A lone figure stood under the trees watching the two boys as they left the basketball court. A hand raised a cigarette to lips buried in a tawny, well-trimmed beard. A tiny red ember glowed as the man took a long pull. After a pause, a plume of gauzy white smoke streamed out, piling into a confused cloud that rose in a lazy swirl that partially obscured the pensive face behind it.
The man followed the boys with his eyes as they walked away. The tall lanky one had a ball under his arm, and the shaggy, scrappy one pushed a bike. Nice bike, the man thought. He took another pull on his cigarette and gazed at the deserted court. It was lumpy with age and had cracks and low patches where accumulated dirt created treacherous footing. Stubborn bits of grass poked out here and there, but the kids had made the most of it. They had danced lightly over the slippery dirt patches and instinctively adjusted for the odd angle of the ball whenever it bounced off a jagged crack. They actually weren’t half bad—might even hold their own in the upper east side, he thought. He was glad they’d left, though. It was getting towards business time and the fewer non-customers around, the better, and these boys weren’t customers. At least not yet. You never knew in these little rural towns.
He took a last pull from the cigarette before dropping it to the ground and grinding it into the dirt. He exhaled a last swirl of smoke and watched as it danced with the breeze before finally dissipating into the cobalt blue sky. He was getting to like it here. Business was good, law enforcement was lax, and there was no competition. And now he had a new kid to help him—meaning a lot more money for him for not a lot of work—as long as this kid panned out. They didn’t always, but it seemed like this one would. Had the right hard-luck background and fly-under-the-radar attitude, plus a strong motivation to make a quick buck and stay out of jail. All good qualities. But most importantly, this kid would keep his mouth shut. He had made him keenly aware of what would happen if he didn’t.
But right now, it was a beautiful sunny late afternoon, the park was quiet, and the sight of his first customer walking into view made it perfect. It was a reliable customer that didn’t freak out and make a scene. Just a quick swap and everyone was happy.
Yeah, he liked this town. Maybe he would stay longer than he had originally planned.
4
Blue
Blue sat on her bed and gazed out the open gable window. Puffs of early summer air carried in the rich aroma of rapidly unfolding foliage as it made its urgent push to take advantage of the short summer season. She could see high out over the last few streets on the edge of town and across the river where soft green hills were decorated with the little red square of a barn here, the bright shingles of a house there, all nestled in a patchwork of freshly mowed fields chiseled into the shaggy carpet of maples and pines. She put her elbows on the window sill, rested her chin in her hands, and took in the panorama for a long time. It was spectacular, really. She had never had a view like this, or a room like this, or even a room all to herself for that matter.
As she let her eyes wander across the landscape, she made a mental list of all the other benefits of her room. Strategically speaking, the location couldn’t have been better. It was at the top of the house on the third floor. Outside her door was a tiny landing at the top of a narrow stair. Across from her room was the door to the storage attic, the only other room on the third floor. The stairs to her landing were completely creak-free except for one step at the bottom, and as long as she stepped on the part right next to the wall, she could slip down the stairs in complete silence. There was a half-bath under her stairway and she could actually hop over the tiny banister and get to the bathroom without setting foot in the hallway. The second-floor hallway led to two stairways, the main stair that went from a balcony down to the living room and a steep back stairway that led down to the rec room off the kitchen. There was a patio door off the rec room that led out to the back porch and back yard.
The boys, because right now all the other O’Day foster kids were boys, all used the big bathroom at the end of the second-floor hall. There were three bedrooms on the second floor. There was the main bedroom for Ma Beth and Pa Bill at the other end of the hallway. They had their own master bathroom. The three boys split the remaining two bedrooms. Wu and Sam shared the big room, and Nate, the oldest, had his own room at the end of the hall across from the big bathroom.
Not a bad setup. Except for the open landing onto the living room, she could pretty much slip anywhere in the house with a minimum of contact—like a little fox, moving undetected through the woods.
Little Fox. She smiled at that. It was Julian Hilbert, the ass from foster family number two who came up with that name. Julian Jackass Hilbert. Jerk. He was an expert at hitting you just hard enough that it hurt like hell but didn’t leave a bruise. He never missed a chance to practice on her when no one else was looking—that is until she’d decided she’d had enough. That was the time he cornered her as she was leaving for school, grabbed her arm, and tried to jab her shoulder but wound up punching the wall instead, because with a quick twist she had managed to get out of his grasp and duck under his arm. He yelped with pain and then threw out his leg to try and trip her, but she stepped nimbly over it, shoved him into the wall, and dashed out the door. It all happened in an instant, and Julian was left cursing and shouting after her, “I’ll get you back, you little fox!” Get her back for what? For him being an idiot? What an ass. He never did get her back, she made sure of it. But she did like the name.
A loud squawk and flapping shadow startled her back to reality as a huge black bird flew out of a nearby tree. She watched as he pumped his powerful wings and sailed off on some suddenly urgent bird errand. Her eyes followed his flight, and she tried to picture what he was seeing. She imagined looking down and watching as the ant-like humans scurried around in their little cars and ran in and out of little boxes in their busy little pointless errands. It must have been puzzling to a bird, but she imagined he didn’t care. He was flying above it all, nothing but a casual observer. She envied him. If she could fly, she could float high over all those ants and never have to interact with them or listen to their constant chiss—the constant whisper of their private thoughts, leaking out of their eyes and into her brain. But here she was, stuck on the ground, forced to figure out how to fit into this ant farm and live a normal ant life.
She sighed. What was a normal life, anyway? Normal for her was avoiding all but the most necessary contact—just enough that she came off as a quirky introvert but not so much that they would call in the shrinks. But what else could she do? She never knew when some ridiculous unfiltered chiss would catch her off-guard, like a rabbit-punch, and set her off. She would overreact, they would yell at her, she would go even more ballistic, then out would come the benzo, and . . . . . . yeah.
Being alone was so much easier for everyone.
At least the O’Days seemed to be rolling with it. All the other foster families, wanted to try and “connect” with her and “draw her out.” All she wanted was for them to fucking leave her alone! For the past two days, that was what she had been waiting for, the attempts to draw her out. But they just left her alone—not ignoring her, but certainly giving her a lot of space. It was a relief, really. She wasn’t sure how long it would last, but so far, it had been way better than she expected. Amazingly, even what happened last night didn’t appear to derail anything. At least, not yet.
It wasn’t chiss that set her off last night. It was a klax. The night had started out fine—meal time came around, and one of the boys called up to tell her dinner was ready. She replied that she wasn’t very hungry and could she please skip the meal. So far, the answer was always yes. She would just slip downstairs later and grab some leftovers, taking them up to her room to eat by herself. After the third ‘skipped’ meal, it was clear they picked up on what she was doing, but they just acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Pretty soon, leftovers were showing up in the kitchen in fairly convenient locations for post-meal
vulturing. Blue was a little wary of it, wondering if there wasn’t some sort of catch, but so far so good, and she sure wasn’t going to squander the opportunity while the going was good.
Last night she did the usual skip request and then she slipped downstairs later and discovered a half casserole of lasagna on the stove, still warm. God, she loved lasagna. She scooped up a big slice and put it on the plate she’d brought with her. She was just about to slip through the rec room and up the back stairs when she heard loud footsteps clattering down. She stood behind the wall separating the rec room and the kitchen and waited. It was Wu. He came clumping into the kitchen and headed straight to the lasagna, clearly hunting for leftovers just like Blue. She stayed hidden, waiting for a chance to skip across the rec room and get upstairs unseen. She didn’t get the chance because he brought his plate of food straight into the rec room, flopped onto the couch, and grabbed the TV remote.
He must have been oblivious to her standing there as he passed. He was faced away from her now, towards the table and TV, and the back stairs. She started to inch her way to an alternate escape when a piercing screech started pounding her brain like a fire alarm: “EEEE . . . EEEEE . . . EEEE!” She nearly jumped out of her skin and before she could completely recover, it came again, “EEEE . . . EEEEE . . . EEEE!”
She looked at Wu’s hand. Every time he hit a button on the remote, the screeching came again. She should have just gotten out of there, but there was something so irritating about that remote that she couldn’t let it go. It was a klax. Stuff that no one else could hear but created an obnoxious explosion of sound inside her head. She’d never encountered a klax that was so frigging loud! And obnoxious! The next thing she knew she was standing in front of Wu with the remote in her hand. Her head was still ringing as she stood there for a moment in the welcome release from the excruciating sound. She looked up at Wu for a second and then without even thinking ran to the door and chucked the remote out of the house. It smashed into a wall and transformed instantly into a most satisfying and clearly irreversible pile of shattered plastic. Blue stood in the door and looked at the wreckage. She experienced a brief euphoria until it dawned on her what she had done.
Damn. There it was, one of those overreactions. Her reflex action to stuff only she could hear in this private little hell she lived in. She took another look at Wu, who was standing there looking completely puzzled, and then she turned, grabbed her lasagna, and dashed back up to her room. Her sanctuary.
Blue had stayed there and waited. Soon she got the expected knock at her door, but instead of an angry demand for her to come out and explain what she had just done, a soft voice merely said, “Blue, are you okay? Do you need anything?” She hesitated a moment. This was so unexpected, she wasn’t quite sure how to react. She decided to pretend it was the door talking and not Ma Beth. That made it easier. Addressing the door she said simply, “I’m fine.”
The reply from the door was, “It’s good to hear that. We’re here if you need anything. If you don’t want to talk, you can just leave a note downstairs on the counter.” And like magic, a pad of paper and a pencil appeared under the door. Blue already had plenty of writing supplies, but she thought the pad and pencil were a very professional touch on the part of the door. She decided that this was a door she could reason with. The door said one last thing, “Blue, it’s nice to hear your voice.” Very unexpected. Nice, but unexpected.
A distant squawk from the black bird brought her out of her reverie. The sun was getting lower in the sky. She realized she had lost all track of time just sitting there, looking out the window, engrossed in her thoughts. A movement down below caught her attention. It was Wu walking up the street.
She had gotten a good look at Wu when they had their encounter last evening. She had felt his shock and surprise, but he didn’t seem angry, just puzzled. You could read a lot about people when they are shocked. It’s like their mask comes off for just a moment. Wu, unmasked, was not scary, he seemed like . . . well . . . like he was going to be a real good father when he was older. Blue kind of shocked herself with this judgment. It didn’t seem like her to think something like that, but the idea did seem to suit Wu perfectly.
She saw that Wu was walking with another kid, a boy. Compared to Wu’s tall, lanky frame, this kid looked solid, like he wouldn’t blow away in a strong wind. It was something more than solid, too. Something more . . . athletic. His head was covered in thick, wavy hair and he was wearing a tie-dye shirt. The corner of her mouth twitched up a little. Not what you’d call trendy style with in-crowd these days.
Watching them walking along like that, free to roam on their own, go where they wanted—it suddenly put a damper on her mood, an unwanted reminder that she’d been confined to the house and the yard for her first week—payback for her history of unauthorized meanderings at previous homes, she was sure.
Wu and his friend stopped at the gate and were talking. Wu seemed a little miffed—about what? She was too far away to catch his chiss. Wu came into the house, and the boy turned and started to leave. She glanced away. She didn’t want him to look up and see her staring at him, but she didn’t leave the window.
What happened next knocked Blue completely out of orbit.
It started with a noise inside her head. It was a “click, click, click” sound. It seemed to come from several places at once, a lot like how she heard chiss or klax, but she had never heard anything quite like this before. She looked around to see if she could focus on where it was coming from. Her eyes finally settled on Wu’s friend. He was looking straight at her. The clicking stopped. And then, a voice that wasn’t hers sounded a single word in her head . . . “Hey.”
Blue gasped. She gaped at the boy for a moment and then jerked back from the window and slapped the curtains closed. This was not just someone’s aimless chiss drifting like background noise into her brain! This was someone who just said “Hey” to her. On purpose. Deliberately. Right in her head! This was a vox! She didn’t think she would hear anything like that again in her life! Could it be that there was still someone else like her out there? She peeked out of the curtains and looked for the boy. He was gone.
Had that really happened? Was she just dreaming? Dammit, this had better not be a hallucination. She had just started to get her life under control. She had stopped looking for people like her. It was when she stopped pleading to people with her vox, and looking for responses that were never coming, that people had stopped treating her like she was crazy. She didn’t want that to start again. If she freaked anyone out it would be back to therapy, back to psychiatrists. She was done with that. But what if it was real? It was the most real thing that had happened to her in four and a half years!
Crap, she wasn’t sure what to do. She had an unbearable urge to dash down the stairs and chase after this kid and stare him in the eyes and find out for real. But if she was wrong and she freaked him out, that, on top of staying holed up in her room, not eating with the family, destroying stuff, could turn this promising start at the O’Days into something all too familiar. Another round through the foster grinder.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit. She instinctively grabbed a pencil and pad of paper and did what she often did at times like this. She started drawing. Drawing was about the only positive thing that came from all her otherwise useless therapy sessions. The sound of a pencil lead scritching across the smooth texture of paper quieted the clamor of confusion bouncing around her brain. She made her eyes focus on the line trailing out from the pencil tip as her hand made delicate adjustments of pressure to guide the line in just the right arc until it was time to lift the point and start the next arc. Again and again went the scritch, scritch, scritch of the pencil until forms started revealing themselves. They were animals, like Fiver from Watership Down and Martin, from Redwall—creatures that lived in a different world, one that was not confusing, one that she could control.
She drew and drew and drew until she started having a hard time follow
ing the pencil. She looked up. The sun was down. Next to her in the darkness were a dozen scattered pages filled with drawings and a small pile of dull pencils. She put down her pad, closed her eyes, and just sat, relaxed, in the darkness. Her brain had found the quiet time it needed to chill out and reset, and now it was time to fire it back up. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Before the last bit of breath was out, she knew what she needed to do. She had to find out who this boy was. Clearly, he was Wu’s friend. She felt she could trust Wu.
She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a note, folded it, listened carefully at her door, slipped downstairs and taped the note to Wu’s door.
5
Contact
Will couldn’t sleep. Did she really hear his vox or was it coincidence? Vox or coincidence? Vox or coincidence? God, he couldn’t stop his head from see-sawing back and forth. He drifted off into a weird half-asleep dream. In the dream, he discovered that she was some long-lost sister and that she had inherited millions of dollars and she was going to share it with her rediscovered brother and sister. That somehow morphed into an angry pack of O’Days all wearing animal skins and chasing him through a field of boulders calling him a perv and throwing stones at him. His legs flailed away trying to run but his feet couldn’t seem to get any traction. And he was naked.
He woke up in a sweat, completely entangled in a pile of twisted bedding. He looked at the clock. It was only one o’clock. Jesus! Was this night ever going to get through? He just wanted it to be over so he could get up and go talk to Wu and figure out some way of meeting this girl face-to-face. That made it even harder to get to sleep. By about 2 a.m. he was despairing that this night would ever end, and then the next thing he knew someone was banging on his bedroom door. Will looked at the clock. 9 a.m.! The banging on the door started again. “Who is it?” he said.
Not Alone Page 3