Going Places

by Kathryn Berla

  The characters were in the earliest stage of development. I knew I’d get to know them and absorb their worlds as my own. That could be months into the future. Maybe even years. But it felt important. It felt worthy, not just of me like Alana had said, but in a much broader context. Suddenly I felt a purpose to my life in a place that had previously been empty. It was more than just starting a business or impressing a girl or receiving a note from a teacher predicting I’d go places. Was it dark? Yes, very. But somehow it lightened me.

  >>>

  I floated through the next day and could hardly wait until that afternoon when Fritzy got home from a Christmas pageant rehearsal at her church. I was Superman on steroids. If a drug existed that could equal the high of a sense of purpose, we’d be a planet of junkies. I wanted to tell someone about it, and Alana was the natural person. But she was gone. Alana would have to wait.

  In the meantime, plan B had taken on new meaning and urgency which only Fritzy could understand. But this time I wanted to talk to her about it face to face. It was too easy to dismiss it over the phone.

  It turned out she was busy until after dinner, so as the sun set so did my faith in the plan. Only a few hours earlier I could have sold it to her or anyone else, believing in it with all my heart. I’d been so filled with self-assurance. Sitting with her in my car that night, I found it difficult to revive that conviction. But since we’d already discussed it once before, we were at least able to bypass the initial disbelief and charges of insanity. It wasn’t as shocking this time although we were both a little scared by it, treating it carefully like a ticking bomb. But the longer we talked, the less scary it seemed. Like allergy shots where allergens are introduced little by little until one day the patient has become immune. Or the violence on TV that desensitizes against the real thing. And since the end result was for a moral purpose, it helped in justifying the means.

  After a while, this plan—plan B—felt less like a bomb and more like a helpful pet. A guide dog that was going to lead us toward a solution to a problem that was hurting a very good man. I think anyone could have arrived at that same place under similar circumstances. You only need to believe you’re acting in the name of righteousness. And that there is no other way.

  Before setting the plan in motion, we had to eliminate all other options, so I attempted another visit to Mr. Scolari, this time by myself. I stopped by his house a few nights later around nine at night, a time Fritzy and I concluded a home burglar alarm would be enabled. It was Christmas Eve so I knew he’d be home. Alana would be back in three days. Plan B would take place in four. I did a quick check of the premises, saw no outside alarm signs and waited for him to answer my knock on his door.

  He came quickly and, it seemed to me, without any indication that he had to first disable an alarm.

  “Hudson.”

  I knew I was taking a big risk but I had to try. Fritzy insisted on it or she was out.

  “Mr. Scolari, could I ask you for a huge favor?”

  “What’s this about?” he asked and I could tell he was annoyed.

  The electric blue tones of a TV flickered behind him like a lightning storm.

  “I wondered if I could take a look at your piano. I’ve been calling around to all the rental companies, and I want to make sure I get the right kind.”

  “Now?” he said with disbelief. “Any standard upright piano will do for a beginner.” His body blocked the crack in the doorway. “You don’t need to see mine, it’s a baby grand which is totally unnecessary for you at this point.”

  It’s a good thing it was dark because the anonymity of the night gave me that little extra courage it took to do something so stupid. What I was hoping for was to be invited in, and get to talking and then after a while I’d ask where the bathroom was and accidentally wander upstairs and call Pirkle from the window.

  “Anyway, it’s pretty late Hudson. Good to see you.”

  “Merry Christmas,” I said while he closed the door on my face.

  I knew I’d never get another chance. Not while he was home.

  I walked back around to Pirkle’s house and told him nobody was home. I’d have to try another time.

  “I think you’re wrong, Hudson,” he said. “I just saw the little girl and this time she saw me too.”

  It was late and getting cold. My mother was expecting me home. Brightly colored lights trimmed the outside of Fritzy’s house. The trees and bushes of one neighbor’s front yard had been transformed into a light show of electric greens and blues. A twinkling tree was centered in the front window of the house next to that one. The sky was black and speckled with glittering stars. All around me the Christmas spirit seemed to mock the rabbit hole of Pirkle’s mind.

  “Merry Christmas, sir,” I said.

  >>>

  Three days later came the call I’d been waiting for.

  “I’m back,” Alana said. “Totally jetlagged, but I really want to see you.”

  “I want to see you too. Did you have a good time?”

  “It was amazing. But I missed you. Can you come over?”

  She’d never invited me inside her house before. We always hung out at my house which she considered more fun and relaxing. Did absence really make the heart grow fonder? Would it work for me and not for Bryce? Was I going to get her father’s blessing that night? I was just about to sit down for dinner with my mom but I was too anxious to get answers to those questions.

  “I’m going to eat later,” I told my mom. “Alana just got back from Paris.”

  My mom’s shoulders rose and fell as she sighed visibly, not audibly. She knew enough not to say anything. “Cover your plate and put it in the fridge,” she said wearily.

  Once I got to Alana’s, she threw open her door and hugged me tightly like a long, lost . . . brother?

  “My dad’s not home,” she said as if to put me at my ease. It actually had the opposite effect. “He went straight to his office to catch up on work.”

  So much for her father’s blessing.

  Her house was a lot different than mine. For one thing, it was expensively and tastefully furnished and decorated. No threadbare sofas you could sink into for an afternoon nap like at my house. Her kitchen was all granite, stainless steel, and recessed lighting. No stained Formica counters and buzzing fluorescent lights. No teachers’ notes stuck to her massive refrigerator. My mom would have loved a kitchen like that, but we couldn’t afford it.

  “Nice digs, Alana.”

  Suddenly I felt an imbalance in our relationship I’d never felt before. Why hadn’t I ever been invited to her house? Why had Bryce? What was different about now?

  “Thanks. My dad always lets me decorate whenever we move. He gives me a budget and I can pretty much do whatever I want.”

  “You did all this?”

  She led me into the living room. Like Pirkle’s it didn’t look too lived in, but it was beautiful. A curved buttery-soft leather sofa faced a huge flat screen TV. I could only imagine the hours I could waste playing video games if I lived there. Original artwork adorned the walls, and colorful glass sculptures were displayed in small alcoves.

  “Mostly,” she said. “A lot of the art my dad and I collected during our travels.”

  “Beautiful,” I examined, without touching, a glass vase that seemed to change from blue to green to gold depending on where you stood, and how the light struck it.

  “You’ll be able to collect art pieces once you start traveling, Hudson.”

  “Doubt if I’ll be able to afford anything like this.”

  She took me by the hand and led me up the stairs to her bedroom.

  “This is the room I reserve for the greatest art,” she said.

  Bryce wasn’t lying. There were pictures of mine all over her walls. Sketches she’d saved from certain destruction.

  Let me have it, she complaine
d whenever I ripped a drawing from my pad in frustration. You’ll be famous one day, and then I’ll be rich.

  I was beyond flattered.

  “I can’t wait for you to see my new graphic novel,” I said. “I started it while you were gone, and this time I think you’ll approve.”

  She looked at me with such delight and approval, I felt capable of anything. She seemed different. Happy. For whatever reason, the trip had been good for her.

  “That’s fantastic,” she said. “I’m so proud of you.” But she didn’t ask when she could see it.

  She took my hand in her own. Her fingers were soft and warm.

  “I really did miss you, Hudson.”

  “You were only gone for eight days,” I said.

  Her sudden emotion was amazing, incredible, awesome—every superlative I could think of. But it also made me uncomfortable. My feelings for Alana never changed, so I wasn’t sure what was behind the change in hers.

  “Didn’t you miss me?” she turned her pretty lips down to mimic a pout.

  “You know I did.” My vision went fuzzy with desire for her.

  She sat on the side of her bed, pulling me next to her.

  “How much?”

  Was she really flirting with me? It seemed like she was, but since it was so far out of the realm of anything in our past, I decided it was just wishful thinking on my part.

  “A lot,” I said, and the memory of Fritzy’s kiss pinged my brain.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stiffen like they say happens just before lightning strikes. Alana lowered herself onto her back and pulled me towards her. The flowering vine running down the side of her neck gave off an intoxicating aroma. Since she was experienced, I followed her lead, and suddenly the body I’d only ever dreamed of was open to me—to touch, to smell, to taste. A gasp. Her fluttering eyelashes. The kiss. Clothes peeling away. Flesh pressing against flesh. Melting into each other. It was the fourth of July, Christmas, and my birthday all rolled into one. Inside of a dream. And then just like a dream, it was over, and I woke up as the new Hudson. Hudson, the man. Hudson who wasn’t a virgin. It was everything I’d ever fantasized about. And more.

  Afterwards, we lay naked under her mauve satin comforter giggling like kids. She smiled at me in a way people do when they’re wondering what’s on your mind. But it wasn’t my mind she was wondering about. It was hers. I feared a Fritzy-type question.

  Please, God, don’t let her say it, I prayed ungratefully to the God I only call on in times of distress. Don’t let her turn to me and ask if it was gross.

  She didn’t. I summoned my courage.

  “Are you really done with Bryce?”

  “Of course I am.” She stretched forward to kiss me on the lips. “We’ll be great traveling partners, Hudson,” she said.

  And it was only then that I got it. I’d just passed my audition.

  I’d become a man, which gave me the courage to go through with plan B. I didn’t kid myself that Alana had gone to Paris for eight days and fallen out of love with Bryce and in love with me. I knew she just wanted to see if I passed. Not in terms of my love-making skills which were non-existent. Just in terms of the “gross” factor. Could she be with me, make love to me and not go running for the hills? Alana needed me to help her through the first part of life after parents. She didn’t need me the way I needed her, but she was smart enough to know there’d come a time when just being friends wouldn’t be enough for me. That’s what she wanted to preempt.

  Did I realize all that at the moment? Not exactly in a way I could put into words, but I knew it in my gut. It didn’t matter to me. Not at the time.

  When good ideas go badly . . .

  . . . maybe you have to go back and ask yourself if the idea was really good to begin with.

  Fritzy and I were ready. We’d prepped and gone over contingencies. She noticed my new confidence, almost arrogance, but put it down to the fact I was psyched about what we were about to do. The act itself was taking on greater significance than the reason behind it.

  I stopped by Pirkle’s house just before Scolari arrived for Frankie’s lesson.

  “I’m on my way to your neighbor’s house,” I said. “When I get there, I’ll look out the round window and call you on your cell phone.”

  “You didn’t tell him anything?” Pirkle asked warily. He lived with the fear that any random person aware of his “problem” had the power to commit him to an asylum. Maybe back in the day they did, and nothing would convince him otherwise.

  “No. I just said I’d stop by. There’s a bathroom upstairs, so I’ll tell him I have to use it.”

  He gazed steadily at me and nodded.

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  How easily I’d learned to lie.

  >>>

  We were standing in the kitchen so I could see when Scolari arrived at Fritzy’s, but she texted me anyway, and Plan B was set into motion. I left Pirkle’s house and walked around the block to Scolari’s street. I waited on the corner until Fritzy arrived.

  “Can’t believe we’re doing this, Wheeler. This is so wrong.” She was breathing heavily even though she’d barely exerted herself.

  “Not a good time for cold feet,” I said. “C’mon, we can do this. In and out in less than three minutes. No one will ever know I was there.”

  “Remember, don’t touch anything. Anything!”

  “I won’t. Relax. Let’s go.”

  We jogged the rest of the way to his house and after looking around to make sure there were no passersby or curious neighbors, we walked to the front door. Fritzy tried a few different keys before finding the one that unlocked the door. She turned it carefully, and we held our breath, hoping an alarm wouldn’t go off. It didn’t. Then just as she turned to leave, we proved the old proverb that the best laid plans often go wrong. And ours wasn’t even the best laid.

  “Shit,” Fritzy said. “How are you going to lock the door when you leave if I take the keys back with me?”

  It was a deadbolt, so I couldn’t lock it from the inside and pull it shut behind me like we’d planned.

  “Too risky to give me the keys. Just take them. I’ll pull the door shut and when he unlocks it, hopefully he won’t notice anything. If he notices, maybe he’ll think he forgot to lock up. Now get out. Go home.”

  I slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind me. I surveyed the darkened room, curtains drawn against the light of day. I could make out a beautiful baby grand piano in a room obviously meant to be the dining room. I moved towards it and ran my fingers against its glossy black surface before remembering the fingerprint evidence I might be leaving behind. Too late to worry about that. I was the star of my own crime show, and Fritzy was going to want every last detail. I looked around, saw the stairs, and walked towards them.

  Later I’d learn that Fritzy ran all the way home probably getting there soon after I reached the stairs. She didn’t hear the plinking of piano keys when she walked into her house. Instead she heard the murmuring of voices. Voices coming towards her. She quickly dropped the keys into the brass bowl.

  “You’d better go see Mom,” Frankie said as he and Scolari walked towards the front door. “She’s in her room crying. The hospital just called and said Grandpa died.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lauren.” Mr. Scolari put a gentle hand on Fritzy’s shoulder. I imagined him reaching up to do it when Fritzy later described it to me. “Frankie, you take care, and I’ll see you next week unless you let me know otherwise.”

  He reached into the bowl for the keys and walked out of their house.

  >>>

  When Fritzy called me I was halfway up the stairs.

  “Get out!” she hissed into the phone. “Scolari’s on his way home. My grandpa died, so they canceled the lesson.”

  “I’m almost there,” I said. �
��When did he leave?”

  “Just now. Get out. I mean it, Wheeler. I have to go help my mom; she’s really upset.”

  I took “just now” to mean just now, but it really didn’t. There had been the seconds ticking away when Fritzy peeked into her mother’s bedroom. When she walked to her own room, shutting the door against Frankie’s helpless gaze in order to call me. There had been the seconds when she listened to make sure Frankie was in the room with their mom. Seconds. Everything we do in life strips away the seconds we have left. Even the little things we never think about. I thought I had a minute to get up the stairs and call Mr. Pirkle. It would take Scolari five to seven minutes to walk home. He wouldn’t be running like Fritzy. I double-stepped it to the top of the stairs, as fast as my legs could carry me. The window, by my calculation, was only a few feet away. My lungs were burning by the time I reached the second story. My heart was pounding and my skin and scalp prickling with primal fear. My eyes swept up and down the hallway. There it was. The round window I’d seen so many times from the other side, it almost seemed mythical. I started towards it, cell phone in hand, Pirkle’s number already ringing.

  And then she stepped out of a room. A little girl with curly blonde hair. She looked at me fearfully but quickly composed herself.

  “Shhh . . . don’t tell Mommy.” She brought a tiny finger up to her lips.

  When bad ideas go well . . .

  . . . you should never expect to get credit.

  What went through my mind at that moment will never be recovered. Only when I think back can I try to piece it together. The girl. My total inability to process her existence. My completely inappropriate laughter at the realization the joke was on me. Joke? 911? What was that signal I was supposed to give Pirkle from the window? What signal should I use for a real girl? What the hell was going on? I grabbed her by the hand and walked quickly to the stairs. Why? I have no idea. Where was I taking her? I don’t know that either. All I knew was that she wasn’t supposed to be there, and that’s what I had to change. Don’t tell Mommy. I won’t. Come with me. Who is Mommy? Who is Daddy? Everything unfolded like a bad dream. One where you pray for the alarm clock to wake you up.