Chapter Twelve

 

Koji was tired from his swim and his ordeal with the box earlier that morning, and I was just feeling out of sorts, so Eve drove. Koji slept in the back seat, and I was back to fiddling with the radio.

"Do you have to keep doing that?" Eve said, exasperated.

"What?"

"With the radio. No stations are going to come in here. You've already gone through all of the AM and FM stations twice." She pushed her hair out of her eyes.

"But every time I go through them we're in a different spot so we might pick something up." Although I didn't want to admit it, she was right. Nothing was coming in, so why did I have to keep torturing us? I shut the radio off, and I could hear the hum of the tires on the road. I stared out of the window at the passing scenery--trees mostly. Occasionally, I glanced down at the box. It sat innocently on the floor between my feet.

"So what's going on with Koji?" Eve's voice cut through the air. I wasn't expecting her to speak, and it startled me a little.

I didn't know what she was referring to exactly. I didn't think she knew anything about what had happened to him that morning. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean, I saw you. I thought it was over, and I saw you coming out of the bathroom at my folks' place when he was supposed to be taking a shower."

"Oh, that. That was nothing. I just needed to talk to him." I didn't want to have to explain too much to Eve. I thought it was best if she knew as little as possible about what was going on with the box. I'd told both of them the story of my experience back at the motel, but it just seemed so unreal that neither of them took it seriously. "We needed to get some things straight."

"What better place to do that than the bathroom?" She was looking at me again. This is why I hated having driving conversations with her.

"We needed some privacy. That's all."

"Does that me you're not going to tell me what you talked about?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"Yes, that's what it means."

"So are you on again or off again now?"

"Off."

"Good. That means he's still up for grabs."

"Grab away."

"Don't worry, I will."

"Can I ask you something, Eve?"

"Sure, anything."

"I don't want to offend you or anything."

"You want to ask me something offensive?"

"Kind of."

"Okay then."

I listened to the rhythm of Koji's breathing for a bit, not saying anything. Eve didn't try to hurry me along, she just waited patiently for the question. "What's with your father?"

Eve laughed. "That's your offensive question? I wonder the same thing myself. You mean the dirt and germs thing?"

"Partly."

"Well he wasn't always like that. I didn't grow up in a plastic house having to sanitize myself when I came in from playing or anything."

"That's good."

"He didn't get like that until my third year of high school. That summer he got sick. It was some kind of bacterial infection that made him vomit up a bunch of black stuff. It was crazy. I still remember it so clearly. I'd gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and he was lying in the hallway with his face in this puddle of thick black stuff that looked like tar. I screamed for my mother and she took him to the emergency room."

"That sounds awful. What was wrong with him?"

"I don't know. The doctors didn't know either really. When all was said and done, they just called it an infection, but they didn't have a clue. He was in the hospital for nearly two weeks. He was all weak when we would visit him. He could hardly lift his head on his own and could only speak in a whisper. He was always telling us about these strange men visiting him, but we had no idea who he was talking about. In the end, we decided they were just dreams." Eve didn't turn to look at me while telling this part of the story, like she normally would've.

The eye that I could see looked watery. I didn't want to upset her, but I felt the need to know more.

"The nurses told us that he was having fitful dreams. That's exactly how one of them described them--fitful. They said he just thrashed around in his bed wildly at night and sometimes called out," she continued. "Anyway, when he came home he was like that, all afraid of germs and stuff. It started with hand washing and then went overboard into not wanting people to touch him. Then he needed to have everything in the house covered in plastic. It wasn't gradual, it all happened fast, like in a couple of weeks. He said it was because he was afraid of the germs, and he never wanted to be that sick again. He claimed that he could feel all of the germs around him. It was freaky. I didn't feel comfortable being home after a while. I would spend a lot of my time at friends' houses. It was just weird to have a normal father one day and a freak the next, that wouldn't even hug me." She wiped her eye, like she was trying to prevent the tears.

"It must've been tough for your mother too."

"Yeah, but she never talks about it now. They used to argue when it first started, but eventually I guess she just accepted it. My mother is good at acting like everything's normal. She should get an Oscar, I swear."

While Eve's story was quite interesting, and sad, it didn't answer my question. As if she'd read my mind, Eve started talking again.

"This is the really weird thing about my dad," Eve said. "When I was younger, maybe four or five, we used to play this game. He liked to go for walks--he's always liked that. Sometimes he'd let me go with him. He used to do this thing, when someone walked by, he'd tell me all about them--their name, their job, their dreams, their worries. I know that he was probably making those things up, but at the time they seemed so real to me. It just seemed like the things he would say were right."

"Really?"

"And he always seems to know what's wrong with me before I can say anything. He never directly comes out and says, 'I know everything that's going on with you' or anything. He just says the exact right thing, or gives the exact right advice. That's the way it seemed, anyway. I know that kind of stuff is supposed to help me feel close to him, like Father Knows Best, or something, but it doesn't. It just leaves me feeling creeped out, like I have no privacy at all."

"Weird," I interjected.

"That's right, it is weird! It was especially as a teenager."

I suddenly felt a warmth around my legs and feet. I looked down, and the box seemed to be shaking.

Eve continued talking, but I couldn't hear her. The box began to hum loudly in my ears. It didn't seem like it was coming from the box though. It seemed to be coming from inside my head. It got louder and louder, blocking all my thoughts. I grasped the hard plastic armrest on the door and squeezed it tightly, trying desperately to regain some control. I felt an urge to open the car door and jump out onto the highway. That would be a way to escape. I could picture myself rolling down the blacktop, my skin coming off, my limp body being hit by one car, and then another.

"Indy!"

I felt a whack on my arm. Eve's yelling broke through the noise and as suddenly as it started it was gone.

"What's going on?" Koji said from the back seat. He was still lying down.

"I don't know. Indy's freaking me out!"

A little disoriented, I looked around to try to make sure I had a tight hold on reality. "Sorry," I said weakly.

"That's okay," Eve said.

"What happened?" Koji asked again.

"I'm talking about my life and family and really important stuff like that and I look over and Indy is gripping the door handle, and muttering some gibberish to herself."

I didn't remember muttering any gibberish, but I couldn't deny it.

"Are you okay, Indy?" Koji was sitting up now. I felt his hand resting on my shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm fine. It was just ..." I hesitated to say anything in front of Eve. I didn't think she was aware of what was going on. "It was just the box. It started humming."

"Like you said it did that time in the motel," Eve said.

"Yeah, like that."

"I didn't hear anything," she said.

"Neither did I," Koji said.

"I guess it was just meant for me."

"Well, aren't you special," Eve joked. "You know, when we were at my folks' house, my dad asked me a lot of questions about that box. He's so nosy. I guess he couldn't figure out what was in it from reading my mind so he decided to ask."

"What did he ask you?" Koji asked.

"I don't know. Normal stuff, like he wanted to know what was in it, and where we were taking it, and if any of us had tried to open it. Stuff like that. I didn't tell him anything, of course. Well I don't know anything, but even if I did I wouldn't tell him." Eve turned her head to look at Koji who was leaning between the two front seats. The car swerved a bit in the lane.

"Careful," Koji said.

"Sorry," Eve said. "I've been thinking about it a lot and I think that maybe we should open it."

"You've been saying that this whole trip. Now you're acting like it's some new idea you had. I already know you want to open it," I said.

"But I think we should know what we're transporting." Eve let the car swerve almost completely into the other lane. The red pickup truck next to us blew its horn and slowed down to avoid us.

"You're going to get us killed," Koji said.

"No, I'm not. It's fine." The car swerved a bit again. "I don't know why that's happening. I swear, I'm not doing it," Eve said.

Just then, a white sedan cut into our lane a little too close. Eve braked to slow up and the car started to skid into the left lane. I thought for sure that we would hit the red pickup and die in a fiery crash on the Alabama border. Horns honked and tires squealed. I closed my eyes and braced myself for impact. There was none. We simply lurched to a stop. When I opened my eyes we were at rest on the grassy median.

"Are we alive?" Eve asked.

"No thanks to you," Koji snapped. He got out of the car and walked back and forth on the grass, like he was making sure his legs still worked.

My heart felt like it was going to explode in my chest. I opened the car door to get out, but couldn't at first. My body was heavy and stiff. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, and tried to get out again. This time it was no problem. I was fine.

"Is everyone all right?" Eve asked. We all stood in the grass on the median.

"Yeah," Koji and I said in unison. Koji checked the car for damage. Traffic streamed by. I was surprised that no one stopped to help us. I guess people are just so involved in their own lives that they don't notice these things. Or maybe they were going too fast to stop.

"We should get on the road again," Koji said. He pointed at Eve. "You will not be driving."