The Break-In (5 page)

“H-h ... h-h-his room. So I can c-c-come back for him. A-a-after.” That was the plan. Leave Boris in Morrison’s bedroom with the door shut. Then go home and wait for Morrison to return. Wait for the ambulance to show up. Then—once they’d carried the old man’s lifeless body away—race back and collect the spider. Feed him an extra-special meal. Two crickets. Maybe three.

Suddenly, Marcus dropped the banana and started pulling at his jacket. “Oh God! I think Boris is loose! I think he’s in my shirt!” Bent over,
he batted at his belly, tugging his T-shirt out from his pants. Alex dropped the gun and grabbed at Marcus’s hands before he hurt the spider. Marcus lost his balance, and the two of them fell to the floor, Marcus still yanking at his clothing.

Alex grabbed Marcus’s hands, pinning them to the floor. Something hard pressed into Alex’s knee. No sooner had he felt it when a shot rang out. It was so loud Alex thought he’d been hit in the head. Marcus held up his hand, opened his mouth, and let out a silent scream.

A perfect hole edged with a thin black line had appeared in Marcus’s hand. They watched the hole go from white to pink to bright red. It filled with blood and then started to leak. Blood dribbled in a thin stream to the floor. Behind the hand, a hole in the fridge door.

“Right through me. The bullet went right through me!” Marcus cried.

“It’s o-o-o-o-k-k ...!” said Alex, fighting his panic. “You’re going to be f-f-f ...”

“You shot me,” Marcus whispered, turning his hand over. “Right through! You shot me right through!”

Alex took Marcus’s hand and held it up. If Alex hadn’t caused his father’s death, this would be the worst thing he’d ever done.

“I’m going to die.” Marcus doubled over. “Here in Morrison’s kitchen. In front of a dancing Elvis clock.”

The bullet went right between the bones, that much was clear. Alex knew from his dad’s police talk that Marcus wasn’t even going to need a cast. But words stuck on his tongue worse than ever now. So instead of going to the effort of calming Marcus, Alex grabbed a tea towel. He tied it tight around the wound to slow the bleeding.

“Call 911!” said Marcus. “Hurry!”

It wasn’t possible. Calling 911 would mean Marcus would go to jail, too. That wouldn’t be fair. Marcus was the innocent victim. Okay, maybe not
totally
innocent. But still. Getting shot was enough punishment.

“Please!” Marcus begged. “I don’t want to die ...”

Alex shook his head. He needed to think like a cop. Look at the Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why. The Who and the What needed no further thought. The When and the Where could not be denied. They needed a How.

“Promise you’ll give the ring to Lisa.”

And a Why, Alex thought.

“She lives at. oh god, I can’t even think with the pain.”

Alex looked away from the now blood-soaked tea towel. It made him feel even more guilty and even less able to think. They couldn’t call 911 or the police would show up. He knew from his dad that a bullet to the hand wasn’t fatal. Not unless it caused a huge loss of blood. But they still had to get Marcus to the hospital. He’d been shot. Emergency room doctors don’t care what happened, his dad used to say. They just fix the problem and move the meat. Human meat.

“W-we’ll go to em ... em ... emerg.”

“Yes!” Marcus climbed to his feet. He checked his pants pockets with his good hand for his keys and pulled them out.

What about the How? How did the shooting happen? They couldn’t show up at the hospital with a bullet hole and no How. Alex thought back to his father emptying the Smith & Wesson on the living room table. “U-un ... un-l-loading.”

“What?”

“That’s the H-how.” Of course, the police would check the bullets, if the hospital called them. They’d want to see the gun. It was registered, of course, to Alex’s father. “I-it’s my d-d-dad’s ...”

“Okay,” said Marcus. “You were checking out your dad’s gun when I knocked on the front door. You opened it, gun in hand. I took one look at the gun and insisted on checking to make sure it wasn’t loaded. It was. I accidentally shot myself trying to get the bullet out. It’s perfect.”

“You came f-for your g-g ... girlfriend’s ring.”

“They’ll never believe it,” said Marcus.

“Th ... that you have a g-girlfriend?”

“No! That I just happened by and checked the gun. And, anyway,
you
shot
me
in the hand!”

“Fine. Then y-you broke into my house!”

Marcus held up the bloody towel and turned a shade paler. “I’m getting dizzy. Can we move this along?”

“I’ll d-d-d ... drive.”

“You’re, like, eight years old!”

Alex tugged at Marcus’s jacket, and a hairy blond ball fell to the floor. They both stared, mouths open. Boris lay perfectly still.

“Oh, no. Your spider’s dead.”

Alex dropped to his knees. He poked at Boris’s lifeless, curled-up legs.

“I am so sorry, Alex,” Marcus said. “I couldn’t be more sorry. But the thing was crawling all over my body. It was like he was looking for an opening. I just freaked out.”

Alex looked at Boris.
How could I have been so cruel as to include an innocent creature in my revenge,
he thought.
If only I hadn’t come up with this stupid plan.
Boris would be in the glass tank back at the pet store right now. He’d still be hanging out behind the plastic palm leaf next to the tank full of tiny lizards. His death wasn’t Marcus’s fault. “A-a-a-accident,” Alex said.

They couldn’t leave Boris’s body here. They had to take him to the hospital, care for him until they could give him a proper burial. Alex grabbed the Kleenex box from the counter. He tore off the top and emptied out half the tissues. He put Boris’s little ball-of-yarn body on the bottom tissues and covered him with the others. Then he tucked the cardboard coffin under his arm and held out his hand.

Slowly, Marcus handed over the keys. “You driving is
so
not legal.”

Alex took his father’s sunglasses from his shirt pocket and pulled them on. “W-w-what part of this d-day is?”

Alex explained why driving to the hospital would be simple. He’d watched his parents drive a million times, and he knew a great route that was all side streets. But when he put himself behind the wheel of Marcus’s car, Marcus pointed out the problem. His feet didn’t quite reach the gas pedal or the brake. Not if he wanted to see where he was going at the same time.

The answer lay in a grocery bag in the back seat. Alex pulled out a four-pack of toilet paper and stuffed it behind his back. Exactly what he needed!

Turned out Alex hadn’t learned quite as much as he thought. Marcus had to tell him how to take his foot off the brake and step on the gas. He helped Alex shift from Park into Drive, and the car jerked
into motion. Alex guided the vehicle to the middle of the road, as if lanes hadn’t been invented yet. The car shook and bumped as they made their way toward the hospital. With any luck, they wouldn’t run into the law.

On the cup holder between them sat the spider’s Kleenex-box coffin. Neither Alex nor Marcus could so much as glance at it. The guilt was too much.

Marcus kept his hand up, on Alex’s orders, to prevent more blood loss. Leaning to one side, forehead pressed to the window, he stared at a passing stop sign. “Rules, Alex. Follow them!” Alex stopped the car with a screech and glared at him. “W-w-want to live or want to d-d ... die?”

“You said I couldn’t die!”

“I’m el-el-eleven. What do I know?”

For the first time, Marcus noticed the pattern on the tea towel: dancing mice. Even soaked in blood, they looked cheerful. Marcus wondered what the Morrisons would think when they returned. The bullet stuck in the fridge door. The blood on the counters, on the floor, the cupboards. Surely they would call the police. At least the gun wasn’t left behind. Alex had had the brains to put it back in the holster.

“You still have Lisa’s ring, right?” asked Marcus.

Alex nodded.

The car sprang forward. Marcus felt a warm gush of blood on his palm. He wished, as he had so many times already, that it was the kid who’d been shot. Alex got the car rolling again.

“Why were you after Morrison, anyway? What did he do to you?”

The car slammed to a full stop and they both hit their seat belts hard. A group of three school kids walked past, staring and pointing at Alex behind the wheel.

“Tell me.”

Alex rubbed his eyes under the sunglasses. He pressed his lips together and looked around the neighbourhood for a moment. “K-k-k-k ... k ... k-k-ki ...” He waved the question away.

“It’s okay. Slow down. The words will come.”

“Ki ... k-k ...”

“He kicked you?”

Alex shook his head. “K ... killed my father.”

Marcus stared at him.

“H-h-hit and run,” said Alex.

The oversized cop shirt. The holster. This was no Halloween costume.

Marcus had heard the story while watching the news with his mother. It had happened late at night, just a few days ago. The cop pulled someone over, and the driver opened the door to climb out. Some idiot went speeding by and took off the driver’s door. The driver suffered nicks and scratches. The cop was killed instantly. Left behind a wife and a child. They’d just moved to a new part of town. Kid started a new school. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “That was your dad?”

Alex didn’t react.

“Is Morrison being charged?” Marcus asked.

“Nob ... n-nobody believes me.” Alex stepped on the gas and sped up smoothly this time.

They drove in silence for a while. Marcus sank lower in his seat. He should have been thinking of Alex, now nearly an orphan. He should have been thinking of his own life. He should have been getting his story straight, the story he would tell at the hospital. But they were too close to her place. Lisa’s. All he could think about was ... “Turn right on the next street.”

Alex jabbed his finger left, toward the hospital.

“Soon. We just have to make a stop first.”

Alex stopped the car in front of a dumpy grey apartment building. Marcus had been getting more and more nervous the closer they got. He had checked himself in the mirror and smoothed his hair with his good hand. Now he turned to face Alex. He had blood all over his T-shirt. His hand was a dripping mess inside its tea towel. “Give me the ring.”

“D-d ... don’t.”

“I want her back. I told you.”

Alex stared at Marcus for a minute before fishing the ring out of his pocket. He pushed it into Marcus’s good hand.

“Thanks, kid. You’re good people.” Marcus climbed out of the car and straightened his clothing with his bloody mitt. “How do I look?”

“Like C-C-Clooney.” Alex turned off the car. He followed Marcus up a walkway, past dandelions and crabgrass, to a peeling metal door.

“I can do this alone, kid. I don’t need a babysitter.”

“T-t-tough.”

Lisa opened the door like it was three in the morning. Her hair was a mess, as if she’d just climbed out of bed. She scratched her arms through her cotton nightie. Marcus found himself wishing she looked a little better in front of the kid. She glanced down at Marcus’s hand and gasped. “What did you do to yourself?”

“Alex here was checking out his dad’s gun when I stopped by the old house. I thought, Whoa. Kid. Gun. I gotta do something about this.” Marcus gave her an embarrassed half-smile. “So I take the gun away. Make sure it’s not loaded and all that. Well, doesn’t the damn thing go off, shoot me in the hand.” Now he’d made himself sound like a total clumsy idiot. He added quickly, “Could have happened to anyone.”

Lisa took Marcus’s arm and looked closely at the towel. “Are you serious? You better get to the hospital before you lose too much blood!”

“We’re going.”

“We should call 911,” Lisa said.

Marcus motioned toward Alex. “He’s taking me.

“What? He’s just a little kid!”

“H-hey!” said Alex.

“He’s a great driver. I just wanted to give you.” He opened his good hand and showed Lisa the ring. Maybe it had belonged to her grandma. Maybe the green stone was a real emerald. But it looked smaller and less important than he remembered.