Blind Date

by Bruce Richards

  "Later, Evan," Alicia said cheerfully as they backed out the driveway. Scott hit the horn.

  "Adios, four-eyes," Boomer bellowed. "I'll see you after school." Boomer pointed his forefinger at Evan like it was the barrel of a gun, and pulled the trigger as they drove away. "Pow! You're dead!"

  Driving down Elm Street, Scott was laughing. "That little guy is such a riot. You can stand there and pound on the dude all day and he won't do a thing. Won't even say a word. Some kind of masochist, if you ask me."

  "I'd like to kick his head for a fifty-yard field goal," Boomer muttered. "I can't believe he failed that test on purpose just to mess with me."

  "He knows his G. P. A. can take it and yours can't," Alicia said from the backseat.

  "She's right, you know," Scott said. "It's his way of getting back at you."

  "It worked, too. Coach Cuttler will bench me for a game — or more — until I get my grade back up."

  "You know, Boomer, you didn't have to copy off him," Alicia pointed out. "Did you ever think of studying?"

  Boomer glared over his shoulder at Alicia. He continued to rub his injured knee. "1 probably won't be able to play anyway since you've crippled me."

  Scott took the next turn so quickly that the Chevy practically rode up on two wheels. Alicia was about to complain, but Tiffany beat her to it.

  "I'd like to get to school in one piece, if you don't mind," Tiffany said, looking around her for a handhold. "Where are your seatbelts?"

  "There aren't any in back," Scott said, zooming on ahead.

  Alicia leaned close to Tiffany and asked, "Do you smell something funny?"

  "It's horrible!" Tiffany said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

  Up front, the boys were talking about Evan again. Alicia eavesdropped on them as Tiffany covered her nose with a tissue.

  "I'd watch out for him if I were you," Scott said to Boomer.

  "Yeah, right," Boomer scoffed. "I am so scared of that little twerp."

  "It's the quiet ones you gotta watch out for," Scott told him. "They're the ones who really wig out."

  The houses along Elm Street whizzed by in rapid succession as Scott hurried to make practice. Alicia watched Scott gesturing wildly as he relived one of their past football victories.

  As usual, he wasn't paying much attention to his driving.

  "Look out!" Alicia shrieked as she saw the big, black hearse enter the intersection.

  Scott hammered the brake pedal and the Chevy's tires squealed. The car shook with such violence that the trunk burst open.

  The hearse bore down on them, its horn blaring.

  The teenagers screamed at the top of their lungs as death in the form of several tons of steel rushed at them.

  Chapter 5

  But the hearse skidded to a halt just inches shy of the Chevy's front bumper.

  For what seemed like ages, Alicia just sat in the car thanking her lucky stars that she would live to see another day.

  In the front seat, Boomer was livid. "That's Evan's car!" he screamed, staring daggers at the hearse. "The little prick just tried to kill us!"

  "Easy, Boomer," Alicia said with a shudder. "It was just an accident."

  "Accident my ass," Boomer said, so angry his voice was trembling. He threw open the passenger door and bounded over to the hearse.

  "Scott missed the stop sign," Alicia called to him. "It wasn't Evan's fault." She really wasn't sure whose fault it was, but it seemed like the right thing to say at the moment.

  "She's right, big guy," Scott said. "Come on, let's go to practice. It was my fault, I was speeding, I missed the stop sign… What stop sign?"

  "He's dead meat," Boomer said. He started yanking on the door handle of the hearse, but it was locked.

  "Would you just leave him alone!" Alicia pleaded, though she knew she was wasting her breath.

  Boomer's muscles rippled beneath his tight T-shirt. He kicked the door so hard with his thick-soled boot that he left a dent. A piece of chrome siding peeled away from the car and hung limply. Then he spat on the windshield.

  "Scott! Do something, please!" Alicia begged.

  "What do you want me to do?" Scott asked with a helpless shrug. "The guy's nuts."

  "Call the police or something," she suggested.

  "Sure thing. I'll just use my car phone and punch in 911 — oops — no car phone," Scott said flippantly, looking about the car. "Must've flown out the car when I missed that stop sign that doesn't exist either."

  Boomer strode back to the Chevy and rummaged underneath the front seat, looking for something.

  "Boomer, calm down, okay?" Alicia pleaded.

  But Boomer ignored her. He pulled Scott's tire iron out from under the seat and plodded back to Evan's car, gripping the metal rod tightly in his hand. Alicia realized with a jolt that he was going to smash in the windshield of the hearse!

  "Boomer — no!" Alicia shouted.

  The hearse door cracked open and Evan's uncle climbed out.

  Boomer froze.

  Dr. Hawke was a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman with wavy, white hair and a carefully-clipped, white mustache. He wore a three-piece pinstriped suit. A slender gold chain disappeared into a small vest pocket. It was the type of suit Humphrey Bogart might have worn in an old gangster movie.

  Like Evan, the doctor wore thick glasses, which magnified his dark eyes.

  Alicia saw that a bag of groceries had spilled over on the front seat of the hearse.

  The doctor solemnly eyed each of them, before turning his attention to the gob of phlegm that was slowly creeping down the windshield.

  "Young man, you expectorated on my windshield," the doctor said to Boomer in a rich, deep voice. "And you've dented my door." He nodded at the tire iron hanging limply from Boomer's hand. "Now I suppose you intend to thrash me with that piece of metal?"

  "N-no sir," Boomer said, dropping the tire iron with a clank onto the street. "I… ah… thought you were someone else."

  "You thought I was my nephew, didn't you?" Dr. Hawke fixed on Boomer with his oversized eyes.

  Boomer looked down at his own shoes. This was the first time Alicia had ever seen Boomer intimidated.

  "I can still recall the way you harassed my nurses for lollipops every time your mother brought you in for a check-up. You were only two when you began, but you were a terror even then."

  "He's much more mature now, sir," Scott joked, trying to break the tension.

  Boomer stepped over to the hearse and tried to wipe his spit from Dr. Hawke's windshield with his bare hand.

  "I have tissues," Tiffany declared helpfully, plucking a clean one from her purse.

  "I've got it," Boomer said, using the tail of his T-shirt to clean the mess away. He kept glancing nervously at Dr. Hawke, as if he were afraid the old doctor could hurt him.

  "There is too much permissiveness among the young in today's society," Dr. Hawke said, regarding Boomer with a dour expression.

  Alicia silently wondered if she should just walk to school in the future.

  "I'll send the repair bill to your parents," Dr. Hawke said, running his hand over the dents in the car. He climbed back in and slammed the car door with such ferocity that the chrome siding fell off and clattered to the ground.

  As the hearse drove off and finally disappeared from sight, Scott leaned back in his seat and laughed loudly. "You expectorated on my windshield, Mister Harrison," Scott said, mimicking the doctor's bass voice. "Permissiveness in today's society…" Scott cracked up, unable to finish.

  Boomer picked up Scott's tire iron and chucked it onto the floor of the Chevy.

  "Close the trunk, will ya?" Tiffany said to Boomer, who stood silently by the side of the car.

  "Boomer? Did you hear me?" Tiffany asked, annoyed that he was ignoring her.

  "Don't worry about it," Scott said. "The trunk's broken. There's a trick to closing it. I'll fix it later." He glanced at his watch, then at Boomer. "Come on, big guy. Get in the car. We've got to boogie.
You know, football practice."

  Boomer climbed zombie-like into the car.

  "I told you to slow down," Alicia reprimanded Scott. Maybe this near accident would teach him a lesson, she hoped.

  "I know I was speeding, but that old codger missed the stop sign, not me."

  "He looks as blind as a bat in those big glasses," Tiffany pointed out. "He probably didn't even see the stop sign."

  Scott started the car and they headed for school. He looked over at Boomer, who was still oddly quiet. "You should've seen the look on your face when old man Hawke got out of the car. It was like you'd seen a ghost."

  "I did see a ghost," Boomer said, his face as pale as snow.

  "What do you mean?" Scott asked.

  "He's dead," Boomer said emphatically.

  "Who? You mean Dr. Hawke?" Tiffany asked in amazement.

  "What are you talking about, Boomer?" Alicia asked him.

  "My dad was just leaving his shift at County General last night when they wheeled Hawke in D. O. A. Dead on arrival — you catch my drift? The guy is dead."

  Chapter 6

  "Are you blind?" Scott said. "We just saw him."

  Alicia's stomach churned. She remembered something from her dream. Something about lightning… and Evan's house.

  "My father was positive it was Dr. Hawke," Boomer replied.

  "Maybe he died and came back again," Tiffany said.

  "Oooohhh…" Scott crooned in a spooky, monster-movie voice.

  "Sometimes people die and come back," Tiffany said. "I mean, they're revived a short time later. Apparently it happens."

  Scott reached over and punched Boomer on his thick biceps. "Snap out of it, man. Hawke was no ghost. He's just the same weird old dude he always was."

  "I have a cousin who was blind and Dr. Hawke cured him," Tiffany said.

  "Get outta here!" Scott said skeptically.

  "Tiffany's right. Dr. Hawke was a big deal in his time," Boomer said.

  "I would just kill myself if I went blind," Scott said. A sudden chill rattled through Alicia's body. She thought the art school she would be attending after graduation from Springwood High. Would life be worth living if she could no longer paint?

  "Boomer's eyes were so bad, he was almost blind," Tiffany said.

  Scott shot a glance at Boomer. "What's the matter with your eyes, big guy?"

  "Nothing," Boomer said emphatically.

  "Not anymore," Tiffany said. "But he used to wear these giant glasses and everyone called him four-eyes. That's when he started wearing contacts. And lifting weights."

  Alicia laughed.

  "What are you laughing at?" Boomer asked, glancing over his shoulder.

  "That's what you called Evan back at his house — four-eyes," Alicia said. "That explains it. You bully Evan because he reminds you of when you were a half-blind little kid yourself."

  "He just gives me the creeps, okay," Boomer said. "They both do — him and his uncle. Did you notice how old man Hawke just sat in his car and let me go half nuts before he finally got out? It's the same with Evan, never fighting back. They play mind games with you. Weird Evan — I'd like to peel his scab, rub him raw, and make him totally lose it and never find it again."

  "Did you know that Weird Evan poisoned his mother when he caught her with her lover?" Scott said with a straight face. "This was right after his father mysteriously disappeared."

  Alicia groaned. Scott was doing it again.

  "I never heard that one before," Boomer said, taking the bait.

  "It happened like this," Scott said. "When Evan was a kid, his father ran off and deserted him and his mother…"

  "Why?" Tiffany asked.

  Scott paused to consider the answer. "Wouldn't you? I mean, if you had Evan for a kid?"

  Boomer chuckled.

  The Chevy hit a pothole, bounced high into the air, and came down hard on its shocks. The trunk flopped loosely on its hinges.

  "He didn't live on Elm Street then," Scott continued. "He lived in a weird motel with his mother on the outskirts of town. Actually in a big, spooky house behind the motel. They owned the motel, but when the new highway was built it took all the business away. So it was just Evan and his mother living by themselves in this big, spooky, old house…"

  This all sounded very familiar to Alicia. Where had she heard that story before… "Psycho!" Alicia exclaimed out loud, snapping her fingers.

  Scott frowned.

  "Who's psycho?" Tiffany asked.

  "It's the Norman Bates story," Alicia explained. "You know, in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho. I told you, Scott's always making up stories about Evan."

  Scott shrugged as if to say "What's wrong with that?" as he turned the Chevy into the student lot at Springwood High and found a parking space. "We'd better hustle. We're only a few minutes late — Maybe Coach Cuttler will cut us some slack if we…"

  "What do you mean we?" Boomer asked, walking with an exaggerated limp. "I've got to get to the nurse's office to have this knee looked at."

  Scott rolled his eyes as he walked back around to the trunk. "I've got a feeling that knee's going to make a miraculous recovery right after I finish running extra laps for Cutt… Whoa!" Scott suddenly reeled back as thousands of flies swarmed out from his trunk like a black cloud.

  The stench was overwhelming. Alicia felt nauseated. Scott's trunk was always a mess, but this was something else.

  "Oh, I'm sick," Tiffany said weakly, backing away. "What kind of a bad joke is this?"

  "Nobody's sweat socks smell that sickening," Boomer said.

  Scott walked nervously to the front of the car and pulled out his varsity letter jacket. He came back around to the trunk then, and used the jacket to cover his nose and mouth.

  Boomer grabbed him by the arm. "It's something dead under there," he said with all the certainty of an expert. "I know. I've smelled that before at County General. Sometimes my dad comes home smelling like that."

  "Spare us the details," Alicia said, her hand shielding her eyes lest any of the flies go off-track in her direction. She looked at the grease-stained rag that was neatly spread out over a large lump.

  "We should get the police," Tiffany said, her face pale. "We shouldn't touch anything. They'll find your fingerprints. This is serious."

  "Come off it, Tiffany," Boomer said, straightening his neck and assuming the look of a football player immune to pain of any kind. "Do it, Scott."

  Scott inhaled deeply behind the jacket, then leaned into the flies and lifted up the rag.

  Alicia gasped. "Ignatius!" The creature was torn apart, its internal organs exposed in multiple places. She buried her face in her hands.

  "It's not Ignatius," Scott said, using the know-it-all tone of voice that Alicia deplored.

  "It's black. You can barely tell it's a cat. How do you know it's not Ignatius?" Alicia said.

  "It's got patches of white and yellow."

  "You can barely see them with all the blood," Boomer observed, once again the expert, trying to straighten things out.

  Alicia made herself look again at the creature. "The flies are so thick," she said with a groan. Then she saw Scott doing the unthinkable. "Don't touch it!"

  But Scott ignored her. He put his hand onto the scruff of the cat's neck. The spot that should have been soft and loose was stiff with dried blood. He held on anyway, and lifted the head of the cat, turning it so they could see the face.

  "Oh, no," Tiffany said.

  Alicia looked, five seconds that seemed like an eternity, long enough to permanently emblazen the horrible image on her brain.

  The cat's eyes — both of them — had been torn out at the roots.

  Chapter 7

  When Alicia arrived at the cafeteria later that day for lunch, she still had the dead cat on her mind.

  Of course Scott and Boomer had blamed it on Evan, which didn't seem fair. Scott's trunk was so easy to open that anyone could have stuck the thing in there. And Scott's jock buddies were always pla
ying practical jokes on each other — some grosser than others. It was like a contest with them, to see who could outdo the others.

  Ellen joined Alicia at the table with her lunch tray. She was wearing a short, tight, yellow-and-white-striped skirt that showed off her shapely figure and her long, muscular legs. Her luxurious, long blonde hair was tied back in a white ribbon.

  "Congratulations, captain. You really wowed Ms. Wilson," Alicia conceded gracefully.

  "Thanks," Ellen said, looking around the noisy lunchroom. "So where's Scott? Doesn't he usually sit with you at lunch?"

  "I think Coach Cuttler has him running extra laps," Alicia replied nonchalantly. But she felt a knot forming in her stomach. Alicia didn't like to think of herself as the jealous type, but how else was she supposed to feel when Ellen wasn't even trying to disguise her interest in Scott.

  Something near the big double doors caught Ellen's attention. Alicia supposed Scott had just entered the lunchroom.

  But when she looked over to see, it was Evan who stared back at them. He was sitting by himself near where the trays were stacked — the table no one ever wanted — eating the mystery-meat meal of the day. On the table next to him stood something about two feet high, covered with a delicate, lacy-looking cloth.

  Alicia wondered what it was.

  Ellen averted her gaze. "I wish Weird Evan would stop staring at me like that," she said curtly. "It's like he's undressing me with his eyes."

  Alicia knew that Evan was probably staring at her, not Ellen. Ellen was just too vain to think that any guy — including Weird Evan — might prefer Alicia over the new captain of the cheerleaders.

  Ellen opened her little plastic cup of blueberry yogurt and dipped into it with a spoon. "Did you hear who Weird Evan is dating? — Mary Aldrich! The skinniest guy in the school dating the fattest girl in the state!"

  Boomer and Johnny Murphy came sauntering into the lunchroom just then with a bunch of guys from the football team. They all had that arrogant jock swagger, looking cool. But Scott wasn't with them.