My Sister's Keeper

Chapter 21

Moonlight suddenly illuminated the room and I could see Angie a few feet in front of me—a cornered animal clutching a lamp like a baseball bat, ready to strike. I took a step back. "Was Ashleigh Matthews involved in this?"

"I don't know. I've only met a few of the girls, but there's lots of tapes with different names on them."

"They might have called her Ash?" I added.

"Sometimes they use fake names here, but everyone has tapes in the screening room just down the hall."

I backed away. "Thank you, Angie. I'm sorry if I frightened you."

"Just don't tell them I helped you."

She was definitely afraid of something. "I won't. I promise." I cracked the door to the hall, but could see nothing more than the outline of the doorway to the screening room.

The stirrings of the house were masked by the distant rumbling of the surf, the snapping of the flags, and tinkling of their metal clamps. Easing through the door, I stole across the carpeting into the dim light of the screening room and scanned the wall of video cases, but there was too little light to read the hand-written labels. I tugged one off the shelf, opened the cassette, and read the label inside. Lindsey 11.

I replaced the cassette, moved farther along the wall, removed another, and read that one. Madison 15. They're in alphabetical order. I stepped to the beginning of the row and opened a case. It read Ashleigh 1. I removed the cassette and was about to return the empty holder to its place on the shelf when the glass sliding door behind me rolled open.

As the roar of the ocean filled the room, I ducked behind a padded chair fumbling the empty black case out onto the sand-colored carpet just as Fat Albert stepped into the room gliding the door shut behind him. Scrunching as low as possible behind the chair, I forced my lungs not to breathe. They revolted in spastic jolts and my arms and legs went numb.

As Fat Albert crossed the room, I crept backward around the chair. Passing right over the cassette, he continued into the next room and pulled open a refrigerator door spilling light into the room and over the cassette case lying between us. Withdrawing a carton of milk and leaving the door open wide, he stepped back toward me, opened an overhead cabinet, pilfered a glass, and filled it.

The black cassette case lay on the floor six feet in front of him. As he cocked his head back and drank, I thrust an arm out and snatched the case. He drained the glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, poured another glassful, turned, and set the carton back in the refrigerator. When the door closed, the house returned to total darkness. I listened as he shuffled across the kitchen, then heard nothing but the muffled sound of the wind and surf. I didn't know if he'd left the kitchen or not. I slid the empty case back into its rightful place on the shelf, tucked the videotape into the back of my trousers, and covered it with my shirttail. With sweat dripping off my chin, I nudged the sliding glass door open and the sound of the surf again thundered in. Squeezing through the crack, I eased it shut behind me and vaulted down the stairs.

My damp clothes turned icy stiff as I scooted down the driveway toward the road.

A voice from the front porch called out. "You there!"

Although my body jumped, I pretended I hadn't heard it and continued down the drive acting a little drunk.

"Hey," the voice shouted. "This is private property! You come through here again and I'll have you arrested. Or worse!"

I staggered around to face the man on the porch and executed my best drunken-Englishman accent, "Truly sorry. Won't happen again." It was Fat Albert. I bowed clumsily and stumbled on down the drive, my knees so weak I feared they'd give out on the next step.

"I won't be so sociable next time," he called behind me.

"Right-o. Sorry, ol' Chap," I shouted back over my shoulder staggering forward. As I reached the edge of the highway, I heard a car engine crank, looked back, and saw a man running down the drive toward me. As the car's lights popped on and it squealed from under the house, my heart leapt into my throat. I bolted across the road and up the opposite drive, tossed the cassette in the saddlebag, hopped on the bike, and cranked it to life. The car picked up the man running, then sped across the highway and was right behind me as I spun out the backside of the property, crossed another sandy lot, and fled out a different road. I pushed the bike to speeds of over 70 M.P.H. with my helmet flapping off the side and the sedan swerving back and forth across the road just a few car lengths behind me.

Managing to get my helmet on, I cut through another sandy lot back to the beach road hoping for more cars, but summer was still officially two months away and traffic was light. I passed one slow moving vehicle, but the sedan also cruised by it and got even closer. As I neared the next car, it made an abrupt left turn causing me to skid on the sandy pavement and bounce off a blue and white 50s-era Chevy parked on the shoulder of the road. I smacked the pavement and got hung up under the bike as it made a 360-degree spin on the roadway and skidded into the deep sand of a beach access ramp.

Pain flared through my left leg as I wriggled out from under the bike and strained to lift it. The sedan slowed, its tires squalling, then swerved and headed straight for me.

Throwing my leg over the bike, I rammed the throttle and—with the back tire spinning in the loose sand—wobbled up the slippery wooden ramp and clunked onto the beach. As the bike hit the sand, it lurched forward just as the sedan came crashing into the sand behind me and stopped dead. I heard their engine racing and their tires spinning freely in the sand as I sped off down the beach.