Fault Lines (9 page)

My hands reached out and took it even though I didn’t want them to.

“This is your job; it’s a labor of love,” she said. “You work on getting the perfect picture of Barney.”

now

used to be my favorite time of year

Now I’m used to being at Grandma’s house without Mom. I’ve been doing it every other weekend since early October. But that doesn’t make today any easier. Thanksgiving. Our first holiday divided. And another one to look forward to: Mom will get us for Christmas.

So far Grandma hasn’t said two words directly at me, about me getting arrested or anything else. When we first arrived, she sat me, Mike, and Bobby down at the kitchen table to show all of us a flyer she made about Barney. I guess she gave up on me ever finishing it.

Now Dad is playing football with Mike and Bobby in the parking lot. I unzip my overnight bag on the couch and pull out Grandma’s digital camera, listening to her in the kitchen grinding up dressing with the antique hand grinder. Every year I’ve helped her with the stuffing. It doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving if I’m not turning the crank, smelling bread, onions, celery, and turkey gizzards grinding and mixing together. But she started without me.

When Mom’s mad, I’m used to getting the silent treatment. With Grandma, it’s torture.

I walk in the kitchen, holding the camera with both hands. The turkey sits in a roasting pan on the counter waiting to be stuffed.

“Here’s your camera,” I say.

She doesn’t look. “Just put it on the counter.”

I stare at the back of her old Detroit Lions jersey lettered with the name of Barry Sanders who retired from football years ago. She gets all hyped watching the Lions play on Thanksgiving Day every year, even though they almost always lose.

I could put the camera down anywhere, but I walk closer to set it near the turkey. “I’m sorry,” I say.

She shifts her weight from one leg to the other. Her shoulders keep moving as she puts food in the antique grinder and turns the crank.

When she doesn’t respond, I start to leave. Then, I hear the grinding stop, so I do too.

“I’m just so… disappointed,” she says.

“I know.”

“I don’t know what to say, Dani.” She finally turns to look at me, and I force my eyes up from the floor to return her stern gaze. “You’re a smart girl.”

“Yeah.”

“Just tell me,” she says, raising her voice. “Why? Why become a vandal? What possible purpose does it serve to attack your neighbor?”

I haven’t shared my reasons with anyone, except Todd way back on that night of the bonfire. It seems so long ago. Grandma’s wrinkles are hardened into a frown, demanding an answer.

I can’t say out loud why I did it. The poop in the mailbox. The fight between Mom and Dad, a sweater unraveling from the string being pulled. Good and evil voices in my head. Bobby’s sadness and Justine’s pain. Mike’s betrayal. It’s too dumb and jumbled, like trying to describe a nonsense dream after you wake up. I wouldn’t know how to make Grandma understand. Maybe even I don’t know. “It doesn’t serve a purpose.”

“Well, I wish you would have thought of that earlier. I wish you’d think before you act, think about someone else’s needs before your own. Like your father. Think about what he’s going through, and try to find ways to make life better. You know, sometimes helping someone else with their problems shows you the way through your own.”

I don’t know how she expects me to help Dad when I can barely help myself. But I’m not about to say that. “I’ll think about that. I will,” I say.

Our conversation seems over. But without a formal finish to it, I sort of stiffly stand there while she continues grinding the stuffing ingredients. The awkward silence heats up my face. I want to leave the room but not if Grandma thinks we’re still talking.

On impulse I grab the stack of Barney flyers sitting in a corner of the counter, away from the food. I’m drawn to the frozen image of my puppy’s button nose, blown out of proportion in size because he’s sniffing into the camera.

“I’m going for a walk,” I tell Grandma. “And I’ll hang some of these.”

She glances at me over her shoulder. “Try the bulletin board at Polly’s and the door at Bob’s Country Store,” she says. “Ask first, of course.”

“Of course,” I tell her, but the only thing I’m certain I’ll do is find a trash can to dump these things. Bright red all-caps lettering proclaims: “Wonderful family dog in need of good home” above the color photo framed in green. Red and green. As if he could ever be someone else’s Christmas present like he was mine.

In Grandma’s picture, the whites of his eyes show in the edges near his brown pupils, making him look manic, ready to eat the camera, unable to distinguish between photography equipment and food. That’s not my Barney, my friend.

No offense, Grandma, but that photo won’t cut it.

then

only Barney understood me

After Grandma loaned me her digital camera following that first weekend visit with Dad, I was in search of the perfect photo of Barney. I don’t even know why, because I didn’t care about making a flyer, but I needed to capture his personality in an image for some reason.

It was impossible.

I wanted a photo of him lying by Bobby in front of the TV like he was watching it. Or standing on my bed with his ears and tail perked, asking to go for a walk. Or out in the woods, running ahead but looking back – smiling – watching and waiting for me.

I shot tons of pictures and deleted them all.

The problem was Barney felt whatever I did. So his ears wilted. He stopped hoping to go outside and play. He’d drop heavy on the floor when I sat down, and sigh out a big breath of air before closing his eyes to sleep.

He seemed to be the only one that understood.

I tried talking one day with Justine and Kailyn Whitehead, who had started eating lunch with us on Tuesdays and Thursdays when drama club didn’t meet. It was a huge mistake.

Kailyn was asking her usual questions about our weekends, and Justine told her about Mr. Reiber’s house getting attacked.

“Who do you think did it?” Kailyn asked me.

“No idea,” I said. Lie number one.

“Probably Todd,” Justine said. “He’s the only person rude enough to do that to an old man. Can you believe it? Attacking an old man’s house? So he’s got to get out there on a ladder and clean up all that mess?”

I said nothing. The cafeteria echoed with voices.

“What’d you do this weekend?” Kailyn asked me.

“I went to see my dad.”

I was going to leave it at that, but Kailyn kept going. “What’d you do? Was that your first time? Did you have fun?”

So I told her. There was nothing to do, and Bobby got on my nerves. I hated dragging my stuff over there and putting it in and out of my bag – like at a hotel. I couldn’t even watch TV in peace.

Justine stared in another direction, chewing her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“If you really want to know, the whole thing stinks,” I said.

Then Justine dropped her sandwich on the top of her lunch bag. “I can’t believe you can say that.”

“What?”

“At least you still have your dad!”

Her eyes watered. Guilt flashed in me, but then annoyance overpowered it. Not that I didn’t feel sorry for Justine, but she didn’t seem to care about my troubles.

I wanted to tell her how empty my house felt without him there, how much I missed the sound of his voice and the smell of his aftershave and the sight of him shaking his newspaper in pretend shock and smiling over the top of it when I told him I got a B on my math test.

I didn’t say any of that. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry I said that.” But I didn’t think she was right, and I wasn’t sorry.

***

The second time we attacked Creeper coincided with my second lie to Justine.

She called that Friday night just as I was heading out. She wanted to walk around the neighborhood, but I said I wasn’t feeling well.

“You looked fine at school,” she said.

“I know, but I’m going to bed soon.”

Long uncomfortable pause. “You don’t sound too sick.”

Why did she have to call and make me late? “Well, I am.”

“Can’t you come out for a little while?”

“Justine, I feel really bad, OK?”

All I truly felt was impatient until I finally got her off the phone.

The plan was to attack Creeper’s house while he was home. We snuck a ton of supplies and met at the trailhead in the woods. Derek was scared of getting caught, but Todd spoke in a don’t-be- ridiculous tone of voice. “No one’s going to see us, and if they do, we just dump our stuff and run. What can they do with no evidence?”

I didn’t say anything. I was too distracted, because the butterflies in my stomach were flitting all over, but I wasn’t looking at Derek.

Todd was partly right. No one did spot us coating all the windows in front with soap and eggs. No one but me and Derek saw Todd pull out the surprise can of red spray paint, shake it three times and whisper, “This’ll get him.” Neither of us said a thing as he wrote swear words in cursive all across Creeper’s aluminum siding, then used up the rest of the paint scrawling dumb, cartoony pictures before tossing the can.

No one who knew me would ever have guessed I’d be involved in such a juvenile attack as to spray paint naked stick figures, including elementary-school-style male and female body parts – even if Creeper did deserve it and even if it was sort of funny.

The back yard was where it got tricky.

Some windows in back were dark, the ones looking into the garage on one end and bedrooms on the other. But light filtered out of the middle section of windows through closed curtains. And the shadow of someone moving inside occasionally danced across the wavy fabric that blocked our view.

We started with just soap on the windows at either end. I did the garage ones while Todd and Derek did the bedrooms. We worked our way to the middle.

I could see the bright dining room chandelier through a crack where the curtains came together. Beyond the dining room, Creeper was visible on a couch with his flannel shirt untucked and his suspenders hanging off his shoulders.

We started coloring with our soap, slow at first but picking up speed as our confidence grew. Until Derek’s shrinking soap bar let out a long high-pitched squawk.

We all froze. We looked at each other like idiots not knowing what to do.

I ducked down just in time to miss coming face to face with Creeper as he threw apart the curtains. I curled into a ball.

I closed my eyes tight, like a baby playing peek-a-boo that thinks if he can’t see you, then you can’t see him. I opened my eyes briefly, saw a stream of light spilling onto the grass beyond me and re-shut them. I stopped breathing for a while.

Finally, I peeked again to see the curtains had closed. I looked over and saw Derek and Todd face down in the grass against the house edge.

I stood to get out of there at the same time as Derek and Todd scrambled up.

My first thought was to run, but Todd said, “Time for the finish!”

“What?” Derek whispered. “No way!”

Todd and I were already trotting to the center of the yard. We stopped and turned toward the picture window, about the same distance away as a pitching mound is from home plate on a baseball field. Derek sprinted to catch up.

With them on either side of me, I fingered the egg in my right coat pocket, putting my index and middle finger on opposite sides of the egg, using the split-finger fastball technique Mike had taught me years ago. “On the count of three,” Todd whispered.

I pulled the egg out. “One.” I clutched it at my side. “Two.” I focused on the target and drew my arm back. “THREE!” We all fired together.

In the same instant, so many things happened: the eggs splattered – BANG! – all over the picture window, the side door to Creeper’s garage flew open, we took off running.

We ran a step or two toward the willow tree, but fumbled back the other way when we saw Creeper charging toward us through the yard. Something shiny in his hands glimmered in the moonlight.

We were like race horses blazing out of the gate, neck and neck. We instinctively made a sharp left to cut through back yards rather than heading for the open street. It was Todd in the lead, followed by Derek, and me.

An explosion pierced the sky. I jumped a foot in the air, mid-stride.

The nut-job fired his gun!

I discovered running muscles I never knew existed.

Since there weren’t any fences, we could go the length of the middle street through people’s back yards. But it was dark. I couldn’t see Todd and Derek ahead of me.

Only occasionally light spilled out from a window where people were home. If the house was dark, the yard was darker.

I dodged rose bushes and baby trees tied to spikes holding them up. I tripped over a rock garden and did a face plant but got up and kept running without wiping the dirt off my chin, hands and clothes. In the Hagan’s yard, I hit the grassless spot where they kept their dog tied up and I’m sure I tromped through his dried-up old piles.

I bet I looked like an Olympic track star. I could have hurdled a picnic table if one had popped up in front of me.

At the end of the last yard, I caught up with them, panting with their hands on their knees. Todd barked a hacking cough that sounded like it shot half his lung into his fist. Then he laughed and coughed at the same time.

All Todd could say was “Man!” in between his heavy breathing and his laughter and the barking cough.

“What’s – so – damn – funny?” Derek panted.

We all stood there, bent over, trying to catch our breath. Inhaling huge gulps of cold air hurt my lungs, and my side ached from sprinting so far.

“He tried to kill us!” Derek said. “That’s not funny!”

That just got Todd laughing again. “He did not try to kill us. He was just trying to scare us.”

“Well, he succeeded then,” Derek said.

“Let’s walk,” I said.

We had been standing next to the street on the opposite end of the neighborhood from our houses and Creeper’s. We turned to take the long way home, so we wouldn’t risk running into Creeper.