One of Us (34 page)

Though I do hope that Oskar will be like the old Oskar, the one with smiling eyes, who made me feel like I mattered. A sudden shower of rain splatters against the bedroom window. I put on Serafina's pink cardigan, which I somehow never remembered to return, then my coat. I grab my wool bag, take one last look at our room, and turn out the light. I'll miss sharing this room.

I tell Mr. East about my wallet and he lets me out. I'm a little late as I crunch down the drive in my boots, hugging my coat around me to keep out
the wind that rattles through the brittle poplars by the field. I see the amber streetlight at the end of the drive. But I don't see the car until I reach the second gate. I look back to see if Raymond is in Mr. East's garden, where the headless sunflower stalk sways. But of course he'll be inside, warmly curled up in his basket, paws tucked under his chin.

The car is parked beside the gate. I don't recognize it, but I've never known Oskar to drive the same car twice. The windows are dark, and I peer inside as the gate swings open. I can only just make out Oskar, half-hidden by his baseball cap, in the driver's seat.

He lets down the window with a whir. “It's open, K,” he calls softly across the passenger seat. “Jump in.”

As I step up to the car, I see Raymond barreling down the drive. He must have come through behind me and he's been sniffing around by the fence all this time.

“Go back, Raymond! Sit! Wait!” I call.

Raymond skids up to the closing gate, but instead of sitting, he rushes through it and storms toward me, barking and snarling, mouth open in a crocodile gape of teeth.

The barking hammers in my head. One moment he's there, Raymond, my old friend, and the next his teeth clamp around my wrist. I jerk my hand away and fumble for the door handle.

“Get in the car! Get in the car, K!”

Somehow I get the door open and fall onto the seat and pull the door shut behind me. The window glass slides smoothly up, shutting out the raging face of fangs and staring eyes. Oskar must have closed the window. I haven't moved since I got in.

In the wing mirror I see Raymond barking and leaping at the back of the car and Mr. East running up the drive.

Oskar starts the engine.

“Don't run him over!” I cry.

“Are you OK?” Oskar pulls into a U-turn with a screech of tires. “Did it hurt you?”

“I'm fine.” But my arm throbs sickeningly. I slide my hand up my wrist, under my coat sleeve. “It's not bleeding.” It must be the pressure of Raymond's teeth that hurts so much. “It's just a bruise.”

I look at Oskar. I'm not the only one who's shaking. His fingers have left damp smears on the steering wheel, and his knuckles are yellow. Maybe he's afraid of dogs.

I look back. Raymond is standing by the gate, his head thrown back. What has happened to my friend, nose tuned to the ground and tail thumping to see me? Maybe he's sick.

Thanks for coming to save me, Oskar
, I don't say.

I'll tell him I'm going to stop working for him when I've calmed down. After we get out of the car, while we're walking, before we meet Ril. Somewhere where there are lots of other people.

Of course, I don't know where he's taking me. I glance sideways at the door. It's not locked, so if I had to I could jump out. This is a new car. It smells of leather as it glides sleekly down the hill. We don't talk. I look at Oskar. His forehead is dotted with drops of sweat.

He drives into the Old City and turns into the service road that leads to the canal and the shopping center, even though there's a
NO ENTRY
sign there today. He pulls over almost immediately. Maybe it
doesn't apply to the police. On the right, the side of a multistory parking garage looms over the road, black and featureless. It's very dark and empty here.

Oskar gestures toward it. “Ril's waiting in a bar around the corner.” His hand is already on the handle. “I'll go and get her. Can you drive around to the front of the Meeting Hall? There's a place you can park outside it. We'll get a ticket here.” He's opening the door. “OK?”

“But Oskar?” I say. “I haven't driven for years. And never a car like this.”

He turns back to me. “Don't worry, it'll be fine. It's like riding a bike: you can't forget. Come on.” He smiles at me with his usual warm smile, but his voice is firm and cold. A stranger's voice.

Then he's out of the car before I have time to reply. I don't want to make him angry before I've told him, so I shuffle across, taking care not to dislodge the hand brake, and I sit in the driver's seat. The rear mirror fills with the open trunk lid. Oskar's face appears around the side, in the side mirror. He waves his jacket at me. I slide down the window so that I can hear him.

“Got it!” He's barely audible. He almost drops the jacket, sucking in his breath. Then he gently closes the trunk. He's so careful you'd think it was his own car.

I start up the engine, still watching him in the mirror. Now I've lost the chance to tell him I'm leaving before Ril gets here. Oskar stops by the driver's door, pulling on his jacket. It's a khaki one, not his usual leather.

“I won't be long,” he says, backing away, only his mouth visible beneath the cap. “Call me if there's a
problem. I'll see you in a minute.”

“Oskar . . .” Maybe I should tell him now. But he's already out of earshot. He jogs toward the corner behind us and disappears.

I drive slowly down the service road, past the lane that leads to the canal, and make a sharp right toward the back of the shopping center. The Meeting Hall is lit up with glittering lights, the scaffolding all removed now. I feel a pang of sorrow. If I was still friends with them, I'd be there with Celestina, Greg, and Emanuel now. I'm sure even Serafina has gone. There is a parking place outside the Meeting Hall. Oskar has made a mistake, though, because the sign next to it says,
Taxis Only
. I pull in anyway and turn off the engine.

He said he wouldn't be long. I become aware of the security camera trained on the car. It's like the ones in the Institute drive, except that this one doesn't swivel. Its single blank eye is fixed on me. Under my coat sleeve, my wrist throbs and burns where Raymond's teeth closed on it.

Why is Oskar taking so long? Two security guards open the doors of the Meeting Hall and come down one side of the steps. A camera crew follow them, setting up their equipment to the right of the entrance. The guards pull a barrier out of the way and all of a sudden the pavement is full of young people, spilling into the road and up the steps. They must have been lining up along the side of the building. Some are dressed in Brotherhood clothes, many just as citizens. With quite a few, you can't tell. I wish I was there, as myself, with Greg and the others.

Movement catches my eye in the rear mirror. The trunk lid is slowly rising, silently and gently, until it fills the whole space of the glass. Oskar should have closed it more firmly. I reach for the door handle.

Several things blast into my mind:

Oskar running away around the corner. Backing away from the car. Stooped over the trunk, his hands busy inside while I was sliding into the driver's seat. Oskar shaking and sweating.
Not
from fear of the dog.

Raymond flying in a frenzy toward me, catching hold of my arm. Not biting; trying to pull me away. Raymond the police dog. Barking frantically at the back of the car.

Sniffer dog.

Me, driving the car. Under the camera, placed with such care. A Brotherhood girl, the child of bombers, here on the screen, waiting.

Waiting for a spark.

A spark that Oskar will send.

Oh, God.

CHAPTER 40

T
IME IS LIKE
water now, held in a bowl full to the brim, waiting for the drop that will send it over the edge.

People mill around the car, some giving me grumpy looks for being in their way as they try to cross the road. A detail that shouldn't matter latches on to my brain. There's a girl stepping in front of the car, right in front of it, and she's wearing a sequined silver top, and she's huddling into herself because the top is way too cold for this frosty evening, and now it doesn't even look
as pretty as it did before because her arms are going all goose-pimply and gray. She's much younger than me. She looks anxiously around, maybe searching for a friend, but that's all she's worried about, not the real thing she should be worried about, the thing right here beside her in the car that she's almost leaning against.

Or have I got it wrong? When did I become so nervous and paranoid? Ready to imagine that Oskar, the man who saved me in a bomb attack, would be capable of mass murder? And many of these people are citizens. Why was he at the station that day?
Pull yourself together, K.
But I can't stop seeing Raymond as we drove away, barking and barking, no need for words.

Who to listen to? What to do? My hands are on the steering wheel of the still car. The stitching feels like braid under my thumbs. A whorled pattern crosses the leather, like waves churning.

Waves churning below the harbor wall at Yoremouth. Oskar's hand on my back. The water swirling in inky coils below. I think of my own words.
Don't freeze, K. Don't freeze.

Still I am motionless, while blood pounds around my head. I become aware of the key fob moving gently in a tiny current of air, as if it's waiting. Like me. Waiting to see what Oskar will do. Waiting until it's too late.

A big
NO
roars in my head.
Not this time.

There are people everywhere, like ants hurrying around the car. They are laughing and jostling. There's no way I could make them move away in time.

My mind soars over the Old City, making a street plan of the whole area. Shopping center. Meeting
Hall. Bridge, main road, service roads. The lane to the canal basin. The towpath and the houseboats are on the other side of the dam. That's it.

I close my eyes and reach for the key. My teeth are chattering. My hand is shaking. Somehow I make myself take hold of it.
It's not the key, K; you know that. You already started the car to get here.
It must be Oskar's cell phone. He said to call him; to trigger the device. Still, I close my eyes as I turn the key.

Foot on clutch. Gear into reverse. Back up slowly until I am around the corner. Then forward, down the lane that leads to the canal. Not too fast, in case there is someone on the grass verge. There isn't.

I drive the car up the shallow curb and onto the grass. Engine off. Hand brake off. Gear into neutral. Get out. Every part of my body is humming with the need to run. But I make myself go around to the back. I place my hands on the body of the car, above which the open trunk lid bumps softly up and down, and start to push. I don't want it to teeter and sway like the Trembling Rock, going nowhere.

At first it doesn't move. I see Emanuel with his hands on the rock. One person can't move it on their own. But then the wheels begin to turn. The car rolls toward the water, and it tips smoothly into the canal basin. I don't wait for the splash.

CHAPTER 41

I
DON
'
T EVEN
know I'm running. I'm not out of breath and I'm not thinking.

I'm in the shopping center. I see phone booths next to
the parking garage ticket machines. I duck into one and dial the emergency number with fingers that won't work.

I hold the receiver to my ear. “Bomb,” I say. “Bomb . . . in the car . . . canal . . .”

“Can you give me your name?”

I open my mouth to speak, and sounds, but not words, are stumbling over my tongue.

“I'm sorry? Could you repeat that?”

Jeremiah's haunted eyes. Tina's look of disbelief. Of course they won't believe me.

The voice crackles from the receiver as it falls and swings from the cord, shattering the glass wall of the phone booth into a cloudy cobweb.

I crouch down on the floor, where the door is metal, not glass, in case Oskar walks past. I can hear a voice twittering from the receiver as it hangs on its wire. I wait for the explosion. Can a bomb go off under water? If I stay here, someone will find me. And then I can tell them everything: no lies, just truth.

I lift my head. I think how readily people believe lies, and how easily the truth can look like a lie. I see myself in an interview room with two police officers, a woman and a man.
“And how did you know there was a bomb in the car?” “Because of the dog.” “The dog?”

I think of the girl who was cremated as K Child.

Jeremiah, and Tranquility Sound.

Greg, and Celestina, and Emanuel and Serafina.

A fire alarm shrieks through the air.

“LEAVE THE BUILDING. LEAVE THE BUILDING BY THE NEAREST EXIT.”

Yes.

I'm not frozen anymore. I slide out of the cracked phone booth and join the surge of people. Police are hurrying down the corridor that leads from the parking garage.

There's no way they will believe me. Why should they? My life is one big lie.