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8
First I heard the cricket. Annoying. I cracked my eyelids and was shocked to discover the subtle glow of a waning moon had been bleached out by a stark sun. I must have been out for a while. This was no dawn’s early light. This was mid-summer’s morning, grab-your-sunglasses light. I could grope around for my sunglasses, or I could shut my eyes. I shut my eyes.
The cricket chirped again, and then I heard my dad talking to it. “This is Robert,” he introduced himself to the cricket. He sounded as groggy as I felt.
“Oh, hey, sweetheart,” he said.
Sweetheart? How well did he know this cricket?
“He’s still asleep. We were up kind of late . . . No, just Jason and me. Everyone else went to their own cabin by nine o’clock. He and I stayed up for awhile.”
I began to realize he was talking on his cell phone.
“They’re all fine. She’s fine. Yeah, he’s even more strange than he was last year, but he was a little eccentric even before the accident. He’s got a new high-tech wheelchair and a van . . . Yeah, almost seventeen; he’s driving now . . . Okay. Me, too, sweetheart . . .
“Jason? Jason, it’s your mom. She wants to talk with you.”
I had to promise myself an afternoon nap as a way of forcing myself into opening my eyes and sitting up. I’ve made that promise before and never kept it.
The conversation with Mom was short and to the point: she did not want me riding in the van with Stephen Warrensburg.
I resisted the impulse to ask why. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. I had an official mother’s warning against riding with Stephen A. Warrensburg which I took as a warning to stay away from him altogether. Maybe this year I would get to hang out with the Space Cadets and listen in as they solved the mysteries of the universe. And maybe I would take that nap.
I hung up the phone, and as I handed it back to my dad he gave his head a slight tilt to the right and raised his left eyebrow.
“She wants me to avoid Stephen,” I said.
Dad brought his head upright and furrowed his brow.
“No idea,” I said. “She didn’t say why.”
Dad shrugged his shoulders.
“Me either,” I said.
We took our time getting ready to meet whatever was left of the day. Dad let me use the shower while he made breakfast. The warm shower washed away my grogginess and even some of the confusion that still covered me from the night before. After breakfast I was beginning to feel like I could come to enjoy a few days in the little mountaintop cabin.
“If I remember right,” Dad said, “there are trails running across the top of the mountain throughout the State Park. You can probably get a trail map at the park office. Take a bottle or two of water. It’s supposed to be in the high eighties today.”
“What about observing tonight?” I asked.
“I’ll get with Angie and the others,” he said. “We’ll probably head over there around six or six-thirty so we can get oriented while there’s still some daylight. Come on back by five, and we’ll get a bite to eat.”
“I may be back earlier. I owe myself a nap.”
Dad told me not to worry about cleaning up, then he stepped into the closet that held the shower and closed the door. I stuck a bottle of water in my back pocket, grabbed a granola bar, and stepped out the front door.
Big mistake.
There it was: midnight blue with gray trim and dark tinted windows. It dominated the landscape in front of our little stone cabin. How long it had been there I can’t say.
“Caldwell!” came the inevitable call.
Right then would have been a good time to take that nap.
9
“Caldwell, come here!”
He’s persistent, I thought. Persistent in his demands. Persistent in his obnoxiousness. I figured I might as well get it over with and tell him that my mommy said I couldn’t play with him anymore. I walked to the van.
He was parked facing out of the cabin area, so I approached him on the passenger side. The window was down.
“Get in,” he said, staring right through me.
I propped my left elbow up on the open window, feeling safe enough that he and I were separated by the width of the van and a closed door. “I’m not riding with you,” I said, deciding it was better to put this on myself than on “mommy.”
“Get in,” he repeated. “We’re going to the observatory. It’s just a half-mile from here.”
I shook my head.
“You think a cripple can’t drive,” he said.
“I think an obnoxious know-it-all can’t drive,” I replied.
He closed his eyes. His upper lip began to quiver. For an instant I thought he was going to cry. For an instant I thought I had gotten to him. For an instant I thought maybe he was human. In that instant I was wrong.
It was anger.
When he opened his eyes, I could see it. The anger. It was all he could do to contain himself. The quivering lip was the lid rattling on a pot that was about to boil over.
He managed to collect himself enough to say, “Everything I said last night is true. My dad was working with the FBI to set a trap for one of the Space Cadets. I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but I overheard him more than once on the phone. I don’t know who it is, but you’re going to help me find out, so get in.”
“I’m not riding with you,” I said.
“Fine, then. You can walk.” Warrensburg turned away from me and started the van. I stepped back to make sure he didn’t run over my toes.
He put the van into gear and then turned back to look me in the eye.
“Jason,” he said, “I need your help.”
I stood motionless, hoping my eyes betrayed no emotion.
“Please,” he said, “I need your help.”
And he drove away.
Don’t get me wrong, I know when I’m being manipulated. I also know that one of these days my curiosity is going to get me
