Todd Strasser - Blood on my hands

He nods. “Okay.” Then he’s gone, and once again I’m all alone.

By the time it’s dark enough for me to leave the marsh, my teeth are chattering and my wet feet feel numb. I walk down a quiet street and pass houses with windows lit, houses in which I know families are gathering around kitchen tables for dinner even if I can’t see them.

“The higher-ups say the reason we’re there is to bring those people freedom. But just about every guy who’s been over there says the same thing: the people don’t want us there to help them be free. They don’t want us there, period.”

“I know. It’s a terrible situation.”

“I just don’t see the point in it.”

“I wish I could help you.”

Sometimes I wondered if Mia was only interested in me because she wanted to know why Katherine seemed to favor me over her.

Mia: Did U ask Y she didnt invite me 2 the city?

Cal: Told U I cant ask things like that

Mia: It really bothers me

Cal: Y not just make other friends?

Mia: Know what Groucho Marx once said?

Cal: ???

Mia: Hed never join a club that would let a person like him be a member.

Cal: LOL?

Mia: Like, we only want what we cant have.

Cal: But shes so mean 2 U.

Mia: Things change.

At Umbrella Point I use Slade’s penlight to search around under the umbrella until I find the note I knew my mother would leave for me.

You have to go to the police. Hiding from them just makes you look guilty. Please, Callie. We’ll find a way to get a lawyer. We’ll prove you’re innocent. Where are you staying? What are you eating? I’m so worried about you. Please, honey, do the right thing.

Love, Mom

It’s what you’d expect from a mother. I leave an answer, this one saying I’m okay but I can’t do what she’s asked and someday I’ll explain why.

And now it’s time to go see Jerry.

“This is the perfect time to dump him,” Katherine said one day last summer when a bunch of us were in the Apple Store at the mall.

“Why?” I asked, amazed at her nerve.

“Because he isn’t here,” she said as if it were obvious. “You don’t have to worry about him making a big scene. If you do it now, by the time he gets back, he’ll be over it.”

By the time he gets back… Those words echoed eerily in my head. So Katherine remembered the night I confessed my secret fear about Slade’s being sent overseas.

Now she leaned close and dropped her voice. “Don’t you want to be part of the inner circle?”

I’d heard passing reference to the IC before. Mia seemed to think it was some kind of secret society, but when I asked her what she thought it was for, she admitted that she didn’t know.

“What is it?” I asked.

Katherine gestured at Mia and Kirsten, then gave me a conspiratorial smile. “It’s what they’re not in.”

Monday 6:57 P.M.

JERRY FAIRMAN WAS Sebastian’s best friend, and as strange and mercurial as Sebastian is, Jerry is stranger still, a reclusive techno-whiz freak geek who rarely leaves his parents’ house. I know I’m taking a chance by going to see him, but at this point anything I do means taking a chance. Besides, Jerry isn’t the sort of person who deals well with authority, and conspiracy theories are like catnip to him. I remember at Sebastian’s nineteenth birthday party, Jerry cornered me and went on and on about how this country never actually sent men to the moon, and how the moon landings were faked on a Hollywood movie set to give the Russians the impression of America’s great superiority in space.

Of course, he also believes that UFOs exist and that the air force knows all about them. But the most disturbing thing he ever told me was about something called the New World Order, which he said was headquartered in a secret city under the Denver International Airport and run by the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, who controlled everything and had ordered the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 to drive up the price of oil.

Now that’s extreme.

I don’t know what to expect as I tiptoe through the dark around the back of the Fairman house. The basement light is on. I bend down and tap my knuckles gently against the glass, hoping it will be just loud enough for Jerry to hear and not alert the rest of the household. A few moments later a shadow appears on the floor and then I see Jerry’s pale face as he peers up, squinting and frowning, with no trace of recognition.

Afraid of being overheard, I lean closer to the glass. “It’s Callie,” I say in a low voice. The frown on Jerry’s face deepens. It’s hard to imagine that there is anyone in Soundview who is so detached from the outside world that he doesn’t know about Katherine’s murder. But if such a person could exist, it would be Jerry.

“Callie,” I repeat, a little more loudly. “Sebastian’s sister.” I slide the fake hoop off my lower lip. On the other side of the window, Jerry squints, blinks with astonishment, then motions to the semi-subterranean door beside the window. I go down three mold-darkened concrete steps to the screen door. It’s locked. Jerry opens the inside door and gives me a perplexed look through the screen.

“Did you hear about Katherine?” I ask.

He nods.

“I was set up. Someone wanted to make it look like I killed her. I came here because I need your help to prove I’m innocent. The person who set me up is hoping everyone will think I’m just like my brother.”

I’ve made it sound like a conspiracy, and Jerry nods in complicity. I reach down to the latch on the screen door and jiggle it to show him it’s locked. Jerry’s eyes travel down and then back up. His forehead furrows. “You want to come in?”

“I need help, Jerry. There’s no one else I can go to.”

It’s easy to picture the gears grinding in Jerry’s head. He could be hesitating for any number of reasons. “What do you want from me?” he asks.

“I’m having a problem with texting and cell phones. I thought maybe you could help.”

There’s nothing he likes more than fixing techy problems. To him it’s a form of recreation. Relief floods through me as he reaches down and unlocks the latch, then gestures me in and points at the floor, where shoes and boots are lined in an orderly row. I take off my wet shoes and socks… but now he looks at my bare feet and makes a face.

“I had to go through a marsh,” I explain.

Someone else might go get me a pair of dry socks, but Jerry doesn’t think that way. Instead, he pulls a bottle of Purell out of his pocket and gestures for me to cup my hands so he can squeeze some onto my palms. He waits while I rub the gel into my hands; then he nods down at my bare feet.

Yes, he’s serious, and I’m not in a position to argue. So I do what he wants and then follow him into his room.

It’s a shrine to OCD. Everything is in its place-books, in neat alphabetical order, computers, screens, printers, hard drives, phone-docking station, fax machine, tools. In two corners of the room, air purifiers hum and emit an antiseptic scent. The basement feels like a cross between a hospital operating room and a nuclear command post, and at its center is a high-backed black leather office chair and a desk with four computer screens stacked two and two. On two of the screens are cyber representations of green oval card tables with gambler avatars. On the third screen is a street scene from Second Life with voluptuous female avatars in skintight clothes and muscular young male avatars with cyber testosterone coursing through their veins. On the fourth is an episode of South Park .