“You’ll like it. Yes, it’s about nuclear war, but the hero is a girl called Jennifer.”
She grinned. “Thanks, Peter.”
Jennifer left and I went to the back room to get changed. I was putting on my black T-shirt with The Heat Is On on it when I heard Matti shout from the other side of the curtain.
“I hope she’s worth it,” he said. “It’s on your tab.”
JENNIFER RETURNED WARGAMES on Monday, two days late, and I was afraid Matti was going to take the late fee from my salary. I decided that I could live with it if he did.
“I’m not surprised you’re scared of Armageddon if you watch movies like this,” Jennifer said as she handed the tape to me between classes.
“But it’s good, right?”
“It is. And you were right about Jennifer being the hero.”
“I hope I didn’t spoil the surprise.”
“Mom and Dad liked it too.”
“Oh.” I was speechless. I hadn’t imagined that Jennifer would go home with the tape, gather her family around the TV, and watch it with her parents. What had she told them about it? About where she had gotten the tape, and why?
“But my brother thought it was goofy. Unrealistic, he called it. A kid playing tic-tac-toe against a supercomputer.”
And her brother too!
“Yeah, well. You can tell him it’s actually totally plausible. I mean, I have a modem and a computer in my room and I can dial up any computer in the world.”
“Is there anything you can’t do?”
I blushed, and Jennifer did too—presumably because she thought she’d embarrassed me. She quickly changed the subject.
“Anyway, I was wondering if you’d want to see Supergirl with me,” she said, and then opened the door to an honourable retreat: “You don’t have to if you think it’s silly, but I remember you saying you’d want to see it.”
“I would! I would. Like to. See it,” I stammered. “With you.”
“Excellent. Tonight?”
We walked to the bus together and agreed to meet at the Atlas fifteen minutes before showtime.
I showered and played Spectrum until it was time to go, and then got on my Crescent and rode to town in record time.
So that’s how I ended up sitting in a dark room with a group of strangers, eating candy and quietly cheering Supergirl on with the hottest girl in the school sitting next to me.
We got seats under the balcony, and for the entire duration of the film, I kept my hands on my lap and stared straight ahead. Jennifer did the same. Together, we followed Supergirl into a new and exciting world.
“DON’T YOU THINK it was strange that her hair colour changed when she wasn’t in her Supergirl costume?” Jennifer asked me afterwards, as we sat in the coffee shop next to the Atlas, drinking hot chocolates with extra whipped cream.
“She’s Supergirl; nothing’s impossible. Maybe she just removed her wig at lightning speed?”
Jennifer laughed. I took a straw and blew bubbles into my hot chocolate.
“Well, I had fun. Did you?” she asked me.
“Are you kidding me? So much fun.”
“I think it’s time to go home, though.”
I glanced at my watch. It was eight thirty.
“Yeah. You’re right. I’ll walk you to the bus.”
Jennifer patted my hand. “My hero.”
We strolled through Kumpunotko toward the main bus stop next to the square, reliving the various good and bad bits of the movie. She was right; it was great to have someone to talk about it with afterwards, just as it was great to have someone to laugh with in the darkness, and reassuring to sense her tensing in anticipation at the scary parts. Also, who knew we could split a bag of licorice allsorts so perfectly: she loved the aniseed jellies (which I hated) and hated the mint licorice (which I loved). I waited until the bus arrived, leaning on my bike, chatting about this and that.
“There it is,” she said as the diesel engine growled around the corner.
Hot coals glowed in my stomach as I remembered that kiss at the dance. It had been a few weeks and nothing. Not even a mention.
I wasn’t sure what to say; I didn’t know if this was a date, so didn’t know if I should be asking her out again.
The bus pulled up, and with a loud hiss the doors opened.
Jennifer gave a little shrug. “Well, bye, then.”
Battling my cowardice and summoning every atom of courage, I leaned forward to reciprocate that kiss on the cheek from February, but she’d already turned to climb aboard.
“Bye,” I whispered.
As she got on the bus, she turned around and wiggled her fingers. “See you later, friend.”
“See you later,” I said, adding “friend” just as the door closed.
Chapter 17
Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)
I COULD HAVE DROPPED Tina’s postcard into any of the three yellow mailboxes between our house and the market square, but I didn’t, and fifteen minutes later, I was back on the dirt road I knew so well. In the dark, when colours turned to grey, all of the houses looked the same, but I knew exactly which one was Jennifer’s.
I rode past, giving the surroundings a cursory look. I didn’t see anybody in the yard, or even on the road. The house looked quiet except for a light in the downstairs window. I circled around to do a second pass, and when I was about a hundred metres from the house, that light went out. Moments later, another one was turned on upstairs.
“He didn’t know what he was doing, and he didn’t know why he was doing it. He just knew . . . he had to do it.” My voice-over voice had dropped to a whisper, a sign that I was nervous.
I stood in the same spot I’d stood in so many times before, never crossing the line between the road and Jennifer’s yard. The road belonged to everyone; their yard belonged to them.
This time, I wasn’t going to wait for an invitation.
I had waited long enough. It was time.
I tiptoed to the front door to get a better look at the sign on it.
It said Welcome.
I had expected to see a family name, something personal. Something that would at least give me confirmation, one way or the other, as to whether or not Jennifer still lived there.
What was I doing? I was a grown man, snooping around like a lovesick teenager.
Frustrated, I turned around and walked back toward the road as quietly as I could, cutting across the lawn to the spot where I’d left my bike.
“He crept with the stealth of a highly trained ninja.”
A few steps from the street, I stepped into a hole. My ankle buckled, and to keep my balance, I had to leap sideways. I landed on something hard and spiky, but before I could tell what it was, something hard and solid shot up and cracked against the side of my face, filling my head with white-hot sparks of pain.
A rake. Someone had left a rake on the lawn.
I may have screamed a little as I collapsed, clutching my face, my ankle, my dignity.
Who am I kidding? I know I screamed, and not just a little bit, either. The reason I know this is because a moment later I heard a front door opening behind me and someone shouting.
“Hey, what’s going on? Why are you screaming on my lawn?”
“I think I stepped on something,” I whimpered.
“What are you doing here anyway?” said the voice, big and male and now right behind me.
I looked up and saw a man, a big man, standing above me. He made no effort to help me up from my knees, not that I could blame him. I wouldn’t have rushed to help a suspicious man sneaking around my house in the dark either.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I’m lost. I was looking for a place to get my hair cut. I used to live around here, and now I’m back, and I remember there’s this place on the way into town—and it’s obviously not this place, this is a house, but I was trying to see what door number it was so I could see if I was going the right way.”
“Isn’t it a littl
e late to be getting a haircut?”
“Yes, of course, but you never know, small-business owners work weird hours. I also like to get a haircut late in the day because you get the most value for money that way. If you cut it in the morning you pay full price but then it’ll grow back all day and . . .”
“Can you get up on your own?” His voice was gentler now.
I added another item to Mr. Laine’s list of primal instincts: fight or flight or roll around on the floor babbling nonsense in the hope that your attacker takes pity on you.
“Probably not, but I’ll try,” I said, and that’s when the man stepped forward. I could see his face better, and he could see mine.
“Don’t I know you?” he said.
“Don’t I know you?”
“Are you . . .” he tried, prompting me to say my name.
“And you must be . . .” I shot back.
He said nothing. Folded him arms. I interpreted it as my turn to speak.
“You’re Jennifer’s brother!”
“What? I guess, yes, I have been known as my sister’s brother. And you are . . . ?”
“Oh, I’m Peter, I’m Jennifer’s classmate.”
“You are?”
“Yes, we sit together in English class. I thought this house looked familiar! Yes, of course, the barber is that way . . .”
“How hard did you hit your head?”
He extended his hand and helped me up, which is when I found out I had sprained my ankle really good. I couldn’t put any weight on my right foot, and I winced in pain the moment I tried.
“All right. I don’t see any blood, or bones sticking out through your skin, so you’ll probably be fine,” said Jennifer’s brother, whose name still escaped me.
I was racking my brain to remember it. I must have known it.
I wasn’t ready to go yet. Jennifer’s brother was here, so maybe Jennifer was inside the house too, right that second. Maybe she lived here and had sent her brother out to scare away a weird man. Or maybe they were both visiting their parents, for one day only, and she wouldn’t be back in town for another year or two?
I found myself straightening my spine and putting on a winning smile.
“Thanks, I’m fine now. Um, sorry to bother you. I’ll let you get back to your family get-together.”
“What family get-together?” he asked. “Are you sure you don’t have a concussion or something?”
“Oh, I just assumed that you were visiting your parents here, and maybe . . .”
“Listen, I’m going to bed now. In my bed, in my house, which is this one right here. Which is my home.”
“Oh, so you live here now? I’m sorry.”
“For what? That I live here? Oh, man . . . I think we’re done here.”
“No, no, sorry for bothering you, sorry for the misunderstanding.”
“That’s fine. Goodnight.”
“So, wait, does Jennifer live here too?”
He stopped, turned back to me.
“Yeah, sure. I have a really cozy relationship with my sister.”
“What?”
“No. She lives across town. She moved back to Kumpunotko when she got a job at the hospital. Anyway, if we’re done here?”
“Jan!”
He stopped again. “Yes?”
“I just remembered your name. Jan. Jan and Jennifer. Simple!”
“Yes, it made labelling our school clothes a lot easier. Anyway, goodnight.”
I watched Jan close the door and the lights downstairs flick off. I saw his figure at the upstairs window. He put his hands on his hips and stared down at me. I gave him a friendly wave. His wave back was more of a gentle go-away, which reminded me that I probably should.
I hobbled over and picked up the bike.
Getting onto the bike, I felt something in my pocket and remembered the postcard I had meant to send to Tina. My ankle was hurting really badly now, and I had to pedal using just my left foot, but I still took a short detour to post the card.
Sitting on my bike, leaning against the yellow mailbox, I reread the card before dropping it in. The closure of the Atlas now seemed less important; I’d just made a much more significant discovery. Jennifer was in Kumpunotko! And Kumpunotko was where the Atlas was. Where I was. Opening the Atlas was meant to be! It had to be. It was the portal through which Jennifer would appear, my Field of Dreams. If I renovated it, she would come.
I didn’t need to stalk her online or look her up in the phone book; this, surely, was destiny.
A half-hour later the Crescent was leaning against the wall outside our front door and I had pulled myself upstairs, like a movie villain who refuses to die.
I was a man with a plan now, and the plan, which I wrote down on a piece of paper as soon as I got to my room, looked like this:
1. Get Atlas.
2. Fix Atlas.
3. Open with a sneak preview of Back to the Future.
4. Invite Jennifer.
I stuffed the paper in the pocket of my jeans so that I’d always have it with me. Then I took a painkiller, curled up under my Ghostbusters covers, and pressed Play on the VCR again.
I fell asleep to Hill Street Blues.
The last thing I remembered hearing was “Let’s be careful out there.”
Chapter 18
Live to Tell
I’VE NEVER LOOKED forward to getting to the hospital as much as I did that morning. My ankle had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. I needed to have somebody take a look at it.
Even more than that, though, I wanted to find Jennifer.
I found it odd that she was working at the hospital. Growing up, she’d wanted to be an artist. Also, she hated the sight of blood. But then, working at the hospital didn’t mean she was a doctor or a nurse; she could be a receptionist, a porter, an ambulance driver. Maybe she was a hospital clown?
I should have asked Jan.
I cringed, recalling the way I’d babbled, squirming there at his feet. I must have looked like a deranged stalker. I knew that wasn’t what I was, but it must have looked a little like it to him. I told myself that I’d meet him again in time, and we’d look back on the whole episode and laugh.
Although my ankle felt a little better as I sat down at the kitchen table, it was obvious I wouldn’t be riding my bike to the hospital. I’d have to ask Dad if I could borrow his precious VW Beetle. He’d had the car for as long as I could remember, and both Tina and I had been allowed to drive it once we got our licences because Dad didn’t want us driving his Volvo.
Once you hold on to something long enough, it becomes cool again, and that’s exactly what had happened with Dad’s Beetle. He never even considered selling it, despite several offers. He drove it only a few times each year, on perfect summer days, and he liked to tinker with it, keeping the engine in good order and the body rust-free.
Dad had already eaten breakfast when I came down, and he was sitting in his TV chair, watching reruns of Candid Camera with a stony, impassive face. For some reason, that really made me chuckle.
“Mom already left,” said Dad when he realized I was there, “but she left you some breakfast in the fridge.”
“Where’s she gone?”
“She went to . . . oh, I forget.”
Mom had stopped working two years earlier. Some people slow down when they retire; I was worried that this was happening to Dad. Other people do the exact opposite, and when they’re no longer obliged to sit at a desk eight hours a day, they fill their lives with fun and variety. That was Mom. There wasn’t a club or an event in Kumpunotko in which she wasn’t somehow involved.
While I ate the porridge she’d left me, I carefully brought up the topic of the car with Dad. I didn’t want a ride to the hospital any more than I would have wanted to be dropped outside school by a parent, and I especially didn’t want a ride in a 2014 Volvo V70, for the very obvious reason that in 1986 they hadn’t been invented yet.
“What do you have planned for today?” I said, cas
ually.
“Nothing. I’ll pick up your mother at some point.”
“How do you know where to pick her up if you don’t know where she is?”
“She’ll call.”
“Could I borrow the Beetle?”
So much for careful.
“Sure.”
“Are you sure?” It seemed too easy. When I was a teenager, he would inspect the car every time I returned it, like a beady-eyed car-rental clerk.
“Of course. The keys are in the cupboard by the phone. Hope it starts,” he said, and turned up the volume.
The maroon car was in its usual place, under the shelter of a carport to the side of the parking lot; this was supposed to protect it from the elements, but a family of birds was nesting in the beams and had given the car a fair splattering—particularly the windshield. I didn’t have the energy to hobble back for a bucket of soapy water, so I decided to try to find a car wash in Kumpunotko. I slid into the old Bug, which smelled of dust and oil and old leather, and gripped the steering wheel, smiling. I tried to remember the very first time I’d sat there, but couldn’t. As a child, I’d slide over to the driver’s side when Dad went into the shops, turning the wheel and wiggling the gear stick, driving off on epic adventures—I particularly liked jumping the Beetle over the dunes of the Sahara—until he returned.
The driver’s seat had a sixties-style rug as a cover, and the steering wheel had a fluffy purple protector, making it look like something out of The Muppet Show. I turned the key and pumped my fist when the engine started on the first try.
I had taped my right ankle so tightly with electrical tape that I couldn’t move it at all, which was fine for walking but made using the gas pedal impossible. And since balancing the clutch is really a two-footed job, I was going to have to improvise. After a quick glance around I found an umbrella on the back seat, and that did the job perfectly. With my left foot operating the clutch and my umbrella operating the gas and the brake, I was driving!
Fortunately, Kumpunotko is a one-traffic-light town, and as the main “rush hour” had passed already, traffic was fairly light. It felt great to be back in the old Bug, trundling along the familiar streets, each umbrella-push of the gas pedal creating a metallic roar that had birds wheeling from the trees.
Someday Jennifer Page 11
