The Storyteller (10 page)

Mandy immediately opened a trunk at the foot of one bed and pulled out two sets of what looked like Walkmen, but they had little microphones next to the headphones.

“Holy crap,” Glen said. “Are those what I think they are?”

Mandy put one of the headphone sets on. “Roger that,” she said, and she handed the other set to Glen.

“What are they?” I asked.

“Walkie-talkies,” Mandy said.

“Like, the most high-power walkie-talkies on the market,” Glen said. “They're, like, nine hundred dollars.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Maybe even more,” Mandy said. “Chad and Dan saved up for them for, like, a year and they hardly ever use them. Now that they have their licenses, they're too cool for such things.”

The headphones were connected by a wire to a little box. Glen used a belt clip on the box to attach it to his waistband and he fidgeted with a knob on the box's side. “There's
nothing
cooler than such things,” he said. “I saw these babies in a catalog once, next to some really high-end throwing stars. I didn't think anyone could actually afford them, though.”

“So,” I said, “what do we do with them? Talk to each other?”

“Or to truckers,” Glen said.

“Or we don't talk at all,” Mandy said. “We listen.”

“To who?” I asked.

“You'll see,” Mandy said. “Actually, you'll hear.”

We ended up back in my neighborhood, at Hanlon Park, sitting with our legs dangling from a wooden structure. We'd walked nearly two miles through cold, misting rain to get there. Mandy was wearing one set of headphones and I was wearing the other set, sharing it with Glen by turning the left earpiece around.

We had picked up the tail end of a conversation. The voices weren't exactly familiar. Men's voices. Both kind of gruff. Kind of uneducated too, that is if uneducated people leave out words that are supposed to be there. I think they do. Uneducated people seem to use not enough words or too many. Never the proper amount.

“… and it gets me all worked up 'cause I don't like seeing anything about any kid who ends up like that,” said voice number one.

“I hear ya,” said voice number two. “But don't ya wonder? Where the armor came from? Like, did someone lift it from a museum? Or a castle? Castles everywhere in Europe and the Mideast, ya know? A kid don't stumble upon armor that fits him and then no one knows who he is.”

“Speculating will drive you mad.”

“I hear that. I keep wondering about it, though. Someone out there's gotta know something.”

“Yeah, well, not my concern. So I'm gonna sign off now.”

“Roger that. Be well.”

“You too. Out.”

Then there was silence. Static.

“Is that it?” Glen asked.

“For now, probably,” Mandy said. “But he'll be back on later. He's on all the time. More often than not.”

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Duh,” Mandy said. “I don't know who the guy talking about the castles was, but the other guy … Who else would be all uncomfortable talking about the Littlest Knight?”

I shrugged. My dad. My mom. Alistair. Kyle. Tons of people, actually, who don't like talking about dead kids. Me.

Mandy motioned her head in the general direction of my house, of Fiona Loomis's house, and said, “Someone who perhaps has a guilty conscience about his missing, and presumed dead, niece.”

“Oh my god. Was that Dorian Loomis?” Glen said in a tone that most people use for the endings of murder mysteries.

“Bingo,” Mandy said. “He's a CB radio junkie. He uses different handles. Luminary. Bush Baby. Red Barry, or something like that. Doesn't matter. The voice is always the same, and I know it's him because he once let it slide that he has a brother named Neal and a sister-in-law named Sarah, and those are totally Fiona's parents' names. He's on the air constantly, always chatting up truckers and dudes that are into building motors and models and things like that.”

“I don't get it,” I said. “Why can we hear him?”

“Frequencies,” Glen said, pointing to the little box that was connected to our walkie-talkie. “We're on the same one.”

“Can people hear us?” I asked.

“Only if we're really, really close,” Glen said. “These things can pick up signals from much farther away than they can broadcast.”

Mandy pointed at Glen. “The kid knows his stuff.”

“So, like, Dorian is sitting in his basement or something?” I asked. “Talking on a CB radio, and we can just listen in on anything he says?”

“The airwaves are public domain,” Mandy said. “At least that's what Chad and Dan tell me. They bought the walkie-talkies to talk to each other, but soon figured out they could pick up nearby CB conversations on them. Mostly it's dudes talking about dude stuff. Cars. Girls. You know. Chad and Dan grew bored of it after a while, but when Heavy Metal Fifi disappeared, I pulled these babies out to see if I could uncover some clues. That's when I first started hearing Uncle Weirdo. Remember how I said he seemed really creepy? Like
did some bad, bad things in the war
creepy?”

“You're basically … a Hardy Boy,” Glen said.

“I prefer Nancy Drew, thank you very much,” Mandy said.

“More like Harriet the Spy,” I said. “So you listen in on people's conversations? Now
that's
creepy.”

“Public. Domain.” Mandy tapped my nose twice as she said the words. I guess it was supposed to be playful, but it came off as annoying.

“What clues did you uncover?” Glen asked, his voice cracking a bit. He was scared. He was excited. He was Glen with the volume turned up.

“That Uncle Dorian is one sad sack o' potatoes, that's for sure,” Mandy said. “All he wants to chat about is building remote control planes and carving wood. Say something about movies or communists or anything remotely interesting and he changes the subject.”

“Like the Littlest Knight,” Glen said.

“Exactly!” Mandy hooted. “I mean, this is actually the first time the Littlest Knight has come up, but anyone who's anyone wants to talk about the Littlest Knight. Who's not curious about the Littlest Knight?”

“Jesus, you yourself just said someone whose niece is missing and presumed dead wouldn't want to talk about that,” I said as I pulled the headphones off and placed them on Glen's lap. “Why don't you just let him be? He's innocent.”

“No,” Mandy said. “He's creepy.”

“Because he doesn't want to talk about a dead kid in the Dead Sea who's wearing armor?” I said. “Gimme a break.
I
don't want to talk about that.”

“It's true,” Glen said. “She doesn't.”

“How many times have you listened in on him?” I asked.

Mandy shrugged. “Five or six. Mostly when I'm at your place.”

“What?”

“In the bathroom,” Mandy said with a sigh. “For, like, ten or twenty minutes tops. I bring the walkie-talkie in my purse, but I didn't want to let you know about it until I knew for sure I was onto something.”

“But you just admitted you're not onto something,” I told her. “You said all he talks about is stupid toys and stuff.”

Mandy took her headphones off and handed them to me. “What I'm onto is that your brother is wrapped up in some shady business. With Kyle, with Charlie, with Fiona. And if Fiona's uncle is wrapped up in it too, then you and your family need to be safe. He could come after you. So you keep that walkie-talkie. Dan and Chad won't miss it, and I can't come over all the time to listen and keep you safe. You should do the listening. If this creep slips up and says anything weird, you can tell the cops.”

“Or me,” Glen said with his chest puffed up.

“Yes,” Mandy said. “Or Glenny Boy here. I'll give him the other walkie-talkie. He seems to know what he's doing with these things. Maybe he can fiddle with the switches and knobs and figure out a way to listen from his house too.”

Like a mermaid flapping her tail in excitement, Glen flapped his legs. “I'll definitely try! Thanks!” he yelped.

“Yeah … thanks,” I said, but it was hardly a yelp. It was more of a
Great, now I've got something else to deal with.

“I want egg rolls,” Mandy said as she stood. “Your house is closer. Your mom still buys those microwave egg rolls, right?”

“I guess,” I said.

“Good. Let's do this.”

 

M
ONDAY
, 12/11/1989

EVENING

Glen insisted that we bring the walkie-talkies to school today, saying, “When you're in your study hall and I'm in my study hall, we can put them on and chat.”

“Won't Ms. Hunkle notice?” I asked.

“She lets kids wear Walkmen all the time,” he said. “What's the difference? I'll whisper.”

“I don't know if Mr. Gregson will be cool with it on my end.”

“Tell him you're listening to one of those books on tape. He won't mind. Kids play cards in study hall. This is no worse than that.”

Point taken. I knew I could get away with it. I just wasn't sure I wanted to get away with it. During study hall, I was planning on writing more about the wombat. The whole concept of Alistair's Aquavania was sparking all sorts of thoughts and ideas for the wombat story. A phrase keeps playing over in my head.

Anything is possible. Anything is possible. Anything is possible.

I went along with Glen's plan anyway. I brought the walkie-talkie and tuned it to the frequency we'd agreed upon. I figured I'd let Glen do most of the talking, which I was sure he wouldn't have a problem with, and when I sat at my desk, I propped my math book up so I could hide behind it and appear to be studying.

“So what do you want to talk about?” Glen asked as soon as we connected, which was exactly the wrong thing for him to say. I didn't want to lead this conversation. I hardly wanted to follow it.

“Um … I don't know,” I said, and let my head fall and rest on my folded arms. “What do
you
want to talk about?”

“Hmm,” he said. “Ask me something that you often wonder about me.”

Dangerous proposal. I wondered a lot of things about Glen. Not many that I was comfortable asking him about, though. Like, why would he be into a weird girl like me? Did he think I was using him? And if he did, why would he be okay with that? And if he didn't, then …

Hmm … these are really things I should be figuring out myself, I guess. But I don't want to figure them out now, and I didn't want to figure them out then. All I wanted to do was write my story. I wanted to think about Alistair and Aquavania and …

That's when it came to me: the perfect question to satisfy Glen but also indulge my curiosity about Alistair's stories.

“Okay,” I whispered through the airwaves. “How about this? If you had the ability to be, like, a god, I mean a real god, a guy who could create whatever he wanted, what would you create?”

“Roger that,” he responded, because he's a sucker for official lingo. “It's a weird question. But weird is good. I guess I'd create a world where there were, like, dragons, centaurs, and elves, because those are the coolest kinds of places. Medievaly ones. But maybe there'd also be spaceships, because spaceships are cool. And lions and African animals, because they're awesome as well. And dinosaurs. T. rex, definitely.”

“Sorry, hon, but I don't think you'd last long in that world,” I said.

The
hon
—as in short for
honey
, as in you, Glen, are my honey—slipped off my tongue without me thinking about it. Really?
Hon?
What is wrong with me?

It didn't weird him out one bit, though. “Oh, I'd have force fields around me,” he said quickly. “And I would smite things whenever I wanted to.”

“Smite?”

“It means kill.”

“I know what it means. I guess I don't see you as much of a smiter.”

“Gods smite. That's what they do.”

For weeks, there had been a vision in my head: Alistair holding a gun. Now, listening to Glen, my head hidden behind the book and buried in my arms, there was a new vision: Alistair the god. Flowing beard, sitting on a cloud, holding a lightning bolt, and bellowing that totally bonkers, totally creepy job description:

“I am the guardian of the images and ideas. When daydreamers need the end, then I give them the end. I am the holder of the souls. And once I figure out how, I'm going to release them.”

“Smiting is serious business,” I told Glen. “You're talking about lives. Souls.”

“Hey, you asked me what I want, and that's what I want. Elves, dinosaurs, and smiting.”

Glen sounded smug, so my vision of Alistair became smug too, his chin high and eyes squinty. There were now cages surrounding him, at his feet. Little birdcages with wispy souls imprisoned in them. Ghostlike things, specters in the shape of Charlie and Fiona. Before I knew what was happening, my arms were wet. I was crying.

“I've gotta go,” I whispered.

“Did Mr. Gregson bust you?” he asked.

“Something like that. Goodbye.”

“It's not goodbye.”

“Okay then,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “See ya … later.”

“No,” he said. “This is a walkie-talkie. You say
over and out
.”

“Oh … over then. Over and out.”

Still hidden behind the book, I pulled the headphones off and laid them on the desk. I kept my face buried in my arms and I didn't cry more than those first few tears, but I did realize something.

Not all promises need to be kept. Someone else has to know.

I'm afraid Glen probably isn't that person.