Passenger (12 page)

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.” Conner smiled and kicked my shin under the table. “Was I right?”

Conner’s always right.

This isn’t Conner.

I left him in Marbury, and he’s trying to find me.

I was scared.

I looked my best friend straight in the eyes. “This isn’t you, Conner.”

Conner looked shocked, tried to laugh. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Jack?”

I pulled out my wallet, left a twenty on the table, stuck inside the ring of sweat made by Conner’s Coke glass.

The center of the universe.

“You remember Blackpool?”

Conner shrugged. “What about it?”

“You remember having a fight?”

“Did I kick your ass?” He laughed.

“I’m not joking, Conner. Do you remember when we got into a fight on the beach?”

Conner shook his head. “Over what?”

“Nothing. Never mind. You’re right, Conner. You’re right. Let’s forget about it.”

I stood up and started to make my way out of the diner.

Conner followed. “What’re you doing? Will you cool it?”

I didn’t want to look at him. I pushed for the door, almost knocked down one of those cheap wooden stands with free Glenbrook real estate magazines in it. And Conner stayed right on my heels all the way out into the parking lot.

The sky was gray.

It looked like Marbury, but the sun had just finally dropped below the mountains to the west and a white-hot sliver of moon hung in the thick furnace of evening.

Marbury: (noun) Third planet in order from the sun. No natural satellites. This planet, as the only in the Solar System which is inhabited by humans.

I think, standing there at the front of Conner’s identical-to-mine truck, facing away from him, at that moment I realized that I was totally alone.

There’s nobody home, Jack.

It was like being dead, or standing in the center of an endless cemetery.

THIS WAS THE HARDEST TO GET OUT OF.

I was done.

So I made a list in my head—first, second, third—the things Jack would do; the last things Jack would ever do.

Fuck this place.

I needed to get out.

“I’m sorry, Con,” I said. “I think I better go home. Maybe I need to sleep or something.”

Conner opened his door and started the truck.

“I don’t want you to do anything weird, Jack. Maybe you should just spend the night at my place.”

I got in.

“Oh. I’d never do anything weird.”

That made Conner laugh.

That was good.

I had to get away.

nine

It wasn’t completely dark yet when I left Conner’s house.

I promised I’d bring his clothes back in the morning, and he joked that I didn’t need to bother returning them—because seeing them on me, he realized how gay they looked.

Before I drove away, I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. I felt like everything I ever knew was gone. I was just so tired.

I believed it was the last time I’d ever see my best friend.

But it wasn’t Conner.

*   *   *

I left my truck in the lot at Steckel Park and then I found the bench—the same one where I’d passed out the night Freddie Horvath took me and drugged me. I thought it was the same bench, but I couldn’t be absolutely certain.

I couldn’t be sure anything was the same anymore.

I knew what I was going to do. I had that cop’s business card in my hand. I was just trying to will myself to hit the
SEND
button on my phone. I’d already punched in the numbers, after I’d double-checked to be sure there was no contact listing for Ben or Griffin—like I’d almost convinced myself that I was just fucked up, that my friends would appear again out of nowhere, and everything would simply go back to being the way it was all supposed to be.

I’d talk to him and then I’d leave. I just needed to know one thing, and then Jack could pop out of this Glenbrook and not come back. And I didn’t care where I ended up.

The glasses were wrapped up in my stinking clothes, sitting under the seat in my truck.

And I thought,
Maybe I just need to go find a dictionary, so I can see what words have been wiped out of this universe.

I swallowed, gritted my teeth.

SEND

“Avery Scott.”

“It’s Jack Whitmore.”

There was a pause. Maybe five seconds. And I heard him switch the phone in his hands, like he was putting it down so he could write something. Maybe he had to switch off the remote from the football game or the porn he was watching.

“Don’t put me on a speakerphone,” I said.

Another pause.

Things being moved again.

“Okay. You’re not. You want to talk? I can come to you. Where are you?”

“What’s wrong with doing it like this?” I said.

“If that’s what you want.”

“Okay.” I snapped my face to the side. The lights overhead in the park flickered on and a moth nearly flew into my mouth. “I just want to ask you how you know about me.”

“Look, Jack. I really think we should talk. Why don’t I come there, wherever you are?”

And I wondered if maybe he had some way of pinpointing where I was calling from.

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Nobody’s going to know anything about you. Is that what you’re scared of? The newspapers, the TV, they’ll never know your name or see your face. I just want to find out if you’re okay, kid. I need to know more about that guy. For the other kids. You know, their families. That’s all. I promise.”

It was the second promise Avery Scott made to me that day.

“What can you tell me?”

“I can show you what I got, Jack. What I got about you.”

He was lying.

There was nothing.

He couldn’t have anything about me.

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

“Jack?”

“What?”

“Where are you?”

I don’t know where this is.

“The park.”

“Five minutes.”

END

*   *   *

Avery Scott sits beside me and hands a flat yellow envelope to me.

I can tell the envelope has never been opened; the edges are sharp and it smells like an office supply store.

He asks if I’d like to grab some coffee.

Or something.

The closest place is Java and Jazz, and I can hear the music.

Or maybe I only think I do, but I tell him no.

I’m not going to let him take me on any more fifteen-minute rides.

I flip the envelope in my hands, open the shining flap. My fingertip tacks across the adhesive. I can smell the glue, and it seems to say,
Put me in your mouth.

Inside, there are papers. Stacked. Some are wrinkled.

“He had this remote file server,” Scott says. “Do you know what that is?”

He thinks I am stupid.

Fuck you.

“It took a while to track it down. He was very organized. Different folders for every one of … you kids. All kinds of information. Medical stuff—weight, blood type, blood pressure, temperature.” The cop watches me. My face.

The top sheet is a color scan of my driver’s license.

Jack is smiling. His hair is down in one eye. A sixteen-year-old kid who nothing ever happened to.

The next two are color photos of me.

Jack is lying on that bed.

The top picture shows the kid from the chest up. No shirt.

The eyes are closed, but you can see glistening slits where they aren’t completely shut. His mouth is open. He looks like a dead kid.

The picture on the next page is taken from the foot of the bed. The kid is lying there on his back, one arm flopped out, dangling over the sides of the mattress, the other hand resting on his belly. And one of Jack’s feet is bent up inside his opposite knee, making a figure 4. Passed out. This was before Freddie put that cable around the kid’s ankle. There is nothing tying Jack down. He just looks dead.

It looks like a cheap amateur porn shot, maybe taken with a cell phone or a twenty-dollar webcam. Jack’s lying there naked.

I look at the cop, wonder if he’s getting some kind of kick watching me.

In that moment, everything is there. I can smell the inside of that room, the cigarettes Freddie smoked. I can feel the precise points on my skin where he pressed the stun gun, the cutting of the wire around my ankle, where his hands touched me, where the needle went into my thigh on that last night. And I remember how the shit he injected me with made my mouth dry and left a taste like nail polish.

It’s funny how you remember stuff sometimes.

The last page has two pictures on it. They are small, cropped, and blurry.

Two more dead-looking kids.

One of them is Ben Miller. The other is Griffin Goodrich.

I turn the page over. I can’t look at it.

This can’t be real.

This isn’t Glenbrook.

It isn’t them.

My mouth is dry; I try to swallow and I slide the papers back inside the envelope.

Bye, Jack.

*   *   *

“You know those kids?”

“Fuck you. Fuck this shit. It isn’t happening.”

I started hyperventilating. It felt like the entire Cadillac was inside some kind of trash compactor, closing in, pressing down on me. I tried grabbing for the handle of the door. I missed, closed my hand on empty air, like when I felt Griffin’s arm vanish in my grip.

I don’t know how long we sat there. It was so quiet, and I found myself staring at the glint of light reflected on the dashboard. Fake wood. This wasn’t real. That’s all there was to it.

I needed to get out of here, before it sucked me in forever.

I realized he smelled like booze. When I called him, he must have been drinking.

“I think I know those kids.”

“They were from here,” the cop said. “Did he show you pictures of them or something? Films?”

“I don’t know. I know them. Ben and Griffin.”

“Okay.”

“Where are they?”

Scott shrugged, like I shouldn’t have to ask these things. And he delivered his answer like a tired fry cook handing over some change and a greasy sack of fast food.

“They were found inside a barrel in Freddie Horvath’s garage. Their bodies were there for maybe four months.”

That’s a lie.

This can’t be real.

“You want to come with me, to my office?”

“Not tonight.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? You’re a cop and you’re just going to say ‘okay’? Okay, Jack. Everything’s fine with me. Okay, Jack, these kids you know are inside a fucking can. Okay, Jack, see you tomorrow. Fuck you, Jack.”

Jack doesn’t cry.

I could tell he was waiting, listening to my breathing so he’d know when the piece of shit kid was calmed down.

“What am I going to do? Arrest you?”

“Maybe.”

“For what?”

“How many other kids?”

“You were number eight, as far as we can tell. You three from Glenbrook. The others were back in Kansas City.”

“Okay.”

“How’d he get you?”

“I fucked up. My mistake.”

I started to open the door. The interior lights came on. Outside the Cadillac, everything was black.

Scott said, “Two things, Jack.”

I sat there with one foot dangling out the door. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stand, anyway.

He said, “The date on the files, your pictures, was June twelfth. Not too long ago. They found the guy’s body on Nacimiento Road, I don’t know, three, four days after that.”

I swallowed.

“How’d you get away? Or did he let you go?”

I stood up, leaned against his door.
I could make it,
I thought. I could get away. I was not going to let him trap me inside that Cadillac again. But he wasn’t making any effort to stop me.

“Let me go home. I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said.

“All right. Do that. Why didn’t anyone call when you were missing, Jack?”

“You said you were only going to ask me two things.”

“I did. That was number two.”

He shifted in his seat. I could hear him leaning across, getting closer to where I stood. And he said, “Look at that. I guess they’re doing a missile launch or something at Vandenberg.”

I glanced back at him, then to the spot he was pointing at in the sky.

“You ever seen shit like that, Jack?”

“No.”

This isn’t happening.

There was a hole in the sky; the same green-gray slash I saw from the roof of Quinn Cahill’s fortress, raining glowing dust, a waterfall of dead light.

“That’s something,” he said. “I never saw it go off like that.”

My phone started buzzing in my pocket.

Or maybe it wasn’t buzzing,
I thought.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the hole in the sky.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Avery Scott was staring at me.

“Fuck ’em,” I said.

I shut the door and walked away.

*   *   *

This is not real.

This is not real.

*   *   *

When I opened the door to my truck, the phone in my pocket began buzzing again, crawling around against my skin.

I have to get out of here.

I got in, slammed the door, locked it.

Conner was calling.

“Con.”

“Where are you?”

He sounded sick.

“In my truck. What’s up?”

“I’m here. I think I’m in my room. I’m fucking sick again.”

I waited.

“What do you mean?”

Then Conner said, “Marbury.”

“We fucked up.”

“Big time.”

I could hear him coughing, like he held the phone away from his face. Conner was throwing up.

“Did you see the sky?”

“Huh?”

“Go look at the sky.”

On the other end, I could hear movement, the sound of Conner getting to his feet, a door opening, taking steps, then another door. And Conner said, “That’s the same shit that was in the sky in Marbury.”

“I saw it.”

“I don’t think we’re going to get out, Jack.”