Meddling Kids

by Edgar Cantero

  “We can buy one tomorrow before we set off,” Kerri said.

  “I just slept, actually; I can drive during the night.”

  “No, Andy, I want to sleep in a real bed. Sleepy Lake’s waited for us thirteen years; it can hold on for a couple more days.”

  Andy did not object. Her hand, however, palpated the thin lump of a wallet inside her pocket.

  “I can still ask my mom for that transfer,” Kerri guessed, again without even glancing in her direction.

  “No, it’s okay. I have some money saved.”

  NATE: Is that from the time you robbed that bank in Albuquerque?

  ANDY: No, Nate, it’s from the time I ass-modeled for your favorite magazine, Amazons in Skimpy Armor.

  Nate scoffed, Kerri smiled. Andy felt a little proud of that.

  “Hey, anyway,” Nate started, “I was thinking we could save money if we stopped in Portland to see Aunt Margo and borrowed the keys to her place in Blyton Hills.”

  “It’s okay, I have the keys,” Kerri said.

  Andy nodded approvingly at the plan. Then she thought. Then she noticed this pause was growing awkwardly long. Nate was staring at Kerri in the front mirror, who was just now becoming aware of her slip.

  “Why do you have the keys to the house in Blyton Hills?”

  “Uh, Aunt Margo gave them to me. I mean, to us.”

  “Us? When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know, like last Christmas? No, two Christmases ago.”

  “I didn’t come home for Christmas two years ago.”

  “I know.” Kerri was putting clear effort into playing it down. “Whatever. Aunt Margo had been trying to sell the house for a year and couldn’t find a buyer, so she just gave me the keys. Thought we might like to crash there sometime.”

  “You never told me this,” Nate complained.

  “I…I just came back, threw the keys in a drawer, and didn’t think about it again.”

  “Wait a minute,” Andy requested. “You have the house in Blyton Hills at your disposal and you and Tim were living in that shithole?”

  “Okay,” Kerri said, laying out her defense, “first: ouch, feelings. And second, I could not just switch coasts overnight; I had stuff going on in New York!”

  ANDY: Working as a waitress?!

  NATE: And you told me nothing? Do you know the kind of places I’ve been living in between clinics? My last two roommates were Chechen terrorists and I was the shady one in the house!

  KERRI: Right, like you would have considered moving to Blyton Hills just for the free lodging!

  NATE: Maybe I fucking would have!

  ANDY: Okay, okay, everybody shut up!

  Tim curled up in a corner of the backseat, sheltering his penguin from the storm, all tensed up in “scandalized Maggie Smith” pose.

  The Chevy hummed its best attempt at elevator music while the passengers cooled down, pined for cigarettes, and mentally calculated the miles to Blyton Hills.

  “You’re right, Nate,” Kerri said. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

  “It’s fine. I wouldn’t have gone anyway,” he said.

  Andy inspected Kerri. The sun visor cast a crisp border across her face between shadow and light; the lower half of her face was purple and soft, the upper half dark and red-eyed.

  “I never thought it’d be like this,” Kerri told the road.

  “I know what you mean,” Andy replied.

  “No, you don’t. I mean—” She sighed, impatient at her own impatience. “I’m sorry. It’s that to us Blyton Hills wasn’t just a summerhouse. Aunt Margo and Uncle Emmet didn’t have any kids, but they built rooms for Nate and me. It felt like home. I never thought I’d be reluctant…not reluctant, unwilling to go there,” she said, pointing at the dying sun.

  Andy allowed a respectful silence.

  “I know. It wasn’t home to me. It was paradise.”

  She checked the others to make sure that didn’t sound like an exaggeration.

  “Blyton Hills was better than home,” she resumed. “Home was where I fought my parents and couldn’t be myself. Your aunt and uncle were family to me. Uncle Emmet taught me how to drive when I was eleven. Your aunt Margo gave me my first tampon. What do you think used to keep me alive in Catholic schools where I was forced to wear skirts and put up with rednecks laughing at my short hair? All the time I was just waiting for the next vacation so I could pack my bags and jump on the bus to Blyton Hills. Even my parents resented all the time I spent with your family, but I guess they were glad I had friends somewhere. If you made me choose between tickets to Disneyland and Disney World with anybody else or Blyton Hills with you guys, I would have chosen you in a heartbeat.”

  “Same here,” Nate voted. Then, pushing the newspaper aside, he added, “Although, implying that Blyton Hills was a redneck-free zone…Joey Krantz, anyone?”

  The gravitas dissolved into laughter.

  “God, everyone remembers that prick!” said Kerri. “Can we please focus on the good people of Blyton Hills?”

  “Nah, just kidding,” Nate said. “We had great times.”

  Everyone used the honesty moment to sigh, sniff, shift in their seats.

  “Shit, I wish Peter was here.”

  Kerri said that.

  “I always thought if one of us were to take the initiative, it’d be him,” she expanded.

  “Well, he took one initiative,” mumbled Nate into the newspaper.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. Offing himself.”

  “What? What are you saying? The police ruled it an accidental overdose.”

  “Come on!” cried Andy and Nate ensemble. “Kerri, he killed himself.”

  “But why? Why would he kill himself? He was the most successful of us—he was the only successful one! While you were trainhopping and you were institutionalized, Peter had a penthouse in Hollywood and was on the cover of Rolling Stone! Why would he want to die?”

  “The same reason I was trainhopping or Nate was in the loony bin! Because of what we went through!”

  “No way! Peter was…he was okay,” Kerri protested. “He was the one who made it out without scars.”

  “He just hid them better than we did,” Andy said bitterly, returning to the violet landscape, biting her knuckles. Mountains and woods were steadily flowing toward nowhere.

  “He called,” Kerri said. Her eyes stayed fixed on the lava lamp effect of dusk.

  “What?”

  “Peter. Before he died, he phoned me.”

  Andy and Nate shared a new exclamation.

  “When? What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. It was late at night and there was a party in my dorm and it was loud and I couldn’t really hear him, so I told him I would call back later, but I drank a lot and I kinda forgot. Then two days later I read his obituary in the paper.”

  Everybody fell silent after that.

  A scything moon had appeared in Andy’s window.

  —

  They checked into a motel not uglier than the rest, which is remarkable, road motels being relentlessly competitive when it comes to creating the most depressing atmosphere out of blank walls and PVC. The country-style rooms, furnished in light wood and tasseled curtains and quilts, featured so few amenities that even Tim became bored fifteen seconds after arrival—and this was the same dog that had, on one occasion, spent eight hours straight fascinated by an egg.

  Kerri poured some kibble into his tin bowl from his very own travel bag, which fit inside hers, and sat on the bed farthest from the door with a bottle of beer. The motel slept in silence, all the guests probably busy counting stolen money or chopping up corpses in the bathtub.

  “Beer?” She offered the bottle across the space between the beds.

  “No, thanks,” Andy said.

  “Your body is a temple.”

  The line “Not one adhering to the moral codes of any major religion I know” took way too long to find its wording in Andy’s mi
nd, so she just smirked.

  “You’re enjoying this,” Kerri noticed, dimly amused.

  “Enjoying what?”

  “This. What we’re doing.”

  Andy surveyed the carpet for a good answer, then shrugged. “At least we’re doing something.”

  Kerri nodded, glanced over at her. “You don’t seem very scared yourself.”

  “I’m fine when I’m with you,” Andy said, shrugging again.

  Kerri grinned at the line and left the bottle next to her sleeping pills and Andy’s wallet. The room was cold. She slithered into bed and tucked herself in.

  Andy stayed in place, vigilant. “Why did your aunt leave Blyton Hills?” she asked, her voice too shy to dispel the quiet.

  “She moved after my uncle died, in ’eighty-five. Business wasn’t going well anyway, because of the depression.”

  Andy frowned, embarrassed of her history knowledge. “There was a depression?”

  “In Blyton Hills there was. The wool trade went down; most of the town economy resented it.”

  The only sound between lines was Tim munching from his bowl, filling the blank seconds Andy spent just staring at the figure drawn by the single bedside lamp, and making her feel self-conscious about it.

  “Why did the wool business sink?” she tried, just to extend the moment. “Sheep smugglers?”

  “No. The sheep died.”

  “Shit. All of them?”

  “Most. In spring they used to graze them in the valley downriver. One morning the shepherds just found them all dead. Remember the chemical plant south of town?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They think it was water poisoning. There’s a big class-action lawsuit.” She turned over. “Fuck, what I wouldn’t do for a warm night.”

  Andy responded swiftly by laying Kerri’s parka on top of her. Hundreds of orange curls oohed and aahed under the wool lining.

  She sat down next to her on the mattress. Her gaze strayed over the fake wood paneling and the halfhearted attempt at rustic.

  “Do you know what this place reminds me of? Chippanuck Camp.”

  A scoff came from under the covers. “Shit, what a miserable place that was.”

  “Hey, only until we exposed the owner’s scheme for forging Indian craftwork.”

  “I bet it’s better now that the children aren’t stitching ‘fair trade’ labels onto hand-sewn Cherokee purses,” Kerri sniffed.

  Andy felt warmed up by the mere memory.

  “Our very first case, remember? At the end of that camp you invited me and Peter to Blyton Hills.”

  Somewhere under her right hand, through the parka and a blanket and the bedsheets, she could feel Kerri’s shoulder breathing. Andy’s eyes had lost themselves in a flame of orange hair, in the way eyes are attracted only by lit fireplaces.

  “Do you know what I remember most about that summer?” she said. “I mean, apart from the child labor thingy?”

  “Heh. No, what?”

  “When I met you. Do you remember it?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “There was that dumb counselor with big tits who introduced us.”

  “Right, the one who was sleeping with the head supervisor.”

  “Shit. She was?”

  “Yep, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Okay, so she dragged me toward a bunch of girls because I wasn’t making any friends. She put her hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘Kerri, this is Andrea.’ And I said, ‘Andy.’ ”

  “You grumbled, ‘Andy.’ ”

  “I did?”

  “You were mad at somebody, probably at everybody, and very, very sulky. You looked like one of those evil kids in horror movies. Children of the Corn, Latina version.”

  “Yeah. Children of the Coca Fields.”

  Kerri laughed into her pillow. “That’s so racist!”

  “I know; it’s my race, I’m allowed. So anyway, I grumbled, ‘Andy.’ And you stuck your hand forward, smiling, and said, ‘Hi, Andy.’ That was it. Never questioned it. Never looked at me funny. And then we bumped into Nate and you said, ‘This is my friend Andy.’ ”

  Tim had finished his supper and lay down at the foot of Kerri’s bed.

  “I remember,” Kerri whispered.

  “You probably don’t know—you surely didn’t know then—but that is rare. Meeting someone who not only respects it, but believes it.”

  Kerri’s eyes were closed now, a peaceful expression declared in her lips.

  “That’s what you and Blyton Hills represent to me,” Andy resumed, sotto voce. “And I want to win it back. For all of us.”

  Leaves cracked under the tread of a furtive smile. “Joey too?”

  “Yes, him too. I bet he never got out anyway; he’ll be an unemployed slacker. Worse than all of us.”

  “Combined?” Kerri said dreamily. “Ex-con, mental, and alcoholic? That’s a lot of boxes ticked.”

  —

  In the next room, Nate sat alone on the left-side bed, hearing the merry humming tune that came from the bathroom.

  Peter spat in the sink, rinsed his toothbrush (Nate’s toothbrush), and returned to the bedroom.

  “Ah, the boys’ room again.” He slumped onto the other bed. “Should we draw a treasure map before it’s lights-out? Perhaps brush up on our sign language?”

  “Get off my bed,” Nate said, without moving.

  “Says who?”

  “What did you tell Kerri on the phone?”

  “Why? Jealous I said good-bye to her and not you?”

  “I’m serious. What did you talk about?”

  “It was private.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “I have no idea what I told Kerri on the phone?”

  “You have no idea because Kerri didn’t talk to you on the phone,” Nate concluded, and he treated himself to a pill out of a prescription bottle and a sip of Orange Crush.

  Peter kept observing him closely, slightly off-balance.

  “What are those for?” he asked.

  “Hallucinations.”

  “Really? What are you seeing?”

  “Right now? A moron who still wears bell-bottoms.”

  “Do you think a pill is going to just make me puff away? Because I’m warning you, it took like thirty pillf laft time to make me paff away.”

  Nate couldn’t help a sportive laugh. “Good one,” he acknowledged, capping the bottle. “But that’s the point. Peter passed away. You’re not Peter.”

  “Come on! We’re the Blyton Summer Detective Club,” Peter protested. “When have you ever caught a bad guy without me? You are going to need my help.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to get by without it. Get up.”

  Nate had stood up and now he was taking over the bed opposite. Peter sprang swiftly on his feet, the remote possibility of someone walking in and finding him sharing a bed with another man being clearly inadmissible. No matter who hallucinated whom.

  He peered down at Nate kicking off his sneakers.“Of course you’re the expert here, having lived among delusional people far longer than me, but don’t I sound pretty consistent to you for a hallucination?”

  “Not really,” Nate answered. “You’d be surprised by the consistency of people’s delusions. If they were easily dismantled, they wouldn’t believe them.”

  “But I look like me. Sound like me. Know what I know.”

  “No, you don’t know what you know. You know what I know you know.” He faced Peter again. “Tell me what you told Kerri on the phone.”

  Peter sat on the left bed, an unusual angle in his lips.

  “That I loved her.”

  “That’s what I think you told her,” Nate replied. “Because I am fabricating you. I am feeding you your lines. You’re just a figment of my subconscious, trying to tell me…something.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “I don’t know; do you need to ask me?”

  He reached for the lamp switch and turned it off, lying still dressed on the bed.
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  “It’s irrelevant what you have to tell me,” he continued, “because I know consciously, without any doubt, that we are doing the right thing here. Andy is right. We must go to Blyton Hills, solve this case, and find peace. And that begins by ignoring our minds’ tricks. So I’m sorry but no, we will not be needing your help.”

  Peter remained sitting, a wide-shouldered silhouette against the window.

  “Okay,” Peter started, in the exact voice Nate recalled him using when laying out an attack plan. “So I’m just a hallucination, a subjective experience that—what?”

  Nate had started laughing.

  “The real Peter would never use the word ‘subjective.’ I mean, sorry, man, you were just a leader; Kerri was the brains.”

  He gave time for his laughter to remit, then fell silent, a smile on his face. When he noticed a minute had passed, he wondered. He risked a glance toward the other bed.

  The silhouette was still there.

  “Okay,” it said. “I see it. You don’t need me. You guys got a new leader. And I’m a figment of your subconscious, so what can I possibly know? About Peter’s life. About Peter’s death. About what waits for you back in Sleepy Lake. About what he saw when you were too chicken-scared to look. About the massive, heart-withering evil you and your friends hardly brushed over while fighting a stupid yokel in a costume. The evil that will catch up with you as it caught up with me, Nate.”

  “Shut up.”

  “What can I know about the cold, like your body naked and buried in the snow, the infinite cold gripping you, burning you, numbing you, seeping through your pores, frostbiting your muscles, killing the marrow in your bones? About dirt being shoveled over your lips and nostrils, about centipedes scuttling into your ears and gnawing the inside?”

  “Stay there.”

  “About maggots living in your body, growing fat, eating their way out? About gigantic god worms sleeping in the center of the earth, curled up, miles and miles of a single primordial thing that will devour your house with you in it, and let you sink into the unspeakable sickness of its gut, Nate? You and Andy and your beautiful cousin burning alive in hell?”