December Park(49)

It was a school night. My other friends would have known better than to ask such a question. But Adrian was new and didn’t know the score. I wouldn’t hold it against him.

“Wasn’t planning on it. My dad’s pretty strict about that. Anyway, I’ve got some homework.”

“You finish that paper for Mr. Mattingly’s class?”

“Not yet.” I hadn’t even started it, and I still hadn’t mentioned Mr. Mattingly’s suggestion that I bump up to AP English next year to my father. Thankfully, Mr. Mattingly hadn’t brought it up to me again. If he had forgotten about it, well, that was just fine by me.

Adrian kicked a pinecone and kept his gaze on the ground. “I asked my mom about all the disappearances and about the dead girl, too. To see if she knew anything. She had heard about what’s been going on in town.”

I thought, This is it. This is why he’s here. Obsession.

“She’s not cool with me going out after dark until they catch whoever is, well . . . I guess, doing what . . .”

“Yeah.” He was a chore to listen to when he groped for words. I learned to come to his rescue lest we both suffer under a barrage of fumbling sentences and half words that never came. He seemed sadly grateful whenever I did this.

“But there’s someplace I want to go tonight before it gets dark. And I want you to come with me.” Then he added, “If you can.”

“Where?”

Adrian shivered in his parka. “I don’t want to tell you just yet. I don’t know how to tell it.”

“What do you mean? What don’t you want to tell?”

“First I need to know if you’ll come with me. Then I’ll tell you.”

“You can’t even tell me where you want to go?”

“Not yet. I want you to swear you’ll come first.”

I almost laughed at him. Michael had laughed at Adrian’s horrified reaction to the Friday the 13th movies, and Adrian had looked like he’d been near tears. At first I thought it was because of the movie—someone’s head had just gotten chopped off—but he’d sat and watched the rest of it without flinching. When the marathon was over, he had simply gotten off the couch and gone home without saying a word to Michael before he left.

I said, “What time?”

“As soon as you can.” He glanced up at the sky, as if to alert me to the oncoming night.

“I’m covered in sap. Let me grab a quick shower, and then I’ll meet you back out here. I’ll only be fifteen minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You want me to call the guys and have them meet us here, too?”

“No,” he said. “No guys. Just you and me.”

“How come?”

“It’s just how . . . I mean, it’s just the way I need it to be for right now . . .”

I could hear Adrian breathing—his raspy little nasal respirations that sounded like a circus whistle was caught inside his sinuses—and I could even sense a slight tremor to his voice. I found myself confronted by a mixture of frustration and uneasiness. This happened often when I was around him; it went beyond simply being embarrassed for him or irritated by him.

But then I realized that it had taken great courage for him to come here and ask this of me, and I found myself apprehensive about what might be on Adrian’s mind. Although I had never been a superstitious or prophetic person, I knew with a frightening certainty that the stars had aligned and afforded Adrian Gardiner the opportunity to meet and befriend me, because there was something fate needed him to tell me, to show me.

“Yes, okay,” I said, even though I was still thinking things through. “Fifteen minutes.”

Adrian bobbed his head like a spring-loaded toy. “Thanks, Angie. Thank you.”

I didn’t like the relief I heard in his voice.





Freshman year at Stanton School, a boy named Dennis Foley sat in the back of my biology class. Largely ignored by the rest of the students, Dennis was a chunky kid with a peppering of brown freckles on his cheeks. He carried a plastic lunch box with cartoon characters capering on its lid, and had he sat with anyone during lunch, he would have no doubt been made fun of. Every day after school the other students watched Dennis climb into the backseat of his mother’s rattling old Escort because the family dog, who apparently took precedence, was belted into the passenger seat.

One afternoon, midway through one of Mr. Copeland’s discourses on photosynthesis, a small commotion began toward the rear of the classroom. A few heads turned. Mr. Copeland frowned and spoke a bit louder. More heads turned.

Then one of the girls shrieked, “He’s bleeding!”

Dennis had opened up his left wrist with one of the dissection scalpels Mr. Copeland had stored at the back of the classroom. There were dark splotches on the floor, and there was blood soaking into Dennis’s polo shirt and rumpled khakis.

Dennis dropped the scalpel, which clattered to the floor where it reflected the sunlight coming in through the partially shaded windows. The look on his face was one of stupefaction. As I stared at him, I could see the color drain from his cheeks.

Dennis had been rushed to the hospital where he had recovered from his wounds. He never returned to Stanton School. His family lived in a dilapidated hovel along the Cape, not too far from the Keener farm, and on occasion people spotted him milling about the property.