The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4) (11 page)

"Hold on. I have one you can borrow.”

"I'm not wearing your wife's swimsuit!"

"It won't be my wife's. Trust me, that'd be way too big for you."

I froze. Leah's dad was offering to lend his girlfriend a swimsuit—but not one of his wife's. Didn't that mean he was borrowing one of Leah's? If it did, it meant he might be coming into the bedroom to get it. He'd catch me for sure!

Footsteps thundered up the stairs.

Terrified, I glanced around the room. There wasn't enough space under the desk to hide. I started for the bed, but quickly saw it was too close to the floor—there wasn't enough room for me there either.

The floor creaked as he walked down the hallway.

As quietly as possible, I darted for the walk-in closet and closed the door behind me.

I was actually hiding in a
closet
? Did anyone in the history of the world ever stay effectively hidden in a closet? With everything packed so tightly together, I couldn’t even hide behind the clothes. And the boxes next to the dresser weren't big enough to hide behind either.

The dresser? Leah kept her swimsuits in that dresser!

Without thinking, I yanked open the drawer, grabbed a swimsuit, and threw it out onto the floor right in front of the closet. Then I quickly eased the closet door closed behind me again.

I crouched down in the corner of the closet as the bedroom door squeaked open. Leah's dad was now just outside.

I held my breath. Would Leah's dad see the swimsuit on the floor? If he turned on the overhead light, he might. But if he headed straight for the closet—if he planned to just turn on the overhead light in here—he'd see me for sure. And even if he
did
see it on the floor, would he grab it and bring it down to his girlfriend? I mean, she'd probably want a
clean
suit, not one Leah had presumably just been wearing. Then again, how would she know? And a man who cheated on his wife was pretty clearly someone who didn't have big issues with honesty.

The overhead light in the bedroom didn't turn on. The floor creaked. He was coming closer.

Just outside the bedroom door, Leah's dad stopped. I could see his shadow under the door from the lights in the backyard. I could also hear him breathing. It was like he was right next me, like we were trapped inside the same dark coffin. Weirdly, it wasn’t hard to keep on holding my breath. Under the circumstances, breathing just wasn’t that high a priority.

Then I remembered something else: the bedroom window. Had I remembered to close it? Had Leah's dad seen it and realized that something was up?

Finally, the shadow under the door shifted: he was either picking up the suit or he was stepping toward the closet.

If you're already holding your breath, is it possible to hold your breath
harder
? Because that's what I was doing. At the same time, a wave of sweat broke out over my body. I was suddenly wet all over, even in unusual places, like between my toes. I’d never sweated so badly in my life—my clothes were suddenly soaked, like I’d been caught in a rainstorm. It was the weirdest thing.

But the closet door didn't open. It was the bedroom door that opened back up.  Leah's dad stopped breathing in my ear as he left the room. He must have grabbed the suit on the floor.

The floor of the upstairs hallway squeaked as Leah's dad plodded away, then the steps thundered, but I still didn't move. It wasn't until I heard the splash of water in the backyard that I slowly crept out of the closet. I glanced over at the window and saw that I'd remembered to close it after all.

I texted Gunnar and Min on the roof, telling them that I was going to try to sneak out the front door and to meet me in the yard.

Then I headed for the stairs.

It was funny: I'd been happy before to hear the creak of Leah's dad's footsteps in the hallway, and the thump of his feet on the steps, because they'd given me some warning that he was coming. But now I was dying a thousand deaths when I was the one creaking down that hallway and squeaking down those steps.

When I reached the foyer, I glanced back through the house to the pool in back. Leah's dad and his girlfriend were both in the hot tub now, and it looked like the swimsuits were already coming off. So much for modesty—but I suspect that suit had been important to the woman because it meant she wasn't a slut or something (full disclosure: heterosexuals confuse me).

I quietly eased the front door open and slipped out into the yard. At first I was a little freaked out by all the lights—stepping onto that front porch was a little like setting foot on a stage. But once the door was closed behind me, unless someone had actually
seen
me coming out that door, I now had plausible deniability that I had ever been in the house in the first place.

I met Min and Gunnar who were hiding in the bushes, and together we hurried back to where Min's car was parked.

Once we were safely inside the car, Min went off with a string of apologies to Gunnar and me both—about how she had been certain that everyone would be gone and how she'd been stupid to be so suspicious of Leah in the first place. I let her go on a bit because, well, it really had been an incredibly stupid, wildly irresponsible plan (even if it had been kind of clever too). It seemed like Min did sort of owe Gunnar and me an apology, especially since I'd come so close to getting caught.

But you want to know the truth? I wasn't really that annoyed. In fact, I would have done the break-in all over again, even if I'd known there was a chance I could get caught at the end. The fact is, my life finally had some genuine excitement—some of that adventure I'd been pining for.

And I was absolutely loving it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The next day, Saturday, I went to see Wade again. If I really was going to choose between Kevin and him, I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't learn more about him—like if he really was gay, for one thing (that seemed important to know). Plus, he'd said he was leaving town soon. I wanted to tell him how I felt about him—and give him a chance to say how he felt about me!—before that happened.

I obviously couldn't call or text, so I just rode my bike over to the freegan house and went up to the front door and knocked.

Venus answered the door. "Russel!" she said. She hugged me, and I hugged her back, and then she said, "You want Wade." It wasn't really a question, and she sort of winked at me.

Venus may have been a total airhead, but she wasn't stupid.

"Yeah," I said, suddenly fascinated by the door jamb.

"Come on inside." She called upstairs, "Wade!" Then she looked at me again and asked like she really gave a damn, "How you doin'?"

"I'm good. I'm really good." I pulled a bag of apples out of my backpack. I'd picked it up at the supermarket on the way over—from the produce section, not the Dumpster (it had been cheap).

"What's this?"

"Hey, we're all in this together, right?"

She laughed and hugged me again. "I knew I liked you! Hey, are you hungry?" She twirled back toward the kitchen. "We were just making lunch."

"Sure." This time I hadn't even hesitated, didn't wonder where the food had come from—a Dumpster or a roadside.

Meanwhile, Wade thumped down the stairs. "Russel? What's up?" I couldn't help but notice he was wearing another crisp white t-shirt.

Venus held up the bag of apples. "He came with food!"

Wade grinned.

"I thought maybe we could hang out," I said.

He stared at me for what seemed like a long time (but for what was probably only a second). Then he smiled and said, "What do you know? Hanging out with you is exactly what I had planned for the day."

*   *   *

It was just Wade, Venus, and me for lunch. Venus served mussels and crab gathered from a local beach and (of course) a generous mound of seaweed. Even knowing all I knew about the freegans, they could still shock me with every new meal.

"It's a little slimy," Venus said, meaning the seaweed. "But it's so good for you! And it's the most sustainable food on Earth. Even more than insects!"

"Insects?" I said.

"Insects are the best kind of animal protein there is," Venus said, completely serious. "It takes ten pounds of plant feed to make one pound of animal meat. But with insects, ten pounds of feed makes nine pounds of meat."

"Insect meat," I said.

"Yeah." Her eyes were wide.

"Is that before or after you pull the little legs off?"

"You're making fun of me," Venus said. "But it's true. Lots of cultures already eat insects—grubs and worms too."

"Oh, well, you didn't say anything about grubs and worms," I said. "That's totally different."

"You're still making fun of me." Venus thought for a second, then gave me a big smile. "But I like you anyway!"

Wade cleared his throat. "I know we freegans need to work on our P.R. But the fact is she's right. It's all just a question of perspective. You know, lobsters are carrion feeders—they eat all the rotting stuff on the ocean floor. The idea of eating a lobster used to be considered totally disgusting. Now they're the world's most prized delicacy. Perspectives change."

"I didn't know that about lobster," I said. I thought for a second, then said, deadpan, "It still doesn't make me want to eat grubs and insects."

Wade laughed. "How about we go for a walk?" We were mostly done with lunch now.

"Where to?" I said.

He hesitated again, then a mysterious smile slipped onto his face. "You'll see." Clearly, this was something else he couldn't tell me, but could only show me.

*    *    *

This time, we left our bikes behind and set out on foot, through alleys and down side roads. Not far from the house, we came to a big, flat field thick with scotch broom. The plants were fat and wide, and yet also somehow spindly. They hadn't bloomed yet, and their spiky, dark green branches stuck straight up in the air, swaying in the breeze like the flailing, hairy legs of giant overturned insects (Venus and the freegans would eat for years!).

We set out down a trail, and before long, we'd been engulfed by the scratchy plants. I couldn't see the road behind us—couldn't even hear the sound of passing cars, and it had been a pretty busy street. I was surprised to see that the ground was made of rock.

No, not rock, I realized: concrete. But it was so old that it was crumbling away, had already cracked into chunks. Weeds grew from the cracks, prying them more open still. I'd always wondered about that—how a simple little weed could break through concrete.

"It was an airport," Wade explained. "A long time ago. This was the runway."

I looked around. I could see it now. It was so obvious I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before: how flat everything was, and the long stretch of concrete that peeked out through the scotch broom in front of us. There were even a few chipped and faded lines of yellow or white paint that must have once guided the planes. But if there'd been any buildings—hangars or ticket counters—they had long ago surrendered to the weeds and scotch broom.

Wade and I walked side-by-side down that runway, and it was hard not to think about a world a hundred or a thousand years in the future, after nuclear war or global warming, after civilization had fallen and all that remained were the traces of our former cities.

"It's spooky," I said. "I can see why you wanted to show it to me."

"Oh, this isn't what I wanted to show you," he said. "We're not there yet."

The runway ran straight into a greenbelt, and another trail wound off through the trees—a strip of stubborn forest pushed back behind hills and deep into narrow canyons. We followed this new trail, the sun shining down through emerald leaves. A couple of times we passed homeless people—once I saw another cluster of tents and tarps through the undergrowth. As usual, Wade waved and called out to people. He knew almost everyone by name.

We passed the opening to a tunnel in a hillside—a big concrete culvert of some sort that was completely covered with graffiti. The city had blocked the opening with an iron grate, but someone had peeled open some of the bars, allowing access inside. Is this what Wade had wanted to show me?

But he didn't stop. "Don't go in there," he said under his breath. "Some scary folk live in there."

At first I wasn't sure if he was kidding, but his face was deadly serious. I wanted to ask him more when I saw someone approaching on the trail in front of us. Wade said, "Matthew!" It was one of the other freegans from Wade's house, the guy with the literally dirty blond hair (not so dirty now).

For a second, he looked surprised to see us. Then he smiled and said, "Hey, Wade. And Russel." It was so strange that the freegans all knew and remembered my name. I've been going to school with some of the same people since kindergarten, and I'm pretty sure more than a few of them couldn't pick me out of a police line-up.

"What's up?" Wade said.

Matthew shrugged, almost nervously, and his frayed backpack rustled. "Hunting and gathering. The usual."

"See if you have anything for George," Wade said, nodding back toward the homeless camp we'd passed before. "I'm still worried he's not eating."

Matthew nodded, and Wade and I walked on.

I thought about the greenbelt we were in now and the one we'd explored before, and also the vacant lots and abandoned rail tracks that Wade and I had passed through earlier in the week. In a way, the freegans had their own roads. And maybe it wasn't just roads: it was almost like there was a whole shadow city right alongside the other one. And it was populated by real people—the homeless and the freegans and whoever lived inside the graffiti-covered tunnel that Wade had warned me about. Isn't that what Wade had told me before, that freegans knew a city's secret things—its hidden people and places?

Sure, you could argue that "our" city was a lot better—that we had paved, well-lit roads and hot showers. And we definitely had a lot of "things." But I was starting to see Wade's point about how sometimes things were just a way to distract yourself, to avoid seeing the world as it is. For most teenagers, "hanging out" pretty much means playing video games, eating fast food, or going to the mall. But you couldn't do any of those things if you didn't have any money. Instead, the freegans actually went out into the world and interacted with it—the non-shopping mall world, I mean. They made real choices. They didn't just do what the television told them to do—in fact, they did the exact opposite.

It was all so confusing. I couldn't imagine anyone more ridiculed and disrespected than the freegans: they were the Brian Bunds of the non-high school world. And yet here they were doing all these interesting, even noble things, things that most parents would
kill
to have their teenagers do. So why all the disrespect? Why was it acceptable to volunteer at a soup kitchen or go for a hike in the woods, but not acceptable to actually know homeless people by name or explore the abandoned airport near your house?

Had Venus been right? Did being a freegan really mean being free?

Wade and I were walking alongside a golf course now—a field of rolling grass. On the other side of a chain link fence, the sprawling clubhouse complex loomed.

I stopped and took it all in.

"That's pretty," I said, meaning the vivid green grass.

Wade didn't say anything.

"What?" I said, looking over at him.

"Nothing. I just feel like I've been doing nothing but lecturing you for the past two weeks."

I laughed. "It's okay. You have interesting things to say. Besides, you haven't been lectured to until you've been friends with Min."

Now Wade laughed. Then he said, "Well, golf courses are frustrating because they look so green and pretty, but they're horrible for the environment. Most of the courses use massive amounts of chemicals—to get the grass green and kill the weeds. And even if some courses are getting better, they still use so much water." He waved at the hill behind us. "This golf course even has its own water tower." Sure enough, there was a big pale green cylinder rising out of the trees on top. "And because they use so much water, all the chemicals get washed right into the streams and rivers."

I stared out at the grass. I hadn't known what Wade was telling me. But he was right about it being deceptive, because it looked so pretty.

A head popped up right in front of us.

Wade and I both jumped back.

It was a boy, maybe ten years old. His clothes were filthy, and there were dirt smudges on his face—dirt that was almost too perfect, like it was make-up on the orphans in a stage production of
Les Misérables
. His shoes were duct-taped together.

"Ha!" the boy said, pleased he'd scared us. He had been hiding in a tunnel that must have passed under the trail—like the culvert from before, but smaller.

"Andy?" Wade said to the boy. "What are you doing down there?"

"This is where we live now," he said proudly.

"Is Molly with you?"

The boy nodded as an older woman stood up next to him. She wasn't any better-dressed—or cleaner—than the boy. But unlike the kid, she was ducking down behind the concrete, fearful. For a second, I wondered if she was afraid of whoever Wade had warned me about earlier. Then I realized she was pretty much just nuts.

"Andy, get down!" she said, already pulling him back into the tunnel.

"Molly, you know you're always welcome at our house, right?" Wade called after her.

When she didn't answer, Wade and I walked on. We weren't talking now. Truthfully, I was annoyed by Molly. She clearly had mental problems. And what about Wade? Was there no room in his world-view for Child Protective Services?

A few minutes later, he stopped in the middle of the trail, glancing in both directions.

"What?" I said.

"I want to show you something," he said. "Remember?"

"Oh. Yeah." I really had forgotten.

"But I don't think anyone knows about it but me—I only found it by accident. I want to leave it that way, so I want to make sure we're alone."

I didn't say anything, just let him lead me off the trail right into the bushes, which were especially thick here. They weren't dark and spiky like the scotch broom back at the abandoned airport. No, under the cover of the trees, these plants were lush and soft and green, but also easily torn.

We fumbled down an unexpectedly steep slope, then forged our way forward through the undergrowth. For a minute, I thought Wade was lost.

Then he peeled back some more branches to reveal a little clearing. And in the middle was something that definitely wasn't part of the forest—and yet it was. Or, rather, it was something man-made, but it was now almost completely covered with vines.