Separated

by Shane Peacock

  I was getting awfully hungry, but I didn’t want to buy anything, didn’t want to have to speak to anyone, make myself visible and draw attention to the filthy lost boy whom they might report to the police. I knew that was crazy, but it was what I was thinking. I passed several policemen, several of whom seemed to be eyeing me, but I didn’t look at them and kept moving on. Now, I had no idea where I was going. I just knew that I had to be gone for a while—I didn’t want to go running like a baby back to the hotel and find Greta there, Muscles herself, laughing at me.

  I walked farther north along the promenade than Grandpa and I had and came to a busier street, four lanes wide and lined with big modern buildings, some of which looked like huge department stores, others like banks. There was another square, or round (they seemed to like their squares round in Sweden). This one had a weird fountain in the center with white circles in the water and a statue, or a sort of statue (it was more like a tall jagged piece of skinny rock, like a work of art—Swedes were into art), towering in the middle. I walked past it, noticing the names of the streets nearby, which in Stockholm are on white rectangles fastened to the sides of buildings.

  Sveavägen.

  This was the street the cab driver had taken us along when Grandpa and I had come through the center of Stockholm on our way from the airport to the hotel. At least it was familiar and I could return on it whenever I wanted and get back to the Grand. I turned up it.

  It hadn’t seemed this wide and intimidating when we’d been on it just a few days ago. When I stared up from the sidewalk I could see that the buildings here were really tall—fancy, modern apartment buildings and other offices with stores at street level, all of them now closed.

  There weren’t as many people here. In fact, once I was a fair piece along the street it was almost deserted, just the odd person passing me as I headed away from the safety of the hotel and Greta. But I couldn’t turn around, not yet.

  The sensation that someone was following me dogged me, but every time I turned around there was no one. In fact, often there was literally no one near me, not a soul on the street nearby.

  It didn’t seem like a good idea to go farther, so I decided to turn around. But then I realized something. The place where Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, had been brutally murdered was just a block away.

  I don’t know why, but something was drawing me there. I wanted to see it and maybe, if I could summon enough courage, actually stand on the very spot. I was imagining what happened that night—the bad guy approaching with his pistol in the darkness as the prime minister and his wife walked along the safe Stockholm street, history and drama about to unfold. I’m kind of interested in guns, though I know that in some ways I shouldn’t be. I don’t think I’m intrigued in a bad way. It’s mostly because they are like little machines, really dynamic, firing objects at amazing speed through space. (The coolest gun is the one James Bond uses—can’t remember the name of it though.) By the time I neared the murder scene, it seemed like I was the only one on the street for miles around.

  I knew where the location was from the reading I’d done and the fact that I’d seen what I thought was the exact spot when Grandpa and I drove in from the airport. But it was very different to see it on foot and all alone. I approached from the far side of the street and stood across from a subway entrance that went down into a building and then into the underground. There was a sign on the building, one of those white rectangular ones with black writing: Olof Palmes gata.

  I decided to cross the road…go right up to the spot.

  Even though I couldn’t see a single vehicle on the street, I looked both ways before I crossed at the light, moving cautiously over the black-and-white-striped pathway. There was a very narrow street right in front of me: Tunnelgatan. That was it—the alleyway down which the murderer had fled! He had escaped along that tiny artery into the bowels of Stockholm and forever away, like an elusive villain in a story! At least, that’s what was said. I approached cautiously and stood where I figured it must have happened, where the bullet had shot through the night. There was another subway entrance just to my right, a big blue-and-white letter T above me and something on the sidewalk to my left, at my feet: a bronze plaque. I stared down at it.

  The words were in Swedish, but I recognized the name, Olof Palme, and the date, February 28, 1986, and it seemed to me that another word, mördades, probably had something to do with murder. My hands grew sweaty, and my heart rate picked up. I raised my head and stared down the narrow street. Its name sounded like a tunnel. Tunnelgatan. It looked like one too. It seemed to disappear into utter darkness.

  I was really good at imagining things, bad things usually—Mom often said that. And right now I was imagining really awful things.

  I should go home immediately, down Sveavägen to the Grand Hôtel, force them to let me in, find my grandfather and then go all the way home, back to America, to my mother and father. I didn’t care whether I was being sensitive or not. Maybe that’s what I was. Who cared? I just wanted to go home!

  But then I saw a figure coming toward me out of the darkness. And it was running right at me. From where I stood, it appeared to be a man, quite large and dressed in black with short black hair and a mustache—the very likeness of the assassin who had been accused of murdering Palme but had never been convicted. The prime minister’s wife, who had been right beside him on that beautiful night as they walked home from a movie in perfect, nonviolent Stockholm and had seen him murdered in cold blood, had picked this person out of a lineup a few years after it happened!

  I turned and fled down Sveavägen. But when I was just a few strides farther, I knew it wasn’t a good idea to try to run. This man’s legs were way longer than mine, and no one was nearby to help me. He would catch me instantly. I slipped into the doorway of the closest building and flattened myself against the wall, trying to calm my breathing, which seemed as loud as the wind in a storm. As I stood there, I wondered where Grandpa was at that very moment—how could he have lost me? What was he doing? What did he do all day at the meetings that he told me nothing about? I imagined how he would feel when they found my dead body lying on Sveavägen, right near the spot where the prime minister was murdered!

  I heard the man emerge from the tunnel-like street. He paused for a second, breathing hard, probably looking both ways, searching for any sign of me. Then he started coming my way.

  SIXTEEN

  He came my way slowly, as if unsure, as if examining every doorway, every building, as he reached it. Then he came even with me and I glimpsed him—or, at least, the side of his head, hair as black as the night. He was staring down Sveavägen in the direction I had originally come from. His shoulders were broad, and his hands, like the thick ends of two clubs, hung down at his side, twitching. It didn’t seem to me that he had a weapon, though he could have been hiding it. Guns didn’t seem so cool at that moment. I held my breath.

  But he walked right past me. And he didn’t turn around—at least, not at first. I watched him from my hiding spot, and when he was a good fifty feet away, I stepped out.

  That was a mistake.

  Just as I moved, he turned around. I didn’t see his face clearly because the instant he began to pivot, I was off and running the other way, up Sveavägen. I could hear him starting to accelerate after me.

  Where could I go? I was far from the hotel and any sort of safety, and I couldn’t see anyone for miles. It didn’t make sense to keep fleeing up this big street where he had a clear view of me and could track me. I turned in to the Tunnelgatan. I had no idea where it went, where the assassin had vanished after he slipped into it that horrible night, but that was where I was going. Maybe I could vanish too!

  I’d never run so hard in all my life, and once I was ten or so strides in, the tunnel got dark. All the doors in the buildings were slammed shut and likely locked, and up ahead it looked totally black. It felt like I was going back in time too, along a narrow cobblestoned medieval street wh
ere Vikings lurked. I came to a cross street and considered taking it, but it was nearly as narrow and almost as dark, so I kept moving forward. I could hear the man behind me, thundering along, breathing heavily and gaining on me!

  And maybe he wasn’t the worst of my enemies. Maybe he was just driving me in here—a lost boy all alone herded into a dead-end street where a whole gang of thieves and murderers could fall upon me. It struck me as a perfect opening scene in a Swedish crime novel—you see the kid pursued and then gruesomely terminated and then it fades to black and a grim, depressed Swedish detective with all sorts of issues figures out the motivations and the identities of these faceless murderers, these sickos.

  Then I spotted a steel gate stretched across the end of the tunnel—no doubt locked, shut down at this time of night because it was too dangerous to go any farther. That was it then. This was the end. My assassin had indeed driven me in here on purpose. But I didn’t see any accomplices, and then I spotted something that surprised me even more. Stairs! There were stairs in the middle of the street, running steeply upward on each side of the gate. And beyond them, I could see light! Or at least I thought I could: dim and distant. I raced up the hard stone stairs as if pounding up the steps in a dungeon. It wasn’t clear where they were going, but I had no choice. Then there was another staircase, and then another, narrowing toward the center, leading up to who-knows-what!

  As I went higher, my legs started to feel like lead and I began to stagger. I was slowing down, really slowing down, and I could hear the beast behind me gaining ground. But up ahead, way up another two flights, I still thought I could see that light.

  I ascended the next flight and then began to climb the last. I could barely move! I’d started out taking three steps at a time, then two, and now I could barely do one! Finally, I was halfway up the last flight, still ten or more steps to go, looking down at my feet, unable to raise my head to see what was in front of me, grabbing my legs to pull them forward to make each step.

  Five steps left! It seemed like the man was just a few strides behind and not slowing. Was he superhuman?

  Three steps, then two…then one!

  But I stumbled on that last one…and felt a hand reach out and grab me from behind!

  I somehow lurched up onto level ground with the hand still on me, trying to push him off, raising my head and seeing that I was on a street, a brighter one.

  “Mr. Adam?”

  Greta Longrinen was standing there, holding the handlebars of her horse-bike, the monkey on her shoulder.

  “Yip,” said the admiral.

  SEVENTEEN

  “You look really scared,” she said. “Man, you’re white.”

  “Greta! Run! There’s a—” I whipped around and looked down the staircase toward my assassin. There was no one there. It was absolutely empty and silent both on the steps and down in the Tunnelgatan. On the street where we stood, people were passing, talking, laughing, some arm in arm, happy Swedes out on the town, their secrets well hidden.

  “A what?” she asked.

  Though there wasn’t anyone down there now, I was certain someone had been chasing me or at least following me.

  “Nothing,” I said to her. “I’m fine. I didn’t need your money.” I reached into a pocket and handed it back to her, even though I was feeling pretty weak and horribly hungry. Maybe my condition had made me hallucinate?

  “You didn’t eat? What are you, nuts?”

  I hadn’t wanted to interact with anyone, especially anyone Swedish, which had eliminated a rather large number of options.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked her.

  “I live nearby.”

  “Near here? Really?”

  “Of course. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No, I just thought that maybe—”

  “You should go back to the hotel. It isn’t entirely safe downtown late at night. Although you know that thing I said about Swedish cops being scary and kids should fear them? Not true. They’re great—really kind and nice. I can’t believe you fell for that.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did. Boys are so funny. I knew you’d fall for the challenge to head out into Stockholm alone at night too. Only an idiot would do that.”

  I didn’t know how to respond, but if I was such an idiot, then why was she talking to me, and why had she followed me, and why was she just standing there now, not moving, not going away?

  “Well,” she said, “I must be leaving. Tallyho!”

  “You’re lonely.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Is it really? Well, just watch me walk away, right now.” She didn’t move an inch. She was looking at me like she wanted me to say something, tell her she could hang out with me, come back to the hotel and meet Grandpa. As I’ve said, I’m not really into girls, not yet anyway, though I must admit that lately I’ve been noticing them a bit. They’re kind of neat, in a way, sort of. I was finding myself kind of, almost, checking them out these days. It was weird. But this one was awfully strange-looking. It wasn’t her looks that interested me. It was something about her as a person, something behind her eyes. She was, I hate to say it, very interesting.

  “Look at this,” she said suddenly and grabbed her bike with one hand and lifted it high into the air. Man, she was really strong.

  “Yip!!” cried her monkey and raised his hands above his head as if in a cheer.

  “That’s, uh, that’s impressive.”

  “Think you can do it?”

  I didn’t want to. Not that I was worried I’d fail—I just didn’t want to. I’m not sensitive. I waved her off.

  “You know, sensitive isn’t such a bad thing,” she said, looking at me like she liked me or something, reading my mind. We were making eye contact. I looked away.

  “I’m not that.”

  “Well, I am sometimes. Strong and sensitive, that’s me!”

  “And modest.”

  “Nothing wrong with believing in yourself!”

  “I’ve got to get going.”

  “Sure, go straight down this street in the direction you came from. It’s, uh, actually pretty safe. Stockholm is really tame. You should be just fine.”

  “Thanks…see you later.”

  “Yeah, later. Sure.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  She wasn’t moving, so I did. I turned my back on her and started walking away, but then I heard her calling out to me. I turned around.

  “Remember me!” she shouted. She was holding her bike high in the air.

  Not long after, probably less than a minute, I turned around to see where she was going. But she’d vanished. I stood there and looked in the direction she must have walked or ridden, and for a few seconds I had the silly idea that she had never been there, that Greta Longrinen truly didn’t exist, never had. I wondered if she was someone I’d invented to give me courage, to push me to be stronger, to deal with my troubles. If so, it was pretty strange that I’d come up with a girl.

  There I was, silently talking to myself again. There’s definitely a good me and a bad me inside my head, fighting each other to make the right decisions.

  But I shook all that off. Greta had to be real. I had been talking to her, hadn’t I, a whole bunch of times? And the guy chasing me in the tunnel… he was real too, wasn’t he? It was strange though: he hadn’t said a word, and I’d never really seen him, not clearly. But man, it had been awfully frightening, as real as the light wind I could feel now on my face as I walked down this busy street toward the hotel.

  I’m not sensitive.

  Soon I was thinking about the hotel and Grandpa. Where the heck was he? Wasn’t he searching for me? Were the Grand’s employees going to throw me out into the street again? I’d escaped death and now I was heading back to the only place that offered any kind of comfort. But would it?

  I’m not…sensitive.

  EIGHTEEN

  I decided
I had to man up and stride into the hotel lobby like I meant business—not take no for an answer, demand my rights, demand to see my grandfather. In order to do that, to pump myself up, I started to think of the way the guys and I got just before we went out onto the ice at the beginning of a game. I imagined a really intense encounter ahead of me, like we were playing Canada, which, unfortunately, was pretty good in hockey. Well, not pretty good—awesome, to be honest, though I would never, never tell my cousins that.

  Then I imagined that they were all on the Canadian side, and my team was heading out to play them, and to get myself ready even more I imagined going one-on-one with each and every one of them right at that very minute. Me against the rest of the McLean family, proving my worth! I figured I could take Bunny, though he isn’t exactly small and sometimes surprises you. DJ would be a problem and Steve too, since he’s got a bit of an attitude. Webb’s got a dark side and might be unpredictable, so I’d have to be ready for him. Spencer? No problem—he’d likely be skating around with a camera in his hand!

  I decided to focus on DJ. He’d be the toughest, almost perfect at everything and a pretty big lad to boot. All I had to do was imagine I was going into a corner against him and had to come out with the puck! With that attitude, I couldn’t fail.