Frenemy of the People

by Nora Olsen

  The host of the movie got to try operating a track hoe. He looked terrified, and he didn’t do a very good job. The cab was hopping jerkily up and down. When the camera zoomed in, he smiled and said, “This is awesome!” but there was fear in his eyes.

  “It takes a lot of practice to become a good heavy-equipment operator,” explained the narrator. “Remember, kids, never approach any equipment unless a competent adult is supervising you.” The peppy synthesizer music came back on.

  “So, do you have that down?” I asked Lexie.

  “I guess so,” she said. “Maybe if I watch it a few more times.” With anyone else, the lack of confidence in her voice would have worried me, but I knew Lexie could do anything.

  “The thing is, how are we going to start the bulldozer without a key?” Lexie asked.

  “That’s just a detail,” I said, dismissing her objection. “I’m sure there are a million instructions on the Internet that tell you how to hot-wire a bulldozer. You can Google anything.”

  Half an hour later, I had to admit that I had been wrong about that. My head was spinning at the descriptions of the different wires and which ones you stripped and paired together. The information seemed sketchy and unreliable.

  “I guess we can’t do it after all,” Lexie said.

  An idea struck me. I was thinking of my dad’s garage where he had his business. There was a big corkboard with rings hanging off it, where the keys to the cars were supposed to be kept. But most of the time Dad didn’t even bother to hang the keys up. He just left them in the cars.

  “Let’s go take a look at this bulldozer again,” I said to Lexie.

  We drove to Bluebird of Happiness Court one more time. It didn’t smite my heart so much to see the house because I was totally focused on the bulldozer. I was glad to see Mrs. Martinez’s car was gone. She was the only snoopy neighbor I was worried about. “Act like you’re looking mournfully at the house,” I told Lexie, “while I go check out the bulldozer all casual-like.”

  I sidled up to it. It was a yellow strikebreaking Cat just like in the movie, and I made a mental note of the model number. I tried to be inconspicuous as I hopped up onto the catwalk above the big tracks and opened the door. I looked inside, holding my breath.

  Just as I had hoped. On the floor, under the seat, in a Styrofoam cup was the key to the ignition.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Lexie

  I couldn’t believe we were really doing it.

  Clarissa and Desi were sleeping over at my house. Ostensibly Desi was there to prevent me and Clarissa from getting busy—I wasn’t allowed to have Clarissa sleep over alone. And I had made sure my father was home. I had been hoping my mom would be home too, but she was away on a business trip. My father might have thought he was a chaperone, but he was actually an alibi. Earlier, while my dad was watching a loud TV show, I had surreptitiously taken our bikes out of the garage so we could get them later. And I had made sure my dad was a witness to us all wearing pajamas.

  At two thirty a.m., Clarissa and I got up out of bed and dressed all in black. Desi was sleeping peacefully. She wasn’t coming with us, but she was going to back up our alibi.

  “Are we ready?” Clarissa whispered, and I nodded. We left the house quietly, got our bikes and helmets, and headed toward Bluebird of Happiness Court. It was several miles. A few cars passed us, but not many. As we got closer, I grew more and more nervous. This had all sounded fine and dandy on paper, but not so appealing when riding along Old Route 55 under a moon.

  “Are you sure you want to damage your old home?” I asked Clarissa, bringing my bike alongside hers.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I don’t feel sentimental at all. I just want to stick it to the bank.”

  Just before we reached Bluebird of Happiness Court, we stopped and took off our helmets, put on ski masks and gloves, and then put our bike helmets back on. They were going to act as hard hats for us. As Clarissa said, always wear a brain bucket.

  “Tuck your hair in,” I told Clarissa. Her brown ponytail was so distinctive.

  Clarissa’s monstrously pretentious former house loomed into view as we pedaled onto the cul-de-sac. All the houses were dark and quiet. The good people of Bluebird of Happiness Court were snug asleep in their beds.

  We dropped our bikes and ran over to the dozer. I got in first and Clarissa crammed herself in behind me. There was only one seat in the bulldozer and, more importantly, only one seat belt. Clarissa could barely fit if she crouched. There really was no room in the cab for a second person. But she had insisted we do this together, and well, sometimes we do stupid things for love. It was hard to know where to draw the line with this scheme since it was kind of stupid in the first place.

  The controls were slightly different than the ones in the movie because this dozer was newer, but the basics were the same. A diagram was printed by the stick shift. I put my hand on the sticks and rehearsed how I should move them to turn left, to turn right. Where were the headlights? I finally figured out where they were. Then I adjusted the side mirror.

  “We don’t have all day,” Clarissa hissed.

  She was right. I reached under the seat for the cup with the key, and I was so nervous I knocked it over. Clarissa had to shine her flashlight under the seat so I could find the key.

  All of a sudden I was sure the bulldozer didn’t work. After all our planning, I would turn the key and nothing would happen. Why else would a bulldozer be left to sit for two months?

  I buckled up and turned the key. To my amazement, the thousand-horsepower turbocharged diesel motor turned over and roared into life. It was incredibly loud. I was sure it was waking up everyone in the county. Plus, we should have been wearing earplugs. I quickly flipped the test switch to check the oil and water. Lights went on, which I thought was probably good. I put my foot on the decelerator. This thing was the opposite of what you expected because you stepped on it to slow down, and took your foot off to make it run.

  I had to find my nerve. Were we really going to do this, or just crawl home in defeat? My heart was going ninety miles an hour.

  Clarissa put her hand on my shoulder. I was sure she was going to say something like Let’s just go home or You don’t have to do this.

  “Let’s not be wimps,” she said. “You got this.”

  My heart skipped a beat and I nodded. As if in a dream, I turned on the headlights, began pulling the controls, and took my foot off the decelerator. We started swinging the wrong way. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

  Reaching into reserves I didn’t know I had, I steeled myself. This had to go correctly and there was no room to screw up. I reminded myself that pulling back on the handle made the tracks turn right and pushing forward was left. I positioned us the right way, lifted up the stick, and we went forward. We were headed straight for the side of the house, where the living room was. Now I ground the gear into third, and we sped up. Bulldozers don’t exactly fly along, but it seemed pretty fast to me.

  Every instinct in my body told me to slow down, but I removed my foot from the pedal completely to open her up. With my other hand I used the third control to lift the blade to eye level, to shield our windshield from the collision. I could still see around the blade a little. My body was actually shivering in fear, so it was a good thing I didn’t have to do any fancy steering. The wall rushed up to us. Clarissa was screaming. The blade of the bulldozer hit the wall.

  At the moment of impact, I couldn’t help stepping on the pedal a little as everything seemed to explode in a sickening crunch. My whole body was slammed forward with the greatest force. Clarissa was tossed into me like a doll, and I could feel my teeth rattle. I saw the blade tear a huge jagged hole in the wall. The world was a mass of noise and white bits flying everywhere. Now we were inside the house. I slowed down further. Little clouds of fiberglass insulation, like puffs of dandelions, were everywhere, making it hard for me to see.

  We crashed through a second wall and bumped int
o something else, and I stopped the dozer. I had the presence of mind to lower the blade so I could see better. There were pieces of drywall littering the windshield. I couldn’t help but notice Clarissa was cursing a blue streak.

  “Are you okay?” I screamed.

  “I’m fine,” shouted Clarissa. Her bike helmet was dented, but she was grinning a lunatic smile.

  There was an ominous creaking sound.

  “I think the ceiling is going to collapse,” Clarissa said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I wondered, too late, if the dozer had windshield wipers and, if so, how to turn them on. The exhaust coming out of the stack was filling the room too. My eyes started to get used to the white stuff all over the windshield, and I could see we were in the kitchen, and we had just knocked over the island. My headlights illuminated the cherry cabinets. I tried to look in the side mirror to see behind us, but it had been lopped off.

  I threw the dozer into reverse, and it beeped madly as I tried to back up while turning. Reverse seemed faster even than third gear. The dozer leaped backward and bumped into a wall. The house shook. The entrance hole we had crashed from the living room to the kitchen was to our right. It would be hard to maneuver back out that way again. I went forward, bumped the island again, then threw it in reverse. We crashed backward through the wall in a shower of dust. The creaking sound got louder. Now we were in the large, empty living room, perfect for turning around in. I realized we were almost out, got rattled, and steered the dozer in the wrong direction. I had no idea what my hands were doing and everything happened so fast. We plowed into the staircase. The blade snapped the newel-post of the staircase like it was a twig. I stopped the dozer and took a deep breath.

  “Hurry up and get us out of here!” Clarissa screamed. “Should we just get out and run?”

  “No, I can do it!” I circled the spacious living room, white dust sprinkling from the ceiling, until I was positioned right in front of the hole. Sparky electrical cables dangled from the wall into the void we had smashed. Driving over all the debris like it was nothing, we went outside.

  I didn’t even bother to turn the bulldozer off, just unbuckled my seat belt and tumbled out the door. My foot slipped off the little catwalk and I landed on the vibrating track, then fell to the ground. When I scrambled to my feet, Clarissa was ahead of me, already racing for her bike. I was close on her heels. I glanced back once at the silhouette of Clarissa’s old house. It had a huge gaping hole, and the whole structure seemed to be sagging.

  Clarissa did that thing where she jumped onto her bike while running, but I wasn’t graceful enough for that. We barreled down the cul-de-sac. Now there were plenty of lights on in the houses, and I was sure each and every person was dialing 911. Turning onto Route 216, we stood up on our pedals and rode as fast as we could.

  My face stung where my head had collided with Clarissa’s. We had only been biking for about a quarter of a mile when we heard a car engine coming. We plowed straight into the shrubbery on the side of the road and waited. A cop car sped by. I held my breath, as if the police could hear us. As soon as it was gone, we peeled off our ski masks, left them in the bushes, and got back on the road. We turned as soon as we could onto Old Route 55.

  Clarissa whooped. “I can’t believe we did it!”

  I grinned, but I couldn’t celebrate until we were safe back at my house. All of a sudden all my adrenaline was gone, and I was almost too tired to pedal. Our flashlights bobbed in the dark. I felt like I was in the movie E.T., only my bike wouldn’t fly.

  We left our bikes in the yard, hidden behind a hydrangea bush. Clarissa made us change back into our pj’s before we raided the fridge. Desi was wide awake waiting for us, and Clarissa hurriedly whispered to her what a success our mission had been. Back in bed, hugging a box of Orgran animal crackers, I finally relaxed.

  “I can’t believe we got away with it,” I whispered.

  Desi and Clarissa started singing some Taylor Swift song, but I didn’t know the words. They both had nice voices, similar in pitch, but Desi was always a few words behind and rushing to catch up.

  Just then, the doorbell began to ring insistently. We glanced at each other, fear in our eyes.

  I waited to hear my father go down and answer the door. Then I crept down the stairs to listen.

  “I’m Officer Farley. Does a Lexie Ganz reside here?” a deep male voice asked.

  My father had turned on the light, so I could see him clearly, but the figure on the porch was just a silhouette to me.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Police investigation. Are you the father of Lexie Ganz?”

  “I’m sorry, Officer, but I’d really need to know why this is something you need to know before I help you. What’s going on?”

  Way to go, Dad, I thought fearfully. Know your rights.

  “Mr. Ganz, we have reason to believe your daughter may have been involved in some kind of criminal activity. If you’re not going to help us, we’ll have to assume she’s not here.”

  “Yes, she is here,” my dad said. “She’s sleeping. Obviously.”

  “Can we speak to her?”

  “Absolutely not,” Dad said. “Look, I’m a friend to the police. I donate to the Police Benevolent Association. I was a chairman of the PAL gala ball in 2011.”

  “We treat everyone the same when a crime has been committed,” the cop said. “I really need to speak to your daughter.”

  “But my daughter is a sensitive girl, and you’re not going to speak to her right now, in the middle of the night.”

  I was so proud of my father. He was actually protecting me.

  “Is there anyone else staying here?” the cop asked.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any more questions,” my father said. “Good night.”

  “We spoke to a Mr. and Mrs. Kirchendorfer, whose daughter is also someone we need to speak to. They said she’s here, that both their two children are here. Is this true?”

  “I’m sorry, Officer.” My dad began to close the door and the officer stuck his foot in it.

  “May I come in?” the cop asked.

  “No, you may not come in.”

  I could hear Clarissa and Desi whispering and creeping down the stairs behind me. It sounded like Clarissa was coaching Desi on our story.

  “Then I will return later with a warrant. It’s easier if you just let me in now.”

  “I’d prefer to wait until you have a warrant—if you even want to go to all that trouble.”

  “It is a lot of trouble to get a warrant. I might not have to if I knew for a fact that your daughter and the other girl are here. How about if they just come to the door? They don’t have to say anything. Then I’ll go.”

  My father glanced behind him, the first sign he had made showing he knew I was there. “Officer, let me go see if the girls are awake and can come to the door. It’s the middle of the night after all. I’m going to close the door now, and you just wait right here. I’ll be back. But I can’t close the door if your foot is there. I don’t want to bump your foot. Can you please move your foot, sir?”

  I didn’t think the cop was going to move his foot, but he did. My dad shut the door gently, then chained and locked it. He turned and his eyes blazed out at me.

  “I don’t know what you did,” he said, “but I can guarantee you are going to be severely punished for this. But you’ll be punished by me, not by the cops.”

  The other two girls trooped down the stairs. Clarissa was clutching her stomach in a stagy way.

  “I don’t believe this guy is just going to leave if he sees you,” my dad said. “We have no legal obligation to talk to him or let him in. Unless he goes and gets a warrant, and then we have to let him in. So what do you want to do? Do you think it would help if he knows you’re home?”

  “I didn’t do anything, Dad,” I lied.

  “Have you girls really been here all night?” my dad whispered.

  “We certainly have,” Claris
sa said. “I’ve been throwing up all night. I think I had food poisoning. You probably heard me walking to the bathroom and retching, over and over again.”

  My dad stared at us for a long time.

  “I certainly did,” he finally said. “It woke me up.”

  Had they all lost their minds? Then I realized what was going on. They were constructing an alibi.

  “I think you might have even come upstairs at one point to see how I was doing,” Clarissa noted, her voice rising, like she was asking a question.

  “I certainly did,” he repeated. “Although I’m not sure what time that was. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Well, me neither really,” Clarissa said. “I was too busy throwing up.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  I nodded at my dad, and he opened the door. This time he flipped on the porch light, and the police officer was illuminated. Clarissa, Desi, and I huddled together at my dad’s side. Dad led us outside onto the porch and shut the door again, I supposed to prevent the cop from barging in and searching our home.

  “Here they are,” Dad said.

  The officer asked us for our IDs, which we had to go and get, and then asked me and Clarissa a lot of questions about where we’d been all night. He asked Clarissa about the house, the foreclosure, but he never said what had happened to the house or why he was questioning us. We both said that Clarissa had been throwing up all night.

  “Can you corroborate that they’ve been here all night?” the officer asked my father.

  “Of course I can,” he said. “Clarissa was vomiting so loudly it woke me up.”

  “I’m sorry,” Clarissa said.

  He patted her shoulder. “Not your fault,” he said. “Although maybe you shouldn’t eat with such gusto.”

  This was so weird.

  “What’s that gash on the side of your face from?” the cop wanted to know.