Behind the Curtain

by Peter Abrahams

  “I know a good shooting drill,” Julia said.

  “We already got one,” said Coach Ringer. “All right, ladies, shooting drill, hustle up.”

  Ingrid, running to her shooting drill position, happened to see Julia’s face. It had gone white.

  In shooting drill, the two goalies defended one goal at the same time and everyone else took turns blasting away, supposedly from the top of the box but soon the taking turns part got messed up and balls flew from all over the place. Coach Ringer stood by one of the posts and yelled mysterious instructions, like, “Eyes, eyes, for Chrissake,” or “vicy-versy, vicy-versy.” Ingrid’s mood improved. She didn’t know whether Coach Ringer’s shooting drill actually helped, but it sure was fun.

  “Hey, Coach LeCaine,” Coach Ringer called. “Mind sending those balls back in?”

  A few balls had rolled out near midfield. Julia trotted after them. She moved well, not gliding along effortlessly like Coach Trimble, but powerful. Ingrid drove the last ball in her area toward the top right corner of the net, missed by a mile.

  “Come on now, funny feet,” said Coach Ringer. “How many times I got to tell you?”

  Ingrid turned to midfield, waiting for the balls to come in. He could tell her funny feet till the end of time and she still wouldn’t have a clue what he meant.

  Julia kicked the balls in, long high kicks that carried and carried. Ingrid jumped up, settled the first one off her chest. The second ball sailed over her head and into the net on one bounce. And the last ball: the boom of Julia’s kick was louder than any Ingrid had heard on a soccer field. Ingrid watched its flight, a thing of beauty, not high, but whizzing through the air on a line, an actual whiz you could hear, a gray blur headed right for the far post, where—

  Oh my God. Where at that moment Coach Ringer was huddled sideways against the wind, lighting a cigarette.

  “Coach!” Ingrid shouted.

  But too late. The ball struck him right on the ear with a sickening whack. His head banged against the post, making another sickening sound, metallic this time. Coach Ringer slumped to the ground and lay still.

  For a moment, everyone froze. Then some of the girls dropped to one knee, which is what they’d been taught to do for injuries on the soccer field. A few of them, including Ingrid, moved toward Coach Ringer, but not running, more confused. The only one running was Julia LeCaine. She blew by all the girls, knelt over Coach Ringer.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “Did a ball hit him?” said one girl.

  “I think it was me,” said another. She started crying. “I kicked it.”

  “Calm down,” Julia said. “It was an accident. And in all that chaos, there’s no way of knowing who did what.” She flipped open her cell phone and called 911.

  The girls crept closer. Coach Ringer lay on his back, eyes closed, his Towne Hardware jacket riding up and his flabby white belly sticking out, rising and falling.

  “He’s breathing, obviously,” said Julia.

  Ingrid came forward, tugged down the hem of the jacket.

  Julia’s eyes darted toward her, too quick to read. “Give him some room, please, Ingrid,” Julia said. She rose, squishing out Coach Ringer’s cigarette butt with the ball of her foot.

  An ambulance came rolling onto the field in less than a minute, lights flashing. As the EMTs raised Coach Ringer on a stretcher, his eyelids fluttered open. “Shoot the frickin’ ball,” he said. They got him inside the ambulance and drove off to the hospital, only a few hundred yards down the hill.

  Julia checked her watch. “The field is ours till five fifteen, I believe?” she said. “Let’s try another shooting drill, slightly more organized.”

  The parents—except for Ingrid’s, who were often late—came at five fifteen. Lots of buzzing conversations started up. Julia raised her hand for silence. “He was conscious when they took him away,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll be all right. See you on Saturday.”

  Everyone drove off. Ingrid sat on the bench, waiting. Mom and Dad had busy lives. The sky darkened, the wind picked up, the rain fell harder. After a while, she took off down the road; only one way up, so there was no chance of Mom or Dad missing her.

  Ingrid came to the turn-off to the hospital, stopped. Still no Mom or Dad. The emergency entrance, an ambulance parked in front, was just a few steps away. A moment or two later, pretty much without thinking, Ingrid was in the emergency waiting room.

  No one there but a nurse at her station, writing on a clipboard. She looked up: Mrs. Rubino.

  “Ingrid.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Rubino. Is Coach Ringer okay?”

  “They took him up to the ward,” said Mrs. Rubino. She put down the clipboard. “Tell you what—I’ll go take a peek, be right back.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mrs. Rubino went through a door marked INPATIENT. Ingrid sat by the window, picked up a magazine. Usually she could lose herself in just about any written material, but now she couldn’t get past the first few words. Could it have been on purpose? Was anyone that good with a soccer ball? Was Julia LeCaine really unaware of whose ball had actually done the damage? And was she, Ingrid, one hundred percent sure about that herself? Those questions were twisting around in her mind when Carl Kraken the third came in from the street entrance.

  He glanced at the empty nurse’s station, crossed the room, and went through a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Ingrid rose. That was kind of strange, since Carl the third worked for the Ferrands, not the hospital. Ingrid walked over to the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY door and opened it, just to see what was on the other side.

  A long corridor, harsh white lighting, no one in sight. Ingrid looked back into the emergency waiting room. No one there either. She stepped into the corridor. The door closed behind her with a compressed-air hiss.

  Ingrid moved down the corridor. Just to see. She passed an empty lounge, came to a door marked STORAGE, open an inch or two. She listened, heard nothing, gave the door a little push. A little tiny push, but for some reason it swung wide open, and with a bang.

  The noise startled the two men in the room. One, dressed in green scrubs, dropped a bottle that smashed on the floor, spilling green pills all over the place. The other one, Carl the third, whirled toward her and said, “What the hell?”

  “Oops,” Ingrid said. “I must be lost.”

  “What you lookin’ for?” asked the man in green scrubs. He had a gold tooth, first time Ingrid had seen one outside the movies.

  “The ward,” said Ingrid, reading his name tag: Rey Vasquez, Orderly.

  “This ain’t it,” he said, pointing the way she’d come.

  “Thanks,” said Ingrid, backing out, but as she did, Carl the third’s eyes narrowed with recognition and his mouth opened. Ingrid walked quickly down the corridor, through the door, into the emergency waiting room.

  Mrs. Rubino came in a second later. “He’s resting comfortably,” she said.

  “So he’s all right?” Ingrid said.

  “Guess what he said to me.”

  “What?”

  “He wants Stacy back on the team.”

  “Wow,” said Ingrid. Stacy was a great player, but she’d gotten into a battle of wills with Coach Ringer and ended up on the Bs. “The ball must have knocked some sense into him.”

  Mrs. Rubino laughed. She had a loud laugh, kind of tough sounding. “Too bad about the skull fracture,” she said.

  “Skull fracture?”

  “Very slight,” said Mrs. Rubino. “No surgery necessary. He’ll just have to take it easy for a while.”

  twelve

  SOMETIME LATE FRIDAY night or early Saturday morning, Ingrid dreamed of St. Joseph. At first he was just the white plastic real estate freebie, long-haired, vacant-eyed, expressionless. Then a bunch of dead leaves blew by and St. Joseph’s eyes slowly opened. He looked right at her. “If the numbers don’t work, we’ll have to make a noose,” he said. Right after that, she was soaring through a blue sky, high ab
ove the treetops.

  When she awoke, her room was filled with milky light, the dream gone, totally forgotten except for the dead leaves part and a vague sense of unease. Ingrid glanced at the clock. Five minutes after eight. Ridiculously early on a Saturday morning, just about a sin to be up. She closed her eyes, tried to drift back down into foggy sleep. But the uneasy feeling stayed with her, got all mixed up with the word sin, started to grow. And then it hit her—MathFest. She’d forgotten it again.

  MathFest! Oh my God. She sprang out of bed. What time was MathFest? 8:30. And the clock now read 8:08. That left her—what? For a moment, Ingrid couldn’t do this simple subtraction. Irony, essence of.

  She ran down the hall, throwing off pajamas, pulling on clothes. It came to her: twenty-two minutes. “Mom!”

  No answer.

  “Mom! Dad!”

  Silence.

  She zoomed down the stairs, practically airborne. Nigel, lying by the front door, got one eye open.

  “Hey, where is everybody?”

  A note on the kitchen table explained.

  Morning, Ingrid. Hope you had a good sleep. Dad’s out with the Sandblasters, I’m taking a course on the new software in Hartford and Ty slept over at Greg’s. I’ll be back in time to take you to your game.

  Love, Mom

  PS—Nigel could use a walk.

  Ingrid came close to pounding her fist on the table. MathFest was trying to kill her. She ran to the mudroom, grabbed her jacket, ran upstairs—pencils and Scotch tape, ran back down. Scotch tape? She tossed it away, somehow losing her grip on the pencils too.

  The high school. What was the route? Mom went right by it on her way to work. Left on Avondale, right on High—

  The phone rang. She snatched it up.

  “Hi kid,” said Grampy. “Good news—just the threat of pigs was enough to make them back off.”

  “Great, Grampy.” Should she ask him for a ride? 8:12, and the farm was twenty minutes away, maybe more. “I’ll call you later—I’ve got MathFest.”

  “Is it a school day?” said Grampy, or something like that; she was already hanging up.

  —right on High, past Nippon Garden—and then what? And how far was it, how long would it take on her bike?

  Those questions bubbled in her mind. Clock on the kitchen wall: 8:13. Oh my God. Jacket half on, half off, Ingrid raced through the kitchen door into the garage. Two plus fifteen minutes, seventeen, whatever. Breakneck speed was the only answer.

  Ninety-nine Maple Lane was one of the oldest houses on the street, but when Dad got promoted to vice president they’d renovated the whole thing except for the garage. It was dusty, shadowy, cluttered with all sorts of junk.

  Plus fresh spiderwebs every morning. Ingrid stepped around one, kind of beautiful, shimmering as though in a slight breeze, as she crossed to her bike, leaning against the far wall.

  Breakneck speed. That was her last coherent thought. Then came a jumble—the scrape of a hard heel on the cement floor behind her, cold hand wrapping over her face, the smell of something like swimming pools, but much stronger.

  Ingrid returned to a horrible world. It was almost no world at all, completely black. Was that because her eyes were closed? She tried to open them, could not. Something held them shut. Fear bloomed inside her like some awful flower taking over. She tried to scream but couldn’t even open her mouth. Something held it shut too. Everything taped up. She couldn’t breathe. No air, no air at all. Ingrid thrashed around. She was going to die. Die? She was thirteen years old. Please don’t let me die.

  After seconds, minutes, she didn’t know, Ingrid realized she was still breathing, breathing through her uncovered nose. She took a deep, deep breath, then another, calmed herself slightly.

  Could she move? Yes, because she’d thrashed around: that proved it. Ingrid shifted a little, hit her head on something hard. Her arms? Held tight together at the wrists, bound in front of her. Her feet? Free. She felt around, panicky quick, discovered she was in some small space. The only sound was rumble rumble, the only feelings the awful flower growing inside her, plus motion. Memory bits came back—MathFest, garage, a cold hand over her face.

  She was in the trunk of a car.

  That realization, bad as it was, settled her down a little, connected to things she’d learned. Like you were never supposed to get in the car of a stranger, not ever. Nothing good happens after you do that, so avoid at all costs. And if you were already in the car, locked in the trunk? No one had taken it that far, but the answer was obvious: You had to get out.

  Or else you were going to die.

  She breathed. The car rumbled. Now she could also hear the whine of rubber on the road. Plus music. Music? She even recognized the tune, one of those stupid oldies, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues.” Whoever was driving, whoever had done this, had the nerve to listen to music at the same time. A little piece of her fear chipped off and turned to hate.

  Pop the trunk. That was the expression. People said it all the time. You could pop the trunk with the key from the outside, or with some gizmo up front, near the driver. She didn’t have the key, wasn’t outside. Neither was she up front with the gizmo. But the gizmo must unlock the lock from inside the trunk, and she was inside. Eyes taped, mouth taped, hands taped, but inside with that locking mechanism.

  Ingrid rolled onto her stomach, bound arms stretched out in front of her, and felt around with her fingertips. She touched one of the interior walls. But which? She ran her fingertips along it, some carpety material, and then—what was that? Hard rubber. Hard rubber with grooves—the spare tire. Where would that be? Usually at one side, right? So this next interior wall—she twisted around—would be either the front or the back. If it was the back, and she kept running her fingertips over it, halfway along she’d encounter—

  The locking mechanism.

  Was this it? A square plastic-feeling thing, sticking out a little bit? That was all? How could that unlock anything? She got up on her knees and elbows, tried pushing and pulling at the square plastic thing with her fingertips. Nothing happened. The panicky flower started sprouting inside her again.

  Please don’t let me die.

  Ingrid tore wildly at that plastic thing. And all at once, by accident, she got a fingernail under one of its corners and it snapped off.

  What was underneath? Ingrid explored with her fingertips, trying to slow down and understand everything they were telling her, fit the details together. Details like this little hooked thing; and a long horizontal rod that felt like coat-hanger wire. Yes, a locking mechanism. Ingrid had seen one like it on Grampy’s shed. Maybe if she tugged on the rod like so, the little hooked thing might—

  Pop. The trunk sprang open.

  Still total darkness, but now she felt the rush of cold fresh air on her skin. Ingrid knelt blindly in the open trunk. Was she in traffic somewhere? If so, someone would see her right away and start honking or calling the police. But she heard no other cars. Was this some lonely road? How long before the driver noticed the trunk lid bobbing up and down—or heard that squeak of hinges? And then?

  She would die, no question.

  Ingrid knelt in the open trunk, facing the inevitable choice. She thought of Jamaica, that all-inclusive vacation, the best week of her life. They had a cliff where you could jump into this cool blue lagoon. She and Dad went up. It was so high, the lagoon far far down there, but other people were jumping off, everyone screaming all the way.

  The car leaned to her left, slowed down a little, then some more, like it was going around a sharp curve.

  Dad said: “The longer we stand here, the harder it gets,” and holding hands, they’d jumped off, screaming like all the others.

  Ingrid got her feet under her. She rose, standing straight up in the trunk. The longer she stood, the harder it would get.

  She leaped. Not a Jamaican-style screaming leap, impossible because her mouth was taped. She just jumped out of the trunk, silent and blind.

  T
hen came a moment, a long, long moment, of free fall, so long she had time to think: Am I dead already?

  She hit the ground, left shoulder first, but not hard. Soft, grassy ground, and slanting. Ingrid rolled and rolled, down, down, and finally came to a stop. She lay on her back, listened, heard nothing—no squeal of brakes, no shouts, no quick footsteps. The only sound was her own panting. Panting? It took her a moment to realize the tape over her mouth was gone.

  Ingrid sat up. Any pain? None at all. She raised her taped wrists to her mouth. Ingrid’s teeth might have been a hideous mess from Dr. Binkerman’s point of view, but they were sharp. She bit and sawed at the tape with her teeth. Rip, rip. A split opened up, freeing her hands a little. She tried to pull them apart, at the same time working even harder with her teeth. Rip, rip, rip—and suddenly her hands were free. A moment later, she’d yanked the tape from her eyes. Free!

  Free, alive, unhurt. She was sitting in a gully: gray sky overhead, woods on one side, a steep hill on the other, torn-up duct tape at her feet. She must have rolled down that hill. That meant the road was up there, and the driver might have pulled over already, might have gotten out of the car and sprinted around to look in the empty trunk, might appear at the crest of the hill any second.

  Ingrid rose. She had to get out of this gully, and fast, and going back up that hill was out. The only other way was into the woods. Ingrid walked into the woods, looking back once at the steep hill. No one there. She hurried on.

  Dead leaves covered the ground, brown and damp, silent under her feet. Ingrid went up a rise, down another, glanced back once more. Now there was nothing to see but bare trees all around. And nothing to hear, not the sound of someone coming after her or anything else. It was silent in the woods.