Before the Storm (28 page)

“Keith can speak now.” She didn’t look happy.“Did I say that

in my message?”

“Yes. And I actually spoke with him myself yesterday. It’s

great he’s doing better.”

Her eyes f lew open. “You did? At the burn center? What

did he say?”

“He told me he saw Andy outside the church.”

“Did he say anything else?” She was fishing for something.

“I wasn’t there long,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t get to see you.

They told me you went back to the hotel.”

A couple of Realtors from the office down the block walked

into the café.

“I’ll be right with you,” Sara said. Her hand shook as she

brushed a wayward strand of hair off her forehead. She leaned

toward me. “He found your old letter,” she whispered.

“
What
old letter?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I

knew. “You
kept
it?”

“Shh.”

I lowered my voice.“Why the hell didn’t you throw it away?”

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“I filed it with my banking stuff when Keith was little. I

never thought about it again. He went snooping through my

files and found it.”

What had I written, exactly? I couldn’t remember the

words, but the gist of what I’d said would be enough.

“What did he say?”

“He was furious. And very hurt. I told him he could never

tell anyone about it, that it would hurt too many people.”

“When did he find it?” I felt the impatient eyes of the

Realtors on us. Or at least, on Sara.

“The day of the lock-in.” She got to her feet.“I left a message

for you, but then the fire happened and…I was just worried

whether Keith would live or die, not whether he’d tell anyone

about the letter.” She tapped her hand on the table.“Later.” She

walked behind the counter.

I vaguely remembered getting a message from her the afternoon before the fire, making a mental note to call her after I got

off duty.

Maybe Keith started the fire,
Laurel’d said. The letter gave him

a motive—if being angry at the world counted as a motive.

But, again, why would he set a fire and then get trapped by it?

Couldn’t answer that one. Suddenly, though, I got why

Keith called Andy a little rich boy that night. Keith would go

home to his double-wide after the lock-in. Andy’d go home

to a two-story stunner on the water.

I’d always felt that was an injustice, myself.

1991

TALOS HAD ONE THING THE SEA TENDER DID NOT: a hot

tub. When winter finally hit with those winds that felt positively arctic at the northern end of the island, Marcus and I

got in the habit of stripping down to our underwear and sitting

in the hot tub in the evening—with our bottles of booze, of

course. Leaning my head back on the edge of the tub, studying

the crisp white stars against a background of black velvet,

reminded me of those nights Jamie and I would bundle up on

the beach in the winter and search for satellites. Only a couple

of years had passed since then, yet it seemed as though those

nights had taken place in someone else’s life, not mine.

One night late in March, we must have stayed in the tub too

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long, or the water had been too hot, or we’d had too much to

drink. When I got into the house and quickly threw on my

terry-cloth robe to stop the shivers, I suddenly felt woozy.

“Uh-oh.” I closed my eyes as I leaned against the living room

wall.

“You going to be sick?” Marcus asked as he threw a towel

around his shoulders.

I opened my eyes. The room blurred but didn’t spin. “I

think I’m okay,” I said.

“Want some coffee? Hot chocolate?”

“Ugh, no.” I took one tentative step forward, then another.

“I’m going to crash in your guest room.”

“Party pooper,” he said. Then hollered after me, “Call if

you need me!”

In his guest room, which now felt like my home away from

home, I slipped out of the robe, peeled off my wet underwear

and crawled under the covers.

I don’t know how long I slept. I only know that when I woke

up, I was lying on my right side facing the wall and I slowly,

very slowly, became aware that Marcus was lying behind me.

I felt his arm around me, his finger lightly tracing the place

where my breast met my rib cage, and the hard warmth of his

erection pressed against my left buttock. I lay for minutes that

way, neither asleep nor awake, sober nor drunk. Then I rolled

over, and somewhere between facing the wall and facing him,

I passed the point of no return.

MISS BETTS LEANED BACK AGAINST HER DESK like she does

sometimes and asked,“What is some of the evidence of global

warming?”

I raised my hand first out of everybody. She called on Brynn

instead of me, even though I hadn’t raised my hand in probably

ten minutes. I was only supposed to raise my hand every third

time I knew the answer. I was good at things like “the evidence

of global warming” because it was facts. I could memorize

facts. That part of my brain was excellent. I wasn’t so good

when we were supposed to debate things, like should we use

the electric chair. Things like that. That part of my brain was

weak. The electric chair killed people and it was wrong to kill

people, so that was simple. But when we did the debate part,

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we weren’t supposed to think in black and white, as Miss Betts

said. That was harder. Mom was the one who told me I should

only raise my hand every third time I knew the answer. She said

I drove the teachers crazy raising it all the time. So that’s what

I tried to do, but sometimes I didn’t get called on anyway.

Brynn gave the same answer I was going to give: melting

glaciers. Then a lady from the office came into the room. I saw

her look right at me as she walked toward Miss Betts. She whispered to her. Then Miss Betts looked right at me, too.

“Andy,” she said, “gather your things and go with Mrs.

Potter, please.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Mrs. Potter will explain why to you.”

I stuffed my books and notebook in my backpack, kind of

mad because I didn’t want to miss the rest of my class. Mrs.

Potter was very, very old. She smiled when I walked toward

her. She put her arm around me and we left the room.

When I got in the hallway, I saw a policeman standing there

looking at me. He wasn’t smiling. Everything I did that day ran

through my mind really fast. Did I do something wrong? I

couldn’t think of anything.

In the hall, Mrs. Potter said, “Andy, this is Sergeant Wood.

He’d like to talk with you for a few minutes.”

He was big. I didn’t want Mrs. Potter to leave me alone with

him, but I could tell she was going to. My heart beat hard as I

walked with him to the office. He had a gun! I saw it on his

waist, like inches away from me. I’d never seen a real gun that

close up. Mrs. Potter said, “Use the counselor’s office,” so we

went in there. The policeman closed the door. I had trouble

breathing all of a sudden. My inhaler was in my backpack on

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the floor. I didn’t need it yet, but I liked that it was there in

case.

“You can sit,” he said to me.

I sat down in a chair by the tall file thing. He sat down in a

chair by the window. The room was little. I didn’t like being

that close to his gun. He had a big badge on his chest with the

word
sergeant
on it and above the badge was a skinny flag, like

an American flag, but without enough stripes.

“Andy, you have the right to remain silent,” he said. Then

he said a bunch of other things really fast, but all I kept thinking

about was that I had the right to remain silent. He rubbed his

chin when he was finished talking. “Did you understand what

I just said to you, Andy?” His eyes were really blue, like Uncle

Marcus’s. “About your right to remain silent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It means you don’t have to talk to me right now. I’m going

to ask you some questions, but it’s your right not to answer

them.”

I nodded. It sounded stupid for him to ask me questions if

I could be silent, but sometimes people don’t make sense. I

guessed this was just one of those times.

“You also have the right to have a parent present while I talk

to you,” he said. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, even though I was very confused. Mom

wasn’t there, but he was talking to me anyway.

“I want to talk to you about the night of the fire,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Did you go outside at all during the lock-in?” he asked.

I didn’t know what to do. I could be silent. Even though he’d

turned a little in the chair and I couldn’t see his gun anymore,

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I knew it was still there. Any minute he could pull it out and

shoot me. I thought I better answer him, but I was going to

have to lie. What if he had one of those lie detector machines

with him? My windpipe tightened up, but I was afraid to reach

for my backpack. He might think I was reaching for a gun, too.

“Did you go outside at all during the lock-in?” he asked again.

“No, sir,” I said.

“You didn’t go outside during the lock-in?”

I shook my head. Why was he asking me another time? I

leaned over to try to see under his chair to see if he had the

lie detector machine hidden there. I only saw his feet.

“We had a few reports that you were seen outside the

church during the lock-in,” he said.

My shirt felt wet at my armpits. I’d forgotten to use the

deodorant that morning. Mom added it as a new thing in pencil

on the edge of my
Get Ready in the Morning
chart. I always

missed it. “I didn’t go out,” I repeated.

“You were involved in a fight with Keith Weston at the

lock-in, is that correct?”

Maybe that’s what this was about. He was trying to figure

out who started the fight first. “He called me a name,” I said.

“And you were very angry with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Angry enough to start a fire.”

“What?”
He really confused me now.

“Did you start the fire, Andy?”

“No, I’m the one who
rescued
people,” I said. He had me

mixed up with someone else.

“Well, why don’t you tell me how you rescued people?” he

asked.

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That was easy. I’d told the story so many times it came out

of my mouth as easy as facts about global warming. I told him

about climbing through the boys’ room window and crawling

over the air-conditioner box and everything.

“Okay, Andy.” He stood up. The handle of the gun was right

next to my eyes! “You can go back to your classroom now.

Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome.”

I left him and went back to Miss Betts’s room. The class was

over and she had to help me figure out where I was supposed

to go next. Once my day gets out of order, it’s confusing. She

told me I should go down the hall to my art class, and then she

said, “How did your talk with the policeman go?”

“Good.” I tried to sound happy. Then I walked to art class.

On my way, I thought about the policeman’s questions and my

answers, and I decided it would have been smarter to remain

silent. Even if he did have a gun.

BONNIE BETTS POKED HER HEAD INTO MY office where I was

taking a fourth-grader’s temperature. “When you have a

minute,” she said, then ducked back into the hallway.

I took the thermometer from the girl’s mouth. “Normal,

sweetheart,” I said. “I think it’s allergies.”

She twisted her mouth into a grimace.“My nose don’t clear

no matter how much I blow it,” she said.

“That can be pretty frustrating,” I said as I dropped the

plastic sheath from the thermometer into the trash can. “Ask

your mom to get some saltwater spray at the store. It’ll help.”

She stood up like she had a sack of potatoes on her shoulders and left my office.

I called Bonnie in. The elementary school where I worked

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shared a campus with the middle school, as well as the high

school where Bonnie taught, but it was unusual to see her in

my building in the middle of the day.

“How are you, Bonnie?” I asked. “You want to have a seat?”

I motioned toward the small chair the fourth-grader had

vacated.

Bonnie stood in the doorway. “No, I’m fine, thanks, but I

thought you’d want to know that Mrs. Potter took Andy out

of my class to talk with a police officer last period. He

seemed just fine when he came back, but I thought you

should know.”

“They talked to him without telling me?” I wasn’t sure if that

was even legal.

Bonnie shrugged. “I didn’t think to question it.” She looked

at her watch.“I’d better get back, but wanted to let you know.”

I thanked her, then sat at my desk, wondering if I should pull