December Park(147)

By ten o’clock, my grandmother came out and handed me a glass of iced tea. The night was still and hot, and the mosquitoes were having a field day.

At eleven, my father’s unmarked sedan pulled into the driveway. He smiled resignedly at me as he clumped up the stairs and across the porch. “Doing some reading?”

“Yeah.”

“How was work?”

“The usual,” I said, thinking of the cop who had followed me home. “How about you?”

He laughed but there was no humor in it. “The usual,” he said, and went inside.

Since our fight on the morning of July Fourth, a space had opened up between us. I had used Charles to hurt him, and it had been a much more lethal blow than I had recognized at the time.

When midnight rolled around, my father appeared in the doorway and muttered, “Go to bed,” then retreated inside.

I realized I’d been nodding off. Across the two yards, the Gardiner house looked as dark and empty as a satellite coasting through space.





Chapter Thirty


The Patapsco Institute (Part Two)





At five thirty the following evening, the five of us met at the far end of December Park, where the chestnut trees flanked the footpaths and the swings moved in the warm breeze. Michael carried a large box by a plastic handle. On the box’s cover was a picture of a smiling family climbing down an aluminum ladder that hung from the windowsill.

“Who smiles like that when they’re escaping from a window?” Scott asked.

We had all our equipment with us—the walkie-talkies (fully charged), the flashlights, our pocketknives. Peter also had his Walkman, which he cranked up so we could listen to one of his mix tapes.

Once more we entered the woods and climbed through the underbrush. I could feel the land gradually inclining as we went. Erosion had dumped old trees into dried-out ravines, their twisted roots like petrified boa constrictors. At one point, we saw a beehive nearly the size of a football hanging from a tree limb.

As we drew closer to the Patapsco Institute, the quality of the air changed: it was possible to smell the salty, fishy scent of the Chesapeake Bay on the breeze. The day was blisteringly hot—that morning’s weather report put us in the high nineties—and by the time the old building appeared through the trees, my T-shirt was soaked and my hair was dripping water into my eyes.

“Is it possible it looks even uglier today?” Michael said as he paused before the looming monstrosity.

“I say the same thing about you every time I see you,” Peter said, switching off his Walkman. The sudden quiet lent an air of significance to the scene.

“Hilarious,” Michael said, checking the bottoms of his shoes. “I think I stepped in something.”

“I smell it, too,” said Adrian. He had his backpack on, which must have been tough to carry all this way. His brow glistened, and the front of his Superman T-shirt was dark with sweat. “I think it’s coming from in there.”

As I walked around the building, I couldn’t take my eyes from it. When we passed the ledge of crumbling statues, they all seemed to be staring down at us, judging us. Or perhaps they were trying to warn us?

Don’t start freaking out, I thought. Save it for tonight when I’m home, safe in bed.

At the back of the building, Michael set his box on the ground and opened it.

“That’s not gonna be tall enough,” I said.

“It’ll be tall enough,” he said, unfolding the ladder out of the box.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s for climbing out of two-story windows. I think it’ll do the trick.”

“Unless your parents lied to you, and they were hoping you’d die tragically in a house fire,” Peter said.

Without looking up, Michael shot Peter the bird.

Adrian undid his backpack and let it drop to the earth. His respiration was wheezy. He took his glasses off and wiped the sweat from the lenses with his T-shirt. I saw that he still wore Courtney Cole’s locket around his neck.

“This is crazy,” I said.

Adrian looked at me. “You’re changing your mind?”

“No. I’m just stating it for the record. I want to make it known.”

“For what?”

“For when we can’t get back out and we have to resort to eating each other,” I said. “I just want it stated that I think this is a lousy idea.”

“You’ve said your part,” Scott said. He took a pack of peanut butter crackers from the pocket of his cargo shorts.

When the cellophane crackled, Michael looked in his direction. “I just know you brought enough to share with the rest of the class.”

“There’s only four crackers,” Scott said.

“So who goes hungry?” Peter asked.

“It should be Scott since he was holding out on us,” said Michael.

It was Scott’s turn to flip the bird. “Screw you. You should have packed your own food.” Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his deck of Uno cards. “Four highest cards get the crackers,” he said, fanning the cards out.

“What about the draw cards?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “Or the reverses and skips. How many points are those worth?”