John Gone (4 page)

Adam took two careful steps toward John,
placing his hand on the long, white wicker dresser to his side as
he walked. John’s eyes followed the motion of the man’s hand,
worried about what he might do with it.

A thick, rounded snow globe sat a foot away
from Adam’s hand on the dresser. John locked his eyes to it and
heard Adam’s now-sandaled foot take another aggressive step
forward. John snuck his hand toward the globe, creeping his fingers
toward it from behind to camouflage the action. Adam took another
step, almost to him now.

It was the small girl who broke the tension.
“Daddy, you’re naked!” she exclaimed.

In a flash, John clutched the snow globe from
the dresser. Adam reached for his daughter with equal speed and
spun her deftly behind his body to safety. John covered his face,
closed his eyes, and threw the globe through the window behind him,
smashing the glass apart.

Without looking back, John followed the snow
globe he’d thrown, jumping through the broken window after it to
the thick grass one story below. He landed sorely, but uninjured.
Adam was quick to the window frame.

“Coward!”

“Stop calling me that!” John yelled back.
“That was pretty awesome just now, actually. And listen, I didn’t
try anything with your wife, okay?”

“Come back up here!”

“No thanks,” John replied casually. He looked
around. He was standing in Adam’s front yard. It was one of many in
what appeared to be a large a suburban neighborhood. The street in
front of him ran in two directions, neither of which led somewhere
with which John was familiar. He decided to run right, figuring it
as good a direction as any.

Two blocks away, he turned and looked behind
him. Adam was nowhere to be seen.
I guess he didn’t want to run
outside naked, chasing down a teenaged boy
, he thought.

John took a moment to catch his breath. He
felt his jaw where Adam had hit him minutes earlier. It was
starting to swell, but the pain was subsiding. He spun his
messenger bag around to the front of his body and cleaned it of the
small pieces of broken glass lodged in its thin front flap.

My phone
, John thought suddenly. He
patted the sides of his pants and smiled in relief at the lump in
his right pocket.

John opened his cell and frantically dialed
his home number. It rang seven times before switching over to the
answering machine.

“You’ve reached the Popielarski residence.
Please leave a message.” John cringed when he heard his last name
play on the machine. He hated it. John hung up and dialed again.
“You’ve reached the Popielarski residence. Please leave a
message.”

This time John waited for the beep. “Mom! Are
you there? Pick up the phone. I really, really need to talk to
you.” He waited for a few moments. “Mom, why don’t just have a cell
phone like normal people?” He heard a small click.

“Because it’s too expensive just paying for
yours!” his mother suddenly responded. “What is it, John, and you’d
better be on fire. I’m missing my show.”

“You want me to be on fire?”

“Speak, speak!” she said. “I’ve got four
minutes of commercials, max.”

“Okay, listen, and try not to freak out. I’m
in Tallahassee.”

“
What?
Try not to freak out? What are
you doing in Tallahassee? Virgil said you were only going to be
working on the island. I would have never allowed you to go all the
way up there on a dinky scooter! I’m going to kill him!”

“It’s too late for that, Mom. He’s already
dead.”

“
What?
” she yelled, doubling in
volume. “John, what on Earth is going on?”

“I don’t know.” A quiet beep played in John’s
ear over the conversation. He looked down at the phone’s screen and
saw that Molly was calling on the other line. “Mom, can I put you
on hold for a second?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Just a second,” he said, switching to
Molly.

“Hey, Molly, listen,” he began.

“Johnny!” she exclaimed. “I’m so excited
about tonight. I decided to call my aunt over to do my hair and
nails. She’s over here now.”

“Your aunt?”

“Yeah, but she was wondering, how are we
going out tonight? Are you borrowing your mom’s car?”

“Molly, listen--”

“I was going to say that I could borrow my
dad’s, but I think that you should drive, right? Boys are supposed
to drive the girls.”

“Molly--”

“I guess I can borrow my dad’s car, then you
can drive it. Does that still count like you picked me up?”

“Molly, I can’t go out with you tonight.” The
statement was followed by silence, then a quiet response.

“What did you say?”

“I’m in Tallahassee.”

“What are you doing in Tallahassee? Are you
standing me up?”

“It’s not actually standing you up if I tell
you about it.”

“Don’t talk to me about the rules of dating,
John Popielarski!” she yelled.

“Can you hold for a second?”

“No!”

John clicked back over to his mother.

“Mom?”

“John, damn it, don’t put me on hold when
we’re having an important conversation. Who was that, Virgil?”

“No, Mom, Virgil’s dead.”

“
What?
And what are you doing in
Tallahassee? You need to start making sense!”

“That’s asking way too much of me at the
moment. Can you hold on a second?”

“John, I swear, if you put me on hold again,
I’ll--”

“Mom, it’s Molly.”

“That’s who you put me on hold for? Damn it
John, don’t you put me on--”

“Just a second,” he interrupted, clicking the
call back to his girlfriend.

“Molly?”

“Did you just put me on hold?”

“Yes, listen, I’m really sorry that I can’t
go out tonight.”

“I can’t believe you put me on hold.”

“There’s this watch, and--”

“What? You have to watch something? That’s
what’s so important?”

“No, I found this watch and now I’m in
Tallahassee or something. I don’t actually know what’s going
on.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No!”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. You
have no idea what I’ve gone through today for you and this dumb
date of yours!”

“Well, we can go tomorrow,” John tried. The
quiet noise of his call waiting started beeping between his words.
He looked down at the screen. It was his mother calling back.
“Molly, someone’s on the other line. I have to take this.”

“No, you don’t,” she replied defiantly.

“No, really, I do,” he answered quickly,
looking at his phone flashing “Mamasama” across its screen.

“John, if you take that call ... ” she
started. There was moment of silence before she continued. “You
know what, John? Take it.” She hung up.

“Molly? Molly?” John clicked quickly over to
his mother.

“This isn’t acceptable behavior, Jonathon,”
she said in a chilling voice.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I should have thought about
how to explain this a bit more before calling you. I’m really
weirded out and I just need your help right now.”

“Okay,” his mother replied, calming. “Explain
to me what’s going on.”

“If you knew what was going on, then you’d
know why you wouldn’t know what was going on even if I tried to
tell you what was going on,” he answered.

“What?”

“Okay, short version: You know that watch I
found? It won’t come off. Virgil tried to take it off. That’s when
it electrocuted him. Then I passed out and woke up in Tallahassee
where some guy thought I was trying to have my way with his blind
wife.”

“Wait, what?” she exclaimed. “Is Virgil
alright?”

“No, Mom, for the last time, Virgil is dead.
He has stopped breathing, seeing, tasting, hearing, touching, and
smelling. He’s no longer alive. Dead. Okay? The man is
deceased.”

“Oh, my God,” she answered. “Are you
okay?”

“No!” he yelled back. “I’m in
Tallahassee!”

“How did you even get up there? Tallahassee
is at least five hours away by car, and you’re on a scooter!”

“I’m not on the scooter. I just sort of woke
up here.”

“John, you’re making me seriously
worried.”

John heard a quiet beep invading his
conversation again, but this time when he looked at the screen, he
saw that it came from his dying battery, not Molly calling to
make-up with him as he’d hoped.

“Mom, my battery is dying. I’ll explain
everything when we meet up. I don’t know where I am in the city, so
I’m just going to find a bus or something heading back toward
Longboard. I’m going to call you when I get there and you can pick
me up from the station and drive me back to the island, okay?”
Nothing. “Okay?” he repeated. Soon he heard soft sniffling. “Mom,
don’t cry, I’m fine, okay? I’ll call you when I get there. I have
to save my remaining battery life and get off the phone now.”

“Okay,” she replied slowly. “Be safe. Call me
the second you get back.”

“I will. I love you. And don’t worry,
everything is fine. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Alright,” she answered. “I love you,
too.”

“Make some tea or something. Try not to
worry.”

“Yeah,” she answered.

They hung up their phones.

John looked out the window to his left and
saw an illuminated bank sign poled high above the street. Its
sharp, flashing red LED lights begged for attention as they burned
against the night’s darkness:
87 degrees Fahrenheit, 3:08 a.m.
Get $50.00 free when you open a new checking account at Commerce
Bank!

He shivered against the torn plastic of his
seatback and struggled to fit underneath his messenger bag. He’d
been trying to use it as a blanket against the cold now welling
inside him. Normally, he’d think the bank’s signboard was wrong
about the temperature--a typo from the controller, or a faulty
thermometer--but for this time of year in Florida, it had to be
right. So why, then, was he shivering? It had been like winter for
him since the warming adrenaline of his encounter with Adam had
worn off earlier that day.

John considered the time displayed on the
sign, and the truth of it saddened him. His underdeveloped plan of
finding a bus home hadn’t been half as simple as he’d hoped. Once
he’d been given directions to the station, there’d still been the
long walk through an unknown city to get there. By the time he’d
finally arrived, it was already midnight, and the next bus hadn’t
been leaving for another hour still. Making matters even more
stressful, his phone had died just minutes after the phone call
with his mother. She’d probably called and called him in a panic
since then, but John had no way of knowing nor answering if she
had.

He tightened his body into a ball on top of
the seat and put his hands beneath his armpits for warmth. He could
see his mother at their home on the beach; she was sitting
wide-eyed on the couch, torn between waiting by the phone like
they’d agreed and jumping into her car to gun for Tallahassee. He
hated what he was putting her through.

John removed his hands from under his arms
and looked at the watch still attached to his wrist. He punched it
with his left hand.

“It’s all your fault,” he said, unsure if he
was speaking to the watch or to himself. His mind fell back to
Virgil’s horrified face, unwittingly frozen in time with the rest
of his body on the cold, hard floor of that plain and dreary old
office where he’d left him. He saw the arc of electricity that
entered Virgil’s hand and heard the sound of the
pop
it had
made as it killed him.

John drew his wrist close to his face and
examined the watch again, hoping to accidentally stumble upon its
secrets. As he looked through the glass at the tiny humming wires
beneath its hands, the bus drove over a large pothole in the road.
The impact sent the watch sharply against his forehead. It
stung.

“Truce?” John asked the watch unemotionally,
slipping his attention back to the world outside his window.

He uncurled and sat slumped in his seat,
trying to empty his mind of the day’s events. He didn’t want to
think about any of it, not the watch, not Virgil, Molly, his
mother, Adam, or his swollen and aching jaw.

His mind finally quieted for but a moment
before a familiar sensation overcame him. His heart began to pound
strongly against his ribs. His limbs were quickly becoming limp,
and the energy they seemed to lose was being funneled in pulse to
his left arm, energizing it just as it had before. John slid
uncontrollably downward into his seat, hoping he could keep from
flopping to the floor and drawing unwanted attention from the other
passengers.

He lifted the watch to his tilted face and
noted the time: 3:14. The watch’s hands sat in the same position
they’d been sitting in when he’d been mysteriously brought to
Tallahassee earlier that afternoon. His mind raced, fighting the
unconsciousness that he knew was soon to follow.

3:14 again. Is this going to happen every
twelve hours?
It was his final thought before blacking out.

One minute later John was awake again. He
waited patiently through the moments it took to regain movement in
his body. While he waited for his vision and hearing to return, he
slid his hand beneath his legs to the cold porcelain seat of an
open toilet. He could hear the voice of a man speaking from outside
the room, then another, more metallic, crackling through what
sounded like a walkie-talkie. Soon, John was aware of many voices,
all men, all serious in tone.

Was he back in Tallahassee? Would he walk out
of the bathroom once more to find Adam, calm, composed and clothed,
telling the police about a young rapist who, as they would soon
discover, was dumb enough to reenter the house? The idea chilled
him.