Second Chance (7 page)

Then there came Lionel, bounding out of the house with a big duffel bag over his shoulder. Ryan convinced himself that Lionel could be running only because someone was after him. A stranger. A bad guy. Someone with a knife or a gun. And Lionel was leading whoever that was right to Ryan. He didn’t even take the time to mount his bike. He just ran off as fast as he could.

He had been doing a lot of that lately.

V
ICKI
felt awkward when Judd pulled into the driveway of his big suburban home. She had been in a house that size only twice before, both times for parties. She hadn’t felt comfortable then either. But this was different. There was no party here. There was no one here but the two of them. When was the last time she had been alone with a teenage boy without winding up drinking, smoking, doing dope, or worse?

Judd seemed nervous, showing her around, telling her she could stay in the guest bedroom downstairs while he would keep his room upstairs. “Doesn’t it give you the creeps to stay so close to where the rest of your family used to be?” she asked.

“A little,” he said. “But I have no choice. Where else would I go?”

Vicki had just been thinking the same thing. She didn’t say so. All she said was, “I hate to ask, but do you have anything to eat around here?”

“Name it,” Judd said. “We have anything and everything you want.”

Vicki and Judd raided the refrigerator and ate well. She noticed he was as heavy-eyed as she was. “I don’t like to sleep during the day,” she said. “But I’m going to pass out sitting here if I don’t lie down.”

Judd pointed to the guest room. “I’m going to sleep too,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I sleep all day and all night, but I’ve never done that before. More likely, I’ll wake up after seven or eight hours, like I always do.”

“Me too,” she said. “But I don’t remember ever being so exhausted.”

“I’d say we’ve been through a lot, wouldn’t you?” he said.

They both laughed for the first time since they’d known each other.

Vicki quickly grew serious. She said, “You know, Judd, I’m going to have to ask you to run me somewhere tomorrow so I can get some clothes. I’ll keep track of whatever it costs and pay you back.”

“No problem,” he said, “but first you
ought to check my mom’s closet. She was about your size.”

“Really? What size was she?”

“I don’t know. She was about your size, that’s all I know.”

“Wow,” Vicki said. “I hope I’m still thin when I’m her age.”

“If you believe what Bruce Barnes believes, we haven’t got much more than seven years to live anyway.”

“Plenty of time to get fat,” Vicki said, shrugging. What kind of a remark was that? She had never engaged in small talk with anyone before. In the past everything she talked about had been centered on what she liked or didn’t like, what she was going to do or not do. She hated talking about normal things—“nothing” things, she always called them. This was the stuff adults and other boring types always talked about.

“You can have whatever you want of my mom’s stuff,” Judd said. “I mean, she’s obviously not coming back. Will it make you feel weird?”

“Weird?”

“Wearing someone else’s clothes, someone who disappeared.”

“How will you feel seeing me in your mom’s clothes?”

“I don’t guess I’d mind. You’ll probably
wear them differently—I mean, tied up or cut off or tucked in or untucked or whatever.”

“Yeah, and I hope it will be temporary anyway. I want to get a job and get myself some new stuff.”

“Sure. But meanwhile . . .”

“Meanwhile I’ll try to get by if there’s anything that works, so I won’t have to wear dirty clothes.”

“Good. You want to look for some stuff now, in case you want to change when you get up? I mean, you don’t have to. You look perfectly fine, but you might want some fresh . . . not that what you’re wearing doesn’t look fresh or anything, but—”

“It’s all right, Judd. Yes, I would like to see if there’s something I could wear when I wake up. Did your mother wear jeans, sweaters, that kind of stuff, or only dresses and old ladies’ stuff?”

“Here’s a picture of her.”

Vicki studied the photograph of a very youthful, trim, and definitely petite woman. “Is this a recent picture?”

“Yeah.”

“She looks very stylish.”

“My friends said she was a babe.”

“To her face?”

“No, to mine. I was proud of her.”

Judd was talking about his mother as if she
were dead. It seemed to Vicki his voice was about to break.

“I can see why you were proud of her,” Vicki said. “If she has a lot of clothes like this, I’d be honored to wear them. Remember, Judd, she’s not dead. If everything we believe is true, and we both know it is, she’s in heaven.”

“I know,” he said, sitting on the couch and sighing. “But she might as well be dead. She’s dead to me. I won’t see her again.”

“Not here, anyway,” Vicki agreed, “but in heaven or when Jesus comes back.”

“I guess I wouldn’t want to see her in heaven,” Judd said. “That would mean I’d have to die within the next seven years.”

“Not necessarily,” Vicki said, yawning. “Bruce says the seven last years don’t actually begin until Israel signs some sort of a treaty with that Antichrist guy.”

Again Vicki was stunned at what was coming out of her own mouth. Would she have heard of or known any of this a week ago? Would she have cared? Would she have talked about it? Hardly. She had never cared about politics, especially international politics. She didn’t really care about much outside her own trailer park. Now not only was life in the park gone, but she also was talking
about global affairs with a rich kid she had just met.

“Nobody even knows if the Antichrist is around yet,” Judd said. “But Bruce said he already has his eye on somebody.”

“I don’t think I’d even want to know who it was,” Vicki said.

“I sure do,” Judd said. “I don’t want to be sucked in by him and fooled.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“You want to look at those clothes now?”

“Sure. Then I’m getting some sleep.”

Judd directed her to his parents’ bedroom and left Vicki to look around in there for herself. She found it eerie. Not forty-eight hours earlier, people were living here with no idea their minutes were numbered. It was a neat room, but stuff was left about, the way it is when people think they’ll be back to tidy up. A jewelry box was open. A drawer was half shut. One side of the closet was open, the other shut. Books were on the nightstands; half a glass of water was on the floor next to the bed.

Vicki was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. She checked the closet and wondered what it must be like to have the money to live this way. Judd’s mom’s closet looked like a department store. Shoes, slacks, blouses, blazers, dresses, belts, you name it.
She had been serious when she’d said Judd’s mom looked stylish, but these kinds of things had never been her style. She had favored a hotter look, a street look, lots of black and leather.

Vicki pulled out a pantsuit that looked way too old for her, but she imagined it with the top untucked and the blazer open. She held it against her body and looked in the mirror on the back of the bedroom door.

Vicki was startled by her own appearance. She took two steps backward and sat on the bed, the hangered pantsuit still pressed against her. She stared at her greasy hair, her makeupless face, her puffy eyes. When was the last time she had paid attention to her face without a load of makeup and mascara? She looked old and tired, yet her youthfulness peeked through too. The girl in the mirror looked scared, tired, haggard. She had for so long hidden that little girl, trying to make herself appear older. Maybe it had worked, but she didn’t want to appear older now. She wanted to be who she was, a fourteen-year-old girl who had finally come face-to-face with God. Finally she knew who he was and what he was about. She had given herself to him when she looked just like this, and she didn’t want to change.

Sure, she hoped she looked better when
she had had a little sleep and a shower and clean hair. But she was finished trying to look like a woman in her twenties. No more hiding. No more pretending to be something she wasn’t. She would wear an older woman’s clothes, but she would wear them in such a way that she was honest with herself, with others, and with God. She was a teenager who had been left behind, but she was also one who had seen what was right and acted upon it. She belonged to God now, and she would present herself to him as she really was.

There was nothing wrong with looking nice, but she no longer felt the need to look hard, or sexy, or old. She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, Mrs. Thompson’s pantsuit draped over her. In a minute, she decided, she would get up and head for the guest room. But within seconds she had drifted into a deep, deep sleep.

Ryan Daley dove behind a hedge across the street and a block behind Lionel’s house. Lionel came charging by, muttering, “Where are you, you little chicken?”

“I’m right here,” Ryan answered.

Lionel skidded to a stop and glared at Ryan. “You
are
a chicken!” he said. “Look at you! Hiding there like a little scared rabbit.”

“So, what am I, a chicken or a rabbit?”

Lionel shook his head, looking disgusted. Ryan found it hard to believe this boy was only a year older than he was. Lionel seemed so much older, so much more mature. He seemed like the kind of guy who could get along on his own, who would stand up to bad guys like he had apparently just done. Ryan couldn’t imagine ever doing something like that.

“We’ve got to get back there and get our bikes,” Lionel said. “Where’d you run off to, anyway?”

“What do you mean?” Ryan said. “You can see where I ran off to. I’m right here, aren’t I?”

“I mean
why
did you run off?”

“Because I saw you being chased.”

“No one was chasing me.”

“Why were you running then?”

“I figured if I surprised them by bolting out of there, I’d have a big enough head start that they’d give up before they started. They must have.”

“But, Lionel, they’ll get us when we go back for the bikes.”

“You want to walk all the way to your house?”

“My house? I thought we were going to stay here!”

Lionel sighed and told Ryan the story. “So I don’t think we’re staying here until I can get the police to throw them out.”

“So call the police.”

“Maybe I will. But don’t you think they have enough to worry about right now, without trying to figure out who owns my house and who should be there or shouldn’t? I mean, if the cops find out I’m thirteen and the only one left in my family, they’ll try to put me in some orphanage or something.”

“Orphanage?” Ryan repeated. No way. He had never heard anything good about an orphanage. Talk about a nightmare. Worst of all, when he thought about it, he realized that now he
was
an orphan. Being abandoned by his parents had always been his biggest fear, and he didn’t think that was just because he was an only child. He was sure he would have felt that way even if he had had brothers and sisters, and that made him wonder if Lionel felt the same. He had to, didn’t he? But he believed this was all about Jesus and heaven and everything, so maybe Lionel was handling it better. At least that’s the way it seemed to Ryan.

Lionel also seemed more interested in get
ting their bikes. “I want my bike too,” Ryan said, “but I’m still not going inside my house.”

“Man, you’ve
got
to get over that,” Lionel said. “You can’t sleep in a tent the rest of your life, and I know
I’m
not going to.”

“I just can’t go in my house,” Ryan said. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to start by getting our bikes. Now come on.”

Lionel left his duffel bag in the bushes, and Ryan followed him as he crept back toward his house. The two guys who knew André were still casually going in and coming out of the house, unloading stuff from their van. Lionel said, “Let’s wait until they’ve just carried some stuff in, then we can run up, get our bikes, and speed away.”

“And what if they see us and come after us in that car or that van?”

“What if Chicken Little was right and the sky falls in?” Lionel said. “You’ve got to learn to take some chances, man.”

Ryan figured that was supposed to be funny, but he didn’t laugh. Lionel was making him feel like a wuss. He had never felt that way before. He was an athlete, a tough guy. Kids looked up to him, respected him. What would they think of him now, running away and hiding?