by N. Griffin
Despite herself, Bett approved of his choice. It must feel good, she thought. Walking through the river like that and fishing. She thought about the man again.
From high up on Bett’s slope, the fields beyond the river and oxbow were visible in the pale moonlight, and she realized that I Know a Guy Field was right behind the oxbow. Waders Man must own it!
Should she ask Eddie about him? See if the man was still a therapist?
Oh, why did she care if he was?
But she did.
She waited, watching the man’s house. Finally, his light went out, so Bett made her way back up to her window and bed.
46
Friday, the Seventh Day of Eleventh Grade
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, ANNA STOOD at the door of their bus after school. What was that about?
Eddie wondered, too. “Who are you? And to what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I’m Anna Reed,” said Anna. “And I want to join the cross-country team.”
What? Why was Anna joining the team? The answer came to Bett in a very few minutes, when Dan approached the bus and stood behind Anna.
Of course, Bett thought. Anna likes Dan.
Her heart sank. And the sinking took her off guard. Shut up, she told it. Anna is pretty and thin and creative and why wouldn’t he like her back?
“You want to join,” said Eddie to Anna. “Well, it’s not as easy as that. There are forms to fill out. And I don’t even know if you can run.”
“I have the forms,” said Anna, waving them. “I got them from Mrs. Schlovsky. And even if I suck at running, everyone else is good. Can’t I at least try?”
Eddie held out his hand for the forms. “They seem to be in order,” he said, flicking through them. “All right. Get the hell on my bus.”
Anna got the hell on his bus. She scooted into the seat in front of Bett. Her head came up over the seat as she turned and knelt to face Bett.
“Is this in any way fun?” she whispered.
“No,” Bett whispered back.
“SIT DOWN!” shouted Eddie from his driver’s seat.
Anna turned around and sat down.
“You get used to the yelling,” Ranger told her friendlily.
* * *
Once on the field, Eddie was in a mood. He kept the bus stereo on, blasting “Hotel California” while they stretched, and then, after that, “More Than a Feeling,” which at least didn’t make Bett want to put a fork in her eye, but was still such a seventies Mom song that she felt like she was in forced time travel yet again. Why did she have to be stuck in Salt River with nothing and nobody and all these adults fastened to the past?
“All right,” said Eddie, when the stretching was done. “Twice around the field and then the long course again. Two circles around.”
“Can’t we at least shake it up a little?” asked Dan. “Can we, like, go left first today after the warm-up laps?”
Eddie considered. “Fine,” he said. “I guess I see no harm in that.” He turned to Bett and then toward Anna. “You two run the warm-up together. Two laps around the field and no cutting corners.”
Anna looked nervous. Bett looked at her and shrugged. “Just do a walk-jog,” she said. “You’ll make it.”
And they began. Anna really was slow, Bett realized. Or maybe she was just conserving her energy for the long course ahead of them. She was puffing pretty hard already, though. Perhaps Bett had made a mistake choosing Anna for the elite force after all.
But Bett only pointed toward the gap in the fence and said, “That’s where we run out to the road. When we’ve done the two warm-up laps.”
Anna nodded, her face already flushed.
Chug chug chug. HONK!
“Get up GET UP GET UP!” Eddie was yelling out the bus window behind them. “You call that a warm-up? You’re almost walking!”
Anna gaped at Bett, clearly terrified.
“He just chases us,” Bett told her, realizing that was no comfort. And chase them he did, shouting, zigging around the field so they had to avoid his bus until they were finally on the road and he could chase them for real.
“GET UP, BETT!”
“WATCH THE ROAD!” Bett screamed back. Surely, this counted as distracted driving. But no. While Eddie let Anna slip back to jog-walk behind the bus, he was pursuing Bett in his single-minded way. He picked up speed. So did Bett.
The crazy bastard was going to hit her.
But he didn’t. He got her around the course, and soon she was passing Ranger and then Dan and was up with Mutt, five yards between them in the end.
“THAT,” said Eddie, once practice was over and they were all back on the bus, “is what I’m talking about. That is what I want to see in the meet, Bett, and I won’t be able to chase you with a bus then.”
“Meet?”
“What meet?”
“I told you fools,” said Eddie. “We got a late start to the season, but the first meet is tomorrow.”
“I forgot!”
“I don’t care! Be at school by six a.m. We got to get there early so we can walk the course first.”
Six a.m.! Dan exchanged glances with Bett. Tonight was Break-In Night. How could they possibly be awake enough to run a 5K the next morning?
“Let’s hope for adrenaline,” said Dan, clearly reading her mind, as the bus pulled up to the school. He and Anna got off the bus together and walked toward the gym door and the locker rooms.
“Eddie?” Bett stood in the entry to the bus. “Who’s ‘I Know a Guy’? The one who owns the field? What’s his name?”
“Why do you ask?” asked Eddie, his voice wary. “I like to keep my real life separate from you twerps.”
“He’s our new neighbor, is all, and I forget his name,” Bett said. “I just wanted to thank him for letting us use the field next time I see him.”
“Oh,” said Eddie. “Well. In that case. It’s Hugh Munin.”
“Yes!” said Bett as soon as he said it. She remembered now. Hugh Munin. She wanted to ask if Mr. Munin was still a therapist at the vet center, but she certainly wouldn’t disrespect Eddie’s business and bring that up now. What would it be like to have, like, a conversation with Hugh Munin now, away from the river? But she immediately quelled the thought. “Thank you,” she said to Eddie, a little too loudly.
“Whatever.” Eddie shrugged. Bett ran into the locker room, tightening her topknot on the way.
47
Friday Evening
BETT LEFT THE SIM CARD house and went down to the edge of the slope that led to the river. Not the cupcake cave slope. The one where a person could walk into the only part of the river where she might dare to swim, if it were the hottest day of the year and she were willing to put on a bathing suit, none of which in existence would fit Bett. But it was the best view of Hugh Munin’s house, and Bett wanted to get an eyeful. Call it a compulsion. Or a mortification.
He was there, in the river, fishing rod in hand.
Relief washed over Bett. “Mr. Munin!” she called to him.
The man turned around, surprised. “You remember my name?” he shouted to her.
Bett nodded.
The man turned and walked toward her. Bett jumped.
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Munin stopped. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Should she go?
Mr. Munin turned as if to walk back across the river to his house, fishing rod in hand like a bow.
“How do you know Eddie?” Bett blurted, and Mr. Munin turned again to face her.
But he didn’t answer her question. Instead, he said, “Eddie told me if I saw you to tell you he’s so glad to work with you.”
Bett started. “You know he’s my coach?”
“Yes. I’ve known Eddie for years. We like to chat.”
“Why did you stay in your house even after the river made the oxbow?” Why was she asking that? She wanted to know about Eddie—but her mouth was behaving independently from her mind. Or maybe reflecting it, because Bett didn’t kno
w what she wanted.
“I love my home,” he said simply.
Bett hesitated. “It must feel good,” she said. “Walking through the river like that.”
“It does to me,” said Mr. Munin. “I love fishing, and I don’t mind getting a little wet. I have a good woodstove.”
He hesitated, his dark eyes looking into Bett’s. “Eddie really cares about you.”
Bett snorted. “Is that why he chases me with a bus?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Munin, smiling. Then the smile faded. “He also said to tell you he just wants to talk to you.”
Bett was silent.
“It’s not going to be scary,” said Mr. Munin.
“Yes, it is, actually.” And Bett turned away from him quickly and hurried back to her house and scaled the wall into her own little room, bypassing the door and the possibility of her mother. Outside her window she could see Hugh Munin standing there in the water, ready to make the crossing to his house.
48
Friday Night/Saturday Morning, Autumn Still
THE FIVE OF THEM—ANNA, Dan, Hester, Paul, and Bett—huddled in the hedges at the back of the school. The hedges were large enough that all five kids could squat in there and not be seen from the road, thank God. They had all managed to escape their houses to meet here at one a.m. Bett was the only one who had done it by window, though. And now here she was, at the bottom of the back wall of the school with these four yahoos, supposed to be ready to climb the wall.
“I’m already wiped out from that practice,” said Anna softly. “I didn’t know it would be so awful.”
“Poor baby,” murmured Paul comfortingly.
“At least you didn’t have the bus chase you the whole way,” whispered Dan. “Bett, I don’t know how you put up with that.”
“I put up with it or get creamed,” whispered Bett back. “You all, can we talk a minute? About this perp? Because my mom always says it’s good to know the psychology of your criminal before you head into their turf. And our school counts as their turf, I think.”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “In this instance, I think you’re right.”
“We know it’s someone angry,” said Anna.
No shit, thought Bett, but she was nice out loud. “Right.”
“And it has to be someone who hates our school,” added Dan.
“Isn’t that all of us?” asked Paul.
“I mean, hate-hate,” said Dan. “And someone strong enough to, like, wield a hatchet over a transom.”
“And tall enough!”
It was Ranger, popping out of the hedges like an oversize and unwelcome robin.
“What the hell are you doing here?” whisper-screamed Dan.
“Helping,” said Ranger brightly. “It’s no fair of you guys to leave me out. I heard you on your phone, Dan. I knew something was up! I’m little but I’m quick—I’m almost as fast as you are.” This was true. “And I want to help.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Paul.
“Ranger,” said Bett. “This is really important, and really risky. You are already practically in trouble for real.”
“Why?” asked Paul.
“For sneaking out,” said Dan hastily, exchanging anguished glances with Bett. “Dude, this could put you over the edge if you get caught.”
Bett hoped Ranger caught the double meaning.
Anna glanced at them both. “Well, he’s already here. We’re sort of stuck with him.”
Dan looked at her in disbelief.
Anna shrugged. “What are you going to do, bring him home now? Maybe he can stay here and be the lookout or something.”
“I’m not being any lookout!” Ranger cried.
“Shut up,” the rest of them hissed at once.
“This is exactly what we mean,” said Dan. “You are too stupid to be quiet even when it’s your own head on the chopping block.”
Ranger’s face grew serious in an instant. “I will shut up,” he whispered. “I promise. Cakes.”
“So that’s where you got that from!” Anna beamed at Bett, then at Ranger. Bett felt a pang—Ranger was her little tadpole.
“Can we get back to the plan?” asked Paul. “Or will there be more seventh-grade idiots who show up to ‘help’ us?” His fingers twitched with the air quotes.
“It’s just me,” Ranger promised. “I didn’t even tell Martin and Joaquin.”
“How’d you get here, by the way?” asked Dan.
“Back of the car,” said Ranger. “I’ve been hiding there since after dinner.”
“What?!” Dan squawked.
“Impressive,” said Hester.
“Anyway,” said Paul. “Back to business. So we know the person is angry.”
“And has spray paint.”
“And a hatchet.”
“Or access to one.”
Bett went still.
A hatchet. The fire hatchet by the first aid kit on the bus. That hatchet could have been used to slash the pictures and the wings and smash the angel the kid vet had made. And anybody could buy a can of spray paint. In addition to his kidnapping them as an introduction to the cross-country team and general weirdness and messed-upness from war.
Oh my God, the psycho might be Eddie.
Bett’s heart pounded. She had to talk to Dan. Alone. But they weren’t alone.
But it made sense. Eddie hated war. He sought psychological services. That cherub made by the kid who died from a war—that kind of thing could have put him over the edge. Eddie could’ve come into the school on the first day no problem and slashed those pictures, too. He wouldn’t have even had to sign in at the office, because he was an employee. And Ranger’s break-in theory made sense for the angel smashing and wing slashing. Though Eddie was kind of hefty to imagine him slinging himself over the rain roof above the school entrance.
Well, I’m hefty, too, Bett thought. And she could certainly climb up on that damn porch thing if she wanted to, without the benefit of military training.
“Are we ready?” Paul whispered.
“Ready,” said the others.
“What’s the warning if you see someone coming?”
“Three foot stomps,” said Dan.
“Or a damn scream if you get separated,” said Anna.
“No screaming,” said Bett. “But, Ranger, you hoot like an owl if you see something out here.”
“I’m not staying out here,” Ranger repeated stubbornly.
“Yes, you are!”
“No, I’m not!”
Several rounds of this and everyone gave in. What else could they do? So it was six of them who stole quietly out of the hedges and approached the back of the school.
* * *
Bett stared up at the wall everyone expected her to climb. Sure, Paul had unlatched the window and loosened the screen up there earlier in the day, but was she going to be able to hang on to the ledge of the sill and push the window open, too? She eyed potential footholds.
“We should have brought that rope ladder we had at the meeting in the basement hole,” said Paul, the mural folded and stuffed under his hoodie. Everybody gave him a look.
“Great timing for the safety thought, bro,” said Dan.
Bett’s left ear began to roar. She hadn’t done anything like this in so long. “Nobody video me,” she said, still surveying the wall. She could see several grips. Good. “I mean it.” That was all she needed, a video of her fat ass heading up the wall.
“We promise,” said Anna earnestly. “We don’t want photographic evidence, anyway. We’re technically doing a B and E, even if it is for good.”
Bett looked at Anna with respect. How did she know the term “B and E”?
“I watch a lot of cop shows,” Anna said, another mind reader.
Bett turned back to the stone wall. Okay, she told herself. This is to keep Ranger safe. And to see what the hell is up with Eddie. Already she could feel the adrenaline starting.
Don’t think of it like a Fizzicle Feet, she told herself fir
mly. Don’t or you’ll die. Think of it as helping. It’s the only way.
And she stood back, swung her arms, and jumped, catching two stone handholds straight off the bat.
“Badass!” whispered Paul below.
Bett used her feet to work her way up, and then found two more pieces of rough rock to grasp.
This is easy, she thought, and was surprised to find herself disappointed.
Below her, the worried faces of the mixed Art and Justice and Cross-Country Leagues, Twinklers and Stays, looked up at her.
But Bett couldn’t think about anything but the climb now. And with just two more swings and grabs, Bett was at the window.
“Go,” she whispered to the others once she’d balanced herself on the sill ledge, pushed up the window with one hand, and heaved herself into the school. “Go to the gym door. Now!”
“Wait,” whispered Hester fiercely. “I’m going up there, too. Give me a boost, you guys. Bett, you can catch my hands and pull me up.”
“No,” said Bett.
“Yes!” said Hester. “It’s not fair if you’re the only one caught. Plus, I can help keep an eye out from the inside.”
Hester was willing to put herself on the line with her? Huh!
“Okay.” Bett gave in. “Boost her, you all.”
So the other four hoisted Hester up and Bett caught her hands and seconds later Hester was over the sill with Bett.
“MOVE!” Bett whisper-shouted down to the others. As they dashed off, Bett pulled the screen down and locked the window again. She and Hester had landed in the English room. In front of them was a table full of new copies of a book—The Prose and Poetic Eddas—that Bett guessed was next on the docket after Virginia Woolf.
“What the hell is a prose and poetic edda?” whispered Hester.