She seemed to think about it for a few seconds. Then she said, ‘Okay. Sure. As long as we don’t have to wait too long.’
‘Great.’
She stopped and waited for me. When I caught up to her, she turned around and walked beside me. ‘I suppose we can give it fifteen or twenty minutes,’ she said.
‘Do you need to be home by a certain time?’
She looked at me and chuckled. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well...you’re obviously not out here at this hour with anyone’s permission. You look pretty young to have a place of your own, so you probably live at home with your parents. Or parent. My guess is, you sneaked out of the house after they went to sleep. How am I doing?’
‘Very logical,’ she said.
‘Accurate?’
‘Maybe.’
‘If I’m right, then you probably need to get home before your parents get up in the morning.’
‘Very good. I can see you’re a brain.’
Laughing, I said, ‘Thanks. So. Is dawn your deadline?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What about school?’ I asked.
‘What about it?’
She seemed cheerful, not at all reluctant to discuss the situation, so I pressed on. ‘Are you still in school?’
‘Do I look like I’m in school?’
‘Not at this exact moment...’
‘You are sharp, Ed.’
‘Have you got classes in the morning?’
‘Maybe. Do you?’
‘An eight o’clock.’
‘Are you sure you have time for another round of Ride or Hide?’
‘I don’t mind missing a little sleep.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Casey. We walked along in silence for a short time. Then she smiled at me and asked, ‘Do you want to guess my grade?’
‘A-plus.’
She shook her head. ‘Something needs to be done about your sense of humor.’
‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’
She laughed. ‘Sure. If you prefer to think so.’
‘You wanted me to guess your grade level? Like freshman, sophomore ... ?’
‘There you go.’
‘Well, I’d have to say you must be a senior.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Your obvious maturity, intelligence and wit.’
She bounced her knuckles off my upper arm.
‘Your physical strength,’ I added.
She laughed.
‘So, am I right? Are you a senior?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe? You aren’t going to tell?’
‘You’re assuming I even go to school.’
‘You said you do.’
‘Did I? Really?’
‘I thought so.’
‘Think again, Chucky.’
‘Are you saying you don’t go to school?’
‘Not admitting to anything.’
‘How about your age?’
‘How old do you think I am?’
Grinning, I shook my head. ‘Lotta good it’ll do. Even if I guess right, you won’t admit it.’
‘Are you sure?’
I laughed. ‘No, I’m not sure.’
‘Can’t hurt to give it a try.’
‘Okay. I’ll say eighteen.’
‘Wishful thinking.’
I blushed, taking her remark as a reference to the state’s legal age of sexual consent.
‘Try again,’ she said.
‘Younger?’
‘I’m not giving clues.’
‘Okay.’
‘Put your powers of reason to work.’
‘Unless you’re extremely mature for your age, you’re probably no younger than fifteen. You have awfully well developed verbal skills for any sort of teenager at all.’
‘Why, I’m flattered, sir.’
‘From your physical appearance, I’d say you’re definitely under twenty-one. I’d probably rule out twenty, too.’
‘If I’m under twenty-one, I’m obviously not twenty-two.’ She grimaced. ‘Cripes, your humor is rubbing off on me.’
‘It’s an improvement.’
She blurted out a laugh, then glanced around as if afraid she might’ve given away our presence. I looked around, too. I had no idea where we were. The houses on both sides of the street were looking shabbier and farther apart than those that had surrounded us earlier. The street seemed darker. But I saw nobody watching us, no traffic coming.
‘So how about my age?’ Casey asked in a hushed voice.
‘Okay. Probably somewhere between fifteen and nineteen. Am I close?’
‘Maybe.’
I growled. She laughed. Then she said, ‘Look. You’re such a brain.’
‘Not really.’
‘Sure you are. So try this out. Take your own age, double it, divide by two, then subtract the number of your feet.’
‘My shoe size?’
‘How many feet do you have at the end of your legs?’
‘Okay.’ I gave it some thought, then gave her my answer. ‘Eighteen.’
‘Ah!’
‘You’re eighteen?’
‘Don’t you remember, I told you there wouldn’t be any clues?’
‘But the formula!’
‘That was for me to find out your age. Which is twenty. Am I right?’
Chapter Thirty-seven
‘Right.’
Casey laughed. She looked wonderful laughing. Though I ached to put my arms around her and hold her close to me, I only smiled and shook my head.
‘Anything else you’d like to know?’ she asked.
‘As if you would tell me.’
‘Give it a try.’
‘I don’t have a clue in the world as to where we are.’
She looked around. ‘No problem. I know precisely where we are.’
‘If you’re going to take off pretty soon, how would you like to lead me somewhere familiar?’
‘Where is familiar?’
‘Well, I know Division and Franklin fairly well.’
‘Let’s head back,’ she said. ‘But we’ll use a different route. It’s always more interesting that way.’
‘Good idea.’
We continued walking in the same direction. At the end of the block, however, we turned right at the corner. We made another right at the next comer, too, and headed back in the direction from which we’d come, but one street over.
‘Just so you’ll know,’ Casey said, ‘Franklin and Division are straight ahead.’
‘Thanks.’
‘In case we get separated.’
‘I hope that doesn’t happen.’
‘One never knows. If we have to hide, we might lose each other.’
‘How’ll I find you again?’ I asked.
She turned her head and stared at me. ‘Maybe you won’t.’
‘If you don’t want me to ...’
‘We’ll see.’
Don’t push it, I told myself.
‘Want to check out the park?’ she asked.
‘Sure.’
‘This way.’ We cut across the street. At the comer, we went to the left. We followed the sidewalk to the end of the block.
There, cater-corner from us, was what appeared to be a public park.
We trotted through the empty intersection.
Just on the other side was a baseball field. Nothing fancy, just a backstop behind home plate, one small set of bleachers along the first-base line and another set along the third-base line. The field was equipped with banks of lights for night games, but the lights were dark.
‘I don’t see anybody,’ Casey said. ‘Do you?’
‘Looks deserted.’
‘Keep your eyes open.’
We stepped around one end of the backstop.
‘There’s a playground over that way,’ Casey said. She pointed toward the far end of the park. I could make out the vague shapes of monkey bars, swing sets, slides and other equipment. ‘Want to go over and look?’ she asked.
br />
‘Sure,’ I said.
Side by side, we walked up the middle of the baseball diamond, over the pitcher’s mound and on past second base. The base bag was missing. So were all the others. ‘I wonder where the bases go at night,’ I said.
‘Home,’ Casey said.
I laughed, but not loudly. It felt strange to be walking across a baseball field at such an hour.
Leaving the diamond behind, we headed out through center field. The grass whispered under our shoes. Though there seemed to be no light except for the glow of the moon, we both cast shadows ahead of us.
There were no trees nearby.
I looked over my shoulder just to make sure nobody was watching us.
Casey looked, too.
‘So far, so good,’ I said.
‘Hardly anyone’s ever around here after dark. Not unless there’s a night game. It’s too exposed.’
‘I’ve noticed that.’
‘The night loonies get nervous when they’re out in the open.’
‘Night loonies?’
‘You know.’
‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘The town’s full of ’em.’
‘Half full,’ she corrected me.
‘Aren’t you afraid of them?’ I asked.
‘They don’t hurt anyone,’ she said.
I couldn’t believe my ears.
‘They don’t?’
She gave me a one-sided smile. ‘They don’t hurt anyone they can’t catch. If they catch you, though, forget it.’
‘What do they do?’ I asked.
‘They get you. And that’s all she wrote. You’re gone. Unless you manage to escape. They almost got me once. It was pretty soon after I started coming out at night. I didn’t know any better and tried to help this guy. Must’ve been three o’clock in the morning. He looked like your typical homeless guy, going down the middle of the street with all his stuff in a shopping cart. I was on a sidewalk and we went past each other heading in opposite directions. I was all set to run, but he kept going. You know how noisy those shopping carts are?’
‘Oh. yeah.’
‘All of a sudden, his wasn’t. I turned around to see what was going on, and the guy was down, just lying there on the street, not moving. So I went running over to see if I could help.’ She shook her head. ‘Stupid move.’
By this time, we’d left the outfield behind and were approaching the children’s playground area. Studying the shadowed darkness, I saw nobody wandering about, no strange shapes on the park benches, nobody on the swings or monkey bars or slides or teeter-totter or carousel, nobody anywhere else in the area.
‘When I bent down to help the guy,’ Casey said, ‘he bashed me on the head with a bottle. Anyway, I think that’s what he did. The seizure ... whatever ... it’d been a fake-out to lure me over and get me. He knocked me out. When I woke up, I was in his shopping cart. It had been piled up to the top, so he must’ve gotten rid of most of the stuff to make room for me. Guess he figured I was a better class of junk.’
We walked over to a swing set. Casey sat on one of the swings. I stood in front of her, but off to one side.
‘He hadn’t taken out all his crap,’ she explained. ‘I could feel some of it under my back.’
‘How did you fit in?’
‘It was a pretty big cart,’ she said. Smiling, she pushed her feet at the ground and moved herself back and forth a little. ‘I only fit in from my head to my butt. My legs were sticking up over the top of the basket and my feet dangled in front. Anyway, I was pretty shocked to find myself in a predicament like that ...’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘When you’re stuck in a grocery cart, there’s no easy way to escape. I couldn’t just leap out and run away, so I played possum.’
‘You must’ve been scared to death.’
‘I sort of was and sort of wasn’t. I’d been in some bad situations before and I’d gotten out of them in one piece ... more or less. So I figured I’d get out of this one, too.’
‘I guess you did,’ I said.
‘Guess so.’ She smiled up at me. ‘I’m here.’
‘How did you get away?’
‘Well, I kept hoping someone would see us and stop him. Like a cop, for instance? I mean, nobody could exactly look at us without seeing me in the shopping cart. He didn’t even bother to cover me. I was right there in plain sight.’
‘At three o’clock in the morning,’ I added.
‘Right. But it’s not as if nobody’s out at that hour. You know that.’
‘I know, all right.’
‘I heard a jogger once. And I thought I heard a bike go by. Even a few cars, too. I think the jogger and bike went right past us on the same street. None of the cars did, but I heard them go through intersections pretty close to us. Nobody said anything or did anything. They just kept going.’
‘Maybe they didn’t see you.’
‘Half of them were probably weirdos, themselves.’
I smiled. ‘Yeah.’
‘Anyway, the guy finally got where he was taking me. He turned the cart over and dumped me out, but he must’ve already figured out I was playing possum. When I tried to get up and run, he grabbed me and pounded me half senseless. Then he swung me over his shoulder and carried me down a slope. I had a pretty good idea where we were, and figured he was taking me down by the stream where we’d be good and hidden. I figured he planned to molest me, you know? For starters.’
I nodded. My mouth was dry, my heart pounding hard.
‘When we got down to where the stream was, I thought he would throw me down and do it. I wanted him to try. That’s when they’re easiest, when they’re all hot and ready to stick it in. Only thing is, he didn’t stop and put me down. Instead, he turned and carried me along the shore. He was gonna take me under the bridge.’ Casey frowned up at me. ‘One thing about bridges, Ed. You don’t want to go under them at night.’
‘I’ve noticed,’ I muttered.
‘I figured I’d better do something real fast and get away. Before I had a chance, though, he calls out, “Come ’n get it!” And he gets answers from under the bridge. Like a bunch of guys are already there waiting for him. Maybe a couple of gals, too’.Shaking her head, Casey muttered, ‘Damn. That scared me. I thought my skin was going to crawl off my bones. It scares me just remembering.’
‘It scares me just listening,’ I said.
‘Well, I wasn’t about to let him take me under there. The way he had me, I was sort of drooped over his back with my legs down his front, and he had just one arm across my legs to hold me steady. His other hand ... well, it was feeling up my rear end. I hadn’t fought him, so far, just stayed limp and kept my mouth shut, so he wasn’t expecting anything.
‘All of a sudden, I grabbed hold of his trousers with both hands and kicked my legs up for all I was worth ... like unbending myself. He couldn’t hold on. For a second, I was straight up, teetering on the back of his shoulder. Then I flipped the rest of the way over and dropped to the ground behind him. I landed on my feet, but just barely. I was so off balance I fell back against him ... which steadied me but knocked him flying. I think he actually bumped into some of the others. Sounded like one or two of them went down. And maybe they blocked the shore for a few seconds so none of the others could get by very fast. I don’t know what really happened, just that I ran like my ass was on fire and nobody ever caught me.’
‘Thank God for that,’ I muttered.
‘I don’t like to think about it much ... what they might’ve done to me. I sure didn’t like the way he called, “Come and get it.” That’s what my mom used to say when it was time for supper.’
‘What do you think he meant?’ I asked.
Swaying back and forth, Casey looked up at me and sounded almost amused as she said, ‘He took me most of the way there in a grocery cart. I guess that’s a clue.’
Chapter Thirty-eight
‘Where’d this happen?’ I asked. ‘What bridge?’
‘I’m no
t sure. It was before I knew the town very well. I do know it was one of the bridges that crosses over the Old Mill Stream.’
‘On Division?’
She shook her head. ‘No. That’s right by the campus. This was a pretty good distance to the west. Maybe over near Fairmont or ...’
She mentioned a couple of other street names, but I only heard Fairmont; the street I’d taken north earlier that night to avoid Division.
‘I live near there,’ I said. ‘Near Fairmont.’
‘Well, don’t go under the bridge. I’m not sure that’s where the guy tried to take me, but it doesn’t matter much. You never know which bridge they’ll be under.’
‘You’ve studied them?’ I asked.
‘I sees what I sees.’
‘You think they ... eat people?’
She shrugged. ‘Whatever they can get into a shopping cart.’
I nodded.
‘At this point,’ Casey said, ‘you’re supposed to tell me I’m nuts. People don’t eat people.’
‘People eating people,’ I said, ‘isn’t as unusual as most people would like to believe.’
‘Well, they seem to do it around here. The night loonies, anyway. How about giving me a push?’
‘Sure.’
I stepped behind Casey’s swing. Bending over slightly, I put my hands behind her shoulders and gently pushed. She glided forward, the chains creaking.
‘Harder,’ she said.
When she came back at me, I thrust harder and she went higher. I took a couple of steps away so she wouldn’t collide with me on her return. Her back pressed against my hands and I shoved again.
‘Harder,’ she said.
Next time, I shoved harder. My hands were lower on her back. There seemed to be nothing between the sweatshirt and her skin. I felt the curves of her ribcage.
‘You’re doing good,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
Soon, I had her flying. On her upward course, she leaned far back, pulling at the chains, her legs out straight, her ponytail hanging toward the ground. On the way down, she sat up and bent her knees, bringing her feet up close to the bottom of the swing, and her ponytail went in against the back of her neck.
I had to keep moving farther away to avoid being stuck. As she went higher, my contact with her back traveled lower and lower. My open hands pushed at her flanks, then her hips, then the sides of her jean-clad buttocks, and then the edge of the swing seat.