The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys

by Scott William Carter

“Double ouch,” Jake said.

  “Really one of those Hallmark moments, huh?” She had that bleak look again, the one that made her face look like a skull, and there was no way I was saying something stupid just to break the tension. “Yeah,” she said again. “Yeah, anyway, water under the bridge. Just moving on, you know. Best thing.”

  We ate quietly for a while, then Jake made some stupid comment about how you just can’t find good pizza anymore, and that got the conversation going again. We ate, we talked, and the night drew on, with Anju getting more and more withdrawn. All that talk about Anju’s mother made me think about my mom again, and it started to gnaw on me that I should call her. It’d been only a day, but I didn’t want her doing anything crazy. I didn’t want to seem like a wuss in front of Anju, but I didn’t want my face to end up on the back of a milk carton either.

  “Hey, can I use your phone?” I asked Anju.

  “Sure,” she said. “Who you want to call?”

  “Oh, just, um, you know—check in at home. Let them know I’m okay and that sort of thing.” After learning about Anju’s situation with her mom, I didn’t want to specifically say Mom, thinking that might make her feel bad.

  “He probably just wants to call one of his girlfriends,” Jake said quickly. “He’s probably got one here in Boise. Charlie’s got them all over. Love ’em and leave ’em, that’s his motto.”

  I ignored him. “It’d be long distance. I hope that’s okay. It’d just be for a minute.”

  “No problem,” she said. “You can take the phone into my room so you can have some privacy. Just ignore the mess.”

  The neon-pink phone next to the answering machine was a cordless, and I picked it up on my way to her room. The whole apartment was so small, and the door to her room so thin, that I didn’t think closing the door would provide a lot of privacy, but I did it anyway. All she had in the room was a narrow bed and a four-drawer dresser, but even so I still had to practically sit on the bed to close the door. Clothes were piled all over the floor and the dresser, and the room had a slight musty odor. The blinds were mostly closed, and the room was dim except for a spot on the bed where bars of horizontal shadows from the blinds fell on the hot pink bedspread.

  Nobody answered, so I left a message saying I was all right and not to worry and that sort of thing. I told her I’d call again soon. I wondered where she was. Maybe she was out shopping. It made me feel lousy.

  Hanging up the phone, I noticed a little blue spiral notebook sticking out from under the bed.

  I had no business picking it up. It was a total invasion of her privacy. But the corner of the notebook was worn and wrinkled, as if it had been heavily used, and there were doodles all over it. I wondered if she was an artist. I decided to take just a quick peek. I picked it up and flipped through the pages. Right away, my heart started to pound and my palms sweat.

  It wasn’t a drawing pad.

  It was a journal.

  There were doodles in the margins on some pages, but mostly the journal was full of her meticulous blue handwriting, the writing so tiny I had to lift it close to read it. Most of the entries in the beginning were short, and the spelling sometimes creative. Jan 8—Went to the Mall with John and we both bot new clothz. But as I quickly flipped through it, the entries got longer, and they were more personal, about how John was acting funny, about how they were fighting a lot, and then, after he left, long, rambling entries about how she missed him and how her whole life was going to hell. I was mostly scanning, but I caught phrases like hate myself and life sucks so much.

  It was the last entry in the book, though, that made me stop dead. She started off ranting about John and how she hated him but was still in love with him, making hardly any sense. It wasn’t much different from some of the previous entries, except for the last line before all those empty white pages:

  I Think maybee I’ll just take the gun and kill Myself like I plannd.

  chapter twelve

  I reread that last sentence again and again, trying to understand if I was misunderstanding somehow. Kill herself? She couldn’t really mean what she was saying. She was down, but she just didn’t seem the type. Of course, I didn’t really know what type a truly suicidal person was, but I figured you’d just be able to tell. I mean, I’d thought about it from time to time too, but only in the most distant way, like wondering how everyone would feel when I was gone. I’d never actually made plans to do it. No matter how bad my life got, there was the whole pain thing that went hand in hand with suicide I just couldn’t get past.

  If I’d had more time, I would have read some of the last couple entries in more detail, but then I heard footsteps in the living room. They sounded as if they were approaching, so I snapped the notebook closed and shoved it under the bed, leaping toward the door all in one motion.

  I opened the door. Anju, however, had already passed and was heading to the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder.

  “Oh hey,” she said. “I’m getting some water for Jake and me. You want some?”

  “Um, sure,” I said. My heart felt as if it was going to leap right out of my throat.

  “So how’s life back on the funny farm?” Jake asked from the couch.

  He was lying on the couch, eyes closed and hands behind his head, and I was glad for it. If he was looking at me, he might have seen something funny on my face, which probably would have made him say something stupid. I made my way back to the living area, taking a seat on the floor. Anju brought us our water, and we made small talk for a little while longer. Apparently they had been talking about how American Idol was what was wrong with television these days.

  I tried to join in, but all I could think about was that journal, so I kept losing track of the conversation. At one point, Anju asked if I was feeling all right, and I told her it was just my stomach, pizza didn’t always agree with me. Soon the conversation died, and after a few minutes of us just listening to the faint pulsing of the neighbor’s stereo, Anju got up and stretched her arms.

  “Well,” she said, “I think I’m going to take a shower and then head off to bed. I know it’s early, but all the driving wiped me out. I know I’m being a bad host.”

  “No, you’re great,” I said, with so much enthusiasm that they both looked at me funny. I couldn’t help it: I was afraid that as soon as she was behind that closed door, she was going to off herself. “Maybe we can do breakfast in the morning,” I added.

  “Maybe,” Anju said. “I have to get to work pretty early, though. You guys are welcome to stay here until you have to catch your bus.”

  We both thanked her for all her generosity, and then she wandered off to the bathroom, rubbing her eyes and yawning. I wanted to say something to her, but I couldn’t think of anything but Hey, don’t kill yourself, okay? And I just didn’t see how that would help much. As soon as the bathroom door closed, though, I leaned over to Jake and whispered to him about what I’d read in the journal. He’d looked about ready to fall asleep, but as soon as my words registered, he sat up and stared at me.

  “You serious?” he said.

  “Why would I joke about a thing like that?” I said.

  “I don’t know, I just . . .” He shook his head. “Man, what a thing to do. And all over some stupid guy.”

  “You think she means it?”

  “Who knows. Maybe. Yeah, probably. I told you something seemed wrong about her.”

  “Yeah, but . . . suicide? It’s so . . .” I couldn’t think of the word. It was then that we heard the shower start up in the bathroom. Water gurgled behind the walls, the pipes moaning and creaking.

  Jake looked at me, then stood and headed for her room.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “I’m going to look for the you-know-what,” he said.

  “The journal?”

  “Not the journal. The other thing.” He was almost to her door.

  “Jake, you can’t do this.”

  “Why not? If we just take the gun,
she won’t be able to go through with it.”

  I started after him. “You can’t just take it!”

  He was in her room now, opening her drawers, searching through the clothes. I watched from the doorway. The shower was still running.

  “This is wrong,” I said.

  “It’s wrong to stop somebody from blowing their brains out?” Jake said.

  “What happens when she notices it’s gone?” I said.

  “Hopefully, by then we’ll be gone.”

  Having found no gun in the dresser or the end table, he was now looking under the bed. He picked up the notebook, flipped through it quickly, then put it back. He looked through shoe boxes and found nothing but shoes. Finally, he pulled out a green gym bag. At first it seemed it was full of actual gym clothes, but then he pulled out a small black revolver that had been wrapped in her socks.

  “Bingo,” he said.

  “Oh man,” I said. I had been hoping she hadn’t literally meant what she had written, but now it was obvious she had. Suddenly I regretted all that pizza I had eaten. My stomach was doing flip-flops.

  The shower stopped. We darted back to the living area. Jake spotted my backpack and shoved the gun inside.

  “What’re you doing?” I demanded.

  “It’s the best place to hide it,” he said.

  “I’m not keeping that thing in there! What if—what if it goes off?”

  “The safety’s on.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you know all about guns?”

  “A little,” he said. “My dad—”

  The bathroom door clicked open, steam pouring into the hall. Jake zipped the bag and tossed it onto the couch. I flinched, expecting the gun to go off, but the bag just landed with a thump. Anju, wearing a white terrycloth robe, stepped into the hall. She was drying her hair with a white towel, and when she saw us, she stopped. I realized we must have made quite the picture, the two of just standing there frozen in place, neither of us saying a word.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “We were just talking,” Jake explained. “You know, about stuff. Guy stuff. You’d think it’s stupid.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Well, good night.”

  We told her good night, both of us practically shouting, and then she disappeared behind her bedroom door.

  “This is so wrong,” I said.

  “Shh,” Jake said.

  I took a step closer to him, dropping my voice even lower. “What are we going to do, just leave with it?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “And take it with us, on the bus and everything?”

  He crossed his arms and stared at me. “You got a better idea?”

  But I didn’t get a chance to answer. Anju’s bedroom door flew open, and she marched out, now wearing purple pajama bottoms and a Snoopy T-shirt, her hair loose and still glistening. She looked like a Doberman ready to pounce. A small one, maybe, but just as mean.

  “Where is it?” she said.

  “Where’s what?” Jake asked, playing the part of Tweedle-dumb.

  She held out her hand. “Give it back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “GIVE IT BACK!”

  Jake flinched. I probably flinched too. You didn’t expect such a loud noise to come out of a person so small. She could have spoken to a twenty thousand–seat stadium without a megaphone with that kind of volume. I started toward the backpack.

  “Don’t, Charlie,” Jake said.

  Anju, though, saw where I was headed. Jake beat her to it, holding it away from her, using his other hand to hold her back. She tried desperately to get the bag, clawing at it like some kind of animal, but Jake had no trouble keeping it away from her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she cried.

  “I read your journal,” I said.

  I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was her face: It had the fierce, savage look of a starving person grappling for a piece of meat. It made her look terrible, and afraid, and pitiful, and I didn’t want her to go on looking that way. All the fight went out of her immediately. She no longer looked angry. She looked like she wished she was somewhere else.

  “You had no—” she began, and then had to stop and swallow. “You had no right to do that.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “We just don’t want you to do anything stupid,” Jake said.

  “I’m not—I mean, I don’t . . .” She sighed. “Please just give it back to me. It’s just for self-protection.”

  “We’ll just keep it for a while,” Jake said. “We’ll mail back to you later.”

  “That’s just stuff I write!” she cried. “It doesn’t mean anything. I just—I just use it as a way to vent. I wouldn’t really do that!”

  Neither of us said anything.

  “Come on!” she said.

  “A couple months,” Jake said. “I promise.”

  Anju didn’t move, but I’d never seen someone’s face turn red so fast. It was as if Jake had lit her on fire. She pointed at the door.

  “Out!” she said.

  “What?” Jake said.

  “Out! Now!”

  Just like that, we were hustled into the hall. She slammed the door hard enough to bring dust raining down from the ceiling. Both of us were too stunned to move. After a moment, I heard Anju’s muffled crying. Jake made a motion to knock on the door, then let his arm fall slack. He turned and headed for the outside door. I stopped him, reached into the bag, and took out my drawing pad. I ripped out the picture of Anju and slid it under her door. I didn’t know what she’d think of it, but I hoped she’d see it as an apology. I hoped she’d see it as a sign that somebody had taken the time to really look at her.

  I followed Jake outside and found him standing on the sidewalk. The night was cool, the street quiet. One of the street lamps down the way made a buzzing sound like someone humming.

  “What now?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I guess we go catch that bus.”

  It was already half past nine by the time we got booted from Anju’s place. We had no idea where the station was, but we found a phone booth a couple of blocks away, and there was a map of the city in the middle of the phone book. We were in luck. The station was a little over a mile away.

  Hoofing it through the dark streets, we argued about the gun. I wanted to throw it into the nearest trash can, or drop it down a sewer grate, but Jake wouldn’t have any of it. He said it belonged to Anju and he’d send it back to her when she was in a better state of mind, just as we’d promised.

  “They’ll never let us take it on the bus,” I insisted. I was already breathing heavily, and struggling to keep up with Jake’s near-jogging pace. What I really should have thrown away were all those textbooks, but there was no way I was going to do that.

  “Oh, they don’t even check your bags on the bus,” Jake replied. “We could probably take on a bazooka in a telescope bag and nobody would stop us.”

  “Well, you’re taking the bag,” I said. “No way I’m getting caught with it.”

  “Fine by me.”

  The station was easy enough to find, marked with a big lighted sign that read, BUS. The front was all glass, and I saw a half-dozen people sitting inside on the red plastic seats. A bank clock down the street showed that it was just after ten o’clock. After forking out nearly ninety bucks for two tickets to Salt Lake City (Jake didn’t want to buy tickets all the way to Denver, insisting we could find another way to get there), we spent the next forty-five minutes hanging out in a lobby that smelled like the underside of a bridge. None of the people waiting looked like they spoke English, and only a few looked like they bathed on a regular basis. When a driver in a blue uniform came through the double doors and told us our bus was ready to board, I handed the backpack to Jake.

  Turned out Jake was right. When we climbed into the bus, we handed the driver our tickets and he didn’t even glance at the backp
ack. Jake smiled smugly, but I still didn’t start to relax until the bus pulled away from the station. Even then, I still hated that we had the gun with us.

  chapter thirteen

  Except for a couple quick stops in little towns whose names I quickly forgot, where the bus picked up a few wayward passengers each more alien-looking than the last, it was a long drive down I-84. I didn’t think I was going to sleep, but somewhere around the Idaho border I dozed off and didn’t wake again until we pulled into the terminal in Salt Lake City. My neck actually made a cracking sound when I turned my head, alarming me. If I kept this up, I’d be wearing a neck brace before too long.

  The early morning sun filled the bus with pale orange light. Jake, already awake, smiled at me. My backpack sat on his lap. Judging by the way he turned away from me when I said good morning, I assumed my breath smelled like a gym locker.

  It was barely seven o’clock, but there was already a buzz of traffic coming from the nearby overpasses. What I assumed were the Rocky Mountains loomed over the city; thin vaporous clouds clung to the tops of the peaks. These mountains weren’t anything like the Cascades back at home, which you often couldn’t see unless you were right on top of them. The Rockies were always there, towering over everything, making all the human activity seem like nothing more than the scurrying of lots of ants.

  The terminal was huge compared to the one back in Boise, as big as some airports. After we both hit the restroom, I asked Jake if he wanted to get something to eat, and he said sure. We wandered down the huge six-lane West 400th and found a Denny’s-type place a couple of blocks away, near Pioneer Park.

  I got the French toast. Jake got waffles with strawberries. I kept the backpack on the seat next to me, and I found myself glancing at it from time to time.

  “Will you relax,” Jake said, wiping whipped cream off his chin with a napkin.

  “We could sell it at a pawnshop,” I said.

  “No.”

  “It might go off.”

  “It won’t.”

  I finally realized that no matter how much I argued, he wasn’t changing his mind, so I changed the subject. “How do you want to get to Denver?” I asked. “I saw that the Amtrak station is in the same place as the bus depot. You want to ride a train instead?” I was eager to get going. It was now Wednesday, and I was starting to worry about how much school I was missing. It was a pretty stupid thing to worry about, but I hated getting too far behind on my homework.