Crush

11

From The Book of Adrian, Mon. Oct. 17

Knowing whom to trust is like the fable of the two doors. Behind one door is a paradise, lush with comfort and sustenance; beyond the other is a ravenous tiger, aching to rend flesh and fill her belly. Every person one meets is a door—do they offer safety or savagery?

Given time, we could erode the door’s surface and peer through to see what awaits us. Friends may be exposed as false. Those who first seem to be enemies may be revealed as saviors. But what if there is no time and a door must be chosen? In such situations we are at the mercy of fate—the 50/50 chance that our trust will be wasted and our lives further damaged.

Isn’t that right, Jonathan?

Saturday afternoon Jonathan dozed on his bed. Groggy and exhausted but too frightened to actually fall asleep, he tried to rationalize the conversation with David, tried to see it as anything but a threat. He couldn’t. Not really. Every time he thought about David’s words—“Just don’t push me, Jonathan”—he pictured Ox being smothered against the trunk of a tree. The two things were inexplicably connected in his mind.

When the phone rang, he was drifting down into a shallow sleep. The noise startled him, sent his heart to ticking like a stopwatch. He looked around his room, confused at first as the remnants of sleep crept from his head. The phone rang again.

David? Let it be David. I don’t want to believe what I believe.

“Hello?”

“Barnes?” The voice was quiet and nervous, but it wasn’t David’s. It was Cade Cason’s.

“Good-bye,” Jonathan said.

“Come on, man. I just want to talk for a minute.”

“Leave me alone, Cade.”

“Fine,” Cade said. “If that’s what you want. We’re cool, right?”

“Whatever,” Jonathan said. “Just stay out of my face.”

“But we’re cool, right?” Cade sounded desperate like a henchman trying to please his master. “I did what you told me, man. So I want to make sure we’re cool.”

Did what I told him?

“Just tell me what you want.”

“Yeah. Right,” Cade said, all but babbling. “It’s just. I mean…Is it cool to talk?”

“Go ahead.”

“Yeah. It’s just that after last night, I got to thinking, and you totally don’t have to worry. I didn’t tell anyone anything. Okay? I mean, maybe you’re right, and Ox had it coming.”

“I didn’t say that,” Jonathan said, disgusted by the implication. Ox was murdered. No one deserved that, no matter how much of a jerk they were.

“Whatever, okay? The thing is, I think we can help each other. Right?”

“Help each other?”

“Right. I mean you don’t really fit in at school or anything, and I can totally help with that. No one’s going to bust your ass anymore, okay? You can hang with me, and I’ll introduce you to the Specials, and things’ll be cool.”

Jonathan listened to Cade’s prattle. With everything that was going on, did Cade really think Jonathan was interested in popularity?

“And it’s not like you have to do anything,” Cade said. “I mean…it’s just…I’ve got this uncle, right? And you know, he lives alone and stuff. But he’s full-on Hilton rich. I’m way up in his will, okay? So, I’m thinking if something happened to him, we could both make out good.”

Jonathan wasn’t sure he was hearing Cade right. Was he really asking him to commit murder? Was Cade that sick?

He thinks I controlled the things that killed Ox, and now he wants me to kill his uncle so he can inherit the guy’s money.

“Are you insane?”

“Dude, I’d totally cut you in. Right? I mean, it’s not like the police are going to be able to put this together or anything. Those things are untraceable. And I turn eighteen in like a month, so it’s not one of those trust-fund things I can’t touch.”

“Jesus,” he hissed.

“Look, dude, I know it’s full-on cold-blooded, but think about it. We’d be set for life, and he’s a total ass. I mean it. He’s like a seriously unkind bitch.”

Sickened by Cade’s proposal, Jonathan pulled the phone from his ear and was about to hang up when he remembered something Cade said.

“You said you did what I told you?” Jonathan asked.

“Totally, man. I haven’t said a word about Ox to anyone.”

“When did I tell you this?”

Cade laughed nervously. “What do you mean? Last night, man. When you called to tell me to keep quiet.”

“Okay, Cade. But the thing is, I didn’t call.”

“Dude, it’s cool,” Cade said. “We’re tight, okay? You don’t have to screw around with that mysterious stuff anymore. I mean nobody else was out there last night. We’re the only ones that saw what happened, and I’m totally keeping it quiet like you said. So we’re cool.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right,” Cade said with a laugh. He didn’t believe Jonathan at all. “Where’d you come up with that name, anyhow? It’s cool.”

“What name?”

“Adrian,” Cade said.

Adrian? Who the hell was Adrian?

“I don’t know anyone named Adrian,” Jonathan said evenly.

The phone line was silent for several heartbeats as Cade processed Jonathan’s words. “You’re telling me you didn’t call last night?”

“Did the caller sound like me?” Jonathan asked.

“I don’t know, man. You disguised your voice.”

“But it was a guy?” Jonathan asked, desperate for an answer. David?

“Damn,” Cade said. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I’m screwed. I’m so screwed. He said I shouldn’t say anything. Oh God. I gotta get out of here.”

“Cade,” Jonathan said. “Are you sure it was a guy?”

But the phone line was already dead.

“Just don’t push me, Jonathan.”

The rest of the weekend passed in a blur. Jonathan didn’t sleep for more than thirty minutes at a time. Late Saturday night, he went to his room and pushed a wad of dirty clothes against the bottom of his door, imagining far too clearly a Reaper slipping through the crack and coming for him. This small accommodation to his fear did little. Whenever he closed his eyes, he pictured dark forms swarming over his small apartment, flitting through the living room and down the halls. Sliding like oil over the roof shingles and along the carpet. He thought about David and his friend’s words. He knew it was a threat, but he didn’t want to believe David was suggesting Jonathan might follow Mr. Weaver or Toby or…Then he pictured Ox again, smothered by one of the phantoms and being dragged through the air. Jonathan would wake with a start, look around the room quickly for any sign of movement, then get out of bed and pace the floor. He’d check the window, check the pile of clothes at the foot of his door.

Once he was back in bed, it started all over again.

He walked through Sunday like a zombie, barely able to keep a coherent thought, though he tried. He struggled to make sense of what he knew, but his sleep-deprived brain punked out on him. Just as he would latch onto a thread of logic, a Reaper would flit through his mind and snatch it away.

David didn’t call him, and he was afraid to call David.

Jonathan watched the news. Ox was considered missing. So was Cade Cason, but there was a difference. The police were searching for Ox because the boy’s parents were frantic—he hadn’t come home Friday night. The police searched for Cade because they wanted to question him about his friend’s disappearance.

“We have reason to believe Cason has left the area,” an old guy in a police uniform said during a press conference. “If you have any information about his whereabouts, contact authorities at…”

Cade had split town. Bailed. Jonathan figured that wasn’t such a bad idea.

But they’d find him. Cade wasn’t smart enough to stay on the run long. The police would catch up to him. In a few days, a week at most, Cade would be sitting in an interrogation room, babbling about that night by the lake.

Jonathan didn’t have a clue what he’d say to the police when they came for him. It was just something else to worry about, something else to keep sleep away.

Sunday night was no better than Saturday, and when he came out of his final nightmare Monday morning, Jonathan felt like his body had been beaten by a hundred sticks. His head ached and felt packed with cotton. His limbs weighed too much, and he struggled to get out of bed.

He had to go to school, he thought. If any place was safe, it would be school.

His completely weary mind forgot that it hadn’t been safe for Emma.