Through the Flames (2 page)

Lionel hurried to Ryan’s room, trying to decide what to say. When he peeked in and knocked, Ryan whirled from what he was doing.

“Hey, little man,” Lionel said.

“I thought I asked you to quit calling me that,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, sorry. Listen, I just want to say that I’m sorry about getting on your case all the time.”

Ryan didn’t respond.

Lionel tried again. “I mean, uh, I’m just saying—”

Ryan approached the door, where Lionel stood, tongue-tied. “You’re just saying you don’t know what you’re saying, right?”

Lionel did not respond.

“Are you finished?” Ryan asked, his hand on the door.

“No, I—”

“Yes, you are,” Ryan said. And he pushed the door shut in Lionel’s face.

Lionel returned to Judd and Vicki, clearly troubled. He told them what had happened.

“We do need to pray for that boy,” Vicki said.

But before they did, Lionel said, “You need to know he was packing up.”

“Really?” Judd said. “He’s leaving?”

“I don’t know,” Lionel said, “but he was getting all his stuff together.”

And they prayed for him.

R
YAN
was angry and confused. What else could he be? He had overheard Vicki trying to explain his situation, and she was exactly right. In truth, he wanted to believe exactly what these other kids believed. It all made sense. His friend, Raymie Steele, had warned him. And it seemed most of the people who had disappeared were known to be Christians. So many people from so many churches were gone that they must have known something.

But if all this was true, his parents had not made it. But still they were gone. Dead. The only nightmare worse than having your parents die, Ryan decided, was knowing that they had missed going to heaven. Was that fair? What kind of a God did something like that to people as nice as his parents? Or to someone like him?

He wasn't a bad kid. Sure, he had done a lot of things wrong, but who hadn't? Raymie Steele was a Christian, but he wasn't perfect.

The one thing Ryan couldn't get out of his mind was that if this was true and his parents knew it, they would have believed. And for sure they would want him to believe before it was too late. But knowing it was probably true, even believing it, didn't mean Ryan was accepting it for himself. Because what Vicki Byrne had said was right. If he bought into it, it meant he was admitting that his parents had missed out and were in hell. That was too much to take in just now.

Ryan knew something the other kids didn't know. Well, except maybe Lionel. Lionel seemed to know Ryan better than Ryan knew himself. What only Ryan, and maybe Lionel, knew was that Ryan had no intention of doing anything that would cause him to leave Judd's house. He had never felt or been so alone in his life, and these kids were his new family. Whether or not he became a Christian, he was not about to leave them or let them abandon him.

Yeah, they treated him like a baby and used names for him that made him feel even smaller and younger. But he
had
been acting like a baby. He had a right. He was an orphan. The others were enduring the loss of their families too, but this was different. Ryan needed time away from the pressure, time to think, time to do something to take his mind off everything. He had to admit he was afraid to go out alone at night, so while it was still light, he headed out on his bike.

The others had seemed so concerned with his packing up his stuff that they would likely watch to see if he took it with him. They would be relieved, he hoped, to find everything still in his room. It was packed and stacked, though, so they could wonder if he was eventually going to leave, based on what decision he came to. But his decision, at least about staying at Judd's, was already made.

It made Ryan feel a little better to know that the others seemed to want him to stay regardless. He knew they wanted him to become a Christian, but that didn't seem to have anything to do with whether he stayed around. Was it because they really cared for him? Were they actually worried about him and looking out for him? He couldn't figure that one out. He had never cared about anybody else that much, except maybe Raymie.

Ryan wanted to work on his courage. Could he ride into his own neighborhood and past his own house? And if he could, could he also see what was happening at the Steeles'? He sure didn't want to ask them about Mrs. Steele or Raymie, because he knew both Mr. Steele and Raymie's big sister Chloe had to feel terrible about their vanishing. Maybe they'd be like his aunt was a few years ago, who seemed to want to do nothing more than talk about Ryan's uncle at his uncle's funeral. That seemed so strange. You'd think she would have been so upset she wouldn't want his name even mentioned. But she had talked about him nonstop. She even asked people to tell her their favorite stories about him.

“Sit here with me for a minute,” she had said, taking Ryan's hand. “Tell me about that time your uncle Walter was trying to teach you to fish and he fell into the lake.”

“Oh, Aunt Evelyn,” Ryan had said, feeling sheepish and awkward. “You know Uncle Wally did that on purpose. I mean, I was only eight, but I knew that even then.”

Aunt Evelyn had leaned back in her chair and laughed her hearty laugh, right there in the funeral home with people filing past the body of her husband. Many turned to stare at the insensitive person who would be guffawing at a time like that and were at first shocked, then pleased to find it was Aunt Evelyn herself.

“I saw the whole thing from the porch of the cottage,” she had said, wiping away her tears of laughter. Ryan thought it funny that she usually cried when she laughed, but of course maybe this time she was covering her real tears of sadness. “I just knew what he was going to do because he had done it to me when we were first dating. He stepped on one side of the boat and then the other, and he kept saying, ‘No problem. No problem. Shouldn't stand up in the boat, but don't you worry, I've got it all under control.' Right? Right? Didn't he say that in that big phony deep voice of his?”

“Yes, he did,” Ryan had admitted.

“And then, pretending to adjust the fishing line or something, he just stepped back and flipped over the side in his shirt and pants and hat and everything. Didn't he?”

“Yeah, but he had put his glasses in the picnic basket first, and he even took out his hearing aid.”

That just made Aunt Evelyn laugh all the more, and soon everyone in the room was waiting his turn to tell a favorite Uncle Walter story. Just thinking about that crazy funeral made Ryan pedal harder as he sped toward his own block. Aunt Evelyn herself had died not two years later. How he missed them both!

Why, he wondered, was he thinking about them now? Maybe because it reminded him that Raymie Steele had not been the first person to ever tell him about God. Ryan had been to Vacation Bible School a couple of times, but it was at Uncle Walter's funeral, when Ryan had worked up the courage to ask Aunt Evelyn why she wasn't more sad, that she had said that confusing thing to him.

“That's an excellent question, Ryan honey,” she had said. She almost always would call him that, even in front of other people. “I'm sad and I'll have my bad days and nights, and I'll cry enough tears for the whole family. But you see, I know where Uncle Walter is, and it's where I'm going to be someday. He's in heaven.”

“But how do you know?”

“The Bible says you can know,” she had said.

But that was as far as the conversation had gone. Ryan had thought about that a long time and even asked his mom and dad about it. Uncle Walter was Mr. Daley's much older brother, and Aunt Evelyn was his second wife. “Your dad says your uncle Walter's wife has always been some kind of a religious nut, Ryan,” his mother had said. “But she means well. She's been good for Walter.”

“Good for him?” Mr. Daley had chimed in. “Took all the fun out of him, if you ask me. Got him the old-time religion, and he became a Holy Joe.”

“He was still fun, Dad,” Ryan had said. “He was always being funny.”

“He kept telling us we need Jesus,” Mr. Daley said. “But frankly, I don't feel the need for anything.”

Ryan skidded to a stop in front of Raymie Steele's house. He couldn't tell whether Mr. Steele and Chloe were home. So that was it, he realized about his thoughts turning to his uncle Walter and aunt Evelyn. They had been Christians. They were in heaven. And they had tried to tell him and his parents about Christ. He wondered how many other chances his parents had had. His dad always had some comment when he saw a preacher on television. He thought they were all crooks, but he never kept the TV channel on any church program long enough to hear what they had to say.

Ryan sat straddling his bike, pawing the ground with his foot. What he wouldn't give to have it be just a week or so ago and to know that Raymie would come bounding out of this house for some fun. Man, they had good times. They squabbled and argued and had often been jealous of each other, but not a day went by when they didn't have more fun than any two kids deserved. They were best friends, blood brothers, and had pledged to always keep in touch—no matter where college or life took them. How Ryan wanted to see Raymie again!

He pedaled slowly to the end of the block, where his house came into view. There was a pile of newspapers on the stoop, and he knew he should get rid of them and call to cancel the paper. Making it obvious no one was home was an invitation to more burglaries. The drapes were all shut, too. And though there were lights on an automatic timer, all the power outages lately put them on a crazy schedule. The lights were on now and would go off early in the evening. Ryan thought about going in and resetting the timer and opening the drapes so it looked like the house was lived in. But as usual, he couldn't force himself to even move up the driveway by himself, let alone approach the front door. What in the world was he going to do when the lawn needed mowing?

Ryan headed off to the other side of town, where Lionel had lived. He would be scared to death to approach that house with all of André Dupree's so-called friends living there. But still, he wanted to see it, to spy on it. He couldn't figure out what was happening with Lionel's uncle André.

Ryan had been there when Lionel had played the answering machine message from André. He had to agree, the guy sounded ready to kill himself. Lionel was only kidding himself, Ryan thought, to think that someone André owed money to had killed him and made it look like suicide. The two guys Lionel said had threatened André once were the leaders of the bunch that had moved into Lionel's house, supposedly with André's permission. And they talked about how great it would be when André joined them. How did that make sense, especially now that Lionel had discovered that whoever had been killed in André's apartment, in André's clothes, wearing André's jewelry, and carrying André's wallet, was not André at all?

Ryan was as curious as he could be, but on the other hand, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. What would he do with that information?

He looked at his watch. He knew Judd Thompson had been serious, and that if Ryan was not back at Judd's house and ready to go to the meeting with Bruce that night, he would no longer be welcome. He still had an hour. Ryan rode idly up and down the sidewalk on the other side of the street from Lionel's. There was little going on at the house across the street, but the van was there and lights were on in the house.

At one side of the house was a wide driveway that served the home next door. No one seemed to be home there. Ryan wondered if he would be noticed if he parked his bike out of sight and just moseyed over there, appearing to just be hanging around, playing. That would be a test of his courage, wouldn't it? He didn't think anyone in Lionel's house would recognize him as the one who had sped away from there on bikes with Lionel. And if anyone didn't want him playing in that area next to the house, he'd just move along.

The plan sounded reasonable to Ryan, but he found himself petrified when he actually began walking across the street. He wasn't sure why he was doing this, except that he was hoping to take some bit of information back to Lionel. Maybe Lionel would respect him if he actually did something grown-up, something brave. Plus he really wanted to be helpful. He figured Lionel would rather live with the others at Judd's anyway, but it wasn't right to be driven out of your own home for no reason.

The police were too busy with all the other emergencies to be worried about something like this, but what if he and Lionel took them solid evidence on the fake suicide? It had obviously been a murder. If the police could be convinced of that, maybe Lionel's invaded house would wind up higher on their list of what needed to be investigated.

But what if it had been André who had committed the murder? Who else could have gotten into his place and put all his stuff on another person before killing him? Ryan was beginning to think he was in over his head.

Worse, he felt conspicuous walking across the street. He knew no one noticed or cared, but he felt as if every eye on the street was on him. Just putting one foot in front of the other took all the concentration he could muster. He tried to look casual, as if he were just strolling nowhere.

When he finally reached the driveway between the houses, he moved toward the back so he would be out of sight. He settled on the grass at the far back corner of Lionel's house, close to the neighbor's house and as far away from Lionel's garage as he could be and still be on Lionel's property. He was afraid someone might see him from the window, so he crept up to the wall and sat with his back to the foundation. The cold cement made him shiver, but he knew he was close enough now that if someone looked out a window, he wouldn't be seen.

What was he doing, he wondered? Putting himself in danger just to prove that he could? What good would he be to anyone if he was discovered? And what might these characters do to him? Would they hurt him? Kidnap him? Kill him? And if they did, where would he be then?