But like always, the Loomises kept to themselves. Fiona’s dad and uncle went deer hunting. Fiona’s mom bought produce from a market and passed time by jarring pickles and jam while listening to old records. Derek and Maria drove to a nearby town both mornings, to shop and eat and call friends from a broken pay phone they had discovered that made free long-distance calls.
Fiona spent the days alone on the screened-in porch, where she made a list of what was good about her life in the Solid World and what was good about her life in Aquavania. She also made a list of her regrets, of things she would do over if she ever had the chance. At the top of that list of regrets was: I wish I never knew about the Riverman.
She suspected that many kids in Aquavania shared the same regret. If she was to believe the legends, then she knew the Riverman had been around for ages. So why hadn’t someone stopped him yet? Surely kids more powerful and smarter than Fiona had tried. Chua and Rodrigo—even Boaz—were perfect examples.
It became clear to Fiona. Maybe the Riverman couldn’t be stopped. Nana’s death was inevitable. So maybe the loss of all these kids was inevitable too, and the Riverman was some sort of a balancing force, some kind of necessary evil. Maybe Aquavania couldn’t exist without him.
When she returned home, she invited Alistair to the wake. They took a walk in the graveyard that was to be Nana’s final resting place. They sat on the steps of a mausoleum and Fiona laid bare her guilt, about how she was to blame for Boaz and Rodrigo’s disappearance, about how she had no idea how to find the Riverman, about how she was grasping at straws.
And Alistair asked, “What if I told you I know who the Riverman is?”
And Fiona thought about this. And she decided that it didn’t matter. For the first time … she didn’t care.
She was called to Aquavania that night.
She stayed in Aquavania for twelve years.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “What could you do for twelve years?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Fiona said. “It’s too private. But I grew up. I became a better person. A smarter person. I learned there are things you can control and things you can’t.”
Fiona climbed onto her bike. It still had the ragged ribbons on the handgrips and slivers of duct tape on the handlebars.
“You matter,” I said. “I need you to know that you matter.”
“I know that,” she said. “And you matter too. I’m going to handle this, on my own, in my own way.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying thank you. For being you. But that’s all you need to be. I don’t need your help anymore. Good night, Alistair.”
She kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to my forehead. And that was that. She started pedaling, and by the time I had gotten on my bike and caught up, she was turning into her driveway and heading for the darkness of her garage.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2
School was slipping away from me. My grades were proving that. The next morning in math class, I received my latest pop quiz back. I got a 43 percent. A solid F. I had never scored so low.
Mr. Baker left a note at the top of the paper: See me after the bell.
I did, and he asked, “What’s going on?”
I told him, “Nothing. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough.”
“There are tutors.”
“I know.”
“You look tired, Alistair.”
“I know.”
“What are we supposed to do here?”
“Try harder, I guess.”
Between classes, I scampered through the halls, constantly on the lookout for Trevor, and Mike, and Charlie, and Fiona. I made eye contact with no one. Instead of going to lunch, I smuggled my brown bag into the room near the gym lockers where they kept the wrestling mats. I built a little fort out of some of the smaller mats and ate my PB&J in the dark and soft silence.
I understood the appeal of being alone. I liked it most when I was lying in my bed, door closed, lights off. Sometimes with music playing, sometimes not. Sometimes the wind was enough. But a year alone? In the middle of nowhere? Doing nothing but writing? That didn’t seem possible. No one, not even the greatest of hermits, could live like that.
And what about the twelve years? And what about those twelve … freaking … years!
Back when Fiona was telling me about monsters and missing kids, I could apply it to her uncle, but the latest installment of her tale was indecipherable, and her indifferent attitude toward everything was beyond confusing. Was she truly losing touch with reality? Had she really given up completely? Did that mean I should give up too? I was beginning to feel like I was on Fiona’s blank slate. No view of the future. No one to count on but myself. And why even count on myself when Fiona didn’t count on me anymore?
We had a test in Social Studies on Reconstruction in the South. I answered maybe nineteen out of the forty questions. Mostly I watched my classmates. I wasn’t copying off their papers. It was more about observing them in deep thought. Some of them chewed their pencils or closed their eyes and bit their lips. Kelly Dubois was downing cough drops at what seemed like an alarming rate until I realized she was using the wrappers as crib sheets. The insides were covered in tiny boxy words—an innovative, if strange, cheating technique. I considered snitching on her in order to complete my transformation into the school’s pariah, but I didn’t have the energy.
I handed my test in unfinished, grabbed a hall pass, and headed to the bathroom. My favorite stall was unoccupied, and I went in without even thinking about the message I’d posted:
In the story of Aquavania there is a Riverman and a girl. Who is the Riverman? Is the girl in danger?
There was a new response, written with the sloppy penmanship of a kid who must have given teachers fits. The identity of the Riverman wasn’t revealed, but that didn’t matter. A more important question was answered.
The place where stories are born? Who claims to have been there? She is in danger.
I analyzed every word.
The place where stories are born: that was what Fiona called Aquavania.
Who claims to have been there: claims was the important word. Liars claim.
She is in danger: she is in danger.
I pulled out my Sharpie and wrote: Fiona Loomis. What did she tell you? Please let me know ASAP: 798-5291.
I didn’t consider that I might be inundated with prank calls. I needed to hear from someone immediately.
I made it through the rest of the day without saying a word to another person. Even on the walk home with Keri, I kept a few paces ahead as she yammered on about some tiff she was having with Mandy. At home, I took the cordless phone to my room and I got in bed and set it on my chest and waited.
It rang. Not right away, but a few minutes before dinner, sending vibrations through my ribs and into my blood.
“Hello.”
“Is this Alistair?”
“It is.”
“I got it.”
“Kyle?”
“The thing. It’s here.”
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3
Kyle’s van was waiting at the end of our driveway when Keri and I left for school the next morning. The engine was purring, and the passenger side door was open. Kyle’s hair was wet and combed back. He didn’t have to say a word. I climbed in.
“You and Dally have fun at the rumble,” Keri teased. “Say hi to Ponyboy for me.”
A couple of weeks earlier, I might have responded to such a comment, but what did Keri know? I sneered, and the kid walked west toward school. We men drove east.
“Are we on our way to get it?” I asked.
“No,” Kyle said. “I got it already. We’re on our way to take care of your problem.”
A frost had settled in, dusting the weedy fields and the patches of woods on the outskirts of the neighborhood. We weren’t going into town. We were heading the other way, into the infinite hilly stretches of pig and dairy farms, of state forests and Indian
reservations.
Kyle wasn’t talking, so I assumed it meant he had nothing to say. The radio was tuned to a morning show, and they were playing a parody song about East Germans climbing the Berlin Wall. I didn’t really get it, but I laughed anyway, trying to lighten the mood. Kyle’s face was stone serious.
“You know what’s funny?” he asked.
“No, what?”
“I think I knew from the beginning who you were talking about. From day one. When you were asking questions about how you can tell if a girl is lying or not. It’s the Loomis kid, right? I’ve seen her riding her bike by your house before.”
We were going close to eighty down a road with no center stripe. Anything in the van that could rattle did rattle.
“Yeah,” I said. “Fiona. But it’s not that I wanted to keep her name from you.”
“No sweat,” Kyle replied. “It’s cool. True studs don’t kiss and tell. Her older sister, Maria? She’s a fox. And your girl is too. Or will be someday. You can see that already.”
“Thank you.”
This coaxed a grin out of him. “You’re welcome.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He pointed through the buggy windshield. “About five miles down there’s a dirt road. Leads to a field where someone cut a runway. Guess you could land a Cessna on it if you had to, but that ain’t what the runway is used for. It’s for these guys. Grown men, like our parents’ age. They go out there with these radio-controlled airplanes and launch ’em and fly ’em all around, up over the fields and the trees and all that. Ain’t something normal guys do, but it’s Disneyland for these creeps, and I’m guessing they just love to bring little boys and little girls out here too. Show them the loopty-loops and whatnot. Makes me sick.”
“And we’re going there?”
“Yes sirree, Bob.”
The frost was melting and leaving dew on the dying cornstalks that lined the dirt road. At the end of the road was a muddy patch that served as the parking lot. There was only one other vehicle there: Dorian Loomis’s truck. We pulled up behind it.
From the lot you could see the runway. It was probably fifty yards long and twenty yards wide, with manicured grass like you’d find on any suburban lawn. Dorian stood in the middle of it, holding a large remote control with multiple levers. A tiny red biplane flew overhead.
“Freakin’ Charlie in twenty-five years.” Kyle sighed.
“How’d you know he’d be here?”
“After our chat at Gina’s, I put two and two together and figured you were talking about this chump. So I followed him yesterday. Plus there’s that sticker.” Kyle raised his chin to Dorian’s truck, and I saw an emblem on the rear window that featured a propeller plane, a golden crest, and the words The Mini Airmen of Thessaly.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“No we. Me. I’m handling this.”
I looked into the back of the van, where it was a landscape of clothes and burger wrappers. And I checked Kyle’s coat, a ratty brown canvas thing with red flannel lining at the collar. I was searching for a gleam or a lump. “You’re not gonna…?”
“I’m gonna have a chat with the man. I can be persuasive.”
“He was in the Army. He was—”
“He’s fat and he’s old and plays with toys,” Kyle said as he opened his door and jumped out over a puddle. Before shutting it, he pointed at me. “Stay, boy.”
I did, and Kyle moved down the path toward the runway, his swagger exaggerated, one arm in front and one in back, swaying to some unheard beat. It was half street corner hustler, half cowboy. Yet it went unnoticed, at least to Dorian, who kept his face to the sky. The sky was a weak blue, a watercolor sky. The acres of fallow land that surrounded the runway were watercolor too—blurred and flat. The only real punch of life was that brilliant red plane.
When Kyle reached the runway, Dorian finally paid attention. He shot Kyle a sharp wave, the exact same wave as the one he’d given me on Halloween night. The van windows were tinted, and I doubt Dorian could have recognized me, but I still didn’t want him to know that someone was in there watching. I slumped down as far as I could while still maintaining a view through the driver’s side window.
The two talked for a bit, but didn’t look at each other. They were both watching the plane. It dipped and twirled, and I was amazed that such a thing could exist. I owned a few remote control cars, but they moved slower than a jog and could barely make it to the end of the driveway and back before their batteries ran out.
All I could hear was the high-pitched buzzing of the plane, which sounded a lot like a weed whacker. I would have given anything to know what Kyle and Dorian were saying. If their postures didn’t seem friendly, they at least didn’t seem hostile. They looked like two men waiting for a bus, chatting to break the boredom. On occasion, Kyle was capable of having a calm head, and I desperately needed this to be one of those times.
The violence in Kyle, the rage, I’d felt it before, lingering on his breath and beneath his twitching fingers. But I’d never seen it. Charlie had never seen it either, or at least that’s what he’d said: “He’s decent to me most of the time, never hit me or anything like that.” But Charlie also told me that the rumors were true, that Kyle had indeed broken a bottle over a kid’s head at a party, that he’d definitely pulled his butterfly knife more than once, and that he’d come home countless times with bruises and scratches that he explained away as injuries from pickup football games.
So when the rage came, it didn’t come as a surprise, but it gutted me nonetheless. Kyle lifted his right arm and brought it down like a scythe and cut the remote control out of Dorian’s hand. The remote control hit the ground, rolled, but didn’t break. It stopped a couple of yards from Dorian, upside down in the grass. The two men faced each other, fists clenched. Buzzzzzzz went the plane, now spiraling out of view.
Dorian tested the tension of the air, bending his knees and leaning forward, ready to pounce. Kyle peeled the left half of his jacket from his body, showed me the outside and Dorian the inside. I saw nothing and I couldn’t say for sure what Dorian saw, but I could easily guess. Dorian stopped, raised his hands, and drew back.
Buzzzzzzz …
Crack!
It sounded like a tree trunk broken in a storm. Glass splintered, veins formed. Red! In my face and then falling away. I flinched, not knowing at first whether it was a bird, a bullet, or what. It was the model plane. It had crashed into the windshield and was rolling down to the hood. The buzzing was gone. The plane was broken, dead.
And I could hear voices now.
“Two in the skull! That’s all it will take!” Kyle yelled. Hands up, Dorian trembled.
Kyle zipped his jacket, turned back to me, and started walking. It was no longer a swagger. It was a march, methodical and tight. Over Kyle’s shoulder, I could still see Dorian, bloated and scared and not doing a thing, and through the windshield, on the hood, I could see the wing of the plane. It was clear now. This was the wing I spied poking out from beneath the towel in the front of Dorian’s truck that night. It wasn’t some kid’s toy. It was his toy.
When Kyle reached the van, he grabbed the broken plane and flung it sideways like so much trash. The key was poised in the ignition, and I reached over and gave it a twist.
Ca … ca … caaaaa …
Nothing. Kyle opened the door, slid into the driver’s seat, stomped the clutch, and employed his expert touch.
Pu … pu … pu … purooooom.
“Pathetic coward,” he growled, and he fed the truck gas and jammed it into gear. The wheels spun for a second in the mud, gripped and dug, and then we flew backward. Kyle spun the wheel, slapped the shift, and we were off.
* * *
At the Skylark, Kyle bought me a piece of apple pie and a coffee, which I loaded with sugar until it tasted more like hot chocolate. School was out of the question by now, but we hadn’t yet concocted a suitable lie to explain my truancy. We needed some time to righ
t our heads.
“Why won’t you tell me what you said to him?” I asked.
“Didn’t say much,” Kyle replied as he forked the yolks of his sunny-side-ups. They bled yellow across the plate until a wall of sausage dammed them up. “Actions speak louder. A picture paints a ton of words.”
“You didn’t leave it in the van, did you? You still have it on you right now, don’t you?”
He dipped a corner of toast in the yolk and pointed it at me. “Not another peep about it.” He chomped the toast like he was killing it.
The Skylark was full of old people and a few workmen who sat at the counter and ate efficiently. No one seemed to be listening in on our conversation, but I understood Kyle’s hesitation.
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”
Kyle chewed and nodded. He lifted his mug and clinked it against mine. Then he dug into his pocket and laid its contents on the table. Keys, coins, a napkin, and a paper clip. At the end of our booth was a miniature jukebox. Kyle continued to gorge himself as he turned the knob and flipped through the little pages of songs. When he found one he liked, he fed the machine a nickel.
A guitar riff, playful and quick, shuffled out and across our table. This was the type of music my parents listened to, and even though Kyle had only six years on me, choosing a song like this made him seem so much older.
“That thing I told you a little while ago,” he said between bites. “It might be happening sooner rather than later.”
“Oh.” I had wanted to forget about “that thing,” but I couldn’t. Every move Kyle had made in the last two weeks I had associated with his desire to escape Thessaly in one way or another.
“Not because of this morning,” Kyle went on. “It’s just time.”
“You spent your money, though,” I said.
“Some of it. An investment. Will make me more cash in the long run.”
I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I didn’t want to know. “I took Fiona here the other night,” I told him instead. “It was a date, I guess.”
“You pay?”
The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) Page 16
