Goodnight Beautiful(59)

Chapter 41




Fuck.

Sam stares at the patches of torn wallpaper clinging to the wall.

Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfuck.

He’s losing his mind.

He can’t lie here anymore under the weight of these casts, confined to what he’s been told is the number-one-ranked mattress-in-a-box two years in a row. He can’t stand how badly his legs itch or one more day of pretending to love frozen crinkle-cut french fries, sweet-talking Albert to save his own life. But he especially hates the sorrow he feels, missing Annie like this.

Well, maybe it’s time for Sam Statler to stop whining like a girl and do something about it.

Sam opens his eyes and laughs out loud. Well, look who it is. Teddy from Freddy, talking down to him from a glass booth. “Gee, Dad, what a great idea. I’ll just stand up and walk out of here. Why didn’t I think of that?” Sam listens. It’s quiet. “What am I supposed to do?” he whispers.

What any self-respecting man would do, his father whispers back. Man up and find a way out of that house.

Sam takes a deep breath. “Hey!” he shouts at the hallway. “Creepy dude! You home?”

You know he’s not home, Teddy says. You heard him leave in his car a half hour ago.

Sam stares at the door, his pulse quickening. “Okay, fine, fuck it. Let’s do this.” He sits up and pulls off the quilt.

Good evening, folks, and welcome to tonight’s spectacle, his father sings in his ear. A chance for Sam Statler to prove he’s a man.

Sam eases to the edge of the mattress and reaches underneath for the putty knife. Sliding it into the back of his waistband, he swings his legs off the bed and rests his plastered feet on the floor. He reaches for the headboard and hoists himself up, his eyes on his chair, six feet away.

Gotta admit it, his dad says. I’m feeling pretty skeptical he can make it to that chair.

Sam lets go and takes a step forward. Unstable gait, his father says. Sam takes another step. Forward propulsion is compromised. Annnnd . . . he’s down.

Sam hits the ground hard. Pushing the pain aside, he hoists himself onto his elbows, dragging himself toward the chair. Okay, Teddy murmurs. He did it. He got there. Sam pulls himself onto the chair and propels himself toward the door. Winded, he removes the putty knife from his waistband, a girl’s name springing suddenly to mind. Rebecca Kirkpatrick, summer before sophomore year. She was two years older, and her family had a cabin on Lake Poetry, forty minutes north. Twice they skipped school and drove there in her yellow Jeep, where Sam would use the credit card Rebecca’s father gave her to pick the lock on the back door to the cabin.

He slides the blade of the putty knife between the door frame and the lock, recalling how it worked. Rebecca sat on the grass, rolling a joint, as Sam concentrated on using the tip of the credit card to catch the edge of the lock and push it aside, opening the door to all the wonderful things that awaited inside that room—

Well, by golly, would you look at that? Teddy from Freddy purrs as the lock clicks open. He did it. Ol’ Stats actually opened the door.

“I did it!” Sam breathes, elated, imagining the roar of the crowd. “I fucking did it.” He tucks the putty knife back into his waistband and throws open the door to a hallway, giddy. It smells overwhelmingly of the pine-scented chemical shit Albert mops his room with three times a week. Sam propels his chair down the hall, which opens into a kitchen with apple-green walls, the back wall covered in the cascading leaves of at least a dozen hanging plants. He considers stopping to search the drawers for a knife but keeps going into the living room, where a large picture window offers a view of the sky he hasn’t seen in eight days. It’s raining. He’s imagining the feel of the rain against his dry skin when he arrives at the front door, and reaches for the knob.

Strike one, Teddy says quietly to the hushed crowd.

Sam rattles the doorknob. Nononononono.

The guy locked him in. Teddy tsks. That’s some bad luck.

Sam moves quickly to the table in the foyer and opens the slim drawer. He slides his hand to the back, extracting a single key on a bright orange keychain labeled “Gary Unger, Gary Unger Locksmiths.” Sam returns to the door and jams the key into the lock. It doesn’t fit, and Sam knows exactly why. It’s not the key to this door. It’s the key to Sam’s office, the same square key Sam has on his keychain. The key Albert is not supposed to have.

“No big deal,” he tells the crowd, tossing the key on the floor and grabbing once more for the putty knife, his hand shaking. He did it once, he’ll do it again. He can taste the salty tang of the sweat on his lip as he jimmies the putty knife between the door and the frame, sliding it up and then down—

Snap.

Strike two, Sam’s dad whispers.

Sam holds up the wooden handle of the putty knife; the metal blade is stuck in the door. “No,” he whispers, reaching for the blade. “Come back.” He bangs the door, attempting to free the metal edge. It’s no use.

Looks like it’s time for plan B, Teddy says.

The window. Sam slides into the living room and uses the arm of the sofa to pull himself close to the window, getting a glimpse of Sidney Pigeon’s house through the hedges at the edge of Albert’s property. There’s smoke coming from the chimney. Someone’s home.

Time’s running out.