Nothing Special Read online

  Actually, he’s always been that way. Andrew is no vegetable.

  If I’m not running, I am a vegetable. Jerri is a vegetable unless she’s with your dad.

  Thank God I got to start seriously running the same week Andrew left or I might seriously have missed him. (Plus I was porny-underpants-model bulky at that point and needed aerobic activity.)

  And, after all the rest, my hamstring man felt good and I went from light jogging to doing some pretty intense running over the next few days (800s and 400s at the college track). I mean, really, the hammy man was gone. I could run hard without feeling any pain, which was a huge, huge, huge relief. I began to meet up with Cody and Karpinski to catch passes—I hadn’t cancelled Michigan, so I sort of thought I should get ready for it (which caused palpitations in my squirrel heart).

  And, things were good…

  • • •

  Somebody is pounding on my door.

  August 16th, 3:34 a.m.

  O’Hare Airport, Part XII (Hotel)

  I’ve been officially warned by the hotel: No Exercising In The Halls. Okay! How did they know it was me? Video?

  I am sort of stressed out, Aleah…

  Journal it!

  Where was I? Here.

  The first real indication that seriously weird stuff was afoot with Andrew came a week after he left.

  I spent that cloudy afternoon at the track running ten sets of 400s and playing catch with Cody and Karpinski on the infield. (Karpinski was late because he’d been pulled over by the cops for shooting popcorn seeds out of a straw at kids on Main Street. Nice, huh?) It was a good time. I felt seriously good. Catching a ball is like breathing to me, Aleah.

  After, while I was riding my bike toward home, up that huge freaking hill on Hickory Street and feeling the power coming back to my legs, a car pulled up behind me and drove slow, way too close.

  Sometimes people in small towns can act like this. I know you think Bluffton is all sweet views and nice people, but that’s not really the case. People just mess with you in Bluffton. We don’t have enough to do here, Aleah.

  Maybe you figured that out so you went to Germany?

  When this car started tailing me, I figured I’d just keep biking. I’d maintain my dignity. I wouldn’t do what I wanted to do, which was throw my bike down and freak out.

  Generally, if you don’t pay attention to them, the person who is messing with you will just get bored and leave.

  But it kept going and going, this car on my tail. My heart started pounding hard, not just from pedaling up the giant hill. The car followed me closer and closer all the way up. I was thinking, “What if this is a real psycho who really wants to kill me? Need to be ready…”

  When we got to the top, I had gorilla adrenaline pumping through every part of my body.

  I turned to shout, and who was it?

  Gus. He laughed.

  I did not find this funny. I hadn’t spoken a word to him since the Randy Stone call two months earlier. He wouldn’t acknowledge my existence at school.

  “You ass,” I shouted.

  He smiled like an evil monkey from under his hair wad. (It took a full ten months to grow back after his grandma made him cut it off last summer.) “Get off the road, you bike hippie,” he shouted out his window.

  I pulled over. He pulled alongside me and rolled down the passenger-side window.

  “Why would you do that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I really hate bikers, I guess. Why didn’t you turn around earlier?”

  “Because I wanted to get to flat ground so that I could more easily punch your face in.”

  “Nice. Good thinking. You’re a jock strategerist, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “How’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Why would you care?”

  “Good point,” he said.

  “Are we done here?” I asked.

  “Could be. I have a question, though.”

  I got ready for something mean. “Okay…”

  “Where’s your little brother?” Gus climbed out of his car and looked at me over the top.

  “Orchestra camp.”

  “No, seriously. Put your bike in the trunk, Felton. I’ve been calling you for like three hours. Where’s your freaky little brother?”

  “What are you talking about?” I hadn’t taken my phone with me to run routes.

  Gus popped the trunk. I climbed off my bike and watched him jam it into the small trunk of his tiny Celica, which I didn’t like because the front wheel dangled out and the trunk door was unsecured and was thus free to bounce up and down on the frame.

  “I don’t think that’s safe, man.”

  “We have to talk to Bony Emily,” he said.

  “Emily Cook?”

  “You know any other Bony Emilys?”

  Here’s where Bluffton becomes multigenerationally incestuous and gross, because it is so tiny. We climbed in the car.

  As we drove off, he said, “Get this. Emily told Maddie that Andrew ran away.”

  “You’re talking about Andrew’s Bony Emily?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  If you’ll recall, Aleah, Emily Cook, the very skinny and dorky girl I call Bony Emily, is Andrew’s best friend. Maddie, who likes to smoke cigarettes and wants a tattoo, is Gus’s girlfriend. Andrew and Emily seem like little kids. Maddie, even though she acts like a burned-out twenty-five-year-old, is only a year older. Maddie was in their orchestra last year. And Emily and Maddie share a love of some weird music, I guess, so even though Maddie is a townie and Emily’s parents are professors, they’re friends, which, since Gus started hanging with Maddie, makes me think of Gus as a cradle-robbing pervert. This is all confusing to me, but whatever.

  “She’s full of crap, man. Bony’s gone haywire. Andrew is at orchestra camp in Door County.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he told you. Do you know for sure?”

  “He calls Jerri every freaking day. He even said he wouldn’t call her that much, but he can’t help himself because he’s a little kid. Run away? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m not buying it, man. Andrew’s one crafty little bitch.”

  “He is not. Jerri put him on speakerphone last night, and I could totally hear orchestra people warming up in the background. He is really, totally at orchestra camp.”

  “Emily says he’s on an adventure.”

  “Bony is weirder than I thought.”

  “Psycho Emily?” Gus asked.

  “She is more than just skin and bones?” I said.

  “She’s a freaky psycho,” he said.

  “A crazy psycho killer?” I asked.

  It was weird how fast we fell into our old way of speaking.

  “Okay. Well. If she lies, then let us drive to Bony Emily’s house and give her a piece of the business,” Gus said.

  “I’m down.”

  Gus turned up the music, Bad Brains (“Classic punk, my man”), which sort of gave me a headache (Dad liked this music), and we rolled on over to Bony Emily’s.

  Thankfully, we caught her mowing the lawn in front of her big house and didn’t have to knock on the door and potentially deal with her weird professor parents. She was wearing a pink and sparkly unicorn T-shirt, I kid you not. When we pulled up, she blinked at us, then let go of the handle of the mower, turned, and started walking really fast toward the side yard.

  “Hey,” Gus shouted. “Are you trying to run away?”

  “Like my brother!” I shouted, getting out of the car.

  Emily turned back slowly. She was red in the face. She pointed at Gus. “Your stupid girlfriend gave me lemonade with alcohol in it.”

  “She’s very bad,” Gus nodded.

  “My mom says
I can’t be friends with her anymore.”

  “Your mom can’t pick your friends. That’s not right,” said Gus.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m not interested in your mom troubles.”

  “You’re an ass, Felton,” Emily said.

  “Whoa. Bad mood, huh?” Gus said.

  “Is my brother on an adventure or is he at orchestra camp?”

  “He’s on an adventure at orchestra camp.” Bony Emily glowered. “Go away.”

  “Why would you tell Maddie that Andrew ran away? That’s pretty psycho, don’t you think?” Gus said.

  “Maddie made me drunk. Now I’m grounded.”

  “So you lied?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what I said. Andrew’s at orchestra camp, okay?”

  I turned to Gus. “I already knew that.”

  “Yes. Of course. Thought we better check.”

  “I appreciate your concern.” I actually really did appreciate his concern. “Let’s go.”

  “Stay off the juice!” Gus shouted back at her.

  “You can both screw off,” Emily shouted back.

  I stopped, turned, and stared at Bony Emily. “What did I do?” I asked. “Why do I have to screw off?”

  “You’re mean to Andrew, and that sucks.”

  “I am not.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Ouch. I told Andrew he should be a pharmacist.

  As we drove away, Gus said, “She’s sort of hot, isn’t she?”

  “If you like ten-year-olds,” I mumbled.

  “Dude, she turns fifteen in September. Andrew and his friends aren’t going to stay little kids forever. She’s la high school chica now. And, totally en fuego.”

  “No, Mr. Pervis, she is not remotely en fuego.”

  “Bet she trades that unicorn-wear for some tight black jeans and eyeliner in like a day. La chica’s angry!” Gus said.

  “Yeah, that’s true…” I said. I was drifting off. Andrew on an adventure? I couldn’t help but think about that word, adventure. Emily told Maddie that Andrew was on an adventure. Andrew told Jerri he wanted to go on an adventure by taking the bus to Green Bay alone.

  Adventure.

  Gus peeled around a corner. I heard my bike slide in the trunk.

  “Jesus, Gus. Please slow down. Your crap driving is killing my bike.”

  “Crap driving?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about this? How about you get out of my car? Our business is done.”

  Gus pulled over.

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “Seriously.”

  I got out and pulled my bike out of the trunk. When I closed it, Gus peeled away without saying good-bye. I watched his Celica go up Fourth Street and turn right at the next corner. I decided I’d never speak to him again.

  Then, a few days later, Friday, June 21st, Andrew called while we ate a dinner of organic chicken breast and bitter artichokes. (I remember this dinner well—right before we sat down, Jerri had made plans for us to meet up with your dad in Chicago on the way to the Michigan camp, which I hadn’t yet cancelled, and which I was beginning to seriously worry about.) As Andrew spoke, there was that sound of an orchestra warming up in the background, lots of sawing on strings and tuning. There were kids talking too.

  Jerri asked a lot of questions about what the orchestra was doing. “Lots of practice? Trips to the Door County coast?”

  “What? Coast?” Andrew asked.

  “I saw your pelican picture.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know you looked at my website…Yes, we went to the beach last week,” Andrew said.

  “What website?” I piped in.

  “Well, your website,” said Andrew.

  He was referring to feltonreinstein.com, which he—very sweetly, I might add—had made for me to track all the articles and crap people wrote about me, which I never looked at because it made my stomach tie up in knots. My laptop was on the table, so I pulled it out and opened the site while Andrew described his work at the camp (in great detail), learning timpani from a music major named Rami (lie) who was about to be a senior at Oberlin College in Ohio (lie). “He is a wonderful teacher. A true percussion genius.” (Andrew is so crafty, just like Gus said).

  Here’s what I saw on feltonreinstein.com: a picture of a terrifying pelican (a little scratched lens fleck in the picture, which marked it as Andrew’s because he’d dropped his phone while hanging upside down from the bleachers during one of my football games in the fall). It was the first entry on the website in months. He’d abandoned posting otherwise in the middle of April.

  A freaking pelican?

  Andrew had written underneath it. These birds have terrifying rubber beaks. More power to them.

  “Pelican?” I shouted.

  “What?” asked Andrew.

  “Pelicans in Wisconsin?” I shouted.

  “Sure,” Jerri said. “Pelicans migrate.”

  “Right,” Andrew said. He sounded nervous.

  “Are you meeting interesting students?” Jerri asked.

  I put my ear close to the speaker. There was something artificial sounding about the background sounds. Have you ever listened to sound-effect tracks on iMovie? Gus has a really nice Apple computer and he’s always made these dumb little movies (this summer starring Maddie smoking cigarettes like she’s some kind of weird French girl) and he’s always put lots of background sound in them.

  I thought: That noise is “Orchestra Warms Up” on a Mac computer. Hum, hum, hum…It just kept going and going while Andrew talked about his new friends.

  I kept my ear close, listening as hard as I could. Jerri swatted at my Jewfro a couple of times, but I wouldn’t move away from the phone. And, suddenly, I was sure the loop started over and the same tapping and conversations were going on again.

  “Holy crap!” I shouted.

  “What is your problem, Felton?” Jerri hissed at me.

  “Shh.” I pointed at her. “Andrew,” I shouted at the speaker. “Can we talk to one of your friends?”

  There was a long pause.

  Then Andrew asked, “Um. What?”

  “Your new orchestra friends. Let’s have a chat!”

  “What are you doing, Felton?” Jerri asked, her face all scrunched up, her neck popped at a weird angle.

  “Why would you want to talk to my friends?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t know. Just for fun. Who’s talking in the background?”

  “Um. Tovi,” Andrew said.

  “Who?”

  “My new friend, Tovi. She’s really cream of the crop. Another really great percussionist.”

  “Where’s she from?”

  “Well. Milwaukee. Right, Tovi?”

  A girl’s voice sounded from the back. “Yeah,” she said tentatively. “Milwaukee?”

  “Really? What school?” I asked. I knew schools in Milwaukee from track and football.

  “South!” this Tovi shouted.

  “South?” I’d never heard of Milwaukee South High School. “South? Milwaukee South?” So many schools are south, west, north, east. Right, good bet, fake friend! But I had never heard of such a school in Milwaukee!

  Andrew jumped in. “South Milwaukee. South Division High School.”

  “Right,” the girl said. “South Milwaukee. South Division.”

  Then Jerri said, “Great! Sounds like you’re having a good time. When’s the performance?”

  “Uh. Five weeks from Saturday, I think,” Andrew said.

  “Mind if Felton and I come?” Jerri asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll find out. I’ll ask,” Andrew said.

  “South Division High School?” I asked.

  “The brochure said the fi
nal performance is open to the public!” Jerri sang.

  “Okay, well, we have to get going. Night rehearsals are pretty serious.”

  “I know people in Milwaukee, Tovi!” I shouted.

  “Okay. Bye?” the girl replied.

  “Right. Talk to you soon,” Andrew said and hung up.

  “She sounds nice,” Jerri said.

  “Oh my God! They just looked up a Milwaukee school on the Internet while we were talking. Something’s going on, Jerri. He’s not at orchestra camp. No way.”

  “What?” Jerri shouted.

  “I’m serious!”

  “What?” Jerri laughed.

  “Really, Jerri. He’s somewhere. He’s not there.”

  “Felton.” Jerri shook her head.

  “What?”

  “Crazy,” Jerri nodded.

  “No!”

  “Really, really crazy,” Jerri nodded.

  “Why would you trust Andrew? There is mounting evidence!”

  “Evidence? Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Of him not really being at the camp?”

  “Uh-huh. Really?” Jerri was totally sarcastic.

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t want to mention drunken Emily.

  “Good Lord, Felton. Chill, kid. I signed the camp permission slip. I received confirmation of payment from this camp. Where would he be, if not…”

  “Grandma Berba paid for the camp!”

  “So?”

  “Did she send the camp the money, or did she send it to Andrew?”

  “The camp sent a paid-in-full receipt here.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I received detailed instructions about where, when, how this whole thing would happen. Wouldn’t the camp call me if Andrew didn’t show up?”

  I paused for a moment on that. Uh-huh. Logic. “Good point,” I said.

  “Andrew’s at camp, Felton. I don’t get this at all. You’re crazy. Are you weirded out about Michigan? You’ll be fine.”

  “No, I’m not worried about Michigan.” (Lie.)