The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  It’s time to trim my bangs, she thought as she pedaled down the hard gravel drive. Now that it had taken so much effort to get up here, she wondered why she had even bothered.

  I’m so stubborn, she told herself. I do things even I don’t really want to do, but I do them because someone tells me not to, or I don’t do them because someone tells me I have to do them. She had already admitted this weakness to Ms. Letter-man, the school psychologist, recently, but it was one thing to recognize it was true, another to do something about it.

  She had certainly been terrified when Hattie Scranton and her coven of witches came tearing across the supermarket toward her and her mother, but she couldn’t believe she was going to be forced to take a pregnancy test. How degrading, and yet the way everyone was looking at her made her feel important. To be sure, her name was on everyone’s lips tonight, and tomorrow she would be the center of attention at school.

  She had considered simply giving them Stocker’s name. Who cared about Stocker Robinson? But it would just make her look as if she had been frightened, and then, despite the person she was betraying, she would still be considered un-trustworthy. Who would take a chance confiding in her? She was seriously worried about the other girls who had been fantasizing about natural birth. Surely they would all be afraid she was going to turn them in, too. Then they would stop inviting her to their homes and to their parties. Why, Miles could even use this as a good excuse to dump her, and everyone would congratulate and console him for it. See if you could get a new boyfriend so easily then, she told herself.

  No, this was easier, better. Let Stocker take the fall. Who cared about Stocker Robinson?

  Surprisingly, there were no automobiles here. The lake looked deserted. Even the frogs were in hiding, she thought, until she drew close enough to hear the water pop where they jumped in after bugs. Over to the right in the deeper woods, she could hear an owl. It sounded more mournful than usual. Unfortunately, there was no moonlight tonight, even though the sky was almost cloudless.

  The light of the stars was enough to silhouette the old Lakehouse hotel, a shell of a structure closed down so long ago, when the Catskills resort world had died, it was practically a historical site. The wood was gray and moldy with age, and every piece of metal on it was rusted. All the windows had been blown out by boys practicing their pitching. The front door hung on one set of hinges like a wounded soldier leaning against the wall. Persistent and determined weeds grew up through the portico floorboards, and shutters dangled like loose black teeth. The hollowed-out building gave her the shivers.

  She stopped and lowered her feet to the ground, the bike between her legs. Where the hell was she? The quicker I get this over with, she thought, the better.

  “Stocker!” she called.

  “Yeah,” she heard, and spun to her right to see her stepping out of a dark shadow cast by the large old oak tree.

  “What the hell are you doing? How did you get here?” Lois asked quickly. She didn’t see her bike or any vehicles.

  “Walked,” Stocker said, approaching.

  “Walked?” Lois looked at the thick bushes and forest between Stocker’s house and the lake.

  Stocker held up a long, black flashlight. “I got a path.” She jerked the flashlight toward the bushes. “Been here lots of times,” she added. “I’ve even been here when you were here with Miles a few times.”

  “What do you mean?” Lois asked, the answer coming even before she finished her question. “You spy on people? That’s disgusting.”

  Stocker shrugged. “It’s better than my daddy’s X-rated sensorama DVDs.” She smiled. “Go on and ask me.”

  “Ask you what?”

  “You know, about Miles and Selma Prince.”

  Lois tightened her grip on her bike handlebar. “What about them?”

  “They were here.” She turned on the flashlight and directed the beam to a corner of the clearing. “Right there. She started by giving him a blow job. I couldn’t miss seeing it. He sat on top of the front seat, and she got between his legs…”

  “Shut up. You’re lying.”

  “I don’t care if you believe me or not. What the hell is so important that I had to meet you here? I had to, you said,” she added, spitting the t in to. “Well?”

  “I got caught with the pills you gave me for the digital video of Open Heart.”

  “They stink. I thought they were better than Anal Causes, but they don’t come close. You can have it back.”

  “I don’t want it back, stupid. I came here because I was caught with the pills. Didn’t you hear anything about it? Are you so far out in the boondocks?”

  “I didn’t give you those pills,” Stocker said coldly.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lois.”

  “You can’t say that now, you idiot. Suki, Clair, Shirley, all of them know you traded them for Open Heart.”

  “They didn’t see the trade. It’s their word against mine, and they’re all your friends, not mine. Of course, they would lie for you. Who wouldn’t believe that?”

  “Stop it, Stocker. I protected you today. I could have been arrested!”

  “There are no pills in my locker,” Stocker said. She felt like Percy teasing Kasey-Lady. Lois looked so frustrated, flabbergasted, chafing at the bit. She laid down her bike carefully and turned to her, assuming the demeanor of Mrs. Rosner, their stern English teacher, her chin tilted upward, her eyes looking down her nose.

  “I want you to go to Mr. Sullivan tomorrow morning and tell him you gave me the pills.” She took a breath and continued. “That way, I don’t have to turn you in, and everyone will respect you for coming to my aide. You’ll be heroic, and everyone will go to bat for you,” Lois said in the tone of a negotiator.

  Stocker stared at her. “I don’t think so,” she replied after a moment. “Is that it?”

  “You don’t think so?” Lois dropped her hands to her waist. “If you don’t do it, I’ll turn you in. I swear.”

  “Like I said, it’s your word against mine. We’re not even close friends, Lois. Who is going to believe such a story? I’ll just say you’re using me to protect someone else, one of your close friends. I know what some of you do at your precious secret parties. Everyone will believe you’re all ganging up on me, trying to make me responsible for something I had nothing to do with. I’ll cry, and I’ll swear, and I’ll invite them to come to my house and search my room.

  “You never invited me to any of your parties, did you? I wasn’t part of the PYPC, Pretend You’re Pregnant Club, was I? Isn’t it more logical that one of them, one of your own, gave you those pills?”

  Lois started to speak, but there were no good and powerful words to challenge Stocker. The frustration exploded when Stocker turned and started toward the bushes.

  “Thanks for wasting my time,” she muttered.

  “Hey!” Lois ran forward, reached out, and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around. “Don’t be an idiot. I’ll tell them you got the pills from your mother, who found them in someone’s house,” Lois said, coming remarkably close to just how Stocker had gotten them.

  The truth was, she had gone with her mother to clean the Rosses’ house, and she had been the one to find them along with those articles on natural pregnancy. Her mother didn’t even know, or, if she did, she kept it secret. Being an Abnormal herself, it was understandable her mother might be sympathetic, but Stocker couldn’t care less. It was just the excitement of finding it all and then using what she had found to help make herself a little more popular at school.

  “So?” she bluffed.

  “So? So no one will want to hire your mother to wipe a glass dry. That’s so.”

  Stocker stared at Lois. Finally, she had said something that rang an alarm bell.

  “Just go into Mr. Sullivan’s office before homeroom tomorrow, and tell him the truth. I’ll say you told me you found them in a paper bag someone dropped on the street. Yes, that’s a
good story. They’ll believe that, and they’ll leave us both alone.”

  “That’s so ridiculous. Only an idiot would believe that.”

  “They’ll believe it.”

  “How do I know you would even say such a stupid thing? How do I know?”

  “You don’t know,” Lois said confidently. “But you better do what I say, and I better not hear that story about Miles and Selma from anyone. After homeroom,” she repeated, and turned to go back to her bike.

  “Lois,” Stocker said.

  Lois turned into the downward motion of the swinging heavy black flashlight. Stocker struck her right across the left temple. The blow was so hard it spun her head around, which twisted her at the waist. She stumbled, blood already starting to drip.

  “Wha…”

  The thought flashed through her head that she had been struck, but the rest of her battled to deny it. How could Stocker have had the nerve? This can’t be happening to me. She wouldn’t dare, and besides, I have homework to finish.

  She turned back, and the flashlight came down with even more force, cracking her skull. There was a very bright light and then an instant darkness. This time, when she spun, she sank as well, her legs folding. Her body slammed against the gravel, shuddered, and then grew still.

  Stocker stared down at her a moment and then kicked her in the stomach. Lois’s body didn’t even twitch.

  I’m like Percy the cat, Stocker thought. Go on, come at me. I’ll show you.

  The stream of blood trickled out of the deep gash on Lois’s forehead and drew a line over her once beautiful cheek. Her mouth was open enough to remind Stocker of a dead fish, just like the dead fish she occasionally found on the shore of the lake.

  She knelt down and looked into Lois’s glassy eyes.

  “I’ll tell anyone I want about Selma and Miles. It just so happens, I don’t want to tell, but I would if I wanted to. You hear me?”

  She slapped Lois’s shoulder with the flashlight, and then she stood up and looked out at the lake.

  Someday, she thought, she would be in a car parked here with some boy, too. Maybe with Miles, even.

  Someday.

  But not tonight and not tomorrow.

  She started away, her head down until she reached the bush, and then, without so much as glancing back, she disappeared down the path she had long ago beaten from her house to lovers’ lane, where she got the best sexual education.

  The water popped with the sound of frogs, oblivious to anything but the struggle to feed and be satisfied before the morning’s sunlight.

  Three

  “Where is that girl?” Chester Marlowe demanded. He looked up impatiently from his newspaper. Jennie turned from the electric range, where she was preparing his scrambled eggs, and looked toward the kitchen doorway. She glanced at the clock.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Well, get her down here. Before I go to the office, I want to be sure she’s going to do what she promised.”

  Jennie sighed deeply and turned down the flame under the pan. “I thought teenagers today were supposed to be easier on parents,” she moaned.

  “Most are!” Chester exclaimed.

  She glanced at him as if he were crazy and started out and up the stairs.

  “Lois,” she called. “Lois, it’s time to come down to breakfast.”

  She reached her daughter’s bedroom door and listened. The stillness triggered a small alarm that quickened her heartbeat. She reached for the door-knob.

  “Lois?”

  She opened the door and faced the still unmade canopy bed. Lois knew that making her bed and straightening her room was the first order of business after she woke in the morning. The room looked as messy as it had been in the afternoon yesterday.

  “Lois?”

  She walked to Lois’s bathroom. No shower was going, no water running, no lights were on, and Lois was not in there, either.

  “Lois?” she asked, turning in a circle. She hurried out of the room and checked every other room on the floor, even her and Chester’s bedroom to see if Lois had gone in there for some reason, the bathroom as well. She was nowhere. Her heart wasn’t beating quickly now; it was thumping with a slow, heavy downward beat, pounding her chest like a sledgehammer. She hurried to the top of the stairway. For a moment, she couldn’t get up enough breath to shout.

  “Chester!”

  He stepped into the doorway of the kitchen and looked up at her. She was shaking her head.

  “What?”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Not here? You mean, she already left for school?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jennie said. “The room’s unmade, and the bathroom looks unused.”

  “Unused? I don’t get it,” he said, refusing to understand. He charged up the stairway, rushed past her, and looked into his daughter’s bedroom.

  Jennie came up beside him. “I think she ran away last night,” Jennie said meekly, anticipating the thunder and lightning to follow.

  “Ran away? Christ almighty,” Chester moaned. “We’ll be absolutely destroyed.”

  He turned and hurried back down the stairway to the wall phone in the kitchen.

  Chief Henry McCalester had just walked into his office when Chester called. The sentry monitors were all going full blast. His deputy chief, Charlie Krammer, was at the console looking very attentive. Henry wasn’t fooled. He knew the twenty-seven-year-old ex-army soldier often dozed off at the controls, but he was otherwise efficient and still in excellent physical shape. He had served with the military police for the last few years of his army stint and had a very good policeman’s demeanor.

  McCalester himself was a big man, well over six feet four and nearly two hundred fifty pounds. His upper body was muscular, his neck thick, but he had a pouch and rather poor posture. His shoulders turned in and down as if he were always carrying a backpack full of bricks. He had dark eyes and heavy eyebrows. His lips were thick, with a distinct turn downward in the corners when he was in thought. He shaved every morning, but his beard was so heavy he had a shadow over his chin by midday. Despite his poor posture, he could be very intimidating, especially to high-school students.

  With the crime rate appreciably down in most regions of the state, the county executives had cut the police force nearly in half and depended upon the state for most of the more involved investigations. Each small community had a police chief and two deputy chiefs to help maintain a semblance of twenty-four-hour surveillance and enforcement. Henry McCalester, at fifty-one, was one of the senior members of the department and almost as well known as the county’s chief supervisor.

  “Quiet night,” Charlie remarked. He looked at the phone when it rang. Henry answered it.

  “McCalester,” he said.

  “My daughter’s missing, Henry,” Chester blurted.

  “Who is this?”

  “Chester Marlowe.”

  There was a deep, long pause.

  “Missing? How do you know that, Chester?”

  “She didn’t use her bathroom this morning. She always takes a shower after she wakes up, and she hasn’t been downstairs for breakfast. I feel it in my gut, Henry. She must have snuck out last night. We went looking for her this morning, and she’s gone!”

  “Sure she’s not on her way to school?”

  “Pretty sure,” Chester said. “You heard about the trouble yesterday?”

  “Yes, yes, I did,” McCalester said. “I was hoping it would all be over today.”

  “Me, too.”

  “All right,” McCalester said, sounding tired already. “I’ll take a ride over to the school, Chester. You going to be at home?”

  “I guess I have to wait for your call,” Chester said. “Jennie is beside herself.” He was even more so, but he didn’t want to admit it.

  “I’ll be as quick about it as I can,” McCalester promised. “Don’t panic yet,” he added. But if she did run away, he thought, you couldn’t panic enough.

 
; Chester cradled the receiver and turned to Jennie.

  “He’s going over to the school to see if she’s gone there.”

  “She hasn’t,” Jennie said firmly.

  “Where has she gone?”

  Jennie shook her head and bit her lower lip. Her eyes were like lights on an old-fashioned pinball machine. “I don’t know. I just don’t know that girl these days.”

  “I should have taken her by the back of her neck and marched her out of the house to the police station last night,” he said. “I shouldn’t have believed her. I should…” He paused and looked at Jennie. “They make our kids invulnerable to disease and all sorts of physical imperfections. Why don’t they make them obedient?”

  “I have a feeling they never will,” Jennie replied.

  She sank into a chair, then realized the scrambled eggs were exploding in the pan, and jumped up.

  “Oh, the eggs!”

  “Who cares about eating now?” Chester mumbled. He circled his hands around his cold mug of coffee and stared down at the black, syrupy liquid.

  All they could do was wait and watch the clock as it ticked toward their future, each movement of the second hand chipping away everything he had accomplished and built.

  The students in Mark Downing’s senior homeroom sat quietly and looked up at Chief McCalester, who stood next to Mr. Downing and whispered occasionally.

  The bell had rung, and the halls were now empty. McCalester turned to the students. “Anyone here know anything about the whereabouts of Lois Marlowe this morning?” he asked.

  No one spoke. He panned the room slowly, lingering on every face for a split second.

  “Anyone here speak to Lois Marlowe last night?” he followed.

  Again, he was met with silence.

  “This is rapidly becoming a very, very serious police matter,” he continued. “If anyone has any information about Lois and is not forthcoming, he or she could be in big trouble for withholding that information. Well?”

  The only thing that broke the silence was the scraping of Stocker Robinson’s chair as she pulled herself closer to her desk.