Some Kind of Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “So…are you cryptically saying that you have been lying?” Izzy asked.

  Hans pointed to himself with both hands. “Not a kid anymore.”

  “Good point,” Izzy said. “I’m hungry—are you hungry? Let’s get a pizza for the road.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The sun was starting to set before Shayla finally got another text from Peter.

  He’d dashed her a quick one earlier: Nobody home in Van Nuys, nothing from the aunt, going in to an unscheduled meeting on base, more later.

  She’d texted him back: I’m here if you need help w anything. Chapt 2??

  She knew that he’d know that stood for the second installment in the When Peter Met Lisa story he was writing as part of the let-Maddie-get-to-know-him offensive. But he didn’t text back and he didn’t text back, and she tried very hard not to keep going into the living room and kitchen, where her windows had a clear shot of his empty driveway.

  After school, Tevin had dropped her car off, but that had taken all of forty-five seconds. Carter had been in a hurry as usual—her ex-husband was a gifted musician, but his time management skills were for crap—so she’d gotten little more than a “Keys are on the key hook!” shout, and waves from all three of them, as Carter zoomed off in his sweet little sports car, taking T and Frank to his place. Their shared custody meant that she had the boys every other week—Thursdays were transition days. Although odds were strong that Carter would get an out-of-town gig and drop them off early Saturday morning with an apology and a promise to pick them up again on Monday, but that was okay, because she missed her children when they weren’t around, and frankly, she never had plans. Not-writing and more not-writing. Maybe a trip to the gym or a run in the park.

  Harry popped in. Yeah, but this weekend you might have plans of the sexy kind.

  Stop.

  He still not home?

  Shayla pointedly turned her back on the window where, yes, Peter’s truck was still not in his drive.

  Ooh, maybe he’s made a connection with Fiona’s aunt Susan. Maybe they’re having a drink together right now—no, maybe he’s fucking her in the law office bathroom—

  “Stop!” Shit, she’d actually said that out loud. Fictional-characters’-voices-in-one’s-head was appropriately, quirkily writer-crazy. But talking back to them, out loud? Nope. That was crazy-crazy, and she was not that.

  You shush me all the time. Out loud.

  That was different.

  No, it’s not. And your SEAL has heard you do it, and yet he still wanted you to kiss him—

  “If he wanted that so much, why didn’t he just kiss me?” Damnit, she was losing it.

  It was then that her phone swooshed and she lunged for it to see, yes, Peter had finally texted her. Sorry about the delay, he wrote. Problem on base, solved now. Lots of waiting around though, so I “wrote” chap two. OK if I email to have you read first?

  Of course, she typed back and hit send.

  Okay, with the speed of your response, you just essentially told him you’ve been sitting around, waiting for him to text, Harry pointed out.

  She had been. But only because she wanted to help him find Maddie.

  Riiight. Aren’t you gonna ask him if it was good? Harry asked. Go on and ask him that. You know. His sex with Aunt Susan. Isn’t that your job as the quirky neighbor? To make sure he gets a proper romance-hero-worthy fucking? Shouldn’t you make sure they hooked up, and encourage him to do so, immediately, if they didn’t? “Life is too short,” you could tell him that. Or YOLO him. While you bring him a neighborly tuna casserole.

  Whoosh! Email sent, came Peter’s texted reply, with another whoosh for his thank you, hot on its heels.

  Shay’s computer was on the kitchen counter, so she opened her email and started to read.

  About two weeks into our ride-to-school-based friendship, Lisa called me.

  “Has Mr. Jimenez called you yet?” she asked.

  “Why would Mr. Jimenez call me?” I asked. He was the drama teacher. He taught English, too, but I wasn’t in his class.

  “So he hasn’t called yet,” Lisa said. “Good. When he calls? I need you to tell him that you were part of this big Shakespearean drama program, and that you played Romeo. You know, on your island.”

  “But that’s not true,” I pointed out. “I mean, I’ve read some Shakespeare, but mostly his comedies. I started Romeo and Juliet, but…”

  “That’s close enough,” she said. “I’ll help you learn the lines. We’ve got nine whole days before opening night.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What? Whoa…”

  She hit me with some classic Star Wars. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” And then she told me that the kid who was originally cast as Romeo got suspended for drinking—along with his bestie, who just happened to be his understudy. Mr. Jimenez was going to cancel the performances, because who were they going to find to play Romeo on such short notice…?

  That was when Lisa told him that not only was I an accomplished actor, but that I’d already played Romeo, so I’d just need to brush up on my lines.

  Lisa was a really good actress, so of course he believed her.

  I told her I wasn’t willing to lie, and she said, “It’s not lying, it’s just bending the truth. Stretching it.”

  “That I’m qualified because I’ve read some Shakespeare…?”

  “No, because I’m going to meet you over at Hiroko’s right now, and we’re gonna rehearse the crap out of the audition scene. That way, you won’t be home when Mr. Jimenez calls, so when you do talk to him, in school tomorrow, you won’t be lying when you say you know the part inside and out.”

  “Audition scene?” I was not happy about that. “There’s an audition?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” she told me. “It’s Friday, so that gives us the entire weekend for you to learn the rest of the play.”

  First it was I’d have nine days to learn lines that were in iambic pentameter, and now it was the weekend? Except, the way she’d said it, we’d be spending that time together. I was slowly warming to the idea.

  “The audition scene is Act One, Scene Five,” Lisa told me. “Where Romeo and Juliet meet.”

  “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” I asked. “The scene with the balcony?” I’d seen the Bugs Bunny version, at least.

  “Nope,” she said. “The scene at the party. With the kisses. There are two. Kisses.”

  She knew damn well what she was doing when she dropped that statement there. I’m pretty sure she was the one who picked that scene as the official audition, because yeah, Shakespeare wrote some kisses into R&J’s flirty first encounter.

  And since I was already madly in love with Lisa…

  I met her at Hiroko’s and we rehearsed the scene, kisses included. And I auditioned for Mr. Jimenez without actually directly lying to him, which was good, because I’m not sure I could’ve done it, even with all of those ongoing promised liplocks.

  In short, I played Romeo to Lisa’s Juliet in high school. And I kissed her about four thousand times which was really nice, but sadly didn’t magically turn me into her boyfriend, the way I’d hoped it would.

  Throughout the run of the play, she continued to date her douchebag sports hero boyfriend. In fact, she stayed with him—Brad—until graduation, when he broke up with her in a spectacularly douchie way.

  That’ll be Chapter Three.

  Here’s a link to that scene from R&J. It’s pretty fun. Lisa killed it. I was okay, but only because she was so good.

  Please be safe.

  “I love it—it’s a poem,” Dingo said as Maddie finished reading aloud the scene in question. “A sonnet—it rhymed. Did you notice?”

  Maddie looked up from the screen of her phone and over at him. “Yes. Did you not just hear me reading it? And rhyming?”

  “Yeah, but some people who shall remain unnamed—Fiona—didn’t appreciate literature. Did you know that I ended up writing a paper for her on Romeo and Julie
t, because she didn’t seem to notice or care just how much Shakespeare had it going on.”

  “Romeo and Juliet is massively stupid—they were both idiots. And Fiona’s an idiot, too. I read that paper—and I definitely wondered who wrote it because I knew she didn’t. I’m impressed, but only because I didn’t know you could even read.”

  “Ha-ha, you’re so funny.”

  “Ha-ha, you’re not.” Maddie shut off her phone, plunging Dingo’s car into semi-darkness in the lot of the truck stop just north of the San Diego city line, where they’d stopped for the night.

  It had taken far too long today to cash that check Hiroko had given them, since the bank where Ding had been certain he’d be able to cash it had flatly refused to accept his ID.

  They’d wasted a shitload of time arguing about using a payday loan place—which ended up also not cashing it.

  Plan C involved them driving around and trying to find Dingo’s stupid friend Daryl, so they could ask him to cash the check for them.

  They’d finally found Daryl, and then began a search for an ATM, because it was already dark and his bank was closed.

  But they’d finally—finally—gotten the money, minus five bucks for Daryl’s help, and instead of immediately hitting the road, they spent a few dollars on a bag of potatoes, and then had to drive around to find a Whole Foods with a café microwave that actually worked. It was The Martian diet—several microwaved potatoes, plus a package of overripe cherry tomatoes that had been marked down to 43 cents. Half were rotten, but the other half were delicious, and with the potatoes, Maddie’s stomach finally stopped grumbling and growling.

  It was only then, after dinner, that they’d hit the road. Only to have extreme fatigue set in, because they’d been up since dawn.

  “Maybe you should drop ’em a quick text,” Dingo said quietly now. “Your da and his girlfriend.”

  “My mother showed me pictures,” Maddie told him. “Of Romeo and Juliet. From high school. We talked—at length—about the fact that schools never do the good Shakespeare plays, they always do the same old stupid ones. And she never told me—ever—that the kid in those photos, playing Romeo, was my father.”

  “That’s…weird,” he said.

  She turned to look at the outline of his profile in the dim parking lot light. He’d built another wall with piles of stuff between them, but she still had a clear shot of his face. “What if he’s lying?”

  Dingo turned to look at her. “Seems unlikely. Especially since GAH can corroborate the story.”

  “How would I know that she wouldn’t lie, too. For him.” Great-Aunt Hiroko had obviously liked Maddie’s father more than she’d liked Lisa.

  Dingo sighed. “You know, love, it’s all right to be mad at your ma. Not telling you that your father was right there in the pictures she was showing you is pretty mean. Selfish-like. Like, she didn’t want to tell you anything good about him at all, so she just didn’t tell you anything. That’s not fair. I know I’d be mad.”

  “I always thought that she loved him, but that he didn’t love her—us—back,” Maddie said. “But what if he was the one who loved her? What if she just kept using him, the way she used him in today’s story, so she could do that play? What if she was the terrible one?”

  “Your dad seems pretty smart,” Dingo said. “Self-aware. Like, yeah, okay, he caved to the pressure and played Romeo, but he knew exactly what was going on. And, you know, they say love is blind, but it’s hard to imagine someone as smart as him falling in love with someone truly terrible.”

  Maddie shot him a look. “Like you with Fiona?”

  “Me and Fee,” Dingo said with another heavy sigh, “was never my proudest moment. A perfect example of the flesh being weak. Thanks ever so much for bringing that up.”

  Maddie laughed. “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you—like tear off your head and devour you after sex.”

  “Well, there’s still a chance for her to do that tomorrow—the tearing-my-head-off part. The sex is long over and done. I’ve decided to embrace a vow of celibacy for a few years.”

  “A few years?” Maddie laughed. “Yeah, that vow’s gonna last. Until the next time you go to the beach and meet some pretty blond girl in a bikini and—whoa! What’s that? Is that…?”

  “Earthquake! Shite! Hold on!” Dingo confirmed, knocking his wall away to reach for her. “It feels like a big one!”

  Pete was in the kitchen when the tremors started.

  He’d washed again after returning home late from the base, and he was wearing board shorts and flip-flops and little else, his hair still damp from his shower.

  He was gazing into the fridge, as if hoping something more exciting would magically appear when the unmistakable shaking started.

  Shayla! Shit! And Maddie! Jesus, did Maddie know what to do in a quake? He had no idea—he also had no idea where she was, but he hoped to hell she was somewhere safe.

  He swiftly closed the refrigerator door, making sure it latched, and moved away from the kitchen cabinets and into the doorway that led to the living room. If it was going to be a big one, the cabinet doors would come open and dishes and glasses would turn into missiles. Likewise, keeping his distance from the front windows was smart, and Jesus, the shaking was so intense, the walls seemed to ripple as his furniture jumped and shook. As he figured out his next move, he braced himself against the doorframe—if he hadn’t, he might’ve fallen down.

  The power went out, plunging him into darkness—and great, it wasn’t just his house, it was the entire street at least.

  Throughout the neighborhood, car alarms had triggered and were going off, but they sounded almost faint beneath the quake’s roar. Movement of the earth’s plates was never a quiet thing. Still, he heard a crash from behind him in the kitchen—and he didn’t need light to know that Maddie’s new computer had been out on the counter. With his luck, that had been what he’d just heard hitting the floor, probably along with the empty mugs from the coffee that he’d shared with Shayla last night.

  He couldn’t see Shay’s house in the pitch-darkness. He knew it was stupid as fuck to move, but he scrambled across the room on his hands and knees—the shaking immediately pushed him down to the still-moving floor—and out the front door.

  The row of shrubs that lined his front path tripped him, and he went down, hard, but used his momentum to roll farther out onto the lawn and away from the windows, as the tremor finally, blessedly stopped. The postquake “silence” was filled with those car alarms and barking dogs—and despite that, it still felt quiet without the low-pitched rumble.

  As Pete pushed himself up, his eyes were already adjusting to the blackout—it seemed to be contained to just his neighborhood because he could see the haze from lights just a few streets away, which was good. “Shayla!” He ran across the street to her house. None of her windows seemed to have broken, either—that, too, was good. The entire quake had lasted maybe twenty-five seconds—from experience, he was guessing it was around a five, maybe five-point-two. Not exactly small, but certainly not the Big One.

  Still, Shayla wouldn’t know that, its being her first since she was a kid. “Shay!” He banged on her front door, but she didn’t open it, didn’t answer.

  Pete ran around to the back and—

  There she was.

  Her back door hung open—she’d made it out of the house and was sitting in the middle of her yard, her face lit from the screen of her cellphone.

  “Shay! You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking up at him and sounding extremely normal, like riding out a five-point-two was no big thing. “Are you?”

  “Yeah.”

  She held up her phone. “Maddie’s okay. The boys and Carter are, too. I tried to call them, but I got one of those weird busy signals, but then I remembered that texts often get through when calls don’t, so I texted, and they all just texted me back.” Her thumbs moved across her phone. “I’m texting Maddie that you’re okay. She was shaken
, pun not intended, and worried about you—I mean, she didn’t say that, but…She was definitely worried. I was just about to go check on you. I texted, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I don’t have my phone.” Pete sat down next to her. She was sitting, tailor-style, right on the ground, dressed in what must’ve been her pajamas—a barely there white tank top over boxers that were covered with little flowers, possibly pink ones. Her arms and legs were bare but she didn’t seem to notice that the night air was cold.

  She’d managed to put on sneakers before leaving her house—no doubt she’d had them right beneath her bed. For such a rule-follower, it was weird that she hadn’t stayed put in a doorway, but then he realized that she’d come out here so she could check on her kids, and go rescue them single-handedly, if she’d had to.

  Her phone whooshed with the sound of an incoming text that she immediately read. “What?” She looked up at Pete with an expression of outrage and disapproval. “Tevin says that was only a four-point-nine on the Richter scale. Seriously?”

  He had to smile. “My guess was a little higher,” he told her. “But just a little. The amount of shake also depends on depth—how shallow it is. And the location of the epicenter.”

  “Tevin says it was about a half mile east of us.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “So Southern California’s still here.” She chose to embrace the good news rather than be pissed that the quake wasn’t as big as she’d thought. “No need to go into Zombie Apocalypse Prevention Mode.”

  He smiled again at that. “Nope.”

  Her phone whooshed, and she looked down at it and laughed. “Earthquake selfie,” she said, showing him a photo of her sons, their heads together, making wide-eyed, openmouthed faces into the camera. She used her flash to take a similar photo of herself, smiling as she sent it back.

  He wanted that, he realized. That easy, friendly, intensely devoted relationship that Shayla shared with her boys—he wanted that with his daughter. But the odds of ever having it were slim to none. Even if Maddie did a complete about-face and suddenly welcomed a relationship with him…He was a lot of things, but unlike Shayla, funny and fun-to-be-with weren’t on the list.