by Blake Nelson
“Did you drive by there that night?”
“No.”
“Where did you go?”
“That night? I ... I drove around ... downtown a little. And since I was downtown anyway, I got something to eat. And I ... then I parked down near the waterfront. And walked around a little.”
“Were you skateboarding?”
“Yeah. Well, actually, no, not really that night. I mean, I had my skateboard. Like I said, I’m not as good as the other guys. So I try to practice by myself.”
Detective Brady nodded. “So can you give me some times for these things? Approximately?”
“Uh ... I went to Jared’s around seven or eight. Then we went to the bus station a little after that. And then I drove around. And then ... oh, yeah ... that was something I got confused about before. I didn’t go home. I went to Jared’s. Because we had originally planned to sleep over at his house that night.”
“Where were his parents?”
“His mom was in Las Vegas. His dad doesn’t live with them.”
“No brothers or sisters? The house was totally empty?”
“Right,” I said. “His sister lives in Seattle.” I swallowed dryly.
“And did your parents know this? That no one was home at Jared’s?”
“Uh ...”
Brady made a note. “So this is the old trick where you tell your parents you’re sleeping at Jared’s and your parents don’t realize his parents are gone, and then you can do whatever you want?”
“Uh ... well ...”
“No, I understand,” he said, smiling slightly. “We used to do that. It’s an old one.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Brady studied me. “So what’s your parental situation ?”
“Uh ... what do you mean?”
“Your parents, they’re together?”
“No. They’re separated. Or they’re ... well, they’ll probably get divorced.”
Detective Brady nodded. A thoughtful look came over his face. “My parents got divorced. When I was about your age, actually. That’s a tough thing to go through.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“A brother. Younger. He’s thirteen.”
“Do you have a sister?”
“No.”
“How about a girlfriend?”
“Uh ... yeah, sort of.”
“Where was she that night?”
“She was with her other friends.”
“Did you call her at any point? Do you have a cell phone?”
“No. I didn’t call her. We just started going out, actually.”
“So she wasn’t your girlfriend a couple weeks ago?”
“Right. I mean, we weren’t totally hanging out yet. She’s more of a girlfriend now.”
“How’s that going?”
“What?”
“Having a girlfriend.”
I shrugged. “It’s good, I guess.”
“You sound unsure,” said Detective Brady, smiling slightly.
“No, it’s okay. She’s kinda ... I don’t know. We just started going out. It hasn’t really solidified.”
“I see.”
“But it’s okay. I mean, she’s nice.”
Detective Brady smiled and nodded. He tapped the point of his pen on the paper in front of him. “So, getting back to this ...” he said. “I’m trying to think about this situation. This security guard. We find him, you know, deceased on these train tracks. We think, okay, he tripped, he fell. But then the autopsy says he was hit with a blunt object.”
I nodded.
“My boss has this idea that some kids might have been riding that train, just for fun, which apparently happens a lot. They’re riding along, the security guard sees them, and he tries to kick them off. There’s some sort of confrontation, maybe a struggle, the guy ends up dead, and the kids take off.”
I tried to look slightly confused.
“So what I’m trying to imagine is,” continued Brady, “what do these kids do then? Where do they go? What kind of kids are they?”
I swallowed. “Yeah, that’s a good question.”
“What would you do? If you were one of those kids.”
“I ... I don’t know. Call the police?”
“What if the other kids were your friends? Would you call the police on your friends?”
“I think I would if someone got killed. Or if it was an accident or whatever.”
Detective Brady thought about my answer. “What if you were alone? What if you were by yourself and something like this happened?”
I looked into my lap. “Then I’d definitely call the police. Because, why not? Unless you wanted to kill the guy. I mean, myself, I don’t have anything against security guards.”
“Right. But what would you do if you didn’t call the police?” said Brady, with a new energy in his voice. “Like, what if you got scared and you didn’t know what to do?”
I glanced up at him then, thinking he would be staring at me, staring at me hard, coming in for the kill. But he wasn’t. He was focused on the pen in his hand. He was deep in thought.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“You’d run probably,” said Detective Brady. “And you’d go back to the skatepark and tell your friends. Or if you were smart, you wouldn’t go back to the skatepark; you’d head for the river and hope nobody saw you.”
“Yeah ... I guess so.”
“And these kids,” continued Brady, “they’re probably transients. Or runaways. They’re probably in trouble already. If I was them, I think I’d hop the first train out of town. Get out of the state. Out of the country, even....”
I swallowed. “I heard someone got stabbed there once ...” I said.
“Do you know any street kids? I mean, yourself personally.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen them. ‘Streeters,’ people call them. Some of them skate. Most of them just beg for change and stuff.”
“If I showed you photos, could you pick out people you’ve seen in the area?”
I shrugged cautiously. “I doubt it. It’s not like I know any of them.”
Brady thought about this for a long time. Then he checked his watch. “All right,” he said. “I’m going to have to cut this short.”
I said nothing.
He packed up his briefcase and got out another business card. I noticed his hands as he handed it to me. They were big and thick, meaty-looking. He wore one of those big rings, like car salesmen wear in movies.
I tried my best to look meek and confused. “So I can go back to class?”
“Yeah. Hey, and thanks. I appreciate it.” He leaned over the table and offered me that same thick hand. I shook it.
Then I got the hell out of there.
JANUARY 7
SEASIDE, OREGON
(3:30 P.M.)
Dear __,
I hadn’t seen much of Jennifer during this time. She made varsity cheerleader for basketball, so that week she was practicing every day after school. Then Elizabeth and some of her friends went ice-skating on Saturday, and Jennifer wanted me to come.
A bunch of people went. Christian was there, and a couple other boyfriends. We all sat at a picnic table drinking hot chocolate, and Christian told the girls about our meeting with Detective Brady. It was weird because he told the story like I hadn’t even been there. The whole group of them talked about this thing that I did, this whole situation that I caused, but since everyone looked up to Christian so much, nobody could imagine I had anything to do with it. They only wanted to listen to him. Even when he told everyone I had been interviewed, too, the girls were like, whatever, and wanted to hear more about him. Which was fine with me. Sometimes it was good to be a wallflower.
After ice-skating, we all went to Elizabeth Gould’s house. She had this fancy hot tub, and everybody stripped to their underwear and sat in it and looked at the stars.
Even though it was fun, I kept thinkin
g of Detective Brady. As we got dressed again, I asked Christian, “Do you think Brady knows more than he’s telling us?”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe he knows something and he’s playing dumb. Like he’s trying to trick us.”
“I doubt it.”
“The whole thing is pretty weird, though,” I said. “A detective showing up at school. Talking to skateboarders.”
Christian scoffed. “Cops are stupid. Why do you think they’re cops? Do you know how much money they make? Like, the same as a janitor.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But maybe they do it for other reasons.”
“Dude, grown-ups do stuff for money,” said Christian, tightening his belt. “There are no other reasons.”
Afterward, I went back to Jennifer’s house. She was acting all sexy, and we went straight to her bedroom to make out. But I couldn’t stay focused.
“What is wrong with you tonight?” she said, pulling away.
“Nothing.”
“You’re acting so ... out of it.”
“How am I supposed to act?”
“I dunno. But you could say something every once in a while. Christian and Elizabeth talk. They have a relationship.”
I stared at her. “What does that mean?”
“When Christian says something, he says it. When you say something, people interrupt you. And you let them.”
I stood up. “I’m sorry if I’m not Mr. Popular, like Christian.”
“I’m just saying, you could be a better boyfriend,” she said. She got up and tucked her shirt in.
I didn’t know what to say. She was probably right.
“You better go; my parents will be home soon,” she said.
“Can you give me a ride home?”
“That’s another thing,” complained Jennifer. “You need to get your own car. You can’t just skateboard everywhere.”
But that’s what I did. I skateboarded home from her house. In the rain. In the dark. I was glad to do it. I was glad to be on my own.
That night I had a dream about Detective Brady. I dreamed that he came to live with my brother and me. He was a relative of ours, it turned out. I sat with him at the airport, and he told me about his parents’ divorce—how it made him become a cop. He said all cops’ parents were divorced; it was one of the requirements.
Then the dream changed, and I was at school and people were congratulating me. Everyone was really impressed about something I did. I felt accepted and comfortable and like everything was all right again.
Unfortunately, when I woke up I was back in reality. Nobody was happy about anything, least of all me. At least it was Sunday. I got up and went downstairs. I ate breakfast and then Jared called. Did I want to come skate with him and Paul Auster and check out the new rails at the convention center? I did.
Jared picked me up. When I got in the car, he looked at my board. “That isn’t your board.”
“Yeah it is, I just got it.”
“What’d you get a new board for?”
“My dad bought it for me,” I said, which was sort of true. “I wanted to try something different.”
Jared looked at it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why would I tell you?” I said, grabbing it back from him.
“I gotta skate with you, dude. I don’t want some wuss board riding next to me.”
“It’s not a wuss board. It’s better than your lame board.”
We picked up Paul Auster. We drove downtown. I worried they might change their mind and want to go to Paranoid Park. But they didn’t. They wanted to check out the new stairs and rails at the convention center.
The new rails were popular that day. All the local skaters had heard about them, and a lot of the best guys had shown up to try them out.
I couldn’t ride rails. Neither could any of us, really. Jared tried and just about killed himself. I mostly hung out and messed around on a three-set on the other end of the plaza, but after I crashed a couple times I laid off that, too.
Paul Auster and I ended up sitting together, drinking Red Bulls and watching this Prep kid do tricks on the sidewalk. He was this dorky kid, but he was nailing kick-flips, manuals, shuv-its, everything. He was a natural talent; he didn’t try to do things, he just did them. There was no thinking.
I drank my Red Bull and reflected on that. Before the security guard, almost everything I did was natural. I woke up, I went to school, I hung out with my friends. I never thought about what I was doing, or why. Now I was always thinking. I never just did stuff. I was always checking myself, watching what I said and did. Which made every day like going to work. It was like my whole life had become a really hard job.
But what exactly caused that? And how did you fix it? Could you go back to being innocent and carefree once you’d done something like what I did?
I didn’t know. And there was no one to ask.
That night my mom came home. My aunt Sally packed her stuff to go. They were both pretty stressed. My mom especially. She took some sleeping pills and went to bed.
Henry and I watched TV until eleven and then he went to bed. I watched the news. I always watched the news. I knew everything going on in the whole state. But there was nothing about Paranoid Park.
Later, I went to the garage. I wanted to see what camping stuff my dad had taken. The little camp stove was gone, of course. But the bigger stove was still there. The cooler was still there. I tried to find the emergency crank-up radio my mom gave Dad as a Christmas gift, but he must have taken it.
I looked through the other cabinets. The sleeping bags were still there-the older ones, anyway. I found a little cot that folded up and fit into a carrying bag. I pulled it out and tried to remember how to set it up. The instructions were gone, but once I unfolded it, I figured it out.
I thought about if I had to run. Like if the cops began to figure things out, could I get away? Where would I go?
I could probably make it to Canada. If I left in the morning. I could pretend I was going to school, take my mom’s car, and be in Vancouver, B.C., by nightfall.
Then what? Live in a stolen car? How long would that last? Maybe I could go to Mexico. That was farther. Two days’ drive, maybe three. I could say I was staying over at Jared’s. That would give me a day. And if I drove all night, I could probably make it. But what would I do in Mexico? What would I do anywhere?
I folded up the cot. I dug around some more. I found a little survival kit that had a compass and aspirin and some waterproof matches. I found a little bottle of antidote for rattlesnake bites. I wondered what that did to you.
Maybe I could take some of my mom’s sleeping pills. If I tried to kill myself, would they go easy on me? Could I say I was insane or suicidal or whatever?
I dug deeper in one of the standing cabinets. I found some snowshoes that my dad bought. A couple years before, he decided he was “into” snow camping. He never actually went, but he bought all the crap. Most of it was useless, but the snowshoes were kinda cool.
I found some fishing stuff, some old reels, some old tackle boxes. I opened a coffee can and found a tangle of hooks and bobbers and other stuff. When I was a little kid, I used to dream of going into the mountains and living off the land. I guess a lot of kids think that. Hunting for food, using a bow and arrow, living in a tree house or in a cave ... But that’s not what it would be like if I bailed. It wouldn’t be a Disney movie. Running away would be a slow, dirty, gruesome existence. Hiding out, sleeping in the car—what would I do for money? I could get dishwashing jobs. Maybe I could meet a girl somewhere, a Canadian girl. I could live behind her house and we could get married and change our names and .... I don’t know what ... grow vegetables, listen to Bright Eyes, hang out in hammocks....
It was a nice dream. There were a lot of nice dreams. But could I do it? Maybe it was better to just go to jail, just do my time and not cut ties. Better to have my dumb parents know where I was than be out in the Canadian wilderness somewhere, alone, ea
ting dirt, slowly going insane....
That was the thing about secrets, they drove you insane. They really did. They isolated you. They separated you from your tribe. They destroyed you eventually. Unless you were strong. Unless you were very, very strong.
I found Jennifer in the parking lot after school a couple days later. She was wearing her cheerleader uniform. She stood with Elizabeth and those guys by Elizabeth’s car.
Jennifer had told me earlier that she was going with Elizabeth Gould that weekend to the Goulds’ beach house with some other girls. She wanted me to be jealous about their “girls’ party weekend” or whatever, but I wasn’t.
I walked over to them. I had my skateboard under my arm. None of them looked very happy to see me. I was not being a good boyfriend to Jennifer. I had not turned out to be the fun-loving skater boy they thought I would be.
“Hey,” I said to Jennifer. “Can I talk to you a second?”
She gave me a harsh look, for her friends’ benefit. But she came. She seemed a little curious about what I wanted.
“I can’t go out with you anymore,” I told her.
“What?!” she said. She was totally shocked. She thought I had come to complain about her going to the beach. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think it’s working out,” I said.
“What? Are you serious? Who have you been talking to?”
“No one.”
“Oh my God!” She looked at me, her mouth open. She was so surprised she couldn’t think of what to say.
“You can’t break up with me,” she finally blurted. “We just started going out!”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I don’t think it’s working out.”
“Why did you wait until now?” she said. “Were you waiting until you had sex with me?”
“No. I just ...”
“You were! You waited until you had sex with me! You used me!”
“No, I didn’t.”
She hit me. A slapping blow to my upper arm. I stepped away from her.
