The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past (13 page)

Normally when she was angry at Zach
she would scream until she was hoarse. But her anger was so white
hot that even that wouldn’t do now. Her single word did the trick
as it stopped Zach mid-sentence. Her “no” hung in the air for a
moment before she turned on her heel, headed up the stairs to her
room, and closed the door behind her.

§

Binny sat on her bed and stared out
her window brooding.

She wasn’t sure what was worse – her
failure to convince her parents that she was telling the truth? Or
that Zach was being a complete lying jerk? Cassie hadn’t really
helped much either, but that was pretty typical when it came to
Cassie.

Binny knew that Zach had been against
telling her parents. But she didn’t expect him to so effectively
stop her from telling them herself. And even worse, it seemed that
her parents now thought she was insane, getting nightmares from
watching kids’ movies. Her job of letting her parents know the
truth had just gotten harder.

Binny was so lost in thought that she
almost didn’t notice the girl across the street up to something in
front of her house. If Binny sat in just the right spot on her bed,
she could see past the nearby tree branches and get a clear view of
the house across the street. What on earth was she doing
now?

§

Zach was sitting at the bottom of the
stairs where Binny had reproached him, trying to sort things out.
He almost didn’t notice his parents pass by him.

“
You ok honey?” Zach’s mom
asked him.

“
Yeah, yeah.
Fine.”

“
You look a little bummed
out.”

“
I’m good.”

“
Can you keep an eye on
the girls for a couple of hours. Your father and I need to run some
errands.”

“
Sure.”

As they walked towards the door, Jay
added, “And especially keep a careful eye on Cassie. We wouldn’t
want her to disappear!” When confronted with a bummed out child
Jay’s first instinct was always to try and make them
laugh.

Zach tried hard to make his laugh
sound convincing.

9

Binny took her eye off the girl
momentarily as she watched her parents get into one of the cars and
head out. She had no idea what they were off doing, but she was
sure it couldn’t be as important as spending time with their kids.
But her parents had made their priorities clear.

After the car pulled away, Binny
refocused and saw that the girl was now sitting cross-legged on one
of the deep steps leading up to her house. She had a shiny teal
shallow box of sorts sitting on her lap. What was that thing – a
laptop? It had a piece of paper sticking out of the top. Perhaps it
was a printer. What was she doing with a printer on her
lap?

Binny watched for a couple of minutes,
her mind wandering back to how angry she was with her brother, how
she was going to get her parents to believe her, with little
interludes of concern for her sister. All of a sudden, the teal box
on the girl’s lap seemed to implode, pieces spilling onto the
sidewalk below. The parts fanned out in a rough semi-circle around
the girl.

Binny shook her head in frustration –
this girl brought things out of her house only to break them into a
zillion pieces all over the sidewalk? But before Binny could finish
judging, it looked like the girl across the street had started to
cry.

Binny suddenly found herself
empathizing with the girl that had annoyed her so. Binny made up
her mind quickly and headed for the door.

As Binny passed Zach on her way out of
the house, he started to tell her, “Mom and Dad…” but stopped
mid-sentence again. This time she didn’t even need a single word to
make her feelings clear about his betrayal.

Binny couldn't focus on her brother
now, though. She had another mission — to investigate the mystery
of the girl next door and the box on her lap.

§

“
What happened?” Binny
took some satisfaction in that she was finally the one to surprise
the girl instead of the other way around.

The girl looked up and wiped her eyes
quickly. “What are you talking about?” She sniffled a little
too.

“
Uh, this thing that you
broke. The pieces all over the ground.”

“
It’s a typewriter. And I
didn’t break it.” the girl responded, correcting Binny twice in two
short sentences.

Any sympathy Binny had felt for the
girl was rapidly fading in the face of the girl’s corrections. They
made Binny feel stupid. Of course Binny knew what a typewriter was.
How could she be expected to recognize one that was far away, teal,
and being used outdoors – who types outside? Now that it was in a
zillion pieces it looked even less like a typewriter than she
imagined it had a few minutes earlier.

“
I know it’s a typewriter.
But I saw you break it.” There. That would show her.

“
You saw me? Were you
watching me?” The girl seemed nervous.

Now Binny started to backtrack, “Uh, I
wasn’t watching you. I just glanced out my window and saw you break
it.”

“
You don’t know what
you’re talking about. I came out here and it was already broken.”
The girl was raising her voice now.

Binny was really getting fed up with
people lying to her. She was starting to wonder if she was going
crazy. First Zach lied to her parents, and now this girl was lying
about the typewriter. Binny knew what she had seen. The girl must
have broken it. What other explanation could there be?

Binny looked up from the mess of parts
about to lecture the girl on what she’d seen with her own two eyes
when it became clear the girl was about to cry again. The anger and
righteousness that Binny was feeling drained out of her in a rush,
replaced once again with sympathy for the girl. “Are you
ok?”

“
I’m fine. You’re the one
that’s not ok, spying on people and accusing them of breaking
things.” The girl’s tears were now coming no matter how hard she
tried to keep them inside.

“
I’m sorry.” Binny stood
there not sure what to do.

Not knowing quite what to do herself,
the girl ran off down the hill trying to get away from Binny, the
typewriter, and whatever was bothering her.

Binny started to go after her and
yelled, “Wait! Penny!” but Penny had gotten too quick a start and
was already rounding the corner, out of sight.

§

Troubled by her thoughts, Binny’s legs
carried her to the woods on auto-pilot. Even though her last visit
had been pretty disappointing, it was still her only place of
refuge. She had already forgotten the worst of her experience,
though she did remind herself not to sit back down in her secret
spot until she, or a summer rain, was able to clean it out
properly.

Wondering exactly what had happened to
the typewriter, and why the usually cool-as-a-cucumber Penny had
suddenly started freaking out, Binny almost tripped over Caleb, who
was on his knees weeding and carefully arranging the border stones
on one of the paths through the woods.

“
Careful Binny, I’m not
the path, I’m just fixing it.”

Binny laughed despite herself, her
anger at her family and her confusion about Penny dissipating a
bit. “Oh. I’m so sorry Caleb. Are you ok?”

“
I may be old, but I’m not
falling apart. It’s going to take more than a bump from you to
break me.” Caleb teased.

Binny noticed that Caleb had never
stopped his work even when she bumped him, even when he spoke to
her. His focus remained on the task before him.

Before Binny could ruminate further,
she heard a loud “Ding!” over her shoulder. Something metallic had
hit a tree. That got Caleb’s attention. Before Binny knew what was
happening, three cackling teenagers – they looked about seventeen
to Binny – and a dog had appeared through the trees. Caleb stood up
with surprising speed inserting himself between her and the
teenagers. Caleb was usually crouching over whatever he was tending
to, and even when he was standing he seemed to stoop a bit, so his
full height caught Binny a bit by surprise.

“
These woods aren’t your
trash can.” Caleb’s voice, and likely his height, caught the
teenagers’ attention interrupting their laughter.

Binny cautiously peered around Caleb
to see what was happening.

One of the kids, not the tallest one,
but certainly the strongest by the looks of his arms, stepped
forward to respond to Caleb’s admonition. He held a large tree
branch in his hand. It looked like he’d recently broken it off one
of the trees, and decided to use it as a bat to hit whatever had
sailed over their heads.

“
These aren’t your woods,
Grandpa.” The boy had bright red spiky hair and his face was
blotchy. Binny couldn’t tell if that was its natural state or the
boy was just getting angry. Maybe a combination of both.

If the boys expected Caleb to back
down, they were soon disappointed. He didn’t seem to be afraid. He
just looked at them calmly and sternly. In the silence their dog
started barking.

Caleb looked briefly from the red
haired boy to the dog and the dog stopped barking. Then in a more
conciliatory tone he continued, “Kids play in these woods. You
could have hit her.” Caleb’s head nodded a bit in Binny’s direction
to indicate the ‘her’ to whom he was referring. Realizing that all
teenage eyes were on her, Binny pulled back trying to make herself
less visible.

A sarcastic “Sorry.” emanated from the
boy.

Caleb paused another moment, and
continued, “In addition, while I’m not a grandfather myself, I do
know yours, Mr. Priluck. And I don’t think he would be pleased to
find out that you were drinking beer in the woods.”

A look of fear crossed the boy’s face.
One of the other two instinctively put the remains of the six pack
he was holding behind his back.

After a moment Binny heard one of the
other boys say to the redheaded one, “Come on. Let’s go somewhere
else. This is boring.” Binny could hear muted grunts of agreement,
and the kids made their way in a different direction.

Caleb stood there for a moment
watching them leave, and then went back to the task at hand. Binny
could hear the boys laughing to themselves as they disappeared
through the trees. It seemed like Caleb wasn’t going to say
anything about what had happened so Binny brought up the
topic.

“
That wasn’t
nice.”

“
No, it wasn’t.” Caleb
agreed calmly.

Binny started getting irritated that
Caleb wasn’t more upset. “They littered. They broke branches off
trees. They, they,” she sputtered, “they were… drinking! Isn’t
there more that we should do? Something?”

Now Caleb paused his work for Binny’s
sake and smiled broadly at her.

“
What should we
do?”

“
Call the police
maybe?”

“
You have a strong sense
of right and wrong, Binny Jordan. I like that about
you.”

Binny was caught off guard by the
compliment, which also seemed like a criticism. “Don’t you also?”
she asked.

Caleb smiled to himself now at Binny’s
retort. “Yes. I suppose you’re correct. We share that.”

“
So why can’t we do
anything about it?”

“
What can we do? I can’t
force those boys to grow up. They’ll have to do it on their own
schedule. And maybe never.”

“
What about telling his
grandfather?”

“
Well, Mr. Priluck’s
grandfather likes me less than Mr. Priluck does right now. But
luckily Mr. Priluck doesn’t know that. So the threat will have to
do for now.” Caleb had a mischievous look in his eye as he let
Binny in on that secret.

Binny considered his point
carefully.

“
There’s one thing we can
do,” said Caleb. Binny’s ears pricked up, “Could you please pick up
that can they threw and put it in my trashbag.”

“
That’s certainly one
thing
I
can do,”
Binny said with a sigh. It wasn’t the answer Binny was hoping for.
It didn’t feel right to just sit there when someone wasn’t doing
what they were supposed to. But she dutifully walked over to the
tree to search out the offending litter. Her eyes searched around
until they settled on the can. A tall silver beer can. Well, it had
been tall – it was crunched up now to make for better throwing –
but there was no mistaking it. It was the same kind of can as the
ones that now covered the floor of her secret hiding
place!