A brightly lit street that led away from the park. Where the three police cars had been waiting.
Will Wilson hadn't made a mistake. He'd just tried to draw out the chase. To make it more dangerous for me and him.
Will Wilson was getting bored.
I watched him now. Even in the shadows under that bridge, I could see his eyes staring out behind half-closed lids. His usually hard face gone somehow soft. I don't think I'd ever seen him drunk. I'd seen him drink twice as much, but I'd never seen him drunk.
"It's coming to an end," he said slowly. "We'll get jobs. And sooner than you think, it'll all come to an end."
We hear the steps upstairs and my legs go blurry, then numb. I'm pulling in air as slowly as I can, turning left, seeing the door I can run through if the voice comes any closer.
"Colleen?" the voice says. "Colleen?"
Coe is crouched low on the floor. Teddy stands at the door. Will Wilson stands at the foot of the stairs.
But then it is quiet, a door upstairs closing. And I look at Will Wilson and he is smiling.
"Almost," he whispers. And he smiles even more.
Teddy and Coe are already starting to climb out the window, Will Wilson next. And as I turn to lower myself over the sill, I think about Will Wilson standing at the foot of those steps, Will Wilson like always starting to think of another way, another step, another thing we can do to find something more. And as I drop to the ground I glance back in the house and I see a woman sitting in the dark kitchen off the wide living room, her eyes barely white in the darkness of the house, staring at me as I still hold on to the frame, having watched the four of us wander through her first floor. Not saying a word, Colleen just a silhouette in a far corner chair.
Teddy had come by to pick me up. He wanted to go for a drive. The two of us used to go for drives a few times a week. We were thirteen and neither of us had a license, Teddy using his cousin's Volkswagen Bug as just me and him went driving around Tacoma.
As we'd turned fourteen, though, I was less interested in driving with Teddy, wanting instead to go by Will Wilson's house, wanting to see what he had going on. And Teddy always agreed.
We were eighteen now, and it was a few days before we all were going to graduate, then leave for summer jobs in Alaska.
We drove in Teddy's white Dodge Dart, the June night air swirling cool around us in the car.
And Teddy then quietly told me he was thinking about going to college when we got back from Alaska. Trying to get into Washington State University, in eastern Washington, three hundred miles away.
And as he told me this I nodded and was quiet.
We were crossing along the waterfront at low tide, the wet and salty, heavy bay smell pouring through the windows. And the silence, not speaking, it was a kind of answer. Teddy, who'd never thought school was important, needed my encouragement to go to college. Teddy, who seemed bound to Tacoma and Will Wilson as deeply as me, needed my support to leave. Even to Seattle. Especially to eastern Washington. Teddy was trying to make a break. But that night I gave him nothing.
Teddy and I drove up McCarver Hill toward our small houses above Old Town, silently driving past the steplike rows of nice homes, the reflection of the yellow streetlights glowing on the hood, the reflection of a house window sometimes even shining on our windshield. McCarver Hill, which we'd ridden up on our bikes when we were ten years old, back then talking about being little kids, saying, do you remember that bush on that corner where we found that whole box of Popsicle sticks? Do you remember the day we skipped school and walked through that alley and then that alley to cross just an edge of the gulch, going to the waterfront with the sand and the rock crabs? Saying, do you remember the lady who lived in that house, who gave everyone the cocoa on snowy days? Do you remember that kid in the window of that house, how he'd smoke pot and stare, just stare out his window for hours, how he was there at the start of that walk and when we got back? Do you remember racing sticks down this hill in the rain, this very spot on this very block, me and you chasing boats, right here, right there, eight years old and passing through this place, me and you in a race at one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour?
But that night on McCarver Hill, I just stared at the road. And, still, said nothing to Teddy.
The car stopped in front of my house. The engine still running. I was about to open the door when Teddy said quietly, "Will Wilson was blowing up some old toaster this morning."
Teddy didn't talk for another moment. I held on to the door handle, thinking Teddy must have something more to say. Will Wilson was always blowing things up.
"And an old gas can," Teddy said quietly, "and this little black-and-white TV. Two M-8os each. He called me at six this morning. Said he was blowing stuff up. Told me to come over."
Teddy was leaning against his door, turned as if looking toward me but staring out the windshield toward my house. The light from the radio glowed above my knee.
"It's like I can't say no," Teddy said. "Going over there at six. I'd rather be in bed. But I can't say no."
I didn't say anything, just looked out the window. I could feel Teddy staring. Wanting me to agree.
"He was talking about break-ins and all," Teddy said, his voice loud now and awkward. "I don't know. It's like he's maybe pushing for something more. When we get back from Alaska."
I stared ahead, the intersection glowing pale yellow from a streetlight, the roads leading into it all lost in shadows. "Like what?" I asked.
"I don't know. He was just talking. All quiet like he gets. Taping M-8os to this toaster. He unscrewed the back of this TV. You should have seen that TV go."
"What was he saying, though?"
"Like, I don't know," Teddy said, turning the radio up slightly. "I love this song."
"Come on, Teddy," I said.
"Just more, you know? When we're in the house. Things he's thinking about for when we get back from Alaska. I don't know. He blew up an old wooden mailbox. It caught fire."
I sat in the car, staring at the shadows beyond the intersection. I knew Will Wilson was making decisions. Will Wilson was thinking, wishing.
Will Wilson was getting bored.
Teddy's face looked a little pained, talking now like he was answering a question. "More," he said, shrugging. "Just doing more. I'm not sure about it. Like, I don't know. He was saying stuff. While, like, he was blowing these things up. Six A.M."
I lowered my head. Saw my feet. "Come on, Teddy."
"Just saying," Teddy went on, but getting quiet now and his voice evening out, not struggling. "When we're in the house. Doing more. I'm not sure about it, Brian. Like, I don't know, Brian. Like waking people up."
The four of us leave the houses almost completely undisturbed. Even Coe is always careful to return furniture to its place. I think the owners woke up in the morning and never knew anything had happened, maybe wondered weeks or months later, How long has that lampshade been crooked? Is this where I left my shoes?
Teddy had been wrong. Will Wilson didn't want to wake people up when we got back from Alaska. Will Wilson didn't want to wait even that long.
One night later, we were in a house in Old Town, the four of us standing against a wall in the living room, after hours of near silence under that bridge near the park, under there quietly drinking, and I was blurry now, and slowed and focused from all the drinking, watching the lights on the ceiling now, light from the bay that flickered up through the windows, white, white flashes in a room that was dim violet from a streetlight outside, and I think I knew it was different when I saw Will Wilson pull a bottle of bourbon from a liquor cabinet, take a drink, and we'd never drunk in a house, never stolen anything. Coe was smiling, drinking, and I was watching Will Wilson, in his gloves like we always wore, with a ski mask in his pocket this time, and passing the bourbon to me before he put the mask over his head.