The Last Whistle

by Jamie Bennett

  She was scowling, the familiar fierce, angry look she often wore, but I actually saw her lip quiver. “I got in a fight with my mom and I left. My phone doesn’t work because, like, she didn’t pay or something. So I hitched here.”

  “Oh, no…”

  “I’m not going back to that shithole,” she told me. “I’m not going.”

  “So you called me? Why me?”

  She looked away and I had the terrible, sinking feeling that she didn’t have anyone else who would have come for her. “What if we hang out some and then I drive you home? Maybe I could talk to your mom,” I suggested, feeling that if Linda were here, she’d be shaking her head and giving me a hard no at this solution. But Marley’s face lost some of the scowl.

  “Seriously? We can just hang out?”

  I looked up and down the block. “Um, yeah. Let’s go…let’s go to the park and we can talk. You can tell me what the fight was about and why you don’t want to go home.”

  She started telling me immediately, before I had even taken a step. “I’m tired of my mom. I’m tired of her going out and leaving me, I’m tired of the guys she brings home. I hadn’t seen her in three days and then she showed up stoned today and yelled at me like I was supposed to take care of her.”

  “Wait, what?” My steps stuttered on the sidewalk. “She was stoned? Like your mom is on drugs?”

  Marley just rolled her eyes. “Why the fuck do you think I keep getting put into foster care, because I like to travel? She cleans up and gets me back and then this happens again.”

  “We need to tell someone. We need to call—”

  “You can’t tell anyone!” She grabbed my arm. “I’d rather live with her. It’s worse moving around all the time and living with new, stupid rules. I won’t do it again.”

  “But—”

  “Never mind, I’m not telling you anything else! I’m sorry I called you.” She started to stomp away from me toward the park and I winced when my knee twinged as I rushed to keep up.

  “Just a minute! Slow down! You have to explain this to me. If I’m going to be flouting the guidelines and seeing you outside of tutoring, then I need to know everything that’s going on,” I told her.

  “Did you seriously just look around like someone could overhear you say that you’re a rulebreaker?” Marley asked me, and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Come on.” We walked more slowly to the little playground and sat on the benches that parents usually perched on to watch their kids on the slides or sandbox.

  I waited but she didn’t start to talk, and we watched the swing creak on its chains in the wind. “I used to come here with my dad when I was a kid,” I remarked, just to break the silence.

  “My dad didn’t ever take me anywhere. He and my brother got along ok but he never did much with me.”

  “Where is he now? Do you live with him, too?” I asked, but she shook her head.

  “No, I only used to see him sometimes. He left town a few years ago and I don’t know where he is but it’s better that he’s gone. He and my brother mostly lived together and he got really mean after Bo died.” She wasn’t able to hold the expressionless mask on her face. I saw unhappiness and a lot of fear there, too, and my heart clenched in pity.

  “So you live with only your mom?” I asked.

  “Mostly I do, except when she does something stupid and the social workers come. Like when I was in elementary school, she used to send me without lunch, and that was the first time they took me out.”

  I knew that coming to school without lunch wasn’t the only reason that she would have gotten removed from her home. Whatever was going on with her mom must have been pretty awful, either neglect or abuse or both. “What’s happening now?” I asked her. “You said that you guys are fighting?”

  Marley looked away, staring hard at the swings. “She’s got some new boyfriend and they’re drinking all the time. She’s at his house mostly, or at least, she’s somewhere else. I don’t know.”

  “So you’re alone?”

  “I don’t need her there! I take the bus to school and I do stuff by myself,” she told me furiously.

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to be around the two of them. He…” Her angry voice dropped to a whisper. “He hits her.”

  I was trying not to breathe hard, not to show her how upset I was. “Does he ever hit you?”

  She watched the swing for a moment, and then one of her shoulders bobbed up and down. I took that as a yes.

  “I can’t let you go back to a place where you’re in danger,” I said.

  “I never told you I was in danger!”

  “You just told me that your mom’s boyfriend hits you!” I protested.

  “I never said that! You’re fucking crazy,” she said, and got up from the bench. “I’m sorry I called you.”

  “Marley—”

  “No!” She walked away from me, and then broke into a jog which I couldn’t match on my bad leg. Stupid fire extinguisher!

  “Marley!” I called, but she didn’t stop and soon she had turned a corner and was out of sight. Darn it. Darn it! I rushed to my car as fast as I could, but even after driving up and down all the (five or six) streets of the town, I couldn’t find her anywhere. I finally turned my car around and headed home, just as it really started to get dark, still watching for her as I drove. I only stopped looking anxiously along the sides of the road as I turned into my own driveway, but then I spotted something else. Someone else, sitting on my porch.

  “Gunnar?” I asked as I got out.

  He stood up. “I didn’t want to sit here in the dark and scare you, but you don’t have a porch light on.”

  “It broke two weeks ago. Something’s happening with all the wiring,” I said, and he walked quickly to my car.

  “Are you crying? Why are you crying?”

  “Marley,” I said, but I started up with sniffing and wiping at my eyes again and had a difficult time saying much else.

  He leaned over me, ducking his head closer as he put his hand on my shoulder. “The girl you tutor?” he asked, and I bobbed my head up and down. “What did she do? Was she rude to you again? What did she say? Did she make fun of your clothes?”

  “What’s the matter with my clothes?” I sniffed. “No, she called me because she didn’t have anyone else, but then she ran away!”

  Slowly, after we went into my cottage and Gunnar got me a glass of water, I managed to get the whole story out. “I’m so worried about her,” I told him. “I don’t know what to do. If I tell Linda at the learning center, or the police or anyone else, Marley will never forgive me. She’ll hate me forever and she doesn’t have anyone else to call besides me!”

  “At the very least, you have to report this to your boss. She should know exactly who to contact,” he said. “You have to.”

  I wiped my eyes on my shirt, one of my grandpa’s that was so soft it was like a chamois. “I know. I just feel like I’m finally earning her trust, and now she’ll hate me.”

  “But she’ll be better off somewhere else. She had to know that you’d tell, Hallie. She had to know you couldn’t keep this to yourself.”

  “Maybe that’s why she called me,” I said. “She’s smart, despite what her grades indicate. Maybe she wants me to tell Linda.” I looked at Gunnar hopefully. “Do you think?”

  “I think that no matter how she’s going to feel about it, you have to call someone.”

  “Ok. I’m doing it now.” I got up and went to the kitchen phone, and over the continuous static, I got Linda to understand what had happened. She did know what to do, and she told me that I’d done the right thing in telling her.

  “Marley is going to be angry tomorrow, if she shows at all,” she warned me, “but we have to report it. We can’t let her be unsafe at home.”

  That was horrifying to even think of. “No, of course she can’t be unsafe at home!” I agreed, but I was already hoping, really hoping, that Marley would somehow not be angry about this and would un
derstand why I had snitched on her.

  “Are you all right now?” Gunnar asked when I hung up, and I nodded. He looked at my face and shook his head. “You’re not, if you’re still crying.”

  “It was very upsetting to think about someone hurting her. No one deserves that—think about it, a teenager afraid to go home.” I wiped my eyes. “Yes, she’s mean to me and she insults me and she won’t do the things I ask, but I like her. I like her in spite of all that,” I said. “I think she likes me too. She wanted to get the address of the person who bought my store so we could do something to him.”

  “‘Him?’ You mean me?” He looked alarmed. “Did you tell her where the lotus pod is?”

  “No, of course not.” I dabbed at my eyes again, then rubbed the fabric over my wet face. “Anyway, if I wanted to do some damage over there, I could anytime I want. I could burn it, take an ax to things. Not that I would,” I added, “but you wouldn’t be around to stop me. You’re never home.”

  “You noticed?”

  “I mean…no, I don’t notice where you are,” I fully lied. “I was just guessing that you must be busy.”

  “I have been busy,” he agreed. “I’ve been doing a lot of physical therapy, acupuncture, time in cryo. I feel like I never leave the training rooms at the stadium.” He reached and wiped off my cheek with his fingers. My skin was starting to feel raw from how I had been swiping at the tears with my sleeve, as soft as the shirt was. “I’m glad you told your boss. Marley will be ok now.”

  I shook my head. “What if she didn’t get home? What if she got a ride from some weirdo and she’s…he’s…”

  “Do you know where she lives?” Gunnar asked, and I nodded. I had put all my thoughts into it as I drove home and I had remembered her full address. “Then let’s go.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t have to pound on the door, but we can look around and see if she’s there. If she’s ok.” He stood and held out his hand to me. “I’ll drive.”

  I wanted to leap off the couch, but I held myself back. “Don’t you have to rest or something? Or watch game tape?”

  “I’ll worry about that,” he said, and waved his fingers a little. “Let’s go, or you’ll sit and worry.”

  I slowly reached and took his hand. He hauled me to my feet and smiled a little. “Did you ever spy when you were a kid?” He asked as we walked to the door.

  “How do you think I would have been as a spy?”

  “Maybe they would have heard you coming,” he acknowledged.

  “I was thinking that you could have seen me,” I said, pointing to my hair. I used my left hand, because I hadn’t let go of his fingers with my other, and as of yet, he hadn’t pulled away. He helped me down the stairs because of that knee problem I had, but he still didn’t release me, and I wasn’t going to give up on holding hands until he pried himself free.

  “I spied on my sisters constantly,” Gunnar told me. “I wanted to know what they were up to, and as the annoying younger brother, I would tell on them to my parents. I’m very light on my feet and blonde may not be as noticeable as your color.”

  “Red. You can say it. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  He walked out to the road rather than taking the path that led across the moat in his yard. “Why would your hair ever bother you?”

  I rolled my eyes like Marley did. “It’s a little much,” I said neutrally.

  “You always wear it in a ponytail,” he noted. “The only time I see it loose is when you swim, and it’s…” He trailed off, watching the mass of hair bobbing behind me as I walked.

  “Unruly?” I supplied. “Unmanageable? Unattractive?”

  “Alive,” he answered. “It’s wild and alive. I really like it.” He smiled down at me, but then a frown took its place on his lips. “Why is the skin on your face so irritated?”

  “Red hair means skin that goes nuts. I was wiping my cheeks a lot because of Marley.” My voice choked again.

  “No, just when I had you thinking of something else,” he said, chagrined.

  “You gave me compliments to distract me? You don’t have to do that.”

  “I complimented your hair because I meant it, and coincidentally, it made you think of something else. When I saw you driving out earlier, I got worried. Your face was so pale.”

  “As opposed to how I’m usually not?” I asked, holding up our hands, his skin tanned against my utter pastiness. Yes, we were still holding hands. “Is that why you were waiting on my porch?”

  “Yes. And I wanted to talk to you about the bookstore, too, but I didn’t know how to get in touch.”

  He must not have had a phone book. “My cell phone stopped working again,” I said. It might have been when I’d fallen off my dad’s old bike when I’d tried to get some exercise. That was how I’d ended up with a little poison ivy, too. “I’ll get it fixed.”

  “I was in Detroit to see a doctor on the day of the closing, but Ainsley said it went well,” Gunnar said.

  It seemed like that had happened years ago. “Why did you have to go to Detroit? Are you ok? What did the doctor say?”

  He shrugged these questions off. “I’m fine. Nothing new, but the team insisted on it, and I have to go when they say to.”

  “The closing was fine, too,” I said casually. “It was just signing papers.”

  “I thought that it would be better for you to deal with Ainsley.”

  “No, I don’t think it would be better for anyone to deal with Ainsley. She has the sympathetic feelings of this rock.” I pointed to a large piece of the gravel road and tried to kick it but skidded a little. Gunnar’s grip tightened on my hand. “Gaby had to tell her off and then we went to lunch and I had four glasses of wine,” I continued.

  “You were upset after the closing.”

  “Of course, I was,” I said, forgetting that a moment earlier I had said that it was just paperwork. “Ainsley thought of it as only another a real estate transaction, and she didn’t understand that it was personal for me. But I realize now that you’re right. If you had been there, you would have made it worse.”

  “Good thing I was in Detroit,” he said stiffly.

  “Yes, because it would have been awful and embarrassing to be so sad in front of you,” I explained. “Ainsley just thought I was an idiot, but you would have been sympathetic every time I cried. It’s embarrassing now, too.”

  “You shouldn’t be embarrassed about crying when you’re this worried. It just means you care.” But he was frowning as he beeped the lock for his car. “I should have put off the closing for another day when I could have gone myself.”

  “I needed it to be over. It’s really over,” I said, and wiped my cheeks. “Ouch.”

  “Stop. Stop crying and hurting your skin,” he ordered. “What should I do? Tickle you?”

  “Not if you want to keep your fingers intact.”

  “I forgot how violent you are,” Gunnar remarked. “I forgot that you first got my attention by trying to kill me with a rock.”

  “Oh, believe me, if I wanted to kill you with a rock, you’d already be dead. Or, with how I’ve been messing things up lately, one of us would be. I probably couldn’t even kill you right.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. What else? What else do you think you’ve been doing wrong?”

  “Besides losing my family business? Well, I can’t get a job with the degree I worked so hard for, my house seems to be falling apart and coincidentally has lost more than half its value, my friend is making a huge mistake with her life and I can’t talk her out of it, and the girl I’m supposed to be helping is being abused instead. Also, I got fired as a dishwasher due to excessive breakage. They felt bad about it, but they couldn’t afford me.”

  “That’s a lot. Want to hear mine?”

  “Shoot,” I invited.

  “That’s not a word I want you to say regarding me,” he advised. “Just in case. Ok, well, my back hurt so badly after the last game that two of the guys had
to help me walk through the tunnel and I couldn’t sit down on the flight back home; I bought a house that has a human-sized underground vault full of bags of doll heads, ethanol, and the plastic tabs from bread bags; and I broke a woman’s heart—twice. It was by mistake, but that doesn’t excuse it.”

  He hadn’t mentioned his dad being sick, but I remembered, and I wasn’t the only person in this car who had some hard things to deal with. “You win, because that human-sized vault part scared me to death,” I told him, and he burst out laughing. “Doll heads?”

  “The contractor and his crew are afraid to come back. They think it’s some kind of voodoo thing.”

  “Man, those Feeneys were weird.” I paused. “What woman did you mean? When you said you broke someone’s heart?”

  “You, Hallie.” He reached and touched my knee briefly. “I took your land and then I took your business.”

  “But not on purpose,” I said. “Or not to hurt me, anyway. Yes, circumstances have been hard, but nobody’s heart is broken in this car.”

  “Just someone’s back,” he said, and smiled at me when I looked over, concerned. “No, it’s not any worse than it was before.” He reached over again and put his palm on my shoulder, then slid it down my arm to grasp my fingers. “Things are tough sometimes, huh? It’s good to have a passenger to ride in your car and listen to your problems about hidden vaults full of extremely flammable liquid.”

  “And to have a driver to help you check on your student. The student who has issued threats about said driver,” I added. “And who may now also want to hurt the passenger, too.”

  Gunnar squeezed my hand. “Exactly like that.”

  Exactly.

  We sped the rest of the way to Marley’s house, which was even more run-down than mine, with trash and broken appliances scattered around, and a few parked cars that looked like they hadn’t moved in years. I got a glimpse of her scowling face in the window as we pulled in, but she wouldn’t answer when I knocked on the door and called to her.

  I shook my head when I got back in with Gunnar. “She’s not going to talk to me,” I said.