Pretty Peg

by Skye Allen

  “He’s a doctor?” Neil spoke around the pen in his mouth.

  “Yeah.” I thought about that and revised my statement. “I always thought he was. But he’s a big fat liar, so he could be anything.” Like a serial killer.

  “He must have gotten into that Afghanistan medicine thing somehow. Anyway, check this out.” I hunched next to the little monitor to see a cheap web page with Dr. Jerome Desroches’s name in big red italics, listed under another doctor.

  “Click on it,” I said when he wouldn’t let me take over the mouse.

  “Ssh, kids are sleeping. There’s no hyperlink. It’s some kind of clinic in… where is that? Area code 661?”

  Most of the oversized blue text was in Spanish. There was an address at the bottom. “Shelton. Where’s Shelton? What’s all that say?”

  “That it’s some kind of clinic. I thought you took Spanish.”

  I scribbled the address on the back of the hot-pink drama club flyer. “C’mon, let me look on Google Maps.”

  He stared at me. “You’re not going there.”

  “Just let me see how far away.”

  He sighed and looked up Shelton. It was 292 miles from Oakland. “They have a phone number,” he said.

  “Oh gee, let’s see. They won’t answer at night. And if they do answer at night, that’ll give him plenty of warning. And if he happens to come to the phone, how will that go? ‘Hello, is this the Dr. Desroches who killed my sister? So how exactly are you planning to catch Laura, sneak up on her while she’s at the piano and knife her nice and square so the heart lifts out easy? And what about—’”

  “Hey. I know. Quit it.” Neil’s voice was the kind of voice you’d use to hush a dog. He took the paper I’d balled up in my fist and smoothed it out. My empty hands shook. I felt panicked, helpless. “It might not be him. I mean, he’s not actually here.”

  “Yeah, but he’s the boyfriend. Shit. It’s just, it’s stupid. Mom thought everything was going to be okay—that’s why she left. Now, I mean. She thought it would be okay if I was… if I took care of… if I didn’t let anything happen to….” My throat thickened, and the words died. Do not start crying. You start now, you’ll never stop.

  “If you took care of Laura and you. He’s coming for you too, you know. I haven’t forgotten that part.” Neil pressed buttons as he spoke, his eyes flicking to the screen. The printer under his desk chugged into life.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked. He was at the crooked closet door now, bent over the milk crates stacked there. He held up one tan boot by the laces.

  “We can get there before they open. Surprise him.” He folded the printed directions and slid them into his inside pocket.

  “Nope, nope. You don’t have to go. Why would I drag you into this drama?”

  “Um. That was a question for, like, hours ago. This morning. I’m dragged in now, dollface.”

  I did start crying then. “That’s your Bogart?”

  “What do you want, a cigar? We’re going. We only have until the twenty-first. Do you really think he’s going to wait around?”

  “We have no plan. Zero plan. Are we just supposed to waltz into his doctor office and go ‘Excuse me, citizen’s arrest, we happen to know you’re planning to—’” My throat closed on the movie of Laura, home alone, oblivious with her back to the door. “And what’s on the twenty-first?”

  “That’s the fall equinox. Whatever’s coming, it’d be my guess it’s coming then. And we have 292 miles to work that out. And those… people… from tonight. They’re going to post a guard or something at your house. For Laura. That elf Blossom told me.”

  “When did she find the time for that?”

  “You were—otherwise engaged. With the Lady.” His face took on the distant look he’d had in the park. I didn’t comment on it. Let him have his hero worship, or whatever glamour was. I felt a tinge of envy that I didn’t feel that same sense of religious awe I saw on his suddenly soft features.

  “The twenty-first? What if the protection thingy only lasts until then too?”

  “All I know is she said it’s supposed to go down by the twenty-first.”

  “And today’s the… shit. Shit! That’s Sunday!”

  He nodded, stopping with his hands on his backpack straps to rest his eyes full on my face. “We’ll take the car.”

  “Oh God. Your mom’ll kill us. And doesn’t she need it for work?” I said, hesitating now.

  “Nah. Tomorrow’s daycare carpool. Mr. Fancypants Helden drops her off so he can spend a little extra time with her cleaves.” He pulled his copy of the drama club flyer out from between two textbooks and Sharpied a note on the back. The chemical smell burned through the haze of that warm, dark room and snapped me wide-awake.

  Chapter 6

  THE SUN rose through the small fingerprints on the Hernandez family car windows and made everything white. We were parked at a truck stop near Shelton, where we’d pulled in at 4:00 a.m. and decided to sleep until the clinic opened. Mostly I’d lain there awake with Dad’s itchy coat over me and watched the trucks on the interstate, while Neil shifted and kicked in the backseat. He must have spent the whole two and a half hours trying to find legroom.

  “What?” he mumbled. Asleep, then. He unpeeled one eye and cackled when I pulled off my soft hat to feel oily hair clumping on my forehead. I pulled down the mirror shade and looked at my face: puffy and streaked. I tried to comb through my pink and brown hair with my fingers, gave up, and arranged the hat so it was at least symmetrical. My mouth felt like cardboard. I ran my tongue over woolly teeth and craned to see if there was a Starbucks I’d missed last night. Coffee would be almost as good as a toothbrush.

  The truck stop was a combination gas station, car wash for huge trucks, and 7-Eleven. I bought a pack of Doublemint and a big Styrofoam cup of watery coffee. They had toothbrushes, but I only had twelve dollars in my wallet, and we still had to get home. Neil bought a sweaty donut and a Red Bull, and we climbed back into the fuggy car for breakfast.

  “So what’s the plan?” We’d had this conversation the whole drive down. I knew what he was going to say.

  “Go in and find out what he knows. Scream like hell if he tries anything,” Neil said around a mouthful of plain glazed.

  “We’re going to say on the form that we need HIV tests, right?” That would get us in the door. It was what happened once we were in the room with the Woodcutter that had me worried. I swallowed thin coffee and hoped it would give me a few minutes of chemical courage.

  “I still like saying you’re pregnant. That way we can both get in together—I’m the dad. They’ll try to separate us otherwise. And I’m going to keep my thumb on 911,” he said.

  “Crap. This is crazy. What if he can just kill us with one hand or something? Calling 911 won’t do us any good.” I’d been trying to keep my anxiety contained for the whole drive. It was threatening to spill out now, just when I most needed to keep it together.

  “We don’t even know for sure it’s him. Plus, remember—not that this is a good thing, I know—but they want Laura first. Don’t they? He’s kind of more after her than after you right now.”

  I didn’t think he had that right, but it didn’t matter. If Jerome was the Woodcutter, and I was right there in front of him, delivered on a plate, he’d make the most of the opportunity. I had to make sure he didn’t find out I was Margaret’s sister, but I still had to try to get him to talk about her. That would tell me if it was him or not, or so I hoped. I tasted dry bitterness that had more to do with fear than with sleeping in the car.

  “They’re gonna be open in ten minutes,” I said. I looked at my phone for confirmation. I had texted Laura from the highway that I was spending the night at Neil’s to take care of the girls, which was technically true if “Neil’s” included Mrs. Hernandez’s car and “taking care of the girls” meant driving to Kern County to stop Jerome from coming for Laura and me. I wished we had a real plan. Laura hadn’t answered, but any normal person
would be asleep on both ends of the five hours since I’d sent my text. I should have dragged her out of bed and made her come with us. I’d wanted to, but Neil pointed out that we might as well not drive her straight to the Woodcutter’s door if Jerome did turn out to be him.

  “Yeah. Let’s haul. We want to get there in time to watch him, you know, come and go first.”

  “Yeah, ’cause we’re sure to catch him woodcutting somebody else for practice,” I said. Our plan was stupid. But it was all we had. Our one advantage was that Jerome didn’t know who we were. If I could just talk to him, maybe I’d be able to tell something. After that, I wasn’t sure what to do next. What am I even doing here? Mom’s going to bring me back from the dead just to kill me all over again for getting myself killed out here.

  Neil slotted the Red Bull can next to the parking brake—one of his sisters had installed a troll doll in the cupholder with some kind of adhesive no adult could unstick. He stuck a hand in his jacket and said, “Shit. I forgot smokes. Can I just—I know we’re on a mission.”

  “Go,” I said. He swung out of the car. I leaned back into the nest of comforting smells and wished I didn’t have to go where I was going. I started to feel like the car’s dingy walls were closing in. I climbed out of the passenger seat and took in deep drinks of cold morning air. If I was going to die, I wanted to feel the sun on my face first.

  Neil was back in under three minutes, already lighting up. I knew he would only take a few puffs. He never smoked in the car. I looked at him, his eyes slightly crossed with concern, now getting rid of his cigarette in his Neil way by stubbing it out on the sole of his Timberland and then flicking it underhanded into the trash can in front of the parking space. He stood behind the open driver’s side door, blotting out the sun with one hand.

  “So you ready?” He pointed his chin at the road.

  “Sure,” I lied. The feeling crept over me that I got whenever I had to give a class presentation: after all the nervousness, at the last second, my mind went limp and totally accepting, this last-rites feeling that whatever my fate was, now it was too late to bolt.

  “Let’s do this,” Neil said. He eased the driver’s side door open wider, but he was looking at the truck stop, not at the car.

  I saw it coming before it happened, but it was too late. He slammed the car door on his hand.

  He screamed “Faaaaa!” and doubled over. Oh shit, oh shit. I ran to his side of the car. He was cradling his hand. When he released it, I saw the angry white line carved across the back. I looked for blood, but nothing dotted up. His face was bloodless too, pinched lines from his hooked nose to his sucked-in lips. He squeezed his eyes shut and then popped them open wide.

  “Ice. I’m going to get ice,” I said.

  He shook his head stiffly. “Let’s just go,” he breathed out in a voice like he was hoarding marijuana smoke. I touched his elbow to walk him to the passenger side, but he shrugged me off in a horselike movement and skittered sideways.

  I’d have to be the one to drive now, and I didn’t have a license. Okay. That’s okay. I can handle this.

  I knew why it happened. It was the trick door. The Hernandez Honda Civic was twenty-six years old, and his mom had bought it secondhand. The hatchback was held closed with a bungee cord, the middle seatbelt didn’t lock, and both doors had tricks. The driver’s side was the dangerous side. You had to slam it once before it would really close. With one hand you had to grasp the doorframe and hold it down, while with the other you had to swing the door using just the right amount of force. You had to get your hand out of the way in time. Neil was an ace at judging distances and speed, but he’d only had his license for three weeks, right before senior year started. He wasn’t used to the driver’s side yet.

  He eased into the passenger seat and bent his whole body around his hand. “Can you—” he said, and I pulled the seat belt around him when he pointed at it with his shoulder. It was awkward. I was nervous the whole time that I would touch his hand. I asked him if he was okay. “Yep. Just hurts,” he wheezed.

  I knew the basics, from the times Mom had taken one of her weapons-grade painkillers when she got overwhelmed at the grocery store and I’d had to be the one to drive us home. I backed out of the parking space, leaning out the open window because all the glass in the car was still fogged up.

  Neil was breathing deeply in and out. I asked him if he was okay a couple more times, and he nodded, so I stayed quiet and concentrated on getting into town and finding the clinic. I watched the fields fanning out on both sides of the road between the truck stop and Shelton. There was purple lettuce like velvet, barely skinning the earth, and a handful of trailers, one with a plywood yard sign that said FRESH PEACHES. And my tongue remembered the peach. Staying up all night made you lose track of time, but I was pretty sure it was only a day or two ago that I’d eaten it. I wondered where Nicky was now, if she ever watched the sun come up, if she’d seen it today. Did elves even sleep? With my hands on the sticky steering wheel, I picked at a cuticle on my thumb until a scrap of white skin jutted up and I could bite it. She’d be lying on her vine-tattooed forearm, all the quick fire in her face smoothed out as she slept. Black eyelashes on creamy cheeks. Something low in my belly melted like caramel, and I felt blood rush to the surface all over my skin. You’re not going to see her again. Remember? But my body wasn’t listening.

  A blinking red traffic light slung in the center of an intersection marked the beginning of town. “It’s on Fourth,” I said, just to break the silence. I risked a look at Neil while the car was stopped, and he gave a tight nod. We were at Second Avenue and Merced Street.

  “There can only be so many streets in this town. There it is,” Neil said, pointing with his chin.

  Nuevo Día Clínica was in a strip mall between a check-cashing store and a tiny post office, both closed. We climbed out of the car in time for the bakery smells that exhaled from a panaderia when its door pinged open to let out a stout woman hugging a stuffed paper bag. She smiled, dimples like nailheads, and offered us a cheerful “Buenos días!” I smiled back and pressed my arms against my stomach when it whined. Breakfast was not important now.

  I pulled the cold aluminum handle in the glass clinic door, but it was locked. “Buzzer!” somebody yelled from inside. I pressed the buzzer and tried to reorder my mind around why we were here. We didn’t need our plan—now we had an actual medical emergency. Oh, Neil. I’m sorry. You’d be fine if it weren’t for me. His hand was tucked into his puffy jacket now, Napoleon-style.

  The lock clicked open before I had to talk to the intercom. I held the metal doorframe open and stepped through after Neil into a room that had the smell of every standardized testing site I’d ever been in. Puke-beige walls were covered in peeling posters with graphics about hand-washing and syringes. All the text was in Spanish. A row of plastic chairs were bolted to the floor against the wall facing a sliding glass panel.

  I approached the window. “Yeah,” the woman behind it said around her gum. She was wearing flowered hospital scrubs that looked big enough to cover both me and Neil.

  “We need to see Jerome Desroches.” Stick to the truth.

  The woman handed me a clipboard. “Sit over there and fill this out,” she said in a drill-sergeant voice. I sat in the exact chair she pointed at. I was afraid to disobey. “This” turned out to be a bright orange questionnaire that had been photocopied so many times the words were cut off on all four sides. Every question was in Spanish and English.

  I leaned in to Neil. “Are you okay? Good thing we happen to be at the doctor’s.”

  “I’m fine. I think it’s fine. It hurts, but I don’t think it’s—haah.” He tugged at his fingers and winced. The deep white groove was starting to turn pink. He glanced at the orange paper. “No, don’t put me. Put you.”

  “You’re insane. Look at your hand. I’m telling her it’s an emergency.”

  I finished writing his name as he clamped his other hand down on my wrist. “D
o not. We’re here for you. I’m fine. I’m going to be fine,” he said, but his eyes were slitted shut, and his voice was quiet, way too quiet.

  I returned the clipboard to the drill sergeant at the desk. “My friend’s in a lot of pain. He might have broken his hand,” I said.

  “Doctor’ll see you when he’s ready.” She didn’t look up from the file on her desk. I returned to my cracked plastic chair and slouched there, eyeing the one grimy issue of Ranger Rick on the coffee table so I wouldn’t have to look at Neil’s hand. The other people in the chairs sat unmoving, not reading or checking phones, just sitting like they were born with the knowledge of how to spend the morning in the free clinic. The old man in the corner woke himself up, snoring a couple of times before the drill sergeant called, “Mr. Peters? You got a minute for the doctor?” The old man took his time getting his hat and newspaper together and scuffed his way across the ancient linoleum up to the window.

  “Hernandez?” a man in a lab coat called in a voice pitched to cover anyone who might be hard of hearing. He was propping open the doorway to the back. One look and I was sure he was Jerome. He had the stocky body and soft brown hair of the guy from Margaret’s pictures, and the same bulging eyes as his brother Timothy. That’s the Woodcutter, standing right there. That’s the guy who wants to kill me and Laura. What do I do? Fear fizzed in my stomach.

  Neil rose beside me, stepped forward, took charge. Right. He’s the one who’s hurt. Follow his lead. I stood up and immediately wished I’d left my coffee cup under my chair.

  “Both coming in?” The doctor answered the question for himself by holding the door until we both passed through. The same beige walls were in the hallway, a coatrack with a yellowing, transparent raincoat hanging by its hood, the inevitable Hang In There kitten poster on one of the two dull red doors. My body went tense as the doctor strode toward the scale/blood pressure station, but he didn’t stop to weigh us. He pushed open the scuffed door on the left with a white-coated elbow. I poured the last three inches of my coffee into the dusty ficus between the doors and followed Neil’s parka into the room.