Текст книги "Passenger"

Автор книги: Andrew Smith

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Part Two

BAD MAGIC

six

How many crows are there?

They croak their crow-words and I can picture ink-black heads bobbing.

Cocking.

When it is hot and still, and you’re covered with the damp stickiness of insomnia, crows make a sound, a twisting grappling hook in your gut.

I am on the floor.

I feel every individual fiber-end of the rough carpet that comes halfway out from beneath my bed, pricking into the skin on my back. Acrylic nettles. And somehow, my feet, my legs, are resting above me on the mattress.

Sometimes, in summers, when I can’t sleep—this is how Jack doesn’t sleep: faceup, feet on the bed, irritated by things like crows and his bare skin on carpeting.

“Fuck.”

I swipe a palm across my swollen eyes, and I see that there is no cut, no bandage.

No Quinn Cahill.

No Marbury.

This is my room.

This is my room.

And then, for a moment, I am suddenly pissed off at Wynn and Stella because our house isn’t like Conner’s. I don’t have my bathroom attached to my bedroom. Why should I have to get up and stumble down the hall?

Because I need to puke again.

What time is it?

The thought almost makes me laugh as my stomach clenches in rhythm with the cawing of the crows.

What fucking day is it?

I flush the toilet.

I go back down the hall, staying close enough to the wall so it can brace me up if my knees give out.

“Jack? Are you up?” Stella calls from somewhere downstairs. At first, she sounds like a blackbird.

Her feet make soft thuds like balls of warm dough dropping onto the staircase.

I open the door and lie down on the floor.

“No.”

I listen to the crows.

I put my feet up on the bed and stare at the fan dangling from the ceiling above me.

Round and round.

This is my room.

*   *   *

Stella always knocked before she’d open the door to my bedroom. Usually, she would stand there patiently, and then I’d hear her going back downstairs if I didn’t answer. This time, she waited only a few seconds and then my door cracked open.

“Jack?”

I looked at the spinning blades on the fan. I could feel her watching me.

“Huh?”

“Are you sick, honey? I heard you throwing up again.”

“I’m okay, Stella.”

“You don’t look good, Jack.”

How good could I look? I was lying there on the floor, pale and sweating, wearing nothing but a pair of damp boxer briefs that felt like I’d had them on for three endlessly hot days.

“I’m okay.”

“I’m worried about you. You haven’t gotten any better since you came back from London. Is Conner sick, too? Maybe you boys caught something there.”

Something like that, Stella.

Conner.

“What time is it?”

I felt more than heard my grandmother take a couple steps inside my room.

“You came home late from your friends’ house last night.”

“What day is it?”

Stella sat on the edge of my bed. She put one hand on my foot. It felt cool, nice.

Worried.

I knew she loved me. So did Wynn. That didn’t change anything. It never made me better.

“Jack, are you drinking? You’re not drinking, are you?”

She didn’t sound angry. It wasn’t an accusation, either. Her voice sounded exactly the way her hand felt on my skin. But I still didn’t care.

And I didn’t answer her.

Stella said, “It’s Saturday, baby. Almost two o’clock.”

One day.

Not even one day since I was in the garage with Conner, Ben, and Griffin. Since we broke the lens.

I swallowed. I thought. I thought for a good long time about how I’d ended up here on the floor of my room like this. It was almost as though I could still smell the rain in Marbury, could hear the sound of cutting those black suckers to pieces with the knife I’d found. And I could swear I still tasted the dinner that Quinn Cahill had cooked for me.

Macaroni and cheese.

I felt the need to throw up again.

“I don’t drink, Stella. I don’t do anything like that.”

I knew that would be enough. I couldn’t ever lie to her. Not really.

And I said, “I mean, I have drank beer and stuff with Conner. A few times. But I don’t drink. I haven’t been drinking or doing anything else. Nothing.”

Fuck you, Jack.

Stella rubbed the front of my leg.

“I called Dr. Enbody. He wants to come take a look at you.”

I tensed.

The good doctor.

When I was a little kid, I used to call him Dr. Nobody.

That made people laugh.

I groaned.

“I don’t want to see a doctor.”

I sounded pathetic.

Stella squeezed my leg.

“We need to see if there’s something wrong, baby.”

I know exactly what’s wrong, Stella.

You want me to tell you?

You want me to tell you exactly how fucked up Jack is?

Didn’t think so, Stella.

My grandmother got up.

Outside, the crows argued.

“Can I get you anything, Jack?”

I wanted to scream.

Somewhere near the head of the bed, my phone began buzzing.

“No, thanks. I’m okay.”

I propped myself up. And I could see those glasses just lying there on the floor beneath my bed.

The phone buzzed.

Stella quietly shut my door and I could hear her doughy footfalls going back downstairs.

I got up and grabbed my phone.

*   *   *

I didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling. Saturday at two in the afternoon meant Nickie calling from England. Any call at two pretty much meant Nickie. Nobody ever does anything at two in the afternoon in California.

I cleared my throat.

“Hey, Nickie.”

“Jack. Did I wake you? You sound out of breath.”

“I was just laying here. Being lazy. Sorry it took a while to find my phone.”

“That sounds like you.” She laughed.

“I miss you, Nickie.”

I wished things could be normal. I wished this world would stop coming and going. I realized my window was open, that I was absentmindedly counting the crows in the big oak tree outside, and I pictured the way it looked when I saw it in Marbury—burned, hollow, dead.

“Six more days.”

I could picture the smile on her face when she said that.

And she said, “What’s the first thing you’d like to do when you come back?”

When I come back.

I nervously cleared my throat again. “I’ll think of something.”

She laughed. “Jack.”

Then I heard it.

And Nickie said, “Do you remember this?”

Roll.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The horse. It was a little wooden toy that Seth Mansfield had carved as a gift for Hannah—the girl he loved—more than a hundred years ago. The horse just appeared one night in Nickie’s bedroom, and she’d assumed I left it for her.

Because I loved her, too.

That’s how shit happened in between here—or wherever I was—and Marbury: Things just came and went, popped in, popped out. No questions, no explanations. Just like the little wooden toy horse that meant Seth was around somewhere.

Nickie must have been playing with it. But when I heard the sound, I saw a flash—Seth standing just inside my window. I blinked and he was gone. I got up from my bed and looked outside.

Just crows.

“It’s the horse,” I said.

“I can’t wait to see you again, Jack. I think I’ve become even more fond of you since you’ve been away.”

“I love you, Nickie.”

And as I looked out my window, I saw a black BMW pull up and park right behind my truck. Dr. Enbody.

I guess he had nothing to do at two in the afternoon.

Shit.

“Ander’s here. Can you hear him telling you hello? We were watching some terribly long German movie and he played translator for me. He’s quite good at German, although I think he made bits up.”

Ander was Nickie’s younger brother.

She laughed.

“Tell him I still have the shirt he loaned me. I’ll bring it with me when I come back next week.”

“I can’t wait. I love you, Jack.”

“Nickie? Remember what we talked about? I’m seeing a doctor today.”

It was another lie. I wasn’t seeing a doctor. He was seeing me. And I wasn’t seeing the kind of doctor Nickie wanted me to see, one who could straighten out the bends in my brain. Dr. Nobody had no idea just how fucked up this kid patient of his really was. He had no clue where to even begin looking.

Nickie didn’t say anything. I could hear her breathing, could sense that she was trying to think of what, exactly, would be the right thing to say to me.

“You’re brave, Jack.”

“He’s here right now.”

“Oh.”

“Nickie? Let me hear it again. The horse, I mean.”

“You’re funny.”

Roll.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The crows went silent.

Seth stood in the shade beneath the oak.

Then he was gone.

Something was wrong.

Footsteps outside.

“I better go. The doctor’s coming.”

“Call me after. If you want to tell me about it.”

I don’t want to tell anybody about anything.

“Okay.”

“I love you, Jack.”

*   *   *

Dr. Enbody tried to be nice.

He told me how long he’d known me, and how much I’d grown, but he asked if I’d been eating enough, too, and said that I should probably start going to a regular doctor, now that I was sixteen.

He made me lie down and he pressed his fingers into my belly and thumped on my rib cage. He peered up my nose and into my ears. He looked me straight in the eyes and asked about “bowel movements” and what color my urine was; if I had any concerns or trouble with my penis and testicles.

I shook my head.

Then he asked if I’d been “sexually active with girls or with other boys,” and I almost choked. But I told him yes, that I had a girlfriend. And that pissed me off, too, but I wasn’t sure exactly why.

I was so embarrassed, I guess. So Dr. Enbody told me that I’d better be using condoms, and I lied and said I always used condoms because I just wanted him to shut the fuck up and go away. I’d never even touched a rubber, and I couldn’t imagine having balls enough to go into a 7-11 and buy a box of them.

It was the stupidest thing I ever had to talk about in my life.

When I closed my eyes, I saw Freddie Horvath, so I just kept watching Dr. Enbody until my eyes started watering.

He took my blood pressure and listened to my heart. He pressed an icy stethoscope onto my back and asked me to cough; then took my temperature. He tried to joke about how he used to do it when I was a baby, and I asked him if he ever mixed up thermometers, which made him smile.

Then he started doing the sneaky thing that normal doctors do when they can’t find what seems to be the trouble: He began asking me questions about what I did in England, and how was the jet lag, and had I gotten back to regular sleeping patterns. Did I like English food? Did I try the beer there? I knew exactly where he was going, but it didn’t piss me off. He wasn’t trying to fuck with me—not like that other doctor. Dr. Enbody was just doing what Wynn and Stella paid him to do, so I answered his questions without volunteering anything else.

How was I getting along with my friends? Was there anything that bothered me about myself? Was I having bad dreams? Getting enough sleep? Did I think I was too fat?

I joked. Yeah, I’m on the cross-country team. I’m a planet.

Welcome to Jack’s universe.

Dr. Enbody laughed. It sounded like he really understood me.

For a minute, I tried to think what it might be like to actually talk to him—to tell him what happened to me. Not the Marbury stuff, the Glenbrook shit. I tried imagining what it would be like if I could let the words come out of my mouth. And I almost started to say it, but I couldn’t.

He poked me and felt the alignment of my spine, bent my knees, and rotated my shoulders.

I answered his questions.

Then he went downstairs.

*   *   *

As soon as he was far enough away, I slipped out my door after him. Quiet, barefoot, nearly naked, I felt like something wild. Like a murderer.

Of course I knew exactly where to sit on the staircase so I could hear what was going on downstairs.

I knew Wynn wouldn’t be there. He never wanted to have anything to do with stuff like doctors and problems and fixing things. Those were Stella’s specialties.

So I heard Dr. Enbody telling her that he wanted to have her bring me in to his office this week so he could take a blood and urine sample from me.

Great.

Stella wanted to know if he thought I was on drugs or something, but the doctor told her no, he just wanted to see if anything was going on with me. He said my blood pressure was a little high, like I was stressed about something. And he got this condescending and calm tone in his voice when he said that teenage boys often have anxiety issues and get sulky when they’re my age, so Stella shouldn’t worry too much about it—it was all routine kind of stuff. Then he started asking her things about if she noticed I was getting depressed, not sleeping, maybe sleeping too much, or if I talked about dying or suicide.

That’s when I wanted to punch the wall.

I didn’t want to hear anything else.

Fuck this place.

I got up and went back into my room.

I lay on my bed, listening to the crows, waiting to hear Dr. Enbody’s car drive away.

Conner.

I grabbed my phone and dialed.

*   *   *

“What’s up?”

“Hey, Con.”

“Dude. I thought you were coming over.”

“Yeah. Stella made me see a doctor.”

Conner laughed. “Did he need to do surgery to get your head out of your ass?”

That was Conner.

This was real.

“Nice mouth.”

“Shit. What did he do?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

I sat up in bed. Outside, I could hear the doctor’s car start up. “Hey, Con, did something weird happen yesterday?”

Conner said, “Uh-oh. Are you tripping out about that shit again?”

Freddie.

“No. I mean, yesterday, after we broke that lens. Did something weird happen to you?”

I waited for Conner to answer.

“Um. What lens, Jack?”

I chuckled. I thought it sounded stupid. Like Quinn Cahill. “Don’t fuck with me, Conner.”

“Okay. So, we broke some lens? And then what?”

“You know. Marbury.”

“Did Stella’s doctor give you any meds, Jack? It sure sounds like you’re on dope to me. And can you bring the whole bottle over? I want to try some of that shit.”

I knew Conner. He sucked at acting dumb for more than a line or two.

He really didn’t know what I was talking about.

Fuck you, Jack.

“Yeah. Well. Maybe he did give me something.”

And it fucked up your brain, Jack.

“Can you operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery?” Conner laughed.

“Do you remember when we were over at Ben and Griffin’s house?”

“Who?”

“Ben and Griffin.”

“Jack. What the fuck are you talking about? Is this something about that shit with that Freddie guy? Are you still fucked up about that? Dude.”

It was Conner. He was frustrated.

“You’re really not fucking with me, are you, Con?”

“Maybe you’re just stressed about going back to England or something. Did you just wake up? ’Cause you sound fucked up, Jack.”

“You don’t know anyone named Ben and Griffin?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“I’m coming over.”

“Let’s go grab some food or something.”

Or something.

*   *   *

I slipped into a pair of shorts and threw a T-shirt over my shoulder.

When I sat on the edge of the bed so I could get my socks and shoes, I thought about the glasses on the floor.

Maybe he was just fucking with me.

That was something Conner would do.

But not about this.

Never about this.

I switched my phone back on, flipped through my contacts list.

No Ben Miller.

No Griffin Goodrich.

Fuck you, Jack.

I reached under my bed and picked up the glasses. The third lens was swung out from the bigger eyepiece. There wasn’t anything there; nothing living inside the lenses. I put my fingers on the outer monocle. I wanted to flip it into place, just for a second, just so I could prove to myself that I wasn’t insane—that somehow I’d really fucked everything up. Everywhere.

Welcome to Jack’s universe.

I had to put things back where they belonged.

I slid the glasses into my pocket, and their weight almost dragged my shorts down. Maybe Dr. Nobody was right; that I wasn’t eating enough.

Who cared about that, anyway?

I fucked up.

I went into the hallway and slipped out of the house without Stella even noticing I was ever there at all.

seven

I guess it was Jack’s day for black cars.

*   *   *

When I walked across the lawn toward the blot of shade at the curb where I park my truck, a big Cadillac SUV with blacked-out windows and no license plates pulled up and stopped right in front of me.

At first, I figured, with a car like that it was probably someone coming to talk to Wynn and Stella about insurance policies or their investment portfolio, or the kind of stuff that never meant anything at all to me.

But I was wrong.

The guy who got out of the driver’s side stood in the street and watched me as I took out my keys and hit the remote.

I tried ignoring him.

I was so sick of people I didn’t know watching, staring at me. It was like I could feel his eyes pressing into my skin.

And with just one glance, I thought I had him sized up pretty good. He stood there, sucking in his stomach with his hands on his hips. He was one of those edgy grown-ups who’d played football in high school and bragged to his friends about how he goes to the gym every morning, and he probably did part-time coaching for a youth program just so he could yell at kids and tell them what pieces of shit they were.

You see guys like that everywhere in California.

I kept my head down.

The walk seemed to take forever.

How far away did I park my goddamned truck?

But I knew he was going to say something to me.

“How’s it going?”

I stopped.

Shit.

My hand was just touching the door of my truck. I calculated three seconds—if I had left my room just three goddamned seconds sooner, none of this would be happening and I’d be on my way to Conner’s house.

I pretended like I didn’t know the guy was talking to me.

I opened the door and started to get in.

He turned up his football-coach volume just a notch. Edgy. I could tell he thought I was another piece of shit.

“Hey. John? You’re John Wynn Whitmore, right?”

What could I do?

Nobody ever calls me John.

I was wedged inside my open door, one elbow resting on top of the cab. I looked over at the guy, who’d come around and stood in the street between our cars. His face was blank, but as soon as he saw me look at him, he cracked a smile.

“Yeah. My grandparents are in there.”

I nodded my head toward the house, trying to see if maybe the guy really was there to fill out beneficiary forms or some shit like that.

Nice try, Jack.

“I was hoping I’d catch you.”

Catch me.

He closed the space between us, his eyes fixed directly on mine, unblinking, smiling that fake football-coach smile that made me feel like a piece of shit.

Then he put out his hand.

I thought of Quinn Cahill.

And he said, “My name is Sergeant Scott. Avery Scott. I’m a detective with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s?”

He said it like a question, like he expected me to say, Okay, you can play that part in this game.

When I didn’t take his hand, he smoothly reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folding wallet with a gold badge and ID card.

“It’s pretty fucking hot today, wouldn’t you say?”

He kept the smile on. He was testing me. He wanted to see if my reaction would show him I thought he was cool for being an old guy who comfortably says words like fuck to a sixteen-year-old kid.

“I didn’t watch the Weather Channel today.”

Avery Scott laughed. He reinstalled his nice wallet into his pocket.

“I came out today. Well. I’m looking into a case we’ve got and I was hoping to ask you a couple questions. It has nothing to do with you.”

Sure.

Nothing.

“Am I in some kind of trouble or something?”

“No, no, no!” Scott was a little too exaggerated. “It’s just. Uh. Some background stuff. Do you mind?”

“Shouldn’t my grandparents be around? I mean, if you’re a cop and all, and want to talk to a kid?”

“Seriously, John. You didn’t do anything wrong, son. But if you’d like to go inside, we could talk to your grandparents, too. It’s about this thing you may have heard of. A doctor named Manfred Horvath. People called him Freddie. He was found dead. Not a nice guy.” Scott shook his head. “A fucking sicko. You ever watch the news?”

At that moment, I felt my balls twist their way up, crawling like snails inside my stomach.

Then I was suddenly aware of the sweat dripping down my temples, running from my armpits, playing xylophone on my ribs.

“Sometimes.”

Scott put his hand on the top of my car door. He had curly brown hairs on his fingers and wore a ridiculous class ring with a big green gem in its center.

“This is a sweet truck. You know the thing that’s fucked up about parking under these big oaks? The crow shit.”

Detective Scott pointed a finger at the grapefruit-sized splotch in the center of my truck’s roof, reaching across so he was pinning me in the small triangular space of my open door.

“I guess.”

“So, you want to go inside and we can talk with your folks?”

“Not really.”

“I just want to find a couple things out. Just checking up on stuff. You know, put this thing to rest.” He looked around. He cocked his head. Like a crow. “Hey. I know. Why don’t we sit in my car so I can turn on the air? You look like you’re burning up, John.”

I looked back at the house.

The crows were totally silent.

I felt my knees shaking.

I was so tired.

“Okay,” I said.

*   *   *

Avery Scott wasn’t sweating at all.

He probably bragged about stuff like that to his friends, too.

And I didn’t want to move once I sat down, because I was certain I’d left puddles of wet on his nice black leather seats.

Scott turned the air on high. I didn’t look at him. I watched the little indicator that displayed the outside temperature.

103°

When he pulled his seat belt on, I instantly thought this was it. I was trapped in a car again with some asshole who wants to fuck with me and I didn’t care anymore.

I was tired, and I believed I wanted to die.

“What do you say we get something cold to drink?” Scott laughed a fake football-coach laugh. “I mean, not a cop drink. You don’t drink, do you, John? Well, you don’t look like a kid who’d drink. A Coke or a shake or something. You want that?”

Hell no, I don’t want that. I want to be in my truck, heading to Conner’s house. I want to drive by Ben and Griffin’s so I can see if any of this is real. I want you to leave me the fuck alone. I want none of this to be happening.

I want to go back, but I don’t know where that is anymore.

I sighed.

“Do we have to?”

“Just a drink,” he said. “I’ll have you back in—” He rolled his wrist over. That was stupid. There was a clock the size of a goddamned brick glowing green in the dashboard right in front of his face. “Fifteen minutes. You got somewhere you need to be?”

No, coach. Whatever you say. I’m a piece of shit.

I shook my head and looked at my hands, pressing the legs of my shorts down against my thighs.

“Great! Buckle up, son. I’m buying!”

While we drove through Glenbrook, the cop went on and on and I hardly listened to him at all. He talked about my school—the football team, naturally—and asked if I did any sports. When I told him I ran cross-country, I could tell by the way he inhaled slowly that he was waiting for me to say something else, a different sport—something where boys hurt each other—because guys like Avery Scott don’t consider running to be a “sport.”

I didn’t look out the window when we drove down Main Street past Steckel Park, the lightpost where Conner and I tagged our initials, Java and Jazz.

I knew he was trying to observe what I paid attention to, so I kept my face forward, watching the swirls in the wood paneling on the dashboard. I wondered if it was wood or plastic.

I just thought about the swirls. Strings. Stella’s Russian nesting dolls. And I reasoned that there were all these strings, layers, stacking and stacking in every unimaginable direction; that they were all going through me—the center of the universe—and somehow I kept jumping from thread to thread.

I was a needle on a scratched black record.

The glasses, the broken lens, just skipping from channel to fucked-up channel.

And, what Conner wrote on a wall in that other Glenbrook:

THIS WAS THE HARDEST TO GET OUT OF.

And this is where I am, sitting in a Cadillac with a cop who wants to ask me things about a man I killed.

This is home.

THIS WAS THE HARDEST TO GET OUT OF.

“Are you okay, John?”

“Huh?”

“I asked if the DQ was okay with you.”

“Oh. DQ. Yeah. But nobody calls me John.”

Scott cranked the steering wheel and pulled inside the curbs to the Dairy Queen’s drive-thru. A phone began ringing. I instinctively reached for my pocket, felt the glasses there.

It was the cop’s phone.

He flipped it out from his belt and looked at it.

That was the first time I’d noticed he was wearing a gun.

Why didn’t I notice that before?

He looked at his phone screen.

Fake smile. “Don’t do this when you drive.”

He sounded like Dr. Nobody telling me to use condoms.

He pressed the END button. “Fuck ’em.”

Yeah, you’re cool, Detective Scott.

“So, what do they call you, then?”

“Jack. My name is Jack.”

*   *   *

We’d already been gone past Scott’s promised fifteen minutes. And I never looked at his face one time. I kept the straw in my mouth and sucked. I couldn’t even taste the milk shake I ordered. It may just as well have been a cup of my own sweat.

I still hadn’t cooled off.

Scott didn’t buy anything to drink for himself. He just kept driving around. I thought he was trying to get me to relax, or he was going to try to spring something on me and shock me into saying whatever it was he was looking for.

I hated cops.

They always knew the answers to everything they were going to ask, anyway.

So out of the corner of my eye, I could see him visibly flinch like he’d been splashed with cold water when I said, “Okay, this is a nice car and everything, but I didn’t think I was going to be driven around Glenbrook all fucking day.”

And I just kept looking at the swirls.

Scott cleared his throat. He probably had to stop himself from calling me a piece of shit.

“Would you feel more comfortable if there was a female detective present, or maybe a doctor?”

I started to crumple the wax cup in my grip, had to stop myself.

Fuck you, Avery Scott.

“Comfortable? Why does how I feel matter?”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, Jack. So, do you want to start?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you want from me.”

“Tell me about that guy. Freddie Horvath. When was the first time you saw him?”

I felt myself sinking, getting smaller, needing air.

“You mean did I ever see him on the news? I never watch the news.”

The car turned.

I looked up as we passed beneath the archway sign reading DOS VIENTOS ESTATES. The new development where Freddie used to live. I started to panic.

The detective said, “No. That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought you said I wasn’t in trouble.”

I felt myself going whiter than the wax inside my empty cup.

“I promise you’re not in any trouble, Jack.”

“How can you promise shit like that?”

Scott didn’t say anything.

And then we were there.

Freddie’s house.

I’d never seen the outside of Freddie Horvath’s house in the daylight, but this was it. Avery Scott pulled his Cadillac right between the brick pillars at the end of the driveway and I looked up at the window where I’d climbed out onto the tile roof before I jumped.

And now it felt like only fifteen minutes had passed since I did that, barefoot, wearing those loose drawstring pants, bleeding, dizzy from the shit Freddie drugged me with.

It was like a dream.

Before the car even stopped rolling, I was out the door, on my hands and knees, puking my guts out, warm, sour vanilla shake, steaming all over the driveway.

I wished I’d thrown up inside that asshole’s Caddy.

I spit between my hands. “Take me home.”

The cop hurried around the front of his car. I could tell he was looking to see if I’d gotten any puke on his shiny wheels.

“Take me the fuck home right now.”

I closed my eyes and put my hands in my hair. It was so wet; it felt like I’d just stepped out from the shower. I thought about taking the glasses out of my pocket, flipping that third lens down, so Jack could just disappear, skip over to another thread somewhere, try to find a new and improved John Wynn Whitmore IV.

I want to go home.

Avery Scott sucked in his gut and leaned against the fender of his Cadillac. He wore slip-on shoes that had tassels, and no socks. I kept my head down and spit again. I waited for him to say something. When I looked at him, he was holding a brown can of Copenhagen tobacco, pinching some of it down inside his lower lip.

Football coach.

He spit.

And I knew exactly what he was thinking; what he was waiting for me to say.

“I should have told you I get car sick when it’s really hot.”

“Is that it?”

I looked at him.

“Yes.”

He put his tobacco in his pocket and checked the display on his cell phone.

I wished I could force myself to stand up. The sun was already burning on my neck and it hurt my knees to be down there on the concrete of Freddie’s driveway. The smell of my puke was nauseating. But I wanted to stay small, keep myself away from anything out there, so I leaned over my hands and watched the foamy white vomit find its way downhill.

Scott spit again.

“You going to be okay?”

I shook my head.

“I got bottled water in the back.”

I thought about the last time I’d been given a bottle of water in this driveway.

“Come on.” Then I felt Scott’s hand cup under my sweating armpit and he pulled me up to my feet. “You don’t look good.”

“I told you.”

I wiped my hand across my mouth, my face. Little bits of sand gritted into my skin. I could see a yellow paper that had been posted, taped, on the front door of Freddie’s house. Some kind of notice. A warning. And Scott watched my eyes when I looked at the door.

“You ever been here before?”

“No.”

The cop spit again.

“Strange,” he said.

“Will you take me home now?”

“I told you, you’re not in any trouble, Jack. It’s not about you.”

He tried to sound nice, compassionate. I wanted to punch him.

“I don’t know anything about this place.”

“Okay. Get in. I’ll take you home.”

*   *   *

That was it.

He didn’t say anything else to me the entire way back to Wynn and Stella’s.

I felt empty and sick, cornered.

When Scott parked his Cadillac in the stretching shade behind my truck, he put a business card from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department on top of my left leg.

I covered it with my hand, slipped it into my pocket and grabbed for my keys.

“I just want to know one thing, Jack. Why were you the only one he let go?”

I didn’t get away from anything.

I opened the door, got out of the car, and took a deep breath.

It felt like I was going to fall down; I willed myself not to.

And as I slammed his door shut behind me, Avery Scott said, “Call me.”