I’d just have to take care of myself. I’d be all right. Peter had this cabin. There was a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen – what more could I want? There was food, he’d said, plenty of food.
God, I was hungry.
The room where Peter was asleep was just off the kitchen, in a little alcove set away from the main living room of the cabin. I crept into the kitchen and slowly opened the fridge door in case it creaked. I peered inside. Nothing, except for some mouldy cheese and two cracked eggs that looked fossilised. There was a nasty smell – something that could have been lettuce leaves was lying dead in the bottom of the crisper. And the freezer was iced over, with mounds of snowy particles hiding ice cube trays and an empty waffle box. No feast in the fridge, then. So where was this huge stock of groceries that Peter had told Jonah about?
The cupboards were almost bare too. There were cans of tomatoes and tuna, saltine crackers, two boxes of macaroni and cheese mix, a plastic container of stale corn flakes. And for dessert? Three boxes of pudding mix and a bag of petrified marshmallows.
I wanted to cry.
Still, there was the food that Peter had brought from town, sitting on the counter in a paper bag – a big loaf of white bread, some Velveeta cheese, a package of Lipton tea bags, half a gallon of milk and two tiny green apples. I put the milk in the fridge, made myself a sandwich and an extra for Peter, the way I used to make extra when Jesse and Cole were at home.
I cut the sandwiches into little diagonals, thinking about the best way to use up the milk. That macaroni and cheese supper mix would probably call for milk. I could use milk in the pudding mix, too. Macaroni and cheese, chocolate pudding – that would make a decent meal. And I could do something with the tuna and tomatoes – save some of the macaroni and have a kind of pasta thing. I could even melt the marshmallows, mix some cornflakes into them to make a nice dessert.
Things weren’t so bad, after all. I found a set of pretty, old-fashioned yellow dishes in a cupboard. I put Peter’s sandwich on a plate, and wrapped it in aluminium foil from one of the drawers. I went to the alcove doorway and listened in. I could hear him breathing – deep, steady, just a little bit of a buzzing snore. He’d like that – waking up to a plate of food.
Suddenly, I was Betty Crocker, Suzy Homemaker and Mom on one of her cooking benders, all rolled into one.
‘The ghost of Grandma Hanson,’ Mom called it, after some Norwegian ancestor of hers. The ghost would strike every year, usually around Christmas, and turn Mom into a good housewife against her will, making her take out the old, crusty cookbooks that were stashed away in the back of the cupboard, forcing her to buy cheap women’s magazines that were on display at the supermarket checkout.
Then, for maybe a week, she’d cook and clean, trying out the magazine tips that involved polishing with lemon juice and vinegar. She’d bake stuff and freeze it – casseroles using Poppin-fresh dough and Tater Tots, weird concoctions that ended up tasting like over-salted cardboard.
This would go on until she tried something tricky that wasn’t based on a mix – maybe a soufflé, or pastry from scratch. Then it would all go wrong, so that by the time the ghost finally left her, there’d be dishes piled up in the sink and hunks of dough would be left on the countertop and spattered on the stove. The kitchen would stay that way, batter hardening like concrete, until, a week later, she’d pay me five bucks to chip everything off with a metal scraper.
Maybe it was the ghost of Grandma Hanson who made me think of the boy outside, made me wonder if he was as hungry as me.
I felt guilty worrying about him, though. This was Peter’s place, Peter’s really special place, and this other kid was trespassing. Peter hadn’t called it that, he hadn’t said anything, but he was upset about it. It was in his eyes, the way they flashed and twitched.
Peter wouldn’t want me sharing our food with the Indian boy.
But still, it didn’t seem right – that kid out there starving, while we were in here with enough food. We’d have to share. We couldn’t just leave him alone, could we?
PETER
The sound of bells woke him. Where was he? Back in England? No. Italy? On holiday?
He pulled off his covers and it came back to him. He was at the cabin. The bell he was hearing was from that old-fashioned dial phone that hung on the kitchen wall.
The telephone. Bollocks!
‘Hey Pete!’
Uncle Kenneth. Thank God. Not Peter’s dad. Ken’s voice sounded rough and staticky, as if it were a thousand miles away, at the end of a long, clogged wire.
‘You were gonna call me.’
Peter wondered how long he’d been asleep. It was still daylight, so not too long. He looked at the clock on the cooker – almost noon.
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ he said, yawning.
‘Well, I hope everything’s still in one piece up there.’
Ken’s voice sounded normal, affable, upbeat – the way the sentence tilted up at the end let Peter know it was a question, but that he was only interested, not suspicious.
‘Everything’s fine, Ken. I had a hard time getting here, though.’ He told part of the story – the closed road, the long walk, the exhaustion, the dawn arrival. He didn’t say anything about a kidnapped girl or an Indian boy in a wigwam.
He noticed the sandwich on the table. It looked like a present, wrapped in kitchen foil, neatly tucked in at the edges. All it was missing was the bow. Etta must have done that.
‘Say, yeah, you know, I got a call from your dad.’
‘Oh, really?'
He tried to sound like his uncle – casual, not bothered. To make himself sound even more distracted, he opened the cupboard that was next to the phone, put his free hand in and started rummaging in the contents – instant iced tea mix, a bag of sugar in a sealed plastic container. Was his uncle doing the same thing – putting on an act?
Peter opened the sugar container. ‘I hope everything’s OK with him.’
‘Well. . .’ There was a slight hesitation. It was as if he were trying to put together the right chain of words, to piece things together in his mind.
‘It was on the answering machine, so I haven’t actually talked to him. Just a message, but it was kinda weird, like, “Is he with you?” I didn’t quite get what he meant.’
‘That is odd.’ Peter was casual again, as if he hadn’t the foggiest idea what his dad could have meant. He tried to sound impatient, too – didn’t his uncle know he had things to sort out here? The sugar container was crawling with black ants, for God’s sake.
‘Just thought it was kinda, well, like you said. Odd. Like he didn’t know where you were.’
Then Peter went for decisive, slamming shut the cupboard door. ‘He was probably worried that I hadn’t got here yet. I told him I’d call straight away, but I fell asleep. I was just about to call him now, that is, if you don’t mind.’
There was silence from the other end. The phone line crackled as if it were getting congested with a traffic jam of unspoken words – Peter’s lies, Uncle Kenneth’s unasked questions.
‘You sure everything’s OK?’
‘Of course.’ He gave a weak laugh – a nice touch. ‘I just wish I’d picked up a few more things at the shop in town. It’s a long walk in.’
‘You know, if you call the store Duane’ll deliver for you. Tell him to put it on my account.’
And that was that, except for a few more ‘yeps’ and ‘all rights’ and the final seal of trust and approval – Uncle Ken saying ‘you bet’ before putting down the phone.
Peter felt sick, a raw, gurgling ache in the pit of his stomach. His uncle knew something was up. They were both crap liars. He might as well get on the phone, call his uncle, his dad, tell the whole world where he was, what he’d done, wait to be collected by some county social worker, to get bundled onto a plane back to England, and met by his father’s stern jaw fixed in position.
‘Do you know what this has cost me – your little escapade?’ He heard
his father’s clenched-teeth words, hissing like venom from the mouth of a snake. Dad would pause before he used the word ‘escapade’ to add extra effect, to make it sound as though he were searching for just the right word, even though he would’ve had his lines all figured out ahead of time, the way he always did.
Arrogant git.
Peter took the phone off the hook and set the receiver down on the worktop, half tempted to cut the twisted cord with a knife. If Uncle Ken called back, he’d think he was on the phone to Dad. If his dad phoned and couldn’t get through, that was tough.
He took a bite of the sandwich Etta had left on the table. Not bad. Maybe it was because someone else had made it, but the bread tasted softer, fresher than it had yesterday. Maybe it was the dampness in the air. He put it down. He’d wait until Etta had hers. It was only polite.
He went back to his room and straightened the bed. When he was little, this had been his favourite room. Although it was in the centre of things, between the kitchen and the main living area, it seemed like a hiding place. Everything in it was child-sized. The single bed that always had – still had – a white candlewick spread with nubs that he twiddled with his fingers to help him fall asleep. The tiny window that only a child could get through, or else a small, harmless animal. Bears couldn’t get him in this room, or wolves, or giants or robbers. He was safe here – it was like being a baby, cocooned in his mother’s arms.
He walked across the living room to the bedroom where Etta would be sleeping. Now that it was lighter, the dirt showed up. There were streaks on the window where months of rain had come lashing down. The floor seemed sticky under his feet. There was a dusty scum on the tables, grimy smudges on the glass-topped desk, as though somebody had made a mess and only half cleaned it up. Soot and the remains of crumbled kindling twigs had been blown across the hearth tiles and had settled in the cobwebs that were spreading in the corners and crevices.
Two small steps and a tiny hallway separated the bedroom from the rest of the house. He trod carefully toward the closed door then knocked gently. Nothing. He should leave her to sleep. She must have gone back to bed after making his sandwich. Still, he wanted to see her, make sure she was OK.
He opened the door a crack. The bathroom door was open, the bathroom light on, the fan humming. The double bed looked empty, but the way the covers were bunched up in the middle, a soft, tube-like hump, he couldn’t tell. She was so tiny, she could easily fit in there.
‘Etta?’
Then he heard it – through the open bathroom window. Laughter. It was musical and sweet, as though somebody were practising a scale on a flute. Etta’s laughter, followed by somebody else’s – that Indian boy’s.
Peter stood still for a while, listening, a spy in his own house.
JONAH
Once, when he was small – he couldn’t have been more than four or five – Jonah had had what his mother called a ‘little girlfriend’. Sometimes she pronounced it in a high, sing-song, baby voice – ‘widdow gewfwend’. Even then, the mocking way she said things had made him angry.
The girl’s name was Melissa and her mother had been a friend of his mom’s. He and Melissa would play together in her bedroom while the two mothers sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee or wine, depending on what time of day it was, smoking cigarettes, coughing and cackling.
Melissa’s single bed had a white canopy over it, a pink flowered bedspread on top of it and, stashed underneath it, crate-loads of pink toys. Barbie houses, Barbie cars, Care Bears, pink building blocks, My Little Pony colouring books. At the time, Jonah had thought even Melissa’s name was pink, the way it reminded him of cotton candy at a fairground, delicate strands of pastel spun sugar, sweet and melty, just like her.
He couldn’t remember being anywhere else with her – the park or his apartment – he could only remember that pink room and the way it glowed, and how Melissa had seemed to be what was lighting it up. Her hair was strawberry blonde and she had two dimples either side of her smile, as though somebody had dipped a spoon into her cheeks because they were as soft and smooth as whipped cream.
Looking back, as he did sometimes, especially when he got older and saw Melissa around at school or in the supermarket on Lake Street buying cigarettes with her hard-faced friends, he realised that he must have been in love with her.
What else could it have been? He would have done anything for her. He gave her his candy, he played whatever stupid girl game she wanted to play, dressing her dolls up, dressing himself in clothes from her dressing up box – plastic high heels, a white, satiny slip and bra, a shiny patent leather purse to match – so they could play shopping. Even then, he knew that there was something weird about a boy wearing plastic high heels, even then he felt humiliated by what she asked – no, insisted – that he do, but he didn’t care. Anything she asked, he would have done it – stolen from his mother, eaten worms, run across Interstate 94 during rush hour, swallowed rat poison.
In the end, what she asked him to do was to draw pictures all over her white flowered wallpaper with black magic markers and pour bright green poster paint onto the new pink wool carpet her mother had just bought. It took weeks for her mother’s shrieks to stop ringing in his ears, years for his mother to stop blaming him for losing her such a wonderful friend as Melissa’s mom.
The girl sitting in his wigwam didn’t look anything like Melissa, so why did she make him think of her? This girl’s hair, once the sun stopped shining behind it, was matted close to her head as though it hadn’t been washed in a week. She fiddled with it, the way girls always did, twisting a greasy strand around her fingers, pulling at the ends, running her fingers through it as if her hand were a comb.
She’d come in a little nervously, poking her head in, stepping through the doorway, following his nodded instructions to sit down on the ground. She looked around at the things that he’d managed to fasten onto the fragile bark walls, admiring them, he thought – pictures he’d printed off from the internet. A sepia photograph of a huge herd of buffalo, some cave pictures from Mexico or Italy – at least that’s what the place sounded like to him. Altamira. He’d even tried doing his own straight onto the bark – he’d used a little kid’s watercolour set that he’d brought with him – but they looked like green and brown stains, smeared-on snot or puke. He’d get some paper, try again later.
‘How long you been here?’
It was just a simple question, but he was so used to questions being loaded, questions from his mother being more like interrogations, that he got paranoid straight away. Did he smell bad, was that what she was getting at? Or was she spying for the English boy, pumping Jonah for information so that they could get him evicted?
‘A week.’
‘Wow. I thought you’d been here for way longer.’
‘I look that bad, eh?’
‘No, God, no.’
She laughed, that pretty sound, as if she were singing. ‘No worse than me, anyway.’
When they both laughed, their two voices got mixed up together – hers high, his low.
Like music, he thought. A beautiful song.
ETTA
Like I said, Jonah was cute. And mysterious, in a way.
‘Different,’ my mom would have said, only to her ‘different’ was never a good thing, it was something weird and hard to understand, maybe even dangerous.
But Jonah wasn’t that. He was intense. Not just quiet in the way that Peter was, with words inside him, desperate to come bubbling out, if only he’d let them. With Jonah, there were weren’t many words at all. His voice was deep and he hardly opened his mouth when he talked. With Jonah there were feelings, thoughts – so many that it must have caused him pain to actually express them.
That’s the way it seemed, anyway, sitting cross-legged opposite him, glancing at his face, trying not to stare. God, he was cute – black hair, dark eyes, nut-brown skin – nothing like the normal run-of-the-mill, flabby, white-bread, pizza-faced guys who roamed the streets of Welm
er.
Different. Beautiful. Way prettier than me, anyway. Not that that was saying much.
‘This is nice. Your wigwam, I mean.’
What an idiotic thing to say. Quick, say something else, something smarter. ‘It’s so sturdy and it’s like it . . . belongs here.’
‘It does,’ he said.
I looked around, as if I was checking it all out again. I put both hands up to my hair, twirled a strand, twisted it tight.
‘Your friend still asleep?’ Jonah asked.
‘Oh, Peter’s not my friend,’ I stuttered. ‘Not like my boy friend anyway.’
Why had I said that? The words came out so fast. Suddenly, the wigwam felt hotter, seemed brighter. The sun must have come out from behind the clouds.
‘I bet that’s not the way he sees it,’ Jonah said, the trace of a smile in the corner of his mouth.
‘No, no, you’ve got it all wrong.’ I tried not to smile. It didn’t feel right, making light of Peter and me, of what we’d been through. ‘No, I mean it, we’re just friends.’
This was stupid. I didn’t need to explain anything to Jonah. Peter didn’t need defending.
‘He saved my life,’ I said.
Jonah smiled, raised his eyes. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ I could have told him the whole story then – about Kyle, about the men, about the woods – but I didn’t have the energy. It would have to wait.
‘So, how long have you guys known each other?
I thought back. Last night. It must have been after midnight when Kyle’s car nearly ran Peter over. What time was it now? Noon, maybe. I counted back the hours, touching my fingers to make sure.
‘Twelve hours.’
That couldn’t be right.
‘Not very long, then.’
At Yellow Lake Page 10