Thunderland

by Brandon Massey

  She was tired of waiting for next time.

  As a matter of fact, lately, she had been seriously wondering if she wanted to stay around waiting for next time. Their present relationship wasn’t what being married was all about-at least, not happily married. They didn’t kiss each other good morning. They didn’t periodically talk on the phone during the day as they worked their jobs. They didn’t sit together at dinner and share their daily experiences. They didn’t snuggle on the couch in front of the TV. Unless you considered once a month a thrilling sex life, they didn’t have much sex, either. About the only thing they did together was argue, and since whatever she told him always went in one ear and out the other, it was almost as if she were arguing with herself anyway.

  She admitted that she had not made any major efforts to repair their marriage. Why bother when he lived for his job? He worked from six in the morning until eleven at night, seven days a week, holidays included. How could you get through to someone that fanatically committed to his work?

  Answer: You couldn’t. It frustrated her endlessly, because she loved Thomas and wanted them to be happy. She had thought the Luther Vandross concert would give them an opportunity to enjoy each other’s company for a little while, but look where that idea had gotten her. Nowhere, where she’d been sitting for ten years.

  But a woman could only take so much, and she had taken all she could bear. She was determined not to let him settle this matter with his patented excuses. She was either going to find those tickets herself or discover what the real problem was here. Even if the truth was worse than she imagined.

  “I’m so sorry.” With a napkin, Thomas mopped up the spilled coffee. “I can’t figure out what I did with those damned tickets. I’d really wanted to go to that concert, too. I promise, next time—”

  “Where did you keep them?” she said.

  “The tickets?” He finished cleaning the table. “I kept them in different places—”

  “Did you ever keep them in your office here?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  She got up and marched to the back of the dining room.

  Before she opened the office door, he touched her shoulder.

  “I’ve already looked in there. No luck.”

  “I’ll look myself.” She shrugged off his hand.

  The room was a model of neatness. A highly polished oak desk devoid of clutter. Built-in bookshelves in which the contents stood ruler-straight. A tall file cabinet. Gleaming beige tile. The scent of pine disinfectant.

  She tore open a desk drawer and shuffled through papers.

  “Why did I trust you with those things?” she said. “You always pull shit like this. I should have known better than to leave them with you. I should have kept them myself.”

  “Woman, you’re making a mess.” He shut the door, nudged her aside, and began reorganizing the desk. “I told you they’re not in here, and I’m not gonna let you wreck my place.”

  She spun, yanked open a file cabinet drawer. She burrowed through the contents. Papers spilled out.

  He cursed, gripped her arm.

  “Get control of yourself. The tickets aren’t in here.”

  “Looking again won’t hurt.”

  “Yes, it will hurt, because you’re not really looking. You’re just ripping through shit, scattering important information left and right. I can’t let you do that. This is a business I’m running here.”

  She snatched her arm from his grasp.

  He grabbed her again.

  “Let go of me.”

  “Get yourself together.”

  “I am together. Let go of me.”

  “Not until—”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you? You let go of me now, or so help me Jesus I’ll make a fool of both of us in front of all those people out there.”

  She pulled her arm.

  He held tight.

  “Linda, please. Cool off. It’s only a concert, not anything worth having a big fight over. We’ll do something better next time. Getting mad about this is stupid.”

  And that was the main problem here, and, by extension, with their marriage: his feelings had died. Concerts aren’t big deals, so don’t be stupid and get mad if we can’t go. I forgot your birthday? Well, sorry, it’s just another workday as far as I’m concerned, but if it makes you stop complaining, I’ll give you a card, how’s that? What, you want to have sex tonight? Woman, who do you think I am, the Six-Million-Dollar Man? I told you I’m tired, I’m going to bed.

  The examples went on forever. Try to get him to see the error of his ways, and he’d look at her as if she had spoken her suggestion in Swahili. He was nothing like the Thomas she had married. That man had made it possible to believe in every sweet love song that had ever rolled from a smooth balladeer’s lips. She had hung on this long because she had hoped that the old Thomas would one day reappear. But maybe she was fooling herself. This man looming over her was a far cry from the man she had fallen in love with. This man was a stranger.

  A heartless stranger.

  As she gazed into his suddenly unfamiliar eyes, her heart pounded.

  “Did you hear me?” he said. “Get yourself together.”

  He shook her a little.

  “Did you hear me?”

  He shook her harder.

  “Get yourself together.”

  Her eyes narrowed. The old Thomas would have never done this. And no man was going to beat her.

  He reached for her other arm, probably so he could shake her more forcefully.

  She bared her teeth and cracked her hand against his face.

  He reeled backward, letting go of her arm. He touched his smacked cheek. His lips worked, but no sound came out.

  A knot of pressure swelled within her chest. It was the first time she had hit him. He had never struck her.

  Her guilty hand throbbed.

  Thomas appeared dazed. He took a tentative step forward.

  She backpedaled a few feet, then turned and fled. He called after her, but she neither stopped nor glanced back. She ran into the parking lot, got in her car, slammed the door, gunned the engine, and peeled away in a shriek of tires and a plume of dust.

  After she had driven a short while, her shaking hands refused to grip the steering wheel, and the knot in her chest made it painful to breathe. She parked on the shoulder of the road, under the boughs of an elm.

  Music blasted from the stereo. She hadn’t realized it was turned on. It was a Luther Vandross song: “A House Is Not a Home.”

  She exploded into laughter. The knot in her chest loosened, and as it did, her laughter grew more hysterical, until she was no longer laughing, but crying.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Around eleven o’clock in the morning, with the hope that getting away from the house would give him the objectivity he needed to understand the strange message in the bathroom, Jason rode his bike downtown.

  A northern Chicagoland suburb with a population of only twenty thousand people, Spring Harbor didn’t have much of a business district; a single street, Northern Road, was the city’s main drag. Stores, taverns, gas stations, restaurants, supermarkets, churches, and small office buildings lined the thoroughfare. In celebration of Independence Day, which arrived that weekend, strings of red, white, and blue plastic pennants had been hung above the roadway. They snapped in the breeze, an accompaniment to the drone of late-morning traffic.

  Jason parked his bike in a metal bicycle stall on the sidewalk. He pushed open the glass door of MacGregor’s Bike Shop.

  “Well, here comes trouble,” Mr. MacGregor said. Wearing baggy Levi’s spotted with oil, a Chicago Cubs T-shirt soiled with more oil, and beat-up sneakers, Mr. MacGregor looked like the workaholic he was, as if he was too busy repairing bikes to bother staying clean. He turned away from the tire he had been working on and walked toward Jason, wiping his hands on a cloth.

  “What’s up?” Jason said. “How’s business?”

  “Business is fantastic!” Mr
. MacGregor said. He tapped a stack of racing magazines on the glass counter. “I’ve sold two of these, a pair of shoelaces, and a can of spray paint, giving me a total take of maybe ten dollars-before taxes. At this rate, I might manage to stay in business until the end of the month.”

  “It’ll pick up soon,” Jason said. “Hey, is my baby still here?”

  “Unfortunately, it is,” Mr. MacGregor said. “I’m serious, kid. You’ve looked at that thing so much I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve placed a curse on it. Everyone loves it, but no one buys it.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m gonna buy it.”

  “I’m praying that you do. I’m sick of seeing you here every day.”

  Jason smiled. “Thanks a lot. But I’m serious-I’m gonna get it.”

  “For your sake, I really hope you’re right,” Mr. MacGregor said. “You are seriously obsessed, my friend. I think you’d suffer a nervous breakdown if you never got the damned thing.”

  “Come on, I’m not that nuts about it,” Jason said. He chewed his lip. “Well, maybe I am.”

  “I love an honest man.” Mr. MacGregor laughed. He went back to work behind the counter.

  Jason walked around the rows of ten-and twelve-speeds, mountain bikes, and fitness equipment, heading toward the far left corner of the room. Once there, he stopped.

  “Man, I’ve got to get this.”

  He touched the handlebars. His heart skipped a beat.

  The Randolph Street M9000 was the bike of his dreams. It had everything he could ever want in a serious street bike: a lightweight chrome-moly steel frame, Syntance handlebars, aircushioned full suspension, dual-disc brakes, a Selle San Marco saddle, and gleaming thirty-six-hole aluminum rims. Striking red highlights on the seat clamp, rims, suspension linkage, stem, and bar ends completed the awesome package.

  Unfortunately, the price was as amazing as the bicycle. Fifteen hundred dollars! What an incredible amount of money. Although his fourteenth birthday was less than three weeks away, he had not asked his parents to buy the Randolph. They would never spend that much for a bike. His granddad was wealthy, but Jason didn’t have the nerve to ask him for it, either. He could get a job and try to save enough to buy the bike himself, but any work he could get at his age paid so terribly that by the time he’d earned enough money to purchase the Randolph, he’d be licensed to drive.

  Sighing, he glided his hand over the smooth black seat.

  It seemed hopeless. Nevertheless, he kept believing he would get the M9000. Somehow. Someday.

  He climbed onto the bike, which Mr. MacGregor allowed. He grasped the handgrips, planted his shoes on the pedals.

  He imagined himself riding. Slashing through wind. Swooping across streets. Fast. Powerful. Free.

  He suddenly heard himself panting.

  Wiping sweat off his face, he got off the bike, embarrassed. Sometimes the intensity of his imagination surprised even him.

  Mr. MacGregor watched him. “Jeez, kid. You really want that bike.”

  Jason nodded.

  “Get your folks to drop in,” Mr. MacGregor said. “I have a great monthly payment plan, one anybody could handle. Telling them can’t hurt. Sometimes dreams do come true.”

  “I hope so.”

  Outside the store, Jason checked his wristwatch. It was almost eleven-thirty. He and his friends planned to visit Water World, the new water park, at noon, but before he went anywhere he had to satisfy his sweet tooth. A McDonald’s was about a block away, and the thought of sipping a strawberry milkshake made his tongue tingle. He rode over there.

  The restaurant was busy. He waited behind a cute mocha-skinned girl wearing a white blouse and denim shorts. He admired her discreetly, wondering what his girlfriend would do if she could see him at that moment. Probably smack him into next week, he thought, smiling.

  Once it was his turn to order, he heard a vaguely familiar voice that drew his attention toward the doorway. When he looked, his gut doubled up.

  Blake Grant had entered, along with his two pals. The lobby was crowded, and they were talking to one another, so they didn’t see Jason. Yet.

  In spite of that day’s strange events, he had been optimistic. Now he felt as though he had fallen into another nightmare. But unlike his recurring dream, the villain here was real and could not be vanquished by the arrival of dawn.

  Jason had not heard the cashier. “Excuse me?”

  “Your order,” the cashier said. “Please.”

  At first, he didn’t remember why he had come there. Then it hit him. A strawberry milkshake. He no longer had the craving for it, but he bought one anyway. A couple of people had noticed his delay in ordering, and he didn’t want to attract further attention.

  He paid for the dessert and went to the condiment table. He withdrew a straw from the dispenser. On the right, at the edge of his vision, he saw Blake Grant.

  Blake Grant was only sixteen, but he looked as dangerous as a jail-toughened thug. He stood about five-feet-ten, and he bulged with such well-developed muscles that he either must pump iron like a maniac or had access to an unlimited supply of steroids. His streamlined face reminded Jason of an eagle, his aquiline features accentuated by his hair being pulled into a tightly knotted ponytail. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed combat boots. A patch covered his right eye. Rumor said he had lost that eye in a playful switchblade duel with his older brother.

  Blake and his sidekicks-a baby-faced kid named Bryan Green and an overweight one named Travis Young-waited in the line beside the south-side door. There was another exit on the north side, and the bike stalls were east, at the front of the building. If Jason was careful, he could leave undetected.

  But part of him wanted to confront Blake. It was time to end this stupid feud, and because Blake didn’t believe in talking things out, a fight was the only way to finish it. Jason had never fought anyone, but he wasn’t afraid of Blake. It didn’t matter to him who won, really, as long as a fight settled matters between them.

  But Blake’s buddies were there, and they were almost as tough as he was. Better to leave. He might be able to handle Blake, but only a fool would try to beat three guys.

  Because the lunch hour was approaching, the lobby grew more congested by the minute. He welcomed the crowd. He needed the cover.

  Warily, he slunk through the throng of people. He would have reached the door without being noticed, except for a hyperactive kid.

  When he was halfway to the exit, a child darted around the table nearest the main walkway, screaming about a Happy Meal. Jason sidestepped, but he moved too slowly. The boy crashed into him head-on.

  The milkshake tumbled out of Jason’s hands and splattered onto the floor.

  People turned to look. The noise level fell.

  Jason’s heart knocked. Now, Blake must see him.

  The kid who had smashed into him had dropped onto his butt. Without looking at Jason, he bounded to his feet and took off, still yelling. A blushing young woman dashed around the corner, murmured an apology to Jason, then chased after the boy.

  “Brooks!”

  Jason froze. That unmistakable voice made spicules of ice spin through his blood.

  “Brooks!”

  Slowly, Jason turned.

  From far across the lobby, Blake stared at him. A humorless grin sliced across his face.

  A month ago, during the final exam for their science class, Jason and Blake had been assigned to sit at the same table. Not surprisingly, shortly after the test began, Blake attempted to bully him into letting him copy. Most kids shriveled under Blake, but Jason refused to give in. His grandfather had indoctrinated him in the importance of standing up for himself. Blake was infuriated. Before he handed the teacher the blank test that would result in his being retained in eighth grade for the second time, he promised that when he next met Jason he was going to beat him so brutally that afterward “Not even God’ll recognize you.” In Blake’s warped mind, it was Jason’s fault that he had flunked.
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  “I’m gonna get you, Brooks!”

  Jason rushed out of the door.

  Blake and his gang hustled out of the door they’d been near, too.

  Outside, the temperature felt as if it had escalated ten degrees since Jason had entered the restaurant. The furnace-like heat snatched the air out of his lungs and made him lightheaded. As he ran alongside the building, he dragged one hand across the brick wall to keep from falling in a faint.

  He had not locked up his bike. Doubting anyone would ever steal such an ugly ride, he never chained it up. He pulled it out of the stall, hopped on it.

  Evidently, Blake and his friends had parked their bicycles beside the entrance. They were on them already, motoring around the front of the building, toward Jason.

  “Gonna kill you, boy!”

  There were several places to which he could flee. He made a decision in an instant.

  A used-car lot lay adjacent to the McDonald’s. It was one of the biggest in the county, the size of three football fields, every inch consumed by vehicles. A virtual labyrinth that provided countless avenues of evasion.

  He weaved around bumpers, aiming to put as much distance as possible between himself and his pursuers. Searing sunshine ricocheted off hundreds of windshields, and the blacktop seemed on the verge of melting under the heat. Rippling mirages glistened on the pavement like pools of molten silver.

  Riding hard and fast, Jason felt as though he had stumbled into an action movie. He had only wanted a milkshake, and now he seemed to be fleeing for his life. Adrenaline pumped like hot oil through his veins, his heart pummeled his rib cage, and sweat drenched his shirt. His bike clanked, whined, and clattered, and he prayed under his breath for the bike to stay in one piece.

  Finally, seeing no one on his tail, he stopped between two rows of cars. He looked around.