Just Plain Weird (9 page)

         
“Oh, so sure you had to deactivate the air bags. No, I shouldn’t even mention that. I don’t want to give you the idea that I would think the entire thing is any less insane if you’d left the air bags alone. And before you conceived this master plan of yours, did you ever consider what would happen if you got hurt and he just left you?”

         
“I never for a second thought he would.”

         
“Well, if you were that sure, you hardly needed to test him. And what if he’d been the one to get knocked out? What then? How would you have felt if he drowned?”

         
“I just had to prove out fate.”

         
“Fate? Fate had nothing to do with it. You were lucky, plain and simple.”

         
“Luck had nothing to do with it. Some things you just know.”

         
“So, you’re sure, then?”

         
“Yeah, he’s the one. He’s perfect.”

         
There was a heavy sigh. “All right, what makes him so perfect?”

         
“Comes out of a weak family structure. Doesn’t feel he fits in with his family. Still has a suspicion he may be adopted, probably. Doesn’t have any friends-- not in the normal sense of the word. Has an inferiority complex when it comes to intelligence. But he has a flexible, open mind. Strong as a moose. Capable of great loyalty.”

         
“Hah! He’d have to be…. What about his actual intelligence?”

         
“I’d have to estimate him at about 120.”

         
“Hmmm. Smarter than he realizes, hunh?”

         
“See what I mean?”

         
“You know how important this is. What if you end up being wrong?”

         
“I’m not.”

         
“But what if…”

         
“ ‘What if’ doesn’t apply here.”

         
“You’re that certain.”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“I’m not.”

         
“Look, you knew this day would come sooner or later.”

         
“Yeah, but I thought it would be later.”

         
“What are our options, really? He’s here now. We pass him up, and hope to run into somebody later on who is just as perfect? What are the chances of that? Besides…

         
“Besides, what?”

         
“Well, if we pass on him now, that means moving again, right away…. I’m really getting tired of moving.”

         
“As am I.”

         
The conversation continued, but I was growing too groggy to follow it. What I had heard sounded as hollow as words spoken in a dream, their meaning half lost and the reasoning behind them veiled in fog.

         
 
The next time I woke, I could have sworn it had all been a dream. That was the way I remembered it all. Even my memory of Eliza driving me out to the country lacked any sense of reality. The last thing I remembered that seemed real was she and I sitting on her front porch and talking after I’d helped her with the lawn.

         
I found myself lying on the sofa in her living room. I felt pretty good, but disoriented. I sat up and checked out my shirt and side; there was no blood on my shirt, and my side was not injured at all.
 
If it all had been a dream, then what had actually happened? Had I had heatstroke and passed out, or what? Ohmigod, I fainted in front of her! How embarrassing. But wait-- I had never fainted in my life. I had scarcely ever been sick; I recalled once, when I’d been in first grade, having a cold for a couple days, but that was about all. So what had happened?

         
“Hello,” I called out, but no one answered. My voice echoed through the barely furnished house.

         
I stood and walked to the front window. When I pulled back the draperies, I saw that it was still light out, though the sun was very low in the west and the world was slipping into twilight. The beat-up old station wagon wasn’t parked in front of my house, which meant my mother had already left for her Wednesday night out bowling with her friends. Later I would be sure to find a note on the kitchen table telling me my dinner, whatever it was, was in the fridge and needed only be put in the microwave for a minute or two. She would not return until the wee hours of the morning, when, if I happened to wake, I would be able to hear her, a little tipsy, tripping over furniture downstairs until she
 
found the lounge chair, sat down, smoked a couple cigarettes, and finally fell asleep. This was a typical Wednesday night for her, whenever my father was on a sales trip, which was most of the time.

         
I let the draperies slip shut. When I turned round, I saw Eliza standing there, in the middle of the living room. Either she hadn’t made a sound as she entered the room, or I’d been too absorbed to hear her as I wondered whether my life was even close to being normal.

         
“You slept a long time,” she said. “Someone will be looking for you?”

         
“Not really,” I said.

         
I walked across the tiled floor, and stopped in front of her. She remained quiet as I studied her a moment. Her hands were clasped behind her back. When her eyes met mine, they were free of distrust and deception. She just stood there and looked at me almost as if inviting me to examine her and convince myself that she was harmless.

         
I reached up to her face, and brushed aside her bangs, which were long and reached down to her eyebrows. The skin of her forehead was pale and smooth and showed no signs of ever having been cut or gashed.

         
“Uh-huh,” I murmured. “I guess we’re at the part when you tell me it was all a bad dream. Of course, I’ll refuse to believe it, and then you’ll take me outside to show me your car is parked in the driveway, and there won’t be a scratch on it.”

         
She managed a weak smile. “I didn’t go through all this to end up lying to you, Travis,” she said. “You won’t understand this, but you’re very important to my father and me. Of course you’re doubly important to me.”

         
“You have a strange way of showing it,” I said.

         
“That? Well, all that was just a test.”

         
“A test?”

         
“I had to be sure I could trust you.”

         
“So you drove me off a cliff?” I asked dryly.

         
“It was the only thing I could think of, given there wasn’t much time. Besides, I was with you all the way. It wasn’t like I left you or anything.”

         
“And what if something went wrong?”

         
“It didn’t, though, did it?”

         
“That’s not the point,” I said.

         
“Sure, it is. The fact that everything ended up all right… well, there’s the proof that it wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.”

         
I studied her a minute. She seemed perfectly clear-headed, which made it frustrating that she seemed to me to be making so little sense.

         
“You know, I don’t know how to swim,” I said.

         
“No, I didn’t realize that,” she admitted. “But, you see, despite the fact you don’t know how to swim, it still turned out all right, and I learned what I needed to learn.”

         
“Which was what?” I asked.

         
“That I could trust you with my life,” she said solemnly. “Once I knew that, I knew I could trust you with anything.”

         
“Well, what’s the point of it all?” I asked, trying hard not to lose my patience.

         
“What do you think the point is?”

         
I mulled it over, and then said, “You know, I really don’t have a clue.”

         
“Well, we’re not aliens,” Eliza said. “So you don’t have to worry about all that foolishness your friend put in your head. If you don’t believe me, you can pull on my face to see if it’s a rubber mask,” she added, contorting her face playfully.

         
I was taken aback that she’d mentioned a rubber mask; it was exactly what I’d said to Raffles yesterday-- how could she have possibly known?

         
As if reading my mind, or the look on my face, she said, “Look, maybe I’m a little better at spying on people than you are.”

         
“You mean…?”

         
“I knew you were spying on the house?”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“Of course, I did-- how could I not know? You really weren’t very subtle about it, you know.
 
You climbed into the tree house every afternoon. The telescope you have wasn’t exactly pointed at the stars. I really learned quite a bit about you during those weeks.”

         
I had a serious creepy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

         
“But look,” she continued, “none of that is very important now. It’s all water under the bridge. I know everything I need to know about you, so now it’s only fair to tell you what’s going on-- why I had to put you through all this. Come on, let’s sit on the sofa.”

         
When I hesitated, she grabbed my hand and playfully tugged me toward the sofa. I sat at the end of the sofa, and tried to get comfortable, which would be impossible because I had no idea what bizarre things she was about to tell me. I knew I was on the brink of learning something, something that I probably shouldn’t know. And once I knew, I would know too much. For a fleeting second, I felt like making a dash at the door to escape, but there was something in her the way she was acting-- as if she really needed to talk about something-- she was so excited. She hopped onto the sofa next to me, and drew up her legs, crossing them in front of her.

         
“All right,” she said. “This is the deal….

2

         
“You probably have about a million questions to ask me,” she began, “and sure, I could answer them. But it would probably be better if I started the story from the beginning. So you’ll have to be patient, because it is a pretty long story. It’s plenty weird, too, I’m going to warn you from the beginning.

         
“It all really started with my father. He’s not really an inventor. He was a college professor. He used to teach archeology. Well, every time he had the chance, during the summer break, he would arrange an archeological outing. Sometimes he would take students with; sometimes it was just my mom and him and me. He just loved the idea of going places, exploring, digging up old things. Go figure. We went all over-- let me tell you-- we went to Peru and Chile and southern Mexico. We went to Egypt and Israel and Jordon. He really loved it when he found some piece of pottery or something. I mean, I never understood it, really. It was just junk-- old junk, sure, but junk. I’m sure three thousand years from now some archeologist is going to be on a dig in this country, and find--I don’t know-- some broken Sponge Bob action figure or something, and he end up rich and famous. Anyway, the whole thing seemed silly to me, but to him-- it was like his passion.