“You in love, little girl?” Zefi nudges me from behind and I blow him off with a punch in the arm.
We unlock the bikes and I take a deep breath as I straddle my way on. I haven’t ridden anything with wheels since the accident, and just as muscles build with exercise, they also atrophy with neglect. I used to be stronger than Zef, but now I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up. I’ve got my foot on the pedal waiting for Todd to make his move, but he doesn’t start the engine. Instead, he emerges from his car with a black duffel bag and heads back to the gym. Zefi doesn’t bother reattaching the bikes to the rack and heads into the building to pursue our potential criminal. A part of me hopes that Zefi’s dad’s two-wheeled chafing machine won’t be here when we return.
“Speaking of girls, Zef,” I whisper. “What’s this I hear about your cutting-edge future career designing barrettes?”
“News travels fast,” he says indifferently.
“Are you planning to major in bows or ribbons?”
Todd rounds the corner toward the music wing and Zefi speeds up without a word, as if my last dig wasn’t just a little bit funny.
“Maybe it’s me, but I don’t picture Todd playing the clarinet,” I say, the mental image of Todd squeezed into a folding chair, feet flat and knees together playing Chopin making it hard for me not to laugh.
“You’re doing it again, Alex. The lame jokes,” he says. “Just admit that you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous, asshole.”
It’s true, I’m not nervous. I’m effing terrified. One swift look over his shoulder and Todd will know he’s being followed, and whatever happens after that is entirely up to him. And Jesus, what if he’s in the Mafia? Some Russian drug ring? There are a gazillion bloody ways to kill a person, about half of which have something to do with genitals, and that’s just based on what I’ve seen in mainstream movies. I can’t even imagine—I don’t want to imagine—what kind of Mafioso torture goes down in B movies.
Todd sneaks into Mr. Garrison’s music room, and with nowhere to hide and wait, Zef pushes us into the empty teachers’ lounge next door. Walking into the teachers’ lounge is like prowling around a stranger’s bedroom or opening their refrigerator. I feel precisely like the intruder I am. The card table in the middle of the room is speckled with coffee stains and a dozen empty coffee cups, all with dried shiny-brown rings around the inside. Plastic stirrers lie like an untouched game of dirty pick-up sticks and the ripped-open, half-used packets of sugar number into the twenties despite the trash can a step away. All their emphasis on neatness and yet these artsy teachers can’t seem to clean up after themselves. I’d bet it’s the same in the other teachers’ lounges too, with the possible exception of the math-wing lounge. I’d bet that one is neat as a pin. I’m padding toward the back of the room where the refrigerator sits when I feel a yank on my shoulder.
“He’s opened Garrison’s CD shelf,” Zefi says.
“If Garrison comes back, Todd’s screwed.”
“He’s not coming back, at least not right away.” Zefi points to the enormous sign on the front door that I had somehow missed.
Humanities Meeting
Wednesday After School, Gym
“He’s stealing them!” Zefi pulls me to the edge of Dr. Garrison’s door so I can see for myself.
Todd isn’t grabbing whatever he can find and throwing it into his duffel bag but browsing as if he were in a store. Damn, he’s got balls.
“He’s already dropped three or four into his bag,” Zefi whispers.
When Todd turns to leave, we squeeze behind the teachers’-lounge door. But his footsteps do not become more distant as I would’ve expected. Instead, he enters the lounge, pours himself a cup of cold coffee, takes a sip, and leaves it full on the card table with the others. He rummages through the pigeonholes of teacher mail before finally turning to leave. As soon as he saunters out, my shoulders drop and I breathe in deeply.
“He walks around like he owns the place.”
“Not for long he won’t,” Zefi whispers.
We stay smashed behind the lounge door, not daring to leave until his footsteps have faded to silence. Being afraid is bad enough, but being a coward is far worse. I’m tired of hiding behind doors and practically whimpering in the passenger seat of his Mustang. I push into the hallway, fighting against the fear.
“We need to call him on it, Zef. Right now, before I lose my nerve. Before the school empties out.”
“We’re after the bigger picture.” Zef shakes his head and frowns the way Dad used to when I did something wrong. “I don’t give a shit about Garrison’s CDs.” He cups his hands around his ears. “I can still hear him squeaking down Wing C. Let’s go.”
“The cafeteria?”
From the swinging doors leading into the kitchen, I glimpse Hank, Lincoln’s fat, Dad-age cook. He’s talking with Todd like they’re old buddies, which seems next to impossible. Beyond the obvious difference of age and body type, Hank is a good guy. In other words, he’s Todd’s moral and physical opposite. We slide into the half-open janitor’s closet and observe the unlikely scenario from the crack in the door.
“They can’t be friends,” Zefi mutters. “Partners in crime?”
I shake my head hard. Hank’s no criminal.
Hank turns to stir a vat of tomato-like sauce, and right as he’s got his back to his unlikely buddy, Todd digs his hand into the dessert basket. He fishes out as many chocolate chip cookies as his fists can hold and drops them into his bag. As Hank cooks, Todd turns to the milk crate and plucks four cartons of chocolate milk. He grabs a sorry-looking apple from this morning’s fruit display, crunches it practically in half, and slaps Hank on the back. Hank waves as Todd heads for the doors, never turning away from his steaming pot.
I’m starting to feel nauseous because all this time I’ve been right. Todd isn’t just a jerk, he’s a criminal; and I don’t know the first thing about standing up to someone who doesn’t play by the rules. I punch him in the face, he’ll take out my teeth with a baseball bat. I tell him what I know, and he’ll sic a pit bull onto my genitals. I can’t win against a criminal. At best, I disappear. And right about now, I’m wanting to disappear.
“He’s got a big master plan,” Zef says.
“I don’t give a shit about his plans,” I say. “I want out.”
“Well, I don’t, Alex, and I’m gonna need backup.”
“I’m out, Zef.” I test out something my mom calls resolve.
“Whatever.” His words are proof of both our friendship and my unsuccessful efforts at resolve. And anyway, he knows that I’ve got his back no matter what.
We follow Todd to the parking lot, and I am disappointed to find Zefi’s dad’s bike right where I left it. I wriggle on and begin to pedal as Todd revs the Mustang.
Todd screeches out of the parking lot and onto Maple, which is flat and wide, but after yesterday’s snow, the bike lane is off-limits. We weave our way through the traffic and keep a safe, five-car gap between us and Todd. It’s easy to keep up with him in the after-school traffic, at least until he turns into Crest Falls, the mazelike neighborhood closest to the high school. Here there are hills, the kind that make you curse your shitty bike and your shitty exercise-and-diet regime. The kind that I’m hoping will put a cork in Project Todd once and for all. Zefi whizzes by me and waits at the top.
“Let’s go get some nachos, Zef.” I’m so slow reaching the top that the bike almost topples over. “My treat,” I wheeze.
“You’re out of your mind.” He pushes forward as soon as I stop for a breather, leaving me and my nacho dreams in the dust.
I start up a second monster hill behind him, zigzagging from one dry patch of asphalt to another until I’m finally at the top. Despite my heavy breathing, rubber legs, and burning crotch, I can’t ignore the amazing view. The high school looks like it isn’t t
he soul incinerator that it is, for one. Now that distance has blotted out the details and we’re out of earshot, the place looks civilized, even peaceful. The trees lining these Crest Falls streets are speckled with light green, pink, and white. The sky is a bright blue and the breeze is almost warm. When I unzip my jacket, a rush of cool air runs down my neck, and I breathe in its sweetness. Maybe it’s the beautiful view or the fleeting idea that things could be worse than they are at this very moment, but whatever it is, Ina makes her way to the surface of my consciousness like she does every day. Her eyes as blue as the sky. The heat of her silky skin against my cheek. Our first “kiss,” forehead to forehead. Despite the expulsion and Ina’s going MIA, despite Dad’s leaving and Todd’s sheer existence, with her kiss on my forehead, I somehow come out a winner.
“An old Mustang should be easy to find,” Zefi says, canvassing the houses below. I pretend to scan the streets too, but they’re all a blur. My attentions are focused on staying in Ina mode as long as possible.
“There it is,” Zef whispers, pointing at the cul-de-sac below.
Sure enough, Todd’s Mustang is parked in front of a small split-level house that looks an awful lot like Zefi’s. I picture a shag rug like the one in his den and dark wood kitchen cabinets with a chipped white Formica countertop. As we get closer, I notice a wreath hanging on the door.
“Burglars look for houses like this one, with holiday decorations still up in the spring,” Zefi says. “It’s a sign that no one’s home.”
“Or that someone’s dead or senile,” I scoff. Zefi shoots me a glare as if to say, There you go again with the jokes.
We drop the bikes up the block and jet from tree to tree, from car to car, until there is one parked car between us and the Mustang. Zefi stretches up from behind the banged-up silver Honda Civic buffer and looks through the back and front windshields to the Mustang.
“He’s still in the car,” he whispers, dropping below the back fender.
The door with the wreath opens and slams shut and I jump, the back of my head ramming into the rusted fender above me. From behind the back tire, I watch a big-boned woman dressed in navy scrubs leave the house. This clunker of a car with the rusted fender is hers. My fingers are wet when I rub my sore head. Blood. I’m probably going to need a tetanus shot if I make it out of this in one piece. When I think about it, the person I need to talk to about this is a registered nurse, like the one walking toward us this very moment.
“My aunt Anne is a nurse. Her hours are crazy long, which makes for the perfect break-in.” Zefi twists around the back tire for a better look, burglar-style.
As the nurse fiddles with her keys, we crawl from behind the car to the neighboring azalea bushes. The nurse-woman putts off in her rustmobile, and we remain frozen behind the green, our eyes on the Mustang. Only after the nurse is out of sight does Todd creak open his door. Through the leaves, we watch him sneak up the walk to the stoop, the black bag of CDs, cookies, and milk over his shoulder. Lugging snacks and music along for a break-in is unusual enough, but then Todd does something else I don’t imagine most criminals would bother trying. He jiggles the front doorknob. As if the nurse is going to leave her door unlocked. As if it wouldn’t be better to slip to the back before neighbors can get a clear visual. But herein lies Todd’s criminal genius: the door is unlocked. In a matter of seconds, Todd is inside.
“He’s been scoping out this house for a while,” Zefi says. “No one would take that chance.”
“Do we call the cops?”
“Hell no,” he whispers emphatically, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open. “We’re going in.”
”Hell no!”
I’m bracing myself for the “we’ve come all this way and for what” speech, but instead, Zefi insists on a quick peek through a side window. We tiptoe across the front yard, past the open front door, to a narrow window along the left side of the house.
“It’s a goddamned bathroom,” I scoff. From what I can tell through the half-open white shutters, the nurse is neat. There is a doily behind the toilet seat on which sits a bowl of dried petals and sticks, probably cinnamon scented like the one in Mom’s room. In a basket next to the toilet is a thick book of Valentine poems. The narrow door is open and gives us a glimpse of the wood-paneled hallway where pictures hang in dainty wire frames, the kind my grandmother has hanging in her apartment.
Zefi yanks me from the window and back around the corner to the stoop. I freeze as Todd whisks across the hallway. From outside, I can hear him opening and closing cabinets. Zefi pushes me, and now, well, I’m inside too, making me a B&E’er just like Todd. But unlike Todd, I don’t know my way around.
The radio suddenly blares, but instead of music, it’s a conversation about ferrets. I hear Todd slamming cabinets and drawers over the debate of cage-free versus caged ferrets, and despite myself, I sneak deeper into the dark hallway for more.
“What about those large plastic balls? Can we put our ferret in that?”
“Oh, no,” the other voice whines. “You might as well zip your ferret up in a black plastic bag.” He scolds. “No, no, no.”
And I suddenly wonder what else might be in Todd’s bag other than snacks and music. A gun? A knife?
And that’s when I hear it. It’s not a delicate, singsongy voice like Madame Forever’s but a gravelly and monotone babble that suggests what I’d previously thought inconceivable: a beyond-forever state. From the sound of it, I’ve just discovered prehistory. Between the judgmental ferret expert on the radio and the old woman babbling in the den, I’m thinking that maybe Todd didn’t case this house as well as he should have. I inch toward the door for a better look, and when I do, her words sound vaguely familiar.
“It’s French,” I whisper behind to Zef, who has followed me inside.
Despite my four years of the language, the only French that slides off my tongue like a native is “Je ne sais pas” and “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?”, the latter thanks to some seventies CD my mom listens to sometimes.
“She’s asked him to dance,” Zefi whispers, as fuzzy trumpets carry through the hallway, replacing the ferret discussion. Mr. Garrison’s CDs. The floorboards in the room to our right start to creak, and from between the door hinges, I watch Todd pull the old woman from her armchair and into his arms. He swings her the way a girl swings a rag doll, her slippers sweeping the floor, her arms looped around his neck. The tin alto fades, and as Todd lowers the woman into her armchair, he speaks to her in French so fluent that I don’t understand a word.
She whispers in Todd’s ear, and he scrambles to his duffel bag for the cookies and chocolate milk. She unwraps the cookies and places them on little china plates already arranged on the coffee table. He pours the milk into mini-teacups. She winds her tiny fingers into the handle of her cup, and they toast.
“Chinchin!” they say in unison.
Sunlight streams in through the bay window, and I can’t help but study her wide, LEGO-white teeth as she chews a miniscule bite of cookie for a good thirty seconds, mouth wide open. Her tiny eyes are essentially lost under crinkles of wrinkly skin that must leave her partially blind. These aren’t your typical wrinkles but more like folds so deep that they could feasibly gather lint. I bet she could hide a safety pin or toothpick or a small button in there too if she tried.
I turn away from the door hinges and scour the photos on the wall for an idea of her previous self, her real self before time took over. I wonder if she searches for a glimmer of her past self on these walls too. And does she find it? Does she remember? The potential eventuality of not remembering, of not recognizing who I used to be sends a rush of panic through me. The idea of it puts everything I am at this moment into question. “I think, therefore I am.” Some fancy European said it centuries ago, but he’s wrong. It’s not thinking that makes you who you are when you look in the mirror or at pictures on the wall. It’s remembering.
And that flips me out. Because if I can’t remember Ina’s kiss for the rest of my life, then who I am suddenly becomes pretty damn glum.
Zefi puts his hand on my shoulder and motions me farther down the hall to a picture of Todd, his arms around this old woman and the nurse with the Honda Civic who should’ve probably checked the cut on my head.
The smell of urine and shut-in and cinnamon from that bowl of potpourri in the bathroom coupled with my fears of amnesia has brought my heart beating to a crescendo that is unsustainable.
“I’m outta here, Zef.”
I’m straddling the entrance, one foot on the stoop and one still in the hallway, when I hear it. His voice.
“Freshman?” Todd makes an impressive transition from dainty, grandma-worthy French to his gangsta New York English. Before I can even think about how effed I am, he’s got his nose pressed up against mine.
“You alone?”
Where the SHIT is Zefi?
Todd wraps his fist around my half-zipped sweatshirt and lifts me off the floor by the neck. If I ever thought that people with a knack for foreign languages and a love for their grannies couldn’t kill in cold blood, then that thinking has fled as quickly as I wish I had. What has become crystal clear, however, is that talk is cheap. Zefi, my supposed best friend and a self-proclaimed big talker, has chosen to go MIA at the pinnacle of crisis.
“I asked you if you were alone.” Todd growls, lifting me higher.
“Looks that way,” I choke, but this time when I look over Todd’s shoulder, I see that I’m not. Zefi has emerged from the dainty powder room aiming the now-empty potpourri bowl at the back of Todd’s head. The smell of cinnamon is strong and sweet. Zefi is about to swing when the old woman shuffles into the hallway.
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