Dirty Seal

by Harper James

  I scoff. “You can’t be serious,” I say, the insanity of his words overpowering my need to cry.

  “Very serious. My mom died when I was born, and my dad was just always better at having buddies than having a son, I guess. Hell, the way I rebelled was joining the Navy instead of the Army, which is the branch he’s in— the military is just our whole lives. Anyway, my point is just…he was just being an ass.”

  “Him just being an ass doesn’t make it any better,” I say, shaking my head.

  “It was an accident, Karli,” Heath says, now sounding frustrated.

  “Yeah. I know,” I answer, but the truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Heath, not really, but I happily walked into a strange house, naked, with a guy I barely know, prepared to do whatever he asked of me. I don’t know his middle name or favorite color or even where he’s lived. All I know is that I want him.

  Which isn’t enough. Or rather, is enough for my body, but isn’t enough for my heart or my mind or my life. It’s not like I’m going to get the chance to know him, either, since he’s leaving in what, eleven days, now?

  We remain silent as we turn onto the main road and start toward my apartment. My mind is a swamp of emotion and worry and hurt and lingering embarrassment; the look on Vic’s face when I waked out, that face so similar to Heath’s, is burned into my mind. We ease through the always-broken gates to my apartment complex and up to the sidewalk of my building.

  “I won’t forget to text you back this time,” Heath says, looking over at me. “Because I want to see you tonight.”

  “Heath—“

  “I’ll pick you up,” he says, with that calm confidence, a voice that no woman could possibly say no to—

  Except me. Because I have to.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” I say, voice wobbly. “I just don’t think this is going to work out.”

  Heath looks like he doesn’t believe me, like he expects me to laugh and explain the joke. When I don’t, he finally says, “Wait, Karli— come on. My dad was a dick and you’re done?”

  “No— well, yes, but that’s not really the thing. I just…you’re leaving in eleven days. I barely know you, and you don’t seem all that interested in telling me more about yourself. You just want a fuck buddy for the rest of your leave.”

  “That is not true,” Heath says. There’s a flare in his voice, anger and concern.

  “I had a nice two nights with you,” I say. “But we’re done, okay?”

  “Karli!” he shouts, almost orders, and I almost point out that I’m not some military recruit he can command. Instead, I swallow, slam the car door, and sprint upstairs to my door, hurrying to lock it behind me.

  I expect him to chase after me. Heath isn’t the kind of guy that gets told no a lot, after all, nor does he seem like the kind of guy who would just let a girl accuse him of wanting a fuck buddy and leave. That’s why I said it, in fact— I wanted to see if he’d let that stand. I wanted to prove that I knew at least some small thing about him.

  But he doesn’t follow me. He just drives away. Proving that really, I know nothing at all about Heath Farrow.

  Chapter 13

  I mope for the rest of the day. I darkly like it. There’s something satisfying about self-pity as a form of healing; allowing yourself to wallow in it, knowing that it’ll help you come out the other side. I go all out, ordering delivery pizza and ice cream and Diet Coke, eating the ice cream in the bath, and binge-watching nineties shows on Netflix.

  My phone rings at six o’clock, and for a moment I don’t dare look at the caller ID— what if it’s Heath? I eventually steel myself, and see that it’s not Heath, but my mother.

  “Hey, Mom. What’s up?” I ask, hoping she can’t hear all that self-pity in my voice. If my mother so much as suspects something dramatic is happening in my life, she’ll pry at me until I give it up. I definitely don’t want to deal with that sort of thing right now.

  “Karli, baby— listen. Don’t be upset with me, but I think I might really need to call the police this time,” my mom says. I can hear the fear in her voice, and it’s a testament to how common it is that it doesn’t particularly concern me.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “I think someone might be in the shed out back.”

  “It’s locked, mom. It’s always locked. You can see the padlock from the house.”

  “I know, but what if someone got into it while I was asleep?”

  “Then how would they have put the padlock back up on the outside?”

  “They didn’t. It’s not there,” my mom says, sounding more frantic than before.

  I frown. That is bizarre— I intentionally got a super-giant padlock so she could see it from the house, since I got tired of driving over to confirm the normal sized one was still keeping the shed locked up tight.

  “Are you sure it’s missing?” I ask.

  “Positive. I’m not stupid, Karli, I know when there’s a padlock and when there isn’t,” my mom says, like she’s always been the picture of reasonability.

  “Okay,” I sigh. “I’ll come over now.”

  “You don’t think I should call the police?”

  “No, mom. I’ll come meet you.”

  “Be careful coming to the front door—“

  “Got it,” I say, and hang up.

  Call me selfish, but this is not the end to my pity party I wanted. Especially since I’d bet hard cash that the padlock is there, she just can’t see it in the dusk-light.

  I throw on sweatpants and a t-shirt and drive to my mom’s, purposely avoiding the route that takes me past where Heath and I met. When I arrive, I see her parting the blinds so she can watch me approach the front door. I wave my arms instead to indicate I’m going to go check the shed first.

  The backyard used to be a seriously magnificent flower garden, then kind that would be super Instagram worthy if my mom were the type to use Instagram. It’s all dead now, though. A few perennials have made it through a half decade’s worth of abandonment, but the remainder of the beds are just raised piles of dirt and pine straw. In the very back of the yard is a small shed where all my mother’s gardening equipment is still stored. She refuses to get rid of it, insisting that she’ll take up gardening again “once this mess with your father is settled”. I’ll believe that when I see it.

  As I near the shed, I realize my mother was right— there’s no padlock on the front door. I frown and go still for a moment, tilting my head, scanning my memory for something that might explain its absence. Was the lawn guy using the shed now? Had I gone out here for something? Had a neighbor needed to bust in to get a wayward cat?

  No, nothing like that, nothing that I could think of. I take a few timid steps forward, then remember my mom is watching me— I don’t want her to see my trepidation, since she’ll magnify it a thousand times over. I walk with my head lifted the rest of the way, and run my fingers across the hook and clasp that the padlock looped through. Nothing on the ground, no tool marks that make me think it was busted off…where the hell is the thing?

  I stare at the door and for a tiny, flick of a moment, allow myself to entertain the idea that mother is onto something. What if someone is in here? My dad’s associates were stupid— they were totally the type to give away their hiding spots by forgetting about a padlock.

  “I know you’re in there,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I’m not mad, but get out. This is stupid.”

  Nothing happens. The door doesn’t open. There’s no scuffle of movement inside.

  “Seriously, man. Come on,” I say, folding my arms.

  I don’t know anyone’s in there, of course, but like hell I’m not going to try this tactic first before opening the door myself. There’s still no change, so I reach forward and pull the padlock clasp out.

  “I’m coming in, and I’ve got a gun. Get your hands up so nothing bad happens,” I say. “Ready? One, two—“

  I yank open the door on tw
o but jump to the side, picturing some sort of mafia-esque scene like a guy with a machine gun on the other side.

  Instead, there’s…a rake. A shovel. The old lawnmower. A few nests from various animals. Bags of grass seed and dirt. Plastic planting bins.

  There’s no one, and the shed isn’t big enough that anyone could be hiding behind or in or under something.

  My relief is so powerful that I laugh, loudly, then turn around and shut the door. What was I thinking? Get it together, Karli. The padlock probably just fell off. Who knows where it went? A missing padlock isn’t the end of the freaking world.

  “It’s nothing,” I tell my mom as I walk into the house. “There’s no sign of anyone in there. No sign of anyone having been in there, in fact— just an old shed.”

  “But what happened to the lock? They don’t just get up and walk away, Karli. Do you think your father—“

  “It probably just fell off, Mom. I dunno, maybe a raccoon grabbed it— they like shiny things, don’t they? Or hey, maybe someone actually was breaking into it— no, wait, don’t freak out— maybe someone who had nothing to do with dad was just looking for some tools to steal and resell and then saw that there’s nothing worth anything in there, you know?”

  “Well, we should call the police about that then, right?” my mom says hopefully, and I can see straight through this ploy to get the police on the phone.

  “Come on, let’s go watch some TV and just relax,” I say, and put an arm around her shoulder. Mom feels more and more like a child when I touch her, like she’s actively growing into herself as the years go by. We sit side by side on the couch and turn on some terrible house buying show. I make a point of commentating on the participants’ terrible choices, just to try to get her mind on something else.

  “Have you had dinner?” I ask when it’s nearing eight o’clock.

  “Oh! I suppose I overlooked eating,” my mom says. This is ridiculous— I have seriously never forgotten about food— but she finally sounds cheerful, so I don’t comment. “Do you want me to make you something?” she asks.

  “Maybe a salad if you’ve got the ingredients?” I say. My body is currently a sludge of sugar and salt on account of the earlier pity party, and while I regret nothing, vegetables suddenly sound amazing.

  “I think I can pull something salad-like together,” my mom says, then disappears into the kitchen. I watch the first few moments of the next house buying show— which is exactly like the last five thousand, only it’s set at the beach— then mute the television for the home buyer introductions, which have grown tiresome.

  It’s during this silence that I hear something. Something that isn’t the noise of my mom chopping up vegetables or opening drawers in the kitchen. It’s some sort of click, maybe, or a bump, and it’s coming from the opposite end of the house.

  I frown at it, but then remind myself that it’s going to be a pinecone hitting the roof, or a rat in the attic. But there was something particularly heavy about the noise, and so when I hear it again, I get to my feet.

  I investigate the back bedrooms. It’s not that I’m brave, it’s that I want to prove to myself that there’s nothing to be concerned about. I wander through the rooms, pausing to listen for the noise again, but there’s nothing…

  So it had to be a pinecone, right?

  I shake my head at myself and head back to the living room before my mother realizes I was gone. When I arrive, I realize that the noises in the kitchen have stopped. I hurry toward the fluorescent-lit space to see my mother couched down below the counters.

  “Get down!” she hisses at me. “Karli, get down!”

  “Mom—“

  “Get down!” she snaps, and I drop to the floor, below the counter line. “I think there’s someone in the back yard, by the shed. I heard him.”

  Somehow, seeing my mom worried doesn’t agitate my own fear, but rather, quells it. She’s always afraid, and it’s never more than a shadow— so that’s all this is, right? She probably heard the same noise as me, and statistically, anything she hears turns out to be nothing.

  “Why are we on the floor?” I ask.

  “I don’t know if he saw me in here. With the lights on you can see straight into the kitchen! I should have put blinds on these windows, too,” she says, dismayed.

  “No, mom. It’s fine. Here,” I say, and edge over to the wall. I reach up and flick the lights off, plunging us into relative darkness. I stand up and offer my mom a hand; she warily takes it, and we both stare out the kitchen window toward the shed.

  “See?” my mom says, voice rocky. My eyebrows lift. She’s pointing at the shed— the shed I was investigating only a few hours before— and the door is open. There’s no wind, really, so it’s merely hanging wide like an old book’s front cover. The back yard is totally dark, so I can’t make out anything more in the pale moonlight.

  “It’s nothing,” I say.

  “It’s open,” she argues. “I saw you close it.”

  I did close it. I closed it and turned the latch on the padlock catch. Even without a padlock, it shouldn’t have been able to open wide like that.

  We both leap backward when suddenly, the backyard is flooded in bright light— the security lights have clicked on. They’re motion activated, but there’s no tell-tale stray cat or possum moseying through the grass. All I see is a flicker of movement, of something large and dark, that vanishes from view just as quickly as I register its presence. My eyes leap to my mother. She didn’t see it.

  But I did, and now I can’t just dismiss the noise and the shed and the lights as paranoia. Something is out there. I’m not saying it’s a person, I’m not saying it’s anything to do with my dad, but something is out there.

  “Should we call the police?” my mother asks worriedly.

  “I—“ I swallow. If I call the police now, and they find nothing in the yard, my mother is going to use it as justification to call the police for the next year and a half at least. It took ages for me to get her to call me rather than the cops. I can’t risk all the progress we’ve made on what is surely, surely just some wayward Labrador.

  But what if it’s not a Labrador? What if my gut is churning and aching because it’s desperate for me to trust it, for me to trust my mom, for me to recognize danger when it’s literally outside the door?

  “No,” I say. “No, I don’t think it’s that serious. But I’ll call someone to come check things out, okay?”

  “Who? Don’t put anyone else in danger, Karli. You know your father—“

  “No one’s going to be in danger,” I say. Then close my eyes. “Unless there really is someone out there. Then he might be.”

  “Okay,” my mother says, wringing her hands. “Who are you calling? Do they have a gun?”

  “Probably,” I say, grimacing. “But I doubt he needs it.”

  Chapter 14

  I don’t realize until after telling my mom that I was calling for help that I’ve never actually talked to Heath on the phone. Does he even answer his phone? He didn’t answer my text, which doesn’t bode particularly well…

  But I call anyhow, turning away from my mom, breathing in slow, even breaths to keep myself from freaking out about both Heath and the potential creeper outside.

  The phone rings. Rings. Rings.

  It goes to voicemail.

  I manage to keep my sigh of frustration to myself as I leave a message. “Hi, it’s me— it’s Karli. I’m at my mom’s and was just wondering if you might be able to swing by and take a look at things. I’m sure it’s nothing, but a light went off outside and there was this thing with the shed— I just. You know, if you get this, send me a text, I guess. Okay. Bye.”

  I don’t mention anything about our argument today, about me sprinting away from him. I can’t— because for starters, I know my mom is listening, and secondly, I know if I start down that road I’ll end up in another calorie-laden pity party.

  “He didn’t answer?” my mom asks.

  “No,
but I’m sure he’ll message back,” I lie.

  “Who is he? Do I know him? Is it someone from your high school?”

  “He’s a Navy SEAL. He’s here on leave. I only met him a few days ago—“

  “Did you ask the lawyer to background check him?”

  “No, mom, and I don’t need to since he’s been overseas on deployment and the SEALS do all those background checks anyway, much more intense ones than the lawyer could do. He’s going back on deployment soon, actually.”

  “And how did you meet him?” my mother asks, hand-wringing again. Am I glad she’s no longer focused on the happenings outside, or horrified that she’s asking about Heath? I can’t decide.

  “At Bella’s house. Remember Jack from high school? They’re friends. They were in basic training together for the Navy.”

  “Oh. Well. That sounds nice. Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No, mom.”

  “Are you sexually active with him?”

  “Oh my god, I want this conversation to stop.”

  “Honey, I just want you to be safe! You know I don’t regret you the tiniest bit, but I do regret that you had to be brought into this world with a man like your father as your…well. Father. You need to make sure that when you choose to engage in sexual intercourse—“

  “Mom, I swear to you, I will walk out of this house right now and sleep in the shed if you keep this conversation going,” I say, and I seriously mean it. I think I’d take on one of my dad’s released jail friends over another instance of my mom uttering the words “sexual intercourse.”

  My mom purses her lips together, almost opens them, then scowls at me. Thankfully, my phone rings just then. It’s Heath.

  “Karli,” he says when I answer. “I got your message.”

  “Yeah, hey,” I say slowly. “So, my mom is right here, and we were just wondering—“

  “We’re on our way over,” he says, voice authoritarian and strict. “Stay inside when we arrive. Front door, back door— do you have a basement or a crawl space?”

  “Um, there’s a crawl space around back. It’s not really much of anything though. You can’t even stand up—“