by Gene Gant
I watched Toff and Jake as they continued their conversation. They seemed comfortable together, as if they had known each other for years.
Yeah. Comfortable. For years.
Jess leaned close to me and whispered, “Jealous?”
What the hell? “Of who?”
She nodded toward Toff and Jake.
“No,” I whispered. “That’s crazy. Why in the world would I be jealous of them?”
Jess pressed her lips together in a smug expression that nearly drove me insane. “If you’re not jealous, then you’re awfully pissed at them. You’re staring them down like you’re gonna snort fire from your nose.”
I crossed my eyes at her, my way of letting her know I thought her sanity had gone off the rails. She was right about the anger, though. I hadn’t been aware of what I was feeling until she mentioned it. Suddenly, I wished more than anything that Toff and Jake had never met. None of those feelings made sense to me. I hated when my own heart and head were a mystery to me.
“So what crawled up your tailpipe?” Jess said. “Seriously. You’ve been sour ever since you showed up with your face punched out. Is that it? You angry with the person who hit you?”
“Carson kicked my ass, but I blame my dad for it.”
“Well, don’t stop there. I can’t wait to hear how Carson punching you out was your dad’s fault.”
“Dad put pictures of Carson, Toff, and me on Facebook with this big-ass headline about having everybody meet my new boyfriend. Carson’s dad saw the picture, which made it look like Carson and I were the boyfriends, and he gave Carson hell. So Carson gave me hell. And I got mad at my dad. I… told him that I hate him.”
Jess let loose with a swat on my arm. “Geordi!”
“I’m not good at telling people how I really feel.”
“That wasn’t saying how you really feel. That was disrespectful. There’s a difference. You owe your dad an apology.”
I already knew that. To keep from getting angry with myself, I tuned back into the conversation between Toff and Jake.
“Where’s your mom?” Jake asked.
“Dead,” Toff replied quietly.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“I wish I could have known her. She died when I was two. It’s a strange thing to say, considering I don’t even remember what her voice sounded like, but I miss her.”
“There’s nothing strange about that.” Jake fell silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, and cautious. “Maybe that’s what happened to your dad. Maybe your mom’s death changed him.”
“Changed him from what? The way he is now is the only way I’ve ever known him to be.”
“But he could’ve been different with your mom. Like, happy and full of life.”
Toff abruptly stopped walking, forcing Jake to an awkward halt to avoid colliding with him. He turned to Jake. “You think… my dad still misses her too?”
“Sure. Why not? I mean… she was his wife.”
Jess and I caught up to them. Toff looked as if he were about to throw up or something. “I don’t think the way he is now comes from just missing my mom,” he said, shifting his gaze from Jake to Jess to me. “When Dad buried my mom, he buried every part of himself with her. He never gave a damn about me or anything else because he put every piece of his heart in the ground with her.”
He held my gaze, waiting, a plea burning in his face. What was I supposed to say to that? The only thing I could think of was to hold him, to offer him fresh assurances that he would get through this awful part of his life. Before I could reach for him, however, Jess grabbed my wrist tightly. “Guys,” she hissed, pointing with her other hand, “what’s that?”
In the immediate area ahead of us, not more than ten feet away, the pale haze from the flashlight reflected off a pair of large green eyes that stared at us out of the darkness. The hair rose on the back of my neck. We were being watched by a monster, one that was no doubt giving thanks that its evening meal had just walked up and served itself in four courses. I probably would have screamed, fainted, or pissed myself if Jess hadn’t gone charging forward, waving her arms like crazy. “Hyah!” she shouted.
The monster took off in an impressive display of wide, flapping wings, warbling a series of angry hoots at us as it swept overhead and disappeared into the dark treetops.
“Okay!” I heaved in relief. “I need a fresh pair of shorts. Anybody else?”
Jake chuckled nervously and shook his head, providing the only laugh I could get from my friends. Toff pressed forward, skimming the darkness ahead with the flashlight’s beam. “Hey,” he called out. “I think the trail ends here.”
Jess, Jake, and I walked over to join Toff where he stood at the edge of the woods. The trail didn’t actually end there. It ran across the wide clearing before us down to the grassy bank of a lake. The lake stretched out for a mile or more, bordered on its opposite bank by a dark mass of trees. Its waters were black and flat under the openness of the starry sky. If a man wanted to lose himself in the lazy peace of a day of fishing, this was definitely the spot.
With the starlight unhindered by leafy treetops, the darkness here didn’t seem as oppressive as in the woods. The four of us stood looking out over the lake, taking in the area. To the north, a wooden pier extended several feet over the water, ending in a large gazebo from which lines could be dangled while fishermen took their ease in the shade. Mr. Toffler might be under that gazebo. Maybe it was just me, but sleeping on a wooden bench under an actual roof seemed better than lying on the ground under a tree.
A tinny beep floated across the air, barely audible over the chirping sounds of the crickets. We looked at each other, surprised and puzzled. The beep repeated itself in a steady rhythm. It was the kind of noise that came from an electronic device, a laptop or something. Actually, it reminded me of the timer on the stove in my parents’ kitchen. We turned, our eyes darting this way and that, trying to pinpoint the source. I looked at the gazebo again.
Yup. The beeps were definitely coming from the gazebo.
I got the others’ attention, pointed at the gazebo, put a finger to my lips for their silence, and motioned for them to follow. I was pretty sure that we’d found Mr. Toffler—the beeps were probably coming from his watch—and that he was asleep in the gazebo. Mr. Toffler owned a gun, and according to Toff, he’d taken the gun with him when he left home. I didn’t want to startle a man with a gun.
The beeping grew louder as we got closer to the gazebo. The structure was plain, lacking any ornamentation such as lattice work or arches. Even in the darkness, I could see how weathered the wood was, worn gray and smooth from decades of exposure to the elements. The gazebo was octagonal in shape, with a wooden bench built into the rail on each of its eight sides.
Someone was lying on one of those benches.
The four of us spotted the person at the same time. A sort of collective pause went through us as we each came to an uncertain stop. The guy was asleep; his snores were so slight they were barely audible over the steady beeping. And I recognized the pattern of the beeps now. That was the alert Mr. Toffler programmed on his cell phone to let him know when the battery needed a recharge.
On a silent agreement made through an exchange of uneasy looks, we moved slowly and quietly around the south-facing side of the gazebo to the north side where the sleeping man lay on his back with one leg drooping off the bench and one arm flung over his face. A smell hung over him like a fog, the scent of a several-day accumulation of sweat, not quite strong enough to bring tears to the eyes but getting there.
Peering over the rail, the first thing I noticed was that the man wore a Baltimore Orioles T-shirt with a rip in the left sleeve. Toff had accidentally made that tear one day when he borrowed the shirt from his dad’s dresser drawer. Then I noticed Mr. Toffler’s leather-banded watch on the man’s wrist, which was close to his right ear. Mr. Toffler’s cell phone lay on his chest, still in the green camouflage case Toff had given his dad last year
as a birthday present. And the boots the man wore were indeed one of the three pairs Mr. Toffler had used for his construction job.
The only problem was that the man bearing all those things wasn’t Mr. Toffler.
Toff reacted the way most people would under such circumstances. He barked out a loud, angry “Hey!” Startled, the guy flipped off the bench in a flurry of flailing limbs, sending the cell phone clattering to the floor of the gazebo. He was on his feet, backing away from us, his left hand held out as if to keep us at bay. His right hand had been slipped into the pocket of his dirty and tattered jeans. He was tall, thin, and only a few years older than us—maybe eighteen or nineteen. His long blond hair was pulled back and tied in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. His expression was wild with surprise, fear, and maybe just a hint of instability. My brain flashed danger signals with every pulse of adrenaline that went through my body.
Toff was too outraged to heed any such signals. He climbed quickly over the rail and scooped up the fallen cell phone. He never took his eyes off the blond guy as he advanced slowly toward him. “That’s my dad’s stuff,” he snarled. “That’s his shirt, his watch”—he held out the phone toward the guy—“his cell phone… his boots!”
With his left arm still extended, the guy shook his head vigorously. He wasn’t doing that in denial; he didn’t understand what Toff was talking about. I could see that in the guy’s face. He backed cautiously away.
I didn’t like the way he kept his right hand in his pocket.
“What did you do to him?” Toff dropped the cell phone as he kept moving slowly forward. His hands clenched into fists. “Where is he? Where’s my dad?”
Jess started to climb over the rail. I grabbed her arm, pulled her back. I shook my head at her and at Jake, hoping telepathy would convey the warning in my head: Stay back. No sudden moves. Don’t scare the guy.
Toff was doing a pretty good job of that already. Although the guy was older and several inches taller, Toff was so upset I figured he could inflict some serious injury if he got his hands on Blondie. I was also worried about what the blond guy might do to Toff if he brought that right hand out of his pocket.
“Toff!” I hissed. “Stop. Don’t walk up on him.”
Toff either didn’t hear me or didn’t give a damn about what I was saying. He kept advancing, one slow, menacing step after the other. The guy backed up against the rail on the opposite side of the gazebo. He shook his head again.
“You have his stuff, my dad’s stuff,” Toff said. His arms were shaking now from his rage. “Tell me where he is!”
Toff lunged. I moved instinctively, pulling myself up. As I leaped over the rail, I saw the blond guy whip his right hand out of his pocket. He brought the gun up in a fluid motion so fast it stopped Toff and me before either of us could reach him.
His face scrunched in panic, his arm trembling, the guy held the gun with his finger on the trigger. The barrel was aimed at Toff’s face.
Chapter 13
I’D NEVER seen Mr. Toffler’s gun, but I was sure it was the same one the blond guy now held on Toff. The irony of my best friend taking a bullet from his own dad’s firearm wasn’t lost on me. I was afraid for all of us, even the guy with the weapon, who appeared more desperate to escape than intent on doing harm. Somehow, desperation made him more dangerous in my mind.
With the gun on him, Toff had stopped advancing momentarily, but he still looked anguished. He wanted answers from this guy, and he looked as if he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a bullet stop him from getting them. When I saw him edge one foot forward again, I did something extremely stupid.
“Hey, hey,” I said, easing myself between Toff and Blondie with my hands raised like a character in an old Western movie. The dude shifted his gaze to me but kept the gun on Toff. “We don’t want to hurt you or anything. My friend here is trying to find his dad. You have some of his dad’s clothes and stuff. We just want to know where you got them, that’s all.”
The guy didn’t say anything. His breathing was heavy and fast. He shifted his eyes rapidly all over the place, from me to Toff to somewhere in back of us. I couldn’t see Jess or Jake, but I hoped to heaven they weren’t planning to bum-rush the guy or anything. We couldn’t all afford to go stupid.
“Hey,” I said, a little louder this time. I was trying to recapture the guy’s focus. His eyes kept flitting nervously around. “Everything’s cool, okay. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Put the gun down and we’ll talk. That’s all we want. Put the gun down.”
Finally, he locked eyes with me. Honestly, he looked too scared to actually shoot someone. For a while it seemed as if he would actually lower the gun. Then he said in a high, scratchy voice, “You think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy.” His eyes narrowed as he swiveled the gun toward me.
Everything went black.
I THOUGHT I was dead.
Death was a frantic state. In the eternal blackness, there was a whole lot of motion and noise.
Something whizzed past my face. Did I still have a face? A muffled crack burrowed through the darkness. Someone yelped, a sharp cry of pain. Something big shot past me on the left. A meaty thump followed, then a loud grunt. Only a second later, something moved on my right, brushing past my arm. Did I still have an arm? The darkness itself seemed to shift and jerk in front of me.
“Geordi!”
I opened my eyes.
I was still standing. There was no bullet hole in my forehead, or any other part of my body.
At my feet, Toff and Jake were struggling to hold the blond guy on the floor of the gazebo as Jess tried to pry the gun from his hand. Blondie was fighting like crazy to break away. And he was winning. Toff was trying to pin his legs but couldn’t get a solid grip on the wildly kicking limbs. Jake took a punch on the side of his head that appeared to daze him for a moment, causing his arms to loosen their grip around the guy’s torso. Jess looked up at me as she slammed the guy’s gun hand against one of the rails. “A little help here!” she snapped.
I lurched forward and Blondie kicked me in the chest with one of those heavy, steel-toed work boots. It felt as if my lungs had exploded. I gulped hollowly, unable to take in a breath, and stumbled backward into one of the gazebo’s support posts. My head bumped against the post, and I got a flash of stars to go along with the pain bouncing around in my chest. I struggled to inhale.
Jess slammed the guy’s arm against the rail again, and the gun flew out of his hand and over the side. There was a solid splash as it hit the water and sank. With the gun out of the way, Jess drew back and landed a quick jab on Blondie’s already crooked nose. Blood spurted from his nostrils, but that didn’t take the fight out of him. He kept kicking at Toff, and one of his boots grazed the side of Toff’s head. Toff fell on his back, bumping forcefully against Jess’s legs and taking her down as well.
That only left Jake. It was obvious he didn’t want to throw punches if he didn’t have to. On his knees, he tried to wrestle the dude down and pin him. The guy slammed him in the shoulders, forcing him back enough that Jake couldn’t grab him again. Blondie scrambled to his feet.
“Look, man, we don’t have to fight anymore,” Jake said. “Just calm down and we can—”
Blondie yelled something unintelligible and threw himself over the rail into the lake, sending a spray of water high in the air. He splashed wildly as he swam along the side of the gazebo and crawled up onto the bank. Once he got his feet under him again, he broke into a frantic dash, heading into the woods. Toff started to rush across the gazebo and go after him. Jess and I both grabbed him. “Let the guy go,” Jess said.
“He did something to my dad!” Toff shouted, staring after him, fighting to pull away. “We can’t let him get away!”
“We can’t chase him through the woods, Toff,” I said, watching as Blondie vanished in the darkness among the trees. “We don’t know what’s out there, and it’s time to get the police involved—”
“No!” Toff spun around, shouting in
my face with more anguish than I’d ever seen in another human being.
Jess stepped closer, towering over the both of us, and gave Toff’s shoulder a soft, reassuring squeeze. “That guy is dangerous, Toff. He pulled a gun on us, and he probably would have shot Geordi if Jake hadn’t knocked his arm down. We’re going back to the car, Jake’s gonna drive us to Selmer, and we’re calling the police.”
Toff mumbled something under his breath and shook his head, still protesting. Jessica got right in his face and said firmly, “Come on. Let’s go.”
Jake retrieved the flashlight and the compass, which had been dropped during all the scuffling. I wrapped Toff in a hug, offering what little comfort I could. Jess gave his shoulder another squeeze. We made our way back to the trail, and Jake led the way through the woods at a pretty fast clip.
It took maybe half an hour for us to reach the north entrance of the forest preserve. “Wait,” Toff said. He went immediately to his dad’s car, reached through the open driver’s window, and pressed the trunk release button. He went to the back of the car, lifted the lid, retrieved the portable file, and closed the lid again. “I’m ready now,” he announced.
Toff and I climbed into the back seat of Jake’s mom’s car, and he carefully tucked the file between us. Jake and Jessica slid in the front, and Jake started the engine. He wasn’t moving fast enough for me. I’d had enough of dark woods and abandoned cars and smelly guys with guns. I’m not a particularly religious guy, but when Jake put the car in gear, circled the clearing, and started back up Route 28Z, I breathed a short, silent prayer of thanks.
THE NIGHT was clear and peaceful, and ours was the only car on the road as far as we could see. None of us spoke on the long drive down Highway 64. Our phones were turned on again, and periodically one of us would check to see if there was a signal. When we hit the five-mile marker outside of Selmer, all four of us jumped at the sudden, heavy sound of big knuckles knocking hard on wood—Jess’s new ringtone. She lifted the phone and checked the caller ID. “It’s my brother, Javier,” she said. “I’m gonna let that go to voicemail. Jake, pull over at the next gas station.”
