by Raj, Carol;
The car quivered to a stop.
She opened her eyes.
The headlights were six inches from the trunk of a giant oak tree.
“Way to go, Mrs. B! How in the world did you manage that? That’s like professional driving.” Kevin put his hand up near the driver’s window. “High five.”
“High five.” Muriel smiled. How long was it since somebody had complimented her on anything?
“Pop the trunk,” Kevin said.
“What? No. Why?”
It hit her then. The real reason Kevin wanted to move the car. No one would ram them in the dark. No one would use the car for target practice. The road was too deserted. What he’d presented as reasons were excuses. She’d been conned. Oh, my.
Kevin wanted to move the car into a secluded area so he could kill her without anyone witnessing anything. This grove of trees would be a perfect place to hide a dead body. No one would find her for a long time. Maybe never.
4
Muriel would have to stay awake all night. It was her only hope.
Kevin was rummaging around the trunk of the car, moving Roxanne’s belongings from one spot to another.
Muriel had dealt with hundreds of teenagers in her fifteen years as a teacher. They weren’t known for creating order out of disorder. They misplaced their homework, their pencils, their permission slips, digging frantically through their overloaded backpacks as if they were mining for diamonds. Natalie’s teenage bedroom had been a perpetual disaster. No teenager would rearrange the trunk of a stranger’s car. What in the world was Kevin up to? The thought hit her like a slap.
He was making room for her body. Once he got her inside that trunk, dead or alive, she wouldn’t be able to escape. No one would hear her scream. No one would find her before the oxygen ran out. If only she hadn’t been afraid to merge.
When Natalie was ten years old, her cat went out before breakfast and never returned. Natalie was heartbroken. For months, she ran to the door every time a branch scraped the siding or a breeze rattled the screens, hoping the cat had come back. Would Natalie be as heartbroken about her missing mother or just relieved to have one less social obligation?
Muriel teared up. She didn’t want to die. If only she could get a chance to say good-bye to the people she loved. If only she could sing Chloe’s baby one little lullaby. Her slacks were baggy at the knees from too many days spent scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom floors. The short-sleeved shirt under her blue jacket was a checkerboard of oddly colored squares. She had bought the shirt off a clearance rack at an outlet store because it only cost two dollars. She never liked it. It looked even worse now with a burgundy paint stain at the hem that she had minimized but not quite removed. If she had known this morning that she would be buried in the clothes she was putting on, she would have picked out something nicer.
What if Natalie wore her red-soled, expensive high heels and natural pearl necklace when she came with the police to identify her mother’s body? It would be embarrassing enough to admit her mother was only a high school teacher. Natalie shouldn’t have to add that her mother had no fashion sense.
If only Muriel had been able to get hold of Kevin’s gun, things would be different. Her only hope was to outwit him. After all, he was just a child. And not even a particularly ambitious one. Maybe she could just stay awake until he fell asleep. Then she could head up the slope and get a head start on the road. Teenagers slept so soundly. He wouldn’t realize she was gone until morning. He wouldn’t even know which way she’d gone. That gave her a fifty percent chance of survival right there.
She needed to find some farmhouse, some summer cabin, or some gas station with a phone and a friendly person who would let her use it. God, I guess I could use Your help again. Surely, God had other things to take care of. The disturbances in the Middle East. The political turmoil in Washington. But this was such a little request. He could certainly squeeze it onto His list of things to do. She should be able to handle the rest on her own.
The sun was setting now, and the whole western horizon looked as if it were airbrushed, quintessential. The entire sky was aflame, changing like the kaleidoscope her mother bought her when she was six. Funny she should remember all that so clearly now. Why, it seemed she could even smell the cherry scent of her mother’s hand lotion.
When was the last time she marveled at a sunset? By this time of day, she was sitting in front of the TV eating her chicken dinner. Good, healthy, cheap food. Food that might make the number of her years longer but that made eating dinner every night a chore instead of a pleasure. Her life served no purpose to anyone, not even to Natalie.
A sunset was so much better than a TV show.
How could she have forgotten? “Look at the sky, Kevin. I’ve never seen such an amazing sunset before. Have you?” She opened the driver’s door, grabbed the car keys, opened her purse, and dropped the keys inside. She got out of the car then, stretching as she did, rubbing the small of her back to rid it of its ache.
The colors in the sky were darkening now, the reds turning into purples and overcoming the oranges, as if some unseen hand were adjusting the brightness control.
Muriel yawned. It had been a long day. She would sleep like a baby tonight. She wouldn’t need her usual cup of chamomile tea. Or her occasional midnight cup of warm milk and honey. But no. She couldn’t sleep. She needed to escape.
Kevin’s voice sounded from behind the car. “Stuff, stuff, and more stuff. I can’t believe all the garbage your friend carries around in her trunk. Is she like homeless or something?”
“Don’t be silly. Roxanne has a perfectly nice little ranch house. Two bedrooms. Full basement. Lots of closets.”
For middle-class folks like Muriel and Roxanne, the neighborhood was perfect. Blocks of houses built in different time periods, not all lookalikes stamped from the same mold. Sidewalks wide enough to walk two abreast. Large maple trees shading at least one side of every road. A small convenience store they could walk to for essentials.
“Well, come look at this.” Kevin was still standing at the back of the car, trunk open.
“I haven’t looked in Roxanne’s trunk for years. She always makes me put my purchases in the backseat. Says it’s easier to open four doors than a door and a trunk.”
“So, come look then. Aren’t you even curious?”
Muriel walked to the back of the car and stopped several feet away from Kevin. Not enough distance to save herself if he made a determined lunge at her. But enough that a half-hearted lunge would give her a chance to run. Not that she would be able to outrun a long-legged, teenage boy.
Muriel gasped at the number of items Kevin had piled up on the ground. A veritable mountain of junk. He was right. Stuff, stuff, and more stuff. She bent down to squint at the date on a catalog. Spring 2003! “Prices subject to change,” the cover read. Well, that was an understatement.
There were old cooking utensils, too, rusted and discolored. A box of matches. Two buffalo-check blankets from five or six winters ago when the heater in Roxanne’s car broke down. No wonder Roxanne could never find those blankets when the weather got cold. They were right here, buried under her other belongings. There was a chipped, Wedgewood-blue plate. A houseplant brown and withered, the dirt so dry even a cactus would have thrown its prickly arms up in despair. An ugly vase, chipped on the rim, with a maze of green ceramic vines forming a checkerboard on the sides. Some costume jewelry.
“Do you suppose there’s any food in here?” Kevin asked. “I’m starving. How about you?”
“I’m trying not to think about it.” But Muriel’s stomach said it must be six o’clock. She ate at regular times. Six in the morning when she got up, noon when the local news came on TV, and six at night. She had eaten that way ever since Howard died. She found it soothing to have a schedule.
Sometimes, Roxanne would stop at an ice cream parlor at two or three in the afternoon, and they would each order a kiddy-size portion. Muriel would pick at her scoop of pla
in vanilla ice cream while Roxanne worked diligently to get the last bit of butter pecan out of the bottom of her dish.
Eating at Natalie’s was even worse. Stan had one schedule. Chloe another. They might have dinner anywhere between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM. No. There was no need for Muriel to change. Not at her age.
“What do you mean you’re trying not to think about it? How can you try not to think about being hungry? That doesn’t even make sense. My mom says that when it comes to food, I’m a black hole. Not that it’s any of your business.” Kevin closed his mouth, lips tight together, an impenetrable seal. He concentrated once again on digging in the trunk. He rose up, a lopsided smile on his face, a package held over his head like a trophy. “Aha! Crunchy Cashew Granola Bars. A whole box. Look! It hasn’t even been opened.”
It was the second time Muriel saw Kevin smile. He reminded her of someone. Maybe it would come to her later.
She held out her hand. “Let me see those, Kevin.” She peered at the small print on the bottom of the box. There was no expiration date.
When had Roxanne bought these bars? She might have thrown them in the trunk with that 2003 catalogue, thinking she would bring them out later, and then forgetting about them both.
Muriel was hungry. It must be way past six. Trying to keep from thinking about being hungry no longer worked. Kevin was right. But were old granola bars safe to eat?
Maybe if Kevin ate the bars, he would die. Probably he’d get a stomach ache first. Then a fit of vomiting. And then he would simply curl up, knees to his chest, and expire out here in the middle of nowhere, leaving Muriel free at last from the threat of being shot.
And all alone.
She couldn’t let him die. It didn’t matter that he was a carjacker. So he’d made one mistake. She had made a lot of mistakes. Especially with Natalie, because they weren’t as close as she had dreamed they’d be. Maybe it was too late for her to influence Natalie. But maybe she could still help Kevin. She had to try.
Ever since Muriel stopped teaching fifteen years ago, she’d been asking God to let her accomplish something important. She wanted to make a difference in the world.
What if God’s whole purpose for her life was that she save this one young man? Maybe someday Kevin would find a cure for cancer. Or orchestrate world peace. By saving him, she’d have done her part. Would it matter that the attendees at her funeral could be counted on one hand? Maybe Kevin would come, too, stand by her grave, give a eulogy, acknowledge her part in turning his life around.
Muriel cleared her throat. “Kevin, I don’t think we should eat those. We have no idea how old they are. They might give us food poisoning.”
“Granola bars aren’t like meat.” Kevin pointed to the box. “See? Right here on the front of the box. The package says they’re all individually wrapped. They probably have enough preservatives to keep them like on the space station or something.”
Muriel held out her hand. “Well, give one to me. I might be able to tell how stale they are by tasting one.”
Kevin’s eyes narrowed. He pulled the box back out of Muriel’s reach, holding it high above her head. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean you don’t think so? I’m offering to try a little bit of a granola bar first. What’s wrong with that?”
Kevin shook the box. “You can’t fool me. I know what you’re up to.”
“Well, that makes one of us. I can’t imagine what in the world you’re talking about.”
“You think you can get food poisoning and blame it all on me. I don’t think so. I’m in enough trouble as it is. My father’ll have a fit if he ever catches up with me. He’ll be furious just because I ran away. I don’t want him to have one more thing to complain about. I can just hear him now. ‘Kevin, you are so irresponsible. Remember that old lady you killed with the granola bar?’”
“I wasn’t planning to eat enough to kill me. I was just going to taste a bar. And anyway, how will I blame anything on you if I’m dead?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. B. Maybe you won’t actually die. Maybe you’ll just throw up all over everything. But you must have some weird old-lady plan in your head. Why else would you volunteer to try a granola bar that might be poisoned? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Some things don’t make sense.” Muriel could think of lots of things. Duck-billed platypuses. Ostriches. Jesus dying on the cross for sinners. None of those things made sense. It didn’t mean they weren’t real. Natalie rarely made any sense at all. Not even to her own mother.
“You’re old,” Kevin said. “You’re supposed to make sense. Maybe you think my parents are rich and you can sue them for a lot of money just because I poisoned you.”
Muriel raised her eyebrows. “Well, are they?”
That would explain Kevin’s expensive leather jacket and his carefully ironed shirt. So how could a wealthy family have raised a carjacker with a dragon tattoo? It was something she would have to think about.
It never seemed that complicated when she’d taught. The quiet students who never raised their hands in class had respectful parents who listened politely to everything she said at parent-teacher conferences. The students who were rowdy had parents who bellowed at her for not being able to keep their children under control.
It took Kevin a while to respond. With his right hand, he fiddled with the buttons on his shirt. His eyes had a faraway look, as if he were daydreaming.
“Well, are they?” she repeated.
Kevin’s eyes focused on her once again. “Are who what?”
“Are your parents rich?”
“Of course my parents aren’t rich. Are you crazy? You might as well get the idea of suing them right out of your mind.”
Muriel sputtered. “But…but…”
Kevin glared at her and pulled the tab across the top of the box. He took one of the wrapped bars out and tore the foil wrapper open with his teeth. He downed the bar in three huge bites. “There. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Now we’ll see who’s going to sue who.” Kevin sat down on a scattering of last year’s dried leaves and leaned on the trunk of one of the big oak trees. His long legs formed two sides of an isosceles triangle.
The sky overhead was dark now. A few stars flickered like votive candles. Only the very edge of the moon, peeking out periodically from behind thick clouds, cast an occasional glow.
“Maybe we should try to sleep.” Muriel‘s head was getting heavy. There was no way she could escape until Kevin was sound asleep. Or dead. Strange that she didn’t really want him dead. She had worked with children his age for too many years.
Kevin grinned at Muriel, the same lopsided grin as before.
Now she remembered. Kevin reminded her of an old student. What was his name? Patrick! That was it. Patrick, the class clown. Star soccer player. He was able to touch his nose with his tongue. A weird trick that he used for laughs when she had her back turned to write on the board. Such silly details were coming to mind. That explained why she liked Kevin in spite of herself. She had liked Patrick. How strange.
“You think a little sleep is going to cure my food poisoning?” Kevin settled as if he were trying to get more comfortable.
“No. I’m hoping you don’t have food poisoning at all. But if you do, a little sleep won’t cure it.” Muriel wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think you’ll die. I think your body will just get rid of the poison any way it can.”
“Like throwing up?”
“Like throwing up. Or diarrhea maybe.”
“Oh, gross, Mrs. B. It’s not like there are a lot of bathroom options out here. You want a bar?” Kevin grinned his lopsided grin, holding the box out to Muriel.
“No, thanks. I’ll wait and see how you do first. Anyway, I don’t know what time it is.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Well, it might not be six o’clock. That’s when I eat. Six o’clock.”
“Why don’t you just
eat when you’re hungry?”
“I’ve eaten at six, noon, and six for years. Ever since my husband died. I like having a routine. It’s precise and orderly, just like mathematics. That’s what I used to teach, you know. High school geometry.”
“Don’t you wear a watch?” Kevin asked.
“Yes, but it’s too dark now. I can’t see the hands.”
“Then it must be way after six. We’re on like daylight savings time.”
Off in the woods an owl called. Who? Who? Good question. Who was the young man sitting across from her? Who would ever find them in these deserted woods? And who was she? She hardly knew anymore. She thought she had known this morning, but that seemed like a lifetime ago.
She didn’t want to miss out on sunsets just because some arbitrary schedule told her it was time to eat and watch TV. She didn’t want to sit around a lonely house pining for Natalie’s sporadic phone calls and Chloe’s infrequent visits. She didn’t want the highlight of her week to be a trip with Roxanne to one more antique shop in one more out-of-the-way strip mall.
Roxanne spent so much time gathering items for that TV antiques show. But the tickets to attend were hard to get.
Muriel didn’t want to spend a night in the woods with a strange young man either. True, Kevin hadn’t made any attempt to harm her. Not while she was conscious. Of course! Kevin wouldn’t try to attack her while she was still awake. He didn’t want to take any chance someone might hear her scream. He particularly did not want his DNA to get under her fingernails as she protected herself. Police often caught perpetrators through their DNA. It happened all the time on TV.