Paranoid Park (20 page)

At this point, I looked down at my hands and saw they were dirty and cut up from getting jerked off the fence. The Streeters had me. They had me dead. If Brady hadn’t come along, who knows what would have happened.

I felt a deep shiver pass through me then. My whole body began to shake. I crawled into the passenger seat of Detective Brady’s warm car. It was the same car I had ridden in before, which made me feel better. A strange calmness came over me. I had the thought:
I could tell Brady the truth.

I stared at the river and the city beyond it. Detective Brady was the key. He was the person I had been looking for, the person I could trust, the person who understood. He’d been right in front of me all this time. Why hadn’t I seen that?

My eyes teared up. I began to cry. I felt all the tension that I had been holding in my body finally begin to melt and let go. I wiped the tears off my face with my shirtsleeve. I found some old Dunkin’ Donuts napkins on the seat and blew my nose.

As I dabbed my eyes and face, I spotted something else on the seat. It was a greeting card, in an envelope. I was sitting on it, crushing it. I scooted to the side and pulled it out. The return address caught my eye. It said “Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Brady.”

I looked at it while I blew my nose again. Who was Edwin Brady? It had to be a relative. It couldn’t be his parents; his parents were divorced.

But now I was curious. I held the envelope in the moonlight. It was addressed to Matthew Brady, and it was from Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Brady. I pulled the card out. On the cover was a picture of a scenic mountaintop. The inside was blank, but with this handwritten note:

I tried to think how this could be. Detective Brady’s parents were divorced. He had told me that himself, when I told him about my own family.

Had he meant he was divorced? But he obviously wasn’t. He was married to this Lisa person.

I sat in the car and read the card again. I looked at the envelope. Detectives couldn’t lie to you, could they? Wasn’t that illegal? Like, a cop could say something to scare you, but a detective, trying to solve a case, can’t just flat-out
lie
to you. That wouldn’t be right. They would get in trouble. Even if it was something that had nothing to do with the case, right? They couldn’t just make stuff up, to trick you, to make you like them or trust them or whatever....

Could they?

The night air seemed colder when I got out of Brady’s car. I pulled my track jacket closer around me as I shut the door. One of the cops turned when he heard it slam. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to stop me.

I walked across the parking lot, away from the river. Another police car was parked at the other end. I couldn’t see if anyone was in it.

I kept walking, across Grand Avenue, under the highway, back to the access road. I walked across the silent, deserted parking lot and found my board lying upside down next to the chain-link fence. The Streeters’ boards were there, too, scattered here and there. I left them and walked north to MLK Boulevard, to where the buses ran.

I’m not sure what I was thinking as I did this. I had a strange conviction that nothing would happen to me. Not that night. And I was right. No one came after me. No one chased me down.

At MLK, the 57 bus had just pulled in. I hopped on. I was still shaking slightly as I walked down the aisle. I took the fourth seat from the back, the same one I sat in with Macy that night on Vista. That was going to be my seat from now on, I decided.

The bus left a moment later. It drove over the river and up Burnside toward the West Side. I watched cars pass by out the window. I watched houses nestled in the trees along the road. I didn’t talk to myself that night. I just sat there. My brain was a blank. I didn’t think about anything.

At my neighborhood stop, I got off the bus and walked down my street. I hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone at home, and I got my wish. My mom was sprawled on the couch, snoring in front of the TV. Henry was asleep, too, in the big chair. I walked through to the stairs and went up to my room. I took off my clothes and took a shower.

Back in my room, I put on clean underwear, a clean T-shirt. I turned on my radio and listened to the end of that night’s Trail Blazers game. As I crawled into bed, I felt that familiar ache in my chest, that fear of being caught, or found out or whatever. But I didn’t let it bother me. None of this was my fault. I was just some kid. I lay down and pulled the covers up to my neck. I blinked at the ceiling.
God, you put me in this place,
I said.
You can’t blame me for trying to survive.

Then I rolled over, and in a few short minutes I was asleep.

During the next couple days, I felt my usual anxieties: waiting for the phone to ring, for Brady to show up, for the regular police to pull me out of class and lead me away in handcuffs.

They never did. Nothing happened. No one came.

The divorce stuff continued. Unlike murders, every detail of the divorce was studied and discussed by a vast array of experts. One Saturday, a male friend of my mom who was a divorce lawyer came over and tried to help her. He spread out a bunch of papers on the kitchen table, and they drank coffee and talked all afternoon.

I stayed away from the kitchen during that. I went out to the driveway to practice my ollies. I set up a line of empty pop cans and practiced jumping over them. After a couple passes I fell on my ass. I rolled onto my back and just lay there for a minute, in the middle of my driveway. It was weird lying on the cold cement, staring up at the gray winter sky. It was kinda cool. The sky looked so big and open and almost friendly. It made me feel good to stare into it. The blankness. The emptiness.

“Hello?” said a voice.

I lifted my head. It was Macy. I put my head back down and closed my eyes.

“Hel-
lo
?” she repeated. “Why are you lying in the middle of your driveway?”

“Because.”

“Are you dead?”

“Do I look dead?”

“A little.”

She was on a bike. It must have been her dad’s; it was too big for her, and she had to put her foot on the curb to not fall over.

I stood up then. I picked up my board. I rode down the driveway into the street and grabbed the back of her bike.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Pull me.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Pedal!” I pushed her bike forward and she had no choice but to pedal.

“I can’t-”

“Go!”

I pushed her. We got a little speed going. She started to tow me. We went halfway down the block. Then we went back the other way.

After that, we sat on the curb at the end of the block. I sat on my board. She chewed a piece of gum.

“So I was thinking,” she said, blowing a bubble and then pulling it into a long string.

“What about?”

“Like, what you were saying. Like, if you did something that you couldn’t tell anyone.”

I didn’t want to talk about that now. “It doesn’t matter. Forget it.”

“What I would do is ...” she said. “I would write a letter.”

“Yeah?” I said. “To who?”

“To the person you did it to. Like an apology or whatever.”

I didn’t answer.

“Or maybe to someone else,” she said. “Maybe a separate person, someone you feel comfortable with. But the point is to tell it and get it off your chest. All the details, all the things you’ve been obsessing about. Get it all out on paper.”

“And then what?”

“Then you’ll feel better.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “And what do I do with the letter?”

“Whatever you want,” she said, stuffing the gum back into her mouth. “Save it. Burn it. Send it to the person. It doesn’t really matter. Writing it down, that’s the important thing. This psychologist made me do that when I was having a big fight with my mom.”

“I don’t know. It sounds like a homework assignment.”

“Trust me, once you get going, it’s not like a homework assignment. It feels so good to say all the stuff you’re thinking. It’s a big relief.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“The trick is,” she said, “write it to someone you can really talk to. You know? Like, write it to someone that you feel comfortable with. Like, not a teacher or your parents or whatever. Write it to a friend.”

“Yeah ...” I said.

“Write it to me,” she said, her voice softening slightly.

I thought about that. Then her cell phone rang. She stood up and answered it. It was her mom. She walked across the street as they argued.

I sat on my skateboard and squinted into the sky.

 

Dear ___,

So I guess that’s what these are. My letters to you, Macy McLaughlin. Or that’s what they turned into. You sort of are the person I feel “most comfortable with,” so I guess it makes sense.

You were so right, though. Every page I’ve written has felt like a weight off my shoulders. When you really get going, writing is like talking to your best friend, except they can’t interrupt you or tell you what an idiot you are.

Anyway ... what else can I tell you before I finish this? The ocean’s pretty quiet tonight. (It’s almost midnight now.) My uncle Tommy is downstairs cooking something. It was nice of him to invite me to come to his beach house for winter break. He’s been super cool about everything. He’s worried about me, I guess; he acts like I’m this fragile person now, with the divorce going on. He never pries or asks me what I do up here all night, scribbling away like some crazy person or whatever.

So anyway, the main thing I wanted to say to you before I end this is: thank you. I’m not sure for what, exactly. For being there, I guess. For riding the bus with me up Vista that night. And for occupying my brain. I sort of think about you now. Mostly because I’ve been writing you these endless letters. But at other times, too, like walking on the beach, or at night before I fall asleep. I always wondered what would replace those horrible pictures in my head. I never thought it would be the annoying sixth-grader who lived down the street.

As for what I’ll do ... who knows? I still have days when I expect Brady to show up at my door with handcuffs. Other times, I want to walk into a police station myself and confess everything. I wish I trusted people more. I wish I had more faith in things. On the other hand, why tempt fate? It’s not like adults always do the right thing. They’re more screwed up than teenagers. At least we know how full of crap we are.

That’s the thing about hanging out with you these last couple months. You kinda saved my ass. The reason is: I trust you. I really do. And that’s all it takes. Knowing there’s one person out there on your side, one person who’s got your back. That’s enough to keep you sane.