Going Places Page 17

  “Oh, shut it,” she snapped back. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “I’m going to have to think of something else. I can’t go back and tell Pirkle, oh by the way, the guy who lives in the house wouldn’t let us in. Then he’d really be suspicious.”

  “It would totally fuel his paranoia. That’s what he has, right?”

  “What do you mean, that’s what he has?”

  “He has paranoia, right?”

  “No, dementia.”

  “Oh well, same thing.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Enough with your nitpicking, Wheeler. Get busy and think of plan B. And when you do, let me know what my part is.”

  It was discouraging. I was so anxious to pull it off and get the whole mess behind me, I’d rushed into it without thinking it through. It wasn’t Fritzy’s fault we failed, it was mine.

  “I’m sorry I got mad at you,” I said. “It was a bad plan, but I’ll think of something else. The important thing is to get Pirkle to a doctor.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “But Fritzy? Was it just me or do you think he acted kind of weird? I mean, why wouldn’t he let us in. Frankie’s his star pupil.”

  Fritzy appeared to ponder this for a few seconds. “My guess,” she said. “He was entertaining. You know.” She jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Ouch!” I pushed back. “No, I don’t know. I’m just saying, he strikes me as odd, that’s all.”

  “You have a feeling?” Her eyes lit up.

  “Maybe . . . I can’t put my finger on it exactly.”

  “Or are you just getting paranoid like Pirkle. You’d better be sure when you say something like that, Wheeler. Some people might say you were a little odd yourself.”

  “Well, you’re definitely odd,” I said. Another elbow jab.

  We’d walked back to Fritzy’s by then. My car was parked across the street at the curb in front of Pirkle’s house. I automatically looked at his kitchen window to see if he was watching but he wasn’t there. I eyed the distance between where I was standing and my car to calculate the number of seconds it would take me to reach it at a full run, climb in, and shut the door behind me.

  “Oh, and Fritzy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your boyfriend looks like an orangutan.”

  She got me square in between the shoulder blades with the basketball before I ever made it to the car.

  >>>

  Plan B. What should that look like? Here’s what I did know:

  1. Pirkle was getting worse

  2. Either my mom or Fritzy’s dad would step in if I didn’t take care of it

  3. Pirkle was still a man who deserved to live life on his own terms.

  At home, Buster was waiting for me on the other side of the sliding door which opened onto my backyard. Since the glass was smeared with his nose prints, he’d possibly been there the whole day. He stood up on hind legs, scratching wildly at the glass that separated us, his one good eye sparkling with joy at the sight of me.

  “What the hell, Buster?” I opened the door and he darted inside, looking around for the nearest chew object with which to relieve his frustration.

  I checked the loose board separating his yard from mine to discover he’d finally figured out how to manipulate it on his own.

  Back inside, he was chewing on one of my shoes.

  “Okay, Buster. Let’s get the gang, and you can take your walk.”

  He looked up at me sullenly when I ripped the shoe from his mouth.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Hey,” Bryce said just as casually as if we were finishing up a conversation begun only minutes earlier. “Alana here?”

  Buster squeezed through my ankles to get a better look at this ringer-of-doorbells.

  “Nope.”

  I knew where Alana was. Knew she’d gone home with Cherie and was staying over that night. But was it my job to make Bryce’s life easier by keeping tabs on his girlfriend? I didn’t think so.

  “Funny dog,” he chuckled, looking down on Buster. “What happened to his eye?”

  “He banged his head on a table, and it popped out,” I said.

  With his one eye fixated on Bryce, Buster wagged his scrawny tail furiously, irrationally disappointing me. Bryce leaned over to scratch him behind the ear.

  “Poor little guy,” he said. “Mind if I come in for a glass of water?”

  I’d used the glass of water ploy only an hour earlier with Mr. Scolari, so I wasn’t completely falling for it.

  “Sure.”

  He followed me into the kitchen where I handed him a bottled water and waited for him to leave. But he was in no hurry. He emptied the contents in about four or five big gulps, all the while looking around.

  “So, this is where you live,” he remarked when he was done, just as though something historical had once happened in that kitchen.

  “Yup. This is where I live.”

  Why wasn’t he leaving?

  He stared at the note on the refrigerator, pronouncing a sort of hmph after a few minutes, then turned his attention to the family room (which you could see from the kitchen) where the TV and video games where hooked up.

  “Wanna play?” he motioned to the video game controllers.

  “I can’t right now,” I said. “Gotta take the dogs for a walk before their owners get home.”

  “Oh, right. The dogs.”

  He walked into the family room. Buster and I followed him there. He looked out into the yard through the sliding glass door.

  “How’s art?” he asked without turning.

  “Fine.”

  “Alana says you’re really talented. She’s always talking about that.”

  He strolled back to the kitchen with Buster and me still trailing behind him.

  “She’s exaggerating,” I said to his back. “I’m not that good.”

  “No really, you are. I’ve seen some of the stuff you’ve done. Alana’s got a few of your pieces hanging on her bedroom wall.”

  Insert knife and turn. I still hadn’t seen the inside of Alana’s bedroom.

  “Well, thanks.”

  What was that expression about waiting for the other shoe to drop? Because it sure as hell felt like something had already dropped.

  “Think I could have another bottle of water to take with me? I’m not going home for a while.”

  “No problem,” I said and handed him another one.

  Go. Leave. Get out. I didn’t want to feel guilty about being in love with his girlfriend and I didn’t want to establish any human connection with him either.

  “You’re not lying to me are you?” The smirk on his face was both arrogant and anxious. It surprised me I might actually be able to provoke some anxiety in this alpha male.

  “Lying?” Were we still having a friendly talk or had we just completed a conversational U-turn? “About what?”

  “Is Alana really here?” he asked.

  “Of course not.” I was dumbfounded. “Why would I lie about that?”

  Here was my second chance to tell him where Alana was, but I stubbornly refused.

  “Mind if I take a look around?”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” I said. But I couldn’t resist the idea of watching Bryce act like an idiot. “Go ahead if you want.”

  He stared at me for what seemed like a minute, as though allowing his truth-o-meter to get an accurate reading. Then he dropped his eyes to Buster who was busily adoring him. He looked back at me.

  “Are you trying to steal Alana from me?” he asked. “Don’t bother, because you can’t, and you might make a fool out of yourself in the process.”

  He was right about that.

  “Look, why don’t you just go and find Alana because she�
�s not here. I’m not trying to steal her away from you, and by the way you can’t steal people. They do whatever they want.”

  There was the anxious and arrogant smirk again.

  “I’ll see you around,” he said. “Thanks for the water.”

  He bent over to scratch Buster behind the ear and then headed out the door.

  >>>

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Bryce’s visit but didn’t mention it to Alana the next day. The thought of the two of us fighting over her like dogs wasn’t an image I wanted implanted in her brain.

  “I heard Bryce came to your house looking for me yesterday,” she whispered in between yoga poses.

  Penelope turned her head in our direction so as not to miss a word. With Gus gone, Penelope paid a lot of attention to me, as if I had the power to deliver Gus back to her. The thought occurred to me she might even want to use me for some revenge sex which I wasn’t totally opposed to. I did feel sorry for her. Even her ha ha’s lacked real enthusiasm. Nothing was “the cutest thing ever” anymore, and she no longer cared if you could “believe it.” And I actually missed Gus. I’d become the last guy standing. In yoga, at least.

  “Yeah,” I wondered how much she knew. “Did he ever find you?”

  “We got together last night.”

  “Oh, I thought you were staying with Cherie.” I prickled with irritation.

  “I was but . . .” she trailed off. “Anyway, thanks for not saying where I was because I might not have wanted to see him.”

  Did she think this was all one big conspiracy? Me and her scheming together to manipulate Bryce into loving her the way she wanted to be loved?

  “You’re welcome, I guess.”

  “I don’t need a ride home today,” she said.

  “I didn’t offer one.”

  I was right on the cusp of where love turns to hate.

  >>>

  Fritzy called after school.

  “So, what’s plan B?”

  “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “Well, you’d better. Pirkle was out in his front yard last night in just his tighty-whities and boots. He was carrying a shovel over his shoulder.”

  I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I was going to, but he went inside. I didn’t want to bother you unless I had to.”

  “Shit.”

  “When are you going to come over and get your piano books? Scolari left a stack of them for you.”

  The piano books. My failed plan A. The sick feeling turned into a cold, hard lump.

  “I guess I can come a little later.”

  “Wear your workout clothes. We can shoot some hoops.”

  >>>

  I walked into Fritzy’s house and dumped my keys in the brass metal bowl kept on the entry table just for that purpose.

  “One sec while I get my shoes on,” she said. I followed her into the bedroom.

  Every square inch of wall space in her bedroom was taken up by posters of glistening bodies of athletes in motion; musculature displayed to prime advantage.

  “Jesus, Fritzy. Your bedroom’s like a muscle shrine.”

  “You’re getting there.” She slipped a shoe on and drew the laces tight. “Slowly but surely.”

  “So anyway . . .” I sat on the thick, spongy carpet, my back to the wall.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk about myself anymore since you said that’s all we do.”

  “Go ahead, Wheeler,” she sighed. “What’s going on with Love now?”

  “Yesterday Bryce came over looking for her. He thought she was at my house hiding from him.”

  Fritzy stopped mid-shoe and looked up at me with disbelief.

  “No way!”

  “And he wanted to look around my house to make sure she wasn’t there. I told him to go for it, but he must have realized how stupid that was, so he left. But not before telling me I’d better not try to steal her away from him.”

  Fritzy pulled on her other shoe and yanked the laces upward before tying and double tying them.

  “That’s what you’re trying to do, isn’t it? Steal her away from him.”

  “No. I mean . . . of course I’d love it if she left him, but it’s so demeaning to say that. Like she’s a piece of property he owns, and I can somehow . . . take her away from him.”

  “You would if you could.”

  She sat forward on the edge of her bed and directed the Fritzy glare right at me. I consciously prevented myself from sliding any further down the wall.

  “Anyway,” she stood up as our signal to leave, “I don’t know what you see in that girl, but you should have fought him even if you got your ass handed to you.”

  I stood up too.

  “Fought him? Alana abhors violence. She even thinks sports are too violent.”

  “What the hell does ‘abhor’ mean?”

  “She hates it.”

  “Oh. Well you should have at least punched him.”

  With her hands on her hips she looked like a warrior princess preparing for battle.

  “Fritzy, you have many fine qualities, but common sense isn’t always among them.”

  “Look who’s talking, Mr. Smarty Pants.”

  “Anyway, you don’t even know Alana.”

  “Thank God for that,” she said. “C’mon let’s go.”

  The Canadian geese were getting fat . . .

  . . . or at least their bird shit was. Canadian geese fly south to winter in my town and others like it. Because I lived only a few blocks from a tiny lake, I’d usually find one or two in my front yard that time of year. I had to admit they were beautiful, elegant with that white band under their chin like they were wearing tuxedos. But they were also mean and nasty, whipping their long necks at me, hissing whenever I walked to my own front door, forced to step around their slimy shit. One day, a few of them landed in Buster’s backyard, and I had to vault over the fence to save him from a massacre.

  With Christmas break just a week away, Alana gave Bryce an ultimatum. “Hawaii or me,” she said.

  “It’s not that I don’t want him to have his own friends and do his own thing. It’s just that other guys invited their girlfriends to go with them and he didn’t. So what does that tell you?”

  She looked to me for the answer, but what she really wanted was confirmation. He was a jerk, callous and selfish. But the messenger often gets killed, don’t they? What I wanted was for her to come to that conclusion on her own. And eventually she did.

  “I’m over him, Hudson,” she said one night on the phone. “He made his choice, so I made mine.”

  Her decision turned her into an even unhappier girl. Penelope and Alana were so bonded in their misery I thought I felt actual gamma rays of grief passing between them (through me) during yoga class. They were sisters in sorrow, with Cherie always willing to jump in and wallow with them even though (so far) she hadn’t yet been victimized by a heartless guy. I became the enemy sex.

  “Get over it,” I advised her. “If it’s not working for you, then move on.”

  Wasn’t this what Pirkle had advised me to do? Yes. Did I do it? No.

  “I thought he was like us, Hudson, but I guess I was wrong. He got sucked into that whole football thing and couldn’t handle it.”

  “I’m not sure I get what you mean.”

  “I mean that even if he wanted me to go to Hawaii with him, I’m not the typical high school jock girlfriend. I don’t fit the mold. And he wasn’t strong enough to stand up to the pressure of the other guys on the team.”

  “He seems like he’s pretty good at standing up to pressure. Being the quarterback of the team is a lot of pressure.” The devil in me went for the kill. “Maybe he just didn’t want you
to come, have you ever thought of that?”

  She got real quiet after that, and I was pretty sure she was mad at me—killing the messenger and all—but the next night she called to talk again. We’d been doing a lot of our visiting by phone those days, with Penelope and Cherie monopolizing her after-school time.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I think you’re right. I think Bryce is just not that into me. Maybe I was fun and exciting to begin with when he was ostracized from his group and could have sex with me anytime he wanted.”

  Sex? Anytime he wanted? With Alana?

  I always knew that was a possibility, but I tried not to think about it, and we never discussed it until that moment. Of course, a guy like Bryce wouldn’t stay with a girl who wasn’t putting out. He wasn’t desperate like me. My throat got tight with the idea of sex on demand from Alana Love. Too tight to deliver an appropriate response.

  “Hudson? You there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway. I just wanted to tell you something really exciting. My dad’s taking me to Paris for Christmas. It’s gonna be amazing. I’ll check everything out for when you and I go.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  Christmas lost some of its luster with Alana so far away in Paris. She texted me pictures of the places we’d visit when we went back there together, but they didn’t do anything for me. For her they were experiences, soon to be great memories. For me they were just tiny images on a phone screen. I could go online and find better pictures than those.

  Fritzy and I made a pledge to run together every day of vacation. Whenever I ran with her, I knew she held back for my sake. Even if I could match her strength and endurance, which I couldn’t, I could never match the length of her legs. One of her strides equaled about one-and-a-half of mine. But I knew I made up for what I lacked by keeping her company. And she did get a certain satisfaction in witnessing my physical transformation.

  One day she was unusually quiet during our run, and when we were done, she suggested going out to grab a burger. I waited for her to shower and change, and then we went over to my place where I did the same. After dinner, we drove around in her truck throwing out scenario after scenario for plan B, all the while wasting a whole lot of gas. We finally parked on top of Windy Hill, which was a well-known make-out spot late at night. But being so early in the evening (and on a weeknight) we had the place to ourselves with its more innocent reputation as just a park.