Unwritten Rules of Impossible Things Read online

Gramm told him. “Do you know what I mean? Yes, I do think you do. Philip Galvez,” he repeated and pulled out a little black notebook and flipped a few pages.

  “Let me see, yes right here. Truancy, check. Vagrancy, check. Suspicion of burglary, check. Wanted for questioning. Check. Seems like he’s filled up a page in my book, and him only twelve, or is it eleven? No matter. One more line in my book, one tiny mistake, that’s all it will take and your friend is going to juvie. You want to be messed up with that? I don’t think so, boy. Everyone says you’re a good boy. A nice boy. A smart boy. Why are you hanging around, like you said, with a loser like that?”

  “Phil’s awesome!” Ben spoke up again, then shrank back in his seat at a glare from the cop.

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” Marcus insisted. The large officer rose to his feet.

  “Well, you’re back,” he said, looking at Kristen. “I guess that’s all we can do for right now. You wanted him back. Now you’ve got him. I’d teach him a lesson, myself,” he added, but held up his paws and continued, “not that I’m specifying any particular action. It’s not in my line.”

  “Thank you officer,” Kristen said as she followed him out to the dock. “I really appreciate your help.”

  He waved away her words and ambled down to the street and waddled away. He had parked his car around the corner in order to keep a low profile, and not warn the kid in advance. He had his suspicions, but then again, he always did.

  In the kitchen, Marcus braced himself for round two, but this one went easy. Kristen was so relieved about his return that all she could do was shake a little and cry. He had no idea, he couldn’t have known, why didn’t he call, she just kept repeating how worried she was, how late she’d stayed up, how she’d fretted all day and waited and waited and couldn’t go in to work and it cost her a sick day and on and on for a while. Marcus hadn’t eaten in more than a day but he wasn’t that hungry. All he wanted was to get away, so he begged off, he said he was tired and went into his room and crawled up to his bunk. Ben followed shortly and lay down on his own.

  The boys remained quiet for some time, Ben listening to his older brother’s breathing to determine his state, Marcus staring up at the ceiling. How could he sleep? Hadn’t he just been sleeping all day? That photo. The things the cop said. He’d been seen? How could he have been seen? What did it mean? All at once, his brother spoke up.

  “I saw you too,” Ben quietly said. Marcus leaned over from the top bunk and looked down at the boy, who lay on his back, keeping perfectly still as if that would help him somehow.

  “When?” Marcus asked.

  “This morning when I went out to play. I thought I might see you, and I did. I saw you and Phil, but just for a moment.”

  “Where?”

  “On the tracks,” Ben replied. “You were running.”

  “Where to?”

  “To the old freight train bridge. I thought that I saw you go up. It was funny.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were in front. You know what I mean? You were both carrying stuff, in some kind of sacks, and you were both running, but you were in front, way ahead. That was weird because, I don’t know. You could never run faster than Phil, but there you were, running faster than him. I didn’t tell anyone. It didn’t seem right. I wanted to follow but Kristen called me back in.”

  Marcus rolled back onto his bed, and sighed. He was beginning to get the picture. They had been seen, all right, but ‘they’ wasn’t them. It was ‘them’.

  Chapter Seven

  Marina Galvez knew one thing for sure. She should have listened to her nose because even before that so-called honeymoon was over she couldn't stand the smell of him. In fact, one of the main reasons she went to work at Uncle Shrimpie's was to dominate the odor of their home. She was raised in the school of ‘you made your bed so you’ve got to lie in it’, and so lie in it she did. The entire family was a lie. Way back when she was still as short as she was now but a whole lot lighter, Mister Pete (as he was known even then) made the biggest impression on her little girl brain. He knew how to fix almost anything, and how to smile with big white teeth, and how to make the other boys curl up and run off. Pete would come driving down the street in his fully customized silver El Camino with the blue flames licking up from the bumpers, and when he came to a stop at the corner where she was standing, waiting to cross the street, he leaned out the window and hollered.

  “You devil you!”

  Marina blushed to the seat of her pants and of course she hopped right in when he pushed open the door, and of course it was a whirlwind romance and how was she to know, a girl of seventeen with no experience of the world, that this man was not the right man for the woman she would someday become. She was becoming that woman now. Foolish to have that child at that age, and what did she know about children? No more than the other girls they paid to likewise fail in raising the boy. But she found her own way, little by little, by ignoring what she didn’t want to see and moving along as if she were free to do whatever she pleased. Pete didn’t care. He’d come to hate her as much as she grew to loathe him.

  She'd made herself a nice, independent life, working the night shift, having the house to herself most of the time, spending a lot of her weekends sailing on the river with Alexei Zuprevin, an elderly Russian mathematician, or studying topographical maps with Hercules Suarez, a gentle young chef with an impeccable and quite suitable mustache. There were minor romances with a customer here and there, a girlfriend or two now and then to just chat. Her traditional family had melted away, relatives had moved on to Texas and Florida, leaving nobody behind. Her own child was a stranger to her. She kept telling herself she was doing her job, keeping the kitchen filled up with food and the boy had his room after all, and the stuff that he asked for - not much and hardly ever - she bought him and was glad to do that.

  How had she missed his whole childhood? This was the question that blared through her brain as she stood in the hallway that morning. Phil and Marcus walked in the front door and she saw her own son for the first time in years. Oh my, how he’d grown! He was taller than her. Well, of course he was that. Marina was only five two. Phil must have been taller for years and yet now she was shocked and she stared at the boy in a daze. He didn’t say anything to her but started to walk right on past, towards the stairs.

  “Philip,” she blurted out, hands on her hips. The boy stopped, and turned slowly to face her.

  “My boy,” she declared, and tears filled her eyes. The Dark Rider cocked his head slightly.

  “Can I do something for you?” he said slowly.

  “Why, I” Marina started to say and then stopped. She couldn’t think of the words. She felt like a spell had been broken, all the years fell away and she was a young mother again, full of baby and feeling it kick, and holding her hands on her belly, she said.

  “It’s just been so long since we talked.”

  “Not now,” Phil replied, and started walking away.

  “No, wait,” she called out, and he stopped once again, Marcus standing beside him.

  “Who’s your little friend?” she asked and immediately felt like an idiot. What kind of a thing was that to say?

  “I mean, your friend?” she quickly retracted, but Marcus and Phil merely looked at each other and shrugged. Looking back at his mom, Phil replied,

  “We have things to do. To not be disturbed. Please?”

  “Oh,” Marina said with a sigh, and the two boys took that as a ‘go’ and moved on. They marched up the stairs to Phil’s room, and Marina slowly followed to the foot of the staircase.

  “Would you boys like some soup?” she called up, but there was no reply, just the sound of Phil’s door closing softly.

  Marina walked into the kitchen and began making soup anyway, tortilla soup, the way her mother would make it. My mother, she thought for the first time in years. How come I’ve forgotten my mother? How the years go on by, how we make these cocoons, and then stick ourselves
in them and never peek out. Who am I now and why am I here? The whole house seemed quiet and cold.

  A half hour went by without thinking. She carried two bowls full of steaming hot soup carefully up to Phil’s room and knocked gently, but there was no answer. She put the bowls down, and opened the door. They were gone. She didn’t know how they had left without her noticing. The window was open. Maybe they went out that way. Marina giggled at the thought of the boys sneaking out, making the two story jump to the lawn. It’s what she would have done at their age. She noticed that Phil’s computer was on and stepped over to take a quick look. It was interesting. Blueprints. A notepad with handwritten squiggles. A folder with pages stuck out. Marina sat down and leafed through it, amazed at the things she was seeing. She knew nothing about engineering and yet, it was somehow not foreign to her. She felt light, almost giddy. So that’s how it is, she said to herself, and she read and she read and she smiled as she thought.

  Chapter Eight

  Most mornings Marina would have a little breakfast, do a bit of reading and go to bed, but this morning she was all abuzz with a crackling sort of energy. She stayed up in Phil’s room, absorbing information for a few hours, and then got busy with her own ideas. She grabbed a notebook and a pencil and, sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of random junk, began rapidly