John Gone (5 page)

Gathering his courage, John opened his eyes
and saw that he wasn’t in Adam’s bathroom at all. He was back in
the bathroom from which his journey had started, the bathroom in
the back of America Offline’s headquarters.

Did I imagine all of that?
He pondered
for a moment before seeing the watch still on his wrist and feeling
the swell of his jaw.
No.

Fully recovered from the travel’s side
effects, John slowly rose from the toilet and crept to the door. It
was open, though only slightly, and revealed just enough of the
outside warehouse for him to see who was out there and just what
was going on in the warehouse at this time of night.

Peering through the crack, John saw that he
was correct about the police presence in the building. Multiple
officers were moving through the scene. Two were within his limited
field of vision, but he could hear others milling about, just to
the side of where his eyes could monitor.

Feeling daring, John inched the door open
just a little more, giving him a better view of the main warehouse.
He saw a large, black plastic bag, zipped closed upon a metal table
with wheels on the bottom of its legs.

That must be Virgil
, he thought.

Two men next to the bag were having a
conversation. “And the janitor who called this in?” one of them
said. “He saw nothing? He telling the truth?”

“Nothing. And we still can’t find anything
here that could have caused an electrical burn like this.”

“Well, if nothing’s here then someone took it
with them. Means they probably also brought it with them when they
came. Sorry to say, it’s looking more like homicide after all.”

“We interviewed a few ladies who were here
earlier today. They said there was some young kid lurking around
with a ‘sinister look.’”

The other man laughed. “‘Sinister look?’ I
love it.”

“I still can’t believe it, though. Longboard
Key ... who would’ve thought.”

“I know. This is the first major crime scene
here since I’ve been on the force.”

A third man entered the conversation. “We
just got an ID on the kid, one John Popielarski. Goes to high
school right across the water. We’re pulling the address now.”

John stood in horror as he heard the man say
his name.

“Used to be teenagers just broke windows with
fly balls. I’ll send Charlie over there to pick him up.”

Maybe it was homicide
, John thought,
even if it was an accident
.

John quietly, but quickly, paced back and
forth behind the door.
I need to get home
, he thought.
I
have to tell Mom what’s happening before the police show up and
freak her out even more
. He knew there wasn’t much time to do
it. Looking out into the warehouse once more, he saw the small team
of officers who’d been speaking walk back toward Virgil’s
office.

John pushed the bathroom door open slowly,
but despite his best efforts, a loud squeak escaped from its upper
hinge. Not waiting to see if anyone had heard it, he rushed from
the room and moved back toward the ell where Virgil had left the
scooter. He was relieved not to hear the sound of frantic footsteps
racing to catch him as he ran.

John approached the corner, and on blind
faith, whipped around it recklessly, hoping no lingering officers
awaited him on the other side. There were none.

Thank God
, he thought. The silver
scooter sat against opposite wall, alone and unmoved.

John took it by the front handles and quietly
rolled it toward the back door. He decided not to press his luck
further by starting its engine while still inside the
warehouse.

As soon as the back door closed behind him,
John mounted the scooter and jammed his key into its ignition. He’d
never driven a scooter before, but took to it easily. After slowly
piloting the machine in a circle twice, John decided that he was
ready for Longboard Key’s twenty-miles-per-hour road. Without
another thought, he sped across the lot, down the curb, and into
the street, hoping he could make it home before the police found
his address.

Ten minutes later, John’s house appeared
ahead of him in the distance. A car was pulling out from the
driveway. It was too dark outside to determine the make or color,
and at first he thought he was too late, that the law had beaten
him there. He imagined them driving away with his mother to
question her about birthing and harboring a known murderer. He sped
up.

Drawing closer, John was surprised to make
the car in front of him as his mother’s own blue sedan, picking up
speed and roaring down the road away from him.

He raised his left arm to wave as he called
out to her. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, Mom! Come back!” Without his
left hand to help steer the scooter, its front wheel pulled sharply
to the right, sending John tumbling from his seat to the asphalt
below.

He quickly rolled back onto his feet and
looked out at the empty street in front of him. It was too late to
hail the fast moving car, now a mile away from him down Longboard
Road.

John sighed and lifted the scooter upright.
As he wheeled the vehicle toward his house, he noticed that the
front door had been left open. Curious and worried, he dropped the
scooter in the grass of his front lawn and ran inside.

The house was empty, but not quiet. His
mother had left the television on in the living room in front of a
still-steaming mug of tea. He looked around the area perplexed,
wondering what could have caused her to leave with such haste. A
news report blaring out from the television gave the answer.

Authorities in Clearwater, FL have reported
twelve dead and twelve more injured after a bus headed from
Tallahassee fell off an elevated road and crashed to the ground
approximately thirty feet below. Police say the bus was carrying
two-dozen people and crashed when the driver and passengers were
simultaneously stricken unconscious by an unknown cause. With the
driver asleep behind the wheel, the bus drifted off the road and
eventually down to this drainage ditch below, as you can see here
in the accident’s aftermath. Authorities say the injured are being
treated at a nearby hospital and that most survivors are not in
serious condition.

The feed changed to a man lying in a hospital
bed with a bandaged eye. John recognized him immediately as the man
who’d been sitting across from him on the bus.

We were just sitting there, you know, and all
of a sudden there was this like, blue light, but, uh, I only
remember seeing it for about a second. That’s all I remember. I
couldn’t really tell where it was coming from, but I think it was
inside the bus.

The camera returned again to the attractive
young newscaster, who stood out starkly against the smoking
wreckage behind her. The right half of the bus was almost
unrecognizable, a twisted nest of metal and plastic caused by its
impact with the ground.

What you just heard is the story told by most
of the survivors: a strange blue light, and after, everyone on the
bus, including the driver, unconscious. Here’s Jordan Ford speaking
with Detective Irving Meller who will attempt to speculate on
what’s happened here tonight. Detective Meller, what do--

The story continued, but John could no longer
hear it.
Twelve dead
, he thought.
Did I do this?
His
head spun as his mind remembered each of the faces he’d seen on the
bus earlier that night. Who were they, and where were they headed
so late? Did some of them have families? Children? Which of them
survived and which are now crushed in that smoking wreckage he saw
on TV?

John dropped to the couch in front of his
mother’s mug. Four used tea bags were strewn across the coffee
table next to it. So this is why Mom left. She must have seen
something about the crash on the news. What’s going to happen when
she doesn’t find me in the hospital? Damn it, Mom, why don’t you
have a cell phone like normal people!

John heard a car pull up outside of the
house. That must be the policeman they were sending over, he
realized, jolting from his seat. He turned and saw the front door
still open behind him. A cruiser with its lights off was sitting in
the driveway, driver still inside. Further news on the accident
drew his attention back to the television.

We’ve just had an update on the bus crash in
Clearwater that happened only half an hour ago. This footage was
pulled from the bus’ interior camera and clearly shows the light
that many of the victims reported. It seems to have come from this
man, who has not yet been found among the survivors or the
deceased.

John looked at the screen and was surprised
to see a low-quality, black-and-white video recording of himself on
the bus and a bright light beetling out from his arm. As the light
faded, the bus’s twenty-two passengers were motionless, and he was
gone.

The policeman’s voice called from just
outside the front door. “Hello? Is anyone in there?”

John lowered to the floor and swiftly crawled
his way across the carpet to his mother’s bedroom. Softly, he
closed the door behind him.

Making his way to the back door, John stopped
and looked at the top of his mother’s dresser. A dark-blue eyeliner
pencil rested against other small containers of assorted
make-up.

He lifted a tissue from the nearby box and
quickly wrote:
I’m fine. I promise. Don’t believe anything you
see or hear about me. I’ll explain. I love you.

John carefully set the note on top of her
dresser and turned his attention back to escaping the officer in
the living room. Quietly, he opened the sliding glass door at the
back of her room and stepped out into the night. He could hear the
policeman inside his living room only a few feet away, offering the
house cautious “hello”s and “is anyone here”s. John climbed off the
porch and into the tall grass by the side of his house.

After making his way to the front, John found
the scooter he’d abandoned on its side in the lawn near to squad
car in the driveway. He considered driving off with it now; the
officer would notice it missing from when he’d arrived and the
whole island would soon be buzzing with police, each hoping to be
the one to snare the fugitive trying to flee justice on a silver
scooter.

It doesn’t matter
, he thought.
I
just need to get somewhere close, that isn’t here, fast.

With no one he knew or trusted on the island
other than his mother, his hideout would need to be somewhere on
the mainland. John lifted the scooter and quietly walked it a
block, careening between the harsh spotlights of the lampposts as
he went. Once far enough from his home, he turned on the engine and
raced toward the island’s bridge.

John racked his mind for a place to go. There
were those few friends from school that he joked with between
classes, but he’d never visited them at their homes across the
water. He did know where to find Molly’s house--she’d made him
memorize the address--but had never actually been there. And even
if he had been, now was not the best time to appear uninvited. John
sighed, realizing where he realized he’d been driving since
mounting the scooter: Ronika’s small apartment by the park.

John slowed to a stop at a yellow traffic
light hazing through the light fog above him. He wondered how
Ronika was going to handle seeing him again. In his mind, the
situation couldn’t be worse.

Even if she opens the door this late, the
last time we saw each other in person was years ago. Now, here I
come with some insane story that only a insane person would
believe, my face all over the news, and, oh yeah, the police after
me for murder. Maybe this is a bad idea.

The light turned green. John gripped the
right handlebar of his scooter and accelerated past the
intersection.

No, it’s definitely a bad idea
, he
concluded.

Unable to think of anywhere else, he resolved
to keep driving toward the girl’s apartment. But, he told himself,
just until he could come up with a better plan.

John turned east next to the park and rounded
into The Napoli, the large, mazelike apartment complex where he
hoped to find his estranged friend. Inside and past the fence, the
grounds were beautiful, if not somewhat tacky. Everything within
The Napoli’s property had been painted, sculpted, and decorated in
the styling of renaissance-era Italy. Small fountains adorned the
courtyards between the blocks, featuring naked dice-white men and
women balancing leaky satyrs, grapes, and pots. The attention to
detail was encompassing, but nothing on the planet could make John
forget that he was living in Florida on Longboard Key.

John circled the buildings of the complex on
his scooter and desperately tried to remember which belonged to
Ronika. It was a difficult task; all of the buildings looked the
same, but John was convinced that if he just kept looking,
something would jog his memory.

Soon the persistence paid off. As he passed
the front of Block D, he caught sight of an armless cherub statue
planted in the ground. It was the apartment association’s feeble
attempt at creating the classical version of a lawn gnome. He
remembered it from his sole previous trip to The Napoli, when his
mother had tumbled carelessly over it, tearing a small hole across
the knee of her jeans. John smiled at the memory.

First floor, 3-D
, he suddenly
remembered.
3-D! Of course! I should have remembered
that.

Knowing what to search for, John found
Ronika’s apartment easily. Hers was the only unit in the long
concrete corridor of doors that had a welcome mat. It was the same
one he remembered from his previous visit, and still looked just as
clean and new as it had back then.