Summer's Freedom

by Samuel, Barbara

  She turned and fled the room.

  Joel wanted to throw back his head and howl, to somehow release the pain she was causing him by leaving. Instead, he grabbed his keys and headed for the only solace he knew. His birds and the open sky.

  * * *

  At first, Maggie couldn’t decide what to do. She paced around her bedroom restlessly, wishing that she could tear out her heart the way animals chewed off a leg caught in a trap.

  For a time she considered going to her grandmother, who would provide a shoulder to cry on. The problem was, Maggie couldn’t imagine allowing her emotions to flow in the manner that would be necessary to cry. If she began, she thought she would never stop. Confession might be good for the soul, but it wasn’t Maggie’s style. Just as she’d felt uncomfortable discussing her attraction to Joel with anyone, she couldn’t discuss his betrayal.

  Finally, tired of roaming her room, she headed for the newspaper and the job awaiting her there.

  The day passed in a blur. She couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or disappointed when she found that Sharon wasn’t at the paper. A note she’d left for Maggie explained she was following up a lead on Cory she’d gotten from a cop at a bar the night before. Turning on the radio for company, Maggie threw herself into planning the traditional Fourth of July issue on books.

  But as she typed reviews, Mitchell’s sharp analysis of books haunted her. Or rather, Joel’s.

  A bubble of pain broke within her. Maggie closed her eyes. He’d created an entire persona for her benefit, led her down the proverbial garden path like an expert. And she’d followed willingly, blindly naïve. With a sharp, bitter sense of betrayal, she remembered how she’d created the category of sincere men, just for him. The irony grated on her wounds.

  At five, Galen appeared at the door of the newspaper office. “Hi,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Maggie knew by the expression in his eyes that he pitied her, and the knowledge made her furious. “What are you doing here?” she asked sharply. “I thought you were going to spend the night in Denver.”

  “I had a feeling you might need me.”

  She met his eyes, nostrils flaring. “I don’t need your damned pity, Galen.”

  “I meant you might want someone to go to the concert with you.”

  “It’s a bit late to be playing protector, don’t you think?”

  He raised his eyebrows and sighed. “Maybe.”

  “How did you know he’d tell me?”

  “Because I know him.”

  “Do you know that he’s a murderer?”

  “Is that what he told you?” Galen frowned.

  “He didn’t go to prison for murder?”

  “Yes.” Galen straightened, seeming to come to a decision. He pursed his lips and took a step closer to his sister. “Look, I know you’re hurting, but don’t write him off yet, okay, kid?”

  Maggie shook him off. “I already told you—you’re too late.”

  Sharon arrived then, breathless and disheveled. “Maggie! I got everything.”

  “What?” Maggie leaped at the distraction. She hurried around the desk. “Tell me.”

  “The kid’s name is Cory Silva. He’s fifteen and until a year ago, racked up a bunch of charges in petty arenas—vandalism, car burglaries, that kind of thing. He’s been in foster homes several times because his father is suspected of beating him, but he always goes home within a few months.”

  Maggie glanced at Galen, whose mouth thinned to a hard line. “Go on,” she said to Sharon.

  “He used to spend every waking moment with a brother who was a year older. Two years ago, at a Proud Fox concert in Denver, the brother was stabbed by a gang outside the arena and died.”

  “So,” Maggie filled in, “he’s waging a vendetta.”

  “Right.” Sharon flipped through some papers. “The cop didn’t have a picture, but he gave me a good description. Cory has a long, thin scar on his face, from his mouth to his eye.” She gave them a sober look. “Got it from his dad when he was four years old—nobody knows how.”

  A rush of excitement energized Maggie. “I know who he is,” she exclaimed, grabbing her jacket. “I spoke to him one afternoon with Samantha, downtown. If we can find him in the crowd, maybe we can prevent any trouble.”

  “I’m going with you,” Galen said firmly.

  Maggie flashed him a hard look. “Do whatever you want.”

  He grabbed her arm as she began to turn away. “Don’t blame me for your pain, Maggie.” His face was grave. “You’re all I’ve got.”

  The words reached past the wall she’d been hiding behind all day, and a quick rush of tears flooded her eyes—the first tears. “I won’t,” she said quickly, then hurried out of the offices behind Sharon, away from any reminder of Joel and his betrayal. If she worked hard, ignored the upheaval in her life, maybe it would all just go away.

  That theory seemed to hold as the trio, joined by David at the entrance to the grounds, searched the concert area for any sign of Cory. There was an atmosphere of tense excitement infecting the air, and thousands of milling teenagers filled the grounds, their blankets spread on the grass under the sky.

  Just outside the main gates, a small cluster of the familiar, neatly dressed teens marched in a solemn circle, carrying their signs and singing a hymn. Their number was small, Maggie thought, and they seemed to be having no impact at all on the eager crowd gathered to see the band.

  Her lips formed a grim line. The night before the tickets had gone on sale, there had been no hint of trouble, either, she thought. Not until one rocker had suddenly started hitting the other kids…

  Realization struck her. “Cory isn’t going to be with these kids,” she said with certainty. “Look for a black leather jacket with a red pentagram on the back. He’ll have long hair.” As they split up to comb through the crowd, Maggie’s stomach burned. All the pieces of the long puzzle aligned themselves—and the full picture chilled her. The reason she’d been unable to find any adults responsible for the protests was because there were no adults involved. Cory Silva, with the charisma of a teenage evangelist, had stirred up an incredible amount of trouble.

  * * *

  The discordant notes of the warm-up band’s music and the general cacophony began to grate on her nerves, giving her a headache. After carefully scanning the portion of the crowd she’d agreed to search, she returned to the meeting spot. First Galen, then Sharon and David met her. “No luck,” Galen said for all of them.

  Maggie bit her lip. The sun had disappeared behind the craggy tips of the mountains, and a gray dusk spread over the field. “It’s going to be harder and harder to find him,” she said, her eyes flowing over the field and the less-favored seats above. “Maybe we ought to check the stands.”

  “What about calling his father?” Sharon suggested.

  Maggie and Galen exchanged a glance. “No.”

  David looked impatient. As much as he wanted to participate in the drama of the search for Cory, Proud Fox would be on in a few minutes, and he’d been looking forward to the concert for weeks. Maggie smiled at him. “I think we can handle it from here, David. Thanks for your help. And be careful, okay?”

  He lifted a hand. “No problem.”

  The opening band finished with a jangling crash of guitars. They departed the stage. “At least that’s a relief,” Maggie said with a sigh.

  “I’ll go check the stands,” Galen said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Maggie glared at him. “We’re big girls, now, Galen.”

  “I just want to find you when I’m through,” he answered evenly.

  As he melted into the bodies, Sharon touched Maggie’s arm. “Are you all right?”

  Maggie considered a lie, but her heart wouldn’t let her do it. “No,” she said, and swallowed hard. She trained her eyes on the stage lights. “I found out that Joel is Mitchell.” With a bitter laugh, she added, “Or Mitchell is Joel, however you want to look at it.”

  Sharon didn’t
answer immediately. “I thought so,” she said.

  “Well, thank you for sharing your insight,” Maggie said sharply.

  “Come on, Maggie. If I guessed, you had to have guessed yourself. You just didn’t admit it.”

  “That isn’t true,” Maggie retorted. “I really didn’t know, or I wouldn’t have allowed the relationship to progress.”

  The volume of the crowd steadily rose. In the bleachers, the sound of stomping feet rocked the stands with steady thundering, and whistles and chants added to the noise. For one instant, Maggie thought of the day with Joel in Manitou, the first time he’d kissed her. For that moment, her world had seemed this alive, this vibrant.

  With the memory came a clutch of excruciating pain to her stomach, and Maggie pressed her hands to it. Next to her, Sharon said, “Maybe you can work it out.”

  Maggie let go of a short near-laugh. “Not a chance,” she said. “This just proves my theory that you absolutely can’t trust a man. Not any man.”

  “Your brother is a man.”

  Raising her eyes to Sharon’s face, Maggie said slowly, “I know.”

  Chapter 12

  As darkness fell, Joel knew what he had to do. Remembering his promise to move if anything happened to ruin the friendship between himself and Maggie, he went back to his apartment. He wandered through the spacious home, admiring the carved metal doorknobs and long windows, the bookshelves and the sunny kitchen.

  Then, with a sense of resignation, he plunged into the work of moving himself out. He cleaned the recycling room, bagging cans and paper and plastic into neat bundles; swept and mopped the floors; boxed his record albums and tapes. A friend at the raptor center had agreed to store a few things for him. The rest he would take with him. There wasn’t, after all, much of an accumulation.

  Except his books. These he packed carefully into boxes and loaded into the cab of his truck. His books went with him. They had been the only constants of his life.

  At last, he went upstairs. His bedroom was untouched since the morning’s confession, and the sight of the letters, scattered like forgotten children on the floor, pained him. He picked them up carefully, shuffling them back into a neat, huge stack that contained all he had left of Maggie. These letters had shown him her resilience and strength, her humor and honor. They had been his beacon of light through the dark years, the one reason he could see, in addition to his birds to continue to keep himself alive. Her thoughts and ruminations had given his mind and soul the fuel they needed to keep growing in an environment designed to thwart.

  Even though he had lost her, there was no regret, not for himself. He had gambled all he had, given her all that he was, all that he had hopes of being. Even his lie had been perpetuated to protect her. A man could do no more. The past was not his to change.

  As he gathered the letters to himself, smelling the scent of the potpourris he now knew she used in her bedroom, he had a brief, searing instant of sorrow. Maggie had truly given him his freedom—freedom to love again, freedom to laugh again. His most fervent hope had been to return that favor, to free her of the betrayals of her past.

  Instead, he’d given her one more. Unlike Moses, she’d required more than shelter and nourishment. In that one kernel of truth, he found his regret. Maggie deserved so much more, and he’d been unable to deliver.

  * * *

  Galen had no luck in the stands. “I think I’ll find him in the front of the crowd.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He frowned. “If I wanted to start a riot, that’s where I’d go. The crowd is thickest there, rowdiest. Stands to reason.”

  “All right.” Maggie rubbed a throbbing temple. “Let’s go.”

  “Why don’t you stay here? I’ll go check it out.”

  “Forget it, Galen. I’m a newspaper publisher, remember? I’m aware of the risks.”

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “Fine. Let’s do it before the band comes on.”

  Unfortunately, the press of the crowd was resistant to allowing even one more body to pass through its mass, and before the trio had inched even halfway toward the front, Proud Fox ran onstage.

  The crowd had been waiting months for this moment, and they exploded with their enthusiasm, screaming, jumping, shouting, whistling and clapping. Wedged into the midst of them, Maggie was jostled and shoved. Her eardrums felt as if they would burst under the pressure of noise. When the band slammed into their first song, a decibel level Maggie would have sworn caused deafness was trebled. Every cell of her brain sizzled with the initial powerful rocket of sound.

  But as she’d told Galen, she was aware of the risks. The thought of the possible mayhem that could result if a riot broke out in this madhouse spurred her on. Ignoring the glares flung at her, she squeezed through one row of teens after another, shouldering and elbowing and dipping to get through. After what seemed like an endless time, she found herself three rows from front and center. Looking up to regain her bearings, her gaze froze on a black jacket painted with a red pentagram, an impossible squeeze to her right, on the fringes of the crowd.

  The boy in the jacket flipped long hair away from his face, and Maggie noted the wig was slightly askew. His face was in profile. In the bright lights from the stage, she could see the twist of his lips and the fine scar running from his eye through his cheek. As she watched, Cory reached into his pockets and withdrew a handful of round, dark balls.

  She frowned, pushing past two more people, then a third, trying to see what he was doing. A match flared in his hand, an unremarkable event in the crowd of smokers.

  Then Maggie saw him touch the match to the fuses on the balls, lighting several at once before tossing them like volleyballs into the crowd. In shock, Maggie saw one sail toward her, the fuse sparkling orange against the night sky.

  Without conscious thought, feeling as if she were moving in slow motion, she shoved at the people in front of her, violently moving through the resistant stream toward the spot she thought the firecracker would land. It was a cherry bomb, probably, not designed to do more than cause a lot of noise, but if it exploded in someone’s face—

  It landed before Maggie could reach the spot, the noise of the explosion muffled in the electric guitar pouring from the speakers. But around the landing spot, kids screamed and jumped back, shoving those behind and in front of them, which in turn, caused those people to shove and push back. As she watched, the ripple of irritated pushing grew, like the radiating circles expanding from a rock thrown into a pond. Around her, she heard the other cherry bombs go off with sharp reports like gunfire, saw the same principle in action.

  An elbow caught her chin with dizzying force, making her teeth clack together with jarring noise. When Maggie shook off the stunning blow to look around, Cory was gone.

  No, not gone, she saw—deeper in the crowd. He’d taken advantage of the milling confusion caused by his cherry bombs to fuse himself with the shifting bodies. The move had brought him only a few feet from Maggie.

  With her goal in sight, she felt a surge of adrenaline give power to her body. She pushed through the last obstacles like a needle through cloth, simply and directly.

  She grabbed the leather-jacketed arm and ripped off his wig. “Don’t do it!” she shouted in his ear. Twisting his arm behind his back with more strength than she knew she had, Maggie pushed him ahead of her, out of the crowd. “I know who you are!”

  He fought her, not much at first, but more and more as they neared the outer rim of people. He kicked her in the shin hard. With the pain came a blinding red anger, a renewal of the same fury she’d felt upon learning of Joel’s betrayal. Adrenaline-spurred power gave her arms twice as much strength as they ordinarily had, and she shoved Cory with all her might toward a security guard.

  Cory broke free, struggling the last few feet to the corridor of space near the fence. Maggie took off after him, determined she would not lose him this time, not if it killed her. He darted toward the gates leading to the bleachers, glancing
once over his shoulder at Maggie, following close behind. He seemed to hesitate, then bolted up the stairs at a pace only a young, healthy boy could meet.

  As Maggie took the stairs, her breath tore raggedly in and out of her chest. Each lungful of air seemed to have gained sharp edges, and her throat hurt, Adrenaline had helped her begin—now stubbornness would not let her give in.

  He ran clear to the top of the bleachers and turned desperately to the right, looking for an out. Maggie forced rubbery legs up the last few stairs. She cornered him at the top level of the arena, where a wind cut through the opening to their left. Bleachers descended in stairs for hundreds of feet in the other direction—bleachers filled with fans.

  As Maggie neared him, he charged her with a yell. She stood firm, absorbing the tackle with a cocked shoulder, the way she had as a child with Galen, and effectively blocked him. They both fell to their knees, and Maggie reached her arms around the boy’s torso, pinning him against her.

  His body went limp. “Oh, God,” he cried. “Oh, God.” He covered his face with his hands.

  Not entirely certain this wasn’t another ploy to escape, Maggie released her hold a fraction. He sagged further under the weight of the sobs shaking his shoulders, and Maggie released him entirely, braced to snag him again if he ran.

  He didn’t. He collapsed completely on the concrete floor, weeping uncontrollably. “I just wanted to make it up to him,” he cried, taking Maggie’s hand. “He was all I had!”

  Maggie thought of Galen. “I understand, Cory. More than you’ll ever know.” She took his hand. “But this wasn’t right. You need help.”

  “No!” His face paled, the scar that twisted his mouth standing out in relief. “God, please don’t tell my father. He’ll kill me.”

  Maggie fought to control her voice. “You have my personal guarantee that you won’t ever have to go home to him again.”

  Cory moved away, panic clear in his eyes. “They always say that and they always send me back. You just can’t know…!”

  “Listen to me!” she shouted. “My father was a brutal, vicious man, just like yours. I do know what I’m talking about.”