Impulse Read online

  Mom told me, though, that when she was my age, she had pictures of Rick Springfield, Andrew McCarthy, and Tom Cruise. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “But this was pre-Scientology, Risky Business Tom Cruise.”

  I had three posters: the Jonas Brothers, Zac Efron, and Rupert Grint. Rupert’s too old but that smile and those shoulders and that hair! I didn’t really care about the Jonas Brothers or Zac, not anymore, but when I was balancing on my desk chair to take Rupert down, the chair rolled sideways while one of the pushpins was still in. The poster ripped diagonally down through his face and I banged the jammed toe when I landed.

  “Fuck!” I yelled. It was so loud I imagined it echoing through the mountain valley, the elk lifting their heads to listen. I ripped the rest of the glossy paper down and crumpled it into a ball. Then I did the same thing with the other two posters and slung the damn chair across the room where it knocked a lower shelf out of one of my bookcases and spilled more books across the floor.

  I started crying and this made me mad. Mom’s a family therapist by training. There is no stigma attached to crying in our house, though it makes Dad uncomfortable, but I hated how it made my eyes puffy. Also, the thought of Mom comforting me or asking me those open-ended therapy questions while I was still mad at her really pissed me off.

  My bed is chest high with a reading nook underneath, with cushions and a light. It’s been my hiding place, my crying place, my safe place since I was little. I hadn’t used it in months but I wanted to crawl into it and bury myself in the cushions. I even crouched to do so but then I saw my snowboarding pants lying across the entrance, where I’d kicked them off the day before.

  “To hell with this,” I said, and got dressed instead.

  There’s a covered walkway at the back of the house that becomes more of a tunnel in the winter. It’s mostly used to reach the springhouse but it continues up the mountain from there, a steep stairway, steps of squared timbers set into the ground. I use it for exercise, when the house gets to be too much, pushing the snow off to the sides until it’s banked high enough to keep even the blizzard-driven snow out. The stairway leads to a pavilion fifteen feet square, a hundred yards up the slope, where the mountain shelves a bit and the black spruces and sub-Alpine fir thin out. It’s glorious there in the long summer days, if there’s a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away. In the dead of winter it’s lethal, especially when the wind blows. But now, in the fall, the temperatures were still above zero, though the snow was piling deep.

  The pavilion marks the top of my snowboard run, which curves north, down a gully, through a birch grove, and down a natural half-pipe that’s a series of short waterfalls in the summer. At the bottom it winds down one more steep slope before curving around to the valley floor, a hundred yards below the house.

  I’m not supposed to snowboard unless Dad has checked the run, making sure all the rocky areas are deep under snow and there’s nothing dangerous around. All of the Yukon is grizzly territory and they like to hibernate near the tree line. Despite the snow, this was early enough in the year for grizzlies to still be active.

  So, too early, and you can run into grizzlies. Too late, and the temperatures get to forty below zero. Fahrenheit or centigrade. Doesn’t matter. That’s the place where it means the same thing on both scales. Do the math—Dad made me do it.

  I hauled my board up the stairs, kicking through some of the newer drifts, my coat open and my hat off. I knew I’d be sweating by the time I reached the top. The snow was even deeper than I’d expected, since the freak storm we’d had back in September dumped three feet and the temperature had never risen high enough for it to melt.

  I took the first run slowly. I was breaking so many rules. Dad hadn’t checked the run. I was supposed to be cleaning my room. And I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

  Dad would have a stroke if he saw me.

  I only had one biff, not really a boomph, when I buttslid out of a carved turn, cutting up short to avoid a rock sticking out of the snow. The rest of the run was clean, and now that I’d marked the rock in my head I could shred the whole thing at speed. There was even a cornice to the left after I exited the pipe that would let me bust huge air above the last steep pitch down into the valley.

  I didn’t even look in the windows as I climbed up past the house. Dad might think I was with Mom and vice versa, but if either of them saw me or realized my board was gone from the back hall, I was busted anyway.

  I was gasping by the time I reached the top again and I sat until my breathing slowed and I was feeling the chill. I buttoned up and snapped my bindings over my boots and started down the slope, aggressive, keeping closer to the fall line. I hit air twice in the pipe and remembered to cut hard at the bottom so I could catch the cornice. To hit the right part of the slope below I had to cut hard, right before the lip, and under the pressure of the turn I felt something shift below my board. I was airborne when I heard a deep thudding sound overlaid with a sharp crack.

  I hit the steep slope below, my knees bending to absorb the landing shock, and risked a glance upslope.

  The entire cornice, fifty yards across, had let go. As avalanches went it was small, but it filled the last slope, funneled even tighter by the near-vertical cliffs on each side. I couldn’t cut sideways out of its path.

  My only hope was to get down before it caught me. I steered straight down the fall line and leaned forward, putting my arms behind, slipstreaming.

  I might have made it, but a slight bump in the slope concealed a loop of willow branch. It wasn’t thick but it was ropy tough, and even though it broke, it took me down, tumbling, to fetch up against another drift just in time to watch tons of snow bear down on me.

  “Sorry, Dad,” was all I had time to say.

  It’s the air in front that hits you first, driven by the snow. The blast popped me into the air and then the snow was all around and pushing me down, down, down … and then I hit something and everything was dark.

  I wasn’t unconscious so the darkness surprised me a little. I’d fallen in deep powder and the snow conducts the light surprisingly well, but not this time. I thought there must be tons of snow above me, but I didn’t feel any pressure. I’d wrapped my arms around my face, to keep an air pocket, which is one of the things they say you should do. Now I thrust forward, hard, trying to make the air space bigger while the snow was still soft. But the snow gave way and my hand hit something hard and smooth. I kept thrusting, pushing the snow … and then there was light coming in from where the snow had cascaded away from me, and I saw a stretch of carpet, a stack of underwear, and six paperback books.

  I was in the reading nook under my bed with about two cubic yards of snow.

  I’d jumped.

  THREE

  Davy: Wet Dream

  Davy had the dream, again, the one where the scars on his chest were fresh, and if he tapped just below his right collarbone, there was a solid disk-shaped lump under the skin. In the dream he felt the tingle in his throat, the coughing, followed almost immediately by the nausea—the titanic heaving of his stomach muscles as he vomited—and he woke up on a steeply pitched roof on the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard in ice-cold, driving rain.

  The vomit, at least this time, was only in the dream and once fully awake, he flinched back to their bathroom, swearing loudly. Despite being awake now, he couldn’t stop his fingers from probing the old scar below his right collarbone, but the old device had not magically reappeared below the skin.

  Millie sat up in bed, abruptly, a sharp intake of breath. “Davy?”

  In the dim illumination that leaked from the bathroom nightlight, Davy saw her patting the bed beside her, searching for him.

  “Here,” he said. “It’s all right. Had the dream again.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Just the dream?”

  “No, dammit.” He took off his wet pajamas and groped for a towel. “They’re having a northeaster on the Vineyard.”

  “You haven’t done that in a while.” Millie
sank back against her pillow. “So, on the rooftop in the rain? That’s good.”

  He snarled at her through the towel.

  She laughed. “Sorry. I mean that if it’s unpleasant enough, we stand a chance of getting rid of the compulsion. They spent so much time making it unpleasant everywhere else. It’s good to counter that.”

  Davy picked up the wet pajamas and threw them violently into the laundry bin. “Too bad they replaced the building, then. Falling to the foundations from three stories up would be really unpleasant.”

  “At least they didn’t rebuild it exactly. You wouldn’t want to reappear in someone’s bedroom.” Millie said reasonably.

  The current owners of the property had torn down the flood-damaged old mansion sixteen years before and replaced it with a two-story beach house.

  “I’m going to soak in the springhouse,” he said. “Chilled.” Come with me? He didn’t voice the thought. It wasn’t fair to wake her up in the middle of the night as it was.

  “Come back to bed soon,” she said. Her voice trailed to a whisper by the last and she smacked her lips and closed her eyes.

  She was breathing deeply, sound asleep, when he came back. He was thoroughly warmed by the hot spring, overheated in fact. He toweled dry, put on dry pajamas, then slipped between the sheets carefully. She made an “mm” sound and resumed her deep breathing.

  He stared at the ceiling until dawn.

  FOUR

  Cent: “I thought Dad was the ruthless one.”

  The second time was like this:

  “Why is there a water stain on the library ceiling?” Dad asked.

  Shit. I had an answer ready but I hadn’t expected that particular question.

  “I was cleaning my room and I took some water in to scrub out a stain in the carpet. I’m sorry, I tipped over the bucket.”

  The question I’d been expecting was “Why is your carpet wet?”

  I’d disposed of the snow in the bathtub, running the shower hot to melt it. My room never looked better. I’d gotten to the books soon enough to keep them from getting soaked but, as noted, a substantial amount of snow melted into the rug—more than I’d realized.

  I’d run three loads through the laundry. Mom was right. The dirty clothes were mixed up with the clean and all of it was wet. Also the cushions in the reading nook. Between loads, I’d also culled three cartons of books that I would never read again.

  I am so over vampires.

  Mom looked surprised, pleased, and finally suspicious when she saw my room. On the grounds that the best defense is a good offense, I said, “See? Boy-toy posters gone. I get that new bookshelf, right?”

  She pulled open a drawer at random. It was full of clean, mostly folded T-shirts—shirts that had been on the floor that very morning.

  “A new bookshelf. Right.”

  Dad jumped to IKEA Funabashi in Japan, since that was the time zone that still had a store open, and purchased a matching shelving unit. I told him that I wanted to put it together so he left the unopened flat pack in my room. But instead of leaving, he leaned against the doorframe.

  “Dad.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t need, or want, an audience.”

  He looked mildly offended. “Oh. Okay.”

  I felt guilty but I really didn’t want him to discover just how wet the carpet really was.

  Yes, I would tell them eventually. Well, maybe not about the avalanche. But about the jumping, certainly. I finished assembling the shelf and putting the rest of the books up. That lousy generator was still chugging away in the basement so I turned up the living room stereo to drown it out. After an hour of this, Dad, shouting to be heard over the music, said, “Okay! We can go someplace.”

  You’d almost think he preferred the grind of the generator to Electroclash.

  I turned the music down. “Where?”

  Mom stuck her head over the railing of the upstairs landing, a surprised look on her face.

  “Someplace quiet,” Dad said.

  “Someplace with people?” I said.

  “Someplace warm?” Mom suggested, walking down the stairs.

  “Mall of America,” I said.

  Dad said, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Surveillance cameras. Thousands.”

  “Wear a disguise,” I said. He has disguises. So does Mom.

  Dad got a stubborn look on his face. “No.”

  “Well, where do you want to go?” I said belligerently.

  He frowned at me. “Queensland.”

  “It’s night there,” said Mom. “And you both need to calm down. You don’t mean overnight, do you? One of the islands on the Great Barrier Reef?”

  Dad backtracked. “Uh, not overnight.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” I said. “We could go snorkeling in the morning. And I could do some marine science units.”

  Mom bit her lower lip. I could see she liked the idea.

  Dad got that wild, desperate look in his eyes. He lifted his hand to his collar and I winced. He wasn’t going to pull out the big gun, was he?

  He did.

  “You see these?” Dad pulled his shirt collar to one side, exposing two parallel scars, three-inches long, just below his right collarbone.

  “Yes, Dad. I see them. I’ve seen them. I’ve heard the story.”

  Mom stepped closer. “Davy, your concerns are real but you need to stop doing that.”

  Dad’s voice rose, “She’s got to realize how dangerous it is out there!”

  I didn’t think we’d be going to Queensland.

  Dad was captured once by some nasty supersecret multinational corporate group. They put a device in him to try and condition him, to control him. It was nasty and it went on for months. Eventually Mom got him out, but he’s been super paranoid ever since.

  “I do know, but it’s not dangerous everywhere,” I said. “I was in Pakistan two days ago and Australia the day before that. Do you expect me to live in this house the rest of my life? I need to make friends.”

  “You have friends!” he said.

  “What friends?”

  “What about Awrala and Xareed?”

  “Awrala has two babies and a husband who is afraid of us. Xareed is married with sons. He’s almost twice my age.” I like them both. They live in Somalia and I’ve known them since I was little, but they’re more my parents’ friends. “I need to go to school. I need to know girls my age.” I pulled out my big gun. “I’m an overbright, undersocialized, discipline-challenged teenager who is going to grow up to be a maladjusted sociopath at this rate.”

  Mom’s eyes went wide and her hand went to her mouth. I guess she hadn’t realized I was listening when she’d said that to Dad.

  “You aren’t going to school. It would be like staking you out for the bastards!” Dad’s eyes were wide, the whites showing all around, as bad as I’d ever seen him.

  “You can’t follow me around all my life to protect me!” I said.

  “Wanna bet?” he yelled.

  “Stalker, much?” I yelled back.

  Mom started crying and I flinched.

  I mean, I flinched so good, I was upstairs in my reading cubby.

  That was the second time.

  * * *

  I heard Mom scream, then Dad—a startled, hoarse yell.

  I almost screamed myself.

  Now they know how it feels.

  They started calling my name. Mom even said the old line, “Where did she go?” but there was nothing playful about it. I almost stayed there, under the bed, but the note of desperation in their voices was too much.

  I walked out onto the landing and said, “Boom. I jumped.”

  Mom’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but she remembered. She got it.

  Dad’s knees buckled and he sat down hard on the floor. Relief, I guess.

  Before they said anything, I said, “Unless you’re willing to chain me up or cut me open and put one of those things inside me, I’m goi
ng to school.

  “Now, do you want to be a part of that or do I have to do it alone?”

  * * *

  Mom sent Dad away, to keep him from hovering. “Go work on the generator. Or relieve a drought. Wait a minute.” She ducked into their bedroom and reemerged with a book in her hand. “Go read this.”

  Dad looked at the book. “I read this. When she was little.”

  “She’s not little any more. Time to reread it.”

  “Is it still current?”

  “Sadly.”

  Dad tucked it into his coat pocket and then, almost shyly, hugged me. I squeezed him back and kissed his cheek.

  Mom made shooing motions with her hands and he almost smiled, then he vanished.

  The memory of his almost smile was so vivid that for a moment I felt it was hanging in the air, like the Cheshire Cat’s.

  Mom shook her head. “Poor boy.”

  “Daddy’s hardly a boy.”

  Mom smiled. “Sure he is. In his head. He’s the same young man I met in New York City. Or, sometimes, the frightened kid who flinched at every sound from his father’s end of the house.” She looked at me. “And you frighten him so very much.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, something happening to you. It’s his biggest fear.”

  “What about you? Isn’t he afraid something can happen to you, too?”

  “Sure, it’s only natural. But I’m afraid when he was captured that time—” Mom made an abbreviated gesture toward her right collarbone. “Well, lots of people have had PTSD from less. After that, he tried to control everything, especially while I was pregnant.” She sighed. “At first it was nice. But my second trimester, when I felt great and could really do anything, he started hemming me in, trying to say what I could and couldn’t do and where I could and couldn’t go.” She laughed softly. “I used to tell my clients that they needed to not run away from fights, to stick it out … but it was only my ability to jump away that made him ameliorate his behavior.”