Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I picked up your stuff so that you’d be more comfortable while you stay here.”

  I wasn’t crazy after all. They were my bins—the ones that should have still been tucked under my bed, in my windowless room, in my locked house, back in Callister.

  I blinked. “How did you—”

  He was prepared for my question and pulled out a plastic card—my driver’s license. “I went to the address listed on your ID.”

  He handed me my ID, with the horrific picture that looked like I had just gotten arrested after a bar brawl.

  “Where did you get this from?”

  “You had it in your pocket when … I found you,” he said with reluctance.

  “No, I didn’t,” I quickly challenged.

  His face shadowed. “Yes, you did.”

  I was racking my brain, trying to remember the last time I had left the house. I knew that the safe thing to do was to keep my ID on me when I ran alone—so that police could more easily identify the dead body in the ditch—but I usually forgot to bring it. I couldn’t remember if I had brought it the last time.

  “How did you get into my house? It was locked,” I probed.

  He rolled his eyes. “Key under the front mat—real original.”

  “You broke into my house?!”

  “No, I used your key,” he corrected. His features narrowed, “You should never leave your key anywhere near the front door. That’s the first place robbers will look.”

  I crossed my arms defiantly. “That’s an interesting safety tip coming from the guy who already broke into my house. Maybe next time you break in, you can leave me a list of everything else I do wrong.”

  He sighed. “Okay, I broke into your house—but I brought your things here for you. Can’t we just call it even?” He smiled, but his face was tight. “Besides, it wouldn’t have mattered even if you hadn’t left the key under the mat. The front door was practically falling off its hinges. Anyone could have gotten into that house without a key.”

  Strangely, this didn’t make me feel any better.

  His eyes held my gaze, but his face was indecipherable. I twisted an errant hair back behind my ear and looked away.

  “What’s wrong?” he quickly asked.

  I tried to glue a smile on my face before I turned my eyes back to him. “Nothing.”

  He assessed my attempt. “Do I make you nervous?”

  I thought about this for a moment. There were no knots in my shoulders—just in my stomach.

  “No, I’m not nervous around you,” I answered truthfully.

  “Then you’re still afraid of me, aren’t you?” he asked resentfully. “It probably didn’t help that I confessed to breaking into your house.”

  “That didn’t help,” I agreed.

  I took a long breath, took a step away from him, and looked down at my fingers before responding. “I’m afraid of what you could do. I mean, I’ve seen what you could do—but, to answer your question, no, I’m not afraid of you.” This was also the truth—strange, completely ridiculous, totally dangerous, but true.

  He came closer to me and lifted my chin with his finger, forcing me to look up at him. I didn’t flinch or recoil from him this time, but my heart rate rocketed while he judged my expression. I kept his eyes but held my breath, which was probably a good thing, considering that I hadn’t brushed my teeth in a few days.

  After a half-second, he was content with what he saw on my face and released me.

  “Then what is it?”

  I forced myself to walk away from him again before I passed out. “It’s nothing.”

  “Tell me,” he pleaded.

  I leaned against the bedpost and swallowed hard.

  “Please?” he added.

  “I can’t read you. It’s … unsettling.”

  His eyes questioned. “I don’t understand.”

  My cheeks were getting hot. “Your face never changes. I don’t know when you’re angry, or happy, or—”

  “Or if I’m going to kill you,” he finished, his voice gloomy.

  “Or have me killed,” I added. “Why didn’t you just tell me that you weren’t going to kill me when I freaked out in the apartment?”

  “Would you have believed me?” he asked bitterly.

  I bit the inside of my lip and nodded.

  His face darkened and I heard him draw a breath. “You had no reason to believe me. In fact, you shouldn’t believe me. You said yourself that you’ve seen what I’m capable of.”

  It took all my strength to keep the tears from escaping my eyes; it was painful to replay that moment when I thought I had been sentenced to my death. “But wouldn’t it have been a better than the alternative? Better that having me sit in a car for how many hours, with the guy who I thought was going to kill me and bury the body in the middle of nowhere …”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said with sincerity. “You caught me by surprise; I didn’t know what to do, I’m not used to that. The crying stuff I mean.”

  He paused. A sheepish smile crossed his face. “Though I thought for sure you would have had everything figured out as soon as the kid opened his mouth.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” I sniffed. “It’s not like I get kidnapped every day.”

  His face soured. A wall had closed the features of his face again, and he looked away.

  “I’ll make some room in my dresser so that you can put your stuff away,” he said, his voice robotic.

  “Okay … Thank you.”

  He pointed to a door that was at the other end of the room. “The washroom’s in there. I’m sure you’re going to want to shower and change and all that other stuff.”

  I nodded. Later I would savor the notion of having my own bathroom again, even if it was in a prison.

  “Shower up and come back downstairs when you’re done,” he said.

  We stood for a minute, looking around in uncomfortable silence, not looking at each other. Then without saying anything else, he turned around, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter Six:

  Cool Kids

  It was an ocean of green beyond Cameron’s bedroom windows—one of those views that you find ensnared in the pages of a calendar, images that people wallpaper onto the desktop of their computer at work, like they need to be reminded of something—perhaps a primeval memory.

  My nose was nearly pressed against the patio doors that led to a small balcony outside Cameron’s bedroom. I was two floors up from the ground, overlooking an egg-shaped, in-ground pool and a yard of thick, golf-course-grade grass. At the end of the pool area, where the terracotta interlock stones touched the lawn, there was a pink pool house with crimson flowers bunched within the windowsills. Fifty feet from the house, the grass stopped and was overcome by an infinite forest of evergreens and maples and jade hills in the horizon that divided the treetops from the expanse of blue sky.

  As far as I could tell, we were somewhere within a densely forested valley. The view from the second floor was breathtakingly beautiful and terrifying all at once. I had no idea where I was, and the fact that I couldn’t see any roads or signs of human life beyond the border of trees hadn’t escaped me. The problem: this didn’t really scare me. There was a part of me—a big part—that wanted to breathe it all in, take a mental picture, and frame it in my mind so that I would never forget it; the other part was mutely terrorized by the first part.

  I eventually peeled myself away from the glass and went through my Rubbermaid bins. Everything was there—clothes, school books, bathroom necessities … down to the indigo ballerina lamp that had been next to my bed and the ragged copy of Rumble Fish that I kept under my pillow. Opening the rubber lids—one after another—was like Christmas morning; my worldly possessions made exciting again in this surreal place. I tried to imagine my bedroom back in Callister, what it would look like stripped to its bare bones, but thwarted the eerie feeling of knowing that someone had had to meticulously go through my stuff to b
ring it to me.

  I was incredibly grateful to have it all with me; this was what I focused on.

  I found something quick to wear—after wearing my running clothes for however many days, even a potato sack would have done the trick—and went to the bathroom to shower and brush my teeth. Like the rest of the house, the bathroom was a showpiece that could have easily graced the cover of one of those snooty home architectural magazines. It was cleaner than the main-floor bathroom; in fact, it was pristine.

  I emerged from Cameron’s bedroom looking, feeling and smelling like myself again. But when I heard roaring laughter coming from the kitchen downstairs, I came to an abrupt halt at the top of the stairs, my paranoid instincts flickering … only to be confirmed by Rocco’s excited pitched voice that echoed through the house.

  “It smelled like chow mein!” was what I heard him say. This was quickly followed by another wave of laughter.

  There was an audience.

  I stood, deliberating whether to go back into the hidden comfort of Cameron’s bedroom or face the music, now knowing that I would have to face it all eventually. My grumbling belly answered my dilemma—food before pride.

  I took a full-lunged breath before slowly walking through the archway into the common room. With all the hefty men that sat, shoulder to tight shoulder, around it, the extra-large dining table looked like a child’s craft table. Rocco was standing at the head, emceeing for the breakfast crowd, while Carly and Spider had their heads bent together at the other end, entranced in a whispered conversation and feigning interest in the papers that were stacked in front of them.

  Cameron wasn’t there. I told myself that this was a good thing: at least I wouldn’t have to be in the same room as him, trying to hide my neurotic stares, while his angry girlfriend sat a few measly feet away from me, and with a tattooed man who glared at me like I was the fly that flew under his flyswatter—it would only take one small motion of the hand to annihilate me.

  “The girl thought that the boss had sent me to take care of her,” Rocco proudly recounted for the crowd. Another roar ensued. Rocco looked fleetingly insulted this time.

  Cameron was also missing his kid brother’s great tale—an added bonus, I thought.

  Annoyed and horrifically embarrassed, I pursued with my brave face to the table. Rocco was the first to see me and took it upon himself to announce my arrival.

  “Hey puke-breath, your ears must have been burning.” All massive heads followed Rocco’s gaze. Spider and Carly’s communal head shot up too: Carly grimaced when she saw me; Spider resigned himself to his usual nasty glare. The whole room had gone tensely quiet.

  My ears were burning, like I was wearing hot coals for earmuffs.

  In an instant, Carly and Spider were out of their seats. With an added faint whistle and nod of the head from Spider, all of the men rose with them, rushing to grab last morsels from their breakfast plates.

  Everyone except Rocco and me trudged out of the common room with Carly and Spider. I was officially back to my first day in high school when I had mistakenly sat at the seniors’ table in the cafeteria.

  Rocco whistled. “That was fast. You sure know how to clear out a room. Do you have rabies or some other kind of contagious disease that I don’t know about?”

  I shrugged and chewed on the corner of my lip while he started stacking dirty plates.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” he said, his head bent over his task. “They’re a tough crowd to break. It took them a while to get used to me too.”

  I clasped a few of the dirty cups and glasses between my fingers and followed him into the kitchen. “How long have you been here?”

  “I got here over a year ago, I think. I’m not really sure. Time seems to stand still around here.”

  “Where are your parents?” I wondered.

  His eyes shot up. “My parents? I don’t know. They’re somewhere out in the world, I guess. Who cares?”

  “Isn’t this your parents’ house?”

  “That’s funny,” he said, shaking his head. He grabbed a frying pan from the stove filled with what looked like canned beans fried in ketchup. “Are you gonna want any of this?”

  I shook my head.

  “Suit yourself.” He scraped the remnants into the garbage and flung the pan into the dishwasher without rinsing it first.

  “Help yourself to some food if you’re hungry. That’s the way it works around here. You grab what you want,” he said. “But just don’t expect to be served. I may have to clean up after these guys, but I don’t serve anyone.”

  For whatever reason, he was trying to make a point.

  I grabbed a bowl from the opened cupboard and poured cereal from the box that was lingering on the counter. I got the milk jug from the table and poured it over my Captain Crunch.

  “Where’s Cameron?” I tried to keep my voice indifferent.

  “I don’t know.” Rocco’s hand quieted over the dishwasher. “Why?”

  “He’s your brother, isn’t he?”

  “Doesn’t mean I keep a leash on him,” he said, taking his frustrations out on the plates that refused to fit into the fully loaded dishwasher.

  In the meantime, I was pulling at invisible straws. “You left your parents and came here—on … purpose?”

  “I left my mom; never knew my dad. There wasn’t much to leave behind. My mom got a new boyfriend,” he said, like this explained it all.

  “So … you came to live with your brother?”

  “No,” he corrected indignantly, “I came to work for my brother.”

  We were getting somewhere. “What kind of work do you do for your brother?”

  “Right now, I look after the administration of the house,” he said as he looked over at me, like he guessed what I was going to ask next. “Meaning I do whatever Spider tells me to do, like cleaning the stupid kitchen.”

  “And putting all the groceries away,” I added.

  “And driving Miss Daisy.”

  I remembered the argument between him and Carly the night before. “This isn’t the work that you want to do?”

  “Do you know anyone who wants to spend his time cleaning up after a bunch of jerks? It’s not work a man should be doing … No offense.”

  “None taken.” I closed the dishwasher door and searched for the start button, letting him vent.

  “I mean, this was supposed to be temporary so that I could prove myself,” he continued without my encouragement. “I’ve proven myself and should be working for Cam now.”

  He pushed me aside and started the dishwasher.

  “What kind of work does Cameron do?” I asked him, but the one called Spider had come to the kitchen to interrupt us.

  “Kid, if you’re done in here, go air out the boss’s car. It smells like death in there,” Spider ordered.

  Rocco winked at me, and with a salute and an “aye-aye, sir” to Spider, marched out of the kitchen.

  Spider ignored the fly in the kitchen and walked out too.

  When I’d finished my second bowl of cereal, I rinsed out the bowl and tucked my dishes away in the second dishwasher. I’d forgotten how great it was to have a dishwasher instead of a sink full of dishes. I then went outside to the warm May sun, looking for more answers.

  Cameron’s car was parked at the top of the circular driveway. All four doors of the Audi were opened and Rocco was crouched over the passenger side seat with a spray bottle.

  There was so much happening outside and big people walking around that it took a while for my brain to fully consider what my eyes were seeing. Four white, cubed passenger minivans with darkened windows were lined up at the far end of the driveway. Men were buzzing around the property, some leaning against the vans, basking in the sunshine, and others walking about, intent on some mysterious task. Then there were the men that were away from the driveway, past the grass clearing, all the way down to the edge of the woods; these men stood in a row along the property line, about twenty feet from each o
ther, and watched the scene from the shadows of the trees—their long barreled guns either in hand or holstered over their large shoulders.

  I sped to Rocco who was muttering and shaking his head, absorbed intensely in a discussion with himself.

  “Need any help?” I offered keenly, withholding the alarm in my throat.

  He glanced up and chewed on my proposal for a minute.

  “Better not,” he said, sighing. “I don’t want to get in trouble again for talking to the inmate.”

  “Is that what I am?” I wondered, keeping a corner of my eye on the gun-wielders.

  Rocco shrugged. “Apparently.”

  While he sprayed some kind of deodorizer on the front passenger seat, I sat on the backseat, with my legs swinging out the side. I leaned my face forward in the outside air—because it was really stinky inside the car.

  “Who are all those people?” I asked him.

  He didn’t look up. “What people?”

  I pointed my thumb in the direction of the gunners. “The men with the guns,” I said, to start with.

  “Guards,” Cameron answered as he approached the car with Meatball at his heels. I noticed that he had showered. His hair was still dripping, and he had changed from jeans and red T-shirt—to jeans and gray T-shirt.

  “What are they guarding?” I managed to ask.

  “Precious cargo,” he replied quickly before changing the subject, starting with a cruelly charming smile. “I heard you got my kid brother back for putting that bump on your head.”

  “Whatever,” Rocco mumbled without lifting his head to acknowledge his brother.

  Still smiling, Cameron glanced at me, motioning his head toward Rocco, silently asking me what Rocco’s problem was.

  I shrugged in response; though my guess was that Rocco had probably been berated by the one called Spider for chitchatting with me—the prisoner—earlier.

  Cameron wasn’t fazed by his brother’s crankiness. “Come on. I’ll show you around.” By the time I realized that his hand had grazed the small of my back to lead me back to the house, he had already pulled it away. Meatball happily followed us.