Tunnel Vision (14 page)

THIRTY-TWO

Betty had seen Jake around the halls of the school on a daily basis since he’d made his offer to her, but they’d spoken only sparingly. She was hoping he’d decided the idea was stupid and felt bad for even bringing it up, but knew it was far more likely that he was simply waiting for her to decide it was a marvelous plan, and then tell him to go run off and play at being a soldier so she could be a housewife on base.

Her silence on the subject must have worn some cracks in his enamel, however, because as Betty walked to her car after school she felt her phone buzz three times in her jeans. All three texts were from Jake, and all bore the same grim words from a week prior, “We need 2 talk.” Praying that Jake wouldn’t be waiting at her car, she marched double-time across the parking lot.

Twenty minutes later Betty was free of the school’s lot and headed south to Riverside to meet June at the park. The weather was fair for the season and Betty had her windows halfway down as she drove and sang along to the new RVIVR album. It occurred to her that ever since her discovery of the case, she’d hardly spent a moment during which she wasn’t thinking about Duke and Mandy. How exactly had her dreams of the future been so completely forgotten in the wake of this investigation?

Maybe June was right. After all, if June could avoid this obsession, then maybe Betty really was taking everything too far. Mandy was June’s aunt, not hers, but June’s interest in the project seemed tempered. Betty felt sure that her imprisonment at home was a large reason for her obsession with the case. June still had a life, but Betty was trying to escape hers, and between Jake and the grounding, a little escapism was probably exactly what she needed.

Arriving at the park, she parked her car next to June’s. The two girls got out of their vehicles at the same time and a minute later were crossing the grass together.

“I thought you said he’d be near the playground,” whined June. “All I see is that pirate-looking guy over there.”

“He’ll be here. I’m sure of it.” She shrugged. “He always seems like he’s sneaking up on me, but I think he just likes to be sure of who he’s going to run into.”

“Sounds like he watches too many movies to me. I don’t care if he wants to play secret agent, but I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid or asking for a decoder ring.”

“Shut it,” said Betty. “He’s going to do us a huge favor, so knock it off.”

“That’s if he shows up.” June shot nervous looks around them. “Right now this place is a ghost town. There’s hardly even any birds!”

“Take a breath, June Bug. He’ll be here.”

She walked to the bench and then sat on the middle of it, with June plopping down next to her.

They had barely settled in when Betty heard Nickel’s voice from behind them saying, “Hello.”

“Holy shit,” yelled June as she spun to her feet. “He really did come out of nowhere!”

“Sorry. It’s sort of a habit.” The redheaded boy extended a hand to June. “I’m Nickel.”

June took the hand, shook it once, and dropped it. “You’re Nickel, I’m June, and I want you to make it so I can buy cigarettes.”

“Yeah, and I got your decoder ring, too.”

June flushed crimson and Betty laughed. “Hi, Nickel,” she said.

Nickel offered his hand to her as well and they shook quickly. “All right,” he said. “I’ll ride with Betty, and you follow, OK?”

“That sounds fine to me,” said Betty, and then the three of them went marching back to the lot.

Betty walked next to Nickel, and could feel that June had shrugged off her embarrassment over him overhearing her secret agent crack and was now grinning hugely at Betty’s back. If Nickel noticed, it wasn’t showing on his face, but Betty felt ridiculous, like a middle schooler with a crush.

When they got to the parking lot, Betty unlocked the car doors with the key fob and then walked around to the driver’s side. When she got in she saw that Nickel was still waiting outside the car, so she turned on the engine and rolled down the window before calling to him, “Are you getting in?”

Nickel nodded. A troubled look on his face, he opened the door and took his place in the passenger seat. “No fast driving, all right?”

“No problem,” Betty said, giving him a sideways glance. She could hear him swallow thickly as she pulled the car out of the Riverside lot. He’d seemed really tough before, but now he was acting as meek as a fawn. Wondering if he was going to get sick all over the car, Betty hit the gas gently and got moving.

“I have no idea where I’m going,” she said.

Nickel responded without turning. “Just stay straight, and I’ll let you know when to turn. It’s not far.”

THIRTY-THREE

They arrived ten minutes later, but Betty wasn’t sure exactly what they had arrived at. She and June parked on the street in front of a gas station, and Nickel popped out so quickly Betty didn’t know if this was really it or if the short ride had just been too much for him. She shut off the ignition and once again she and June exited their vehicles in unison.

“What are we doing here?” June asked.

Nickel smiled. “We walk from here. Don’t worry, it’s not far.”

Betty expected June to ask why they couldn’t just drive the rest of the way, but she kept mum, and Betty enjoyed the silence. Nickel didn’t look pale or weak anymore, didn’t even look as he had earlier in the park. Whatever had been bothering him about the ride in the car was gone now, and he looked as confident as he had on the day she met him.
Confident and cute
,
confirmed a particularly ill-timed part of her brain, and Betty fruitlessly fought against the flush she could feel rising in her cheeks.

They walked as they had in the park, with Nickel and Betty in the lead and June following. The neighborhood was a little run-down, but was more boring than trashy. Betty wasn’t sure how she felt about the vibe. For one thing, nothing stirred—no pedestrians, no moving vehicles. Not even a stray cat. It was almost as if the houses had been built for use as a background on a movie set. Betty felt sure that if she walked behind them, she’d see they were nothing but fronts and sides.

“Nice and quiet,” said Nickel, the statement coming as if he’d been in her head, and Betty just smiled.

“It sure is.”

Nickel stopped at a house that was as plain as all the rest. It had one story and looked as though it could use some paint, along with a general update, if it were going to be on the market soon.

“Home sweet home,” said Nickel. Betty felt sure she could hear some nervousness in his voice. As he walked up the driveway with the two of them in tow, he opened the garage door with a clicker on his key chain.

The garage was sparse. No car, and no sign of one—no oil stains or tread marks. A ratty-looking mountain bike sat on one side of the garage floor, and there was a massive black toolbox next to the door to the house, along with a padlocked metal cabinet. There was a clean workspace between the cabinet and toolbox with a weird-looking machine on it, along with various tools hanging on a pegboard above it. At the opposite end of the strange machine, a massive vise had been bolted to the bench, and several plastic fixtures sat next to it.

“Does your dad reload?” June asked, the sound of her voice startling in the garage’s silence. When Nickel just blinked at her, she said, “I saw the press over there and figured he must because my dad does and he has—”

“Yes,” said Nickel. “Dad reloads for his hunting guns.”

June nodded and then Nickel hit the clicker to shut the garage before opening the door to the house and waving them on ahead of him. Feeling like a doomed actress in a PSA warning against entering the homes and vehicles of strangers, Betty walked into the house ahead of June, and then heard Nickel shut the door after them.

When he flipped on the lights, the house appeared to be normal enough, just as the outside and garage had. Yet all of it felt a little wrong, somehow. Hollow. The kitchen and dining room were spotless, and the living room was one of the most sparsely decorated living spaces that she’d ever seen. There was a couch but no TV. No carpet, no rug. No coffee table. Nothing on the walls. Curtains sealed the windows tight.

Betty let Nickel pass her, and he disappeared into a room down a hallway, and then reappeared a few moments later juggling a roll of paper and two metal stands. “Would you guys give me a hand, please?”

Betty ran to grab the stands before they fell and handed one of them off to June.

“Thanks,” he said and walked ahead of them to the living room. “There should be plenty of light in here.” He turned on a pair of floor lamps. “The real trick is to make it as unnatural as possible. They sure as hell don’t use natural light when they shoot a Michigan ID.”

Nickel laid the roll of blue paper on the floor, then took the stand Betty had given to June and snapped it open. It looked like a long-necked tripod, and when it was in place in front of the couch, Nickel took the other one from Betty and unfolded that one as well. With both up, Nickel took the paper roll—it had a metal spindle running through the middle of it—and placed the ends of it so they attached to the tripods. After yanking at the paper so that it rolled down to cover a few feet of air and a few inches of floor, he said, “I’ll grab my camera. Who’s first?”

“I’ll go,” said June. “It took me a minute, but now that I see what you’re doing, I’m all in.” She smiled at Nickel. “If you can really pull this off, I am going to be seriously impressed.”

“Of course I can,” said Nickel with an odd look on his face, and then he disappeared back into the room that he’d taken the paper and stands from.

“He is seriously weird, but seriously cute,” said June in a whisper. “Betty, if you decide you don’t want this one, I’m going to make it happen. For real.”

“You’re such a ho,” said Betty, and the two of them burst into laughter just as Nickel emerged from the room with a camera around his neck.

“What did I miss?” he asked, and that just made the pair of them laugh harder.

“We’re just being stupid,” Betty said. “I think the thrill of being in a boy’s house without his parents at home might be getting to us.”

Nickel smiled with an odd look on his face, and began fiddling with the camera. Betty didn’t know much about photography equipment, but the camera was obviously a serious piece of kit. It had the heavy look that high-end electronics almost always do, even when they’re as light as a feather. Nickel raised the camera to the paper he’d put up and clicked the button a pair of times before checking the results on the little screen on the back of the camera. Apparently satisfied, he nodded at June. “You still want to go first?”

“Yeah, I’ll go,” said June. “Sooner the better, right?”

“One more thing. Do you guys think you’re going to dye your hair before you go see Duke?”

“Ah shit, no,” said June, “but we really need to, huh? I keep forgetting that it’s all washed out.”

“You both look really nice,” he insisted, his face reddening as he realized what he said.

“Thanks,” said Betty. “Get to it, June.”

June crossed the room, taking off her hoodie as she went and laying it on the sofa behind the background stand before taking her place in front of the paper. She gave the camera and Nickel a smile, and then waited for the picture.

“Remember, you’re at the DMV,” said Nickel behind the lens, and June forced the grin from her face. “Better,” he said, and then he pulled the trigger three times, rapid-fire flashes bursting from the camera. “I think we’re good,” he said.

When June walked over to see, Nickel leaned the camera over so she could get a peek. “I think they look good.”

“They look better than good,” said June as Betty crowded in to see. “Seriously, if they look that good on plastic then we’re going to be in with no problems at all.”

“I’m telling you guys, ginning these up’s not as hard as you’d think,” said Nickel as Betty walked to the background. She smiled at first—she couldn’t help it—but then switched to a bored expression before Nickel could chastise her. He did the rapid-fire thing with the camera, and then waved Betty over to see her pictures.

“Not exactly flattering,” Betty said, “but they sure look authentic.”

“Seriously, with the template I have, the ID part is easy.”

“What’s the hard part, then?” June took the camera from him and grinned at the array of images. “You just paste these to a template, print, and we’re golden?”

“Well, I guess the hard part was meeting Betty to begin with,” said Nickel, taking the camera back and busying himself with it. “Walking up to a girl you’ve never met before can always be a little nerve-wracking.”

June smiled and jabbed an elbow in Betty’s side at the remark, and Betty elbowed her back.

“Yeah, like I’m so intimidating,” Betty said. “You didn’t seem so nervous. And you’ve been ridiculously helpful, and you’re supernice.”

His face pretty much on fire, he turned away. “Let me grab my laptop and we’ll get to actually making these. You guys can go sit at the kitchen table, and I’ll be right back, OK?”

Nickel didn’t wait for a response, just turned tail and walked back into the room he’d gone to before.

At the table, Betty gave June a thin smile, trying to communicate that things were going as smoothly as they possibly could, and in response, June whispered, “He just keeps getting cuter. Normally the awkward thing does nothing for me, but this boy is adorkable. I just want to grab him.”

“Well don’t.”

June rolled her eyes. “You’re just trying to hog him. If you’re going to keep stringing Jake along, I can’t see why I can’t at least try and throw myself at this one. Worst that could happen, he says no, but I think—”

“Think what?” Nickel asked as he returned to the room, camera still hanging from his neck and a laptop under his arm.

“You don’t want to know,” said Betty. “Trust me.”

“All right.” Smiling, Nickel grabbed the free chair between Betty and June and flipped the computer open on the table. He plugged the camera into the computer with a USB cord and, with Betty and June leaning in on either side to see the screen, got to work. If he was bothered by being crowded by girls, he didn’t show it.

Betty and June watched as he pulled up a program that looked a great deal like Photoshop, but had a blank form on it that looked just like a Michigan ID.

“Betty first,” said Nickel, and then he began rattling off questions as he filled in the form. “Full name?”

“Elizabeth Anne Martinez.”

“Address real, or fake?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not if you get in enough trouble.”

“Fake.”

“Date of birth?” Nickel asked, and then added, “I want to use the real month and date, so if somebody tries to trip you up by asking your sign or something, you can just spit it right out.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” said Betty. “So, March fifth, 1998.”

“Well, for the intents and purposes of this fake, we’ll go ahead and list you as 1996. Sound good?”

“Oh. Yeah. Duh.”

Nickel grinned and filled in the rest of the information before opening a separate window of the program and cropping her picture down to the right size for the ID template, and then copying and pasting it onto the template itself.

“All done,” he said. “Are you ready, June?”