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At the front of the classroom, Mr. Swanson (the kids called him Swansonius Maximus among themselves) was fervently trying to explain the subtl
e difference between hortatory and jussive subjunctive independent clauses. But this close to lunch, and now with the smell of the cafeteria fries wafting in through the open door, he had about as much of a chance as Carthage during the Third Punic War.
Undeterred, Swansonius continued on, and Brian suddenly remembered the honey-nut clusters Mary Catherine always stuck in the side pocket of his knapsack. He could ask for a bathroom break and then do a quick drive-by to his locker, down the hall, around the corner, he thought. Going to your locker during classes was technically a detention offense, but he was Starvin’ Marvin.
Speaking of which, Brian thought, turning around to glance hopefully at Marvin, in the next row. But Big Marv only looked away. Still pissed at him.
Marvin still wasn’t talking to him after what he had pulled in the park with Big Flicka. Marvin had assured him it wasn’t over. That he didn’t know what he was doing. That Flicka wasn’t stupid. That he knew when someone had set him up, and that he would kill him if he got out on bail.
Brian hadn’t known what to say to that, except that Marvin was the one who had started it, bringing a damn gun into their house. He raised his hand and asked to be excused.
Five minutes later, Brian had scarfed down both honey-nut clusters from his locker and had just finished washing them down at a hall water fountain when he heard the shoe squeak down the deserted hall to his right. He tensed at first, before he looked, thinking it was the dreaded Brother Rob, the dean of discipline, about to crack him for being out of class. Then he looked up, and boy, was he wrong.
Brian’s eyes opened to their outer limits.
Guess Big Flicka made bail after all, came a tiny scared voice from somewhere far off inside his head.
He didn’t know how. He didn’t know why. All he knew was that the crazy-ass drug dealer he’d pulled a fast one on was marching down the middle of the hall!
Their eyes met. Flicka’s were going wide, lighting up with recognition.
Then he was reaching into the pocket of his big black goose down parka.
Brian didn’t wait to see what he was reaching for. He just bolted, made the hall corner, saw the outside emergency exit door, and hit its push bar at a run.
Out in the cold, he ran across the dead hard grass of the football field behind the school in his black dress shoes faster than he ever had in cleats. A moment later, the emergency siren blaring in the distance behind him was interrupted by a flat, hard firecrackerlike pop.
He started zigzagging then, past the twenty, the ten, and then into and out of the end zone, not breaking his sprinting and dodging until he hit the stand of trees on the other side of the field’s chest-high fence.
Past the trees, he came upon the busy four-lane road of Southern Boulevard. With no time to look, he ran right out into traffic. He almost got hit, first by a brown Mustang, then by a white Euro delivery van. Then he was on the other side, running alongside a tall hedge.
The hedge ended suddenly and opened onto a parking lot with a sign beside its driveway that said THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN. There had to be a cop or something, he thought as he saw a guard booth.
Please, God. Please help me, he prayed as he ran. I don’t want to die.
Chapter 83
Twenty feet up the park road, past the empty guard booth, Brian Bennett spotted a long set of cement steps on his left-hand side and pounded up them with everything he had.
The worn concrete treads flew past under his shoes. In twos, sometimes threes. He hardly felt them. He could feel only one thing. The massive power of his sixteen-year desire to live, boosting adrenaline into his bloodstream like nitro into a funny car’s engine.
He topped the steps without breaking stride and hit a path that skirted the base of a vast grass hill. He looked about frantically. The empty path. The empty hill. Dead gray trees. The dead gray sky. No cops. No security. Nobody at all. It was like the entire park was abandoned, the entire Bronx, the entire planet.
It was just him and Big Flicka now, he thought as sweat began to sting his eyes. He and his own personal psycho killer, left all alone in this calming urban nature oasis to play the deadliest game of tag in world history.
The botanical garden’s famous and immense domed greenhouse appeared as the path crested a rise. He’d been to the garden a few times with his family when he was a kid, but he’d never looked at the greenhouse before. It looked Victorian and somehow futuristic at the same time. Like something out of an H. G. Wells novel.
Twenty flat-out running seconds later, he reached it and ripped open its door.
And stopped and stood blinking.
The building was even weirder inside than out, an Alice in Wonderland indoor forest world of stone paths meandering in multiple directions among green grass and bushes and trees and wildflowers. You could smell the sweetness of the flowers in the suddenly warm air. As the door clicked behind him, he waited to hear bird chirps or maybe crickets. Instead, it was dead silent.
Outside inside upside down, he thought as he hurried left down an interior woodland path.
“Hello? Is there anybody here? Hello? Help!” he called.
Another twenty yards down the path, beyond a huge weeping willow, he pulled a French door. This even curiouser room of the enclosed English garden had an actual pond on its other side, with lily pads and a bronze fountain gurgling in its center.
