Rhett McLaughlin - The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

As Rex placed his scooter on the grass near the curb, Leif put down his kickstand, acutely aware of the pounding in his chest. Now that he was standing with Rex at the foot of Alicia’s lawn, he was having second thoughts.

“Call her,” Rex said, nudging Leif with his shoulder.

“Oh, right.” Leif put one loose fist over his mouth and delivered one of his patented turkey mating calls, a sort of seductive gobble that he’d mastered a few years earlier at Baptist boys’ camp.

They focused on Alicia’s first-floor bedroom window, her lamp already on, illuminating the opposite wall, which featured her collection of posters showcasing her excellent taste in pop culture, including one of Larry and Balki from the TV show Perfect Strangers . Leif had always wondered if Alicia saw Rex and him as Larry and Balki, and in this moment, as he prepared to profess his deepest feelings for her, he realized that he was definitely Balki. He didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Maybe his proclamation could wait.

Just then, the window opened and Alicia’s dark curls emerged, blocking both Larry and Balki from view. She flashed a sly grin when she saw the dark outlines of her best friends. Leif grinned back, his second thoughts evaporating. He felt a serenity wash over him. He didn’t need to work on his precise wording—he would let the rhythm of the moment guide him. It was all so much simpler than he’d—

Suddenly, Alicia screamed, as two hands grabbed her shoulders and attempted to yank her back inside.

Leif and Rex stared in the darkness, speechless.

“Get off me!” Alicia shouted, writhing back and forth.

“Her parents…?” Leif asked, but Rex was already in a crouched run, his backpack sticking out like a turtle shell as he headed toward the window. Leif followed, but this time catching up was harder; he’d never seen Rex run this fast in his life.

It wasn’t fast enough, though. Just as he got to the window (a full two seconds before Leif), Alicia’s grip on the windowsill gave out and she disappeared.

“Rex! Leif! Helmmmphsseh!” Alicia shouted from inside. Leif ignored the tiny voice in his head that wondered why she’d shouted Rex’s name first. He peered in and shuddered. Two men in beige coveralls were lugging her out of her bedroom.

What the hell…?

“Get off her!” Rex shouted through the window as he climbed in after them.

“Yeah!” Leif added, following Rex’s lead and wincing as he felt the sting of a splinter from the sill dig into his calf. He had no idea what the two of them would do once they caught up to the kidnappers, but it turned out to be a moot question. Alicia’s door slammed shut when they were halfway across the room.

Rex tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. One of the men was blocking it. “Come on,” Rex said to Leif. They threw their bodies against the door.

“Go home, boys,” a strained but familiar voice said from the other side.

Leif and Rex stopped pushing. They stared at each other, dumbfounded. “Mr. Boykins?” Leif asked.

“I know you’re trying to help Alicia,” he continued, “but we know what’s best for her.”

“You don’t understand!” Rex shouted. “Two guys just—”

“We know, Rex,” Mr. Boykins said. “Please, this is hard enough as it is.”

Leif heard a scuffling from outside and ran to the window, where he saw the men putting a still-writhing Alicia into the back of a white van parked at the curb. If Leif hadn’t been so busy planning his stupid love confession, maybe he would have noticed it earlier. Rex vaulted out the window past Leif, shouting, “Get off our friend, you jerks!”

Leif threw himself out the window after Rex, but without deciding exactly how he was planning to land, ended up facefirst in the grass. He leapt up from the ground in time to see the van’s back doors slam and hear the engine rev up.

“Easy with that lip, son,” one of the men said, still standing by the closed doors. “You could be next.” He popped into the passenger seat and the van took off. Rex had reached his scooter, which he picked up and began wildly propelling down the street with his giraffish left leg. It certainly looked like he was going fast.

Leif ran to his bike, flipped up the kickstand, and jumped on his pedals all in one motion.

“Don’t follow them,” Mr. Boykins said from the front porch, clad in a bathrobe, an arm around Mrs. Boykins as she wept into her hands. “Please, Leif. After what happened today…Don’t make this any worse for Alicia than you already have.”

“I’m so sorry,” Leif said, and he suddenly understood that the Boykinses hadn’t actually been okay with the whole pushing-Mr.-Whitewood-onto-a-grill situation, not at all.

Leif knew where Alicia was being taken.

He took off on his bike, Mr. Boykins shouting his name three more times before his voice faded into the distance. Leif was impressed with how far up the street Rex had gotten, but he was clearly out of breath, and the van was almost out of sight.

“They’re taking her to the Whitewood School,” Leif said.

“Oh, shit,” Rex said between gasps. “We gotta go there!”

He continued to swing his leg around and pump his scooter down the narrow road after the white speck in the distance. Once again, Leif had no idea what the plan would be once they caught up to the abductors, but he knew they had no choice but to follow. He felt stupid for not seeing this coming; after you’d grilled the hands of a man who runs a reform school, chances were good you’d end up there.

Leif had always heard the stories about kids snatched away in the night, but, like most people, he’d dismissed them as urban legends, designed to scare them into being good kids who went with the flow. Seeing one of these snatchings up close, and happening to his best friend, was traumatic to say the least.

Leif looked for Rex, as he often did in anxiety-provoking situations, knowing that his calmer, less panicky energy would be grounding. But no one was there. Rex had fallen far behind. Leif experienced the briefest moment of satisfaction before rapidly U-turning.

“Leave the scooter,” Leif said, pedaling alongside him. “Hop on my pegs.” Another burst of intense satisfaction. Rex had been making fun of Leif’s “unnecessary” bike pegs for years.

“No, you go ahead,” Rex said. “It’s not the scooter. I just haven’t developed my scooter leg enough yet.”

Leif couldn’t believe that, even now, in hot pursuit of their kidnapped best friend, Rex refused to admit defeat.

“Your scooter leg?” Leif couldn’t help but ask.

“Yeah, the pushing leg. It takes months to have a reliable scooter leg,” Rex insisted.

“So I’m just gonna take these guys on alone?” Leif asked.

“No, I’ll definitely catch up. My leg’s about to get a second wind.”

“We’re wasting time!” Leif could no longer see any sign of the white van. “Just get on my pegs!”

Rex kept scooting.

“I agree it’s your scooter leg and not the scooter,” Leif said.

Rex abruptly hopped off his scooter and tossed it under a shrub on the side of the road. He stepped onto the two pegs jutting out from Leif’s back wheel, his hands on Leif’s shoulders. “Burn it.”

And Leif did. He pedaled like he’d never pedaled before, rocketing forward even with the extra 150 pounds of lanky human freight. The fiery pain in his thighs was overwhelming, but as the boys rounded the last turn on Creek Road, the white dot reappeared ahead, and that was all the motivation Leif needed.

Soon the lights at the Whitewood School gate came into view, the only indication that there was anything behind the pine trees lining the road. On the rare occasion when Leif had passed by the school, secluded as it was on the far side of town, he’d been unsettled with how the utilitarian chain-link fence seemed much more like the gateway to a prison than to an educational institution. But that was the least of his concerns now. By the time he’d pedaled them to the entrance, one of the men was locking the gate, then hopping into the van and heading up the long driveway toward Alicia’s new home.