Scare Crow

  So he was a regular Sherlock Holmes, or I was the worst lawbreaker in the world.

  The heat that had been creeping up my neck a few seconds ago was pushed down as the blood left my face. I simply stared at Joseph blank-faced, knowing that he had everything to destroy me.

  Joseph laughed, leaning back in his chair. “It’s funny how little you can know about someone you’ve been living with for over a year.”

  My exact sentiment. “What do you want?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In exchange for the information. What do you want to keep your mouth shut?”

  “Not everyone is an extortionist. Are you always this paranoid?” he wondered, crinkling his forehead. “I might not understand it, but I think what you did was really awesome. I hate that guy. When my brother was nine, he got caught by this same cop when he was trying to sell allergy pills he stole from the pharmacy. This Victor guy beat him up so bad that my mom didn’t even recognize him when his friends dragged him back to our apartment.”

  The feeling of relief was quickly replaced with an inflow of anger. “And you didn’t report him?”

  “Report him to whom? Who would believe a street kid from the Projects over a hero asshole cop?”

  I knew the feeling. Victor was untouchable. Almost untouchable.

  “Why’d you do it?” Joseph asked me.

  My mouth stretched thin, and my brows arched.

  He shrugged, accepting my nonanswer. “I also guess that Griff doesn’t know anything about it?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. Griff had only seen me coming home soaking wet. If he knew what I had actually been up …

  Joseph continued, “It’s probably best that you didn’t tell him. He hardly sleeps as it is. His head shoots up from the pillow if you even move your big toe.”

  “Thanks” was all I could tell Joseph. He had done for me what I hadn’t done for him: not use the information as blackmail.

  “I’ll keep looking for that guy,” he told me when I was leaving his room, as if I didn’t feel bad enough. “That kind of stuff bugs the hell out of me. Nobody should be able to hide from me like that.”

  He was taking my search as his own personal treasure hunt, sudoku for hackers.

  ****

  It turned out that I knew more about Pops than Griff did, even though I had only been there once. I knew it was likely near a reservation. Pops had mentioned to me something about tribal legends, though I couldn’t remember which tribe. I also knew it was within a day’s drive of Cameron’s cottage. And there was that little hotdog stand we had eaten at—the one with the waterfall, the one where I had offered to Cameron that I join him in the business. He would be rolling around in his grave if he knew what I was up to.

  The bad part was that there were at least ten different reservations that were within a drivable distance for my station wagon, and while our search had turned up over three hundred hotdog stands, none of them were located near a waterfall. In fact, we couldn’t find the waterfall anywhere. I was sure, almost sure, I hadn’t just imagined the waterfall.

  It was exciting to be sitting at a computer with Griff, planning our weekends around road trips to the country. His mood had picked up, and so had mine. Because I was in the midst of exam season, there wasn’t much free time. I studied all week and should have been spending my weekends studying … but I didn’t. I was pretty sure I had aced my constitutional law exam, but my ethics exam had definitely been a bust. I supposed this was evidence of my skewed morals as of late.

  Our first weekend out had been a bust, but only in the sense that we didn’t find Pops or the hidden barn. We had packed a really good lunch. But Meatball ate the sandwiches and the crackers when we failed to notice that the bag had fallen open on the backseat. So we settled for the leftover soup and hot chocolate that Meatball couldn’t get to.

  Everything was different now in the countryside. The land had gone cold and hard. Sunlit hours were few. This made playing I Spy really easy since everything was white or brown or pitch-black, but it made it difficult for me to recognize any landmarks that Cameron and I would have crossed.

  On our way back, we bought a Christmas tree from a shady guy on the side of the road who had just a few firs in the back of his pickup truck. The tree trunks had been cut in many odd angles, with splinters coming out the sides. Wherever he had (illegally) acquired these trees, they had been hastily cut. We got home, dragged the tree in, and found a corner for it. And as Griff put his arm around me and we watched the black-market tree, I realized what this meant. That Griff and I were going to spend the holidays together. That this was going to be a happy Christmas. That I was starting to feel happy again.

  I felt stronger with Griff at my side. Stronger than I did before he came to find me, and definitely stronger now that he was looped into my world. Most of my world. It was as though I had grown two inches, or perhaps I was just walking with my head held higher, my spine straighter.

  We didn’t make much more progress the following weekend either. This time we had headed northeast, but the drive was slow because of the thick snowflakes and because the Roadmaster was starting to protest winter. When it took what seemed like its last breath for the Roadmaster to climb a slight hill, Griff and I decided to pull over to give the old girl a break before she gave up on life and left us out in the middle of nowhere.

  We got out of the car and found a tree to sit where we could keep an eye on Meatball while he burrowed his nose into the snow like a drunken groundhog.

  We both leaned against the wood and sighed at the same time. There was a part of me that wanted this moment to last. The other part knew that it couldn’t, for so many reasons.

  “This won’t last forever, you know,” I said. “Eventually we’ll find what we’re looking for.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. Things will change.”

  He shrugged. “Things always change. You just have to roll with the punches, I guess. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out together.”

  I watched Meatball throw himself into the snow, legs flailing skyward. I wished I was him.

  “You’ve got a snowflake on your nose, Ginger.” Griff took his thumb and wiped the snow off my nose.

  I hadn’t heard him call me Ginger in a long time.

  “When we first met,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest to keep warm, “you told me that you were planning to get back to fighting as soon as you could get yourself out of debt. You’re out of debt now.”

  “Didn’t you hear me earlier when I said that things always change?”

  “I don’t want to be the one who makes you give that up, Griff.”

  “Nah,” he said, “that part of my life is good and over.”

  “You’re a hero to a lot of people. Hunter wets his pants when you say hi to him. You were really good at it, and you seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Seemed. Past tense. I’m not going back to that, Em. I realize now that fighting had taken me to a dark place. I don’t ever want to go back to being that guy in that world.”

  I knew I was being hypocritical. Because I was the one who was forcing Griff to stay, who was forcing Griff to give up something that he had clearly once loved. The guilt was starting to eat through my skin.

  “Is it so bad that I just want to be normal … with you?” he said to me.

  “Okay,” I said in a tone that was sarcasm-heavy. He obviously had absolutely no idea what normal was.

  Then Griff did something that I hadn’t seen coming. He leaned in and kissed me on the mouth.

  And I did something I hadn’t seen coming. I kissed him back.

  It was a soft, freeing kind of kiss. The kind of kiss that makes you want to spread your wings and fly up high and over mountains and above the sea and into the breeze.

  But as Griff’s hands came to my face as naturally as they would come to hold my hand, I pushed him back and shook my head, daring the tears that wanted to rear their ugly head to
stand down.

  I called Meatball over and walked back to the car. Griff followed a few minutes later, and we drove off.

  His eyes flickered from me to the road as we sat in a silence that was so thick, so pressured, it could explode us. At least half an hour had gone by before any words had been uttered, until Griff piped up in the clearest voice I had ever heard, “I love you.”

  Boom! The detonation I had been waiting for.

  I could see it even in the farthest corner of his eyes. The hope, the desperation. He wanted me to say it back. He needed me to love him as much as he loved me. I knew this. I had known this for a while. But I had chosen to overlook it.

  Something was climbing up my throat. I put my hand to my mouth, thinking I was going to be sick. Griff drove off the road, stopped the car, and watched me turn olive.

  He reached out, but I stopped him. I wasn’t going to be sick—what was climbing up my throat was words. Words that would be powerful enough to break him and me. To break us.

  The words had reached the inside of my mouth, and swished around like Listerine. And then my lips parted. “Griff, I’m pregnant.”

  Griff didn’t move. He didn’t blink. His chest did not take in any air.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  He took another minute and a breath.

  “How far along are you?” he asked me, keeping his eyes ahead.

  “About six months.”

  I could see him make a very quick calculation in his brain as he figured out whose child I was carrying. “How long have you known about this?”

  I couldn’t lie to him. Not anymore. “A while.”

  He stoically put the car in drive, hit the turn signal, and veered us back onto the road. Then he turned the music up and took us home without one more word being spoken.

  When we got home, I grabbed Meatball’s leash, but Griff took it from me.

  “I’ll take him,” he said without looking at me. His lips were tight and white as he headed out the door.

  I had expected to feel some kind of relief after finally telling Griff the truth about the baby. But all I felt was ache. The truth hadn’t set me free. It had blown a suffocating bubble around me.

  I needed to talk to Griff, even though I had no idea what else to say to him. Hadn’t I said enough?

  I went up to my room, sat on my bed, and stared at my leaky walls, waiting for him to come back, wondering if he would come back.

  ****

  Griff did come back a couple of hours later. He went into the kitchen, and I heard the cling of dog chow against Meatball’s salad bowl, before hearing the front door close as Griff left. It only took Meatball a minute to scarf down his meal before climbing up the crate stairs I had built for him so that he could get onto my stilted bed. He burped in my face, then let me wrap my arms around his thick neck and stuff my face in his fur while I continued to wait for Griff.

  It was total darkness when I woke up. Meatball was crowding all the space on the bed. I was about to push him over so that I could get a bit of breathing space when I noticed Griff sitting at the end of the bed. I leaned over Meatball and switched the lamp on.

  Griff had already hopped off and leaned over the side, leaned over Meatball to take me into his arms.

  He said, “I’m an idiot. Jesus, I’m such a bloody idiot.”

  Meatball grumbled and pushed us apart long enough to get off the bed and go find a new spot to sleep on the floor.

  I had switched from burying my face in Meatball’s fur to burying my face in Griff’s neck. I let out a sigh that lightened the weight pushing against my heart.

  “I should have told you,” I mumbled through the crook of his neck. “I should have told sooner, but I didn’t know how.”

  Griff pushed me to arm’s length so that he could see me.

  “Of course you didn’t tell me. With everything that happened.” He looked ill, as though he were the one who had been afflicted with morning sickness. “I’m sorry, so sorry all this happened. I understand now why you seemed like you had changed so much. How are you doing?”

  I smiled, and my eyes watered at the corners as relief settled in. “I’m fine, Griff. The baby’s fine. I saw a doctor a few weeks ago.”

  “You need more than just one doctor,” he said, worry encasing his voice. “When I took Meatball for a walk, I was so angry. But my head cleared, and I realized what an asshole I was, Em. I’ve been in that world. I’ve seen these pricks in action. I felt sick when I understood what you were trying to tell me while I was too self-absorbed to listen.” He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket, struggling to unfold it. “I went to the library, and then to the school crisis center.”

  I looked at the piece of paper, and my heart sank. Griff did not understand at all.

  “I don’t know how to help you, but there are people who can,” he said. “And I’ll be there with you, every step of the way.”

  There was a moment, a fleeting moment, after I read the piece of paper and realized that Griff thought I had gotten pregnant after being raped, that I considered letting him believe this because this would keep him with me.

  But as soon as this glimpse of a thought flashed through, I felt sick to my stomach. Because Cameron and his memory didn’t deserve that, even if he had chosen death instead of fighting for us. And because I was done lying to Griff for my own selfish reasons just so he wouldn’t leave me.

  Griff waited for me to speak, hope and desperation finding their way back to his eyes.

  I gulped and took a few long breaths. “It’s not what you think, Griff.” I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him. But I had to. “This baby was made out of love.”

  I told Griff about Cameron and me. About Cameron falling in love with me. About me falling in love with Cameron.

  I had expected this to hurt him, but he instead kept a sympathetic eye. “Your mind was playing tricks on you to help you survive the ordeal. I know you think you loved him, Em, but you didn’t. And believe me, he never loved you.”

  “I did love him. And he did too,” I said, my voice calm.

  “You knew the guy what? A few weeks? It doesn’t make sense for you to have fallen in love so quickly with someone you barely knew.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense, Griff. I don’t know why I fell in love with Cameron …” I had asked myself that question many times. I didn’t understand it, but I accepted it.

  “You know, there’s one thing I don’t understand,” he said. “When I saw you that day in the barn, he barely acknowledged you. He treated you as though you were his property. How can you love someone who treats you like that? Is that what chicks are into nowadays? Being with a guy who treats them like crap?”

  I could hear the frustration in his tone. Cameron had been forced to ignore me, rebuff his feelings for my own protection. “It’s complicated, Griff.”

  But this wasn’t enough to satisfy him.

  “How can you have loved someone who left you? Pregnant nonetheless!”

  “Cameron didn’t know that I was pregnant when …” I sighed, realizing I had never told him that Cameron was dead. “He didn’t leave me, Griff. He was killed. By Spider. That’s why I need to kill Spider and Victor—because they will eventually find out that I’m having Cameron’s baby. And there’s no way they are going to let that happen.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I need to kill—”

  “No, not that. Cameron. You said that he’s dead?”

  I told Griff about being taken by Shield. About being locked in a little room. About what had almost happened. About Cameron using his last breath to save me before being shot by Spider.

  A dark look took over Griff’s features. When he didn’t speak, I finished with what I needed him to understand most. “I love Cameron, and Cameron loved me. While I wish he would have fought for us, I can’t change that. But I will fight for the child we created together.” That was it. I had now told him everything.

  Griff lo
oked pensive for a second, but something inside him triggered. “You mean, you did love him. You said that you love him, but what you really meant to say is that you used to love him.”

  I knew this would hurt him. “There’ll always be a part of me that will love him.” I touched his arm. “But it doesn’t change anything else. I love you, Griff. But I don’t know if I love you in that way. Things are just too complicated and confusing right now. Nothing makes sense anymore.”

  Griff shrugged his arm from my grasp. “As long as you love him, you’ll never be able to love me.”

  I didn’t know what to tell him. But I felt as though I had just put a bullet through his heart.

  He stood and paced. “So if that son of a bitch walked through the door right now, you would take off into the sunset with him? After everything?”

  “There’s no sense in hashing out hypotheses, Griff. Cameron isn’t coming back. This is my life now.”

  Griff stopped pacing long enough to look at me. Watching me. Deciding what he was going to do. But I already knew what his decision would be. I could see it in the vacancy of his eyes. There was so much I needed to tell him. How much I needed him. How much his light made my life tolerable. How I could see myself being happy someday. But there was no point. It was too late. I had hurt him too much for that.

  While Griff’s body was still there, standing in front of me, he was already elsewhere.

  Griff turned around and went to bed. Right before dawn burst, I heard him shuffling next door. He tiptoed past my curtain and down the stairs. When I got up in the morning, I went to his room. His bed was made. His duffel bag was gone.

  Griff had left me.

  The fact that I had fallen in love with his nemesis was killing Griff, like a bullet that lingered near his heart. The fact that I was pregnant with the child of his archenemy, the fact that I was bearing the seed of everything he hated, the fact that I still loved Cameron was enough to thrust the bullet to its final target.

  CHAPTER TEN: CAMERON

  FICTION

  There was no rewriting of this story.