“Why did Larkin take all the drugs?”
“He craves sensation. He’s sensational.”
“You’re shivering, Adlyn.”
“It’s one side-effect of 62-13.”
“I’m kind of mind-blown by this stuff about Larkin.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. It started getting really scary. It… Mike… it still is really scary. Can you get me a blanket from my bedroom closet, the pink one with the unicorns on it?”
“Be right back.” And I am.
“They found her in the woods near Bethesda.”
“Who?”
“Tammy. Our neighbor. Ten. Strangled. Two months later Dad got transferred to the Edgewood Arsenal up on the Chesapeake Bay and guess what? It happened again. In the woods, our neighbor, Kathleen. I knew her. Then Dad got a big promotion that took us way out to Missoula, Montana, and guess what?”
“Another neighbor girl strangled and left in the woods.”
“Forest, actually. Our next door neighbor. That was when Dad finally put two and two together. So did the police. The detectives interviewed Larkin for hours. Several times. Of course he wouldn’t tell them anything because before the questioning he’d taken X62-15, which Dad designed to prevent captured Americans from confessing. It was intended as an antidote to X62-13. It raises your pain threshold to almost nothing and gives you a gigantic but completely logical imagination. You can make up convincing lies and follow them up with irrefutable details. Even a lie detector can’t tell. You get real calm. Larkin told me one night, in tears, after taking 62-13, that he had taken 58-37 before he killed the girls. That drug was supposed to be a waking-hours sedative but instead it causes dissociation and violent behavior, and Dad and his partners considered it a total failure. Larkin told me he cased the girls’ houses by daylight but always went out and took them on new moons, so he’d be harder to see at night. Afterward, he felt so bad about what he’d done, when he took 62-13, that is. So bad.
“Well, then the Pentagon generals came in and met with Dad and Larkin and the local police and the next thing you know we’re living in Albuquerque, where they’ve got another government pharmaceutical research facility. But not Larkin. He gets sent away to a prestigious private liberal arts school in the Midwest and only comes home on holidays and some weekends. Mom and Dad put bars on Larkin’s door and windows, and alarms on all the other doors and windows, for when he visited. So he couldn’t get out. Mom would be his jailer-nurse-cook. They never let him outside the house unless they were both with him. Never. But? He still gets another girl in New Mexico, from her own house around the corner, Christmas break. Left her in the desert. So we packed up and headed out to California. Everything was fine until the Fourth of July, when Ronnie Feurtag disappeared. And until tonight, because it’s a new moon and Larkin took the 58-37 about a hour before he left for your house.”
“Marie!”
“I genuinely like you, Mike. Can I say one thing before you go?”
“No!” I’m already to the door. I hesitate at the keypad on the wall, lights blipping red, red, red.
“Mike, I took a lot of those pills with Larkin. I helped him but only a little. That’s why Mom and Dad lock me in, too. I’m more prone to shoplifting, burglary, and self-destructive behavior. But I have residual goodness. I hate what those drugs did to us. They broke down our souls then built them back shapeless and black. Sometimes I can smell them. Our souls. I can’t wait to die.”
I throw open the door and the alarms shriek. Adlyn yells out that she’s sorry. She’s confessing her sorrow in very emotional detail, raising her voice higher and higher. But it only gets fainter as I run across the lawn toward Heritage Acres, faster than I’ve ever run before.
The chapter meeting is just breaking up. People stand out in the yard by the flagpole and the police motorcycles. Some of them are the cops who ride them. A station wagon sweeps away from the curb. Mom stands on the porch, saying goodnight and handing out the red-white-and-blue John Birch Society ballpoint pens that litter our entire house. No sign of Dad. “Where’s Marie?”
“What’s wrong, Mike?”
But I’m already past her and into the still-darkened living room where through the smoke I see Dad in close conversation with Mrs. Lamm, and Ken Crockett pounding out “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the piano while Mrs. Crockett slow-dances alone, and my brother Max using the beam of projector light to cast shadow figures on the wall with his hands: rabbit head, flying bird, devil with horns. But no Marie and no Larkin Lamm. The sliding glass doors are open to the back patio and the curtains sway. I fly through the house, room-to-room. In the master bedroom Mrs. Frantini and Mr. Dale are kissing. Back in the living room I throw open the slider and spill onto the back patio by the snacks-and-drinks table, where a few last guests are smoking and loading up paper plates. I can see the whole backyard: no Marie. And the side yard: no Marie. But I see the lights on in the gun room and the door slightly ajar. Suddenly, Dr. Lamm bursts out, looking left and right, searching everywhere, fast as his eyes can focus—just as I am. He sees me and throws his arms wide and cocks his head like I’m supposed to know where Marie and his homicidal pervert of a son are.
And then I remember. The woods, the forest, the desert, the drainage ditch.
I yank open the back gate and run to the flood control channel. I hear Dr. Lamm behind me. At the edge of the channel I see the trickle of water at the very bottom. And in the faint patio lights from my house I can see the still-dripping footprints—just one pair—leading up the opposite side of the concrete canal toward the orange grove. In a blink I’m down the near bank and through the little stream and up the far side. When I get to the grove the light is too dim for footprints so I have to go right or left and I choose right because I always do, automatically, I always choose right because I’m right-handed, and because Dad and Mom choose right, the right wing, because the right leads to freedom and liberty but the left leads to communism and death. I run a few yards then stop. I hear footsteps behind me and turn to see Dr. Lamm catching up.
Suddenly, back in the trees, Marie is screaming. It’s more of a snarl—a throttled grunt made while biting or tearing with your teeth, though her two front top teeth are missing. She has a ferocious temper. The trees are dark, the oranges just faint dabs of color. The earth of the grove is big-clodded and firm. I run toward her like in a dream—slowly, laboring so hard but moving so little. Some fool inside me thinks: this is a dream. Wake up. Wake up!
Marie has stopped screaming. But I see them, Larkin Lamm crouching with his back to me, wrenching her wrists, pushing her against the trunk of a big orange tree, pulling her back, slamming again. I hear her breathless huffs. It takes time to get there. Minutes. Hours. But some dreams come true some days, and mine comes true that day. I jump up and drop my arms around Larkin Lamm’s neck and choke him as hard as any sixteen-year-old has ever choked another person in the history of this Earth.
He’s strong. He stands, but I stay on. He tries locking his hands on my arms then pulling on my hair but I can feel the start of his panic. He spins away from Marie and crashes me into another tree trunk. The same fireflies buzz my eyes as when I held onto the bottom of the ocean while the wave went over me. I do not let go. I will not let go. Then Larkin straightens and jumps and lands on his back, crushing me between himself and the ground. Lights out. I’m gone, completely.
But just for a second or two. I open my eyes to Larkin above me, his hands outstretched. He’s moving backwards, like a lunging dog held by a leash. I roll away and get to my hands and knees and I see the belt around his neck, and Dr. Lamm, holding on with both hands, arms taut and legs braced, pulling Larkin back.