But she did believe it.
Alice moved as far away from the phone as the silver snake-metal cord would let her. She wet her lips with the same dry useless tongue. “Mom,” she began, and then she had nowhere to go. Alice’s brain stumbled away from her mother’s words.
Her mother regained some control. With a tremendous effort, she whispered, “Where are you, honey? You be a brave girl. I love you. The police and I will come for you.”
Alice pulled herself together. “Mom, what are you talking about? I didn’t do anything. There was this man. I never saw him—actually, I was hiding—and Dad wasn’t even there. I don’t know what message you’re talking about, but—”
“Alice, the police are on the phone, too. I don’t want you to say one more word until we have lawyers. We’re not going to make up stories about strange men. We’re going to tell the truth. I mean, Ally, we have your confession!” Her mother was sobbing again, but talking through it, as if she were two people. “Just tell me where you are, Alice, so that we can come and get you.”
Alice hung up.
She walked back to the car. She got in. Shut the heavy door.
Through the open window she listened to the river flowing over rocks. It was a peaceful, eternal sound.
Alice started the engine. It was not peaceful. People own Corvettes in order to disrupt the peace. Alice checked for traffic, dogs, and bikes. Drove away.
It was easier this time. The seat back supported her now, and her feet rested against the pedals, her heels correctly on the floor of the car. Memory of wrong decisions had stayed in her hands and feet, and she drove properly now, exactly centered on her side of the road, without problems at curves and stop signs. She was even getting used to the fingernails.
She had never driven any further down this road. She and Dad always ordered ice cream, turned around, and went home.
Here the road bordered Salmon River, and on her right the stream was wide and shallow and twinkly. There wasn’t much countryside left in this part of the world. In a few miles she was back among houses again, and then abruptly, on the edge of another city. The road got wider, and went from two lanes to four, and from four to six, and there were strip malls and superstores and factories and warehouses and Alice did not know where she was.
She was weeping.
For a moment the tears were so heavy and thick they were like gelatin, and she could not see, but the car was well-balanced and stayed on course, even when she took a hand off the steering wheel to wipe her eyes. She came to an entrance of a parkway.
The name of the parkway was familiar, but Alice had not done enough driving to learn the geography of her own state. She did not know where the parkway went.
It occurred to her that it did not matter where it went.
If Dad was dead—and she did not believe it. She could not have that be true; plus, Dad had not been there in order to be dead! Well, but if he was, then she did not have that plain gray-and-white tailored home anymore. And if Mom really believed that her only daughter, her only child, her Alice, her baby, was capable of killing somebody—and not just anybody, but Dad, whom Alice had defended through a million fights and arguments—then Alice did not have a home with Mom either.
Alice turned onto a ramp. East, it said. Alice truly did not know whether her own city was north, east, south, or west of where she was right now. But east felt distant, it felt like a going-away direction, not a going-to direction, and Alice merged with traffic, which was simply luck. She could not seem to turn her head to look for a space, nor use the side mirror. Her neck was a wooden post.
We already have your confession. Confession of what? How could Alice have confessed anything? How could Mom believe it?
It was harder than she had expected to keep her speed steady. Her foot played with the accelerator, trying to learn the right amount of pressure, but the trouble was, going uphill or downhill or on the flat required different amounts of pressure.
I killed him good, the almost-familiar voice had muttered.
What did “good” mean in that context? Thoroughly? Or with pleasure?
Alice needed cruise control. She could see buttons and dials with words on them, but she could not read. Was she crying too hard? Or could shock shut down the reading segment of your brain?
People admired the Corvette. As she passed them, or they passed her, their eyes floated down the slick scarlet body of this sexy car, and in each case they were startled to see her. She was the wrong driver for such a car, and everybody knew it.
And Alice thought: They announced my license plate over the radio.
Chapter 3
THEY HAD ANNOUNCED HER license plate and described her car.
Alice had so much to think about, she could think about nothing at all. Was she a fugitive from the police?
She, Alice.
Tenth grade. Taking American literature, and physics. French Two and Algebra Two. American history. Chorus and gym.
She, Alice.
A nice pleasant girl who didn’t butt in line, didn’t write graffiti on the bathroom stall doors, didn’t drop her hamburger wrapper out the car window, didn’t cut pages from library reference books.
The police, the radio announcer, and her very own mother believed she had committed a murder.
The murder of her very own father.
The red Corvette was a splendid decoration on the road. Nobody could miss it.
How many people who admired her
Vette were listening to the radio right now? Had the boy in the ice cream shack been listening to the radio? Who, speeding down the parkway, had a car phone? Dad’s Blazer had a car phone, but he didn’t keep one in the Corvette. The Vette, he said, was for escape.
Dad had a daydream he liked to use when he drove the Vette—that he was escaping. Running. Keeping pursuit off his tail. “Look back,” he used to say when she was little, “recognize any of those cars? That white sedan, the one with the tinted windows—it’s following us! Here. We’ll leave ʼem in the dust.” Alice and Daddy would holler joyfully while they left ʼem in the dust.
Then Mom, who had loved this game for years, suddenly said it was childish and dangerous and stupid.
Alice wanted to shove the accelerator to the floor, drive two hundred miles an hour, put dirt and towns and mileage between herself and the phone call to her mother. This was the car to do it in.
I can go eighty. In a Vette, I can do ninety. A hundred. That’s what it’s for.
But this was not a good time to get a traffic ticket.
She let a glitter-beige Avenger pass her. Dad would never have permitted such a thing. Corvettes do not get passed; they do the passing. Dad loved the name of that car—Avenger—but not the handling. Dad had always wanted to be a car namer. Dodge Ram, he would say. Great name. Great truck.
Coming toward Alice, cut off by the scenic divider, was a police car. Its lights and sirens were on. It hurtled forward. The sound of its siren was heart-slicing. The lights ripping around in circles were the lights of hell, of jail, of torment.
The lights of your very own mother believing quite easily that you, her only child—you were capable of killing your father.
Mommy, thought Alice, how could you?
Her mother was a pretty woman, but not beautiful; a little chubby; fond of jewelry, always changing her hairstyle, always on the phone with her friends. Her mother loved to cook. Loved to decorate. She worked in the city for a firm that designed mail-order catalogs. It was a job that fascinated her, and she could never resist the useless but beautiful objects sold in the catalogs she designed.
Alice drove faster. The Corvette turned human, and let her know that it loved speed; it yearned for speed. Alice held harder to the steering wheel, to be sure she made the decisions, not the Vette.
The cop was in the left, faster lane of his side. When he saw the Corvette, he slowed.
There was no doubt about it. He slowed.
For a moment they were suspended across f
rom each other. Alice, who had been going 75, easing off, and the cop, who had been going even faster, easing off, too, looking her way.
Their eyes did not actually meet, because they were too far apart and because Alice had lost the ability to focus her eyes. But she knew he had spotted her; he was going to get to her side of the parkway and come after her.
He could not cross here, but within a quarter mile, a half mile at the most, the police car could find a spot to bump up onto the grass, squeeze between trees and rocks, and come after her.
Alice was sobbing, but they were dry sobs. It was more that her heart and lungs were yelling. Her hands got so cold and slippery she could barely hold the wheel.
For a moment she considered just pulling over, letting him come, telling him what had happened, explaining that her father had told her to drive the Corvette, that she was bringing Dad the computer disk, that—
No. She was not bringing him anything. He was dead.
The parkway blurred; she felt like a small child in need of glasses, confused by a world of color smudges.
If all she had to do was talk to a policeman, Alice could stop the car. But talk to Mom? Who had just said: We’re not going to make up stories. We have your confession.
Mom had been talking of getting married again (she who had bungled the only marriage that mattered). Dad protested vigorously that his daughter should never have a stepfather. Mom and Dad had talked of going to court in a custody fight, but they couldn’t; Alice was too old; she could decide; and she had decided they had to stop their nonsense and share their daughter better.
Alice imagined Mom’s friend showing up at the house right now. Her mother called him Rick darling. Alice never called him anything. Alice made a point of never meeting Rick’s eyes; facing away from him when she was forced to speak to him; having urgent social activities whenever there was a threat that Rick might be present for more than half a minute.
Alice imagined Rick saying, “Chrissie, we must stand by your daughter. Whatever dreadful things she has done, we must be brave and remain at her side.” Alice heard her mother saying, “Rick darling, I’m so glad you’re here; what would I do without you?”
Her father saying (because he was alive after all, and had a voice, and a heart, and loved Alice), “Come on, sweetie, give me a hug; everything’s okay. I’m here; it’ll work out.”
Thinking about her parents was so painful and hideous, a great black vortex that might suck her down and leave her insane, Alice decided not to think about either of them. She would think car thoughts.
An exit sign loomed.
Alice got off the parkway.
She had absolutely no idea where she was, and she had to hide from the police while driving (badly) the world’s most obvious car.
She’d gotten off at the kind of road with stoplights every quarter mile. Endless strips of stores and parking lots and—and a mall.
Westtown Mall. A mall she knew well. It was a mere five miles from her mother’s house. Alice had not driven away. She had driven right back. There was no time to yell at herself for such stupidity. It had happened. She must deal.
The mall was an immense array of white buildings one, two, and three stories high, sitting in the midst of a truly vast parking lot.
There was not just outdoor parking. There was underground parking. Alice found the entrance and coasted down the ramp, between huge scary cement pillars, and into a damp, dark world with dim lights and cars creeping out of corners.
She needed headlights but could not remember how to turn them on. She needed both hands on the wheel. The horrible sick feeling in her stomach threatened to leap up and fill her throat and mouth.
She braked at the same time she gave it gas, goosing the car in a jerky, incompetent sort of way. People who owned Corvettes were terrific drivers who loved driving, and now in this hideous cellar for cars she would end up burying her father’s beloved Corvette.
Could it be true? Would Dad never sit behind this wheel again, never play footsie with the state cop radar, never pride himself on how he drove way above the speed limit without getting caught?
There.
Two spaces next to each other.
Alice measured the space with her eye, trying to match it against the long front end of the Vette. Prayed. Turned. Braked.
Halfway into the slot, a cement pylon pressed up against the front bumper. The perspective must be confusing her. Other cars fit, and hers was not in fact six feet longer. It just felt that way. A mistake would smash up Dad’s car. She must not make a mistake.
Confession, she thought dimly. What confession? E-mail. What E-mail?
Alice inched forward until it seemed the cement pylon must be in the front seat with her. Finally she was even with the car on her left and surely that was good enough. She yanked up the parking brake. She turned off the ignition. Lifted her tired right foot from the gas. Rested her feet flat on the floor, folded her arms on the wheel as if on a pillow, and put her cheek on her arms.
The car sat silent and dark.
Alice did E-mail her parents constantly. It was easier for them at work than the telephone, and it was fun. She could comment on the dumbest or most profound parts of her day and her thoughts; she could slip into the school library at lunch and say Hi; she could be at the other parent’s house, and call in. She loved E-mail.
Today she had not sent a message to either parent.
Alice struggled to focus.
Okay, she could make no sense of the reference to E-mail. But the disk Dad had so urgently required must have something to do with his work. Dad had access to all kinds of classified information at major corporations. That was his job—getting it back for them, or protecting it in the first place. Had Dad uncovered something he shouldn’t know? Had he found out something about a person or a company they didn’t want found out?
But why bring the disk home? Surely he would just show it to Mr. Austin or Mr. Scote, who owned the company, and it would be their problem.
A freak for neatness, the man’s voice had said. Drives everybody crazy with it.
So this voice must work with Dad. Must have been driven crazy. And Alice had almost known the voice, so it was a person she almost knew, too. Alice had met few of her father’s colleagues, and Mr. Scote and Mr. Austin only a handful of times.
If Dad had actually been killed, which was impossible, Alice would not accept this idea, but if he had, that voice had done it. Done it where? At that phone number? The one on the Caller ID display? Or in the condo? While Alice lay beneath the Corvette?
This, too, was impossible.
Alice massaged her arms and wrists, trying to press down the tremors that assaulted her.
Okay, the Corvette was parked, she’d lost the cop; now what? She had to phone her mother again. Finish that conversation. Everything had gone wrong in that crazy sobbing minute over the phone. This time Alice would ask the right questions and state the right facts.
A car slid silently into the space next to her. It was spooky and awful, the way its engine was so quiet.
It was a van.
Her heart slammed. Her fingers iced.
No. It was not that van, which had been navy blue. This was a Windstar, in one of the crayon colors popular this year, driven by a very large woman who was finishing her cigarette as she heaved herself from the van. She reached back in to grind out the cigarette and then gathered an immense purse and a shopping bag from Macy’s department store.
Alice thought: She’s returning something and she’s in a bad mood about it.
The woman squeezed between her car and Alice’s and headed for the mall entrance, and now Alice thought: She left her keys in the ignition.
Keys.
Ignition.
If Alice could not drive the Corvette, because the police were searching for it…could she drive another car!
The woman vanished into the mall. There would be telephones in the mall. Should Alice find a phone, or drive away?
&nb
sp; Alice needed time to think. She could not shake off her shock and confusion. Maybe she should drive away…in somebody else’s car. One with the keys conveniently hanging from the ignition.
Could she just get out of the Corvette, climb into the van, and drive off?
Alice had never stolen anything in her life. Not a pack of gum. Not even a pencil off a teacher’s desk.
Alice got out of the Corvette and locked it. Dad never parked in places like this. He parked way at the back of lots, a hike from the mall entrance, angling the Vette over two spaces so nobody could open a door and dent his beloved car.
Alice looked into the Windstar.
She was right.
The vehicle was not locked. The keys were there. The car was hers to steal.
Alice stood with her nose pressed against the van window, like a child staring at toys.
A few hours ago I was worried about whether I could get the nail polish to lie smoothly on my fake nails, thought Alice. Now I am considering whether to steal a car.
She thought of her best friend Kelsey. She and Kelsey had managed the exact same class schedule for two years, and were co-captains of JV softball. Kelsey would never believe that Alice could behave like this. Alice, who never even pretended to be sick in order to miss a test? Evading police and stealing cars?
The rest of her friends—Emma, Laura, Cindy, Mardee—would think: Alice? She doesn’t even ask the office to let her switch teachers when she gets one she can’t stand. She’s not going to kill somebody. Certainly not her own father.
Then they would think: but it does happen. Look at that woman who drowned her two little boys.
All right, said Alice to herself, talking to Mom comes first. I have to get to a phone. Besides, if I take the van, where would I drive? I have to have a destination. The only destination I’ve ever had is our house, which is now just Mom’s—probably Rick darling is there. Probably police—probably even police in my bedroom—touching my things—looking for clues!
At her father’s condo, there must also be police. And reporters, obviously. TV cameras, and—