The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (15 page)

I looked out over the cemetery at the patchwork of graves and stones. I thought of that strange handkerchief. “Of course I remembered the pact,” I said.

“If I had disappeared, would you have dug it up?” she asked.

“Definitely,” I said. “But I don’t understand. You keep calling it a map. It’s a grid with a bunch of names on it.”

“Yes,” she said. “And each square of the grid represents a kid’s world in Aquavania.”

“But everyone’s world is connected?”

“That’s right,” Fiona said. “You have to think of it in three dimensions. What happens when you fold something like a handkerchief? You can connect any two points, right? Because there are infinite ways you can fold it.”

This sort of abstract thinking was a bit beyond me, but I sort of understood what she was saying. It didn’t matter, I guess. The important part of this story was me. Where I came in.

“Last time we talked, you said that the Riverman knew about you. What if I told you I know who the Riverman is? And that you’re right—he’s here, in the Solid World.”

She folded her arms, cradled herself. “I’d … ask you how you knew.”

“Don’t worry about that. All you have to know is that I’m figuring out a way to handle it. And all you have to do is stay safe.” I placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked at it, but didn’t push it away.

“Have you ever built anything from scratch?” she asked.

This was not the response I was hoping for. No
Thank you, Alistair
, no
Of course, Alistair, I’ll stay safe for you
. Just an incongruous question. “I don’t know,” I replied. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve told you my story,” she said. “That’s a good thing. At least one person should know it. But I’m starting to think that no matter who the Riverman is, we won’t be able to stop this. The best we can do is start over from scratch.”

And that was all she said. She didn’t elaborate, didn’t explain. As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. So she stood up and started walking back to the wake.

Even though I was tempted to, I didn’t follow her immediately. I was trying to dig up more of that story beneath the story. Rodrigo’s world was described as a rain forest. Maybe the stuffed animal on the floor of Dorian’s pickup was connected to Rodrigo. Maybe it was a monkey or something. And the toy airplane? Fiona said that Boaz lived in the clouds. Was that a reference to the boy’s love of airplanes? Were those things in Dorian’s truck souvenirs he kept from the kidnappings?

I imagined that the part of Fiona’s story about the telephone was close to the truth, that she suspected Dorian was responsible for the missing kids and so she made phone calls to learn more, but when the phone bill came back, Dorian caught on to what she was doing. That would explain why she said
He knows that I know
.

But what about the green names on the handkerchief? Were they other victims that Dorian had chosen? And how would Fiona know about them? Not all the pieces were fitting together, but they didn’t need to. I was more concerned about her hopelessness. Why couldn’t we stop this? Why couldn’t
I
stop this? Because someone had to.

I sat there on the steps for a few more moments, watching a man raking the damp brown leaves. He pulled them away from the graves into mucky piles along the gravel access road. The grass he uncovered was thin and pale, and I wondered what it would be like to have the power to wish all the color back into it.

M
ONDAY
, O
CTOBER
30

It was a rainy morning. Misty, spitting, and cold, but not exactly a downpour. Inside the house, sitting on the stairs near the front door, my dad pulled rubber galoshes over his brown leather shoes. He spotted me grabbing an umbrella from the coat closet.

“Come here,” he said.

My dad was over six feet tall, but with him sitting three steps up, it put us at eye level. “What’s up, old man?” I asked.

“I’m proud of what you did yesterday,” he said. “Mom is too.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“That’s what a man does,” he went on. “He’s there when you need him to be there. Fiona is lucky to have someone like you.”

“She invited me, so I went.”

My dad shook his head. “It’s more than that. Growing up in that house can’t have been easy. And dealing with death … it’s always hard, even when it’s expected.”

“What do you mean by ‘growing up in that house’?” I asked.

The galoshes snapped against the heels of his shoes as he put them on. “I didn’t mean anything by it. They’re different from us. That’s all. Believe me, they’re … fine people.” He stood up and looked down at me.

“It’s hard to know what to believe sometimes,” I said.

“Believe in the girl,” he replied.

That’s when Keri tapped me on the shoulder. “We’re gonna be late.”

*   *   *

Jacketed and loaded down with our backpacks, Keri and I slogged up the driveway. The wind blew our umbrellas inside out before we even reached the sidewalk, so we folded them up and faced the weather.

“Do you love her?” Keri asked as soon as we were out of earshot of the house.

“You are so annoying,” I said.

“What’s it feel like?” Behind the words there was honest curiosity. It was strange to be asked such a question from my older sister, but then again, she was barely fourteen, still an eighth grader.

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” I said. This was a lie. When it came to Fiona, it felt like everything.

“I’m sorry,” Keri said. “About her grandma. And for saying she was nutzo.”

“I don’t care.”

“She
is
nutzo, but she’s your girlfriend, and it’s cool that you have a girlfriend.” She was right. It
was
cool, even if it wasn’t entirely true, and yet the more time I spent with Fiona, the more I wanted it to be true, the more I wanted people to believe that it was true.

Keri scooped an acorn from the road and proceeded to fling it at a mailbox. It hit the target with a satisfying
dong
. A less skilled markswoman might have roared in victory, but this was nothing for Keri. She had always been astoundingly coordinated.

“It’s a federal offense to tamper with other people’s mailboxes,” I told her.

She shrugged and said, “Do you guys make out?”

“Will you quit it?”

“A girl can ask questions.”

Indeed. And a girl can be asked questions. I hadn’t thought of it before then, but Keri wasn’t all that different from Fiona. Same neighborhood, close in age. Clever, confident. Girls. Maybe their minds had a similar geometry.

“Do you want to be saved?” I asked.

Keri cocked an eyebrow. “Like Jesus?”

“Like Lancelot.”

“I hang my hair out the window every night, waiting for some dude to climb up.” This was a typical Keri comment, designed to provoke, but I wasn’t going to be tricked into trading barbs.

“I’m serious,” I said. “Is that what every girl wants? A guy to step in and save the day?”

Keri shrugged. “I guess if a monster is involved. Mostly I think a girl wants a guy who, like, tells her nice stuff. Reminds her that she matters, you know?”

A monster
was
involved, but what Keri said was equally important. Part of helping Fiona was reminding her that she mattered. And to do that, I would have to do something significant.

I decided to avoid Fiona at school until I knew for sure what I was going to do. I suspected her emotions were still all over the place after dealing with the wake.
My
emotions were still all over the place, and I didn’t want to burden her with my ideas until my ideas could be put into action.

At lunch, I sat next to Mike and Trevor again. They didn’t ask me about Charlie this time. Halloween was all they wanted to talk about, and how even though they were a bit old for trick-or-treating, they would still be dressing as ninjas and snatching up every peanut butter cup they could.

“Your neighborhood is Battleground this year, you know?” Mike told me.

I didn’t know. Information of this sort was so low on my priorities.

“Cops were all over last year’s Battleground,” Trevor remarked. “Could get nice ’n’ nasty tomorrow.”

In other places, mischief reigned on the night before Halloween, but in Thessaly it always dominated Halloween night itself, when identities could be concealed and vandals could easily fade into the costumed crowd. An Olympic committee composed of the more popular kids decided which corner of town everyone should descend upon. It made the shaving cream assaults more intense and exponentially increased the probability of coed socializing. The chosen neighborhood was always called Battleground.

“I don’t know if I’m going out,” I told them.

“What!” Trevor yelped. “You live in Battleground! You have to go! It’s gonna be wicked awesome. I heard Chad Burk is bringing a rocket launcher!”

“Come on,” Mike said. “A rocket launcher?”

“Okay,” Trevor admitted. “Maybe it’s only a crossbow. But he jiggered it so he can shoot smoke bombs with it. He’s got, like, a hundred smoke bombs.”

“How about it, Alistair?” Mike asked. “Crossbows? Smoke bombs?”

“Maybe,” I said.

They continued to press me, to insist that Halloween might be the greatest night of my life. It was a possibility, but it wouldn’t really matter unless I could think of a way to help Fiona.

*   *   *

At the end of the day, I collected Charlie’s homework and brought it to his house. I hadn’t seen him since the sleepover and I was worried that he might expect me to stay for dinner. I considered leaving the books and papers on his front porch with a note saying I didn’t have time to stick around, but that was bound to backfire. He’d end up calling me and booking me on yet another guilt trip.

Charlie’s parents had an open-door policy for me. In many ways, they trusted me more than they trusted their own sons. Of course, they never stated this, but you could hear it in their voices. They were always saying things like, “It’s good to have you around, Alistair. We wish you were here more often.”

So I let myself in the front door and made my way to the back room, where I was sure I’d find Charlie. The house hadn’t changed much in the last ten years. A two-year-old me could have walked through and recognized almost every chair and table and picture. The Dwyers didn’t move things or add fresh embellishments. It was comforting in some ways. In other ways, unsettling. It was like they were curators at a gallery of their previous lives.

That said, when I reached the back room, I spotted something unmistakably new. A swooping, elegant, embroidered red hat—perhaps the biggest hat I’d ever seen—sat atop Charlie’s head. On his body, he wore a long red coat and a billowy white scarf. A fencing foil was attached with Velcro straps to one of his bandaged hands. To the other? A hook.

“Whaddya think?” Charlie asked.

“Impressive.”

“Glad I let you live to see it,” he said as he used the hook to push the hat back from his brow.

“Didn’t take you long to get there.”

Charlie thrust the foil at me. The tip stopped inches from my chest. “Question my honor and I’ll take your heart, you filthy cur.”

I pushed the foil away. “You’re a day early.”

“Gotta see if it fits. There’s big news, you know? They’re happy with the healing. Sending me to school. So I’m going out tomorrow night. Then on Wednesday, it’s back to class.
Bwa bwa bwa.
”

Bwa bwa bwa
was Charlie’s sad trombone sound, but it didn’t make me sad at all. This was a relief. I could handle lunch with Charlie if it meant I didn’t have to stop by his house every evening. “It was bound to happen sometime,” I said.

“What do I need school for?” Charlie replied. “I could read for a couple of hours a day and learn more than what they teach in that hole.”

“Don’t you want to see people? Socialize?”

“With a bunch of infant morons? No, thanks.”

“But you’re still going?” I needed a yes. More than anything, I needed a yes.

“Yes. For Mom.”

And there it was, and thank god for it. I smiled. “It will be good to have you back. I always thought you kinda liked school.”

Charlie waved his hook dismissively. “Only thing I like about it now is that my mom finally bought me a laptop computer. No more writing with my hand like a chump.”

“A laptop?” I said. “Those things cost like a million bucks!”

Charlie smiled. “Four thousand … nine hundred … ninety-five … buckaroos. To be precise. Five times the Blue Book value of Kyle’s van. Mom said I’m worth it. Besides, what choice does she have? She wants me to keep up with my schoolwork, so I’m pinkie-typing all my notes and assignments from this day forward. You kids have fun with your cursive
z
’s. This guy is getting sophisticated.”

I couldn’t let the obvious contradiction go unnoted. “You’re not too sophisticated for Halloween, though, are you?”

This time Charlie twirled the hook. “Pretending, dear boy, is the definition of sophistication.”

*   *   *

I left Charlie’s house two hours later, after a plate of microwave eggrolls and an intense gaming session. While playing, I kept a tally in my head of the creatures I had killed. One hundred forty-seven total. Most were serpents, rabid wolves, and whatnot, but there were also a handful of people, namely sorcerers and black knights.

Only a game,
I told myself as I biked home into a stiff wind. A few nights before, I had basically told Charlie the same thing. But it suddenly made me consider the cemetery and Fiona’s grandma. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all that stuff. Death takes everyone. Most of us too early, a few of us not early enough.

As I reached my driveway, Kyle’s van pulled up alongside of me.

“Hey, pal,” he called out.

“Hey.” After our harrowing night, maybe I should have been angry with Kyle. I wasn’t. If anything, I was more impressed than ever by his recklessness. Reputations rarely held up to inspection, so now that one did, it inspired a strange sort of trust. Kyle was dangerous, exactly as advertised.

“The … fun we had,” Kyle said with a sigh. “Sorry if I put you in a bad spot.”