Reality Check (2010) (12 page)

friend, that Townes kid from the TV report? She'd said nothing about that in her letter. But maybe there'd been a hint, something between the lines. Cody wasn't sure; all he remembered by heart from the letter were those two sentences:
One or two I don't like at all. It's hard to know who to trust sometimes.
The letter was in the glove box of the car; Cody made a mental note to go over it the moment he got back, although written material--reading between the lines or just the lines themselves--was not his strength. That first act from
Hamlet
, for example: impenetrable.

The slope rose steeply to Cody's left: no trace of a path, just rocks, moss, patches of dirt, acorns, dead branches, dead leaves--mostly yellow or brown, with a few dull red ones mixed in, not the kind of red he was looking for. He climbed for a few minutes, reached a tall, slanting rock, and leaned against it, resting his knee.

Cody watched her climb. She followed the same route up from the bridge that he'd taken, climbed it pretty easily. Alex was strong, with broad shoulders--broad for a girl, at least. She reached the tall rock, straightened, gazed up at his face.

"Play any sports?" she said.
"Some," said Cody.
"Like?"
"Football."
"Lucky you."
"How come?"
"Football rocks," Alex said. "I'd love to have played." "Yeah?" said Cody. He'd met very few girls who even liked

watching football, if they were honest about it. "What position?"
"Safety."
"Good choice," Cody said.
"Because you see the whole field?"
He nodded.
"Cool." Alex peered up the slope. "Onward," she said, and then after a pause, "Although it really doesn't make much sense."
"Why not?"
"Think about it," Alex said. "The working hypothesis is she fell off her horse, got knocked a little silly, and wandered around in confusion."
"What doesn't make sense about that?" Cody said. He remembered getting knocked silly by Martinelli in the first quarter of the Bridger game: Wandering around in confusion made perfect sense to him.
"I suppose it's possible," Alex said. "But confused wandering in an uphill direction? That does not compute."
She was right. "So we should be working downhill," Cody said, "on the other side of the bridge."
"Except they swept that sector yesterday," Alex said. "With the dogs. Finding zip." She bit her lip, her braces glinting in the light. "All this looking and not one single clue," she said.
Meaning they had to keep looking: Was there another choice? "So we go up?" Cody said.
"Nowhere else to go," Alex said. "These woods have been pretty much searched now--hundreds of people, ATVs, dogs, choppers, you name it--all the way to Route Seven." "What if she crossed Route Seven?" Cody said.
"You know how busy it is--hard to imagine that no one would have spotted her, or that she wouldn't have asked for help." Their eyes met. Alex's eyes were dark, intelligent, worried. "I really like her," Alex said. "Clea, I mean. No offense, but all this is different when she's a real flesh-and-blood person in your life."
Cody felt a thickness in his throat, could not have uttered a word at that moment.
"She lived--lives--next door to me, in Baxter," Alex was saying. "Clea's new--came as a junior from out west. Not easy, but she handled it so well. Naturally, it helps when you're someone like her."
Cody cleared his throat. "Someone like her?"
Alex took a deep breath. "Better get moving," she said. "Night comes so early." She turned and started up the slope, Cody following. Her quickness surprised him; even with two good knees, he might have had trouble keeping up.
"Someone like her?" he said again.
Alex, still climbing, her back to him, said, "Heard you the first time. I just don't want to sound all snotty."
"I can take it," Cody said.
Alex laughed, a surprised kind of laugh. "I forgot--did you say you went to the high school?"
"No."
"Do you know much about Dover Academy?"
"No."
"Well, this is the snotty part--there's lots of very accomplished kids here. They come from all over the country--all over the world, really--to Dover and a few places like it. Sounds unfair, maybe, but it's a fact."
"Unfair because you're all rich?" Cody said. They reached a narrow ridge, worked their way along it, the wind picking up as a stony summit came in view off to the right.
"Not all of us," Alex said. "I'm not rich."
"You're not?" Cody would have bet anything she was.
"I'm on full scholarship," Alex said, gripping an overhanging branch to pull herself along.
"Yeah?"
"Single mom situation," Alex said. "Renting out the top of a Dorchester triple-decker."
Cody didn't know where Dorchester was--or the exact nature of a triple-decker--but he got the point. Maybe like living over the Red Pony: not terrible--he had no complaints--and there was much worse, and also much better. "So you must be super accomplished at something," he said. First time he'd used the word
accomplished
in a conversation, for sure.
"I wouldn't say super accomplished," Alex said. "But the answer is it's crew."
"Crew?" Cody was at a loss.
"Sculling," she said. She looked back, maybe saw he still didn't understand. "Rowing," she explained.
Rowing was a competitive sport? Cody kept that thought to himself.
"I got involved with a Harvard program, crew for inner-city kids," Alex said. "I was one of the inner-city kids. With Clea it's riding. Of course, she
is
rich, although not rich for here. Plus she's just so good at everything. Larissa--she's the lit mag editor--said Clea submitted a poem that blew her away. On top of that, she's a wizard at math, and--"
"I'd like to see it," Cody said.
"See what?"
"The poem."
"You're interested in poetry?" Alex said.
"Not really."
"Then why do you want to see the poem?"
"No reason," Cody said.
They came to a rocky cliff, maybe ten feet high, with a trickle of water running down its face. Here and there at the edges of the trickle, the water was starting to freeze. Alex glanced up at the sky. It seemed smaller here than back home in Little Bend, although Cody knew that had to be impossible. Cody also remembered it being blue when he'd entered the woods; now it was gray, the clouds dark and sagging. Alex and Cody moved along the base of the cliff, came to a strangelooking bowl-shaped hollow full of stunted evergreens, not much taller than a person.
"It was called 'Bending,' I think," Alex said.
"The poem?" said Cody.
Alex opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment they both saw a man seated on a tree stump at the far side of the hollow, smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in black, except for a bright red headband, the only red Cody had seen in the woods; in fact, that red flash was the first thing he noticed. The man looked up, saw them; no, not a man, but a kid, like them.
"Townes?" Alex called to him. "What's up?"
Yes, the TV report kid, the one with long blond hair falling over one eye. Townes took one last drag from the cigarette, rose, and ground the butt under his heel, then moved toward them, smoke curling up from his nostrils. He carried a long stick, used it to raise a branch of one of those dwarfish trees, hack at another. Was this part of looking for Clea? Alex stepped down into the bowl, and Cody followed.
They met halfway across. At first Cody thought he was much shorter than Townes, then realized it was mostly an illusion from the way Townes carried himself, head tilted slightly back. In fact, he was only an inch or so taller than Cody, and not quite as broad. "Townes, Cody," said Alex. "Cody, Townes. Cody's a volunteer from the town."
Townes glanced at Cody for maybe a split second--his name not ringing the slightest bell, as far as Cody could see-- and turned to Alex. "Where the fuck is she?" he said. His eyes were red. Had he been crying? There was no sign of tears. Cody glanced down, saw that his hands were balled up in fists, like they were doing things on their own; he jammed them in his pockets.
"We've got to keep looking, that's all," Alex said.
"You don't think I know that?" Townes waved his stick--a hardwood branch trimmed except for a big knob at the end--at the stony summit. "You think I'm going to stop looking?"
"I didn't say that," Alex said. She took out one of Mrs. McTeague's maps. "Aren't we supposed to be checking down there?" She gestured toward the woods at the other side of the bowl, where Townes had been smoking his cigarette.
"Apparently," said Townes.
"Then let's do it," Alex said.
Cracking sounds came from the other direction, back by the cliff. A few seconds later Larissa and Simon walked down from the ridge, breath clouds rising over their heads, and joined the others in the bowl.
"Is anyone else freezing?" Simon said.
"This way," said Alex.
They all followed her into the far woods, Simon last. "I hate nature," he said. "Despise, detest, loathe."
They stepped into the trees, the ground sloping up again, but not steeply. "Spread out," Alex said. Everyone spread out, Alex on the far left, Cody on the far right, with Townes closest to him, whacking at the undergrowth with his stick. Cody moved around a big rock, kept his eye out for anything moving, anything red. But all that moved were the darkening clouds and themselves, five kids that Cody could only think of as four and one; and the only red to be seen was Townes's headband.
"There's no God," Simon called out. "Brambles are the proof."
They crested the top of the hill, found themselves on a narrow ledge. Beyond the ledge, the trees thinned out and the ground sloped toward a distant paved road. A semi went by, lights on, and then a car with skis on the roof.
"Route Seven?" Larissa said.
Alex checked her map and nodded. "If we head north off the ledge, we should find a trail to the bottom."
"Perfect," said Simon. "We can take a taxi back."
"Calling a taxi how, precisely?" Townes said. "This is a dead zone."
But just as he said that, Cody's cell phone rang. They all looked at him in surprise. "What service do you have?" Simon said.
Cody took the phone from his pocket. "Hello?"
"Where the hell are you?" It was his father. His voice was loud; he might have been standing right there.
Cody moved away, although there really wasn't anywhere to go on the ledge. He lowered his voice. "I left a note," he said.
"I saw your fucking note," his father said. "You think that's good enough?"
Cody, aware of the Dover Academy kids watching him, took a few steps off the ledge onto the steep slope, and slipped on some dead leaves. He felt a sudden twinge in his bad knee, for an instant thought it was coming apart again, but his knee held, and somehow he stayed on his feet. "Can't talk right now," he said. "I'll call soon."
"Call soon? Who do you think you're talking to?"
"I'm sorry," Cody said.
"Ain't that the truth," his father said. "Now answer my question--where are you? What are you doing?"
Cody's knee started to throb. He glanced back, saw the Dover Academy kids gazing down from the ridge. "Read the note."
"What did you say to me?" His father was shouting now, shouting and drunk.
"You heard."
"Think you can talk to me like that, boy? I'm your goddamn father."
"Why?" Cody said. The word just popped out, totally unplanned, not even making any sense that Cody could see. He clicked off.
The Dover Academy kids were still watching him. "What service do you have, again?" Simon said. Cody noticed they all had their cell phones out, maybe hadn't overheard the conversation, maybe had no interest in it, not the slightest. He named the service. They stared at the tiny screens, shook their heads, put their cell phones away.
"At least we'll be able to call the cab," Simon said. A fat snowflake wafted by, followed by a few more. "Let's take it all the way back to Manhattan," he added.
"Really," said Larissa. A snowflake landed in her hair. For some reason the sight--snowflake so white, hair so black and glossy--had a calming influence on Cody, just at a time when that was what he most needed. The snowflake melted and disappeared.

trifle early, no?" Simon said--fell lightly, sifting down through the bare branches like salt from a giant shaker.
"You limping, Cody?" Alex said.
"No." They were walking in single file. Cody drifted to the back.
"The helicopter has been conspicuous by its absence," Simon said.
"Mr. Negative," said Townes.
"I'm merely noting the fact," Simon said.
"Shut up," Townes said.
"Hey, come on," said Alex. "It's probably just refueling, anyway."
They continued in silence, Alex, Simon, Larissa, Townes, Cody. Snow coated the trail now, a fraction of an inch, but enough to record their footprints. Something about the snow bothered Cody, maybe just the thought that it had in fact come too late. Wouldn't snow last Wednesday have captured Clea's footprints, led the rescuers right to her?
"Hear the latest?" Larissa said. "Clea's dad had a heart attack. He's in the hospital."
"How do you know?" Townes said.
"The cops were talking about it in the barn," she said.
"How bad?" Townes said.
"How bad what?" said Larissa.
"The heart attack, for Christ sake."
Larissa gave him a look; despite the fact she was half his size, the look said she wouldn't be pushed around. "No idea," she told him.
"He struck me as the heart-attack type," Simon said.
"Shut up," said Townes.
"Hey, come on, guys," Alex said.
"Speaking of the barn," Simon said, "what's the story with this Ike character?"
"No story," Townes said. "He mucks out the stables."
"I refer to his whole
Deliverance
aspect," said Simon.
"He's harmless," Townes said.
"Maybe," said Simon, "but he really should do something about his--" Simon cut himself off. Up ahead, and not too far off the trail, a small cabin appeared.
"Just one of those warming huts," Alex said.
"They've all been searched," said Townes.
A minute or two later they were even with the warming hut: square and squat, with walls made from rough-hewn logs, a lopsided roof, a slanting chimney. "I'd like to take a look," Cody said.
"I just told you," Townes said. "They've all been searched."
"You guys go ahead," Cody said. "I'll catch up."
"But how will we call the cab without your phone?" Simon said.
Cody didn't want to lend them his phone, partly out of fear that his father might call again, partly because, apart from Alex, these kids seemed so strange to him. "I'll just be a minute or two," Cody said, and turned off the trail.
"But no more, if it's all the same to you," said Simon. "Hypothermia is setting in, and my funeral would be so awkward for my parents, having to stand together in the reception line and all."
Larissa laughed. The Dover Academy kids kept going down the trail.
Cody stepped over a fallen branch, got tangled in some brambles, freed himself, reached the hut. He felt better away from those kids. They--or maybe just Simon--took up all the air.
Cody walked around the hut, looked through the grimy little windows, didn't see much: a potbelly woodstove, a table, shadows. He returned to the front, tried the door: unlocked. Cody went in.
It was colder in the hut than outside, kind of strange--cold enough to make Cody shiver. He examined the interior of the hut: a single room, woodstove in the center, the table against one wall, a bench against another, two wooden chairs and a stool, a pile of split wood in one corner. Easy to imagine a confused person stumbling into a hut like this, maybe resting on the bench: but he saw nothing red, no sign of Clea, or anyone else. Cody read a notice tacked to the wall.