Ripple (21 page)

Sam leans, arms crossed, against his Escalade in the parking lot where I told him to meet me. Despite being the dead of night, he's got sunglasses perched on his head. Carver, with his usual spastic energy, fidgets close by.

I pull up and take a deep breath. Tonight has already been a goddamn roller coaster. One minute I wanted to stuff Tessa in a hospital closet and never see her again, the next I wanted to hold her in the middle of the cemetery and just feel her next to me.

Then she showed me that hat. With that blood. Cute, sweet Emma's blood. In Mom's car. And I lost it.

It was a gut reaction, kicking her out of the car. I don't think I've ever been that pissed off before. But people have been coming after my mom for a long time now, and I'm conditioned to get in their way.

And if Mom did hit Emma, I need to protect her. That means keeping everyone, Tessa included, away from the whole truth of what Mom is now.

I suck in another lungful of air. In the distance, beyond Sam and Carver, I spy the mailbox just off the main drag down a thin
side street, where Mom dropped her letter full of psycho-ness to Representative Binchy. I get into that fuck-with-the-world mode and get out of the car.

Sam adjusts his thermal henley as he steps toward me. “Took your ass long enough to get here,” he says. “What's on the agenda?” His clean-shaven face is filled with curiosity.

“Yeah, dude. What are we doing?” Carver's white-blond hair spikes out from the sides of a black beanie. He's clad in a long-sleeved black sweatshirt and shifts from foot to foot, practically drooling for what my plan might be. He actually looks like a thief. Except for the spray of freckles on his tanned face and his black Bermuda shorts with some embroidered designer label on them.

“On the agenda tonight, boys, is massive destruction of government property.”

Carver smiles, but Sam holds his hands up. “Whoa, bro. Not sure I want to go there. Have you heard that my mom is, like, the mayor?”

“Never fear. This will most assuredly not be a crime against the city. It's a federal offense. Completely different.”

I open the back of Mom's Jetta, where I'd crammed a PVC pipe bomb I made just for the hell of it last year. It's perfect for this job. I'll need to position it just right to incinerate Mom's letter but not do any major damage to surrounding property or human tissue.

Sam sees the bomb and cringes. “Holy shit. Seriously, dude. My mom was just talking to me about applying to the University of Michigan, but they don't take people from Jackson prison.”

I shove the bomb into a backpack and walk up to Sam.

“Look.” I turn slightly so he sees. “It's so small, it fits neatly into a backpack. It's like a little baby felony.”

“Sweet,” Carver says, eyeing the bomb like it's chocolate cake.
Carver has less to lose. His football-loving dad has donated crap-tons of money to Central Michigan's athletic department. Though Carver hasn't even started his college apps, I'm sure he'll be accepted to Central with open arms no matter what blemishes he has on his record.

Sam frowns at Carver. “It's not fucking sweet. This is fucked up. I know you've got issues with authority, my friend.” He points at me. “But seriously, what the hell are you thinking?”

Sam crosses his arms again. He's a little taller than me and using every inch he's got to show me he's not happy. He's not going for this one, and frankly, I don't blame him. He's got a future to protect, even if he's being pushed into it by his mom.

But my future prospects depend on destroying the letter in that box.

“You're right.” I give him a long, sincere look. “I don't want you in on this one.”

“What?” Carver blurts, disappointed.

“You either.” I nod at Carver. He looks wounded. “This is my gig, so you both have choices. Go home or hang here in the comfort of Sam's very expensive luxury vehicle and watch the fireworks from a distance.”

Sam steps up to close the small gap between us. His voice drops to almost a whisper. “First, my parents bought the Escalade used.”

As if that makes it any less worth a fortune,
I think.

“Second, I don't get why you want to do this. Can't we go spray-paint something? Lodge someone's car in a too-tight space? I mean, why does it have to be a bomb?”

Maybe for the first time, I get serious with Sam. “Listen, dude, my mom's done something stupid as hell. I have to make it right.”

Sam takes in my determined expression. I don't know how
much his mom has told him about my mom's issues. I don't even know how much Mayor Kearns really knows, but Sam nods.

“Okay,” he says. “We'll stay here and whistle our asses off if someone like, oh, say, the police, wander your way.”

I give him a grateful half smile. “Thanks.”

“No worries.” He herds Carver into the Escalade. They watch me cross the street and head to the only public mailbox in town.

I walk about fifty feet past the blue box to a secluded spot behind a string of bushes in front of the
Pineville Post
building. Normally, I'd prepare more. Days before, I'd have chosen a place for surveillance like this one in the bushes. I'd have sat there crouched for an hour or two to determine the patterns of movement in town at this time of night.

But the town looks dead with it being so late, and I don't have time for preparation. That letter goes out Monday morning. The cops are dealing with the drunk and disorderly in other places. The time for this deed is now.

In the shadow, I slip on some utility gloves, pull a wet wipe from my jacket pocket, and wipe the bomb's PVC pipe clean of any fingerprints.

My heart is pumping fast. I try to find that calm center I usually have during these pranks of mine. But this is so far beyond a prank. This has moved into territory where I never expected myself to go.

But I have no choice. I can't let her destroy her legal career with this crazy letter. We still need any income she manages to bring in if we're going to pay our rent and bills and stay together here in Pineville.

I give the pipe bomb one last inspection. I'd made it to see if I could, just for the challenge. It was supposed to be plugging a
toilet I'd pulled from some junkyard and tossed in a field. Porcelain's pretty when it explodes. Instead, it's here.

Half gunpowder, half petroleum jelly. Gasoline will keep the fire burning longer to ensure all the letters inside the box, including Mom's, burn. The wick's extra long, so I have time to get away.

But once it's lit, it's lit. And there's no undoing it.

I search the stretch of sidewalk on either side of the street. No one. I look to Sam's Escalade sitting in the lot with the lights off, the steam from the purring engine coiling softly into the brisk October night. Then I take a deep breath and think of Mom. Of her hand on my cheek. The way she looks at me like I'm all that matters to her. “I love you, Jackie,” she says. Often.

I lift the hood on my sweatshirt over my head and start moving toward my target.

My lighter is lit by the time I'm halfway to the mailbox. The flame touches the wick with a spit and a spark, coming to life. My mouth is dry. My heart is racing. I try to keep my hands from shaking. My usual prank-induced thrill is missing.

Still, I hyperfocus. Grip the mailbox's hinged door, slip the bomb in, and rush back to the hiding spot in the bushes. I hope to hell I'm outside of the blast zone and any flying shrapnel at this distance. But I have to make sure the bomb blows correctly before I leave the scene. Otherwise, this risk was for nothing.

Smoke snakes into the air. The wick will give me about a minute before the blast. I hold my breath. Somehow, I know Sam and Carver aren't breathing either.

Suddenly, Sam jumps out of his car. He waves his arms, spastic and crazy, telling me to stop.

But I can't. The wick's lit. It's a done deal.

He points down the sidewalk where some middle-school-age
kid on his skateboard fishtails his way down the street, headed toward the smoking mailbox.

What the fuck!
Why's a goddamn kid skateboarding in the middle of the night?

My head calculates the time, his position, my distance from him and the mailbox. He's getting closer to the bomb each second. Adrenaline rocks every cell in my body. I picture his young face blown off by the explosion.

“Fuck!” I bolt out of the bushes, sprinting toward the kid and closer to the box.

He startles as I launch myself at him. I yank him toward the bushes as a thunderous crack sounds.

The blast knocks me onto the kid. He grunts beneath me as the hinged door of the box blows past our heads and hits the ground several feet away. The smell of gunpowder fills the air. The crackle of fire smolders inside the box.

I lift off the kid, his close-set eyes as big as the O of his mouth. I scan him, make sure he's not hurt, then realize I need to hide, stop letting him get a good look at me. I pull my hoodie over my head and face again.

“Go home,” I bark at him.

Terrified, the kid jumps up. “Whoa. Like, wow. Thanks, dude,” he says, shaking.

“Get out of here!” I snarl. He dashes off, leaving his skateboard covered in cinders and sparks near the torn-open blue box, where it had rolled to a stop.

With the kid gone, I sprint over to check my handiwork. Like serious fate is on my side, only one letter sits burning to ash inside the mailbox. It has to be Mom's. Relief washes through me that I didn't destroy someone else's mail. I silently thank the world's
techie geniuses for email and online bill payment. Oh, and for the 3:00 p.m. Saturday mail pickup Mom must have been too late for.

I leave the letter to burn, get up, and bolt toward the parking lot, past the Escalade already pulling out of the lot. Sam throws me a quick wave as I head to Mom's car. In the distance, a siren sounds. But I'm on the road and headed home before anyone else arrives at the scene.

Only when I pull into my driveway do I realize I've barely been breathing. I finger a hole in my shirt from a flying spark. I can't get the scent of gunpowder and gasoline out of my nose. And the eagle emblem of the U.S. Postal Service flashes in my head. The magnitude of the crime I've just committed suddenly sinks in. And for the first time in a long time, I'm afraid. Scared out of my mind I've gone from simple vandalism to a federal offense. But more terrified that I may not be smart enough to manipulate my way out of this one.

All I want to do is sleep, to not think for a little while, but I know, after what Tessa found in Mom's car earlier, that I need to inspect it and see if there is any evidence of Mom hitting something. Or someone.

Even without any alcohol, Mom is a crappy driver, so her car has always been sixteen kinds of fucked up, with dents and scratches all over. But when I lean down toward the right side of the bumper, I can see that the turn signal light is pushed in farther than normal. And when I get on my back, peer into the wheel well, I find the hard plastic casing torn partly away and hair—Emma's color—pinched between the casing and the metal car frame.

My chest hurts as I imagine Mom speeding to the cemetery that night, worked up and emotional, not thinking clearly. As
usual. And poor pixie-like Emma not even suspecting Mom would plow her right down. Not even stop.

Mom didn't fucking stop.

If she did, it was just long enough to pull Emma's hat off her grill.
Christ!

I scrub my hands over my face, then head into my house. But I stop instantly. All the kitchen drawers are open, and the knives—butter to steak to cleaver—are missing. I curse myself for not hiding them. The only hammer Mom and I own and my baseball bat from middle school sit by the front door. Mom's collecting weapons. Panic skitters through me.

I push at Mom's bedroom door, careful to make sure she's not waiting right behind it with a knife. From the dark, I hear a panicked squeak. She's lying in bed, covers pulled up to her nose, her forehead and the skin around her eyes all wrinkled with terror. The knives from the kitchen splay like dangerous confetti on her covers and along the floor by her bed.

I flip on the light. “Hey, what's going on?” I keep my voice smooth and calm. But I wonder if one day, no matter how calmly I talk, I'll have morphed into something horrific in front of her. Or she'll think I've turned against her somehow.

“He was outside, Jackie,” she whispers. “Out by our woods. He's coming for us.”

I step farther into her room. Slowly. Gauging how she reacts as I get closer. I bend and pick up the knives from the floor. They clink together as I gather them under one arm.

“Those are his woods, too, Mom. They line the side of his yard just like they line the back of ours. He's probably just finding kindling from the trees in there. They have a wood-burning stove inside, remember? We saw the fire?”

She shakes her head. “You know what that fire was!” she cries. And I give a silent curse for bringing it up at all and for trying to appeal to any rational part in her when, right now, she's anything but rational.

She pulls the blankets away from her face, agitated. “We should move,” she spits. “He might come tonight, so we should go.”

And she's right. We should. It might calm her down a little. But no one is going to give us the rental deal Mayor Kearns has given us, and I can't afford to pay for anything more. Maybe I could take on another job. Drop out of school and work full-time.

I nod at her. “I'll see what other rentals I can find.”

Mom relaxes a little. I pick up the knives on her pink-and-peach-flowered comforter.

“Where were you?” she asks. “I thought he might have taken you.” Her worried eyes begin to water. I set the knives down on the chair by the door before sitting next to her. I grip her hands in mine. They're cold. Always freezing cold.