The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (28 page)

“Grant isn't taking any visitors,” the maid said with a glance over her shoulder.

“It would only be for a minute,” Delilah said.

“I'm very sorry,” the maid said, and she did sound sorry, but she had moved her body into a defensive position in the open doorway, as if Delilah and I might suddenly try to force an entry. “I have very strict orders.”

I had only seen Leland Parker a few times, but I could easily imagine he ran his house the way Kim Jong Un ran North Korea.

“Okay,” Delilah said pleasantly, her voice sweet in a way I had never heard before. “Thanks anyway.”

Seemingly relieved, the maid shut the door gently, and Delilah turned as if to walk back to the Camaro. I was almost to the porch steps when I realized Delilah was not following me. Turning back, I saw her with her ear pressed to the front door.

“What are you doing?” I asked in a whisper.

She held up one finger, telling me to wait, then waved me back to the door.

“Come on,” she mouthed silently.

“Come on where?” I hissed.

“Inside,” she said with impatience.

“I'm not breaking into his house,” I said, my voice rising with worry.

“The door isn't locked,” she whispered. “It's not actually breaking in. We're just going to
walk
in.”

“And do what?” I asked. “Are you crazy?”

“Not as crazy as you,” she said. Then she ignored me as she gently pushed down the door lever. The noise from the door handle was barely audible, but to my ears it sounded as loud as a passing freight train.

“No,” I whispered. “Delilah. Delilah!”

But she was still ignoring me as she pushed the door open six inches and stuck her head inside. I held my breath, expecting to be startled by a cry of anger or alarm. But no one objected as she put one foot through the doorway and slid into the foyer.

I thought about just turning on my heel and walking away. If Delilah wanted to get herself arrested by her own father, that was her problem. Just the thought of running into Leland Parker as an uninvited guest in his own home made me think about peeing myself again.

I wanted to grab Delilah by the arm and drag her to the Camaro, but it was too late. She had already disappeared into the house, and I either had to leave or follow. “What the fuck am I doing?” I moaned, then slipped through the gap of the open doorway. On the other side I found myself in a cavernous foyer, with a wide staircase and an unreasonable number of paintings featuring horses. I had not noticed any horses on the grounds of the Parker mansion, but if the decor was any indication, they seemed to really like them.

My hands were sweating and my heart beat loudly in my ears as I followed Delilah's confident stride past the docile gazes of the horses and up the grand staircase. On the walls of the stairway were family portraits and photos documenting every milestone of Grant's childhood. Grant as a baby, with dimpled cheeks and wearing a onesie covered in ducks; Grant as a towheaded child in blue seersucker; Grant on one knee, squinting against the sun for his Pee Wee football portrait.

Delilah seemed to know exactly where she was going, and I remembered Don saying that Delilah had once been part of the popular crowd. This probably wasn't her first visit to Grant's house. If we got caught, it would definitely be her last. But we hadn't heard any evidence of another human since entering. Our feet made only whispers on the plush carpeting of the stairs and upstairs hallway.

When Delilah stopped it was so sudden that I ran into the back of her, and she dug her elbow into my gut as she fought to keep her balance. She frowned at me, then pressed her ear to a closed door. I waited impatiently as she listened. She put a finger to her lips to warn me to be silent, and I narrowed my eyes at her, annoyed that she would treat me as if I were stupid enough to start making a ruckus. Again it was Delilah who took the courageous first step, opening the door to stick her head in, then giving me the all clear as she quietly entered the room.

*   *   *

The first sight of Grant startled me, not because he looked so different. He didn't. But he was changed somehow. He no longer looked like the person I remembered. For one thing he seemed smaller, and I realized I had built him up to be a colossus in my mind. He wasn't much over six feet and didn't have unnatural muscle bulk. He was just an average-size guy.

After over a month in the hospital he had grown thinner, and he was pale. I suppose this had a lot to do with the fact that he hadn't been eating solid food for a while. I cringed inwardly at that thought. He didn't look anything like he had when I spoke to him on homecoming night.…

 … Which, I had to remind myself, had not really been him. On homecoming night he had been a hallucination. The figure who sat before me now was a weakened, stripped-down version of the Grant who had stood before me in the Elks Lodge parking lot.

Delilah and I stood side by side, she with her arms clasped behind her back, me with my hands hanging awkwardly at my sides. We stood gazing over Grant's sleeping form.

Grant lay on his back in a queen-size bed, a flat-screen television hanging on the wall across from him. A remote control and magazines and a PlayStation controller lay scattered on the duvet. There was a hospital-style table pushed to one side, but within easy reach to swing into place so he could take his meals in bed.

He looked so … innocent. Childlike. He wasn't the menacing figure who had haunted me for the months since I had moved to Ashland.

I was relieved that he was asleep. I didn't know if I had the strength to face him yet, to have a conversation with him. What would I say? That I was sorry? I wasn't sorry. I hadn't done anything to him.

I took a deep breath and a moment to think. Had I been wrong to think Grant was an ogre? Had I just overreacted to an innocent prank? After all, it was the kind of prank I might have played on some unsuspecting freshman at my old school.

But Grant was a monster. He had mistreated the LARPers and been a jerk to Penny and …

Was that Grant? Or was that you?

The question startled me, and I turned suddenly to Delilah, as if she were privy to my internal dialogue. Her eyes widened as she mouthed the word “
What?
”

I was rattled by the question, but I tried to shake it off. It wasn't my imagination—how ostracized I had felt when I first came to Ashland. It wasn't my imagination—the humiliation I felt when Grant pranked me in front of all his friends. But since I had seen Grant's apparition in the Elks Lodge parking lot, I had started to doubt everything I thought I knew.

And now, faced with Grant in this new light, I couldn't decide if he really was an ogre or if the ogre was me.

“Let's wake him up,” Delilah whispered, but I shook my head no.

“Why not?” she pressed. “We came all this way.”

“Let him sleep,” I said, and for once Delilah didn't argue.

With one final look at Grant, I opened the bedroom door and we made our way back down the stairs and to the front porch without encountering anyone.

“You didn't even say anything,” Delilah said as we descended the porch steps.

“He seemed so weak. I didn't want to wake him,” I said. “It felt … wrong.”

She was quiet for the rest of the walk to the Camaro, and even as I held her door for her and she climbed into the car, she only thanked me quietly.

I didn't start the Camaro right away, just sat in the driver's seat with the keys in my lap. When I finally did start the car it broke the silence between us.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, usually the most annoying question a girl could ask, but in this instance, it was the only question that made sense.

“I was thinking … that I don't really remember. I can't remember what's real and what I imagined.”

“There's a video of it,” Delilah said matter-of-factly. “You didn't do anything other than get out of the way.” I wondered if Delilah had actually seen the video. I didn't think Chief Perry would have let her see it, but knowing Delilah, she would have figured out some way on her own.

“That isn't what I mean. I mean I can't really remember how things played out between Grant and me. Between Penny and me,” I added with an apologetic glance in her direction, but she seemed unmoved. “And maybe I didn't push Grant into that grease pit, but I wasn't sad about him ending up there. And I sure let everyone believe I
did
push him.”

“Is that what you told everyone?” Delilah asked. “You told them you pushed him?”

“I didn't tell anybody anything,” I answered truthfully. “People just kind of believed what they wanted to believe.”

She considered that for a minute, then said, “Well, I guess that's where we are, then. People will just believe what they're going to believe.”

 

46

Facing Grant Parker had been awkward and horrible, but I had never felt any real guilt about what had happened to him. Even if he wasn't the monster I had imagined, Grant had made my first weeks in Ashland hell. Maybe he didn't deserve to be put into a life-threatening coma, but that point was definitely debatable.

The real guilt I harbored was not about what had happened to Grant Parker. My feelings of uncertainty and dread were much more centered on facing people like Don and Roger. They had shown me friendship, of a sort, though in Roger's case it wasn't immediately obvious that he even liked me.

After we left Grant's house I dropped Delilah at home. Or, more accurately, I dropped her off four doors down from her house, a careful eye out for Chief Perry's patrol car as we said our good-byes.

“So?” Delilah said. “What now?”

“I don't know. I don't know about anything anymore,” I said, wanting to glean as much sympathy as I could. But Delilah was never one to offer much sympathy. Self-pity only garnered weakness, and she wouldn't give me any more than she gave herself. And since she had lost both a mother and a brother before she turned seventeen, self-pity could fill every crease of her life like sand if she let it.

“So you'll be at school on Monday?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said as I chewed nervously at the skin on the side of my thumb, a habit that had been with me since the night of Grant's accident.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose if this might be the last time I ever see you, I'll say good-bye. Just in case.”

I was idly wondering what a good-bye from Delilah would be. Maybe a fist bump, or a punch on the shoulder if she was feeling really affectionate. I was thinking I should get out of the car, open her door for her, and give her a hug. And maybe Grant Parker could have pulled that off, would have taken charge of the situation and not fumbled it the way I did.

I was still thinking about what to do when Delilah slid across the seat and leaned in to gather the collar of my jacket loosely in her fist and put her mouth over mine. This time I remembered to breathe through my nose.

She pulled away abruptly and managed the door by herself.

“Hey,” I said, calling her back as she started to swing the heavy door closed behind her. “Delilah?”

“Yeah?” she said, sticking her head back into the car, one arm rested along the top of the door.

“Thanks,” I said. It was sort of a lame thing to say, but I couldn't wrap my head around everything I wanted—needed—to say to her. Before that moment, I hadn't really appreciated her friendship. She had tripped Grant to distract him from ridiculing me, stuck up for me against Tony when he came to deliver Grant's threat, and had kept me company when I worked on the Camaro all those nights. She had even called me out when I was being an asshole, which was something only a real friend would do.

“You're welcome,” she said simply, then shut the door between us and turned to walk away.

*   *   *

The Camaro found its way home to Roger's garage. It wasn't until I got there that I really knew that's where I was headed or what I would say when I saw him.

Roger didn't greet me right away when I walked into the garage, but his expression said plenty.

“Grant's out of the hospital,” I said.

“I heard,” Roger said with a nod.

“I went by his house.”

Roger's eyebrows shot up questioningly at that bit of information. “I'm surprised Leland didn't shoot you on sight.”

“He didn't see me.”

“Ah.”

“So,” I said as I pulled the car keys out of my pocket and held them out to him, “I wanted to return the Camaro to you. I don't know that I ever really earned it with the time I worked.”

Roger considered the keys in my hand but didn't reach out to take them from me. “That's what you want? To give the car back?”

“I think so. Like I said, I don't think I really earned it. It's still your car. Besides,” I said, casting a forlorn look toward the Camaro, “every time I look at it, it just reminds me of all the shitty things I've done over the past few weeks.”

“Well, you could try not being an asshole,” he offered helpfully. “If that doesn't work out, you can always go back to being one.”

“I am kind of an asshole, aren't I?” I asked, glad to have it out in the open.

“I wouldn't say ‘kind of,'” Roger said.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Thanks.”

“I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Maybe it's better for you to keep the Camaro. You need to keep her as a reminder.” He paused after he said this, waiting for me to catch up, but before the moment got too deep, he added, “And, of course, the office is a mess again, and you'll be working to the end of the school year to earn back what those tires and parts cost me.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I suppose. Plus, Tiny misses having you around.”

“He does?” I asked with some surprise.