December Park(159)

In the morning, I hoped for good news. None came. I got on my bike and rode past Keener’s truck on Haven Street. It hadn’t moved. I went to work at Secondhand Thrift, plodding through my day like someone who’d had a lobotomy. Yet despite my lethargy, there was a nervous tension vibrating throughout my entire body; I could feel it like live wires strumming just beneath the surface of my flesh.

Peter stopped by the store at noon and asked if I’d heard any news about Adrian. I told him I hadn’t. He seemed nonplussed. We ate lunch together and played a few hands of Uno while on my break. Then he went home.

“You,” growled Callibaugh at one point during the day. “You move like you’ve got a pant-load of bricks. What’s the matter with you today?”

I told him I didn’t feel very well.

He examined a gold pocket watch that he’d procured from one of the many pockets of his overalls, then consulted the wall-mounted clock above the cash register, as if his watch required corroboration. “Give it another hour, then. No more customers come in, you can head home early. I’ll take care of the receipts.”

I thanked him.





I stopped by December Park on my way home from work, even though it was out of my way, hoping—and almost strangely expecting—to find Adrian waving at me from the edge of the woods. But he was not there. A few police officers milled about the grounds, but there were no kids.





Nathan Keener’s truck was still parked on Haven Street.





When I turned onto Worth Street, I saw police cars in front of the Gardiner house. The front door stood open, and a uniformed officer walked around the perimeter of the property with a German shepherd on a leash. I hopped off my bike at the foot of the driveway and just watched. I wondered how far beneath the crust of the earth a German shepherd could smell.

My father’s unmarked sedan was not in our driveway. With a sickness coiling around my spine, I wheeled my bike into my yard, propped it against the wall of ivy, and found today’s paper on the front porch. Those editors at the Caller had wasted no time in putting a photo of Adrian on the front page. The headline proclaimed Piper Claims Another Teen.

My grandfather opened the front door and seemed startled to find me standing there. “You’re home early. Cops are talking to your friend’s mother.”

“Have they heard anything?”

“No.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“He got called in. He won’t be back till late.” He drew me closer to him with one of his big rough hands on the back of my head. I smelled pipe tobacco on his shirt and the old man smell of his skin.

And I thought, Piper claims another . . .





I had no appetite, and my grandmother didn’t make me come down for dinner. I listened to my grandparents’ muted conversation through the floor while I stretched out on my bed and stared absently at the ceiling. Outside, twilight had soured the sky to the color of seawater and turned the trees on the edge of our property into black pikes.

Something Scott had said to me last night on the phone still resonated in my head: What if he broke a leg? Or fell down one of those holes and broke his neck?

Adrian should have been home by now.

After dinner, as per their ritual, my grandparents retired to the den to watch television. My father still wasn’t home. Aside from the occasional bout of canned laughter from the TV, the house had grown uncomfortably silent.

Twice, I picked up the telephone in the upstairs hallway, intending to dial Peter’s number; both times I replaced the receiver to the cradle without so much as punching the first digit. From the hall windows, rapiers of bruised light speared through the leaves of maple trees. Thunder rumbled. I felt an aching nostalgia.

I took a hot shower, hoping it would make me feel better. It didn’t. I put my old clothes back on, then found myself staring at the telephone in the upstairs hall again. This time, I dialed Peter’s number. It rang a few times before he picked up.

“Midnight at the rendezvous point. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

There was prolonged silence on the other end of the line. I was about to hang up when Peter said, “I’ll call the others.”

“I’ll understand if they don’t want to go.”

“I think they’ve been waiting,” he said and hung up.

At eleven o’clock, the television went off. I heard my grandparents moving around downstairs. The bathroom sink came on. Their soft voices nearly lulled me to sleep as I lay listening to them on my bed.

Twenty minutes later, as I listened to their duet of snores through the floor, I changed from shorts into a pair of blue jeans, then strapped on my sneakers. I upended my JanSport backpack and emptied textbooks, papers, pens, pencils, a slide rule, and two Ronald Kelly paperbacks onto my bed. Rachel’s poems were among the items. For whatever reason, I put those folded squares of lined notebook paper in my pocket.

Out in the upstairs hall, I listened to the silence for what seemed like an eternity. Then I entered my father’s bedroom.

The mattress held the faint impression of him, the single sheet and coverlet balled up at the foot of the bed. The pillows looked like they had been punched. On the nightstand stood a bottle of cholesterol medication, an alarm clock, and the framed photos of Charles and my mother.