Chapter Eighteen

 

My cell phone rang on the way back to my parents' house. I didn't have to look to see who it was, I already knew it was Tom. Koji plugged the earpiece into the phone and handed it to me.

"You delivered it?" Tom asked.

"What?" I decided to mess with him because he was being so rude.

He hesitated for a moment. "The box."

"Oh ... that." I dragged out my words.

"Stop fooling around."

"Yeah, we're just leaving her house now."

"You took someone else with you?"

"I didn't want to go to some strange house by myself. That could be dangerous."

"Okay." He paused. "But you did deliver it?"

"Didn't I just tell you that?"

"Did she say anything to you?"

"She said a lot of things."

"Anything about the box?"

"No, not really." I didn't know if I should tell him that she'd asked us to come back tomorrow. I decided not to mention it.

"So you're coming back now?"

"Nah, we're going to stick around here another couple of days and enjoy ourselves."

"Call me when you get back and I'll pay you the rest of the money."

"Sounds good."

He hung up. Again no good-bye or see you or anything.

"What a jerk!" I pulled the earpiece out of my ear.

"Really? He seemed nice when I met him," Eve said from the back seat.

"I thought he was nice before this trip." The streets were unusually dark. Thunder roared in the distance. There was no moon, no stars, just a black, velvety sky overhead. Then the rain started. It wasn't heavy at first.

"Koji, maybe I should let you know that the sunroof leaks," I said.

"Great." He looked up.

"It's not that bad if it doesn't rain hard, and it only happens when I turn left. Actually, it's more like someone is dumping a bucket of water on you than it is a leak."

"Look out, Eve. I'm joining you in the back seat." Koji clicked off his seat belt and climbed over the seat.

"Watch it," I said as his heel came dangerously close to my nose. I moved my head to the side to avoid being struck and swerved the car a bit too. The front tire scraped the curb before I could right it.

"And you talk about my driving." Eve laughed.

"She didn't spin us out onto the median." Koji lay on the backseat. His head was in Eve's lap.

The rain started pounding the roof, and I flipped on the wipers. It was at times like these that I always remembered I needed my wiper blades changed. They left streaks on the windshield that made it hard to see.

"Your wipers are terrible," Koji said. "Can you see?"

"Buckle up," I joked. I heard both of their seat belts click. Now the rain was coming down so hard that I really couldn't see. The clang of the raindrops hitting the car roof was deafening. I turned on the defrosters, which clouded the window before a tiny hole of clear glass formed down near the dashboard and then slowly moved up. The thunder rolled over us. This was what I'd always hated about Florida summers growing up. I'd never liked thunder and once I learned to drive, these heavy rainstorms became my nemesis. "I think I should pull over." I turned right into an ice cream shop parking lot and stopped the car.

"We could get some ice cream while we wait," Eve suggested.

"Let's wait 'til the rain dies down. If we go in there now we'll be drenched and then I'll freeze in the air-conditioning." I turned off the car.

After only a few minutes the air became sticky and hot, fogging up the windows. Before either of them could complain I restarted the car and turned on the air-conditioner.

"I feel like I'm your chauffeur or something." I took off my seat belt and turned around in the seat so that I could see them.

Eve took a tube of lip balm out of her pocket and applied it generously to her lips. "This rain is crazy. I hope the streets don't flood."

We were all avoiding the subject. We'd just come from delivering the box! We'd just met a very strange woman who'd asked us to return the next day. It was all so bizarre: the shiny white walls and floors, the way she seemed to fall asleep at the dining table, her knowing Eve's name. I sat there staring at Eve and Koji as they both looked out of their windows at nothing. The glass was so fogged up; they couldn't see out.

Eve wiped her window with her hand to clear away some of the mist. "Nature is so powerful."

"Yeah," Koji said.

Growing up here, seeing hurricanes and tornadoes tear people's homes and lives apart, I'd learned that lesson long ago. I was afraid of nature's power. I always had been.

A bolt of lightning cracked like a whip along with the loudest bang of thunder I had ever heard. It was like something heavy was falling down on top of us. Eve yelped. I closed my eyes and gripped the seatback.

When I opened my eyes it was dark. I could hear the beep of a car alarm in the distance. I couldn't make out any lights through the foggy windows.

"Black out," Koji said calmly. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

"It must've struck right near us." Eve used her hand to wipe the fog off her window again. "The flash and sound happened all at once."

The rain pounded down even harder. It sounded angry, like it wanted to get into the car with us.

"What do you think she wants us to come back for?" Eve undid her seat belt and sat forward.

"I don't think we should go back," Koji said. He didn't open his eyes.

"Neither do I really, but ..." Eve sighed. "Don't you want answers?"

"Of course I want answers," Koji said. "She didn't promise us any though. Going back doesn't seem like the smartest move."

"I have to say I agree with Koji. I mean, we did what we were supposed to do. The package has been delivered. There's no reason for us to go back there." I tried to block the drumming sound of the rain out of my head so I could concentrate on the conversation. Severe weather easily distracted me. I couldn't help but imagine what might happen if the rain never stopped, or if we got struck by lightning. The flashes were so close together I knew it was right over our heads. I'd been told that the safest place to be in a thunderstorm was in a car, but I didn't know if I believed that.

"I think I'm going back tomorrow," Eve said. "Even if I have to go alone, I'm going."

"How do you plan on getting there?" Koji opened his eyes to look at her.

"I don't know. I'll take the bus or a cab."

The rain started to die down. I loosened my grip on the seatback. "Eve, how will you even know when to go?"

She looked at me like I was stupid. "She said we'd just know."

"Just one more reason why we shouldn't go," Koji said.

The rain stopped. I was in no mood to get ice cream so I pulled out of the parking lot. The tires splashed through the water on the nearly-flooded street. All of the lights were still out, even traffic lights. We poked cautiously through all the large intersections.

We passed a couple of other cars on the road, but not many. A large black pickup truck sped by us, splashing so much water on the windshield that I couldn't see. I slowed the car down some more. I could feel a warmth around my neck and head that was much like the warmth I sometimes felt when holding the box, but the box wasn't here. My stomach felt like it was being pulled like toffee.

"How do you guys feel?" I asked. "Because I feel like the box is still in the car with us."

"I know what you mean," Koji said.

I looked in the rearveiw mirror and saw Eve cover her face with her hands. "I feel like this will never stop," she said.

Koji reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. "It will be over soon," he said.

"Yeah, before you know it we'll all be back home and everything will back to normal." I tried to reassure her as the feeling of uneasiness grew inside me. I wanted to be right, but my discomfort told me otherwise.

**

We drove straight back to my parents' house. When we went in my father was asleep on the couch. The only light in the room was the flashing glow of the television. His head hung forward; his glasses had slid forward on his nose. He didn't wake when we entered the room. He sucked in an enormous amount of air and made a gurgling sound.

My mother came in from the kitchen carrying a large white plastic bowl of popcorn. "I didn't hear you come in," she said. She turned on the lamp next to the sofa.

My father woke up. "I was watching that," he said.

"What? The lamp?" My mother laughed. "Nobody's touched the TV, Herb. You can go right back to watching it through your eyelids."

"You're trying to say I was asleep?" my father said.

"I'd never suggest such a thing. We all know you always snore when you're wide-awake watching TV." My mother looked at me and smiled.

"Hey, Dad." I sat down on the sofa next to him. Koji and Eve stood by the door.

"You're back." He pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Did you deliver it?"

"Yes. It's all over," Koji said. He sat down in the lounge chair on the far side of the couch.

"That's good," my mother said. She popped a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth and held the bowl out toward the center of the room. "Does anybody want some popcorn? I can always make more."

Eve walked over and took a handful. "Thanks. Don't bother making more. I don't want much." My father moved over so Eve could sit next to my mother on the sofa and they could share the popcorn.

"Anyone else?"

"I'm good," Koji said.

"I didn't ask how you were. I asked if you wanted any popcorn." That was one of her favorite lines.

"No, thanks," Koji said.

"We were just getting ready to watch a movie on TV." She put the bowl back in her lap and settled into the sofa cushions.

We all watched a Lifetime movie that night. It was the same as most Lifetime movies: a woman is victimized by a terrible man, but in the end she gets revenge. The woman in the movie was not the typical victim. She had a toughness to her that made her victimization all the more shocking. It shouldn't have though. That's what always happened in these movies. At the end, the man died in a gun battle with police as expected.

When the movie was over, we all went to bed.