INTRUSION.
A novel.
by Elaine Babich.
Dedication.
I would like to thank my husband of nineteen years for putting up with a wife who gets up at three a.m. to write.
Acknowledgments.
I would like to thank Eve Paludan for the wonderful editing job.
CHAPTER ONE.
I was in my living room reading a book, which I did most of the time, when my little brother, Jacob, came running in the house. He was crying, he was dirty and his gla.s.ses were missing.
My mom came running from the kitchen she had been cooking dinner,"What in the world...?" she said.
"Some boys beat me up and took my basketball," Jacob said, blubbering.
"Where are your gla.s.ses?" my mother said.
"Oh, yeah, and they broke my gla.s.ses," Jacob said through his tears.
My mother sighed and I got off the couch, I walked over to them.
Jacob"s face was streaked with dirt and tears.
"Who did this?" I asked angrily.
Jacob stopped crying, Eugene and his friends," he said.
I was furious. Jacob had had trouble with Eugene before. Eugene was a bully and he was Jacob"s age, but was a head taller.
"I am going down there," I said.
"No, you are not," my mother said.
"Why not?" I was eight years older than Jacob, who was seven.
"Your father and I will handle this, Whitney," she said grimly.
"Where was Jordan during all this?" I asked. Jordan was my other little brother, who was nine.
"I don"t know," Jacob sniffled.
"Go wash your face and we will have a nice dinner, then when your father gets home, we will go get your basketball," my mom said, my father rarely ate dinner with us, he was an engineer for a major airline and he was very busy and worked long, odd hours.
This got Jacob"s attention, that Mom was going to wait for Dad and then collect his ball.
"How are you going to do that?" he asked.
"We will just go to this Eugene"s house and get it," my mom said.
"I don"t know where he lives," Jacob said.
"You let your father and I worry about that," she said.
"Okay," he said.
"Now scoot! Go wash the tears and dirt from your face," Mom said.
"I think I know where Eugene lives. He is the little brother of a friend of mine at school. I went to her house once," I said.
"Then you can go with us," she said.
I was glad, because I wanted to punch this guy, Eugene, in the face. I wouldn"t do it, though. I was too old to fight like that anymore, I used to go and fight with my brother"s tormentors until my freshman year, but I was a soph.o.m.ore now and I needed to grow up.
Jordan came home and heard all about Jacob"s ordeal. He was angry, too.
We had dinner and then we waited for my father to get home, when my father got home, he heard all about Jacob while he ate his warmed-up dinner. He was angry, I could tell. His face got sort of red and a vein stuck out in his forehead.
"Do you think you know where this Eugene lives?" he asked me.
"I think so," I said.
"You and I are going over there. Your mother doesn"t need this stress," he said.
"Paul, I want to go," my mother said.
"If you want to go that is fine, Janet, but I think the boys should go, too. Jacob needs to identify the boy who broke his gla.s.ses and stole his basketball," my father said.
Jacob looked terrified. "I don"t want to go," he whined.
"You are going and that is it," my father said.
We waited for my father to change his clothes, then we all walked out to the car. I was excited because I wanted to see what would happen.
The neighborhood where I directed my father to wasn"t as nice as ours. We lived in a neighborhood known as "the flower track." All the trees bloomed with beautiful flowers in the spring. We were lucky enough to have purple flowers that got everywhere when they fell. I was the lucky one to sweep them up!
I located the house where I thought Trina lived. She was the girl who I was sure was Eugene"s sister.
Their house was sort of rundown, it needed painting, and the lawn hadn"t seen a lawnmower in months.
We all got out of the car and went to the door, we looked like an angry mob, and we were. A woman answered the door after we knocked. She looked a little startled to see all of us at her door.
"Is your husband here?" my father asked. "I need to speak with him."
"We"re divorced," the woman said. "What"s this about?"
"Does a Eugene live here?" my father asked.
"Yes, Eugene lives here. What has he done now?" she asked, exasperated.
"I would like to talk to him if that is all right with you," my father said.
"Eugene!" she screamed.
The boy I knew as Eugene came sauntering to the door.
"Yeah?" he said, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops and angling a hip toward us.
"This man wants to talk to you," she said.
"Did you break my son"s gla.s.ses and steal his basketball?" my father asked Eugene.
"His name wasn"t on the basketball," he said stupidly.
"Did you break his gla.s.ses?" my father asked.
"Yes," Eugene said honestly.
"Oh, Eugene," his mother whined.
"I expect you to pay for them," my father said.
"We don"t have any money," his mother said.
"Then I expect Eugene to work it off by doing my lawn and yours," my father said.
"We don"t have a lawnmower," Eugene said.
"We do," my father said.
"Oh," Eugene said.
"I want the basketball back now," my father said.
Eugene left, and he came back with Jacob"s basketball and handed it to my dad.
"I expect you to be at my house tomorrow to do my lawn," my father told him. The next day was Sat.u.r.day.
"I don"t know where you live."
My father gave him the address, Eugene"s mother apologized and we left.
When we got in the car, I asked my dad if he thought Eugene would come over to do the lawn.
"Probably not, but I think we scared him," my father said.
"Oh, Paul," my mother said, laughing.
We all kind of smiled, I thought it served Eugene right if he was scared. I hated that bully for picking on Jacob.
It was springtime and the days were getting longer. It wasn"t quite dark when we arrived home.
Just as we pulled up into the driveway, I saw some guy in a black tee with a logo on it, black jeans and a ball cap. He was putting a pizza parlor flyer on our front doork.n.o.b. He had a stack of them in his hand.
"Hi," I said, as I pa.s.sed him and grabbed the flyer off our doork.n.o.b. He just kept walking away and looking down at the flyers in his hand.
I smiled when I saw the name of the place on the coupon. "We go there every Sunday!" I called after him, but he was already putting the door-hanger ad on Chanda"s, my best friend, house.
I gave my mom the pizza coupon and she put it in her purse.
I went to my room and finished reading my book. I was a speed reader. I could read a book in a day if I didn"t have school.
That evening, my mother came to my room to tuck me into bed. She still did this even though I was in high school.
"I am proud of you that you didn"t say anything when we went to Eugene"s door," she said.
"I wanted to, but I think Dad handled it pretty well," I said.
"I should say so," my mother said smiling.
"Do you think he will show up to do our lawn?" I asked her.
"I doubt it. Did you see his lawn? I don"t think he even knows how to use a lawnmower," my mother said.
"Well, he did say he didn"t own one," I said.
"That is true," she said making me into a burrito by tucking all the sides of my blanket around me. I usually got hot in the night and tore the whole thing off of me, but it was the thought that counted. She kissed me goodnight and I fell asleep.
I was surprised to hear the sound of a lawnmower when I woke up. I was still in my pajamas and I went to the door.