Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

“Maybe he found out.”

“How?”

“Maybe she did come up, as you said, but went to your room. What if he was there?”

“Why would he be?”

“Why not? Where else can he go? What if he was there, popping those green pills, kidnapping plots buzzing in his brain?”

“So?”

“So he made her bring him here.”

“Wags couldn’t make Grace do anything.”

“Or tricked her, then.”

“He couldn’t trick her either.”

Izzie’s face softened. “You think pretty highly of her.”

“It’s not so much that,” Nat said. The soft look faded. “More that Wags is-” He started to say harmless, stopped himself. Wags wasn’t harmless. Plus: leaving Lorenzo on the pillow. That was Wags; he’d probably seen something like it in a movie. “We’d better check my room,” Nat said. He shone his light around the wreckage one more time. There were movies like that, too.

They started up the rope ladder, Izzie first. As he reached for the ladder, Nat stepped on something slippery. He shone his light on it, picked it up: a black satin jacket.

“Wags’s?” said Izzie, coming back down.

Nat had never seen it before.

“The kind of thing that would amuse him,” Izzie said. A black satin jacket, two snaps ripped from the material, with Saul’s Collision in gold and crossed bowling pins on the front, and a gold crest, Runners-Up ’99. “Especially that runners-up part,” Izzie said.

“Sure it’s not Grace’s?” Nat said.

“You think she’d wear something like this?”

“It’s not impossible.”

“Trust me,” Izzie said.

Nat’s room. And there was Wags, sitting at Nat’s computer, fingers on the keyboard, face almost touching the screen.

“With you in a sec,” he said, not turning toward the door. “Just checking out the Fatty Arbuckle Web site.”

Nat glanced in the bedrooms. No sign of Grace.

Izzie jabbed off the monitor.

“Hey,” said Wags as the screen went dark. “I was downloading.” His eyes went to Nat; actually to a spot in midair a few inches off target. “Hope you’re not pissed about our little… debate last night, or the night before, Nattie, my friend. No harm done. And I brought you some chocolates, as a bribe.”

A box of chocolates lay on Wags’s old desk. They’d been gift-wrapped, but now the wrapping was ripped off, the box open, and three or four of the chocolates gone.

“Fact is, roomie, I’m moving back in. I can’t afford to neglect my education for another second. So if you’ll excuse me…” He reached for the monitor button.

Izzie grabbed his wrist. “Where is she?”

“That hurts a bit,” Wags said. “Ouch. I mean it.”

“Where is she?”

“Where’s who?”

With her free hand, the back of her free hand, Izzie smacked Wags across the face; harder than a smack, from the way his head jerked to the side, stunning him. Nat was stunned too.

“Where is Grace?” she said.

Wags gazed up at her, wide-eyed. “Is that like metaphysical or something?”

She raised her hand again; he winced in anticipation, like a dog Nat remembered in his neighborhood.

“Izzie,” he said. She froze, slowly lowered her hand. Her other hand still gripped Wags’s wrist.

Nat went to them, put his hand on Izzie’s. Her hand, so cold, relaxed. He uncoiled it from Wags’s wrist, looked down at Wags. “Do you know where she is?” he said.

“I don’t understand the question,” Wags said, his eyes still locked on Izzie. They filled with tears, like the eyes of a child badgered by the teacher.

“Did you take her down in the tunnels?” Nat said.

“The tunnels?”

“The tunnels under the campus.”

“There are tunnels under the campus?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Real, physical tunnels?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been in them?”

“Yes.”

“And you never told me?” Wags smiled, a smile Nat didn’t like at all, with only one side of his mouth turning up and the eyes not participating. “Why am I surprised?”

“No time for therapy,” Izzie said. Wags’s smile, what there was of it, vanished. “Does this belong to you?” She held up the black satin bowling jacket.

“No.”

She shoved the jacket at him. “Put it on.”

Wags rose, unsteady, as though his legs were weak, put on the jacket. “Is this like Cinderella?” he said. It was much too big.

Izzie reached behind the collar, turned it out. “XXXL,” she said.

“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Nat said.

“With what?” said Wags.

They didn’t answer.

“These tunnels-are they scary?” Wags said. “I’d like to see them, at your earliest convenience. Also, I’m growing partial to the jacket.”

“You can’t have it,” Nat said.

“Can I borrow it?”

“No.”

Wags took off the jacket, handed it to him obediently.

“What do you want to do?” Nat said.

“Resume my education, I already told you. Beginning with Fatty Arbuckle.”

“I meant do you want me to call your parents or do you want to go back to the hospital?”

“Give me a hard one,” Wags said.

They sent him to the hospital in a taxi.

“Now what?” said Izzie; back in Nat’s room.

“I don’t know,” Nat said. But what could it be? Either Grace had heard her father’s analysis and had some sort of violent psychological reaction or… what? He couldn’t think of anything else. “She must have overheard.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“It’s part of a pattern.”

“Pattern?”

“Grand Central Station,” Nat said, “all over again.”

“Grand Central Station?”

“When your family was splitting up and Grace stood on the railing.”

A look he hadn’t seen before, at least on her, appeared on Izzie’s face. He wouldn’t have thought her capable of a look like that if he hadn’t seen what she’d done to Wags.

“You know everything about us, don’t you?” she said.

“You didn’t have to tell me.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

They sat in silence. The wind was blowing harder now, driving snowflakes against the glass; they made a soft drumming sound.

“We just sit here, then,” Izzie said, “waiting for her to reappear. Is that the plan?”

Nat had no other; but this one had a flaw. First he just sensed it, an uneasy feeling, then he identified it, then it grew bigger in his mind: the bowling jacket, size XXXL. He picked it up and did what he probably should have done in the first place. He searched the pockets. There were two. Nothing in the left-hand one. Something in the right; something his fingers identified before he even pulled it out: a switchblade knife. There were always a few kids at Clear Creek High who carried them. He pressed the button. The blade, longer than the ones he’d seen, snapped out. Nat knew then that she was right and he was wrong. Something bad was happening.

Izzie held out her hand.

He gave it to her.

“Like this?” she said.

Like that.

She folded the knife, stuck it in her pocket.

“Let’s go,” he said. She was already moving.

They went down to the cave. Everything, the whole mess, was exactly the way they’d left it, except for the painting of the nude bathers and the centaur, the painting that had fallen. Now it was propped against the wall, facing the wrong way. On the back, in big black letters: A milion sounds nice. Right here soon say by dark. Call the cops and she die$.

Was luck still with him? Bottom line: yes. The expression bottom line pleased him; the kind of expression he was going to need in the future. A golden future. He’d asked for a break-who deserved one more? — and maybe he’d gotten one, maybe the breaks would finally start breaking his way. The kid from the flats, on his way to the big time. For one thing, he had the girl.