Close to the Broken Hearted

by Michael Hiebert

  “I’m tryin’,” Sylvie said. “I really am tryin’ hard.”

  “Try a little harder. I don’t think it matters as much as you go on about it matterin’.”

  “Wish I thought same as you,” Sylvie said.

  Leah walked to the front door. “Just take care of yourself, all right? And look after your girl.” She unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the porch. “Don’t forget to lock up behind me.”

  Leah walked down the stairs, hearing the door shut and the dead bolt shoot in her wake. She thought she probably didn’t need to add that last bit. She doubted locking up her doors was something Sylvie Carson ever forgot to do.

  CHAPTER 3

  My mother actually did turn out to work late the afternoon Dewey talked me into wrapping aluminum foil all around our living room. I doubt I would have gotten into much trouble for it anyway—my mother knew a Dewey scheme when she saw one. But it definitely saved me from having to come up with a whole bunch of explaining about why I didn’t think for myself before I did stupid things conjured up by other people. It was a conversation I’d had enough times that I didn’t really relish the thought of having to go through it yet again.

  When she finally did get home, it was late enough that I had already gone to bed. Carry was up watching something on television, but I was exhausted. I guess running tinfoil in a big circle around your house was a harder job than I thought.

  I managed to still be awake when my mother came in to check on me.

  “How was your day, Abe?” she asked.

  “Not bad,” I said, sitting up in my bed. “How ’bout you?”

  She let out a little sigh. “Oh, I suppose it was all right. Had to go see Miss Sylvie again.”

  I knew all about Miss Sylvie. My mother was called to her home at least every other week it seemed for one thing or another. I didn’t really understand why Miss Sylvie couldn’t get along without always calling the police. Everyone else in town seemed to manage to do all right.

  “Again?” I asked. “What’s wrong with her, anyway?”

  My mother shot me a look and I immediately knew I’d said something wrong. She had a way of just glancing at you that made you wish you could go back in time thirty seconds and completely change what you just said.

  “There’s nothin’ wrong with her, Abe. She’s just . . . different. She’s got problems.”

  “Aren’t problems something that’s wrong?” I asked. I figured I already got the look, I might as well keep going and see where my line of reasoning took me.

  “Well, yes and no, I suppose. You know what happened when she was little, right?”

  “You mean ’bout her brother bein’ shot by that preacher man and it happenin’ right in front of her?” I asked. I looked down at my comforter. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Just imagine if you was her and that had happened to Caroline. How would you feel?”

  I thought it over and realized I didn’t rightly know exactly how I’d feel. “Probably sad?” I asked.

  “Probably,” she agreed.

  “But I don’t think that would make me keep callin’ the police all the time when I grew up, would it?”

  “You don’t know what it would do, Abe. When things happen in your childhood, they change you. They affect you emotionally in unpredictable ways. Miss Sylvie can’t help how she is. Do you think she likes bein’ this way?”

  “I ain’t never thought ’bout it ’fore,” I said. “I guess not. I guess you’re right. I don’t reckon anybody’d want to be callin’ the police all the time.”

  “Anyway,” my mother said, “you get back to sleep. Oh, and she might be callin’ the house. I gave her our number to set her mind at ease.”

  “You gave her our home number?” Even to me, a twelve-year-old, this seemed like a ridiculous thing for my mother to have done.

  “She needs to know she has access to someone she can count on, Abe.”

  “Will she be callin’ all night?”

  “What does it matter to you? You won’t be answerin’ it.”

  “I’m just askin’.”

  “I don’t know if she’ll call.”

  I hesitated, then asked, “Do you know what you’re doin’?”

  “Just go to sleep.”

  She got up off the edge of my bed where she’d been sitting and walked to my door as I lay back down. She stopped in the doorway and turned. “Oh,” she said, “and in the mornin’ we can talk about the oodles of aluminum foil I found spillin’ outta the trash can outside.”

  I swallowed. “It was—”

  “I know, Abe,” she said. “It was Dewey’s idea. That’s what I want to talk about. The blind leading the stupid.”

  She walked out of the room, leaving me staring up at my ceiling wondering what Dewey was doing right now. Most likely he was lying in his own bed, dreaming up some ridiculous new invention that made no sense other than as a tool to show off my ability to be led by an moron.

  The more I hung out with Dewey, the more my mother thought I was an idiot.

  Dewey came over the next morning and asked if I wanted to ride my bike down to the grocery store to get his mom some more aluminum foil.

  “I bet you got in some serious trouble when she saw you’d taken it all,” I said.

  “She never suspected a thing,” Dewey said smugly. “She just told me, ‘You know, I coulda swore I bought some last time I went grocery shoppin’.’ ” Dewey smiled. “Took all I had not to laugh.” The way he said it made him sound just like her.

  Sometimes I think some of Dewey’s traits run through his family.

  It was pretty early in the morning, having just gone on seven thirty. My own mother was still asleep, but I woke her to ask if it was okay if I went along with Dewey. Experience had taught me that my mother’s sleep wasn’t as valuable as me getting permission to do stuff, especially where Dewey was concerned.

  She told me it was okay if I went, so I threw on my sneakers, grabbed my bike, and we headed off into what felt like a fine summer morning. The sun had already started beating down something fierce, making the world extremely bright. Sunlight bounced off the windows of the houses and stores along the sides of the street, and it reflected off the chrome of the cars parked along it, but there was a slight breeze that would pick itself up every so often and blow over us, keeping things tolerable.

  Normally, for something like a couple rolls of aluminum foil, we’d just go to the Mercantile or what my mother referred to as Mr. Harrison’s five and dime. But, it being so early on a Saturday, I was pretty sure the Mercantile wasn’t going to be open. “I think we’re gonna have to go all the way to Applesmart’s,” I told Dewey. Applesmart’s Grocery was halfway up Main Street. Almost twice as far as Mr. Harrison’s place.

  “You don’t think the Mercantile will be open?”

  “I doubt Mr. Harrison gets up as early as Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow,” I said, referring to my neighbor across the street, who I knew liked to go on early-morning walks every Saturday. I also knew the grocery store opened at seven in the morning every day on account of my mother sometimes took me shopping early in the mornings. “Besides, it will be cheaper at Applesmart’s,” I said.

  Dewey looked at me strangely. “Now you sound like my ma.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why I said that, to be right honest. Must be my own mom comin’ out in me.” I felt a little shiver run up my legs and through my arms.

  We rode down Hunter Road and passed the Mercantile, which was indeed closed. “It doesn’t open until eleven!” Dewey yelled out, riding up on the sidewalk so he could get a close look at the sign in the door. “Mr. Harrison must really like his sleep.”

  “Oh, well,” I said. “It’s a nice day for a ride.”

  And it was. It was an enjoyable ride all the way to Main Street.

  Then things changed.

  Because that’s when I noticed something strange happening while we were on that bike ride.

  A car was following me and
Dewey. I’m not sure where it started, but at some point I noticed somebody was driving slowly behind us. Even though we kept going to the side of the road to let the car pass, it wouldn’t. It was like whoever was driving wanted to keep on our tail and see where we were headed.

  I didn’t like it one bit. It gave me a sick feeling in my stomach.

  At first I kept the fact about the car to myself, but after a while I figured it was only fair to let Dewey in on it. After all, he was being followed, too.

  So I told him. I couldn’t tell if he got the same sick feeling as me. It’s hard to tell things like that with Dewey sometimes.

  “This is creepy,” Dewey said, sounding oddly excited.

  “Just ignore it. It’s probably one of the high school kids bein’ a goof.” I think I was trying to make myself feel better about the whole thing by saying that.

  I kept trying to glance back and get a look at the car, but I couldn’t see who was driving on account of the sun reflecting off the windshield. I hoped my guess was going to turn out to be pretty close. I tried to tell myself to relax. Who else would be following us on a bright and sunny Saturday morning in Alvin? It’s not like me and Dewey were fugitives or anything. But then, what kind of teenager woke up before noon during the summer holidays? Sometimes Carry didn’t roll out of bed before three.

  From what I could tell, the car was a dark gray sedan that looked quite new. It may have even been black—it was hard to tell in all this sunlight. It looked pretty nice, and probably expensive. This didn’t help the feeling in my stomach one bit. High school kids didn’t drive nice, expensive cars. They drove old broken-down beaters they used to get them to and from school in Satsuma because they were lucky enough to not have to take the bus.

  The car continued following us all the way to Applesmart’s. We leaned our bikes up against the front window that said APPLESMART’S GROCERY in big arched lettering. I was considerably relieved when the car picked up speed and headed right past us. If it had been following us, it obviously decided we weren’t worth stopping for. Thank goodness for that. Because, as I said before, it certainly didn’t look like a car that belonged to one of the high school kids.

  The town of Alvin was too small to have its own high school. All we had was an elementary school, so for anything above seventh grade you had to go all the way to Satsuma for school.

  Even me and Dewey would be going to Satsuma after summer break was over, but we wouldn’t have the luxury of driving. For one thing, we were still too young to get our licenses and for another thing, neither of us could ever afford to buy a car. Not even one of those lousy ones you always saw the high school kids pulled over in on the side of the road with their hoods up, trying to pretend they knew anything about fixing cars. Besides, there was no way my mother was about to put out that kind of money.

  My sister, Carry, had been going to school in Satsuma for three years and she still had to take the bus back and forth. It took more than two hours total if you counted both ways. It seemed like a colossal waste of time to me. Especially compared to how good we had it here in Alvin for elementary school. Just a fifteen-minute walk, sixteen if there was a headwind.

  No, I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the end of this summer. Me and Dewey had better make the best of this one, that was for certain. It was almost like this summer marked the end of something special, like these days were a countdown of our final days of childhood before we moved on to a new part of our lives.

  It turned out Dewey’s mom had given him a bit of extra money for candy (which was increased by the fact that we probably saved an extra twenty cents coming to Applesmart’s instead of going to the Mercantile), so that was a nice surprise. He hadn’t told me until we got to the store. So we managed to get a grab bag each from old man Eakins, the guy who owned the store. I remembered his name on account of my mother tried to make me remember the names of adults I met so that I could be polite and say hello next time I saw them. She liked to say, “If you remember someone’s name it impresses upon them that you’re worth listening to.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, as I really didn’t have much to say to anyone that was worth listening to, but I tried to do as she told me. So I remembered as many names as I could.

  The part I couldn’t believe is that Mr. Eakins remembered my name. Or at least he remembered me. As soon as he saw me and Dewey, he said, “You’re the boy with the mother who’s a detective, that right?”

  “I sure am, Mr. Eakins, sir!” I said with a big smile. I’d always found big smiles worked in your favor at times like this. And I used his name so he’d know I was someone worth listening to.

  It turned out, using his name got me more than that. With a grin, he quickly threw some extra gummies into my and Dewey’s grab bags after asking us what our favorite candies were. Of course we said gummies were our favorites. I didn’t understand why gummies weren’t everybody’s favorites.

  I had forgotten all about the car that had been tailing us on our way here.

  We were laughing and joking with Mr. Eakins about all sorts of stuff—nothing in particular, just the kind of mindless stuff you talk to guys who own stores about, you know.

  That’s when I happened to look outside.

  Well, let me tell you, I stopped talking immediately. My mouth hung open, and my eyes grew wide. The car that had been following us, the nice black one (and it was black, I could tell now) was parked across the street from the general store and the driver was watching us through the window. The car was parked in the shade of a line of maple trees, so the sunlight was blocked from reflecting off the glass and the chrome, allowing me to see the driver. It was a woman, not a high school kid—a woman who must’ve been at least as old as my mom. Or maybe not quite that old, I don’t know. I wasn’t a very good judge of age when it came to anyone over twenty.

  I heard Dewey and Mr. Eakins still jabbering away behind me. “Dewey?” I said quietly. But he didn’t hear, he just kept laughing and filling his face with gummies.

  “Dewey,” I said louder.

  “What?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you?” He was near on impossible to understand since his mouth was stuffed with gummies.

  I continued staring out the window. “Look. It’s . . .”

  “The car,” he said, astonished, as he came up beside me. “She really was followin’ us.” Only he didn’t sound scared like I was. He sounded . . . excited.

  I looked at him. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  He swallowed. “What?”

  “Aren’t you pissin’-your-pants scared right now?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. I think it’s like a movie.”

  “You’re so weird.” Then, quietly, I added, “I’m really worried. What do we do?” Behind us, Mr. Eakins hadn’t even noticed we’d moved on from our conversation with him. He was busy now helping some old lady find a bag of biscuits for her dog.

  “I dunno,” Dewey said. “Nobody ever wanted to follow me before.” Then it was like all the shutter blinds opened up in his head. I heard him gasp and his hand came to his mouth.

  “What is it?” I asked, looking at him again.

  “What if,” he said, “she’s after my inventions?”

  Oh my God, this guy lived in a fantasy world. “Are you serious?”

  “I think it’s a strange coincidence that she shows up right when I’ve decided to start puttin’ them in a book, is all.”

  “I think you have mental problems.”

  “What are we gonna do?” he asked.

  “Not much choice,” I said. “I guess we get back on our bikes and head home.”

  “And what if she follows us?”

  “Then I get my mom.”

  “And what if she doesn’t follow us?”

  I stopped and thought about this. “Then . . . then there’s no problem.”

  “Oh.” Dewey sounded disappointed. “What if she does somethin’ else?”

  “Like what?”

  “I du
nno,” he said. “Shoots us?”

  I let out a big sigh. “I don’t think she’s gonna shoot us. Besides, she had the whole ride here to do somethin’ and she didn’t. That’s the weird part. It’s almost like she wanted to see where we was headed.”

  “I know!” Dewey said. “Maybe she’s after our candy.”

  “Or our aluminum foil!” I offered sarcastically.

  “You think maybe?” Dewey asked, not getting the sarcasm.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. Come on.”

  We went outside and I kept glancing over at her as we got back on our bikes. The driver’s side window of her car was rolled down, so it was easy to see her. She had blondy-brown hair that was tied up, and she wore a lot of makeup. She was probably older than she looked, I guess. Her face was thin. She had big blue earrings on.

  We began riding back the way we had come. At first it looked like she was just going to sit in her car, but then I heard it start up. I looked back to see her slowly start moving and go back to following us down Main Street.

  “So much for there not bein’ a problem,” Dewey said.

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I just tried not to notice the stone turning over inside my stomach.

  A couple blocks later, I heard her car getting closer. Then closer.

  Then closer still.

  Then I realized she was pulling up beside us.

  Part of my brain remembered what Dewey had said in the store. I hoped she wasn’t about to shoot us.

  “Hey!” she called out through the open passenger window. Her voice had a strange kind of nasally accent.

  I ignored her and kept riding. My mother always said never talk to strangers and all that. I was sure it included stalkers.

  “Hey,” she said again. “Is your name Abe?” she asked.

  That caught me off guard. Now I wasn’t sure what to do. Was she a stranger if she knew my name?

  “She knows who you are,” Dewey said from the other side.

  I decided to answer her. I looked up. “Yes.”