Ten Miles Past Normal

Chapter Twenty-one


Busted





It’s sort of hard to explain how I got from the art room to a cell in the Manneville jail. Even harder to explain is how Mrs. Brown got there with me. With us, that is. Me, Emma, and Sarah. Oh, and Monster.

I guess I’ll also need to explain how Monster got involved too.

This could be tough.

But first, let me report on the coolness of walking out to the teachers’ parking lot and popping into Emma’s baby blue VW Bug. Just like that. No biggie.

“I can’t believe you parked here!” Sarah said when we reached the car. “Aren’t you afraid of getting towed?”

“I always park here after lunch,” Emma said, unlocking the passenger-side door. “The security guards never check after fifth period. It’s a lot easier to get out at the end of the day.”

I ducked into the backseat. “So where did you say we were going?” I asked, clicking on my seat belt, trying to sound cool. I’d never skipped school before and was acting like it was no big deal, even though my heart was thumping a million beats a minute. I felt a little bit like a crazed rabbit.

“I didn’t say,” Emma told me. “But I need your help getting there.”

Mr. Pritchard’s house wasn’t that far from the high school, but it was easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, a little cottage tucked back on two acres off a back road. A for sale sign was stuck in the front yard, but no one had done much to draw potential buyers in. Mr. Pritchard still owned it, but it had been a long time since he’d been able to care for it. He hadn’t been planning on moving, and when a stroke landed him in the nursing home, no one had immediately jumped in to keep the house up. The grass hadn’t been cut in ages, and the garden was a big, tangled mess of weeds and marigolds in full-scale rebellion.

No one had taken down the yard art, either—the huge cross covered in morning glories. Fifty years ago it had been stuck in the middle of the front yard, doused with gasoline, and lit on fire. It was still pretty scary-looking, even if there were flowers growing all over it.

“I don’t think I could have lived with that thing every day,” Sarah said as we walked up the gravel driveway toward the house. “It’s creepy.”

Emma agreed. “It’s a nightmare, right here in broad daylight. But I can see why he kept it. It was like telling the Klan, ‘Bring it on, boys!’”

“So what are we doing here, anyway?” I stopped to dig a rock out of my shoe. “I’m pretty sure the house is locked.”

“I just wanted to see it. I mean, I’d read about it, you know. Your dad wrote a great article.”

“You read my dad’s article? The one in Southern Cultures?”

Emma nodded. “I subscribe.”

“You subscribe to Southern Cultures?”

“I subscribe to everything,” Emma said with a shrug. “I like to know what people are thinking about.”

That’s when I realized something, something big. Emma was wild, all right, but she wasn’t wild in the way I’d always thought she was. I’d let the biker boyfriend and the broken curfews get in the way of seeing that Emma’s wildness wasn’t in her actions.

It was in her brain.

We sat on the porch for a while, sometimes getting up to peek through the windows into the empty house. It was a peaceful place to be, and after a few minutes I stopped feeling nervous about skipping. We were doing something important, after all. We were honoring Mr. Pritchard.

We were living large.

It was Sarah’s idea to go to Mrs. Brown’s. “I bet she doesn’t know about Mr. Pritchard yet,” she said. “It would be awful if she found out by reading it in the paper.”

So we got back in the Bug and drove to Manneville Heights, where we found Mrs. Brown out in her yard, trimming the grass along the front walk with a pair of embroidery scissors.

“Lend me a hand, dear,” she said to Emma, then rose to her feet with a groan. “I hate to think my gardening days are nearing an end, but sooner or later I’m going to spend the night in my yard because none of my neighbors were outside to help me get up.”

Mrs. Brown brushed a few grass clippings off her pants and then peered at us over her glasses. “The former teacher in me is wondering why you three aren’t in school. It can’t be later than one thirty.”

That’s when Emma delivered the bad news.

It was Mrs. Brown’s idea to go to the farmhouse. “Harlan’s the one who’s held the deed to it all these years,” she told us in the Bug as we drove into town, convertible top up because Mrs. Brown didn’t want her hair mussed. “He doesn’t have any children, so it will go to his nieces and nephews, and I imagine they’ll sell it. The land’s quite valuable. We should take a last look while the farmhouse is still standing.”

I suppose it’s possible, looking back on what happened next, that we overreacted. Or, more to the point, Sarah overreacted. She’d spent most of Sunday making plans to turn that old farmhouse into a museum, and now suddenly she had to deal with the news that it might be sold, most likely to be torn down, so that something new could be built in its place.

“If they sell it, I’ll buy it,” Sarah proclaimed as the car neared the soccer field.

“With what money?” Emma asked. “I bet that land goes for thousands of dollars an acre, maybe more.”

“I’ll think of something,” Sarah insisted. “I’ll contact the Historic Preservation Society.” She leaned toward Mrs. Brown in the front seat. “Do you know if Manneville has a Historic Preservation Society?”

“Yes, I believe it does,” Mrs. Brown assured her. “Though if I were you, I’d start filling out paperwork now. Getting a place declared a historical site can take a good while, I understand. You may not have enough time.”

“I’ll find the time,” Sarah said, which didn’t make much sense and was probably the first hint that Sarah was becoming unhinged.

We walked from the parking lot to the soccer fields, where workers from the town’s Parks and Rec crew were picking up trash after Saturday soccer games. A couple of them stared at us as we cut across a field, but Emma just waved and called out, “Hey, boys! Nice weather!” and they went back to work.

We had to cross a rickety bridge over a creek to get to the farmhouse. “There used to be a much sturdier bridge here,” Mrs. Brown recalled as she carefully made her way across. “Harlan built it. He loved building things. I’m glad he had his law degree, but I’m sure he would have been just as happy being a carpenter.”

I recognized the farmhouse immediately. It was one of those buildings you look at all your life and never really see, just a small house with a wraparound porch and peeling white paint. A bunch of the front windows were broken, and the stairs leading up to the porch had mostly rotted away.

“Oh, how sad,” Mrs. Brown said, shaking her head as we stood in the front yard looking at it. “I suppose a house can’t be left alone very long before it starts falling down around itself.”

Sarah stepped gingerly onto the porch and peered into one of the windows. “It looks like people have been partying in here,” she reported. “I see a bunch of beer cans and some graffiti on the wall.” She tried the front door, but it was locked. “They must be getting in through a window somewhere.”

Emma and I took a few steps back to get a better look at the second story. Sure enough, the window on the far left was open about a foot. The better to sneak a couple of six-packs in, my dear.

“So, are you game?” Emma said, turning to me. “Ready for a little climbing action?”

I checked out the porch, the roof, the window. “I think it’s going to take a ladder to get up there.”

“Or a boost,” Emma said. “Maybe if you climbed up on my shoulders.”

“I’ll do it,” Sarah called over. “I’ll climb through the window, take pictures with my cell phone, and begin the documentation process.”

This girl will be president one day, mark my words.

If I hadn’t been terrified that someone was going to end up with a broken neck, I would have found the sight of Sarah hopping up on Emma’s back piggyback style and trying to get a foothold on her shoulders hilarious. It was like watching a circus act where two clumsy clowns try—and keep failing—to pull off a big stunt. But at the circus, the clowns surprise you at the last minute by pulling it off.

The only surprise here was that Sarah didn’t bust a kneecap when she toppled to the ground after two seconds of teetering on top of her sister’s back.

“Well, that’s a bummer,” she said, wiping the dirt off her pants. “But I wouldn’t have been high enough up to reach the roof, anyway. What we need is somebody really tall.”

We all turned and looked at Mrs. Brown, who immediately started shaking her head and backing away from us. “Oh, no, girls, don’t even think about it. I’m eighty-four years old, and I am not sacrificing my back, not even for the best of causes.”

Emma scratched her chin. “Well, we don’t have a ladder, and the only person here tall enough to help is wisely refusing. Where does that leave us?”

“We have to get in,” Sarah insisted. “If we don’t, this place will be a McDonald’s by next week.”

Emma, Mrs. Brown, and I all looked at the farmhouse, and then we looked at Sarah. “Okay,” Sarah admitted. “Maybe not a McDonald’s. The access from the main road isn’t good enough. But you know what I mean. A McMansion at the very least.”

“What we need is somebody really tall and really strong,” I said, stating the obvious. “Like a football player. Or LeBron James.”

A grin broke out across Emma’s face. “Give me your cell,” she said to Sarah. “I know just who to call.”