04 September Smoke · 4 of 11
The boy in the bus stop had two names, but each felt wrong. Was he Jonathan or was he Avery? God, he wished his mother were there to help him. He’d take either mother—his old or his new—because neither would be as scary as this old man. He leaned over him in a green slicker and demanded his name, spitting questions from his coarse, grey mustache.
It was hard for the boy to see him through his foggy right eye. The last time his new mother made him play the game, she kept him in the chamber too long, and he almost lost his sight. If he couldn’t see, he was of no use to them. So, he closed the eye, and the old man just looked scarier.
“Who are you?” the old man.
This was a quiz, and he knew it. He just didn’t know the right answer. It had been a long time since quizzes, since school. How long it had been, he wasn’t sure, but it had been long enough that he forgot the name his teachers called him.
Avery, it was Avery, he thought, but he was just as certain that it was Jonathan.
The glass shell of the bus stop amplified the rain, so it sounded like fists, hard enough to overpower the old man’s voice. The one word the boy caught was kidnapped.
He shook his head violently. No more kidnapping. No more luring. Wherever this man wanted to take him would be worse than the attic, he knew it. At least back in the attic he had Benjamin.
Avery or Jonathan? Jonathan or Avery? The wrong choice might, as his new mother would say, get his neck rung. That was before his escape. Before the dogs chased him and he left Benjamin behind.
“Are you Avery Danbury?” the old man pleaded. “Avery Danbury.”
The name sounded wrong from his mouth—Dan-berry. Danbury was a name he knew, though he wasn’t sure if it was his. His new mom and dad had the last name Rodgers, but Danbury also sounded kind of right. If he was wrong though—
He shook his head. He was better safe than sorry.
The old man clenched his jaw so hard, his teeth could crumble. He shoved his hands in his slicker pockets and stared directly into his eyes. His stare was intense; it was as if he was trying to see into his brain. For a moment, the boy wondered if maybe he was a nice man. He reminded him of that grandfather in the picture book about the apple farm. He even wore the same green jacket. But with his jaw clenched, fists balled, the tears welling in the corners of his eyes, the old man scared him.
“If you are Avery Danbury, please, your mom and dad miss you so much. They hired me to find you so long ago, after the police— God, please, are you Avery?”
My mom and dad? Old or new? The new ones would do those things if he went back. He didn’t want to play those games in the attic or the shed ever again. Those coils and chambers made him forget who he was—what he was. Benjamin would have to do it every time now. They’d need to steal another boy, and that made him want to cry too.
After two, maybe three, minutes, the green slicker slumped on the old man’s shoulders. The boy had defeated him, and he watched him climb into his idling Buick. The rain fell harder and steamed off the summer blacktop. The Buick drove away so slowly, but after a minute, its right turn signal ushered it away into the trees.
The boy worried that he had made a mistake. Was that his escape?
He waited another hour before the rain eased up. Walking would keep him moving, but a bus would take him so far away. Without the blur of rain, the glass looked cracked and filthy. A poster for a spaghetti dinner fundraiser at the Knights of Columbus, but it was five years old. Years of decaying leaves had built up in the corners.
There was never going to be a bus, and he slung his backpack over his shoulder, ready to walk—somewhere. Before he could step onto the blacktop, he saw a familiar white van turn from the trees, the same trees the Buick disappeared into. He didn’t have anywhere to hide, but he scrambled under the bench, hiding his face with his backpack.
The van stopped right in front.
Its panel read: Rodgers Heating and Cooling. The back of that van had cages. The face in the driver’s seat tried to smile, but he had never seen his new dad make a real smile.
“Jonathan,” said his new dad. “Thank God, you could still see me.”
When those gloved hands fell on the boy, he knew he had failed the quiz.