Crossroads (11 page)

"We’re gonna walk in there all cozy like, but if either of you tries running off you better believe I can shoot a gnat off a horse’s ass with this thing."

He aimed the gun in Kira’s face.

"Okay," she said.

He shoved the pistol into his pants again and pulled the jacket back over it.

"Get out on my side, both of you," he said, backing out of the truck.

When they were all out he nudged Kira toward the bank, and Jen ambled along beside her, unconcerned as always.

"I thought you were supposed to protect me," Kira whispered to Jen, giving her a wide-eyed look, that said
now would be a real good time.

"You make the decisions," said Jen, following her through the heavy swinging doors into the cool interior.

Only one of the teller windows across the wide expanse of gray marble floor was occupied, and a woman in a tight blue dress stood waiting behind an old man who leaned on the counter chatting with the teller. Bullet shoved Jen and Kira in front of him, placing Kira directly behind the woman in line. The woman looked over her shoulder, smiled at Kira, frowned at Bullet, then turned away again. Without warning Jen sidled over beside the old man, leaning her elbow on the counter and acting as though she were a part of the conversation, but Kira could tell that neither the old man nor the teller saw her.

"What’s she doing?" whispered Bullet, bumping into Kira’s back so that she felt the pistol in his pants.

Kira shook her head. She really had no idea.

Bullet leaned down close to her ear. "Get her back here, now!"

Kira wanted to tell him that that wasn’t likely to happen unless Jen felt like it, but she knew there was no use arguing with him. She was caught between two large stones that were moving closer and closer together.

What he really didn’t understand was that it was impossible for her to argue with Jen at all under the circumstances because she was sure now that not even the lady in blue had any clue that Jen even existed. What were the three of them going to think when she started talking to Jen? But Bullet nudged her again, and she reluctantly trudged over to Jen’s side.

Jen looked at her as Kira took a up a position slightly behind the old man. The teller glanced at her curiously, and that drew the old man’s attention.

"I’ll just be a minute, Sweetheart," said the old man.

Kira nodded, smiling weakly.

She gave Jen a look and jerked her head back toward Bullet. Jen ignored her, turning back to watch the old man. Kira glanced over her shoulder. Bullet had one hand under his jacket, and Kira could just see part of the wooden gun butt.

Jen finally seemed to sense the growing danger. She glared at Bullet, then looked down at Kira.

"Walk away," she said, calmly.

"I can’t," insisted Kira.

"Can’t what?" said the old man, turning to look at her again.

"There’s no way for us to stop what’s going to happen here," said Jen, sadly.

Kira stared at her, shocked. In all the months she had known Jen, she had never once heard any emotion in her voice, seen anything but flatness on her face, but now her one good eye shone with a strange look of grief, and Kira sensed that part of that was her doing. Something was changing in Jen, and somehow
she
was the cause of it, but whatever it was it wasn’t going to save anyone in this bank. Her heart pounded in her breast. The final drum roll for the condemned.

"If I just walk away," said Kira, quietly. "He’ll shoot me."

"Who will, Honey?" said the female teller, leaning closer to the window and squinting down at her.     

Jen shook her head. "Just walk away."

But Kira knew she was missing something important. "Tell me exactly what’s going to happen."

The teller shook her head, raising her eyebrows at the old man.

"Nothing that we can change," said Jen.

"Why not?"

"Sweetheart, who are you talking to?" asked the old man.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Bullet had the pistol half out of his pants. He was listening to the conversation in confusion. She stared at the teller, the old man, and then the lady in blue, and she thought of all the people who had died around her already. She shook her head. She couldn’t just walk away knowing that she was leaving more death in her wake.

"There’s nothing you or I can do," said Jen, staring past Kira at Bullet.

Kira turned in time to see him jerk the pistol out and point it at her.

"Everybody put your hands up!" he shouted.

The lady in blue spun, her hand slapping over her mouth. The old man fell back against the counter. The teller was reaching beneath it.

"I can’t save them," said Jen, shaking her head.

"Why?" gasped Kira, as Bullet’s pistol swung from her face to aim finally at the teller.

"I do not have the power. It is not what I was created for."

"Then what?" screamed Kira. "Stop this!"

Her words echoed around the high ceilinged space, and as she drew in her breath she noticed that that hissing gasp was the only sound she heard. She stared at the teller, frozen in place, the old man not even blinking, the lady in blue in the act of stumbling backward toward him, caught in mid-fall. Bullet’s pistol arm was paralyzed in place, not even quivering from the weight of the gun.

"What did you do?" whispered Kira.

"I stopped them," said Jen, simply. "Walk away."

Kira shook her head. "You never did anything like this before. Why didn’t you stop the Grigs when they came for my family? Why didn’t you stop them when they came for Clancy?"

"It wouldn’t have mattered. I can’t stop what’s going to happen to them. I was created to protect you."

Kira stared around her at the weird tableau. "Is everything like this? Everywhere?"

Jen shook her head.

"Outside people are moving?"

Jen nodded.

"I’ll go get the sheriff!"

"It won’t help."

"Why not? He can come here and stop this!"

"Look," said Jen, nodding toward Bullet.      

Kira could see his finger already pressed on the trigger. All that would happen would be that the sheriff would walk through the door as the gun went off. Bullet would turn on him and he’d get killed before he could draw his own pistol. But if she could warn him, maybe he’d have his own gun out...

Only he wouldn’t. No cop was going to listen to her, a fourteen-year-old girl, small for her age. What was she going to tell them?

There’s a crazy man in the bank with a gun, but my friend Jen has frozen time.

No. All that would happen was some more innocent people would be killed, and she would end up in police custody again trying to explain why death followed her like a puppy dog with razor teeth.   

"You could have stopped it all earlier," she said, angrily. "You could have frozen them before, maybe outside, anywhere. Why didn’t you stop them."

"You were not in danger."

That was the way of it. Jen was a tool, and she was badly used. More people were going to die because Kira didn’t understand, wasn’t smart enough to wield her properly.

"I’ll stay here forever, if that’s what it takes," she whispered, staring at the lady in the blue dress.

"Then eventually the Grigs will come. The
Empty-eyed-man
will come here, and many more will die."

Kira closed her eyes against the tears of frustration. She wanted to slap Jen, but she knew that would do no good. Nothing would do any good until she could understand what was going on, how she could stop the madness-if, indeed, there was any way to stop it.

"Walk away now," said Jen, quietly.

Kira sighed, stepping away from the group, turning toward the door. Jen held her position, leaning on the counter, but her eyes pleaded with Kira to keep going. When Kira reached the heavy double doors she glanced one last time at the little group, at Bullet’s finger tight on the trigger of the pistol, at the look of fear on the faces of the lady in blue, the old man, the teller. She bit her lip, opened the door and stepped once more out into the warm, mist-filtered sunlight that now felt cold as a steel spike in the winter. As the door clumped closed behind her she heard alarm bells clammering in the distance, a shot from inside the bank, then several more in rapid succession, but she was already disappearing down the sidewalk even as sirens sounded and curious towners rushed by her toward the bank.

As she rounded the corner she found Jen leaning against the front door in an empty storefront doorway. Jen joined her on the sidewalk, and they trudged away in slump-shouldered silence.

Chapter 15

Across the road a ramshackle honky-tonk named Barney’s--that was more neon than cracking paint--shielded wide fields of green tobacco that rolled away to the treeline down by some unnamed creek. Kira and Jen shared an outdoor table at an ancient Dairy Queen, eating hamburgers that Kira barely tasted but which, of course, Jen wolfed down greedily. Sirens still echoed up the highway, the killings drawing cops from all over the county.

"How did you do that?" asked Kira.

"The same way you do what you do."

Kira shook her head. "I can’t do anything like that. Sometimes I can fool people into seeing things that aren’t there."

"Why do you say they aren’t there?"

Kira frowned. "Because they aren’t. I don’t magically make money appear. I just mess with their heads, and they
think
it’s there."

Jen frowned right back. "Why do you believe that?"

"Because that’s what happens."

"And you think that afterwards, after we’re gone, the money just disappears?"

"Of course."

Jen raised the eyebrow over her good eye as though to say,
interesting.

"What do you think happens to it?" asked Kira.

"I think we all learn what we need to learn," said Jen.

"How did you know what was gonna happen in the bank?" asked Kira, sighing at the cryptic answer.

Jen shrugged.

"What did happen?" asked Kira, hesitantly.

Jen turned away, staring at a carload of teenagers, laughing uproariously at the drive-through window.

"How many died?" whispered Kira.

"No good comes from knowing."

"But you do. Don’t you?"

Jen nodded.

"Tell me what happened," insisted Kira.

"The teller’s glass was bullet proof."

"So she lived?"

Jen shook her head. "He shot the other’s first. Before the police arrived he climbed over the window and took the teller hostage. The standoff only ended a few minutes ago."

"I saw you cringe," said Kira, remembering how Jen had suddenly stumbled.

Jen nodded.

Kira swallowed a large lump in her throat. "The teller?"

"What good to know?"

"Because I have to!" said Kira.

"She’s dead. As is Bullet. Two policemen were wounded."

Kira felt as though the world kept shrinking around her with every passing breath. Everywhere she went someone died.

"We can never get close to anyone again," she muttered.

Jen stared at her. "That is not the way."

"Never," insisted Kira.

Jen shook her head. "That solves nothing."

"Then what
does
solve anything? What can I do? Is there some place I’m supposed to go, something I’m supposed to do?"

"You will know when you know."

"But you know. Don’t you?"

"No."

"You’re lying."

Jen gave her a confused look, and Kira knew that she was wrong. Jen might be incredibly frustrating, but she would not lie to her.

"I’m sorry," said Kira, quietly, "but if you don’t know, and I don’t know, then what am I supposed to do?"

"Be yourself. Follow your feelings."

"My feelings tell me that we should go somewhere and kill ourselves so that no one else gets hurt."

"That would help no one. In fact it would make things far worse."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I know."

Kira stared at her, wondering at her strange talkativeness. She had said more in the past two minutes than in all the time Kira had known her.

"We stay away from people," Kira insisted, tossing her cup and tissue paper in a nearby garbage can.

She stared at the highway, ignoring the looks from the teenagers who had now parked in the far corner of the lot. If she and Jen continued hiking down the road, sooner or later someone else was going to stop for them, and she didn’t relish climbing into another car. Not that she expected the next driver to be anything like Bullet. What were the odds of that?

Regardless of what Jen said, though, Kira refused to get close to another human being who could be hurt.

"You are not bringing the hurt to them by trusting them," said Jen, reading her mind. "You will not keep it away by staying away."

"I don’t believe that. If we hadn’t gone to Clancy’s camp the Grigs wouldn’t have shown up there."

Jen shrugged. "They would have shown up somewhere else. Grigs are Grigs. They live to punish the innocent."

That was the first time Kira had ever heard it put that way, and it reminded her too much of what her mother had said. Maybe Clancy and the people in the bank had all paid a penance for something they didn’t do. The Grigs punished them.

"Why didn’t they come just now?" asked Kira, frowning. "Why didn’t they show up in the bank and kill the others, and Bullet?"

Of course Bullet wasn’t innocent. He wouldn’t have been paying a penance for things he hadn’t done, but for things he had. Grigs didn’t work that way. They didn’t kill the guilty.

"He is dead, anyway. Do you think you caused it?" asked Jen. "Do you believe you caused the deaths of the others in the bank?"

"No," whispered Kira. "I don’t know. Maybe."

"Look around you. You are not the cause. You are the effect. When you learn to accept who you are and to
become
the cause, then perhaps you can make a difference."

Suddenly the teenaged girl in the car shrieked. At that distance Kira couldn’t see what was happening, but it appeared that the three boys were now all in the backseat with the girl. What looked like a white bra came flying out and landed in the parking lot. The girl screamed again, and then Kira could see a pair of booted feet sticking out the window.