Snared

2

As they drove south on the narrow coastal road, Lindsay was thrilled to see all of the new construction going up near town. Then she was disappointed when they neared her uncle’s house, because this stretch hardly seemed to have changed at all. Every tenth house was fantastic—all glass and new paint—which only served to point out the lameness of the older properties.

Of course, the weather didn’t help. It was so dreary. Still, she kept hoping, unreasonably that in the years since she’d last visited the beach it had gone from zero to hero on the resort scale. Then, just before turning into her uncle’s drive, she saw the sign for the Redlands Mobile Home Park, and her spirits sank a little lower.

Lightning cracked as Lindsay followed her parents into Uncle Lou’s house. The rain sounded like a million tiny footsteps on the roof.

“It’s supposed to clear up tomorrow,” her dad said. He carried her bags upstairs, while her mom stayed in the kitchen to unload the groceries.

Uncle Lou’s house hadn’t changed in five years. His green sofa still faced the fireplace in the den, and the square wooden coffee table sat in front of it. He still had all of the old paintings of dogs and hunters on the walls. At least he’d discovered the magic of Febreze, so the room didn’t smell as bad as she remembered. Lindsay went to the window and looked toward the beach. Angry surf, with caps of froth, cut a line through the otherwise gray scene. The beach looked messy with tons of drift-wood and litter poking out of the sand.

Glad I brought sandals. I’d cut my toes to shreds on that stuff.

Once she heard her dad’s heavy feet on the stairs, Lindsay turned away from the view. She needed to recharge her Treo, cell phone, and iPod, and get her laptop set up.

Her dad met her at the bottom of the stairs and said, “You’re all set. First door on the right. Why don’t you get unpacked and then come down to help your mom fix dinner?”

“I have to call Kate first,” Lindsay said, walking up the stairs. “Tell Mom I’ll do the salad.”

The room wasn’t awful. The bed was huge, with a fluffy down quilt hugging the top of the mattress. A small chest of drawers, hardly large enough for the clothes she brought, stood by the closet. There was a cool window seat with a thick green cushion on the far side of the bed. She imagined that was where she’d spend a lot of the next ten days, drinking coffee and looking out at the ocean or at the screen of her laptop. That would work. She could picture herself there, like one of those models in a coffee commercial, looking all cool and content while gripping a steaming mug of bean and gazing out into the world.

There was even an electrical outlet built into the wall under the window seat, so she could keep her laptop plugged in. Nice.

Lindsay lifted the first suitcase onto the bed, where it sank in the fluffy quilt. She unpacked her cables and chargers first, plugging them into the socket by the chest of drawers, and then connected her cell phone and iPod. She carried her laptop and its power cord to the window seat and hooked them up.

Looking out the window, she noticed the house next door. It was smaller than her uncle’s house, and it looked like it might just collapse under the next big gust of wind. The shingles were black and torn like the scales of a sick dragon. The house was supposed to be white, but the boards were dirty and broken. The porch in front sagged, and the two windows on the side facing her were crusted with dirt. The gloomy afternoon made it hard to tell exactly how dismal the house was, but viewed through the rain, the place made her uncle’s house look like a Malibu palace.

Movement caught her eye, and Lindsay looked into the backyard. The first thing she noticed was the umbrella—a large black mushroom, opened up to keep its owner dry. She could not see who stood beneath the umbrella, but he wore a slick black parka just like the ones the men from the grocery store wore. The umbrella guy stood beneath a scraggly tree with pointy limbs. He didn’t move, just faced the back of the house like a black statue.

Uneasy again, Lindsay stepped away from the window seat. What if the freaky umbrella guys had followed her? What if they lived next door? The place had all the charm of a zombie hostel, so it wouldn’t be hard to believe.

She finished unpacking her things and returned to the window seat. Cautiously, she looked at the house next door. The umbrella guy was gone, and she found that even creepier than seeing him standing under the skeletal tree. He could be anywhere. He could be looking at her right now.

Lindsay backed away from the window. At the chest of drawers she lifted her cell phone, which was still connected to the charging cord, and dialed Kate’s number with a trembling finger.

“Get me out of here,” she said when Kate picked up.

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

Kate giggled. In the background, the TV blared some sitcom, and her friend’s laughter blended with the show’s laugh track.

“There’s this house next door,” Lindsay said, “and Buffy wouldn’t go into it. And there are these weird guys with umbrellas all over town.”

“Is it raining?”

“Yeah, it’s raining, but these are huge black umbrellas and all of the guys have these shiny black parkas on. It’s like they’re part of a cult or something.”

“Maybe they don’t want to get wet.”

“You’d understand if you saw them. They’re from some serial killer outlet store. One of them was just outside, and he was totally scoping me.”

That was a lie, but she had to say something so Kate would understand just how bizarre these guys were.

“No way,” Kate said.

“So true. He was in back of the place next door, just staring. Totally not moving or anything. Just staring.”

“Is he still there?”

“No. He bailed.”

“Weird.”

“I know. It’s just awful here.”

“It sounds like it,” Kate said. “Maybe it’ll be better if you get some sun.”

“I hope so. Right now it’s just so gray.”

“Have you forgiven your parents yet?”

“Not even. They must be punished. I can NOT believe they picked this week to drag me out of town.”

“Well, you totally helped with the party. I so owe you, big.”

“It’s okay. I just wish I could be there. It’s going to be way fun.”

“I’m so nervous.”

“You’ll do fine. Just make sure you have the number of the taxi company if anyone gets too wasted, and do not let Justin and Farge in.”

“Oh my god,” Kate said with a cackling laugh. “I’d have to fumigate the place if those burners got in.”

“Exactly,” Lindsay said. “Just remember, they are guests in your house, but it is your house. Don’t put up with any dis’.”

“I won’t, Linds. Thanks so much. I totally have to go like now. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“See ya.”

Back at the window, Lindsay sat on the edge of the green cushion and looked out. The yard next door was still empty. She relaxed a bit and opened up her laptop. Kate was probably right. It was raining really hard, and it made sense that people would have umbrellas and raincoats on. It wasn’t like a total breakdown in reality.

As she thought this, a figure dashed into the alley, pushing close to the rundown house. Lindsay pulled a little way back, just looking over the edge of the sill to see who stood below.

The boy was blond with long frayed dreadlocks. He wore cargo shorts, Teva sandals, and a tie-dyed T-shirt that was drenched and pasted to his body. He bent at the waist, and a flash of light burst over his belly as he sparked a lighter. Hunched over, the burner was sparking a bowl in the downpour.

What a looz, Lindsay thought. The burner couldn’t even wait to get home and get under some shelter before taking a hit.

The boy straightened up a bit, cupping his pipe in his palm so it didn’t get too wet. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke that was immediately beat down by the rain. Lifting his face to let the downpour wash over him, looking ecstatic, the boy shoved the pipe into a pocket. Lindsay moved farther from the window. She so didn’t want this dope jockey spotting her.

He started walking to the back of the house, pausing at a window and looking in.

Lindsay’d had enough. She turned away from the window and focused her attention on her laptop. She checked her email, but there was nothing interesting: a piece of spam from one of those online pharmacy places, a notice from Amazon that her DVD order was shipping, and a note from her friend Trey.

Like Kate, Trey had been Lindsay’s friend forever. He was just so nice. She’d never heard him say a nasty thing about anyone. It was like he liked everyone, and he always said the sweetest things. Lindsay knew he’d kind of crushed on her for a while in the eighth grade, but then he’d met Sarah Thomas during the summer break, and by the time he’d come back for the ninth grade he was in love with Sarah. Unfortunately, the relationship ended last year, when Sarah moved to California with her family. Trey had been miserable, and Lindsay had felt miserable for him. But she’d taken him out for coffee every day for two weeks, letting him unload his sadness on her, and soon enough his smile was back.

She looked at his email and smiled. For the tenth time in three days, he told her how much he would miss her at Kate’s party. She’d run out of ways to thank him, so she simply replied with a smiley emoticon.

She reminded herself that she needed to run downstairs and help her mom with dinner, but for the moment she just wanted some quiet. Lindsay scooted back on the window seat and leaned against the wall. Just then a light came on in the house next door. She leaned closer to the window, close enough that her breath made fog on the glass. The burner was gone, probably dancing over the sand, too high to care about the storm. The light came from the second window about halfway back on the house. Someone moved in the room, throwing shadows up and down the wall. Lindsay wiped a cloud of vapor from the glass.

Then she saw him. The distance and rain made it impossible for Lindsay to make out any details, but a boy came to the window, and she saw him. So not the pot-smoking looz. Black hair. A slender muscular build. He was wearing distressed jeans and no shirt, and even through the gloom, she could see his developed pecs and six-pack abs. She pushed as close to the glass as she could to see if his face was as fine as she wanted it to be, but the weather smoothed the specifics of his features, leaving nothing but an impression of the boy, a very hot impression.

Suddenly the family vacation was looking a lot better.

At dinner Lindsay was in better spirits. She ate and joked with her mom and dad. As parents went, Lindsay knew she had it good. Her mom and dad were still married, still in love. They still had sex way too much, and she soooo didn’t want to think about that. But at least they hadn’t split like so many of her friends’ parents had, and despite having dragged her on this vacation, they usually let her do her own thing and didn’t gripe too much. They rarely yelled at her and didn’t pull cheap stunts like snagging her cell phone as punishment (an art Kate’s mother had perfected).

“Your mom wants to go flea marketing tomorrow,” her dad said, before raising a fork full of corn to his mouth. He chewed and drank some wine. Then he said “You feel like coming along, or do you want to check out the beach?”

Winnie the Pooh, Lindsay thought. Her dad looked like Winnie the Pooh. He had a round face, and when he smiled his cheeks pooched out. His eyebrows were really thin and neat, but the rest of his face was rounded and blunt. Pooh had been her favorite cartoon character when she was a little girl. Strange that she’d never noticed the resemblance before.

He had his eyebrows arched and grinned like he was waiting for the punch line of a joke. Lindsay almost laughed at the expression.

“I’m going to hang here,” she said. Her dad’s smile faded into disappointment. “I’m going to be on panic alert with Kate until her party is over. She’s kind of counting on the long distance help. I’ll just hang and explore the beach or something. You guys have fun.”

“We won’t be out long,” her mom said.

“Cool,” Lindsay said. “If the weather is still crappy, I can watch the box.”

“It’s supposed to be clear and warm,” her dad said. “I’ll bet the beach will be swarming with kids.”

“Well, they better stay on the beach,” her mom said. “I don’t want you bringing strangers into your uncle’s house unless we’re here to meet them.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes and put her fork down. “Right, because I want a bunch of slack-jawed mouth breathers to know where I’m staying.” She smiled widely to show her parents she was just playing.

“You might be surprised,” her dad said. “I told you the real estate market has been booming in this area. A lot of new people have moved in, and a lot of tourists are renting houses for the summer. Your uncle told me it’s quite the resort town these days.”

Sure, Lindsay thought. It’s Cancún and Ibiza all rolled into one. That’s why there’s a trailer park half a mile up the beach.

Still, she realized it was better than she’d thought. There had been new shops downtown, and some of the houses were new and cool. And of course the bit of eye candy next door didn’t hurt.

Though she’d only caught a glimpse of him, she thought about the boy, wondered if he were visiting or if his parents owned the house. She reminded herself that she hadn’t seen him very well. Close-up he might look like Freddy Krueger, or he might be old, like twenty-five or something. But she didn’t think so. He might be a couple years older than her, and maybe he wasn’t a total CW throbber, but he could be.

“Did Uncle Lou say who owned the house next door?” Lindsay asked, making sure she sounded really casual.

“No,” her dad said. “I know he was pretty upset when Don and Judy sold the place, but that was over a year ago. He hasn’t said a word about the new owners.”

“And what’s so interesting about the house next door?” her mom asked.

Lindsay knew she couldn’t say anything about the boy without enduring her mom’s goofy jokes about romance, so she didn’t. “Someone needs to introduce them to Total House Makeover,” she said.

“It could use a bit of renovation,” her dad agreed. “I noticed the porch was missing a couple of boards when we were unloading the car. It’s a shame. The structure looks pretty solid. The place could be real nice with a little work.”

“Maybe a bulldozer would help,” Lindsay joked.

“Be nice. It’s not that bad,” her mom said.

“I have exacting standards and exquisite taste. As such I can’t help but notice how much most things blow.”

Her dad laughed loudly, and her mom smiled.

“That’s my girl,” her dad announced, and jabbed his fork into a piece of chicken.

She found the binoculars on the windowsill in the den. Lindsay certainly wasn’t looking for them, but there they were. After dinner she’d wandered into the room, wanting to see more of the ocean. She picked the glasses up and lifted them to her eyes. The metal casing was heavy and cold against her soft skin. Looking through the lenses, she adjusted the focus until the distant ocean waves came to her crisp and clear, though still terribly gray from the storm. Breakers rose and crashed and foamed. It looked cool, if depressing. She swept the glasses over the horizon and down the beach, where she again adjusted the focus, bringing a new object into view.

“Jeez,” Lindsay yelped, tearing the glasses from her eyes. There was something hideous and unbelievable out there. It looked like a baby, buried in the sand.

She looked through the binoculars again and relaxed. It was a doll. The plastic head was crushed and most of the body was buried in wet sand, but its sad and mangled face was clear enough. One of the eyes was open, while the other was covered with the broken eyelid, which drooped askance against the doll’s cheek. The plastic fibers that once looked like hair fanned over the sand, dirty and wet.

Farther along, she saw the side of a distant house and then a window. Lindsay adjusted the focus yet again, and nearly dropped the binoculars when the image cleared.

A woman, maybe her mom’s age but totally beautiful, walked through the upstairs bedroom of the house. She wore a brightly colored piece of fabric knotted around her waist. Its lovely purple and crimson swirls draped to the woman’s knees. Besides the loose skirt, the woman was naked.

Embarrassed, Lindsay put the binoculars back on the sill and stepped away. It occurred to her that the half-naked woman was the exact reason her uncle Lou kept the binoculars on the sill, and she shuddered at the idea.

Still, she might be able to use the binoculars.

She wouldn’t watch the boy next door, wouldn’t spy on him or anything. But at least she could get a good look at him. More than likely he’d turn out to be just another guy, and that would be that. Though if he was cute…

The thing was, Lindsay had to take something good back from this trip, even if it was just a story about the hot guy next door. Her parents had dragged her away from the party of the year. That’s all anyone would talk about when she got home, and Lindsay would feel like a complete shadow if she didn’t have an equally cool—no, cooler—story to tell. She needed an adventure or a summer romance, something none of the other kids would have. She couldn’t go home with stories about flea markets or rubbing suntan lotion on her mom’s back.

Lindsay left the binoculars on the windowsill and walked through the dining room to the kitchen door. Wanting to make sure her parents were busy before she lifted the binoculars, Lindsay pushed open the swinging door and froze.

Her stomach knotted up, and she reared back a step. Her parents were making out against the kitchen counter.

They weren’t just kissing either. That was gross enough, but they were really lip-locked, and her mom had her hand inside her dad’s shirt, rubbing his stomach. She didn’t even want to think about where her dad’s hands were.

At least they’d be busy for a while.

Lindsay closed the door quietly. She grabbed the binoculars and went up to her room.

Lindsay stood next to the window seat, adjusting the binoculars, focusing on the window of the house next door, but she didn’t see the boy. The light was out in his room and not so much as a shadow moved. After a few minutes, she felt like a perv, and hid the binoculars under the green cushion before logging onto the web. She surfed around for a while, but the long day had exhausted her, and soon enough she turned off her computer and crossed the hall to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Ten minutes later, she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. The house was so quiet she could hear music playing next door. It was strange. It sounded New Agey, with the muffled chime of bells and a small drum being rapped beneath a moaning melody like chanting. Maybe the kid’s grandparents were hippies or something. Her friend Trey’s grandparents were like that. They wore headbands and said things like “groovy,” “peace,” and “far out” a lot. They really liked a place called Woodstock and a band called Happy Dead or something like that. Of course, Lindsay had no idea what that band sounded like. They might be just like the odd monotone voices she was hearing, punctuated by chimes and drums. They probably were.

Don’t let it be his music, she thought. How sad would that be? A hot guy who listened to decaf tunes? That would be tear-worthy.

The moaning chant rose in volume, sounding deep and ominous.

Then a cry pierced through the muffled music. It sounded like someone was in pain. And it didn’t seem to be part of the drum and chant song. Lindsay looked at the window, worried. Did someone outside need help?

Is it part of the song?

Afraid, Lindsay curled up tightly under the covers. The sound didn’t come again, though she strained to hear. After a while, the music stopped and the night grew silent. Then she rolled over, faced the wall, and waited for sleep to come.