Tide King (39 page)

“I never told anyone the code.” Johnson took a step toward him. “Did you?”

“Johnson.” Stanley held out his arms. “I believe you.”

Johnson opened his own arms as Stanley pitched forward into them.

“I'm sorry, Johnson,” Stanley cried, burying his head in Johnson's shoulder. “I never forgave myself for getting you killed. It ate me up for so long.”

“I forgive you, Stanley. I'm not mad. Just happy to see you,” Johnson laughed as Stanley hung on him. He squeezed his eyes closed so that Stanley would not see him cry. His life became real again, everything between their separation a fever dream. He felt his back relax, his shoulders. “All right, Stanley, let's not get too emotional about it. I forgive you.”

But Stanley became heavier, his grip on Johnson's back looser. Johnson wrapped Stanley up in his arms as he began to slide down his shoulder and set him on the landing of the stairs.

Stanley was dead. And Johnson had no idea where the herb was.

It had been twenty-five minutes, and her father had yet to show up. She had always expected this, that one day the truck would finally die. Every day that her father waited for her, on time, the dragon filling the air in front of the school with its special blend of toxic fumes, was an anomaly, and today was expected. But if it were expected, she did not know why she had never drawn up a contingency plan.

She walked back to her locker and opened it, feigning a search for a forgotten book. She waited for Mrs. Webster to lock her door and begin her way down the hall.

“Whatcha doin', Polensky?” Oliver smacked the open door of her locker with his palm. His signature scent of Wrigley's chewing gum and aftershave worked its way into the space between her and the dark hollow of her locker.

“Nothing,” she answered, fingering a copy of
Les Miserables
in French. What could she be doing here? She played no sports; math club was on Tuesdays, science on Wednesday. “What are you doing?”

“Getting the hell out of here. Want a ride?”

It was not a divine intervention, and it didn't feel like one, but Heidi was strangely at peace with whatever serendipity was in the works, with her father's absence today, Oliver's seeming chivalry. She'd let him drive her home, see where she lived. Maybe he would stay and actually meet her father this time, since the aforementioned nursing home visit to meet his grandfather had never materialized. Or maybe he'd break up with Shauna. Her torture of Heidi had not stopped, contrary to Oliver's belief; instead, she'd just grown more clever, more careful about it—saying hi to her in his presence, complementing her on a shirt she must have worn for three years—while Heidi still found used tampons in her locker, her clothes still stolen from the locker room during gym; once, underwear doused in vinegar, and crushed potato chips in her shoes.

Maybe, in his guilt, Oliver thought of her at night, some innocent fantasy of seeing the Jasper Johns exhibit together at the university in town and ramming his tongue into her throat in the back of his Mustang, flowers, long, fluent letters on looseleaf detailing his long-kindled devotion, and a date to the prom secured. Maybe he had staked her movements out for the last week, two, seeing an opportunity as she idled by her locker and seizing it.

Or maybe she was just delusional. They walked silently through the hall, filled with amateurish posters advertising this year's theme—Enchantment Under the Sea—out to the student parking lot, a square of concrete where plans were made, alliances between cliques forged, and impromptu trips to Buildaburger taken. It was a hub at which Heidi had never bartered, only heard about in the aftermath of newsworthy events. Oliver whistled. His aluminum varsity baseball bat lay across his shoulder. At the end of it, dangling, rested his backpack, and with a flick, he catapulted it across the parking lot, where it landed at the back of his Mustang like an obedient dog.

“Nice aim,” she said.

“You want me to do yours?”

“No.” Although she was flattered that he would show off for her. “I've got breakables.”

“Yeah—I broke my trig calculator once,” he conceded. “Um, so do you have a date for prom yet?”

“I don't have any plans,” she answered. She could not believe he was actually asking her. Her father would have to splurge for this—a dress. Perhaps she could even ask Ms. Webster for a loan.

“Yeah? Maybe I'll see if one of the boys wants to take you. Richard Young doesn't have a date.”

She felt her backpack slide off her shoulder and onto the tarred pavement. Richard Young would probably be as unpopular as she was if he was not batting .478 as the Tigers' left fielder. He was an orangutan with pimples and braces and always smelled like mayonnaise and salami. Oliver scooped the bag up with his bat and flicked over on top of his, figuring, perhaps, that whatever fragile piece rested inside was already broken.

“So, yeah, I'll ask Richard.” They reached the car. It couldn't get any worse at that point, she figured, how could it? Except that when she grabbed her backpack and went to open the passenger door of Oliver's Mustang, Shauna was already sitting in it. Her eyes widened as she cracked her gum.

“Jesus—yuck, you scared me.” Shauna pulled the door closed on her. “Go away, troll.”

“I'm giving Heidi a ride home.” Oliver said, opening the driver's side door. He threw his own backpack roughly into Shauna's lap. “So shut the fuck up.”

Shauna's jaw dropped at perhaps the same velocity and speed as Heidi's. They stared at each other as some weighed balance rolled, like a roulette ball, between them. For a moment, there was a pinhole of vulnerability in the irises of Shauna's eyes, the beginning of a tear on one of her eyelids, before their gentle, pulpy black hardened irreversibly, and Heidi knew that her remaining days at Mt. Zion would be as cursed and unforgettable as a nightmare.

“Get in.” Oliver said to Heidi, nodding toward the front seat. “Shauna was just leaving.”

“I just remembered—my father is going to pick me up soon.” She backed away, unable to unlock her gaze from Shauna, a medusa busy turning Heidi's limbs and stomach to stone the longer she stayed put. “Thanks, though.”

At an alarming and embarrassing speed, Heidi ran back toward the school, hoping to catch Ms. Webster before she left. She could get a ride and perhaps some advice on how to avoid the freight train of Shauna's wrath that would be barreling through the school at her as early as Monday morning. But the halls were dark, smelling of dust and adolescence—an eau de gym sock, bubble gum, and hormones. She stood outside in front, willing the orange monster to make its slow turn from State Avenue and lumber before her.

After forty minutes, she traced the route her father would take to the school to get her, if he was indeed coming. Six miles. It was breezy, and she scurried along the side of the road like an opossum for two hours, ready to duck into the high grass or ditch at any vehicle that wasn't the truck. She had been stupid not to take Oliver's offer, and for some reason, this made her angry at her father, rather than Shauna or Oliver. Her father was at fault, along with her stupid mother, for her existence in this shit world. And Ms. Webster, too, for giving her a chance. She became angrier every step she took, and by six o'clock, reaching the driveway of their farmhouse and seeing the truck parked in the driveway, she was furious.

Right away, she knew something was wrong. All the lights were out, and her father was a notorious waster of electricity on account of his glaucoma. Even during the day, at least the kitchen light burned. She stepped inside the hallway and there he was, like a pile of laundry that had settled at the bottom of the steps.

“Shit.” She lifted his face between her hands, his head the weight of a bowling ball. Some of his drool smeared across her right palm, but he was cold, unmoving. She pinched his nose and blew in his mouth and pushed his chest, trying to approximate the CPR she'd learned during swimming classes years ago. Finally, she rested on top of him, feeling her short, beleaguered breaths press against the rigidness of his chest.

She got a glass of water from the kitchen, gulping it greedily by the sink, pressing her lips tightly so that she would not immediately throw it up. When she turned, he was still there, where she'd left him. She sat down and took one of his hands. It was strange to think that the only person she'd ever known on earth, really, her only home, had gone to some other place, some other home. And left her here to fend for herself, with thirteen sixty-eight in his checking account until his next pension check.

She picked up the phone and called Ms. Webster. She waited, strangely composed, as the rings went unanswered and she hung up. If she spoke of it, it therefore would be true, and the thing, strong and green inside her, would rot and snap and never grow again. She could not speak of what had happened just yet. She willed the tears from her eyes and went back to the stairs. She grabbed her father's shoulders and pressed her foot aside the side of the step for leverage, pulling him up to a sitting position. He looked like he did when he slept, except he was cold and everything about him was weighted down with gravity, enclosed in a faint smell of urine.

“Why'd you have to go and pull this? Jesus,” she asked, smoothing the collar of his shirt. Her thoughts began to gather speed, when his pension would come in, how much she could cash at a time, when she could pay the bills and get gas. She'd already done so much of it with and without him present, that it didn't seem so hard. So hard to what? To pretend nothing was wrong? It was her senior year, and in a few months, she'd graduate. She didn't want to go into foster care, for the state to sell the house, to evict her from the only memories she had. She didn't want any extra attention at school, or even pity. And, mostly, she didn't want to believe it. He'd left her. She sat on the stair above him and dropped her head in her hands.

She heard it then, creak in the kitchen, not the creak of mice or settling foundations, but the creak of an intruder, a slow moan on the soft spot of the kitchen floor near the stove.

A young man appeared at the entrance to the living room, wearing a white V-neck undershirt and jeans, a leather jacket, some undetermined type of mountain boot, a timeless nondefinitive style, certainly no one she'd ever seen before.

“Wait…” He held out his hand, but she was already up the stairs, the charge of survival electrifying her limbs like a cattle prodder. She locked her father's bedroom door and made for the shoebox at the top of her the closet where he kept his .22 pistol. It felt heavy and foreign, like an alien transponder, and she wished she'd taken him up on his numerous attempts to train her in firearms. Unfortunately, he was usually drunk when the offers had occurred, and she spent more time trying to talk him out of shooting the empty Wild Turkey bottles he'd lined on the fence for his own safety than wondering when her own marksmanship would come in handy.

She crouched by the door and listened to his boots squeak on the wooden planks of the steps. Each board pressed against her heart, pinning it against her throat. She moved the safety with her finger, thank goodness she knew that much, and pointed the gun at the door.

“Heidi?”

The knock, his voice, startled her. She held the gun as steadily as she could with two hands and waited, her breaths quick through her nose. He knocked again, and she felt the sweat build in her armpits and begin in run down her sides. There was no third knock, and as the boots moaned again on the planks down the stairs and outside the house, she moved to the bedroom window, peering out. He turned, and she caught a glimpse of his face—placid, square—and she leapt back, wondering if he saw her. She thought of a Joyce Carol Oates story Ms. Webster assigned them last semester—about a convict with a motorcycle jacket and too-big boots who talks a girl out of her house and into his car while her parents are gone.

He walked toward the truck. She took a deep breath and flew down the stairs, hurdling over her father's body to the front door to lock it. She let the gun fall to her side and glanced through the curtains. At the truck, he had turned, staring at the door, realizing what had happened, and he trotted back up and tried the doorknob before disappearing around the side of the house. Her heart flittered in her ears as she moved back through the house to the kitchen. Sure enough, he was coming around the back of the house.

She locked the back door and ducked as his form filled its six glass panes. The handle jiggled, and then he knocked again. She tried to imagine herself part of the wallpaper, a chameleon.

“Heidi, I don't mean you any harm. Please—answer or something.”

But he didn't knock again, and after a few seconds, she could see smoke lazily spiraling up to the sky. She stood up to find him sitting on the back porch steps, smoking. She wondered how long he would wait.

A long time, apparently. Fifteen, twenty minutes passed, and she crept from room to room, peering through different windows. She could not turn on the lights as the sun began to disappear in the sky, could not turn on the television, not even take a shower. She thought about slipping out the front and running to the Harris's house a mile up the road, asking Mr. Harris to come back with her. But she was a terrible runner; surely he would catch up with her. It would be better to be bold. It was not, she realized, as if she had anything to lose. Her life was no longer anything she knew and she would have to walk through the storm's eye and get to the other side, wherever that would be. She sighed loudly, walked with the gun at shoulder level, and opened the door.

“What do you want?” She growled. The man stood up quickly in surprise.

“I'm sorry,” he answered calmly, backing down the steps and into the yard. He seemed unbothered by having a gun leveled at him. “I came to see your father, Stanley Polensky.”