Tunnel Vision

by Aric Davis

  The page comes through a couple minutes later, but I have to shake myself out of the fog I was in. The zero is my safe place. It’s dark, black, and bleak, but that’s the best place to go when you’re scared. Remembering you came from nothing and every day is a blessing is a fine place to be, especially in times like this. The buzzing in my pocket snaps me out of it, though, and I know I’m on the right path.

  Paul answers on the first ring, there’s silence, and then words out of a dream. “Riverside Park, right now, alone,” says Paul.

  He couldn’t have picked a more perfect place. I say, “I’ll be there,” and then the phone goes dead. I shove it back in my pocket, then pat the trailer twice on the roof, like I’m rewarding a loyal dog. I need this plan to work, and if I’m lucky the rest will just fall into place. Giving it one last look, I climb atop my bike, hit the clicker on the garage, and roll onto dusky streets. This is my world.

  I make the park in about twenty minutes, and I’m happy to see when I hit Riverside that not only is it deserted, but dusk has turned to full dark. I’m sure that this was what Paul wanted, too: a nice quiet place to lowball me on money and make threats, but I’m ready for him. I have threats of my own, and even though he can’t see it, I’ve got a big hammer poised and ready.

  Lights flicker in the parking lot where Lou picked me up four years ago with a gunshot wound in my arm, and it feels like a homecoming. I can see a van with two people standing by it. Paul said come alone, but I guess that rule didn’t cover him.

  I see the lumps in their clothing as I roll up—barely concealed guns. There’s nothing I can do but ride right up to them.

  “Look at this shit,” says Paul. I think he figured his friend would laugh at the joke, but he doesn’t and an uncomfortable silence fills the air. He knows there’s no joke. I brought the stuff they want, and he’s only messing around because somehow this kid rolling up on a bike for his deal makes him feel like less of a man. It’s a small victory. He keeps flogging the joke: “What, you babysitting?”

  I shake my head as I step off the bike. “Not yet. Everything’s in the trailer.”

  Paul nods at his guy, and the dude comes over to give the stuff a look. He fiddles with the zippers on the trailer for a minute, finally figures it out, and then pulls the door open and sticks his head in.

  “Four bales,” says the guy, his voice muffled, and Paul smiles.

  “Get it.”

  The buddy grabs some dope, walks it to the van, and then rolls on back. No one has mentioned money yet. He’s just unloading my stuff and walking to the van, and I’m not sure if I should remind Paul this is a two-way street.

  It’s Paul who brings it up, though. “We never talked money,” he says. “You know what that means?”

  “It means we need a number.”

  “Yeah, we do,” he says with a chuckle, and I want to punch him in the throat. I don’t, though. I just stand pat, waiting for the bad news to drop.

  “I can do $5,000 on this,” says Paul, and I nod slowly. It’s not a bad price, but he and I both know the pot’s worth a lot more, especially once it’s broken down to street prices. Still, it’s a good lump sum, and I need the money for the house. “Go weigh that shit in the van,” he calls to the other man, and Paul’s crony disappears into the back of the vehicle.

  “$5,000 will work,” I say. “This time. Next time it’s going to need to be more.”

  “We’ll see how long this takes to move, Nickel. Might be less, might be more. Time will tell.” We turn as the other man pops out of the van.

  “Fifteen pounds, man, right on the money.”

  “Excellent,” says Paul with a nod. He shoves his right hand into a pocket on his jacket, and when he takes it out there’s a roll of money. Banded twenties have never looked so good. He hands it over, and I make the cash disappear without counting it. That will come later. “All right, Nickel. You let me know when you can do this again.”

  “One more thing,” I say, and Paul turns to look at me, irritation visible in his eyes. “There was a kid staying at that house with you, and he didn’t look good. Will you make sure—”

  “I’m not staying there no more,” says Paul. “We pulled out yesterday, as a matter of fact. Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”

  “So the kid—”

  “What the hell?” Paul’s getting annoyed. “Why the hell are we talking about this bitch and her kid?”

  I keep my voice even. “Because the kid looked messed up to me. The mom, too, but that’s not—”

  “I’ll say the mom’s messed up,” Paul says with a toxic laugh. “Likes the nose candy way too much. Caught a bad blow-cold. That was her laid up on the floor the last time you were there.” He squints at me like he honestly can’t imagine why I’d care about any of this. “Listen, don’t worry your bleeding heart, Nickel. Either she’ll come around or the kid will eventually catch wise and head to the neighbors. All I know is I wasn’t going to stick around to hold her hand.” He shakes his head, and I force myself to stay calm. “Dumb bitch, but hey, junkies are junkies.” He’s smiling that smile that makes me want to rip his throat out. “So hey, Nickel, if our little social services talk is over, I’m going to bounce. Let me know when you want to make some more money.”

  He’s in the van and gone just a few moments later, and I’m left staring into the night. The money is a hard lump in my pocket, but I don’t care about that right now.

  I walk back to the bike and board it. My thoughts are on that little boy on the stairs, and on Sam and the small hole in the snowy ground. I start pedaling, the trailer behind me fifteen pounds lighter, and I’m rolling without looking back. The night is here now, but I still have one more thing to do before I can go home.

  I make it to the house where I’d met up with Paul in a little under a half hour. Not bad for biking in the dark, but I’m already tired of the trailer.

  I park in the driveway. It does look like Paul and all his buddies have pulled out, just like he said—at least, all of the showy cars from before are gone. I tell myself all I need to do is knock. A good, simple ending. Knock, find the little guy and his mom, either get them to go for some help or make sure some help goes to them. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, though.

  Enough negativity. Enough paranoia. I knock on the door three times, try the bell, and then give the knob a spin.

  The door opens, and I slide inside and walk down the same hallway Rio led me down last time I was here, doing my best to be quiet. The house is still and silent, but I’m beyond paranoid that trouble is going to roar out of the darkness. I slip into the space between the kitchen and the living room. The TV, Xbox, and everything but the mess has disappeared from the living room. When I look into the kitchen I sigh, like I really expected that woman would still be lying there.

  I head to the stairs. They’re dark, but I can see the coloring book is still on the landing. My nerves feel electric, and as I head up the stairs my optimism for a happy ending is sinking. I’m just some dumb kid, I shouldn’t even be here, but I am and that’s all that matters.

  There’re no lights on upstairs, either. I want to pull the flashlight from my pocket but I don’t. I’m still not convinced I’m alone. There are three doors off the upstairs hall, but only one of them is closed and that’s the one I go to, giving only the most cursory looks into the other two.

  As I try the knob, I know it won’t spin, but it does, and the door swings open. It’s dark, but I can see shapes. A bed with a lump on it, a dark mass on the floor that I don’t want to look at. My heart feels like it’s going to explode when the lump on the bed stirs. The darkness makes it impossible to tell what it is, but then it all makes sense.

  I take a step into the room and say, “It’s OK, buddy. Come here.”

  The boy does, the boy from the steps. He’s shaking, probably starved half to death on top of everything else that’s happened. He slips off the bed and skirts the shadowy mass on the floor, and when
I pick him up it feels like picking up a bunch of sticks. This is what real skin and bones feels like. I leave the room with him in my arms, and the boy is crying against my chest.

  “It’s OK,” I say, but I know it isn’t. The boy’s mother is dead in that room, and he’s been sitting in there with her, probably praying that she’d wake up. I know that was her on the floor. I couldn’t help but look at her when I bent down to pick him up. Even in the darkness I can see the bruises on her face and on her throat, black ones, along with a mask of blood on the lower half of her face. I take a deep breath, absorb the rage, and then say, “I’m Nickel, what’s your name?”

  “Ben,” he says, and we go down the stairs together, and then leave the house.

  I’m not going to tell you what I said to Ben when I put him in the trailer, because that’s for us, the lost children, but I think he understood.

  I was a kid like that, and Dad found me. I have a place where Ben can go, to a friend of mine who would be even harsher to Paul and his friends than I want to be. I get pedaling and head there. I know he’ll be there—he always is when I need him—and I know what he’ll say when I introduce him to Ben. “Vou encontrar-lhe um lugar.” I’ll find him a place.

  Just as important, this business with Paul is now a lot bigger than money. I could have taken care of him when we made the deal, I know that, but I’ll find another way. I have to. It’s bad for business for another doper to disappear, bad for me to be attached to it, but none of that matters anymore. Sam in the snow, Ben in my arms, Dad teaching me what was right and wrong. Paul has a debt, and I’m going to collect on it.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The day after Betty’s discharge from the hospital was hell. Ophelia took the day off of painting, and Andrea even took a personal day from her job. The moms crowded her like they never had before, too much for her to do even as much as e-mail Nickel or text her friends to let them know what had happened. Not that Betty had much doubt about their knowledge of what had taken place. It would have been impossible to think the story hadn’t raged through the high school like a midsummer wildfire.

  People are going to know about it, and you’re going to have to accept that.

  Betty had rolled the words over and over in her head, but by the time she was actually driving to school two days after the attack, the advice no longer seemed relevant.

  She knew people were going to talk, and she knew she was going to hate it. Not that stories like hers didn’t turn out a lot worse on a pretty frequent basis. She’d have known that even if Andrea hadn’t drilled it into her head. It was hard to feel lucky, though, knowing that her name was going to be in everyone’s mouth. Her head didn’t look that bad, but she did have a wicked black eye, along with a few scrapes from landing on the pavement.

  Betty let these thoughts tumble through her mind like clothes in the spin cycle as she drove to school, but it wasn’t until she was pulling into the lot that she had the revelation that this was exactly the sort of abuse Mandy had gone through. It had all turned out worse for June’s aunt, of course, but had it started with just a random act of cruelty? The conclusions Betty had settled on at the prison now seemed childish. Duke had cared for Mandy, but what did that have to do with anything? After all, Jake had cared for her, and he could have easily killed her if she’d fallen on her head wrong. Or if Nickel hadn’t been there.

  Betty parked and walked into the school. She could see a gaggle of freshman girls talking behind their hands, but she paid them no mind. Even if they hadn’t been freshmen, Betty had bigger fish to fry, but that would have to wait until fourth period. Right now all she had to do was survive and not make a spectacle of herself.

  The halls didn’t become quiet as Betty walked into the school, but there was a lull in the cacophony typically present by the junior lockers. Betty tried to ignore the drop in noise and was comfortable enough to lock eyes with anyone who stared at her too intently. In every case but one, the owner of the too-curious eyes pulled her gaze away. The last one was June.

  “Oh my God,” said June as she grabbed Betty’s arm and dragged her through the packed hallway.

  Somehow her friend’s interest had lessened their peers’ interest in the high school spectacle, and Betty felt so thankful for June grabbing her that she wanted to burst into tears. Instead of crying, she said, “Thanks for coming to get me. They’re like a bunch of piranha that smell blood.”

  “Nothing new about that,” said June. “C’mon, I’ll walk you to first period and you can fill me in on what exactly happened.”

  “Oh God,” said Betty, “I’m not sure I want to tell you or anyone else. But anyway, I can’t tell you jack until fourth period.”

  “I knew it,” said June, her grin more appropriate for a shark than a best friend. “I totally guessed it. I wish I had some money riding on him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking about who could have given Jake Norton a run for his money,” June explained, “and there was only one name that came to mind. How bad was it?”

  “Well, my head still hurts,” said Betty, “but it hasn’t been long enough for—”

  “I don’t mean that,” June interrupted. “I mean the ass whipping Nickel put on Jake. How bad are we talking? Like, I get that it was hospital bad, but—”

  “Oh my God,” said Betty after recovering enough from what June was saying in front of all of these people to speak. “You need to shut up immediately. We can’t talk about him, and we can never talk about him like this.”

  “But—”

  “Fourth period. Not another word about this until fourth period.”

  June nodded, and then mimed zipping her lips, fastening them with a key, and pitching the imaginary key over her shoulder.

  Betty smiled at the purse-lipped June, and the two of them burst into laughter as the bell rang to signal the beginning of first period.

  “I’ve been waiting all day,” said June, “so spill.”

  They were sitting at their usual place at the back of the library. Two of the library’s recently-updated-but-still-outdated desktop computers were fired up to various pages littered with information on the Duke case, but neither of them was looking at the computers.

  “I don’t suppose I have a choice in the matter?”

  “Oh, hell no,” said June. “I want to hear about the knight in shining armor, so make with the goods.”

  Betty shook her head, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. She’d gotten a concussion, Jake had been badly beaten, and Nickel could’ve gotten into some really serious trouble. And, weirdly, the idea of Nickel getting in trouble was even scarier than any injury she herself could have incurred without his timely interruption.

  “I met Nickel in the park to talk about going to the house where Mandy died,” she said. “We were walking back up from the bench, and then I saw Jake in the parking lot. He was waiting by my car, pacing back and forth, and when he saw Nickel and me he raced over to us. I tried to get between them, mostly so I could talk some sense into Jake, but before I could even really say anything, Jake punched me in the side of the head.”

  “What a piece of shit,” said June. “Seriously.”

  “Pretty much,” said Betty, “but what happened next was crazy. Nickel basically ruined Jake. He was kicking his legs and dancing around him, and then he kicked him right in the balls and Jake fell over and started screaming. I was almost to my car, and when I looked back, I turned to see Nickel kick Jake in the mouth really hard.” Betty swallowed thickly. “It was pretty gross.”

  “So are the cops looking for Nickel?”

  Betty shook her head. “No. I told them I didn’t know who helped me, and Andrea pressured the cop to let it go. It blew away the detective I talked to the other day. Jake had been telling him a story about how we had been hanging out and got mugged. I think Jake thought I would be too messed up to remember anything.”

  “That’s horrible,” said June, and the look on her face made it
clear she meant it.

  “Yeah, pretty much. The only positive thing to take away from it is that because the moms both had to take a day off to see me at the hospital, and then another one to stay with me at home, they’re going to be superbusy at work. I promised them I was done with adventures, but all I’ve been able to think about since Jake hit me is the house where Mandy died, and about Duke.”

  “What about Duke?”

  “You know how we both came away from the prison thinking he was innocent? I think I might have changed my mind. Just because Duke loved Mandy doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt her. In fact, that could just provide even more evidence it was him. There probably isn’t much left of Duke and Mandy in that house, but I still want to look inside. Are you still game?”

  “Yes, all the way.”

  “Good,” said Betty with a smile, the grin causing a ripple of pain to flow through her face. Even now I can’t be happy because of Jake. In that moment Betty hated him more than any person she’d ever met, but she still felt sympathy for him. Jake had let his temper destroy his foreseeable future, and even though she had been hurt, Jake was going to be the one to feel the real pain. The physical wounds would heal quickly, but if he happened to be charged as an adult, the rest of his life was going to wear an asterisk next to it. Betty frowned, making the pain flare up again, and then said, “June, did you ever talk to your dad?”

  “No. Maybe tonight.”

  “But probably not, right?”

  “Yeah, probably not,” said June. “Besides, my dad is going to be useless compared to what could be in the house. He might not know anything at all about what happened, or like most things with my dad, he’ll have some awful theory or tell us about how Mandy deserved it, and that he still thinks so.”