The Sleepwalkers (4 page)

B
EAN FOLDS UP THE LETTER SLOWLY
, carefully, and places it on the little foldout tray next to a half-spilled bag of airline peanuts. He picks up two peanuts delicately, tosses them into his mouth and starts chewing, staring all the while at the back of the seat in front of him. Caleb waits for the joke, for the wiseass comment—he longs for it, in fact, needs it to steady his nerves, to know that at least
some
things never change: no matter what, Bean takes nothing seriously. But Bean doesn’t say anything. He just takes a sip of his Coke and looks at the letter distrustfully, as if he expects it to sprout arms and slap him upside the head.

“So . . . ?” Caleb says, and even this prompts no response. “What do you think?”

“Dude, it got into my head,” Bean says, cracking an ice cube between his teeth and glancing sidelong at his friend.

“Yeah,” says Caleb. Out of all possible responses, this is perhaps the worst he could have received. “Dude, you’re stupid,” “Dude, you’re gay,” “Dude, this person is just some wacko; pull your head out of your ass”—these would have all been acceptable, if embarrassing, quips from his best friend. They would have been comforting. This is not comforting. This is bad.

Ever since he made an early exit from his graduation party, feigning stomach flu, he has been waiting for someone to tell him he’s crazy, waiting to come to that conclusion himself. He read the letter over and over, in a display that could only be considered obsessive in the extreme, trying to find some flaw, some hint of a joke or a hoax, anything that might discredit the piece of dread correspondence. He found none. Worse, he found the letter to be spotted with dried tear marks. He observed how the handwriting became sloppier at the end, as the writer’s perceived threat drew near. It only proved what his heart had known all along—the letter was real.

“So,” Bean says, “who’s Christine?”

“This girl I knew,” says Caleb. His voice sounds hollow in his own ears. “She was my friend when I was a kid in Florida. That’s where the letter is postmarked from—Hudsonville.”

“Right,” says Bean, “where your dad lives.”

“Yep. She was poor. She had a twin sister who got kidnapped and they never found her. We were all best friends.”

Bean pauses, thinking. “So if you haven’t seen this Christine girl since you were a kid, why would she send you this?”

Caleb shrugs, not trusting his voice this time.

“And why all the secrecy?” Bean asks. “I’ve never seen you lie to your mom. I mean, you’re a total sissy momma’s boy. And you didn’t even tell Amber the real deal, and she’s like the puppet master holding your freakin’ strings.”

“Bite me,” says Caleb.

“I don’t mean it as a bad thing. I mean, damn. Most guys would be more than happy to be pussy-whipped by her. But it’s just weird that you told both of them we were just going on a little trip to visit your dad, when we’re actually—wait, what
are
we doing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know where Christine is. I don’t know if I’d recognize her if she were sitting right next to me.”

“I just can’t believe you actually lied to your mom.”

“I’m not that much of a momma’s boy. I had to lie to her because she hates my dad completely. If she knew we were staying with him, she’d crap herself.”

“You ever get a hold of him?”

“Dad? Nah. He must’ve changed his phone number. We had to do that sometimes. He’s a lawyer. He represents a lot of controversial cases. We’ll just surprise him.”

“Sweet,” says Bean. “Now leave me alone. I gotta get my beauty sleep. But first, take that letter back. It creeps me out. Seriously.”

Caleb puts the letter back in his pocket, and Bean leans his head against the airplane window.

Caleb stares past him, out at the infinite blue. He told everyone that he had become overwhelmed with the exertion of finishing the school year, going through graduation, writing college essays, and all the other crap that came with being an eighteen-year-old. Total bullshit. Still, his mom and Bob bought it and sprung for a “vacation” to Florida for him and Bean. After all, “breakdowns” are par for the course for teenagers growing up in Malibu, so, if anything, this lapse made him seem more normal in the eyes of his peers and maybe even his family. It made him wince to imagine himself as one of those lame kids who were always paging their therapists and popping handfuls of Xanax.

But the lies will all be worth it if Christine really is in trouble and they’re able to help her.

“This trip’s gonna be cool,” Caleb says, but somehow he doesn’t believe it. He’s racking up the lies.

“Shut up,” Bean mumbles. “You’re screwing up my beauty sleep.”

The humidity is dizzying as they step out onto the tarmac. Waves of heat rise off the blacktop and the sun seems to bore through the top of Caleb’s baseball cap and into his brain.

“Thank Jesus,” says Bean, “I thought we were dead, man. I swear to God, I did. That turbulence was crazy. We like, fell. We should sue for emotional distress, I’m telling you.”

The plane had hit a tiny bit of turbulence on the way to land, and Bean had started freaking out. It was funny to Caleb, who had never seen that side of his friend, but Bean had recovered quickly and had spent the rest of the landing in macho talk about how they should kick the pilot’s ass and sue the airline and use the money to buy a giant RV so they could travel the country in real comfort and never have to fly again. All through his tirade his eyes were big and scared, and a sheen of sweat sparkled on his forehead, giving him away. Caleb had been tempted to make fun of him, since that’s certainly what Bean would have done to him, but decided against it.

“Come on,” Caleb says now, heading off the lingering urge to crack a joke by changing the subject. “Let’s get our bags and find a rental car. I don’t know if I can find my dad’s house in the daylight, much less in the dark.”

They hustle through the airport, which is decked out in pastel pinks and greenish blues, Florida colors, and head for the baggage claim. In no time, they reach the rental-car place where, thanks to Bean’s trusty fake ID (which lists him as a twenty-seven-year-old bearded guy named “Dirk Stephens”), they soon secure a car and hit the road.

The windows are down, the sun is bright (though it’s past its zenith now; four o’clock has come and gone). In the air, the sickly-sweet smell of a paper mill makes the humidity seem even thicker, even more intoxicating, and Caleb keeps thinking how much difference a few days can make, how the course of everything can reverse like the changing of the tide and pull you in the opposite direction with frightening force.

But somehow, in this moment, that’s okay. After all, the ability to change direction is freedom, and on a beautiful afternoon like this, with his best friend at his side and all the demands of his life thousands of miles away, freedom has never felt so nice. The sense of foreboding that haunted him since the moment he read Christine’s letter has dissipated, leaving in its place only the road and the sun and the warm, sweet-smelling wind. Bean, who’s been looking out the window, lost in his own thoughts, reaches down and turns on the radio. He scans for a minute and finally comes up with some old-school rock song and blasts it, singing along at the top of his lungs.

Caleb joins in, and they laugh and mock head-bang for a minute.

The adventure has begun. Still fifty miles to go to make Hudson-ville, they race along an empty two-lane road, skirted by endless pine trees and punctuated with the occasional run-down gas station or grapefruit stand. They’re the only car in sight; they’re free of parents and tests and stress and girls and everything complicated and bad. In this moment, there’s only the wind and the sun and the radio and the possibility of great times ahead.

Around a turn in the road, a sign: the rotary club welcomes you to the village of hudsonville, population 123.

Bean has been talking excitedly for the last hour. “. . . Dude, I wonder if this chick Christine’s a hottie. After we rescue her, maybe she’ll, like, rescue us a little bit, you know what I’m sayin’? Oh, yeah, forgot about your ball and chain. My bad. All I’m saying is we have to get to the beach while we’re here. I hear the beaches here are sweet. Of course, we live on the beach—but still I’ve never been to a
Florida
beach.”

Bean sees the sign and falls silent for a second. “A hundred and twenty-three people? I’ve see that many people in one bathroom at LAX.”

They pass a sandy driveway. There’s a half-collapsed green and white motor home squatting in a field of sand with tufts of scraggly grass protruding everywhere. A skinny old man wearing overalls, with close-set, beady eyes, watches them pass. The air is still and hot as it rushes through their windows, but its sound falls to a whisper as Caleb slows the car down. There’s a gas station called Pete’s Gas and Store, covered in peeling white paint. The parking lot is gravel and the pumps are antique. The place is silent. They pass a few boarded-up stores, maybe three on either side of the road. On one side they see a hardware store that seems to be open for business and on the other side they see a diner with a few patrons sitting by the window, eating. That’s the whole downtown strip. They pass a few more driveways, marked by listing mailboxes, that curve and disappear from sight amidst dense vegetation, then nothing but woods.

“Damn,” Bean says. “That’s it, that’s the town?”

“Yeah,” says Caleb, “this is where I grew up.”

They pass another driveway or two, but they’re coming less frequently now. Caleb squints out the windshield, concerned. It’ll be dark soon. The red sun skates on the edge of the horizon. Caleb glimpses it fleetingly through breaks in the trees. Soon, he won’t see it at all. And he knows he won’t be able to find his way after the light is gone.

“Shit,” he mumbles.

“What?” says Bean, concerned. “You know where we’re going, right?”

“Well, I remember the old address was Walnut Road, but I haven’t seen it. Maybe we passed it.”

“Dude, you used to live here, right? Come on, we can’t be lost.”

“I moved away when I was, like, seven,” Caleb says, defensively.

“Great,” Bean says. “We’re lost in the Land of Rednecks. I mean, that’s fine for you, you’re cousins with everybody here, but what about me?”

“Walnut Road,” Caleb says, spotting the sign. He swings the car around the corner. The wheels squeal and Bean almost falls out of his seat, across the arm rest, and over onto Caleb’s lap.

“Jesus, Knight Rider,” says Bean, “give KITT a rest.”

The road is gravel. The grind of the tires eats up the silence all around them. One driveway, another driveway—Caleb leans forward. The sun is going fast now, and here, under a thick canopy of trees, night is already closing its fist on sight. The car rolls a little farther, and Caleb sees what he’s looking for.

“Bean, what does it say on that mailbox?”

Bean squints. “Mason.”

The mailbox was once white, but mold and dirt have stained it a streaked greenish brown. The reflective letters stuck to the side, however, are still legible.

The roar of gravel on tires gives way to a gentle hushing sound as they turn into the sandy driveway.