Crooked (21 page)

33

ANOTHER NOTE FROM THE GREAT DEVOID

When he arrived home, Amos could hardly remember how he got there. It was as if he'd moved through the crisp clear night without quite knowing how. It was a new, genial world, seen through new eyes, sensed with a new body. The sidewalk seemed to carry him forward on its own. The lighted homes seemed snug, the yards threw a wide welcome, the trees swept him along.

It was a surprise, then, when Amos found himself at home so soon. The gate had been left open, which was just like Liz, especially when she was hurrying off on a date. Only one room within the house was lighted, and that was the room that always seemed now to be lighted at all hours of the night. It was the small reading den off the kitchen. The lights always seemed to be on because his mother always seemed to be up. Even after a full shift at Bing's, she had a hard time sleeping, and her new way of filling the hours was to listen to the Bible, with commentary, on tape. A church friend had lent her a reel-to-reel tape deck along with the huge earphones that plugged into it. “The stone age of audio,” Amos had said upon first viewing the huge apparatus.

Tonight Amos just glanced at his mother—she had her back to him, but the tape was slowly sliding through the two plastic spools—and walked on past without interrupting her. He was too jittery to sleep, so he took a root beer and sandwich out to his pigeon coop. It was quiet there, except for the throaty cooing of some of the birds at his arrival. From the house he heard the front door open and close; then the upstairs lights went on, first in Liz's room, then in the bathroom. So Liz was home from her date. Amos finished his sandwich and went inside.

Liz was still in the bathroom when he got upstairs. He knocked heavily on the door and said, “I need to get in there. As in
urgently
.”

From within the bathroom, Liz said nothing.

“Okay,” Amos said. “Thirty seconds and I'm coming in.”

“I'm reeling with fear,” Liz said.

“Twenty seconds.”

From within, Liz said, “I'm quaking in my mules.”

“Ten seconds.”

As Amos raised his fist to pound again, the lock turned and the door opened. Liz, her dark eyes staring out from behind a creamy mask of white face-saver, gave him a mocking, older-sister smile. “So how do I look?”

“Better than normal,” Amos said. This banter with his sister was reassuring to Amos. But Liz had changed since the funeral. She cooked when their mother was at the restaurant, she did her homework, she was looking for part-time work. She was never even late from her dates. It was as if she'd turned into an adult overnight. Exchanging insults was for old times' sake. “So how was your big date?” Liz said now, from behind her oily white mask.

“Wasn't a date,” Amos said, already feeling his skin prickle.

“Ah,” Liz said thoughtfully. “And did you meet this member of the opposite sex at an appointed time?”

Amos saw the trap and said nothing.

“Because if you did,” Liz continued, “it was definitely a date.” She gently took hold of his arm, then released it. “So how did it go?”

Almost before he could think, Amos said, “It was a lot of fun. I mean, we didn't really do anything. Mostly we just talked. But...” His voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“Well, I never knew talking could be that nice.”

Liz was smiling. “Lucky you,” she said, and then, giving his arm another squeeze, “Lucky her.”

In the bathroom, Amos studied his image in the mirror, turning this way and that, trying to see himself as Clara Wilson might have seen him. He did this for quite a while, and then finally he went to his room, turned off the light, and slid into bed.

But as Amos slipped his hand under his pillow, his fingers brushed something foreign. It was paper, a packet, a packet that contained something. Amos sat up and turned on the bedside light. What he found under his pillow was a small paper folder. MR. AMOS was typed on the front. Inside the jacket were three color Polaroids. The first was blurry and distant, but under the light, Amos could see that it was a shot of him and Crook being greeted by Clara's father under the porch light. The next one was of Amos's mother, from the back, with her earphones on her head, which meant it was taken from within the house. The last Polaroid was of a bed. This one, evidently taken with a flash, was perfectly clear. The soft surface was a bedspread. It was chenille. It was exactly like the one on Liz's bed. Laid on top of the bed was a pair of girls' white briefs. A typed note read:

MACAMOS, MACMOM, AND MACLUSCIOUS—ALL WORTH WATCHING.

P.S. YOU HAVEN'T BEEN ACTING RIGHT. IF YOU WOULD JUST ACT RIGHT NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN. SIGNED, YOUR GAURDIAN ANGLE

Amos pulled on his pants and crossed the hall. A band of light shone at the base of Liz's bedroom door. “It's me,” he said, knocking lightly.

“It's open,” Liz said.

She was sitting up in bed reading
Mirabella,
which she now folded over her hand. “So?”

He handed the photographs and the note to Liz, whose face grew wooden as she looked at them. “Who took these?”

“The Tripps come to mind,” Amos said. He nodded toward the photograph of the bed and briefs. “I suppose that's your underwear.”

Liz got up and pulled open her underwear drawer. Everything was in order. All the briefs and bras and slips were carefully folded into neat rows. The briefs that had been photographed were on top, carefully folded. Thinking of someone sneaking into Liz's room and taking pictures of her briefs and then folding them and putting them back sent a sickening wave of revulsion through Amos.

Liz collapsed back on the bed. “This smells like the Tripps.” She exhaled tiredly. “Well, tomorrow we'll go see O'Hearn.”

But Amos was hesitant. “I don't know about that,” he said, and then described how the Tripps had accosted him after Detective O'Hearn's last visit with them.

“But then we're letting
them
dictate to
us,
” Liz said.

Amos looked down at his bare feet.

Liz rattled the note. “What's the business about ‘acting right'?”

Amos shrugged. “I know Eddie Tripp didn't like my, you know, hero status. But I think he's also not that happy about my being friends with Clara Wilson.”

Liz's face stiffened. “So what're you going to do, let them tell you who you can be friends with?”

Amos averted his eyes.

“Amos?”

“Look,” Amos said finally, “it's not that simple. These guys are truly creepy.” He wanted to say more, but had the feeling nothing would help. Liz was staring at him. Her disappointment in him seemed total.

Dad would've known the right thing to do,
Amos thought as he lay down at last in his narrow bed and stared out his window into the moonless dark.
And I never will.

Hardly aware that he was doing it, Amos pulled the bed-covers tightly over his head, just as he had used to do when he was still afraid of the dark.

34

TRUTHS AND LIES

“Amos!”

It was Monday morning, between second and third periods.

“Hey, Amos!” Clara called again.

Amos turned but barely waited for her to catch up. “Can't talk,” he said. His eyes looked jittery and unfocused. They shifted to either side of her face, as if looking for someone over her shoulder. “We can talk on the phone, but not at school.”

Clara felt all her good spirits draining away. “What do you mean?”

“I'll explain later. I'll call tonight.” He turned quickly and became part of the stream of students flowing away from her.

Why wouldn't he want to talk to her at school when they had just had such a good time last night? Had he decided it was a big mistake? Was he embarrassed by her now? Unconsciously, she touched her hand to the side of her nose.

Out of nowhere, a nearby voice said, “I like your nose.”

Clara, startled, stopped and turned.

Eddie Tripp stood grinning, just staring and looking directly into her eyes, and then, right in the middle of the hallway, he leaned close and touched the top of her nose and ran his fingertip down the curved bridge and would, she supposed, have touched her lips if she hadn't turned her face.

“I like that swoop in your nose,” Eddie said in almost a whisper. “It makes you prettier.”

“I'm late for World Cultures,” Clara said. “I've got to go.” And she did go, but not to World Cultures. She sneaked into the library and sat at a remote corner table staring at a book and wondering what it meant that, as Eddie Tripp had smoothed the tip of his finger along the crooked line of her nose, an actual and pleasant tingling sensation had run through her entire body, top to bottom, A to Z.

Sands Mandeville had receded from Clara's mind. This was in part because of the passage of time, and in part because Sands had clearly resented Clara's small success in
The Smiling Gumshoe
. But one of the things Clara was learning this year was that when it came to hurtful human behavior, almost nobody should be underestimated. And Sands Mandeville was no exception.

In leaving the library at the end of third period, Clara turned a corner and saw Sands Mandeville approaching from the other end of the corridor. It was the usual Mandeville—she walked down the hallway like she owned it. She called out to people, she smiled, she laughed, she knew she looked good. She was wearing black jeans with a green shirt, tails out. As she approached, Clara stared at the shirt with greater and greater disbelief. It was long-sleeved, flannel, and green. It was Amos's shirt. Clara knew this not just from the shirt itself but also from the cocked cold smile Sands Mandeville pointed fixedly at Clara as she passed.
Bang-bang,
the smile said.
Bang-bang,
you're dead.

White roses were sitting on Clara's front porch when she got home from her paper route that night. TO CLARA, the typed enclosure read. SORRY. There was no signature. They could have come from Amos, or they could even have come from Eddie. She told herself that she hoped the roses and apology were from Amos, either for not talking to her at school or for Sands having worn his shirt to school, and by the time her mother called from Spain a half hour later, Clara had converted this fainthearted supposition to fact. “It was so much fun,” she said of her Sunday night pizza with Amos and Bruce. “We just talked and joked and had the best time.” A long moment passed before Clara heard herself say, “And then this afternoon, Amos gave me six white roses.”

Her mother's delighted laugh sailed across one ocean and two continents.
“Well,”
she said, “it sounds like somebody besides Sylvia Harper's got a new beau.”

Yeah, Clara thought. I just don't know who he is.

After dinner that night, Clara's father stayed seated. And when Clara rose to help clear the dishes, he said, “Let that go for a few minutes, Clara. We need to talk.”

Clara.
Not
Polkadot
or
Doodlebug
.

Clara sat back down. What did he know? That she'd gone riding with Eddie? That she'd let Amos kiss her? That she was messing up at school?

“Well, as you know, my job has always required me to travel, and I guess you've noticed that ever since your mother left, I haven't traveled at all. The company has allowed that. But they can't allow it forever because I can't do my job without servicing accounts. And the accounts are in many different cities.”

Clara stared and waited.

“They've come up with a smaller territory, which means less travel. But not
no
travel.”

Clara looked down at her dirty plate. They'd had a tuna casserole with no-fat cheese that wouldn't melt and tasted awful and now lay piled to one side of her plate.

“I'm going to have to make a quick trip this Thursday.”

Clara looked up. Her father gave her a reassuring smile. “I'll be back Tuesday,” he said. “I checked with Sylvia Harper, and she said you could stay those days with her. Or you could just line it up and stay with Gerri.”

Clara hadn't told her father that she and Gerri were no longer friends. She'd presumed he must've noticed that Gerri never called or came around anymore, but now she realized he hadn't noticed at all. “Okay,” she said, “I'll talk to Gerri.”

This was a lie, of course, and it was also a lie when she told her father later that night that she had a headache and couldn't talk to Amos, who had telephoned.
Tell him that I'll have him
paged at school tomorrow,
she thought.
Tell him to call Sands Mandeville if he needs someone to chat with
. “Tell him I have a terrible headache,” she said.

Her father seemed concerned. “Oh, Polkadot. Have you taken aspirin?”

Clara nodded and refined the lie. “Tylenol,” she said.

One lie after another. But after her father went away to carry her fib back to Amos, Clara sat on the floor with Ham's head in her lap and was shocked to find that telling these lies didn't bother her, not at all. What bothered her was the
truths
she
hadn't
told her mother or her father or anyone else. That she'd gone off in a car with Eddie Tripp, or that she'd felt strange and happy not just when Amos had kissed her on the mouth but also when Eddie had stopped her in the hall and smoothed his finger along her nose, or that some part of her was glad her father was going away for a few days and she would have the house to herself.

Maybe that's just one more of the awful signs of growing up, Clara thought. When the unspoken truths are more bothersome than the say-out-loud lies.