Second Chance (3 page)

“I did the same thing a little while ago, Judd. If what Bruce said is true, then I guess that puts us in the same family. We're brother and sister now.”

Judd nodded again. “I guess we are,” he said. “I could use a sister.”

“I could use a brother.”

“Yeah, didn't you say your big brother was living in Michigan and you thought he was raptured too?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

L
IONEL
Washington had sprinted down the street away from New Hope Village Church, looking both ways for any sign of Ryan Daley. He knew the little guy had gotten quite a head start on him and only hoped that Ryan was not still running. If he was, Lionel would never catch him.

Lionel was a fast runner, but this was ridiculous. He huffed and puffed and sucked air, running in the general direction of his own house. He hoped Ryan's home was somewhere on the way. Maybe the kid had to stop and catch his breath himself.

Lionel slowed to a walk and put his hands on his hips, allowing his chest to expand and his lungs to drink in more air.

He squinted at a small form huddled under a street lamp two blocks ahead. It
could have been anybody, of course, as people just like him—people who had lost loved ones and were scared to death and wondering what was going on—wandered about hoping to see someone they knew.

When Lionel was within a block of the streetlight, the form rose and began to walk. It was Ryan Daley. This time, fortunately, he was not running. At least not until he turned and looked behind him. When he saw Lionel, he began to jog.

“Hey! Hey, kid!” Lionel called. For the moment, he had forgotten the boy's name. “Wait up!”

At first Ryan seemed to speed up, but then it appeared he had resigned himself to the fact that there was nowhere to go anyway. He stepped off the sidewalk into the grass and thrust his hands deep in his pockets, his chin tucked to his chest. Lionel figured he had been crying. Maybe he still was. He sure didn't have to be ashamed of that, Lionel thought.

Lionel hurried to the boy and stood next to him, matching his posture, pushing his hands into his pockets and looking down. “What are you gonna do?” Lionel said. In his peripheral vision, Lionel saw Ryan shrug. “Ryan, isn't it?” Lionel said. “That's your name, right?” Lionel looked up in time to see
Ryan nod slightly. “Ryan, I know how you feel. This is terrible, and we all hate it.”

“How could you know how I feel?” Ryan blurted. “Your family's in heaven. For all I know, my parents aren't just dead, they're in hell.”

Lionel didn't know what to say. He believed that was true. Nothing he said could make that any better. “The important thing now is,” he finally managed, “what are
you
gonna do?”

Ryan sat in the grass in the darkness and put his face between his knees. Though his voice was muffled, Lionel could make out what he was saying. “I have no idea what I'm gonna do. I'm not going to be able to stand being in that house all by myself, I know that. I thought maybe I'd just gather up a bunch of stuff and pitch my tent in the backyard. I guess I can stand going in there for food and the bathroom, but I wouldn't want to live in there. And I sure wouldn't want to sleep in there.”

“Me either,” Lionel said. “My house has my family's clothes all over the place, right where they left them when they disappeared.”

“I wish mine did,” Ryan said. “Then I wouldn't have to believe all this stuff about everybody who disappeared going to heaven.”

Lionel nodded, but said nothing.

“I don't s'pose you'd want to help me get my tent set up?”

“Sure I would,” Lionel said. “I've got nothing else to do.”

“It's just a couple of blocks from here,” Ryan said. “Thanks, Lyle.”

“It's Lionel.”

“Sorry. Like the train?”

“Uh-huh.”

A few minutes later Lionel and Ryan were digging around in the garage at Ryan's house. Lionel saw Ryan occasionally looking at the door that led into the kitchen. “You want something in there?” Lionel said. “I'll get it for you.”

“I
am
getting a little hungry,” Ryan said. “It's just that I don't want to go in there yet.”

“I'll get you whatever you want,” Lionel said. “You want me to just find whatever I can in the refrigerator and the cupboards?”

The Daleys' kitchen was similar to Lionel's own. He could hear Ryan dragging stuff from the garage to the backyard, and he hoped the boy would invite him to stay. Lionel would have to go home and get some of his stuff, but he didn't want to be in his house any more than Ryan wanted to be in this one.

Lionel found a bunch of snacks and soft drinks and went directly into the backyard from the kitchen. He wondered if Ryan
would be too shy to invite him. “You want some company tonight?” Lionel offered.

“You'd stay with me?”

“Sure! I don't want to be alone tonight any more than you do.”

Once the tent was set up—snacks, flashlights and all—the boys headed toward Lionel's house, just over a mile away. Ryan wasn't saying much. Lionel had never been a big talker either, but when he wasn't talking he felt like crying, and he assumed Ryan felt the same. “I guess we don't have to worry about going to school tomorrow,” Lionel said.

“Yeah. I heard on the news that enough students and teachers and parents disappeared that it might be a long time before school opens again.”

Lionel snorted. “So we can be thankful for a little good news in all this mess.” That wasn't really funny, of course. This was a nightmare from which neither of them would awaken.

Lionel figured Ryan was just as tired as he was by the time they reached Lionel's house. “You want to come in for a minute while I get my stuff?”

“It beats being outside alone, I guess.”

The first thing Lionel noticed in the kitchen was that the answering machine was emitting a steady tone that indicated the tape was com
pletely full of messages. Ryan followed him upstairs as Lionel ignored his parents' and his sisters' bedrooms and grabbed a backpack that he stuffed with clothes. On the way down he turned toward the kitchen to listen to the messages, noticing that Ryan was no longer behind him. Lionel turned to see Ryan staring at Lionel's father's nightclothes draped over the chair in the living room. “C'mon, man,” Lionel said. “That gives me the creeps just as much as it does you.”

White people were nothing new to Lionel, of course, and he wasn't surprised that a blond boy was paler than most. But he had never seen a face as ghostlike as Ryan's when he turned away from those empty clothes in the living room. Ryan appeared to be gasping for breath. Lionel wanted to get Ryan's mind off what he had just seen. “Let me listen to these messages,” he said, “and then we'll go.”

Lionel played the answering machine tape for several minutes before getting past the messages he had already heard that morning. He was stunned then to hear that the entire rest of the tape was just one long, rambling message from none other than his uncle André.

As soon as Lionel began listening to it, he wished he hadn't turned it on. He wished even more that Ryan was not there to hear it. It was clear Uncle André was either drunk or
high or both. His grief and his horror were obvious. “Lionel, man,” he said, “I done you wrong. I led you down the wrong path, boy. I just called to tell you I'm sorry and to say good-bye. I never meant to do wrong by you. I hope you'll find it in yourself to forgive me someday. I should have been there for you, and I should stay here and be here for you now, but I just can't. I can't live with myself.”

Lionel had never heard anything like that before, but it sure sounded like André was planning to kill himself. Lionel listened with urgency, hoping and praying he would hear some clue about where André was calling from.

A couple of times Lionel thought he heard voices in the background and wondered if André's enemies—the ones he owed money to—had put him up to this. Maybe they wanted it to sound like he was planning suicide when actually they were going to kill him. Lionel didn't want his imagination to run away with itself. This was bad enough. André was serious. Dead serious.

Lionel sneaked a glance at Ryan, who still appeared ashen and seemed to be barely breathing. Lionel turned the machine off. “Maybe you don't want to hear this,” he said.

“No, it's all right. You'd better find out
where he's calling from or we'll never be able to help him.”

“I'm not going to drag you into this. This guy is my uncle, and I'll need to handle it myself.”

“Don't keep me out of this, Lionel!” Ryan said. “I got to keep myself busy or I'll be thinking about the same thing your uncle is thinking about.”

“Let's hope he's still just thinking about it.”

Lionel turned the machine on again and could hear what sounded like a bottle being poured into a glass. Also, if he had to guess, he would have assumed André was downing some pills. André's voice became slower and more slurred, and he cried more as he spoke. “Lionel, don't make the same mistakes I made. I was wrong, totally wrong. I heard all my life that God loved me and that Jesus died for me and that I was a sinner. I knew it. I believed it. I just never bought into it for myself. I told you a lot of it was fairy tales, and I hoped I was right. But I was wrong. I was wrong.”

Lionel didn't think he had any more tears to shed, but he could feel them welling up again. André sounded so lost, so empty. Lionel thought about whom he could call, where he could possibly find André. He wondered if anyone left behind at the church
might have any idea where André was. He flipped off the machine and dialed the church. The line was busy. He tried time and again, but always it was busy. He asked Ryan to take over and keep dialing. Meanwhile, he listened to the rest of the tape, which went on for more than twenty minutes. In it, his uncle André simply repeated how sorry he was, how sick he was of himself, how much he hated his life, and what a waste it had been. In the end, he resorted to simply apologizing over and over and saying good-bye. He was still talking, mumbling, rambling, when the tape ran out.

Ryan said, “It's ringing!”

Lionel grabbed the phone. When the machine at the church picked up, however, it merely signaled a long tone as well. The tape was full, and no one was there to answer either.

“I've got to get to André's place,” Lionel said.

“Where's that?” Ryan said.

“In Chicago.”

“How are you going to get there?”

“On my bike, I guess,” Lionel said. “You want to go with me?”

“Sure. But I've never ridden a bike to Chicago.”

“You can use my sister's bike,” Lionel said.

“No, I've got my own. Just give me a ride back to my house and I'll get mine.”

Half an hour later, Lionel and Ryan were pedaling quickly out of Mount Prospect, heading toward Chicago. Lionel hoped he would recognize the same landmarks he did while riding in the car. It seemed to take so long to get to each one while riding bikes. He soon realized he was going too fast to keep up his endurance. “Let's slow down,” he hollered. “Let's save our strength. It's going to be a long trip.”

The boys reached André's neighborhood around eleven o'clock. Lionel had never been out that late alone before, and he was intrigued that no one seemed to mind. He couldn't imagine riding his bike through cordoned-off expressways and side streets on his way to the inner city of Chicago without being stopped by the police. It simply seemed too strange that two young boys would be out on their bikes in Chicago at this time of the night.

Had it not been for his grief and his fear and his anxiety over Uncle André, Lionel might have enjoyed an adventure like this. But just then he couldn't imagine ever enjoying anything again. He sure hoped Bruce Barnes was right and that he was still eligible to become a Christian, even at this late date. It was awful
that he had missed the truth the first time around, especially when he knew better. He sure didn't want to live through a period like this and lose out on heaven altogether.

“How do your legs feel?” Lionel asked Ryan. “Tight and heavy?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I can't imagine riding all the way back to Mount Prospect tonight.”

“But we have to,” Lionel said. “The only people I would want to stay with down here are all gone. I wouldn't feel safe with the ones who are left.”

When Lionel and Ryan came within sight of the tacky little hotel where André rented a room, a couple of policemen were getting back into their cruiser. The one getting in the passenger side noticed the boys. “No time to even deal with you two tonight,” he said. “Why don't you just run along home?”

“I'm looking for someone,” Lionel said.

“Who isn't?” the cop said.

“My uncle lives in this building,” Lionel said. He gave the officer André's full name.

The cops glanced at each other with what Lionel sensed was a knowing look. “Should I tell him?” the one cop said to the other.

The driver shrugged. “Why not?”

“Son, your uncle is the reason we were called off traffic duty, where we've been all day. He was found in his apartment a couple
of hours ago. His body was just loaded onto an ambulance and taken to one of the morgues set up at a high school about seven blocks down the street here.”