The Burning Man (24 page)

It was a risk, but having a partner in this particular crime would make it so much easier.

“Okay, look,” Olivia said, leaning in to Annie as if she was sharing a special confidence. “I’m trying to send a letter to my boyfriend.” She hit the word boyfriend with extra emphasis. Subtext:
See, I already have a boyfriend, and have no interest whatsoever in stealing Doctor Lansen away from you.

“I miss him like crazy,” she continued, “and I want him to come bust me out of here. I need the correction fluid to cover up the address on a stamped letter I swiped from Doctor Lansen, so I can write in a different address.”

Annie looked skeptical. She seemed to be sizing Olivia up, to figure out if she was trying to pull a fast one. But it was the truth, and it seemed like Annie could tell.

“Will you help me?” Olivia asked.

At first, Annie didn’t answer. She just held Olivia’s gaze, her dark eyes slitted and challenging, that smirk still lazing around the corners of her lips. Then, she turned slowly away and strolled over to the open doorway that led into the nurses’ station.

“Hey, Ratchet!” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “Come here, I want to tell you something.”

Olivia’s breath caught, and her heart was in her throat. Was Annie going to rat her out? If the nurses searched Olivia, and took away the envelope she’d stolen, she might never have an opportunity to get another one, and all her hard work would be for nothing. Had she made a terrible mistake trusting Annie?

Mrs. Andrada got up from behind the desk and stepped over to the door to talk to Annie.

“What do you want, Miss Pagliuca?” she asked coldly.

Annie looked back over at Olivia for a second and winked. Then she turned toward the nurse and slammed her own head as hard as she could against the doorframe.

The nurse swore and hit the button to summon help.

Larry arrived almost instantly with another orderly, a big, fat Samoan guy with lots of tribal tattoos. The two of them grabbed Annie by the arms and hauled her away from the doorframe, but not before she got in two more solid knocks to her own head. Blood was running down between her eyes as she stood up on her tiptoes and licked Larry’s face.

He flinched away from her with his face screwed up like a little boy who’d just been kissed by his aunt. If he’d had a free hand, he probably would have wiped his face on his sleeve to rid himself of cooties.

“Hold her, dammit,” the nurse said, filling a syringe.

This was Olivia’s chance.

She walked as casually as she could manage back to the station window. No one paid her any mind.

Annie was screeching and kicking while the nurse was trying to find a place to stick her with the needle. Olivia slung her little lasso over the lip of the window one more time, stretching as far as she could. The loop brushed softly against the bottle a few times before finally sliding down around the cap. She held her breath, lower lip clenched between her teeth, and flicked her wrist.

It worked. The noose tightened perfectly, and she was able to quickly pull the little bottle upward. There was a scary moment when it hit the lip and wobbled, threatening to slip free, but the noose held and she was able to pull the bottle the rest of the way up and over.

Once she had it, she used the string to flip it up into her good hand and palm it.

Behind her, Annie had knocked over a chair with her kicking legs, startling her and nearly making her drop the bottle. She edged cautiously around the melee, clutching her hard-won correctional fluid so tightly the little cap dug painfully into her skin. She paused, hesitating by the sofa and trying to calculate if she should wait until the orderlies dragged Annie away before leaving or try to slip past them into the hall.

An unfamiliar blond nurse grabbed Olivia’s good arm.

Her whole body went rigid with panic, ready to fight for her prize. Her skittering mind was racing, desperate and clutching at the disintegrating fragments of her precious plan.

“Go back to your room,” the blond nurse said, shoving Olivia toward the lounge door. “And stay there until this situation is under control.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Olivia said, weak with relief.

She did what the nurse instructed.

Once she got her prize back to her room, she ducked into the bathroom and pulled the letter out from its hiding place inside her cast. She set the envelope on the lip of the sink, and then used her teeth to unscrew the bottle cap. Once it was loose enough for her to open it with her good hand, she set it down on the other corner of the sink, pulled the tiny brush out, and wiped the excess fluid against the neck of the bottle.

The commotion from the lounge increased again, and she froze with the brush poised above the letter. She held her breath as she heard the Doppler effect of Annie, shrieking and swearing, as she was dragged past Olivia’s cell and down the hall to the quiet room. She still didn’t move for a beat or two after the screaming stopped, waiting to see if the orderlies would come charging into her room and rip the hard-earned brush out of her shaking hand.

When that didn’t happen she went to work, carefully covering up the old address. She plastered a thick layer of the chalky white fluid over the front of the envelope and waved it in the air, blowing on it and wrinkling her nose at the smell.

Once the fluid had fully dried, she took her pen and wrote Kieran’s address over the rough white patch. As soon as she was sure it wouldn’t smudge, she slipped the envelope back into her cast, address facing away from her moist skin.

This had to work.

* * *

Olivia sat in Doctor Lansen’s office, staring at the modest stack of outgoing mail like it was the Holy Grail. She’d already slipped the envelope out of its hiding place and tucked it under one thigh, ready to grab it as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

The session was almost over, and she was running out of time. She had to do something and quickly.

As she stood to leave, she staggered, swung her cast, and knocked the outbox off the edge of his desk and onto the floor.

“Sorry,” she said. While he picked up the box, she bent down to help pick up the fallen mail. There were several envelopes, and she slipped her own into the middle of the small stack.

“Here,” she said, handing them over.

“Thanks,” he said absentmindedly, slipping the envelopes under the rubber band and setting the box back on the desk.

Kieran trudged through the melting slush along the path that led to the rec hall, lost in thought, gloveless hands stuffed deep in his pockets. The day was gloomy, and there was a threat of rain or snow. This time of year, it was a toss up which it would be.

Just inside the front door was the campus post office, such as it was. It was really just a wall of individual mailboxes for all the students, along with a letter drop slot and a coin-operated stamp machine. His box was number 331.

He opened the box with a tiny brass key and pulled out a hastily scrawled postcard from his mother, who was vacationing in Costa Rica. There was a slip of paper that let him know he had a larger package waiting for him up at the front office—probably also from his mother, and undoubtedly full of questionable herbal supplements and protein shakes specially formulated for “hard gainers.” Instead of actually caring about him, she was constantly sending him junk he didn’t need.

Also wedged into the narrow box was the latest issue of
Video Watchdog
and a padded envelope from his Hong Kong tape trader. It had to contain his long-awaited VHS copy of
Heroic Trio
with Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, and Anita Mui. Last and definitely least, there was a white, letter-sized envelope from some doctor.

Probably junk mail or some kind of alternative medicine scam. Thanks to his mother, he was on a lot of strange, health-and-wellness-related mailing lists.

He carried the mail over to one of the study tables and tore open the padded envelope from the tape trader. Sure enough, it was
Heroic Trio.
The tape was in a plain black sleeve with a Chinese label on the spine, and the English title had been handwritten with a black sharpie over the red characters. He had to restrain himself from kissing the cassette. He’d have to make sure to put his name down on the VCR sign-up sheet ASAP, so he didn’t get tape-blocked by some girl who wanted to watch
Sleepless in Seattle
for the fifty-billionth time.

He put the empty padded envelope and the junk mail off to one side, to toss in the trash on the way out. Then he put the precious tape into his backpack. He was about to put the magazine in there, too, but hesitated. He just couldn’t resist flipping through it for a few minutes.

He read through the Oliver Stone interview and an article about one of his favorite action movies,
The Crow
, but decided to save the rest for later. He always read each new issue of
Video Watchdog
way too fast, and was trying to stretch them out, to make them last.

He tucked the magazine away in an outside pocket of his backpack, and then grabbed the stuff he was going to throw away. When he picked up the junk mail from that doctor, he noticed something odd about it. The texture of the front of the envelope was rough and chalky in the center, where his address had been written.

Looking at the envelope more closely, he realized that the original address had been covered with a thick layer of correction fluid. He scratched at it with his thumbnail and revealed a few letters of a different, typed address beneath.

That seemed odd. If whoever sent the letter wanted to correct the address, why not just retype it? Why would they have handwritten his address?

He used his mailbox key to scrape off the rest of the correction fluid, creating a dandruffy flurry of white flakes all over his lap. The address that appeared beneath was some kind of scientific instrument wholesaler.

Seriously curious now, he ripped the envelope open, and sure enough, inside was a letter from a doctor to a scientific instrument wholesaler, complaining about a faulty part. He couldn’t imagine why on earth anyone would want this letter to go to him, instead of the intended recipient.

Then he turned the letter over and saw the handwritten message on the back.

* * *

Kieran waited in the hallway outside of Rachel’s math class, feeling like he was going to lose it. He forced himself to breathe slowly and stay calm.

The second he’d seen the message from Olivia, he’d almost run right to the parking lot and driven away, but he couldn’t leave without telling Rachel first. She was so fragile these days, and had only agreed to start going to class again this morning.

He couldn’t just disappear on her.

So he waited. It felt like forever, but eventually the bell rang and she and a chattering flock of junior high kids came tumbling out the classroom door. He noticed she wasn’t participating in any of the chatter, though.

“Kieran,” Rachel said, her worried eyes going right to him. “What is it? Did you find her?”

“I got a message...”

Before he could say anything more, she flung herself against him, squeezing him around his waist so tightly that he could barely breathe.

“Easy, kid,” he said. “Let me finish, will you?”

“Is she okay?” Rachel asked, breathless and flushed. “When is she coming back?”

This was the tricky part. Olivia’s note had begged him not to tell Rachel that she was in danger, but he didn’t want her to be scared if he just took off without any explanation.

“Listen to me,” he said, gripping her arms. “Listen, okay? I got a message from the hospital where Olivia has been recovering. They said she’s all healed up and ready to be discharged, so I’m going to go pick her up and bring her back to Deerborn.”

“That’s fantastic!” Rachel said. “But why didn’t she call me?”

“I don’t know,” Kieran said. “But...”

“Whatever,” Rachel said, cutting him off and grabbing his hand. “Let’s go!”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Kieran said. “You’re not going anywhere. You have classes.”

“Screw my stupid classes!” she said. “I’m going with you.”

“Come on, Rachel,” Kieran said, fumbling for some kind of answer that she would accept. “You’ve missed so many days already this semester, and you’re getting seriously behind on your coursework. You know Olivia would be pissed if you skipped any more, just to pick her up. Especially when she’ll be back here before you know it.”

Rachel stopped, and looked as if she wanted to cry. But she just sniffed and nodded, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, but you bring her straight back. Seriously, don’t even stop to pee.”

Kieran smiled and put a hand to his heart.

“Deal,” he said.

As Kieran drove down the long, winding road to the town of Westley, a rough plan started to form.

He thought about the package his mother had just sent him, via SpeedyShip. She always used SpeedyShip.

Kieran remembered a time when she’d sent him a huge, utterly ridiculous celebrity exercise machine that he couldn’t have used even if he wanted to, because of his heart. She’d gotten it as a free gift from some kind of television endorsement deal, and decided to ship it to him “for his little friends at the school to use.”

Of course, if she ever actually spoke to him, she would have known that he didn’t have any friends, big or little. Not to mention the fact that Deerborn already had a full, state-of-the-art gym facility for the athletically inclined, and didn’t need a MegaFit Thigh-Blaster 2000.

He’d had to convince one of the custodians to give him a ride in his pick-up truck, so he could go get the damn thing from the SpeedyShip warehouse over in Waltham. They took it straight to the nearest thrift shop and donated it without even bothering to open the box.

But thanks to that particular misadventure, he knew where the SpeedyShip warehouse was, and remembered the fleet of distinctive red trucks parked out back. He also remembered the motley crew of slackers and befuddled bimbos who worked there.