by Luc Reid
Still nothing.
“Do you really think the Larshes cursed you? Couldn’t it be … someone else?”
“Fine, don’t believe me,” Seth said. Could the watch have somehow slipped under some leaves? Maybe he should dig in the dry leaves. But that didn’t seem likely, and if he dug up a lot of leaves he might bury the watch as easily as find it.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’ll find out everything I can—without telling them, I mean. But it’s hard to believe they would … couldn’t the curse just be going without anybody keeping it? Jerry and Tessa wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s them. Remy Larsh told us himself, a hundred years ago.”
“But you weren’t there.”
Seth didn’t reply. She just didn’t want to believe her relatives would be that kind of people—or else she was still play-acting.
“So you didn’t know about this,” Seth said without inflection.
“Of course not! I mean, my mom said she heard stories about Jerry’s family, before Aunt Tessa married him, but when your grandmother talked about it, I thought my mom just liked to tell the same stories. Just stories. Gossip, kind of, like she said.”
There it was. A gleam, nearly hidden by a branch, several feet back from the side of the road. Seth reached in and took his watch, brushed the dirt off it, and put it back on his wrist. “Why didn’t you say you were related to them when Grandma Neddie told you about the curse?”
“Oh, come on! She makes it out that my uncle is an evil sorcerer, and you expect me to step forward and say ‘Hey, I’m his niece!’?”
“Even if it was just gossip?”
“Yes!” Chloe said. “Think about it: what if it were you, and you came over to my house and someone said that your uncle snuck over to our house all the time and vandalized our car? Would you volunteer that he’s your uncle? Even if you thought they were wrong?”
That was true: he wouldn’t. But then, Seth had to be a lot more protective of himself and his family than Chloe did. Her family wasn’t cursed.
“If you didn’t know anything about this, and you aren’t helping them,” Seth said, “then why did you act like you didn’t know me when I came to your house today?”
Now it was Chloe’s turn to be quiet. Except that Seth wasn’t letting her off that easy.
“If you’re not lying to me, tell me why you did that,” Seth said. “If your family isn’t helping their family, why didn’t you say who I was when you answered the door?”
Chloe turned her bike around and kicked at the dirt with one foot. “That’s none of your business,” she muttered.
“None of my business? We’ve just finished talking about a hundred years of my family’s history. We can talk about two hours of yours.”
“My dad,” Chloe said, not meeting Seth’s eye.
“Your dad what?”
“He’d … he doesn’t like me dating.”
“We’re not dating.”
Chloe looked up at him. “I know that! He just … he’d assume. If a boy came to my house.”
“But haven’t you had boyfriends at all before? And you could just tell him—”
“You don’t understand. He doesn’t want me dating. He’s very, well, strict. He’d drag you out on the front lawn and … well, he’d hit you …”
“But we’re not dating!” Seth said in exasperation.
“I know, but he’s suspicious. He always asks where I’ve been. The night I went to your house was the first time I’d been out in the evening. He was out with his friends, but I got home first. My mom said if I didn’t come home right after school again, she’d tell him.”
Seth didn’t know whether to believe this or not. It sounded ridiculous. Parents couldn’t really be that strict, could they?
“That’s why I wear clothes like this,” Chloe said, so quietly Seth had to strain to hear her. He moved closer so he could make her voice out over the sound of the wind. “I try not to be, you know, conspicuous. I try not to look too much like a girl, so there’s no trouble.”
Seth looked her over again. It did explain the weird way she dressed. The weird way she acted with her father. Her mother’s sharp looks when she’d driven Seth halfway home. And when she dressed at all like a girl … he remembered seeing her in the morning, disheveled but almost pretty.
He hadn’t realized how close he’d come to her, but when she looked up he found himself looking right into her eyes.
“I want to help,” she said. “I’ll learn whatever I can, and then you have to trick me into telling you or something, so it’s not helping.”
“Trick you?” said Seth.
“Or something. Don’t you have some way of doing that?”
“In my family we use beans. Bags of beans. You offer someone a bag of beans to do something, and they agree to do it for the beans, so it’s a trade instead of helping. But you have to practice, because the beans aren’t worth much and you have to kind of pretend to yourself that you want them enough to make the trade.”
Chloe nodded, not taking her eyes off him. They were remarkable, really, her eyes, open and candid and deep and dark. She should be able to have a boyfriend if she wanted to. It wasn’t fair to her. It wasn’t a curse, exactly, but Seth wasn’t sure it was any better than what he had to put up with—and her curse-keepers were her own parents. No wonder she was a little strange.
Then he stepped forward and kissed her. She made a quiet noise, surprise or dismay or happiness or something, and for a moment she didn’t move. Then she stepped back suddenly, jerking her bike with her. The pedal caught Seth in the leg.
“Ow!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, eyes wide. “I’m really sorry. I really am. I’m sorry.” Then she jumped on her bike and took off down the road so quickly that she was gone before Seth even understood what had happened.
He thought about it all the long ride home, and he still didn’t know exactly what she was sorry about.
Chapter 11
One thing Seth did figure out on the way home was how he was going to return that stupid bicycle. His preference would have been to wait until it could be done quickly, leaving the least chance for problems, but Grandma Neddie had made it very clear that she expected it to be returned right away. And Grandma Neddie had a way of making life miserable when things didn’t go the way she specified. She even had gotten Seth’s parents to grant her grounding privileges, and getting grounded would be the worst thing for Seth right then, in the middle of spying on the Larshes.
Returning the bike would be simple enough, really: it was just going to require a hell of a lot of walking. He had been counting on one of his parents or Grandma Neddie to drive him, but that was clearly not going to be possible. So he would ride down to Bradford to return the bike, walk to the Vermont Transit stop, take the bus north toward St. Johnsbury, and convince the driver to let him off between stops, as close as possible to home. He was pretty certain the bus ran that way late in the afternoon; he’d just have to confirm it on the bus schedule the family kept at home. Seth and his parents memorized bus schedules and phone numbers for a couple of taxi services in case they ever had to get themselves out of a jam.
He’d have to walk at least a mile or two in Bradford and around six miles after he got off the bus, but it was the best plan he had to get the bike back that day, and it was workable. He’d be back by early evening this way. And it wasn’t very expensive.
*
The bus left at 5:20, which left plenty of time. Seth took a backpack with two peanut butter and banana sandwiches, a slice of zucchini bread, a large plastic bottle of orange juice, and the scant remainder of a jar of dry roasted peanuts. He also packed a book on seismic bridge design he had on interlibrary loan, an old Walkman radio, headphones, the bus schedule, and all the money he had: thirty four dollars and change. He left a bag of beans on the bed in case he was desperate and had to call to try to convince someone to come get him. It might not work, but it was worth having as much in p
lace as he could manage.
He biked out toward Route 5, immediately regretting the need to ride this old three-speed clunker instead of his own bike, which while nothing special at least had 12 speeds. His back began to sweat under the backpack, except for the part where the orange juice cooled it. He wished he had brought some sunglasses, but wasn’t willing to turn around now that he had started.
It was a long ride, but it went quickly. Truth was, Seth felt more at home biking and letting his mind wander, or walking in the woods, or lost in building a new bridge model, than he ever did in anyone else’s company. After all that had happened over the last few days, he was glad to let his mind wander where it wanted to for a while.
But it kept coming back to two people, two very disturbing people: Jerry Larsh and Chloe. It bothered Seth that he had yet to figure out anything of what Jerry was doing: he didn’t even know for sure that Jerry recognized him, even though it seemed silly that he wouldn’t. He wished he could find something conclusive, some clue that would settle once and for all that Jerry was just stringing Seth along.
And even if Jerry didn’t know who Seth was, nothing made any sense. How could a man who would keep a curse on somebody act like he did toward a stranger? Even granting that the stranger had saved his daughter: people didn’t suddenly become cheerful and friendly because someone had done them a favor, not when deep down they were vindictive and unforgiving. What kind of person could welcome a stranger into his house and make a family in the same town miserable for generations?
Chloe was even more troubling. Seth was a little embarrassed at having kissed her, both because it seemed pretty obvious that she didn’t want to be kissed and because he wasn’t sure he liked her enough to want to have kissed her.
At that moment, sure, right then he had wanted to. It was her eyes that had drawn him in, that and the sudden, heady change in his mind: he’d thought she was an enemy, but she’d become an ally in the course of a mere ten minutes, and his relief at that had maybe run away with him a little.
And he kept remembering how she looked when she had opened the door at her house. How she looked when she wasn’t hiding.
It didn’t matter, anyway. He wasn’t interested in her, not really. She wasn’t even the kind of girl he was generally attracted to, not that he felt it was safe to date much at all, given his curse. No, he usually liked girls who were sunnier, more cheerful, with parents who’d smile at him and turn their attention elsewhere as their daughter escorted Seth into a family room or finished basement where they’d watch MTV and eat microwave popcorn, and occasionally kiss.
Not girls like Chloe. Not at all.
He wasn’t far now; another half hour or forty-five minutes and he’d be there. He’d hide the bike somewhere off the road first, so that he could approach the house and see if they were home. If so, he’d have to sneak up and leave the bike behind the garage or something. Neddie had been more specific, but he could put together something plausible on the way home, and she’d have no way of disproving him without looking into the whole thing a lot further than she was likely to.
He was shocked out of these thoughts by the whoop, whoop of a police car switching on its siren. No, no. There was no way a policeman would have recognized that bicycle, was there? But then, what else did policemen in rural Vermont have to do some days except talk to people whose bicycles were stolen or follow up on vandalized mailboxes?
Seth braked and pulled the bike over to the side of the road. It probably wasn’t for him anyway. Since when did police cars stop bicyclists? But the police car slowed to a stop just behind him, gravel from the shoulder popping under its tires as it decelerated. The window rolled down and Seth took a deep breath and turned to look. Maybe it wasn’t about the bike. One look at the policeman’s face should tell him.
But the policeman’s face was neither benevolent nor stern: it was aghast. It was Jerry Larsh’s face.
“Seth?” he said. “What are you doing out here?” He looked over the bike, his gaze lingering on the wicker basket. “Is that your bike?”
Seth’s first instinct was to lie and say it was, but from the tone of Jerry’s voice Seth doubted that would get him anywhere. The next best thing would be to lie about how he came to have it—to have any plausible story other than that he had taken it himself. But what lie could sound plausible on that count? Jerry knew it was stolen, and finding Seth riding it was nearly as good as a detailed, signed confession.
“No, sir,” Seth said. “I was returning it.”
Jerry’s face clouded over. “You want to tell me why you stole a piece of junk like that? What the Hell did you think you were doing?”
“I never meant to steal it,” Seth said hurriedly. “I got stranded out here on Wednesday, and the only way I could find to get home was to borrow this bike. I’m taking it back now.”
Jerry glowered at Seth, then walked up and wrenched the bike away from him, dragged it back to the police car, and opened the door.
“Get in!” he shouted. He picked up the bike and threw it into the back seat. Seth winced as Jerry slammed the door.
“I said get in!” Jerry roared.
Seth debated running. What was Jerry intending? To arrest him? Or something worse? The friendly mask Jerry had worn at his house was gone. He hadn’t been any too easy on the bike when he threw it into the car, apparently not caring if he ripped the seats. He was at least a little out of control.
So was this it? Maybe Jerry had cast some kind of a spell to catch him at this, and was using it as an excuse. He grabbed my gun and ran, your honor. When he fired, the cruiser swerved and hit him by accident. You can see the bullet hole in the left front quarter panel, and I’m an officer of the law. What other evidence do you need?
Jerry strode up to Seth, clamped his hand on Seth’s shoulder, and jerked him toward the car. With no better plan, Seth walked with him. After a glance at the back seat, which was entirely taken up by the bike, Jerry opened the passenger side door and shoved Seth inside. Then he got back in his own seat. Jerry put on his seat belt, then stared at Seth until Seth started and put on his own. Jerry turned the key and listened to the engine for a moment before speaking again.
“Why didn’t you just call your parents?” he growled.
“My dad broke his leg. They were at the hospital.” That was true, anyway. The timing wasn’t quite what he was implying, but it was close enough to the truth that it was probably safe to say.
Jerry pulled out onto the road and drove on in complete, agonizing silence for several minutes. Then he spoke again, quietly, but with no less anger in his voice. “What were you doing at our house the other day, when the barn collapsed?” Jerry said.
Seth didn’t dare face Jerry as he spoke, so he stared at the mat below his feet. “I was walking in the woods. I do it all the time; you can ask my parents or anybody. I was just walking, and I heard the scream, and you know everything after that.” Seth stopped short of saying you know I saved your daughter’s life. Jerry did know that, and either it would count for something or it wouldn’t.
“You stole that bike,” Jerry said finally, but some of the anger had been sapped out of his voice. The words lingered for a long moment.
“Yes, sir.”
“But I believe you were returning it. A boy your age isn’t going to be caught riding a bike like that if he can help it.”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t have—”
“Just be quiet,” Jerry said harshly. “You’re causing a lot of trouble for me today. I shouldn’t have to choose between a strict interpretation of my duty as a police officer and my personal obligations. I shouldn’t have to, but you’re forcing me to. And when it comes down to it, I don’t believe in a strict interpretation of justice.”
Seth did stay quiet, not only because Jerry had said to do so, but also because Jerry’s last statement directly contradicted what Seth knew of Jerry, that Jerry was keeping the Wall family curse. Seth’s family hadn’t even done anything wrong: they wer
e being punished for a distant relative who had been too frightened to put himself in harm’s way. That wasn’t justice, not even in a strict sense.
They arrived at the house, and Seth had a momentary pang of fear that Jerry was going to make him return the bike himself, possibly amid an explanation of how he, Seth, was now under arrest for the act. But Jerry just climbed out of the car and extracted the bike, wheeling it to the front door. An old Ford station wagon was parked in the driveway now, and when Jerry knocked, a white-haired man answered the door.
Seth couldn’t hear every word the old man said, but most of Jerry’s speech was pretty clear. Particularly, “found it by the side of the road,” and “There’s no way to know. If I were you, I’d just be glad I had it back.” Then Jerry strode back to the car and started it up. He didn’t say a word as he turned the car around and headed north on Route 5, toward Caledonia. Nor did he say much all the rest of the way back. He asked for directions to Seth’s home and Seth told him to go to a crossroads a little more than a mile away, but Jerry didn’t seem surprised that they weren’t pulling up in front of a house when they stopped there. Seth guessed Jerry was fully aware of the trouble he would bring a kid by dropping him off in a police car. The only thing that was surprising was that he would care about making that kind of trouble. Maybe he didn’t want to tip his hand to Seth’s parents?
But Jerry stopped Seth before he left the car. “I don’t want you back at our house,” he said. “You go your own way now.” Then Jerry yanked the passenger door shut and drove off.
Free of the bike, miraculously in no trouble with the law and with half an hour to get home on time for dinner, Seth walked, occupied by thoughts of what he would do now that he was banned from the Larsh’s property. It was either return to lurking in the bushes, something that was unlikely to produce results any time soon, or defy Jerry and try to work his way back into the man’s regard.
It was obvious what he had to do, but he sure wasn’t looking forward to doing it.