Paranoid Park

by Blake Nelson

  It felt good to be home, in my own room, in my own clothes. It was a relief. Sort of.

  “Honey!” called my mom. Her footsteps came down the hall toward my room. The door opened. “Honey?” she said, staring at me, studying my face.

  “What?” I said, sitting quickly on my bed.

  “Uncle Tommy called earlier. He said he got a call on his caller ID.”

  “He did?” I said.

  “It said it was from the Fitches’. He asked me if I knew anyone of that name, and I told him that’s where you were staying.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Did you call Uncle Tommy’s?”

  “Oh ... uh ...” I thought for a moment. “Yeah, maybe I did, by accident.”

  “He said the call was at four thirty in the morning.”

  “Huh,” I said. “That’s weird.”

  “Were you still awake then?”

  “No,” I said, trying to think. “But you know what? That’s when Jared first woke up. Because he was sick. And so ... I guess I was thinking about calling Ryan and seeing if he wanted to go ... but then... I must have been half asleep or something....” I tried to smile. “Maybe I was sleepwalking.”

  “What did you guys do last night?”

  “Nothing. Just getting ready for the Expo. I wanted to see the new snowboards.”

  The phone rang down the hall. “Henry, would you get that, please?” my mom yelled to my little brother.

  I sat watching my mother.

  “Were you trying to call Dad?” she asked me seriously. “Be honest.”

  “No, I just... I must have dialed it by accident....”

  “Is there something you want to talk to him about? Something about the separation?”

  “No,” I said, “I just... it was an accident... calling Uncle Tommy, I mean.”

  “Because you can talk to him, you know. At any time. We all need to keep the lines of communication open.”

  “I know.”

  “I should call over there myself,” said my mom, her face growing concerned. “I need to talk to Aunt Renee....”

  “Mom! It’s for you!” yelled Henry from down the hall. My mother left the room.

  I remained where I was, sitting on my bed, shaking.

  I tried to lie down. But I couldn’t keep still. Henry had the TV blaring downstairs. I couldn’t stand the sound of it, coming up through the floor. I started to freak out. I couldn’t stay in my room.

  I decided to go to the mall. I told my mom I wanted to go look at some snowboards, since I hadn’t been able to at the Winter Expo.

  That was okay with her, but she needed the car, so I had to walk. Which was fine.

  “Where’s your skateboard?” she asked as I headed out the door.

  “I left it at Jared’s,” I said, going out of the house.

  But that wasn’t a very good excuse, I realized, as I walked down the driveway. People knew I always had my skateboard.

  I walked toward Woodridge Mall. It was a long walk-too far, really; I should have gone the other way and taken the bus.

  But I walked. The gray clouds hovered low in the sky. Raindrops began to fall. I wished I had a radio; I wanted to hear the news.

  At the mall, I went straight to the magazine store. That day’s papers were there. I bought The Oregonian for fifty cents and took it to Burger King. I sat and flipped through the pages. There was nothing in the main section about the security guard, nothing in the metro section.

  Maybe they would think it was an accident. Maybe they’d think the guard was goofing around on the job. Or he was drunk. Or he just got too close to the train. People had accidents on the job. It was possible.

  I suddenly thought about Scratch. I hadn’t thought about him all night. Scratch. What kind of person has a name like Scratch?

  At least he was smart. He was probably halfway to Phoenix by now. He was probably a thousand miles away. Guys like him knew what to do. You don’t turn yourself in. You vanish. He’d beat up some cop in San Diego, and what had he done? Panicked? Called the police? Went crying to his mother? No, he skipped town, he laid low. That’s what they did in the Godfather movie. When the Al Pacino character killed that guy, they just sent him to Italy to chill. You don’t panic. You just hunker down and keep your cool and don’t do anything stupid.

  “Hey,” said someone. I looked up. It was Macy McLaughlin, a girl who lived on my street.

  “Oh, hey,” I said back. Macy was a sophomore, a year younger than me. She was with one of her sophomore friends.

  “What are you doing here so early?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “The newspaper.”

  She looked at me funny. She thought it was weird for me to be at the mall reading the newspaper in Burger King at ten in the morning. Which it was.

  “I’m checking the sports scores,” I said. “Then I have to get some stuff for my mom.”

  Macy studied me with her large brown eyes. She’d had a crush on me in sixth grade. She used to follow me around, leave notes in my locker. I didn’t see her as much these days. She had become one of the cool sophomores. The girl with her was Rachel Simmons, another one of the cool sophomores.

  “Okay,” said Macy. “We gotta go.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  The two of them left. As they walked away, Macy looked back at me. It wasn’t a giggly, crushy look; it was more checking on me. It weirded me out. I didn’t want anyone looking at me like that. Not then.

  Walking home from the mall, I thought about my parents. I couldn’t tell the police, because my parents couldn’t take it. They were already barely hanging on. Something like this, it would blow their world apart.

  Especially my mom. She wasn’t so stable. And my dad would go ballistic. They would blame each other. They would freak out and stop talking and then the divorce would start that much faster. The lawyers would use it against the other lawyers. My mother would have to think up an excuse for why I was running around loose on a Saturday night. It would kill her if she lost custody of us. She always said that she would never give up custody of Henry and me. Ever. She would do anything. She didn’t care.

  And my dad. It would look so bad. He leaves his wife, leaves his kids, and then this happens. The people at his work would think he was a terrible person. He might even get fired. It would make us all look horrible. It would be a total disaster, in every way.

  For that reason, I decided I would do nothing. That was my new plan. I wouldn’t even debate it. I would just do nothing for a day or two. Let the dust settle. Wait until my head cleared.

  This new plan felt right. It calmed me down. That was a good sign all by itself. I said it over to myself: Just chill for a day or two. Just let the dust settle.

  But the calm went away when I walked into our kitchen. On the refrigerator was a message: “Call Jared.”

  I went to my room. I didn’t call Jared. I went online and tried a local TV news site. There were no reports about a dead security guard. I tried the Web site for the local paper. Nothing. I Googled various combinations of “murder,” “body,” “death,” and “security guard” with “Portland, Oregon.” Nothing came up. I deleted my search history and logged off.

  Then I called Jared.

  “Bro, what’s up,” he said. “Where you been?”

  “Nowhere,” I said. “At the mall.”

  “So, bro, guess what happened to me last night?”

  “What?” I said.

  “I totally got laid!”

  “All right,” I said, sitting on my bed. “Just like you planned it.”

  “But not just like I planned it,” gushed Jared. “Because I almost got laid by her roommate, too!”

  “You did?”

  “Dude, there’s so many hot college girls down there! You don’t even know! And people were hooking up. I made out with three different girls. And nobody even cared. Nobody even noticed! I’m telling you man, college is the
best! ”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “So check it out. So we’re partying and everything, and we go back to Kelly’s dorm and there’s, like, a bunch of us ... and her roommate starts dancing around, and doing this little striptease. And then she flashes us while the other girls weren’t looking. I swear, it’s like Girls Gone Wild down there. That’s all they do is party and get naked! ”

  “Wow,” I said again.

  “Kelly, from the coffee shop, she was, like... I don’t know... messed up or something. She’s kind of a head case. But whatever. That’s the thing: I coulda had my pick. Like this one blonde chick, she was totally checking me out, like from the minute I got there....”

  I tried to listen to his story. I tried to enjoy it. I needed to think about something else. I needed to get out of my own head.

  “... but I’m telling you,” Jared was saying, “I am so going to college. You should have seen the frat we were at. Dudes had a flat-screen TV that, like, covered an entire wall. And kegs everywhere. And this pole you could slide down in the backyard-it was like a friggin’ fire station!”

  He kept talking. It sounded fun, but it sounded so far away. It sounded like a place I’d never get to.

  “So what did you end up doing?” he finally asked. “Did you go to Paranoid?”

  “No, I... I just ended up ... hanging out.”

  “Did you call Jennifer?”

  “Nah, I just hung out.”

  “Dude, seriously, if you had been down there with me, you coulda had any of those girls. Because they‘re, like, freshmen and nobody pays attention to ’em. I mean, the really hot ones get hit on. But the other ones. There are, like, so many doable chicks down there, just looking for someone to party with.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds pretty easy.”

  “Bro, it’s totally easy,” said Jared. “So wait, did you sleep here last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh. Cause there’s this big black footprint on my mom’s carpet. Right by the front door.”

  “Oh,” I said. I stood up. “That must have been me. I think I stepped in something.”

  “My mom’s not going to be psyched.”

  “Can you clean it up?”

  “Dude, what am I? Your maid? You clean it up!”

  “No. I will. I totally will. I mean...”

  “Nah, I’m kidding. The cleaning lady will deal with it. But hey, do you have my Rampage sweatshirt? I can’t find it.”

  “Yeah, I borrowed it.”

  “What’d you do that for?”

  “My... mine got wet.”

  “So what exactly did you do last night? Just wander around by yourself?”

  “Yeah, kinda, I mean... You know, I can’t really talk right now. But I’ll bring your sweatshirt to school tomorrow.”

  “Bro, I’m not really into you borrowing my clothes. Or going through my stuff. You didn’t even ask.”

  “No, I know, I would have, I just—”

  “You borrow anything else?”

  “Uh... just some shoes.”

  “Some shoes? Which shoes?”

  “Those old Etnies.”

  “Dude, what happened to you? You’re borrowing my shoes? Did you borrow my underwear?”

  “No,” I lied, “I just... I just got a little wet. And I stepped in something. And I didn’t want to track it all over your house.”

  “Just gimme my stuff back. Bring it to school tomorrow. And what’s going on with Jennifer?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know exactly.”

  “Well if that’s not happening, you should definitely check out Oregon State. I’m serious. I’m gonna need a wingman. I’m not even going to waste my time with stupid high-school girls anymore, not with that kinda action around.”

  “No, yeah, it sounds cool,” I said, trying to sound like my old self. “It sounds awesome.”

  That night I went to bed at ten thirty, which was early for me. I turned off the lights and lay in my bed.

  I didn’t sleep. I lay staring at the floor in the dark. I was tired, more tired than I had ever been. But sleep was impossible. So I got up and pulled my chair to my window and sat, looking at the trees in our backyard.

  I dug out an old Walkman and tuned it to KEX. Surely there would be something about the security guard. It had been twenty-four hours.

  But there wasn’t. The big news of the night was they had hired a new Portland Trail Blazers coach. The newspeople acted like it was the biggest event ever. I couldn’t believe how much they went on about it. So they had a new coach. Big deal.

  I kept tuning my Walkman to different stations. I listened to bits of music. I listened to bits of talk radio. I stared at the trees.

  Then I got mad. It made me mad that people always talked about helping teenagers. There was always some new program, some new plan to help kids. There were ads on TV, on the radio. Hotlines, and this and that. But did any of it work? Not in the slightest. Here I was, with a real problem, with a serious problem, but was there anywhere I could go? Who do you call when something really goes wrong? Those geeks in the studentcounseling office? When you had a real problem, there was nothing you could do, no one you could talk to. It was so typical. And so unfair. Why didn’t they set up an anonymous number you could call, so you could talk to someone who actually knew something, someone who could give you real advice and tell you what your options were?

  For once in my life I genuinely needed help, and where could I go? There was nowhere. There was nothing. And it really pissed me off.

  Later, I fell asleep in my chair. I still had my Walkman headphones on, and I must have heard something about a murder. I woke up instantly and turned up the volume. But it wasn’t local. It was the national ABC news. They were talking about a boy in Texas, a seventeen-year-old who had shot his next-door neighbor. He had been sentenced to death and was going on death row. His lawyers were appealing to the Texas Supreme Court; they wanted to get his sentence reduced to life in prison. They said it could take ten years of appeals.

  I thought about that. Ten years. Death row. Life sentence. I pulled the headphones off my head and let them drop to the ground. What was I supposed to do?

  What was I supposed to do?

  JANUARY 5

  SEASIDE, OREGON

  (8:30 A.M.)

  Dear ___,

  So that was the first day.

  The next day I went to school. I was a total zombie. I stumbled onto the bus, stumbled to my locker. I was so in shock I barely knew where I was.

  In math I didn’t have my assignment. I hadn’t done it, hadn’t looked at it. Mr. Minter got kinda pissed. I had an A in math up till then.

  At lunch I sat with my friends Parker and James. They talked about some Japanese horror movie they had seen. I didn’t say anything. Then, as I ate, tears suddenly came into my eyes. The veggie burger I was eating turned to mush in my mouth. I felt so sad and so exhausted. Everything was like a terrible dream I kept waiting to wake up from. But I never did.

  Parker and James took off, and I ended up eating by myself. I looked down the table and saw Macy McLaughlin. She was with some other sophomores. They looked so young to me, sitting there, gabbing about whatever. Macy turned in my direction and I quickly looked down into my food. But I thought about her: I remembered how she followed me around in sixth grade. She was really outgoing back then. She would follow me on her bike, pestering me, asking me endless questions. She wasn’t like that now. She stayed with her cool friends. I thought about that for, like, twenty seconds-which I was grateful for. That was twenty seconds I wasn’t seeing that security guard lying in the tracks.

  After fifth period, I walked by Jennifer’s locker. She had first lunch that day, so I hadn’t seen her. She was on her cell phone, and she kept flipping her hair. When she finished talking, she didn’t look to me. She bent down to get something out of the bottom of her locker. “So did you and Jared have fun on Saturday?” she asked.

  I slipped my hands in my
pockets. “Not really.”

  “What did you guys do?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Just... hung out....”

  “You should have come with us. We went to Elizabeth’s house and went swimming.”

  I nodded.

  “But I guess that doesn’t really interest you very much,” she said. “I guess skating with Jared is more fun.”

  “I already told him I would.”

  That was the weird thing about Jennifer. She could be a little hard on you sometimes. But then she would turn around and be nice again.

  “What are you doing after school?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “We could do something if you want.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  After school, I got my books and walked behind the cafeteria to meet Jennifer. Jared was skating with Christian Barlow and Paul Auster in the parking lot. They were the other two serious skaters at our school, besides Jared. They practiced kick-flips, ollies. I watched for a minute.

  “Where’s your board?” asked Jared, coming over.

  “Left it at home.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “I dunno,” I said.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Hanging out with Jennifer.”

  Behind him, Paul Auster landed a kick-flip. Christian tried one but couldn’t land it. Jared pushed across the parking lot and tried one, too, but he fell on his ass.

  Jennifer and I went to her house. No one was home, and we went upstairs to her bedroom. She seemed really excited about something, and when we got in her room she shut the door and jumped on her bed.

  “So guess what happened to Petra?” she asked, bouncing on the bed. Petra was one of her friends.

  “What?”

  “She did it! With Mike Paley! They did it, like, three times last weekend.”

  “Wow,” I said. Petra and Mike Paley had only been going out for a couple weeks.

  “Do you think that’s too soon?” she asked, still bouncing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I sat in her chair and looked at the stuff on her desk.