The Long Sleep (17 page)

The butterflies weren’t real, thank goodness.
I could almost picture going to a dance in those shoes, except I
had no one to dance with. And the heels had to be almost four
inches. I wasn’t used to walking in heels like that, much less
dancing. My date would be scraping me off the floor.

What date? Not Hank. Even if he were
conscious, he didn’t seem like the dancing type.

How about Falco? A policemens’ ball. Did
Southbridge have a policemens' ball? I was off and daydreaming and
had to rein myself in before somebody noticed the dopey look on my
face.

Cree was being waited on by a young guy
scarcely older than she was. I saw him put a rejected pair back in
its box and go to the storeroom for more.

I sat down beside her. “Any luck so far?” I
could see there wasn’t. I was only trying to make conversation.

“I wish they were toe shoes,” she said. Cree
used to study ballet. At one time she thought of going
professional, except she started too late and didn’t have the right
kind of figure. Instead of being sylphlike and skinny, as
ballerinas usually are, she had a full bust, curvy hips, and a
slender waist. Her grandmother called it an hourglass figure and
said it was just right for an eighteen-nineties chorus girl.

Ben liked it.

“Why don’t you try on something?” she asked.
“It might cheer you up after talking to Evan.”

I had told her all about that
conversation.

“Too depressed,” I said. “Not about Evan. I
banished him from my mind. It’s Hank.”

“
How’s he doing?”

That was a tough one. “To be honest, I think
he looks worse, maybe from being unconscious so long. But he’s out
of ICU and that scares me.” I explained my worry about his safety.
“That’s why we have to catch Evan real quick. But when I tried what
Ben suggested, it didn’t work.”

“Maybe he sensed you weren’t being
sincere.”

I’d thought about that but hadn’t put it into
words, even to myself. “Do you really think Evan is that
sensitive?”

“How would I know?” Cree had never met him,
but she’d heard enough from me. True, that was only one side of the
story. But it made a lot more sense than his side.

The salesman came back with another load of
boxes. Black shoes with hot pink trim. White with hot pink. Lime
green. Silver. She didn’t like any of them.

Some were too expensive. Others not feminine
enough, even with the pink. Finally she said to the clerk, “I know
you carry dance slippers, I used to buy them here. What have you
got in toe shoes?”

“Cree!” I said. “That’s not what you came
for.”

“But it’s what I want.”

“What are you going to do with them?” The
ballet school she went to in Southbridge had closed and there
wasn’t another nearby.

“Dance. What else?”

“But . . .” I knew she didn’t have a lot of
money. Why waste it on something she didn’t need?

“It cheers me up,” she said.

“What do you need cheering up about?”

Lovingly she took the box the clerk handed
her, lovingly took out a pair of pink satin shoes wrapped in tissue
paper.

“You can try them on,” said the clerk. “But
no dancing till they’re paid for.” He grinned.

“Gotcha.” She took out a slipper and put it
on her foot. She pointed her toe but didn’t try standing on it. I
wondered if she really was going to buy them.

“What,” I asked again, “do you need cheering
up about?”

“My old man.”

“What did he do?”

Cree’s father was on an island somewhere in
the Pacific. Right after she was born he left home to travel. Said
he needed space. He decided he was a travel writer and he toured
the world, taking a few pictures, writing a few articles. Mostly he
did odd jobs to support himself. He didn’t earn enough to support
his family. Cree’s mom had to go into real estate where she made a
pretty good income.

The fact that he left almost as soon as she
was born was something Cree took personally. She figured her father
got one look and couldn’t stand her. What would anybody think in
those circumstances? Since then he’d only been home once for a
short visit several years ago. Before that, she’d never even seen
him.

Cree took off the toe shoe and carefully
wrapped it. To me she explained, “We got a letter from him that he
was coming home. I thought finally I’d get to know this guy. Then
we had another letter that he isn’t. I wish I could just forget
about him.”

I wished she could, too. He deserved it, but
he was, after all, her father.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?” I
said.

“Because I was afraid it might not be true,
and it wasn’t.”

“That’s superstitious.” Even though I do it
myself sometimes, not talk about something for fear I’ll jinx it.
I’ll bet a lot of people do.

I sat down and hugged her. “Cree, I’m so
sorry. Anyhow, you have Ben. He’s true blue.” Whatever that was
supposed to mean. Maybe because it rhymed.

Next to Jules Penny, my own dad was dull as
ditchwater but very sweet and reliable and I loved him. I couldn’t
imagine what Cree had to go through. She really should try to
forget him.

Easy for me to say.

She handed back the toe shoes and apologized
for wasting the guy’s time. We left the store without her buying
anything.

Five feet away from the door, she stopped.
“You know what? Maybe I—”

She started to turn and suddenly barreled
into me. She pushed me, hard, along the sidewalk until we both fell
down. I thought she’d gone bonkers but I really didn’t have time to
think. With a horrendous roar, a huge thing loomed where I had just
been and crashed into Rayburn’s window.

Chapter
Fourteen

Cree landed on top
of me. She kept saying, “Oh my God. Oh Lord. Oh my God . .
.”

With her blocking my view, I couldn’t see
what it was. It looked like a big black SUV. People came rushing
across the street, down the sidewalk, out of the store.

It didn’t take the police long to get there,
either. They wrenched open the car’s door and hauled out the
driver. He was young. I didn’t know him.

Other people picked us up off the sidewalk
and asked if we were hurt. I looked for Rick. He wasn’t there.

“How did you know?” I gasped to Cree.

She, too, tried to catch her breath. “I saw
it—the reflection—in the door. Coming straight—if I didn’t
decide—right then —if I didn’t turn—” She sagged and I caught her
before we both fell down again.

We were surrounded. They all kept asking if
we were hurt. Asking what happened.
Insisting
we must be
hurt.

Sirens came. More police. An ambulance. The
paramedics were certain we needed help. They didn’t know what
happened until people told them. They made us get in the ambulance
and sit down. That was okay with me. Sitting was good. While they
checked us over, I watched what the police were doing. They stood
the guy up and made him walk. Instead, he tried to bolt. They
caught him and snapped on cuffs.

They found a canvas bag on the front seat and
took something out of it. From where I sat, it looked like a huge
roll of bills.

Cree’s friend Phil Reimer, a reporter from
The Chronicle,
came, and then Rick. He talked briefly with
the officers working over the car, then came into the ambulance.
When he saw me, his eyes got big and he rushed over. “You? This was
you?” He must have heard that something happened but didn’t know it
involved anyone he knew.

“Don’t ask me for details,” I said. “It’s all
a blur. My friend pushed me out of the way.”

Cree had to repeat her account of how she saw
the reflection. Several times she repeated it, to Rick, to Mr.
Reimer, a few other officers, and a couple of paramedics.

“Coming straight at you?” Rick said. “Up on
the sidewalk?”

Cree nodded. “I just decided to buy the toe
shoes, so I was going back in.”

Bless those toe shoes. They saved our lives.
I would buy her a pair.

The canvas bag, it turned out, contained five
thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills. And the driver was
really, really high.

“Somebody,” said Rick, “must have paid him to
go on a suicide mission.”

“Suicide?” I quavered.

He put his arm around me. “Somebody has it in
for you.”

“Evan.” But Evan, as far as I knew, didn’t
have that kind of money.

As it turned out, nobody had that kind of
money. It didn’t take any sophisticated equipment to discover the
bills were phony.

Whether it was intended as a suicide mission
or not,
I
wasn’t meant to survive. The kid was too whacked
out to know what he was doing. All he wanted was money for another
fix. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t know the person who gave it to
him. Now all he had was trouble.

Rick felt sure it was me they were after, and
not Cree. He gave me another hug. “How can I keep you safe?”

“Find Evan,” I said.

They were trying. But Evan was slippery.

* * *

My parents worried, too. They almost didn’t
want me going to school on Monday. In the end they decided school
was safer than home by myself.

Furthermore, they concluded the attack was
only meant to scare me.

Rick didn’t go along with that. “Why take a
chance?” he said, as we gathered in our living room on Sunday to
discuss my fate. That is, everybody discussed it except me. I
wasn’t given much say in the matter.

Rhoda said, “Do you really think it’s more
serious than that?”

“Till we find the person who’s behind it, I
wouldn’t want to guess,” Rick replied. “It might be wrong.”

“So what should we do?” Daddy asked. “Should
one of us stay home?” He didn’t look happy about that. Both he and
Rhoda had clients. Or did he mean Ben?

“I just don’t know,” said Rick. “I don’t know
what we’re up against, whether one person would be enough or too
many. I’d stay myself, but I’m a public servant, not a private
guard.”

They could understand that, and this was
getting ridiculous. Finally I spoke up. “I’ll go. I mean school.
I’ll ride with Ben, so I’m never alone.”

I hadn’t been alone in front of Rayburn’s.
Cree was with me. It was Cree who saved my life. For all I knew
that car was aiming at her, although I couldn’t think of a reason
why anybody would do that, and neither could anyone else. Lucky
Cree didn’t have an Evan trying to prove his machismo, or whatever
he was trying to prove.

And so I went to school on Monday. Nothing
happened or even looked as if it was going to happen. The day
passed normally, except I didn’t have my car to visit Hank. That
bothered me, but I supposed it was better than being flattened on a
sidewalk.

Tuesday they allowed me to take my car. Rhoda
was panic-stricken. We were having our newspaper meeting that day
because of Thanksgiving on Thursday. She remembered very well that
it was after a newspaper meeting that Hank was shot. I remembered
it, too, of course, but I assured her, and myself, that the meeting
had run late that day and I wouldn’t stay late this time. Even if
other people wanted to go on talking, I would make sure to leave
before sundown.

I had worked hard to get something ready to
present, but it wasn’t coming off. At least not the way I wanted
it. In the end, all I had was my notes.

Cindy Belcher said, “Haven’t you finished
that yet?”

She really was kind of bitchy. Maybe she
liked conflict.

“There’s a lot to it,” I explained. “I keep
finding more. I don’t want to turn this into a lecture but it
doesn’t hurt to make people aware of what can happen.” I glanced at
Mr. Geyer to see if he approved. His face was impassive.

“So anyway,” I said, “here’s the timetable.
Paula was sixteen when she took that overdose.”

That wasn’t the right word. I tried
“cocktail,” meaning a mix of stuff. It wasn’t right either. I gave
up and went on.

“After they got her to the hospital and
hooked up to a ventilator, she spent three years with the machine
breathing for her, and everybody arguing back and forth whether to
keep her alive or let her go. That’s what this series is about. Are
you really alive if you’re lying there with a pump pushing air into
your lungs? What’s the sense? Is that living?”

I saw a hand go up, and hurried on. “Let me
finish this first. I didn’t mean to go off track. Anyhow, her
family prevailed and they took her off the ventilator. But
surprise, she didn’t die. She’d passed three birthdays that she
didn’t know about and was nineteen then. Even without the machine,
she went on living and breathing, but still unconscious, for five
more years. Then she caught an infection and died. She was
twenty-four. That was ten years ago. She’d be thirty-four now,
probably married, having kids, leading a normal life.”

Cindy Belcher raised her hand and didn’t wait
to be called on. “If she could breathe without the machine, it
proves she was alive.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Nobody set out to
kill her. They only wanted to give her a chance to do what came
naturally.”

I thought it was a pretty good argument, but
Cindy wasn’t convinced. “That proves it!” she said again.

“Proves what?” I asked. “That she lived?
Until the infection got her. Nobody will ever know how she felt
about it, what kind of life it was for her. Whether she wanted it
or not or even knew about it. A life of nothing but sleep.”

“Sleeping’s nice,” said one of the guys.
“Don’t you like it?”

“All the time? I like it if I know I’m
sleeping,” I said. “Like if I wake up and know I can stay there
instead of jumping up for school. But what if you can only hear
voices and know you’ll never wake? I don’t see where that would be
so nice.”

I wasn’t at all sure how a person would feel,
or know they would never wake up.