Don't Look Behind You

by Lois Duncan

  Although Mom, Bram, and I were not allowed to go out, the hotel provided laundry service, and Jim got some extra clothing for us at the mall. He also made regular forages down to the gift shop to pick up such necessities as deodorant and toothpaste, and on one embarrassing occasion, a box of tampons. And every morning and evening he went down to get newspapers. The moment he was back, Mom snatched them from him and eagerly combed the pages for news about the trial. As the hearings dragged on, the articles kept getting shorter, and eventually they were bumped to the C section next to “Dear Abby.” It wasn’t until the jury retired to their chambers that the story again made an appearance in section A.

  As soon as the verdict was in, Max phoned to tell us. He called at mid-afternoon, when I was out on the balcony trying to get a start on my summer tan. The sound of the phone was so unexpected that for a moment I simply stood there, too startled to react. Then I whirled and bolted back into the living room, where Jim already had the receiver to his ear.

  “Hello?” he was saying. “Yeah, that’s what we all expected. Do you want to tell her yourself, or do you want me to do it?” He paused for a moment, then handed the receiver to Mom. “It’s Max. The jury is in, and the verdict is guilty.”

  Mom’s face lit up like a neon light. “Thank god!” she exclaimed as she grabbed the receiver from his hand. “Max, is it really over? Has George left for home yet?” As she listened to the answer, her smile lost its brilliance. “Well, of course his attorney will appeal, that’s standard procedure. What does that have to do with George being kept there?”

  This time she was silent much longer. Creases appeared between her eyes, and she started to drum her fingers impatiently on the coffee table. Finally she said, “What you’re telling medoesn’t make sense. There’s no way Loftin could have made those threats from prison.” She paused. “Can’t the letters be traced? Isn’t that your job?” Another pause. “I suppose we have no choice, then, but I don’t understand why you couldn’t have told us sooner.” She hung up the phone, and Bram gave a squeak of excitement.

  “Are we going home? Can I sleep in my room tonight?”

  “I’m afraid not, honey,” Mom said in a strange, tight voice. “Dad has received some threatening letters, and Max thinks we should stay where we are until they find out who wrote them.”

  “But Steve’s graduation is this coming weekend!” I protested. “I have to be there for that and for the parties afterward!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mom. “That’s just not going to be possible.”

  “You promised!” I wailed.

  “I didn’t promise you anything. I simply said that I thought we would probably be back in time.”

  “So we’re stuck here for life, just because of a few stupid letters?! We don’t even know they were written by somebody dangerous! There are all sorts of screwed-up weirdos who hide in the woodwork and write sick letters to people whose names are in the newspapers!”

  “Don’t yell at me, April,” Mom snapped. “I just can’t take it. You’re not the only one who wants to go home, you know. My book is due to the publisher at the beginning of August.”

  “So send it in late!” I shot back at her. “They’ll publish it anyway! I’m the one who’s had to miss everything—first the prom, then Steve’s graduation—and now, for all we know, we could be stuck here all summer! Steve is going to think I’m never coming back! If Jim doesn’t let me talk to him, I’m going to go crazy!”

  I whirled and ran into the bedroom and slammed the door. Then I threw myself down on the bed and burst into tears. Mom was usually a reasonable person. It was hard to believe she was taking those letters so seriously. The trial was over, so why would anybody harm us? In fact, what proof did we have that we’d ever been in danger? A shot had been fired, but no damage had been done to anybody, so maybe the gesture had only been meant to scare Dad.

  I don’t know how long I lay sobbing into my pillow before I heard the sound of the doorknob turning. A moment later I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Go away!” I hiccuped. “I don’t want to talk to anybody!”

  The voice that answered was not the one I expected.

  “You don’t have to,” said Jim. “You’ve done far too much talking already. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, April. You’re a nice enough kid, but you’re part of the reality TV generation. You can’t believe real-life stories don’t always have happy endings, and you think of yourself as the star and the rest of us as bit players.”

  “That’s not true!” I cried, glaring up at him through my tears.

  “Then give some thought to your mom,” Jim said brusquely. “She’s worried about your dad, and she’s hitting the wine too hard. She’s in no condition to deal with your childish temper tantrums.”

  “This isn’t a tantrum!” I struggled to keep from shouting at him. “Are you too old to remember what it’s like to be in love?!”

  “My personal life is none of your business,” Jim said. “Your personal life is my business when it puts you in danger. I didn’t like what I heard just now in the living room. I want you to promise you’re not going to call your boyfriend.”

  “I wouldn’t have to tell him where we are,” I said. “I could just let him know I’m safe and tell him I miss him.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jim said. “It’s out of the question.”

  “What harm would it do? You’re being so unfair!”

  “There’s always the chance you might let something slip.”

  “So what if I did? Steve wouldn’t repeat it to anybody. Or do you think every phone in this state has been tapped, including Steve’s cell?”

  “You’re not to call your boyfriend,” Jim said firmly. “I’m not going to leave this room until you’ve given me your promise.”

  “All right, I promise,” I told him. “Now are you satisfied?”

  “I’d like to believe you mean that, but I don’t think I trust you.”

  “What are you going to do about it, lock me in a closet?”

  “I’m going to tell the operator not to put through any calls from this suite,” Jim said. “I can’t afford to take chances with a hysterical teenager.”

  He left the room, pulling the door closed behind him, and left me lying there, seething with indignation. I could not remember ever having been so furious! Jim had no right to accuse me of being a liar! It was insulting to be monitored by the hotel operator, and I wasn’t about to allow myself to be intimidated! Jim had forced me to promise that I wouldn’t phone Steve, but hadn’t said that I wouldn’t get in touch with him some other way.

  Swept along on a rising wave of perversity, I jumped up from the bed and crossed the room to the desk. As usual, Mom had spent her morning working, and sheets of hotel stationery covered with line after line of her neat, slanted handwriting layscattered across the desktop in a haphazard manner. I took a fresh sheet from the drawer and tore off the letterhead. Then I sat down at the desk and composed a letter.

  Dear Steve,

  A note from your missing Rapunzel! I wish I were really the princess in that fairy tale and could let my hair down fourteen stories so my prince could climb up to me. I felt so horrible standing you up for the prom. Now I’ve found out that I’ll miss your graduation too. I’m so disappointed and miserable I just want to die. I wish I could say where I am, but I’m not allowed to. I’ll explain everything when I get home. For now, just know I’m thinking about you every second of every day, and I miss you, miss you, miss you.

  All my love,

  “A”

  After I’d completed the letter I reread it carefully. As far as I could see, it was totally innocuous, void of any shred of real information. Still, to play it totally safe, I added a postscript:

  Don’t show this note to anybody and destroy it after reading.

  My next concern was how to get the letter delivered. I couldn’t mail it in a hotel envelope with the name and address of the Mayflower printed in the corner. Another pro
blem was that I didn’t have a stamp. I thought about sneaking down to the lobby to buy one, but the only time I could do that would be after Jim was asleep at night, and at that late hour the shop was sure to be closed.

  Suddenly I remembered the magazine subscription payment. I’d filled out the credit card info with Sherry the last time I’d spent the night with her and I’d meant to put it out the next day for the mailman. Then, for some dumb reason, I hadn’t unpacked, and the suitcase with all of its contents had been stashed in my closet. I’d dumped out the musty clothing when I’d repacked, but I didn’t recall that I’d ever removed the envelope. My carry-on bag was lying open on the luggage rack, and when I checked the side pocket, the envelope was in it. I managed to pry it open without tearing the flap and substituted my letter for the printed order form. Then I resealedthe envelope, crossed out the company address, and wrote Steve’s name and address in its place.

  Late that night, after everybody was asleep, I tiptoed through the dark living room and unlocked the outer door. Then I took off the chain and let myself out into the hall.

  The brush of my bare feet on the heavy carpet sounded so loud in the empty corridor that I kept expecting a dozen doors to fly open and a chorus of voices to demand to know “What’s going on out there?” Of course that didn’t happen. Nobody accosted me. I didn’t even run into a drunken hotel guest staggering back to his room after a late-night party. I crept down the hall without seeing or hearing anyone and dropped the letter in the mail chute between the elevators. Then I returned to our suite, got back into bed, and slept more soundly than I had for a great many nights.

  CHAPTER 5

  I mailed the letter in the dark, early hours of Wednesday morning and figured Steve was bound to receive it on Friday. In his neighborhood the postman made his rounds in the morning, and since Mr. and Mrs. Chandler both worked and Billy was still in school, it would probably be Steve who brought the mail in from the box, possibly upon his return from commencement rehearsal.

  I spent most of Saturday picturing his face when he saw the printed form with the address scratched out and his own substituted in my handwriting. By late afternoon I was telling myself, “By now he’s gotten it. At this very minute he’s probably sitting on his bed, reading it over and over, so glad and relieved to finally have had some word from me.”

  To me, that thought was what Mom’s wine was to her; itlifted my spirits and gave me a momentary high. I really needed that lift, because our living situation had become more depressing than ever since my showdown with Jim. We addressed each other politely (“Please, pass the salt.” “Would you mind if I switched channels?”) but aside from such conventional civilities, we had exchanged few words since our confrontation on Tuesday. Mom didn’t seem to notice our strained relationship. During the day she scribbled away at her desk, and in the evening she was so mellowed out and drowsy that she usually went to bed before Bram and I did.

  It wasn’t easy to avoid Jim’s company in such close quarters, but I made it a point to do so as much as possible. Instead of watching soaps with him in the mornings, I watched Bram’s game shows in the bedroom, and despite the fact that the weather was damp and muggy, I spent a lot of time sitting out on the balcony, reading paperback novels and watching hotel guests splash in the pool fourteen floors below me.

  On Saturday afternoon Jim followed me out there. “Stop being childish,” he said. “Let’s call a truce.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said coolly.

  “Don’t give me that. You’ve been pulling a sulk for three days now, pouting like a three-year-old whose father’s forbidden her to play in the street.”

  “You’ve been treating me like a three-year-old!” I retorted. “Besides, you’re not like my father. My father trusts me! I told you I wouldn’t call Steve, and you didn’t believe me. I don’t like having people call me a liar, and I’ll never forgive you for talking to the hotel operator.”

  Jim was silent a moment, digesting that statement. Then, to my great surprise, he said, “I apologize. Actually, I never did contact the operator. I was worried that you were getting ready to do something dumb, and telling you that was the only way I could think of to stop you.”

  “I’m not stupid,” I said.

  “You don’t have to be stupid to be dumb,” said Jim. “My granddaughter, Monica, is just your age and nuts about a kid with a Harley-Davidson. Monnie’s normally as levelheaded as they come, but she turns into somebody else when she gets with this boyfriend. She’s got this idea that the two of them together are invincible. She rides on the back of that motorcycle without wearing a helmet, while he steers with one hand and chugs beer with the other.”

  “That’s not only dumb,’’ I said. “It’s just plain crazy.”

  “Sure, it’s crazy, but Monnie doesn’t think so. She’s thinking with her hormones instead of her brain right now. Anyway, like I said, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”

  The apology made me ashamed of my own rude behavior. When I looked at Jim with his thinning hair and his weathered face, with the laugh lines and worry lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, he reminded me so much of the grandfather who had died when I was twelve. I felt a sudden, overwhelming surge of affection.

  “I’m sorry too,” I said. “I was pretty horrid. I didn’t mean that crack about your being old.”

  “If you’d said it today, I’d have had to agree,” Jim said wryly, lifting his hands and grimacing as he flexed them. “At least in my line of work I don’t get writer’s cramp. I pity your Mom if she ever gets arthritis. There’s no way hands like these could keep pushing a pen all day.”

  “She doesn’t usually write in longhand,” I told him. “That’s probably one of the reasons she’s so bummed out at night.”

  “We’re all bummed out,” Jim said. “We’re going stir-crazy. Why don’t I see if I can pick up a few board games? Do you and your brother play Scrabble? Or what about Yahtzee?”

  “Bram can’t spell well enough for Scrabble,” I said. “He likes Monopoly, though, and Family Feud.”

  “If they’re not in the shop downstairs, I’ll check out the mall,”Jim said. “None of us needs another night of the boob tube.”

  After he left, I remained outside on the balcony, fighting the guilt I felt at not having come clean with him. I knew that I should have told him I’d sent Steve a letter. On the other hand, there was really nothing to be gained by that, and it wasn’t as though what I’d done had put us in danger. There were ways for people to trace a phone call, but after listening to Mom’s conversation with Max, I realized that even the FBI, with all their sophisticated technology, would have a hard time tracing a letter that was sent through the U.S. mail.

  I stayed outside a while longer, trying to sort things out in my mind until, around 4 p.m., the overcast dissolved in a drizzle and I was forced to move back inside. There I found Bram in the living room, sprawled on the floor, watching TV through half-closed eyes like a zombie.

  “Jim’s gone out,” he said. “He went to the mall.”

  “He’s gone to buy some games we can play tonight.”

  “I wish we could go swimming,” Bram commented wistfully. His round face suddenly brightened as an idea struck him. “If Jim’s at the mall, then he won’t be back for a while. It’s starting to rain, and the pool won’t have anybody in it.”

  “No way,” I told him firmly. “We’ve got to live by Jim’s rules.” The moment the words were out, I felt like a hypocrite. I decided that when Jim got back I’d make my confession. The worst he could do in response was to bawl me out again, a small price to pay for dumping a weight off my conscience.

  For lack of anything better to do until his return, I plunked down on the sofa and gave myself over to the old Saturday afternoon movie, an adventure story about an ill-fated wagon train lost in the Arizona desert. For the next half hour Bram and I sat in silence, watching as the cast was reduced by a third by a smallpox epidemic and
listening to a frontier woman scream her way through childbirth.

  The newborn infant had just been kidnapped by Indians when I heard a knock at the door, and a voice called out, “Housekeeping!” Hauling myself up from the sofa, I went over and looked out through the peephole. There in the hall was the familiar, uniformed figure of one of the hotel maids, standing next to a cart piled with linens and cleaning supplies.

  “The maid is here to make up the rooms!” I called to Mom, who was at work at her desk in the bedroom. “Should I tell her to come back later after Jim gets back?”

  “She’s running so late, we can’t ask her to wait,” said Mom. “Besides, I’m dying for a shower, and we’re out of clean towels.”

  So I opened the door and immediately wished that I hadn’t. I stood there with one hand circling the knob and the other poised in readiness to undo the chain lock, experiencing the unsettling feeling that something was wrong. The woman who stood in the hall appeared anything but threatening. She was slender and tall, with blond hair and very dark eyes. The fact that I didn’t recognize her wasn’t surprising, as most of the hotel staff was off on the weekends and part-time workers substituted for the regulars. The maid wore the regulation blue shirtwaist dress with MAYFLOWER embroidered across the breast pocket and was manning the usual pushcart loaded with cleansers. True, her dress hung loose and was a little too short, hitting her just above her kneecaps, but that wasn’t all that strange either, since if the woman only worked on Saturdays and Sundays, she might have borrowed a uniform from a full-time employee.

  “What’s the matter?” Bram asked me. “Why are you standing there?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I told him, feeling like an idiot. Still, I continued to hold the door, not liking to appear foolish, yet oddly reluctant to open it the rest of the way. I wasn’t able to pinpoint what was disturbing me and finally decided that it had to be the woman’s eyes. I’d heard people use the term “black” in regard to eye color, but usually when you looked closely at someone whose eyes were described as black, you discovered that they were actually a very dark brown. This woman’s eyes did not fall into that category. They were literally black, so the pupils were lost in the irises, and they dominated the rest of her face completely.