Pod (9 page)

Silence.

“I’m sorry. Does this bother you?” I hear the click of his knife. “There, you feel better now?”

Silence.

Richie says, “You know, my friend, you should work on your attitude. Try to com-
mu
-nicate more. You’ll never be voted Security Guard of the Month the way you’re going.”

Silence.

Richie says, under his breath, “Always one damn crisis after another.” The door slams. Footsteps walk fast around the SUV. They fade into the distance.

I count two minutes. That’s all I can take. I jab my head out of the sleeping bag and take great gulps of sweet, cool air. I listen. Nothing but the buzz of the security light. I climb onto the seat, reach down to the bottom of the bag. There’s a warm ball of fur. It moves, then mews softly.

“Cassie!” I whisper, lifting her out and holding her to my chest. Her purring engine is already starting to fire. “That was a close one. We should be more careful.”

I don’t know how long they’ll be gone, so it’s time to act fast. I need to find that key. I’ve never fired a gun, but Zack let me hold his a couple of times. I think I can figure it out. Cassie curls up on the seat. I crawl up front and start looking.

It’s worse up here than it sounded. The window visors are snapped off and cut to shreds. The roof liner is slashed, and the radio is hanging by a wire. Even the door panels are pulled away from the frame. They did all this in less than a minute. I try to think of places they didn’t look, but
it’s hard to imagine where. I use the flashlight pen to look behind and under things, but it feels like a waste of time and batteries. I’m about to switch off my light when I spot the black liner to the ashtray. It’s upside down next to the gas pedal. There’s a small bump on the side where it should be smooth. I pick it up. A strip of black tape is covering something. I peel back the tape and smile.

A silver key.

I glance over my shoulder at the green door. It’s closed and quiet, but who knows for how long. It’s almost midnight. Maybe they’ll decide to get some sleep before coming back. And maybe they won’t. I look under the driver’s seat, slide the key in the lock. It turns. I pull out the drawer. It’s padded with a thin layer of black foam. There’s a thick wad of folded-up fifties wrapped with a rubber band. A cell phone. And a black metal box. It’s like a mini-briefcase with a handle and a combination lock with four numbered dials. I lift it out of the drawer. It’s definitely big enough to hold a gun, and heavy enough, too. I leave the money and the phone but keep the briefcase. I close the drawer and start to lock it, but my brain flashes a picture of Richie smashing the taillights on the Nova. Mom will have to get that fixed and we don’t have any money. There goes our breakfast at Denny’s. That gives me an idea. It’s stupid, but I can’t stop. I find a piece of paper and use the flashlight pen to write a short note:

I slide the note under the money, close the drawer, and put the key in my pocket.

There’s some noise coming from behind the green door. Something is happening inside the hotel. The sound is muffled, but I think it’s screaming. I climb back to Cassie, carrying the black briefcase in my hand.

I pick her up. She’s warm and floppy from sleeping on my bag. Her eyes open.

“Look what I found,” I say, showing her my prize. “The Holy Grail.”

Contact

I’m watching the apartments across the street. I do this for hours, binoculars glued to my eyes while I sit in the comfy red chair I dragged over to face the living room window. It’s a fascination of mine ever since the gunshot episode. Not because I’m a sicko freak hoping to catch a murder in progress. I do it because it keeps my mind off the alternatives. I tell Dad I’m looking for changes in the POD. I even have a notebook that I use to write down bogus observations, like:
2:17pm – Subject slightly changed color
or
Subject moved five centameters to left, then fired blaster beam at old lady with red hat.
Dad looks at the notepad from time to time. His only comment so far: “Centimeter is spelled with an i.”

I have a system. I start at the window on the bottom right and move across each floor until I reach the upper-left
apartment on the third story. Some windows have curtains, some don’t. One lap takes me about fifteen minutes unless something interesting is going on, and that happened only once, not including the naked fat guy with the bullet holes. I saw a woman dancing in a white dress. She kept passing in front of the window, twirling and spinning, sometimes really shaking it up. I liked how she’d toss her head back and laugh, her long blond hair dangling down behind her, then flying out when she did one of her spins. I keep checking back, but there’s a curtain over the window now. Even if I never see her again, I’d say my time here is well spent.

I hear Dad moving around behind me. I put down the binoculars, check my watch, pick up the pad, and write:
4:38pm – POD reverses rotation and nearly crashes.

I pick up the binoculars and resume the search. The window on the second floor, three over from the right—it’s cracked and missing a shutter. Five years ago this apartment building was new and attractive with fresh white paint and green doors with matching shutters. Now it’s a dull brown, the grass in front is mostly weeds, and there’s usually some kind of trash out front blowing around in the wind. Moving to the right—nothing, nothing, then the old lady with the paisley scarves. She used to sweep the sidewalk in front of her door every morning. She’s married to the French guy—Henri—who fixed my bike last spring for twenty bucks. I think she’s watering a plant. She turns and walks away. I move on.

Third floor now, scanning left to right. It looks like a total bust—and
bam!

She’s standing at the window looking through a pair of binoculars. I recognize her from the bus stop. Short blond hair, yellow backpack, wire-rimmed glasses. She was always off in her own world, her face buried in a book. I think she’s a freshman. I don’t know her name, but I think it’s Amanda or Aimee or something like that. There’s this unspoken rule at the bus stop—the apartment kids form one group, the house kids form another.

I think she’s looking at me. I raise my hand and wave. She waves back. She reaches down for something—a piece of paper. She starts writing, her hand moving in big sweeping arcs. Then she turns her head like someone said something to her—and she’s gone.

Two seconds later a tall, skinny dude with a patchy beard and no shirt looks out the window. He’s in his twenties, maybe early thirties. Definitely too young to be her father. I’ve seen him around the neighborhood once or twice. I think he drives an old pickup with a dirt bike in the back. He opens the window, spits, closes it, and walks away.

I wait for a few minutes. She doesn’t come back.

I put the binoculars on the windowsill and rub my eyes. My head hurts and I wonder why. Maybe it’s because I’m smiling. For a moment I had communication with another human being, one who isn’t obsessed with folding laundry.

Dust, Dents, and Duct Tape

I put the gun case on the seat and take a deep breath. What should I do? Keep trying to open it to see if there really is a gun inside, or move to another car and
then
worry about the gun? The metal is thick—I tried prying it open with the screwdriver, but that didn’t work. Same thing for picking the lock.

I glance at Cassie, hoping for some amazing words of wisdom. She looks up at me with big kitten eyes. Hungry eyes, I’m sure.

“Yeah,” I say, “you think I should move first, then get some food, then worry about the case.” That seems like a good plan. Richie is coming back, and I don’t want to be here when he does. A part of me wants to hide close by so I can see his face when he opens the drawer, but that would be stupider than leaving the note in the first place.

“You are a smart kitty,” I say. “It’s time to find us a new home.”

A flash of pain burns my heart. I remember Mom saying those exact words—
find us a new home
. It was only what, last week? But it feels like last year. I came home from school and her car was in the driveway. A little alarm started ringing in my head. She usually didn’t get off work until after supper. I looked through the windows. The red plastic cooler was on the floor in back, and on the back- seat there was a pile of clothes, mine and hers, along with a grocery bag full of snacks. The front passenger seat had two pillows and a stack of maps.

Mom was waiting for me when I walked into the house. The living room was thick with cigarette smoke. Her eyes were red and moist and her makeup was smeared. But whatever made her cry had turned into something else. Something hard. “It’s time to find us a new home,” she said, her voice steady. She told me I had fifteen minutes to pack the suitcase on my bed—then we were leaving. “Only bring the stuff you really need,” she said. “Don’t ask questions, there’ll be time for that later. And don’t stand there with your mouth hanging open. Just do it!”

I went into my room not sure what to think. We were running from Zack, that much I knew. But where to, and why now? The suitcase was on my bed, open and waiting. I looked around trying to figure out where to start, what parts of my life to keep and what parts to leave behind. Mom yelled, “Three minutes!” My mind was spinning, my hands shaking.
Be calm,
I told myself.
Think!
My
sketching notebooks, keep. Stuffed koala from Zack, leave. Poster of ’57 Mustang, leave.

The phone rang while I was sorting through some books.
Treasure Island
, keep.
Bridge to Terabithia
, keep. I heard Mom talking, first slow, then fast. The phone slammed onto the floor, broken pieces scattering on the linoleum. Seconds later she burst into my room. “No time, Megs,” she said. “Leave it all. We gotta go
now
!”

I grabbed my backpack and we ran out the door. Three minutes later we were on the freeway headed east out of town. Once we passed the CHICAGO 220 MILES sign, Mom finally relaxed. “Don’t worry, Megs,” she said, lighting a cigarette and leaning the driver’s seat back a little. “It’s all going to be okay.”

And that’s what I’m thinking as I stuff my backpack full of the treasures I found in this SUV.
It’s going to be okay.
Spaceballs are shooting death rays from the sky. All I have left to eat is five pieces of popcorn and one tube of ketchup. I’ll drink the last of the beer before we leave. Plus I have one hungry kitten—how did I wind up with that? Richie is coming back any minute and he’s expecting to find a gun in the safe. A gun that I don’t want him to have. Instead he’ll find a note from yours truly. But still I whisper, as I roll up my sleeping bag and tie it to my backpack, that it’s going to be okay.

I slip the backpack on and step out the door, headed for who knows where. Definitely up because down isn’t a
choice. I look over my shoulder at Mom’s car, all covered with dust, dents, and duct tape. The taillights are broken, pieces of red plastic mixing in with the dirt and cement. I walk into the shadows of the parking garage, a yellow kitten in one hand and a briefcase in the other.

Mom is right. Crazy does run in the family.