The Long Sleep (8 page)

“Nice looking place.”

“My family,” I said, “is sure Evan Steffers
fired that shot. You know, the guy who was stalking me? He won’t
let up. I’ve been getting phone messages, mostly music. It’s all
things that have some significance for me. And I’m sure he sent
those roses.”

“I thought they were for your mother.”

“That was before I saw the card. He’s in New
Hampshire now, they tell me, but that wouldn’t stop him from making
phone calls. Or ordering flowers.” I turned in at my driveway.
Nobody else was home yet.

“You said he’s at school in New
Hampshire?”

“Garson Academy. Something like that. How are
you going to get home? Do you want me to take you?”

“Hell, no. Excuse the language. It’s too dark
and you’d be coming back alone. Thanks anyway.” He took out his
cell and made a brief call.

Pocketing the phone, he said, “My buddy’ll
pick me up. Before I leave, I want to see you safe inside. Garson
Academy, huh?”

“That’s what they said, but I don’t know
where it is. I’m just glad he’s not still at Lakeside.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I wish he’d get over me. Do people like that
ever get over their obsession?”

“Not often enough, from the things we hear,”
he said. “Maybe you should go away somewhere.”

“I already changed schools because of him.
Why should I have to change my whole life? Why can’t somebody do
something about
him?
Like—well, prison would be good.
Maximum security.”

“
Okay, then. You stay safe,” he said,
as headlights turned in at the driveway.

It was Ben, shortly followed by Rick’s buddy.
I thanked Rick again and thought about baking him some cookies.
That was very generous, that thing with the windshield.

Chapter Seven

The nurses started
looking at me funny each time I showed up at the ICU and stood
gazing at Hank through his window. Luckily it wasn’t always the
same nurses. I told them I represented
The Tiger’s Roar
and
had the duty of reporting on his progress. Of which there was none
to report.

When not at the hospital making an idiot of
myself, I worked on our series. By now I had it all mapped out. I
would lead with the story of Hank and then segue into Paula
Welbourne. Mr. Geyer gave me the names of the other staff members
and I managed to find each one. There weren’t many. According to
Geyer, at the beginning of the year there was usually a roomful of
people, but the number would shrink as they lost interest. They’d
come expecting a nice social time, not any actual work, and leave
when it wasn’t like that.

“I hope they’re interested in reading it,
anyway,” I said.

“
Oh, they’ll do that. And pay their
twenty-five cents.”

That was the selling price of
The Tiger’s
Roar.
It wasn’t much of a paper, just those eight pages stapled
together. People complained that a quarter was too much, but we had
expenses. It took a lot of paper, a lot of printer toner, and even
the staples weren’t free. As for our time, it was a labor of
love.

Every week we went semi-pro when a digest of
that week’s issue appeared in
The Chronicle,
the town
newspaper
.
We had a whole page just for us in the Sunday
edition.

Our weekly meetings were on Thursday
afternoon. The week after Hank was shot, all the members showed up.
And Mr. Geyer, of course. He always kept in the background. I’d
been the one to push for continuing, but I didn’t want to take
over. It seemed presumptuous when I was so new. I found out that
Ron Sullivan, a guy with blue eyes and a buzz cut, was supposed to
be the assistant editor. He was nearly as quiet as Mr. Geyer. I
asked him if he wanted to conduct the meeting.

He smirked and waved his hand in a ‘no
thanks’ gesture. “You go right ahead. You’re doing fine.”

Shy or sly, I couldn’t tell, but I had to go
ahead because nobody else did.

First I gave them an update on Hank’s
unchanged condition, and said I had seen him. I didn’t mention how
many times. Then I read what I’d written about him and they
approved. I did my best to make it sound like a temporary thing,
not an obituary. I wrote as though he’d be coming back as soon as
he recovered even though it might take a while. I had looked up
“brain injury” and knew a lot depended on what part of the brain
was affected.

As I wrote the article, I felt very close to
Hank. I felt it was just he and I. When I read it to those other
people, he seemed farther away. As though I had to share him. Even
though they’d known him longer, they didn’t feel the same personal
caring that I did.

“
Next week,” I told them, “I’ll have
this finished, with the stuff about Paula Welbourne, too. I need to
do more research on that.”

Cindy Belcher fluttered her hand. “What about
this week?”

“This week,” I said, “I have an eyewitness
account of what happened to Hank.”

“Who’s the eyewitness?”

She didn’t know? I thought the whole school
knew. Some of them did, but maybe Cindy didn’t care all that
much.

“I am,” I said. “He needed a ride home and we
were getting into my car.”

Her eyes widened. “How do you know they
weren’t aiming at you?”

“Why would they?” I hoped my face didn’t
betray my own questions about that.

It already struck me that it might have been
because
of me. Because I was with another guy and Evan was
more likely to shoot the guy than me.

But Evan was in New Hampshire. Glyn said
so.

“Why would they shoot Hank?” she
countered.

This was getting sticky. I’d wondered about
Cindy herself, but no way could I even hint at that. I hoped I was
being subtle when I said, “It’s possible someone didn’t like his
idea for that series. Some people can get rabid on certain
issues.”

“You mean me.”

I wasn’t subtle enough.

“Cindy, you were
here.
How could you
be out there at the same time?”

She seemed okay with that, but it didn’t say
anything about motive. No one pursued that angle, although Ron
Sullivan turned around and chuckled at her.

“I don’t even own a gun,” she told him
icily.

“Anybody can borrow one,” he said.

I rapped on the desk with what I could find.
It happened to be a pencil and didn’t make any noise. “Let’s not
get personal,” I said. “We’re all working together on this and we
have to have it ready to print. Who usually takes care of that,
with the layout and stuff?”

“Hank,” several of them said.

Oh, great. A rudderless ship. Maybe we ought
to let it sink, but I liked the things we planned. And I’d been
working hard on the right-to-die series. I thought it was
important, especially the part about having an advance directive.
Even Cindy’s new gossip column was amusing. Pure fluff, but she did
it well.

“Does anybody know how to do layout?” I hated
to admit that I didn’t, but layout was a special skill. The typing
I could handle. “Ron? What about you?”

He wiggled his eyebrows. Everything I said he
took as a come-on.

Finally we got it settled. I would type up
the individual articles and email them to Ron. He would take care
of the layout and the artwork, inserting photos and some of his
funny little cartoon drawings.

As we left the classroom, Mr. Geyer put his
hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We might want
to go easy on the Lakeside girl. Paula. Her family lives in this
area and it could be upsetting to have it all dredged up
again.”

I hadn’t thought of that, and wasn’t sure I
agreed. “She was going to be the easiest to do because she
is
local,” I said. “I can get stuff from Lakeside and I
won’t bother her family. It’s not going to be a long article. I
won’t need a lot. Mostly the first installment will be about Hank,
then her, and then a brief summary of the other cases coming
up.”

“Hmm.” He removed his hand. “As long as you
can manage it without going too deeply.”

He and Hank didn’t seem to be on the same
wavelength. Hank was going for depth, but I knew Mr. Geyer hadn’t
been wild about the idea and Hank was out of it now. Besides, we
didn’t have a lot of space for much depth in our eight-page
paper.

We were going to need a photo of Hank. He was
a senior, but the ones for the yearbook hadn’t been taken yet. I
asked a few people if they had pictures, and they didn’t. The only
thing I could do was try his family.

I had never met them. I hoped they wouldn’t
hold it against me that he was shot in my car. They didn’t know
about Evan. Ben and Cree were the only ones at school who knew and
I trusted them to keep quiet.

I learned that Hank lived in what used to be
the separate village of Northbridge. Now it was all pretty much the
same thing but still a way off. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to miss
his bus. He should have ended the meeting on time even if we hadn’t
finished getting the next issue ready. How
did
he expect to
get home?

On Saturday morning I called the Dalbecks. A
woman answered. I assumed she was his mother but it turned out to
be a sister, Arianne. I didn’t know he had a sister. She sounded
hesitant at first, as though she knew my name and blamed me for
what happened. Or maybe that was my own guilt complex talking.

I explained why a picture was needed. “If you
have a digital one, that would be great,” I said. “But even a
printed one, they can always scan it.” I knew Ben had a
scanner.

“I don’t know,” she said, still hesitant.

“We really need it so it can come out next
week. It’s the only thing we don’t have.” I should have done this
sooner. Desperation made me say it. “I suppose I could take one at
the hospital.”

That got a reaction. “No, don’t do that! I’m
sure we have something. I’ll look around and get back to you.”

“I was hoping to have it today. So we can run
it in the next issue.”

She was still reluctant, but mention of the
hospital worked. She told me to come on over.

The house was an oldish one on Northbridge
Avenue. It was dingy white with green trim, and carved wood
curlicues on the front porch pillars. Arianne was older than I
expected maybe early to mid-twenties. She had dark reddish hair,
almost the same color as Cree’s, and didn’t look much like Hank.
I’d hoped I could get some quotes, but she didn’t seem all that
friendly.

She’d found a packet of photos taken last
summer at a family gathering. They were all group pictures but
there were a couple of nice ones that Hank was in. They would have
to be scanned and cropped. Ron was set up with PhotoShop, so he
could do the cropping.

The mail was just in when I got home from
Northbridge. Ben grabbed it and went through it, looking for
college catalogs. His heart was set on MIT but he was realistic
enough not to put all his hopes in that basket.

I took a look at the mail but mostly I was on
a cloud of my own, picturing Hank growing up in that old-fashioned
house with the gingerbread porch pillars. I imagined him as a
little boy, those serious dark eyes. I wondered how long he’d worn
glasses.

Ben handed me an envelope. It was the right
size for a college catalog, but thinner, and I hadn’t sent for any.
I still had another year of high school. There was no return
address and the postmark was pale and illegible.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Ben shrugged. How would he know?

I sliced it open and gasped. Ben had been
starting away but he came back to look.

It was photos. Evan and me and some others.
In every picture, my image was marked up—a beard, blacked-out
teeth, and all the dumb, childish things that get done to photos.
None of the other people had been touched. I handed Ben the
envelope and pointed to the postmark. “Can you read that?”

He squinted. “Nope. Can’t you figure out who
it’s from?”

“I want to know
where
it’s from.”

Most of those pictures, I was sure, had been
taken with a digital camera. I raced upstairs and turned on my
computer, going straight to email.

Yep, they were there, too, with no message.
Only the attachment. I clicked Reply and asked,
Why can’t you
move on, you dummy?
I wouldn’t have been so confrontational
face-to-face, but this was Internet. And he really pissed me off.
It was so stupid to be so obsessed. If he thought he was showing
his control over me, it was just the opposite. The fact that he
couldn’t let go meant
I
had power over him. Don’t guys like
that realize how pathetic they are?

I deleted the whole message, including the
images, and tossed the printed pictures.

Ben was in his room, browsing through his new
catalog. I gave him the pictures of Hank for scanning.

“Just send them to me when you’re done,” I
said, “and I’ll get them to Ron.”

He thought
The Tiger’s Roar
was
trivial, but promised to take care of it. There were three that I’d
picked out. As soon as they arrived on my computer I sent them to
Ron so he could choose and crop.

With the pictures finished and my article to
go with them already turned in, I couldn’t do any more. So I set
off to visit the hospital.

Now that I’d met Arianne I was afraid of
running into her at the ICU. She would wonder what in heck I was
doing there when they wouldn’t allow me in his room.

The nurse, who now knew me by sight, greeted
me with a big smile. “He’s been extubated! Only an hour ago.”

It sounded horrible. “What’s that?”

“The breathing tube. They took it out.”

“Can he breathe?”

“He’s breathing on his own. Isn’t that
wonderful?”

I walked over to the window that looked
toward his bed. She was right. The tube was gone. The breathing
machine was still there, but it was pushed aside and quiet.