Me & Death (17 page)

“I still don’t know why you dragged us away. He liked us. They both did. I wish we could have stayed.”

“Jim’ll understand.”

Louise was going to say something but stopped dead. “Who’s Jim’ll?”

“Jim’ll?” said Cassie.

“You said Jim’ll understand,” said Louise.

They giggled and said
Jim’ll
a couple of times.

“Well, he
will
understand,” said my sister. “Won’t you, Jim’ll?”

She’d seen a Mourner. That’s why she knew I’d understand. “We were drinking chocolatinis, and I heard someone say, ‘
Watch out
.’” Cassie nodded meaningfully at me. “I turned around and there he was, floating behind me.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Louise. “Or see anything. The waiters were smiling at us. I wanted to stay.”

She put her hand on the wall to support herself. Meanwhile, Cassie’s meaningful look had turned to one of concern. She blinked at me.

“I … bathroom,” she said, stumbling past me. I wondered how many chocolatinis she’d had.

Louise lurched against me. She put her arms around my neck. “Hey there, Jim’ll,” she said. “You may not be as cute as the waiter, but you are pretty cute. And you’re here.”

She rubbed SpongeBob against me.

I thought about Ma downstairs and Cassie in the washroom.

I thought about Marcie. I saw her smile and her teddy-bear dressing gown. I heard her saying she liked me. Felt her lips on my cheek.

“Put your arms around me,” said Louise. She stood on her tiptoes to bring her mouth up against mine and kissed me. I mean, really kissed me.

I stopped thinking about Marcie.

I remembered the forest fire creeping up the tree. I felt like that myself. It was a long way around Louise. I squeezed her tight. She moved her mouth on mine and kissed me again. Yikes. Her tongue seemed to reach into my stomach. You could say that I burst into flame. We kissed some more.

Louise took one hand away from my neck and ran it down my chest and stomach, down past the bottom of my black shirt to the front of my jeans.

Ta-da!
said my dick.

She grabbed one of my empty belt loops and walked backward, dragging me after her.

“This is your room, right, Jim’ll?”

Clothes in a corner, Ferrari poster on the wall, newly made bed with
Star Wars
sheets, a table made from an orange crate holding some tools and a nearly full spiral notebook. My room.

I stood in the doorway. Louise put her hands over her head and tried to twirl like a ballet dancer. She wobbled and fell backward onto the bed. She was wearing slip-on sandals, I noticed, and one of them had fallen off. Her toe-nails were painted bright red.

Unmistakable noises were coming through the bathroom door. I tried to ignore them and focus on Louise. She was lying on her back now, breathing deeply. Looked like the tide was coming in.

Ta - da!
said my dick.

My sister finished throwing up. I heard the toilet flush, but she didn’t come out. Louise’s eyes were closed. These girls could not drink.

I heard snoring from behind the bathroom door. I looked in. Cassie was asleep, curled around the toilet bowl. Back in my room, Louise had rolled onto her side, pillowing her head in her hands. Her eyes were closed; her expression innocent, childlike.

I got a picture of myself, a horny teen with a drunken woman in his bed and she’s fast asleep. I threw back my head and laughed.
Ta-da!
said my dick. But that only made me laugh some more. I got my spiral notebook out and sat down gingerly next to Louise.

I’m done writing now. It’s midnight. I’m about to grab my tools and leave.

I’m not looking forward to the next bit.

CHAPTER 33

I
hurry down Roncesvalles past Galley to Pearson Avenue. I hear music and TV noise coming from the apartments over the stores, and pigeons cooing from rooftops. The air is warm and greasy.

My tools weigh in my pocket. Flashlight doesn’t mean anything, and the hook’s just a piece of bent wire, but the sharpened screwdriver’s a weapon, and the bendy shim screams,
Car thief!
You use it to pry the window away from the doorframe so you can reach the hook in and open the door. If the cops search me, they’re going to be suspicious.

I don’t want to be here. Ol’ Scrooge wouldn’t be doing this. But Scrooge didn’t have a promise to keep. I won’t let Raf down.

I get a bit of a shiver, turning onto Pearson. Last time I walked this way I was with Raf. That was only a few weeks ago, but I feel a million years older.

The alley off Pearson is a long shared driveway with garages on both sides. It’s lit by a couple of streetlights on wooden poles. One of them is flickering, making the shadows dance. Walking down the alley under the flickering light, I kind of lose myself. Doesn’t last long but the feeling is strong, like a dream vision. It seems for a moment that the garages are moving and I’m the one staying still – like I’m on a station platform watching two
freight trains flash by. They’re on their way to the future, and I’m stuck here forever in this present.

The white Lincoln is in a garage with no door, facing out, just like I remember. There’s a NO PARKING sign across the alley, next to a BEWARE OF DOG sign. Someone has been by with a can of spray paint, so the first sign looks like it reads, NO BARKING. Ha ha.

The hood of the big car gleams in the harsh light. No sound coming from the yard, no lights in the house. I slip into the garage.

I check the car door because it might be open. It isn’t. I pull out my tools, and in less time than it takes me to write this, I slide in the shim and hook the opener. You sometimes have to fish around, but I get it right away.

I’m totally concentrating on the job because you don’t want to jerk too hard and jam something. Out of the corner of my ear, I hear footsteps. I freeze. Two sets of footsteps in the alley and a murmur of voices growing louder. I’m up to the elbow in illegal tools and car door guts, and two guys are coming toward me.

I’ve got about four seconds to decide what to do. Plenty of time. The hook is in my right hand. I pull straight up and not too hard, and the door unlocks. Good to know I haven’t lost my touch. I drop my tools into my pocket and slide around to the back of the garage, crouching low, peering around the rear bumper.

Two guys go past, dressed in black and white – waiters. “I still don’t believe the tits on that girl,” says one of them.

“I tell you, she was underage,” says the other. “So was her skinny friend. We shouldn’t even have served them the chocolatinis.”

“I wonder why they took off like that?”

“I don’t know. It was a waste of Blue Nitro.”

Their footsteps fade.

Now that my ear is pressed against the trunk, I can hear noises coming from inside. Something is moving around in there. I slide into the front seat, pop the trunk catch, and the alarm goes off.

News flash: alarms don’t do much good. One night Raf and I set off a bunch of them and hung around, timing reactions. The cops never showed. Not once. It took at least ten minutes for the owner to come – which is about nine minutes longer than it would take us to boost the car. One grumpy neighbor showed up way before the owner – and got so mad he kicked a dent in the front bumper. Raf and I killed ourselves laughing. I bet if we told him we were going to steal the car, he’d have held our coats.

So when I hear the alarm on the Lincoln, I’m not worried about being caught. I’m thinking, Who puts an alarm on the
trunk
?

I’m out of the front seat, careful. The trunk light is on, throwing shadows around the back of the garage. I peer round the trunk door. Yes, I am worried there might be a cat in there. Old fears die hard.

What I see is a car blanket, and the top of a head of hair. There’s a kid in the trunk. A big kid, not a baby. Good thing the Lincoln has all that space.

The alarm is hooked up to the car horn.
Honk honk honk honk!
(Sounds like a boring goose telling you about its day:
So we were, like, flying along, me and my buddies, and, like, we always fly in this V formation, so there was me, and my buddy Jake ahead of me, and my buddy Ted behind me, and sometimes there was land below us, and sometimes there was water below us, and we, like, kept flying along. Honk honk honk!
)

“Hey,” I say over the noise of the alarm.

The kid sits up, a scrawny, pale, pathetic boy with mousy hair and long eyelashes and a striped pajama top.

“Lloyd?” I say.

He blinks, focusing his eyes. “Jim!” he cries.

My first thought is that he’s been kidnapped. Someone is taking children and hiding them in the trunk of his car. Lloyd is his latest victim. There was a case like this, last year. The cops went house to house, and the local TV gave hourly updates.

“Don’t hurt me,” he says.

Is there anyone in my life I treated worse than Lloyd? I don’t think so. It’s not right that he’s here, but it’s right that I am here to help him.

“I won’t hurt you, Lloyd.” I smile at him for maybe the first time ever. “I’m going to help you out of here. Come on, let’s go.”

He shakes his head no. I can’t hear what he’s saying over the noise of the alarm.

I bend closer. “What?”

“I’m supposed to sleep here tonight,” he says.

I don’t understand. “This is a car. You are in the trunk of a car.”

“It’s punishment.”

“No one sleeps in the trunk of a car. You’re confused. Come on.”

Lloyd shrinks away. I reach forward to grab a pajama-covered leg. It feels like a stick under my hands. There are neat round holes in the floor of the trunk. I’m shocked when I realize that they are breathing holes. The kidnapper drilled them so that his victims wouldn’t suffocate.

That’s a yuck, actually – shocked. You’ll see why in a minute.

Honk honk honk honk!

I brace myself against the rear bumper, pulling hard. Lloyd struggles. He doesn’t want to go with me. It’s awful, but kind of funny too. A reformed bully tries to rescue his old victim, and the victim doesn’t want any part of it.

Suddenly he goes rigid with terror. Not because of me. He’s never been this scared of me, not even when I was punching him or peeing on his coat. I drop his legs and turn. A rickety wooden door swings open at the back of the garage. Someone’s inside. The alarm’s been honking for less than a minute, but Lloyd’s kidnapper is not your regular householder. Of course he’s going to come quickly.

“
Watch out!
” yells a familiar voice from over my head.

“Dad!” yells Lloyd.

There’s a fizzing sound, and my world stops.

CHAPTER 34

I
’m on the floor of the garage, and my right shoulder is on fire. I feel like I’ve been stomped by a rhinoceros. The air smells like after-the-lightning. My right side is numb.

The car alarm shuts off. I can hear the blood pounding in my ears.

A man in a dark tracksuit stands next to me. Looks like an old ninja. He’s holding something in his hand. A flashlight or something. His voice is soft and sweet as cotton candy.

“Sorry, Dad,” says Lloyd. His voice seems to come from far away.

“Sorry doesn’t mow the lawn, son,” says the man in the tracksuit. “You know that.”

My brain is like an engine with a faulty ignition. It’s turning over but not catching. What happened? What happened?

A shadowy figure floats near my head.

“Hi, uh, Raoul.”

I don’t know if I actually say the words, but I think them. Raoul is Marcie’s Mourner. The bearded guy with the whiny voice. It takes me a second to remember his name. He waves at me.

“Maybe next time you could give me a bit more warning,” I say.

He shrugs like, I did my best.

I struggle to sit up. My right arm shakes uncontrollably. The old ninja squats next to me. His hair is wispy, and his mouth is puckered up like he’s about to kiss a baby on election day. “You’re trespassing, puke,” he says. “That’s the second time this month you pukes have broken into my car. I’m going to teach you to respect what is mine.”

He holds out the flashlight, only it’s not a flashlight. Instead of a light, there are two little pointy things on the end, and a small spark between them. The spark makes a buzzing sound.