Zebra Forest Read online

  “She’s worried, Rew,” I told him, getting more worried myself by the minute. “That’s all. That’s why she sent them away. She won’t let him do anything to us.”

  But Rew was so mad, tears started in his eyes. And Rew was tough. Once, in third grade, he’d been bullied so badly in school, I found him curled up in the back of the bus, nursing a big scrape he’d gotten down one arm when some bigger kid pushed him off the jungle gym. And he hadn’t even cried then. Now the tears only made him angrier.

  “I hate her,” he said. He raised his voice a little with every word, and the red from his face crept right down his neck. “I hate both of them. They both should go to jail. I wish the both of them were dead.”

  The first time I’d ever done our shopping, I was nine, Rew’s age. Gran had given me a list and money, and told me it would be okay, she just couldn’t manage to go into town that day. But I was nervous, thinking of the big grocery store I’d been in with her, the one on the end of town, and so I took Rew with me. When we got there, the place was so big and bright, Rew got overexcited. While I read the list, trying to figure out the aisles, Rew followed some woman who had a little dog in her cart, and when I turned around for him, he was gone.

  I called him, but he didn’t come. And I got a feeling then, a sudden, terrified feeling, like nothing would ever be okay again. Nothing would ever be good. It settled right inside my throat and squeezed so tight, I could barely speak up enough for the cashier to hear me when I asked for help finding my brother. She paged him over the intercom, and we found him not far away, standing by the fresh-flower display. We got home all right; we even got our groceries. But I never forgot that feeling, so sudden and awful.

  That was the feeling that hit me in the kitchen. Because I looked up when Rew said that, about wishing Gran were dead. And I saw Gran. She was turned around on the couch, staring straight at us, her eyes big.

  Rew saw her, too, but it didn’t stop him. He walked right into the living room, up to one of the side tables beside the couch, where a stack of her favorite Life magazines sat.

  “You care about him so much,” he said to her, his voice husky. “Why don’t you just go with him!”

  Andrew Snow lifted his head at that, but he didn’t speak. I’d come up behind Rew and saw now that Gran’s eyes were filling with tears.

  “Rew . . .” I started.

  He didn’t let me finish. He kicked the side table hard, and the Life magazines toppled over. Gran and I both jumped, and Andrew Snow half rose, but Rew didn’t care. He grabbed the magazines and threw them, threw them at Andrew Snow, one after the other. I saw Joe DiMaggio’s face fly by, saw Andrew Snow duck. He walked across the room and grabbed Rew’s wrist, pulling him to his feet before he could scoop up another magazine.

  I ran at Andrew Snow then, taking hold of his arm and trying to get him to release Rew. Gran was on her feet.

  “Let him go!” I yelled. “You’ll break his arm!”

  Andrew Snow abruptly let Rew loose, and Rew staggered backward.

  “I wasn’t hurting him,” Andrew Snow said. “I was stopping him.”

  I ignored that. “You okay?” I asked Rew.

  But he didn’t answer. He just scooped one more magazine off the floor and threw it directly at Andrew Snow’s face before he turned and dashed upstairs. A second later, he slammed his bedroom door so hard, the ceiling shook.

  Gran hadn’t moved. She just stood there, looking at the mess.

  “I’ll clean it up, Gran,” I whispered to her, not wanting Andrew Snow to hear.

  But he wasn’t paying attention anyway. I stole a glance at him out of the corner of my eye, to see if he’d gone back to his chair, but he was looking at Gran, his face unreadable. I looked at Gran, too. Would he do something to her? Was that how bad he was? Did he think Gran could have stopped Rew? I wondered how well he really knew her. Or how well she knew him. Because Gran didn’t seem scared when I turned to her. Just sad. Awfully sad.

  Then Andrew Snow came up close to her, and he whispered, too, but I could hear him anyway. And what he said surprised me, because it had nothing to do with Rew at all.

  “What did you think would happen?” he asked Gran. “When you did this?”

  I hadn’t an idea in the world what he meant. But Gran must have, because she looked at him so suddenly, and with such a terrible sadness in her face, that I had to look away. I couldn’t stand it. And then she went upstairs, too, and shut her door, but quietly.

  Gran stayed up in her room, refusing the food I brought her, her face to the wall. Rew came down, though. Around lunchtime he walked downstairs, making a point of turning his face from Andrew Snow, who sat with his chair tipped back against the front door, just staring up into nothing.

  Rew and I poured cereal and milk for lunch. Rew liked cereal, but I rarely let him have it. Cereal boxes are bulky, and I hated carrying them home from the store. But when he came down now and pulled out the Super Sugar Crisp, I decided not to make an issue of it. So we sat there, eating cereal and stealing glances at Andrew Snow. He didn’t bother us, but he looked our way plenty, an expression on his face that told me he wanted to say something. I guess Rew felt it, too, because he started in on Andrew Snow as soon as he’d finished his bowl. In fact, he spent a good half hour taunting him, promising he’d run at the first chance and get the police to put Andrew Snow back where he belonged.

  Andrew Snow ignored him, and after a while, unable to listen anymore, I went upstairs and tried to make Gran talk to me, tried to get her to tell me something that made sense. But Gran said not a word.

  And so finally I went back down to them. Andrew Snow sat in that chair by the door, face expressionless, watching Rew, watching me as I came down the stairs.

  “You get years and years for holding people hostage,” Rew was saying to him. “Maybe the death penalty, even.”

  Andrew Snow didn’t answer.

  “You’ll fall asleep, you know,” Rew said. “And then I’ll do it. You can’t stay awake forever.”

  Andrew Snow studied Rew, his lips pressed together in a line.

  “How do you know I won’t hurt someone once you’re gone?” he said. “Don’t you care at all about them?” He nodded toward me, and up in the direction of Gran’s room.

  Rew turned his face away.

  Like those people in the embassy over in Iran, we were captives. Andrew Snow held us, with his grim face and his back to the door. If my figuring was right, then according to ABC, the hostages had been held for 243 days by the time we joined them, in our way. For us, day one was a Thursday. The third of July.

  The heat of that day pressed itself through the windows, even after Andrew Snow had shut them. I went and stood by the kitchen door, looking out the back window at the Zebra Forest, thinking how it would be cool there now, in the shade. Thinking how if this were yesterday, I might be happy.

  Someone came into the kitchen behind me. I thought it was Rew, but when I turned, I found Andrew Snow. He’d managed to chain the living-room door and wedge his chair against it so it would take a while to yank open.

  “They’ll come back for you,” I said. “They don’t just let people walk out of prison, you know.”

  Andrew Snow raised his eyebrows. “You know much about prisons?” he asked me.

  I shrugged.

  He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. Through the kitchen door, I could just see Rew on the stairs, listening, his face pale, his head resting against the rungs of the banister. I guessed all that yelling had tired him out.

  “Then I’ll tell you something,” Andrew Snow said. “Policemen don’t pay attention. They’ve checked their box. They’ve been here. They’re done. They’ve got too many other things to worry about, specifically the forty-nine other guys that headed up that highway. I’m not worried.”

  He sounded like a liar, though. And not even a good one, like Gran.

  So I said, “Yeah, well, you can’t keep us here forever, you know. People will be lo
oking.”

  He didn’t answer right away. But he looked around the kitchen.

  “You have many people here? Does your Gran have a lot of people?”

  There was something funny in his voice when he said it.

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so I looked past him, wishing Rew had an answer. Andrew Snow turned and looked, too, at Rew on the stairs. Then he looked down at his hands and around our kitchen. He seemed to want to say something more but took a long time with it.

  “They call her Morgan here?”

  “What?”

  “Miz Morgan. That’s what they called her this morning. Is that her name here?”

  He asked it soft, like a regular person would. I nodded.

  “You too?”

  “Just at school,” I said, unsure whether I should tell him anything. Not knowing what he meant to do. “It’s for her mother.”

  But he didn’t do anything that I could see except look confused. “Her mother?” he asked.

  It was strange, having a conversation with him, this man who’d so lately dragged me downstairs and nearly smothered me. But I couldn’t see any way out of it, so I said, “That was her last name. Her mother, from Chicago.”

  But that wasn’t what he’d been after, because he sat up in the chair then, looking annoyed. “I know that. Don’t you think I know that? I spent summers with my grandmother Morgan.”

  His grandmother Morgan. I’d never thought of it that way. For a minute, I caught myself wanting to ask him something. Ask him what it had been like in that apartment building, with all the cousins and the shop downstairs. But I clamped my mouth shut before I did. I didn’t think I ought to get too friendly, knowing what I did about him. So I said nothing.

  Finally, he said, “Did your Gran ever talk about me?”

  I was so startled by the question that I just gaped at him for a minute. Then I shook my head.

  “She said you were dead,” I said. “A long time ago.”

  Rew had been listening. He’d gotten up from the stairs so quietly, I hadn’t noticed him until he was standing just outside the kitchen door.

  “You should be dead,” he said. “I wish you were.”

  Andrew Snow didn’t look at him right away. But I saw his mouth go tight and a muscle jump in his jaw. He stared straight ahead for a minute before turning slowly to look at Rew.

  “Well, I’m not dead,” he said in a low voice. “I’m here now. Alive. And I’m staying.”

  Rew flushed. “I hate you,” he said, his voice shaking. “All of us do. Even your own mother wishes you were dead.”

  He rushed upstairs then, and when he’d gone, Andrew Snow dropped his head into his hands.

  For a second, I felt bad at what Rew had said. If I hadn’t known what Andrew Snow had done, I’d have thought maybe he cared that Rew said that. And besides, I didn’t think it was true. Gran didn’t hate Andrew Snow. At least I didn’t think so. But then, maybe I didn’t know much about Gran after all.

  That night, I went upstairs to Rew and found him sitting cross-legged on his bed, writing something in one of the spiral-bound notebooks he had from school.

  He’d refused dinner, and Gran hadn’t come down, so I had eaten a silent supper of leftovers, hastily, at the kitchen table. Andrew Snow asked me for something to eat, too, and even though I wanted to refuse, I didn’t think I ought to. So I made him a sandwich, and took it to him at the door.

  “It’s just peanut butter and jelly,” I told him. “If you want something better, you can get it yourself, I guess.”

  He picked it up and seemed to inspect it. “No,” he said. “This’ll be fine.”

  I walked away from him then, to make Rew something. But from the kitchen, I heard him again. “It’s good,” he said. “Thank you.”

  I made Rew’s sandwich, an extra thick one, and took it up to him with some orange juice in a glass, the way we sometimes did on Mother’s Day for Gran.

  He looked up at me when I came in and surprised me by looking almost happy.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked him. I set the tray down on his bookcase and went over to his bed. “Drawing?”

  He finished whatever he’d been writing, ripped the paper neatly from the notebook, and handed it over to me. In big letters, he’d written, “Please help us. We live at 6 Willow Road, at the far end. A man from the prison is holding us HOSTAGE. Please HELP!”

  My stomach jumped a little when I read it.

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked him. “It’s not like someone’s coming here to get it.”

  The mailman never came to our house. When we’d first moved, Gran had gone into town and set up a post-office box, which is a tiny cabinet where they put your mail over at the post office, and you go and pick it up with a little key. Once, in the third grade, our teacher had wanted us all to write our addresses down so we could have pen pals — other kids we wrote to somewhere in a faraway country. But Gran didn’t like that one bit. She told me then to tell the teacher we didn’t give our address out, and that if she needed me to write a letter, I could write one to Beth, to her house in town. Of course, I didn’t tell the teacher this. I just pretended like I forgot about the assignment, and she let it go.

  But that was when I learned about the post office, and boxes. And then a while later, when it got too hard for Gran to go into town to get the bills, she taught me how to use it. Our box was registered under the name Morgan, and it came with a number, and that funny-size key. Every few weeks, I’d go to the post office and empty it, and that was enough, because all that ever came there were bills, anyway; we never got any letters.

  So we didn’t have any cheerful mailman coming to our door each day. And he was probably happy about it, since we didn’t live near anybody anyway. Which is why I thought Rew had gone off the deep end, writing that letter.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” I said to him again. “You have as good a chance of sending the police a letter as you do of calling them on the phone.” Andrew Snow had been sure to rip the cord out of the phone, in case we got any ideas about using it while he was sleeping or in the bathroom.

  But Rew shook his head, excited. “Look,” he said, and he pulled an envelope out from under the notebook. In big letters across the front, he’d written “Police Chief, Sunshine” as neatly as he could.

  “So?” I asked him.

  “So you wait, Annie. You’ll see,” he said to me. “You think he can keep the house shut up like this forever? In a few days, we’re going to need food, you know. What will he do then? I’ll tell you — he’s going to send someone.”

  I just looked at him, not understanding, and he jumped up onto his knees, leaning toward me to explain it, he was so wound up.

  “It’s gonna be you, don’t you see? He can’t send Gran, and he won’t send me. He’ll send you — just like Gran does! And when you go, you’ll put this right in the mail, and he’ll never know you did it! See? Then you’ll come back, and he’ll think it’s all just fine, that he’s got us, but a day later — pow! — here they come!”

  I didn’t like it. I wanted to be free of Andrew Snow, all right, but Rew’s letter made me uneasy. What would Gran think of it?

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “What if they come and start shooting or something? We could get hurt. And Gran — well, you saw what she did when they came. She was scared they’d hurt him.”

  Rew let out a little puff of exasperation. “They won’t! Don’t worry! Nothing’s going to happen. They’ll just get him and take him away.”

  “I don’t know,” I said again. “Accidents happen. Remember those people that got killed in the spring, trying to rescue those guys in Iran?” I had seen that on ABC, at Beth’s.

  “All right,” Rew said, annoyed. He pulled the letter back from me, picked up his pen, and added another line to his note. Then he shoved it back into my hand. He had added, “And please no shooting” at the bottom and underlined it.

  “Okay?” he said. />
  Still, I didn’t want to take the letter. So I said, “You don’t have the right address, anyway. You can’t just address something ‘Police Chief.’ That’s like kids writing to Santa Claus at the North Pole.”

  Rew shook his head. “It’s not,” he told me. “It’s more like calling the operator in an emergency. I’ll put this on it, see?” He took out a red marker and wrote EMERGENCY across the front of the envelope.

  I looked at it, dismayed.

  But Rew was happier than ever. “Get some stamps,” he told me, excited now. I kept the stamps in my room, because I was the one who sent out the bills most of the time. And, watching Rew move with such agitation, I knew I didn’t have much choice. So I got him one.

  He stamped and sealed his letter and then explained his plan again. “Gran won’t know, and neither will he,” he told me. “They’ll just think they found him out of luck, you know? But they’ll get him, and that’s the point.”

  The more I thought about it, the less I liked it.

  “He’ll go away soon enough,” I told him. “I don’t think this is such a good idea. What if they come and see Gran and think she’s too sick to be with us anymore? Then what’s going to happen? We’ll have more than Adele Parks coming here then!”

  But Rew wouldn’t have it. He moved around the room, so jumpy, I was put in mind of Mrs. Roberts telling the boys to settle down ’cause they had “ants in their pants.”

  “That won’t happen,” he said, real fast. “They’ll see that he did that. She’ll get better once they take him, anyway. You’ll see.”

  I didn’t think so, but I could tell when there was no talking to Rew. He didn’t act angry anymore, exactly, but I had a feeling that his chess mind wasn’t working just then. “Promise me,” he said, pushing the letter into my hands. “Promise me you’ll do it.”

  “But, Rew —” I began, and then he did get mad, a flash of fury reddening his face.

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” he asked me, in a whisper that sounded more like a shout. “Are you on his now?”