I Am Not Who You Think I Am, page 17
“Until you realized it wasn’t him at all,” I said. “Until that was the only thing that made sense.”
“No. That’s not it.”
“Why was he here—the Tall Man? Who is he? How does he know my mom? What are they hiding?”
Mr. Kane scraped at a rash high on his cheek, just under his wet eye. I wondered why a rash would bother him, but not the mosquitoes. “He came here to tell me to . . . stop.”
“Stop what?”
He gave a sad smile. “Bothering your mother. In the months after what happened with your father, I often met with her, and I’d inevitably end up telling her how I literally could not believe your father did what he did. I started to push: ‘Why did he do it?’ There had to be a why. One day I asked her if there was something she’d done, perhaps. It was not my place to ask. And I didn’t mean that I thought she’d done something intentionally. I certainly didn’t mean to blame or hurt her. I . . . liked your mother. It was just that in the weeks before, I’d sensed a . . . space that hadn’t existed before. The warmth they shared had cooled. That’s why my wife stopped coming for dinner at your house. She said your parents seemed as if they were not even there in the room. Your mom got furious with me when I asked if she’d done something. She insisted she’d done nothing to hurt him. She would have done anything to keep him alive and safe. She had loved him more than ever. More than anything or anyone else. Still, I pressed. I told her I found that odd, that I’d sensed a strangeness between them. She slapped me and told me never to return.”
Mr. Kane’s fingernail dug at the rash on his cheek until the pink, dry skin turned into an aggravated red sore. “Then, you came here asking questions and making claims. So I went and saw your mother again. I hadn’t seen her in years. She looked . . . I voiced my concern for you, for your state of mind.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Probably not. I cared about her. And your dad. Your family. I look at you and worry.”
“She sent me to a doctor because of you,” I said. “Some quack who . . . ” I didn’t want to get into how Dr. Zantz was a fraud and stole the note. I didn’t want to tell anyone else about the note. “The Tall Man. How does he know her?”
“I don’t know. All I know is, he showed up and told me to stop. And I didn’t appreciate his threatening tone.”
“My mom wouldn’t threaten you.”
“Wayland. Listen to me. Don’t wreck your future trying to understand the past. Knowing won’t change what happened. People always want the truth. I did once and now, I wonder why. The truth is often ugly and mean. That’s why we lie to one another, after all, isn’t it? Whoever this man is who visited me today, he’s serious. Dangerous. He’s helping to hide something you don’t want to know.”
“You said you glimpsed him once, years ago. The Tall Man. Where did you see him?”
“At your house that day. I glimpsed him speaking to your mother at the curb in front of your house, just before the ambulance arrived.” Mr. Kane put a hand on my shoulder. “Stop searching in the past. It’s gone. Enjoy your childhood. There is so little of it left for you, you have no idea.”
UNCLE
As I approached my house, I spotted my mother in our driveway, getting into the Pontiac to head to her lunch shift after a break. I sprinted and threw myself against the driver’s window, startling her.
“Roll down the window!” I shouted, motioning for her to crank it down.
My mother looked alarmed as she cranked down the window.
“Who is he?” I shouted. “This ‘doctor’? Where does he actually live? Who is this Tall Man? Who are they? What are you up to?”
Her alarm morphed to horror, terror. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why aren’t you in school?”
“The house. The office. It’s empty. It’s a shell, a front. Sick. He’s not sick. He’s gone. And he has my property. And I have to get it back. And I was at Mr. Kane’s and—”
“Don’t ever visit him again, you understand me?” My mother looked stricken. “He’s trouble. He . . . interferes where he shouldn’t. Has strange ideas.”
“Tell me what’s going on,” I demanded. “You tell me, or I swear.” I thrust a finger at her so close, her eyelash tickled my fingertip as my spittle flecked her pale forehead. My mother shrank from me, her eyes bright with panic.
“I need to get back to work. Let me go. I need to go.”
I leaned toward her. The image of my fierce grimace in the car’s side-view mirror frightened me. I looked deranged. “What are you two up to!” I roared. “You and the Tall—”
A hand grabbed my shoulder and wheeled me around to face Mr. Dietrich, our neighbor.
“What’s going on here?” he asked. “I heard your mother yelling, and . . . ” He glanced behind me at my mother in the car. “Are you okay, El?”
My mother cringed at Mr. Dietrich using her nickname in such a familiar way. She had righted herself and brushed her hair back from her face and smiled a thin-lipped smile, looking as if she was trying to keep from being sick.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Mr. Dietrich considered me. His beefy hand clenched my shoulder. He was massive, with the build of a guy who caught cannonballs with his abs when he was not busy crushing steel cans against his forehead. Bald, oiled scalp gleaming.
“You sure?” he said, peering in at my mom.
My mom nodded.
Mr. Dietrich torqued my shoulder, cranking me around to glare at me. “You shouldn’t disrespect your mother.” I could see the blackheads pushing up from the flaky pink skin at the side of his pulpy nose. “Apologize,” he demanded, deepening his voice to impart authority.
He sickened me. He wasn’t interested in my mom’s well-being. He was grandstanding, leveraging our altercation as a way to insinuate himself into our lives, to come on to my mom in some pathetic attempt at chivalry. He had probably dreamed of riding to her rescue for the past decade while he watered his lawn in his Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts for longer than necessary, pretending he wasn’t ogling my mom and sister from behind his dime-store aviator sunglasses. “Go ahead, apologize.”
“I was the one yelling at him,” my mother broke in. “I get stressed and get on him too much.”
I twisted my shoulder free of Mr. Dietrich’s clutch.
“You sure?” Mr. Dietrich said, not out of concern for my mother, but because he sensed he was losing his reason for being in our driveway, for being near my mother. His voice couldn’t conceal his disappointment that his window had closed.
“I’m sure,” my mother replied. “Now, I have to get to work.”
She backed the car down the driveway. Mr. Dietrich backpedaled so she wouldn’t run over his foot.
My mother eyed me through the windshield just as she accelerated down the street. It was a look of fear, not just of what I’d done, but of something else, something I did not understand—not yet.
I sat on the front steps, furious and confused. Alone. Never more alone.
Tease me too long, I’ll get bored.
I had avoided Juliette for days. I wondered how bored she was of me by now. Whether she would ever speak to me again. I shouldn’t have cared, but I did.
I walked to school, arriving five minutes early for biology class.
When Juliette showed, gossiping with two girlfriends, she noticed me and offered a strained smile just as she looked away. She joined her friends at the back of the room and opened her notebook, unzipped a small plastic polka-dot purse, and took a pencil out from it. She did not look my way again for the rest of class.
I faced the chalkboard as Mr. Bouchard ventured to the front of the room and droned on about evolution and how we are all made up of the same matter, the same atoms, the same star dust, and had all morphed from the single-cell organisms known as prokaryotes.
At the bell I waited until the scuff of chairs and the slapping-shut of notebooks subsided, and the voices and footfalls faded away, before I closed my notebook and got up to depart.
Juliette startled me as I turned to leave. She had waited. She slung her backpack over one shoulder. “Where you been? Are you all right? You look really . . . ” She cringed. “What’s happened?”
“I’ve been laying low. Thinking.”
“You were supposed to tell me your creepy plan and we were going to execute it. Days ago.”
“Something happened.” I studied her face for a sign of guilt, a recognition that I was, in part, talking about her and Clay. That her face betrayed no such guilt upset me all the more. “And my mom had me see someone, and he stole the note.”
“Stole it? Who stole it?”
“Some doctor. Except he isn’t a doctor. He’s . . . I don’t know what he is, but he said he was going to make a copy and give the original to the cops and . . . Forget it. He stole the note and now he’s gone. It’s gone. I think the appointment was all a ruse to get it. Set up by my mom. To get information, get what I knew out of me. His house, his so-called office, is totally empty.”
Students shuffled into the classroom.
“But why ignore me ? What’d I do?” Juliette said. “You avoided going to our classes, and I haven’t even seen you in the halls. I know you were upset when we went to the mansion, and even Clay was saying—”
“Clay?” My guts curdled. “What’s the mighty Clay saying about me?”
“Why are you so mad?”
“Am I?”
“Clay and I crossed paths. He asked if I’d seen you. He was worried about you.”
“Imagine that.”
“I’m worried too. You don’t look like yourself. You look . . . ”
“If you’re both so worried, why didn’t either of you stop by my house or call me the last few days? Why do I have to always be the one to stop by or call? To get punched, stood up, humiliated. Why should I—”
“I did call,” she said. “Like, a million times. A few times no one picked up your phone. And the other times, the line was always busy. Do you leave the phone off the hook, or what? You need to get an answering machine.”
She had called me? Multiple times? “My mom can’t afford an answering machine,” I said. “My sister’s the only one who uses the phone, anyway. No one calls my mom or me.”
“I called you. To see if we were still on for your plan. And to see if you were okay. Like I said, Clay and I were—”
Students gawked as they pushed past us to settle into chairs.
We walked out into the hallway, into the flow of straggling kids late for class.
I dreaded seeing Clay saunter down the hallway. “What else did Clay say?” I said.
Juliette adjusted her backpack, glanced down the hallway. “Nothing.”
The bell for the next class rang.
“I’ve gotta get to trig,” Juliette said. “You want to meet after school and execute your plan together, or not?”
“We can’t do it in the daytime. It has to be at night, in the dark, after everyone is asleep.”
“Mysterious. Where do we meet?”
“The cemetery gates.”
“The cemetery,” she said, eyes glinting.
“If you’re going to blow me off—”
“I won’t. I swear. What time?”
“Midnight.”
“I’ll wear black.”
I went into the boys’ bathroom to splash cold water on my face. The image looking back at me in the mirror was wretched. I hardly recognized myself, my hair greasy and flat, face gray as spoiled meat, my bleary eyes bloodshot and unfocused. I filled the sink up with cold water and pushed my face down into it to cool off.
The bathroom door creaked open behind me.
A hand smacked me on my back. Hard.
I choked and spit up water, wheeled around. “What the hell!” I huffed. “Stop hitting me. You promised—”
“That didn’t count,” Clay said. “That was a pat on the back.” He leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, and jutted his chin at me. “Did you catch the plague, or what? You look like death. Seriously. I don’t know how Juliette still digs you. I saw you two in the hall earlier and—”
“What do you know about it?” I spat. I tried to get past him to leave, but he stepped in front of me, blocking me. He poked a finger against my chest.
“I know she digs you to even talk to you in public in the state you’re in. You’re a fucking mess. Where you been hiding, a sewer pipe?”
“I got other stuff to do than to hang out with you.”
“No, you don’t, unless it’s hanging with her. And I know you haven’t been doing that. You can’t be wasting time. You have to move in or she’s going to think you’re a fruitcake.”
“Not everyone is you. Not everyone moves in.”
“I’m telling you—”
“Well, don’t. Don’t fucking tell me. And don’t lump her in with your conquests. Leave me alone. And leave her alone.”
“All I’m saying is, if you don’t do something, she’s going to think you don’t dig her. You dig her, right?”
“It’s more than that.”
“Whatever you call it, act on it. If she flips the switch to friends mode, you’re DOA. That switch flips one way. And locks. You might as well be her brother after that. She’s not hanging with you for your Nancy Drew bullshit. Kiss her before she flips that switch, or another guy catches her eye. Because another will. And it’ll happen fast.” Clay snapped his fingers. “Poof, she’ll be gone. I’ll give you tips. Write ’em down, steps to take before some other dude does. Before I do.”
“Don’t say that shit,” I snarled.
He draped his arm around my shoulder, mocking me. “It’s easy. First, you want to—”
I yanked away, swung at him, and missed.
He hauled back his fist as if to punch me. Instead, he roughed up my hair as if I were a lost puppy. I wished he had hit me instead.
That night as I opened the garage door to get the backpack with the foxhole shovel and crowbar in it, a buzz saw of speed-metal music assailed my ears.
Dipshit’s truck rocketed up the street toward my house, swung into the driveway, and nearly hit me. It jerked to a stop before me, rocking on its springs as it idled. Greasy black smoke oozed from dual upright chrome exhaust pipes jutting up behind the cab.
The music stopped. A voice from inside the truck shouted, “Stop it! What the hell is wrong with you!”
It was Lydia, her voice carrying out her open window.
The truck’s passenger door flew open, but Dipshit’s hairy arm, polluted with ugly blue tattoos, shot out and grabbed the handle and slammed the door shut.
I charged toward my sister’s side of the truck. “Let her out!” I yelled.
Lydia spun her head to look at me out her open window, startled to see me. Wet eyeliner and mascara streaked her cheeks, and her breath reeked of wine coolers.
“Let her out,” I shouted at Dipshit.
“Piss off,” he grunted.
I grabbed the truck’s door handle as Dipshit smacked his fist down on the lock and started to crank up the window.
I shoved an arm inside the cab to try to unlock the door. Dipshit hauled on the window crank. “Don’t!” Lydia shouted.
The window pinned my wrist to the door frame, sank into my flesh to gnaw at the bone beneath. I cried out, pounded the glass, wanting to shatter it, wanting to shatter Dipshit’s face.
“Stop,” Lydia shouted. “Please! Stop.”
A horizontal crack appeared near the bottom of the window.
“Say ‘uncle.’ ” Dipshit laughed. “Say it, punk.”
I would die first.
The window cut deeper. Blood dripped from my wrist.
“Say it, you pansy!” Dipshit roared, laughing.
“Uncle,” I croaked.
“I can’t hear you,” Dipshit taunted. Laughing.
“Uncle. Uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle.”
Dipshit rolled the window down a crack. When I tried to free my hand, he cranked it up again, laughing louder as I howled in pain. He rolled the window back down, and I jerked my throbbing hand away, blood surging up my arm. My fingers hummed with pain.
The window rolled up tight again, and Dipshit gave me the finger from inside the truck.
I smashed my uninjured hand against the hairline crack in the window. I didn’t care if I broke my hand. I needed to break the window to get at the lock and free Lydia. Her face was fiery with anger and shame. As Dipshit trapped her against the door, slobbering all over her neck, I pounded on the window. “Stop! ” Lydia shouted.
I punched the window, imagining it was Dipshit’s face. The glass splintered. Dipshit lifted his face from Lydia’s neck, like a vampire coming up for breath after sucking blood. His eyes gleamed with lurid gratification.
As Dipshit lowered to my sister’s neck again, I reached in my back waistband and pulled out the revolver, smacking its barrel against the window. The window shattered. Pieces of glass rained on Dipshit and Lydia. I hid the revolver behind my back. Dipshit pushed off of Lydia.
“My truck! Fucker!” he roared. “You fucker!”
“Fuck you,” I hollered. I wanted to do something, for once. Not to be a pussy. To act. The revolver was as cold as ice and as real as death in my hand. “You fucking pedophile loser.”
Dipshit sprang from his side of the truck and charged toward me.
I planned to aim the revolver square at his fat gut and make him kneel and grovel for his life, but Dipshit was quick, and in the darkness, he never saw the gun, never slowed. He was on me fast. He shoved me hard, and I fell backward on my ass. The revolver jarred loose, pinned beneath me.
