Wanted! (12 page)

Mr. Rellen was a leisurely, hefty sort of man, the type who liked a soft recliner in front of a large TV. Alice’s father was tall and thin and never had time for TV. He had too many projects (done with such neatness and care that outsiders thought he had no life).

How reassuring Mr. Rellen’s arms looked. How badly Alice wanted to be held and reassured by a parent. Once, Mom had told Alice, Rick darling had gathered her in his arms and carried her over his threshold. Alice had found this more nauseating than romantic, but right now she wouldn’t mind being scooped up and carried away from her troubles.

This is the man who is going to marry my mother, Alice told herself. She tried to be as glad to see Mr. Rellen as he was to see her. She tried to tell herself that the two best people to sort this out were her mother and her future stepfather.

Richard Rellen’s hand, big and thick, stretched toward her. “Alice, come on home with me.” His stout belly was draped with a fine thin sweater, camel colored. The white and gray and black hairs of his mustache and beard gave him a porcupine look. The smile continued. There was so completely nothing to smile about.

“Come on, Ally, let’s head on home,” he said, getting closer to her.

As if it were his home. As if he could invite her there, like a guest, to her very own house. Even calling her Ally, as if when she was not looking, he had become part of the family. As if Mom and he were married already, and she, Alice, was the outsider.

“It’s all a misunderstanding, Ally,” he said.

Alice felt as if a painter had put several coats of polyurethane over her thinking. Thinking was down there, beneath the slick layers of shiny stuff, but she couldn’t get to it.

“We need to get home,” said Mr. Rellen, his smile growing wider. “Talk to your mother, sort it out.”

Maybe the Hunter always smiled when he closed in on the Victim.

I’m not a victim, thought Alice.

She leaped away and he leaped toward her, the awful, thick, hairy arm like an anaconda wrapping around her, and in spite of his weight, he was quick.

Alice was quicker.

He didn’t get Alice, he got the backpack. He yanked, trying to lasso her with it, but she shrugged it off and raced away. Her flimsy sneakers actually came apart, and just as in nightmares, she knew she was not running fast enough. She circled a huge brick building, half-circled another, left the path, raced across a parking lot filled with hundreds of student commuter cars, and cut between cars parked too close together for Richard Rellen to fit. She sat on the chilly pavement between two cars, invisible to the world.

He had not yelled for help in capturing her. He had not shouted to the students brushing through and around them—This is the girl, don’t let her get away! He had allowed her to get away.

Mom must have given him instructions when she sent him out to search for Alice. What could those orders have been? Don’t upset her, keep smiling, pretend it’s just a misunderstanding, don’t use force.

Alice got up, dusting grit from her clothes, and walked along the edges of the commuter parking, mentally noting the cars whose drivers had not bothered to lock. If she got really desperate for shelter, she could slip into a backseat and huddle down.

There was Flemming.

A police car idled by the front door, its radio spitting unintelligible information.

The police would be checking the girls leaving Flemming, not the girls entering. Dripping with sweat, hair hanging in her face, T-shirt wet and jeans clinging, Alice jogged into the dorm.

Indeed, a young officer in a fine blue uniform was asking three college women for their IDs. They were half flirting, and had him completely surrounded, and he did not look up to see who was coming in.

She went to the stairs, not the elevators. She went to Three, for no reason except her legs could climb no higher.

There was little action on the third floor. The few girls who had no morning classes were slopping bleary-eyed between rooms, old saggy bathrobes hanging open, or wearing nothing at all. Flemming Third seemed to be very comfortable with nakedness.

“Oh, like wow!” said a nude girl, laughing at Alice. “You are in desperate need of a shower.”

Alice nodded. This had never been more true.

“I’ve got to take up running,” said another girl, coming out of Three Twelve. She was beautifully groomed and had ironed her khaki trousers. Her shirt was crisp, with a pleated front, and a heavy necklace of brown and black beads hung like a scarf. “I haven’t done anything since September except lie around.” She examined Alice closely. “Do you run every morning?” she asked. “I might join you.”

The naked girl giggled. “Please, Amanda, you’re never going to take up exercise. You are morally opposed to sweat.”

“I would certainly not run fast enough to sweat,” agreed Amanda.

Everybody laughed. The naked girl disappeared into Three Fourteen and Amanda followed her. “You owe me a bottle of shampoo, Kerry. I need it.”

The hall was now empty. Every door, however, had been left open so that conversations could continue.

“Amanda, you don’t need it. You’re clean and perfect. Tomorrow you might need it, but not today.”

Alice shivered badly and walked into Amanda’s room. Empty. Amanda’s roommate must have left already. The bathroom door was open a few inches. Alice slid in. There was no tub and the shower had a glass door. It, like Amanda, was scrubbed and polished. No soap scum here.

Alice got in the shower and closed the glass door, and bit her lips against hysteria. Alice, the girl who hides behind clear glass.

Surely Amanda did not need to come into the bathroom again. Amanda looked like a woman prepared for a sophisticated and successful day, not a woman who still needed to brush her teeth.

Amanda came back into her room. There were straightening sounds, drawer-closing sounds, hanging-it-back-up sounds. Alice tried not to think or breathe. Amanda opened the bathroom door.

Alice pressed her spine against the cold bathroom tiles.

She needed air desperately. Fear used up so much oxygen. Alice needed a bucket of air, a whole room full of air—

Amanda plucked a gold lipstick tube off the counter and left.

Alice’s breath came sucking in like the drain in a whirlpool, noisy and unmistakable. But Amanda was already out the door, pulling it shut behind her, and testing to be sure it had locked.

Alice stayed in the shower stall for a long time before she could emerge into the light. Then she searched Amanda’s room.

Amanda lived the way she looked. Socks were neatly folded at one side of the top drawer, and the ironing board tucked carefully in the back of the wardrobe. The edges of books had been straightened and a stack of CDs was perfectly aligned. Alice had lived with a person like this.

It hit her once more. Alice
had
lived with a person like this.

Oh, Daddy!

Scissors lay neatly in the top shallow drawer of Amanda’s desk. When she was six years old and got tired of cutting Barbie’s hair, Alice had given herself a ragged hideous haircut. Should she do it again?

Vanity stopped her. She was going to get caught, or would turn herself in, or solve this, or get killed trying, and she didn’t want a disgusting stupid haircut when she had to face the world.

On top of her chest of drawers, Amanda’s barrettes and scrunchies were neatly arranged on a silk scarf. Alice took a clip from which tiny shiny ribbons and beads hung, gave herself a spiky topknot, and fastened it with the clip. Never, not once, had she appeared in public with her hair sprouting from the top center of her head.

Then she raided Amanda’s wardrobe. “I promise to wash them and starch them and send them back in plastic bags in perfect condition, Amanda,” she said to the neatness of the room.

Alice yanked a heavy sweatshirt over her sweaty T-shirt, and on top of that, buttoned up a poufy-sleeved white granny blouse. Then she added a final layer: a long baggy brown and gray dress with ruffles. Alice was always surprised that this style had taken off: ugly white shirts under limp country dresses in which no girl ever looks pretty and she was now fat besides. She hoped Dad was right—weight gain was the best disguise.

She rolled up the legs of the jeans, so they didn’t show below the hem of the long saggy dress. She patted the jeans pocket, which now contained her only remaining possession: the backup disk.

Hoisting some of Amanda’s books, Alice held them in her arms in front of her. In the hall, nobody was around. She went back down to the lobby.

Now there were two police officers, a man and a woman, and they were being assaulted by several young women shrieking that cops had no right to invade their privacy! No right to demand IDs! No right to be here at all! Did they want a lawsuit brought against them? Did they understand what worthless revolting excuses for people they were?

Alice joined this promising group, and they all shoved through with much yelling and calling of names and even turned back to glare and shake fists. The police let them go.

Alice was pretty good on essay tests, where the whole key was bluffing. Some teachers never seemed to mind if you didn’t include a single fact. They gave you points for length and process. But Alice had not expected life to be like that. Whoever pretends the best wins, she thought.

The book edges dug into Alice’s stomach in a familiar, school-type way. She felt sure of herself holding these books, as if the only tests ahead were academic.

She also felt fat. It was most peculiar to have thick arms and such a substantial waist.

Okay, she thought again, there is no point in running unless you have a place to run to. So. Who is at work? Whose house can I hide in?

She really knew that hiding was not going to accomplish a thing. She knew nothing she was doing was sensible. She knew that the only hope of ending this was to end it.

But she kept those thoughts as distant as possible, because she was not ready. She could not deal with her father’s death at the same time as answer the questions of authorities. She could not weep for Dad in the presence of a mother who had ceased to love him. And along with all that—perhaps before all that—she could not admit defeat.

She walked, and nobody on the campus glanced at her—not police, not students, not professors.

Finally she thought of Mr. Heddig, with whom Dad went fishing a few times a year. The men also liked to go to a wilderness lodge for a long weekend. Alice had sometimes gone along. It wasn’t like any wilderness she’d ever imagined: The motel room had a Jacuzzi. Alice liked a wilderness that came with a Jacuzzi.

Mr. Heddig traveled a great deal for business. Alice had been to his house the times they went fishing. He’s been divorced forever, thought Alice, so there can’t be anybody else home. He’ll certainly be away during the day, and if he’s out of town, I’m all set.

Alice was desperately hungry, but her few dollars and her credit cards were in the backpack in Mr. Rellen’s custody.

Alice crossed the huge campus safely and cut through an even larger parking lot than Westtown Mall’s, serving a total of nine superstores like Home Depot and Office Max.

People were buying outdoor stuff: barbecues and lawn chairs and flats of flowers and pink flamingos. They did not dress up to do this. Women and men in sweatsuits pushed massive metal shopping carts into which they dumped pet food and building supplies. Dumpy Alice looked just fine.

Alice went to The Brick Oven, where they usually gave away free slices of bread to entice you to buy the whole loaf. Sure enough, they handed her a slab of soft hot bread, and yes, Alice wanted a whole loaf, or ten, but she had no money. She went into Best Price Foods and checked every aisle for food samples and had two crackers with a new cheese spread and one slice of hot dog about the size of a quarter. It was all she could do not to lick the table.

She walked on out, holding her books, as if every schoolgirl routinely stopped in for cheese on Thursday morning.

Was it really still morning?

Was it really only one day since the chase began?

Half a mile past the superstores, as she walked briskly down a sidewalk, alone and exposed, she saw Kelsey. Kelsey, whose parents would rather she had lice than miss a class. Kelsey was cutting school. Kelsey’s dad was driving.

Alice hunched down into her books. She tried to look heavy. It worked. She really was a different person. Gone the thin, graceful girl with long, shiny, swinging hair. Alice had vanished. Even her best friend did not know her.

It took her the afternoon to walk to Mr. Heddig’s.

He lived on a dead-end road in an old, failed development, where only a dozen houses had ever gone up, had sold poorly and at a loss, and where people did not keep up their yards. Her father could not stand this sort of thing: People should edge their walks and prune their bushes and clean their gutters. It was surprising that he would be close friends with a guy who never thought of that stuff.

The woods had grown thick where people had given up mowing, and hedges planted years before had become green monsters separating each house from its neighbor. Mr. Heddig’s house not only looked vacant today, it looked as if it had been vacant for months.

Suppose Mr. Heddig was inside catching up on his sleep after some jet-lag trip to Japan?

Suppose Alice broke in and he kept a gun by the bed and shot her?

Suppose she just knocked on the door and said, Hi, Mr. Heddig, it isn’t true, I didn’t do it, please let me sleep on a real bed and don’t call the police.

Alice knocked on the door.

N
OBODY CAME TO THE
door.

Alice walked around the garage and from a hook hidden beneath a hanging light fixture, she took the spare house key. The weekend of the fishing trip, Mr. Heddig had carefully shown her its location in case she ever needed it.

Inside, his house was dusty and dry, as if it were all attic. It was a split level, and Alice went up the half-stair to the living room/kitchen part. Everything about the house felt tired. Seats sagged and curtains drooped. No wonder Mr. Heddig went fishing a lot. Who would want to stay here?