Cold Fury (11 page)

Much later, I would remember his sad wave.

I would wish that I’d waved back, since it was the last time I ever saw him.

9

TEN LONG BLOCKS LATER,
all I could think about was how late it was, how Max probably wondered if I would even show up at the dance, and how the dress I’d sweated and fretted over had driven away with my dad.

Also, how weird it was that Gina and I were going to the dance together.

Over the years, as she honed and perfected her gossip skills by knowing and talking to tons of people (and I pointedly didn’t), we regressed from hanging out regularly to sometimes to rarely. My mom’s warning had kept me away from her, and so did Gina’s ever-growing popularity, but even though we’d grown apart, we still had one of those original-friendship connections. We’d been each other’s first real friend, which never quite goes away, especially when you attend the same schools. So, whether it was out of nostalgia, curiosity, or the old challenge that lies between us—would she ever whisper to me a morsel of gossip so juicy that I’d actually want to know more?—we decided to go to the dance together. Days before, we’d found ourselves jammed next to each other in a crowded school assembly and chatted aimlessly until we arrived at the subject of the dance. She wasn’t currently dating anyone but planned on attending anyway, and I mentioned I was meeting someone there but basically going alone. And then we both sort of shrugged and decided to go together.

When I showed up at her house, sweaty from walk-running the whole way, she took one look at me, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Jeans, Cubs T-shirt, and Chuck Taylors again? For a dance? See, this is why we never hang out anymore. FYI, Sara Jane . . . the general consensus floating around is that you’re a very strange kid.” She pulled open her closet to lend me whatever she had, except that I’m sort of tall and definitely on the thin side and Gina is genuinely curvy. I tried on a few skirts but they were too short, and a few tops but they were too airy. Her mom, who had been watching our sad little fashion show, left the room, saying, “We’re almost the same size, Sara Jane. I think I might have something.” She returned pulling plastic from a hanger, smiling ear to ear, saying, “I haven’t worn this since college.”

Gina looked at the dress, at me, and at her mom, and said, “Where’s it been, in a time capsule?” I stared at the dress glittering before me, knowing Gina had a point. The best way to describe it is to say that Farrah Fawcett would’ve worn it if she were working undercover, posing as a disco instructor on
Charlie’s Angels
.

“It’s a spring dance, Mom,” Gina said. “Not a Halloween party.”

“Well, Sara Jane, if you don’t want it . . . ,” Gina’s mom began.

“No, it’s great,” I said, mainly because it looked like it would fit and because we were more than an hour late. “I’d love to wear it.”

Gina’s jaw dropped. “You would? Okay, but I’m walking into the gym alone. I mean it. I don’t need it getting around that I associate with a disco queen.”

Nothing could’ve kept me from that dance.

I would’ve gone in a suit of armor.

And then, once I walked into the balloon-filled gym and took a look around, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Right in front of me, encircled by a golden spotlight, Max was dancing with Mandi Fishbaum. A swarm of her look- alikes cruised past me, one of them giving me an up-and-down inspection, saying, “Nice dress.”

I flashed a look at her and said, “Shut the hell up,” as a small, cold flame began to dance in my gut. It was a strange feeling, one that was scary and thrilling at the same time, and I concentrated the sensation behind my eyes. The look-alike froze, her own eyes wide and mouth slightly open, and then I blinked, and she scurried away like a terrified chipmunk. I stared across the dance floor, sure that the right thing to do was exercise my left hook on Mandi’s jaw. But then the flame subsided, the feeling passed, and I turned and hurried from the gym.

“Sara Jane! Wait!”

I was through the double doors and hurrying across the parking lot when Max caught me, touching my shoulder and turning me toward him. “Where are you going?” he said, giving me the same appraisal as the look-alike. He grinned and said, “Nice dress,” except that he meant it.

Without thinking, I pushed him so hard that it made him take a step back. “You were dancing with Mandi Fishbaum!” was the worst thing I could think to say.

“So?” Max said, coming at me with his arms open and grin in place.

“So? Do you like her?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“But you told me she was a
knucklehead
!”

“That was three years ago.”

“So three years later, she’s not a knucklehead anymore?”

“Oh yeah,” Max said, with his TV-star grin, straightening the lapels of the sport coat he wore over a Triumph Motorcycle T-shirt. He moved brown curls from his eyes and said, “Mandi’s still a knucklehead all right. World class.”

“But you like her?” I said, feeling tears coming, and pushing him away.

“Yeah. Sara Jane . . .”

“And she’s a knucklehead?” I said, pushing him again.

“Yeah. Listen, can you stop doing that?”

“You like her
and
she’s a knucklehead?” I said, and before I could push him again, Max grabbed my arms and held them tightly.

“You know, this is starting to sound like a scene from that movie Doug just showed us.
Chinatown
, remember?”

“How can you like Mandi Fishbaum, of all people?” I said, trying to yank my arms free while Max held them.

“Because, as I was trying to tell you,” he said, “she’s my cousin.”

“Your . . . cousin?”

“Yeah,” he said, with a smaller, more cautious grin. “Everyone has the right to like his cousin and also think she’s an idiot.”

“Max,” I said, the reality of the situation descending on my head like a wet blanket. I had wanted to be so cool, so laid back and funny, but instead I had come off like some type of stalker/maniac. “Max, I’m . . .”

“A knucklehead?” he said, and the warm smile that followed made it okay. “I really do like your dress. It’s old school, but not hipster-fake old school. It’s real.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Like you,” he said matter-of-factly. “You just seem like . . . you. You don’t try to be anyone else.”

“You mean the look-alikes.”

“The who?” he said.

I explained the term and Max nodded. He understood that I didn’t hate those girls but just wasn’t anything like them—I wasn’t embedded in the type of social circle (or any social circle, for that matter) that dictated how I dressed or who I did or didn’t speak to. Finally I said, “What about the dance?”

“I told my mom I’d be home by ten. I did my servitude and now I get my motorcycle.” He looked at his phone and said, “It’s nine thirty. Why are you so late?”

The day’s drama between my dad and uncle, combined with the anticipation of meeting Max at the dance, had worn me down. I was suddenly exhausted, and said, “It’s a long story. I’m going home, too.”

“Red or brown line?” he said.

“Brown to red.”

“You want to ride together?”

Max talked excitedly about his motorcycle as we walked, and then apologized for talking so much. I didn’t care what he talked about, I was just happy to be together, and then we were at the El stop, swiping our cards and climbing the stairs to the platform.

The train pulled to a silent, breezy halt, sending litter bits cartwheeling in the air.

The doors separated with a
zwoosh.

The recorded announcement said, “This is Diversey. Exit on the right at Diversey.”

Max and I climbed aboard the mostly empty car and sat shoulder to shoulder. As the train pulled away, he cleared his throat and said, “Hey, you want to see a movie? I don’t mean a classic one. I mean a go-to-the-theater movie.”

“Which one?” I said, thrilled at the prospect of what sounded like a date.

“See if you can figure it out,” he said. “I’m talking about exploding helicopters, 3-D natural disasters, guys doing the super slo-mo spinning-in-the-air thing while spraying Uzis at each other. Oh, and also a gigantic bomb that could destroy earth.”

“Let me guess . . .
Ten Seconds to Zero
?”

“What gave it away? The gigantic bomb?”

“You like Ashton Willis?”

“He’s not a great actor,” Max said, “but he gets blown up well.”

“Doug would disapprove,” I said. “He’d call it ‘culturally insignificant.’”

“Actually, I think he’d call it ‘cotton candy for little brains.’”

“Doug hates action movies,” I said.

“I know. That’s why I’m asking you instead of him,” Max said, and nodded his head at the Belmont platform that was rumbling into view. “What do you say?
Ten Seconds to Zero
 . . . nine, eight, seven . . .”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “You can buy me some birthday popcorn.”

Max’s grin made my heart flutter like a baby bird. “No kidding. When’s your birthday?”

“Today,” I said, blushing for some reason. “Which means my family will probably have a cake tomorrow.”

“Which means the world will explode Sunday instead of Saturday,” he said. “Sunday at the Davis, noon?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said as the train eased to a stop. I rose and went to the exit, then looked back. “See you then.”

“Get ready for an action-packed birthday weekend,” Max said with a wink.

I stepped onto the platform and was enveloped by the mild night air that blankets Chicago in springtime.

The doors sealed, and Max turned in his seat to wave as the train rolled away.

I watched him go, blissfully unaware of how soon his words would come true.

10

IT'S ONLY LATER,
after the fact, that you remember the mental and physical warning signs that twitch and quiver throughout your body and brain, trying to alert you that something is about to happen. It’s like when the flu is coming on and you remember the small, intense headache that you ignored, or the bout of shivers you ascribed to a chilly breeze, even though it’s eighty-five degrees outside.

Walking up Balmoral Avenue to my house, seeing all of the windows pitch black, a telltale quake ran up my spine. But I was thinking about Max, and didn’t pay it the attention it deserved.

I climbed the steps and saw that the screen door was swinging crookedly on one hinge. Behind it, the front door was wide open.

The interior of the house was dark brown with shadows.

Stepping forward, my foot crushed glass, the
grind-crunch
making me jump. I entered the house cautiously, calling out to my mom first and then my dad.

The answer was nearby.

It was chatter-laughter, high-pitched and looping.

It shrieked, stopped, and shrieked again, punctuating the silent house.

I had been taught in self-defense class that when something feels dangerous or threatening to stop thinking and flee. But this was
my
house. My notion of it as a secure place had not yet been violated. Each time I took a step forward, the laugh would start again, and I’d freeze, unable to move, holding tight to the empty space around me.

Shree-hee-hee! Shree-hee
-
hee!

It didn’t sound human, yet I heard human sounds in it, perverted by speed.

Shree-hee-hee! Shree-hee
-
hee!

It should have been repelling, but instead drew me forward.

Shree-hee-hee! Shree-hee
-
hee!

I turned the corner into the living room and the first thing I saw were piles of feathery guts that had been pulled out in chunks from the belly of the leather couch. Bookshelves were overturned, the books’ spines stomped flat, and chairs torn apart with legs missing or at odd angles. Our family portrait hung sideways over the mantle, slashed in half, with Lou sitting on my dad’s lap on one side and me standing with a hand on my mom’s shoulder on the other. Every drawer had been pulled and dumped, and the big Persian rug was yanked back and rolled over on itself, like a huge abandoned crepe. Anything with an interior or that covered something else—pillows, pictures, cabinets—had been flipped over or kicked in or slashed apart. Seeing the room like that was so unreal that all I could do was gape.

Shree-hee-hee! Shree-hee
-
hee!

It was next to me, and I toed at the debris until a pair of piercing blue eyes stared up from a face that was cold and stone white.

Shree-hee-hee! Shree-hee
-
hee!

I picked up the unbroken bust and looked into its face, watching the cornea of the left eye dilate—wide, narrow, wide, narrow.

Shree-hee-hee! Shree-hee
-
hee!

I noticed for the first time a whisper-thin seam around its hairline and, holding the statue tightly, I unscrewed the head of Frank Sinatra.

Inside, a mini video camera focused and refocused its lens behind the left eye.

The tape was stuck, winding forward and backward, shrieking loudly.

I removed the camera, pressed the Stop button, and the chatter-laughter stopped.

I understood suddenly why my parents had kept the tacky gift from a long-dead nanny. It was Elzy’s parting gesture of protection, a nanny cam, hidden inside the head of the only man she had ever loved. The mini camera was charged, with a tape inside, so of course my parents knew about it and had used it. My hands were so clumsy with fear that I almost dropped the camera as I slid it back inside the skull and screwed it shut. And then I was standing in my borrowed disco-queen dress holding Frank Sinatra’s head, sweating and trembling at what might lie beyond the living room. If my mom and dad and Lou were in the house, surely they would’ve appeared by now. They would’ve heard me calling out to them, would’ve heard the chatter-laughter of the stuck tape, would’ve rushed into the room, turned on the lights, and explained it all as a freak occurrence, some kind of bizarre burglary. Or they had done the intelligent thing that I had not—walked in on the scene, followed their primal instincts, and fled.