—
The west side of town, a four-block residential area off the end of Main Street, didn’t look very different. Wooden FOR SALE signs sheltered under the trees from the gentle rain, but the houses they referred to stood old and solemn on desolate gardens.
The Chevy Vega crawled the few final meters to a stop before a low stone wall and a brittle wooden gate, pink paint peeling off. Kerri switched off the engine. Herewith ended a weeklong journey.
Andy got out of the car and, even before caressing the asphalt skin of the street, she looked up at the house.
It didn’t look back. It stood grave and stiff-upper-lipped like Mount Hood, window pots of wildflowers and weeds as shoulder patches indicating rank. It barely caught the striped station wagon with the corner of its left dorm window and mumbled, Punks.
The punks stood outside the fence, bags at their feet, glancing up at the gray-and-pink stone-and-wood cottage. Pink flakes snowed off the shutters, the front door, the swinging chair, the meek gate quivering on its hinges under a Japanese breeze. Andy mouthed the word “exfoliation.”
Kerri strode over the aimlessly low gate because she couldn’t waste time searching for the right key. Pacific rain forests had grown between the irregular slabs that made the narrow walkway.
Andy stopped halfway along that path and gazed back at the street. This was how every adventure had ever started. In Andy’s mental dictionary, the entry for “adventure” featured this exact picture: the walkway across the little garden, the pink gate, and the uncharted wilderness beyond.
Kerri located the front door key and rattled the lock awake.
Aunt Margo had told her that she still drove her VW Beetle up from Portland once or twice a year to check on the place. As soon as the door swung open, though, Kerri knew they were the first ones to step inside in at least two years, since she was given the keys—just like one can tell that their space has been violated in the five minutes they’ve been gone. The house was a cave, clean of campfires and energy bar wrappers. A Roman temple minus the guided tour posts. A catacomb for shrouded sofas.
Even Tim walked in slowly.
Kerri and Andy and Nate ventured in, holding on to their scant luggage, guessing the shapes of furniture under wraps and noting the silent airstrike of dust particles in the broken sunrays. Floorboards creaked exaggerated cries of pain under their suede boots and rubber shoes.
What annoyed Andy the most was the utter silence. Worse than reminiscent piano music, worse than a panicking violin. Nothing.
There was something more that bothered her, but she couldn’t grasp it. Everything was like she expected it to be: every framed photograph, every book on the shelves that she still felt too young to read, the wallpaper, the fireplace, the prehistoric TV set. Everything was okay; it just didn’t…sing.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she said, trailblazing ahead.
The steps agonized like B-movie actors.
“You take your room as usual, Nate?” Kerri said upon reaching the landing.
“Yeah, I guess,” he replied, peering down that side of the hallway like he expected dart traps to shoot from the walls.
Kerri followed him from a safe distance as he walked up to the dark end and pushed open the door. A somehow cozy blue crypt welcomed him.
Then Nate took a leap of faith, crossed the darkness, and unbolted the shutters.
The rest of the colors splashed in, defibrillating the boys’ room back to life: two berths, a desk, a dartboard hanging on the door. Despite his frequent visits as a kid, Nate’s shier nature had never left a deep imprint in the room; the walls were poster-free and the books on the shelf weren’t his.
“It always felt like a really, really nice hotel,” he said.
Kerri nodded from the threshold, understanding. “I hope it beats the loony houses.”
Andy’s voice came from across the hallway like a fire alarm.
“Kerri! What the fuck happened to your room?”
Kerri sprinted back down the corridor, startling the porcelain dishes, and stormed through the door at the other end.
She saw the sloped ceiling and the sun cat-scratching the shutters. Her butterflies pinned inside their showcases. Her maps. Her books. Her Lego models. Her desk with her colored pencils in a clay vase.
“What? What happened?”
Andy stood wide-eyed in the middle of the carpet: “It shrank!”
Kerri checked the distance between her head and the sloped roof. She had to duck to look through the dorm window now.
“No, it didn’t. This is what you said was going to happen when we saw the lake again, remember?”
Andy made a slow, Mars-speed orbit on her feet, inspecting around. She stopped on Kerri, her lips beginning to sketch a smile.
“It was always like this?”
She caressed the 1960s-flavored paisley quilt, glance-queried Kerri for permission, and sat down on it. The mattress sighed gently under her bum.
A full smile settled on her face and bit her lower lip, a silent wow in her eyes.
—
Nate wandered in, coatless, hands pocketed.
“So what now?”
Andy sprung to her feet, shaking off the tipsiness of bliss. “Okay, uh…We got a case to solve.”
The other two agreed voicelessly.
“So, um…We should have a club meeting. Uh, five minutes…At Ben’s Corner. You okay with that?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“No, I mean it, because…You know, it’s not like I want to take command or anything; I think we should be a team, make all the decisions together, you know. Reach consent.”
“You mean consensus.”
“Yeah, that. So, you agree on meeting at Ben’s in five?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, then…I don’t know, unpack, go to the bathroom, whatever.”
“I’m fine,” Nate said. “I never unpack; I just take my clothes from the bag as I use them.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Okay. How long is it to Ben’s Corner on foot?”
“Five minutes.”
“Let’s go then.”
—
Ben’s Corner had changed little, in the way of other humble establishments that wager that if they don’t try to chase trends, trends will eventually run all the way round and embrace them back. Short of a nuclear attack throwing America twenty years back in technology, Ben’s Corner would not live to see the day it would become fashionable again.
The restaurant was busy enough with lunching workmen and beer-drinkers so that the staff didn’t notice the three hikers arriving, or the dog shaking the rain off on the blue-tiled floor. The jukebox had gone. The radio played “Groove Is in the Heart,” which is a radio’s way of saying it couldn’t care less about the mood of a scene.
They claimed a booth by the window, Andy and Tim sitting next to the tearful glass. Nate grabbed a menu, checked that it was just the same old Michael Jackson—new face-lift—and dropped it.