Nothing Bad Is Going to Happen (5 page)

“Ugh, I remember when that started with my dad,” Libby mutters, careening down the salted road so fast I have to press a palm against the ceiling to avoid getting thrown into the door. “It's all about sex and stuff. It's totally gross and weird. He and I had a great relationship until I grew tits and then everything sucked. Pretty much the only time we talk is when he gets out the chainsaws for us to do our yearly ice sculpture.” She glances at me. “You'll get used to it.”

“That's depressing.”

Within a few minutes, our headlights illuminate Davey's garage door. Eight p.m., right on time. “I've got an idea,” Libby says, cranking her truck into park. She turns toward me, smiling wide. “How about you let me do your hair? You look like a blond thing of cotton candy, and it's not pretty.”

“Has anyone ever told you your voice is like a verbal eye roll?”

“My dad tells me that
constantly
.” She shakes her head. “Dads. They're so
sassy.
” She reaches over and before I know it she's somehow shaped my long, unbrushed hair into a perfect bun. She claps her hands until I put the festive red hat back on. Then she frowns.

I open my coat to show her my negligee. “Can you believe I found this in Dom's cedar chest of Mom's old stuff? Isn't it perfect?”

She crinkles her nose. “Wait, isn't your mom dead?”

“Yes.”

“So you're wearing . . . like . . . dead clothes?”

“Clothes don't die.” I look down at the negligee. It's really pretty, embroidered with little black flowers at the hem. When I was little, Dom hated how I'd go through that cedar chest.

“Well, it's nice, I guess, but
that
thing is ugly,” Libby says, wincing at my walking cast. She makes the word
ugly
last forever. “I'll text you in the morning to see when I should pick you up.”

“Thanks. What are you and Colt doing tonight?”

She shrugs. “Probably playing Xbox or something dumb.”

“Oh. Cool.” I swing out of the car. “Oops, donuts.” I swing back in and reach for them.

“You think tonight will be romantic?” I ask.

“Xbox?”

“No!”

“Oh . . . right! Your thing.”

Icy air curls up the bottom of my coat and I shiver, slamming the door.

“Kippy,” she says, rolling down the passenger window. “You okay?”

“Duh.” I nod, check my reflection in the rearview mirror, and adjust my red hat, feeling disappointed. I want to be perfect.

“Kippy? Look at me.”

“Yeah?”

“Don't be nervous. At a certain point you're not in control.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's like a basket toss, okay? It's like ballet.” She nods rapidly, smiling. “You've got to practice it a couple of times before you land it—then it's muscle memory—but the first few tries it's in Gah's hands. Not that I would know, obviously, because I don't believe in sex before marriage. No offense.” The window suctions closed.

As she pulls away I can hear the dogs barking outside. Davey must have put them out to pee and forgot to let them in again.

“C'mere, guys,” I yell, whistling, and they bound around the house toward me, yapping like crazy—really barking their heads off. “What's wrong with you?” I limp up the walkway to the screen door. Warm air from inside the house coils through the mesh, colliding with the icy wind like smoke.

I ring the doorbell and wait a second, my teeth chattering. “Hey, Lampy, I'm here!” I call. There's music on inside so he probably can't hear me. I let myself in and leave the dogs out—they're really hyper for some reason and I don't want them jumping up and tearing my negligee or something.

“Davey?” I slough off my trench, licking my teeth to make sure there's no lipstick. The dogs are barking so shrilly that I'm starting to get a headache. I hear footsteps and look up to see a shadowy figure crouched at the end of the hall on all fours.

The box of donuts pops open as it hits the ground, launching a few onto the carpet. My legs wobble and I sink to my knees on a raspberry jam–filled, cream-glazed one, spurting jelly on my legs.

I force myself to stand up. My heartbeat slows to a slight rattle. “Jesus, Davey, you scared the shit out of me.”

It's too big of an occasion, I decide, to worry about the mess that looks like blood.

I force myself to smile, turning in my negligee. “What do you think?”

He's gone.

“Is this some kind of sex thing?” I yell.

Something streaks past the living room window—Albus?

No, I remind myself. Not real.

But was the shadow man real?

I hobble down the hallway, telling myself the figure in the hallway was just Davey—just fooling around—we're both nervous, that's all—then I round the corner to the living room and see a man splayed out on the carpet, surrounded by beer cans and pill bottles and shards of glass from the coffee table. There's vomit covering half his face, oozing frothily from his mouth. His leg twitches and I am somewhere above myself watching me scream, rolling Davey over and wiping at my boyfriend's face, trying to help him breathe.

“Message sent today, December 21, at 8:32 p.m.:

“End of message. To delete this message press seven, to save it press—”

“Suicides are hard,” Staake
said. “Davey was an okay boy.”

“Is
an okay boy—
is
, present tense—and I already told you, he wasn't trying to hurt himself.” I am attempting to breathe through the tightness in my chest. My voice is hoarse from screaming and there's a space under my ribs that seems to swallow itself whenever I think of Davey or the fact that he might not wake up. We've been here for almost thirty minutes, and there's still no update from the doctors except that it's critical. I can still see his face—blue around the mouth, puke everywhere—

“All right then,
attempted
suicide,” Staake says, making it sound like I'm being some kind of language snob.

“Davey was happy,” I say, trying to stay calm. I clench my
teeth. The fluorescent lights in the hospital's waiting room make me feel like a bug roasting underneath a magnifying glass. “
Is
happy. Tonight we were . . . he was excited to . . .” I search for the words. “He was excited to hang out.”

Staake smirks knowingly. I ignore him.

“Somebody was there,” I continue, rubbing my chest. I'm pretty sure my heart might explode. “Somebody hurt him and I refuse to leave this waiting room until they check his hands for signs of struggle.”

“Geeze Louise Bushman—”

“Two months ago you called Mrs. Klitch's murder a suicide, and you didn't even check her hands. There were cuts everywhere—”

“What exactly were you thinking of achieving in this getup, anyway?” he snaps, nodding at the hem of my negligee.

“That is a huge digression,” I whisper, feeling icy. I can smell the beer on his breath.

My stomach sinks. This man can't help me. He never could. Even if he had any brain cells, he'd still be too drunk to follow what I'm trying to tell him.

I wrap my trench coat tighter around myself. The heat is cranked up and it's boiling in here. But I wish I had a million more layers.

Maybe I can simplify it for him. “You've got to call
Green Bay Correctional, Sheriff Staake. You've got to make sure Ralph's still locked up.”

“Oh right—because he called you and alluded to some special gift, huh?”

“He said he sent me a package! ‘A present,' he said—but there wasn't any mail for me today. I checked the PO box—”

“The what?”

I look at my lap, not wanting to admit to my continued correspondence with Ralph.

“If he left you such a crystal-clear murder message, then why won'tcha play it for me?”

“I already told you, I pressed a button by accident and deleted it.”

He chuckles, wafting more rancid beer breath my way. “That's handy.”

“Sheriff Staake—” My voice catches and I stop short. My chest hurts so much that I can barely talk. The pain is sharp enough that tears are blurring my vision.

“Okay, okay,” he says gently, thumping my back. “Calm down, why don'tcha—I don't wanna make you all hysterical.”

I groan. The thumping feels nice, actually. “You gotta get out there,” I plead, swiping at my face and trying to breathe normally. I've had attacks before and that's what
Dr. Ferguson always says: “Breathe. This is your brain, not your body—breathe.” But what about when your brain is telling you there's a killer loose, and nobody is listening because they think your brain mixes up what's physical and real with what's most feared? Who do you call then? “There was someone at the house.” My voice is scratchy. “I saw them—Well, I saw a shadow, but—”

“Honey, I checked that house up and down, and everything I found points straight to suicide,” he says.

I glare at him until he rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay.” He holds up his hands. “I'll say it again:
attempted
suicide. You girls get so hyper about plain old words, it baffles me. Every little phrase has to be as perfect as one of your embroidery projects.”

“
What?”

He wags a finger in my face. “All I'm saying is, hopefully tonight will teach you a lesson about God and law. Sexy pajamas might look cute on the models, but in real life they get you into trouble.”

“Sheriff Staake, please focus. If I'm right we're all in extreme danger.”

“Well now, Kippy Bushman, Miss Sassy, I for one think you should hold up with your outlandish theories and your general make-believe mentality. You're having one of those stress responses, is all. You probably need
to talk to that psychiatrist I've heard you see.” He pulls a lollipop out of his coat and hands it to me. “Go on, forget your diet a second. I know you girls love your sweets just as much as your princesses and flying ponies and your big imaginations. You think you'll sit there looking cute, and then: a man will come.”

“Oh my God.” I slump in my seat, feeling vaguely jealous of Davey that he gets to be asleep and temporarily apart from the rest of this weird bullshit world.

Then I snap out of it and hate myself for ever thinking that.

“You ready to leave yet?” Staake asks.

“I told you I'm not going until I find out what's happening with Davey.” I look around for a nurse or a security guard or somebody to talk to, but the waiting room is empty except for us.

“They're not going to tell you anything, Bushman, because you're not his family.”

I grit my teeth. “I'm staying. Whoever did this might come back. I need to protect him.”

He leans in so close that the smell of his breath makes me want to puke. “We're talking about Davey Fried here, the same boy who shot off his own finger to get out of the war, no offense. Now don't get me wrong, I respect him for going out there and doing what he did for our
country. I don't hold the same grudges others do, no sir. I don't tell myself, ‘Oh well, he shouldn't've come home that way, what a phony.' No sir, he sacrificed two years for us before he hurt himself, and I don't discount that. But, Kippy, honey, I found an empty forty-eight pack in the house. The boy was drunk. He took a ton of pills—”

“It was a setup,” I plead. “He wouldn't hurt himself.”

“He's in a coma,” Staake says, but he's not talking to me. I follow his gaze to Dr. Ferguson standing near the magazine rack.

“You go ahead,” he says to Staake. “I'll drive her home.”

I blink through tears. “I can't believe you actually called my psychiatrist.”

“Oh, that's who this is,” Staake says, saluting Dr. Ferguson. “Don't let her get too hysterical, Doctor.” He slaps his knees and stands up, groaning from the effort. “Take care now.”

I wipe my eyes with my sleeve as Dr. Ferguson sits down next to me. “That guy doesn't have such a fantastic bedside manner, huh?” he says.

“Nope,” I mutter. “He also doesn't believe me about what I saw.”

“What did you see?”

I roll my eyes. “You probably won't believe me, either.”

“Is that a certainty or a concern?”

“Both.” I snatch the tissue he offers. “I saw . . . a figure . . . a shadow of a guy . . . I think—no, I definitely did.” I nod vehemently, snuffling. “He was in Davey's house when I showed up. And, well, this is going to sound crazy, but I think it was Ralph. At first I thought it was just a burglar—I don't know, maybe someone broke in and beat Davey up, took money or something, and made it look like a suicide. But there was money left out and a pair of Mrs. Fried's nice earrings on the counter, and no one took that . . . so . . .” I lick my lips. “And then Ralph called, and said all this weird stuff about did I get his present—”

“Ralph?” He sounds shocked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure. He left a message.”

“Can you play it for me?”

“Ugh, why does everyone”—I dig my fists into my eyes until I see stars—“I hate this.”

“Okay,” he says softly, like he's afraid I might explode.

“Don't be so nice—don't treat me like I'm crazy.”

“Okay,” he says again in the same tone. “Here's the thing, though, Kippy—I'm not trying to challenge you, but the shadowy guy you've just described sounds remarkably similar to the figure in the flashbacks you and I have talked about.”

“I know.”

“Why don't I take you home? I can come by your place tomorrow evening for an impromptu session.”

“When?” I wipe my eyes.

“I can swing by around seven.”

The cold air doesn't shock me when I leave the hospital. I'm not sure anything can shock me at this point. As the streetlights and darkened yards whip past my window, I think I see Albus a zillion times—which I guess should worry me about myself, but the thing is, you can have post-traumatic stress disorder and still be self-aware. Most people don't know that but it's true. I know what's real and what isn't. And I know what I saw tonight.

By the time we get to my house I've calmed down enough to feel what I can only describe as vaguely cantankerous about the fact that there's a homicidal maniac out there and I'm the one person who wants to deal with it. I mean, here I am, just some girl trying to get boned, and instead I have to hunt down a killer.
Again.

“Can you get in okay?” Dr. Ferguson asks, easing the car into park.

“Please don't infantilize me.”

“Kippy, you just got your cast off. There's snow outside.”

I push open the passenger door and plant my boot on the salty blacktop. It's supposed to hurt this early on to put your full weight on the injured leg. But I don't care.

I trudge up the walkway past our Christmas decorations. Before I can get my key in the door, Dom swings it open and just stands there, staring at me like some petulant cross-dresser. He's wearing the pink bathrobe that Miss Rosa got him for his birthday, and the face cream he got himself for his birthday, and he looks shiny and furious. He obviously didn't get all that rage out of his system when he careened out of the driveway earlier.

“Look, I know I'm still wearing Mom's . . . thing . . . which implies certain . . . things,” I say, pulling my coat tight over the negligee. “But I'm your kid, and I'm tired, and my boyfriend's in a coma, so maybe we could just not fight right now? You basically already served me right when you refused to pick me up from the hospital—which, by the way, was a pretty low blow.”

“I can't deal with this,” he says, spinning on his heel, all haughty.

“Are you at least going to ask if I'm okay?”

“I'm going to sleep.”

“You waited up all this time just so you could make some dramatic gesture of rejection?” I watch him climb the stairs and feel completely tongue-tied. He thinks
something happened that didn't even happen, and he's acting like the thing that did happen didn't happen—and since when does virginity have anything to do with fatherhood anyway?

“I didn't even have sex,” I call after him.

His bedroom door slams.

I blink away angry tears. I lock the front door but I still don't feel safe. “Oof,” I mutter, scrolling shakily through the contacts on my phone. Due to my no-new-friends policy, there's hardly anyone to call—well, there's one person.

“Rosa? Yeah, it's me, Mud Dumpling,” I say when she answers. “Will you come pick me up?”

As soon as we step foot into Rosa's pint-sized (or, I guess, Rosa-sized) brick house—and before I can even fully explain what I'm pretty sure is going on (conspiracy, murderers on the loose, etc.)—we hear Rosa's landline ringing off the hook.

“Hello?” she barks into the phone. “What? Oh, hello, Kitten.”

Ew. It's Dom. She calls him Kitten even though compared to her he looks like a wooly mammoth. He's probably calling to continue whatever weird Dad breakdown
he's having, and to ask what the hell's going on, and where the hell I am.

I wave my hands around and make a face, indicating that I don't want to talk to him.

“Quiet yourself, Dominic,” she says, nodding in my direction as if to reassure me that she's handling it. “I leave my cellular at home—is fine, why is all this yelling? Okay, so you call many times, so? I am here now. Yes, of course she is here. I already tell you that I pick her up . . . Well, yes you say is not okay, but then I come anyway . . . Because I am woman and Kippy is woman. Too much boys in her life right now I think and it is bad for her. Is late and she is tired, no more madness—oh? Uh-huh.”

I can hear him whining through the earpiece. Probably telling her to stay out of our family affairs. He wants to have her around all the time, but he's always saying he doesn't want her involved in my “upbringing.” As if I'm going to confuse her with my real mom.

The only thing they ever argue about is me, and I guess I should feel guilty, but it's kind of nice, having the attention. Not to mention having someone on my side.

Rosa rolls her eyes at me, and I answer with an eye roll of my own.

“Here is question, Dominic,” she snaps, her double chin appearing and disappearing with each violent nod. “Are you small child? Yes, is serious question, Dom—Oh, okay . . . so . . . you . . . you are not tiny baby child? Does this mean you are grown-up man, maybe?”

She winks at me. Meanwhile, Dom's response, though indistinct, is very loud—so loud that it rattles the phone in her hand.

She presses it harder against her face, listening to him rant.

“What is he saying?” I whisper. I've never seen them fight like this.

“Is crazy,” she whispers back, covering the receiver.

“Dom?” she says, going back to the phone call. “Yes I listen. What? . . . ‘Statutory rape'? How . . . oh.” She smiles, listening to Dom's frantic explanation. “Oh yes, yes—I see. Is sex thing. In Poland we don't have this. When man is older, we say to the girl,
‘Gratulacje.'
It is meaning, ‘Ah, how good for you child, congratulations. He die soon, cooking is not so long for you.
Gratulacje!
' Then we dance . . . What? Yes, I remember patriarchy conversation. Was boring. Rosa slept long time after.”