The Boomerang Effect

by Gordon Jack

  Heidi looked over at her float. “I can get my dad to do some recon,” she said, thinking aloud. “We’ve got some netting we can use to booby-trap the backyard.”

  “No land mines?” I said, again trying to lighten the mood.

  “I don’t think the situation calls for that,” Heidi said in total seriousness. “Yet.”

  “Okay,” I said, backing away. “Looks like you’ve got things covered here.”

  “Hey, Spence,” Heidi said, touching Spencer on the shoulder. “Since you’re here, wanna work on Ariel’s tail with me?”

  “I, uh . . .” For the first time since I met him, I saw Spencer struggle for an answer. The poor guy must be doing furious mental calculations trying to figure out how much time remained before his mother returned from her errands. Heidi’s hand on his shoulder probably wasn’t helping his concentration.

  “Spencer and I are going to a concert,” I said, to help the guy out.

  “You going to hear the youth symphony perform that Tchaikovsky piece?” Heidi said, bouncing from heel to toe.

  “Nah. We’re going to the Japandroids concert at the Fillmore. See ya!”

  Spencer opened his mouth to speak. Not trusting his ability to improvise, I hastily escorted him out the door and back to my car. Spencer was strangely quiet during the ride back. I figured he was trying to find a way to thank me, but when I parked the car, he left without saying a word. Most likely he was worried that his mother was scouring the stacks looking for him. I followed him inside in case he needed any help with her.

  I watched Spencer do a quick visual scan of the area and then walk into the boys’ bathroom. After waiting outside for a few minutes, I walked in to find out what was wrong. Glancing under the stall door, I saw his polished dress shoes furiously tapping the linoleum floor.

  “Spencer?” I said. “You okay?”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

  “Done what? Made you look cool?”

  “Lied to Heidi. It was unnecessary.”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “The story you told is not something I can continue. What do I say when Heidi asks me about the concert tomorrow?”

  “Tell her it was awesome. I’ve seen them before. I can give you details.”

  “I can’t invent things like that, Lawrence. You have put me in a very uncomfortable situation.”

  “Spencer, I’m sorry. I was only trying to help.”

  “I don’t know why you think you have to lie to have people like you.”

  “What? I don’t do that. It was just a story. You’re making way too big a deal about it.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone now.”

  “Seriously?” When he didn’t respond, I left. That’s what you get for trying to help people. It’s like what Spencer said earlier about the boomerang effect. You try to do something nice for people and all it does is bite you in the ass. Well, fuck it. If Spencer didn’t want to look cool in front of the girl he liked, he could sit and cry in that bathroom stall all day for all I cared.

  I drove home and ignored my phone alerts telling me there was a new message on our family website. All I could think of was that I wanted to get wasted. I texted Will and the two Nates, but none of them wrote back. They probably wanted nothing to do with me after I flipped out on them during our Chipotle run. The only way I’d be invited back into the fold was if I opened my house for a keg party, but I’d seen what happened to places when they were filled with a bunch of drunk teenagers and it wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t ready to make that kind of sacrifice to restore my popularity. Not yet.

  I went up to my room and took out the joint I had hidden in the origami shoebox in my closet. The rainbow zoo of animals and insects I had created over the years stared back at me like neglected pets. Maybe Spencer was right. Maybe I did lie to make people like me. My whole persona was like a wobbly house of cards that threatened to collapse at any moment. The first two beams of this foundation were created when I lied to Eddie in eighth grade about going to Hawaii. I didn’t want to look pathetic for being left behind by my parents for Dad’s “no kids allowed” fiftieth birthday party. Eddie always took these cool vacations with his family and I didn’t want him to think that my family was any different. But of course Eddie wanted to hear about the trip, which required making up a bunch of stories, and supporting them with photographic evidence, which required learning Photoshop. The harder part was keeping Eddie away from my parents, which meant never inviting him over to my house, which required a whole new set of lies to explain, until eventually it all got so complicated it just became easier to drop Eddie as a friend and take up smoking pot.

  At least pot let me forget about the unstable architecture of my personality, if only for a moment. Maybe that was why it was such a relief to hang out with Spencer, Eddie, and Audrey. They were already so weird, I didn’t feel the need to impress them. In the two evenings I had spent with Audrey, I told her things I hadn’t admitted to the guys I’d hung out with for the past two years.

  I dropped the joint back in the shoebox and dug my student directory from the depths of my desk drawer. I wrote down Zoe Cosmos’s address, then dialed Audrey’s phone number. A woman answered on the first ring. “Who is calling?” she asked.

  “My name’s Lawrence,” I said. “Is Audrey there?”

  “What is it you want with Audrey?” She sounded Russian. There was a hint of KGB in her interrogative style.

  I need her help to fight a demon, I wanted to say, but instead I claimed to need help with homework. The woman dropped the receiver onto what sounded like a hard Formica surface and clomped away.

  I heard Audrey pick up the phone a few minutes later. “I got it, Grandma!” she yelled. I waited for Grandma to hang up the phone but I didn’t hear any clicks. In fact, her heavy breathing on the other line was quite audible. “Grandma!” Audrey yelled again. “Hang up the phone!”

  Grandma refused to oblige so I started peppering Audrey with largely made-up questions about our U.S. History homework. Throughout our discussion I could hear Grandma’s Darth Vader rasps on the other end. Finally, Audrey hung up the phone on her end and stomped downstairs, where Grandma was probably seated at her listening station at the kitchen table. After some struggle, Audrey wrestled the receiver away from Granny. “Sorry about that,” she said, breathing heavily.

  “No problem. I just wanted to thank you for nailing Jerry with that apple,” I said. “You should really be playing softball with that arm.”

  “Would that make me more normal?” Audrey said in a barely audible voice.

  Ugh. This wasn’t starting off well. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I just wanted to thank you for rescuing me. Again.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  “Listen, are you free tonight?” I asked. “I could use your help with something.”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Meet me at Arroyo Park at seven. And come dressed for battle.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I waited for Audrey on a bench by the illuminated tennis courts. Two old dudes swatted a ball back and forth, a bit wobbly on their failing knees. I must have fallen into a kind of trance watching the ball move in its slow, plunking rhythm, because I didn’t hear Audrey right away.

  “Good evening, Lawrence.”

  I turned and saw her standing about ten feet back near a cluster of trees. She seemed reluctant to enter the glare of the overhead lights. I left the middle-aged dads with their terrible backhands and moved toward the Renaissance maiden waiting for me under the canopy of redwoods.

  Audrey, as usual, was beautifully made up with her tight corset, billowy dress, and lace-up boots. Her hair was pulled back with a headband and decorated with tiny daisies. In her left hand she held a sword that, in the glow of the nearby tennis court lights, looked almost real.

  “Where is your weapon?” she asked.

  I pointed to my forehead. “My weapon is intelligence.”
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  “Oh.” Audrey sighed. “I thought we would be sword fighting.”

  “No, we’re battling vampires.”

  I explained the situation as best I could in Shakespearian English, peppering my speech with many “thous” and “whatnots” and “forsooths.” Audrey looked confused.

  “Your speech lacks clarity,” Audrey said. “Am I to understand that we are protecting a mermaid from a bloodsucking hellion?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  “But Lawrence, surely these are figments of your overactive imagination. Such things do not exist in this world.”

  “Oh, they exist,” I said. “As sure as wizards and dragons.”

  She couldn’t argue with this logic. We walked back to my car and drove to Zoe Cosmos’s house.

  Zoe lived in a modest two-story house with a porch swing and a nicely manicured lawn bordered by daisies. Something my history teacher said about the banality of evil floated into my head as I parked the car across the street and turned off the engine.

  “Think Zoe is adopted?” I asked.

  Audrey shrugged.

  “Probably switched at birth by a Satanist nurse,” I went on. “I bet the Dark Lord wanted his daughter to grow up in a typical suburban home.”

  Audrey clearly wasn’t interested in talking about Zoe’s upbringing, so we sat in uncomfortable silence for what felt like hours. There was no visible movement, either in the house or outside. From the front window we could see the dim, flickering light of a television in some back room, but beyond that both the house and the street were quiet. “Maybe we already missed her,” I said. “Think we should drive to Heidi’s?”

  Audrey, all dressed for battle with no one to slay, looked at me with a bored and annoyed expression. “I would prefer if you just took me home.”

  “I need you, Audrey,” I said. “I can’t fight Zoe on my own.”

  “Methinks you have feelings for this girl and for some reason you brought me along to rub my face in your amorous quest.”

  “What? No! Gross! How could you think that?”

  “The border between love and hate is unmarked territory, Lawrence. I believe you are in no-man’s-land.”

  “No, I’m firmly planted on the side of hate, believe me.” Now it was my turn to be offended. “You must think I’m an incredible asshole to bring you along to help me score with Zoe Cosmos.”

  “It is my humble opinion that you do not know what you want.”

  This would have stung more if it hadn’t come from a girl living simultaneously in two different centuries.

  “I can see why you like her,” Audrey went on. “She is unafraid to present herself to the world, unlike me.”

  “She’s evil,” I said. “I like you, Audrey. Okay? I like spending time with you, even though I can’t understand what you say half the time. I like your bravery, your imagination, your independence. I especially like this lace-up thing you wear, and think it suits you much better than those bulky sweatshirts you’re always dressed in at school. If I’m going to face my death at the hands of the devil, then I want you by my side because I have confidence that you will help me, and even if you can’t, yours is the face I would like to see before I have the lifeblood sucked out of me.”

  I was prepared to go on, inspired as I was by the sweet and sad expression on Audrey’s face, but she leaned across the seat and stopped my lips moving with a kiss that tasted of maple syrup. “Did you have pancakes for dinner?” I asked, pulling away and staring at her face.

  She nodded.

  “I thought I was the only one who refused to pigeonhole pancakes as breakfast food.” I smiled, and then, to use a Renaissance phrase, I ravished her. We made out, maneuvering our bodies around seatbelt buckles and emergency parking brakes, not to mention Audrey’s sword, which kept jabbing me in the ribs.

  A passing car spotlit us with its high beams and we broke apart for a moment. I looked at Audrey’s dreamy expression in the soft light of the streetlamp and thought I’d never seen something so lovely. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Promise you won’t get mad?”

  “I make no such promise,” she said, straightening up. “Choose your words wisely, sir.”

  “Why do you dress the way you do at school? Your plain-Jane attire is, like, on purpose, right?”

  Audrey turned her head and stared out the window at the darkened suburban street. After a few minutes of silence, she turned to me and spoke in a soft voice. “In middle school, I had one friend. Chloe. We were as close as twin sisters. One day, a group of girls decided they didn’t like Chloe and tormented her until she transferred schools. Their foul play was heinous, but what made it worse was how random it was. The girls could have just as easily persecuted me, but giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel selected my friend for their abuse. After Chloe left, I decided that the safest way to survive was to become invisible. So that’s what I did.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Now it’s my turn to ask a question.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Why do you care so much about catching the Viking?”

  That was easy. “I don’t like people thinking I’m an asshole.”

  “But aren’t there easier ways to clear your name?”

  “I guess. Maybe I’m tired of people thinking I’m an idiot.”

  “You want to be the hero,” Audrey said, smiling. “You want people to like you.”

  I shrugged. “Is that so bad?”

  “It can be if the people you want to impress aren’t worthy.”

  “I happen to think there are more good people at our school than bad.”

  Audrey’s smile faded. “I’m afraid we disagree on this point.”

  As if on cue, Zoe walked out of her house.

  “There she is,” I whispered. Strangely, I didn’t feel any of the coldness I normally experience when Zoe is within a few city blocks of me. Audrey must act as some kind of shield of goodness, protecting me from Zoe’s dark arts. We watched our suspect glance up and down the block and then head off in the direction of the school.

  “Come on,” Audrey said, opening the door. “This may be our only chance.”

  I joined Audrey on the sidewalk, unsure if it was proper detective etiquette to trail our suspect holding hands. I felt like some gesture of appreciation for the makeout session was required, so I squeezed her elbow.

  We followed Zoe from a distance of about half a block. It was hard at times to see her, given that she was dressed all in black. At one point, she turned around and her pale face looked like it was floating in space. Both Audrey and I ducked behind a parked car and held our breath, hoping she hadn’t spotted us. When she started moving again, she walked slowly, like someone taking a stroll on the beach, or in Zoe’s case, the burning lake of hellfire.

  When she finally reached the block where Heidi lived, she slowed her pace even more and we had to hide behind a tree to avoid being seen.

  “I knew it,” I said when she finally stopped a few feet from the gate that led to the backyard of Heidi’s house. “She’s the one.”

  “Where’s the Viking head?” Audrey asked. “Why isn’t she disguising herself?”

  “She’s probably doing some preliminary scouting.”

  Zoe paused before entering Heidi’s backyard and looked around the bushes that bordered the side gate. When she reached for the gate’s handle, she must have triggered some motion sensor, because she was immediately illuminated by a beam coming from under the eave of Heidi’s house. Zoe quickly jumped back in the bushes and hid until the light switched off. When it did, she emerged slowly and seemed to take stock of the situation. A few minutes later, we saw her move over to the neighbor’s house, open the gate, and disappear behind the wooden door.

  “Let’s alert the family,” Audrey said. “She’s going to try to enter from the back.”

  “We need to catch her in the act,” I said. “I’m going to follow her.”

/>   “I’ll go to the other side of the house and block her exit,” Audrey said, and disappeared.

  Zoe had left the neighbor’s side gate slightly ajar, so it was easy to peer in and see if she was waiting for us. She wasn’t. The door opened up on a narrow corridor sandwiched between the neighbor’s house and the gate. I saw Zoe at the back, climbing up a tree with boughs that hung over into Heidi’s backyard. She was going to drop into Heidi’s yard from above and then do her dirty work. I guessed she wasn’t going to worry about disguising herself this time, maybe because entering and exiting Heidi’s house was more complicated than at the other houses she had broken into. She probably didn’t want anything impeding her escape plan.

  I waited for her to drop from the tree branch she clung to, but she just sat there. Maybe Heidi’s dad was doing recon in the backyard, but when I peeked through the slats of the wooden fence, I just saw the mess of a float where it had been earlier that day. No sign of Heidi’s dad. I checked my watch. 11:30 p.m.

  I sneaked a little closer, keeping close to the gate, trying to get a better look at what Zoe was up to. While balanced on the tree limb, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. For a brief second, the screen illuminated her face before she called someone and whispered something I couldn’t hear from my distance. A few seconds later, I saw the Viking’s head pop up from the other fence, the one that bordered the neighbor opposite us. The one Audrey was supposed to be guarding.

  “Zoe must be the advance lookout,” I muttered aloud. It made perfect sense. Even with Satan’s help, dismantling floats was a two-person job.

  I watched our Viking jump down into Heidi’s yard and cautiously approach the float. He was wearing a backpack and when he got up close to the structure, he unzipped it and pulled out a crowbar and what looked like wire cutters. He walked around the structure, probably trying to figure out how he could make this thing look any worse.

  I held off raising the alarm because I wanted Zoe busted. If the family caught the Viking now, she could scamper down the tree and escape into the night with me powerless, as usual, to stop her. No, I had worked too hard to let her off that easy. This devil was going down, and she was going down tonight.