottle in Ben’s barn, a squishy feeling of excitement and dread. We are about to tell the story.
“Why? What are you going to do?” Thea asks, spitting a nail in Frank’s general direction.
“Kill him,” Frank says, matter-of-factly. “Slowly.”
“Mountain justice,” Ben says, and Frank nods.
“Idiots,” Pilar says.
“What? You don’t think that guy deserves to have his heart ripped out through his …,” Frank says.
“Oh, please,” Thea snaps. “You guys want to be old mountain, right? Live up there in the woods crapping in an outhouse and living off chipmunks and wildflowers? You want to bash his head in with an old mountain rock?”
“You said it, babe,” Frank says, “not me.”
“I’m sorry,” Cate says, speaking for the first time, “but what’s ‘old mountain’?”
I’m the only one to look at Cate. Everyone else completely ignores her. They ignore her, but wait for me to answer. Like she’s my responsibility. She’s the outsider that I brought inside.
“It just means the logging families that lived up here before our parents,” I say. “They all live way up-mountain now. You see them sometimes, in the village, buying supplies or whatever.”
“Oh,” Cate says.
“Old mountain’ says we take care of our own,” Ben says, jutting out his chin.
“’We’?” I say. “Last time I checked, Ben, you had indoor plumbing and all your teeth.”
Sight Page 12
