Wu handed Will the note and said, “What’s up with this, we’re back to notes again?”
“I don’t know. Has she been acting weird lately?” asked Will.
“Yeah, a little. Ma Beth said she spent the whole day in her room except to go to the park by herself for about half an hour. Why would anyone go to the park for just half an hour? I don’t know. She gets in weird moods from time to time.”
Will was anxious to read the note, but he was afraid that Wu would want to know the details, especially since he seemed worried about Blue. Will decided he had to take the chance anyway. Blue would have known that he might have to open it in front of Wu.
He opened it and read:
That was it. Will smiled, because this was clever. A little corny, but clever enough to work. She knew Wu would be there, and she also got a message across to Will without it being suspicious. Meet at midnight and bring the camera.
He read the whole note out loud to Wu.
Wu seemed relieved. “Yeah, it has been humid the last couple of nights, and being up in that room? She should just go down and sleep on the couch in the rec room. What’s this camera she’s talking about?”
“It’s really cool, a night vision camera, I’ll show you.” Will still had the camera in his room. When he got it out and demonstrated it, Wu tried to act impressed, but only showed half-hearted interest. Wu was not exactly a science geek.
At midnight, Will intercepted Blue as she slipped out the downstairs window of the O’Day’s family room.
“Click, click, click” voxed Will.
“Cht, cht, cht!” Blue voxed back. “Where are you?”
Will couldn’t help smiling to himself—he must have gotten better at stalking if Blue couldn’t find him. “By the gate,” he voxed
In a moment Blue materialized next to him. “You brought the night vision camera,” she said matter-of-factly. “Good. Let’s go to the park. I don’t have much time. I want to get back soon.”
Well, thought Will, I guess things are back to normal. That is, the familiar minimal words, to-the-point, ‘introvert’ normal . . . not the ‘Hey Will, good to see you’ normal.
“Okay, but why not someplace closer if you need to get back soon?”
“The park,” she voxed with finality.
Great. It was going to be one of those nights again. He sighed. “What are we waiting for then . . .”
She looked at him with the tiniest hint of apology in her face, but then it vanished and she took off with a dash—disappearing into the shadows. Will followed her and matched her pace with much more practiced ease than their first night weeks ago. He almost didn’t trip on anything.
They quickly reached the park—the route being so familiar they could have each easily reached it with their eyes closed. They only encountered one smooching couple and one car but easily evaded any exposure or detection by melting into the shadows. Will had no idea where Blue was taking him—it wasn’t their usual stomping grounds, during the day or at night. It was at the far end where there was a small parking lot and restroom. It was not well lit, only indirectly by a single streetlight down the block. And there was one outstanding feature about this spot: an enormous maple tree.
“What are we doing here?” asked Will.
Blue was inspecting the restroom area and studying the tree. She didn’t speak for a minute. Then she pulled something out of her pocket and held it near his face. It looked like a ziplock bag. He could smell what was in it before he could actually see it. It had the spicy, fruity fragrance that he had learned to identify in his first year at high school. When his eyes finally focused on the bag and its contents, he wasn’t sure what to say. Even though he was expecting something unusual, he wasn’t expecting this.
“Blue, what are you thinking? You could get in so much trouble with this! Where in hell did you get it?”
And then she dropped the real bombshell. “You have to keep it,” and the next thing he knew, she was stuffing the little bag in his pocket. “And don’t open it. It’s a bag inside a bag. It’s got his prints on the bag inside.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” voxed Will, and he scrambled to take the bag out of his pocket again. He held the bag in his hand awkwardly. He couldn’t give it back to her. He really didn’t want her to get in trouble, but he couldn’t keep it either. “I can’t take this!”
“Stop being ridiculous,” voxed Blue. “It isn’t hard to hide something like that. Besides, cops don’t watch kids like you. They watch kids like me. They would throw me back into the system.”
“What are you talking about? And why did you bring me all the way over here to show this to me? And what are you doing now?”
Blue had started climbing the tree. She climbed like a cat right up to the lowest branches. “Can you see me from down there? Walk around, and see if you can spot me.”
Will was starting to feel like he was a trained monkey, and he was getting a little ticked off by it. She’s moody all week, then leads him here, hands him a joint in a ziplock, then climbs a tree and tells him to walk around and see how well she is hiding? What was happening? He felt like leaving, like dropping the joint and just going home. But she was a kid—she was his responsibility. He felt like an older brother wrapped around the little finger of a bossy little sister.
“Well?” came her vox from above.
Will hesitated, but then gave in. He couldn’t leave her alone, and if he was going to find out what was going on, he was just going to have to see this evening through.
He looked up from where he stood. The broad canopy of the tree kept the light from the streetlight out and deepened the shadows near the trunk of the tree. Will could make out the silhouette of her head and one shoulder “I can make out your head, but only because I know it’s there.” He saw a light blob bouncing a little bit, “And I can see the white bottom of your shoe.”
“Damn, I forgot about these sneakers. I need to wear my black slippers. What about from over there near the parking lot?”
Will could hear her making some adjustments in her position up in the tree. He walked slowly backward toward the parking lot, moving his head around to see if he could spot anything that was a giveaway.
“Well?” came a vox from the tree.
“Well, I can’t see you from here, and I know where you are. Let me check it out from different angles.”
Will and Blue spent the next few minutes checking out different angles and different positions. Some were perfect from one angle but not so perfect from another angle. If anyone had been watching, it must have looked like a lost deranged boy was lurching silently around the tree as if he had never seen one before in his life.
Finally, Will voxed, “I really doubt anyone who didn’t know you were there would ever spot you. You’d have to make noise to give it away.” Then he remembered he had the night vision camera hanging around his neck. “Wait a sec, I want to see if I can find you with this.” He powered it up and turned the illuminator on and then held it to his eye. There was Blue, clear as day waving at him. He put the camera down and squinted carefully. Nothing.
“Is there room up there? I’m coming up,” Will said, and he climbed up to join Blue. Now he could see why it was easy for her to hide. It was a very roomy spot where several large branches converged. “You were clear as day in this night vision camera with the illuminator on, but I couldn’t see anything without it.”
Blue reached out and nodded her head at the camera. Will took the camera from around his neck and handed it to her. She took it and fiddled expertly with the controls and then held it up to her eye and started scanning the area below.
Will watched her. She was totally engrossed. Hidden under her dark hair and buried somewhere deep was this place she retreated to. In that place, she was dancing to a different drummer, living a different life. Nobody seemed to know what that was. Will decided that he was going no further until he found out. Things were starting to get just a little too weird, and he didn’t want to be a partner in madness.
“What’s up with the joint, Blue?” he whispered.
She looked at Will. “It was a test. I got the joint this afternoon. I went to the park and decided to see if Greazal would sell me a joint. If he did, I decided I was going to take those guys down. He didn’t sell it to me, he GAVE it to me!”
She paused for Will’s reaction, but he was silent.
“Don’t you get it?” she asked.
“No, I don’t get it, Blue. You are tight as a drum. I don’t know what the hell is going on in that head of yours.”
“Look,” she voxed, “on the way back home I heard a man and woman chiss about scoring some smack—heroin! They’re going to meet a guy, Bronco, here at midnight tomorrow night and buy it from him! Gronk is Bronco! With this night vision camera, we can take these guys down!”
“What? Geez Blue, you’re not serious! Let’s just tell the cops and let them handle it! That’s what they are paid to do!” He didn’t even try to hide his voice.
“Stop talking! For crying out loud, you want to give away this hiding place!”
“Sorry! For some reason I just went completely nuts, because you are insane. Forgive me! For God’s sake, Blue, I can’t keep going on this crazy vendetta without knowing what is going on in your head. Even then, I still think it’s crazy. We’re not superheroes. You can’t just go out and sneak around conquering bad guys.”
Blue looked away from Will. She was looking off into the dark at nothing. She finally spoke in a whisper, “What more do you need to know than the fact that these guys are giving kids drugs—little kids! Me! All they want is easy money, and they don’t care about anyone. Do you want Rose or Sam to start smoking dope? Do you think Gronk or Greazal cares what happens if they did? Do you think you could prevent Rose and Sam from doing it just by saying ‘Don’t do it’? Really, how stupid are adults thinking they can just tell kids not to do it and think they won’t?”
“That’s it then? You don’t trust adults? Is that what this is all about? Is that why you don’t want to go to the cops? Well, what about me? Do you trust me? Do you think it’s stupid for me to tell you not to do this and hope that you won’t do it? You think it is stupid for me to care when it’s all I can do? It’s all I can do because I don’t know what is driving you! If I did, I’d try and stop that!”
Blue looked down and was silent. Will waited. She finally looked up at him. He was expecting a look of anger, but instead it was a look of anguish. Even the deep shadows of the tree couldn’t hide it.
“You can’t stop it. I’m the only one that can stop it,” she voxed.
Will could sense that this was the core. Something happened that only she knew about, and she didn’t trust telling anyone else, so she was dealing with it on her own.
“You’re wrong. There are people who will listen and help. What about Ma Beth? She’d listen to you. I will listen and help. My Mom would listen and help. She is awesome. She is a psychiatrist, you know.”
Blue’s face became hard. “You don’t know anything about it! They’ve been trying to tell me how to stop it for years, and they don’t have a clue! I honestly don’t know why anyone listens to those people. They are so full of crap!”
“My mom’s not full of crap. She’s really good at it,” voxed Will calmly.
“Therapists! Doctors! Psychiatrists! That’s exactly what I’m talking about! I’ve been to so many of them, and I trusted them, and all their drugs and talking and therapy. Do you know what it did to me? Do you?” hissed Blue in an angry, exasperated whisper. She didn’t wait for an answer. “A psych ward for six weeks! You know what it’s like being around crazy people? Best thing that happened to me there was I figured out I wasn’t crazy! Half the people in there weren’t crazy; they just didn’t play the game. I figured it out. I started playing their game. I became ‘normal’, so I could get out. No drugs, no therapists, just me. ‘Ready for reintroduction into society!’” She turned away and put the camera to her face and started scanning again with renewed intensity. “If you don’t want to help me you don’t have to. Just go.”
Will didn’t go. He couldn’t move, because he was trying to digest this new information. He decided he wasn’t going to give up. “It doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there that can help. There’s me. There’s my mom. You’ve never talked to a psychiatrist that could vox.”
Blue pulled the camera from her face and glared at Will. “I don’t want to talk to your Mom! I don’t care if she’s the world’s greatest psychiatrist! No more psychiatrists! No more anyone! Fat lot of good talking to you has done me, too!”
She scrambled down out of the tree and headed back, fast.
He scrambled down after her and followed—though he made sure to give her some space. She ignored him all the way to the hedge outside the O’Day house, until she finally turned and voxed, “I don’t want your help anymore. Just leave me alone.” She turned back and plunged through the hedge.
Will didn’t follow. He just stood there for a while. He knew he had done the right thing to push her, but now he didn’t know quite what to do. If he could talk to his mother about it, she would give him great advice. But he couldn’t talk to her—that would betray a confidence between him and Blue. He wasn’t ready to do that. It wouldn’t be right. He thought his mother would agree on that point.
Finally he turned and went home. He would just have to work it out himself. Just like Blue.