“Do you want to play a game?” I said.
“Do I look like I want to play a game?” He threw the candy wrapper on the floor.
Our mother came looking for us half an hour later. What were we doing, she wanted to know. She had a smirk on her face, seeing us there, alone but not complaining. It was as if she was proud that her two boys could go anywhere and have fun. Like she was happy knowing she could leave us anyplace and we would use our powerful imaginations to turn that place into a new and exciting world, alive with danger and possibility. She didn’t seem to realize that my brother was angry, or upset, or something else. Since we’d watched the tape, it was hard to tell.
We didn’t want to see Rick, I told her. That was all.
“You don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to see,” our mother said. She stood there for a second, then sat down on the stairs, her knees popping as she crouched next to us. “You know, I’m not going to make you like anyone you don’t want to like. That wouldn’t be fair.” She picked up my brother’s candy bar wrapper, turned it inside out. “But you won’t be rude to anyone. And you’ll do as I say or suffer the consequences.”
She tried to put her arm around my brother but he brushed it off. Suffer the consequences. It was something a villain would say, a dungeon master, not a dungeon mate. Without a word my brother stood up and stomped up the stairs, leaving me with my mother.
“I guess he’s still mad from the party,” she said, and I felt her gaze drift toward me, as if to say, What do you think, cute boy? And even though I thought Rick was the biggest jerk alive, I still felt something for my mother. I still wanted to lean into her and smell her shirt and say I was sorry, for spying, for lying to her about Chris, for my brother. I wanted to tell her about the tape and for her to tell me it wasn’t real.
But I didn’t say anything, and after a minute of silence, my mother balled up the candy wrapper. She pushed the foil into her fist, like a magician would a handkerchief, until the whole thing disappeared.
* * *
My brother and I spent the rest of the night building a fort in the cafeteria. We dragged two tables together and hid underneath, behind the chairs that sat upside down on the tabletops. We didn’t have a name for it, but our fort was someplace safe. No one could see us, we believed, but we could see everything. We saw Rick hang around, even though it was clear he wasn’t here to work. We saw our mother help a man for fifteen minutes, showing him the different clubs available. We saw the man leave without buying anything, our mother and Rick shrugging and laughing.
When it became late, we fell asleep. We must have. Otherwise we would have seen it when our dad showed up. We wouldn’t have missed him taking two chairs off our fort’s table, turning them upright. We would’ve thought that after our dad sat down in one chair, it would have been our mother who sat in the other. We would’ve heard her thank him again for the phone, their voices warming in a way they hadn’t in a while. We would have heard and seen all these things. We would have never guessed that the person who sat opposite our dad wouldn’t be our mother. It would be Rick.
“Thanks for doing this,” my dad said.
“Hey,” Rick said, “anything for the po-lice.”
It was my brother who poked me awake, I later realized. Who without a word told me to be quiet, and pointed at the chairs, the extra legs present. Our dad’s were all black, draped in his uniform. Rick’s were tight in light blue jeans, though we only saw one on the floor. He must have had his legs crossed, like talking to our dad the police officer was no big deal.
“You know why I’m here?” my dad said.
Rick laughed. “Yeah, I know why you’re here. Because you missed the party.”
“No,” my dad said. “It has nothing to do with that.”
“You sure? Sure you’re not mad that you missed out?”
“Why don’t you shut up and let me do the talking.”
Rick uncrossed his legs. Now both feet were firmly on the floor. “How about you not talk to me like that,” he said.
Or what? I would have said, my brother would have said, if one of us was playing the good guy, the other the bad. What are you going to do? We would have taken out our nightstick and showed it to Rick. Pulled out our gun if we had one. I’m an officer of the law, we would have said. Now sit there, shut your mouth, and do as I say.
“Listen,” my dad said. “I’m not here to get on your case. I know you jailed with Kern. That’s all I want to talk about.”
“Don’t you mean the Stranger?” Rick said. “The big bad Stranger. Though I guess he’s not a stranger to you.”
I heard my dad sigh through his nose, perform his patience trick.
“Fine,” Rick said. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know anything I can use. Did he ever say anything to you?”
“Who? The Stranger? Oh yeah. All the time. Didn’t you know, we were best buds?” Rick laughed. “Yep, we used to talk about all sorts of things. Sports, the weather. Our favorite movies. He liked those violent ones, you know, for mature audiences only.”
“Rick,” my dad said.
“Yeah, me, I’m more into comedies. But he was a real sick bastard. Said he liked making movies of his own. You know, homemade stuff. Real gory. You know anything about that?”
The tape. The woman.
“I’m being serious,” my dad said.
“Good,” Rick said. “That makes one of us.”
“Did he ever say anything about what he wanted to do if he got out? Anyone he wanted to see?”
Rick laughed. “You mean other than you?” he said. “Nope, didn’t say a thing.” My brother and I looked at each other with confusion. “Seriously, are these the questions? You know we weren’t in the same cell, right? Not even the same block. I barely saw the guy.”
There was a pause in the interrogation. My dad crossed his legs at the ankle, making a diamond-shaped window, and through that window we saw my mother. She was still in the pro shop, no doubt curious what this talk was all about.
“Yes,” my dad said. “I do know that.”
“Oh,” Rick said. “I get it.” He stood up, and my brother and I retreated farther under the table so he couldn’t see us. “I was right. This is about what you missed.” He walked away from our dad and faced the pro shop. “Or, miss.”
“I’m just trying to do my job,” my dad said.
“Yeah,” Rick said. “I know what you’re trying to do.” He watched my mother fish a misplaced shirt off a top rack, put it where it belonged. “You think you can scare her, is that it? Remind her who I am and she’ll come running back?”
My dad shifted in his chair, and I heard the click of his pen as he put his pad away.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Rick said. He laughed and my dad told him to shut up. That he didn’t know what he was talking about. “Maybe,” Rick said. “Maybe not. But I do know some things. Some things I know for sure.”
Like what? my dad said. Oh, nothing much, Rick said. Just the threat Kern made that day in court, the day he was sentenced to life, with my dad, the arresting officer, watching. Rick pulled out a big dip of chew and tucked a chunk under his bottom lip, ballooning the lower half of his face into that of a deformed monster. “You should have let me die,” the monster said. “You should have let me kill myself. Now someday I’m going to come for you. Someday I’ll hurt the people you love.”