The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (24 page)

By the end of the week, school was hardly school anymore. Almost every class was dedicated to talking about our feelings. On Friday afternoon, Keri and I were walking home when she began to cry. I’d seen her cry plenty of times, but never out of the blue like this. She sat down while still wearing her backpack and buried her face in her knees.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching, but we were alone. So I sat down beside her with my back against a tree. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Of course not. No one’s all right anymore. It’s so unfair. It’s so stupid and so unfair.”

A news van rumbled past.

On Friday night I waited until I was sure my parents were asleep and I went outside for a stroll. It wasn’t quite midnight, but it was late. In the past, the neighborhood was usually pretty dark at this hour, but the fear had become contagious. Most of the houses had at least a few lights lit. TVs were on even if people weren’t watching them.
Don’t try anything because we’re awake
was the message to the peepers and the prowlers and the restless souls like me.

It had been a week since I’d seen Fiona, since we’d walked through the snow and stood outside of Charlie’s house. I followed the same path, replaying our conversation in my head.

You’re so much better here.

I still didn’t understand what she meant by that. Except for the occasional vacation, I had never been anywhere but Thessaly. Maybe it was Fiona’s way of saying that while
I
fit in here,
she
didn’t. Maybe it was her way of telling me not to follow her. As if I had any idea where she went. Or even
if
she went. Maybe someone did get to her. But if not Dorian, then who?

I stopped in front of the Dwyer house. Kyle was leaning against the side of his van and smoking a cigarette. He motioned for me to join him.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“You okay?” I asked.

Kyle opened his mouth but didn’t breathe. The smoke drifted out slowly, hugging his face and climbing into the air. When it had all escaped, he said, “What’d you get me into, kid?”

“I didn’t—”

“They searched my van, my room, took my fingerprints.”

“They didn’t find…?”

“They didn’t find anything,” he assured me. “Because I didn’t do anything. What happened, kid? They’re saying Uncle’s not a suspect?”

“That’s what they told me.”

“And did they also tell you that I am?”

“Sort of.”

“Chriiiist.” He took another drag.

“I know you didn’t do anything. And I didn’t tell them anything. I’m a kid who can keep secrets.”

Kyle sent a blast of smoke out his nose and looked up at the moon. “So if I hit the road like I’ve been needing to, what are people gonna think? They’re gonna think I’m some perv running from justice.”

“No they won’t.”

“How old are you again, Alistair?”

“I’m almost thirteen.”
Almost
was relative. I still had a few months to go.

“Yeah, and someday you’ll be eighteen.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. And we stood there for a few minutes, looking at the moon. As soon as Kyle burned it down to the end, he flicked his cigarette at a puddle near the edge of the driveway and walked to his house.

*   *   *

Back in my room, I pulled out the box Fiona had given me and I put on her grandfather’s tweed jacket and I sat in the corner in the beanbag chair and I listened to the tape of that first interview we did. It was only about a month old, but it felt ancient, an artifact from another era, an age when Fiona was solid and real.

Play. Stop. Rewind. Play. Stop. Rewind.
I listened to it so much that it came to a point where I didn’t even need to hit
Play
anymore. I could summon the words whenever I wanted. Fiona’s voice was in my head.

Because we’re weirdos, Alistair. We’re the aliens.

V
ETERANS
D
AY

There was a parade for Veterans Day, and a few dozen uniformed men marched through the center of Thessaly, followed by the football team and the cheerleaders and bagpipers and anyone, it seemed, who liked to parade. Dorian wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure if he even owned a uniform anymore.

Actually, no one in Fiona’s family attended, but there were missing posters stapled or taped to every utility pole that lined the street. The Elks Club made their way through the crowd with clipboards and asked people to sign up for search parties. Our family was camped out in lawn chairs near the memorial tree. When the clipboards reached us, my mom only put down two names: hers and my dad’s.

“Why didn’t you put me and Alistair on the list?” Keri asked.

“We don’t want you coming upon something that your mind will never shake,” my dad said.

He had a good point. I didn’t want that either. Not all memories rot away. Some sprout fungus. “What happened with you and Fiona’s parents?” I asked. “You used to be good friends.”

My dad looked at me like he did whenever he had to report that it was time to turn off the TV or to go to bed. “We didn’t like them,” he stated. “I know that sounds harsh, but it’s that simple.”

“They’re individuals,” my mom added. “Let’s leave it at that.”

“No,” my dad snapped. “For once, let’s not leave it at that. The kids should know. The Loomises didn’t love that girl. They didn’t want that girl. They told us as much.”

“They told you what?” I asked.

I had never seen my dad so riled up about something. My mom gave him a disapproving look and whispered, “They didn’t say that, Rich.”

“They might as well have,” my dad replied. “They’re our neighbors, so we gave them a shot, but sometimes what’s worse than people lying to you is people being too honest.”

“Did they really not love her? Not want her?” I asked.

My mom shook her head. “That was years ago. All parents get annoyed and say things they don’t mean. She’s their daughter. Of course they love her. And they miss her dearly. They’re in a terrible place right now. I’ve been speaking to her mother on the phone almost every night. They can barely function. They need our support. Everybody’s. The whole town’s.”

At the tail end of the parade, a group of veterans carried spools of wire and bulbs. Firemen propped ladders against the memorial tree, and the veterans climbed and strung up the blue lights, wrapping them around the tree in a spiral, passing the spools from ladder to ladder. As always, they were going to wait until Christmas Eve to turn them on.

“Why don’t they do this on Memorial Day?” Keri asked. “Isn’t today when you’re supposed to remember the ones who lived?”

“It’s tradition,” my mom said. “A tribute to start the holiday season.”

“Do you have to die in war to get a light?” Keri asked.

“That’s why they call it a tribute,” my dad said. “These people made the ultimate sacrifice for you and me and the entire country.”

“They should have lights for anyone who died who shouldn’t be dead,” Keri added. “You know, anyone who died too early.”

I knew what she was getting at, and I started to say, “You mean like—”

But my mom cut me off. “Oh, Keri,” she said with a sigh. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t even think like that. We don’t know anything yet.”

S
UNDAY
, N
OVEMBER
12

TO

F
RIDAY
, N
OVEMBER
17

The next week went much like the one before it. My head buzzed. My bones ached. I flew through the days on autopilot, hardly knowing which one was which. Teachers tried to return our classes to the normal and the comfortable, but school was plagued with rumors about men in rusty cars and old farmhouses in the woods with secret cellars where someone could be squirreled away.

“They worship the devil,” Sanjay whispered to me in gym class. “Out there in the boonies. Sacrifice cats and stuff. I saw it once, drove out with my brother, and he showed me some bones and spray-painted pentagrams.”

Police officers came and went from the main office, and a security guard was hired to make sure no one was sneaking out at lunch or during study hall. Kids who lived within walking distance of the school had to bring home release forms for parents to sign. My parents signed, but made Keri and me promise not to walk alone.

It was impossible to avoid Charlie. Even though I knew his schedule and planned my routes through the halls around it, he was always there at lunch and on the front steps in the morning, joking with new friends like Ken Wagner and Kelly Dubois, who were either impressed by Charlie’s deformed hands or by his omnipresent laptop and his satchel full of floppy disks. Those hands were no longer wrapped in gauze, but Charlie wore thin leather gloves. Stuffing filled the empty glove fingers, so it was hard to tell which ones were flesh and blood and which ones were fluff.

Whenever Charlie saw me, he gave me a respectful nod and mouthed the same thing.

Sorry.

Word spread that Fiona was my girlfriend, and I got a lot of sorrys like that, including ones from Trevor and Mike. Even Kendra and Fay-Renee sat next to me at lunch one afternoon and pulled out a Ziploc of Oreos. Kendra passed me a few, and they each took a handful. We ate in silence, until Fay-Renee closed her eyes and rested her head on the table. Kendra rubbed Fay-Renee’s back and then stood, pulled Fay-Renee from her chair, and led her out of the cafeteria, but not before telling me, “We’re sorry for being jealous. Fiona really liked you.”

It was meant to comfort, but it didn’t. Instead it made me feel like this was all the result of my mistakes. That if I had tried harder, or listened better, or done just about anything other than what I had done, then this wouldn’t have happened. And maybe that was the truth of it.

Each evening there was an update on the news about the search for Fiona. My parents accompanied every group that combed the woods and the fields. Divers descended to the bottom of lakes and experts came from somewhere in the Midwest to help dredge the Oriskanny. A yearbook picture appeared on milk cartons. There were no suspects and there was no evidence, at least not any the media was aware of, so numerous sources still listed Fiona as a possible runaway.

I heard that Derek and Maria had been driving from city to city, as far as New York and Boston and even Montreal. They brought along the missing posters and handed them out at homeless shelters and to groups of wayward teens who hung out in parks and under bridges.

Back in the neighborhood, I would see Dorian’s truck sometimes, and Kyle’s van sometimes, quietly gliding through the streets like they were trying to evade detection. Or maybe that was just how I perceived it. Maybe that’s how they always drove. Maybe, suddenly, I was the one who wanted to stay hidden.

Charlie is the Riverman. Charlie is the Riverman. Charlie is the Riverman.

I kept telling myself this, because it was the last thing that Fiona told me. She wanted me to know it, to believe it.

In my basement we had our own boiler, tucked in the corner where the floor was concrete. I spent Friday night sitting on a plastic tub of driveway sealant with a flashlight in my lap, and I watched that boiler. It didn’t disappear. It didn’t speak to me. It hardly made a sound.

Before going back upstairs, I peeled the top off the tub of driveway sealant and pointed a beam of light into it. It was a colorless liquid, but it shimmered. I wondered what Charlie would look like if he were coated in the stuff. I tried to imagine a tiny version of him, rising out of the tub like a creature made of the night sky. But all I could see was a specter of my face reflected in the shimmer.

I put the sole of my slipper on the top rim of the tub and I tipped it back and held it at an angle. It started to tip over, so I let it. The tub hit the concrete floor, and the liquid spilled out and spread. The slope of the floor pulled the liquid away from me, and soon there was a black river running across the basement. I spent the rest of the night mopping it up.

S
ATURDAY
, N
OVEMBER
18

The weekend started when the doorbell rang and I was like the salivating dog in that famous experiment. The bell was more than a bell to me. It meant Fiona.

I launched myself from bed and was at the door before I realized I wasn’t dressed for company. Not that I cared. The only thing that mattered was finding her on that doorstep and making a pact to start over. Pledging to do whatever she needed this time around, so long as it kept her home.

That hair. That skin. Those eyes. They were nearly the same, but the person at the door wasn’t Fiona. It was her mom.

“I’m so sorry to wake you,” she said.

“It’s okay. I was up.”

She held out a key. “Your mom is expecting this. We’re leaving for a few days. The police know where, but we’re ridding ourselves of reporters for a bit.”

I took the key. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her empty hands suddenly perplexed her. She stroked and tapped the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other. “How are we doing?” she asked.

“Um … okay. And you?”

“Getting by.” She giggled the words out, but it wasn’t really like she was laughing. Her shaking fingertips then touched her lips, but instead of bringing them to my forehead like Fiona might have done, she held them in the air for a second. “Thank you, Alistair. You’ve always been a good boy.”

The Loomises’ station wagon was in our driveway, engine running. She turned and hurried back to it, skipping from our steps to our brick walkway like someone half her age. Dorian sat in the backseat next to Maria and Derek. From behind the wheel, Fiona’s dad was watching me. I closed the door so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye.

When my mom got out of bed a few minutes later, I gave her the key.

“I’m watering the plants, feeding the fish, getting the mail. Neighbor stuff,” she explained as she hung the key on a hook in the kitchen. “It’s good for them to get away for a bit. And Dad and I think it might be good for us to get away too, at least for today.”