Among the Brave (2 page)

You know, it really wasn’t a good idea to grow four inches in the past year,
he thought, then marveled that he could think so clearly at a time like this. He pulled his long legs even closer to his body.

Walkie-talkies crackled instructions: “Search the basement.

‘Affirmative.”

“Search the yard.”

Trey began to sweat. What if someone was dispatched to search the porch? He strained to hear every instruction, all at once. He listened for footsteps up to the porch. It wouldn’t take any great observational skills to find Trey. What was he going to do if—no, when—that happened?

Come out fighting.
Trey ordered himself sternly.
Don’t go down gently. You’ll have the element of surprise on your side. As soon as you hear someone nearby, jump up and start swinging punches....

And then what? Did he really think he could prevail? Maybe he could surprise one of the uniformed men. Temporarily. But two? Three? Fifty?

A board creaked nearby. The first step of the stairs up to the porch had creaked just like that when Trey was walking to the door. His heart began pounding so hard he thought the sound itself would give him away. He held his breath as another board creaked, and then another. Closer, closer
...

Trey had his head down, practically tucked between his knees. But the suspense was too much to bear. Trey, the biggest coward in the world, decided it was better to know what was about to happen. Silently, slowly, he tilted his head back.

A uniformed man—no, really just a boy, barely older than Trey himself—stood there silently looking down at him. Trey’s eyes suddenly seemed to work like a camera, registering every detail of the boy’s face in a single glance. The boy had freckles across his nose, and that detail alone seemed so out of place that Trey could do nothing but stare.

“Liber?”
the boy said, oddly.

Wait a minute. Was he actually speaking
Latin?

“Free?” Trey translated incredulously.

The boy rewarded him with such a small nod that Trey wondered if he’d imagined it. Because then the boy raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth and pressed the button on the side.

That’s it,
Trey thought, disappointment swelling through him.
Why didn’t I fight when I had the chance? Why didn’t I run?

He probably still had a few seconds before the boy summoned the other uniformed men and they came swarming around the porch. But Trey couldn’t move. He could just imagine where running or fighting would lead. He could hear the gunfire that was bound to come, could see the hands that would undoubtedly grab him, maybe pummel him—maybe beat him to death....

It’s better to be captured alive. To be meek and abiding. Then maybe they won’t kill me right away.

No, they’d just torture him to try to get him to betray everyone he knew. No matter what, Trey couldn’t win.

Then he heard what the boy shouted into his walkietalkie.

“Porch all clear,” he said. “Nothing here.”

Trey stared up at the boy in amazement. He was so stunned, he couldn’t make out the words that crackled out from the walkie-talkie in response.

“Affirmative,” the boy said. “I’ll join the search in the backyard right away”

He paused only long enough to glance at Trey one more time, and whisper, “Stay hidden.” Then he turned on his heel and left.

Gradually, Trey’s heart rate returned to normal—or at least what had passed for normal since he’d stepped out of the car, instead of the I’m-about-to-die rate his heart had reached when the boy was on the porch. He almost wondered if he’d been hallucinating. Could he have gone so insane with fear that he’d imagined the whole exchange?

Trey didn’t think he had such a strong imagination.

He could hear bits and pieces of the continuing search—someone shouting for a shovel, another man grunting as he carried a heavy trunk to a car. But no one else stepped up onto the porch. Nobody else came to look for Trey. And Trey was so paralyzed with fear that he couldn’t have disobeyed the boy’s order if he’d wanted to.

Then, amazingly, he began to hear doors slamming, engines starting, cars driving away. They went slower now, their engines making the same letdown hum as fire trucks driving away after a fire. Trey tried to eavesdrop— he listened so hard that his ears roared. But he couldn’t tell whether the men had found whatever they were looking for or not. They were talking about women; they were talking about smoking the cigars they’d discovered in Mr. Talbot’s closet

“Illegal as all get-out,” one man said loudly.

“Yeah, we’re just going to have to smoke them and destroy the evidence,” another shouted back. “It’s the least we can do for an old friend.”

This made the men laugh, like it was funny that any of them might be friends with Mr. Talbot Or maybe it was that Mr. Talbot had thought they were friends, but they weren’t.

Trey could never understand what people meant when their words and meanings didn’t match up.

That’s called irony,
he reminded himself.
I don’t get irony. I admit it. Okay, Dad? Are you happy now?

He was so busy carrying on an imaginary conversation with his father that he missed the exact moment when the last car drove away For hours, it seemed, there had been a general hubbub all across the Talbots’ property—raucous laughter, bossy shouts. But suddenly the entire area was plunged into an eerie silence. Trey strained his ears again, listening. He risked another peek over the top of the flowerpot. There were no more cars within sight or earshot. But he didn’t have to wonder if he’d hallucinated everything, because the uniformed men had left behind plenty of evidence of their visit: trampled flowers, skid marks on the driveway holes scattered in a seemingly random pattern across the yard.

Trey ducked out of sight again.

Maybe the chauffeur will bring Nina and the others back now
, he thought.
Maybe the chauffeur knew somehow that the uniformed men were coming. And he’ll know that they're gone now and it’s safe to come back and get me.

Trey didn’t want to think about how the chauffeur might have known about the uniformed men. He didn’t want to think about what that probably meant about whose side the chauffeur was on. He just wanted to be rescued.

Because if he wasn’t rescued, he didn’t have the slightest idea what he was supposed to do.

Chapter Three

It got dark.

Trey’s mind recoiled from calculating just how long that meant he’d been hiding behind the flowerpot. It had been early morning when he’d arrived at Mr. Talbot’s house. It was dusk now. He’d waited a very long time.

Trey imagined what would happen if he never moved, if nobody ever came for him.

I’d die of hunger or thirst,
he thought.
How long would it be before someone discovered my corpse?
Maybe he’d be a skeleton by then.
Nobody would know who I was.

Trey was scaring himself But he had to. He had to make it seem scarier to stay hidden than to venture out

You’re hungry now, aren’t you?
he challenged himself
Aren’t you starving? You’ve got to get some food.

But his stomach, which had become more than accustomed to hunger over the years, just said,
Hey, don’t pin this on me. I can wait

Trey’s legs were stiff from huddling in one position for so long. He thought maybe he’d been asleep part of the time, but it was a strange sort of sleep, where any noise, any hint of movement—a bird fluttering in the sky, say— could snap him to full alertness. Still, he’d managed to dream. He’d had strange dreams where his father was alive again, and standing on the porch lecturing him. Only, in the dream, Trey’s ears didn’t seem to be working, and he couldn’t understand anything his father said. He could just tell that his father was very worried.

“Symbolism,” Trey muttered to himself. “Dreams are often metaphorical representations of the dreamer’s fears.”

Or wishes.

Trey gave a little half-snort of disgust at himself, that he could think about symbolism and metaphors at a time like this. He needed to think about
action.
He needed a plan. He shook his head as if that would clear his mind of fancy, useless words and lingering dreams and cobwebs.

If the chauffeur and Nina and the others comes back...

They hadn’t so far. Odds were, they weren’t going to. Ever.

If Mr. Talbot comes back...

After being whisked off in handcuffs? Trey couldn’t quite get his mind around what might have happened to Mr. Talbot—had those men in uniform been arresting him or kidnapping him? But Trey knew he couldn’t hold out hope anymore that Mr. Talbot would be his salvation.

If Lee shows up...

Ah. There was a hope worth dwelling on. Lee had said he’d meet his friends at Mr. Talbot’s house. He hadn’t said when, but he
would
come, and when he did, Trey didn’t want to have to admit that he’d spent the whole time cowering on the porch.

So it was shame, finally, that made Trey stand up and shake out his stiff legs. He stepped off the side of the porch, so he could crouch behind a line of bushes next to the house. Between the darkness and the bushes, Trey could convince himself he was still hiding. That gave him the courage to keep walking, following the slope of the yard downhill. The bushes sheltered him so well that he kept going, even around a dark corner.

Then he saw a huge garage, gaping open. A dim light illuminated two gigantic luxury cars and a vacant space where a third belonged. Where a third had evidently been, until it had whisked Mr. Talbot away that morning.

Trey stared. He felt a silly little burst of pride, that he knew enough to label this space a garage. He’d never seen one before, except in pictures. And pictures, Trey had learned in his short time outside of hiding, never did anything justice. Everything was bigger in real life. Scarier.

Irreparably damaged.
The words forced their way to Trey’s attention as though they’d been waiting for him in the garage. They were from an argument his parents had had shortly before his father died.

“The boy’s irreparably damaged now,” his mother had screamed at his father. “Handicapped for life. He’s got no chance of ever living a normal life. Of ever thinking a normal thought. Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?”

Trey shut down his memory right then, wishing he’d never heard that fight, wishing his mind hadn’t recorded it so well. His feet moved automatically across the garage floor, toward the door that hung open, leading to the house. His mind seemed incapable of thinking anything now beyond,
Hide inside. Better hiding always inside.

The space he entered was dark, and that was just fine with Trey. With the door from the garage still open, he had just enough light to make out a long hallway, lined with doors. The doors were all shut, or else Trey wouldn’t have had the courage to walk past them. As it was, he tiptoed.

Either Mr. Talbot and his family were all awful slobs or else the uniformed men had totally trashed the place. The hallway was littered with clothing and pillows and other items Trey couldn’t identify without more light. He tried to step over them, but it was hard to find bare carpet to walk on. The items that were hardest to dodge were round and black and metal. They had holes in the middle—were they wheels of some sort? Why had the Talbots needed so many of them? Trey stubbed his toe on one, and it was all he could do not to cry out in pain. But he managed without a whimper.

Hey, silent pain is my specialty,
he thought darkly, almost amusing himself

And then he accidentally stepped squarely on one of the disks, and it rocked against another one, making a dull thud. Trey froze, waiting. Surely the sound had been too soft to attract anyone’s attention. Surely there was no one around to hear. Surely— A line of light appeared near the ceiling, like a door

opening. How could there be a door so high up? And then a figure appeared in the doorway, and a beam of light began sweeping down, down, down...

Right toward Trey

Trey hit the floor, thinking he needed to dive under some of the clothing and pillows. But he only succeeded in hitting more of the metal wheels, hurting himself and making even more noise.

The light found him.

And up at the top of the room, behind the light, a woman began screaming.

Chapter Three