The Drowning Game (13 page)

“Poor girl? What about poor Dekker? I'm the one who could have been shot, who had to abandon my truck, who's wanted by the law through no fault of my own, and for what?” I turned to walk back to the Jeep, but Uncle Curt caught my elbow and yanked me backward, almost knocking me off my feet.

“So you're just going to walk away, is that the plan? Going to be a selfish coward bastard like . . .”

“My dad. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?” I snatched my arm back, my face hot with embarrassment, and I hated Uncle Curt at that moment.

“I didn't have to say it,” he said. “When your mom got sick—­”

I turned away, but he got in front of me. “You're going to listen to this,” he said. “When your mom got sick I promised her I'd keep an eye on you, make sure you grew up right in spite of that son-­of-­a-­bitch of a fucked-­up dad. I'm sorry. I can't let you off the hook. I can't let you desert that poor girl.”

I didn't move. I mirrored Uncle Curt's crossed-­arm posture and tried not to appear shaky.

“All right, then,” Uncle Curt said. “That's how you want to play it, you'll have to find your own way back to your truck, and when we get to the house, so help me, I'm calling the cops on you.”

“You wouldn't do that,” I said.

“Look. You don't know Randy King and Keith Dooley the way I do. They want Petty's money, and they will do anything to get it. And I do mean anything.”

He was as serious as I've ever seen him.

“I don't understand why you're being such an asshole about this,” he said. “This isn't about the band or making it big or anything like that. Tell me what's going on.”

I hated that he could see right through me. I hated that I couldn't hide from him. He knew me too well.

I looked down at my feet. “I'm like Charlie Brown,” I said. “Everything I touch turns to shit. This is serious, grown-­up business. It's this girl's
life
. What if I fuck it up?”

“You won't,” Uncle Curt said, throwing his arm around my shoulders. “Because you're not your dad. I have the feeling that this may just be the most important thing you ever do. And you won't regret it.”

 

Chapter 15

C
URT AND DEKKER
got back in the Jeep.

“Dekker would love to accompany you,” Curt said. “So that's settled. We all need to get home and get some sleep because you've got a long drive ahead of you tomorrow.”

It was three-­thirty in the morning when we got to Wamego and Curt's farmhouse, which was in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere.

Curt pulled the Jeep up to the barn and told Roxanne to open the doors for him.

“Dekker, you gonna sit there or be a gentleman and help me?” Roxanne said.

He groaned but got out with her and each of them swung a barn door open. Curt pulled the Jeep into the barn as lights came on.

The dogs both leaned on me; they were so friendly and silly it made me nervous. They were nothing like my dogs, and if someone attacked us, they'd be worthless. Dekker opened the passenger door and they hopped out before trotting over to separate dog beds and flopping down.

Aside from the beams, the inside of the barn didn't look like a barn at all. The floor was painted, textured concrete, and the walls were covered with vivid paintings. One-­quarter of the barn was an art studio, but the rest housed some classic cars, parked in two parallel diagonal rows.

Curt switched off the Jeep, pulled the barn doors shut behind it and locked them.

“Aunt Rita asleep?” Dekker said.

“She's in Houston on a job interview.”

While they were talking, I studied the paintings on the walls, and ended up in front of one that was three-­quarters finished, sitting on an easel. It was a massive canvas depicting a little girl running through a wheat field toward a giant rising moon. I smelled Roxanne's vanilla scent, felt her appear at my side, and took a step away automatically.

“I'm so excited for him to finish this one,” she said, her eyes on the painting.

“Who?” I said.

“My dad.”

“Your dad painted this?”

“All of them,” Roxanne said, waving her arm at the colorful canvases around the room. “He's been doing this my whole life. Other dads play golf. Mine makes art.”

“Although I golf too,” Curt said as he and Dekker joined us in front of the easel. “This one is of—­”

“Wait,” Roxanne said, snatching at his hand. “I want to tell it this time.”

He squeezed her to his side. “Oh, all right.”

“When my twin Layla and I were but a twinkle in our father's eye, our oldest sister Chloe and my folks stayed up late to see the supermoon. My parents are science nerds, you know—­”

“Told you,” Dekker said.

“So they stopped at this wheat field where there weren't any trees,” Roxanne continued, “and they had a great view of the sky and they saw the supermoon rising. My big sister, in all her infinite three-­year-­old wisdom, decided the moon was close enough that she could—­”

“ ‘Hurry, Daddy,' she says, ‘let's jump on!' ” Curt interrupted. “Ain't that some shit?”

“Dad,” Roxanne said. “Language.”

“Sorry.
Isn't
that some shit?”

Dekker laughed. Roxanne went on. “So she started running toward it, but when she reached the edge of the field, there was a barbed-­wire fence she couldn't get over, and when my parents caught up to her, she was crying. She was so mad because she thought it was their fault. If they'd gotten there in time to lift her over the fence, she would have made it on to the moon.”

I watched Uncle Curt out of the corner of my eye as Roxanne told this story, and his lips moved ever so slightly as she spoke, as if he were a ventriloquist. The look of pride on his face was unmistakable. When she neared the end of her story, he took her by the shoulders and shook her playfully, trying to knock her off balance just so he could stand her upright again, but it didn't stop her from talking.

All their touching and tickling made me nervous, but I found this story amazing on several levels. A little girl walking outside at night with her parents. Her parents letting her believe they could actually jump onto the moon. A girl and her parents having fun together.

A girl with a mom.

Dekker and Curt led the way out the door, and I tried to drop behind Roxanne, but she was determined to walk by my side. We followed them out of the garage and across the breezeway to the house.

“It's a good thing I didn't go to Padre, huh?” Roxanne said. “Since Dad's here all alone, and I got to meet you!”

I didn't answer her. I didn't know what to say. All this buddy-­buddy stuff made me suspicious. What did this girl want from me? Dad had told me that ­people always have ulterior motives. Of course, he mostly meant men being nice to get sex. So why was she being so friendly? I was too tired to think too hard on it though, so I just let myself pretend that Roxanne was my friend.

Curt slid open a glass door that led into the house. I was the last one inside.

“To bed, everyone,” Curt said, yawning. “We'll figure out your plans first thing tomorrow.”

I was so sleepy I couldn't even argue. We all trooped up the stairs, and Curt carried my suitcase to one of the bedrooms. “Petty gets Chloe's room so she can have her own bathroom. Rox, you want to get Petty settled in?”

Before I knew what was happening, Roxanne took my hand and yanked me toward the end of the hall and into the last room. She went through an interior doorway and turned on a light. “Bathroom's in here,” she said, opening a cabinet and pulling out two plush white towels. “You need a washcloth too?”

I shook my head, dazzled by the gleaming lime-­green glass tile of the countertop, the matching walls and multicolored abstract painting across from the toilet. The light and color were so radiant, I could almost taste citrus.

“Is there a lock on the bedroom door?” I asked.

Curt appeared in the bathroom doorway. “Yes,” he said, “and the whole house is alarmed. Plus we've got the dogs. Holler if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Good night, Petty,” Curt said, and walked out.

Roxanne pretended to leave the bedroom, then came back around the door with a huge grin and said, “Now we can go downstairs and stay up all night watching trashy movies and—­”

Her dad reappeared, lifted her over his shoulder and she screamed.

They were both laughing. Roxanne gasped out, “Good night, Petty. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.”

“See you in the morning light,” Curt said as he carried my new friend away. Did it always work this way? Was it really this easy to be friends with another girl? I wouldn't have thought so after my interaction with Ashley, but it felt to me like I'd known Roxanne my whole life.

“We don't really have bedbugs,” she called.

After locking the door, I got ready for bed and looked at photos on the wall of Roxanne and the girls who must have been her sisters. They all resembled each other but Roxanne didn't look enough like either of them to be a twin. There were ribbons on the walls too, along with medals for science fairs and trophies for tennis and golf and go-­cart racing. A soft stuffed bear sat on the pillows wearing a knitted navy-­blue striped sweater that said,
Mr. Wugglesby
.

I let myself imagine that this was my room and that Uncle Curt was my dad. But I imagined my real mom was just down the hall, maybe knitting sweaters for my other stuffed animals, ready to come running if I called out to her in the night. I closed my eyes and whispered, “Good night, Mom. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.”

I imagined her saying,
See you in the morning light.

Tuesday

A
KNOCK ON
my door woke me with a start.

I leapt to my feet and took hold of my blade. The bedside lamp was still on although sunlight streamed in the window.

“Petty, it's me, Roxanne.”

I stealth-­walked to the door and listened.

“Breakfast is ready.”

It was a female voice, and it did sound like the girl I'd met just a few hours ago. I unlocked and opened the door. There she stood with a steaming blue mug in her hand. She gave it to me, turned and walked toward the stairs.

“Come on,” she said.

I took a sip of the coffee, smelled bacon frying downstairs and decided to follow her.

Down in the kitchen, Dekker and Curt were putting away groceries from cloth bags.

“How are you this morning, lady?” Curt said to me.

“I'm fine,” I said, feeling bashful. Curt talked to me as if he knew me, as if I were one of his kids. I realized that the previous night's easy camaraderie among family members was not just a show or a figment of my imagination.

“Have any weird dreams you want to report?” he asked me.

“I don't think so.”

“I did. I dreamed my wife had facial hair. She took real good care of it, kept it clean and trimmed and everything, but walked around like this was totally normal. I love my wife, you know, but I think I'd really have to draw the line at a beard. She's been telling me for years it's just a matter of time. She's Greek, you know.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Thanks for the visual, Dad,” Roxanne said.

I looked around at everyone and was struck by how easily and completely they'd invited me into their lives, without any hesitation. I felt like I owed them a glimpse inside my head, my life, which was a terrifying proposition. But I wanted to be real friends with them, and this sort of sharing seemed to be the currency around here.

I mustered up my courage. “Actually,” I said, “I've had this one dream over and over.”

Curt and Roxanne both stopped what they were doing and their eyebrows rose.

I told them about my drowning in the bathtub dream.

“Wow,” Curt said. “That's intense.”

“What do you think, Rox?” Dekker said. “You ever take psych?”

“Yeah, but no dream analysis,” she said.

“It's obvious to me what the dream means,” he said. “It symbolizes the control your dad had over you. He held you down, held you back, and you felt like you were suffocating, like you were drowning.”

If dreams really meant something, then his interpretation seemed logical. But the dream didn't feel symbolic to me. It felt like what it was—­drowning. But what did I know?

“So maybe you won't have that dream anymore,” Roxanne said. “Because you're free now.”

“Sort of,” I said.

Roxanne pulled two boxes of hair dye out of one of the grocery bags. “I told you, Dad, dyeing Petty's hair is like killing a unicorn. I can't let you do it.”

“I'm not going to,” Curt said. “You are.”

“On the one hand,” she said to me, “I'll be complicit in desecrating this work of art, but on the other I'll get to play with your hair.”

We didn't have time for this. This was TV-­movie stuff—­not what real ­people did if they were on the lam. What if Randy and Mr. Dooley came driving up while we were playing dress-­up? Curt said himself that the cops would be on their way at some point. Probably sooner rather than later. If you were on the run, that's what you did. You ran. Not dye your hair. I didn't think I could sit still long enough.

“Wait,” I said. “We have to go. We don't have time for—­”

“It won't take long,” Curt said. “Plus I need to get the car gassed up and ready to go for you.”

Dekker held up a box of dye. “I still think it's a dumb idea.”

He seemed so unconcerned I felt the muscles in my neck knot up.

“If you want to get out of Kansas and stay out of jail, you'd better do it,” Curt said.

“I'm going to look so emo,” Dekker said.

I actually started to wonder if they were keeping me here on purpose, that they'd called the cops themselves to get the Crimestopper money. But remembering the car collection in the barn and looking around this beautiful house, I realized my faulty reasoning.

Roxanne took my hand and pulled me toward the stairs. Over her shoulder she said to Dekker, “I'll do Petty first, because hers'll take longer to process. Wait for me in Mom and Dad's bathroom.” To me, she said, “We've got time. Just relax.”

I tried to do as she said, but I listened hard for sirens.

I followed her up the stairs and into Chloe's bathroom. Roxanne opened the window and a warm breeze blew in, then she switched on a clock radio by the sink.

I looked out the window, out over the cornfield, the long, uniform rows rolling up over the hills. A cluster of huge old oaks like at home stood by the dirt road. The sun was behind a thin layer of silver-­white cloud, and birds called to one another over the corn.

The song ended on the radio and the DJ said, “We're getting severe weather warnings from the National Weather Ser­vice, so when you're out and about today, keep an eye on the sky and we'll do the same. Stay tuned to KQLA for weather updates.”

“Take off your shirt,” Roxanne said, opening up the box and pulling bottles and tubes and gloves and instructions out of it.

“Why?”

“You'll need to get in the shower after we're done to rinse out the dye, and you won't be able to pull the shirt over your head without getting bleach on it.”

“That's all right,” I said.

“No, really. It'll be a mess. Take your shirt off. I've got an old robe you can wear. Doesn't matter if we get bleach on that.”

She stood staring at me expectantly and I went cold all over. But I knew this was the kind of thing girlfriends did all the time. I'd seen it on TV. So I pulled my shirt over my head and handed it to Roxanne. Her eyes bulged.

“Holy shit,” she said.

“What?”

“Are you a body builder? You're so ripped. Wow.”

“I work out,” I said.

“That's not working out,” Roxanne said. “That's Israeli Special Forces Navy SEAL type training. Wow.” Then she saw the zipper scar on my left arm. She touched it and I tried not to flinch away. “What happened here?”