Strange Girl (9 page)

“I remember. What if you contact Casey Morall directly? Tell her the band feels uncomfortable about how she’s portraying us.”

Janet shook her head. “She’s already saying her video has nothing to do with Half Life. That it’s all about Aja and the soldier she healed.”

“What’s popular on YouTube one week is forgotten the next. It’ll blow over.”

Janet hesitated. “You’re probably right.”

Aja drove home with us this time—after I insisted she call Bart and explain where she was. She rode in the back with Mike, Shelly, and Dale. Naturally, the whole gang had heard about the YouTube post by the time we got on the road. Shelly had her tablet in her bag and we all got a look at the thing. Mike was excited at his fifteen minutes of fame, and that the video showed him diving into a crowd of bloodthirsty soldiers.

“It proves I’ve got more balls than the lot of them,” he said.

Shelly and Dale were less enthusiastic. They feared Mike’s behavior might make conventions, schools, and clubs reluctant to hire us. Yet Dale did remind us that any publicity is usually better than no publicity.

“At least it gets our name out there,” Dale said.

“Damn straight,” Mike said.

Although the clip was focused on Aja, she had little to say about it, even when the rest of us prodded her to speak. Yet, to my surprise, she did give indirect support to the soldier’s story.

“The man’s wound went away. Isn’t that good?” Aja said.

“That’s not the point,” I said from my place behind the wheel. “The guy’s acting like Mike split his head open when he didn’t.”

“Oh,” Aja said.

“I’m pretty sure I saw bone when I clobbered him,” Mike said.

“Me too,” Aja said.

Janet turned and looked at Aja and spoke in a serious tone. “But you agree you didn’t perform a miracle on the soldier, right?” she asked.

Aja hesitated. “Yes.”

Janet groaned and spoke to me in a soft voice that only I could hear. “If Casey Morall shows up in town, we’ve got to keep Aja away from her.”

“Agreed,” I whispered.

Since our route back to Elder took us near Aja’s home, we dropped her off first. Most people in Elder were familiar with the Carter Mansion. Before his death two years ago, Carter had been the town’s only truly rich person. He’d made his fortune in oil and promoting concerts. If only he’d lived a few extra years he could have kick-started Half Life’s trajectory to the stars.

He’d lavished a good chunk of his wealth on his home, which sat in the center of a plot of land two miles in diameter. The terrain looked both rich and natural; it sloped up and down and was covered with plenty of trees and acres of carefully mowed grass. The house itself, despite its size, had been designed to resemble a log cabin; the rustic style allowed for numerous chimneys. I’d once read it’d taken over a thousand truckloads of lumber to build the place. Less than a quarter of a mile behind the home was a large lake. Basically, the Carter Mansion had it all.

As we crept up the long driveway, Mike asked Aja if she ever went swimming in the lake. “Every night,” Aja replied.

Mike was interested. “I bet you go skinny-dipping.”

“Skinny what?” Aja asked.

I grumbled. “Mike wants to know if you swim naked.”

“Sure. I don’t want to get my clothes wet,” Aja said.

Mike went to speak again but I slammed the RV to a halt. That shut him up. I escorted Aja to the front door. Despite the silly hysteria with the YouTube post, it had been fun performing in front of her. I’d never seen her smile so much; she really seemed to enjoy the show. She thanked me for the music and the ride as we stepped onto the porch.

“You can thank me by never going out with Bobby Dieder or James Caruso again,” I said, joking. But Aja must have heard something else in my voice. She touched my arm.

“This week at school, I felt you were unhappy,” she said.

I shook my head. “You just moved here, and we barely know each other. You don’t owe me anything. If you want to date other guys then do it.”

She looked perplexed, an unusual expression for her. “I don’t want what you think I want,” she said.

“So what do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“That’s right.” She raised my hand to her lips and kissed my clenched fingers just before she kissed me on the mouth. Her lips felt as warm as the sun, although the night couldn’t have been darker. We kissed for a while, and I prayed the others couldn’t see us.

She whispered as we parted, “Talk to me this week at school.”

“Sure.” I let go of her and began to walk down the porch steps. I spoke over my shoulder, “Good night, Aja. I’m glad you came.”

“Me too.” Then she called, “Fred?”

I glanced back at her. “Yeah?”

“There’s no reason to be unhappy.”

“Then why do I keep finding reasons?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said before turning and entering the house.

Great, I thought, another secret. From a girl who was full of them.

CHAPTER SIX

THE NEXT DAY I had to get up early to work the nine-to-six shift at the hardware store. Business was slow, though, and my boss ended up letting me go at five. I had my bike and was on my way home when on the spur of the moment I decided to swing by the town cemetery. From talk I knew that Mrs. Nancy Billard always visited her child’s grave Sunday evenings. I had no desire to intrude but Aja’s remark about their encounter over the summer at the cemetery gnawed at me.

Billard was sitting on a bench not far from her boy’s tombstone, a bundle of fresh flowers in her hands. Elder was too small a town to have many secrets. I knew what most people knew about the child’s death. It was a brutal tale, and far too common.

A decade ago, two-year-old Barney Billard had been playing in the family living room under the less-than-watchful eye of his father, Stan Billard. The story went that Stan had gone outside to collect firewood, but had left the front door ajar when he came back inside. It was a freezing February morning and all of Elder was buried under four feet of snow. Back in the house, Stan stoked the fireplace with fresh lumber and stretched out on the couch and dozed off. Barney, seeing that the door was unlocked and slightly open, did what most boys his age would’ve done—especially when they’ve been locked up in the house for most of the winter.

Barney went outside. A neighbor said she saw him making snowballs and throwing them at a bunch of birds, laughing delightfully. The neighbor hurried to scoop him up and take him back inside but before she could reach him the boy wandered into the street. As fate would have it a car came by at that exact instant. The driver—a salesman from out of town—slammed on his brakes but that was probably the worst thing he could have done. The road was icy; the car went into an uncontrollable spin. Barney was crushed, dead before the ambulance could arrive.

The driver was arrested but soon released. It had been an accident, the police said, nothing more. Mr. and Mrs. Billard separated soon after, with Stan moving to Florida. Perhaps he couldn’t bear the stares he’d get when he walked down the street. Everyone blamed the poor guy for his carelessness, although, over the years, I came to understand that his wife wasn’t one of them. The fact they broke up so soon after Barney’s death made me assume I had a less-than-complete picture of what had gone on in their house after the death of their only child.

Billard looked up as I approached. The sun hung low in the west, coloring the white carnations she held a haunting red. Despite the warm evening air, she wore a gray sweater. I was relieved she took my sudden appearance in stride.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” I said.

“Not at all.” She gestured to a spot on the bench beside her. “Have a seat. It’s not often I have company when I visit my son.”

Leaning my bike against a nearby tree, I sat beside her and stared uneasily at Barney’s tombstone, particularly at the stone cross set atop the heavy block of granite. Unlike Aja, I never visited the cemetery, probably because when it came to the “Big Questions” about life and death, I had no answers. Or perhaps I should say I had no faith in the answers I’d been fed.

Both my parents were Catholic and I’d been raised in the faith. From as far back as I could recall, I’d gone to church every Sunday; made my first communion when I was in third grade, and my confirmation when I was in seventh. Up until then I assumed the local priest and nuns had the inside track on getting into heaven and I didn’t give much thought to my immortal soul.

Come my freshman year in high school, however, the foundation of my beliefs began to trouble me and I spent serious time reading the Bible—a practice that wasn’t, ironically, encouraged by most Catholics. For me, it was a real eye-opener.

Because the Old Testament came first, I started there and by the time I got to Noah and his ark and two of every living creature on earth, I knew either my faith was as shallow as my trust in Santa Claus or else the book I was holding in my hand conflicted with every scientific concept I knew. Frankly, because I’d devoured at least a couple of sci-fi novels a week since the time I was ten, I knew more chemistry, biology, and physics than probably any kid in town.

It was probably unfair to Jesus Christ and his Gospels, but by the time I reached the New Testament I was 99 percent certain the whole Bible was nothing but fiction. Granted, parts of it were inspiring—I really enjoyed reading the Psalms—but as a so-called manual given by God to mankind to help him understand his place in the universe . . . well, I felt a lot safer in the hands of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke—famous science-fiction authors that I worshipped.

What I mean is, I lost all faith in the supernatural. Reading the holy books of other religions did nothing to change that loss. When it came to the topic of religion, I now felt as Janet did. That “faith” was a code word for a circular form of logic. To put it more bluntly, “faith,” to me, now meant “Believing in something you had no logical reason to believe in.”

That’s why staring at the cross atop Barney’s tombstone made me uneasy. I feared in the next few minutes I’d be comforting Mrs. Billard, and that I’d have to say something like, “He’s at peace now,” or, “You’ll see him soon in heaven,” when I knew damn well I’d be lying. It had been a terrible tragedy but Barney was gone.

Yet Billard surprised me with her first words.

“You don’t go to church anymore, do you, Fred?” she said.

“No, ma’am.”

“Is it because you no longer believe or because you can’t stand the fact that Father Mackey is a senile old drunk and Sister Josephine took a vow of celibacy because the poor woman couldn’t bear to tell her parents that she’s a lesbian?”

I smiled. “Father Mackey and Sister Josephine have nothing to do with my crisis of faith. I can only blame myself.” I added, “But it’s not something I lose any sleep over.”

Billard nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. “I used to feel the same way, when I was young. I figured I’d grow old and die and that would be the end of it. But I did use to hope I’d go before Stan. I didn’t want to face losing him.” She stopped and stared at Barney’s tombstone. “Then I lost more than I dreamed possible.”

I was afraid to ask but the question seemed to hang in the air.

“Did losing your son rekindle your faith?”

Billard shrugged. “I thought so at first. The day after we buried Barney, I began reading tons of spiritual books. They didn’t have to be Christian. I read about near-death experiences; books on miracles. I watched videos of séances, and all those characters on TV who say they get messages from the dead. I drowned myself in New Age literature. I even went to see several channelers. Let me tell you those people weren’t cheap. Still, I got to the point where I was pretty sure there was enough evidence to believe in life after death.” She stopped and brushed away a tear that had crept over her cheek. “But then I realized something was missing.”

“What?” I asked.

“Proof. Hard-core proof.’ ”

“It’s a pain in the ass that it all has to come back to that.”

She looked at me. “But then I was given proof. The one thing I had prayed for since Barney wandered out our front door to play in the snow. I was given it this summer, sitting exactly where you are right now. All the proof I could ever have asked for. And it . . . it tore me apart.”

“I don’t understand?”

Billard reached out and took my hand. “It was Aja.”

“Huh?”

“She came here one day in July when I was . . . visiting my son. Or else, I don’t know, maybe she was here before me. It’s strange but I can’t remember which one of us got here first. All I know is when I saw her I felt annoyed. Like she was intruding on my space—on Barney’s little area. I wanted her to leave. I snapped at her, I think, told her she had no business disturbing the dead.” She paused. “But Aja didn’t leave, at least not right away.”

“What happened?”

Billard’s hand slipped from mine like it had lost all strength to hold on. Her face was suddenly stricken. “She said something, something she couldn’t have known.”

I waited. I waited without speaking; it felt wrong to press her.

Billard lowered her head. “It was just one sentence. I don’t know why it shook me so deeply. No, I’m sorry, that’s not true. I do know why. Part of it was the way she said it. Like she knew what she was telling me was absolutely true.”

“Tell me.”

Billard quoted, “ ‘Your son doesn’t blame you any more than your husband does.’ ”

“Wait. From what I heard, your husband, Stan, it was his fault. He left the door open and your boy wandered . . .” I didn’t finish.

“I never told anybody this except Stan and Mrs. Green, the florist. But I trust you, Fred. It was my fault the door was left open. I came downstairs after Stan had fetched the firewood. He was dozing on the couch and Barney was playing with his Legos. It was a Sunday morning. As usual, Stan had forgotten to bring in the paper. I went outside to get it. It was snowing lightly and there were five sparrows walking over a nearby snowdrift. They looked like a family—there were two big ones and three baby ones. I remember how I wished Barney could see them. Maybe he did. Our neighbor, Margaret, said she saw him playing with some birds before he stepped into the road.”