Another Life

by Robert Haller

  “Hey, kid.”

  I looked up. An old man sat on a bench a few yards away, staring at me. Beside him sat the dog, and he was stroking it gently with one hand. It had no leash or collar.

  “You’d better get home,” the man said. “There’s some bad people come out here after dark. People with bad things on their minds.”

  It was too dark, and the man was too far away, for me to really see his face. His voice sounded familiar, and for a second I was sure I knew him, but I didn’t know from where. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I’d never heard anyone talk like this in Grover Falls. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m going home now.”

  The man nodded and kept looking at me, stroking the dog’s neck.

  I went over to the big maple tree by the river, where I’d left my bike. It wasn’t there. I looked around in the quickly fading light. Nothing. Someone had taken it while I was sleeping. I turned back to the man to ask him if he’d seen anyone with a bike around here, but when I did, the bench was empty. I looked around and didn’t see him or the dog anywhere, but now it was getting too dark to see much. Cold, too. The hairs on my bare arms were standing on end. I shivered and started walking fast across the park.

  If I knew what was good for me, I would have called my mom, told her I lost my bike and was on my way home, or asked her to come get me. But for some reason, I didn’t. I’m not sure why, but I think maybe there was part of me that wanted to get in trouble for missing my curfew. Maybe that was why I fell asleep in the first place—I wanted to be punished for something.

  Walking across town, I thought of Bethany. I wondered what she was doing right now, if her parents were yelling at her, if she felt guilty, or if she didn’t care. I thought about that man Michael Keegan, and I wondered why I hated him so much. I thought of those guys on TV deciding whether to be priests, whether to give up sex for the rest of their lives to be closer to God. Maybe on the show it was all rigged, but it happened in real life, too, and I thought of the stories I’d seen on the news, of priests who’d secretly touched boys. I thought of what that weird man had said—bad people with bad things on their minds—and walked faster.

  When I opened the door of the mudroom and walked into the kitchen, my mom came in from the office. As soon as I saw her, my desire to accept my punishment vanished, and I immediately felt defensive.

  “There you are!” she practically yelled. “Where have you been? It’s past eight.”

  “Somebody stole my bike,” I muttered.

  “What do you mean, somebody stole your bike?”

  “It’s like when somebody takes something of yours without permission.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, mister. Who took it?”

  “I don’t know!” I almost shouted. “I was …” I trailed off because I didn’t want to admit that I had fallen asleep.

  “Where’s DeShawn?” my mom asked, looking past me to the mudroom.

  “He’s not here?”

  My mom looked at me hard. “What do you mean? He was with you.”

  “Yeah, but I thought he came back already.”

  My mom gave an annoyed groan—something she did to disguise real worry. “Oh jeez, it’s past eight o’clock. When did you last see him?”

  “We were at the park, and then he left. I thought he came back here,” I said, beginning to feel a little nervous myself.

  While my mom went into the other room to get my dad, I pulled out my phone and called Jason. As soon as he answered, I asked him if he knew where DeShawn was.

  Jason said he didn’t, that they’d all ridden around for a few minutes and then headed back home.

  “Well, he’s not here,” I said.

  “Honestly?” said Jason. “I don’t blame him. After what you said to him, he probably doesn’t want to be anywhere near you.”

  I didn’t answer. I watched my parents come into the kitchen, my dad grabbing the car keys, my mom getting her purse.

  “Anything?” she asked me, and I shook my head and ended the call.

  “We’re going out to look for him,” she said, putting on her jacket.

  “Wait, I wanna come.”

  My dad shook his head. “No, stay here in case he shows up. Call us if you find out anything.”

  Then they shut the door behind them and left me alone in the empty house.

  LAURA

  I really needed to pee. Although I wasn’t used to drinking coffee, I’d finished my first cup quickly, taking long, nervous gulps. As soon as I did, the waitress was back to refill it. Now, after three cups of black coffee, my bladder was crying out for relief. But I didn’t want to leave the table. I didn’t want to take my eyes off Martin for a second.

  After he’d resigned himself to having dinner with me just to keep from starting a commotion in the restaurant, at first Martin had stayed silent, sulking like a child. No matter how hard I tried to make conversation, he wouldn’t give in.

  “Do you come to this place a lot?”

  A facial shrug.

  “So how long have you lived in Albany?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  I remembered asking him the same question online months ago, and he’d told me a few years.

  I was beginning to despair. If all this night turned out to be was me forcing an unwilling man to have dinner with me in silence, then the whole thing had been a waste. But I didn’t know why I ever thought the outcome could be different—he had been expecting a woman, and I tricked him. Of course he would be angry and upset. Why had I thought, even remotely, that some part of him already knew the truth, that when he saw me, a fifteen-year-old girl, his surprise would be only partly genuine, that deep down he had somehow known all along? I had lied to myself. Martin had every right to walk out then and there, but still I wanted to say, I’m the same person you talked to for hours online. Everything I said then was true, truer than this dumb reality. But I couldn’t say that. It wouldn’t have made any sense.

  I was staring down at the table when Martin spoke. So far, his eyes had been around the room—anywhere but me—when they suddenly turned to me. “So,” he said, “your real name isn’t Kim Moore, is it?”

  I hesitated a beat, then decided I had no reason to lie to him anymore. “No,” I said. “My name’s Laura.” I didn’t give him a last name and he didn’t ask for it.

  “Laura. That’s a nice name.”

  “I’ve never really liked it, actually.”

  “Names are weird like that, aren’t they?” he said, smiling a little. “They shape so much of our identity, and yet, they’re something we have no control over. I always wondered what it would be like to live in a society where we chose our own names, when we felt ready. We might end up so different.”

  “Yeah!” I said. “I would love to choose my own name.”

  He took a sip of water. “Well, in a way, you did, Kim.”

  I smiled and blushed, suddenly happy. This was how we had spoken to each other online, chatting about random but interesting things, our conversation veering this way and that in unpredictable but never boring pathways, emotionally guarded but subtly flirtatious.

  “So, Laura,” Martin said, now leaning forward, “I was talking to you the entire time, yes?”

  I nodded.

  He leaned back and shook his head in disbelief, almost admiration. “How did you learn to talk like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well … like a woman. Like someone twice your age.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just came to me.”

  He looked me in the eyes. “You’re an old soul, I guess.”

  I nodded, hoping that was a compliment. Martin’s eyes were watery blue, almost silver, like that thin space between ocean and horizon.

  “And have you done this before, Laura?”r />
  “Done what?”

  “You know, created a fake identity, befriended an older man online, and then got him to meet you?”

  “Oh, no!” I shook my head. “You’re the first—I mean, the only.”

  He gave a dry chuckle. “Lucky me.”

  I smiled back, but uncertainly. Something about the way he was looking at me now was unnerving, but I wasn’t sure I didn’t like it.

  “And what were you planning on us doing, now that we’ve finally met?”

  “Um,” I fumbled, “I don’t know. I just wanted to meet you. I thought it was time.”

  “I mean, you had to be aware that it was going to come as a shock to me,” he said. “That I would be … disappointed.”

  This, I thought, was some sort of come-on, a challenge, and I had to meet it. I gave a little jerk of my head, the way I had seen Haley do around boys, the way I’d seen Bethany do without even trying, and put my chin in my hands and looked in his eyes. “Are you disappointed?” I asked.

  He paused for a long moment. “I don’t know yet,” he said at last.

  That was when I really felt the need to pee, but I was scared that if I left the table, the fragile connection we were beginning to make would be broken, so I crossed my legs and, counterproductively, took another sip of coffee.

  “And so who were those pictures of?” Martin asked.

  “Huh? Oh. Um, just a random woman I found on Google.” I didn’t want him to know they were pictures of my mom.

  “And do you really live in Grover Falls?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With your mother?”

  I nodded.

  “And where does she think you are now?”

  I didn’t like the way he added a needless and before his questions, and I didn’t like that the conversation kept coming back to my mom. I couldn’t tell him about the abortion protest—that would just open up another can of worms—so I lied. “At my friend’s house.”

  “You’re a very brave little girl,” he said.

  I uncrossed my legs and shifted in my seat. I had to pee so badly. “Why?” I asked.

  He looked at me as though the answer was obvious, and maybe it was. “Because I could have been anybody. I could have been lying to you the way you were lying to me. I could have been a very bad person—I still could be; you don’t know.”

  “But I do!” I said. “I already know who you are.”

  “Yeah?” His eyes narrowed. “And what am I?”

  The question confused me—his use of “what” instead of “who.” What am I? It seemed more philosophical, existential, than personal. “Um …” I felt a little weak and dizzy. I hadn’t eaten anything since morning and hoped our food would come soon. Martin was looking at me unwaveringly, with a thin smile on his lips. I wished he would stop. “You’re …” I said. How could I explain to him what I thought about our connection, that all the things I’d said online had been true, had been honest, despite being lies? That he knew me better than most because I had revealed a secret self in those late-night chats. But before I could come up with anything, Mindy arrived with our food, breaking the spell.

  “Here you go, guys,” she said, placing our plates in front of us. “Enjoy!”

  I couldn’t hold it any longer. I stood up and said I’d be back in a moment. I meant to go as quickly as possible, but once I was in the bathroom stall, sitting on the toilet, I found my heart was racing so fast it was hard to breathe, and I was sweating. I had to sit there a good few minutes, forcing myself to take long, slow breaths, before I could stand up again and leave the stall. I checked myself in the mirror after washing my hands, though at this point I didn’t know to what end, and walked back into the dining room.

  When I saw our empty table, for a moment I was able to tell myself he must have gone to the bathroom as well and would be right back, but then I saw the pile of cash tucked under his water glass.

  He was gone. My mind raced, faced with a choice. I could just let him leave. After all, I had done what I planned on doing. I’d met him, and what more had I expected to happen, really? This might have been the best way it could end, if I was honest with myself. I couldn’t deny that he had begun to make me feel nervous, even a little frightened. But something didn’t feel right, and standing there in the middle of the restaurant, I realized that the flirting, the pointed questions, had all been an act, a ruse. Because really, the entire time, he’d been waiting for an opportunity to make a break for it, to leave me behind. He lulled me into a false sense of security just so I would give him the chance to run. And suddenly, I was no longer frightened of him, only furious.

  I looked around the room wildly and saw that the group of teenage girls who had noticed us earlier were watching me curiously from their table. One of them pointed toward Martin’s seat. “I think he left,” she said. They waited for my reaction.

  I gave them a pinched smile. “Thanks,” I said. Then I turned and walked out of the back room, past the hostess’ table, and out the front doors, into the street.

  In front of me, cars went by in flashes of noise and light. I looked right, then left, but it was too dark to see very far ahead. I turned to my right and started down the street at a swift walk at first, but soon I was running, dodging anyone on the sidewalk who got in my way.

  When I reached the next block, I saw him. He had his back to me, but I knew by the way he was walking—head down, as fast as he could without actually running—that it was him.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw me. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then he bolted.

  I chased him.

  We were halfway down the block and I was gaining on him when I saw him pull his keys from his pocket and wave them in front of him. The taillights of a silver Chevy parked at the end of the block flashed red. “Hey!” I shouted again, almost on top of him.

  Without warning, he stopped and turned toward me. I skidded to a halt in front of him.

  “Go home, Laura,” he said calmly.

  “You were just going to leave me there?” I shouted, panting.

  “You need to go home.” His voice was infuriatingly calm.

  “No!” I shouted. I wasn’t thinking when I reached out and grabbed his arm.

  The instant I touched him, Martin changed. He wasn’t the man I had come to know online, or even the one I’d met so briefly in the restaurant. He was something else. His face transformed; his skin seemed to burst into flame. His eyes emptied of everything except mingled terror and rage. He ripped his arm away from me as if my hand were a hot iron.

  “Don’t touch me, you little bitch!” he screamed. And then the look was gone. His face was drained, and he turned and walked out into the street to his car.

  “You’re an asshole,” I yelled, and found myself sobbing.

  He whirled around and looked at me. “Oh, I’m much more than that, Laura.” He paused, decided something, and then he took a breath. “I’m a registered sex offender, all right? A very bad person. Still want to have dinner with me? I didn’t think so.”

  His face was drawn, and I knew he was telling the truth, but I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

  He looked up at the sky. “Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head. “Look, do yourself a favor: go home to your mom and forget this ever happened. Count yourself incredibly lucky.”

  I watched him walk over to the driver’s side of his car. I watched him get in and slam the door. I watched the engine roar to life and the lights come on. If I’d had a baseball bat, I would have swung it into the taillights. If I’d had a rock, I would have chucked it through the back window. But I had nothing, so all I could do was raise my leg and kick the side of the car as hard as I could. It pulled out into the street without so much as a dent. My foot was throbbing.

  I stood in the street fo
r a long time, as if frozen. The lights from a store behind me were blinking on and off, off and on. I didn’t know where to go now or what to do. It was only because nothing else occurred to me that I found myself walking back down the block to the Starving Artist. As if in a daze, I wandered into the restaurant, to the back room where we’d been sitting. No one stopped me. I half expected our food to still be on the table, my coffee waiting. But the table had been wiped clean, our plates cleared, the money gone. It was if our meeting had never happened. The disappointment was almost physical. I could feel it pulling on my stomach. I thought of The Wizard of Oz. How Dorothy went to such trouble to find the Wizard, only to discover that he was a fake, a pathetic hack. That movie had scared me so terribly when I was little. After I saw it the first time, I crawled into my parents’ bed, between my mom and dad, for the next three nights. My mom still teased me about it sometimes. She could do a perfect Wicked Witch of the West imitation: “I’ll get you, my pretty!”

  “Hey.” Someone was calling me, pulling me out of my daze. I turned. The girls were still here, watching me. “Did your dad really just leave you here?” asked the one who had told me he left.

  “He wasn’t my dad,” I said, and walked over to their table. There was a free chair at the end, and I sat down. “He was my date.” I was suddenly exhausted.

  The girl gave a short laugh. “What?”

  “I met him online,” I said, looking down at the table and reciting as if from a script. “Told him I was older. Convinced him to meet me. Then he bailed.”

  “What were you planning on doing?” one of the other girls asked me.

  I looked up to see them all staring at me with fascination. “I … don’t know. I guess I just wanted to see what would happen.”