PJ looked left and right, then back at Joey. “What are you doing here?”
Joey took the few remaining steps that put him close to her, the toes of his rubbers nudged up to the edge of the stoop. “I tried to call, but there was a recording...”
PJ gave a quick nod, trying not to show her embarrassment. She could make up some excuse, but Joey would know it was just that. He knew her. He was standing right here. He could see where and how she lived. Put that all together and the recording, which said simply ‘The number you have reached is temporarily out of service’, might as well have said ‘We’re sorry, but the people here used to have a working phone, but, well, yesterday we pulled the plug because they decided this month they’d rather be warm than in touch.’ And, well, it was warm. The furnace was going full blast. She could feel it on her back.
PJ glanced back over her shoulder, into the apartment. Bobby was on his stomach on the living room floor watching Bugs Bunny tie a knot in Elmer Fudd’s shotgun. As she looked back to Joey she heard the cartoon gun go off and her little brother wail with glee. “Yeah, I know. Is, um, there something you want?”
“Yeah,” Joey said, nodding. “You’re correcting the spelling tests this weekend, right?”
“Yeah.” There was a nervousness in his voice that PJ almost wondered if Joey was going to ask her to make sure he got them all correct. But this was Joey she was talking to. No way would he do that. No way would he even think it. “Why?”
“I need to borrow them.”
“Borrow them? Why would you want to borrow a bunch of spelling tests?”
Now Joey looked around, and peered past PJ into her apartment.
“What is it, Joey?”
“Is your mom home?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
She shook her head. “Just me and my little brother. He’s busy watching TV.” Worry lines scored her brow. “What is it?”
He told her what Jeff had told him on the phone last night, about the note in the suggestion box. And about an idea they’d thought of to figure out who had written it.
After a hard swallow and picking her jaw up off the ground, PJ went back inside and gathered all the tests into a stack. She put them in a folder and gave them to Joey as she came back out. “They shouldn’t fall out of that.”
Joey tucked the thick paper folio inside his jacket. “Thanks. I’ll finish correcting them for you.”
“Okay,” she said, her gaze low and lost, thinking about the tests not at all. ‘I saw who did it’? Who could have seen them? Who could have possibly seen them?
“I can give them back Monday before school,” Joey said, then offered, “Or I could bring them by tomorrow after church.”
“Okay,” PJ repeated blankly again, the note’s contents still vexing her. The possibility of the note’s contents being true, actually. After a few seconds contemplation of that awful scenario she looked back up to Joey. “When do you think you guys will know?”
“Jeff’s coming over in a while.”
Just inside the apartment the Looney Tunes theme began to play. Bugs had won another one. PJ looked and saw Bobby fixated on a cereal commercial, the one where little chocolate chip cookies leapt from a springboard into a bowl of milk and splashed happily like little kids in a pool on a hot summer day.
PJ focused on the chocolate chip cookies and told herself everything was okay, and everything was going to stay just that way.
“When we find out who wrote it I can...” Joey paused, unsure of where to take what he’d started to say.
“The phone might be working later,” PJ said, her chin rising into a little nod. Her mom had mentioned something about maybe borrowing the money and paying the phone bill in town after doing the laundry. It might happen. “Or you can just tell me Monday.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Joey patted the bulge under his jacket and took a step backward, his eyes fixed on PJ. He’d never told a soul this, but he thought she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. It didn’t matter that she was standing there barefoot in her sweats and a tee shirt. She could have been wearing a gorilla suit. Just as long as it was her inside. “Well, you should go inside. It’s cold.”
Her lips curved into a quiet smile. She gave a little wave to him with one hand and backed into her apartment and closed the door.
Joey stared at the split bubbles of brown paint peeling from the door for a moment before sloshing back down the driveway.
* * *
The gates were locked, as were the doors, so Dooley hopped the chain link fence by the teacher’s parking lot and strolled toward the bungalows. Halfway across the ball field he discovered he was not alone.
In rapid, staccato thumps the sound came, metallic impacts and air spitting pneumatically. Just what everyone wanted to hear on a Saturday morning. A jackhammer at work.
Dooley acquiesced to the presence and continued on, the noise rising. When he reached the back corner of the bungalows the audible assault was intense. And now the scent of hot tar filled the air. As he turned near the ivy covered fence and walked toward room 18, both smell and sound came together, making sense.
Mr. Carter released the jackhammer’s squeeze trigger and leaned it against his waist as Dooley neared. He pulled the earphones off his head and smiled at the man he’d met under very different circumstances earlier in the week. “Hey there, Detective Ashe. How’s it all going?”
Dooley approached and shook the hand the school’s custodian held out toward him. He pumped the strong hand a few times and gazed at the ground where snow had been scraped away and the asphalt was chewed into dozens of irregular chunks. “Why are you tearing this up?”
“The police said it was okay,” Carter explained, a bit sheepishly, his expression paining as he continued, “and this old spot’s been nothing but a reminder to everyone. The kids especially. So, I suggested we just dig it up and make it like new.”
“Make it like new,” Dooley repeated, and Carter pointed to the fuming trailer of hot tar, propane burners breathing flames that licked up the black and blotchy sides of the machine.
“It’ll be like it was never here,” Carter promised proudly, beaming.
Dooley nodded politely, but something made him wonder if the memory of Guy Edmond could be gotten rid of that easily. Erased, so to speak. He wondered if anything that was still feared, that could not be spoken of even if only as a remembrance, could ever be truly gone.
And that was a strange thing, Dooley realized. Something that had never struck him before. Dead might mean dead. But dead didn’t have to mean gone.
* * *
Jeff Bernstein’s mother had raised a polite son, and a smart son, so he smiled big at Joey’s mom when she opened the front door to let him in. “Good day, Mrs. Travers.”
“Hello, Jeff,” Debbie said, stepping aside as her son’s precocious friend entered. His precociousness came from moments like these, very adult moments when he would let loose with something like ‘Good day, Mrs. Travers’ where any other kid would say ‘Hey, there, Mrs. T’, or maybe just grunt. “How are your mom and dad?”
“They’re doing fine,” Jeff answered, snugging his cast neat into its blue sling, tugging at the material to flatten the few wrinkles bunching it. “My mother is finishing my Halloween costume today.” He reconsidered what he’d just said, remembering just what he was going to be. “She’s sort of putting the pieces together.”
“Well, good.” Debbie stood there for a moment, a tight-lipped smile aimed at her son’s friend, and his own version of the same at her. When the seconds dragged toward awkwardness she crossed her arms and said, “Joey’s in his room.”
“Great.” Jeff nodded, still smiling, and took a step back. “Thank you, Mrs. Travers.”
“Have fun,” Debbie said.
Jeff kept backing. “We will.”
Debbie watched him finally turn and scoot down the hall, and heard the door to her son’s bedroom close and shut quickly.
When Jeff came in he leaned against
the door and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
“What the hell was all that, Bernstein?” Joey asked with a sneer. He was kneeling on one side of his bed, his elbows resting on the mattress, the spelling tests he’d picked up from PJ divided into two stacks near the goose down pillow at the head. “I heard the front door open and it took you like ten minutes to get in here.”
“I was trying to throw her off,” Jeff said seriously, looking at his friend now.
Joey shook his head. “You were acting goofy.”
“Good, then your mom will be thinking how goofy I am and not what we’re doing in here.”
As stupid as it seemed, Joey had to admit there was some logic to what Jeff was saying. Even if his mom wouldn’t be worrying about what they were doing. That was one of the great things about her: his room was his room. What he did in here was his business.
He wondered if that would change when he started dating.
“Did you bring the note?” Joey asked. Jeff came to the bed across from his friend and slid out of his sling. The folded slip of paper fell free of where he’d hidden it and fluttered to the floor like a huge, wounded moth.
“Here,” he said, picking the paper up and passing it over as he settled to his knees. He lifted his now unsupported cast up so it could rest on the bed and watched Joey read the five words.
Joey shook his head and laid the paper on the bed between them. “Man, Bernstein, this isn’t good.”
“Tell me about it,” Jeff concurred. He looked at the twin stacks of spelling tests. “Do you think we’ll be able to match up the writing?”
Joey took one of the stacks— he’d divided them pretty evenly, half for him and half for Jeff —and arranged the note so both he and Jeff could see it. “It has to be someone in our class, so yeah. I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
Jeff nodded and took the stack of spelling tests still at the head of the bed. He set it next to his cast and focused on the first test. His eyes moved over the letters and words, flitting frequently to the note, searching for similarities. But there were none. He slid the first one aside and looked across at Joey. He was already on his third. That was pretty amazing for a guy who could hardly read or write just a year ago. But then things were different then. They were different then.
“Hey,” Joey said, lifting test number three up to show to Jeff. “What do you think about this one?”
Jeff came up on his knees and leaned close to the test, his gaze angling down at the note next. He shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think so. Look here on the test.” One of their spelling words had been ‘wholesome’. “Now look at the note.” He pointed to the third word: ‘who’. “It’s the same three letters at the beginning of the spelling word, and they look different to me. The ‘h’ is thin and scrunched up.”
Joey studied the contrasts his friend had noted and agreed with a nod. They went back to comparing without another word.
Fifteen minutes and two more near misses later they had found no match.
“Again?” Joey suggested, and they switched stacks, each going over new ground this time.
Ten minutes and only one near miss this time and they had come up empty again.
“Joey, I don’t see anything that looks like that writing,” Jeff said, defeated, stabbing his good index finger at the note.
Joey picked up the note and laid it on the bed. He sank deeper onto his knees, resting his chin just about on the bottom edge of the note. A squished frown puckered his lips as he stared at the writing, at the letters printed carefully together, slanted just slightly and forming those five words that were really starting to bug him more than scare him. He looked across the bed at his friend, who had let his own chin sink into the comforter-covered mattress, just the top two thirds of his face visible behind the cast that—
Suddenly, Joey’s head began to rise slowly up from the bed, his eyes flaring and his shoulders bulging slowly as deep, steadying breaths spilled down his throat like the bitter, ancient air sealed with the dead for the ages in some evil tomb.
Jeff saw the abrupt change in his friend’s expression and posture. The hairs on his own neck pricked to attention in sympathy. “What is it?”
Joey was up fully on his knees now, half of the proper stance for a really reverent prayer session, only the hands needing to clutch together for the full effect. But his hands would not be able to oblige. One was taking the note between trembling fingers and sliding it on the bed toward Jeff’s cast. The other was pointing an equally shaky finger at Jeff’s cast.
At one spot on the cast.
At one message on the cast.
“It’s his,” Joey managed to say, the words raspy and fearful.
“Whose?” Jeff asked, his friend now starting to frighten him.
“His,” Joey repeated, and now Jeff came up on his knees and bent over the bed, over his cast, twisting as best he could to see what Joey’s quaking finger was aimed at. When he saw it his own eyes bugged, and his own breath left him in a rush of terror.
“Oh, shit,” Jeff said, on the verge of a whimper. He looked at the note, and at his cast again. “Oh, shit. This can’t be right.” When his eyes came up, Joey was nodding, and still pointing.
Pointing at what Guy had written on Jeff’s cast. “It’s the same writing.”
Part Two
Tattletale
Eighteen
They walked in silence through Bigfoot Woods, Joey and Jeff in the lead, PJ, Bryce, and Michael clustered close behind. None of them had said anything since Joey showed them the note, holding it close to Jeff’s cast for comparison, and none had disagreed when Joey told them what he wanted to do. What he thought they should do together.
Any other time, any other place, and Jeff Bernstein would have told them all they were nuts. That this was a real stupid thing to do. But he had seen what Joey had, when Joey had. He had seen what they all had stared at with slack jaws. And as much as he knew it was impossible, the evidence was right there, on the hunk of plaster he’d received courtesy of Guy Edmond. It was Guy’s writing there, and on the note.
And it could not be.
That contradiction of facts was weighing heavy not only on his mind as they moved through the thickening growth. It was central in all their thoughts, as well as some fears. PJ in particular. For her, Guy Edmond’s demise had been more than welcome; she had prayed for it. Never mind that she hadn’t been to church since her late grandmother took her once or twice when she was almost six, she had prayed for him to be gone, out of her life, in any way possible. She hadn’t sought God’s help in the traditional manner one might associate with childhood prayers, kneeling next to her bed with her hands clasped reverently, eyes closed tight. In the room they shared her brother would have seen that, or maybe her mother, popping her head in to check up on her two kids before hitting the sack herself. And what then? What would she say if her mom, stunned by so odd a sight as her daughter on her knees in divine worship (or begging?), had asked what she was praying for? Would she have lied? To her mom? She didn’t want to have to, so she had done her praying in the bathroom, her knees dug into the damp bathmat that lay outside the peeling white tub, elbows on the curled lip of its rim, hands clamped together tight. Tighter than she had ever held anything—until the bat they passed around, that is. And there, eyes open in this bit of privacy, she had asked God to please make Guy Edmond leave. Not just leave her alone, but leave. Be gone. Have his dad get transferred, if whatever he did was the kind of job where he could be transferred, or have Guy run away to some far away place like the kids she sometimes saw on the TV movies. Have him run away to Hollywood and live under a bridge or something. Or, if not that, let someone kidnap him and take him away and do whatever to him and dump his body in a river where fish could eat out his eyes. Or, please God, let him be crossing a street, maybe running from someone after busting a window or something, and let a car or a truck or a bus come out of nowhere and plow into him. Let that happen if nothing else could. Let
him be gone that way. Or, she had thought, her prayers feeling more like wishes by this time, let someone be so tired of what he was doing that they would...do something to him to make him be gone. If nothing else, God, let that happen.
Let him be dead. She had prayed for that to a God she had never really known. And her prayers had been answered. He had been dead. He had.
But was he all dead? Everything about him? That possibility scared her more than Guy Edmond in the flesh. Because just how were you supposed to kill a bad memory that wanted to stay alive? (That’s his writing! That’s Guy’s writing! Bryce had practically shrieked when he saw it, PJ remembered, his finger shaking at the note Joey held, his other hand mashed against his forehead as if some horrible fever had struck without warning) What scared Bryce, PJ thought, was the same thing she now found terrifying herself. That a bat over Guy Edmond’s head might not have been enough. Might never be enough.
Let him be ALL dead, she prayed silently as she walked, her eyes cast up through the mingling boughs of pine at specks of sun-bleached sky. Cast toward some higher power. Looking up, and not at where her feet were carrying her.
The thick arch of an exposed, dirt-dark tree root, which over the years had poked its meaty self free of the forest floor only to dive back into the cold safety of the loam, caught one of PJ’s toes as she walked, stopping her lower half abruptly and sending her face on a fast trip toward the ground. She got her hands out of her pockets just in time to break her fall, and by the time she had freed her snagged sneaker (the pale rubber sole of which was pulled even more from the canvas top now) and gotten to her knees, four pairs of hands were gently on her, about her shoulders and arms, her four friends crouched low all around her.
“You okay?” Joey asked first. PJ looked at him and swallowed, her hands swatting at the tops of her jeans to wipe the stain of dark, rich soil from her palms. “Are you?”
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