Stones and Spark (35 page)

"Drew?"

In that basement I couldn't see her clearly, not just because it was dim. But because fear kept slapping my brain like a panic button. Now, under the unforgiving hospital lights, against these shock-white sheets, every detail about her stands out. Her skin, normally olive-toned, looks yellow. Her hair wiry and matted.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"Bupkis," she says to the window.

"If that's Yiddish, I don't know what you're saying."

"Obviously it's Yiddish." She hasn't turned toward me yet.

My eyes burn. "Can you tell me what it means?"

"Crap." She turns toward me. "Bupkis means crap. As in, literal fecal matter, excreted from an oversized mammal."

Around her ears there are raw patches of skin, red and angry-looking.

"Bupkis or no bupkis," I tell her, "I'm so glad to see you."

She stares down at the white sheet and nods absently.

"Drew, you have no idea how much I missed you."

For a long while, she doesn't say anything. I feel stupid, saying something so obvious. Or something that sounds like my pain is placed over hers.

"I didn't mean—"

"He asked for help." She looks at me, then at the window. "Help. He wanted help."

My heart thuds.

"He bought a batting machine." She blinks slowly. "I was telling him about the center of percussion."

The diagrams. Marked with
COP
.

"I saw that, in your notebook."

Her head swivels. She looks at me, hard.

"Yes, I had to read it. Drew, you were gone. And your notebook was sitting there in the Physics lab, with your jacket." My voice sounds defensive and I'm too tired to control it. "What did you expect me to do—not look for answers?"

She returns to the window. I follow her gaze. Across the street, the big stone church known as First Lutheran. The large stained glass window is lit, glowing through the dark.

"Baseball," she says. "This happened because of baseball."

I don't want to argue, but baseball is not why this happened. This happened because evil exists in this world and sometimes it looks very, very ordinary. It looks like a nice bald guy who whistles when he works.

I tell her about the soil samples, taken from her bike wheel, and how those minerals led me to the quarry. She doesn't say anything.

"We found one of your purple All-Stars there."

Still she doesn't say anything.

"I couldn't figure out why you were there." I hate to ask this next question. But I have to know. "Was it for geology? Is this my fault?"

"You're not listening," she says. "He always let me stay late at school. He would even close the door to the Physics lab if Parsnip or Ellis was coming to make sure nobody was still in the school. I could work. Without interruptions."

"He did you favors." Just like my dad said.

"He was the only person who never told me to stop what I was doing."

Drew Levinson—best friend, genius—can explain critical mass theory and densities that exist in the lightest gasses within the universe. She can talk for hours about string theory and how teleportation might not be that far off.

But she was an easy mark: a predator's dream.

I wait through another silence, not wanting her to stop.

"He likes baseball, coaches little league." She pauses and a shiver seems to run through her. "He asked for my help, how to teach his players to hit."

Those notes, the diagrams. I feel sick. "I should've figured it out sooner."

"Is that why you went to the baseball field, on Friday, to help with batting?"

"Partly."

When she looks at me, I realize the other part. It's written in sorrow, in her eyes. I don't want my next words to sound accusatory. But they do.

"You wanted to run away."

She doesn't deny it.

"Drew, why didn't you tell me about the move?" My exasperation breaks down my fatigue. "That guy knew you were moving, and I didn't? You told him—before you told me, your best friend?"

Her voice, unlike mine, sounds weary. "You honestly believe that I confided in him before talking to you?"

"I don't—I can't—"

"Jayne. She called the office, wanting to know about my credits transferring to some private school in New York. Parsnip heard that and went into apoplectic delirium. I was leaving, and she couldn't shut up about it, apparently, because John overheard her talking about it to Ellis." She lifts her hand, pressing it into her forehead. Like her brain aches.

"I'm sorry."

"And consider this." Now the heat comes into her voice. "That means Jayne told Parsnip long before she told me. In fact, Jayne never told me."

"Wait." I shake my head, trying to clear it. "You found out—from him?"

The sorrow in her eyes grows deeper. "Thursday night, I was working in the lab, getting some new findings ready for our Friday dinner. John came in, he looked . . . upset. He said he was going to really miss me." Her fingers move down the white sheet, gathering it into a fist. "Jayne. Again. We fought all night."

The first domino falls. Hits the next, and the next, and suddenly the pattern appears to me.

"And you were going to tell me about the move at dinner, on Friday. But John asked you for help that afternoon, with the batting stuff. You felt like you owed him, because he told you about the move. So you cancelled the tutoring session with Tinsley because—"

"Because it doesn't matter what I teach her, she's always going be stupid."

Normally I would laugh. But right now, the world seems very badly rigged. Cruel dummies like Tinsley are flourishing; while brilliant people like Drew suffer. Or die. Tears spring to my eyes. I don't push them back.

"I biked down to the field," she says. "He told me how to get there. But I didn't see him. I walked around, he grabbed me, he said I wouldn't have to move away, he would keep me—"

My tears fall.

"I got away, got on my bike. I started riding, but it was like I couldn't see where I was going—"

"You wound up at the quarry?"

"I don't know . . . I was . . . I couldn't think." Her voice climbs, I've never heard it this agitated. Ever. "It was as if my brain turned off."

"That's what fear does, Drew." I want her to calm down, so I speak slowly. "Sometimes, I get so scared I literally can't think. It's normal."

"But I
never
have that happen. Never. And the fact that I couldn't think scared me even more. He was following me in his truck, down the road, and then I was on gravel, soft dirt. Suddenly—the bike, it wouldn't go fast enough."

Not fear. Terror. Sheer terror.

"Your shoe was—"

"He grabbed me there, again," she stares into the air, into the memory. "I was trying to get away, my shoe, it came off. I felt cold air on my foot. And then, everything went black."

She doesn't say more. But I imagine him grabbing her by that mound of soil, throwing her into his camper, taping her up. Her ninety-pound frame, paralyzed with terror. And the purple shoe, left behind on the ground, buried by Saturday's rain that poured down and slumped the soil over it.

"He must've snuck your bike back to school." I tell her about seeing the purple Schwinn there later, during the dance. "It made people think we were playing a game. But he didn't put the lock on right." I try to smile, but I only feel like crying more. "Thank God you're compulsive."

She lifts the sheet, pressing it to her face. I wait, trying to decide whether to tell her about Titus. No, not now. Later. And then maybe she'll be strong enough to calculate one of the complicated physics equations about speed of travel and approximations of arrival, divided by the discovery of how close Titus came to appearing at that field on Friday, at the same time, and saving her this agony, these scars.

She speaks into the sheet: "I know you want to ask."

"How did you stay sane?"

She shakes her head. "What did he do to me."

I shake my head right back. But she can't see me. "No, I don't care. You're back, that's what matters."

"I am technically still a virgin, just so you know."

"Okay." Something creeps into my heart. "Drew?"

She doesn't look up from the sheet.

"Drew."

As the silence stretches out, I feel scared all over again. I want to reach out, hug her, take her hand, comfort her somehow. But I remember how she flinched when I touched her in the house, to carry her upstairs. How scared she was, even of me.

When she finally lowers the sheet, a distant expression fills her eyes.

This time, I hold back the burn in my eyes. "You should get some rest."

Silence.

"Do you want me to stay with you? Would that help?"

She doesn't reply, I ask a second time. She turns to the window. "Is Jayne out there?"

"Yes."

"Drunk?"

"Believe it or not, she's reading Feynman."

"Jayne." She looks at me. "My mother, Jayne?"

"The same." I describe being in the kitchen this morning. "No wine bottles anywhere. Not even empties in the trash. I think she's trying to change, Drew."

"Like I'm changed?" She sounds bitter again.

"Your dad's out there too," I tell her.

Two hours later, Drew has fallen asleep—with Jayne holding her hand.

I walk out to the waiting room, desperately needing fresh air. Officer Lande stands when she sees me.

"How is she?" she asks.

I'm not sure what to say. When I carried Drew out of that house, something told me life would never be the same. I just didn't realize what would change. "She's the same, and different."

Officer Lande's face looks both very hard and very soft, all at once.

"Her parents are going to stay in the room," I tell her. "I was wondering. Do you think it's okay if I go home, for just a little while?"

***

Officer Lande walks out with me. The cold air makes me shiver, and feels so wonderful I can't stop pulling it into my lungs. Clean and clear compared to everything else tonight.

"I'll give you a ride home," she says.

"It's only two blocks from here."

"But your bike's in the trunk of my car."

"Okay, I'll get it out. "

She gives me another look. I point down Monument Avenue.

"Two blocks, that's all it is."

But that's only half the reason I want to go alone. The other half, the greater half, is that I don't want her cruiser to scare my mom again. I've done enough damage already.

"They're going to call you tomorrow," she says, taking my bike from her trunk.

I reach in for my backpack, slinging it onto my shoulder. My arms are sore, an ache like the flu. I push away the image of his face.

"Thanks," I tell her.

"They'll call you tomorrow. For questions."

I nod and take the bike from her. "Can they talk to me at school, instead of my house?"

"Sure," she says. "Just tell them the truth."

“I will.”

***

I push my bike down the alley. The big houses are dark, a few lights beaming from the carriage houses for security. With every step forward, my mind travels backwards, trying to put this day together. And then it tries to piece together these last five days. I feel more tired than I have in my entire life.

As I push through the back gate, my one hope is to dump my bike on the patio, sneak up the back stairs and drop into my bed.

But before I'm even halfway across the patio, the kitchen light comes on. I feel a flutter in my heart, the last surge of adrenaline left in my body. The kitchen door opens.

I stand in the dark, watching the light fall on the slate rock, turning it almost white.

"Raleigh?” My dad steps out. “Is that you?”

"It's me."

He comes down the steps so fast, racing across the stones, his arms wide open. I drop the bike and lean into him. My throat swallows the explosion in my heart, holding it down.

He is whispering but it’s a long time before I can hear anything. My eyes are scrunched so tight it’s like my ears are closed too. But he’s saying it over and over again. He loves me. He loves me, loves me, loves me.

I bury my face in his shirt.

Do not cry.

But tears leak out anyway.

He holds me tighter. I know Officer Lande called him. She told me at the hospital.

“How is she?” he asks.

"Different." My voice is a sob.

He strokes my hair. "Give her time."

"I’ve got her back and now it’s like losing her all over again."

He takes a deep breath, I listen to it fill his lungs.