by Barry Lyga
An innocent enough statement. Pizza, so far as Kim knew, was harmless. She and Dean had eaten pizza together a million times.
But he suddenly looked ill, his face gone pale, his eyebrows jumping out in stark relief from the utter whiteness of his skin.
“From Nico’s?” Strangled, he could barely get the words out.
“Where else?” she asked. What a ridiculous question. There was a Domino’s over in Finn’s Landing, but they never delivered out this far. Besides, Nico’s was so much better.
For a moment, she thought Dean might throw up. His entire face twisted, seeming to collapse around and into his lips, which had pinched into a tight rictus.
“Are you okay?”
Dean stroked his temples, as though attempting to smooth out whatever jagged concerns had clotted there. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
It was as though he’d said it twice to convince both of them.
After dinner it’ll all be different. He just needs something to eat. And then we’ll go into my room and everything will change.
DEAN
That night, damn them, Nico’s was as good as their thirty-minute guarantee. They’d been making out on the sofa, and when the doorbell rang, he startled, his arm spasming and almost smacking into Kim, who ducked just in time.
“What is with you?” she asked.
“Nothing!” he exclaimed far too loudly.
“Can you get the pizza?”
Quite against his will, his eyes widened. He struggled to narrow them. “Me? It’s your house.”
She tilted her head. “I’d just feel safer if you got the door. It’s dark out.”
Dean ran through a million scenarios in his mind, tacks he could take, strategies he could employ. Lamely, he spilled out, “It’s just the pizza guy.”
“Exactly. So here.” She held out a twenty-dollar bill. “We’ll have dinner and then maybe something special for dessert.”
Dean’s heart hammered. Was that a double entendre? He was pretty sure that was a double entendre.
The only way to get out of this was to absolutely refuse to answer the door. But that would mean a fight with Kim, and he didn’t want to fight with her, especially when he wouldn’t be able to explain his recalcitrance. It was one thing to argue from a position of strength, with a solid rationale serving as both sword and shield. Quite another to stand in the arena with nothing between you and the enemy but your underwear. Which is exactly how he would feel refusing to answer the door without a good reason.
So he took the twenty and headed to the door. What were the odds, he heartened himself, that it was the same pizza-delivery guy? Pretty slim, no doubt.
It was the same pizza guy.
He actually saw the car, the beat-up Datsun, before he saw the guy. Opening the door, he beheld the car, idling at the curb down the slight grade of Kim’s front lawn. The pizza guy was crouched, plucking something from the doormat.
“Dropped the receipt,” the guy said somewhat apologetically, straightening. He grinned sheepishly and held out the slip of paper, as well as the pizza box.
Dean stared at him. The voice was the same, but different. Now deferential and relaxed, as opposed to the previous week’s aggressive rage. The face, placid.
Dean’s eyes flicked to the car. That baseball bat, he was certain, was still in there, probably nestled in the little crook between the driver’s seat and the door. For easy access.
“Uh, is this right address?” the guy asked. Dean hadn’t moved to take the food or the receipt. The pizza-delivery guy craned his neck to double-check the wrought iron numbers mounted next to Kim’s front door. “Thirty-seven. This is Fairpoint Street, right?”
Dean nodded mutely, taking the receipt between numb fingers. He couldn’t feel the paper. Nor could he feel the cardboard of the pizza box or the heat radiating through its bottom.
He managed to remember to hand over the twenty, shifting the box to his receipt-bearing hand for a moment. The guy dived into his pocket for change, but Dean shook his head and waved it off.
“Thanks!” said the delivery guy. It was a nine-dollar pie. Something like a 110 percent tip.
The guy flashed a quick grin and flicked the bill of his cap with one finger in salute. “Have a great night.”
Dean said nothing. Stepped back inside and nudged the door shut.
He didn’t recognize me.
Deep breath.
Of course he didn’t recognize me. Our headlights were on. It was dark. All he saw were light and shadow. Especially when we hit him with the high beams.
He brought the pizza up the stairs to the living room, paused at the top of the staircase, then ducked into the dining room to peel back the curtains and peer out into the darkness. The delivery guy had just closed the door to the Datsun. After a moment, the car pulled away and disappeared around a bend.
A hand on his shoulder goosed him like a golf club to the ass. Almost dropping the pizza, he spun around, knowing his eyes must be wild. Kim held her jerked-back hand as though she’d just touched a beehive.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked.
“Nothing.” The lie corroded his tongue as it oozed from him. He wiped beads of sweat from his hairline. He held up the box. “Let’s eat.”
After they ate, Kim went into the bathroom and wasn’t back by the time Alex Trebek announced Double Jeopardy. Dean called out to her and heard her respond from somewhere farther back in the house than he’d expected.
Picking his way through the hallway, he once again marveled at how familiar her house had become to him. Almost as familiar as his own. He knew the people in the framed photos along the wall, the family members both living and not, and thought of them not by their names, but by the same familial sobriquets as Kim—Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt T, Uncle Bumps, and all the others. They had become an extension of his own family.
The hallway was dark. He went on to the end of the hall. A flickering light drew his attention to Kim’s room, to the left.
She lay on the bed, buttons of her shirt undone into the depth of her cleavage. The flickering light was from her nightstand lamp, which she’d covered with a red scarf.
“Hey,” she said.
Dean swallowed. “Uh, hey.”
“We don’t have to be downstairs on the old sofa,” she told him. “Or worry about my parents.”
Dean nodded, swallowing again. “Are you sure?” he asked.
She shifted on the bed, making room for him, her answer the blank space awaiting his occupation.
His legs rigid and rubbery at the same time, Dean stepped over to the bed and sat down, his back to her.
“I’m not sure,” he said after a moment.
The shift of her body jostled the mattress, tilted him slightly. Her hands touched his shoulder, kneaded.
“It’s okay. I’m sure. I know I said I wanted to wait until marriage.…”
“You did. And I don’t want to take that away from you.” He fixed his gaze straight ahead on a hook she’d screwed into the wall. Several medals on ribbons hung from it, her various blue-ribbon awards for marching band competitions.
“You’re not. It’s my decision. I’m ready.”
The medals reflected the reddish, muted light, their gold surfaces gone dull in the crimson glow.
“I don’t know if I am,” he said at last.
The mattress shifted again, tilting him back slightly as she pulled away from him. When he craned his neck, she was rocked back on her heels, staring down at her hands in her lap, the right scraping at the nail polish on the left.
“Hey.” He took her hands, pulled them gently apart. “It’s not about you. It’s all me. I’ve had it in my head that this wasn’t going to happen and then… it’s just an adjustment. Plus…” He took a deep breath. He had to tell her. “Plus, there’s something else. I’m a little mixed up tonight.”
She tossed her hair; it moved as one piece, almost like a hat or helmet. “Why?”
“It was the piz
za guy,” he began.
He told her about that night, but he didn’t tell her everything. He didn’t tell her about the baseball bat. Jay’s knife. Some things seemed too far.
And besides, her reaction to what he thought of as the least objectionable and most mundane parts of the story was enough. He’d thought that the idea of following the pizza guy was stupid and pointless, but also harmless.
Kim, though, actually gasped at even that minor infraction. “What were you thinking?” she demanded. “This is what you guys do on Fridays?”
“Look,” he said, moving on quickly, shifting the conversation from his own stupidity to his very real fears, “I don’t think he recognized me, but I keep thinking… what if he did? What if he wrote down your address? Or just kept it from the receipt? What if he thinks I live here and he’s going to show up after his shift and do something stupid?”
“Stupider than spending hours on a Friday night driving around following a pizza-delivery guy?” She’d buttoned up her shirt at some point and now folded her arms over her chest as though to say, You can’t touch and you can’t even look anymore.
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kim… I’m serious.”
“So am I.” She swung her legs around, hopped off the bed, and marched out into the hall.
KIM
Her mother had told her—so many times, it seemed—that girls matured faster than boys. But Dean, smart and clever and kind, seemed so much more grown-up than the other boys her age that it was easy to dismiss her mother’s admonition when it came to him.
She’d forgotten, though, that Dean-with-her was a different creature than Dean-with-the-guys. That Dean was susceptible to whatever hormone-induced outrages boys managed to conjure among themselves, like a masculine version of a witches’ coven, invoking foolishness and stupidity and banal cruelty in lieu of something useful.
There is nothing more dangerous than an angry man, her mother had once warned her. Except for one who’s bored.
Dean caught up to her in the kitchen, where she’d gone after leaving her bedroom.
“You should call the store,” she said, rummaging in a drawer, “and apologize.”
Dean blinked at her. “What?”
She turned and held out the Nico’s menu she’d dug out of the kitchen junk drawer. “Call. Apologize.”
Dean laughed. “No way.”
His laughter hurt more than if he’d struck her. It reduced her. It demeaned her. Anger was one thing, mockery quite another.
“I’m not joking, Dean.” She let her voice rise into the registers of outrage she rarely permitted herself. “You did something stupid and you should apologize for it. We’re not kids. We’re practically adults.”
“You don’t have to shout,” he told her, taking a step back, out of the kitchen and into the dark hallway, where shadows swaddled him. “Don’t get so emotional about this.”
In response, she snatched the handset from the phone mounted to the kitchen wall.
“Fine. I’ll call.” She tapped out the number on the handset and held it to her ear.
“Don’t!” he yelped. In half a second, he’d bridged the space between them and seized the phone, ripping it away from her and slamming it back on the base with a hard plastic clack and a distant, hollow ring.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Dean said, palms raised. “But we can’t just—”
“Go home,” she said.
When he hesitated and opened his mouth to speak again, she screamed it, and the scream felt good, felt powerful.
“Go!”
Dean nodded and mumbled something, then backed away toward the stairs and out the front door.
THE PRESENT: ELAYAH
Her first day back at school had been hell, pure and simple. All things considered, holding a clandestine meeting that afternoon seemed safer and more pleasant.
They met in Brookdale, not Canterstown, where hopefully they wouldn’t be identified by any random passersby. Liam had agreed to her scheme only if he could be present. She wasn’t sure if she was still angry at him or not, but he could call his father at any moment and end all of this, so she suffered his presence.
They arranged the meeting at the creatively named Burger Joint. She and Liam took a table together with an easy line of sight to the door and sat next to each other so that Indira Bhatti-Watson would have to sit across from them.
Indira looked nothing like what Elayah expected. Her voice through Elayah’s earbuds had been all cigarette rasp, whiskey-smoothed into something sensual and clear. Elayah had expected someone older, maybe in her thirties, with smoky eyeliner and full red lips and a come-hither vibe.
Instead, Indira Bhatti-Watson was almost a pixie, topping out at five three, max. She wore her black hair in a messy bun, streaks of yellow and pink and blue ribboning through it. Her left earring did not match her right earring. Like, at all.
She spied Elayah immediately and slid into the seat across from them. Indira’s eyes shone with excitement and glee, and she started babbling with neither preamble nor introduction.
“I’m so glad you agreed to meet with me,” said the husky siren possessing the body of Indira Bhatti-Watson. “This is great! It’s so great. I mean, I came here because of what happened to you and the whole idea of uplifting a story about a woman of color, and then when I couldn’t talk to you, I just really sort of fell in love with the idea of the story of the town itself, its history and how it’s changed, but I always kept the other stuff on a low boil, you know? That’s what my mother says: a low boil. Anyway, I—”
“You said you knew something about my uncle,” Elayah interrupted. She knew the type; if she let Indira go, the woman would yak until the heat death of the universe.
I have info on your missing uncle was the exact formulation of Indira’s last DM, the one that had caught Elayah’s attention at Marcie’s in the depths of her despair. And in an instant, she’d known exactly what she had to do.
For days now, targeted because of what they’d dug up, she’d labored under the misapprehension that she had nothing else to offer or to surrender, that her only poker chip was the junk her dad and his friends had consigned to an airless vault under the ground thirty-odd years ago.
But that wasn’t true. Yeah, there was a crazy man out there trying to get back what was his, and that crazy man might even be her own father, but there were also crazy reporters trying to get something else only she had: information. It was time for some quid pro quo.
(When she’d said exactly that to the others during the school day, Liam had essayed a weak joke about calamari that had flopped badly. And, damn it, sort of endeared him to her.)
“This is not, actually, your worst idea ever,” he’d eventually conceded.
“If we can exploit the resources of a news-gathering organization,” she’d told him, “then maybe we can figure out what’s going on. Or at least prod someone else into figuring it out before the guy with the knife comes back.”
There was Rachel, of course, who was easy-access, but she was small-time. Local. What assets or resources could she bring to bear?
Indira was perfect. Backed by NPR, which was big-time enough to count. And she was young, so neither she nor Elayah would likely have an advantage in outwitting each other or screwing each other over.
Indira tapped her bitten-down fingernails on the chipped surface of the table. “I really do know something about your uncle. What are you willing to do in return?”
“What do you want?” Liam asked in his gruffest tough-guy voice, the one he’d used junior year in the drama club’s production of Twelve Angry Jurors. Its reappearance almost surprised her into laughter, but it made Indira jump, so she suppressed her reaction.
“It’s an even trade,” Indira said, blinking her long lashes and pulling back from the table, bracing herself against it with her palms at the same time as though to hold on during a tornado. “I tell you about your uncle; you tell me what the police won’t let you tell the press abo
ut the time capsule.”
Elayah favored Liam with a meaningful look. She wanted it to appear as though the two of them were considering something, but in reality, she was just stalling because she’d already made up her mind. It seemed like a good idea not to just jump on the opportunity.
“I want information,” Indira pressed. “Specifically, confirmation.” She consulted her phone for a moment before looking up.
“So, in the article that we believe prompted the attack on you, you say that there was evidence in the time capsule. You say you’re not allowed to say what it is, but that ‘We know what you did.’”
“I was misquoted. Sort of.”
Indira grinned lopsidedly. “Was the evidence a knife? Can you confirm that? Because we have a source inside the sheriff’s department telling us that blood test results were recently received from the state police lab on a large hunting knife.”
Did Indira know who Liam was? She gave no indication—no special dart of her eyes toward Liam when she mentioned the sheriff’s department—but she could just be a really good actor. Liam, for his part, covered up his sudden shock by diving into a hamburger with gusto.
Elayah weighed the possibilities here. She was desperate for help, and desperation made for a poor bargaining position. Still, someone had invaded her home, and she had good reason to believe her father wasn’t who he claimed to be. Liam’s dad seemed out of his depth. She had to do something to put the pressure on.
Mental coin toss. Heads, confirm; tails, no comment. The coin wobbled in the air and never landed because this was a really, really stupid way to decide something.
“It was a knife,” she said, then hurried on to cover the sound of Liam nearly gagging on a quarter pound of beef and bun. “And it looked to me like there was blood on it. We think someone was killed with that knife and then it was sealed up in the time capsule to get rid of it.”
Licking her lips, eyes thrilled, Indira leaned forward, closing in to conspirator’s distance. “Do you have a picture?”
“What have you got for me?”