Reality Check Read online

  PETER ABRAHAMS

  REALITY

  CHECK

  To Peter and Peggy Rice

  Contents

  One

  EXCEPT FOR FOOTBALL FRIDAYS, Cody Laredo’s

  favorite day of the…

  1

  Two

  CODY, SHIRTLESS AND BAREFOOT, wearing

  sweatpants he’d found under a…

  13

  Three

  CLEA CALLED TWO DAYS LATER. “This is me,” she said. 24

  Four

  SHE WAS LEAVING ON WEDNESDAY. Cody called

  work first thing…

  39

  Five

  COACH HUFF HAD A SIGN over the locker-room door: RUN… 54

  Six

  ALL THE HIGH SCHOOLS in the conference had

  health

  insurance…

  65

  Seven

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, or the one after

  that—or maybe the…

  70

  Eight

  CODY, STANDING BY THE NEWSPAPER RACK

  at Main Street Deli,…

  82

  Nine

  CHANCES OF SURVIVAL IN THE NIGHT WOODS:

  Cody couldn’t get…

  95

  Ten

  CODY FOLLOWED THE MAIN STREET—Spring

  Street, according to the signs—for…

  106

  Eleven

  CODY MOVED OFF THE BRIDGE. His face felt hot. Clea…

  119

  Twelve

  THEY MOVED NORTH OF the ridge, soon found the trail. 130

  Thirteen

  DARKNESS WAS FALLING FAST as Cody walked

  past the Mellon…

  143

  Fourteen

  MR. STEIN LEFT THE REV. The waitress returned

  with

  Cody’s…

  156

  Fifteen

  CODY’S FIRST RESPONSE wasn’t very logical.

  “You found her?” he…

  166

  Sixteen

  BUD STAMPED HIS FOOT and tossed his mane,

  backed

  away…

  177

  Seventeen

  SO WAS HE UNDER ARREST or not? How could he…

  190

  Eighteen

  CODY WALKED ACROSS the Dover Academy campus.

  He could have…

  207

  Nineteen

  CODY AWOKE IN THE NIGHT, his first night in the…

  220

  Twenty

  CODY OPENED CLEA’S CELL PHONE. Evidence,

  solid red evidence. Clea…

  232

  Twenty-One

  NO RANSOM DEMAND, but all of a sudden money was…

  245

  Twenty-Two

  CODY HAD NEVER BEEN in a bar before. There was…

  259

  Twenty-Three

  THE BLUE LIGHTS STOPPED FLASHING. In his side

  mirror

  Cody…

  272

  Twenty-Four

  CODY DROVE BACK into North Dover. Everything

  looked different—Spring Street,…

  287

  Twenty-Five

  SERGEANT ORTON WAS WAITING for Cody at the

  doughnut

  place…

  297

  Twenty-Six

  ORTON KICKED THE CIDER-HOUSE door shut with

  his heel. Cody…

  311

  About the Author

  Other Books by Peter Abrahams

  Credits

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  EXCEPT FOR FOOTBALL FRIDAYS, Cody Laredo’s favorite day of the school year was always the last. Now, May 30, final day of his sophomore year at County High, he sat in the back row of homeroom, waiting for the teacher—a sub he’d never seen before—to hand out the report cards. As long as there were no Fs—even one would make him ineligible for football in the fall, meaning summer school, an impossibility because he had to work—Cody didn’t care what was in the report card. He just wanted out.

  “One more thing,” the sub was saying. “The principal sent this announcement.” The sub unfolded a sheet of paper, stuck a pair of glasses on the tip of his nose. “‘County High wishes everyone a safe summer. Please remember . . .” And then came blah blah blah about alcohol and drugs, tuned out by some mechanism in Cody’s brain, overloaded from having heard the same thing too many times. The sub thumbed through the report cards, called out names in alphabetical order, mispronouncing several. Cody was the only L. A minute or two later he was outside, crossing the student parking lot, warm sun shining down and the sky big and blue. Somewhere close by a horse neighed.

  His car—a ten-year-old beater with 137,432 miles on the odometer, an odometer disconnected by the previous owner, one of his dad’s drinking buddies—sat at the back of the lot, open prairie behind it and Coach Huff leaning against the fender.

  “Hey, coach,” said Cody.

  “Close shave, son,” said Coach Huff.

  “Huh?”

  “Ain’t opened your report yet?”

  Cody shook his head. The coach already knew his grades? What was with that?

  “Waitin’ for what, exackly?” said Coach Huff, a tall guy with a huge upper body and stick legs, varsity football coach and also teacher of health and remedial English. “Sign from above?”

  2

  Cody slit open the envelope with his fingernail, slid out the report card. U.S. History—C–; Algebra 1—C–; Biology—D; English—D–; Shop—B. D minus: close shave, no doubt about it. He looked up, feeling pretty good.

  “Good thing Miz Brennan’s a football fan,” the coach said.

  “She is?” Ms. Brennan was the English teacher, bestower of the D minus. Cody actually liked her, especially when she forgot all about whatever the lesson was and started reciting poetry, right from memory, something she did maybe once every two weeks or so. Somehow Ms. Brennan, an old lady with twisted arthritic fingers and a scratchy voice, had all this poetry in her head. Poetry in the textbook was a complete mystery to Cody, but in a way he couldn’t explain, the murkiness all cleared up during Ms. Brennan’s recitations, or at least he thought it did. Like: Screw your courage to the sticking-place / And we’ll not fail. Cody was pretty sure he got that one, just from how she’d spoken the words, made his mind picture courage fastened deep to something that would never break, like a huge boulder. But he’d never seen Ms. Brennan at a football game.

  “Either that,” said Coach Huff, “or we’re lookin’ at a legit D minus. That the story? It’s legit?”

  Cody didn’t know what to say, felt his face turning red.

  “Just razzin’ you, son. Nothin’ wrong with your football IQ, 3

  that’s for sure. We’re all countin’ on you in the fall.” He pushed away from the car. The shocks squeaked and the whole body rose an inch or two. “Stay in shape this summer.”

  “I will,” Cody said, thinking: Is there something wrong with my other IQ? Does Coach Huff think I’m dumb? The coach got a squinty look in his eye. “Workin’ with your dad?”

  “Maybe,” Cody said. His dad did landscaping in the summer. Landscaping wasn’t bad, and Cody loved being outdoors, but he was hoping to find some other job, almost anything.

  “Just remember—landscapin’ don’t replace liftin’, so hit the gym.”

  “Okay.”

  “Upper body’s important—put some zip on the ball.”

  “Why, coach? We never throw.”

  Coach Huff gave Cody a long look, then laughed, a single eruption of sound, close to a bark. “Sense of humor—I like that,” he said. “Just remember there’s a time and place for
everything.”

  Coach Huff gave Cody a pat on the shoulder, started walking away. He met Clea Weston coming from the other direction, report card in hand, and nodded to her, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were on Cody. The sun lit golden sparkles in her hair, and Cody thought: The whole summer ahead of us! 4

  And what did he have at this very moment? A full tank of gas.

  “Let’s ride out to Black Rocks,” he said. Black Rocks was an abandoned quarry near the bend in the river, the best swimming for miles around.

  “I got a B in calc,” Clea said.

  “Wow,” said Cody. There were two kids taking calc in the whole school, Clea—a sophomore like Cody—and some brain in the senior class. No one thought of Clea as a brain. She was just good at everything: striker on the varsity soccer team, class president, assistant editor of the lit mag; and the most beautiful girl in the school—in the whole state, in Cody’s opinion.

  But a real person, as he well knew, capable of annoyance, for example. When Clea got annoyed, her right eyebrow did this little fluttering thing, like now. “Wow?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. He himself wouldn’t ever get as far as calc, not close. “Pretty awesome.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never had a B.”

  For a second or two, Cody didn’t quite get her meaning; he’d scored very few Bs himself. Then it hit him. “All As, every time?”

  She nodded.

  “You never told me.”

  She shrugged. “My father’s going to be pissed.”

  5

  “Come on.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  Maybe not. He and Clea had been going out since Christmas but didn’t spend much time in each other’s homes. Clea lived with her dad and stepmom in the nicest house in town, a house that actually had a name instead of a number: Cottonwood. Cody lived with his dad—when his dad was around—in a one-bedroom apartment over the Red Pony, a dim downtown bar his dad—his parents, actually—had owned at one time, back when his mom was alive.

  “Then don’t tell him,” Cody said.

  “Don’t tell him my grades? Are you serious? He’ll ask to see my report card first thing.”

  “He will?” Cody’s own dad hadn’t seen any of his report cards in years.

  “He keeps them all in his desk,” Clea said, “going back to kindergarten.”

  “Whoa,” said Cody.

  “How did it happen?” Clea said. “I thought I aced the final.”

  For a moment tears shone in her eyes, and Clea wasn’t a crier. He’d seen her cry only once or twice, and those had been mixed-up tears, partly, even mostly, happy. Cody couldn’t stand to see her upset like this, especially about nothing. He handed 6

  her his report card. “Scan this,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”

  Clea ran her gaze over it. “Oh, Cody,” she said, looking up, laughing a little laugh, like What am I going to do with you? She reached out, tousled his hair. Cody loved her touch, loved everything about her.

  “What do you think my IQ is?” he said.

  “Three thousand,” said Clea.

  They drove out to Black Rocks. The town they lived in, Little Bend, lay at the western border of hundreds of miles of flatland, the Rockies’ foothills in sight. The quarry, abandoned after World War II, stood at the top of a long rise—the first suggestion of the mountains to come—overlooking the town, spread out from that perspective like an open book. Little Bend had a potash mine, owned for two generations by Clea’s family, and now a year or two left before being worked out; an ethanol plant, just getting started, owned by investors from Denver and run by Mr. Weston; a base that the Air Force was always threatening to close; and a rodeo every summer that attracted ten thousand paying visitors, sometimes more. A pretty town in a pretty place: almost all the kids at County High hoped to end up somewhere else—Denver, Minneapolis, Seattle, California.

  Cody followed the curving gravel road up the rise, parked 7

  by a sign with a few bullet holes in it: ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING. ABSOLUTELY NO SWIMMING OR DIVING. He and Clea stripped down to their underwear, ran to the edge, and jumped, holding hands. They screamed their heads off on the long fall, then hit the water, not too cold on the surface, icier and icier the deeper they plunged. And darker and darker, too. Somewhere down in the darkness they lost touch, kicked back up into sunshine separately, and came together laughing. They kissed, their lips and faces icy cold, their tongues warm.

  “The whole summer,” Cody said.

  “Yeah,” said Clea. “I just wish . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re not still thinking about calc?”

  Clea nodded, drops of clear water falling from the ends of her hair.

  “Stop,” he said. “It’s summer. No more teachers, no more books. We’re free—free at last!” He shook his fist in the air. Clea laughed.

  They swam to a rocky ledge that jutted out from the steep quarry walls, climbed onto it, lay down. The black stone soaked up the sun’s heat, soon warmed them up. It was quiet and peaceful, the only sounds their own breathing, and the quarry water they’d disturbed still lapping at the walls. Cody felt a change 8

  in the atmosphere, like the air pressure was rising, bearing down; a change he felt in his stomach, and lower. He reached out, touched Clea’s leg, could tell that the change in the atmosphere was affecting her, too—maybe it was just their own little private atmosphere. Cody moved his hand higher, the world shrinking very fast around him. Willpower, judgment, all kinds of other cerebral things started shutting down, like fuses shorting out in a fuse box. Then, very faint, he heard a car engine. He took his hand away.

  “Someone’s coming,” he said.

  “I don’t hear anyone,” said Clea, taking his hand, drawing it back to where it had been.

  Cody sat up, heard the car again, coming up the slope, no doubt about it. He rose, pulled Clea to her feet. She had a funny little pout on her face, the kind of look her teachers didn’t see; maybe no one else got to see it, no one but him.

  “There’s never any space,” she said.

  “That’s the thing about Big Sky country,” Cody said. Clea smiled. A beautiful, private kind of smile. “I like how you think,” she said.

  “Me?”

  They followed the steep path that corkscrewed up the side of the quarry pit, headed for the car. Another car, kicking up a dust cloud, was coming up the road, two or three curves from 9

  the top: a black-and-white car, with blue lights, not flashing, on the roof. Cody and Clea hurried to Cody’s car, started throwing on their clothes. They were just about done, Clea slipping on her sandals, when the cop drove up and stopped beside them, his window sliding down. His gaze, not friendly, went from Cody to Clea, back to Cody.

  “Sign too small? You missed it?” He pointed his chin at the sign. Cody and Clea said nothing. “Who wants to read it for me?” They remained silent. “How about you?” the cop said, pointing his chin again, this time at Cody.

  “We weren’t doing any harm,” Clea said.

  The cop turned to her. “Was I talkin’ to you?”

  Clea shook her head.

  “Read the sign, boy.”

  Cody read the sign in a low voice. “Absolutely no trespassing. No swimming or diving.”

  “Left out that second absolutely,” the cop said. “Any reason for that?”

  Cody thought: Absolutely. He said nothing, just shook his head.

  “This your car?” the cop said.

  Cody nodded.

  “Let’s see some ID.” Cody handed over his license. The cop glanced at it, handed it back. “Weren’t fixing on swimming 10

  down in the pit, were you?” the cop said.

  Cody didn’t say anything, but Clea had less experience with cops, actually none, and she said, “No.”

  The cop smiled. “Then how come your hair’s wet? Some sudden shower happen up here and nowheres else?”<
br />
  Silence. The wind rose, blew across the plain.

  “Got some ID?” the cop said to Clea.

  “I don’t have my license yet,” she said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Clea Weston.”

  The cop gazed at her for a moment; then his eyes shifted. Had he recognized that surname? “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “And don’t never come back.” His window slid up and he drove slowly off.

  “Goddamn it,” said Cody. He kicked the nearest tire of his own car, hard enough to hurt.

  Clea patted him on the back. “He’s just an asshole,” she said. Cody thought of his friend Junior Riggins, nose guard on defense, tackle on offense, and the biggest, strongest kid on the team, who said that human beings were all programmed to turn into assholes some time in their twenties—what other explanation was there? Junior was real smart, although no one in charge seemed to know, maybe proving his point. Clea patted him again. “Forget it.”

  11

  But Cody couldn’t, not just like that. His face was suddenly hot, burning red. He turned, and all at once found himself running toward the edge of the quarry pit—

  “Cody, stop!”

  —and diving off, headfirst and fully clothed. This time hitting the water reminded him of a moment halfway through the last season, the very first play of his first start as varsity quarterback, a quarterback draw—Coach Huff loved calling the quarterback draw—when the gap had closed in an instant and he’d been rocked from both sides by a pair of all-county 280-pound tackles, one of whom was headed for CSU on a full ride.

  Down in the cold and dark, Cody remembered somehow bouncing up off the turf and saying, “Nice hit.” He swam to the surface, treaded water. Clea was gazing down from the top, her face anxious; and then not. The sun had moved a little, no longer shining all the way to the water, leaving him in shadow, but it backlit Clea in a way that made her shine with her own light. Cody felt better.

  12

  CODY, SHIRTLESS AND BAREFOOT, wearing sweatpants he’d found under a pair of old cleats in the trunk of his car, drove Clea home. She lived in the Heights, the only really fancy neighborhood in Little Bend. The Heights weren’t very high, just high enough to stand over the rest of the town. Cottonwood, a huge stone house at the very top of the top, and therefore with nice views of the river, had broad lawns cut like putting greens, lots of trees, two swimming pools—indoor and outdoor—and a tennis court. Cody pulled into the long circular drive. He cut the engine, turned to Clea. She was gazing at the house, the report card held tight in her hand. Sunlight glared on all the windows. Her mind was on something, exactly what he didn’t know. Cody searched for words that might help out.