by Tom Leveen
“There’s smoke coming out of your ears,” David said.
I bumped into the truck. “Huh?”
“You’re thinking way too hard,” David said. “What’s up? Is it the cocoa? Because I bet I can have Harriet fired. I have that kind of pull.”
“Sorry, no,” I said, bypassing his joke. “I mean, I’m fine.”
“Okay,” David said. “You ready to do this?”
I nodded.
“Are you positive you want to?” he asked.
“No.”
David looked as surprised as I felt. He opened his mouth, but I cut him off.
“I just mean, like you said, I could be wrong about this whole thing. All of it. And what happens then?”
“Then we come home,” David said. “That’s all.”
“Yeah, we come home, but then what for me?” I said. “If I can’t get Tara back, then . . .”
David said nothing, only waited for me.
“Then maybe nothing will ever change,” I went on.
“Well,” David said slowly, “let’s find out. C’mon.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat. I stood outside the passenger door for another moment, staring blankly at the empty space his body had just occupied.
“Okay,” I whispered to his ghost, and got in.
David was a very safe driver for seventeen. Or maybe he was a very safe driver because he was seventeen, I couldn’t tell. He got us onto the freeway that would connect to the highway out of town, nice and smooth. Of course, on an early Saturday morning there wasn’t much traffic to contend with, which helped.
I couldn’t get my mind to settle down on any one topic. Thoughts ricocheted from one side of my skull to the other until I could barely keep my eyes open.
“What’s your family like?” I asked, trying to get something to focus on.
“Pretty decent,” David said. “For family.”
“What do they do?”
“My mom’s an editor for a health magazine,” David said. “Like, for vitamins and stuff. And my dad’s a dealer.”
Well, that certainly got me to think about something new.
“Drugs?” I said.
“Blackjack.”
“What’s blackjack? Is that some kind of heroin or something?”
David laughed out loud. I thought for a second he’d run us off the road, careful driver or not. “Blackjack, the card game,” he said. “He works at one of the casinos on the reservation.”
“Oh,” I said, and sat back in my seat. “God. I thought . . . wait a sec, you did that on purpose, didn’t you.”
David gave me a theatrical, innocent shrug.
And I smiled. “Can I smoke in here?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“It’s hard to get the smell out. You know.”
“Sure, yeah. It’s okay.”
“Do you want me to pull over? We can park, take a break.”
“We’ve been on the road for, like, ten minutes.”
“Yes, but see, I’m flexible that way.”
“I can make it,” I said, looking out my window. “I shouldn’t do it anyway.”
“Why do you?” he asked.
I bit my lip, reconsidering his offer to pull over. Damn. Once the desire was in my head, it wouldn’t go away. So much for not being addicted. Or self-medicating. That’s what Dr. Carpenter called it.
“Okay, pull over,” I said. “I mean, when you get a chance.”
“How about once we hit the 17?”
“Okay.”
David kept an eye out. About fifteen minutes later, outside of Phoenix proper, he found a big stretch of dirt and slowed. He pulled off, and we climbed out together. We stood on either side of the bed of the truck, draping our forearms over the sides, facing each other. Traffic zoomed past, uncaring. I wondered what they thought of us. Of who—or what—we were.
I lit my cigarette and tilted my head back, blowing the smoke up. Wind frittered it away into nothing. It was getting chilly.
“It’s going to be cold up there,” I said, avoiding his eyes.
“I’ve got an extra sweatshirt behind the seat if you need it.”
“Not yet, but thanks.” I took another drag and shut my mouth, blowing the smoke out of my nose. “I picked it up a couple years ago,” I said finally. “From some—people. I was going to say friends, but they weren’t, really. Just people I knew.”
“Those darn kids from the wrong side of the tracks?” David asked. “Getting you involved with the wrong sorts of people? What with their long hair and disregard for authority.”
“No. Nothing like that. It was just around, and I picked it up. It was something to do.”
“You should give it up.”
“I know.”
“I mean, when you’re ready.”
“Yeah.”
“I personally don’t care,” David said. “But I think you’d be happier without them.”
“Happier,” I mumbled, blowing out a cloud.
“Someone buys them for you, you said?”
“Yeah, I got a guy. Well, a girl. But she always says that about stuff. Whatever you need done, she’s ‘got a guy’ who can do it.”
“So she’s a friend.”
I stamped the cigarette out in the dirt. “Not exactly,” I said. “She isn’t not, I guess. Met her at my doctor’s office. She buys them for me once a week.”
“I don’t know if you know this, but you sound like you don’t like her very much.”
I pulled out another smoke. Lit it. Kept it between my lips as I answered, giving me that unique smoker’s lisp. “What d’you shink?”
“I think there’s a lot you don’t talk about.”
I froze in place, eyeing him through gray smoke. David gazed easily back at me, his face friendly. I pulled the smoke out with my fingers. Stood there looking at David carefully.
A brand-new thought came to mind. Something I’d never considered. Something Dr. Carpenter had never suggested. Something that made me feel both really guilty and at least a little excited.
In the Wizard of Oz movie, when Dorothy is in Kansas, everything’s in black and white. In Oz it’s in full color. As I was standing across from David at that moment, his image went from black and white to color. Like I’d never really seen him fully for who he was till that moment.
I’m not saying I was in love with him. How could someone say that with any certainty in this situation? Even he hadn’t said that. I’m not saying I suddenly wanted to throw him into bed or something. Thanks to my meds these past years, I barely had an inkling of what being “turned on” even felt like. I’m only saying that he seemed different. And that maybe following him into Oz for a little while just might work out.
I crushed my cigarette out on the ground, only half-smoked. “Let’s go,” I said.
David slapped a palm against the edge of the truck bed with a metallic thud. “You got it,” he said. A minute later we were back on the road.
It didn’t take long for me to realize I was able to relax and have an actual conversation with David. Not that we solved the mysteries of the universe or anything, but we just—you know. Hung out. Like a real road trip. And when I started veering into worry and panic, I snapped my rubber band and reminded myself there’d be plenty of time for both when we got to Canyon City.
David insisted on pumping the gas when we stopped at a place called Cordes, a truck stop about halfway to Canyon City. I didn’t want him to do the work himself. But once he wrestled the nozzle away from me, I didn’t mind so much. I hopped onto the hood and banged my heels against one tire while he worked.
“I’ll pay,” I said.
“No, I got it,” David said.
“I know how much you make, remember,” I said, shivering
in a sudden breeze. It was cooler up here. I wished I’d brought more than my thin jacket. I wondered how much colder it would be in Canyon City.
“It’s okay, really,” David said. “I’m covered.”
“Are you, like, independently wealthy or something?”
“No . . . but my sifu pays me a bit to teach the little kids sometimes,” David said.
“What’s a see-foo?”
“My wing chun teacher.”
“You teach little kids to kick ass, huh?”
“Not quite,” David answered. “It’s not about kicking ass. It’s about . . . peace.”
“Peace through punching.”
“Peace through blending, remember?” he said. “Blend with your opponents instead of trying to match or beat their strength. Then it doesn’t matter how much bigger or stronger he is.”
“I wish I could believe that,” I said.
“I’ll teach you,” David said.
Only this time he didn’t try to apologize for it. I’d never seen this kind of confidence from him before. It was relaxing somehow. I didn’t fight a small smile.
David caught me doing it and laughed. “See, now, is it so bad to be in a good mood once in a while?”
“Sorry,” I said.
David stood beside me, leaning against the side of the truck. “Hey,” he said softly. “I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. I just like seeing you happy for a change. Can’t you feel the difference?”
I frowned. “I guess.”
“But you’re not really digging it.”
“It’s new,” I admitted.
I tilted my head to the clear sky above us. Such a beautiful part of the state. I hoped Tara was outside enjoying it. Behind and below us, the “Valley of the Sun” lay bland and familiar as the smudged pink walls of my room. Up here, rounded granite boulders reflected almost red, dotted with narrow green bushes.
“Can I tell you something?” I said.
“I sure hope so.”
“I spent some time in a . . . hospital,” I said.
“Appendix? Hangnail?”
“Not exactly. It was a—you know. Like, mental hospital.” It came out mennel hospil, I said it so fast.
David blinked a couple times. Sucked in a breath through his nose. Nodded.
“Okay.”
I glared at him through slitted eyes. “You don’t think that’s weird?”
David shrugged. “Maybe. Or not weird so much as, like, rare. Unusual. I mean, come on, Pel. Your best friend got kidnapped. I think you earned a little mental health break.”
“It doesn’t freak you out?”
“I can say yes if that’ll make you feel better,” David said. “It doesn’t happen to everyone, no, so it’s weird like that. And I mean, it’s—well, if you’re sick, you go get help. At a hospital. Doesn’t matter what kind of sick or what kind of hospital. Are you sick?”
“Sure feels that way.”
“Are you, like, going to hurt yourself? Because I swear to God, you try any shit like that, I’ll drive you right back to that hospital myself.”
I thought about my legs. What he might think if I showed them. Then I processed his threat. How could a threat make me feel good? Very strange.
“No,” I said. It was true at the moment, anyway. I wanted a cigarette more than my cutting blade. Still, my fingers drifted to the pillbox just to make sure it was still there.
“That’s good,” David said. “So, then, no big deal.”
I didn’t respond. Not right away. The gas was done pumping by then. He put the handle back, snapped the gas cap lid closed, and leaned against the car. Beside me.
“I was only there a few days,” I said at last. “Well, and then day treatment after that. But what I wanted to say about it . . . what I wanted to tell you . . .”
It was actually harder to admit to this part. David crossed his arms over his chest, not saying a word. Just waiting. I loved that he did that.
I gazed across the highway, watching the rare car drive by. Another breeze dimpled the skin on my arms. I wished we were just on a regular road trip.
“It’s easier,” I said finally, saying the words I’d never even said to myself but knew were true. “They do everything. It’s almost like a vacation, except for the therapy and the meds and the blood tests every morning.”
David winced.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like freaking vampires, I swear. But still. It was easier. No one really expects anything from you. If you want to be alone, you just whip up a fresh batch of tears, get a pass to go back to your room. The food wasn’t great, but it didn’t suck. You don’t even have to do homework necessarily. You’re this fragile little bird and everyone bends over backward to make sure you don’t get upset. It’s kind of a sweet deal. That’s where I picked up smoking. There’s this patio outside the living area, with a lighter bolted to the wall, kind of like a cigarette lighter in a car. We couldn’t have our own lighters. No lighters, no matches. No sharps. No shoelaces. Some of them couldn’t even have pencils.”
“Did you try to . . . you know.”
I knew.
“No,” I said. “But I’m not sure why not, really.”
David squinted at me.
“I just mean—” I hesitated, not sure how to describe it. “Are you claustrophobic at all?”
“Not especially,” he said. “I did get stuck on a roller coaster once. That was pretty terrifying. So we were out in the open and everything, but it took hours for them to get us down. I don’t know if that’s the same thing.”
“Close enough,” I said. “I’m not claustrophobic, but that feeling? Like everything’s closing in on you . . . that’s me. That’s me, every day. For years. That’s why I ended up in the hospital. I’d have these moments of being okay, but then I’d have these epic breakdowns. Like the other day at work. Go totally mental, or totally paralyzed. I mean, you’ve sort of seen it. So Mom and Dad put me in there.”
“So what happened, how’d you get out?”
“The money ran out. Something like that. I don’t know how it all worked exactly, my dad was in charge. But sometimes I want to go back. So I don’t have to think, don’t have to do anything. Just watch game shows and take meds and forget that Tara was ever my friend . . .”
I had to stop. My throat was tightening up.
“Pelly?”
I didn’t respond. Just stared at the highway.
“You can say no,” David said. “But—can I hug you?”
I still didn’t respond. Then I dipped my chin down, once. Twice. So small, so slight, almost imperceptible.
Then his arms were around me, his ear pressed to mine. He just stood there, holding me. My hands rose all on their own and gripped his shoulders, squeezing. They were narrow but strong.
We stayed that way for a while. Eventually, though, when David didn’t say anything else either, I got self-conscious. I let go of him, hopped off the hood, and started walking to the gas station’s tiny convenience store. “You, um, want anything?”
“Mountain Dew,” David said, like nothing had happened. “Thanks.”
I waved a “no problem” back at him and went into the little shop.
Maybe David was right. Maybe I was shut off. Actually, no maybe about it. I kept people away, and yeah, I did it on purpose. What did that make me? Was I inhuman?
And what just happened out there? Between us. Did this mean—
“Shut up!” I shouted at the soda cooler.
Two customers turned and stared at me in shock. The cashier peered over a rack of chips to see what I was up to.
“I don’t take back-sass from soda pop,” I said to them.
Well, that didn’t get a laugh, but it got them to turn away again. I grabbed a Dr Pepper and a Mountain Dew, paid hurriedly, and rushed back out to the car,
where David was already behind the wheel.
“You all right?” David asked as he turned the engine.
I sputtered, trying to come up with an answer. And then I laughed. Hard. Bigger and bolder than anything so far today, than anything the past several years.
Back-sass from soda pop? Seriously?
I tried to explain myself and couldn’t, curling up in the seat and holding my ribs. David started in with me, and for a while there, everything in the world was good.
TWELVE
“It, um . . . doesn’t look terribly terrifying,” David said, and then snorted like he’d surprised and amused himself with the wordplay.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
We were parked across the street from Franklin Rebane’s house in Canyon City.
Any other time, I might have admired the neighborhood. Tall pine trees lined every street, and the houses fell neatly into the “quaint” category. Mountains flanked Canyon City on three sides, and here in what Phoenicians called “the high country,” the scrubby desert brush of Phoenix had disappeared, replaced by ancient trees of the Coconino National Forest. The streets waved up and down all through town, like pavement roller-coaster tracks, and Rebane’s street was no different. His driveway tilted at a slight angle as it snaked around to the rear of the house.
We’d had no trouble finding it. Interstate 17 ran right through the middle of town, with major streets branching off. One of those branches led up a hill and into this neighborhood. We’d stopped at a two-way intersection, driven straight up this road called Rosemont, and there in the middle of the street sat the house of the man who’d kidnapped my best friend.
The house itself was simple and, for lack of a better term, “cute.” Just like the others along Rosemont and the surrounding neighborhood. They were older clapboard models, many whose chimneys had begun to tilt. A concrete path led from the sidewalk to a raised porch and a red-painted front door. The house was two stories but long and narrow, with an ancient wood-shake shingled roof. I didn’t see the white car anywhere, but from where we were parked, also couldn’t see to the back of the house. It did seem like there was another building in back. A workshop or small garage, maybe. We’d seen others like that at other houses as we’d driven through the neighborhood.
