Grendel's Guide to Love and War

by A. E. Kaplan

  But the cop who had hold of Wolf just laughed. “That argument might hold a little more water, son, if you didn’t stink like a Pink Floyd concert.” He smacked Wolf in the shoulder. “We’re going to be good friends, you and me.”

  He shoved Wolf in front of him, and I followed behind, listening to Wolf protest again and again that the pot wasn’t his.

  “Wait!”

  I looked up to see Mrs. Lee, who had only just released Rex’s ear, stumbling toward us down the sidewalk. “He’s with us. He wasn’t at the party.”

  The cop looked down at me. “Are you sure, lady?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s one of ours.”

  The ladies of Lake Heorot murmured their agreement. The cop uncuffed me and shoved me in the direction of Virginia Werm. “You ladies’d better get him home, then,” he said. “And keep him inside.” I stumbled toward my neighbors, who took turns fussing over me, picking pieces of grass off my shirt and pine needles out of my hair.

  At that moment, I caught sight of Willow, running toward us from the direction of my house.

  Wolf stared right at me, with this expression like he knew he’d lost but was taking me with him. He smirked at Willow. “So, Will. Does he know who told us about his sweet little notebooks?”

  I stared at Willow, who was now only a few feet away. I wanted to ask why she was there, when I’d asked her to be anyplace else, but what came out was “What does he mean?”

  Willow said, “We need to get inside.”

  I said, “What does he mean, about my notebooks?”

  Willow said, “Tom, please.”

  “You told him? Why? Why would you do that?”

  Fifty feet away from us, Wolf was being shoved into the back of a cop car. Through the window, he winked at me.

  “Willow,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. They saw us leaving Mrs. DeLuca’s house, and they wanted to know what we were doing there, and I just…I told them the truth. I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think they’d do anything with it.”

  I felt myself getting sweaty; it seemed like it’d suddenly gotten really hot out, and the air felt bad. I could smell the sulfur even from the front yard, and the taste was stuck in the back of my throat and made me want to gag. Willow looked like she might cry, which just made me madder, because this was my thing to be upset about, not hers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I just told them you were interviewing her. That it was a thing you did. I didn’t think it would matter.”

  I rubbed my forehead with my palms, hard. “That isn’t all, is it?” When she didn’t answer, I said, “You helped them with Stevens’s dogs, too. Didn’t you.”

  “Tom,” she said. “I had to.”

  Then I remembered what she’d said to me, right at the beginning: she played the game that was laid before her, and she played it better than most. And I realized she’d been honest with me from the start, only I hadn’t wanted to hear what she was saying. She’d told me who she was, and I hadn’t believed her.

  And then, from behind the line of police cars, a black Escalade screeched to a stop in front of the house. Out of it leapt Ellen Rothgar.

  “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” she roared.

  Willow jumped. “WILLOW, WHERE IS YOUR BROTHER?”

  Cowed, Willow slunk back toward the house.

  “How…,” Zip began.

  “I may have put in a call,” said Mrs. Werm, “to the network.”

  At home, we sat in front of the kitchen window, where we could watch the remaining guests being escorted into police cars. Parents were called. Someone threw up in the driveway. Ed opened a celebratory bottle of merlot, which tasted like vinegar, so Zip made us celebratory egg creams instead.

  I didn’t feel much like celebrating, though. I couldn’t stop thinking about Willow, and I wasn’t even sure why I was so upset, because it wasn’t like we’d ever made things official. She’d never been my girlfriend. We’d never made each other any promises.

  It hurt like hell anyway.

  “Talk to me,” said Zip. She waved her fingers at my face. “What’s all this?”

  “I guess I just thought…I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t really know her at all, and I don’t know why I liked her, and now…I just…I don’t even know why I’m upset.”

  “You knew her,” Zip said.

  “No, I really didn’t.”

  “Because she didn’t fill out one of your surveys? Come on.”

  “No! Ugh, Zip. It’s just. I know what’s important to you. I know what’s important to Ed. I don’t know anything about Willow, except that I never have any idea what she’s thinking.”

  “Well,” said Ed. “That’s knowing something.”

  I drank my soda.

  “Try to remember,” Zip said, “that Dad’s coming back in a few days and you’ve magically fixed everything at the Animal House next door, and you’re even more of a messiah to the widows of Lake Heorot than you were before.”

  “And all it cost us was our deposit at Party City and Willow.”

  Zip reached out and patted my shoulder. “It didn’t cost us Willow, Tom. She was playing both sides right from the beginning.”

  “I don’t think she saw it that way,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I seemed not to know what to do with my hands. “I don’t know.”

  Ed said, “Thomas. You are missing the enormity of what we’ve accomplished tonight. We faked a volcanic eruption in central Virginia, where there has not been a volcanic eruption since dinosaurs roamed the earth. You have avenged us all, sir. I salute you.” Then he did.

  “You’re not wrong,” I said. “It was awesome. It’s just…”

  “I think this is like postbirthday letdown,” Zip said. “Is that what this is? You’ve opened all your presents, and now you don’t have anything to look forward to?”

  “This isn’t postbirthday letdown.”

  “I think it is.”

  “I think Tom needs a cake,” said Ed.

  So we made a cake. It took us the rest of the night, and it was huge and too sweet and inexplicably blue, and was topped with a rudimentary drawing of Wolf being shoved into a cop car that Zip made out of chocolate syrup and six-month-old marshmallows. And we ate it until we were all sick and exhausted and our teeth were stained blue, and then we remembered that our volcano-faking equipment was still out in the woods, and then we went deeply and passionately to sleep.

  I didn’t know what time it was when I woke up the next day. Ed was passed out on my floor, and his phone was chirping like crazy. I nudged him with my foot, and he sat up and looked at the phone. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he said. “It’s one-thirty. I’m grounded forever.”

  “You should call and tell your mom you aren’t dead.”

  “It’s a moot point, because once she sees me, I will be.” He dragged himself up, tried unsuccessfully to mash down his hair, and staggered toward the door.

  “If I never see you again,” he said, “it was an honor knowing you.”

  “And you, old friend. Go in the way of the dodo.”

  He stopped. “That’s not exactly comforting.”

  “I’m not really awake yet. I’ll comfort you later.”

  He nodded, dialing his phone. “Hi, Mom, I—”

  He was cut off by screaming that was so loud I couldn’t even tell if it was English or Korean. It was easily translated either way as My child, and now you will die.

  He waved as he backed out the door, while the yelling continued.

  I changed out of my clothes from the previous night, still stained blue with frosting from our celebratory WOLF IS TOAST cake. I washed my face, which had three days of stubble growing from it, and went in search of breakfast.

  I found Zip on the couch, her hair still full of frosting, exhausted and exultant and clutching her phone, which was open to her email.

  I grabbed the Cheerios out of the cabinet and ate them out of the box as I flopped d
own next to her.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re getting back together with Pasha,” I said, nodding at the phone.

  “I got an interview,” she said, grinning.

  I put down the box of Cheerios. “For what?”

  She set the phone down and picked up the box, batting at my hand when I tried to grab it back. She settled with it in her lap and shoved a handful of cereal into her mouth. “You’re never going to believe this one,” she said through a bunch of crumbs. “Historical reenactor.”

  I thought of all the millions of Civil War reenactors I’d seen on TV over the years. “I didn’t know those guys got paid.”

  “The ones at Colonial Williamsburg get paid. They need someone to stay in character and work at, like, a millinery shop. Selling hats.”

  “You’re going to sell historical hats.”

  “In costume. If I get the job, which I probably won’t.”

  I eyed her carefully. “Not with that hair, you won’t.”

  She ran her fingers through it, knocking some dried frosting onto the couch. “You’re not wrong. At least I have a wig.”

  “That’s a terrible wig. You need a better one. But anyway, I thought you didn’t want to act. I thought you were over that.”

  “Technically, this isn’t acting, it’s sales. And historical interpretation. Which could lead to something else later, like teaching or working in a museum.”

  “Do you want to teach or work in a museum?”

  “Well, no. But it’s also right next to William and Mary, and if I save my money, I can take some extra classes there and work on my plan B.”

  “You never told me what plan B was.”

  “No.” She smiled. “I didn’t.”

  A minute passed, during which she pointedly did not describe plan B.

  “Well,” I said. “I mean, it’s nice enough down there. I went there with school once, and it was pretty, I guess. And it’s only like two hours away.”

  “Much closer than New York,” she agreed. “So you can come down and visit. Once I get an apartment. And, you know, the job. Which I probably won’t get.”

  “Yeah. Once you get this ungettable job, I can come down and visit your hypothetical apartment.”

  “That would be great. You can bring Ed.” I grabbed the box of Cheerios out of her lap and hit her in the arm with it before tucking it under my elbow.

  “You aren’t really…You and Ed…”

  She screwed up her face. “No. I’m way old and it’s gross.”

  I gave her a long look. “The lady doth protest too much.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Look. Ed is…um…not bad to look at. You know this.”

  I closed my eyes. “I have observed that girls seem to think he’s reasonably attractive.”

  “Also, he’s. You know. He’s smart, and he’s interested in things, and he knows what he wants to do with his life.”

  “He’s the un-you.”

  “Well, thank you, but yes. He’s the un-me. And anyway, I won’t always be old and gross. So who knows.”

  “Maybe he’ll hire you as a historical grape stomper at his vineyard in Napa.”

  She laughed. “I would be very happy to historically stomp grapes in Napa for Ed. Put in a good word for me.”

  “Will do. Zip?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope you get the hat thing.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

  Zip went off to buy a new outfit for her interview. I went outside and hovered at the edge of my driveway, watching the movers and hoping to catch sight of Willow.

  The grass was a foot high in the Rothgars’ front yard and starting to go to seed. The front flower beds were filling up with entrepreneurial dandelions. The columbines by the mailbox were half trampled from last night, but those, at least, would come back. It takes a lot to kill wildflowers. The backyard still bore the scars of Shultz’s pigs and would probably need to be reseeded.

  I finally saw Willow dropping off a box at the moving truck and intercepted her on her way back to the house. She stopped when she saw me. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  A long silence hung between us. “So,” I said, looking at the truck. “That was fast.”

  She smirked. “There may have been a threat from Mrs. Werm if Mom didn’t get us out of the neighborhood. So we’re going back to Chambliss. She’s pretty mad.”

  “What happened to Wolf?”

  She shoved her hands into her pockets and rocked back and forth on her feet. “He got booked for providing alcohol to minors and possession of pot.”

  “I still can’t believe he didn’t bother to drop that joint when the cops showed up.”

  She gave me a Mona Lisa smile. “Oh, the joint was the least of it. They searched his truck, and the glove compartment was all full of pot stems or something.”

  I laughed a surprised laugh. “Pot stems,” I said.

  Poor Bob Shultz. It wasn’t enough that we’d stolen his pigs. We’d also stolen half a pound of artisanal pig feed. Somewhere in Tolerville, Zipora Grendel was buying a navy-blue suit and feeling entirely pleased with herself.

  “Anyway,” she said, “Mom refused to bail him out, so he has to wait for one of his friends to come down from New York, I think. As far as I know, he’s still in the pokey. Mom sent his mother a strongly worded email.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’m sure he’s quaking in his flip-flops.”

  She laughed, but just barely. “Well,” she said. “I should go.” She turned to go back to the house.

  “But. But. See, the thing is,” I said. “I have this problem, and it’s really bothering me.”

  She stopped. “Okay.”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets, mirroring her. We both looked at each other like that, with our hands hidden away, and I coughed. “The thing is,” I said, “I like you kind of a lot. And I barely know you. And that’s really bothering me.”

  She ran her toe through the gravel. She waved back toward the house, where Rex and Ellen were arguing about a box in front of the door. “You know plenty about me.”

  “No, I know about your circumstances. But I don’t know what you like or what you hate or what you want to be or where you want to live or what you think about when you can’t sleep at four in the morning or even your favorite color. And I want to know all that. About you.”

  “Would you like me better if you knew those things?”

  “Well, yeah, possibly.”

  “There you go. Possibly. Possibly you would like me better. Or maybe you wouldn’t like me at all. What if I stay up until four in the morning thinking about murdering kittens? Or my favorite color is something ungodly like chartreuse?”

  I frowned. “I don’t think the reason you don’t want me to know you is because you think I might not like you. I don’t think it’s that at all.”

  She tipped her head down, so I was mostly looking at her forehead. “Maybe I’m just private.”

  I watched her for a minute as she stood there, offering me the top of her head and not looking up. “I get that,” I said. “I understand. But do you need to keep everything private? From everyone?”

  She picked a long blade of grass and tore the seeds off the end. Then she looked back toward the house, but I couldn’t see anyone there. “There’s something I want to show you,” she said. “Give me your phone.”

  I pulled it out of my pocket, and she took it and looked it over. “What the heck is this?” she asked. “Can you even get Internet on this?”

  “Never mind,” I said, taking it back from her. She pulled her own phone out of her pocket and typed a few things into the search engine, then handed it over to me.

  “What is this?” I asked. It was an article in the parenting section of some women’s magazine. The title was “Grieving a Grandparent: A Mother’s Perspective.” I said, “I don’t understand.”

  “Look at the byline.”

  By Ellen Rothgar.
r />   I read the first few sentences. It was an article about how, when Ellen’s mother died, Willow had cried for a month and tried to run away from home. How she’d pulled out a patch of her own hair.

  I stopped reading after the third paragraph. “This is really personal stuff,” I said. “I can’t believe she wrote this.”

  “She’s writing what she knows,” she said bitterly. “Guess how many times that article’s been viewed.”

  “I. I couldn’t guess. A few hundred? I don’t know.”

  “Twenty-three thousand. Twenty-three thousand times.”

  My eyes went up to hers. Twenty-three thousand times some stranger had read about how Willow felt about losing her grandmother, read Willow’s real name and her real history. “Did she ask you? Before she wrote this?”

  She shook her head. “Just. Just don’t look at the comments section.”

  “There’s a comments section?” I closed my eyes. “Of course there is.”

  She took the phone back from me. Her hair was ratted in the back and her eyeliner was only half washed off from the night before. But as much of a mess as she was, I felt like maybe I was seeing the real Willow for the first time. I wondered how many other articles her mother had written, how many times she’d sold Willow’s privacy for money and a byline.

  Willow pulled at her bracelets with her right hand. “The thing is,” she said. “Those things are mine, Tom. All my dreams and thoughts and favorite colors, those things belong to me. And if I share them with you—”

  “They still belong to you.”

  “Well, no.” She stopped picking at her bracelets and rubbed her hands over her forearms. “Not really. Because then you have the right to comment on them. You get to have an opinion. Maybe you think my favorite color is really ugly, and you tell me so, and now maybe I’m thinking that chartreuse isn’t so great and maroon is better. And poof! My favorite color is not my favorite color anymore.”

  I took a step toward her without taking my hands out of my pockets. “So what you’re saying is that you don’t trust me not to be an opinionated jerk?”

  She didn’t laugh. “I think part of the human condition is to be an opinionated jerk. Your little old ladies don’t care, because maybe by the time you get to be eighty, you’re like, My favorite color is fuchsia, and the rest of the world can suck it! But I’m not eighty yet. Do you get it now?”