“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I am so sorry about leaving you alone, especially without anything to protect yourself.”
I had only been shooting out in the desert a few times, but I felt confident enough to defend myself if I had to. The gun wasn’t a big deal though, and I still managed to make it out of the house. It was just dumb luck that I didn’t get to Milo’s bedroom while another prowler was still in his room. I thought about how afraid I was the night before but could see my mom appeared even more frightened by the whole ordeal.
“It’s fine, mom. It would just be nice if you were home a little more.” I said as I walked out of the room. I didn’t need to have an entire conversation about it. She knew how I was feeling and leaving her to fret would do much more than having the one millionths heart-to-heart about how I was feeling.
Chapter 28
Going to work in an empty office was starting to weigh on me and my patience. It wasn’t as if I thought working in the Insurance business was going to be a party but with the way everything was going, it became inhibiting. It had become nothing more than a hassle when putting on the “I care” face when I was at work. It was all one big lie, but I had become so good at playing the character of a happy, confident, and friendly individual whose sole purpose was to serve the customer that I had become irreplaceable.
Mr. Blethenfield had taken a real liking to me which made me feel bad about leaving at the end of the summer and even worse about wanting to leave earlier. Lucy would always complain about cleaning motel rooms for her annual summer job, and it made me think I was a bit of an ungrateful baby. How can someone dread going to an air-conditioned office every day? Apparently, such job stability with a boss that adored me, for some reason, and little to do was supposed to make me feel not only content but downright thrilled. However, the responsibility of all the inner workings of the office without being given all the facts was frustrating. When I was supposed to help with claims, I wasn’t always given all the facts. What was the point? It seemed the worst types of people made the most insurance claims. I was sure that everyone hated working in an office, or I assumed they would. It was a lot better than scrubbing toilets. Although, I was asked to clean our office’s toilet which wasn’t so bad.
It was more than the office, it was Manere. The place was not like every other small town in America, something abnormal existed in Manere. Something sinister. The sweltering heat paired with the overbearing sunlight inflicted some sort of zombie-like trance on all the town’s inhabitants. A place of too many methamphetamines and not enough education or activities, Manere Valley, had become the town of ruin. I just had to get through summer.
Once I was in school, I would start a new life and never look back. Since I couldn’t leave right away and was always left alone in the office, it seemed to snoop was my only solace. I went to the filing cabinet that housed my father’s information. I knew there was something strange about the June 18th filing date. I just wanted to see if there was any more information on the night. After a few weeks at Blethenfield Insurance, I noticed that most accidents included police reports. The first time I went through my dad’s file I was too concerned with getting caught to look for it. I flipped through the pages, most of which were filed by the truck company and the insurance that covered them. When I finally stumbled on the paper labeled Manere Police Department Incident Report the writing was neat and tidy and filled in carefully. The events of the night were what was relayed to me over the years. The truck was driven off the road and went headfirst into a building. What was different about this report was there were entire sections blacked-out.
“Is it a good read?” Mr. Blethenfield’s husky voice asked. My heart leaped as high as I did. I couldn’t hide how startled I was, making me appear guilty.
“Oh, hi Mr. Blethenfield. I was just going through some of these files. Making sure they were in alphabetical order and stuff.”
Mr. Blethenfield took off his glasses to clean while shaking his head He towered over me as I was sitting on the ground with the files spread out around me. “It’s not the best idea to get into these files. They’re old files. They don’t matter so much anymore. Which one you got there?” he asked as he leaned over to get a better look. “I see. Well, at least I can see where your interests in this job came from” he said.
“No. I didn’t know there was anything like this in here, I promise. I just came across it. I’m sorry it won’t happen again.”. I said.
“Angela, why don’t you head home now. We aren’t busy, I think it’s best if you just get along home,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if he was firing me. It was never busy, so leaving had to mean something more than the lack of foot traffic.
“Alright then. I’ll just get this cleaned up.” I started putting the papers back together.
“Don’t you worry about it. I’ll take care of this, and you just go enjoy your summer day young lady.”
I thanked him and grabbed my backpack. I had no idea what had happened, but it was time to see Milo again because things were getting far too strange even for Manere.
Chapter 29
I pulled in my driveway relieved to find that Milo’s Galaxy was sitting in his driveway. I decided we had returned to the kind of relationship in which I could knock on his bedroom window again. When I went to the side of the house, I heard someone yelling for me.
“Angela, what are you doing?” Milo asked as he was walking out the front door.
“I was going to see if you were in your room,” I said.
“You could have just knocked on the front door. We aren’t twelve anymore. Come in” he said. I followed him in the house straight to his room. I closed his bedroom door.
“Door closed? Is this a special kind of visit? Because I’m good with that, it won’t ruin our friendship, I promise” he said with a smirk.
“Not now, Romeo. I think we need to do something about what’s been going on around here lately. You are the only other person I know who has the same suspicions about Manere being literal hell.” I said.
“Is this about last night? Did they take something of yours too?” he asked.
“Too? You mean they took something of yours?”
“They took my journal which was kind of weird.” He said.
“You still keep a journal?”
“Yeah, don’t you?”
“Yes. I do,”
When Milo and I were ten, we decided that when we grew up and moved away, we might forget about living in such a unique place. It was around that time when we realized Manere was not like other towns in America. As much as most teachers wanted to hide things from us, our parents and a few of the cool teachers told us the truth. The best thing to do was to keep a journal. We would write down the strange happenings and even our own feelings and thoughts on the matter. I kept it up only stopping for a few months in tenth grade. I didn’t expect Milo to keep doing it. Not just because it didn’t seem like something a teenage guy would do, but because I figured it would just remind him of some dumb pact, we made when we were kids.
“So, was yours stolen?” he asked.
I thought about the question and remembered that I had seen it in the morning on the way to work. “No, but it was in my car. I had it sitting on the floor of the passenger’s side.”
“That’s lucky.”
“Why would they break into two houses just to steal a journal? That makes no sense.”
“That’s not all they took. My sister said they took something of hers,” he said. He peeked out the door and then through the window. With just above a whisper, he added “Leah had a phone. It was a mobile phone,”
“How did she get one of those?” I asked.
“She said she got it from a friend. She’s being vague about the whole thing. It’s not just any mobile phone. It had a camera on it and games. You could do all these things with it by touching it. There were no buttons, it was like a television screen. It’s some science fiction thing. Bizarre.”
“I don’t know. Maybe,”
“What’s uncanny is that I saw Chris the first day of summer school and he hasn’t been back since he had the thing confiscated,” I said. I hadn’t even realized he had not returned.
“So, here’s the thing. This is all obviously the town council or chamber or whoever the hell oversees this prison we call home. It wasn’t Tweakers or random hoodlums breaking into our houses. If it were, we would be missing jewelry, electronics, things like that. This has to do with what we wrote in those journals and that mobile phone which came from outside of Manere,” Milo said.
“You’re right. This is getting kind of creepy. How did they know that we wrote things in the journals about the town?” I asked.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that we don’t belong here, Angie. We’ve known it for years. Hell, we’ve probably talked about it at length in public,”.
“And they don’t like it,” I added.
“Yep. So now they’re just going to try to get in our heads and see what we are really thinking. God forbid we have any progressive ideas that we might want to share with our friends. What would happen to their perfect Manere Valley if enough people started resisting their plans? The place would collapse, and they couldn’t have that,”.
“There’s more. I think they, whoever they are, had something to do with my dad’s death. I don’t think he killed himself,” I said.
“I don’t think he did either. I’ve never thought he did.”
“What? Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”
“It’s kind of a tricky conversation to have Angie. I didn’t want to get all conspiracy theory about your father. It just hits a bit close to home to get into it, you know?” Milo said.
“The truck company he worked for filed the accident report with the insurance company the same day he died. With the time he died, it would have only made sense if they filed it hours before the accident,”.
“Because they knew he was going to drive into the school? This is some crazy shit. Murder? Is that what we’re talking about Angie?” Milo asked.
“Shh, not so loud. What if they have people outside listening to us or something?” I said.
Milo put his finger up to his lips to signal silence. He pointed to his closet and walked over to it. We both strained to get ourselves in the right spot. Our chests pushed up against each other, I took in shallow breaths. Our faces were too close to look directly at each other. Milo’s lips hung just over my ear. He whispered. “Sorry, I think it’s best if we talk in here for a second,”
“Okay. What are you thinking?” I tried to slow down my heartbeat but could feel that Milo’s pulse was racing rapidly too.
“I think we need to get out of here. I think I know how we can leave town and see what it’s like out there.”
“How are we going to do that? Somehow, they always know when someone is leaving town. They probably have some cops on the edge of town just waiting to take people in. It’s risky. Especially now that we know there are no limits to their punishments.”
“No, I don’t think it’s the cops. I thought about this. I think it has to do with our cars.” He said. “What do you mean? Like they have trackers on them or something?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Wouldn’t we notice them putting trackers on our cars? Or do you mean like when we’re in school or work or something?”
“For a while, that’s exactly what I thought, but then I considered the likelihood of them getting away with that. If they did it when they had the chance, like when a car is left alone in a parking lot or someone’s driveway, there is always a chance of someone else seeing them fiddle with it.”
“Maybe they just get rid of any person who caught them,” I said
“No, Angela. They’re not just killing people one by one. If they did that, there would be an even smaller population than there already is. I think.” Milo moved closer, there was no space between our bodies, his lips were on my earlobe. “Do you hear that?” he asked
“Um, what? No. I don’t hear anything” I said trying to remain calm. It was difficult caring about whether anything was happening outside of the closet considering what was going on inside of the closet.
“Okay. Maybe I’m just being paranoid” He backed up slightly, but the tight space required us to remain uncomfortably close.
“So, what I was saying was that I think it’s the mechanic.”
“Joe?” I asked thinking about the low-key Joe with his beer belly and a white t-shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
“Joe. He’s the only mechanic in town. He has probably had every car in this town in his shop at one time or another. I think that’s where they put the tracker on our cars.”
“I just can’t imagine Joe doing that,” I said.
“He’s not doing it. I mean, he may be physically doing it, but he’s just doing what he is told. Ask no questions, and they let him continue his business.”
“So, they just track a car, and if it makes it out of the city limits, they pull them over?” I ask.
“Or, they have one of those. Those things.”
“What things?”
“There are these things that they make. My dad told me about them” he said with his volume increasing with each sentence. I reminded him to be quiet. He was getting far too excited.
“There are these things that the government, spies or military or something, use. They put these devices on your car, and if you hit a certain speed or a border that you aren’t supposed to, your car just stops. I don’t know if the wheels give out, or the steering, or if the brakes stop themselves or what but they have it.”
“This sounds farfetched though. Why so much effort just to keep people in?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we need to get out. We need to get out because then we will know what these people are so afraid of. I don’t think it’s as bad as they say it is. It’s just scare-tactics. They are making the outside world sound terrible, so we will all be too scared to leave,”.
“You’re right Milo. I’m in. I want to go. When?”
“How about Sunday morning? It gives us almost a week to prepare what we’re going to do. We can sort out the details, but I think that we should do it somewhere super private. I don’t like the idea of someone listening in. Let’s handle what we need to handle and aim for Sunday. Sound good?”
I nodded. Sunday felt too far away but Milo was the go-to person for plans. He never jumped into anything without preparation while I tended to leap too quickly and then second-guess every decision I made.
Chapter 30
Meet me at Finnegan’s Park was scribbled almost illegible on an index card stuck between the two doors at the front of my house. It was a boy’s writing with its masculine jagged edges and the refusal to beg for acceptance. Still, it didn’t quite fit Milo’s style. I wasn’t sure if I should chuck the note in the trash, get inside and lock myself in ignoring it completely, or if I should take a chance and see who was beckoning. Though the sun had gone down, the illumination from the moon gave me the courage to meet whoever I was supposed to meet.
“Didn’t think you would show” Derek crept from the darkness
“You? Well, aren’t we theatrical? What’s going on Derek?”
“Oh, you know, just enjoying the summer, learning the tricks of my new trade. Being a man of the law sure does open your eyes to all the ways my friends break the law. It’s been a real educational experience,” he said with a sly half-smile as he leaped onto the creaky merry-go-round.
“What’s the deal? Do you think you caught me breaking the law or something? Because if you did, that is beyond laughable coming from you,”
“Hush, hush, sweet Angie. It doesn’t have to get as far as anything formal, but surely I know what you’ve been up to and I suggest that you stop,”
“Derek. I have never known a
nyone who has broken the law as often and with such brazenness as you have in the last year alone. You’re being ridiculous,”
“That’s old Derek. I’ve learned the error of my ways. Besides, we were still in high school then, children, really. Now we are moving on to the next chapter in our lives. It’s time to be responsible, don’t you agree? I just think that what you’ve been doing the last few weeks is not benefiting you right now.”
“You can take it down a few notches, Derek. Are they watching you right now or something? Is this some sort of initiation because if it is, I would like to inform our audience that Derek stole twenty beers from the police station last year during the policemen’s appreciation celebration, and not only drank a few but promptly delivered the rest to under-aged friends to drink in the desert,” I said practically shouting. Derek only chuckled.
“Angela, it doesn’t matter what I did. What matters is what I do from now on. I think it’s time that you let up with this little mystery you have concocted. There is no dark underbelly to Manere. It’s just a small town with rules that are here to protect our town and its people.”
“Okay. What about the dead girl? You don’t think that’s dark and seedy? The fact that everyone is doing their best to ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen, what about that?”
“Again, Angela. You are mistaken. There was nothing dark about the tragedy of the girl. She simply walked in the desert in the middle of the hottest time of year with no water and her body gave up,”
“Are you shitting me right now? She wasn’t that far into the desert? She couldn’t have become that dehydrated. She also had a bullet in the back of her head. I’m not a doctor or anything but I don’t think that a sign of dehydration and exhaustion is a gaping bullet wound in the skull.”
“This is all hearsay. There was no wound. This is what happens in a small town, people start talking. It’s only to create panic, but there is nothing to panic over,”
“I was there” I shouted.
“You think you were. You just want to make the story more interesting, as usual,”
All That Remains (Manere Book 1) Page 16