Jaden Baker (41 page)

He ran to the edge of the overpass, dodging people who marveled at the smoldering hill, and stepped onto the ledge. It was probably a twenty foot jump. He was about to backtrack so he could walk down instead of jump, when he saw a garbage truck coming toward him. The truck would make a faster getaway; he needed to clear this suspicious scene.

Waiting until the last possible moment, Jaden closed his eyes and jumped, dropping into the rumbling truck and landing softly in a pungent pile of garbage. He scrambled and righted himself, bracing his hands on the walls as the truck rumbled on.

Jaden breathed through his mouth and wished he had walked down the hill instead of jumping into the truck. He told himself that this way no one would know where he was going. And if anyone had seen him jump into the truck, they would not see him leave it.

The truck continued its task of garbage collection. There was a pounding sound as a full dumpster emptied into the truck. Jaden leapt clear of the falling refuse. An idea came to him. Trudging over the stinky assortment of dirty diapers, rotten food, and bloody wads, Jaden grabbed the dumpster lid and was flung into the cavernous metal box as it was lowered to the ground. He remained hidden until the lumbering engine of the garbage truck faded away. When he was sure no one was looking, Jaden jumped out.

The dumpster stood in an apartment complex. Jaden checked his watch for the time. It was ten in the morning. He breathed through his mouth to avoid his stench. It was a giveaway he didn’t belong here. His noxious odor would attract even more attention. Worse, California weather was still warm in October, which he now remembered. Covered in slime and excrement, and simmering in his own sweat, Jaden wasn’t so much a person as he was an awful experience with its own terrible orbit of stench.

He couldn’t remove his sweatshirt, now stained and soaked with mysterious substances, because he didn’t want anyone to see his tattoo or the plastic cuffs around both his wrists. The collar was bad enough.

Thankfully it was a weekday so most adults were at work, most children at school. If Jaden kept to the residential areas of town, he should avoid most eyes.

Joseph’s next move would have to be more subtle. Jaden demonstrated he was not going back without a fight. Any men sent to pursue him would be heedful. Hadn’t Sam always said it would be dangerous for everyone else “out there” if Jaden was freed? Jaden saw his point.

The world was an arsenal of improvisational weapons. Without anyone to hold him back, he could literally do anything. He was unstoppable; the helicopter and SUV stunt had proven that. No one out here could control him…

Yet Jaden knew Joseph had done something to him that he wasn’t completely aware of. All those times when he had beeen standing in one moment, and lying down in another... Chunks of his life were missing, and he knew Joseph had something to do with it. There were methods of control Jaden couldn’t fathom.

He trudged on, staying to the outside of town, watching out the corner of his eyes for anyone who noticed him.

By one in the afternoon, Jaden was exhausted. He reminded himself this was nothing to be ashamed of, that for the past two years exercise had been a punishable offense. The sun, which he was happy to see and feel, beat down on him, producing more sweat, intensifying his stickiness and smell. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but the odor steaming from his body made him feel sick. Jaden walked faster, though he wasn’t sure where he was going.

Around two in the afternoon, he saw orange school busses traveling the roads. Jaden followed one past the edge of town.

He walked along the side of the road past small vineyards. The trees in the road’s center divide had gold flecked red leaves. The smooth rolling hills in the distance were blonde. Jaden loved the openness of this town, how, no matter where you were, you could always see miles and miles into the countryside.

The school bus was gone, a gaggle of students walked into a neighborhood ahead of him. Jaden wanted to get closer to see their faces. From here they looked his age, young high schoolers home from a day of studying. He didn’t run to catch up. Though he wanted to watch them, he must observe from a distance.

He turned into the little subdivision. There was another vineyard here, and the sidewalk was lined with trees kissed by fall: orange and yellow leaves spiraled to the dirt and tapped the ground. Jaden crunched a few that had fallen days ago.

A young couple on the other side of the road pushed a baby stroller. The father walked beside the mother with a chocolate Labrador. They chatted quietly about something.

Jaden ran across the street to follow a couple of girls, who walked along in flip flops, giggling. One was tall and wore short jean shorts and a red tank-top. She was tan and had pretty brown hair. Her friend was shorter, thinner, and wore skin tight pants and a yellow t-shirt. He wanted to see their faces, but found himself hypnotized by their swinging backsides, entranced by their movements. Girls had changed so much in six years.

His surroundings forgotten, Jaden followed them, watching them move, amazed. He wasn’t sure how long he tailed them, and it didn’t matter. They both disappeared into a house and he sighed in disappointment.

With the girls gone, Jaden looked around at the neighborhood. He didn’t belong in this place, it was so clean and trimmed. It reminded him of where the Kauffmans lived. Green lawns, weedless sidewalks, sapling trees, and large houses. As he walked through the little community, he noticed a man pick up a newspaper then trot across the street into a different house.

Jaden paused. Either that man stole a newspaper late in the afternoon, or the house was temporarily unoccupied. No lights were on, but then it was bright outside. There were no cars in the driveway. Maybe they were in the garage.

He walked up the path and stepped under the porch. His mind wandered through the house, and he felt no living person or thing inside. To be sure, Jaden pushed the button for the door bell and waited. No one came. He pushed it again with the same result.

After scanning the streets and neighboring houses, he determined that no one was looking at him or the empty house. With his back to the door, Jaden unlocked and opened it. He slid inside and shut it behind him, locking it.

The house was bigger than he expected. It had high ceilings, rounded corners on the soft yellow walls, crown molding, and dark hardwood floors. Jaden walked through the downstairs hallway. There was a lavishly decorated dining room which opened into a gourmet kitchen with black cabinets and brushed metal appliances. A big flat screen TV was mounted to the wall in the living room with an L shaped couch surrounding it.

In the garage was one car, a black Mercedes coupe, but the second car was obviously missing: there were oil stains on the cement floor. Before exploring upstairs, Jaden searched the living and dining rooms for a wall calendar. The calendar, showcasing Japanese gardens, had the dates of this week and coming weekend blocked off. “Disneyworld and Universal” were the only words written in for the week. Vacation.

Jaden sighed and went upstairs. He glanced at the framed photos on the wall, but first things first. He found the master bedroom and bathroom.

The entire bathroom was tiled, even the walls. There were his and her sinks, a shower, and an opulent bathtub which was situated under frosted windows, which looked out onto the rolling hills.

Jaden shut the door and could have cried with the sheer pleasure of privacy. No one would watch him wash, no one would see him strip to nothing. He was in a proper bathroom. Finally.

He peeled off the layers of grimy clothes. The shower doors slid back without his touch and he stepped inside. Brass handles turned and the water jetted from the spout above. It was hot water, not lukewarm. Hot. Steaming off his skin.

Thirty minutes seemed a good time to spend in the shower, washing and rewashing, enjoying the hot water, the way the soap bubbled and frothed. The heat washed some of the tension and tightness out of his muscles, relaxing him into a pleasant stupor. He rinsed his hair and body and turned off the shower, letting the remaining water drip off his nose and roll down his chest.

A plush blue towel hung from the rack; he used it to pat himself dry. The towel was feather soft. He wrapped it around his hips as he wiped condensation off the mirror above the sink. Jaden saw the shock collar around his reflected neck and reached up to touch it.

Holding his towel to his waist, Jaden left the bathroom and made his way into the garage. He padded across the cold concrete floor to a wall with a hammer hanging from it. Here were screwdrivers, measuring tape, a saw, wrenches of all sizes, and, at last, a pair of rubber-handled wire cutters.

Back in the master bathroom, Jaden leaned against the sink. He worked the clipper under one of the three wires holding the collar to his neck. He tightened his grip and worked the clippers up and down, using both hands to grasp the handles. The blades cut through the outer rubber sheath, and Jaden pulled the clippers away, looking closer.

The rubber concealed not a wire, but a cable. Jaden cut away the two other sheaths and touched the silver cables with his fingers. If he had to stand here all day and cut until he got the collar off, he would. He started with the bottom, cutting through the steel fibers until they frayed and one cable snapped. Then he cut through the two remaining cables, ignoring his weak and tired hands. At last, after much struggling and fighting, the final cable broke.

The collar did not fall to the floor like he expected. Jaden took the three strands of frayed cable in both his hands and tried unwrapping it from around his neck. The disks detached themselves easily from his skin, but he met resistance when trying to pull the collar off the back of his neck.

Then he remembered what Joseph said two years ago, that this collar tapped into his central nervous system. What did that mean?

After some searching he found a vanity mirror. It hovered around to the back of his head, adjusting and tilting so he could see the back of his neck through double reflections. The part fixed to his neck was larger than the rectangular disks. Jaden put his fingers on it and tried pulling gently.

“Try at an angle,” Seth suggested. “Pull up and out, not just back. Carefully.”

He did so, pulling along his neckline then out and away. The box lifted and two thin, short needles came with it. Jaden clapped his other hand to the back of his neck and dropped the collar with a clatter into the sink.

The inside of the collar was much different than the outside. Small, flat metal circles, the size of dimes, came out of each disk. Those had to be the conductors, the things that jolted him. There was no blood on the needles.

Jaden swallowed. His throat felt loose and liberated without the collar. His skin showed red where the collar had been, circular burns around his neck. Eventually, he thought and hoped, the circular marks would fade and disappear as his skin healed. He shut his eyes and sighed as he felt the bare skin of his neck.

Then he took the bolt cutters to the protective cuffs on his wrists. These clipped away easily, and when they fell to the sink, Jaden rubbed away years of dead skin, scratching and washing his wrists until he saw the horizontal scars where he’d slit them with the broken mirror, and the smaller scars below his palms where he’d cut himself trying to get out of restraints.

Jaden gathered the tools of his imprisonment, dropped them on top of his dirty clothes, and left the room.

Portraits of the house’s family showed overweight occupants. The mother and father were in their early forties, judging by a photo on a chest of drawers in their bedroom. Both had round faces and double chins.

They had two children, both boys. Jaden left the master bedroom in search of the sons’ rooms.

The first room he found belonged to the younger son, who was probably seven or eight. He had posters of sports teams and movies on his wall, and his room was relatively neat.

When Jaden popped his head into the second boy’s room, he knew he’d hit the jackpot. This boy was probably younger than Jaden was, and his clothes were strewn all over the room. Jaden explored the closet and pulled on a t-shirt and what he hoped was clean underwear. Everything was too big for him, but at least clean. He put on a pair of jeans and rolled the legs up a few times, then punched new holes in a belt to keep the them from falling. It would do for now.

Opened envelopes on the boy’s dresser were addressed to Aaron. The shoes Aaron wore were thankfully Jaden’s size. He grabbed a pair of hiking boots and took them downstairs, though he wasn’t leaving yet. Overweight people must have a well stocked kitchen, and as Jaden opened the refrigerator, he wasn’t disappointed.

The shelves held juice and sodas, three different cheeses, roast beef and pastrami, pickles, olives, and peppers, eggs, tortillas, shredded steak, and a whole ham. The freezer contained so much more: pizza and hamburger patties, two half gallons of ice cream, cream puffs, whole chickens, and pre-cooked buffalo wings.

Jaden pulled out a frozen pizza and read the instructions on the box. He played with the oven to get the right settings, then popped it in. From the pantry he grabbed an already opened bag of Cheetos, and threw himself on the couch.

“No television,” Seth said, sitting next to Jaden.

“I won’t,” Jaden said, getting up again. He sifted through the DVD collection and made his pick. It took him twenty minutes to figure out how to turn the television on and then the DVD player, but he finally figured it out.

Lounging on a couch, eating junk food, watching a movie, waiting for a pizza to bake, should have been a normal activity. It was relaxing, it made him feel like how he thought a teenager should, yet it was surreal. People were out there looking for him, and here he lounged, hiding in someone else’s home.

One whole combination pizza, half a bag of Cheetos, and two bowls of ice cream later, Jaden was satisfied. He and Seth watched the rest of the movie together, keeping the volume low so no one would know he was here. Then Jaden decided to make it an early night, seeing as how he’d hardly slept at all this morning in San Francisco.