Driver's Dead (3 page)

Virgil Garth was standing in front of the school, looking bored. When he saw Maria he brightened. “Where were you?”

“You didn't hear?” Maria asked.

“Hear what?” Virgil said.

“Oh, Rob was being a sadistic jerk,” Maria replied. Then, with a sly smile, she added, “But you'll never guess who has a crush on him.”

“Mariaaaaa!” Kirsten felt the blood rushing to her face. She barely
knew
Virgil!

“Oh, come on, it's okay,” Maria said. “Virgil had a crush on him, too.”

Virgil grimaced. “Maria, what did you have in your lunch today?”

“Well, you used to think he was
soooo
cool.”

‘Yeah, but that's not the same as—”

Maria threw her arms around him. “I have a big mouth, but he loves me, anyway.” She planted a kiss on Virgil's lips, and he blushed. “Go ahead,” she continued,
“you
tell her about Rob.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Well, he's kind of … unpredictable. If I were you—”

“You
guys!”
Kirsten interrupted. “I mean, I've never even
met
this guy.”

“Keep it that way!” Maria said with a laugh. As she and Virgil began walking away, she said over her shoulder, “Call me later!”

“Okay.”

Kirsten was amazed. Maria could say whatever was on her mind, no matter how obnoxious—but you couldn't stay angry with her.

She watched Maria and Virgil for a while, then headed in the other direction, toward her house.

This
was one part of suburban life she liked. Walking home among the chirping birds, shuffling through bright piles of fresh-fallen leaves, smelling the cool, sweet air. It was a far cry from the sweat, the B.O., and the car-horn noise of her ride home on the M19 crosstown bus.

Each day Kirsten was missing New York City less. Port Lincoln wasn't so bad. Despite the cliques. And the fact that kids went everywhere in cars. And hung out at a mall. And wore the same clothes. From the same store.

Well, almost all the kids were like that. Rob wasn't. How had Virgil described him?

Unpredictable.

Virgil had used that word so
dramatically,
as if it were the world's worst quality. No kidding, Rob was unpredictable. Kirsten had seen that, all right.

But behind that word was something else. Rob was different. Different in dress, attitude, looks.

Different from
us.

And being different was deadly in Port Lincoln.

Kirsten laughed to herself.
Now
who was being dramatic?

She walked down Anchor Street to her family's white, Cape-Cod-style house. With the overgrown lawn and the mismatched curtains.

Kirsten was kind of proud of the fact that her house stuck out. The Wilkeses were in no great hurry to be exactly like everybody else. The walls of the house were still bare, save for one enormous china platter that her mom had hung on the kitchen wall because it wouldn't fit anywhere else.

From the outside the house was dark and still, all the doors and windows locked. Precautions left over from city living. Never give a burglar a chance. Kirsten bounded up the stairs, key in hand. She grabbed the mail from the box, which still bore a brass plaque with THE LORILLARD'S stamped on it, misplaced apostrophe and all.

Clutching the stack of letters, Kirsten let herself in.

The house was dark, clammy. After the fragrant walk home, the stale air was suffocating. Kirsten went to open a window.

Then she stopped.

Someone was in the house.

She didn't know how she knew it. But she did.

“Hello?”

No answer.

“Nat?”

This had happened last week. She'd come home to an empty house and Nat had sprung out of the kitchen pantry, scaring her to death.

“Don't do this to me, Nat!”

Kirsten thought a moment. It was the last Tuesday of the month. That meant Dad was at the hospital seeing Emergency Room patients, Mom was at her monthly editorial board meeting—and Nat had soccer practice. That was it.

She walked into the kitchen, plopped the mail on the table, and let her backpack fall to the floor.

The windowless, L-shaped pantry was dark. She pulled the light switch and looked inside. Just to be sure.

It was empty.

She carefully opened the door to the back foyer and hung her jacket on a wall hook.

To the right of the hooks was the door to the basement. She opened it and peered down the stairs.

“Hello?”

Natless.

She was alone. Safe.

No, I'm not.

Why did she still have that feeling?

It was the house.

Had to be. It always felt a little like a locker room. Even on a beautiful, balmy day like this. Too much insulation, maybe. Her family would just have to learn to leave a few windows open when they left.

Which is just what she did, before heading straight for the fridge.

In moments she put together a nice, thick, toasted cinnamon-raisin bagel with a huge wad of cream cheese in the middle. Her favorite snack. Guaranteed to cure all ills.

As she munched away, she flipped through the mail. Not one envelope had her name on it.

That did it. She vowed to write her ex-best friend Rachel Ross out of her will. She would
make
a will just to do that.

If Rachel had written a letter, Kirsten could be reading it now. Then she could have written back. What a great afternoon it would have been.

Now, instead, she had to do her homework.

She reached into her backpack and pulled out its contents. Social studies text (yawn), mathbook (gross), French lesson
(quel ennui),
and a stack of dog-eared papers—notes, mimeographs, whatever.

Kirsten glanced at the glossy sheet on top. It was the driving-contest flyer Mr. Busk had given her class the week before.

Kirsten felt a knot in her stomach. The kids had laughed when she'd taken it. She had been so embarrassed, she had stuck it in her pack and never read it.

Win the Car of Your Dreams! was emblazoned across the top. Under that were the contest rules:

1. All PLHS seniors in driver's ed classes are eligible.

2. The winner must have the highest combined scores on his or her written test and road test.

3. Tie scores will be decided by lottery.

4. Top prize is on view at CUNNINGHAM MOTORS of Port Lincoln.

In the center of the flyer was a color photo, the sleek profile of a white Ford Escort, speeding along a highway.

Ha! Fat chance, Wilkes,
Kirsten said to herself. She folded the flyer and stuck it back in her pack.

Eeny, meeny, miney, mo. Social studies first.

She opened her book. After one paragraph, her eyes began to wander.

Across the table, the stack of mail had fallen over. The letters had fanned across the table, right to the edge. Kirsten stooped to pick up one that had dropped to the floor.

Actually, it was only a piece of an envelope.

It must have fallen out of her hands when she came in—but where was the rest of it?

Kirsten looked closer. She could make out half a postmark, with strange, foreign letters—and below it, the letter
M,
where the address should begin.

She retraced her steps back to the mailbox. Nothing had fallen onto the living room carpet.

The missing pieces were outside—two at the bottom of the mailbox, one in a corner of the porch, and the rest under the bushes in front of the house.

She brought them inside, muttering to herself. Her dad
loved
to complain about the post office, especially when they sent those little plastic bags with destroyed letters inside and a computer-printed apology. The letters always looked as if they had been chewed by a wild tiger.

Maybe they didn't use plastic bags in the suburbs. But the tigers were much fiercer.

These pieces were
shredded,
not ripped. They looked as if they'd been in an explosion.

A letter-bomb,
she thought. Maybe that was what she should send to Rachel.

Taking a roll of tape from the kitchen desk drawer, she began piecing the fragments of the envelope together, like a jigsaw puzzle.

The address on the envelope soon came together:

Mr. and Mrs. H. Trang

477 Anchor Street

Port Lincoln, New York 11500

The return address read, Outreach, Inc., Ho Chi Mihn City, Vietnam.

Kirsten was used to seeing junk mail for the Lorillards and Trangs, but this was definitely not junk mail.

She got to work on the letter, which was typed on onionskin paper with an old-fashioned typewriter.

As the letter began to form, a tiny voice began to pipe up in back of her head:
This is none of your business.

But it was her business. What if the letter was about a huge inheritance? Or a note from a long-lost relative? What if the Trangs had to go to Vietnam right away for some emergency?

Do we have the Trangs' address?
she wondered. She doubted it. The Lorillards wouldn't have left it, nor the real-estate agent. They'd acted as though the Trangs never existed.

And that was just plain wrong.

Kirsten owed it to the Trangs to forward this letter.

Not all the pieces were there, but slowly the message began to take shape:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Trang, Outreach Americ

uniting family members of the Southeast Asian-American community with lost or forgotten loved ones overseas. I task filled with sublime joy and, sometimes, unexpected sadness.    unately, in the latter spirit that we must inform you that Mr. and Mrs. R. Haing, the parents of your nephew, Nguyen, have been located. Last month they died of natural causes. Please accept o                       of deepest sorrow for you and the young man.

In Sympathy, Lynn Ngor Director

Nguyen was a refugee. He had dropped his real last name, taken his uncle's. Or had he been sent here as a child? Did he
know
about his parents?

Kirsten turned another piece of the letter over.

This one had a stain on it.

A dark, red stain. Still wet.

“H
ELLO? …
S
TOP! …
H
ELLO? …
Will you—?”

“Hi, Maria?” Kirsten said into the receiver. “It's Kirsten. I have to talk to you!”

“Down, Virgil! Hi!” Maria burst into giggles. Kirsten could hear barking noises in the background. “Sorry. Virgil thinks it's hilarious to distract me when I'm on the phone.
Virgil, it's my father!”

The barking stopped.

“There. Now, what's up?”

“Do either of you know where Nguyen Trang's family moved?”

“Hang on.” Her voice became muffled and distant as she asked Virgil the same question. “Uh-uh. Neither of us knew him that well. Why?”

“I need to swear you to secrecy about something.” Kirsten told her everything—about the letter, the condition she had found it in, the stain.

“Whoa. Gross,” was Maria's reaction. “Maybe the mailman got attacked by a dog, and held the letter out—”

“None of my neighbors has a dog.”

“A cat? A killer gerbil?”

“It's not funny, Maria. Who would do something like this? I mean, what if the Trangs were, like, spies, and someone is looking through our mail? Who knows what else they'll do?”

“Hey, chill, Kirsten. The war ended before we were born. The letter probably got chewed up by some machine at the post office. The stain could be anything—mud, a squashed berry, bird droppings. Be real. Just write ‘Please forward' on the envelope and leave it for the mail carrier to take. They forward the rest of the personal mail, right? Or do you get all of the Trangs' letters?”

“No, just some junk mail,” Kirsten replied.

“Okay, so problem solved. That'll be forty-five dollars, please.”

Kirsten took a deep breath. “I don't know, Maria, I—I just feel creepy in this house.
You
know. I always have. And now that you told me about Nguyen's death—”

“Ugh. The haunted house business again.”

“Nooo!
I didn't say I—”

“Look, Kirsten, if it makes you rest easier, everybody knows cremated people do not come back as ghosts.”

“Ghosts?
Maria, I don't—this is
dumb… .”
Kirsten paused. “Nguyen was cremated? How do you know?”

“It was in all the local papers. Kirsten, Nguyen's death was the biggest news item in Port Lincoln in years. When the Trangs went to sprinkle the ashes around the crash site, Mr. Trang had to push photographers out of the way.”

“How come nobody ever talks about it?”

“I don't know. I guess it's one of those things people like to forget. And
nobody
really knew the Trangs well. They kept to themselves. Nguyen was, like, a shadow. He blended into the walls at school. I do know he liked cars, though.”

“Enough to steal one?”

“Who knows? He was a little weird. He was into magic and … that
thing,
what's it called? You know, where you move things just by thinking about them? Maybe he thought he could make the car fly.”

“Come on,” Kirsten said. “Do people really think—”

“Telekinesis,”
Maria cut in.

“Huh?”

“That's what it's called. Like in the book,
Carrie.
Whatever. It was a joke. The point is, Nguyen wasn't in his right mind, Kirsten. He was upset. Suicidal—over
Gwen,
if you can imagine that. I mean, his aunt and uncle insisted he
couldn't
have done it. They said he would never even steal a piece of gum.” Maria sighed sadly. “But what did they know about love, right? It was obvious he did it. The car belonged to this old guy—you know, Olaf, who walks around town talking to himself? Anyway, he
saw
Nguyen take it. And when the wreckage was found, Nguyen's body was the only one in it.”