0840 hours There is another knock on Ms. Thibodeau’s bedroom door, which is apparently locked. A brother, Max Thibodeau, age 8, requests entrance. He knocks repeatedly and then slides a note under the door.
you sade you’ld play Pokémon wih me
0850 hours Ms. Thibodeau opens her bedroom door. Max Thibodeau, of 17 Plum Lane, is waiting in the hall, holding a shoebox of Pokémon cards sorted into bundles and wrapped with rubber bands. He says:
“I’m training for the title of Most Talented Ten-and-Under Pokémon Player, and I need your help. I’ve made you a special fire deck. Fire-type Pokémon can be tricky because they require a lot of energy, and you have to somehow pull that energy out of the discard pile after an attack, but I’ve given you a Reshiram and an Emboar with Inferno Fandango Ability. Which means that you can play as many Fire Energies as you want with each—”
[His speech is interrupted by a text message to Ms. Thibodeau’s cellphone from an unidentified caller.]
Hi this is Tiffany hope ur ok? Billy is worried about u
When Ms. Thibodeau fails to reply, Max gains her attention by shaking the cardboard box and resumes his speech. “With each turn. You can use the Blue Flare Attack. So, basically, a Pokémon with 130 HP can do 120 damage every single turn!”
At this point, Ms. Thibodeau makes a false statement, promising her brother that she will meet him in the shed/playhouse to play Pokémon at 0915 hours. He is instructed to wait for her there.
0905 hours Ms. Thibodeau, wearing jeans, Converse high-tops, and a dark hooded sweatshirt, carrying a machete, exits the residence on foot.
Transcript: It was cold. Although I was wearing a sweatshirt, the string had come out of the hood, so the wind kept blowing it off my head. My ears were freezing. As I walked, I changed the machete from one hand to the other so I could warm the free hand in my pocket.
A few ragged clouds hung in the gray sky, and the air smelled like damp clothes. All along Plum Lane, the houses were silent. Occasionally, I saw the blue flash of a TV screen through a living room window, or a minivan rounding the corner, but cold affects southerners the way it does lizards, making us still.
Only the dogs were alive, barking frantically behind their fences as I turned the corner onto Peach Street. In the driveway of the house with the green shutters, a boy was riding his bike up and down the driveway. He was about Max’s age, wearing a thin hoodie zipped up to his raw, red face, with the cuffs pulled down over his hands. He pedaled furiously to the edge of the street, slammed on his brakes, turned, and pedaled furiously back up the driveway, where he slammed on his brakes and turned again. When he came flying back down, I could see that his eyes were watering from the cold, or maybe he was crying. He was the age of my father when Mr. Lafontaine brought him into his basement. Not Max—I could not think of Max being hurt—but this boy about the same age as Max; he was small. He had to say, “Yes, sir.” If he cried, he would be called a baby. He would believe anything. He would be terrified.
0912 hours Ms. Thibodeau reaches the end of Peach Street, which dead-ends into Muscadine Circle, a street that encircles a small lake.
Transcript: If I turned left, I would pass number four, the house of the pedophile on Muscadine Circle, but out of habit, I turned right. In my mind, I could see the Google map of the Orchard on Diane’s computer screen, with red pushpins marking the addresses of child molesters. “He might look like an ordinary person,” Diane had told us. “Like a teacher or a friend’s father. Never let anyone touch you in a private place.” It upset her to talk about child molesters. The wads of chewed nicotine gum would pile up in a yellow mound on her desk. If she’d had a husband, he would have put his arm around her.
0915 hours Ms. Thibodeau continues on Muscadine Circle.
Transcript: When Kate saw a picture of Joe, she said, “Oh- mygod, he is hot.”
I said, “Don’t creep on my dad, okay?” Billy is hot too, but he looks nothing like Joe. He has the all-American-boy look, which Diane says is not my style. How would she know? We could use a normal person in the family. As I plodded around the lake, switching hands in my sweatshirt pocket to keep them warm, I thought about our first date. (The sacristy meetings don’t count.) We were at the movie theater, sitting five rows behind Diane, with Max sandwiched between us until Billy sent him out for popcorn with a five-dollar bill. I don’t remember the movie. Billy’s tongue tasted like Junior Mints and Coca-Cola and the metal of his braces. His mouth seemed separate from him somehow, connected but not. I felt connected to him but not. The whole time we were kissing, I was wondering if he would say he loved me.
The heron won’t show up at the lake if you’re looking for him, so I kept my head down and watched my feet. “God Is, God Isn’t, God Is, Isn’t, Is, Isn’t.” My phone was vibrating against the warm hand in my sweatshirt pocket.
0920 hours Ms. Thibodeau receives a text message from a number she has recently identified in her iPhone address book as “SKANK.”
Billy used to talk about you 24-7 but hes over it just saying ywsylsbfn28
0921 hours Text message from Ms. Thibodeau to SKANK:
wdalyic?????29
Transcript: I would have said more, but my fingers were freezing, so I put the machete under my arm and stuck both hands in my pocket. My hood blew off my head again, and when I looked up, I saw the heron.
He appeared bluer than usual, poised against the flat silver water, just a few yards ahead of me. I walked softly, hoping to catch a closer look at the strange web of beard he wore around his neck, but even though he didn’t turn his head—he was much too cool for that—he knew where I was at every step. There were three or four ducks in the water, black and gray ones that missed the last flight to Florida, floating with their heads tucked under their wings. The heron seemed to be looking over their backs at something in the bleak limbs of the trees. A blue heron will never look straight at you. When he rose into the air with three soft flaps of his wings, it was as if he had been swept up by an invisible hand. Then he was gone.
0930 hours Ms. Thibodeau exits the Orchard neighborhood via Apple Lane and approaches Highway 11.
Transcript: The heron was ahead of me and behind me and ahead of me again, always appearing mysteriously from nowhere before disappearing with three wing beats into nothing. It seemed like more than one heron, but it never was. Poor lonely bird. This is what I was thinking: Screw Billy. Hitchhike to Louisiana. Find Mr. Chief Lafontaine and settle the score.
0935 hours Text message from Billy Starr:
sry i haven’t been in touch lost my phone r u ok?
0936 hours Ms. Thibodeau throws her phone into the street on Apple Lane and continues walking south toward Highway 11.
Transcript: I stood on the curb for a few minutes, looking at the sun. If the sun was rising in the east, which of course it was, then it should be on my left if I was heading south, to Louisiana. I had to cross the highway to catch a ride in the right direction, but there wasn’t much traffic, mostly logging trucks.
0938 hours Ms. Thibodeau gestures to passing vehicles (sticks her thumb out).
0942 hours Clement P. Harris, of Waycross, Georgia, an employee of S&P Trucking, stops his vehicle and offers Ms. Thibodeau a ride.
Transcript: It takes trucks a long time to stop. I had to walk almost half a block to the place where the wheels finally stopped turning, and then I wasn’t sure if the driver had stopped for me. Maybe he just stopped? This was my first time hitchhiking. I stood on the curb awhile, not sure what to do. The cab was actually pretty high off the ground, and I didn’t want to climb up there and hang on the door like a monkey, especially if he hadn’t stopped for me. I felt stupid, standing there, and I started to walk away. Suddenly, he leaned across the long seat and opened the passenger door.
“You want a ride?” he asked.
I thought, No. Diane says you should always listen to that first answer, the one that comes from your gut. My answer was definitely no, but I was embarrassed to say no after
I had stuck my thumb out and followed the truck all the way to the point where it stopped, and then stood there until he had to open the door himself. I climbed up and got in.
He had fuzzy red hair. It came out in wisps under his cap, and in a scraggly beard. His eyebrows were red too. There were red hairs on the knuckles of the hand that gripped the wheel, no ring. He had almost no eyelashes, and his eyes were dilated, the way they are when the optometrist puts drops in them. An air freshener shaped like a cross hung from his rearview mirror.
“Where you headed, young lady?” he asked.
“Louisiana.”
“Is that right?” He looked at me, too long, and I stuck my hands in the pocket of my hoodie, pulling it tighter around me. I held the machete between my knees.
“That’s a mighty big knife you got there,” he said. “That’s damn near as big as you are.” Then he started to laugh. I laughed too, which is a bad habit of mine, laughing at things that really aren’t funny to make the other person feel like his joke was funny. So we were laughing, and he was looking at me so weird that I couldn’t make myself into a small enough ball, when a horn honked.
0948 hours Penn MacGuffin arrives on the scene. 1989 green Mazda truck.
Transcript: “What the fuck,” said the trucker. Penn had pulled up beside us even though there wasn’t exactly a lane over there. His window was rolled down. He honked again.
“Yeah, buddy, what is it?” said the trucker through his window.
“Let her out,” said Penn.
The trucker took a swallow of his Mountain Dew, rolled up the window, and hit the gas. We couldn’t go very fast because we were going up a hill.
“Louisiana,” he said slowly. “What’s down there? Your boyfriend?”
“No,” I said. “My boyfriend is in Boston. We broke up.”
“Ain’t that a shame.” He lit a cigarette, not even asking me if I minded, but he rolled his window down when I started coughing.
There was Penn again, pulling up alongside us. He was actually driving on the median.
0955 hours The driver of the green truck passes the logging truck, on the median, and pulls across the highway, blocking the flow of traffic in both lanes. He steps out of the vehicle and approaches the logging truck, on the passenger side. He motions for Ms. Thibodeau to dismount the vehicle, but she remains inside the cab.
Transcript: I couldn’t move. Penn must be able to see the gun, even though the trucker was holding it behind the Mountain Dew bottle. (Did he buy it at Walmart? Point at it through the glass case with his red-haired finger, drop it in the shopping cart? Attention, Walmart shoppers! Was he thinking, Someday I might need this. I might need to put a bullet in someone’s heart.)
Now, the trucker had the Mountain Dew bottle in his left hand, the gun in his right. So if a car passed us, the gun was hidden. Penn kept walking toward us, straight into the barrel. When he opened the door on my side of the cab, he shouldered me out of the way. Now there was nothing between Penn and the gun.
“Walk to my truck, Aris,” he said. “Get inside. Floorboard.”
“Okay,” I said, but I walked backward, slowly, with my machete in my hand. I couldn’t turn my back on Penn.
“I’ll kill you,” said the trucker. He dropped the Mountain Dew bottle, revealing the gun, aimed at Penn’s chest.
“I understand that,” said Penn. “She’s twelve.”
The trucker was watching me walk backward through his windshield. Did he think I was older? Was he a child molester? Through the glare of the glass, his face looked like the red mask of a face, with nobody behind it. “If you ain’t gone in two minutes,” he told Penn, “I’ll run right over your truck.”
1000 hours Ms. Thibodeau and Mr. MacGuffin enter the green Mazda and make a U-turn on Highway 11, heading north.
Transcript: While I was in the floorboard of Penn’s truck, my ears were frozen up, prepared for the sound of a gunshot. It didn’t come. During the U-turn, it felt like we were going around and around, forever, but Penn is a good driver.
After a while, he said, “Coast is clear.” I climbed back into the seat and fastened the seat belt. I tried not to look at him, so he wouldn’t look at me, but I couldn’t help it. His face was drawn up tight, and there was a strange, sharp smell to him. Thick blue veins stuck out on his hands as he clenched the steering wheel.
When we were back in the Orchard, driving down Apple Lane with the familiar small brick houses, the bikes in the driveways, the garbage cans on the street, Penn slowed the truck down. “That your phone in the middle of the street?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You stay IN THE CAR,” he said. Then he got out to pick it up.
When he handed me the phone, I said, “You can smoke if you want.”
“Damn right I can,” he said, lighting a cigarette, but he rolled the window down. Turning onto Muscadine Circle, he said, “We’re gonna loop around the lake and talk for a minute.” The heron wasn’t at the lake. Even the ducks had gone somewhere. The water was a flat gray disc.
“You okay?” he asked. “Did he touch you?”
“He didn’t touch me.”
“Were you hitchhiking?”
“Yes.”
“That sombitch was on some high-speed chicken feed. Where is the ever-vigilant Chutiksee County Police Department when you need them? They’ll catch him, though. The cops may be asleep when an armed driver picks up an underage girl, but they put the sirens on for a missing red flag on an object extending four feet beyond the bed of a vehicle.” With one hand on the wheel, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a tattered red square of cloth.
I wanted to ask him how he got the flag, but my phone started going boing, boing, boing in the pocket of my sweatshirt. That was Max’s ring.
“Answer him,” said Penn. “Tell him we’ll be there in a minute.” He picked up his lighter and put it back down. “Never mind. Give me the phone.” He took the phone out of my hand. “We’ll be there in a minute, Max,” he said, and hung up. He shook his head at me. “Aris, where were you going, if you don’t mind my asking, with a machete?”
“Houma, Louisiana? Where my dad is from?”
“I guess I don’t need to tell you how absolutely fucking dangerous that was.” He lit the second cigarette and then dug around under his seat until he found a dirty towel. “One corner of that is clean. I cannot stand to see a girl cry.”
“Are you going to tell Diane?”
“No, I don’t have to. You will.”
“Do I have to?”
“No, but you will.” We drove in silence while he blew his smoke out the window.
Then I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, and said, “Penn? I don’t know how to say this, but about the weirdness between you and Diane?”
“What weirdness?” he said with a poker face.
“I mean, it didn’t work out, right?”
“Can we talk about this some other time?”
“Sure,” I said, but I was afraid there might not be another time. If Diane hadn’t blown it with Penn, I certainly had. Who wants to be the dad of a girl who gets you caught at the wrong end of a gun?
As soon as we pulled into the driveway, Max dashed out the door. “Where were y’all?” he demanded, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “Aris left me here alone. I called and called, and she wouldn’t answer.” He cast a suspicious glance at my hands. “Did you get ice cream without me?”
1020 hours Ms. Thibodeau enters her home at 17 Plum Lane. She is unharmed, but shaken. She reports paranormal activity in the living room: The empty rocking chair her parents made for her when she was a baby is in motion.
Transcript: All I wanted to do was hide in my room, but as I passed through the living room, I stopped. The room was dim, lit only by the weak winter sun, and eerily still except for the empty rocking chair, which was rocking. Was Joe here?
I locked myself in my room. Even though I could hear Penn banging on the playhouse in the backyard, and I knew
that Diane would be home soon, nothing felt safe. Billy was finished with me, had been finished with me for a long time, probably ever since he moved to Boston. Diane had lost her job. I had scared away my PMI and probably just missed a gruesome death. I remembered the way the truck driver had looked at me with his empty eyes, and the red hairs on the backs of his hands—
Max’s knock on my door sounded like a gunshot; I jumped.
“Go away,” I yelled.
“You said you’d play Pokémon with me.”
“Later.”
“You said that this morning. You promised.”
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Just stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!”
There was a short silence. Then, through the wall that separates our bedrooms, I could hear Max talking to himself. “Stop it,” he said, mimicking a girl’s voice. “Stop it, stop it, stop it.” In his own, calm, male voice, he said, “Stop what? I just invited you to play Pokémon. Is that a crime?” In the voice of someone else, he agreed with himself. “No, that is not a crime. Is she your sister? Really? Dude, I’m sorry.”
I leaned my elbows on my dresser and stared into the mirror. There I was, a 12.5-year-old girl with frizzy hair and brown-not-violet eyes—a total stranger. I had stood on the highway with a machete, holding my thumb out. What was I going to do? Slice Mr. Lafontaine’s head off with the machete? The blade wasn’t even sharp. Was I crazy? I probably was crazy. Penn was right—I had to tell Diane what had happened. When I heard the dogs barking, and her voice as she opened the door, I was ready to tell her. She would listen. Holding my hand, she would say, You hitchhiked? You were going where? Are you nuts? Dear God, Aris. Honey! He had a gun? She would grab her phone and make me that appointment with Dr. Dhang.
The plan to spill my guts was foiled when Diane walked into the house with Charles. “Look who I found at Kroger,” she said, beaming. They both had their arms full of grocery bags. When Penn came in from the backyard to help, she said, “Penn, this is Charles, my former student.”
“Former?” said Charles.
“I’ll explain in a minute,” said Diane, flipping her bangs away from her eyes. “I hope you don’t mind, Charles, but I’ve told Penn about your court case. He thinks it’s awful.” Penn and Charles reached around the bags in their arms to shake hands.
How to Write a Novel Page 18