It felt good to be out on my bike, whistling along the road down to the canal, away from the tension at home, away from the tension of the day. I wanted the wind to sweep up all the bad things into an enormous gigantic sack, and hurl it into space. In it would be me being bad at basketball, the tournament, Mom being angry with Dad, Dad being angry with Mom, Mom and Dad not being together, Wills’s horrible friends, the money under Wills’s mattress, the knife wherever it was, Wills finding my story, and Will’s Acts Dumb and Dumber.
I was sure I would find Wills with his friends. If I found him, I was going to bicycle up to him, tell him Mom and Dad were worried about him, then cycle away again as quickly as possible before his friends could say or do anything horrible. If I found him, at least I would be able to go home and tell Mom and Dad that he was all right. Then they could stop worrying, Dad would be able to go back to his own home, and Mom and I could sit down and watch the television together like we normally did when Wills was out.
I couldn’t find Wills though. I searched all of his usual haunts twice over, in case he was on the move from one to the other. I was about to give up and go home, when I remembered the scrap yard, and the time when I thought I had seen him coming out of the scrap merchant’s building. It was worth a try.
I bicycled there as fast as I could, because it was beginning to get dark. The scrap yard was empty, probably because of the game on the television and because it was nearly dinnertime for most people. It wasn’t the sort of place I wanted to be on my own. In the gloom, the scrap merchant’s building looked spooky and unwelcoming. The danger signs with their white backgrounds shouted their message out louder than ever. I couldn’t believe anyone would want to go inside, even on the brightest, sunniest day. I laid my bike down on the ground and walked slowly over, ready to turn around and run if Wills’s friends suddenly appeared. I stood outside the building and listened. I couldn’t hear anything, and it didn’t look possible to get in through the heavily barricaded doors. Perhaps I had been wrong about Wills and his friends coming from inside the building. Perhaps they had just been walking by.
I went around to the back. There was another set of doors, padlocked and with large planks of wood across them. I reached through the planks and rattled the doors halfheartedly, knowing already that they would not give way. I felt defeated and relieved at the same time.
I turned to go home, when I noticed a small door to the right, set back into the brickwork and fastened with a padlock and a crisscross of narrow slats of wood. Some of these were broken lower down, leaving a gap large enough for a person to crawl through, if they were stupid enough to want to. And then I noticed that the padlock was not locking anything together. It was hanging from a hook, but behind it the door was slightly ajar. I put my hand through the slats and pushed the door gently. It squeaked on its hinges and the bottom dragged on the ground, but it gave way a little. I listened for any sounds from inside. Nothing.
DANGER! the signs warned me. I was sure there was nobody there, but curiosity made me hesitate to go away. DANGER! DANGER!
Then I heard something move. My first instinct was to run. My second was that it might only be a rat. My third was that if Wills was in there with his horrible friends, I wanted to know what they were doing. I’d had enough of all the secrecy. I’d had enough of his friends interfering in my life. I’d had enough of his friends all together. What could they do to me if I did barge in on them, except call me more rude names? At least if Wills knew I knew whatever it was he was up to, he might think twice about continuing with it, especially if I said I was definitely going to tell Mom and Dad.
I squatted down and pushed gently again at the door, cursing because it squealed at every nudge and gave away the fact that I was there. I steeled myself to come face to face with a welcome party as I crawled on my hands and knees through the gap. I stood up to find that on the other side of the door a narrow concrete staircase rose steeply to an upper floor. I waited at the bottom for a few seconds and listened, trying to blot out the whooshing of blood in my head. There was no sound. I crept up the first three steps, but hesitated again. My nerve was deserting me. Why was I putting myself through this? I didn’t have to. Why didn’t I just make up my mind that there was nobody there and go home?
Something flashed past my face, and I screamed. A pigeon landed behind me and fled through the door. I became aware of several more pigeons scrabbling around above me, and saw piles of their droppings on the steps ahead.
Then I heard a different sound. It was like someone sobbing. I took a deep breath and whispered, “Who’s there?”
“Don’t hurt me,” a voice cried back.
“Wills?” I said.
The sobs increased. I climbed to the top of the steps, ducking to avoid the sheets of cobwebs that hung from the rafters.
A huge room opened up before me. The darkness was broken only by patches of light where the roof had caved in. Sinister-looking shapes seemed to move around in the gloom, but I saw that they were only pieces of scrap metal that had been left lying there. The sobs were coming from the other end of the room. I walked slowly towards them, the floorboards creaking and groaning under my feet.
“Wills?” I said.
I moved forward again, until I could make out Wills’s face. He was cowering in a corner, shaking uncontrollably.
“What are you doing, Wills? What’s happened?”
Wills howled now, his whole body heaving. It was frightening. I didn’t know what to do to make him stop. If only I’d had my cell phone with me I could have called Mom or Dad.
“Where’s your cell phone, Wills?” I asked. “Let me call Mom.”
He shook his head miserably. I didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean. And then I remembered that he had thrown it into his gym bag.
“Come on, Wills,” I said. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
At last, he whimpered, “It is that bad. It’s worse than bad.”
“What is? Tell me, Wills.”
“I’m going to go to jail.”
The words leapt around inside my head as I tried to make sense of them.
“What are you talking about?” I spluttered.
“When they find out I was there, they’ll send me to jail.”
“Don’t be silly, Wills. Nobody’s going to send you to jail,” I said.
Why did everything have to be such a drama? I thought.
“They didn’t tell me they were going to do the library. I didn’t want to do it, Chris, but they made me go with them.”
He started to sob again. Suddenly I felt as if my insides were being squeezed tight by an iron fist.
“I hate them,” howled Wills. He shrank back further into the corner. “They might come and get me. I ran away. They said they’d come and get me if I ran away.”
“Your friends?” I whispered.
“They’re not my friends,” he wailed. “I hate them. They threatened that woman with a knife.”
This was no play. This was for real. Even Wills couldn’t make this up. I wanted to laugh and cry and be sick all at the same time. I was losing control. This was my brother talking about my friend. A knife, he said. THE KNIFE. I wanted to run away, to get out of that place, and be at home sitting on the couch with Mom. I wished this was just a bad dream so that I could wake up in the morning and everything would be like it was every day, with Mom clattering away downstairs and hippo snorts coming from Wills’s bedroom.
“They said we were just going to frighten her because she’s a stuck up cow and deserves it. I didn’t know they were going to use a knife. I didn’t know they were going to trash the place.”
I was angry then. I could feel it boiling up inside me like a volcano.
“She isn’t a stuck up cow,” I raged at him. “She’s my friend. What have you done?”
I started to pummel him with my fists.
“Why do you have to ruin everything, EVERYTHING?” I yelled.
I wanted to hurt him so badly. He tried to protect himself with his arms, while he begged me to stop.
Then the hurricane broke through. He yelled at the top of his voice, “LEAVE ME ALONE. IT WASN’T MY FAULT!”
At the same time, he pushed me with all his might, hurling me backward like one of those crash test dummies. I went straight through the rotten floorboards. For a moment there was silence.
Shocked silence.
Then the pain hit me like a blow from a hammer, and Wills’s voice cried hysterically from above, “Chris, are you all right, Chris, oh God, please let him be all right, please don’t let him be dead!”
I lifted my head to speak, but the only sound I could make was a loud moan from deep in my throat. I saw that my right leg was twisted sideways. I knew right away it was broken. I’d seen soccer players with broken legs on the television. I tried to be brave like they were, because the funny thing is that if soccer players are really, really hurt they don’t make a fuss. It’s only when they’re being prima donnas or want to get another player into trouble or want to make the referee point to the penalty spot, that they roll around as if they’re about to die. I didn’t think I was about to die, even if the pain was worse than any pain I had ever felt in my life. But I was scared, and I wanted Mom.
“Chris?”
Wills’s voice was panic-stricken. I heard a low wail and thought it was him, until I realized it had come from my own lips. There was a scuffling sound up above.
“Wills,” I cried, summoning all my strength, “keep away from the hole, Wills! Don’t come near the hole.”
“I thought you were dead,” he howled. “I didn’t mean it, Chris. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“I think I’ve broken my leg, Wills. You need to get help.”
“I can’t go outside,” he said. “They might get me.”
He was terrified, I could hear it in his voice.
“There’s nobody there, Wills.”
“I want to stay here with you. Please don’t make me go.”
I heard him moving around again. I was scared that he might fall through the floor and hurt himself, even more badly than I’d been hurt. But I was relieved that he didn’t want to go, because I didn’t want to be left on my own however much I wanted Mom.
“It hurts, Wills,” I groaned. “Keep talking to me. Tell me things so I don’t have to think about the pain.”
There was a silence before he said, “I don’t want to talk about what happened, all right? I don’t want to remember it.”
I didn’t either.
“We lost the basketball game,” I said. “I was horrible.”
There was silence again, and I thought Wills might not want to talk about basketball because he would know it was his fault we lost.
“You’re not horrible,” he said then, quietly, and I think he really meant it. “You just need to grow a bit. I’m lucky cuz I’m big.”
“Sometimes you’re unlucky being big, because people think you’re older than you are and expect you to behave older.”
“Dad’s like that,” said Wills. “He thinks I should act older.”
“And Mom sometimes babies you,” I said.
“I suppose Clingon is furious with me,” Wills sighed.
“I don’t think you’re his favorite.”
“I’d like to be a basketball player when I’m grown up.”
“I’d like to be a writer,” I said, and I immediately wished I hadn’t.
“So you can write about me, I suppose,” Wills threw down.
“Been there, done that, got the torn pages,” I threw back. “You’re not the only subject in the world.”
“I’m the only one worth writing about,” said Wills. I could hear the chuckle in his voice and was glad.
We both fell silent for a time. Thoughts of Penny kept breaking through, even though I was trying to keep them buried. I was beginning to feel dizzy with pain and fear and hunger. As if he could read my mind, Wills suddenly said, “I could chow down a pizza.”
“They don’t deliver here,” I groaned.
Wills chuckled again. “You’re quite funny sometimes,” he said.
“Thanks for the vote,” I muttered.
“Does it hurt much?” Wills sounded anxious again.
“It hurts like crazy,” I said, “but I’ll live, no thanks to you.”
And then, in a flash, it hit me. Penny didn’t work on Saturdays. Someone else did. If anyone had been hurt, it wasn’t Penny.
I felt so relieved, and then I felt guilty about feeling relieved, because it meant that the girl who worked on Saturdays was the girl who had been threatened.
I had to be sure. “Wills?” I called.
“Yes, bro,” said Wills.
“What did she look like, the girl in the library?”
“Don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped.
“Did she have dark hair?” I persisted.
“No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Leave it alone, will you?”
We went quiet again. I could hear Wills shifting around. I didn’t know which would be worse: his thoughts, with the knowing what had happened; or my thoughts, with not knowing what had happened, and trying not to fear the worst. It was pitch-black now, and I was beginning to shiver. I closed my eyes, but I was scared I wouldn’t wake up again, and I wanted to see Mom. I wanted to see Mom more than anything else in the world. She would make everything all right again. That’s what moms do, isn’t it?
“Chris?” Wills called. “When are they going to find us?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. I didn’t want to think about it. Someone would come eventually, but the thought of being there all night terrified me.
“Mom and Dad will be worried. I expect they’ll call the police.”
“No!” cried Wills. “I don’t want the police! They’ll send me to jail! Don’t let the police take me, Chris. Tell them it wasn’t me.”
He was becoming so agitated that the floor was beginning to creak.
“Keep still, Wills. Stay in the corner!” I yelled.
“Promise you won’t let them take me away,” he wailed.
“I won’t let them take you away, Wills,” I promised. “You’re my brother.”
“Together we stand?” he shouted.
“Divided we fall.” I grimaced.
I had fallen, badly, and we were divided not just by a rotten floor, but by what Wills had been through that day, which I couldn’t even begin to understand, and which threatened all of us. Just like Dad leaving had threatened all of us. Still threatened all of us. We weren’t the same any more. Could we somewhere, somehow, discover a different sort of togetherness when all of this was over?