Heaven Sent (7 page)

I didn’t have to be on the look-out for the Ashley Scott’s of the world to come pouncing on me with one judgment after another, or lewd remarks from idiot boys who thought way more of themselves than anyone else did. I could actually hear myself think. I could also hear people walking up the corridor behind me.

The person’s footsteps quickened.

I figured it was one of the other mathletes heading home from the party.
Who else would be in school on the last day at this hour?

I turned. The corridor was empty.

I stood in the empty corridor for several seconds listening for the sound of a person moving or breathing. Nothing. The building was eerily silent. Scratch that thought about liking being in school when the building was deserted. The fine hairs on my arms rippled to attention. Being in an empty school wasn’t cool at all; it was actually kinda creepy.

“Hello?” I said it softly out of the embarrassment that no one was actually there. It was obviously just my overactive imagination.

I waited for several seconds. Satisfied it was indeed my imagination, I turned to continue away. I took two steps and thought I heard the rustle of clothing.

I spun back around.

“Hello,” I called more loudly, but this was out of mounting fear and not embarrassment. “Tran, is that you?”

I didn’t think it was Tran, because Jenny was with Tran the last time I saw him, and I didn’t believe he could get her to be part of a scheme to sneak up on me.
Then, who?

I couldn’t believe how quiet the building had become. I could hear myself breathing, which wasn’t hard since I was hyperventilating. While I knew I wasn’t the only one left in the building, it sure felt as though I was.

I turned and picked up my pace, heading for the exit. I again thought I heard the footsteps behind me, but I kept walking. I had made up my mind not to turn around again. I felt if I did, I might see something I didn’t want to see, something out of one of my nightmarish dreams. The exit was in full view and I counted the footsteps until I got there.
Forty footsteps
…
Thirty footsteps… twenty footsteps… ten… Boom!

I barreled through the exit door and out of the building. I was immediately engulfed in sunlight and fresh air. The sound of birds, trees, cars, people, assaulted my ears. It was a welcome assault.

I leaned back heavily against the door. As I stood there breathing in big gulps of relief, I realized that as I was exiting the building I thought I heard the faint sound of laughter behind me. Again, the fine hairs on my arms stood on end. It was a familiar laugh, one I’d heard not so long ago in my dreams, when Satan was stalking both me and my mother.

Of course, I wasn’t certain I’d heard anything. The door had slammed shut behind me closing out all sound before I could be sure. It might have been my imagination again. One thing was certain, though. I was glad school was out for the summer. No way was I going back into that building before September.

*

I entered the house and headed straight for the kitchen to get something cool to drink. The day had warmed up again. The sun beat down on the pavement and flared up off the sidewalk like a heat lamp. The walk from the bus stop had left me hot and dry.

When Amanda heard me come in, she bounded into the room, her toy mouse hanging by its tail from her mouth. She trotted over to me, dropping the toy mouse at my feet. Looking up, she mewed.

I had just grabbed a cool bottle of water from the fridge. “For me? Thank you, Sweetie.” I stooped to scratch her behind the ears. “Mommy is so proud of you.”

That’s when I saw the blood drizzling from the mouse’s nose. This mouse was no toy.

“AHHHHH!”

I dropped the bottle of water. It went bouncing to the floor as I let loose a blood-curdling scream that I’m sure resounded throughout the neighborhood. The dead mouse lay at my feet, a tiny stream of blood steadily leaching from its nose and onto the floor.

I began hopping back and forth from one foot to the other as if I were standing on hot coals. Amanda screeched and raced from the room.

“Calm down. Calm down. Calm down,” I repeated to myself over and over. It’s just a dead field mouse. No need for alarm. Cats kill mice. That’s what they do. It was a present. Amanda was giving Mommy a present. As much as I appreciated the sentiment, I didn’t want another one.

I needed to get the dead mouse out of the house. Amanda wasn’t going to be any help with that. She was nowhere to be found. I needed to find something to pick it up.

*

Five minutes later I was still standing there. I was having a crisis of confidence that I’d ever be able to find the proper utensil to pick up the mouse carcass. I figured I could use a ten ton crane, but I didn’t have one handy.

It was odd, me not feeling confident enough to remove the mouse. In the past, I’d removed all sorts of dead rodents and birds from our garden without a second thought. But this mouse was in the house, lying dead on the beige-and-brown tile kitchen floor, and somehow, being here in the house made it seem more formidable.

I needed to find some
body
to pick up the dead mouse and get it out of the house.

When Mrs. Dawson opened the door, I noticed she’d changed her hair color. Mrs. Dawson was a natural redhead, like Matt. But not anymore. Her hair was now jet black. Her style had changed, too. It was a cute pixie cut that opened up her face, yet somehow didn’t seem right on her.

“Oh, my stars.” A smile of genuine joy appeared on Mrs. Dawson’s lips when she saw me standing there, which sent tiny needles of guilt threading through my entire body. I’d only been to the Dawson’s a handful of times since Matt’s death. My reason was that living right next door to me had to be a constant reminder for them. Matt and I had been best buddies since kindergarten, so to avoid any added pain for them, I stayed away.

“Hi, Mrs. Dawson.” I was still hanging onto my alarm over the dead mouse, but I knew I needed to be cordial, make a little small talk before barreling ahead with my reason for being there.

She opened the door wide, waiting for me to enter. “Megan. What a surprise. You seem more grown up each time I lay eyes on you.”

“Yeah, I’m getting there.” I didn’t move. My reason for not coming by was actually a flimsy excuse I’d created to make myself feel better. My own guilt over Matt’s death was the real reason I’d stayed away for so long
.

“You have a birthday coming up, don’t you?”

I was getting a sinking feeling about coming over there. Matt always spent my birthdays with me. No matter what we did, Matt was always included. “Yeah,” I said weakly. “Sweet sixteen, June twenty-second.” This year would be my first without Matt.

“All grown up,” she said. She was still smiling, but something had changed. It was as if a shade had been drawn behind her eyes, shutting out the light coming from within.

Enough small talk.

“I was wondering, is Mr. Dawson home from work yet?” I asked, abruptly shifting the subject.

“No, not yet. Why?”

I told her about Amanda catching the mouse and dropping it at my feet, and that I was too squeamish to pick it up.

“You don’t need Mr. Dawson for that. I can do it.”

I started to offer a protest. Another woman removing the little rodent from my kitchen would make me feel even more of a wimp than I was already feeling. In addition, her eagerness to help was added guilt for me not visiting. I never stop by, and now I was only there because I needed help removing a dead mouse. What a horrible neighbor I was.

Before I could say “never mind,” Mrs. Dawson disappeared back into the house. The door hung open. I stood, unmoving. I didn’t want to cross the threshold. I didn’t want to see the Dawson living room, or the den, or smell the interior of their house that I knew held fragrances that would dredge up images of Matt. So I stood there on the doorstep like a vampire who hadn’t been invited in.

“Here we go,” she said, returning wearing a pair of throw-away latex gloves. “Show me the way.” She was out the door and heading for my house as I stood on her doorstep, lost in my guilt.

Eventually I got up the nerve to move, and five minutes later the mouse had been flushed down the toilet. Mrs. Dawson stayed behind to help scrub the blood stains from the kitchen tile.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself a hunter,” she said. We were both on our hands and knees, paper towels and Lysol in hand, finishing up with the floor.

“A hunter?”

“It’s instinct for some cats to kill birds or mice or lizards and leave them for you as gifts. Hunters love leaving gifts.”

“You mean this is going to happen again?”

“Probably. The only way to stop it is to keep them indoors. But you don’t want to do that to a hunter. They’re born to hunt.” Together we moved to the compactor and threw the wadded-up paper towels into the trash.

“Then I guess I’d better get used to cleaning up dead rodents.”

She laughed. There was a throatiness to her laugh that reminded me of Matt.

“Hey, umm… sorry I haven’t been by until now,” I said in a low tone.

“It’s okay. We understand. You’re getting on with your life.”

“Umm, yeah. I am.” Now I was truly sorry I’d asked her, of all people, to help me with the mouse. “But I’ll try and get by to see you guys more often.”

“It’s okay,” she repeated, and I got the feeling that maybe it was okay for me not to stop by, that maybe they needed me to stay away as much as I felt I needed to stay away. “Isn’t that something about Erin?” she said after a few moments.

When I heard what she’d said, a clamminess settled over me. It was as if I’d been outdoors on a foggy night and the coolness of the air had seeped into my bones.

“Erin who?” I asked, as if I didn’t know the answer.

“Erin Chambers. Your best friend.”

“What about her?” I asked. I could hear a slight tremble in my voice.

She seemed surprised by my question. “You don’t know.”

“Know what?” My voice was now rising with panic.

“She’s getting married.”

“What? That’s impossible. Erin doesn’t even have a boyfriend.” Then I thought of the man she’d been palling around with, the roughneck, Danny Tambor.

But that doesn’t make any sense.

“Obviously she does, Megan. A fiancé, in fact. When’s the last time you talked to her?”

“I don’t know.” My voice was a scant whisper. “She just turned sixteen,” I said. “It can’t be true.”

“Maybe I got it wrong. It was just a rumor.” She put the Lysol back in the cabinet under the sink. “I said to Mr. Dawson ‘that girl’s smart and she’s got her whole life in front of her. Why would she want to do a dang fool thing like that?’”

I thought I knew the answer, and if you dug deep enough looking for it, you’d find me at the bottom.

“Thanks for telling me, Mrs. Dawson. I’ll look into it and let you know what I find out.”

“I’d appreciate that, dear. I sure hope it’s not true. There’s nothing wrong with marriage. Ted and I have been married for over twenty years. But like you said, she’s only sixteen. Too young to settle down.”

I didn’t respond. I agreed with her, of course, but there was nothing more to say. I nodded.

“I’m glad you stopped by,” she said, a fresh smile brightening her face.

I got the feeling she meant it. “Me, too,” I replied, returning the smile.

A few minutes later she was gone. I was out the door soon after, off to the Rattlesnake Lounge. I had put it off long enough. It was time for me to look up an old friend.

The bus pulled away, kicking up a cloud of dust as it did, leaving me in an unsavory part of town. I was standing in front of an old pawn shop, one of the few establishments whose dingy windows hadn’t been boarded up.

My nerves were jangling as I looked around, wondering if I’d googled the right address. I pulled out my phone. The drop pin on the map showed the Rattlesnake Lounge about four blocks up the street. Actually, it wasn’t a street. It was a road. It had been paved once a long time ago, but the surface was now filled with cracks and crevices from disrepair, covered with a dusting of Arizona red clay. The little sidewalk that existed was powdered with it, as weeds sprang up through the cracks, like bad news invading a happy day. The area reminded me of an old Western ghost town.

I started walking.

It was hard to believe that Erin would be hanging out in this neighborhood, but I knew that Danny Tambor hung out at the Rattlesnake. If Erin was his betrothed, she’d be there, too.

The street was sparsely populated with older men with slumping shoulders who looked as though they’d played the game of life and lost.

I decided that Mrs. Dawson had been wrong, that the rumor of Erin’s engagement was just that, a nasty rumor. I would walk into the bar, and when I didn’t find her there, I’d be relieved. But what if Danny Tambor was there?

I had defeated him twice: first on the day Guy made him and his party crasher friends leave The Explosion, and then again at my expulsion hearing. He might want a third crack at me, and this time I’d be all alone, on his turf—exposed.

Stop it!
I told myself.
Enough with the negative thoughts.

If Erin was here, I’d talk to her, maybe even persuade her to leave with me. Why not? We’d been best friends since the third grade. And if she wasn’t here, I’d have a quick look around and get back on the bus and go home. That was the plan. A simple plan. So why was my heart beating so rapidly? I could hear it thundering in my chest as the drop pin told me I was getting nearer to my destination.

I wished I’d dressed less conspicuously. Skinny jeans and a powder-blue Hello Kitty tank top did not seem neighborhood appropriate, but this is what I’d worn on my last day of school, and I didn’t take the time to change. To make matters worse, the sun would be setting soon, and once it went down I’d appear even more out of place. I did not want to be in this part of town after dark.

What is wrong with this picture? I know; the girl in the jeans and blue tank top doesn’t belong here. Let’s string her up.

As hard as I tried to fight the negative thoughts, they kept wrestling their way back in, like the losing dog in a dog fight who didn’t know when to quit. I hurried along.