The Orphan (29 page)

He hasn’t told any of the other guys. He rarely speaks to Tommy anymore, and none of the others since last spring, when they ruined his bike at Palo Park. He isn’t mad at Tommy, but the few times he’s tried to tell Tommy so, the bigger kid looks away, and Adam knows he is ashamed, even though Tommy wasn’t the main one who did it. Darren Lynwood has remained above it all, aloof, his same old cock-of-the-walk self. The word around school is that Darren Lynwood’s family is moving away, going to Alabama or Arkansas or some other place because his dad got a new job. Darren Lynwood’s leaving Boulder, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Him and Tommy and the rest of them are sixth-graders. Even if he stayed, the Wonderland Hills Gang are moving on to junior high while Adam’s got one more year at Crest View.

More importantly, as more time has passed, Adam comes to believe that keeping his Cinelli project undercover, a secret inside himself, is a source of power.

Near the end of the school year, his sister has seen the changes in him and started asking questions. Sheila has always been closer to their parents, and the three of them constantly warn him not to tell anyone about the family’s personal business, their rituals and beliefs. Just as often they ignore him, pretend he doesn’t exist, and he wonders if they secretly know he hates them. Or maybe hate isn’t the right word. Because to hate you have to care, to feel strongly, and Adam doesn’t feel enough for his family to call it love or hate. Until he can run away at age sixteen, they are just people in his way.

‘Where do you go all the time now, dickless?’ Sheila asks him from time to time. ‘What do you do with that money? Why’n’t you buy me some candy?’

‘What money?’ he always answers, hiding his alarm. ‘I don’t go anywhere except to stay away from here.’

‘You’re lying,’ Sheila says, crawling on him tickling him trying to make him tell. Sometimes she is too touchy, rubbing herself on him in ways he knew a sister shouldn’t, especially now that she is becoming developed. ‘Tell me, Adam, I can keep a secret. I promise not to tell. Maybe when you save enough, we can run away together.’

The thought of this makes his skin crawl. He doesn’t want to go anywhere with Sheila. She is already ruined, like their parents. She seems to enjoy the sick things they do, practicing on her, calling her their Venus medium. Allowing her to lounge around the house in the nude. This spring he has noticed a foulness filling the trailer, too, a sweet rotten stench, one that seeps up through the floor. Adam doesn’t know what it is, but they are all in on it together and he cannot trust Sheila with anything he suspects or plans. She doesn’t know anything, he tells himself. She is bluffing.

But still, it scares him. The closer he gets to $579, the more afraid he becomes. He is sure something bad is going to happen, that someone will find a way to convince Arnie to sell the Cinelli out from under him. Or that he will get crippled in some random accident, like getting hit by a car walking home from school. The bike shop might burn down. Adam has nightmares about that, the Cinelli burning to molten steel and rubber, turning to ash.

So he always waits until the middle of the night to count his funds. And this last Sunday of the school year, when he is sure everyone is out cold, he slides his mattress as quietly as he can, taking the sock from inside the box spring and then hiding in his closet to count it. Using a flashlight to see the stacks, he arrives at $568.

Eleven bucks short of his goal.

Arnie will probably let him take the bike with that much, if he promises to bring the rest in a week or two. But this doesn’t feel right. A deal is a deal. Arnie is already picking up the tax. Adam wants to stand tall and see the look in Arnie’s eyes when he plunks down $579, not one dollar less.

Not to mention, the second he rides the Cinelli out of the store, he plans to live on his new bike for days and days at a time. He doesn’t want to take it home and park it in his bedroom while he goes back to work. Once summer is on and the Cinelli is his for keeps, Adam will not mow another lawn or scrape another inch of chicken shit as long as he lives. Or at least until next summer, when he might need a new set of tires.

School ends this Wednesday and this is the deadline he has subconsciously set for himself. It is the official start of summer, and to cross into real summer without his new bike, well, in some way he cannot explain, that would be to miss the whole point. Of course one or two days won’t matter, not in the long run. But he is determined to find the last eleven dollars by Wednesday at noon.

Adam traverses the neighborhoods with his lawnmower on Monday and Tuesday afternoon, knocking on his clients’ doors, but he already caught up this past weekend and no one wants their lawn mowed again so soon.

Any odd jobs, no matter how small? He begs them, and eventually a few take pity. He cleans out a garden for two bucks, rakes last fall’s wet leaves from under a porch for a few more. One old lady pays him fifty cents to carry her trash to the end of the driveway. Another guy, Mr Richardson, who lives on Sumac near the school and carries a Buck knife strapped to his leather belt, pays him two dollars to wash his Ford Bronco.

Three bucks to go.

His parents have more than that in the change jar in their bedroom, and they are always so hungover or cooked up, they wouldn’t miss it. But no. It is not their bike. The Cinelli will only, ever and always be his bike.

The one that puts him over the top comes Wednesday morning, on his way to school. He is walking the three short blocks to Crest View, practically skipping with nervous tension, when he sees a pretty young woman out in her front yard with a pair of tongs and a paper grocery bag. He stops, trying to understand what she is doing, bending over every few steps to tweeze something from the grass and drop it in the bag.

Then he hears her dog barking inside the house and he knows.

‘Picking up dog logs,’ he says, laughing. Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? Half the people he mows for own dogs, and no one likes picking up dog logs. If he’d offered this service on top of the mowing for a dollar more, he would’ve hit his goal a month ago.

Adam hurries over to the woman and presents his case. She is almost finished, she explains, but okay, sure, if he finishes it for her and does the backyard real thoroughly, where she probably missed some, she will pay him two bucks. Adam takes over the tongs and runs around like a boy on an Easter egg hunt, rushing to finish before the school bell rings. But he is thorough too, because this is his last chance. So thorough, he manages to fill the rest of her bag and half of another.

‘I guess I didn’t realize how much I was skimming over,’ the woman says when he knocks on her door and asks where is her trash bin. She shows him in the garage and he gets rid of all the dog crap. ‘Thank you so much for that. You’re a hard-working kid, aren’t you?’

‘No problem, ma’am,’ he says, nodding politely. ‘I wish there was more. I need one more dollar.’

He meant it offhandedly, not expecting her to pay him more than the agreed upon two, but she digs back into her billfold and plucks out an extra single.

‘Call it a tip,’ she says.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, honey. I’m sure.’

$579, officially. Adam wants to kiss her, and she really is pretty, somebody’s young wife or older daughter, but he only thanks her and runs off to school, landing in his chair one minute after the second bell.

Mrs Fletcher eyes him skeptically but says nothing.

And the day passes in an agony.

And when the final bell rings and the kids are excused for the school year, Adam runs home, before Sheila can get home from Casey, the junior high school she is already failing out of. His dad’s brown Ford truck is not parked out front, but that doesn’t mean his mom isn’t home. Miriam doesn’t have her own car, and she sleeps most days. Inside he forces himself to act casual, but there is no need.

The trailer is empty.

They are probably out drinking. Celebrating the end of school, as if they had been the ones to suffer through it. They don’t need an excuse to party. They drink most nights and do drugs whenever they can find them. Good days or bad, though the good are few and far between.

Once he is sure he is alone, Adam goes to his bedroom. Pulls the mattress back, rams his arm down into the box spring. He searches around but cannot find the sock. He begins to panic. His fingers scrape along the wooden slats and he gets a splinter. His heart races and sweat pops from his brow.

‘Oh no, no, oh no, pleeeeease…’

His fingers snag on the sock. He pulls it out, relieved beyond words.

But… what… his eyes want to jump from their sockets. He is holding it but no, no, there must be some mistake. It is the same sock, his old white tube sock with brown and orange stripes. It has no holes, but he lost its match a long time ago. Just this past Sunday night it was plump as a sausage, packed to bursting with five-dollar bills.

Now it is limp. Empty. Even the single silver dollar Mrs Heritage gave him for carrying her groceries into the house is gone.

Adam rips away the mattress, heaving it against his bedroom wall, but already he knows the truth. Sheila found it. Tattled on him, thinking it would win her some favor. His parents took it. And somewhere right now they are drinking it, inhaling it, smoking it, dancing with wads of it raised in their fists, and they will not come home until every one of his $579 is gone. He can rage and scream and cry and plead and his parents will only look away, pretending not to know what the heck is the matter.

‘We put a roof over your head, clothes on your back,’ they told him three years ago, when he yelled at them for taking the twenty-dollar gift certificate he earned selling Little League candy bars. The gift certificate was for Grand Rabbits Toy Shoppe and Adam was going to use it to get himself some binoculars, to watch birds. Another activity that would keep him away from home. His mom found it in his jeans and made the woman at the store exchange it for a cash refund. ‘You’re getting old enough to contribute your share, and why would you want to go and do a faggoty thing like watching birds anyway?’ his mother said. ‘You’re a weird kid, you know that? Sometimes I wonder who the hell made you.’

That night they went out to the BustTop titty bar on North Broadway and came home plastered. He never got his Grand Rabbits Gift Certificate or the binoculars, and he never played Little League again.

That was twenty bucks. This is the Cinelli.

His dreams. All of them.

Gone.

Sheila watched, and waited, and struggled to control herself. It was going to happen soon, but it had to be just right, and they couldn’t put it in motion until they understood every angle. Things were shaping up differently than she imagined, but there were exciting new elements to consider.

The Family had found the Lynwood place several hours ago, about forty minutes after bottling up as much of Tommy Berkley’s blood as they had time to preserve before leaving the farm. Sheila had checked the Boulder County phone book in Tommy’s living room, but found no listing, so she used her cell to call information. She was given an address on Linden, in North Boulder, which she knew was only about a mile from where she had grown up. Fate working in their favor.

But when they arrived, parking two blocks up the quiet street, the signals she was receiving immediately crossed and combined and confused her. She made sure Miriam and Ethan stayed in the back of the Tercel while she walked to the Lynwood house. She confirmed the address on the mailbox, even though the house was emanating for her. Someone of importance was inside. She was preparing to Crawl around back, and perhaps inside for a look around, when she heard voices on the front porch. The door closing. Quiet voices, young, coming near her at the end of the drive.

Dressed all in black, Sheila backed into the side of the yard and pressed herself to the ground. A boy and a girl walked to a used gray Saab. The boy hugged the girl and whispered to her. Sheila heard the name Raya. She was excited by the sight of the boy. Was this him? Could it really be so simple?

But he did not emanate strongly enough to be Adam.

Still, there was power here. The girl?

These were someone’s children. Darren Lynwood’s son or daughter?

And then it all became clear, and Sheila knew this was a symbol of a kind. Seeing the girl and the boy before she had the chance to Crawl the house.

In some ways this was better than stumbling across Adam, even finding him in his bed to slit his throat. This was an opportunity to hurt him in ways she had never imagined possible. This was leverage. The power she might reap…

Sheila waited until they were inside the Saab, the boy opening the door for the girl, because he was crafty too, and then she ran back to the Tercel.

The Saab drove down Linden, and the Family followed.

And then there was a new house, a party, with too many people, and she was forced to wait. She was tempted to leave, turn back for the Lynwood residence, where they were keeping Adam, but she knew this was another symbol, a reminder to think bigger. If she could control herself, and her parents, she would control the final ceremony.

The hour grew late, but eventually her persistence paid off.

The party Raya and Chad attended at Taylor Pultz’s house over on 9th and Evergreen turned out to be a disappointingly well-behaved affair. Taylor’s parents were home, as it turned out, though they allowed several of the more brazen kids to drink a beer or two out in the backyard. It was a combination of liberal parenting policy (better to do it in front of us than out where we can’t supervise you) and general aloofness. Father Pultz was busy manning the grill on a small deck without a spotlight; mom was in the living room chatting with a group of girls, listening to their stories from the school year and contributing a few of her own. But most of the fifteen or so high school kids who showed up did so without illicit beverages of their own, and what little was smuggled in dispersed thinly and quickly.

Chad and Raya spent most of the time sitting in the lawn chairs in the backyard with four or five other friends, talking of summer plans, who had broken up already since school let out, and who was looking like they might be hooking up tonight. Chad was his usual upbeat self, talkative, cracking jokes. He’d convinced one of his friends to spot him three beers, and when Raya declined to join him, he pocketed two while nursing the one.

Raya felt she shouldn’t be here. She was worried about her parents, especially her dad. She knew by now he was dealing with something more than nightmares or insomnia. The words ‘mental illness’ kept appearing in her head like a dimly glowing green sign, the sort of broken-down thing you saw in the window of a scary bar or cheap motel. The letters fuzzy, some of them turning from green to gray to black, the light inside them dying. It was difficult to think of her dad as someone with mental illness, and no one had called it that yet, but after tonight’s outburst at the dinner table it was impossible not to start framing it this way.

Whatever was going on with him was getting worse. Her mom was scared. Raya had been feeling that for days. She’d tried to ignore the vibe her mom was giving off, but it was out in the open. For the first time in her life, Raya understood that thing kids at school are most ashamed of –
problems at home
– and she wondered how other kids learned to live with this feeling, day in and day out.

We should go now, she thought every fifteen minutes. Even though Mom said they needed some time to themselves, this doesn’t feel right. We need to stick together, like a family, no matter what’s happening or how bad it is.

Raya kept looking at her phone, checking for a voicemail, a text. She’d called twice as she had been asked to do, but her mom wasn’t answering. She left a voicemail assuring them that she and Chad were being safe, and later sent a text letting them know she and Chad were still at the Pultzes’ house.

But she got no response.

They were either in bed by now, or in the thick of some discussion, the crisis.

‘You okay?’ Chad asked her again, around midnight. He had finished his second beer and he looked a little flushed. He wasn’t slurring or anything, but Raya knew he was feeling it. Maybe it was his way of pretending nothing serious was happening. ‘Did you hear from your mom yet?’

‘No. It’s fine. It’s got to be fine, right?’

‘Yes,’ Chad said, kissing her on the nose. ‘I’m sure they’re just talking it out, you know? Sounded like your mom is on top of it. If he needs help, he’ll get the best help.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Raya said. ‘I don’t want to hear that right now.’

Chad leaned down beside her. ‘Sorry. All I meant was, this isn’t going to be a big deal. They have medicine for this stuff, for everything. You’re dad’s not sick sick. He probably just has some anxiety issues or something. Half the world does these days. It’s gonna be okay, babe.’

She didn’t respond.

‘Do you want to go home?’ he asked. ‘It’s cool if you’d rather be there. I don’t mind. We can leave anytime.’

His understanding of how she was feeling made her feel a little better. ‘No, not yet. We should give them some space. If I haven’t heard from her in half an hour or so, maybe we’ll head back?’

‘Whatever you want,’ Chad said. ‘I’ll be over here with Sam and Emma.’

‘Are they smoking pot?’ Raya said.

‘No, just cigarettes.’

‘Are you smoking cigarettes?’

‘No. I don’t like ’em. I told you that, remember?’

‘You can smoke if you want to. I’m just asking.’

Chad laughed at her but not in a condescending way. ‘I know. Why, do you want a cigarette?’

‘Yes,’ she said, surprising herself. ‘Can you bring me one?’

Chad frowned. ‘Absolutely not.’

Raya smiled. He kissed her again and went back to his friends.

She checked her phone again. Nothing. She sat by herself for a few minutes, everyone else preoccupied with some other corner of the party. She watched them all, some of her friends and some of them just faces she recognized but had not gotten to know. Most were older, Chad’s year, but she didn’t feel out of place. All in all she’d had a really good first year in Boulder, this new place that felt like their inevitable home, even to her mom and herself, who hadn’t grown up here.

Then she looked away from her friends, to a small grove of trees near what looked like a garden, the trellis thingy already turning green with new vines of some sort. It was dark in there along the fence stretching back to the garage, and she thought about exploring it, walking back into the garden to see where it led. But she didn’t want to stray too far from people right now. The night felt hungry, like it was waiting for one more little thing to go wrong, and when that happened, the worst would come true.

But why did she want to know what was back there? The urge to step past the trellis was stronger now, despite her caution. Part of her wanted to know how bad it was, that’s why. Not in there, but out here, everywhere, at home.

She wanted to know the truth. But it probably wasn’t waiting for her inside the garden. If there really was a little boy, a lost boy named Adam, he wouldn’t wait for her in there, would he?

Raya got up from her chair and walked closer to the trellis, looking around to see if anyone was watching her. She stepped past the vines, onto a path of maroon brick stones leading back between rows of weeds that had not been pulled this spring. The light from the party did not reach more than a few feet, and the darkness at the end of the path was so deep, she couldn’t see to the end of the garden.

What was back there? Something watching her? She could feel it beckoning to her. Just a few more steps, and she would know. She would meet him, Adam, or whatever was making it possible for him to enter their lives.

Raya took another step, and another, until she was standing out of the light, concealed completely from the rest of the party. See paused, feeling a strange energy inside her, around her body, calling to her, inviting her deeper.

She took two more steps and paused, the smell of flowers and something richly composted reaching up to her.

Yes, come say hello. We’re family, after all. Don’t you want to meet your real family? Don’t you want to be my sister?
 

Who was that speaking to her? Inside her? Her own mind, or someone else’s? Was this Adam? Was he here, the way he had been there in her phone, and crying in the living room? Somehow this didn’t seem like him either.

Her real family…?

She thought about Chad and her family and the way she felt every morning, waking up to face the day. Suddenly she needed to know if she was happy, really happy. She didn’t know how to define real happiness, but she suspected it had something to do with being content, grateful, having things to look forward to. Feeling loved and being able to love others.

Which meant she was happy, wasn’t she? She knew she was going to have a good life, a life filled with a lot of advantages, thanks to her family’s money, and her own hard work in school. But she would work for it too. She would set her own goals, reach for big things, like her father had done, as he had encouraged her. She wanted to travel all over, to Europe and Asia and Africa. She could picture herself running a business. She didn’t want to be an artist, she wanted to be an entrepreneur, engaged, moving and shaking, doing deals under deadline. She wanted to build something that would last.

She loved her mom and dad so much, though, she couldn’t imagine moving away. To spend even one year away from them seemed, in this moment, like a terrible waste. It wasn’t that she couldn’t make it on her own. She knew she would be able to survive out there, somewhere in a city or a small town, wherever she ended up. But she would miss them too much. Every day. Little things. The trust they put in her. Their conversations, they way they made her feel she could talk to them about anything, no matter how silly or frightening, and they would never judge her. They’re my real friends, she realized with something like inner shock. My mom and dad are my best friends, and they always will be. I need them, I will always need them.

And right now they need me.
 

Raya backed out of the garden, along the path, afraid to turn her back on the darkness at its end. She couldn’t explain what had changed, but she knew she had almost made a terrible mistake. She had to go, but something back there did not want her to go. It tugged at her with each step, pulling at something inside her, asking her to come back, stay a while, meet her real family.

But no. Her real family was at home.

‘Chad,’ she called across the yard, hurrying away from the trellis and its twisting vines. ‘We need to go home.’

Chad nodded and gave her the ‘one second’ cue with his finger, then resumed his conversation with Sam Penrose.

It’s not mental illness
, the boy’s voice said from somewhere inside her.
It’s death, hell in human form, and it’s on its way to get your daddy.

‘Now, Chad. It has to be now!’

Chad crossed the lawn and met her on the way into the house. She walked faster and he followed her through the kitchen, the living room, past the girls chatting with Mrs Pultz, and she didn’t wave or say goodbye.

‘What is it? Did you hear from your mom?’

‘No, someone else,’ she said, pushing through the front door.

‘What’s going on?’

She stopped at the street, turned, and snatched the keys from him, because he’d been drinking. ‘Something bad is happening at home. Right now. Get in the car.’

Chad obeyed. His Saab was an automatic, which was good because she didn’t know how to drive a stick shift. She’d had some practice in this car, unbeknownst to her parents. She resisted the urge to speed, but it was nearly impossible. They turned from Evergreen, onto Broadway.

‘It’s gonna be all right,’ Chad said. ‘Don’t panic. We’ll be there in five minutes.’

‘We should never have gone to the party. What was I thinking?’

They had gone only six blocks up Broadway when a pair of headlights behind them drew closer, turning bright and enormous in the rearview mirror.

‘Someone’s following us,’ Raya said. ‘Like, way too close.’

‘Might be a cop,’ Chad said. ‘Are you speeding?’

‘A little.’

‘A little’s okay,’ he said. ‘We’re fine. Just be cool. You’re doing great.’

‘I don’t have my license yet.’

‘We’ll tell them I’ve been drinking, which is true, and you’re being responsible – also true. It’ll be okay, I promise.’

‘Why is he so close?’ Raya said. ‘The lights are messing with my eyes.’

‘He’s looking to see if you’re swerving or whatever.’

‘I wasn’t, until he started following us. Now I can’t hold the wheel straight.’

‘Raya, sweetie, you’re sober. Don’t worry.’

Then the rearview mirror went dark. The headlights behind them had shut off. The car behind them was driving in darkness, but still tailing them dangerously close.

‘Is that really a cop?’ Raya said. ‘It doesn’t look like a police car to me.’

Chad turned in his seat to have a look through the rear window, straining against his seatbelt. ‘Oh… oh, man…’ he said quietly. He turned around and looked at her, forcing himself to speak softly. ‘Stop the car.’

‘What?’

He continued to whisper. ‘Raya, pull over. Get off the road, now.’

Raya looked back over the console, to the back window, where the car was, but when she turned back to face the road, something else caught her eye and she did a double-take.

Then she saw what Chad had seen, and she understood the whispering.

A scar-ravaged face attached to an old woman was lying across the backseats, inside the car with them. She wasn’t moving and Raya thought,
there’s a decaying dead body in the car
. Then the old woman’s arm came up, a wrinkled hand flicked something at them, and something thin went
zzzzziiiip
around Chad’s neck. He began to thrash and kick the dashboard.

Shock was all that had kept Raya from screaming, and that shock was stripped away now. She released a scream and drove off the road. Chad’s Saab bucked under them, up over a curb and the sidewalk, and she saw houses too close, lawns, bushes. She screamed again and swerved away, back toward the road.

Something tickled at her neck, digging under her hair. Hands, fingers. Nails clawing at her throat. The old woman’s hands.

Raya screamed again and thrashed away from the seat, losing her grip on the wheel. The Saab’s back end skewed sideways over a patch of lawn and there was a thick tree in front of them. Coming at them, too fast. A loud heavy crunch. The Saab’s hood folded up. Chad snapped forward in his seat and something hard smashed Raya in the forehead. Her teeth cut into her lips, her brain seemed to be rocking back and forth inside her skull, and she couldn’t tell what happened after that.