Twisted Fate (21 page)

Evans sat in a chair at the kitchen table and I cut away
the ropes that tied Brian. From the way he was breathing, I was certain that he had been drugged. His pulse was slow and steady, and apart from some bruises and chapped lips, he looked okay. He must have been terrified and dehydrated, and clearly other things had happened to him or were about to happen to him before we arrived.

It was one of the quickest recoveries of an abducted child in the history of the state. We called Brian’s mother right there from the house and told her that her boy was found and seemed fine but needed to go to the hospital. And I’ll never forget the way she exhaled and started crying and laughing on the phone. As if she’d been holding her breath for days.

Evans held the boy close to his chest and we all felt like we had won the lottery.

On the way back to the car one of the uniforms said, “If that kid Graham hadn’t come in we might not have found him.”

I shook my head. “If that kid Graham wasn’t out making his movies, Brian would have been home with his mom and baby sister this whole time.”

But what he said was true. It took guts for a teenager with his history to come in and turn that information over to us. And thank God he did.

At least one tragedy was averted that year. At least one.

S
o Graham was officially a hero. Story in the paper and the whole thing.

“Art Dullard might have been too stupid to even know that what he did was connected to Brian’s kidnapping,” Declan said on the way to school. “If you hadn’t made us go over there and convince him, God knows what would have happened.”

“Yeah, well, it was Becky who said we should get him to help, and he did.”

“I don’t understand,” Declan said. “He was dead set against anyone finding out, and then he went there himself.”

I shrugged. But I knew exactly why he turned over the movies to the cops. Ally had convinced him in her gentle way. He wanted her to think of him as a hero and she could be very convincing sometimes. I don’t think he would have
done it if he wasn’t afraid we’d do it ourselves and if he didn’t have Ally persuading him. It was a one-two punch from the Tate sisters.

“He still doesn’t think he did anything wrong,” I said. “You can tell he just doesn’t understand these things.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But you can also tell he’s kind of our friend now too. We didn’t rat him out that night. We went to bed and in the morning he did it himself. We ate pad thai at his house and talked to him like he was our friend. I think he’s our friend, Tate.”

I sighed. The mystery of Graham wasn’t that he had stupidly sold information to pedophiles. There was something more going on. Maybe I could sense these things because my own life was not exactly what it seemed all the time. Maybe I knew because he seemed like two different people to Ally and me when we talked to him.

But no matter how you cut it I knew. And it didn’t help things that people now thought he was a hero. Or the newspaper did at any rate. The creep who took Brian had I guess manipulated Graham too somehow. I don’t think he’d have given that information to someone doing bad things. But then again maybe he would. When we asked him about it the night we watched the movies, he didn’t seem to care why these people were paying so much for the movies. According to the newspaper, he didn’t tell the cops the same story he told us. Just that the guy had bought him a camera—not paid him money. Unless there were more
people who bought the movies that we didn’t know about.

Everything seemed to be getting more complicated, not less. What did it mean that even Declan thought he was our friend?

“C’mon, Tate,” Declan said. “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on him because you have a crush on him?”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I asked.

“Well . . . because it looks that way. The way you were hanging out with him after school and stuff.”

“What the hell are you talking about? It sounds like you’re the one who’s jealous.”

He laughed. “Of Art Dullard? No. But he is there—right next door and always around—and I could see how you might be interested in him.”

“Becky’s the one with the crush.”

“Right,” he said. “Becky and everyone else. I’m just a dope-smoking brainiac with long black hair.”

“Me too,” I said.

He laughed and then he stopped walking and stood in front of me.

“I love you, Earthling,” he said.

I was surprised he said it. We were close and I knew we loved each other but we didn’t talk like this. First Ally telling me she loves me and now this. Everyone was getting soft on me.

“Declan, what the hell?”

“I mean it. The way you took charge of this situation and
made us go over there. The way you convinced him. You’re really changing. You get cooler and more badass and more responsible every day.” He laughed. “How can you be such a bad girl and such a good girl at the same time?”

“Good role models, I guess.”

Then he bent down and kissed me and I held him tight and for some reason I felt like I might cry.

Dear Lined Piece of Paper,

What a week. No sooner had I figured out a way to finance my fantastic project than it has been taken away. At least temporarily. Brian—the X-Man kid who I had hoped to do a long-term film project about—was found. I guess I should say he was kidnapped. Yes. He was kidnapped and then found in some guy’s basement. The guy had bought the movie I made about Brian, and so he knew some things that made it easier to take him.

Man. People do some fucked-up things. I’m glad he’s back, but I doubt his parents will let me make any more movies of him. The police called after he was found, and they wanted to talk to me about my website and the movies, but Dad and Kim said I don’t have to talk to anyone, and they got our lawyer to explain things to them. Brian’s family is happy he’s home, and they think the movies I made saved his life! So no one is there to press any charges at all.

And you know what? It did save his life, just like Tate said it would.

Oh God, Tate. I can hardly think about her now without feeling butterflies in my stomach. I keep remembering her out on the lawn by the fountain holding me in her arms and whispering so sweetly and making everything better. She’s the most interesting person I have ever known. I’ve been watching the movie I took of it all week. There’s no sound, which makes it even better. I used the little camera and attached it to the edge of the fountain. So you can’t see all of us, mostly just our faces and chests. She’s so beautiful. I need to have her over to make more movies of her in my room. I like it when she talks about her life. I like how she changes and how her expressions are so free floating. I like everything about her.

I want her to be the star of the best movie I have ever made. Something better than what Eric and I made. Something that really will reveal all the beauty in the world.

I had to talk to Dr. Adams again about Brian. He asked me how I felt and I told him I felt like I had corrected something that went wrong before and also afraid that it might mean my camera would be taken away.

He said, “What would it mean if your camera was taken away?” And before I even realized what I was saying I said, “It would mean that I was blind.”

“Can’t you see without your camera?” he asked.

I said yes I can but I was really thinking no. I totally can’t. Of course not. Not the way I want to. Not the way I need to, so I can
study things and understand what’s going on. No, actually not at all! I would rather look at a movie I’ve made of myself than look in the mirror, because it’s more interesting. If I have a movie of Tate, I can rewatch it and understand what’s going on. It doesn’t slip away through time into nowhere.

But of course I said yes. Sure, I would still be able to see blah blah blah. And I didn’t tell him about correcting my own dosages. I didn’t tell him that actually I was mad at Brian for getting kidnapped because he almost got my camera taken away from me. He almost made me blind.

If it wasn’t for Tate figuring out it would be better for me to go to the police myself I’d be completely screwed.

W
e should have known something was wrong. We should have known he was struggling. I do blame myself for this. The fact was we had a lot of time at home with him and we spent a lot of time together, the three of us.

David essentially left his job so he could be a better father and be there for Graham, and I know I was the one who constantly reassured him that there was no problem.

When the police called and said a film Graham had made was probably the reason Brian Phillips was kidnapped, I told them the one sure thing was that a film Graham made was the reason Brian Phillips was saved. Then they told me about the wish list and the camera. A known pedophile had bought Graham a camera. And Graham had provided this person with our home address, where the camera was shipped. That startled me. So many strangers having our address. I know kids think differently about privacy than
we did when we were young. But this was a serious lack of judgment.

“Why would you do that?” we asked him. “If you wanted a different lens or a different camera, why wouldn’t you ask us?”

He said he wanted his movie to be a surprise. He wanted to be independent. He thought no one would trust him after what happened in Virginia. And all those things seemed reasonable. Heartbreakingly reasonable conclusions for a young boy to come to.

Dr. Adams said it was important to have consequences, but at this point I still believed it was wrong, completely wrong, to take the camera away. I thought it would only make him do something more desperate in order to have it. I understood how important it was to him to have it—to be able to control his environment more, to frame what he saw and what he looked at again. I felt I understood him.

The consequences we gave him had to do with the car. No more driving the Austin to school, and David was putting the new car—the one they were planning to work on together next—on hold. He wouldn’t have it shipped until things settled down.

“What do you mean by
settled down
?” Graham shouted at us. “You take everything from me. First I can’t see Eric, then I can’t watch my own movies, now I can’t put things on my wish list or drive my own car. And you won’t let me
work on the new one you promised me. What am I supposed to do?”

David remained calm and loving, as he always does in these situations. “Well,” he said, “it seems like you’ve got a nice group of friends here, and you’re lucky to have folks right next door. Maybe you could spend more time with them. You know, when I was your age, I didn’t have a car.”

Graham groaned and rolled his eyes. “I know. I know. You’ve told me. I know. But I thought that’s one of the reasons you wanted me to have one.”

David told him he was sorry, but it wasn’t negotiable.

I remember thinking this would all blow over. I remember thinking this was just a stage he was going through and that eventually he would realize we were right. I remember thinking that once he became more a part of high school and his friends, he’d be more reasonable about these things. I remember thinking a lot of things that fall, and looking back now, none of our ideas would have made any goddamn difference.