by Una Mannion
“Libby, I need you to promise me that if you think Ellen needs a doctor or if you need any kind of help at all, you will call me. You can always call me.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“And one more thing. You’re right to be cautious about Wilson McVay. He shouldn’t be in the house when your mother isn’t home. Nobody should be.”
Mrs. Boucher worked in the courts, and she probably knew more about Wilson than we did. “I better get going. You’ll lock the house behind me?”
“There won’t be anyone here like that ever again, Mrs. Boucher. I promise.”
I watched the taillights of the Volvo blink through the dark woods, up toward the road, and then disappear as the theme music came on for The Incredible Hulk.
“Libby, Hulk, Hulk.” Peter was getting very excited. He stood in front of the TV as the theme music played, raising his shoulders and lifting his arms out wide.
“I’m the Hulk!” he shouted.
The episode was titled “The Beast Within.” I knew it would give him nightmares. He’d seen Hulk once before when he’d gone for a sleepover at his grandparents’; every Friday for a month, I’d had to stay with him in his room until he fell asleep.
“They have no sense,” Mrs. Boucher had said after the nightmares started. “This is exactly why I’ve told their father I don’t want them staying there. They’d think nothing of watching The Exorcist with the kids. I admire your mother for not having a television.”
“Come on, Peter. I’ll race you downstairs to the bathroom, and we’ll brush our teeth.”
Mrs. Boucher never told me where she went those Friday nights. I hadn’t babysat for many families, but the other ones had always told me where they were going and given me a number for the restaurant or friends’ house. Mrs. Boucher only left an emergency number, which was Mr. Boucher’s. He lived with his soon-to-be new wife. My mother said Mrs. Boucher was an “intellectual” and one of those “feminists,” like they were bad words. I wondered what had happened to her marriage. Like my parents, the Bouchers were divorced, but they were so different in every other way. I’d met Mr. Boucher several times. Once Marie and I had bumped into him and his fiancée at the Acme. We’d gone in for doughnuts and watched them kissing by the seafood section, where whole fish were splayed out on ice, heads and all.
“Oh my God,” Marie had said, “Barbie and Ken.” He did look like a Ken doll. “He’s so artificial-looking. I just want to run over and mess up his hair.” His fiancée, Angela, was as tall as him. Her blond hair was cut and frosted just like Farrah Fawcett’s. She was extremely tanned and wore a bright-orange dress. She seemed young and silly compared to Mrs. Boucher, who was small and dark but somehow more anchored and elegant than either of them.
I was pretty certain Mrs. Boucher had started seeing someone. She’d taken extra care the last few months getting ready to go out. She’d be distracted when she came back, and several times, when I got into the car to be driven home, I’d smelled something other than Mrs. Boucher’s lemony scent—some kind of cologne. But there were other things, things I hadn’t told Marie or Sage. Lately, when the Volvo turned in from the road, the headlights would briefly hit the glass walls of the living room, only for a moment, and then cut. The car would stay there, sometimes for as long as an hour, and then the headlights would switch on again and the car would crawl down the drive to the house. The first time it happened, I was terrified, wondering who was sitting in the car, watching me inside the lit glass room. I sat still on the couch waiting, and eventually the car moved again. And it was only Mrs. Boucher.
With the lights on inside the house, Mrs. Boucher could see me, but I couldn’t see out. I wondered if I was being tested, to see what kind of babysitter I was. The second night I got up and tidied and made sure the dishes were done, seeing myself as if from the outside, like I was in a film and had an audience. But by the fourth time the Volvo pulled into the driveway and the lights cut, I was pretty certain that Mrs. Boucher wouldn’t be wasting all that time just to watch me. I wondered if she was sad and found it hard to come into the house, the way my mother sometimes just sat in the parked car in the garage after she had come home, as if she had to brace herself before facing all of us.
The last few weeks I’d been turning off the sound on the television, listening, and I thought I heard a car door shut before the headlights came back on. Was someone else in the car with Mrs. Boucher? She told me once that she was never afraid living deep in the woods in a tree house, that it was the most private place in the world. I didn’t want to spy on her, and I hadn’t told anyone what I’d heard and seen.
Late the same night that I told Mrs. Boucher about Ellen, I was standing at her sink squeezing a tea bag when the headlights swiped through the woods and across the windows. For a brief second my stomach lurched, thinking it was Wilson. But then the lights cut, and I knew it was only Mrs. Boucher, home again.
8
I pushed my toes against the bald scratch of earth below the merry-go-round and started to spin again. Sage and the others were dark shadows across the Sun Bowl. I could hear the low murmur of their voices, and every few minutes a burst of laughter. I looked up at the sky and felt slightly dizzy. The moon was visible behind a thin mesh of clouds, like stretched cotton. It was more than a half-moon but less than full. More laughter drifted from the others out in the field, sitting in a circle, passing a bong.
I was already tipsy. I’d taken some swigs of gin straight out of a Hellmann’s Mayonnaise jar. Abbey had raided her dad’s liquor cabinet. She said her dad had started to suspect his kids might be helping themselves, so he’d taken to drawing lines with Magic Marker on the Seagram’s bottles where he finished. The kids markered lines under his so he’d be uncertain which line was his and he’d wonder if he had drank more than he thought. But they would never add water to bring the level up to his black line, Abbey said. He might be confused about which line was which, but he knew his drink and would know it was diluted. Even though I was drinking Mr. Quinn’s gin, I thought it was depressing that his kids were still stealing it from him.
I heard Sage call my name, could see movement in the dark across the field as she came toward me, the clink of her bracelets. She sat beside me.
“Wilson went to Pottstown.”
“What?”
“Wilson went to Pottstown last night.”
“To find him?” I had heard of Pottstown, knew it was north of us but couldn’t remember ever being there.
“Yeah. Abbey and some of the others were just talking about it. He went around looking for the boys who’d said they’d go.”
“Are you sure they went?”
“Abbey says she saw Danny Shields with Wilson on Forge Mountain Drive.”
“What did they do to him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they never went or couldn’t find him.”
“Oh my God. How does he know he’s from there?”
“Beats me, except he knows a lot of strange people.”
“Did you tell them anything?”
“No. Abbey just said they were going to give a pervert a beating. That this guy had kidnapped a girl from the mountain and hurt her.”
“He told them she was kidnapped?”
“She kind of was, Libby. Barbie Man didn’t let her out of the car. She’s a kid. That’s kidnapping. He should be punished. If Ellen hadn’t jumped, what would have happened to her?”
I wasn’t able to even think about that. “I just want this to end.”
“I know.” Sage looked back toward the field. “I’m going over for a few more minutes. You mind?”
I shook my head. “I’m okay.”
Sage was going back to the others to get high. Most of them were older than me, and I didn’t smoke pot. I didn’t want to sit in a circle with them, passing a bong. I’d tried it once and spent the night struggling to shake away the floating feeling. I’d eaten toothpaste and slapped myself across the face, so that I could feel like my two feet were on the ground. I
liked drinking better. The way it started in my body rather than in my head, that warm feeling rippling from the center of my chest outward. Abbey’s mayonnaise jar was under the merry-go-round; I unscrewed the blue lid, took another long drink. It made me shudder, and my eyes teared. I rolled the jar back. I tried to stop thinking about Wilson and Barbie Man, that Wilson might have gone up there. I leaned back and looked up to the night sky streaked with clouds, the few stranded stars. The air was warm.
“Well, Gallagher, shouldn’t you be at home watching The Brady Bunch or something?” The voice came out of nowhere. I jumped from the merry-go-round and toppled back down. I was drunk, and Jack Griffith was standing in front of me.
“Jesus,” I said. “You scared me.” He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. His hair had gotten longer. “You forgot. We don’t have a TV. Shouldn’t you be at home calculating algorithms?”
Jack laughed. “Beer?” He held two bottles, one extended toward me.
“Yeah.”
He sat beside me on the edge of the merry-go-round. I looked at our feet on the worn dirt. We circled slowly. I took a swig from the bottle of beer.
Jack was one of the few people who had spent time in our house when my father was there. He and Thomas used to spend weeks creating elaborate mazelike obstacle courses with paper-towel rolls and uncooked spaghetti, which they rolled marbles across.
“So what’s up?”
“With me?” How would I even start to explain my life in the last two weeks. “Nothing. You?”
“Working mostly, tarring driveways with a guy down in Chesterbrook.”
“Oh.” I had never thought about Jack having a job.
“How’s Thomas?” he asked. It felt awkward, like he should know because they had been friends for so long. We both pushed the earth with our feet. Someone in the distance screamed, and there was a burst of laughter from the field.
“The same, I guess. He doesn’t have a job. You know, with swimming and all.”
“And you’re still into trees?” I didn’t know if he was making fun of me. I’d seen him one other time after the night in the snow. A blizzard had hit us in March, followed by an ice storm, felling branches and trees across the mountain. I’d hiked down as far as Valley Creek to see the damage. The creek had frozen, a white sheet with a single dark seam threaded down the center where water was still moving below the surface. Trees bowed under the frozen weight, and ice daggers crashed from branches across the woods. So much water was melting around me that it sounded like rain. I was trying to take a rubbing from a black walnut that grew out of the bank, but it wouldn’t work because the tree was damp and the paper was disintegrating. I was leaning within inches of the tree when I heard voices on the trail that ran alongside the creek. I kept my hands on the trunk and looked over. Jack Griffith and his dad. I turned back to the tree and put my forehead against it, hoping they wouldn’t see me.
“Be careful near that ice,” Mr. Griffith called. “It can be very deceptive.”
“I will, Mr. Griffith.”
Jack waved. “I’m just looking at the bark of this tree,” I said, to explain why my cheek was against its bole.
The merry-go-round had come to a stop. “My dad thinks you’re a very strange girl,” Jack said. “He means that as a compliment.”
Across the field someone shouted “Pool-hopping!” Cheers and whooping followed.
“Come on.” Jack stood up and held out his hand. I took it. The shadows from the field were already running up the path to the fenced perimeter of the Mountain Swim Club, about fifty yards up the hill.
“Are you coming?”
“I better wait for Sage,” I said, looking around.
“Sage is probably climbing the fence by now. Come on.”
I stood, and we ran toward the hill. It was only when we were halfway up that I realized Jack Griffith was still holding my hand.
The Mountain Swim Club was surrounded by a high chain-link fence with foot-length barbed wire angled at the top. I had been on guard before, ready to sound the warning if the cops came—three hammer blows to the imitation Liberty Bell that swung on a trestle outside the front gate. I whooped with the others as we fled through the woods, the police lights bouncing off naked bodies as we ran. But while I was part of the escape, I had never climbed the fence and gone in.
One night two summers ago, Thomas and his friends had climbed over—Jack must have been there, too. Sage and I stayed outside the fence, on watch. The full moon lit the pool, and Thomas started to swim lengths of butterfly up and down. Everyone stopped and watched him. He dolphin-kicked without making a splash, and his upper body arced out of the water, his arms wide and his hands coming together just in front of his head. His body could just move through water soundlessly. “God, that’s beautiful,” Sage had said.
Now Jack was walking ahead of me. “Watch out,” he said as we stepped over a pile of cement blocks someone had put on the path. He waited while I climbed over, and we heard the repeated bounces on the diving board and the splashes as bodies entered the water.
At the far side of the pool, I could see five or six figures still clinging to the fence, like spiders dangling from a metal web. Every one of them looked naked.
“Find a tree you’ll remember.” Jack had already started to take off his jeans.
I went to the far side of another tree and unbuttoned mine and took off my T-shirt. I left my underwear on. Jack left his on too.
“Here,” he said, stooping down and offering me his interlaced hands and a knee. “I’ll give you a head start.” He hoisted me up several feet.
I found my grip and started climbing. I went slow, squatting at the top with legs angled apart, trying to keep my skin wide of the barbs. My legs started to shake, even though we were only about eight feet off the ground. I got my second leg clear and started down the other side. Jack jumped the lower half and stood reaching up, catching me by the waist and landing me on my feet.
“Race you in,” he said, and he ran to the deep end, cannonballing in. When he surfaced, he shook the water from his head and looked toward me. I followed, giddy with the thrill of having scaled the fence, breaking in, being half naked in the dark. I cannonballed right next to him.
“Great form, Gallagher,” he said.
“I’m drunk.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you never to swim while drinking?”
“I was told never to drink.” I wanted to laugh out loud I felt so good. “Let’s just float on our backs,” I said.
We lay still. The moon was exposed, the clouds drifting farther away. The water was warm and lapped against the pool edges, and for a few minutes I forgot about Ellen, Wilson, Barbie Man, and Pottstown. We started an unspoken game, diving down to the bottom of the deep end where the drain was and pushing off. On my third turn I went down and started counting. I gave myself a minimum of one minute. I could make out the moon’s light glancing off the surface of the water as it moved, the shadows of legs and bodies above me. Almost sixty seconds in, when I thought my lungs would explode, I crouched low and pushed off, my arms straight up. Before I broke the water’s surface, I could hear commotion, muffled and distant. I gasped in air and heard the shouting.
“Cops, cops! The fuzz!”
Everyone was running to the fence by the woods. Some were already halfway up. I panicked, looking for the ladder, trying to orient myself. Then I realized that the surface of the pool was shimmering with red and blue light. The police had pulled the car up across the lawn to the gate. They had another amplified light angled at the pool. The long side of the pool’s L shape was completely lit, and lawn chairs floated upside down. I was between the deep end and the main section.
I’m dead, I thought. Mom’s going to kill me. I’d put my head down to swim to the side and turn myself in when someone grabbed me and pulled me farther into the deep end, outside the light beams. I kicked and looked back. Jack’s face broke the surface of the water. He brought his fingers to his lips and mot
ioned me toward the ladder.
“Who’s there?” a voice shouted. “This is the Schuylkill Township Police. Come out now.” Two policemen were running toward the woods as the shouts of all the other kids went down through the trees. How had they got out so fast? Another policeman began to walk the perimeter, shining the flashlight on the water, the deck chairs, and the decorative shrubs around the building where the office and changing rooms were. Battle cries echoed from the woods.
Jack pulled me behind the ladder so that our bodies were flush against the pool wall and the lip of the deck was above our heads, keeping us in shadow. He used the ladder to lower his body and hold himself so that just his face was out of the water. I did the same, trying to quiet my breath. Two sets of policemen were walking the fence from opposite directions, their lights scanning across the pool and hitting the deep end. When the line of light was almost on us, Jack slipped completely under, still holding the ladder. I did the same, grasping my hair so it didn’t splay out on the surface above me. I could see the light on the water above my head, rippling in waves. I tried not to move. My lungs started to hurt. The light moved past us. I eased my face up to the night air and breathed in, trying to make it quiet. We were pinned there.
“Someone’s left their clothes behind,” shouted a voice from the woods. I looked at Jack.
“Let’s see if we can cut them off down on Jones,” said the first one, and the flashlight came swinging across the deck, near the diving board.
We stayed perfectly still, looking at each other. Jack was mostly in shadow. Water glistened on his face and shoulders. We heard car doors shut. The first car started and backed away from the gates, leaving us again in near darkness. We heard the second car start and waited until both of them were distant sounds.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe we didn’t get caught.” I was euphoric.
“I just wonder which one of us is going home without their clothes.”
“Oh shit, I forgot.” I climbed the ladder in front of him, both conscious and careless of my body.