The Aqua Net Diaries (19 page)

“I chased them out to National Road, up to Frisch's,” my dad said. He meant Frisch's Big Boy with the sign out front that always read
Try our Cheery Pie
because the man who changed the letters was slow. “Except for the one who fell into the pool and the one who drove away.”

My heart stopped again and my breath stopped. I stood blinking at him. “How could you do this to me?” I said finally, when I had recovered my ability to speak. I rarely confronted my father or talked back to him, but I couldn't help myself. He had chased, on foot,
Jeff Shirazi
and God
knows who else. He had run them down like some mad, wild dog in a suit.

I stomped into the house and ran up to my room and slammed my door. As I ran, I heard my dad say to my mom, “What in the hell is wrong with her?”

The very best thing to ever happen to me, and my dad had ruined it. This was what happened, I told myself, when you had a father who ran marathons. My dad ran eight or nine miles a day—a
day
—and twenty-six on the weekends. He was a maniac. Until now, it had never interfered with my life. He went for his runs, sometimes with Tosh, sometimes alone, and he came back sweaty and hungry, and, depending on the season, would either complain about it being “hot as the Devil,” or would have to cut the icicles from his beard. My mother and I endured the complaints and the sore muscles, the knee that sometimes gave him problems, and the midnight snacks that my father made in secret, or so he thought. They stank up the entire house for days—fat Bavarian sausages fried up at the stove while he smoked his pipe and drank a glass of wine, thinking no one could smell the onions. But this …this was too much to bear.

I raised the blind and looked out the front window. In the center of the lawn, right beneath my room, I could tell that the shaving cream spelled something. I rubbed the glass where my breath had made a cloud, and looked.
Regan,
it said in crooked white letters.

Idiots,
I thought.
They could have at least spelled it right.

Indiana cornfields

This goes out to the person or persons that found it necessary to take a wreath from a grave. Every time you look at this wreath remember one day someone you love will be buried and when someone carries your flowers away as you have done, you won't be able to say a word, will you!

—Mary Ann Harrison,
Palladium-Item,
“Your Opinion” section

Sandra Hillman was assistant principal of Richmond High School. Joey and I once filled her van with helium balloons, as many as we could fit, and laughed till we cried picturing her face as she opened the door and all those balloons sailed away. We thought it would be a lovely scene, like something from a movie—
Out of Africa
or
Trip to Bountiful,
both of which we'd loved. It would be almost like poetry.

It was just something we thought up to do, like climbing the Purina Tower or driving fast in circles or writing stories about how we were separated at birth, creating an entire elaborate backstory for ourselves in which we were stolen from our original (shared) parents and smuggled across the world through a series of wild and dangerous adventures only to end up in the World's Most Boring Town. In other words, we didn't do it to be mean.

But there were some things that our classmates did do to teachers to get back at them for unfair exams, for pop quizzes, for picking on them in class, or for just trying to do their jobs. One of these things was to steal realty signs and, in the dark of night, stick them in their front yards. Some teachers woke up on weekend mornings to find seven or eight For Sale signs—possibly more—on their lawns, depending on how unreasonable they had been in class that week.

Collecting signs was a popular activity. My friend Hillary always carried a tool kit in her purse along with her lipstick and her tampons, just in case she saw a sign she liked. She had a particular love for license plates—not stealing them, but switching them from car to car. She could spend a happy hour in a parking lot, usually one at a church.

On one rare night when there weren't any parties, Joey and I found ourselves, as usual, driving up and down the streets of Reeveston. We even drove way out in the country to where Ian Barnes lived in a multilevel wooden house by a pond. There was a diving board that hung over the water that someone always jumped off of around midnight when there was a party. But on this particular night the pond was dark and the house was quiet.

“Should we go out to Ruger's?” I said hopefully.

“No,” Joey said. “He's out of town this weekend.”

“What about Jeff's?”

“He's probably holed up somewhere with Angie.” Jeff Shirazi and Angie Oler had been dating off and on for almost a year.

We drove aimlessly. I didn't have to be home for two hours.

“We could call Jennie and Hill and see if they want to meet us somewhere,” I said.

“No. Hillary's a pill and I don't want to see Jennie right now.” Joey and Jennie had been going out for a few weeks. She was always trying to climb on him and get him to do things to her that he didn't want to do. “We could steal signs,” Joey said.

I thought about this. I never wanted to get caught stealing signs, but there was nothing else to do. “I guess.”

We cruised around for half an hour or so on dark, dusty roads, in the thick of farm country. These were where the best signs could be found—funny, colorful signs stuck in cornfields or vegetable patches, or tacked to the outside of barns.

We drove slowly down Backmeyer Road, going fast over the hills so that the car bounced, and then slowing down in the flat parts. We listened to Billy Idol's “White Wedding,” which seemed appropriate for committing acts of delinquency.

We headed out to Mr. Kaiser's farm, south of Boston, which was far, far away from anything. To me, who didn't drive, who thought all farms and cornfields looked the same, it seemed hundreds of miles from Richmond, though it was probably more like seven. Joey had spent each summer working for the Kaisers, bailing hay and painting the barn
and doing other farm-type chores. We drove out onto the property, which seemed enormous and had a grand name like Marlando.

At the front of the grounds there was a little trailer with a light on inside, which Joey said was just a decoy to discourage trespassers. Mr. Kaiser and his wife wanted people to think they had a groundskeeper. There was something very lonely about it. We drove past the decoy trailer all the way to the back of the property, which was thick with high, dark trees and a swing. We got out of the car and stood there, listening to the stillness. Far off in the distance you could see the burning orange glow of Richmond.

I sat down in the swing and Joey started pushing me. We stared out at the view of the town.

“From here it looks almost pretty,” Joey said.

“One day we'll be far, far away from it,” I said. “I wonder where.”

“New York. Moscow. Dublin.”

“Paris. London. Los Angeles.”

We named all the cities of the world that weren't in the Midwest, Joey pushing me higher and higher, and then we climbed back into the car and drove even farther out into the country. The moon was out and the stars were white-bright and we turned the headlights off because we didn't need any lights other than what was in the sky.

Then, coming around a corner, we saw
the
sign. It was enormous and white and glowed in the moonlight. It stood near the side of the road by the edge of a cornfield, and the farmhouse sat several yards away, blank and quiet. I thought of the farmer and his family who were no doubt asleep inside, early to bed, early to rise. I felt a little pang.

We drifted toward the sign.
AgriGold,
it said in black letters. And above it, a lively cartoon drawing of an ear of corn, bright yellow with green husks. I caught my breath. Close up, the sign was even bigger than it first looked. It was taller than I was and taller than Joey. It was as tall as Ross. It was maybe even taller than that.

I had been terrified of corn ever since we watched
Children of the Corn
at Joey's house, required viewing for any Indiana teenager. We loved to scare ourselves by driving out into the country in the dead of night and then turning off the headlights and driving directly into the corn. Joey and I did this night after night, but it always ended the same way—with one of us seeing a face in the rearview mirror or there to the left, to the right, over there in the corn.

Joey pulled past the farmhouse, past the AgriGold sign (AgriGold, it said on one side; AgriGold it said on the other), and parked near the edge of the cornfield. We rolled down the windows and sat listening to the night.

“Okay,” Joey said. “Let's go.”

I was nervous. “Why don't I just wait here?” I said. “I'll keep watch.”

“Are you scared of getting caught?”

“Yes.”

He rolled his eyes at me. Then he bundled up the tools in his shirt and climbed out of the car. As the door opened, the inside of the car immediately lit up.

“Don't slam the door!” I hissed. “Just close it enough so that the light goes off.”

I watched him in the rearview mirror as he walked around back. I slunk down low in my seat and watched him
in the side mirror. He bent over, setting the tools on the ground, no doubt trying to figure out what was what. My eyes moved back and forth between the farmhouse and Joey, the farmhouse and Joey.

I stuck my head out the window. “What are you doing?” I whispered, as loud as I could.

“Trying to figure out how to get the sign down.”

I got out of the car, careful not to slam the door. “Let me see.” I examined the bolts that anchored the sign to its posts. I examined our tools. “This one, I think.” I handed him a wrench. “And this one.” I handed him a screwdriver. We bumped each other and dropped some things and there were crickets hopping in the grass, which caused us both to jump and scream. The corn rustled and we stood very still, waiting.

I tiptoed back to the car. I slunk back down against the seat and watched him.
Hurry,
I thought.
Hurryhurryhurry-hurry.

Twenty minutes later, Joey had undone the bolts at the bottom of the sign, and was climbing up the side to reach the top. I sat there shivering, even though it was still hot and sticky out, offering up little prayers that we would get home safely. I thought of Demi Moore in
St. Elmo's Fire
and how fearless she was. I thought of Zelda Fitzgerald diving into fountains and dancing on tables. I was trying very hard to be fearless, too.

At some point, there was a crash, as Joey and not one but two AgriGold signs hit the earth. They had been hitched together, back to back, one showing one way, one showing the other. I popped the trunk and jumped out of the car.

“Get your sign!” he shouted.

We each grabbed hold of one and dragged them toward
the car, running smack into each other, our heads knocking, the signs making a metal
boi-oi-oing
sound.

“Put them in!” I shrieked.

It took both of us to lift each one, but somehow we got them into the trunk. The trunk wouldn't close, but we threw Joey's sweatshirt on top of the signs, so that they would be at least partially disguised. Joey drove me home with the trunk door bobbing up and down. He drove under the speed limit and was extra cautious.

The next morning, Joey's dad went into the garage and found the AgriGold signs propped against a wall.

Joey was still asleep, but his dad rapped on his door and then walked right in. “Hey, Buddy?” he said. “Where did those giant corn signs come from?”

From his bed, Joey didn't say anything, just pulled the covers up over his head and tried to go on sleeping.

“You and Jennifer didn't steal them did you?”

From under his pillow, Joey said, “Mitchell.” Mitchell was Joey's brother who was a year younger than we were. “Mitchell and his delinquent friends probably took them.”

Of course Mr. Kraemer knew this was a lie. Mitchell, for the most part, was much better behaved than we were. “You know they have cameras out there, keeping an eye on those signs. Those farmers are always getting things stolen from them and that's their way of making sure they're protected. Whoever took those signs will be on videotape. They could be turning those tapes over to the police even as you're lying there in your bed. I guess I should go downstairs now and wait for the phone to ring. What do you want me to tell them?”

Joey lifted the pillow off his face. “What do you mean they have cameras? You're just making that up.”

Mr. Kraemer said, “Am I?” He let Joey think about this. “I'm surprised you didn't see the cameras actually. But then again, the farmers hide them in the corn.” He walked out the door then and left the room. By this time Joey was wide awake. He reached for the phone and dialed my number.