Things That Are (retail) Page 9

  Bobby gives a short laugh, then says, “And if your dad knew this guy was in his basement, endangering you this way, plus putting the secret at risk—would your dad want to help him…or would the professor want to take some other course of action? Good question, huh? Let’s just say that if Dr. Leo knew, I would not like to be in William’s shoes.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I snap. “Are you saying my dad would do something to harm him, do something…bad? He would never do that.”

  “To protect you and your mom?” Bobby asks. “Think again. All I know is, those mice didn’t last long, did they?”

  “But that was different. It was.” And I have to stop talking, stop thinking about this. Because, honestly, I don’t know what Daddy would do. If he knew where William was right now.

  Bobby sits beside me, and the sound of a jazz trumpet fills the room.

  And he just sits, breathing in and out, long, deep breaths.

  Again, I wish I could see his face.

  I nudge him and whisper, “What?”

  He says, “I think I should get William out of here, right now, take him to my house. Once I get him out to my car, if we got caught, none of you would be in trouble. Like William said, the FBI is following me. None of this would be happening if I hadn’t messed up first. And I can get him out of here before your mom and dad come back.”

  So sweet. He’s trying to take this whole problem onto himself. To keep me safe—me and my parents, I mean. So sweet. Makes me want to hug him and never let go.

  Oh, Buttercup…I see the pink bunnies….

  I reach for his hand anyway.

  And I whisper, “You can’t do that, Bobby. And anyway, I don’t think William would go with you.”

  “Yeah he would. If he’s as desperate as we both think he is, he’d do anything I tell him to. He believes I can help him. He trusts us, remember? And the sad truth is I can’t help him, not really. And I’m not sure anyone can, not even our dads. There’s no way they can help William, at least not anytime soon.”

  He trails off into another long pause. This time there’s a bass solo filling the air. When we came into this room, he didn’t flip any light switches. So it’s dim in here, dim and bluesy.

  I squeeze his hand, and I say, “Bobby?”

  “What?”

  “If I tell you something, you promise you won’t get mad at me, no matter what?”

  He laughs a little, and says, “Logically, that’s an impossible promise to make.”

  “Then stop being logical,” I say. “I’m serious.”

  “Then I promise.” And he’s serious too.

  I take a deep breath. “I think there’s a way we can help William.”

  “You mean, like, you and me?” Bobby whispers. “How?”

  It takes me a long time, but I finally say, “Remember Sheila?”

  “Yeah,” he says, “of course I do.”

  And I know he remembers, because Sheila made a huge difference in the way things turned out for Bobby. We found Sheila two years ago, when Bobby was invisible. She was like William—the invisibility seemed to hit her out of nowhere, and she’d decided to use it, to embrace it. She used it to run away from her old life. And us finding Sheila, talking to her, comparing experiences, that was a big part of what helped us figure out the problem for Bobby back then. And after his own readjustment worked, Bobby told her about it, offered to help her. Except Sheila didn’t want to come back. She couldn’t face…reality. I think about Sheila a lot.

  Bobby prompts me, “What about her?”

  “About two weeks after you got back to normal, I got a phone call from her.”

  “From Sheila?” he says. “No way!”

  I keep talking fast—it’s easier that way. “You’d put my name and phone number in the note, the one you put in the box of things you sent her. So she called me. And she said she didn’t want the stuff, said she was never going to want it, said she never wanted to have a visible body again. Said she liked being free. That’s what she called it, ‘being free.’ She was mostly yelling, so angry. And after a few minutes of that, she made me promise I’d never tell another soul about her, told me that if I did, she’d hunt me down and make me sorry I had. So, of course, I promised her, and she slammed the phone down, and that was it. I never told you, Bobby.”

  “That’s wild!” he says. “Sheila—I mean, she sounded crazy when I talked to her, but this…and it’s okay you didn’t tell me about it. Still…I think it would have been all right if you had.”

  I nod and whisper, “I know, and I’m sorry, Bobby. But there’s more. Because three weeks later, I was here at home by myself, and UPS brought a package addressed to me. I opened it, and right away I could tell what it was—the same box of stuff you sent to Sheila. All of it. And I never told you about this either—I just wanted the whole thing to go away.”

  He’s sitting straight up on the couch now. “Alicia, you…you still have it? The box?”

  “Shh!” I whisper. “William might hear you—and let go.”

  He’s almost breaking my hand, squeezing it hard, freaking out. Because the box he sent to Sheila had an electric blanket in it, an old Sears model with a broken heat controller that sends the wrong kind of power into the blanket’s coils. And if the solar winds are blowing, shooting energy into Earth’s atmosphere, the malfunctioning blanket creates an electrical energy field that’s big enough and powerful enough to affect a full-grown person—a man like William, or a teenager like Bobby, or a woman like Sheila. Because that’s what happened to each of them, on different dates, in different places, but each one lying asleep under the same kind of blanket.

  Bobby repeats, “You still have the box?”

  He puts his ear close to my face again, and I whisper, “I almost trashed everything—didn’t want my dad to find the blanket or any of their notes and sketches, didn’t want him to start messing around with the physics again. Which is almost more irony than I can stand. And I came close to destroying all of it. But back then I thought, ‘What if Sheila changes her mind one day?’ So I hid the box away, up in the attic. Everything. Which is another reason to worry about the FBI coming in here with a search warrant.”

  He’s silent, and I don’t know what he’s thinking. I whisper, “So…Bobby, are you angry, that I didn’t tell you sooner, like, right after she sent the box to me? Because really, all of that belongs to you.”

  “No, I’m not mad, not at all. You did the right thing. And this is great news, or it could be.”

  I whisper, “So…you think everything would still work, to do the reversal?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  I’m finding it hard to whisper. “Then let’s grab the box, get William, and go! We can go to your house, right now, like before my parents get back. Because I don’t want them to know he was ever here—that way, if things go wrong, they’re innocent. And if we can bring William back to normal, that’s huge! It’s like making all the evidence disappear…or reappear. Right? So let’s go, Bobby!”

  He hesitates, then says, “How about this: I take the blanket and I leave with William, right now. And you stay here, Alicia. Because I really don’t want you to be on the hook for William. Like I said, this all started with me getting the police involved. So let me be the one to get him away from here for you, okay?”

  So sweet. And unselfish. And I want to hug him and say, “Bobby, don’t you get it? If it’s your problem, it’s my problem too.” Except then I’d get another visit from the Brain Fairy, telling me that my feelings are getting too warm and fuzzy.

  But that is how I feel. I want us to do this together. Like at the very beginning.

  So I shake my head and I say, “No. I’m in this too, all the way. So let’s get moving.”

  And he says, “Okay. But if your dad kills me, it’s gonna be your fault.”

  I was ready for more of a fight. Which means that Bobby really wants my help. He doesn’t want to do this all on his own.

 
Which should not be a surprise, not to me. Because no one wants to be alone. Including William. And even Sheila. Because alone is not the same as free.

  I’m on my feet. “Gertie, come.”

  And we’re in motion, because my parents are on their way back home by now. With ice cream. Too bad about that.

  But we’ll be gone, out into the winter twilight—William, Bobby, Gertie, and me.

  And a pink bunny or two.

  chapter 16

  plan in motion

  Doesn’t this beastly car have a heater?”

  William’s in the backseat, and I feel sorry for him. Nakedness and frozen leather upholstery has to be a bad combination.

  Bobby says, “Takes ten minutes to warm up. And we’ll be at my house in five. So just tough it out. And keep your head down.”

  “Perhaps you’ll recall that I’m invisible?” William says.

  “Yeah, but your breath isn’t. Water vapor plus cold air equals visible clouds. Physics. It’s all about the physics.”

  I ask, “Are we being followed?”

  I’m here beside Bobby with my teeth chattering as the old Volvo lurches from stoplight to stoplight, and I’ve got a box of potentially incriminating information sitting between my feet, and there’s an invisible man who’s wanted by the FBI making wisecracks from the backseat. So I’m feeling a little exposed.

  Bobby says, “I don’t know. I’m not even looking at my mirrors. If someone’s watching us, I want to look like I don’t have a care in the world. I’m just taking my girlfriend out for a drive. Over to my house. And my parents are away.”

  “Which makes me the chaperone,” says William. “How charming.”

  Bobby used the g-word—he said “my girlfriend.” And I wonder if the way he’s using that word is changing.

  Gertie shifts her weight. She’s sitting between Bobby and me on the front seat. She’s getting more used to William, hasn’t growled at him once since we got in the car. But I can feel her head swing back to look for him every five or ten seconds. And she’s sniffing at him like crazy.

  I don’t know what Bobby told William about why we’re taking him to the Phillips’s house. After Bobby got the box from the place I’d hidden it in the attic, he carried it out to the car. I had my coat by then, and we met at the basement door. Then he ducked down the steps, and thirty seconds later the three of us hurried through Daddy’s study on our way to the garage—four of us, counting Gertie—and William seemed eager to be leaving, eager about everything. Except about the cold.

  Dash, dash—vibrations. It’s my phone.

  Dash, dash.

  I have a love/hate relationship with my cell phone. At the moment, it’s hate. Because those vibrations are Morse code for the letter M, which stands for “Mom.”

  Which means she got home ten seconds ago, figured out I’m gone, and now she expects a full report.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Where are you? I thought we were all going to have ice cream together.”

  “Yeah, but we decided we wanted hot cocoa instead. And Bobby remembered he has to stop in at home to get a phone call from his parents around seven o’clock. So first we’re going to the Starbucks on Fifty-seventh Street. Then, after Bobby talks to his folks, we might go and see a movie.”

  “Oh. Well…do you think that’s…wise? I mean…don’t you think Bobby’s really tired? Because he’s had such a long day, flying home from New York and everything?”

  Weird question—and then I get it: Mom’s afraid someone could be listening in. Which is a valid fear, I guess. And it certainly suits me, because now I can be vague. Which means I won’t have to lie as much.

  “Bobby says he feels fine. And we won’t stay out real late or anything.”

  “But…”

  And I know she’s just dying to say, “…what about that man who talked to you at the library? What if he comes after you?”

  She continues, “But you know I don’t like you out after dark, Alicia.”

  “Mom—I live in the dark, remember? I’m okay, really. And I’ve got Gertie here. Nobody messes with a German shepherd.”

  “Well…all right. But I want you home by ten-thirty, not a minute later.”

  And I say, “Mom, no. Eleven, okay?”

  Because this is how we do our curfew dance.

  And Mom says, “All right…eleven. Sharp.”

  Which is when she really wanted me home in the first place. But she always asks for an earlier time, and I always resist: push, pull, deal.

  “Okay, Mom. Thanks. Talk to you later.”

  “Good-bye, dear.”

  There’s a moment of polite silence in the car after I hang up, then Bobby says, “So let me guess—you don’t have to be home until eleven, right?”

  “That’s what she said. But I can probably push it back again. The negotiation is never really over.”

  William says, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Alicia, that I’m making light of your…situation, or that I’m being too personal, but I must say, that was a terribly effective retort, about always living in the dark. I can’t imagine a parent trying to reply to that line.”

  I nod. “It’s one of my best. Along with, ‘Try keeping your eyes shut for four years—then we’ll talk.’”

  “Brutal,” he says. “Doesn’t exactly make a person long for the joys of parenthood.”

  I hesitate, then, “I know this question is definitely too personal, but are you married?”

  “Was,” he says. “Was married. With a daughter. She’s almost eleven now…no, make that twelve.”

  “So…you don’t see her anymore?” I ask.

  “It’s been four years. Which is one of the things I plan to change, if we can—”

  As the heavy car slopes around a corner, Bobby cuts into the conversation. “You know, William, if you’d talked like you were a human being instead of a monster when we first met in New York, things might have been a whole lot simpler than they are at the moment.” Then he says, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  A sober voice from the backseat: “No, I’ve had that coming. But honestly, Robert, do you think your father is going to be able to help me when he returns home from Europe on Sunday?”

  That’s my first clue about what Bobby said to make William so eager to hop into the backseat of a frozen car.

  Bobby says, “I hope he can. Until then, we just have to keep you off of everyone’s radar. Or sonar. Or infrared scanner. And…here we are.”

  The big station wagon slows, pulls sharply left, and as the nose of the car rises to cross the sidewalk into the driveway, the tailpipe scrapes the concrete behind us.

  The car shudders to a stop, and Bobby says, “I’m parked here at the side kitchen door, sort of on an angle to block the line of sight from the street—can you picture that, Alicia?” I nod, and he says, “So, William, Alicia and I are going to open both front doors of the car. I’ll leave my car door open, open the door into the house, and then walk around to the passenger side to pretend like I’m helping Alicia. When I do that, you climb over the front seat and slip out the driver’s side and into the house. And hold your breath—no vapor trails, remember? Here we go.”

  Twenty seconds later, both car doors have slammed, the door to the house is shut and locked behind us, and Gertie and I have been led up five steps from the landing into Bobby’s kitchen. I hear Bobby flip a light switch, hear the hum of the refrigerator to my left, hear Gertie’s claws on the tile floor.

  Speaking softly, Bobby says, “Nicely done, everyone. William, you are here, right?”

  “Yes,” he whispers, “but I’m crouching, down below the level of the windows. All the shades are open, and your mentioning infrared scanners has made me altogether paranoid. Why is it so cold in here?”

  I can feel Gertie move her head toward his voice, but calmly, so that’s progress…I guess. I don’t want her to get too comfortable around William. I’m beginning to trust him, I guess, but still, he’s
basically a stranger. A strange stranger.

  Bobby says, “It’s exactly sixty-two degrees in this house, which my dad thinks is an adequate evening temperature for sitting in a reading chair with a blanket, and according to him, it’s also the ideal sleeping temperature. He’s a global warming activist, and since he’s the only one in the family who knows how to program the digital thermostat, my mom and I wear a lot of sweaters.”

  I hear Bobby cross in front of me, pull the refrigerator door open. And I imagine that I can feel more cold air spilling out into the chilly room. He shuts the fridge. Picks up where he left off with William.

  “But the hot water heater in this house works great, never runs out. Back through the doorway we just came in? There’s a stairway to the left that goes to the second floor. When you get to the hallway, the first door on the right is my room, the next one is the bathroom, then there’s a guest room, also on the right. You can go up and take a shower, but don’t turn on any lights. And I’ll put a pair of my dad’s pajamas in the guest room for you. And I think you should just get in bed and stay there—the less you move around, the better. For all we know, the FBI really might have heat scanners out there. Alicia and I are going to stay down here and try to look like we’re just hanging out. I’ll shut some curtains and blinds, but only a few—I don’t want it to look like we’re trying to hide anything. In case anyone’s watching.”

  “The shower sounds wonderful, thanks. And I’ll try not to slip and kill myself in the dark.”

  “I bet you’ll do fine,” I say, “…in the dark.”

  That gets a chuckle from William, and a few moments later I hear him creaking up the back stairs. It’s almost impossible to sneak around in one of these big old Victorian homes.

  The shower starts running almost immediately, and Bobby says, “I’ve got to go out to the car for a second and get the box. I’ll be right back. And then I’ve got to go up and air out the guest room, open all the windows. And I’m going to put an electric blanket on William’s bed for him. Because I want him to have a really, really good rest tonight—know what I mean?”