Save the Enemy (17 page)

But I can’t. I get too easily distracted. I always have. I pull back and look at that face, that wide-eyed face, those brownish curls falling over the forehead.

“I’m just going to Warwick,” I say. “It’s the suburbs.” I pause. “Thank you for being worried,” I say.

“Don’t thank me.” He stops. If I don’t leave, I won’t leave.

“Thank you,” I say again. “For being worried. And for lending me the Volvo. For asking if it’s an ex-boyfriend.” I smile at Pete. He has a weird mix of expressions over his face, all at the same time.

I can’t parse them all. Mostly, Pete looks tired and concerned, and angry. And I think I see a glimmer of something affectionate. But I’m probably wrong about that. He only kissed my cheek, not my lips. He’s probably just being familiar. And if I’m wrong about that then I’m probably wrong about all of what I think I’m seeing on him, in him. I don’t even know him. I don’t know why he’s here with me in
Rhode Island, or why he wants to leave. I keep asking, but I still don’t know. My mood darkens, my anxiety rises again. What
is
going on here? How come Pete could just take off from school? Why is he helping me? He doesn’t even know me. He’s got a much prettier and more attractively dressed girl at Shenandoah who loves him.

I leave Pete in the vestibule and go out to the car. Get in the driver’s seat, adjust the seat forward so I can reach the pedals, adjust the mirrors, try to remember what else one is supposed to do when driving in the wee hours of the morning. I’ve never driven a lot, and never driven this car. I turn the car on and turn on the radio because that’s what you’re supposed to do, listen to music. It’s a song I haven’t heard in a while, one of those melancholy songs that sounds like it should be cheerful but hits you right in the gut. I listen and I start to cry.

For a few minutes
, I sit in the driver’s seat, singing along with the radio and crying over some dumb song about a fisherman who’s got the blues and feels better with an unnamed “you” in his arms. Dad loves this song. Present tense; can’t fathom that the present tense might no longer be applicable. Dad says the song was popular when he was in college, which was a hundred million years ago. I’ve only heard it a few times, when it’s randomly been playing in some ice cream parlor or something. It’s not a song I could pick out by title or band or anything. But here it is.

Then there’s a tap on the window. I see it’s Pete.

“Okay?” he mouths.

I give him a thumbs-up, then shake my head because, thumbs-up? Really, Zoey? Then I start the car again, even though it’s started, cringing as I hear something bad happening in the engine. At least I think it’s the engine. And then
I drive off toward Warwick, remembering partway down the road to turn on the headlights, the flash of brightness coming just in time to see a small fox dash from in front of the car and into one of the neighbor’s yards—that neighbor also has faux turrets; I didn’t even know there were foxes in this neighborhood—and run run run away, off on some mission of its own, probably just as important to it as mine is to me.

When I get to
Molly’s house, the lights are all off. Of course they are. It’s almost one in the morning. I sit outside in the car for a few minutes, looking at the two-story house. A split-level in a neighborhood of modest split-levels and old pine and maple trees. I spent so many nights here for so many years.

I get out of the car. My legs are shaking a little bit in my jeans. Bad jeans. They’re too dark. I thought I wanted dark jeans when I got these, but now I think they seem too severe. I wish I had new jeans. Walk up the driveway and then the gravel path to the front door. The door’s locked, obviously. I can’t exactly ring the bell. I pull out my cell phone, call Molly. No response. I text. Nothing. Shit.

Walk around back. No lights. Not even in the basement. Molly’s older sister has been living there since her divorce. Or
had
been living there, last I knew; moved back from New Jersey, where her husband’s family worked in the trash hauling business. We thought that was hilarious when Shira married
into the trash-hauling business. Imagine having to travel all the way to New Jersey to marry into mafia, when you can’t throw a recyclable bottle without hitting Casa Nostre in the Biggest Little! What, we used to say with exaggerated made-up accents, Rhode Island mobsters aren’t good enough for you, Shira? Shira seemed to find this funny, too, up until her actual divorce. (It was sad. Turned out he wanted kids, she wasn’t ready. You’d have thought they’d have sorted through that before getting married, but I guess the ring finger and the womb don’t always have compatible wants.)

But that was a year ago. Before I moved to Virginia. Maybe Shira has a new made man who’s gotten her out of the basement. Or maybe she just goes to sleep at a reasonable hour now.

I check the back door. Locked. Jiggle the sliding glass door, which we used to leave unlocked when we rambled away from the house in the middle of the night, back when we used to do that sort of thing. Locked. I could turn around and go back to Aunt Lisa and Uncle Henry’s now. I tried. But the thought of that makes me so sad. Like, unbelievably sad. Despairingly sad. But what to do?

I circle the house one more time, looking for some entryway that somehow I’ve never before known about in the decade-plus since I first started spending time in this house. Nothing. Except … There’s that maple tree on the side of the house where Molly’s room is. The one Molly and I tried to play Lone Ranger on when we were about nine—she hung on the lowest branch; I pretended to be a horse and was supposed to run under her so she could drop onto my shoulders. The branch broke before I got there. Once she got back from the hospital (minor concussion, plus poison ivy from the unfortunate thicket she landed on), her parents
said if we ever went anywhere near that tree again there would be certain unnamed Serious Consequences.

It is time to try again.

I skulk over to the tree, around the side of the house. It is so dark it’s hard to make out much of anything about it, except that it’s still there. I walk to the trunk and reach for the first branch. If I stretch, I can just get my hands around it. Will it hold? THAT is a good question. I’d rather not find out the answer with a concussion. Or poison ivy.

There is some sort of shovel in the back of the house, I recall. A spade, I think it’s called? I’m not so familiar with gardening implements, or much of anything relating to the useful arts. I go back and fetch it from its spot leaning against the house. It’s heavier than I thought a shovel would be; hope I can lift it high enough to hit the branch and test its strength.

And I can! These small victories. I bang the branch two or three times. I’m getting a little bit winded lifting the shovel so high, then heaving it at the branch, but I do it, and the branch holds. Hi-ho Silver at last.

Dropping the shovel with a bit more of a clang than might be ideal, I hoist myself onto the branch by holding on, then walking myself up the trunk. I’m nimbler than I thought I’d be. It’s possible that the loathsome lacrosse has got me into a little bit of an athletic way. I start feeling more confident, jaunty even, as I reach for the next branch up. Which, I realize, I can’t test, since the shovel is down on the ground. Hm. I just grab at it and tug. It should fall if it won’t hold me, I think. It holds. I climb up and sit on it, my legs splayed on either side. I’ve got one more branch to go, I think, then I should be at Molly’s window, at which point … I have no idea. Like usual.
Oy vey
.

Up I go to the next branch. A fall from this height would
produce, I think, quite a bad concussion. Some broken bones. The worst case of poison ivy
ever
. But no, my luck, like the tree, holds. And here I am, close to the branch, a couple of feet away from Molly’s window, assuming she hasn’t switched rooms. Now how to get in?

I shimmy along the branch, smelling the earthy, barky smell, feeling bugs fall into my hair (real bugs, imaginary ones, I don’t know), praying to a higher power I don’t believe in to keep me safe as I attempt this profoundly stupid feat to win back my old friend. And more than that, within reaching distance of the window, I am making all kinds of unenforceable negotiations with that great nonexistent being in the sky about how good I’ll be if somehow this works out. I’ll be better than good. I’ll get up on time. I’ll make sure Ben eats real food. I’ll get Dad back. I’ll make sure Dad is punished for what he’s done. I’ll make sure no one else in our family is killed, or kills. I’ll thank Pete. I’ll do my homework. The thing that doesn’t exist comes through; the branch doesn’t fall to the ground, and neither do I.

I’m about a foot from the window, about to reach out to it to try to open it from the outside, like some sort of cat burglar, when I suddenly see Molly’s face in the window, looking right at me.

She screams. I scream. I almost fall from the branch but hold on and don’t fall. Molly holds up her index finger, looking shaken and stern. She leaves the window. I keep holding on. She comes back, opens the window.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

“I had to turn off the alarm,” she says.

“When did you get an alarm?” I ask.

“This winter,” she says. She doesn’t say, “After your mother was killed and everyone freaked out.” I assume,
narcissistically, but also kind of really reasonably, that that was the impetus. She does say, “What are you doing here on a tree outside my window, you psycho?”

I start to defend myself. Then I start to laugh. Then I start to talk. “I wanted to apologize,” I say. “Please take me back.” I reach out my arms, then think
concussion
, and grab the tree again, clutching myself to it. “Why were you at the window?” I ask. “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“You didn’t,” she says. “I was just having a bad dream. I get insomnia and then nightmares. This one … it was about your mom, actually. She was telling me that you were in trouble.”

“Holy lord,”
I’m about to say, when I hear an extremely distressing, extremely scary
bang!
like a car is backfiring. But I think,
It’s just a car backfiring
.

But then there’s another
bang
!, then another.

These
bangs
are feeling awfully personal. I hear something hit the tree,
thwap
, a violent moment that shakes the tree a little bit. It’s a violent scary moment. Another
bang
. I grab the branch even tighter, hugging it to me. Wishing myself back to somewhere safe, but there is nowhere safe. There is nowhere safe. Bits of bark crumble. I can still feel so many bugs on me.

“Get down!” I shout at Molly. “Get away from the window and get down!”

Looking terrified, quite understandably, she moves back from the window. I can picture her going to the far side of the bed. Crouching next to it. I hope she’s crouching next to it.

My heart is pounding. My mind is racing. Am I close enough to the window to get inside? I don’t think I am. Not without some acrobatic maneuvering that would leave me quite vulnerable. Can I stay where I am? The bullets whizzing
around me would suggest not. How many bullets does this shooter have? And
why
are they directed at me? A
plan
, Zoey. Think. Think.

I start climbing back down the tree. The shooter can’t see me very well. I’m sure of it. I’m happy for the dark jeans. I’m glad for the camouflaging qualities of my dad’s beat-up army jacket I stole from him a couple of years ago. (No, Dad wasn’t ever in the Army. He got it from Gap. I think he did. That’s the story he’s always told, anyway.) This is not a graceful egress from the tree. But I get down, and I get down without being shot.

The
bang-bang-bangs
stop for a second. Christ. I try to suck in my stomach and hide behind the tree. I can’t tell if this is effective, but since I’m not being shot, it must be at least moderately effective. I should probably also try to lose five or six pounds so that I don’t have to suck in my stomach like this next time I need cover from arboreal sources. I can hear my mom’s voice in my head saying that it’s unseemly to be concerned about five pounds. She thought I was vain whenever I worried about my weight. This from a woman who claimed to be thirty-seven three years in a row; was still making that claim up until the day she was killed.

Then I hear footsteps. Crunches on gravel. Padding on the grass. I wonder if Molly has called the police. I wonder if she has, if that is a good idea or a bad idea. I wonder if it was Mom’s ghost that came to her in the dream, or if this was just the coincidental moment her subconscious was telling her to forgive me. I hear a man’s voice say “OW!”

I peer out from behind the tree and see a lumpy-looking man lifting up his left foot, which has been injured in some way; maybe stubbed on a tree root, in which case, thanks, trees. He’s got the gun clutched in his right hand. I remember
that Molly’s yard is littered with rocks. I have an idea. It might even be a decent idea.

Reaching out, I grab the shovel. Then I look around me for a rock, a good-sized one, but not too big. I reach down with the shovel and scoop up the rock. C’mon, Zoey, I think. You can do this. You can. My heart is pounding, but I also feel like I’m slipping into warrior mode or something. In principle, this should work. My heart pounding, my arms not quite up to the task, I use the shovel like a lacrosse stick, like a catapult, to heave the rock at the man, who I still can’t quite make out in the dark.

The rock goes
near
the man, I think; it at least goes somewhere within his ambit, I surmise, because I can see him stop as he seems to be examining his environs, to see what has just happened. And while he is distracted, I look for another rock but then have a different idea, and run straight to him, shouting “aaaaaarrrrrrrr” as I do it, and finally thwack him on the left side of the head with the shovel. The man lets out an “umph” and looks at me, then rather melts to the ground.

Finally, I can see his face. And what I can see is it’s the lobbyist. It’s the
goddamn
lobbyist. The one from the Postal Museum. From the night this all began. Now he’s splayed out on Molly’s lawn, wearing more wrinkled khakis and a navy blue windbreaker. Why? Why? Why?