Deviant, page 11
Since time was pressing, he decided to get to the main reason he had come to this rendezvous. “Tell me about the cats,” Danny said.
“What cats?” Hector said innocently.
“I saw you looking at Charlie when I brought it up.”
Hector shook his head. “I don’t think I can do that now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a trust thing. Hold on, look, there’s April Donovan and Susie McGwire.”
Danny recognized two of the girls from 9A. Both had changed out of their school uniforms into what had to be a Colorado version of the mall-rat/valley-girl look he was familiar with in Las Vegas. Short denim skirts, ankle socks, pink sneakers, frilly blouses, fake pearl necklaces, bangles, bracelets, and white-framed sunglasses pitched high in teased, sprayed hair.
Hector’s eyes lit up like a lion spotting a baby zebra separated from the herd.
“Let’s go over. You’ve no idea. We’ll never get a chance like this in school,” he said.
“Are you serious? I’m not going over with you,” Danny whispered.
“I’m going for it. Look at the way April’s checking us out,” Hector replied.
April was the prettier of the two, with dark hair, a pale complexion, and a slightly chubby face. She was wearing red lipstick, and her cheeks were rouged. She looked about nineteen or twenty. Susie was a skinny blonde with a vacant expression and so much perfume that it probably could be considered a weapon of mass destruction.
“No, don’t do it,” Danny said desperately.
“Hi there!” Hector yelled from where he was standing. The girls giggled and miraculously began walking in their direction.
“Did you say something?” Susie asked.
“You want a coffee?” Hector said.
April’s violet eyes fluttered at Danny. “You’re the new kid, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, Danny Lopez,” Danny said. He shook hands with both of them. Hector offered his hand and both ignored him.
“Is that your skateboard?” Susie asked, pointing at Sunflower.
“Yeah,” Danny said.
“Ladies, can I interest you in a drink?” Hector said. “Or perhaps a caramel slice?”
April sighed.
“They have very good madeleines. Have you tried those?” Hector continued.
“No,” April said coolly.
Hector was foundering badly. “Um, so do you girls like World of Warcraft?” he attempted.
“Come on, April, this kid’s a total weirdo,” Susie said to her friend.
“Look, at least tell us what we did wrong,” Hector said suddenly.
“What do you mean ‘we’?” Danny said.
The girls looked embarrassed, but then April decided to rise to the challenge. “You want to know why I think you’re, like, super creepy?”
“Uh, yeah,” Hector said.
April thought for a moment. “Well. This whole talk, for a start, and those freakos you hang out with and, you know, the whole prison thing, which isn’t your fault but even so …”
“What if we hung out with you guys,” Hector said desperately.
“This conversation is so over. Pretend it’s like school. Don’t talk to me again,” April said, and both girls sat down miles away at a table near the window.
Hector grabbed his jacket and started buttoning it, his face red with shame and consternation.
“I’m getting out of here,” he whispered.
“Wait a minute, tell me about the cat killings,” Danny said, grabbing Hector by the lapels.
“I gotta go, man, they’re laughing.”
Danny stood up and grabbed Hector’s arm. “No, tell me what you know.”
“Why don’t you join us, and then you’ll know what we know. You’ve got a cat, right?”
“How did you know that?” Danny wondered suspiciously.
“Hey, you know who could really help get to the bottom of it?”
“Who?” Danny wondered.
“Your friend Bob.”
“Bob? I don’t know any Bob.”
“Sure you do. Bob Randall, Alaskan Bob, the foreman on your dad’s work gang. He’s an expert. I’ll bet he’s bursting with ideas.”
“What? How the hell do you know about him?”
“Through my dad. Listen, dude, think about joining us; we can do the cat thing, WoW, anything you like, you seem like a pretty cool guy. As a sign of our goodwill—Monday morning, ten fifteen. Remember that.”
“Monday what? What are you talking about? How do you know about Bob?” Danny asked, but Hector was already running out of the Starbucks under the giggling gaze of the two 9A girls.
The girls were looking at Danny now. He wished they weren’t.
It wasn’t that they weren’t pretty; they were if you liked tubercular white cheeks, puffy red faces, heavy makeup. But it was more that Danny didn’t have that much experience with girls. Not really. In Las Vegas, the girls in his year only went out with older boys, grade 10, grade 11, some even with college kids. They had a haughty disdain for kids their own age, and their chica latina intensity was enough to freeze you in your tracks before you even thought of asking them to the movies or the Fat Burger on Las Vegas Boulevard.
Time to head. He picked up Sunflower, put on his beanie, and followed Hector to the door.
“So, what were you hanging with a cheesy dude like Hector Watson for?” April asked when his hand was on the door handle.
“I don’t know,” Danny said.
“He’s in that not-so-secret society,” Susie mocked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Stay away from them. They’re a bunch of freaks,” April muttered.
“Hector’s the weirdest. Totally screwed up,” Susie added.
“Is he?” Danny said, suddenly interested.
“Oh yeah. Don’t you know? His dad works on death row at the Supermax. He’s the executioner. The guy that pushes the button to give the lethal injections. Totally creepy, huh?” April said.
“Totally creepy,” Danny agreed, and wondered if that was how Hector knew about his father and Bob.
“Tell us about Vegas,” one of the girls said, and Danny was about to spin them his Paris Hilton story when he got a peculiar icy feeling on the back of his neck; he turned to look behind him and standing there glaring at him was Tony, who was with her dad. When their eyes met, Tony looked away.
Mr. Meadows had paid and they departed by the east-side door.
Danny followed them to the parking lot.
“Tony!” Danny called.
She ignored him and got inside the Mercedes SUV.
“Tony!” he said again.
Mr. Meadows looked around and recognized him. “You. What are you doing in town?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm, I suppose I should offer you a ride home.”
“No. No, thank you. I brought my skateboard.”
“Skateboard, eh?” Mr. Meadows muttered as darkly as if Danny had been referring to his portable witchcraft kit.
Danny didn’t say anything.
“Well, good-bye, then,” Mr. Meadows said, and got into the car.
They drove off along Cascade and turned right on East Colorado Avenue.
A thought occurred to Danny. He got out his pager and texted: wtf? whts the mattr?
Thinking of Mr. Meadows, he deleted the “WTF” part and sent the text.
He waited for a minute and then a reply came.
dnt txt me.
He put the pager away and, since there was nothing else to do, he skated home.
Walt had decided to cook again. It was some kind of New England bean thing with odd cuts of meat. His mother pretended to love it, and Danny had to admit that it wasn’t bad.
“How was school?” they asked him.
“Great,” he told them. He did his homework reading parts of the US Constitution and then wrote some of those lines about triangulation.
After he was finished, he texted Tony again, spelling out every word so she would understand it: bob from the prison knows something about the cat killings. i could ask walt if we could go see him tomorrow if you want?
He waited half an hour for a reply, but no reply came. He turned off his light and opened the windows wide to let in the cold air.
He thought about the last two days. Tony’s father was obviously a lunatic, and she was pretty difficult herself. Hector was also kind of a weirdo and didn’t seem trustworthy either. He was the executioner’s son. That couldn’t be good for you psychologically. He thought about April and Susie, but the truth was that neither of them really interested him at all.
And even with Jeffrey sleeping at the bottom of his duvet, he felt lonely. He reached under his bed and got Sunflower. He flipped it deck-side up and hugged it as if it were a stuffed toy.
He put his feet on Jeff’s back and shoved the window wider.
That wind again, pushing through the trees like waves on the shore.
He was uneasy.
He didn’t feel confident about anything in Cobalt. Not the people, not the weather, not even the icy ground beneath his feet. This was a new game, with new players, and he hadn’t figured out any of the rules. He wondered if he ever would, among these big, tall local kids with their happy families and their skiing and their hot chocolate.
He stared out at the black mass of forest. No stars tonight, no moon. Just darkness.
He watched for a long time and then, suddenly, in the trees he saw a tiny light, like a reflective piece of fabric.
He remembered something that either Charlie or Hector or someone had said: We’ve been watching you.
Would they really be out there at this time of night?
Maybe he should shout something. Maybe he should sneak out the front and double back behind them. But what if it was Tony’s dad out there with his gun again? Or some other local crazy? He turned on the light and tried to peer through the ambient glow that shone into the trees.
Nothing.
Tomorrow I’ll get a powerful flashlight, he thought to himself. He flipped the switch, shut the window, closed the curtains. He fell asleep to the sound of wind blowing and Jeffrey purring peacefully.
Danny Lopez’s window. The light goes off. On again. Off for the final time. And now it’s dark. Dark like it was on the ranch.
Stars. Constellations. Orion. The Big Dipper.
He lies down on the pine needles. “Are you curious, Danny Lopez? Do you want to know?”
He pulls up the sleeping bag. He closes his eyes and now he doesn’t see the Lopez house or the other houses. Just the belts and the fear.
Get rid of them. Get rid of them. And sure enough, they vanish, eventually.
A dog barking. The rain coming in through the open window. Rain not snow, which means he’s dreaming. He is back in the beginning. Crying in the soiled barn light. His father with whiskey on his breath. Horses whinnying and the well rope coming out of the hitching rail. The smell is the sweet-smelling poison they have laid down for the mice.
How the cat got poisoned, no one knows.
He’s crying. Bawling his eyes out. “It’s your fault!” he’s screaming.
“That’s enough, pull yourself together!” his father says.
“Leave him alone, he’s sensitive. And he’s right, you were careless,” his mother says.
She contradicting him? It’s been going on all day. His father’s expression clouds. He slaps her. Suddenly the boy is between them. Everyone’s yelling. He gets in the way of a fist. One blow and he’s sent flying.
His father’s voice: “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. It will never happen again. You’re right. It’s crazy out here. We’re going crazy. We’ll move to the city. And I promise it will never happen again.”
They move.
It happens again.
Saturday. Indigo sky. White surf. Golden sand. Danny was dreaming about the beach at Santa Monica. Bodysurfing with his cousins. Laughing, rolling with the breakers, cradled by the even swell.
“Maybe we should go,” a voice said.
“Uh, yeah.”
Danny woke but he kept his eyes closed. He knew the score. She was in his room again and she’d brought someone with her this time. This outrageous behavior really had to end. Maybe he should tell Walt to buy a shotgun. Walt, though, was some kind of peacenik—opposed to guns. Maybe he should just tell his mother to lock the doors at night.
Two people in his bedroom. Danny was angry, but underneath the anger there was another current of emotion he was struggling to identify. What was that? Happiness? No, not quite. What then?
Relief.
Yeah, that was it.
He couldn’t get really worked up at this repeated home invasion, because if she’d come over to his house, didn’t that also mean she’d forgiven him for Starbucks?
“He breathes funny,” the stranger said. A boy.
“That’s not him making that noise, that’s Jeffrey,” Tony said.
“Who’s Jeffrey?”
“The cat.”
“Oh.”
Danny now identified a third emotion underneath the anger and the relief.
That emotion was a kind of resentment. He thought, Why should Tony have been ticked off at him anyway? What exactly had he been doing wrong? Talking to two girls from their school? Talking to two girls who were obviously into him. What right did Tony have to be annoyed about that? They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. They were just neighbors. Not even good neighbors. Tony’s dad had tried to kill him, for heaven’s sake. That wasn’t very friendly.
“Let’s wait downstairs, seems a shame to wake him. I could nap on the sofa, I was up late myself.”
Danny identified the male voice as Tom’s.
He heard them pad out of his room and go downstairs.
He opened his eyes and glared at Jeffrey.
“Fine watch-cat you are. I thought you were a tough street kitty; you’ve gotten soft.”
As if on cue, Jeffrey rolled across the bed, stretching his claws and baring his fanglike yellow chops.
Danny smiled at him and rubbed his belly.
“Sorry, Jeff, I didn’t mean it. It just takes a while to get used to a new place.”
In Vegas, Jeffrey had brought many dead offerings to the back door of the Lopez house: dormice, field mice, rats, a pigeon, and once, most impressively of all, a rattlesnake. For the first few days in Colorado, Jeffrey had refused to leave the upper floor. The previous night, however, he had proudly brought a dead vole through the newly installed cat flap—something that had horrified Juanita and secretly pleased both Danny and Walt, who’d exchanged a knowing look.
“Tough old geezer,” Walt had said, and now Danny repeated it in Jeffrey’s ear: “Tough old geezer, ain’t ya?”
Danny changed out of his racecar PJs and pulled on blue jeans, his red Converse high-tops, and his Raiders T-shirt.
He went downstairs and affected surprise when he saw Tony and Tom having Frosted Flakes at the breakfast table. Walt was standing there by the kettle with his nightshirt open to the navel, revealing his gray, hairy chest and blotchy corpselike skin.
It was disgusting and embarrassing.
“Morning,” Tony said.
“Hi,” Danny replied nonchalantly.
“Hey, Danny,” Tom said.
“Hey,” Danny replied, lifting a finger with rehearsed sangfroid.
“Danny, whatcha want for breakfast? I offered them eggs, but your friends are just having cereal,” Walt said.
“Wise choice,” Danny muttered.
“What?”
“I’ll have cereal, too,” Danny said. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s sleeping in. I’m bringing her breakfast in bed. End of her first workweek and all that, you know, old chap?”
When there was company around, Walt’s nervous tics included a pseudo English or perhaps upper-class Bostonian accent. It was very tedious. Danny was sure that his real father would have been appalled by it.
“You wouldn’t mind helping yourself to some Frosted Flakes while I bring this up to her, would you, Danny?”
“Sure,” Danny said, and poured the flakes into a bowl.
It was only after he’d eaten several spoonfuls and drank a glass of orange juice that he pretended to become interested in Tom and Tony’s appearance in his house.
“So, what brings you two out here? Easy ride for you, Tony, but bit of a drag for you, Tom.”
“Easy for me; I’ve got an electric bike. Ever see one of those? Don’t need to wear a helmet or get a license. And besides, I know all the shortcuts.”
“Don’t tell Walt about that. He’s got an electric car; he’ll bore you to tears with it,” Danny said.
“Electric car? That red thing? Oh God, it’s not the Tesla, is it?” Tom said excitedly.
Danny sighed inwardly. He’d be the first to admit that he was geekish, but Tom was some kind of supergeek.
“It is the Tesla,” Tony said.
“That is made of awesome!” Tom replied.
“Not to me,” Danny muttered.
“Tesla Motors is on fire right now, and we’re practically living in Teslaville, and we’ve got a Tesla coil in our school, so come on! And electric cars are the future,” Tom said.
Hector had used that phrase the day before—a Tesla coil.
“What exactly is a Tesla coil?” Danny asked.
“It’s a big sort of thing that does stuff,” Tony said, which didn’t really explain an awful lot.
“You’ll see it in science class,” Tom said, and looked at them significantly. “Maybe it’s time to get down to business?”
“Yeah, why are you guys here?” Danny wondered.
“You haven’t heard?” Tony said.
“Heard what?”
“You know Sarah Kolpek, 7A?”
“No.”
“She lives on Alameda. About twenty houses from here. They were out for the night, and when they came home they found her cat, Coco, hanging from the tree outside her house,” Tony said.
A chill went down Danny’s spine. He looked at Jeffrey. Twenty houses from here?
“Hanging?” Danny asked.
“Hanging,” Tom said.
For some reason Danny thought of Hector, the son of the state executioner, but Hector had an alibi for at least part of the day, after school.
