The Right and the Real (29 page)

“No,” Derrick said. “God will protect him here.”

“How can you believe that shit?” I grabbed the front of Derrick’s shirt. “I
know
all about you. Josh told me the truth. You can have a
real
life. All you have to do is put him in the car and get in too.”

In all the craziness, I had totally forgotten about Mira, and I guess she’d been hanging back with the other women by the fence, but before we could stop her, she darted forward and opened the front passenger door. “Richard, darling,” she said. “Come inside. You can trust me, I’m your wife.”

I pushed her out of the way, and she stumbled, falling to the ground. I felt kind of bad, but Mira was in too deep to be trusted.

“Dad, she’s not your wife. Do you understand? The Teacher can’t legally marry you. It was only a secular service. A fake wedding.”

The Teacher stepped forward and helped Mira to her feet. A couple of the women led her away, telling her to let Christ handle it. I blocked the Teacher’s way to Dad by putting my body between them.

“Richard,” he said, leaning over me, “do not let these sinners take you away from the people who love you.”

“Don’t listen to him, Dad,” I said.

“Move her,” the Teacher ordered two of the servants, and they lifted me out of the way to get to Dad. In an instant, Josh and LaVon had come to my defense, and I found myself in the middle of a free-for-all. I heard that sickening thud like raw meat being slapped onto a cutting board. My dad curled himself up into a ball and moaned softly, while Megan, Liz, and Krista leaned over the seat, trying to calm him down. The Teacher had retreated to avoid getting caught in the melee, and I took the opportunity to lock and slam Dad’s door so they couldn’t get to him again.

The fight was ten men to two, but it still took several minutes before they had LaVon and Josh pinned to the ground. The Teacher stepped forward, smiling. “Leave Richard here with us, and we’ll let you go without pressing charges.”

“I’ve got the whole thing on video!” Krista shouted from the backseat. She waved her phone in the air. “I’m sending it to the cops right now!”

The Teacher’s smile disappeared. “Get the phone!” he ordered his men.

I dove into the backseat, shielding Krista from the men and ignoring my throbbing shoulder. She stuffed the phone down her shirt,
and I lay on my back, kicking at the disciples reaching into the car. Megan and Liz scrambled over the seat into the far back to get out of the way and started hitting the men with brooms.

I don’t know how LaVon got loose, but suddenly he was there, pulling bodies off of me, hurtling them across the lawn. Then he was in the car, and the engine gunned. From where I lay, I could see the top of Josh’s blond head in the driver’s seat.

LaVon pulled me up into a sitting position, and I did a double take. Krista had crawled into the far back with Megan and Liz, and Josh sat slumped on the seat next to me.
It was Derrick driving the car.

In front of us, the congregation made a wall of bodies. Behind them, in the main parking lot, they’d strategically placed about half a dozen cars to keep us from escaping. “Derrick! Don’t!” I screamed as the car lurched forward. People dove out of the way, but he swung the station wagon up onto the lawn and around in a U-turn. It scraped bottom from all our weight and made a horrible grating sound as we tore down the road.

“We’re going out the back way,” he said. “There’s an emergency exit in case the compound’s ever raided.”

“How did you and Josh get away?” I asked LaVon.

He nodded at Derrick. “Some of the church members helped too,” he said, shaking his head.

“Wow. Really?”

“Not everyone at the church is bad,” Derrick snapped, and I sort of believed him.

He raced the car down the road, gravel spewing behind us. When he got to the Teacher’s mansion, he drove right up onto the grass and down a narrow track between some trees. A high gate ran across the
end of the path, and he jumped out. We watched him take a key from around his neck, unlock the padlock, and swing it open. He hopped in behind the wheel and eased us over the curb and out onto the street. All around us normal-looking houses lined the streets. Suburbia had never looked so good.

A MINUTE LATER, DERRICK TURNED ONTO THE MAIN
road, heading back toward our part of town.

“Uh, James?” LaVon said.

“Yeah?”

“That was all
Charlie’s Angels
and shit, but don’t you think when we get back to your dad’s place the cops are gonna be waiting for us? Breakin’ and enterin’ and all that?”

“No, we can’t go back to the house,” Dad said faintly from the front seat.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I…I…well, I signed it over to them…to the church.”

“You gave the church our house?” I asked.

“It was Mira’s idea,” he said. “She told me we didn’t need it anymore.”

“I’ll bet,” LaVon said.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d have to live in the Regis Deluxe Motel for the rest of my life. Or at least all summer. And now that my dad didn’t have a job anymore, I’d definitely have to ask for extra hours at the Coffee Klatch too. I tried to remind myself that at least Dad was free, but it still kind of pissed me off.

“So what about the cops?” LaVon asked again. “Those church people ain’t gonna just let me go. Man, my parole officer’s gonna kick my ass. And my daughter…she’s gonna flip.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Krista said. “Right, Jamie?”

I smiled.

“Not only did I get the whole fight scene on video,” Krista said, “which I won’t show anyone unless I have to because LaVon’s in some of it, but while we waited for Jamie to bring the car, Richard told me everything they did to him—starving him, beatings, sleep deprivation—” She saw the look of horror on my face and stopped listing them. “Anyway, I sent that video, along with the pictures of him tied down, to Trent. He’s already posted them on his website and e-mailed them to every media outlet in the city.”

“Plus CNN,” Megan said from the back.

“And the Huffington Post,” Krista added.

“They’re going to be way too busy at the Right & the Real to worry about us,” Liz said.

“It still don’t mean they won’t call the cops,” LaVon said.

“They won’t,” Josh mumbled through the bowling shirt LaVon had given him to hold against his bloody nose. “Believe me. They don’t trust the police at all. And their only answer to the media will be
no comment.
If there’s one thing the Right & the Real is good at, it’s keeping secrets.”

We dropped Josh and Derrick off at their aunt’s apartment, where their mom was staying. At the motel, LaVon and I helped my dad out of the car.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to my house?” Krista asked.

“I don’t want your mom to see him like this,” I said. “We’ll stay
here tonight. If he has any money left, maybe get him some clothes and move to a better motel tomorrow.”

“Come on, James,” LaVon said. “Let’s get him inside.”

I leaned into the window. “Thanks for getting the car, Liz.”

“Anytime.”

“Bye,” Megan said.

I gave Krista a quick hug. “Thanks.”

“Anything for you, chickie. Call me if you need me.”

Dad leaned so heavily on LaVon as we took him through the lobby that Stub looked up from his computer and said, “He better not be dead.”

“Just drunk,” LaVon said.

“Drunk?” I asked once we were in the stairwell.

“Easier than explainin’.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Half an hour later, LaVon closed the door to my room behind him. He’d brought me a bowl of potato-leek soup, and it sat on the dresser, cooling. My dad lay sleeping on the cot, my Princess Pink comforter tucked up under his bearded chin. I’d wanted to take him to the emergency room, but he’d refused.

“No health insurance,” he’d said.

Another thing the Right & the Real had taken from us.

Someone tapped on the door, and I hurried to open it so Dad wouldn’t wake up. Trent stood there, holding a shopping bag.

“Hey,” he said. “I brought some stuff for your dad.”

I stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind me, leaning against it. “What’d you get?” I asked.

“Electrolytes and baby food.”

“Sounds delicious,” I said.

“I looked it up on the web,” he said. “It’s the best thing for someone who’s gone without food for a while. He’s probably dehydrated.”

“Thanks.”

It was all I could do not to throw my arms around him, but after kissing Josh in the scene shop on Thursday, I’d been kind of nervous with Trent. Josh and I were definitely over, no matter what happened, but right then, I felt so fragile I was almost afraid I might confess how weak I’d been. And that would be so awful, to hurt Trent when it didn’t mean anything.

I didn’t know what to say, but I also didn’t want him to leave yet, so I said, “You were great.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, laughing. “I was right there in the middle of it all, saving the day, wasn’t I?” He balled up his hands into fists and, scowling, punched the air like he was fighting the men at the church.

“You
did
help,” I said. “You got it all up online so fast.”

“That’s true.”

We stood there grinning.

“Never underestimate the need for a computer geek,” I told him.

“Which reminds me,” he said, “I should probably go because I got so much traffic on my website it crashed. I need to see if I can fix it.”

I took a step closer to him, and he set the bag down on the floor.

“All right,” I said. “If you really have to.”

“I don’t
have
to go,” he said. “If you need me, I can stay as long as you want. You know, strictly as a friend. Because, I know you said you needed time to get over that Jon guy, and then to figure out everything with your dad, and you just rescued him an hour ago and everything, so that’s not actually a lot of time. I get that. And I know
I said I’d wait for you, and I still will,
but
if you needed me
now
, I’m here for you. Seriously. Don’t take this as pressure or anything, but I’m totally willing to forgo the thirty-year waiting period and—”

“Trent?” I said. “Just shut up and kiss me.”

And then his arms were around my waist, and his mouth was on mine, and I was finally brushing his hair back with my hand. And it was just as silky as I’d always imagined. I guess I’d expected Trent to taste like coffee, but his breath was toothpaste fresh. I traced his tattoo with my finger, even though I couldn’t see it, and pressed myself closer to him. As we kissed, his arms tightened around me, and our mouths opened slightly. Very lightly, with the tip of my tongue, I touched his crooked tooth, and a shudder ran all the way through me.

And then a voice growled, “What the hell’s going on out here?”

We jumped apart. LaVon stood outside his door, scowling at us.

“Oh, you know,” Trent said, putting the width of the hall between us and smoothing his hair, “just the usual. Boy meets girl, boy charms girl, boy kisses girl, et cetera, et cetera. But they don’t do anything else because that would be bad. Very bad, and the boy definitely does not want to be killed by either the neighbor or the dad.…”

Trent’s babbling trailed off into silence, which grew and grew while the three of us stood there not looking at each other. Finally, LaVon’s laughter broke the tension, and we all cracked up. “He’s as crazy as you, James. You two will make a great couple.” He shook his head at us and went back into his room.

“So…about that waiting period,” Trent said.

“It’s over.”

“Fastest thirty years of my life.” He closed the distance between us.

After a while, I came up for breath thinking we better slow down or I’d need to ask Stub for another room. “I should probably check on my dad,” I said.

“Right. Okay.” Trent looked a little dazed himself. “And I need to fix my website.” He picked up the bag. “Oh, yeah, I got these too.” Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, he produced a bouquet of daffodils.

“Awww…you remembered.”

“Yep. And your birthday’s April twentieth,” he said. “Only forty-six more shopping days.”

It took us another ten minutes to say good-bye, and the flowers were a little bit crushed by the time he left, but I planned to press them in my complete works of Shakespeare anyway so I could keep them for always.

“James?” Dad mumbled when I came into the room.

“I’m right here,” I said. I scooted the folding chair LaVon had lent me up to the bed. “What do you need?”

He opened his eyes a little. “I just want to say…I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s really not.” A tear slid down the side of his face and into his ear. “But I’ll make it up to you.”

“You’ll go back to Dr. Kennedy?”

“As soon as he’ll see me,” he said. “And I’ll talk to the lawyer about the house too.”

“Okay. Sounds good.” What could I say? He was my dad. So he’d screwed up. We all did. And yeah, this was on a pretty massive scale, but sometimes we mess up big. I knew he’d forgive me if and when I made a disastrous choice or two.

“Know what I missed most?” Dad asked.

“Me?”

“Of course,” he said. “But I also missed you reading plays aloud to me.”

“I’ll do it again,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“Would you read to me now?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t you rest?”

“Please?”

“Yeah, okay.” I had recycled all the cartons from my shoes and clothing, but my books, plays, and memorabilia boxes were piled at one end of my bed, still sealed. “What do you want to hear?” I asked, shifting them around.

“I don’t care,” he said. “Something cheerful.”

“No
King Lear,
then?” I asked.

“No…definitely not
Lear.
”

I dragged the box over by the lamp, used my key to cut the tape. Inside was a large manila envelope with my name on it in Dad’s handwriting. I opened it and slid out the contents. There were several pieces of paper, and clipped to the top one were ten one-hundred-dollar bills. A thousand dollars? I examined the first sheet. It was the title for the Beast, signed over to me. The other papers were some sort of bank statement. Next to the account number was my name. In my father’s handwriting, it said,
Your grandfather left you this for college, but you can use some of it now.
I looked at the balance: $102,018.86.