Kryptonite

by Lesley Choyce

  “You really going to buy it or just steal it?”

  “Whichever you prefer.”

  Chapter Five

  The coffee shop was noisy and crowded. I thought the girl behind the counter was ignoring us, so I waved to get her attention.

  “Two espressos, black.” I guess I almost shouted it. I hate having to wait for anything.

  The girl gave me a dirty look, but she got us our drinks. I tossed a five-dollar bill at her and led Abby to a table.

  “You always in such a hurry?” she asked.

  “She was ignoring us, and it pissed me off.”

  “No she wasn’t.”

  I could see I wasn’t making a very good impression. I took a deep breath. “Sorry. Just nervous, I guess. I get nervous around beautiful girls.”

  “Cut the crap,” said Abby as she sipped her espresso. She squinched up her face. “What is this shit anyway?”

  “Strong coffee in a little cup. Like they do in Europe.”

  “So you’re…what? Like, a man of the world? A shoe thief who’s traveled far and wide?”

  “You’re not afraid to be hanging out with a criminal?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re only a shoplifter.”

  “Maybe I’m just honing my skills for bigger things.”

  “Oh, so now I should be impressed?”

  I laughed. “You seem to know a lot about me. What about you? Where do you go to school?”

  “I quit last year. School just wasn’t working out for me.” She now looked embarrassed.

  “School can be a pain in the ass,” I said.

  “It wasn’t really the school. It was me. So I quit and then, well, some stuff happened, and then my uncle knew the guy who owns the store, so I started working there. Aside from the jerks who come in and try to hit on me, it’s a pretty good deal.”

  “I can understand why guys try to hit on you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I guess. Is that what you’re trying to do right now? Hit on me?”

  “I’m just trying to get to know you.”

  “You might not like me once you get to know me.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  She lost her smile altogether now as she looked down at her nearly empty cup. Then she tapped the side of her head. “I’ve got issues up here. I can hold it together most of the time, but sometimes I just dive into this deep, dark place, and it feels like I can’t climb back out. What do you think about that, Mr. Jackson Malone?”

  I guess I must have zoned out for a few seconds. She looked up at me, waiting for an answer. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but I could tell I wasn’t at all convincing for once.

  My man-of-the-world routine hadn’t worked to my advantage, so it was time to try a different approach. I looked down at my empty cup. “I’ve never been to Europe,” I admitted. “Truth is, I haven’t been much anywhere. What about you?”

  “Well, I guess you can say I’ve had some interesting experiences. In fact, not long ago I was in Westlake.”

  I couldn’t see what the big deal was. but then it clicked. “As in Westlake Detention Center?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Now you’re curious. You think you’re the only kid in town who occasionally breaks a few laws?”

  “So what did you do?” This girl was becoming more interesting by the minute.

  “Well, I didn’t really do anything.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “It was my boyfriend, Bryce. Bryce Winston.”

  “Oh,” I said, registering the word. “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Had a boyfriend.”

  “I’m guessing he didn’t hang around after you went to Westlake.”

  “He was the reason I was in Westlake. But now he’s disappeared. I’m out, and he’s gone. I miss him.”

  “Maybe you’re better off without him,” I said.

  “No. I love Bryce.” And then she said a very odd thing. “I still love him. And I want you to help me find him.”

  “Are you joking? Why me?”

  “Because you don’t give a shit about rules. And you’re willing to take chances.”

  Chapter Six

  I guess I should have seen the downside. I liked this girl. She was trouble, but I think I liked that too. I wanted to be with her and get to know her. My real hope was that whoever Bryce was, maybe he was long gone. Maybe Abby would get to know me. No, that’s not quite right. People who really got to know me tended not to like me. Maybe I could persuade her to like me. I just had to play my cards right.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s find this Bryce. But first you have to tell me how you ended up at Westlake. I thought that place was only for the worst of the worst offenders.”

  Abby stared into her empty cup. “First, we need to have a real drink.” She opened her purse and pulled out a little metal flask like I’d seen in the movies. She poured some clear liquid into her cup, threw it back and then refilled, drank again and poured some into my cup. I immediately slugged it and felt the burn on the way down.

  “Nice,” I said in a raspy voice.

  “I met Bryce a couple of years ago. I was bored out of my gourd and needed something, anything, to make me feel alive. Bryce did that. He liked to take chances. Sometimes he would just walk into people’s houses and take things. He said it wasn’t so much the stealing part but that he loved the dare, taking the chance. Sometimes it was daylight, sometimes night. Sometimes people were even home. One time he asked me if I wanted to go along.”

  “And you did.”

  “It was fun. You understand. I know you do.”

  “Well, maybe. But something must have gone wrong.”

  “We were down near the mall, watching some guy in one of those big houses. He was on the phone in one room, in a long-winded argument with someone on the other end. Front door open. Perfect setup. So Bryce and I walked in, casually as could be, saw a wallet and a watch, a really expensive one, right there near the door. Bryce grabbed them, and we turned to go.”

  “Yeah?” This girl had my full attention.

  “Only problem was, suddenly there was this jerk, aiming a gun at us. Bryce said to run. As we started to bolt out of there, he fired. His stupid wife must have come into the room at the same time. Bryce was quicker than me, and I couldn’t keep up. Some nosy neighbor grabbed me from behind and pushed me onto the ground. I could hear screaming from inside the house. Turned out he had accidentally shot his wife.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “She was only wounded. People shouldn’t be allowed to have guns lying around.”

  “What about Bryce?”

  “He was gone. I was caught. And that was the last I saw of him.”

  “No phone call, no texts, nothing?”

  Abby poured another shot in her cup and one in mine. “Nothing.”

  “What a bastard.”

  “Yeah, he is a bastard. Trouble is, I still want to be with him.”

  “Why?” I asked. From the sounds of it, she should have hated the guy.

  Abby just shrugged and gave a funny little smile. “Because,” was all she said.

  Chapter Seven

  When we left the coffee shop, I thought about ditching this crazy girl. Why should I bother helping her find her criminal boyfriend? Was she one of those freaky women you read about who are attracted to real criminals? The ones who start writing to convicted murderers in prison?

  I guess she was reading the look on my face and could see I was having second thoughts. She stopped and took my hand. I turned toward her. She was standing with her face just inches from mine. “Will you really help me find him?”

  Hell, I didn’t want anything to do with this chickenshit Bryce. I wanted the girl, not her boyfriend. But I was more than comfortable telling people wh
at they wanted to hear whether it was true or not. And Abby was working some kind of strange voodoo on me for sure. “Yes,” I said. “If that’s what you really want.”

  She smiled, and then she kissed me on the lips. I could taste the alcohol on her breath.

  After that we walked on, Abby holding my hand like we were a couple. For a guy like me, who usually makes a muck-up of any social situation I’m in, I was thinking that this was about as good as it gets. But what would Bryce be thinking if he could see us now?

  I wanted to talk about myself. I wanted to explain to Abby how unique I was. One of a kind. Explain how smart I was and that school was always holding me back from my potential. I wanted her to get to know the real me. Then maybe she’d forget about Bryce. But I held back. I played her game. “Tell me more about Bryce.”

  “He’s eighteen,” she said. “He always said I looked and acted much older than sixteen and that age doesn’t matter.”

  I wanted to say, Age does matter in the eyes of the law. Abby was a minor. He was an adult. “Go on,” I said instead.

  “Bryce is smart. He knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it and doesn’t let anything get in his way. Nothing scares him. He’s fearless. But he’s charming too. He can talk anybody into anything. But he does it in a good way. He knows that one day he’ll be rich, but he’ll get there on his own terms.”

  “I know the type,” I said. If she wasn’t still holding my hand, I probably would have said out loud what was on my mind. This guy is a loser, walking into people’s houses and stealing wallets and trinkets, and he thinks that’s how he’s going to get rich. Again I kept my mouth shut about what I was thinking. Sometimes when a girl is really hooked on a guy, they have a blind spot. They just can’t see the bad side of him. And this guy sounded like a real jerk.

  But I wanted to spend time with this crazy girl. I really wanted her to like me. So I did what I had to do. “I bet I’ll be able to find him,” I told her.

  “How can you be so sure?” she asked.

  “’Cause he sounds a lot like me.”

  Abby let go of my hand. She looked confused.

  “You got a picture?” I asked.

  She stopped and pulled one out of her back pocket. “That’s him. I miss him so much.”

  So this was Bryce. Shaved head. Scraggly beard. Dark, penetrating eyes, tattoo of something on his neck, and kind of a square jaw. I couldn’t figure out what Abby would see in him. I was clearly much better-looking. I took out my cell phone and took a photo of the photo of the jerk.

  “Well, he’d definitely stand out in a crowd,” I offered. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”

  Abby smiled and kissed me again, this time with enough enthusiasm to make me dizzy. “Thank you so much. I’ve tried, I really have, but haven’t had any luck. None of his old friends will even talk to me.”

  I was pretty sure Bryce probably didn’t want Abby to find him. I wanted to ask her what would happen then, if we found him and he told her to get lost. But I didn’t say a word. This girl believed she needed me, and I wanted to be with her. That’s all that mattered to me.

  Chapter Eight

  Forget what I said earlier about cyberstalking. I downloaded the best facial-recognition program I could find and went Bryce hunting, using the photo I had downloaded onto my phone. I had a game plan in my head. I would pretend to have some clues and then take Abby to some interesting places while I got to know her better.

  But I had to change my plans when I found him almost right away. Yep. Photos posted online from a bar in Carsonville, just a few miles from our town, were a match. I thought the program was wrong at first. This guy had short, dark hair and was clean-shaven and well dressed. But the eyes gave him away. Something told me he was no longer a cat burglar in the suburbs. Either he’d cleaned up his act or he was into something else that required he look respectable. I was pretty sure, though, that he was still on the bad side of the law. And that made everything even more interesting. I love a challenge. And Bryce was it. If I could find him and figure out what kind of dirty deeds he was up to, I figured I could report back to Abby and convince her what a real shit he really was. But I’d have to get to know him first.

  I let a couple of days slip by without calling or texting Abby. Made her think I was hard at work finding her sleazeball ex-boyfriend. Then I decided to impress her by going back into Striker’s Sports to say hello.

  It was a quiet afternoon when I returned to the scene of the crime. Abby was showing tennis rackets to some old guy when I walked in. I winked. Abby’s boss was behind the counter, and I recognized him from the store’s website. He gave me a quick once-over, and then his eyes grew wide.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Striker,” I said. “I only came back to apologize.”

  Mr. Striker frowned. He definitely knew who I was.

  “I took those shoes on a dare. Your salesgirl ran after me and convinced me to return them. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should come back and apologize to you. It was just stupid what I did. Time for me to grow up. So I guess I wanted to thank her for showing me the error of my ways and thank you for not tracking me down and having me charged.”

  I’m pretty sure no shoplifter had ever come in and given such a speech at Striker’s Sports before. Old man Striker just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

  “No hard feelings?” I asked.

  “None,” he replied, looking more bewildered than anything.

  Before I left, I waved in Abby’s direction and said, “Thanks again,” then turned to go.

  “Wait,” said Mr. Striker. “Take this.” He handed me a gift certificate for fifty dollars. Nice touch of irony, eh? I almost gave the guy a hug.

  As expected, Abby called me that night. I told her I had a hunch about Bryce and asked if she wanted to go look for him the next day. She said she would join me.

  So we headed off on a bus in the opposite direction of Carsonville. It was a wild-goose chase, of course. I had made up a story about a pawnshop that had bought stolen goods from someone matching Bryce’s description. The guy in the pawnshop was a real piece of work—shifty-eyed, suspicious of me, but giving Abby a full inspection. I showed him the photo, and he replied with a snarl, “Maybe I’ve seen this guy, but what’s it to you?”

  I made up a story about Bryce being a friend of ours who had a mental illness. We needed to find him to help him. The guy smiled, eyed Abby again and said, “A couple of do-gooders, are ya? Just what the world needs.”

  We snooped around the neighborhood a bit, but—no surprise—there was no sign of Bryce.

  “I won’t give up,” I declared as we headed home on the bus. I gave Abby a hug, and she hugged me back.

  Chapter Nine

  It took me a couple of days to find someone to produce a fake driver’s license for me. It took a chunk out of my bank account, but I figured it would be worth it. It got me into Bonner’s Bar in Carsonville and my first “legal” beer at four thirty on a Thursday afternoon. If you wanted to find a place to shoot a TV show where shady dealings went on, this was the joint you’d be looking for.

  I downed my beer and played pool for money against some bearded guy in an AC/DC T-shirt. I beat him and got twenty dollars back on my fake ID investment. After he lost, the guy said, “Why don’t you just go back to school where you belong?”

  I just laughed and bought him a beer. His name was Jessie, and he told me nearly his whole life story. It wasn’t pretty. “You shouldn’t be hanging out here, kid,” he finally said. “Some crazy shit goes on in here, believe me.”

  When I asked him what kind of crazy shit, he just shook his head and said he had to go. “Be careful, kid. Believe me, this is not your kind of place.” And I was. Careful, that is. I wasn’t dumb enough to show Bryce’s picture to anyone. It would take time. Things would fall into place eventually.

  I soon discovered that the after
noon crowd at Bonner’s was mostly out-of-work, middle-aged men like Jessie. I had a good hunch that a slick guy like Bryce didn’t hang out with them. So I started showing up at the bar later and later. It was a younger crowd later for sure—early twenties mostly. I studied how they dressed and acted and bought some new clothes to better fit in. My dad soon noticed the new look and the hours I was keeping and started asking questions. But I always had answers. Besides, most nights he came home later than I did. Things hadn’t been working out with his latest girlfriend recently, so he was probably out on the prowl, looking for a new one.

  It’s not like I went to Bonner’s every day. It was a twenty-minute bus ride each way. Money for the bus, money for clothes and money for beer. This investigation thing was costing me.

  Abby was beginning to think I’d lost interest in her, so I wrote her a poem and texted it to her.

  Well, I didn’t really write it. I found it on the Internet and “borrowed” it. I guess you could call it a love poem, but it didn’t actually use the word love, so I was hoping it wouldn’t scare her off.

  It didn’t. She called me late that night and said, “I know you have feelings for me. I will never forget your poem. Or you. But I really need you to keep working on finding Bryce.”

  I swallowed my pride and said, “I will. If that’s what you really want.”

  And then I found him.

  I had learned how to stretch out a single beer long into the evening as Bonner’s got noisier and noisier. I could smell the musty odor of weed on some of the customers and even wondered if some of the women were hookers. I usually kept to myself or sometimes sat at a table with Jessie and one of his buddies if he was there. Just trying to fit in.

  One night around nine, I was getting ready to leave. I stood up and bumped right into Bryce, knocking a drink out of his hand.

  His eyes bored right through me. “Shit,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I said, recovering quickly. Here was my chance. “Really sorry, man. Let me buy you another drink.”