Stones and Spark Read online

  "Drink up."

  I move my lips over the rim. The fluid is warm, like spit. It dribbles down my chin. He pulls the glass away.

  "Spoiled," he says. "All you spoiled, rich crybabies."

  He offers me the glass again. I suck the warm fluid from the rim, funneling it to the back of my mouth.

  "You make messes everywhere you go. Classrooms, halls, the bathroom? Don't even get me started.”

  My mouth is full. I push my lips against the rim, pretending to swallow.

  "And lunch?" he says. "I spend hours scraping your food off the floor."

  I pull air through my nose, holding it in my lungs.

  "You done?" he barks.

  I nod.

  He turns, setting the glass on the counter. And I stare at his face, and blow. Everything—water, food, bile rising up my throat. He throws his hand up, protecting his eyes, letting go of my arm.

  I run for the door. Panic flashes across my back, burning my skin. My right hand grabs the doorknob, my left yanks the key out of the deadbolt. I hit the first stair, slam the door, and twist the deadbolt, snapping the lock on him.

  "Get back here!"

  I have both hands latched around the knob. He tugs at it. Kicks the door. He's yelling.

  I glance behind me. The stairs are black as night.

  I keep one hand on the knob. The other holds the key, frantically brushing the wall for a light switch. Didn't he turn off the light up here? I can't remember; my mind isn't working. He's twisting the knob, yanking, kicking at it. How long, I wonder. Does he have another key? My fingers are shaking when they touch something hard. Light bursts on below.

  I haul down the stairs, racing straight for the closet.

  Her eyes bulge with fear. I can hear him pounding on the door.

  "Roll over!" I yell.

  She pulls away from me but I grab her shoulders, diving my hands for her wrists. Even in the dim light, I see her fingers don't look right. They're dark, turning blue. I try sawing the key's teeth against the tape but it's too thick. I can't see well enough to pick at the ends.

  The door cracks.

  I turn my head. Wood splintering.

  I hear someone panting.

  Drew.

  I pull the rag from her mouth, she cries out, but I run to the freezer. Lifting the lid, I search for a tool—screwdriver, knife, anything—to cut the tape. But it's all baseball supplies. Glancing around the room, taking in the dark at the edges, I see white buckets stashed under the stairs. I run over, they're full of baseballs.

  Wood snaps above us. The door. He's getting through.

  Drew's slumped forward, grimy and helpless.

  I lift the freezer's lid again, pull out a baseball bat, and lower the lid.

  "Close your eyes," I tell her.

  She looks up, confused. "Raleig—?"

  "Close your eyes!"

  I jump on the freezer and aim the bat at the window, slamming it into the glass. It shatters, the shards smashing on the concrete floor. The cold night air rushes into the room, slapping the hot skin on my face. I beat the bat against the pane, clearing the edges of broken glass.

  "Don't leave!" she cries. "Raleigh—"

  The bang explodes at the top of the stairs. I turn, waiting.

  "You can't leave me!"

  I jump off the freezer. The door splinters above me. Pieces fall on the stairs, tumbling down. I grab the rag that was in her mouth, and try not to look into her pale, petrified face as I shove the cloth into her screaming mouth. Then I close the door on her.

  Something hits the stairs. His foot.

  I run for the bottom step, swerving at the last moment, dodging beneath the stairs to crouch beside the buckets of baseballs.

  Bang-bang-bang! He comes down the stairs, the steps vibrating in the dark over my head.

  At the bottom, he pauses. One arm is stretched out wide, his hand holding an axe. His other hand grips his side, his shirt drenched with sweat. He surveys the room, side to side, then steps to the open window, rising on his toes to gaze outside. Even from here, I can feel that air, blowing in on us, telling him I'm gone. But suddenly his head snaps. He moves to the closet, he throws open the door. Drops the axe behind him.

  "Oh, baby." He almost coos. "You don't gotta worry, I'm still here."

  Her cry is a strangled sob, coughed into the rag that he doesn't remove. He turns, moving back to the freezer, lifting his face to the opening. Once more, he rises on his toes, trying see where I am out there.

  But I'm here. Right here.

  The first ball sinks into his wounded side. He yelps, staggers, turns toward me with surprise. But I'm already unloading the next pitch, aiming for the strike zone of his forehead. He turns, the ball clonks his right temple. He goes down on one knee. My third pitch strikes his throat when I pick up the bat, running for him. This time when I hit him, I feel a weird vibration running through the bat, shimmering into my palms. He's down, falling sideways when I swing again. I miss his head but my second swing comes down hard on his back. He collapses, falling like his bones suddenly disintegrated.

  He lies motionless on the floor.

  I raise the bat, high. My arms are shaking. Everything is exploding in me.

  But her whimper makes me turn.

  Drew's skin is white as marble, her brown eyes as wide open as that window, dark as the night outside.She turns her head. Once. Twice. Again.

  No, she tells me. No.

  I drop the bat. It lands on the concrete floor, clattering hollowly.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Three hours after I almost killed a man, just past midnight, I am sitting in the waiting room at Stuart Circle Hospital, begging my body to stop shaking.

  Officer Lande sits beside me. Every five minutes she asks if I'm okay.

  I'm not.

  But I don't think Officer Lande is okay either. Not since I called her on the phone upstairs in that house of horrors. Drew was seated, exhausted, at the small table, finally free of duct tape and mouth-gags. The door was locked. With him down there.

  As I told Officer Lande where we were, Drew stared vacantly at the mangled cheeseburger. Then I hung up and piggy-backed her out the front door. She weighed nothing. And it seemed only seconds later that Officer Lande's cruiser swooped into the gravel driveway, blue lights slicing through the dark. An ambulance followed.

  Drew never said one word. They wouldn't let me ride in the ambulance with her. So maybe she said something in there.

  But now, it's been three hours of waiting and shaking.

  "You okay?" Officer Lande leans into me.

  "Fine."

  "They should be done soon," she says. "I told them to ask the doctor if you can see her. After her parents."

  Her parents.

  Sitting directly across from us, on the other side of the waiting room, Jayne looks crumpled and old. Rusty sits beside her. And of all the strange things tonight—and there are many—among the strangest is seeing these two people not fighting. In fact, every time Jayne starts to cry, Rusty puts his arm around her small shoulders. Then she stops. Then she cries again. In her lap, she holds a book. It's Feynman. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

  And this is why Drew's books were out of order: Jayne. She was reading the books, finally curious about what interested her daughter. Finally. The missing clothes, Officer Lande explained, were the police. They took one of Drew's shirts, in case we weren't lying. In case they needed to use dogs.

  Officer Lande has apologized to me—a lot—tonight. And now Detective Holmgren is talking with Drew, trying to get more information.

  I hope he doesn't understand her.

  "What?" says Officer Lande.

  "I didn't say anything."

  "Yes." She smiles, her hard face softening. "You said, ‘I hope he doesn't understand her.’"

  "Oh." I didn't mean to say it out loud. "The detective, I hope Drew confuses him."

  "Really?"

  "It'll mean she's still Drew."
/>   Her smile shifts, bittersweet now. I recognize it, because it's what I'm feeling. The first waves of delirious joy—Drew's alive! She's here!—have been smothered by the panic. It launches me into shaking again. Five days in that closet. With that maniac. A guy who stole her in broad daylight then showed up for work, cleaning and jingling his keys.

  I asked God to bring her back. He did. But I want all of her back.

  Detective Holmgren comes walking down the hall. His wooden-mask face reveals nothing. He looks at Jayne and Rusty and seems to decide it's better to leave them alone. He nods at me, then tells Officer Lande he'll see her down at the station.

  "What about Titus?" I ask.

  He snaps his fingers. "Right, I'll call the jail."

  "No, in person," I say. "He deserves an apology."

  Holmgren hesitates. Then nods. "You have my word. And owe you an apology, too. Sorry we didn't believe you."

  He leaves, and a doctor appears wearing a white lab coat. Not hospital scrubs. A good sign, I decide.

  "Which one of you is Raleigh?" he asks.

  "I'm Raleigh."

  He turns to Jayne and Rusty. "Your daughter's asking to see her. Alright with you?"

  Jayne nods. Rusty says nothing.

  I quickly stand and follow the doctor down the hallway. The hospital was built around the JEB Stuart rotary, a half-circle whose hallways curve toward the rooms. I'm so tired, so far beyond any functional limit, that I feel dizzy.

  "You rescued her?" he asks.

  "I suppose."

  “Best friends, I take it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He stops beside a door. It has a glass panel and through it I can see a nurse, moving around a hospital bed, feet tenting the white blanket.

  "She'll seem quite different now," the doctor says. "Trauma changes people."

  I nod, still staring into the room. "I'm different now too."

  He's already reaching for the door when I say it, but he turns, evaluating me.

  "Yes," he says, turning the knob. "Yes, I suppose that's true."

  ***

  She has a room to herself, which seems like both a good and bad idea. Good, because I don't want some patient moaning in the next bed, but bad because I don't want her to be alone again.

  "Hi." I stand beside the bed.

  She stares out the window, night black as a chalkboard.

  "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."