BUT ALL THAT was forgotten when we flew home the following day.
There were two reasons.
Early in the morning, the producer Richard Gratter had mentioned, Ralph Varanda, called at the hotel and told me to meet him at his studio in Malibu. Apparently he had an unexpected opening in his schedule.
Again, Paradise Records sent a limo for us. Upon arriving at the studio Ralph handed me a guitar and asked me to play “Strange Girl” alone, without backup. So with a massive microphone in front of my mouth and an unfamiliar guitar in hand, I sang with only acoustic chords to back up my voice.
If my demo was good this was better.
It may have been the superb acoustics of the studio. I’d never sung in a room where my voice sounded so rich. Or perhaps my swelling confidence lent a fresh potency to my voice. Just knowing that the song was going to be recorded and marketed to the public had done wonders for my ego.
Then again, it didn’t hurt that the guitar Ralph had lent me was light-years beyond any brand sold in South Dakota. Plus having both Aja and Ralph cheering me on from the other side of a two-inch-thick sheet of Plexiglas definitely gave me a boost.
Whatever, it all came together and it was magic.
“I’m not sure but that might be the take we use,” Ralph said, before asking me again, and again, to play the song. I sang “Strange Girl” a dozen different times and all of them sounded great. When I was finished Ralph doubted I’d have to fly back out again. “Probably not until we’re ready to cut the album,” he added.
“Richard didn’t say anything about doing an album,” I said.
Ralph smiled. “He will after he hears this.”
Reason two for my excitement while flying home was Janet. She had called from Kennedy Airport and said she’d meet us in Sioux Falls at two in the morning. We only spoke briefly but she asked if I’d been serious if she could stay at my house. I said sure. I knew my parents wouldn’t mind.
“You look happy,” Aja said as I stirred from a nap as our plane began to descend through our ever lovely South Dakota sky. I’d fallen asleep with my arm wrapped around her.
“It’s been a hell of a week.” I yawned and stretched. “Someone should probably shoot me now.”
“You’re still afraid,” Aja said.
“Who wouldn’t be? I just went from dreaming about being a rock star to having a chance to cut an album with the hottest record company in the nation. And my best friend, who I thought I’d lost forever to the Big Apple, is coming home with us. Honestly, Aja, us mere mortals don’t get many days like this.”
“So enjoy it while it lasts.”
“I can’t. Not totally.”
“Because it won’t last?” she said.
“You know me too well. I keep waiting for disaster to strike.”
Aja nodded. “The world you live in is always changing.”
“And your world is always the same?”
“Always the same and forever new.”
“You know what? You may be one with the universe but I swear you’re crazy.”
Aja smiled. “Finally, you’re beginning to understand me.”
Our plane landed an hour before Janet’s and we killed time by picking up sandwiches in the airport cafeteria. We’d slept through our meals on the planes. For being so enlightened, Aja seemed to like meat as much as sex. She picked up a roast beef sandwich while I chose turkey. She drank half my Coke and ate most of my fries.
“And you say you don’t have any cravings,” I taunted. “What about eating? You obviously love it.”
“Maybe I’m eating extra for a different reason.”
“Huh?”
Aja took a bite of her sandwich. “I read a girl gets really hungry when she’s eating for two.”
I almost choked. “Aja, you’re not saying you’re—”
She interrupted. “I might be. Don’t girls get pregnant after they have sex with boys?”
“But . . .”
“Disaster is striking.”
“Aja!”
She laughed. “Relax. I’m teasing.”
I sat back in my chair. “You’re dangerous. I’m dumping you as soon as my record comes out and I’m rich and famous.”
“If that’s your plan you’ll never be rich and famous.”
“Why? Because all my good luck is because of you?”
“You said it not me.”
Our playful banter was suddenly interrupted. Bo, walking none too straight, swept by outside the cafeteria. Although I knew Janet hadn’t called him, I wasn’t surprised to see him. Bo must have spoken to Janet’s mother and gotten her flight plans.
“Damn,” I said.
Aja followed my gaze. “He’s drunk.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“He’s very drunk. What are you going to do?”
I stood. “Wait here. Let me handle this.”
I caught up with Bo in the terminal where the flight from Chicago would arrive. I knew Janet would be on that plane. Bo prowled the black window that looked out on the icy landing strip. It had snowed a couple of inches since we’d been in California.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” I said, sneaking up behind him. He whirled, scowling.
“I’ve come to take my daughter home,” he said.
I took a step closer. “No way. She’s gone through too much shit the last few days, and all because of you. I promise you, Bo, make a scene right now and I’ll bust your face.”
“To hell with you. Stay out of our business.”
“Your business? What kind of business is that? The kind where you creep into your daughter’s bedroom in the middle of the night?”
Bo took a swing at me but Aja was right. He was very drunk. I took a step back and allowed his momentum to spin him around and dump him on the carpeted floor. He bounced back up, though, raising his fists, acting like I’d hit him with a sucker punch.
“Come on, Fred. Show me what you’ve got.”
I should have let it go but I was angry. More angry than I’d ever been in my life. He’d hardly finished his last remark when I stepped forward and rammed my fist deep into his solar plexus. I didn’t go for his head because I knew how hard the human skull was and didn’t want to mess up the bones in my right hand, not weeks before I was supposed to cut my breakthrough album.
The one punch was enough. The blow popped the air out of his lungs and he crumpled in a heap, gasping for air. I would have kicked him in the ribs if others hadn’t been watching. I crouched down beside him and spoke softly.
“Talk to her when she gets off the plane and I’ll break your neck,” I said. “No joke.”
He groaned and coughed up a dark fluid that stank of bourbon. I strolled back to the cafeteria and sat down across from Aja. She hadn’t moved from her place. She couldn’t have seen our fight. But she looked none too happy.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“He swung first.”
“Fred . . . ,” she began.
I pounded the table. “How can you defend him?”
I’d never yelled at Aja before. Yet she didn’t blink.
“I’m not defending him.” She added, “They’re both hurting.”
I sat back in my chair. “He’s a monster.”
“Who are you trying to help here?” Aja said.
When Janet’s plane landed a few minutes later, Bo was nowhere to be seen. I assumed he’d taken my advice to heart and left the airport. Janet appeared happy to see us. Still, there was an awkwardness. She was not totally at ease. She hugged me, but barely looked in Aja’s direction.
Nevertheless, while we headed for the baggage area, she pumped me for details of how it had gone in LA. I gave her a brief summary. When I got to the part where Ralph put me in his studio with only an acoustic guitar and told me to sing “Strange Girl,” Janet shook her head in amazement.
“You must have been sweating bullets,” she said.
“It was weird but I felt confident. The guitar he had loaned me had an incredible tone. I could have sung ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ in that studio and it would have sounded great.”
“And you had Aja rooting for you,” Janet said, loosening up a bit.
“Nah. She flirted with Ralph the whole time. It was distracting.”
Aja laughed at my jab. In reality, Ralph had flirted with Aja but I couldn’t say I blamed the guy.
As we neared the baggage area, Aja volunteered to get our luggage. Janet and I headed for the Mercedes I’d left in the parking lot three days ago. Aja must have known Janet and I needed to speak alone. For all the talk about Bo abusing Janet, I still had no clear idea what he’d done.
However, I thought it might take her time to open up.
Days if not weeks.
But she filled me in as we stepped out into the icy air.
It had started when Janet was seven or eight; at least as far as she could remember. Again and again, as she spoke about the abuse, she said she couldn’t recall exact details, which was odd because she usually had an extraordinary memory.
In either case, she said when she was in second or third grade, she remembered Bo coming into her room late at night, when her mom was asleep. He’d just sit on the edge of her bed and stroke her hair and talk to her and it was nice. At least she thought it was nice. He did this off and on for a year. But later, when she was in the fourth grade, he started to climb into the bed with her, wearing only his underwear, and she remembered him touching her and asking her to touch him.
“Touching me,” and “Touch him.”
That was as detailed as she got.
“Did you tell your mom?” I asked as we climbed into Aja’s car. I felt in no hurry to start the engine. Aja would wait.
“Not until I was in fifth grade.” Janet added hastily, “I was young. I didn’t know what was going on.”
“What did your mom say?”
“She told me she’d talk to my dad about it. And she told me not to talk about it to anybody else.”
“But she believed you?”
Janet hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
It might have been a coincidence, but Janet was in fifth grade when her mother suddenly filed for divorce and moved to New York. She took Janet with her but only because Janet asked to go. Not because Mom was anxious to have sole custody or was desperate to protect her daughter.
“That’s a pretty lame reaction,” I said. “I hate to say it but I don’t think she believed you.”
“That, or else she didn’t give a damn,” Janet said. “Don’t forget, I just spent a week with the woman. Mom never changes. She’s nice and friendly and attentive and yet—all the time you’re in the room with her—you feel like a robot’s been assigned to be your chaperone. She was like that when I was growing up.”
“Is that why—when you were a kid—you came back home after a year?”
Janet hesitated. “Yeah.”
“You said before you missed your friends.”
“I missed you.”
I didn’t believe her, I thought. She was telling me only part of the story and not the most important part. Something else had dragged her from New York City back to Elder.
I spoke carefully. “Did you miss Bo?”
Janet ignored me and looked toward the terminal. “Aja’s waiting with our bags. We should get her.”
“What did Aja do to drag this skeleton out of the closet?”
Janet stared straight ahead, her gaze thoughtful. “Nothing. I mean, nothing I can put my finger on. But just hanging out with her I started to remember what had gone on, you know.”
“Wait a second. Are you saying you’d blocked it all out?”
“No. I knew it’d happened. It’s just . . . whenever I did remember it, I pretended like it hadn’t really happened. Does that make sense?”
“Sort of. Has anything happened in the last seven years?”
“No. Not since I was ten years old. Bo’s been great.”
Great, I thought.
Aja was waiting outside with our three sets of bags when we drove up to the loading-and-unloading zone, shivering in a thin leather jacket she’d bought in a shop in the hotel in LA. I yelled at her for not waiting inside the baggage area.
“That’s a great way to catch pneumonia,” I said as I loaded the bags into the trunk.
“I’m fine,” Aja said, starting to climb in the backseat.
“Sit in the front seat with Fred,” Janet said.
“I don’t care where I sit,” Aja said.
“You should be with your boyfriend,” Janet insisted. She may have been trying to put distance between us to stop all the Bo questions. That was my thought anyway. I hadn’t told her about Bo being at the airport or the fact I’d punched him in the gut. For the first time since I’d known her, Janet appeared delicate. I didn’t want to add to her burdens.
It was after three in the morning before we left the airport. We had a long drive ahead of us. But I felt awake enough to drive. I’d slept on our flight home, and it was good to be with my two favorite people in the whole world. Plus I was still riding the buzz from my impending record deal.
While Aja and I had been in the air, Marc Kroff and Jimmy Hurt had both called and left messages reminding me that I had to get an agent right away. Their hurry to finalize the deal added to my excitement.
It was important I stay alert. The recent snowfall had been light but it had left the road icy. I held our speed below fifty and kept my distance from other cars. The last thing I wanted to do was hit the brake; we’d spin out of control for sure.
We’d been driving for roughly an hour when I saw Janet stir in the rearview mirror and yawn, waking up from a nap. Aja sat silently on my right. I was surprised she hadn’t dozed off.
“I don’t want Mike, Dale, or Shelly to know what’s going on,” Janet said.
I nodded. “Understood.”
Janet sighed. “Of all the families in the world I could have been born into. I get a mother who’s so closed down inside she can’t show affection and a father who’s so desperate for love it’s turned him into a pervert.”
“All human beings are desperate for love,” Aja said.
Janet chuckled. “You know, Aja, I appreciate you give good advice and all that, but do you ever stop and look at your own problems? I mean, I doubt everything in your life has been bright and rosy since the instant you popped out of your mother’s womb.”
“You’re right,” Aja said. “My family life was far from perfect.”
I glanced over at her. She was staring out the side window.
“How so?” I asked.
Aja shrugged. “My father was a criminal and my mother was a saint. It made for a difficult combination.”
“What did your father do?” I asked.
“He worked for a drug cartel.”
“Shit,” Janet muttered.
“Was your mother like you?” I asked. “Was she aware of the Big Person? Is that why you call her a saint?”
“A saint is someone who does no harm. That was my mother.”
I spoke carefully. “How did they die?”
Aja hesitated. “My father was greedy. He could never have enough money. He stole from his bosses. They didn’t like that. When I was five years old, they sent three men and a woman from another country to kill him.”
“God. I’m so sorry,” Janet said. “What happened?”
A car close behind us suddenly honked. I’d seen the car approaching in my rearview mirror, or at least its lights. Now it was practically on top of us. It kept honking, edging closer. Janet peered out the back window.
“That’s Bo’s car!” she cried.
“Damnit!” I swore. “I didn’t tell you, I ran into him at the airport. He came to pick you up. He was drunk. We ended up trading blows.”
“He hit you?” Janet gasped.
“It was more like I hit him.” Our car lurched as he struck our rear bumper. “Christ! He’s trying to run us off the road!”
I wasn’t exaggerating. Bo struck us twice more before he accelerated into the left lane and came up on our side. I could just glimpse him through the glare of our headlights and the fury of the flying snow. Hunched over his steering wheel, craning his head in our direction, he looked insane. I suspected he’d drowned the pain and humiliation of my blow with another bottle of booze. He had to be totally smashed to be risking his daughter’s life.
Aja’s Mercedes was powered by one of the finest engines the company had ever built—the 4.0L AMG biturbo V-8. The car could do over a hundred and fifty miles an hour without straining. Outrunning Bo wasn’t a problem. It was the damn ice on the road. The frozen sheets could spin us into the steep grassy slopes on either side of the interstate just as easily as his ramming routine.
Bo swung partway into our lane and gave us a light tap.
A light tap that almost sent us careening out of control.
I felt I had no choice but to accelerate. I pushed our speed up to ninety. But doing ninety on icy asphalt in the dead of night felt like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. Still, Bo stayed with us, the lunatic. I increased our speed to a hundred. No good. The bastard was an expert mechanic and he’d supercharged his Mustang. He caught us easily.
“Roll down your windows!” Janet cried.
“Why?” I yelled.
“He’s rolled his down! Do it!”
I hit the buttons that rolled down my window alone, while locking the others in place. Freezing wind flooded our car. Janet pounded the back of my seat in frustration. I ignored her. I couldn’t handle another distraction. Bo’s Mustang was a foot away and the road up ahead looked like a frozen lake. We had at most ten seconds before the combination of gravity, speed, and an extreme lack of friction would become every bit as dangerous as a cliff.
Bo screamed at me across the gulf. “I’m taking my girl home!”
“She’s not your girl, you prick!” I yelled back.
“I’ll go with him! I’ll go!” Janet cried.
“Fred,” Aja said.
The ten seconds were cut in half and all I could see was a thick, white sheet in front of us that appeared to glisten—I had the high beams on—with a million hidden diamonds. On the upcoming stretch it was clear the wind had funneled the two inches of snowfall into a two-foot blanket of powder. If we hit it doing a hundred there was a chance we’d flip over and become airborne.
I had no choice, I hit the brakes. On our left, Bo’s Mustang vanished. For all I could tell he’d smashed into a tree.
Our wheels gripped the asphalt for perhaps three seconds. We were lucky to get that; it cut our speed to sixty. Then we hit a sheet of invisible ice that lay camouflaged beneath the blanket of snow and we went into a spin. My life didn’t flash before my eyes but the dark landscape did. We were a clock running backward, subtracting potential years instead of hours from what was left of our lives. We were totally out of control.
We hit the two feet of powder; it could have been a ten-foot wall of granite. I heard a loud, grinding noise. It sounded as if the Mercedes’s driveshaft was cracking. But maybe it was my back that was breaking. I felt my body jerked in every direction at once.
The air bags exploded in our faces but rather than softening the blow I felt as if I’d been slugged by a prizefighter. I heard a loud snap followed by a warm wet gush. I felt pain inside my nose, terrible pain, and knew it was broken. Agony swelled through my head as a black wave washed over my brain. I passed out; it could have been for five seconds or five minutes.
The next thing I heard was silence, nothingness. I was freezing cold. The window on my left was still open and I had the makings of Frosty and his pals sitting on my lap. In other words, I was buried in snow. I couldn’t help noticing the white powder was soaked red. A sticky red as in blood.
Our wild momentum had caused a six-foot-tall mountain of powder to build up on the driver’s side. It had us half-buried. There was no way I’d be able to open my door. I’d have to crawl over to the passenger door. As long as Aja was . . .
I thought of her then. Looked at her.
She smiled. “Your nose looks like a snow cone.”
“Which flavor?” I said in a nasally voice.
“Strawberry.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.” Aja twisted around. “You okay, Janet?”
I could still see Janet in the rearview mirror. She’d smashed into her own air bag and seemed to be holding up her left arm to keep it from hurting. The arm didn’t look a hundred percent straight. I assumed it was broken.
“I’ve been better,” Janet groaned. “Where’s Bo?”
Aja gestured to our cracked windshield. Her side was relatively clear, at least she could see past the powder. “His car’s a quarter mile up the road. It’s lying on its side. His lights are still on.”
“We have to help him,” Janet said. “Fred!”
I raised a hand. “I’ll check on him. But we need to light a few flares and spread them over the road. We need to do that immediately. The next car or truck that comes along could crush us. Aja, can you open your door?”
“It’s stuck,” Aja said, struggling with it, before suddenly spinning on her butt and raising both her legs and kicking it open. I hit the button that should have popped the trunk but didn’t hear anything. Snapping free of my seat belt, I held out the keys to Aja. She leaned back in the car and grabbed them.
“Get the flares,” I said. “Light them far away from the car, up the road, back the way we came. Hurry.”
“Gotcha,” she said before she turned and vanished.
Crawling over the armrest and across Aja’s seat let me know just how banged up I was. Everything ached; my progress was pitifully slow. I felt as if I’d been kicked by a gang of thugs. I imagined how nice it would be to soak in a hot tub. I was so cold!
I spoke to Janet. “Can you get out? Can you stand?”
“My door’s jammed. And my left arm . . . it’s numb.”
“I’ll work on your door once I’m out. I’m worried about a gasoline leak. There’s a chance the tank cracked. I don’t want us staying in here any longer than we have to.”
“You have to check on Bo,” she said.
“I promise, I’ll check on him as soon as we’re clear.”
I stumbled and fell the instant I got outside. There was something wrong with my left knee; it wasn’t working. Aja returned to my side and helped me to my feet. She had four flares in hand and already had two burning behind our car—at distances of forty yards and fifty yards. I took two and stuffed them in my back pocket. Aja had also retrieved a flashlight from the trunk.
“Good work,” I said. “Let’s get Janet out and get jackets on. I’ve got my cell. I’ll call 911 and tell them our situation. Then I’ll check on Bo.”
“Can you walk?” Aja asked.
“I’ll walk.”
It was actually Aja who popped Janet’s door loose. My knee was in worse shape than I thought. It didn’t hurt, not like my dripping nose, but it made a disturbing clicking noise when I put weight on it and it felt mushy. Great, I thought. My first advance from Paradise Records would go to an orthopedic surgeon.
I called 911 and explained where we were and what had happened. The dispatcher was blunt. She explained we were in the middle of nowhere and it would take forty minutes for an ambulance to reach us. I told them to please hurry.
Minutes later the three of us huddled together outside the slightly crumpled Mercedes. The car was heavily reinforced with steel bars; it scored high on crash tests. In that respect we were lucky. The vehicle had kept us alive and free from serious injury.
Yet, except for Aja, we were still pretty banged up. We managed to light another two flares and spread them across the road but the way I was limping, the four hundred yards to Bo’s Mustang looked like a marathon. Frankly, judging by how far it had skidded on its side before coming to a halt, I wasn’t optimistic what we’d find inside it.
I explained what the 911 gal had told me. Janet swore under her breath. “Where’s a cop when you need one?” she said.
I spoke. “They promised to hurry. I’ll check on Bo. You two stay here and try to flag down any cars that drive by.”
“You can’t even walk,” Janet said. “I’ll go.”
“Your arm’s broken. You’re not going anywhere,” I said.
“I should go,” Aja said.
“Yeah. Have Aja go,” Janet said quickly, too quickly for my taste. It was clear she was thinking about Aja’s healing abilities, while conveniently forgetting how sick she’d gotten after healing Mike.
“No way,” I said. “Aja’s not getting anywhere near Bo.”
“How can you say that?” Janet asked.
“I just said it,” I snapped. “Now stay here and take care of each other. I’m going.”
The strength of my order might have prevailed had I been able to follow it up with a brisk pace in the direction of the overturned Mustang. But as I started up the road, my left knee went from bad to useless. I was basically forced to hop on one leg—not a very efficient way to traverse a blanket of snow. The girls, not impressed with my progress, caught up with me within minutes. Aja took my left arm and told me to lean on her.
“We’re all going,” she said.
I gave her a hard look. “As long as you keep your distance from Bo.”
To an outsider we must have looked like a pitiful trio. Even though it was Janet’s arm that was broken and not her leg, she moved no faster than me. Her arm needed a cast and a sling. The way she kept grimacing—and Janet wasn’t one to complain—I suspected the ends of her cracked bones were grinding against each other every time she took a step.
I could do nothing to help her. I could hardly help myself. Without Aja propping me up I would have been crawling on my knees. And Aja was not a big girl. Whatever supernatural powers she possessed didn’t translate into physical strength. Every time I leaned on her, every step I took, I came close to knocking her over.
It took us fifteen minutes to reach Bo’s car. When we got there I let go of Aja and used the body of the Mustang to keep me upright. The air was freezing but stank of gasoline. I warned the girls to stay back.
“The car could blow any second. Aja, give me your flashlight and help Janet to the divider rail. I’ll get Bo out.”
“His neck might be broken,” Janet said. “His back. It might be a mistake to move him.”
“I’ll take that into consideration. Now get back!”
Finally, the girls listened to me. They headed for the rail. I suppose the thought of being engulfed in a ball of fire was enough to get anyone’s ass in gear. But to be blunt, I wasn’t in love with the idea of rescuing Bo. He was the one who had caused the accident. He had caused a lot of grief lately and had I been alone with Aja I probably would have waited until the paramedics arrived and let them deal with it.
Yet Janet was pushing me to hurry. In the space of minutes she had gone from hating the guy to pleading for me to save him. As the girls trudged through the snow to the divider, I slowly made my way along the upturned bottom of the car. I could see the fuel tank in the beam of my flashlight. It had cracked open; and gasoline was continuing to leak out onto the snow. I would have felt safer if the toxic puddle showed signs of freezing but no such luck. I saw a nauseating mist rise from it at the same time I saw sparks crackling in the direction of the engine.
“Great,” I said, pondering the irony of my situation. The very day I’m promised a record contract I get incinerated in a car accident caused by a drunken pervert.
Given the fact that the car was lying on the driver’s side, there should have been no way in hell for me to pull Bo out of the wreckage. But I’d thought of a way to get to him the instant I’d seen the overturned Mustang. Bo loved to drive fast with the sun and wind in his face; and for that reason he’d installed an extra-large sunroof. As I made my way around the top, I was relieved to see the sunroof had totally shattered. That meant all that stood between me and Bo was a wall of snow.
I fell to my knees and began to dig. The stink of the gasoline and the red rattle of the sparks inspired me to hurry. As far as I could tell, Bo could have a broken neck and a crushed spine and I’d still have to drag him out of the car. Otherwise he was going to be toast.
“Bo,” I called when I’d cleared away enough snow to see him flopped around an air bag in the crumpled front seat. Trails of blood poured from his forehead and his breathing was ragged and wet but he was alive. “Bo, it’s Fred. Can you hear me?”
He moaned in pain. “Fred? How are you doing?”
“All right. How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.” He coughed and a mouthful of blood splashed over his tan leather coat. He added, “I think I’m dying.”
I chipped away at the jagged edges of the sunroof with my flashlight. “Nah. You can’t die yet. Janet’s pleading for me to rescue you and if I fail she’ll never speak to me again. You’ve got to help me help you get out of here. You’ve got your seat belt on. You’ve got to unlatch the belt. Can you move your arms?”
Bo groaned mightily as he dragged his right arm over the swollen air bag. The damn thing was supposed to deflate after impact. “Where is it?” he gasped.
I focused the beam on his bloody fingers. “Keep going. Two more inches. That’s it—your hand’s right on the latch. Can you feel it?”
He sounded weak. “I don’t know. Sort of.”
“Good. That means you’re not paralyzed, that you’ll make a full recovery. If you move your ass. Your tank’s gushing gas and someone threw a handful of sparklers in the engine. We’ve got maybe a minute or two to get you out of here before we’re both barbecued. Are you hearing me?”
Bo fumbled without luck with the seat belt. The effort exhausted him and he coughed up another wad of blood. “It’s no good. Get away, Fred. Save yourself. I’m not worth it.”
“Not an option. Janet’s waiting and she says I’ve got to save your ass. So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to undo that latch and I’m going to pull you out. Do it!”
Bo made one last desperate grasp at the seat belt latch and I heard it pop loose. Quickly, chipping away a few last jagged spikes of glass from the sunroof, I kicked with my right leg and propelled myself, headfirst, into the front seat of the Mustang. I could just reach the collar of Bo’s jacket. I got a grip on it.
Unfortunately, I had another problem. My position was way beyond awkward. I was practically falling into the car. I had no leverage, nothing substantial to brace against to pull him out.
“Are we there yet?” Bo babbled. He sounded delirious; he probably had a concussion.
“Bo, I need some more help. I need you to push with your feet. Push with one of them if that’s all that’s working. But push now and push hard. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Great. On the count of three: one, two, three!”
Bo pushed and screamed simultaneously. He probably had a broken leg; he might have had two of them. Whatever, the stab of pain seemed to reawaken him. His eyes popped open and he looked around at the mess he was in. Luckily, his shove had pushed him high enough to where I could wiggle back a couple of feet and still wrap my right arm around him.
I used my left arm to press against the edge of what was left of the sunroof. It was lousy leverage but it would have to do. Bo began to move. Shards of glass dug into my palm but I chose to ignore them as I continued to pull him up and out. I had never felt such an urge to hurry in all my life. I smelled smoke. Something was burning and I knew we had only seconds before we would join it. The car was about to explode.
I yanked Bo free of the Mustang. Using one hand for support on the side of the car and the other to drag him over the ground, I pulled him clear of the heavy powder and onto what I hoped was a sheet of ice. A pity I had forgotten about my lame knee. As soon as we moved away from the car, I collapsed beside Bo. He looked at me and tried to smile.
“Thanks for saving me,” he said.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I replied as I struggled to get back on my feet. It was lucky for Bo and myself that the girls chose that instant to disobey me. Suddenly they were by our sides. Janet fighting with me to pull her dad clear of the car; Aja struggling to keep me upright. Except for Aja we were all a mess, all in agony, but we didn’t stop working until we were a hundred feet from the Mustang.
It was then the bomb went off; a mushroom of fire; and a shock wave so powerful it knocked us back on our butts.
“Daddy!” Janet cried as she tentatively embraced Bo. “Are you all right?”
I had not heard her call him “Daddy” in ages.
Not even “Dad.” Not since she was a little girl.
“Don’t worry about me.” He coughed, more blood spilling from his swollen lips. His breath was scary; a wet wheeze. It sounded like a death rattle. I suspected the impact had cracked a dozen ribs. He didn’t seem able to catch his breath. I tried rolling him on his side but he cried out. I rolled him back. His jacket was soaked red. He was bleeding from so many places. There was no question he had major internal injuries.
Janet fretted over him but was afraid to touch him. “What do you need? How can we help you?” she said.
Bo opened his eyes and looked up at his daughter, managed a feeble smile. More blood dripped from his mouth. “You’re here. That’s enough,” he gasped.
Janet looked at me with pleading eyes. “How long before the ambulance gets here?” she asked.
I checked my watch; it was broken. “Soon.”
“That’s not good enough. He’s dying.” Her eyes went to Aja. “We have to do something.”
Aja stood silent, her face calm in the orange rays of the burning car, staring down at Bo. She did not look at Janet, which pissed her off. Janet stood and grabbed Aja with her good arm and shook her.
“Do something!” she cried.
Aja stared at her but said nothing.
I stood and pushed Janet back, wrapping a protective arm around Aja. “We’re not doing this,” I said.
Janet gestured to her father lying on the road. His condition was deteriorating rapidly. I feared yanking him out of the car had not helped; that my tug had caused the sharp edges of his shattered ribs to puncture his lungs. He tried to say something to his daughter but couldn’t. His struggle to take in oxygen had become all-consuming. He kept sucking at air that couldn’t help him. The sad truth was he was drowning in his own blood. It didn’t matter that I was supposed to be furious with him; it was agonizing to watch.
“So it’s okay for her to heal total strangers,” Janet said bitterly. “But because it’s my dad you’re not going to let her help him. Why is that, Fred? Huh? Is it because he doesn’t measure up to your moral code?”
I pulled Aja closer. “You know that has nothing to do with it. Bo’s near death. Healing him could kill Aja. We can’t risk it.”
“Liar! You want him to die because of what he did to me!”
I went to speak and stopped.
Was it true? Did I hate him that much?
Janet turned to Aja, pleaded. “Can you do it? Can you save him?”
Aja stared at her before shaking her head.
Janet wept. “Why not? You did it for Mike. So you get sick for a few days. You’ll live. And he’ll live. . . .” She lowered her head as tears fell from her face. “You can’t let it end like this. You can’t.”
Was she speaking to Aja? The Big Person? God? I wasn’t sure but I could have sworn, the way Aja was studying her, that Aja believed Janet was talking to herself. And that Janet was the key to what would happen next.
Perhaps Janet sensed that. She raised her head and defiantly threw out a challenge. “You’re waiting for me to forgive him, is that it? If I do that, will you heal him?”
I worried Janet might be right. I pulled Aja back.
“Forgive him all you want,” I said. “She’s not risking her life to save his.”
Janet pointed an ugly finger my way. “You’re not in charge here. She is.”
I let go of Aja and took a wobbly step toward Janet. “You’re wrong. I’ll drag him back to the Mustang and throw him in the fire before I’ll allow her to heal him. I’m not bluffing.”
Bo began to choke; he shook on the ground. He could cough blood out but he could no longer draw air in. His whole body began to convulse. The back of his head banged the ice. Janet hastened to his side, gripped his hands, trying to steady him. She looked up at me with scorn.
“You let him die and I’ll hate you until the day I die,” she said.
“Aja doesn’t owe you a miracle,” I said.
Janet stood. “Maybe not but you do. How many times have you told me that you’re my best friend? That you would do anything for me?”
Her words pierced me like a sword. Suddenly I felt unsure of what I was doing. But it wasn’t as if my resolve to protect Aja wavered. I knew in my heart how much I loved her; knew I’d die before I’d let her risk her own life. Especially to save Bo.
Yet my doubt remained and it was odd because I suddenly questioned whether Janet had anything to do with it. I sensed a power gathering around us, an ancient force that was uninterested in my desire to save Aja or Janet’s efforts to guilt me. Something switched, inside and outside, and I suddenly felt as if we stood on a wide-open plain where no horizon existed. I sensed a huge presence approach, which should have been a comfort. Yet I felt lost and very much afraid.
Janet moved close to Aja, reached out with her good arm, tried to take her hand. “Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything you ask if you’ll heal him.”
Aja stared at her a long time.
What she said next stunned us both.
“Let him die,” she said.
Janet winced. “What?”
“He’s dying. Let him die.”
“But you can heal him. You have the power. How can you say that?”
Aja shrugged. “He sexually abused you. You were just a kid. Why do you want to save a man like that?”
“Because he’s my father!”
“So what? It’s not like he was a good father.”
Bo choked hard and long; he coughed up so much blood.
Janet grabbed Aja by the arm, went to slap her. But then her eyes met Aja’s eyes and she stopped. I understood that, why Janet halted, even if I had no idea what else was going on. I’d felt the heat and intensity of Aja’s gaze many times. Janet shook her head in disbelief.
“What’s gotten into you? What’s wrong with you?”
Aja spoke in a firm tone. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? Why are you begging me to help a man you hate?”
“That’s not true. I don’t hate him.”
“Of course you hate him. You have every reason in the world to hate him.”
Aja’s words hit Janet like physical blows. Janet groaned as if she were trying to ward them off. But I knew not to interfere even though it was hard not to. Aja was up to something—something I didn’t fully understand. Yet I could see Aja had transported Janet to another world, to her world, and that she was determined to do with Janet what she willed.
Janet yelled. “Damnit, Aja, can’t you see? I’m trying to save his life!”
Aja just stared at her. “Why?”
Janet was as confused as she was hurt. “Why what? Stop saying that. This isn’t like you. You always help people. Please, you’ve got to help my father. He’s dying.”
“And I told you, let him die. He’s not worth saving.”
“How can you say that?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Aja said.
“No. You don’t know him. He’s a good man. He made a mistake but it wasn’t his fault.”
“It’s always the pervert’s fault.”
“He’s not a pervert!” Janet screamed.
Aja turned back toward me. “Let’s go, Fred. I’m getting tired of this.”
Janet dashed forward and grabbed Aja by the arm. “Wait! He’s not who you think he is. It wasn’t his fault.” She cried in desperation. “It was my fault!”
The sphere of invisible power around us seemed to tremble. In a mad rush I recalled the conversation I’d had on the phone with Janet when I was in LA.
“Are you saying you’re not coming back?”
“I can’t.”
“That’s crazy. You’ve got to finish out the school year. You can stay at my house. My parents would love to have you.”
“No. Then everyone would know. And that’s the last thing . . . I hate that you know. I hate how you must see me now.”
“Janet, you did nothing wrong.”
“Didn’t I?”
Aja’s demeanor suddenly shifted. She stopped and stared at Janet. “How was it your fault?” she asked gently.
Janet lowered her head as if in shame. It was as if she had been broken. I had never seen her so wounded. Tears streamed down her face.
“Because I let him . . .” Janet stopped, started again. “I let him . . . I didn’t stop him. I let him do it.”
“Did you?” Aja asked.
“Oh God, I don’t know what you want me to say! Yes, I let him do it! I let him do it because I loved him!”
Slowly Aja shook her head. “Janet, you were a child. You were what? Six? Seven? Eight years old? Of course you loved him. He was your father.”
Janet looked doubtful. “But I came back to him. Even after what he did, I came back to Elder to live with him.”
Aja spoke with authority. “Your love for your father isn’t why he abused you. Your father abused you because of his own problems. You were never to blame.” Aja paused. “Love—your love, all love—it’s always good.”
What Aja was saying—it was true. It was such an obvious truth. It pierced Janet like a living flame, burning away the deeply entrenched lies she had been telling herself for ages.
Janet trembled. “Can it be . . . ?”
“It’s true,” Aja said.
“It wasn’t my fault?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Aja said.
Janet shook her head. “I was only a child.”
“Yes,” Aja said.
Janet wiped the tears from her face. It did no good—more came. “All this time,” she sighed.
“It’s done,” Aja said.
Janet hugged Aja right then, with her one good arm, and Aja hugged her back. They held each other for a long time, before Janet finally let go and turned to stare down at Bo’s face. He had stopped struggling. He lay still, and for all we knew he was dead.
“Can you heal him?” she asked.
“If that’s what you wish,” Aja said.
The decision had been given back to Janet, or perhaps it had always resided in her hands. That frightened me. I did not know what it meant. I did not know what was to follow.
Janet stared up at the sky and shuddered. Then she looked again at Bo, staring hard at her father, before finally turning to Aja. One last time.
“I want the Big Person to decide,” Janet said. “Just don’t . . . I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Aja nodded faintly and stepped past her, before stopping beside Bo. Every fiber in my being cried at me to rush forward and swoop her up and carry her away from this dangerous situation. But I couldn’t move. It wasn’t my injured knee. It was the ocean that blocked my way—the endless ocean upon whose shore I could only stand and gaze out.
I could beg Aja all I wanted not to heal Bo and it would make no difference. Right then, at that instant, Aja was the Big Person. Everyone was equally dear to her. I liked to pretend otherwise but she loved Bo as much as she loved me. She would give her life to save him.
Aja looked in my direction and her eyes seemed to say that she was sorry but that this was the way it had to be. I wished I could have fought with her but all I could do was watch as she knelt beside Bo and placed her right hand over his heart and her left hand over his forehead. I heard her draw in a deep breath. I did not hear her exhale but I did see her eyes close and watched as her head fell forward and the life seemed to drain out of her.
• • •
The ambulances arrived fifteen minutes later. By then Bo was sitting up and talking with Janet, not far from the burning front of the car, while Aja and I sat at the rear of the Mustang, near the flames, trying to stay warm.
The paramedics were attending to Janet and Bo. She had a broken arm, after all, and Bo was obviously soaked in blood, although from what I could hear from the paramedics they couldn’t find anything wrong with him.
I accepted their offer of a blanket and asked them to examine Aja. But she waved them away. She whispered in my ear that there was nothing they could do.
“You don’t know that,” I said anxiously. “These people are trained. They’re practically doctors. They have drugs, all kinds of fancy equipment. They can shock your heart if it stops. Aja, please?”
She shook her head wearily. “It’s too late for that.”
“It’s not too late. It’s never too late.”
“Oh Fred.” She sagged into my arms as I wrapped the blanket tightly around her. “Hold me, just hold me. That’s what I need the most.”
I held her but inside my mind was screaming. “It can’t be too late.”
She looked up at me, raised her arm, wiped a tear from my cheek. “I should have told you at the start. The days of this body were numbered.”
“Why?” I said.
“The Big Person doesn’t tell us why. But it knew. That’s why it sent me to your town. That’s why it sent me to you.”
I swallowed thickly. “To break my heart?”
“No. To love you. To be loved by you.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. “How long do we have?”
“Not long,” Aja said, snuggling close to me beneath the blanket, my arms wrapped around her, clutching her, struggling to keep her from slipping away.
“It’s not fair. I thought we’d have more time,” I said.
“The time we had together was good.”
“Did you know it would end tonight?” I asked.
“No, not tonight. I’m like you with those mystery books you love. I try not to look ahead to the last page.”
“You should have looked.” I closed my eyes and fought for control. Every second was precious now. Because I knew I’d cling to every one of them for the rest of my life. I forced myself to recall what she’d told us in the car just before Bo had attacked. “Did your mother give you that name? Aja?”
“Yes. My father was away when I was born.”
“What does the name mean?”
With the tip of her finger, she touched between my eyebrows. “Two inches beneath that spot, inside your head, is the ‘Aja.’ ” Then she put her hand on my chest. “It’s also here. Aja is the spiritual eye through which the Big Person can be seen.”
“Did your mother know you would be born a saint?”
“I wasn’t born one.”
“What happened? How did you change?”
She spoke in a weary whisper. It was all she could manage. “Like I said, I was five years old when the cartel sent three men and a woman to kill my father. I was playing outside when they came. They carried machetes. My mother rushed to pick me up and carry me away but they stopped her. They herded the three of us inside. They’d come to kill my father. But they wanted him to suffer. They made him watch as they . . . they cut my mother’s throat.”
“Oh God.” I wanted to weep for that little girl. “They made you watch?”
“Yes. It was horrible. So horrible the child in this body—her mind, her identification with this body, even her sense of ‘I,’ they all fled and ran away and tried to hide and were lost. That’s how I was changed. Nothing was left of that girl. In the deepest way possible she became . . . no one.”
Aja stopped to struggle to catch her breath. The same way Bo had struggled. All of us had been so in awe of her healing ability but I couldn’t have hated it more right then.
“That was the day I became the Big Person,” Aja said.
“Why did the men let you live?”
“The woman felt the change in me. She felt something powerful enter the room. She dropped her machete and picked me up and carried me away, into the jungle.”
“And your father?”
“The men chopped him to pieces. The same with my mother. They left nothing behind. Nothing but blood.” Aja paused. “The woman who saved me was Angela. You saw her at the PTA meeting.”
I was stunned. “Principal Levitt’s lover?”
“Yes. Being there, at that moment, changed her.”
“She became psychic?”
“Yes. But I think for her, the gift was something of a curse.”
“She knew her daughter would die.”
“Yes.”
“From then on you lived mostly in the jungle?”
“Yes. It was more comfortable for me to be in nature than to be near people.” Aja nuzzled my cheek and I felt her dry lips. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I was happy after the Big Person came. I was always happy.”
I struggled to keep my voice from cracking.
“Are you happy now?” I asked.
She sighed. “Yes and no. I’m sad that you’re sad.”
“I’ve been sad most of my life. Why should it change?”
“That’s not true. Everything changed the day we met.”
I nodded, sniffed. “I’m sorry, Aja. Honestly, I’m happy you came into my life. And I’m happy just to hold you right now.”
“That’s better.” Her head fell back on my chest; she lacked the strength to hold it up. I could hear her heartbeat, could feel it slowing down. Taking her hand I squeezed it. She tried to squeeze mine back but she was too weak. It wouldn’t be long.
“What does the name ‘Fred’ mean?” she asked.
“ ‘He who loves goddesses.’ ”
“Really?”
“It does now.”
Aja smiled faintly, her eyes closing. “I knew I chose the right boy when I chose you.”
I felt a stab of fear; I shook her gently. “Don’t go, not yet. Please?”
Her eyes opened. “It’s okay, Fred. I’m going home.”
I felt a wave of panic sweep over me. It was a tidal wave but I was no ocean, not like Aja, and suddenly I felt as if I could not bear it. Tears burned my eyes. I pulled her closer.
“No! Wait!” I cried, losing all control, sobbing. “Please don’t go! Use your power! For God’s sake, Aja, heal yourself!”
“Shh, Fred. It’s okay. You will be okay.” Straining, using the last of her strength, she placed her hand over my heart. “I will be with you here. I will always be with you. I promise.”
My agony did not stop.
Yet somehow her touch made it bearable.
I leaned over and kissed her. “I love you.”
She closed her eyes and settled back on my chest.
“I love you,” she whispered.
She died minutes later.