Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

I’m back!

I’ve got a few minutes before Penny comes home from work. I think it’s smart to hide my CD in the Jewel CD case, because that means Pen has to look through every single case if she suspects something. Why should she suspect me of this? Because she suspects me of pretty much everything! But what if she finds the actual Jewel CD between my bed and the springs? She’ll go see what’s in the Jewel CD case, and I’ll be cooked! So I’ll just take the Jewel disc to school and throw it away. Tomorrow. Not a problem.

Penny says she got a better job in California. I looked up Oceanside and it looks like a really great place. It’s on the water, duh, and it’s got a surfing museum, a super-cool library, and it’s, like, always in the seventies. Degrees, that is. Pen says her technical editing job there will pay two dollars an hour more than here in Phoenix. And there’ll be the beach and good schools.

When I’m doing my homework at the dinner table, Penny pretends she’s reading on the couch and she looks out at the street and parking lot every few seconds. This is totally not unusual. This is what she always does, every place we’ve lived. But we’re in a condo complex now, so there’s cars coming and going a lot, so Pen looks up from her book all the time. Here I am trying to figure out a math problem or read something but I have to look up at her looking out at the car. I don’t know what she’s expecting to see. Why look at every passing car? All I know is that she’s afraid. And I get afraid, too. And, like, totally distracted. Not that I care about my grades. So I go in my room. But I know she’s there, looking out that window.

So it’s goodbye to Phoenix and Bellamy. Goodbye to Mrs. Herron, who for a teacher is pretty cool. Goodbye to the Yogurt Yurt and the extra sprinkles.

I saw Pastor Atlas yesterday. He’s in Phoenix to preach at a convention. He always lets me know his schedule when he’s going to be nearby. He sends a postcard with his picture and the info on it. Drives Penny insane that Reggie always has our address. With her taking away my Facebook, it’s harder for him to communicate, so sometimes he just calls. Of course I can’t tell Pen, and the pastor and I talk even though I’m like totally banned from talking to him because there’s an illness in him, she says, but when I ask her what illness is that — like a heart or gallbladder problem — she just says he has cancer of the soul.

Which is strange because, like, everybody loves Pastor Reggie. And he’s got his podcasts and his streaming Four Wheels for Jesus sermons that Penny won’t let me watch or listen to. But I do. There are ways. Bellamy loves him. Her mom does, too. And when Pastor Atlas is preaching near home, I always seem to run into him somewhere. Really funny how that happens. Small world! He’s usually with his wife and kids. He smiles and stops and we talk. He’s always got fans around him, but when he talks to me I can feel all of his attention totally one hundred percent on me. One time when we were alone for a minute at the mall he said that we were like ghosts flying through each other, which I thought was so beautiful. And when he said we could fly together sometime, side by side in Jesus, I said okay, Pastor Reggie, get me a ticket! And he said he had a ticket for me and I just had to pick it up. Whatever he meant by that. He does have a way of making you feel good inside. And that you’re close to Jesus.

Gotta go.

“That’s how he got to me when I was young,” said Penelope, pausing the CD, a faraway look on her face. “Back when I was eleven, he was still coming through Mobile twice a year. He didn’t have a church yet. Just his van or motor home. But he always made sure my family was invited to his guest appearances, and his special tent programs. We were a very religious family. Fundamentalists. We went to anything Pastor Atlas did, if it was in driving distance. Reggie paid special attention to my mother and father. But just like with Daley, his private attention was aimed at me. I came to believe that he was truly holy. When he looked at me, he must have seen an adoring little angel. And a willing victim. I had no real idea what he was doing. Neither did my parents.”

Penelope still had the remote, worrying it in both hands, the force of her memories showing through. She accidentally hit the play button, flinching when Daley said, “I’m back!” Found the pause, then looked at me.

“But I know exactly what he’s doing to Daley,” she said. “Reggie Atlas is going to have to go through me first. I taught her from an early age that most men are wicked at best, and some are evil. And I was able to shape that thought into the person of Pastor Reggie Atlas. When she became old enough to understand. To be aware of him. To watch out for him. Should he approach . As I knew he would. We moved and moved and moved. My daughter. My sister. My legal charge. The first time I saw him near her was at one of her soccer games. She was nine. I was walking her back to the car after the game, and he was watching us from behind the wheel of a black truck. I acted like I hadn’t seen him. Pulled the pepper spray out of my purse, then charged him. He sped out of the lot. His engine had been running, just in case. Cagey Reggie. And guess what I did?”

“You moved again.”

“You bet we did. By the time we got to Phoenix I had to admit that Reggie could find us no matter where we went. He was big. He was rich. He had people to keep track of us. We were easy. I was getting very tired. I picked out Oceanside because it sounded so good. Beside an ocean. And it was close to San Diego and lots of technical writing for me to do. And just after I sign the lease on this place and get Daley enrolled at Monarch, guess what?”

“Reggie Atlas breaks ground on his Cathedral by the Sea,” I said. “Pretty much right next door.”

A strange expression from Penelope then, hostility, with notes of mayhem. “At which time I decided to stop running. But he began to close his net around her. And I can’t control her anymore, and she has no fear of me or anyone. No fear of her teachers or Chancellor Stahl, or her sometimes much-older friends, or of ill-tempered Nick Moreno. No fear of Reggie Atlas, certainly. She told me a couple of weeks ago that she felt like running away with him just to get away from me. He would divorce his wife and she’d marry him and have hundreds of his children. Be free of me and my silly rules forever. Get her damned Snapchat and Instagram back.”

I watched the anger recede from her face, replaced by a blank long-distance stare at the window and the street. Without breaking that stare, she pointed the remote at the boom box again.

Daley’s diary wasn’t all about Reggie Atlas. She talked about her “really cool little house in Oceanside,” and her new school, and the strict Chancellor Stahl, and two friends she’d already made. And an interesting guy named Nick who drove a van and had a mobile dog-walking business.

I’m back!

So Max is kind of a friend, and this guy Nick and Max’s mom picked up Max after school today and Nick smiled at me when he saw me looking at the picture of the dog on his van. And he tells me the dog is called a papillon, which is French for butterfly because of the ears, and I said duh, everybody knows that. And I could see this made Nick feel dumb and a little bit angry, too, and I thought, well, there’s your basic boy stuck inside an older man’s body. Great face, though, Nick’s — alluring eyes and a beautiful smile. Told me Max’s mom’s car was in the shop so he was helping her out, and did I need a ride home, too? So I said yeah, why not, because Alanis was sick that day and Carrie was going to this club called Alchemy 101 and I just wanted to go home and kick it, maybe play some guitar and have some cookies. And that’s what I did.