Mrs. Hanley told me she’d be out for most of the day today attending her ladies’ Bible study and then going to lunch with a friend, which means I have the house to myself. I cut myself a slice of the homemade pound cake in the fridge, pull a chair up next to the wall-mounted phone, and get to work.
Wishing for Google for the thousandth time since I wound up stuck in 1985, I start with the heavy yellow phone book Mrs. Hanley keeps in one of her kitchen drawers. Stan was probably around my age in 1985, maybe a little older, so I’m not sure if he’d have been living on his own or with his parents. I’m actually not even sure if he was living in Stone Lake at all. I know he lived here for a while when he was young, before spending most of his young adulthood bouncing around from state to state, but if he ever told me how old he was when he lived here, or when he left, I must not have been paying attention.
It takes me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to dial Mrs. Hanley’s phone, which has a spinning dial with little holes over each number. First, I try pushing the numbers, but nothing happens. Then, after a few minutes, I realize I’m supposed to spin them, but when I pick up the handset to initiate the call after entering the number, all I hear is an interminable dial tone. There’s no “Send” or “Call” or “Dial” button anywhere. Eventually, I figure out that I have to pick up the handset before dialing and am finally rewarded by the sound of ringing on the other end.
I find myself simultaneously wishing Rose had been here to explain to me how to use the phone, and glad she wasn’t here to witness just how bad I am at existing in this stupid decade.
Once I get the hang of dialing, I spin the same story over and over: I’m a friend of Stan’s who moved away a while ago and is trying to get back in touch. I will say this for the people of 1985: they’re way more generous with personal details than the people of the future. A couple of times, I think I’ve found him—they have a cousin with that name, or know someone in the next county over—only to get my hopes dashed when they tell me he’s in his fifties, or married with kids, or dead.
I’m not sure what I hope finding Stan will accomplish. Obviously, the fire hasn’t even happened yet, and his obsessive quest hasn’t begun, so it’s not like he can tell me anything about it. And even if I were somehow able to call up future Stan and have him consult his murder board for me, he still couldn’t tell me for sure what to do since he’s never managed to solve the case. I only know that he says he knew my grandparents, and that he really cared about what happened to them.
I guess I figure that if I can talk to him, something might jump out at me. Maybe a word that seems meaningful, or a clue he doesn’t realize he has. Or maybe, once I see him, the sight of his face might jostle free one of my own memories that I’d previously forgotten.
It’s the longest of long shots, but it’s something to do, and at the moment, I’ll take what I can get.
And—I can barely admit this, even to myself—it might be nice to see a familiar face. Even if it’s Stan’s.
But by the time I’ve gone through every possible number in the phone book that could be him, it’s early afternoon, and I have nothing to show for my half day of work. I truly am the world’s shittiest detective.
There are other things I could do today. I could take yet another tour through the garage and the police file. I could go to the bridge. I could seek out my grandparents, see if I can determine what leads them to the school instead of the debate on Saturday night, or talk to McMillain myself.
Instead, I wind up on Mrs. Hanley’s couch.
It’s not that I don’t want to make the most of the day, or that I don’t care about getting home. It’s that I want those things so badly that I feel paralyzed.
I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s just the way I’ve always been. Alyssa used to get on my case about procrastinating on stuff, but the truth is, I don’t think that what I do counts as procrastination. Procrastinating is telling yourself, I’ll do it later. What I do is tell myself, I’ll do it now, and then I just . . . don’t.
When I’m on my medication, it’s better, but still hard. When I’m off it . . . well. You may as well ask me to run a triathlon as do my homework. Beginning either seems equally daunting.
Mrs. Hanley comes home from her lunch to find me still sprawled on the couch, paging through the old issues of Better Homes and Gardens on her coffee table while a grainy soap opera plays on the tiny living room TV.
Listen, when you’re staying with an old lady in 1985 who doesn’t even have cable, entertainment options are limited.
She starts shaking her head as soon as she sees me, making disapproving “mm-mm” noises through pursed lips. She switches off the TV—I consider protesting, since I was actually kind of invested in seeing what happened when the guy found out his wife was being impersonated by her evil twin sister—and plucks the magazine out of my hands. “Have you been inside all day?”
I nod, and she actually smacks the side of my head like I’m a faulty microwave. It doesn’t hurt, just surprises me. “Hey!”
“Get outside. It’s a beautiful day, and if you’re going to stay under my roof, you’re not going to waste all your time in front of the TV.”
“But—”
“Out.”
She points toward the front door, her expression leaving no room for argument. So I do the only thing I can—I leave.
Chapter Thirty-Six
KARL
His breath coming in ragged gasps, Karl pushed down hard on the pedals of his bike as he rounded the corner, legs pumping furiously. He risked a glance over his shoulder—and let out a dismayed cry. Robbie Reynolds and his crew—Steve Burks and Kevin Thomas, flanking Robbie on their bikes—were still right behind him, just a dozen or so yards back.
“Get back here, Derrin!” Robbie shouted, rapidly shrinking the short distance between them.
“Leave me alone!” Karl shouted, fear spiking his voice up several octaves.
Harsh laughter carried over the roar of the wind in his ears. Karl’s legs burned, and his back and shoulders ached from where the straps of his backpack pulled and bounced.
Where was he even going? He didn’t have a plan. His idea had been to ride toward the center of town, hoping that the people milling about the sidewalks would discourage Robbie and his gang. It hadn’t worked—Robbie was closer than ever, and now Karl was too tired to outpace them all the way back to his house, which involved riding across Wilson Bridge and through the woods.
If he tried, they’d be sure to catch him, and he knew all too well what would happen then, in the woods, with no one to hear his cries for help.
His parents didn’t believe that Robbie was dangerous, but they also didn’t believe that Robbie had held him underwater at the pool that summer until black spots bloomed in his vision, or that he’d been the one to push Karl down the steps at school last May, sending him tumbling across the floor and giving him bruises so deep they turned black.
Karl was flushed with a sudden, burning rage. It should be Robbie crying and cowering and wetting his bed from the terror of his nightmares. It should be Robbie feeling this overwhelming fear, this utter helplessness.