“Nate's here?” I said, doing my best to sound surprised. I didn't want Nate to know I'd been following him. “Small town, I guess.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Small town.”
“Well,” I said, “let's make a deal. Don't tell Nate I was here. Then you won't have to explain that you kissed the wrong guy.”
She held out her hand to shake mine.
“Deal,” she said. She gave a quick embarrassed smile. “See you later.”
She walked away to the theater.
I waited a few minutes and then I hurried after her. Now it looked like I'd be following Nate and Mercedes for the night.
At least Nate had picked a decent movie for his date with Mercedes. It was the opening night of an action-packed thriller with car chases and buildings getting blown up. It had been advertised for months ahead of time, and there was a showing of it every two hours. The theater was packed, and lots of people were waiting in line.
That was the other piece of good news. Because there were so many people, it was easy for me to slip into the back row and feel
certain that Nate and Mercedes wouldn't see me there. After all, if I was going to follow Nate until I found out what
the usual time and place
meant, I'd rather be somewhere where I could enjoy my wait.
Except it turned out I was wrong about the enjoyment part.
Ever noticed that the more exciting the trailer for a movie is, the more boring it turns out to be? This was one of those movies.
Still, I had popcorn and something to drink. Nate and Mercedes were sitting a few rows ahead of me, and I was able to keep a close watch on them.
During one of the few good parts of the movieâa car chase with explosions and jumps over destroyed bridges and through machine gun fireâNate left his seat.
He stepped into the aisle and started walking toward the exit behind me.
How could he leave at the best part?
It made me suspicious. If you have to take a bathroom break at a movie, you wait until the slow music plays and the main
female character starts telling the main male character that she's falling in love with him.
I ducked my head as Nate passed. It was unlikely that he'd notice me in the dark packed theater, but I wasn't going to take the chance.
I counted to ten; then I slipped out of my row too.
I walked to the exit at the back and slowly stepped into the lobby.
No sign of Nate.
Now what?
There were people in line for popcorn and drinks, so I decided to take the chance that I wouldn't be too obvious if I quickly walked across to the video game machines set up in the far corner. I sat in front of a race-car game and grabbed the fake steering wheel.
Then I looked around again.
Had Nate really decided he needed to go to the washroom?
I kept my eyes on the door to the men's washroom. It struck me that maybe the meeting was in there. Right after that it struck me that I'd watched too many spy movies.
As I watched the door, however, someone did walk quickly to the washroom from the far side of the lobby. A tall man with thinning hair, wearing a theater employees' uniform.
Yeah, I told myself. Too many spy movies.
Especially when Nate walked out about thirty seconds later. He went straight back into the theater.
So I'd missed the best part of the movie for nothing.
I got up from the race-car game and headed back to the theater. As I did, the tall man with thinning hair came out of the washroom.
I'm no expert on how long it should or shouldn't take for guys to go to the bathroom. Still, it seemed that the guy had done his business really quickly.
Unless his business had been with Nate.
I told myself again that I'd watched too many spy movies. Still, if I'd made an idiot of myself so far, there was no harm in being an idiot a little longer.
I slowed down and stayed behind the line of people getting popcorn. I didn't want this guy to see my face, just in case he really had gone in there to meet Nate.
I joined the last person in line and kept watching the tall guy. He didn't look from side to side, just hurried back through the lobby the same way he'd hurried to the wash-room.
At the far side of the lobby, he disappeared through a door.
Again, I counted to ten. Then I checked it out.
There was a small sign on the door: EMPLOYEES ONLY. PROJECTOR ROOM.
That explained why the guy had been in such a hurry. If you're in charge of making sure the movie is running, you don't want to be away from it for long.
At least I'd learned one thing: The time and place for Nate's meeting wasn't here. Now I'd have to follow him after the movie.
As I slipped back into the theater to find my place, I realized something else. If
Mercedes stayed with him and met the two guys in the expensive Mustang convertible, that would probably mean she was part of it too.
Whatever
it
was.
After the movie finished, Nate walked out with Mercedes. I joined the crowd leaving the theater and stayed far enough behind so they wouldn't notice me.
Outside it was cooler than at the beginning of the evening. It was still pleasant though, and the sidewalks were crowded with people. That made it easier to stay with Nate and Mercedes without being noticed.
I was afraid they'd go to a restaurant. That would mean standing around outside for an hour or more with nothing to do.
I was relieved when they walked to Nate's truck, about half a block down from my car. I was pleased when he tried to hold her hand, and she pulled away. I told myself I wasn't jealous.
When they drove off, I jumped into my Toyota.
From Kensington, he drove along the north side of the river. After a few minutes, he turned right onto the low level bridge to cross the river to downtown. Above it was another bridge guarded by a big statue of a lion on each side. It seemed like the lions were scowling at me.
Maybe I deserved it.
I told myself that I was following my brother to find out what kind of trouble he was in so that I could rescue him. Not because I wanted to prove he was in trouble, but because I had been jealous of him my whole life. He was fast. Slick. In the limelight. It never seemed fair that we were as close to identical from head to toe as two humans can be, but I was the one who had started losing my hearing for no reason that
any doctor could find, and he was the one with normal hearing, a normal speaking voice and no implant.
In my car, I looked up and scowled back at the lions.
Across the river, Nate turned into Calgary's Chinatown. In the first week after I got to Calgary, Nate had taken me to a great restaurant in Chinatown. I had loved the food. There was an energy in Chinatown that I loved tooâthe bright neon signs, people on the sidewalks, busy traffic, horns honking.
Nate slowed down and signaled that he was going to back into a parking spot.
Nuts.
The street was jammed with traffic, and I couldn't see any open parking spots between my car and his truck. A car behind me honked, because it looked like I was slowing down for no reason.
I had no choice but to move along and hope that Nate didn't notice my car as I passed his truck. I hunched down and kept
going. There was another parking spot half a block away.
Should I take it?
I checked my rearview mirror and saw that Nate had jumped from his truck and gone into a small video store between two restaurants.
So I pulled into the open spot.
Now what?
Was he renting a movie?
But why in Chinatown? That wasn't close to where his billets lived. And the movie rental place had Chinese characters on the windows, like it specialized in Chinese language movies.
Why rent there?
I decided to wait in my car and keep watching in my rearview mirror. If he was just renting a movie, I needed to be in a good position if I was going to keep following him. If he wasn't renting a movie, maybe I'd see the two guys from the Mustang go in or out of the shop.
I sat in my Camry, just a few parking spots ahead of Nate's truck. The streetlights showed
clearly that Mercedes was still sitting in his truck. It was more fun to watch her than the sidewalk.
I frowned.
She had pulled a video camera from her lap. Had it been in her purse?
She swung the camera toward the video store and pointed it at the store window for a few seconds. Her lips were moving.
She was talking as she recorded?
I stared as hard as I could. It wasn't daylight, and even with the streetlights I couldn't be sure that I was seeing every lip movement. Still, I was pretty sure I could make sense of it.
“Nate Andrews has run into this movie rental place,” she said. “He didn't want to discuss why. It will be interesting to see if he comes out with a movie. The two men speaking to him are not Asian. I doubt they work in the video store.”
Then she pulled the camera down. It disappeared below the dash of the truck as if she were putting it back into her purse.
Now this was getting truly weird.
Before I could give it any thought, a big biker guy showed up at my driver's side window. The big blond guy with tattoos who had given me money to give to Nate.
He bent down and looked at me. Then he tapped on the window. With a tire iron.
“Step outside,” he said. “If you don't, I'll break the window.”
I've read that the best time to resist during a mugging is in the first few seconds. I was going to slide across to the passenger side and try to make a run for it down the sidewalk. The guy with the tire iron was huge. But probably not fast. If I couldn't outrun him, I didn't belong in the WHL.
But someone else was waiting on the other side of my car. The other guy from the Mustang. Just as big. Just as mean-looking. With a bent nose.
I didn't have much choice.
I got out of the car.
“Kid,” Tattoo Biker said to me, “this is the end of the line for you.”
If he meant it as a joke, he wasn't smiling.
Neither was I. We were standing near the LRT tracks by the river, not far from downtown. LRT stands for Light Rail Transit. Calgary's C-train. It's part of the transit system, but it uses trains instead of buses. The trains came and went about every ten minutes.
I hoped he didn't mean what I thought he meant about the end of the line. I was having a hard time keeping my balance, and there was no way I could make a run for it.
After taking me from my car, they had put me in a white van. Once I was inside, they had used duct tape to wrap my wrists and my ankles. Then Tattoo Biker had started driving, with me in the back.
No matter how many questions I'd asked, they'd said nothing. They'd gone through some alleys and ended up near the river. The tracks were fenced off, but they'd used wire cutters to get through. Then they had carried me like a sack of rocks to a place near the track. Finally they had put me on my feet again.
Tattoo Biker was holding what looked like a long unlit flashlight with two points sticking out of the front of it. The tracks were well lit. I wondered why he needed the flashlight. He saw me looking at it and gave his first smile.
“It's a flashlight stun gun,” he said. “Know how it works?”
“Better be simple,” I said, “or an idiot like you doesn't have a chance.”
Not the smartest thing to say, but I hate bullies.
Tattoo Biker proved it wasn't the smartest thing to say.
He shoved the stun gun into me.
Once, when I was too little to know better, I had pushed the end of a screwdriver into an electrical outlet. That's what it felt like. Except a hundred times worse.
I screamed and barely managed to keep my balance.
“That's only a half-second jolt,” Tattoo Biker said. “It gets worse.”
Bent Nose Biker stepped forward and wrapped something around my head. A blindfold.
“Doing this for your own good,” Bent Nose Biker said with a laugh. “That way you won't see it coming.”
I didn't have to ask what I wouldn't see. I felt them lift me and put me on the tracks.
He meant the train.
“Any chance you guys will change your mind about this?” I asked.
“None,” Tattoo Biker said.
“Probably a good thing,” I said. “You'd need a diaper to do it.”
“Huh?” he said.
“If you're going to change your mind, you'll need a diaper,” I said. “Let me explain. It's a joke. It means that your brain is full ofâ”
He jabbed me longer and harder with the stun gun. Now it was a thousand times worse. I fell to my knees on the track. I had no control over my muscles. My magnetic spider had been knocked off my head. My world went silent.
They shifted my body so that I was all the way across the tracks. I still couldn't move.
In my world of silence, I wondered if getting hit by the train would hurt. Maybe what the preacher had told me in grade five about the cement truck hitting my parents' car had been true. Maybe I really wouldn't feel a thing. I began to pray that the preacher was right. About not feeling the pain. And about going to a better place. I concentrated on
praying. I was afraid of discovering how terrified I was.
I didn't have long to pray. Rumbling told me that a train was approaching.
The rumble didn't come as noise. It came as a vibration that hummed in my chest. Even though I was blindfolded, I turned my head toward the train, as if I needed my eyes to tell me what I already knew.
The train was close and coming fast. With me on the tracks.
Louder and louder. Faster and faster.
I braced for impact. What else could I do?
I wasn't that brave. I screamed.
Suddenly something yanked me off the tracks. The train whizzed by as hands lifted me to my feet.
The blindfold was pulled off. I was shaking so hard I had to bite down to keep my teeth from shattering.