Hiding Page 5

  Really wrong.

  I mean, I’m actually actively against such sorts of behavior, because they remind me of this nut I know named Paul Stewart, this real psycho nut who I used to talk to sometimes after lunch. He had this huge thing for this girl named Bethany Cooper or Cowper or something like that, and he went around taking pictures of her while she wasn’t looking. I mean really sneaky pictures, and I know he actually did it, because he showed me the pictures to prove it, even pictures he took of her when he followed her to the beach, like, a hundred and fifty miles away just for the purpose of spying and came away with these very sexy pictures of her wearing this filmy thing over her bikini like some Sports Illustrated model. And even though she was not my type, because I don’t actually go for tall blondes and prefer shorter beautiful brown-haired girls like Laura, I will say this Bethany girl was incredibly beautiful in that sort of very popular Sports Illustrated way.

  But this nut Paul didn’t stop there. After he went and took all those pictures and did things with them on the Internet that I don’t even want to talk about, because I can’t have some weirdo reading this get any vile ideas, he finally got the nerve to get her phone number from some goofy friend of hers, some careless, goofy friend, and one night he starts texting her, and she must have thought he was charming, because they got a little talk going. She was in her house upstairs on the second floor evidently walking around her room or watching TV in her undies up there, and when she finally asked where he was, he said, “I’m out on your roof! Will you let me in?”

  He was right outside her frickin’ window!

  It made the papers, that did, and Bethany was so freaked she got her mom to put out a restraining order on psycho Paul, which just for the record I’ll say I totally see the purpose and necessity of, and I’ll add that I no longer wanted to talk to him after lunch or anytime else, and I mean ever, because it is not my habit to associate with loony psychos.

  But here I go and find Laura’s window open, her basement transom hopper window, at what must have been at least midnight and was probably more like one o’clock in the morning, and without even thinking about it and giving it any clear thought at all I just climb right in, like it’s something I’m really good at and maybe do every day.

  I’m telling you, I didn’t know what to make of myself.

  And the weird thing is, once I was in there and standing in the dark, I didn’t know why I’d come in.

  The even weirder thing was that I felt there was a reason.

  I just couldn’t tell what it was.

  Of course I wanted to get back together with Laura. I’m sure you’ve already guessed that. But I didn’t see how sneaking into her house would help. If anything, I knew it would just destroy whatever chance I might ever possibly have with her, because if she found me in her basement, she’d probably despise me and never speak to me again for her whole life.

  My best bet was just to climb back out the window.

  But this feeling I had, this feeling of a reason, it was really strong.

  What worried me was that I really couldn’t tell if it was a good reason, or whether I was just a nut like Paul Stewart and was obsessed with seeing Laura, or spying on her and trying to catch a glimpse of her sitting around in her undies watching TV, even though while we were together making out where she baby-sat I’d already seen her in her undies, or close to it, so it wasn’t like I had some special perverted need to see her like that again.

  I mean, even though I’d thought already about how she was asleep up in her room—because I swear I could sort of really feel her there, like I could almost hear her breathing—I wasn’t planning to, like, wait for when everybody else was asleep and go peek in on her. True, she had told me that she slept wearing hardly anything; we were talking one day about it, and I forget how the subject came up—I think it was when she saw these pajamas I wear—and she mentioned that she always slept with no shirt on because she felt comfortable that way, but also I could sort of tell she wanted to impress me with how sexy and mature she was. And I must admit I did think about that—I mean I thought about her asleep up there with maybe no shirt on—and I have to admit that I thought that was pretty exciting and might be sort of nice to see—actually very nice to see—because Laura is really, really beautiful, like I said, but I mean only if she wanted me to see her that way, and not like I wanted to just go and peek in on her like some total weirdo.

  I thought being down there was wrong.

  I really did.

  I felt really nervous and even had this weird sense of dizziness—from so much excitement I guess—and thought the best thing to do was just climb right back out of there.

  But the feeling stayed with me.

  I mean the feeling that there was a reason.

  I felt extremely alert, as if something might be right out there in the dark, maybe so close that I could even bump into it. And it was so dark in there, and the smell of dead grass and gasoline was so strong, that I guess that’s also why I felt a little dizzy and unsteady on my feet.

  I reached out my hands like a tightrope-walker so as not to waver back and forth and possibly fall—when all the frickin’ lights came on!

  I didn’t move.

  Well, I jerked my head.

  I’d never been so surprised to see a room in my whole life.

  Really it wasn’t much of a room. It was just a dirty basement. Clean, but dirty. I mean, what I saw was clean enough, organized enough: these glass cabinets along one far wall that were filled with papers and stuff; various tables and unused furniture, some of it under sheets to keep it from getting too dusty; a lot of gardening stuff hung on a rack and a rider mower with flat tires; a washing machine and a dryer; and some carpets—big rugs, really—rolled up and wrapped in brown paper, stacked like logs on a big shelf a few feet away from me.

  The walls were just the reverse side of the building stones, and the mortar sort of curdled out of them like froth, and the floor was stone too, and covered in dust and drops of dried paint.

  There were so many other boxes and pieces of sports equipment and various crates of old clothing that I was a bit surprised to see the room being so ordinary. It was like anybody else’s storage basement down the hill where I live, where all the houses are filled with so much random junk that if you looked at it long enough, you’d know everything about the family living there without their ever having to say a word to you, because you’d find photos and documents and letters and everything else people have done and used for years, until it’s almost like looking at a museum collection about them. Not that I saw anything too personal—I mean, it wasn’t like the junk at my house; it was all just stuff they’d bought and gotten tired of using, but the feeling was sort of the same.

  I just couldn’t associate this kind of basement with Laura, whose life, as I guess you’ve gathered, I thought was only fun and really pretty glamorous, but this room kind of revealed that there was a lot of effort behind that, like machinery behind a curtain that keeps the rest of the palace—and I definitely thought of her house as a palace—in perfect shape.

  Of course a lot of this is what I can tell you now just in retrospect, because at the second the lights went on—while seeing the basement so shabby was a bit of a shock—all I could really think about was how I might just drop a load in my pants if somebody actually came down the stairs, which was exactly what was happening.

  I didn’t know if it was her dad or her older brother, Jack, but upstairs one muffled voice said something I couldn’t hear, and then this man, Laura’s dad or Jack, said in this very tired voice that almost sounded like a snore, “Yeah, I’ll get it,” and started coming down the stairs.

  The stairs were about fifteen feet across from me—this was a very big basement; I guess that that makes it at least a little glamorous—and I was standing right in the middle of it, right in the clearest, most open visible place, exactly as if I had wanted to just put myself on display.

  But that didn’t really ma
tter. Because like I told you—like I had to tell you—I am good at hiding.

  When the lights flashed on, I’ll admit I had a sort of subconscious reaction to the room, and I hope it didn’t sound too much like a rude judgment, because I wouldn’t want you to think I’m casting aspersions on Laura’s family because they had a less than perfect basement, but really, the first sort of automatic thought that went through my mind was where to hide.

  I saw the best place instantly, even while listening to them talking upstairs.

  The best place was under the shelf with the rolled-up rugs; I just sort of instinctively saw that place and picked it without even really trying.

  I was still holding my shoes, because I knew they’d make noise and I certainly didn’t want to leave any mud tracks on the floor. So without making a sound—and I can scoot just about anywhere without making a sound, especially over a stone floor—I zipped right over to that shelf.

  It was a shelf about a yard deep and ten feet long, waist high, attached to the wall stones with some sort of long bracket and held flat by steel cables strung from each end of the shelf to metal bolts stuck in the wall. I got under it really fast, and it hid me perfectly, because first of all, there was a table not too far in front of it that had boxes and household items both on top and underneath, and also because part of the paper wrapper had come undone off one of the rolled rugs, and it hung down almost all the way to the floor like a brown paper curtain.

  The craziest thing is that there was a goddamn bed behind that paper curtain. It was this long plushy bed of what looked like piled cotton, and it was very soft and a little greasy under my hands. As soon as I was on it, I smelled the unmistakable odor of dog. And then I remembered Laura’s dog, this humongous Doberman named Dobey who scares everybody, and I literally prayed to god in my head, Oh please don’t let them be bringing that dog down—

  I stopped praying.

  All I did was listen.

  He was out there, Jack was. I figured it was Jack because I didn’t think Laura’s dad would be singing some pop song to himself, this sort of sing-humming that I heard going from one side of the room to the other as he walked around.

  And I was right, it was Jack, because I could see out one end from under the shelf, and at one point he came into view under the light hanging from the ceiling over the washing machine, this big, wide-shouldered guy in a Stanford T-shirt. I think he does actually go to Stanford—Laura said so, she said he was a “Stanford man,” those were her exact words, and she really sort of bragged about how brilliant he was.

  I saw him noodling around in the cabinet next to the washer. I couldn’t get a clue about anything he was up to until I saw him drag out an old leather bag and unzip it and look inside and dig his hand through what I thought by the sound must have been papers and then zip it shut and walk off.

  Jack.

  I guessed he was back a while from school.

  Funny enough, I was sort of glad to see him. He had always been a pretty friendly guy. On a couple of occasions he drove Laura and me to the movies and came to pick us up afterward, and also drove us to this roller-rink, where Laura had taught me how to skate. That was the first date we went on, when we skated around in big circles hanging on to each other in an embrace, because if she’d ever let me go, I’d have fallen on my ass and embarrassed the hell out of her. I remembered it perfectly.

  So I liked Jack and had a lot of respect for him for being so big at Stanford and playing football and everything, even though to tell you the truth, he was a very privileged guy and knew it. And I really did forgive him for being a bit naturally snooty to me and not actually deigning to look in my direction when he talked; though in all honesty I have to say he had to keep his eyes on the traffic.

  I lay there waiting, hoping he’d go up soon so I could breathe again.

  But then he did the worst thing.

  I have to admit that lying there on that dog bed I was sweating bullets and really feeling pretty frantic and stupid for even being there; I mean, the whole dumb aspect of having come in sort of fell on me all of a sudden like an avalanche. All I wanted now was for Jack to go the hell back upstairs so I could creep out and climb through the window and go home, because by then I’d finally resigned myself to going home and seeing what was up with my dad.

  But instead of that, what happened was that Jack walked right past where I was hiding. I even saw his feet in these sort of plush moccasins going right past. His legs scraped against the paper curtain, and then he must have angled around the table, because he stopped for a few seconds at what must have been the sink I’d washed my hands in, and then I heard some squeaky noises and then this sort of vacuum/lever sound that really made my blood run cold. Then he went up the stairs and shut the door.

  The lights went out.

  I didn’t even move.

  I listened hard.

  And then I heard it.

  Five little beeps, and then a long beeeeep!

  And I was like, Oh crap.

  I crawled out very quietly. I swear to god I had this sort of dead feeling in me. I kept crawling and didn’t even bother to stand until I was near the sink.

  Then I stood.

  Yep.

  Sure enough, the window was shut, the hose no longer hanging down. I could just barely see, along the edge of the right side of the frame, these two rectangular plastic contacts.

  The alarm.

  I didn’t go back to the bed.

  Well, not yet.

  I stood there wondering.

  I can climb pretty fast. I could climb up and open the window. I could be out in, say, ten seconds. Another ten seconds to run across the yard. Then I could get to the alley behind the house. Once there, well, I could hide in another yard or something. It would be easy.

  Except one thing.

  Jack was on a football scholarship. He was a running back.

  I stopped for a second and smiled, wondering just where he’d tackle me. Probably about five feet from the window, because he’d know just which one had been breached—they’d have a sensor board upstairs, I was sure.

  Alarms would go off. The roving van would arrive. The woman cop with her hair in a bun would arrive. I’d go to jail. My dad would have to come and get me.

  I went back and lay down on the dog bed.

  I turned on my back and tried to see the underside of the shelf above me. Finally I did, just the faintest image of the unpainted wood. I reached up and touched it a couple times, almost to remind myself that I was actually there. I wasn’t very hungry; although I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten, it must have been hours ago.

  My eyes started feeling fuzzy and finally they closed.

  Anyways, that’s how I came to be hiding in my ex-girlfriend’s house.

  Chapter

  Six

  To tell you the truth, I’ve always been pretty lousy with girls. Going out with them has been difficult for me.

  I don’t mean I don’t like them or anything like that.

  I’ve always liked them. I’ve liked them since I was, like, six years old. I mean I’ve wanted a girlfriend since I was six. Really.

  I probably like them too much, because to tell the truth, they drive me a little crazy. You’ve probably noticed that.

  I even like them when they have a cold or a runny nose or when they’re just walking down the street. I mean I’m interested in girls in general in sort of all the phases of who they are, and not just when they’re all dressed up and standing around at some party trying to get noticed.

  Actually, it was not entirely correct for me to say that Laura was my first girlfriend, because if you want to just factor in girls in general, she really wasn’t. I mean, she was my first girlfriend in certain ways, and by that I mean certain uncomfortable and potentially awkward ways that sort of put a lot of pressure on our whole relationship.

  I’ll tell you what I mean by that in just a little bit, but what I should do first is talk a little about this other girl
I know, this girl in my neighborhood named Suzie Perkins, because if I have to say I ever had another girlfriend, it’d be Suzie for sure, except that we were never really romantically involved or anything.

  We were almost romantically involved, or maybe I should say we certainly could have been romantically involved, but the truth is, we were always just friends, and still sort of are, but always, like I said, with a hint of potential romantic involvement, even though in the end it didn’t work out that way.

  I met Suzie about a million years ago when I was only about twelve, so it’s almost like I grew up with her, or at any rate we got to know each other pretty well before we got to be teens and there’s all this pressure to start making out, as if when you see a girl and some bell doesn’t go off in your head you’ve got some weird problem, which is a situation that’s really pertinent to Suzie and me. I mean really sort of apt, and you’ll know why later. That hadn’t happened yet at all, because when we first met we were almost still virtually just little kids.

  It was through that kid I know named Carol that we met, I mean Suzie and me, because Carol was always finding out about new kids in the neighborhood and Suzie had just moved in next door to him, so naturally when she came out in the yard in front of her house my friend Carol—who is a boy, by the way, even though his mom named him Carol, which in certain ways is a very preppy, sort of stand-out name—went out and started to chat her up to find out where she’d moved from and what school she was going to and everything like that.

  One thing you’ve got to know about Carol is that he’s actually very weird. He would sometimes lie about who he really was. I mean, he would actually adopt a false identity and tell people he had different parents and lived in a different neighborhood and all these other lies, like being a tennis champion, just to impress them and see their reactions. It gave him what he called a private satisfaction, and I will say he never did it to scam or cheat anybody; his whole sort of private satisfaction was just seeing them believe he was somebody else.

  Sometimes we’d be standing around a store or out in a parking lot waiting for his mom after we’d gone to the movies or something, and he’d start a little conversation with somebody passing by—some adult usually, but he was good at this with kids, too—and tell them all about himself, but saying he went to a different school than he really did, and lived in a wealthier area of the neighborhood, or a different neighborhood entirely, or even a different state, and people seemed really impressed by him, which was only natural because of all the terrific things he said about himself.