“I’m not sure…”
“You know,” said Neddy. “Breathe together, hold hands, and project a strong mental image.”
“Oh, right,” said Mom.
We breathed together, held hands, closed our eyes. Crazily enough, even though the fix was in and this time Neddy and I were the fixers, a hyperclear image of Dad arose in my mind at once. He was out in the desert where the winds blew strong, back in the Tucson days, flying a box kite. Dad loved flying kites, built his own. I remembered this one very well: a strange-looking thing in the shape of a flying horse, but it had soared way, way up there. Dad had this enchanted expression on his face, like a little kid.
“I have an image,” Mom said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear. “What comes next?”
“Travelers,” Neddy said. “Three faithful travelers.”
“Three faithful travelers are trying to reach you,” Mom said. “Your wife and your beautiful children. If…”
“You can hear us, or see us,” Neddy said.
“Or sense us,” I said. “Please give a sign.”
We sat in silence, eyes closed. Time passed. I started to wonder whether Neddy had messed up somehow, snuck a glance at him. His eyes were closed. He looked calm, and more than that, a lot like Dad in the box-kite memory.
“Please, Rich,” Mom said. “There’s so much I want to say. I beg you.” She sounded desperate, unbearably so. And at that moment, Dad’s laptop made one of those beeps that signal a computer coming to life.
We all opened our eyes, gazed at the screen. It remained blank for a moment, and then a message popped up.
Dear Family,
I just want to tell you that I am fine. There is no pain and I love you very much and will always be with you. But the best thing you can do for me now is to go on with your lives and be happy. That can only happen if you dont contact me anymore. We will be together soon enough.
Love,
Rich/Dad
Neddy had left out the apostrophe in don’t. Dad would never make a mistake like that. But Mom didn’t seem to notice. She gazed at the screen, tears streaming down her face, not making a sound. I felt bad.
After a while, her tears dried up. She turned to us. “Dad’s right,” she said.
“Yes,” we said.
“Can you print that for me, Neddy?”
Neddy rose, brought back the portable printer, printed the message. A few seconds later, the screen went blank. Mom kissed her fingers, touched the screen. Then she gave herself a little shake, almost like a dog, and blew out the candles. She didn’t seem so trancelike now.
Faint milky light came through the window. The first number 7 bus of the day rumbled by. The air in the kitchen wasn’t tingling anymore; we were back to a kind of normal.
Mom yawned, checked the time. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “I don’t want to see either of you till noon, at the earliest.”
“Night, Mom.”
“Night.” She kissed us both and went to bed, taking the printout. We heard her sigh softly as she lay down, not an unhappy sigh, more like the kind of sigh when something is over. Almost at once, her breathing grew slow and rhythmic, the breathing of sleep. We closed her door.
Neddy and I went into our bedroom, closed our own door. I’d never been so tired in my life.
“Good job,” I said.
“You, too,” said Neddy. “Do you—”
Our computer beeped, all on its own. We went over to the desk. Words appeared on the screen, but not in the usual way, more like they were materializing.
Thanks, kids. Good advice—not just for your mom, but for you, too.
I turned to Neddy. “Did you do this?” But all those commas in the right places—no way.
Neddy shook his head, eyes wide. Very slowly, almost a pixel at a time, the message dematerialized from the screen, leaving it blank. The air tingled.
About Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams is the New York Times bestselling author of the Echo Falls Mystery series, which includes Behind the Curtain, Into the Dark, and Down the Rabbit Hole, which won the Agatha Award and was an Edgar Award nominee. He’s written numerous novels for adults, including Delusion, Nerve Damage, End of Story, Oblivion, The Tutor, The Fan, and Lights Out, which was an Edgar Award nominee as well. Peter has also written Quacky Baseball, a picture book with art by Frank Morrison. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and four children. You can visit him online at www.peterabrahams.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE
Libba Bray
Dallas traffic is a bitch, a bear, a hockey mask–wearing serial-killer-in-the-basement kind of scary, and Maggie is sure they are all going to die, die, die in a fiery crash. They will die on their way to the concert, and, worse, they will then be memorialized in the 1980 Crocker High School yearbook with pictures of roses drawn by the stoner AV students. There will be a bad poem about the most beautiful flowers meeting an early frost. The poem will rhyme, for Chrissakes. Maggie would rather have her entrails pulled through her nose than have that happen. She’d rather repeat “Devil Dog” Devalier’s business typing class or accept a date with Jimmy Johnson, who she personally witnessed eating one of his boogers while he was stopped at a red light near the Whataburger on College Drive.
“Get over! Get over!” she screams to Diana, who’s at the wheel.
Diana careens into the right lane without checking her side mirror. They narrowly miss a black Datsun, whose driver scolds them with a sharp blast of his horn.
“Holy shit!” Holly squeals from the backseat, laughing. She waves to the guy in apology.
Holly’s waves get them out of a lot. She is the prettiest of them—tall and willowy, with long, shiny brown hair and Disney-animal brown eyes. Last summer she took a modeling course at the Barbizon School, a fact she likes to mention anytime she can.
The green-and-white exit marker looms up ahead. Maggie nudges Diana. “There’s Twenty-one B!”
“We’re gonna miss it,” Justine pipes up from the backseat, a mascara wand in one hand, a compact in the other.
“Hold on.” Diana flies across the right lane, taking the exit ramp at such a clip that the girls bounce in their seats.
“Shit,” Justine says. “You made me drop my mascara.”
Maggie has gotten a special dispensation to come to Dallas for the Cheap Trick concert. Her mother has issued the following rules: 1) The girls will leave right after school before rush-hour traffic gets bad. 2) They will not smoke marijuana cigarettes, as her mother calls them. 3) If they get into trouble, Maggie can always call her dad, who lives in Dallas now. She gives Maggie a dime for just such an emergency phone call, and Maggie takes it, though she knows she will not use it.
“Holy shit, I thought we were gonna be that truck’s hood ornament for sure,” Justine says, wiping off her mascara wand with a McDonald’s napkin she finds in the backseat. Justine never goes anywhere without eye makeup. Not even to the pool. She lines the insides of her lids with blue eyeliner and wears three coats of mascara because she read somewhere that this will make the whites of her eyes “pop,” whatever that means.
“Keep a lookout,” Diana says, and they fall into positions: Maggie and Holly scanning the right side of the road, Diana and Justine the left.
“See one. Over there,” Justine calls.
Diana pulls into the gravelly parking lot of the Bullseye Liquor Corral and parks off to the side by the banged-up ice cooler, and they wait for somebody they can sweet-talk or bribe into buying booze for them.
“There’s somebody.” Justine points to a guy getting out of a white Ford pickup. He wears a cowboy hat and a large belt buckle in the shape of Texas.
Diana shakes her head. “Looks like a state trooper.”
Maggie knows they have to pick carefully. The wrong guy—and it has to be a guy—could be an off-duty cop or a holy roller coming to drop off pamp
hlets for a church. At the very least, he could lecture them about underage drinking; at the worst, he could turn them in. They let two more cars pass—an old lady with orange lipstick and crazy penciled-in eyebrows, and two tattooed guys on Harleys whom Holly deems “too skeevy” to ask. Ten minutes pass without another car in sight.
“We’ll be here all night,” Justine laments.
The girl tribunal meets. It is decided that Diana will get the liquor. She’s blond with big boobs and can usually pass for eighteen. Maggie will ride shotgun, sergeant at arms. Maggie hates this position. She gets nervous in liquor stores.
Diana and Maggie push through the doors into a dark hole of cool air. Bottles line the shelves like an alcoholic’s dream library. The pimply-faced guy behind the counter looks up from his car magazine.
“Can I he’p you?” he asks. He’s got a thick plug of chewing tobacco wedged next to his bottom lip. He spits a thin brown stream of it into a Dixie cup.
“Um, I hope so!” Diana flashes her brightest TV hostess smile, and the guy smiles back, which is a good start. She puts her hands on the counter and pushes her arms into her sides, which makes her boobs press together in a magnificent display of cleavage that does not go unnoticed by Chaw Boy. “Do you have peppermint schnapps?”
This is the part where Maggie gets nervous—will he ask for ID? She pretends to be very interested in the rack of free newsprint magazines that advertise homes for sale in the area. She leafs through one, letting her eyes scan over the ranch houses, the 4BD/2BA homes with mature trees. She sees a place for sale on Briarwood Street, which is her old street, the one where she used to live before her parents divorced last year, before her father came to live in Dallas.
Diana comes up behind her and grabs her by the arm. “Got it.”
In the car, Diana pulls the bottle out of its brown paper bag, and they pass it around taking celebratory shots. The schnapps looks like water but it feels thick and hot as it burns down Maggie’s throat, and she can’t wait for it to do its neat party trick—the one where she feels numb enough to forget herself and be someone else for a while, someone fun and pretty and fearless. Her mother would be disappointed that she’s drinking. Her mother is never pissed off, only “disappointed” and “concerned” and sometimes, if she’s really angry, “a little upset.”
“And your brother’s sure the band’s staying at the Hyatt?” Justine asks. She passes the bottle to Holly.
“That’s what he said.” Maggie’s mouth tastes of oily peppermint.
“How does he know?” Diana asks.
“He heard it from this roadie they’ve used before,” Maggie says, hoping this settles it.
Justine nods, grins. “I can’t wait to see Cassie’s and Maureen’s faces when we tell them we partied with the band. Robin Zander’s so sexy. Do you think he has a girlfriend?”
“Where’s David now?” Holly asks. She’s always had a thing for Maggie’s brother.
“Houston, I think. Or maybe New Orleans.” She takes another sip, waiting for the bliss moment. “No. Houston.”
David’s been gone for six months. He graduated early and went on the road running lights and mixing sound for a Dallas bar band, Tower of Granite, that everyone says could be the next AC/DC, but Maggie thinks they’re kind of lame. The lead singer likes to twirl the microphone on its wire, as if Roger Daltrey didn’t practically trademark that move. Plus he refers to all groupies as “filling stations,” which is just too gross for words.
Maggie and David speak in TV commercials. Not real ones but commercials they’d like to see on TV for products that should exist.
“Sugarlicious gum, because dentists have mortgages, too.”
“For a religious dining experience, resurrect yourself and cross on over to Cheesus Crust Pizza!”
“The Tolkien Laundry Eraser: It’s Lord of the Rings Around the Collar.”
“Pervert’s Photo-Mat. Take off your clothes, and we’ll see what develops.”
Back when Maggie’s dad used to live with them, he would try to play along sometimes, but he was absolutely hopeless at it.
“Say olé to chicken mole!” he’d said once, holding up a plate of enchiladas.
“Dad, that is just pathetic,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes. It was their regular Thursday night out when it was just the two of them. On Thursdays, Maggie’s mom had night class and David was busy with his band.
“It rhymes,” her dad protested. “What more do you want from your old man?”
Maggie put a hand to her heart in mock sympathy. “It’s hard getting old, isn’t it? I want you to know that when it’s time and you’ve become a total embarrassment to us, I’m going to put you in the best home.”
Her dad cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll bet it’ll be like The Snake Pit with Olivia de Havilland.”
“She overacts,” Maggie said through a mouthful of melted cheese. “I like Joan Fontaine better.”
“Blasphemy,” he said.
Maggie enjoyed these nights with her dad. Sometimes they went to the mall or to a museum, or they went to dinner at their favorite chain restaurant, Viva Zapata!, and pretended it was a special occasion so that the mariachi band would play at their table and they could wear oversized sombreros and shout out, “Arriba!” on cue. Other times they would stay up to watch an old movie where the people looked impossibly glamorous, and Maggie would put her head on her dad’s shoulder and fall asleep. She’d usually open her eyes again about the time the credits rolled. Her mom would be snoring lightly in the armchair, and David would be sitting on the floor, eating ice cream and calling attention to Maggie’s drool-encrusted shirt.
“Friend, is nighttime drooling a problem? Then say hello to the Saliva Suction Cup!”
She misses David and wishes he weren’t so far away. But for now, she has the girls—Diana, Justine, and Holly. No one can remember exactly how or when it came to be this way; Holly and Maggie lived on the same street; Diana and Justine had been friends since fifth grade. But for more than a year now, it’s been the four of them. They are rarely without one another. Especially on hot days, when they slather their skin in baby oil and iodine and lounge around the Holiday Inn pool on plastic chaises. The thick mauve-and-white strips on the chairs feel good supporting Maggie’s stomach, like giant fingers. Maggie loves the feeling of the sun baking her slippery skin into something sticky, loves watching the pink blobs of iodine float through the Johnson’s baby oil bottle like a homemade lava lamp.
After exactly forty-five minutes on her stomach, she flips onto her back and stares at the pool through half-mast eyes hidden behind big black sunglasses. Feigning sleep, she watches the guys roughhousing in the deep end, calling each other “asshole.” She wonders if any of them think she’s pretty or if there’s only one kind of universal pretty, like Holly, or like Jaida Jordan, who made drill team captain two years in a row. Sometimes, as she studies the guys, bodies slick with pool water, shorts so heavy-wet they expose a small bit of butt crack, a mysterious trail of fine hair below the navel, she wonders if any of them are gay.
The first homosexual Maggie ever knew about was Christopher Jensen, who taught her Intermediate Jazz Dance class. Christopher was thin and blond with a high, feminine voice. Behind his back, the older girls liked to call him “ChriTHtopher,” emphasizing a lisp that wasn’t there. Maggie had been only eleven and hadn’t understood. A girl named DeeDee, who went on to become homecoming queen and then a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader after that, said, “He’s a little happy.” She put “happy” in quotation marks. When Maggie still didn’t get it, DeeDee leaned close and put her hand next to Maggie’s ear, making Maggie feel suddenly anointed, the ecstasy of being chosen to share a secret with one of the big girls.
“He’s a homo,” DeeDee said, her whisper tickling down Maggie’s neck like a kiss.
Christopher had come back into the room then, clapping his hands and asking to see his “Jazz Babies” in position, and Maggie saw him as a completely different person. How co
uld she not have noticed before? It was like looking at one of those optical illusion pictures where at first all you can see is a bunch of curvy lines and color, and then, suddenly, you see the hidden object—a lady’s face in profile, a penguin with a hat—and from then on you always see it that way.
The day Maggie’s parents split up was a cold one in January. Maggie was in her room stretching out for a run with David when their father knocked lightly on her door.
“Your mother and I want to talk to you,” he said.
She followed him to the living room, down the long hallway with its careful, symmetrical placement of framed family photographs—baby pictures, a posed family photo at Yosemite that her brother had ruined (according to her mom) by making a “crazy person face”; wedding pictures of her grandparents; her own parents on their wedding day looking young and stiff and slightly terrified, seeming somehow less substantial than the cake; Maggie in a hobo costume for Halloween, a greedy bloodlust on her pudgy face; her brother in his Boy Scout uniform beside a volcano made of mud and baking soda, a red ribbon pinned to it. It was funny how sometimes the pictures made Maggie feel watched over and connected, like she could point to them and say, This is where I come from, these are my people. Other times, she would stand in the cool dark of that hallway really looking at the faces in the photographs and see total strangers; and then she would be startled by the very idea that she was tied to this place, this family, this shared history, with no say in the matter whatsoever.
In the living room, her mother was sitting on the brown plaid sofa under a framed poster of “Desiderata,” a box of Kleenex beside her, her hand pressed to her mouth.
“Okay, we’re here,” David said. He pulled his leg up behind him in a quad stretch.
There were a lot of words that followed: Things happen. Can’t be helped. No one’s blaming anyone here. Divorce. Maggie felt as if she were sitting on the bottom of a pool watching the wavy forms of people above, hearing the muffled blah-blah of talk that she couldn’t really decipher. She was safely away from it for as long as she could hold her breath.
Up All Night Page 3
