Empty

by Suzanne Weyn

  So far, no one had even noticed that her mother had split. Gwen did an excellent forgery of her mother’s handwriting when a signature was required, not that she thought anyone really checked. If neighbors realized she and Luke were on their own, they weren’t getting involved. Her house was close to the development where Tom lived, but that was separated by the hedges. The nearest house on her side was easily an acre away.

  Hector was the only one who knew for sure that her mother didn’t live with her, but Gwen trusted him. And it helped that he was so off the grid. Who would he even tell?

  A twig snapped below the roof, and Gwen was instantly on her knees, peering into the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” she asked.

  “Gwen?”

  A dark form appeared from the side of the house, and Gwen recognized it. “Tom?”

  Tom stepped closer, into a pool of moonlight, and Gwen gasped. A stream of blood ran from his right nostril. A purple bruise was forming around his left eye. The shoulder seam of his varsity jacket was torn.

  Gwen quickly crawled to the edge of the roof and he joined her there. He reeked of smoke and gasoline.

  Had he come to see her because he needed help? If so, why her?

  “What happened to you?” she asked, impulsively raising her hand to stroke his bruise, then thinking better of it. “You’re bleeding.”

  Tom brushed the red stream from his nose, glancing at his stained hand a moment before wiping it on his jeans. “There was a big fight at the bonfire,” he explained, sniffing back blood. “Guys from the Marietta team were stealing gas from our tanks.”

  Gwen hissed a curse. “Like those kids can’t afford to buy it. I thought they had all the fuel in the world over there.”

  Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. But two Marietta guys started whaling on Carlos, so I had to jump in to even the score.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Not really,” Tom disagreed with bitter laughter. “I was getting the snot kicked out of me. Good thing the cops came when they did. Everyone ran when they showed.”

  “Want to come inside to clean up?” Gwen offered.

  “Maybe later. Is your brother home?”

  So he hadn’t come to find her, after all.

  “Why?” Gwen asked, trying to keep her voice even enough to mask her hurt feelings.

  “I walked here from the school. My truck is stuck there; some jerk stole all the gasoline right out of my tank.”

  “How did you find my house?” Gwen asked.

  “A guy at a gas station told me where I could get some black market gas and gave me directions. When he told me I should ask for Luke, I realized I was going to your house.” He looked toward the wall of bushes at the back of her small yard. “Hey, you live right behind me.”

  Gwen grinned. He had only just realized it—and after she’d been watching him from her perch on the roof for so long. “Is that right?” she replied drily. “What do you know?”

  Tom missed her sarcasm altogether. “Yeah, we’re neighbors. Sort of. If you go behind those trees, you could see right into my yard.”

  “Huh,” she grunted. “That’s funny. Imagine that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much gas did those guys take from you?” Gwen asked.

  “I had a nearly full tank, and they took it all. It took me hours to find the gas today, too. And when I did, I had to wait on line for two more hours. I don’t even want to tell you how much it cost me. My mom is going to seriously freak out. The last thing we need is this.”

  “A whole tank of gas jacked right out of your truck,” Gwen sympathized sincerely. “Man, that’s low!”

  “No kidding. So, is Luke around?”

  “I’m not sure where Luke is,” Gwen told him, trying to dodge the pang of disappointment she felt. For a few minutes there, she had allowed herself to continue to imagine he had come to the house to see her, even though she knew he hadn’t. “He went out with his friends a little while ago.”

  “I don’t have any money to pay him right now. But I could get it to him by the end of the week. My windshield got smashed in the fight, and I just want to get the thing home before anything more happens to it.”

  Luke wasn’t inclined to give anything on credit or faith. Gwen sighed, wondering how she could help Tom.

  “Do you have a gas container?” she asked.

  Tom picked up the red canister he’d set at his feet.

  Gwen took it from him. “Wait here.” If she poured a little from each of Luke’s containers, it would fill Tom’s canister and her brother would never miss it.

  “Will Luke mind that I can’t pay him right away?” Tom asked. “I don’t want him to be mad at you.”

  “If I do this right, you won’t have to pay him at all,” Gwen said as she pulled the red gas can into her bedroom window behind her. If Luke was going to say the law no longer applied, he was fair game like everyone else.

  NORTH COUNTRY NEWS

  U.S. Seizes Venezuelan Refineries; American Refineries Bombed in Retaliation

  …Only 149 American-owned refineries remain in the United States, 26 fewer than existed in the 1990s. Most of these oil refineries are owned by the top ten American oil companies. It is here that oil is pumped from the ground and processed into gasoline.

  Although President Waters has decried the bombing of three refineries in the last week, experts speculate that the loss will not significantly hinder the war effort since approximately only 30 percent of America’s oil supply comes from these refineries, with the remaining 70 percent of crude oil coming from the Middle East, South America, and Canada. Canada, once the second-leading supplier of oil, has lately reported severe depletions. Canadian tar sands have not yielded the expected supply. There is speculation, too, that Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and, indeed, even Venezuela have been grossly overestimating their supply. Some analysts have suggested that the world may be completely out of oil in the next ten to twenty years.

  Junior Senator Thomas Rambling (D-MA) has called for an end to the fighting, stating, “We are fighting over something that does not even exist anymore: oil. The Venezuelans are bluffing. They only want to solidify their position as a world power in the coming reorganization of alliances that will surely follow the realization that the world is out of oil.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Tom and Gwen sat on a dark hill on the far side of the high school’s outdoor track and watched the police activity down in the parking lot. The red canister of gasoline sat on the grass between them. Tom leaned forward, watching the police talk to various students. It was difficult to see from this distance exactly which students were still there. Most of them had run when the police had shown up.

  “Why don’t we just go down and put this gas in your truck?” Gwen said. “You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?”

  “What if they ask where I got the gasoline?” Tom replied.

  “Say you bought it at a station.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any one.”

  Tom shook his head. “A lot of them are closed. If I pick the wrong one, they’ll know I’m lying.”

  “Hmm.”

  “See what I mean?” Tom said. “Also…they might be looking for me.”

  Gwen looked up at him sharply. “You? Why?”

  “A Marietta guy was about to hit Carlos with a tire iron, and I yanked it out of the guy’s hand. When I did, it flew out of my hand and sailed into a window of Mr. Davenport’s SUV.”

  Gwen cringed. “Mr. Davenport, the principal?”

  “Yep.”

  Gwen blew out a low, shrill whistle. “Glad I’m not you.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Tom said, but found his lips twisting into a baleful grin despite the seriousness of his situation. She was a funny girl sometimes, with her wry, bleak view of things. “Nice whistle, by the way,” he added.

  “Thanks.” She flopped down flat with her legs bent. “Are we going to be here
all night, do you think?”

  “Just wait a little longer and I’ll drive you home,” Tom suggested. He would have told Gwen that she didn’t have to wait there with him, but it was late and angry Marietta kids were still driving around looking to pick fights. It wouldn’t be safe for her to walk home alone.

  “Who’d you go to the bonfire with?” Gwen asked casually.

  “Niki Barton.”

  Gwen sat up straight again. “Do you really like her?”

  “Yeah. Don’t you?”

  “No,” Gwen said, shaking her head and picking at a moon-rimmed blade of grass. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t find her again after the fight. She’s not picking up her phone, either. Somebody told me she might have gotten a ride from some Marietta cheerleaders. She’s been staying at her lake house over there.”

  “Oh, how fancy of her! Nice of Niki to stick around to see if you were okay,” Gwen quipped sourly.

  “It’s all right. There was a lot of confusion.”

  The sound of slamming doors alerted them that the police were getting back into their cars. (There were only three police cars left on the whole squad, so this was clearly a big deal in Sage Valley tonight.) A van probably driven by someone’s parent arrived, and the remaining students climbed in.

  About thirty parked, empty vehicles remained in the parking lot, nearly half of them with broken windows. “Let’s go,” Tom said, getting to his feet and lifting the gas-filled canister.

  Gwen scrambled up alongside him, and keeping to the darkest parts of the grassy hill, they made their way down toward the truck.

  When they got near it, Tom cringed at the gash someone had gouged into the right door.

  “At least your side windows are okay,” Gwen pointed out, taking in the sight of his smashed windshield.

  Tom grunted in agreement as he opened the small door to his gas tank and began pouring in the fuel. They climbed into the front seats and Tom turned the ignition key.

  The engine revved, then sputtered.

  Tom swore under his breath.

  The second time he tried, the engine roared to life. Tom drove out of his parking space just as a police cruiser turned into the drive to the school. “Say you already had the gas. You don’t remember where you got it,” Gwen coached.

  The patrol car came alongside and Tom rolled down the truck window. The officer got out of his car and shone a flashlight’s beam into the truck, forcing Tom to squint against its glare. “Just picking up my dad’s truck, Officer,” Tom explained.

  “Out of the truck, please. License and registration,” the officer commanded in a matter-of-fact tone. “You, too, miss. Out of the truck, please.”

  His heart banging in his chest, Tom stepped down from the driver’s seat. Would he be connected to the damage to Principal Davenport’s SUV? Did the policeman suspect that he was using stolen gasoline?

  Tom took the requested identifications from his wallet and showed them to the police officer, who perused them critically. “Have either of you been drinking or taking any kind of drug this evening?” the officer asked.

  “No, sir,” Tom replied emphatically.

  “No,” Gwen mumbled.

  The officer stepped closer to Gwen and sniffed. “Why do I smell gasoline on you?”

  “I slipped in a puddle of it earlier this evening,” Gwen lied quickly. “It’s spilled all over the place,” she added, gesturing at the oily splotches that now stained the parking lot.

  He looked her up and down. “Would you breathe out for me, miss?”

  “I told you, I haven’t been drinking.”

  “That’s not what I’m checking for,” the officer insisted. “Breathe out, please.”

  Gwen’s breath formed a cloud in front of her face and the officer leaned toward it. Then he straightened once more and took a pad from his back pocket. “Name and address, please.”

  “Rae Gonzalez. 57 Dartmouth Street, Sage Valley,” Gwen lied.

  “Get back in the truck, please. Wait there.”

  “You’re a fast thinker,” Tom commented when he and Gwen were once again in the truck’s front seat.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to tell him the truth, was I?” she replied.

  “No. I’m just saying—you’re pretty cool under pressure.”

  “Thanks. Why was he checking my breath, if it wasn’t for alcohol?”

  “He wanted to know if you’d been sucking up gasoline,” Tom told her.

  “What?” Gwen asked incredulously.

  When Tom had first come down to the parking lot, he realized that some of the Marietta guys were getting the gas out of the tanks using black rubber tubes, which they were sucking air from and then sticking into a fuel tank’s opening. The vacuum created by sucking the air from the tube drew the gas out of the fuel tank and into a container. He explained to Gwen how it worked. “It’s basic science, like when you draw liquid up in a straw.”

  “Why would that make my breath smell like gas?” Gwen asked.

  “Those guys were using the same tube over and over. After a while, there was so much gas residue in the tubes that they were sucking it in. You should have seen them. They were belching like crazy—sickening gas burps.”

  Gwen scrunched her face in disgust. “Glad I missed that. Someone should have lit a match in front of one of the guys when he burped. That would have scared the snot out of him.”

  Tom chuckled. “I’d like to see that.”

  “And this cop thought I was sucking up gasoline?”

  Tom smiled at her revulsion and shrugged his shoulders. “He smelled gas on you. It makes sense, I guess.”

  The police officer came back from his car and returned Tom’s paperwork to him. “Who worked you over like that, son?”

  “I was trying to leave when some guys jumped me. I didn’t know them.”

  “So they were from Marietta?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you see who broke any of the windows on your truck and these other vehicles?”

  Tom shook his head. “I heard crashing, but I didn’t see who was doing it.” In truth, he didn’t know who had smashed his windshield. He could have given the officer at least five names of Sage Valley guys he saw whaling on Marietta-owned cars and trucks, but he wasn’t about to turn in his friends, and he hoped his classmates felt the same, since his name would be among those reported.

  In this fight, the Sage Valley kids had stuck together. If it hadn’t been for Brock pulling one guy from his back, Tom didn’t know what would have happened to him. His injuries would certainly be a lot worse right now. He hoped that sense of camaraderie would last through the police questioning that was sure to follow.

  “All right, you can go,” the officer said. “But there’s a good chance that someone will be coming by your home with further questions.”

  “No problem, Officer. Thank you,” Tom said.

  The policeman stepped back, allowing Tom to drive forward. “I wonder if you should have given that phony name and address,” Tom considered, turning toward Gwen. She might have gotten herself into trouble and there was still time to turn back and correct it. “What if they check and come after you?”

  “They’d have to find me first,” Gwen replied.

  “Sage Valley isn’t that big. You wouldn’t be impossible to find. And they know you were with me.”

  “They won’t bother,” Gwen insisted.

  Tom glanced at her from the corner of his eye as he drove out the school’s front entrance. Despite her words, she looked worried. Gwen wasn’t as tough as she tried to pretend; he’d gradually realized that in the course of talking to her at school. He wondered why she felt the need to throw up such a harsh front and remembered the rumors about her mother being gone. That had to be rough on her.

  They were on Creek Road near the trailer park and about to turn up toward her house when Tom noticed an odd glow in the night sky. The moment he rolled down his window, acrid, smoky air wafted
into the truck. “Something’s on fire,” he said, alarmed. “Maybe we should turn back.”

  “Don’t turn back,” Gwen said. “I want to see what’s burning.”

  “I don’t think it’s safe,” Tom objected, backing into Birchwood Lane and then turning in the opposite direction on Creek Road. They had to be crazy to drive straight into a fire emergency. “Let’s go to my house and see what we can tell from there.”

  “All right,” Gwen agreed, sounding reluctant.

  They were nearing his driveway when they heard the first fire sirens. “It sounds big,” Tom remarked. He knew that various Sage Valley volunteer firefighters responded or didn’t, depending on how many siren blasts they heard. It sounded like all of them would be running for their blue-light-equipped cars tonight.

  His mother was standing on the sidewalk, in her pink winter jacket and clutching a box. Quickly pulling to the curb, he leapt from the truck and ran to her. “What’s happening, Mom? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but the house behind ours is up in flames,” his mother said, her voice cracking with fear. “I grabbed this box of family photos and ran outside. Just pray it doesn’t spread.”

  Gwen came out of the truck and joined him. “That’s my house,” she murmured.

  “No,” he said. But maybe it was. “Are you sure?”

  Without waiting for her reply, Tom stepped into his driveway to check. Sparks, like fireworks, blew up over the high hedge at the back of his yard. By the time he was halfway up the driveway, he could feel the wall of heat.

  The fire sirens suddenly grew loud on his street. Turning, he realized they were pulling in front of his house.

  A firefighter in a yellow slicker appeared at the end of the driveway. “Do you own that truck?” he demanded of Tom.

  “Yes.”

  “You have to move it. More trucks are coming. We’re going to soak all this property back here and hope it doesn’t catch.”