In Stone (10 page)

We say our goodbyes. A strained exchange with half-waves and cautious head bobs. Jack climbs into his car, and the engine growls to life. Red beams from the rear lights cut through the rain. He pulls out on to the road, drives a couple of feet, pulls his car to a halt on the opposite side of the street, and kills the engine.

“What is he doing?” I ask the air. The warmth of my bed, the sweet, sweet smell of my sheets is calling, but I have to go over and find out.

Jack’s seat is in recline. His hands are tucked underneath his head. He looks less than pleased to see me as he rolls down the window.

“This is you getting warm?” he says.

“This is you leaving?” I reply. “Are you keeping eyes on me? Scared I’m going to do a runner?” I only half tease.

“I’m not here because I want to make sure you stay. I’m here because I want to make sure you’re safe.”

Oh. Awkward. I drum a chirpy, two second beat on his door with my fingers.

“Guess I’ll leave you to it then. Goodnight,” I say as I hurry back over to the house.

“Goodnight.”

Mom is not happy that I look and smell like I took a swim in pig shit. But I manage to convince her that Jack’s car got stuck on a dirt road, and we had to push it free. I think I might have even managed to make it sound romantic -- a sort of flirtatious, mud-fight type scenario. While she’s lecturing me on the hazards of getting so wet and cold, I think of an excuse to disappear for a few days. Mom let me go camping with Leah once before. I think if I beg hard and long enough she’ll let me go again.

“ARE YOU ON GLUE?”
Leah questions in an ultrasonic squeak. The half-empty corridor is like an amphitheater; it projects her voice and sends her question bouncing off lockers and various plucky, school-spirit wall displays. My shoulders sink, and I tuck my chin into my chest. At least ten pairs of curious eyes are fixed on me. 

“Dude,” I hiss through gritted teeth.

“Don’t Dude me,” she replies with wide, disapproving eyes. I snatch her hand and drag her into the bathroom.

“You’ve got to be in some sort of drug-induced delusion to even be considering this.”

“Hold that thought,” I say, dumping my weekender on the floor and checking the stalls. They’re empty. Leah is pacing, her heels click-clacking against the floor tiles and her skull-and-crossbones-splattered tutu swishing about from side to side.

“I know I was pushing the whole ‘moving on, moving up’ thing, but this…this is straight up bonkers.” She’s on a roll. Her hands are flapping about all over the place. She’s a crazed ballerina, a black swan with new, candy-floss-colored hair. “I’m not going to cover for you. Forget it. No way,” she sounds off, shaking her head with absolute certainty.

“It wouldn’t be covering for me exactly. You won’t have to say anything...”

“Unless someone asks?” she snaps, squaring her shoulders and folding her arms across her chest. This is the most hostile I’ve ever seen her. Anybody would think I was asking her to kill someone. I’m not. I’m asking her to pretend I’ve changed my mind and decided to go camping this weekend.

“Leah, you know I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t totally necessary.”

“How exactly is sneaking off around creepy regions of Europe with a guy you hardly know ‘totally necessary’?” She breaks out the air quotes and questions pointedly.

“It just…is,” I reply in a huff, flapping my arms and pacing, too. I spot my reflection in the mirror and realize that my tantrum doesn’t have the intimidation of hers. I just look sulky, in need of a good slap.

“That’s weak.”

She makes a very good point, but that’s all I’ve got. I didn’t prepare anything else because I wasn’t expecting to meet with resistance. Leah does a lot of crazy things; drinking, sneaking off to the city to watch rock concerts, jumping off of Pinnacle Bridge that year she had a plaster cast on her ankle. She sank like a stone to the bottom of the creek. If I hadn’t been there to pull her out she would have drowned. All these things, and much, much more, would ensure that Leah was grounded well into her sixties, but I cover for her every time.

“You owe me,” I remind her, though it lacks conviction. Angry Leah scares me.

“Totally. And whenever you wanna head into the city and watch Buckets of Blood beat the shit out of their instruments, I’ll pay up. But you’re talking about taking off halfway around the world with a potential sex offender. One in six Beau, one in six.” One in six is some serial-killing statistic she’s heard off a crime drama, I presume. She watches a lot of that sort of stuff.

“Jack is not a sex offender.”

“Why? Because he says he’s not a sex offender?”

I huff more frustration and start making laps. Arguing a case without being able to relay all the facts is more irritating than trying to find the value of ‘X’ in algebra.  

“Look, B,” she says after we’ve both worked out some of our annoyance in exercise. “I get that you’re going through some sort of emo-intensive, Brittany-Spears-type emotional trauma, and you’re looking to let your rebel flag fly. That’s cool. I say go for it. But for God sake, limit your mileage. At the very least keep it within this state.”

Screw it. I’m done. I’m starting to think she’s not going to budge, and if she doesn’t do this for me I can’t go with him. The world will go to crap, and we’ll all be forced to endure buckets of blood, literally.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say with a touch of reluctance. Trying to find a starting point for a confession like this makes me twitchy. I’m like a mouse caught in the claws of a cat. My hands come over all clammy, and my throat suddenly feels tight. But if there is anyone in the world that’s going to believe, and be able to digest the secrets I’ve been keeping, it’s Leah. She has a massive tolerance for all things strange. That’s why we gel so well.

“You have to swear never to breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you to anyone, ever.”

Her eyes slip around in their sockets, and she half-heartedly traces a cross over her chest. I open my bag, grab the knife, and show it to Leah.

She inspects it with squinted eyes. Naturally, she’s disappointed when it’s less than shiny and sits stationary on my palm.

“Is something supposed to happen?” she questions, leaning closer, giving it a sniff.

“I found it.”

“What exactly is it?”

“It’s a knife.”

“Looks more like a dog chew.” Repulsed, Leah cranes her neck back.

“Trust me, it’s a knife, but it’s not just any kind of knife. And Jack, he’s not…well he’s not what you’d call a real boy.”

I tell Leah about Jack and his stone shell. I tell her about the knife and what it’s capable of. I tell her about breaking into the storage building and my encounter with the slack-jawed she-devil. I even tell her about the shower of demon entrails I received last night.

“Seriously though, are you on glue? Because you know that shit rots your brain and makes you see things, right?” she says when I’m finished.

“I am not now, nor have I ever been, huffing mind-altering substances. Leah,” I snatch hold of the tops of her arms and squeeze. “I’m not kidding around.” Her eyebrows tilt inward and the black-cherry grin on her lips perishes. Her skin possibly pales, but it’s hard to tell because she wears white foundation. Still, she looks convinced.

“You realize how insane this is right? I mean, for a warped story of epic proportions, you’re acting incredibly cavalier.” She laughs nervously.

“He needs my help, Leah.”

“Demons,” she mumbles to herself, as if coming to terms with the idea. “I can’t even...there are no words,” she concludes, flinging her fingertips to her forehead and starting to massage slow circles. Brain sting must be setting in.

“So you’re leaving now?” she says, eyeing my bag.

I nod. “It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. Flight gets into Bulgaria around seven tonight. That gives us Saturday and Sunday to do what needs to be done.” I’m hoping she doesn’t probe the ‘what needs to be done’ part of that sentence. It’s not pretty. When Jack said the knife couldn’t be destroyed in mortal fire he meant we’d need to throw it in immortal fire. Apparently, there’s only one place that we’ll find that. It’s not the sort of place you can locate on Google maps. I guess I’m not probing it either. Not yet. Not until I absolutely have to.

“When will you be back?” Leah asks.

“Flight is booked for early Monday morning. I told Mom we had free classes, and I’d be staying over at your house on Sunday. She’s not back from work till around eight on Monday. That gives me the whole day to get home.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

We stand for a minute in a mourning sort of stillness -- until Leah launches herself at me. She throws her arms around my neck and squeezes tight. I feel a tremble in her arms.

“You can tell Jack, I don’t care who or what he is, if anything happens to you, if you don’t come back, I’ll hunt him down and find a way to make death stick,” she growls into my hair. Her words are tangled up in tears. I don’t cry, but I feel it. For the second time today, a clump of something hot, tight and salty is stuck in my windpipe. I felt for sure when I hugged Mom goodbye this morning that I was going to cry, but I managed to hold it back. Teens don’t cry when they go camping for the weekend.

Leah decides not to walk me to the parking lot. Instead, she stays in the bathroom to fix her face. Dragging my weekender up the hall, I head for the front doors of PHS. Stupid bag. It weighs a ton. I was supposed to be getting a lift into school with Jack, but that didn’t go down too well with Mom, and she ended up driving me.

“Beau.” A nails down a chalkboard shudder rips right through me. The last time I heard this voice, it was dumping me. Sure, Mark and I have passed each other in the hall a couple of times, but we don’t speak, not anymore. I twirl on the balls of my feet to meet with my Ex. Oh goody, he’s with The Boob.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.” As soon as I open my mouth The Boob latches on to his left arm like a leech.

“Hey Beau,” she chirps through bubblegum-pink lips. I resist the urge to hiss at her, but I can’t muster the enthusiasm to speak. Instead I force a smile. Her Austen-esque bosom heaves as she sighs. 

“How’ve you been?” he says.

“Good.”

Awkward. Lots of awkward hours amble on by.

“You going somewhere?” he finally says, eyeing my weekender.

“No.”

He laughs. “What’s with the bag?”

“What’s with the questions?” I say. His mouth opens, but no words come out. Movement in the parking lot catches my attention. I look through the double glass doors and see Jack’s car sliding into a parking space.

“I have to go. Doctor’s appointment.” He calls my name once more as I hightail it out of there. By the time I reach Jack’s car, he’s climbed out, popped the trunk, and is waiting to grab my bag. I steal a glance over my shoulder. The glass doors are reflecting the bright, white sun. I can’t see through to the other side, but I know Mark’s there, watching. With any luck, the curiosity is chewing up his insides.

AIRPORT BATHROOMS ARE A
sanctum for the suited-and-booted frequent flyer. The city is home to that airport--the one that no one has ever heard of, but everyone needs to catch a connecting flight to or from.

I can hardly move for women lined up at the sinks, brushing their teeth, retouching makeup, and giving themselves a wash down with a damp paper towel. I skulk off into one of the cubicles and take a seat on the toilet. Propping my foot up against the door, I pull my sock up over my skin. This is not some quirky way of having a pee. This is the start of the premeditated plan.

The premeditated plan has me sitting in wait for the suck-and-blow-swoosh of the hand dryers. The second it starts, I begin tearing off strips of tape and tacking the knife to my ankle. The knife is cold against my skin, too cold to sit there for any considerable duration. I’m going to get ice burns. I decide to pad my sock out with toilet tissue and tack it over the top. My hand is trembling as I twist the tape around and around. Not too tight, not too loose. When I’m done I clasp my hand and squeeze it into stillness.

Baggy jeans were a good wardrobe choice, I think as I stand up and shake them back over my sneakers. The knife is lost amidst a bulk of blue denim. I grab a lungful of composing air. Then make my way back to Jack.

He’s right where I left him, standing beside a payphone. Only now he has three flight attendants keeping him company. They’re all airbrushed beauties in tight skirts and silky shirts. Jack is making them laugh and flashing a sweeter-than-syrup smile.

He’s not wearing his hat today. His dirty-blonde hair falls about his face. He’s wearing a light grey shirt that clings to his body and makes me bite down hard on my bottom lip.

I’m about to walk over when he looks up and spots me. His eyes shimmer. I’m momentarily terrified that such an obscure retina reaction will cause questions, but the girls are too busy getting their flirt on to notice. His body language changes. He goes from causal conversationalist to eager escapee, mopping up the conversation quickly. He’s still muttering his goodbyes to the girls when he reaches me.