The Telling (26 page)

“Are you and your mom going to bury Twinkie and Winkie at your house?” I ask. It feels mean to bring the little dead dogs up, so I do.

Carolynn watches me from the corner of her eye as Becca shakes her head. “Nope. We're going to—what is it called when they incinerate them in a giant oven?”

“Cremate,” I supply.

“Yeah, Mom brought them to the vet to be cremated.” Becca sighs. “I wish teacup pigs weren't so over—they're only for losers now, though. I guess I'll get a kitten next. I've always wanted one of those famous cats on Instagram.” She rests her elbow on the seat back and cups her chin dreamily.

“
Pussycat
,” Duncan calls for no apparent reason other than he's Duncan.

“My cousin's cat has two hundred thousand followers,” Carolynn says.

Josh twists around. “That's insane.” We pass under a streetlamp, and his features sharpen in the light. “What does the cat do?”

Becca giggles. “Duh. It's cute and famous.”

Josh runs a hand through his hair and faces front. He doesn't do all the posting and picture taking that a lot of boys do. He always seems
here
. He's not disembodied and existing in his phone or wondering how he looks in a picture like Duncan or obsessively texting
with teammates like Rusty or wanting to tell lesser friends what a sick time he's having with his best friends.

My knees bounce. I've had two sips of schnapps and fuzziness is spreading through my veins. I am a candy cane. I am an unfocused smile and anticipation. I'm concealing a murder weapon in my childhood hidey-spot. Two people have shown up dead, and I suspect Ben of having everything to do with it. Dust is settling in Maggie's print on Ben's desk, and I haven't even started to decipher why she risked ghosting through our house. These are some of the reasons that I should be sluggish with worry. Instead they seem distant annoyances, blunted, happening to my favorite characters on television rather than me. I can easily imagine Ben sharing the third row with me and Rusty.

Rusty gulps the schnapps, pounds his chest to free a burp, and offers me the flask again. “Don't wuss out on me, McBrook,” he says when I hesitate. I take the flask and tip it to my lips. He elbows my side. “There ya go. You're all right,” he says offhandedly and then shouts, “Heads up, bro,” as he tosses the flask to Josh.

I smile. Tonight is for Ben. And what's more, I feel like I belong in this moment. I am entrenched. I am heels dug into the ground. I know that amid the clutter on the floor of this practically new SUV is my pair of pink Havaianas, forgotten after a bonfire a week ago, the day before we found Maggie. I know that the wad of putty the color of dead flesh in the cup holder is Carolynn's grape bubble gum, and I remember Carolynn and Becca's debate about the virtues of watermelon versus grape flavoring. It ended in a stalemate. I also know that while Duncan will have an embolism when he finds it, he would drive this car into a brick wall if it would make his friends happy. It's all selfishness,
loyalty, jokes, and insults delivered with the subtext
I love you
.

Their togetherness is what always struck me most about the core. How close they appeared made them seem distant, a separate species, even when surrounded by peripheral friends. They operate as a single organism. They arrive together; they leave together. They are the five stars of a constellation. They have an authentic shared history like the one Ben and I wished for. A force drew them to one another at the start of grade school. It could have been the gravitational pull of Josh's red corduroy pants.

“Did you bring the crowbar?” Duncan breaks into my thoughts.

“Bro, I said yes when you asked five minutes ago,” Rusty says. He slaps my thigh lightly and thrusts his chin at Duncan. “You'd think this was the first time he ever planned a B and E. That's breaking and entering,” he clarifies when he sees I'm confused.

Josh must hear because he shouts, “Is everyone wearing gloves? No one can leave fingerprints.” A chorus of affirming groans and
yeah we know
s and Becca giggles. I confirm that my mittens are still tucked inside my jean pocket.

Duncan snorts. “I told you that my parents are on the board at the museum. If we get caught, no way will they call the cops and risk losing all those fat checks from Mommy and Daddy.”

“Or your dad will throw us under the bus to save you,” Carolynn remarks.

Duncan steers the car suddenly to the shoulder and slows. He twists to look Carolynn in the eye. “Car, I'd confess to the cops before I'd let you guys take all the heat. I may be a prick, but I'm a loyal one.” Carolynn's still staring at him when his attention returns to the road.

The flask goes round and round. My lips go from tingly to numb
as we drive alongside the harbor and eventually reach the south end, where commercial fishing rigs are docked. Beyond them a string of warehouses extend until Gant's downtown dies into the forest. Most of the warehouses were used by the old mining and logging companies and are now empty except when an art show or indoor festival pops up inside. The last warehouse before the preserve holds the Gant Wildlife Rehabilitation Museum.

Any woodsy rodent, bird, or mammal that's injured and rescued is delivered to the museum's vets. As the animals are nursed back to health, they serve as exhibits in the museum. Kids press their runny noses against the glass partitions, watching the furry, feathered, and scaly creatures heal.

Ben would point at a raccoon that ingested trash, or a baby hawk that fell from its nest and was stoned by a few children, or an owl that was hit by a car, and say,
See. We're a blight—a human disease—on animals
. I never knew what to say in response, but the evidence he pointed to was hard to deny. He thought it was wrong to put the sick or injured critters on display for kids. And then, at the time he started articulating how selfish he thought Gant was, Winnie, the bald eagle, became a symbol of that selfishness to Ben.

Winnie—the least majestic name an eagle could ever be christened—was injured seven years ago when she snatched a salmon from an estuary. The salmon had swallowed a fisherman's hook and so Winnie swallowed it too. It worked its way into her stomach lining and she collapsed out of the sky.

For months Winnie underwent medical treatment at the museum. Updates were printed on the front page of Gant's newspaper, and adults and kids were always buzzing over Winnie the resident celebrity.
Then a bunch of environmental groups heard about Gant Island's injured bald eagle. The groups demanded to know when she'd be released into the wild. They got a biologist to write a letter to a newspaper about the town needing to protect Winnie's habitat once she was released. The scientist warned against keeping her in captivity for too long; they didn't want her to forget how to live in the wild. The groups protested every time there was another acre of forest chopped down and a fro-yo, or cupcake, or wine shop planned. Pretty soon the environmentalists were accusing Gant of not allowing enough space for Winnie to transition back to the wild. Gant's brilliant solution: keep Winnie caged for the rest of her life.

Before either of us could drive, Dad would drop Ben and me off at the museum on the weekends. I moved with the flow of kids, staring glaze-eyed at the sparrows with their wings in splints, and the baby gopher snakes learning to hunt trapped white mice. Ben stood unmovable in front of Winnie's enclosure.

He wanted to help her and to rebel against Gant and what it had done to keep her caged. I'm not sure why he never tried to rescue her himself. No matter. We'll free Winnie for Ben.

We pull to the rear of the museum, where a chain-link fence cordons off the loading dock. Duncan parks between two mammoth Dumpsters, and we pile out. During their stakeout, Duncan and Rusty watched the last employee leave and padlock the garage-style door of the rear entrance. The lock is the simple kind we use on lockers at school. Busting the padlock will be quieter than breaking a window or forcing open the front door. Besides, it's less like breaking in if we sneak in through the back.

I face the fence. The metal chain links pixelate the long building's
silhouette. My mittened hands do that weak I-can't-form-a-fist thing. I believe that if we get caught, Duncan won't let us shoulder the blame, and his parents will have no choice but to protect us all to prevent him from accepting responsibility. Duncan is loyal. More importantly, we won't get caught, and this is
right
. Winnie is a captive. She doesn't belong in a cage. The wildlife museum doesn't
own
her. I stomp, driving my heel into the pavement, and flex my fingers.

Josh and Rusty are hunchbacked with our supplies. They're all wiry, lithe limbs on the gently swaying fence. Duncan is less graceful, but he gets up and over without trouble. Becca and Carolynn will stay in the locked SUV to serve as lookouts while we're inside. If they see a patrol car or anyone coming, they'll call Josh's cell and we'll evacuate.

There are gaping holes in the plan—like what if there isn't time to run through the museum and escape over the fence? Or what if someone spots the SUV parked with no apparent purpose and calls the police rather than the museum's administration? I think it's hard for everyone to be afraid of getting in trouble when there are dead bodies stacking up and we're no longer suspects. Why would Gant PD care about us liberating an eagle when there are real crimes being committed?

I draw a deep breath; the air's briny and thick without the wind. Hand crosses over hand, foot above foot, and I'm over the fence, soles striking the ground. The strength has returned to my fingers. My heart is knocking.

Rusty and Duncan are at the foot of the cement loading dock. Rusty maneuvers the crowbar into the padlock. A split second later, the lock snaps off. The metal door rumbles and creaks up. We stare
at a two-foot-high gap between the door and the cement slab. A nod goes around as we silently agree to squeeze through rather than risk additional racket.

Josh steps up. “Here goes, my fellow criminals,” he says, half laughing at the spectacular nerve of us. He drags himself into the darkness. We've all visited the halls of the museum but this section is off-limits to nonemployees.

“At least this might get me laid when I tell Bethany J. about it,” Duncan says with a dogged grin.

I go next. It's cool and dank in the darkness on the other side. Rusty fumbles at the opening by my feet before hopping up. We navigate haltingly to Josh, who's framed by a rectangle of fluorescent light ahead. A corridor is through the entranceway, and we open doors a crack to glance through. All offices and exam rooms.

“The museum part must be this way,” Josh says, moving up the hall. After one left and two rights, we dead-end into another closed door. “Here we go,” Josh says, and turns the knob.

The hairs on my arms stand on end as we enter the atrium. Its lofty ceiling is a metal skeleton, webbed with glass panels that allow for natural light to illuminate the space. The moon glints off the banks of glass enclosures running the perimeter. They're small and aquarium-like. Sets of inquisitive eyes wink at us from the dark interior.

In the center of the room is one vast steel-wire cage. It extends from the cement floor to the glass ceiling, forty or fifty feet above our heads.

“Winnie,” I breathe. The eagle's silhouette is stenciled black on a perch halfway to the roof. A blinking, distant airplane drifts in a
diagonal behind her. We move stealthily to the center of the atrium.

“What did you get to coax her from the cage?” Josh whispers.

Rusty drops his backpack at his feet and kneels. “
Unagi
,” he says. Silence.

“Are you talking about the eel they have at Gingko Sushi?” Duncan asks.

Rusty holds up a clear plastic to-go container full of it. There's a clump of wasabi that's so green it glows radioactive beside the ribbons of pink pickled ginger. “What else was I supposed to get?”

“The bird deserves the best of Gant's Japanese cuisine,” Duncan snickers.

I examine the large double doors at the front of the building. They're only five or so yards from Winnie's enclosure. They're bolted on the inside and don't appear to require a key. It will be easier for Winnie to escape through them rather than us luring her out of the twisty hallways and rear hatch. We aren't 100 percent sure that the front doors aren't connected to an alarm system, though, and while there's nothing indicating that they are, the plan is for me to wait and throw them open once everyone is in the SUV and it's idling out front for a hasty getaway.

Rusty and Duncan take turns with a pair of bolt cutters Rusty snatched from his garage. Each chain link snaps as a finger bone would in the metal jaw, and my ears prick, picking up the scratching, breathing, and fidgeting of the watching animals. Tons of little witnesses, all hungry for escape.

My mittened hands skate over the plastic container of sushi as I pick it up from the floor. The boys are about a third of the way done outlining a large rectangular window.

“Make sure you grab all the tools before you run back for the car,” I remind them. “And keep your gloves on. No fingerprints.” I begin dropping the bite-size pieces of eel on the floor. The trail runs from Winnie's enclosure to the front entrance. Josh wields the bolt cutters. Another few minutes and the boys maneuver the heavy section of crisscrossing bars to the floor. Winnie has the look of one of the shadow animals Ben and I used to make down at the fire pit. His hands could cast a million different shapes on the rocks.

It shouldn't surprise me that Ben found a way to stick around after he died. He was good at reinventing the ordinary. He was great at manipulating the shadows.

Winnie hasn't moved since we arrived. “I'm going to go out the front with Lana,” Josh tells Rusty and Duncan as they collect their supplies. Their footsteps recede, a door opens and shuts on the opposite end of the atrium, and we're alone.