Runner (9 page)

She frowned. "I don't think anyone else is coming."

She fingered a stack of file folders in front of her that I guessed were for stories. I broke off a piece of the croissant and ate it.

"Did you write anything?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I tried, Melissa. I really did. I started something on salmon. But what I wrote sounded like an eighth-grade report. A bad one."

She looked away. "It doesn't matter. Thomas is the only one who submitted anything, and all his stuff is sports. Annie hasn't written a word—I'm sure that's why she's not here. Natasha spends all her time studying for the SAT. I'll never get an issue out before Christmas. Mr. Bresnan is my faculty advisor, and he doesn't care. He gets paid the same if there's one newspaper or if there's ten. I thought if it was a great newspaper it might help me get into Stanford, but the whole thing is going to be a total failure."

"You'll get in anyway. You've got good grades."

She managed a weak smile. "You need more than good grades for Stanford. You have to show something special for them. And there's nothing special about me."

"That's not true," I said, and right away I felt stupid.

She reached over and put her hand on mine. "That's sweet, Chance."

After that we sipped our drinks and talked about Arnold's class. I was in no hurry to finish, and she wasn't either. Finally, around ten, she stretched. "It's so warm in here, I'm getting sleepy. Do you want to go for a walk? Sunset Hill Park isn't too far."

We took Thirty-fourth Avenue, a quiet, dark street on the bluff above the marina. The night was clear and cold, with more stars in the sky than usual. When we reached the park, she stopped, leaned against the chainlink fence, and pointed down to the marina. "Can you see your boat?" she said.

"I can pick out the pier," I said. "But that's it. Our boat is small."

A barge, probably carrying sand headed for Salmon Bay Gravel, was gliding across Puget Sound. A couple of big freighters were anchored offshore.

"Those ships are ugly when you see them up close," she said, "yet they're beautiful at night from a distance."

A chill wind came up, and she leaned into me for warmth. I put my arm around her, and she leaned in closer. For a long time, neither of us said anything. Finally, a foghorn broke the silence. "I've got to get home," she said, looking at her watch.

For the first few blocks walking back, it was as if we were alone in the world. That she was headed for Stanford and I was headed nowhere didn't seem to matter. But when we reached streets with more traffic, we pulled apart. By the time we'd reached her car, the mood that had brought us together was gone.

"I've been thinking about the newspaper," she said.

"What about it?"

"Natasha's idea was good. I talked to my dad. He says he doesn't think there's much danger from terrorists, but that there always is smuggling on a waterfront. He says that if you kept your eyes open, you might see something. Now that would really make a great story."

I tried to keep my voice level. "Melissa, if the cops can't find smugglers, how can I?"

"It's just an idea," she said. "It can't hurt to keep your eyes open."

It was early Saturday morning, not even eight o'clock. The sky was wet and gray. I was headed to Little Coney for breakfast. That was something I'd started doing every Saturday now that I had a little money. As I walked along the marina, I pulled my coat tightly around me and buried my hands in my pockets.

I stopped at the newspaper rack in front of Pier M to buy a newspaper for my dad. I stuck a quarter into the slot and opened the rack. The top newspaper was wrinkled, so I took one from further down in the stack. "Two Soldiers Killed" the headline shouted. I read the first sentence of the article and folded the newspaper in half. When I turned around, the fat guy was standing behind me. "Come with me," he said.

I followed him into the marina office. On Saturday, the office didn't open until nine, so we were the only ones there. When we stepped inside, he turned on the light, but he kept
the blinds down. I followed him to his desk in the back. I sat down in a blue plastic chair as he slid into his swivel chair.

"Is there someplace on the boat where you could store things for a little while?" he asked.

"I don't know. I don't think so. Everything's pretty tight already."

"Come on, there has to be someplace. It's worth another hundred dollars a month to you."

I remembered the secret storage nook where Dad kept his service medals and his American flag. It was behind a false panel in my sleeping berth. Unless you knew it was there, you'd never find it. That spot was almost a taboo place—my dad never looked in there. "I guess I could store some packages. Not too many. But what's wrong with what's been going on so far?"

"Nothing's wrong with it. And you're going to keep doing it. Only every once in a while there's going to be a different kind of package. When that happens, you bring it to the boat and store it. You understand?"

"How will I know?"

"You'll know. These packages will look and feel different."

"For how long will I store them?"

"Not long. Somebody will contact you, and then they'll take them off your hands."

"How will they contact me?"

"I don't know and I don't care. But they will."

I stared at him for a long time, searching his dark eyes. Suddenly everything clicked. "That envelope a while back," I said. "That was a trial run, wasn't it? You've got a new
customer. Which means you're making double what you made before. So I should get double."

He glared at me. "Double?" he replied contemptuously. "You're not doing anything more than what you've been doing. You're lucky to be getting an extra hundred bucks. Don't push it, kid."

I didn't back down. "I want double," I said. Then I leaned forward. "I could go to the police, you know. I could tell them all about you."

The fat guy jumped to his feet, reached across his desk, grabbed me by the shirt, and yanked me out of the chair with a strength I wouldn't have thought he had. His eyes darkened chillingly. "Listen and listen good. This isn't some high school poker game you're involved with. If the wrong people heard you talk about the police, we could both end up in body bags. Understand?" He jerked me forward so that my face was inches from his. "Understand!"

"I understand," I whispered, my throat so tight I could hardly speak.

Still he kept squeezing, and fear roared through my body. "Say it again. Only this time I want to hear it."

"I understand," I said, my voice louder. He shoved me back into my plastic chair. I slumped down, my heart racing.

"You think I'm scary, kid? I'm Mother Teresa, that's who I am, compared to the other people involved in this. Now get out of here."

I stood, my knees like Jell-O, and made my way to the door. I opened it, stepped outside, and walked about halfway back
to the boat. Then I stopped and leaned over the railing and vomited.

I was out of my league. The people I was dealing with were criminals. Big-time criminals. Million-dollar criminals. I didn't see them, but that didn't mean they didn't see me. I had to be very careful. And as soon as I could, I had to get out.

Over Christmas break, my dad would get up early every morning, shave, and leave before I even got out of my bed. He never said where he was going, and I never asked. Maybe he was going to Labor Ready, a place for men to get temporary jobs, or maybe he was drinking at the Sloop Tavern. Probably one day it was one place, and the next it was the other.

I slept for as long as I possibly could those mornings. Then I'd get up and hang out around the marina and along Market Street. On decent days, I'd walk to Great Harvest bakery. They give away big hunks of warm bread as samples. I'd get a piece, then sit down at one of the tables and—surrounded by the smell of baking bread and the warmth of the ovens—eat it as slowly as I possibly could. A couple of times I caught matinees at the Majestic Bay. Still, the days dragged.

On Christmas Eve, my dad found some hemlock branches
that had been downed by a windstorm. He stuck them in a bucket filled with sand and stood them up in the corner of the cabin. "What do you think of our Christmas tree?" he said.

"It's great," I said, but I wished he'd done nothing.

Christmas morning I gave him a book on the exploration of Antarctica that I'd bought at Secret Garden bookstore. He read the title and then flipped the book over. "This is about Roald Amundsen." He skimmed the first paragraph, and then looked up. "Amundsen was a great man, Chance. A great explorer. Thank you very much."

He shoved a plastic bag toward me. I opened it; inside were gloves made of some high-tech fabric. "I got them at a bike shop," he said. "They're supposed to keep you warm but not make you sweaty."

"They're great, Dad," I said. "Thanks."

"I figured sometimes your hands must get cold when you run."

"They do. These will be great."

"All right, then. Not such a bad Christmas after all."

I ran at my regular time that afternoon, and then I went to the movies. I thought the theater would be empty, but it was nearly full. The movie was some comedy whose name I can't remember. Around me, people laughed like crazy. When the movie ended, I walked back to the marina. I thought I'd have the boat to myself, but my dad was waiting for me down in the cabin. "Let's go to dinner," he said.

We went to Charley's, a restaurant on the waterfront not too far from our pier. When the waiter came around, I ordered
a hamburger. My dad shook his head. "You're getting a New York steak," he said. "And I'm getting the same."

"Anything to drink?" the waiter asked.

"Coke," I said.

"The same for me," my dad said, which surprised me.

I guess I must have looked nervous about the money he was spending, because he told me to stop worrying. "I've been working steady all week at Ballard Bicycles. Assembling bikes, that sort of thing."

After that we sat at the table, neither of us talking. Finally the food came. I'd been eating canned and packaged meals for so long that I'd forgotten how good a steak dinner at a restaurant could be. The meat was pink and juicy; the mashed potatoes buttery; the carrots glazed in brown sugar. After he took his first bite of the steak, my dad looked up. "Good, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said, "it is."

When we had both finished eating, he put the napkin down by his plate and looked at me. "There's a chance they'll keep me on at the bike shop. If they do, I want you to quit that job of yours. You understand?"

"Sure, Dad," I said.

He leaned forward. "I mean it, Chance. If they hire full-time, I want you to quit that job. I don't like anything about it."

"You don't know anything about it," I said.

"I know you get paid in cash, Chance. You try to hide that wad of bills, but I've seen it. Delivering stuff on the waterfront for cash—I wasn't born yesterday."

I looked out the window. "Say I quit and then you lose your job. Where will we be then?"

"I won't lose it, Chance."

The family at the table across from us all broke into laughter over something. We both looked over; the man was laughing so hard tears came to his eyes.

"OK," I said. "If they hire you full-time, I'll quit."

When I'd first started working for the fat guy, I figured the lousy weather in the winter would empty the beach and make it easier for me to search through the rocks for packages without worrying that someone would see me and get suspicious. But it was almost January, and every day people were still out combing the beach.

These weren't muscle builders or babes working on their suntans. They were winter beach people, and they were looking for things: herons and eagles, starfish and sea pens. They held binoculars to their eyes, and they knew the beach like I knew the
Tiny Dancer.
They made me nervous, so I took to running as close to nightfall as I dared. It was harder to see if I ran late, but the later I ran, the more deserted the beach was.

New Year's Day I waited until it was so dark that I almost didn't find the package. I spotted it just as I was turning to head back. The wrapping was different from the other
packages; the paper was reddish and coarse. And whatever was inside felt different too, though I immediately knew I'd felt something like it before. Finally it came to me—it had the consistency of Play-Doh.

This was the new stuff.

I slipped the package into my backpack and headed back to the marina. But instead of bringing the package to the locker, I kept it on the
Tiny Dancer.
My dad was working at the bike shop, so it was simple to go below deck, climb into my berth, slide open the panel to the secret storage nook, lift out his medals and his perfectly folded American flag, and hide the package behind them.

I'd gotten used to sleeping late, so it was hard getting out of bed the Monday winter break ended. As I dragged myself up the hill toward Lincoln High, the skies opened and a freezing rain poured down. I walked fast, but still I was drenched by the time I made it to school. As I pushed open the main doors, I spotted a stack of school newspapers by the front door.

I grabbed a copy and headed to the commons area, hoping it would be warm in there. Other kids must have had the same idea; it was so crowded I had to sit on the floor.

For the ten minutes before my first class, I skimmed through Thomas Dowell's articles on the football team, the girls' volleyball team, and the soccer team. Annie Comstock wrote something on the ecology club; Natasha Martin had a description of the new biotech academy. Melissa wrote everything else. Some junior had come in third at a chess competition; four kids were National Merit Scholarship semifinalists;
one of the football players worked with Habitat for Humanity. She wrote other stuff, too, stuff that I didn't read.

Almost everybody in the commons was flipping through the newspaper. But when the bell rang, most kids left it behind on the tables or tossed it in the trash.