The Long Way Home (6 page)

I saw those lights and for a moment my mind drifted. I thought about the families inside those houses. They’d be sitting down to dinner with one another just now. There’d be the smell of food and the mom would be saying something to the kids like, “So what did you do at school today?” Maybe the dad would say something about what happened at work, or maybe he and the mom would talk about something, just normal stuff . . .

And they wouldn’t know—that’s what I was thinking. They wouldn’t know how great things were for them. How great it was that they were all there together with plenty of food to eat and a house around them to keep them dry and warm. They wouldn’t know how great it was that they were talking to one another, how lucky they were that they could all go to their rooms at the end of the day and sleep in their beds when the day was done. They wouldn’t think about the fact that it could disappear, all of it, in the snap of a finger, just like that. They could wake up one morning and it could all be gone just like it was gone for me. They could find themselves out here, in the night, alone, with no food and no bed and no mom or dad or sister or brother and no friends and no one to help them. Then they would miss this dinner they were having now. They would miss it more than they thought they could ever miss anything in their lives . . .

That’s what I was thinking about—when, all at once, every thought I had was blown away and the darkness and quiet all around me were blown away by a fresh howl of sirens and a sudden burst of light. Monstrous white light rushing at me headlong. Blue and red light catching the branches and the trunks of the trees.

A police car had appeared as if from nowhere, right there suddenly on the street in front of me. It was racing toward me, blocking my way, making it impossible for me to pass. I heard another siren scream and looked behind me and there was another one, another cruiser, closing in on me, cutting off my retreat.

The police cars came toward each other with me in the middle. I was blinded by the headlights. I was deafened by the noise. I was caught in the space between, caught on a little stretch of street that was getting smaller and smaller with every instant as the two cruisers rushed together.

In the seconds left to me, my eyes desperately scanned the road. There: a driveway, just to my right, the driveway to the small garage of a small, white clapboard house.

I nearly upended the bike as I turned into the drive at full speed. The sirens shrieked, the lights flashed. Now there was just the garage in front of me, a garage with a car already parked in it; no way out. Again, I looked around wildly. Now I saw the small front yard, the little brick-faced house next door—and a narrow alley between the two houses.

When I slipped out between them, the cops in the two closing cruisers found themselves rushing toward each other, toward a head-on crash. The cars braked and swerved. One bumped up onto the sidewalk, its muffler crunching into the curb as it came to a sharp stop. The other car managed to slow down enough to make the sharp turn and follow me up the driveway. He was right behind me.

I twisted the handlebars. The motorcycle hopped up onto the house’s front lawn. The sudden change from pavement to soft earth made the tires go wobbly underneath me, but I couldn’t slow down. I raced across the front lawn, heading for the little alley between this house and the house next door.

Behind me, the cruiser that had pulled into the driveway stopped short. I heard its doors fly open. I heard a huge, booming voice—one of the officers speaking over the car’s loudspeaker: “Stop right there!”

I drove the motorcycle forward, fast but unsteady on the grass. I tried to hold on to it, tried to get control of it so I could make the turn into the narrow alley.

It was no good. I was losing control.

I hit the brakes, trying to cut my speed before the bike went over. The moment the motorcycle slowed, the soft earth seemed to grip it even harder. I felt the bike begin to slide out from under me.

It all happened with a dreamy slowness at first, and then it happened very fast. The bike tilted and tilted and I felt my body going down and down and I felt my hands losing their grip on the handlebars—and it seemed as if it was taking several hours, as if it might never come to an end.

Then—
wham
—it ended. I hit the ground and everything sped up again. I flew off the bike. I flew through the air, eerily watching the bike kick up dirt as it twisted away from me. I felt a flashing ache go through me as I hit the soft grass with my shoulder. I rolled, fast, and went on rolling. I didn’t know if I was hurt. I didn’t know if I’d be able to get up. But I sprang to my feet and, before I knew it, I was running.

That huge voice boomed at me again through the night. “Police! Stop right there!”

Then I was in the alley. Racing as fast as my legs would go. I brushed a garbage can and sent it spinning and clattering out in front of me. I had to leap over it to keep from tripping. I leapt and kept running.

There was a low diamond-link fence up ahead, a gate into the backyard. The breath came out of me in harsh gasps as I pumped my arms, pumped my legs, charging toward it.

Another shout: “Hold it, West! Or I’ll shoot.”

I was at the fence. I grabbed the top of the gate. I lifted off my feet.

A gunshot. It was like a bomb going off—unbelievably loud. There was a tearing sound. White splinters flew into the air as the bullet ripped into the corner of the house beside me, about an arm’s length away.

I felt my stomach turn to water. I was so scared that if I could’ve stopped right then, I probably would’ve.

But I was already in the air, already leaping, vaulting, up over the gate, into the dark yard behind it.

I landed on my feet and ran—ran so fast I felt as if I were wearing a rocket pack. A swing set flashed by my shoulder. A sandbox flashed by my feet. A lighted window appeared in front of me. And for a moment, just a moment, I saw them: that family I’d been thinking about. The mom and dad, a son and daughter. They were sitting at a dinner table, eating and talking. I felt something lurch inside me at the sight of them. I wanted to pound on the window. I wanted to plead with them to take me in, to let me sit with them at dinner, let me have a life again away from this fear and loneliness.

But that was just a fantasy.

I saw another alley off to the right. I charged into it, and a second later I came out onto another front yard and veered off across it until I was on the street again.

I didn’t slow down for an instant. There was an apartment building in front of me, and that had an alley, too, and I ran into that one, and through another yard and toward another alley.

I must’ve been going even faster than I thought. The police never caught up with me again. I ran and ran and ran through a broken pattern of yards and streets and alleys.

I ran until I ran out of houses. I ran until I reached the edge of town.

And then I kept running.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Murder

There were clouds blowing by in the dark overhead, but there were great swaths of open sky. A half-moon shone, lighting my way, and I had stars enough to guide me.

I jogged down lonely country roads. When I heard cars coming, I ducked off behind the surrounding trees or dodged into an isolated driveway and hid behind a parked car.

Sometimes I heard sirens in the distance. Those were the cops, I guessed, still hunting for me. But that was back toward town, back toward Whitney. Out here, it was just me and the passing cars.

The farther I got from the little city, the easier it was to keep off the roads completely. I cut across flat farm fields harvested to the nub. I tried to lose myself in high brown grass and high brown stalks of gathered corn. Sometimes there were forests, and I’d slide in between the trees. But I couldn’t go too deeply into the woods. At night, with no flashlight, it was just too dark in there, too easy to lose my way.

Once, in the middle of a great, broad space, with a vast sky of stars wheeling above me and the clouds sailing by overhead like big ships headed for faraway lands, I looked off into the distance and saw the fearful red and blue flashers of two cruisers passing on the state highway. They were heading east, toward Spring Hill. I guess it hadn’t been too hard for them to figure out I was going home. I knew now they would be waiting for me, searching for me, the minute I arrived.

But I kept on. Getting tired now. My legs feeling like lead. Sometimes my head hung down and my eyes closed, as if I could sleep and walk at the same time. I was thirsty and hungry too.

I couldn’t keep going. I needed a place to rest. Some­00- where secluded, somewhere safe. I considered a barn I found, but the farmhouse was too close. I could see the lights in the windows, hear the voices of the people talking inside. It felt dangerous. Someone could spot me or hear me moving. Someone could come out and surprise me while I slept.

Tired as I was, I forced myself to move on.

I was about two miles away from Spring Hill when I saw the church. It was an old one, but I’d never seen it before. It stood on a stretch of open grass, pressed close to a cluster of hickory and pine trees. In the moonlight, its white clapboards showed gray streaks where the paint had worn away. It had red cedar on the pitched roof and gray shingles at the top of the steeple. At first, as I approached, I thought it might be abandoned. But as I got closer, I saw the sermon sign and it was up-to-date. The preacher was going to give a sermon next Sunday called “Be Not Afraid.” It sounded like good advice. I wished I could take it.

I tried the front door. Locked. But it was only a padlock, looped through a hasp. The hasp was screwed into the wood of the jamb. The wood looked old and soft. As soon as I pulled at the door, the hasp started to tear away. I pulled harder, making the hasp rattle. The screws started to come out. Every time I yanked at the door, the hasp got looser. Finally, there was a ripping noise and a rattle of screws. The hasp came off and the door swung open.

I went into the church and pulled the door closed behind me.

There was a deep quiet inside, but it was surprisingly bright. The windows were tall and the moon shone through on one side, painting the place silver with deep gray shadows. There wasn’t much to see. No decorations or anything. Just pews and a pulpit and an altar with a cross hanging on the wall behind it. And words above the cross: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

That sounded like good advice too.

I made my way carefully down the side aisle, moving slowly, reaching out in front of me so I wouldn’t bump into anything. I found a door near the pulpit and went through. There was a small changing room. There was a narrow corridor lined with hanging robes. I pushed between the robes until I made out a door standing open at the end. A bathroom.

I turned on the light in there. Found the sink. I ran the faucet and filled my hands with water and brought it to my mouth and gulped it down. I did it again and again. I never wanted to stop. I felt energy rising inside me as the water filled me.

When I was done, I turned the lights off again. I didn’t want anyone passing by to wonder who was inside. I made my way back down the corridor, out of the changing room, back through the door behind the pulpit. I picked a pew for myself, a pew under a window with the moonlight falling directly onto it. I sat on it heavily. Then, exhausted, I lay down on my side, my shoulder against the hard wood.

It was cold—cold and damp too. I turned up my collar. I put my hands under my cheek and pulled my arms in tight against me. After a while, with my chin tucked into my fleece, I felt warmer, warm enough to get some sleep anyway.

But I didn’t sleep. Not right away. As exhausted as I was, my mind wouldn’t stop working. Images kept flashing at me. The man with the knife in the library bathroom. The thugs who nearly hustled me into their car. The police cruisers racing after me on the lonely street. The gunshot that struck so close to me in the alley that it turned my guts to water with fear.

The flashbacks wouldn’t stop coming, and with every one my heart raced faster. After a while, tired as I was, I knew I would not be able to sleep. Still lying on the pew, I reached inside my fleece and found the papers I’d stuffed into the inner pocket: the news stories I’d printed out in the library. I drew them out into the moonlight.

I held the pages up in front of my face, angling them so the silver moonlight played over them and I could read the words. I shuffled through them until I found the headline I wanted: “Local Teen Found Stabbed to Death.”

That was Alex. Alex Hauser. We’d known each other since kindergarten and for years we did just about everything together, even studied karate together for a while. Then, when Alex and I were both sixteen, Alex’s dad and mom got divorced and his dad moved away to another town.

It hit Alex hard. He’d hear his mom crying in her room all the time and he didn’t know how to help her. They didn’t have as much money as they used to either. Alex had to move to a different neighborhood and start going to a different school. He and I couldn’t hang out together the way we used to. Alex started going around with a lot of not-so-nice friends and doing stuff he shouldn’t have been doing. Drinking, stealing, fighting, stuff like that.

While all this was going on, according to my friend Josh, Alex also started hanging out with Beth Summers. Beth was one of the nicest girls I’d ever met, really sweet- natured and always interested in people and kind to them. I guess it’s kind of obvious I liked her a lot myself. She and Alex were both working down on Main Street at Blender-Benders for the summer and they started walking home together. Anyway, according to Josh, as Alex started changing, Beth stopped liking him so much and stopped hanging out with him. Later, when the school year got started, I saw my chance and I asked Beth if she’d go out with me sometime and she said yes.

This is all stuff I can remember. Stuff that happened before this weird yearlong darkness came over my brain.