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  “Not right now, okay?”

  “Okay. You hurt at all?”

  “Not in the body.”

  “Will you call me after school tomorrow? Tell me how you’re doing?”

  “Sure.”

  “Tell me if you need me to bring over anything?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I guess that’s it, sort of. I’m sorry my call’s so screwed up.”

  “We’re all screwed up. Ah, Macy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for being such a friend.”

  “Likewise, girl,” Macy said. “Likewise.”

  Allison hung up the phone and felt a little less empty inside.

  I’m making the news, she thought. The idea made her feel queasy.

  Macy must have called just after the ten o’clock news report. Allison turned on her little black-and-white TV and waited for eleven, when the three other stations did their news reports. She tuned in channel five, because it had the best reception, and waited for Eyewitness News to come on. The promos confirmed her fears, showing an exterior shot of Euclid Heights High School.

  “Major violence stains the halls of an East Side high school earlier today, critically wounding one student. More at eleven.”

  She began to feel more violated than ever.

  EIGHT

  EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Tuesday October 26, 1999

  01:35 AM

  Allison spent the night staring at the ceiling of her room, trying not to think of what had happened. Her rebellious mind used the effort as an excuse to drag up more and more grotesque recollections. Her half-awake mind would drift into slumber, then hit her with something so vile that it would shock her awake.

  She couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and Chuck’s injury had been indelibly marked on the inside of her skull, a surrealist portrait in Day-Glo red and nightmare black.

  And when she didn’t think of what Chuck had done, or what she had done to Chuck, she thought of what she had said to Mom.

  Whatever Mom might have lied about, she didn’t deserve what Allison had said to her. Thinking about it made her almost feel as if she had deserved what had happened with Chuck.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, during the night she heard her mother’s voice on the phone downstairs. The words registered blankly in Allison’s exhausted mind.

  “… Hello? Yes, yes, it’s me… You were right… No I haven’t told her yet… I need you there to… The phones, if you’re right they’re probably listening… Yes… When I first called you a baby killer? You have a sick sense of humor… Yes, I remember. Did you send it?… See you there…”

  Allison drifted into sleep listening to her mother.

  07:00 AM

  Allison’s alarm woke her at seven, as usual. She sat up and had a blissful three minutes where everything was normal again. It wasn’t until she was fully awake that she thought, what am I doing up this early? I’m suspended.

  Allison threw herself back on the bed, muttering. “After all that homework...”

  Thinking of her homework, as if it mattered after what she’d been through, was so incongruous that it started her laughing. Once she began, it was hard to stop. The universe was playing some sort of elaborate practical joke on her so that, not only did she get to play the part of a helpless victim— nearly raped on her way home from school— she’d been immediately cast into the role of savage tormentor. It was insane. How could anyone believe she had done that to Chuck? It was impossible.

  Impossible.

  She had tapped such a deep well of hysteria that she couldn’t stop laughing until she saw her mother standing at her door. Mom had such a look on her face that Allison came to a choking halt.

  “It’s ok, Mom. I haven’t gone crazy.” Yet.

  She came in and hugged Allison. “I’m so sorry, Allie.”

  “No, Mom. I was a bitch yesterday. I don’t know how you can forgive me.”

  Mom sucked in a breath. “Allie, you’re the last one here that needs forgiveness.” She let go and stood back, still holding on to Allison’s shoulders. “I thought I was doing the best thing for you, but—” Mom’s voice caught and Allison saw that she was on the verge of tears again. “I think I might have done more than anyone to hurt you.”

  “No, Mom. I can understand how it must have been, things going bad between you and Dad.”

  Mom shook her head. She looked almost as distressed as she’d been when Allison had been yelling at her. “No, honey. That’s as far from the truth as you can get. If there’s anyone who cares about you as much as I do, it’s your father. John is a good man, Allison. He would never do anything to hurt you or me.”

  “But why lie then? Why haven’t I seen him since I was five?”

  “Because no one else could know he was your father.”

  Allison stared at her Mother and tried to understand what she meant. “What has that got to do with anything?”

  Mom sighed and looked pained. “Oh God, I wish I had the time…” Allison realized that Mom looked as if she had gotten no sleep at all. “Honey, I’ve got to get to the office as soon as it opens. I have to arrange some things—”

  Work again. Allison nodded and said, lamely, “I understand.” She turned away but Mom reached around and cupped her chin, turning Allison’s face to look at her.

  “If there was anything else I could do right now instead, I would. Believe me, the last thing I want to do right now is leave you, especially with only half an explanation.” She stood up. “But I have to do some things before we leave.”

  Allison straightened up. “Leave? Where?”

  Mom looked as if she debated a moment before she said, “We’re going to see your father.”

  Allison’s jaw dropped and she was left speechless. Mom let her go and backed toward the door. “I’m sorry I have to go. I want to stay here but—”

  Allison whispered, “Dad?”

  Mom nodded and said, “I know he wants to see you very badly. I’ll be home by one, two at the latest? Then we can talk about what’s happening.”

  “Yeah…”

  Mom wrung her hands a few times. “Please, stay in the house, please?”

  “Mom?”

  “Promise that you won’t go anywhere. I don’t want to worry about you.”

  “I promise, Mom.” Allison felt a burning in her chest and before Mom had stepped outside the door she said, quickly, “I’ve been lying to you too.”

  Mom paused in the doorway. “Allie?”

  “I lied about the headaches going away. They’ve been pounding me constantly—”

  “Oh baby,” Mom took a step toward her.

  The confession kept rushing forward, “It’s been eating my brain until last Saturday night. I threw up Mom, I tore apart my room, I’ve been so scared—”

  Mom rushed up and hugged her. “Oh honey. Shh.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t believe me, after the doctor— am I dying?”

  Mom crouched down so she was at Allison’s eye-level and holding her hands. “No, honey. You aren’t dying.”

  Allison looked into her Mom’s eyes. For once she didn’t see fear there, or denial. What she saw was a fierce determination. “I know,” Mom said. “I’ve known since I heard what happened to Chuck.” She squeezed Allison’s hands. “You inherited those headaches from me and your father. I’m sorry I was so blind. I was just praying that we hadn’t passed on those genes. You are not going to die, understand?”

  Allison nodded. What she saw in Mom’s eyes now scared her. She had been going to admit to listening in on the phone, but she decided not to.

  Mom let go of her hands and stood up. “I love you more than anything, honey.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  As she left the room she said, “Stay in the house—”

  “I will.”

  “And don’t answer the door for anyone you don’t know.”

  “Mom?”

  “Promise.”

  “Yeah, sure…”


  Allison was left thinking about that until she heard the door close downstairs.

  ◆◆◆

  Allison spent the morning trying to catalog memories of her father. The images that came to mind seemed half childhood memory and half romantic fantasy. She remembered a tall, dark-haired man, a giant from a four-year-old perspective. She remembered a one-story house with blue curtains. She remembered a uniform that smelled of mothballs in a bedroom closet. She remembered a station wagon driven by a smiling man with heavy eyes.

  Two scenes focused in her memory.

  She remembered wearing her Sunday best and going with her father into town. The town wasn’t Cleveland. Her daddy wore his uniform, still smelling of mothballs. She remembered thinking, something’s wrong with Daddy.

  He took her to a city square. All the people had scared her, and she’d hidden behind his legs. She looked up at Daddy, and— for the only time in her life— saw Daddy crying.

  “What’s wrong, Daddy?” she asked.

  “A great man died here,” her daddy said. “A long time ago.”

  “Why’d he die?” Allison looked around and only seeing grass, roads and buildings.

  He paused. “Because there are bad men in the world, Allie. Men who like to hurt people.”

  “Will the bad men get me?”

  Her daddy’s eyes welled with tears and he hugged her to him. “No, I won’t let the bad men get you.”

  The other scene was more chaotic, jumbled. She remembered being pulled out of bed. “Where we going, Mommy?”

  She was thrust into the back of a waiting taxi, half-asleep, still wearing her Smurf pajamas with the little feet. She clutched her old Cat in the Hat doll. Mommy’s overcoat wrapped around her, and she remembered how comfortable it felt. Then Mommy was yelling, up at the house, and that scared Allison. Things were shoved into the taxi, suitcases, a cardboard box—

  Somehow that devolved into a memory of a Greyhound bus, and asking Mommy, “where’s Daddy?”

  “Daddy had to go away, hon.”

  That’s silly, we’re going away.

  Allison could remember being distracted from everything by the endless scenery out the Greyhound’s window. For the first time in a long while, Allison remembered being awestruck by the St. Louis arch. Then there were hills, trees, and she was going to school in Euclid Heights, Ohio.

  When she finally got out of her bed and dressed, around ten, she did so with a great feeling of emptiness, and a sense of almost surreal anticipation.

  “We’re going to see your father.”

  Allison still couldn’t quite get her head around her mother’s change in attitude. It was as if the woman on the end of the first two phone calls was completely different from the one who’d talked to her this morning. What does she need to get done at the office?

  She had barely gotten dressed, when the doorbell rang.

  What? Who?

  Irrational fear gripped her gut, paralyzing her for a moment. Mom’s warning about strangers rang in her head.

  The bell rang again and she told herself that it had to be one of two things, Macy or the police. And even if police had come for her, they didn’t rate the gut wrenching fear that rooted her to the ground. She moved to descend the steps.

  What if it’s a reporter?

  Oh god, I’ll deal with it. I have to deal with it.

  She looked through the peephole, scaring herself with her mother’s ominous words, and it was none of the above. It was a gentleman in a UPS uniform holding a clipboard gadget and a red-banded cardboard envelope. She opened the front door, chain in place.

  “Yes?” Allison asked.

  “Package for a Ms. Boyle. Sign for it?”

  Allison took the cardboard envelope, through the partly open door. The guy gave her an odd look, but let her sign his clipboard gadget through the gap.

  She stood there watching as he walked away. She didn’t stop staring until he had boarded his brown UPS van and had driven down the street.

  My life is turning surreal, Allison thought to herself. Soon Rhett is going to start talking to me.

  Her neighbors in the duplex had a paper laying at their stoop. The one headline she could see on the folded Plain Dealer was, “Alleged Teenage Rapist Victim of Savage Beating.”

  Allison stared at it, the words lodging in her mind and tumbling over each other. Ok, is he an alleged teenager who’s a rapist’s victim? Is he beating up savages? Or was the savage beating up on the teenage rapist’s alleged victim? I was there, and the beating is a lot more alleged than the rape.

  She was on the verge of laughing hysterically or bursting into tears.

  In front of the house, Allison saw a familiar figure across the street. Standing motionless in a driveway was a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy wearing a Bugs Bunny T-shirt and Walkman headphones. The kid stared straight at her, through her. She locked eyes with the kid and felt a brief wave of sickness reminiscent of her headaches. It wasn’t that the kid’s look was intense, really. It was more the emptiness. The kid’s dead eyes stared at something that wasn’t there— or at least at nothing that Allison could see.

  It took all of her willpower not to slam the door. When she closed it, she remained slumped against it, shaking. That kid’s stare was nearly bad as the looks Chuck gave her.

  Just a kid, she thought, he’s probably on some sort of drug. The more she told herself that, the more she felt it had to be the case. Whoever he was, he certainly looked spaced out.

  After a while Allison shook her head, dismissing her own paranoia. “He was at the school yard when I got hysterical. If he recognized me at all, of course he’d stare.”

  She collapsed into the living room couch and tossed the “UPS Urgent Mail” letter on the coffee table on top of back issues of The Economist and U. S. News and World Report.

  The way she was falling apart was pitiful. She had come near collapse just because someone looked funny at her. She couldn’t do that. If she ever— When she went back to Euclid Heights High, she was going to have more than one boy looking funny at her.

  She wondered if David would ever go out with her again.

  She wondered if she’d ever feel safe going out with anyone.

  Another thing lost, Allison thought. Along with my past, my school career, nearly my virginity—

  “And Babs?”

  Her stuffed rabbit was missing. She had left it down here yesterday— no, two days ago— right there, on that issue of The Economist, the one with a constipated looking Boris Yeltsin on the cover.

  She started looking all over the living room for Babs Bunny, and found no sign of her. Not under the couch or the table. She even pulled the cushions from the sofa in the search for her rabbit.

  She stood there, holding a sofa cushion in each hand, when she noted Rhett and Scarlet sitting on the dining room table. The two cats looked at her a little quizzically.

  “Ok, what’d you two do with her?”

  Scarlet began to lick an orange paw, and Rhett jumped off the table to amble into the kitchen. Allison was suddenly struck by how silly she looked, and meekly replaced the cushions. It was so childish, being upset over a missing stuffed animal.

  “I don’t care,” Allison said. “I deserve a little childishness. I don’t have much left.”

  She sat down on the couch and her gaze landed on the UPS letter.

  The return address was somewhere in California.

  Allison picked it up. She had assumed that this was something to do with Mom’s business, boring accountant stuff. Now, Allison began to wonder why that’d be sent here, rather than Mom’s office. As she examined it, Allison felt a thrill run through her body.

  The sender was a John Charvat in Los Angeles.

  The same John?

  The thin cardboard of the envelope felt hot in her hands. Her pulse raced in her neck. She remembered last night Mom had asked, “Did you send it?”

  Here it was.

  Allison could almost feel the answer
s in this envelope. Who “they” were, what had happened to her father, everything.

  Allison looked at the addressee.

  “Ms. Boyle.”

  No initial, no “Mrs.” Just the last name. Theoretically, this envelope was addressed to her as much as to Mom.

  I’m sorry, Mom. I have to know.

  Allison tore open the cardboard envelope and out fell two more envelopes bearing the United Airlines logo.

  Of course. She’d overheard the conversation last night, and Mom had said they were seeing her Father. Did she expect her mother to drive when Dad was probably a half-dozen states away? More, if the return address was any indication.

  She opened one envelope and lost the certainty she’d had that she knew what was going on. Inside were tickets from a half-dozen airlines.

  “St. Louis.” Allison read. “Dallas. Los Angeles. Phoenix. St. Louis again? Atlanta. Washington DC. New York.”

  This almost crosses the whole continent, twice.

  She kept reading the itinerary with growing incredulity. The layovers stretched from an hour-and-a-half in Atlanta, to nearly seven hours in Dallas. Getting from Cleveland to New York by this cockeyed route was going to take more than three days. The total price on the grand tour was over two thousand dollars.

  For each envelope.

  Two sets of tickets, leaving Cleveland Hopkins Airport for St. Louis at 11:15 AM tomorrow and arriving in New York at 2:35 PM on Saturday.

  “You could get there sooner by boat.”

  Allison held in her hands an expensive hopscotch across country, for no apparent point. They were just flying to see Dad. Why all the layovers?

  The more Allison thought about it, the more it worried her. She remembered now, last night, Mom had talked about tapped phones. Mom had been paranoid about strangers knocking on their door.

  If someone tapped your phone, wouldn’t they also follow you around?

  Allison had a brief thought about the kid she’d seen outside and dismissed it as ridiculous. Neither Mom nor her Dad would be worried about twelve-year-old kids.

  But maybe Dad was worried about someone else following them to him. Maybe any one of these layovers could be the real destination, and the rest smoke screen.