December Park(14)

Still perched on the piling, Sasha began playing “All Along the Watchtower.” The few who knew the words chimed in.

I watched him from the edge of the dock, suddenly cold and damp and slightly winded from the excitement. My heart was pounding.

Michael slung an arm over my shoulder, and for one crazy moment, I thought he was going to plant a kiss on my cheek. It wouldn’t have been unlike him. Instead, he looked at me with his startling and somewhat insane blue eyes. “You know, Angelo, someday I’m going to fall in love.”

“Never. Don’t ever fall in love, you son of a bitch. Please. Spare us all.”

We were buzzed on adrenaline, we were loud and happy, and no one knew what it was all about until the evening ended. Less than an hour later, after the rest of our friends left, the four of us sat on the edge of the dock, our feet dangling mere inches above the coal-black water, and passed around a can of root beer.

Peter filled Michael in about the dead girl and how we’d watched the cops carry her body out of the woods. Michael listened with uncharacteristic solemnity, nodding when it seemed appropriate.

“This changes everything,” Michael said once Peter had finished the story. “Now that they’ve found a body, they’ll be looking for a killer. It’s not just about kids who’ve gone missing anymore.”

“The body might not have anything to do with those kids who’ve gone missing,” I said. I found I very much wanted to believe this.

Michael nodded, then shrugged.

It occurred to me that we had all kept quiet about the dead girl until it was just the four of us, as if to speak about it around anyone else would be to corrupt what we had seen.

Michael took the can of root beer from Scott, downed the last of it, and unleashed an impressive belch. “I’m freezing my balls off out here,” he commented, climbing to his feet.





Ten minutes later, Peter and I coasted back through town in Ed the Jew’s pickup, simultaneously laughing and groaning at Peter’s stupid elephant jokes while playing cassette tapes too loud.

When we pulled up to my house, I saw my father’s unmarked police car in the driveway.

“Shit. I thought he’d be out all night,” I said, turning down the tape deck and glancing at the digital clock on the dashboard. It read 11:36, which meant I was an hour and a half past my curfew. “Lights.”

Peter snapped off the truck’s headlights. He shut the engine down, too, and allowed us to coast up to the curb. If my father was asleep, I didn’t want to wake him.

“Are you gonna be in trouble?” Peter asked.

“Probably.”

“Want to stay at my place?”

My gaze scaled the house, observing the darkened windows and simmering silence in which it sat. Was it possible he had come home and gone to sleep? I felt more equipped to deal with any chastisement in the morning as opposed to right now. “No,” I said finally, knowing from past experience that it would do more harm than good to avoid coming home altogether.

“You sure?”

I nodded.

“Okay. Take care, man. Glad you came out.”

“Yeah,” I said and hopped out of the truck. I made my way to the rear, popped the tailgate, and took out my bike.

Seconds later, I nodded to Peter as he turned over the ignition and spun the pickup around, the headlights still off, and sped down the street.

Shivering against the cold, I rolled my bike to the side of our house where I buried it within the wall of lush ivy, then decided to enter through the rear porch instead of the front door. It would be quieter. I’d done this before and knew the ropes.

I crept around back and mounted the porch steps. They creaked just slightly beneath my weight, as I’d expected them to—I had braced myself by wincing as I stepped on each one—but their protestations weren’t loud enough to rouse anyone within the house. I fumbled for my keys, and, as I slipped the appropriate key into the dead bolt on the back door, I heard my father clear his throat.

Startled, I nearly dropped my keys. I took an instinctive step backward as my breath caught in my throat. Then I froze beneath the darkness of the porch awning, trying to adjust my eyes to the shapes all around me. I noticed my father sitting in one of the wicker chairs, so silent he could have been nothing more than part of my imagination.

“Dad,” I uttered, my voice pathetic, “I didn’t see you there.”

He didn’t say anything.

For one split second I almost convinced myself that I was out here alone talking to shadows and that it had been nothing but my imagination playing tricks on me after all. But then I saw him shift position in the wicker chair and heard him sigh in his exhausted, meditative way.

“Grandma said you were called out tonight,” I continued, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Also, I couldn’t bear the silence. But then I realized it sounded like a confession, and I immediately clamped my mouth shut before I could dig my grave any deeper.

“Where were you?”

“Just out with the guys,” I said, desperate to sound casual. I smelled cigarette smoke on me—in fact, I smelled nothing but cigarette smoke. Surely my father could, too. “Peter got his driver’s license so he drove me home in his stepdad’s truck.”

My father made a quick humming sound.