Eye Sore

by Melanie Jackson

  “Almost there!” I punched through more air. Then, with a whish, the air gave way. I landed in the grass, in the wildflowers.

  I scrambled up. “Lauren?”

  But it wasn’t Lauren now. It was the woman with the glowing white flower.

  She held the flower up to me, closer and closer. The flower expanded. The white petals turned into a floodlight and blinded me.

  Chapter Ten

  When I woke, I sat up and yelled, “AAAGGGHHH!”

  From outside my open window came a startled exclamation. “Chaz?”

  It was Dad. He probably thought I was being murdered. Or that a baboon was in the house.

  I swung out of bed and padded over to the window.

  Below me, outside the front door, stood Dad, with Jonas and Brody Bilk.

  Dad gazed up at me in astonishment. Jonas looked impatient. I had interrupted them.

  Brody kept his gaze down. He was reading a large slim book.

  I called down, “Sorry, Dad. Weird dream.”

  I headed toward the bathroom. I needed a hot shower to get that dream out of my mind. That weird, glowing white flower.

  I stopped. Speaking of weirdness—

  What were the Bilks doing at our house?

  I went partway downstairs, just enough to hear the conversation through the open front door.

  Jonas’s voice oozed up to me. It was oily and fake friendly.

  “…an admirable effort, Don. Everyone agrees on that. You worked hard. You built your dream—North Vancouver’s first Eye. You put us on the map, Don. Up there with London, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro.”

  Jonas sounded like he was on Dad’s side. I didn’t get it.

  Jonas’s too-smooth words flowed on. “But you’ve had some problems, Don. Some controversy. And two cases of vandalism.”

  The newspaper publisher clicked his tongue. “I’m a businessman too, Don. I know how problems take their toll on a person. Heck”—a bark of laughter—“they take their toll on a person’s bank account!”

  I edged down another couple of stairs. Now I could see Dad and Jonas and Brody, deep in his book. Dad’s shoulders were hunched. His head drooped.

  Ice climbed my spine. I realized what had happened over the past day or so. Jonas had sucked the life out of Dad.

  Jonas said, “I’m going to help you, Don. If you’ll let me.”

  No, I thought. Don’t listen to him, Dad. Jonas doesn’t want to help you. He has some other reason for being here. Something he isn’t telling. That’s what Jonas is all about—secrets.

  Jonas fished in his shirt pocket. He brought out a rectangular piece of paper.

  He said, “This is a check for you, Don. I think you’ll find the amount to be more than fair.”

  Dad didn’t take the check. Didn’t move. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m offering to buy you out, Don. Take over the Eye. Relieve you of your problems.”

  Sweat shone on Jonas’s forehead. He badly wanted Dad to accept.

  Why? What would a money-losing newspaper publisher want with a money-losing Ferris wheel?

  Dad didn’t reach for the check. But he didn’t take his eyes off it either.

  No, Dad, I thought. Don’t do it.

  With the back of his hand, Jonas wiped the sweat off his forehead. “You can build an Eye somewhere else. Just take this one apart and move the pieces. Look at it that way—you’re making money.”

  Dad didn’t take the check. He didn’t say anything. But he nodded slowly. This made sense. Jonas was getting to him.

  How could Jonas afford to buy out Dad? That made no sense.

  Jonas talked on, his words washing over Dad. Wearing him down like water wears down a stone—if nothing stops it.

  “The Eye is a good idea. This just wasn’t the place for it. I’ll take the land over. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Give me a break, I thought. You’re into doing the right thing like I love heights. There’s some other reason you want the property.

  Dad reached for the check.

  Well, Jonas hadn’t sucked the life out of me.

  “No!” I shouted.

  They looked at me. Even Brody glanced up from the slim book he was so focused on.

  There were so many things I wanted to say. Liar, liar, pants on fire would have been a satisfying start. But it was Dad I had to get through to.

  I blurted, “George Ferris did that. He set up his wheel somewhere else.”

  “Uh…sure,” said Jonas, bewildered.

  Jonas didn’t know what I was talking about. But Dad did. Once George moved his Ferris wheel, it was the end of him.

  Dad held my glance for a long moment.

  He didn’t take the check. He put both hands in his pockets. He said, “Give me a day to think about your offer, Jonas. To talk about it with my son.”

  Jonas kept smiling, but his eyes flashed with annoyance. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted this deal done.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll hold the offer open until tomorrow.”

  He walked down our path to the sidewalk.

  Brody followed. But first he shot Dad and me a look. Not a hostile look though. It was kind of a wistful look.

  I didn’t have time to think about that. In the next twenty-four hours, I had to find out why money-strapped Jonas was so anxious to buy the Eye property from Dad.

  And talk Dad out of selling.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dad replaced the phone. “That was my realtor. She said land values around here haven’t shot up. If anything, they’ve softened.”

  He shrugged. “So Jonas can’t be looking to flip the land and make a profit.”

  “He wants the land for something,” I said.

  What, though? I executed three sidesteps and a spin. I needed to get my brain cells working on it. What made this particular property so attractive to Jonas?

  “Not bad, Gene,” Dad observed.

  “What? Oh—thanks. Sorry. I…” I trailed off, embarrassed. I guessed it didn’t look very businesslike, lapsing into Gene Kelly mode.

  Dad waved off the apology. “You’ve been decent about supporting me with my Eye dreams and schemes. The least I can do is support you in your dancing.”

  I hesitated. I was used to being on the defensive about dancing. To him ranting about what a loser career choice it was.

  But he was smiling. “You got a routine down for the contest?”

  He hadn’t asked me about the contest before.

  “Yeah, I think so. Lots of punching and…”

  I paused. I was back in my dream. I was punching my way down through the air to reach Lauren. Only it wasn’t Lauren when I got there. It was her great-grandmother, with that glowing white flower.

  “The contest is Saturday, isn’t it?” Dad asked. “I’ll be there, watching. If you don’t mind,” he added.

  “No, that’d be great,” I said. I smiled back.

  I was obsessed with that dream. For some reason I needed to figure out why the dream was staying with me. It was like the dream was trying to show me an idea buried deep in my mind that I couldn’t reach.

  The next day was gray. It was hot and still. According to weather reports, a storm was brewing.

  I took tickets. I helped people on and off the Eye.

  The twenty-four-hour mark had come and gone. Dad was on the phone with the bank. He was trying to find a way to stretch his money, to find out if he could get another loan.

  I wondered when Jonas Bilk was going to show up.

  Moe relieved me for lunch. When I came back, he’d leave. He had the afternoon off. His dad had invited him to watch a surgery from the operating-room gallery.

  I went to the office. Dad was still on the phone. He shook his head at me.

  Two guys from the fence company arrived. With Dad busy, I offered to show them the section that needed repairing.

  I led them through the woods. Again I noticed the quiet. It was like stepping into another world. No w
onder Lauren’s great-grandmother had hung out in the woods.

  When we got within view of the fence, it was back to the real world again.

  The two jagged holes stared at me like oversized eyeballs as the men inspected the fence.

  The holes reminded me of the short gray-haired man with the gold-rimmed glasses. He had stared at me too. He had told me to look up, up! at the birds.

  He had claimed to be a bird-watcher. But he couldn’t tell a goldfinch from a robin.

  I realized I was punching the air, like in my dance routine. The men from the fence company watched me in surprise.

  “This is how I think,” I explained to them.

  They glanced at each other and shrugged, as if to say, Kids. They went back to jotting down notes.

  I didn’t care what they thought. I was remembering something else.

  Brody Bilk, showing up at the Eye to make friendly. Brody had wandered into the woods. When I followed, he aimed his camera up into the dark evergreens. What kind of photographer would do that?

  No photographer. Just like a person who mistook a robin for a goldfinch was no bird-watcher.

  People were awfully anxious for me to think they were looking up.

  Maybe it was time I looked down.

  I crouched in the grass and the wildflowers. It took a moment for my eyes to get used to the shade.

  White wildflowers were scattered pretty evenly through the grass. I looked closer. Except in one patch, where—

  Where grass had been pulled away. Where a hole yawned at me.

  Someone had dug one of the flowers up.

  Brody? Is that what he’d been doing here? I’d heard something clanking in his knapsack, like spoons.

  Or…spades.

  I flattened the grass around another flower. I leaned in close. I had barely noticed the wildflowers before. They were just wildflowers.

  No. They weren’t.

  The petals were too big. They curved wide and then met in a point. Two gold stamens with rounded ends hung out. Like two tiny people taking a bow.

  I’d lived in this area all my life. I’d played, jogged and skied at Grouse Mountain. But I had never seen this type of flower here till now.

  I’d seen it in one other place though—the portrait of Lauren’s great-grandmother. The woman had, as a girl in the 1920s, played in these woods. In those days, the woods stretched for miles, unspoiled and undeveloped.

  I leaned back on my heels and punched the air a couple of times. I thought about land.

  Dad’s realtor had said land values were soft. So Jonas, already facing money problems, wouldn’t be looking to profit off land.

  But what if it wasn’t the land he was interested in?

  What if it was something that grew on the land?

  I felt the first spatter of raindrops as I ran back to the office. I pushed the office door open so hard it crashed against the wall. “Dad?”

  No reply. No sign of Dad. His phone lay on the desk. Typical. He’d forgotten it.

  I checked his recent calls. The name I didn’t want to see popped up first. Jonas Bilk.

  I played it out in my mind. Jonas called and Dad agreed to sign the deal. He could be on his way to the Bilks’.

  I heard the door open again. I whipped around.

  I wanted so badly for it to be Dad. But it was Moe.

  My buddy stared at the floor. He wanted something but wouldn’t ask. Asking was too much bother. Asking involved vocabulary.

  Even in my panic, I had to smile. “The surgery,” I said. “You have to go.”

  Moe nodded. I thought of asking him to stay. I didn’t though. Watching someone get sliced and diced wasn’t my idea of a great afternoon. But it meant a lot to him.

  “Go on,” I said. “I’ll close up. Nobody’s going to come in this weather. And I have to find Dad. It’s…”

  It’s life or death, I almost said. But that was too corny. Or was it? The Eye was Dad’s dream. And dreams were what you lived for.

  Moe left. I locked the office and the front gate.

  I ran down the hill. The sky spat out more raindrops, big, heavy ones that hit the pavement like stones.

  I had to reach Dad in time.

  Chapter Twelve

  I rang the Bilks’ doorbell once. No answer. I pressed my finger on it. Still nothing. I pounded the door with my fist.

  From inside, silence.

  Yet a car was parked in the curving driveway.

  I tried the door. Locked. I ran around to the back. The stone terrace surrounded a swimming pool. The rain, now turned to hail, hammered the water. Splashes rose like geysers.

  I shoved my face against the glass doors.

  Jonas was hunched over his desk examining something. He was alone.

  I felt a glimmer of relief. Dad wasn’t here—yet.

  I tried the window handle. It turned. I stepped inside. My soaked runners squelched against the marble floor.

  But Jonas didn’t hear. He was wearing earbuds.

  I tapped his shoulder.

  He removed the buds. He turned around with the snarl that was his version of a smile.

  “Another of your dramatic entrances! I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  I never got to reply. From upstairs, screams rang out. They went on and on, each one higher and louder than the one before.

  Jonas smashed his fist down on his desk. “Enough!”

  He stomped out of the room. I heard his feet pounding up the winding marble staircase.

  No one’s being tortured, Lauren had said. Maybe not, but somebody up there was in trouble. Someone was suffering big-time. And Jonas had not been wearing a love-thy-neighbor expression just now. The screamer’s situation was about to get way worse.

  I started after Jonas. Dad losing his property was one thing. This could be someone’s life.

  As I passed the desk, I knocked over a tin wastebasket. The basket went flying.

  I straightened it. A crumpled piece of paper had fallen out. I picked it up. I was about to drop it back in.

  Then, without meaning to, I read the first few words.

  I stopped. Smoothing the paper, I read the rest of it.

  I sank into Jonas’s chair. I stared at the words for a long moment. Now I understood about the screams. About the cry for help, and Jonas’s furious “Enough!”

  There was something I should do about the screams. Something I should say.

  But it could wait, I decided.

  Because my gaze fell to the desk. To what Jonas had been hunched over.

  It was photos. Close-up shots of the white flowers in the woods. They were taken from every angle, with shots of stems to leaves to stamens to creamy petals.

  But you wouldn’t need to be close to get these photos. You could snap them with a zoom lens—like the short gray-haired man had been holding. That’s what he’d been up to. Not bird-watching.

  I heard shouting upstairs. Jonas could storm back down here at any moment. I had to be fast.

  I picked up the letter. It was on gold-edged stationary, with gold lettering at the top: Hans von Driezel, Collector of Rare Plants.

  The gray-haired man! I was sure of it. I could hear his brisk, accented voice. See the birds! How they fly about. So graceful.

  It was Hans I’d heard Jonas talking to on the phone. Jonas had snapped, I can’t move forward till I have a guarantee from you, Hans. A written one.

  Upstairs, a cellphone rang. The shouting stopped.

  I read on.

  Dear Mr. Bilk,

  As you requested, I am setting this down in writing. From photographs I’ve taken, I am almost sure the flowers in the woods are a rare breed of snow orchid—thought to be extinct.

  I need you to bring me a specimen. I will study it under a microscope. If these are, as I suspect, genuine snow orchids, I will buy them from you for—

  It was a large number. I had to blink to make sure all the zeroes in it were real. It was way more than Dad had paid for the Eye property.


  I let out a whistle. No wonder Jonas, though in financial trouble, wanted to buy the land from Dad. By law, the woods were a protected ecosystem. Dad respected that. But Jonas wouldn’t. Once the land was his, he’d let Hans von Driezel dig up the snow orchids. He’d never have to worry about money again.

  I folded the letter. I tucked it into my pocket. I kept thinking.

  With his newspaper story, Jonas had fired up public anger. On the Eye’s opening day, protesters had scared customers off. Later, Jonas sent someone to vandalize the Eye, then to cut holes in the fence.

  From the guard’s description, the vandal was Brody. It made sense. Brody had dug up the snow orchid. Brody did what his dad ordered. He was Jonas’s henchman.

  All oily smiles and fake sympathy, Jonas had shown up on our doorstep. He’d offered to buy the property from Dad.

  Now I knew why. Now I could stop the deal.

  I pushed out the office door and into the marble foyer. I stopped. The house was silent.

  I looked around. The only person I saw was the woman in the painting. It seemed she was staring at me over the glowing white flower. Warning me with her bright blue eyes.

  I swung around.

  Brody was at the top of the stairs. He was holding the slim book. He studied me for a moment, as if I were a specimen like the flower he’d stolen. As if I were something he was trying to understand.

  Then he said, “My dad’s going to meet your dad at the Eye. Your dad’s agreed to sign.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I pushed out the front door. The hail had turned to rain—thick, silver sheets of it.

  The car that had been parked along the Bilks’ wide, crescent-shaped driveway was gone. That phone call had been from Dad. While I’d been concentrating on the photos and letter, Jonas had talked with Dad. He’d left the house.

  I phoned Dad’s cell. Please be there. Please answer.

  Ringing. Then voice mail kicked in.

  I closed my eyes. I lifted my face and let the rain sluice down it. I said, “Dad. Don’t sign. Wait for me.”