Authors: Sophie Littlefield
Chapter Twenty
Jen could feel the cold concrete through the fabric of her pants, but she couldn’t seem to stand up. Her strength had left her, all but the hand that held on to Licorice.
Hold on to him and forget everything that happened tonight.
Tanya had said that. Long ago, the night she gave Jen the stuffed bear. But why? What had happened? Jen tried to remember, but it was like someone lowered a screen over the memory every time she got too close. She remembered that it was August and their mom was getting sicker. She spent all her time at home on the couch, and she was missing a lot of work. Jen and Tanya didn’t talk about it. It was like they had worked out a deal without ever discussing it, that neither would acknowledge what was happening to their mother—and maybe then it would stop being true.
Tanya was staying away from home more and more, hanging out with her friends at the Soul Patch or going for drives with boys. That night she had gone to the carnival with some boy, and Jen pretended she didn’t care. But the night dragged out long and lonely. Jen lay in the upper bunk listening to Jackson Browne on her Walkman and trying to focus on the problem set she was working through from the math book.
Jen didn’t blame her sister for wanting out for a few hours. She wanted out, too, but the sort of escape Tanya favored—the boys and the loud-revving cars and the smell of cigarettes on her clothes, the sticky lip gloss and front-porch manicures and shorts made even shorter by rolling the hems—none of that was within Jen’s grasp. So she waited for her sister to come home on nights like this, and as she drifted off to sleep in the upper bunk, she’d listen to Tanya’s whispered accounts of skinny-dipping in the lake and making out at Suicide Point and someone’s older cousin buying them beer. And it would be enough, even with the sweltering heat and the clacking fan, the sweat on her pillow, to get her to sleep—just knowing that Tanya was there below her, anchoring them both, making it all okay.
Around eleven she heard a car pull up and tossed the math book to the floor and yanked off her headphones. It was here that the memories became hazy and unreliable. Sometimes she remembered watching for her sister through the window. Other times she thought she might have gone out on the porch. Sometimes she thought she remembered the boy, a lanky senior named Dwayne, who had a farmer tan and a car he’d saved up for by working at his father’s scrap yard. Other times, she couldn’t remember anyone bringing her sister home that night.
This time, the memories took her further. Treading softly, she passed through the living room—her mother had managed to get herself to bed, the afghan was folded on the couch and her bedroom door was closed—and let herself out the front door. She didn’t want to wait through some long make-out session. Whoever the boy was, the sight of Tanya’s little sister on the porch ought to be enough to cut short his ardor. And Tanya wouldn’t mind, not too much. That was the good thing about her—she didn’t stay mad at Jen for long, not these days.
Standing on the porch, worn-paint boards cool under her bare feet, she inhaled the overripe smell of river and exhaust that drifted up their street on summer nights. The porch light hadn’t worked in ages, but the moon glimmered in and out of a bank of chalky clouds. A car. How could she have forgotten that car? It wasn’t one she recognized, a long sedan like someone’s dad would drive. It was parked carelessly, front tires sunk into the edge of the yard, and the driver had left the motor running.
Jen tried to see who it was. She squinted and took a few steps forward. She could see the oval of his face, glowing pale under the moon, but all the features had been erased. The car shimmered and shifted, changing from the dark sedan to their mother’s car and back, refusing to stay still long enough for Jen to understand.
She took a few more steps forward toward the car, trying to peer around the faceless figure to see if her sister was in the passenger seat. The face shook slightly. It was laughing at her—somehow Jen knew it was laughing, even though she couldn’t see its eyes or mouth. Why couldn’t she remember who had come that night?
A sound behind her caught her attention, and she turned. Her body felt light and graceful; it seemed to move without her moving a muscle. The house loomed in front of her, dark and foreboding and empty, the way it looked later, after their mother had died and they had moved away and no one lived there at all, broken glass on the porch and the windows boarded up and graffiti on the front door.
When she turned back around, everything had changed. In the yard lay a listless mound that resembled a heap of rags more than a person—except for the sounds that emanated from it.
The car was still there and the engine revved, but no one was at the wheel. The tires spun on the wet grass and then found purchase, kicking up cinders and dirt as it backed off the lawn. For a moment it idled there and then it was gone, taillights disappearing down the street and around the corner.
Silence. The heap of rags on the lawn twitched.
Jen walked across the yard, treading softly like she and Tanya used to do when they were in grade school, playing Indian scout and making no noise. She slowed as she approached the thing on the ground. A few feet away, she saw that it was a man, lying facedown, limbs splayed. But that was
Sid’s
coat, wasn’t it? His scruff of thick black hair was like a wet hound’s, his squared-off fingers scrabbling at the grass. He was making sounds like a man carrying a sofa up a flight of stairs, grunting and trying to sit up.
But suddenly Tanya was there in front of her, materializing out of nowhere to stand between Jen and the man. Under her arm was a big stuffed animal, a prize from the arcade at the fair. Around its neck, a bow of shiny satin reflected moonlight.
“I never remembered this part before,” Jen said. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking out loud as her mind flickered between the present and her memory. “Sid being here.”
“Go on back inside, now,” Tanya said, smiling. “It’s awfully late for you to still be up.”
“But it’s Sid,” Jen said, pointing at the thing on the ground.
“Don’t you worry about that.” Tanya held out the stuffed animal, a big-bellied stuffed bear with a smile stitched on its snout. In the moonlight it appeared to be the color of blood. Jen took it and hugged it against her chest, ducking her chin into the soft place between its head and its floppy front legs. It smelled like the cotton in an aspirin bottle.
“You know, he had it coming,” Tanya said, her voice echoey and far away, like she was speaking from another room. “You go on inside, and I’ll come get you in a few minutes when I need you.”
But Jen didn’t go inside; she sat down on the porch steps to watch, the bear in her lap.
Tanya took her keys out of her pocket. She had a little mini flashlight on her key chain, and she shone it down onto Sid. His shirt was slick with blood, the plaid disappearing into the dark of it. Tanya used the toe of her shoe to hook him under the arm and roll his body over. Sid groaned and his hands went to his gut as fresh blood leaked out.
“Someone from the roadhouse did this,” Tanya said. “He got into a fight.”
“He got into a fight,” Jen echoed. Her mouth was pressed against the bear’s soft fur and her words came out muffled.
“They brought him here and dumped him, so now
we
have to deal with the mess.” She shook her head, clucking, a show of exasperation exactly like their mother’s—at least, how she used to be, before she got to feeling so bad all the time.
Jen remembered the featureless face, the way it shook when it laughed. Confusion made her words come out slow, like they were getting caught behind her tongue. “But I don’t think—”
“He got into a
fight,
” Tanya said, not mad, but insistent. “Say it, Jennie.”
“He got into a fight?”
“Yes, that’s right. Good.”
Tanya reached down and picked up the old canvas drop cloth from the shed, wadded up and sticking to itself where paint had dried. It hadn’t been there before, but Tanya didn’t seem surprised. She spread it out across the backseat of their mother’s car, which was idling in the road where the other car had been. How it got there, Jen had no idea, but Tanya didn’t seem surprised by that, either.
“I guess since you’re out here, you can help.” Together they dragged Sid over to the car. They each took an arm. Jen tried not to touch him anywhere there was blood, which was hard to do because he had it on his hands and his shirt cuffs. He tried to talk a couple of times, but Jen couldn’t understand anything he said. Dragging him was like dragging a dead person, the way his ankles bumped along in the grass.
“Time to go,” Tanya said, breathing hard, after they’d maneuvered him into the backseat.
Tanya wasn’t supposed to drive, because she didn’t have her license and, anyway, Dwayne had only barely started teaching her, but Jen got in the passenger seat, anyway. It seemed like the minute she closed the door and got her seat belt on, they were at the roadhouse outside town past the paper mill. They could hear music from inside, drifting through the muggy summer night. Tanya parked next to a jacked-up pickup that blocked the view from the door. Jen helped Tanya pull Sid out of the backseat and drag his body along the ground, muttering and shivering. They laid him by the Dumpster, his arms flung out like a snow angel.
“That’s it,” Tanya said, wiping her hands on her shorts. “Don’t worry, Jennie, our part’s done now.”
“Our part’s done,” Jen agreed.
Someone was tugging on her and wouldn’t stop. She squinted, trying to make out who was standing next to her now. The memory went wavy, the roadhouse and the pickup truck and Sid lying on the ground, and then it all disappeared like a snuffed-out flame.
Livvy.
Livvy needed something and Jen had to help. She made a mighty effort to focus, blinking to dispel the dark. Livvy’s outline became clearer, shimmering above her, her long hair inches from Jen’s face. She tried to look back and see Tanya, but she wasn’t there. The house was gone; the car was gone. It was all gone. Her eyes adjusted to the light and she saw the shelves behind Livvy, felt Licorice’s paw in her hand.
“What do you mean, our part’s done?” Livvy said. She looked so scared that Jen forced herself to sit up. She let go of the bear and rolled onto her knees, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
“I just meant we need to get our part done.” She rubbed her temple, trying to clear out the last of the confusion from her fall, or fainting spell, or whatever it had been.
“I know. I’ve figured it out, Mom. But are you okay? What happened?”
“I—I guess I just got a little dizzy because I haven’t eaten,” Jen said. “But I’m fine now.”
“What is
that?
” Livvy pointed to the stuffed bear, which was bedraggled with age, its ribbon flattened and faded.
“It was mine when I was about your age. Aunt Tanya gave him to me.”
“Oh.” Livvy picked it up and set it back on the shelf. Jen flinched when she touched it; she didn’t want her daughter near the musty old thing. She should have thrown it out. Why hadn’t she thrown it out?
“Listen, Mom, maybe you should eat something now. And drink some water, okay? This’ll take me a few minutes. I’m going to hook up the TV so we can find out what time it is. Then right before seven we’ll figure out a way to get upstairs. We only need a minute or two on the walkie-talkie, right? Just long enough to tell Jake to have Aunt Tanya call the police.”
“But how can you hook up the TV?” Jen said, trying to cut through the cloudiness in her brain. “There’s no cable down here.”
Livvy gave an exaggerated sigh. “Have just a little bit of faith in me? Okay? Just a
tiny
bit of faith? I’m not an idiot.”
“I never said you were an idiot,” Jen protested, but Livvy was already stalking off to the corner of the basement.
Jen dragged herself over to the couch. Her body felt sluggish and weak, her mind slow. She drank some water and forced herself to eat a handful of crackers while Livvy got tools from Ted’s workbench and climbed up on the stepladder. She worked in silence as Jen ate a pear, and suddenly the silence was broken by the voice of Leroy Edwards, evening anchor on Channel 2.
“There,” Livvy said, a note of pride in her voice. She tapped the channel controls on the clicker and brought up the cable guide. “Six forty-three, Mom, we don’t have much time.”
“Mute it, honey—we don’t want them to hear. I can’t believe you figured...” Jen stopped herself and tried again. “It’s really impressive, that you knew how to do that, sweetie.”
Livvy rolled her eyes. “It’s
nothing.
Jeez. Two seconds. Now we need to figure out how we’re going to get them to let us go upstairs.”
“Livvy, I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. Even if one of us can get upstairs, and somehow we get a moment alone, which in itself would be a miracle, what are the odds that Jake’s going to be listening?”
“Really freaking good, Mom,” Livvy said impatiently. “Jake never misses a night.”
“But still, I don’t want you up there alone. I should be the one to go. I’ll just tell them I need to see Dad.”
“Okay, if you want, but, Mom, you have to be really convincing. You have to make them understand that you need a moment in private with him somehow. You have to make them
believe
it.”
“I know, honey, I’ll do my best. I won’t let you down, Liv.”
“You only get one chance, Mom.” Livvy hugged herself, her voice wavering. “Dad’s hurt bad, isn’t he? You aren’t telling me because you think I can’t take it.”
“No, no, that’s not true,” Jen protested, and instantly regretted it. Livvy’s trust wasn’t something she could afford to squander now. She and her daughter had come into this nightmare already fractured, their bond weakened by the stresses of adolescent rebellion and Jen’s own failures as a mother. But that didn’t mean that Jen couldn’t do better, even now, even here. “Wait, Livvy...it’s true. Dad’s hurt pretty bad. The bullet, it went in near his elbow.”
She traced a gentle path on her own arm with her fingertip, showing where the thing had lodged.