Love Over Matter (23 page)

What a liar. There was no birth
certificate in that pile. In fact, said document has been in my
possession for years, so . . .

“
Gee,” Mom says in her
let-‘em-down-easy voice, “I’ve been holed up in my office all
morning. Haven’t even had a chance to . . .” She
glances about the kitchen, as if there are chores awaiting her
attention. “Kids? Anyone notice anything out of order?”

Haley shrugs, twirls her hair around
her finger. “Uh-uh.”

I squint as if I’m confused. “No. We
were watching TV, and . . .”

“
You should call the
police,” Aleks interjects. “I’m sure they’d be interested in
helping you recover those papers.”

Is he wacko?

Mr. Brooks appraises Aleks for a long
moment. “Perhaps you’d accompany me next door while we await the
authorities? Lillian is quite shaken. It would do her good to have
some added protection around the house right now.”

It’s a trick,
I want to shout.
Don’t
fall for it. Who knows what he’ll do to you once you’re in his
clutches?

Aleks gives a smug grin
that says:
Game on.
“Sure. My pleasure.”

I shoot Mom a pleading glance she
can’t possibly interpret, given her lack of knowledge about the
Brookses. “Um . . .” I start to say, not knowing
where I’m going next.

“
Let me get my sneakers,”
Mom says, staring at her slippers as if she’s shocked to find them
on her feet.

“
That won’t be necessary,”
Mr. Brooks states.

Haley nods in my direction.
“Why don’t
you
go?”

“
Yeah,” agrees Aleks.
“Cassie and I will check things out. You guys stay
here.”

Mom feebly objects, but before she can
finish making her case, Mr. Brooks, Aleks, and I are out the door.
In the background, I hear Haley assuring her that everything is
under control.

I get the same time-warp feeling when
we cross over to the Brookses’ yard that plagued me the day of
George’s accident. Covertly, I poke Aleks in the shoulder, hoping
to slip him a whispered message. But when he does a sideways turn,
my bravado evaporates and I just give a concerned shrug.

It’ll be okay,
his eyes tell me, even though his lips don’t
move.

As we traipse up the Brookses’ front
steps, I can’t escape the feeling that we are on a kamikaze
mission. Once we’re inside, Mr. Brooks deadbolts the door behind
us.

Standing stiffly in the foyer, her
arms crossed over her chest, a tight, icy stare in her eyes, is
Mrs. Brooks. She’s clad in a one-piece black leotard like Catwoman.
Oh, and somehow her IQ seems to have quadrupled.

“
Well, well, well,” she
says, her voice suddenly acquiring an Eastern European accent,
“what have we got here?”

I feel like a fly that’s just wandered
into a spider’s web. Beside me, Aleks stretches to his full height,
his body abuzz with alertness.

“
Hello, Lillian,” he says
snidely. “Or is it Gloria? Or maybe you’re going by Peggy
nowadays?”

Holy shit. He’s egging them on? I did
not sign up for this.

Mrs. Brooks—or whatever her name
is—takes a clicky step toward us (she’s got stilettos on with that
catsuit?). “What have you done with the papers?” she
demands.

If I turn around, I’m sure I will find
Mr. Brooks with a gun of some sort—a pistol? a revolver?—cocked at
the backs of our heads. “Listen,” I say, my voice shaking
noticeably, “we didn’t mean to . . .”

Aleks snorts. “You don’t owe them an
explanation, Cassie. They’re scum. Worse than scum.”

A smile curls Mrs. Brooks’s glossy red
lips. “You’re nothing like him,” she coos, plunging a knife
(metaphorically, for now) into Aleks’s heart.

The words pop out of my mouth
unbidden. “Yes, he is.”

She lets loose a wild
cackle. “
Please,
”
she says, waving my words away. “
My
George was intelligent. Sophisticated.
Respectful.” She wrinkles her nose as if she’s caught a whiff of
something foul. “But
this boy?
Pff!
He’s nothing but a
weak copy. An empty reflection.”

“
He wasn’t yours,” Aleks
says with venom. “And his name was Anatoly.”

Mr. Brooks steps over to join his
wife. I’m glad to see that his hands are empty. “The papers,” he
says, holding a palm out as if we’ve brought the evidence
along.

Aleks gives the couple a dead-eyed
stare. “They’re in the mail,” he tells them. “One copy to the CIA,
one to the FBI. The originals to my post office box in
Queens.”

“
You’re lying,” Mr. Brooks
accuses, his face betraying a smidge of nervousness.

“
You wish,” Aleks says,
holding steady.

I can’t think of anything to say to
defuse the situation, which seems poised to rocket out of control.
Erasing all doubt, Mr. Brooks moves in and clamps his liver-spotted
fingers around Aleks’s neck.

“
What the hell?” Aleks
spouts, wriggling out of the ghoul’s grip. “Get off me.” He rubs at
his throat and glares the duo down.

“
Maybe you guys should just
. . . take off,” I suggest, figuring that, at least if
the Brookses fled Willow Crest, they wouldn’t be darkening
my
doorstep anymore. And
the law would catch up with them eventually.

“
Actually, I’d prefer they
didn’t,” Aleks says, in a tone that reminds me of a cartoon
villain’s. “They’re much too important to lose track
of.”

“
You could turn yourself
in,” I say, trying to put a smile in my voice. “They might go easy
on you, if you . . .”

“
Shut up,” Mrs. Brooks
snaps. “Idiot.”

Aleks comes to my rescue, like George
would have. “Leave her out of it. She’s the only reason I don’t
kill you right now.”

The Brookses bust out in amused grins,
giving the impression they’re a pair of bored cats and Aleks and I
are nothing more consequential—or delicious—than a couple of
disoriented field mice. “You’re lying,” Mr. Brooks says, this time
focusing on me. “Where are the documents? We don’t want to have to
hurt you”—he shoots a glance in the direction of my house—“or your
family.”

Great, now he’s threatening Mom, Dad,
and Haley?

Aleks puffs out his chest, goes
toe-to-toe with Mr. Brooks. “It’s over, old man,” he says with cool
control. “You’re not going to be hurting anyone
anymore.”

But . . .

Mrs. Brooks lunges at me,
the hairs on my arm standing up before the Taser hits my
skin.
Click, click, click, click. Click,
click, click, click.
I give an anguished
wail and crumple to the floor, my head conking a giant vase on the
way down.

I guess it’s an
equal-opportunity attack, because soon Aleks is yowling like a
wounded animal and joining me on the gleaming marble. I throw him a
desperate glance as the psychos strike again.
Click, click, click, click. Click, click, click,
click.
“Stop,” I plead, although the
delight flashing through Mrs. Brooks’s eyes tells me begging is
pointless.
I’m
pointless.

“
I never liked you,” she
says matter-of-factly, stinging me a third time.

The urge to wallop her takes hold of
my arm, so I give a sloppy slug. Predictably, it’s a
miss.

Rawr, rawr, rawr
go Aleks’s vocal cords.

This could be going
better,
I think. Much
better.
I shove up on one elbow and
roll out of Mrs. Brooks’s grasp. When I’m in the clear, I make a
break for the back of the house, hoping to escape through one of
those rainbow-colored doors. Mrs. Brooks takes a few skidding leaps
after me before wrenching an ankle. Over my shoulder, I see Aleks
on his knees, fending off Mr. Brooks with slow-motion karate
chops.

On instinct, I head for the mauve
door, which I fling open with supernatural strength. The sun is
blinding, the heat a solid wall. My legs feel alien, as if they
belong to a drunken toddler.

Still, I run.

When I burst into our kitchen, I’m too
weak and winded to speak. Instead, I point furiously at the
Brookses’ yard, hoping that someone (in the last ten minutes, the
occupancy of my home has grown to include not only Haley and Mom,
but Rosie, Ian, and Dad too) will decode my frantic gesturing and
save Aleks from whatever brand of demented torture the spies next
door plan to unleash next.

“
What?” asks Mom, laying a
soothing hand on my back. I hunch over to catch my breath. “What is
it?” When I straighten up, she notices the scuff on my forehead.
“Are you okay?”

“
Aleks!” I gasp. I flail my
arm toward the Brookses’ place again. “Help him!” I drop into a
chair. “
Please!
”

Ian’s eyes lock with mine and suddenly
he knows. Or maybe he just trusts me. Without another word, he
takes off running. Haley, Rosie, and Dad follow, albeit at a slower
pace.

My breath finally evens out. “Call
911,” I tell Mom, trying to keep it together long enough to get the
story—or at least the important parts of it—out. “George’s
parents . . . They’re evil. They—”

A chorus of urgent voices cuts through
the summer air, followed by a raucous crashing sound. Mom and I
bash into each other on our way outside. “No way,” I mutter as the
Brookses’ car peels out of their driveway in reverse, taking an
ample chunk of the garage door with it. A jagged hunk of metal
trails behind them as they speed away, creating a dangerous shower
of sparks that, if there were any justice in the world, would
ignite their gas tank, ridding society of such soulless
vermin.

Finally, Mom hauls out her
cell phone. “Yes, um . . .” she tells the
dispatcher, her eyes blinking, blinking, blinking in disbelief. “I
need someone—the police?—for a
disturbance
at 1015 Lancelot
Way.”

While Mom briefs the authorities, I
rush over to the Brookses’ front lawn, where Rosie and Haley are
crouching over a still-stunned Aleks. Ian and Dad, apparently, have
tramped into the house in hopes of expunging any remaining threats,
though I doubt they’ll find anything. (I’m sure I saw both of the
Brookses’ heads bobbing around through the rear window of the Camry
as it fled the scene.)

I offer Aleks a hand, and
he begrudgingly accepts. “I wasn’t expecting
that,
” he says with a jokey grin as
he dusts off his shorts.

“
Everything copasetic?” I
ask, repressing a laugh.

He pats around his chest as if he’s
checking for broken ribs. “Yeah,” he confirms. “You?” He gives me a
quick once-over. “You look good.”

Why, I do believe the boy just paid me
a compliment. “Thanks,” I say.

Haley catches me blushing and rolls
her eyes. Rosie’s attention, however, is on the Brookses’ open
front door. “I’m gonna go help them,” she says, already starting to
wander off. Right then, I’m sure of one thing: no matter what the
future holds for Ian, he will always have someone to love—and
someone to love him. Because if a girl will follow you into a
potentially booby-trapped hideout, well
then . . .

Aleks’s hand felt good on mine
before—warm and welcoming and familiar—so I give it another try.
“We should go,” I say, tugging him toward the safe zone, a.k.a. my
house, “take care of some things.”

The sparkle in his eyes says he gets
my reference to the Brookses’ documents, which, despite his claims
to the contrary, remain boldly arrayed across my couch. “Good
thinking,” he agrees. And with an innocent wink, he breaks my heart
all over again.

chapter 19

It’s too soon to know if the
authorities—be they FBI, CIA or Vermont state troopers—will ever
pick up the scent of George’s make-believe parents and bring them
to justice. Something tells me not to hold my breath. But Aleks and
I (and, to a lesser extent, our accomplices, Haley, Ian, Rosie, and
Opal) can rest easy in the knowledge that we acted on George’s
behalf, however unsatisfying the outcome may be.

* * *

I stick my head into the hallway to
listen for running water, the signal that Aleks is enjoying his
last shower as a guest of the McCoy household. Once I hear the
shower curtain draw shut, I lock my bedroom door and wiggle the
black box out from under my bed.

Clive has been unusually chipper of
late, treating me to his own brand of song and dance that, I swear,
could rival an off-Broadway show. As I lift the lid off the box, he
pipes up with another run of: “Hell-o! Hell-o! BWAAH, BWAAH,
BWAAH!”

“
Wow, you’re on a roll,” I
tell him in a light voice. The truth is, I’m feeling a spike of
upbeat optimism too.

What I want from the box is my old
cell phone, the one containing George’s last words, the message
I’ve lacked the strength or courage to confront until
today.