Before You Go (8 page)

The boys drove in silence, lulled by the hum and thrum of rubber on asphalt, the headlights mystical on the wet, shimmering road, content to be headed somewhere. The Amityville house was a place to go, another bullet to kill Saturday night.

Jude couldn’t imagine stealing alcohol from his father. The guy was Mr. Free Range Organic, constantly shoving bananas in the blender, spooning in heaps of protein mix, talking about roughage and—worst of all—his weekly acai colon cleanse. Mr. Fox counted his calories, monitored his cholesterol levels, and shuddered at the thought of an ice cream sundae. His father drinking bourbon? Jude couldn’t see it.

As for his mom, she practically had a pharmacy in the medicine cabinet—Jude had snooped it out like Encyclopedia Brown—with little bottles of Vicodin and OxyContin to kill the pain and who knows what else? The delicate chemistry of happiness. At least she didn’t drink anymore. It was something.

Lee took another short sip, passed it along like a big shot. Jude tried not to judge. He guessed everybody had their own way of keeping the wolves at bay.

“What’d you do last night, Corey Man?” Canino asked.

“Not much,” Corey said. “Some powerdisking. I caught up on the final season of
Friday Night Lights.
Why didn’t anybody tell me that show jumped the shark? There’s not enough football. Then I finished reading
Breakfast of Champions.
Insane and hilarious.”

“Reading’s bad for the eyes,” Canino noted. “You’ll go blind that way.”

“Thank you, Mr. Twenty-Twenty,” Corey retorted.

“
Breakfast of Champions
? What is it about, Wheaties?” Lee joked. He laughed after delivering the line, like the canned soundtrack on TV sitcoms: “Ha-ha-ha.” It wasn’t that funny.

“Yeah, right, barfwad. I read a book about a box of cereal,” Corey scoffed. “Seriously, Kurt Vonnegut was totally righteous. He looked around at all the stupidity in the world and pointed out how dumb everything was—and he was funny as hell doing it too.”

“Yeah, like what’s so stupid?” Lee asked, as if he didn’t like the sound of this Vonnegut guy.

“Like ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ for instance.”

“He thinks it’s stupid? Our national anthem?” Lee was gearing up into argument mode.

Jude groaned internally. Lee was becoming a problem. Car or no car, he was growing tiresome. Something had to change. Jude couldn’t wait to get his license.
Freedom
.

“Admit it, Lee, it’s a lousy-sounding song,” Corey replied. “Vonnegut says it’s gibberish sprinkled with question marks.… ‘Oh, say, can you see…?’”

“What does he want? The song is about a battle—‘rockets’ red glare’!”

“‘The bombs bursting in air,’” Jude added.

“Exactly,” Corey said, rising to the challenge. “What kind of country picks that as their song? I mean, look at us. We didn’t pick it, we’re stuck with it—just like everything else around here.”

We didn’t start the fire
, Jude thought.

“Maybe we should all vote on our favorite song?” Lee asked.

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Jude commented. “Make it a popularity contest. The new national anthem would be sung by the latest Disney teen product or, like, Lady Gaga.”

“Skank,” Vinnie opined.

“She’s hot,” Lee said. “I’d do her.”

Jude frowned. “
You’d do her.
That’ll be the day. Do you ever wonder if she’d do you?” He made no attempt to hide the irritation in his voice. Lee danced on his nerves.

“I don’t know what the hell she’d do,” Lee snapped back, glaring at Jude in the rearview mirror. “Don’t get political on me, Jude. I’m just stating my personal policy on who’d I’d be willing to bang.”

Vinnie snorted. “Right, and Lee’s got such high standards.”

“She’s gotta have two legs and a pulse!” Corey exclaimed, finger thrust into the air—and even Lee had to laugh at that.

“I’m not one of those necrophiliacs,” Lee said. “No corpses, no circus freaks, no carny tang, that’s where I draw the line.”

“Carny tang? What the hell?” Jude laughed.

Meanwhile, Vinnie eyed the road. Their car was stuck behind a slow, gray Impala. “Come on, Lee,” he urged. “Pass this old lady.”

Lee hit the turn signal, announced “Turbo jets on,” and accelerated into the left lane.

“Slinggg-shot!” Vinnie cried, as the car sped past the chugging Impala.

Corey returned to the main topic. He couldn’t help himself. He was one of those guys who became like a missionary knocking on doors, spreading the good word about his latest discoveries. It could be a new song or a pretty girl or a phone app or the coming zombie apocalypse. Corey was like a bull rider who couldn’t let go. “It’s what the song’s
about
, Lee,” Corey persisted. “Or really, what it’s
not
about. There’s no mention of peace or hope or happiness.…”

“Oh please, Corey Man, shut the eff up, will you?” Lee said. “The song is about a battle—we fought for our freedom, for Christ’s sakes. And the flag was still there!”

“Maybe Vonnegut was right,” Jude said.

“Yeah, he’s right,” Corey agreed. “Counterculture, that’s what I’m all about—whatever’s out there, I’m against it!” Typical Corey. He had the rule-hating gene in his double helix.

“Yeah, but what are you
for
?” Lee asked.

“You know what I’m for?” Corey said. “I’m for … ‘Oh, say, can you see…’ that McDonald’s up ahead? I’m for pulling into the drive-through. I’m starverated.”

When they reached their haunted destination at 112 Ocean Avenue in the town of Amityville, Lee killed the lights and coasted curbside. The boys stared out the windows at the old, silent house. It was three stories high with seven windows facing the street, a few tall trees and a low, neatly manicured hedge set off a few feet from the front of the house. At a casual glance, it looked about as scary as a cucumber sandwich.

They had all been there before, even though the drive to Amityville was more than half an hour. There was something magnetic about the place. The house was famous for its ghostly legends, and the second-rate Hollywood movie that was based on all the weird stuff that happened after the DeFeo murders back in 1974, scaring the living daylights out of the next family that moved in until, one night, they fled the house and never returned. No one would ever know what really happened.

Lee turned around in his seat to once again retell the tale, his voice hushed and mysterious, drawing out the words to build suspense. “So after the murders, the Lutz family moved in,” Lee began.

The boys had all heard it before, about as much as
Green Eggs and Ham
, but no one tried to shut Lee up. After all, it was his car and they were a long way from home.

“I guess they got a bargain price,” Jude opined.

“Yeah, but after they moved in, all this sick shit started happening,” Lee said. “Like, swarms of flies were everywhere, even in the winter. The father of the family used to wake up in a cold sweat every night at three fifteen—the exact same time of the murders. Green slime oozed from the walls. And one night they saw a demon’s face in the flames of the fireplace.”

“I’m calling bullshit,” Canino said. “It was a hoax.”

“Cheesy movie though,” Jude said appreciatively.

“Hold that thought,” Corey said. “I’ve got to take a leak.” He climbed out of the car, forfeiting shotgun, and wandered off into some nearby bushes.

A minute later Corey scrambled into the backseat, laughing and gasping and still zipping up his jeans. “Go, go, go!” he shouted.

“What the hell?” Lee asked.

A fist pounded against the side window. It was a white-haired geezer who appeared like a vengeful ghost out of nowhere, sputtering and ranting at the boys, telling them to go away, they had no business here,
blah blah blah.
He was pretty excited for a grandpa. Stallion gave him the finger, and Lee hit the gas—four guys racing in the streets, a little buzzed and laughing, speeding into the heart of Saturday night and the start of Jude Fox’s sixteenth summer on the planet.

TWELVE

Operation Becka swung into full effect. With Corey acting as Jude’s spiritual adviser—“Go for it, Jude dude,” was the sum of Corey’s advice—Jude spent many hours deep in thought, meditating on Her Beckaness. At work Jude took every opportunity to make small talk, joke around, and take breaks with Becka. He even went so far as burning CDs for her, a lovesick act if ever there was one. He painstakingly selected each song for maximum meaning and full effect. The music would reveal to her his secret soul, his beating heart, his unspoken depths and innate goodness. They were, in other words, a bunch of really sad songs, one after another. All strummed in a minor key. Jude pushed the CDs into Becka’s long thin fingers and jabbered about these really great tunes she absolutely had to hear.

And Becka, for her part, seemed to enjoy Jude’s fumbling attention. She listened to the music, commented favorably on some of it, and threw pieces of stale pretzels at the seagulls. They often chatted during lunch breaks in the shade of a breezeway, a concrete passageway that connected the main concession building to the women’s bathrooms and shower facilities. It was actually nicer than that sounds. Things with Becka usually were.

“What about your family?” she asked. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No, just me,” Jude said. But that wasn’t exactly true. So he clarified, told how he used to have a little sister, Lily, but she died, like, six years ago.

“I’m so sorry,” Becka said. She reached out, put an open hand on his upper arm.

“Yeah, no, it’s fine,” Jude said. “I mean, it totally sucked, and I guess it still does sometimes, but you kind of get used to it.” He looked away, uncomfortable and embarrassed, not used to it at all. He didn’t want to talk about it, had already said too much.

“How did she—?”

Jude turned to her, eyes dull and brown. “I can’t talk about it, Beck,” he apologized. “Not now.”

Becka nodded and didn’t try to make it better. She just sat with him, silent, together. He loved that Becka didn’t try to smooth it over with idle nothings, all the empty words like Band-Aids he’d heard over the years, how sad it was and how it must have been so hard for him and how terribly unfair everything was. People like his neighbor Mrs. Buchman, who prodded and poked and made sympathetic noises when all he ever wanted was to be left alone.

Jude was grateful that Becka didn’t probe for facts.

“Hey, you know what?” Becka said. “I heard we’re getting a new closing manager—that guy Roberto told us about.”

“Kenny ‘Half-Baked’ Mays, the man, the myth, the legend,” Jude said, grateful for the change of subject. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Roberto says he’s the coolest boss ever.”

“Yeah, like Ernie from Sesame Street,” Jude said.

“Ernie? What?” Becka asked, her eyes like bright beams, smiling.

“I guess this guy, Kenny Mays, is supposedly the biggest partier on the planet. They call him Half-Baked.”

Becka laughed, “Half-Baked Mays—like the potato chips. Who comes up with this stuff? I don’t know, it doesn’t sound right. How does the world’s biggest partier become a manager?”

Jude shrugged—no idea.

Becka seemed to chew on that for a while, ever the queen of speculation. Her face immediately brightened. “I just remembered. Did you see that notice about the softball game on the bulletin board? It’s coming up.”

Jude raised both hands. “Don’t tell me, you’re like a ninja when it comes to softball.”

Becka blew on her fingernails, brushed them on her shirt. “Seriously? I’ve got mad skills. Are you going to come? It’ll be fun. We totally need you—we can’t lose to Field Six.”

“No, that would be humiliating,” Jude commented. “If you can give me a ride home, I’ll play.”

“Great!” Becka answered. And her smile was so genuine, her happiness so pure, it was all Jude could do to keep himself from leaning in and kissing her on the lips. He wanted to, but something stopped him. Not yet, not here, but they were close. On some unspoken level, Becka hadn’t given him permission yet.

Uncertainty crept into Jude’s thoughts.

Maybe she never would
. Maybe they were falling head over heels into a mineshaft of disappointment called Let’s Just Be Friends.

Ugh, anything but the F-word.

THIRTEEN

The cards came like clockwork around the date of Lily’s birthday, June 28, though fewer arrived as the years passed. Jude’s mother displayed the condolences and prayer cards on the refrigerator, then mercifully packed them away shortly after. Jude hated those cards, hated the way everyone knew about his “family tragedy”—poor Jude, that poor family. As if anyone knew how he felt, as if they had a damn clue.

His neighbor, Mrs. Buchman, was the worst, with that bittersweet smile, the way she always asked, “How are you, Jude? Everything okay?” She watched him with those eyes of hers, a gaze that looked upon him with such tenderness and pity that it burned his skin and made Jude turn away.

Lily had been playmates with the Buchman girls, forever bouncing on their trampoline, doing what little girls do. Drawing pictures, practicing cartwheels, chasing after cats. Lily used to say that Zoe Buchman was her best friend in the whole big world. Jude still saw Zoe out on the block. Ten years old now and skinny as a pole. They never talked, never said a word, just warily watched each other out of the corner of their eyes, thinking whatever it was they thought. Jude the older boy who cast a sad shadow, Zoe the gangly girl who once played inside his house, munching on fresh-baked cookies: strangers now.

Each year, on the anniversary of Lily’s birthday, Mrs. Buchman left a basket of flowers on the front stoop. Pale yellow lilies of the valley, of course, always with a short, handwritten note attached. This year was no different. Jude almost tripped on them on his way out the door to Corey’s. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered, and angrily kicked at the flowers. The basket crashed against the front door, the delicate petals in disarray, scattered on the ground.