Читать книгу Time - Roger Reid - Страница 10

No one said a word.

Mom had been leaning against the door frame. She stood up straight and crossed her arms, standing in the doorway with a body language that said, You’re not leaving this room. Dad remained seated on the bed and staring straight at me. I had this urge to look up and see if there was a sword hanging over my head by a single horsehair. Instead, I rolled up my shirt and placed it in my duffel bag.

“Does this mean Deputy Pickens will not be able to pick me up at the airport?” I said.

Dad didn’t answer right away. He looked toward my mom. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her return his stare.

“Carl Morris escaped? What about his brothers?” Mom said.

“Just Carl,” said Dad. “The brothers are still in jail.”

I folded my socks and placed them in the bag.

“You still want to go?” asked my dad. It was not so much a question for me as it was for my mother. His eyes remained on her.

Before Mom could answer for me, I said, “Yes, sir, I want to go.”

I turned to my mom as she uncrossed her arms and placed her hands on her hips. “Jason,” she said, “I don’t know.”

“As long as Deputy Pickens will meet me at the airport,” I said, “I would still like to go.”

At that moment I felt a buzz in my pocket. It was my cell phone. Dad had bought me one after our trip to Huntsville back in June. I pulled the phone from my pocket, and there was a text from Leah.

“U heard?” was all the text said.

I slipped the phone back into my pocket.

“The deputy said he would meet you in Birmingham if you still want to go,” said my dad.

“Robert, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” said my mom.

“Rachel,” said Dad, “if Carl Morris wanted to find Jason, he would have a lot better chance of finding him here at home than at some obscure fossil site in Alabama.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“What do you mean, if Carl Morris wanted to find Jason?” Mom exclaimed. “Did he threaten him? Did he say something?”

“No,” said Dad. “No. No one heard him threaten Jason or Leah or the deputy or anyone else. He just wanted us to know—Deputy Pickens just wanted us to know. Morris, if he’s smart, is long gone. He’s probably in Alaska by now.”

“Smart?” said my mom. “The man’s an idiot. If he were smart, he wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.”

I had to agree with my mom on that one. “Smart” is not an adjective you would use in connection with Carl Morris.

The room fell silent again. Funny thing about a room of people not saying anything when every one of them wants to say something: it seems to make time slow down. Maybe my little bedroom was suspended in time. I wanted to take a peek at my watch to see if the second hand was moving. Checking the time, though, might be seen as an attempt to get my parents talking.

My pocket buzzed again. In my nobody’s-saying-a-word room, we all heard it. Mom and Dad’s eyes turned to me. I shrugged my shoulders. The second hand must have begun to move again.

“It’s probably Leah wanting to know if Jason’s making the trip,” said my mom.

“What should he tell her?” asked my dad.

Strange. I was standing right there, and they were talking about me in the third person—like I was in another room.

“He’ll be safe?” Mom asked.

Dad paused.

I was about to think the clock might stop ticking again when he said, “He’ll be safe.”

“Maybe I should talk with Deputy Pickens myself,” said Mom.

“Maybe you should,” Dad agreed. “It would probably make you feel better.”

“You still want to go?” Mom asked.

It took a second or two for me to realize she was talking to me.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

“You’re sure?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said again.

My pocket buzzed.

“Tell her you’ll meet her in Birmingham,” said Mom. Then she walked over and gave me a hug. A long hug.

Dad remained seated on my bed after Mom left the room.

“There’s something else I discovered when I was talking to Shirley Pickens,” he said.

I chuckled. Deputy Shirley Pickens is about six-four and well over two hundred pounds. He’s built like a linebacker. He carries a gun. And his name is Shirley. In all my fourteen years, I’d never met a man named Shirley until Deputy Shirley Pickens.

“If I were you,” said my dad, “I would get that chuckling out of my system before I got to Alabama.”

“Good idea,” I agreed.

“Like I was trying to say,” Dad said, “when I was talking with the deputy, I discovered that your host in Alabama is a friend of mine. He’s an astronomer. His name is Curtis Carroll. We always call him C. C., but you should probably call him Dr. Carroll.”

“An astronomer?” I said. “Why are we staying with an astronomer?”

“You’ve got something against astronomers?” said my dad the astronomer. I think he was joking.

“No,” I said. “I’m used to astronomers. I just thought we would be staying with a paleontologist or geologist.”

“C. C., uh, Dr. Carroll is a professional astronomer and an amateur paleontologist,” said Dad. “Tell him I said hello.”

I nodded.

“And,” Dad continued, “ask him to give you and Leah a little bit of his presentation on time.”

My pocket buzzed again.

“You should probably answer that before she gets the idea that you’re not going,” said Dad. “And Jason?”

“Yes?”

“You do want to go?”

“Yes, sir.”