Seconds Away

CHAPTER 2

An hour later I sat in my backyard-or really, my uncle Myron’s backyard-and filled in Ema. As always, Ema was dressed entirely in a shade of black that matched her hair. She wore black eye makeup. There was a silver skull-and-crossbones ring on her middle finger and more earrings than I could count.

Ema’s natural disposition leaned toward the sullen side, but right now she stared at me as though I had suddenly sprouted a third arm.

“You just left?” Ema said.

“What was I supposed to do?” I countered. “Beat the information out of an old woman?”

“I don’t know. But how could you just leave?”

“She went upstairs. What was I going to do, follow her? Suppose-I don’t know-suppose she started undressing or something.”

“Ugh,” Ema said, “that’s just gross.”

“See?”

Ema wasn’t even fifteen but she sported a fair amount of tattoos. She was maybe five-four and what most in our society would call on the large side. When we met only a few weeks ago, she sat by herself for lunch at the outcast table. She claimed to prefer it.

Ema stared at the old black-and-white photograph. “Mickey?”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t really believe that this is the same guy.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but…” I stopped.

Ema had this way about her. Her outward shell, the one she showed pretty much the entire world, was defensive and surly. Ema was not what one would call conventionally beautiful, but when she looked at me like she did now with her big brown eyes, with all the concentration and caring emanating from her face, there was something almost celestial about her.

“Go on,” she said.

“The accident,” I began. “It was the worst moment of my life, times ten. My father…” The memories flooded me. I was an only child. The three of us lived overseas for pretty much my entire life, blissfully trekking through the most obscure corners of the world. I thought that we were carefree nomads, international bohemians who worked for various charities. I didn’t realize how much more there was to it.

“It’s okay,” Ema said.

But it was hard to reveal more. When you travel that much, you don’t get to make many (or really, any) friends. It was one of the reasons I wanted so much to settle down, why my father ultimately quit his job and moved us to California and signed me up for a real school and, well, died. So you see, what happened after we returned to the United States-my father’s death, my mother’s downward spiral-was my fault. No matter how you wanted to slice it, it was on me.

“If you don’t want to tell me…,” Ema began.

“No, I do.”

Again she gave me the big eyes, the ones that seemed so focused, so understanding and kind.

“The accident,” I said. “It took away everything. It killed my dad. It shattered my mom.”

I didn’t bother going into what it had done to me-how I knew that I would never get over it. That wasn’t relevant here. I was trying to figure out how to transition this back to the paramedic and the man in the photograph.

My words came slower now. “When you experience something like that, when something happens so suddenly and destroys everything in your life… you remember everything about it. Every single detail. Does that make sense?”

“Sure.”

“So that paramedic? He was the first one to let me know that my dad was gone. You don’t forget what that guy looks like. You just don’t.”

We sat there another minute in silence. I looked at the basketball rim. Uncle Myron had gotten a new one when he knew that I’d be living with him. We both found solace in it, in basketball, in the slow dribble, in the fadeaway jumper, in the way the ball goes swish through the hoop. Basketball is the one thing I have in common with the uncle I’m forced to live with and I can’t quite forgive.

I can’t forgive him. And, I guess, I can’t forgive me either.

Maybe that was something else Uncle Myron and I had in common.

“Don’t bite my head off, okay?” Ema said.

“Okay.”

“I understand everything you said. You know that. And, well, this past week has been absolutely loony. I know that too. But can we just look at this rationally for a second?”

“No,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I know how this looks rationally. It looks like I should be locked in a padded room.”

Ema smiled. “Well, yeah, there’s that. But just so we cover all the bases, let’s go through it step by step, okay? Just to make sure I have this straight.”

I nodded grudgingly.

“One”-she held up a finger with pinot noir nail polish-“you’re walking to school last week and you go past the creepy Bat Lady’s house and even though you don’t know her, have never seen her before, she tells you that your father is alive.”

“Right.”

“Spooky, right? I mean, how did she even know who you were or that your father was killed-and what would possess her to say such a thing?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Neither do I. So let’s move to two.” Ema held up a second finger, the one with the skull ring and canary-yellow polish. “A week later, after we go through hell and back, Bat Lady tells you that her real name is Lizzy Sobek, the famous Holocaust heroine no one has seen since the end of World War Two. Then she hands you a photograph of this old Nazi who killed her father. And you think it’s the same guy who took your dad away on a stretcher.” Ema spread her hands. “That about sum it up?”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay, good, we’re getting somewhere now.”

“We are?”

She shushed me with a hand gesture. “Let’s skip for a moment the fact that somehow the guy hasn’t aged a day in seventy years.”

“Okay.”

“Here’s the other thing: You always describe the paramedic as having sandy-blond hair and green eyes.”

“Right.”

“That’s what you remember best about him, right? The green eyes. I think you said they had yellow circles around the pupils or something.”

“Right, so?”

“But, Mickey?” Ema tilted her head. Her voice was gentler now. “This photograph is in black and white.”

I said nothing.

“You can’t see any colors. How could you tell, for example, that his eyes are green? You can’t, can you?”

“I guess not,” I heard myself say.

“So let’s put it plainly,” Ema said. “What scenario is more likely? That the Butcher of Lodz has a passing resemblance to a paramedic and you imagined more-or that a ninety-year-old Nazi is now a young paramedic working in California?”

She had a point, of course. I knew that I wasn’t thinking straight. In the past week I’d been beaten up and nearly killed. I had seen a man shot in the head, and I was forced to stand by helplessly while Ema had come within seconds of having her throat slashed.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the really stunning part.

Ema stood, brushed herself off, and started to walk away. “Time for me to go.”

“Where?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She did this all the time-just disappeared like this. “Let me walk you,” I said.

Ema put her hands on her hips and frowned at me.

“It’s getting late. It might not be safe.”

“You’re kidding me, right? What am I, four years old?”

But that wasn’t it. For some reason, Ema wouldn’t show me where she lived. She always just vanished into the woods. We had quickly become close, yes, maybe the closest friends either of us had ever had, but we both still had our secrets.

Ema stopped when she reached the end of the yard. “Mickey?”

“What?”

“About the photograph.”

“Yes?”

She took her time before she said, “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

I waited for her to say more. She didn’t.

“So what then?” I asked. “If I’m not crazy, what am I? Falsely hopeful?”

Ema considered that. “Probably. But there is another side to this whole thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe I’m crazy too,” she said, “but I believe you.”

I stood and walked toward her. I’m six-four, so I towered over her. We made, I’m sure, an odd pair.

She looked up at me and said, “I don’t know how or why, and, yeah, I know all the arguments against it. But I believe you.”

I was so grateful, I wanted to cry.

“The question is, what are we going to do about it?” Ema asked.

I arched an eyebrow. “We?”

“Sure.”

“Not this time, Ema. I’ve put you in enough danger.”

She frowned again. “Could you be more patronizing?”

“I have to handle this on my own.”

“No, Mickey, you don’t. Whatever this is, whatever is going on here with you and the Bat Lady, I’m part of it.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I settled for, “Let’s sleep on it and talk in the morning, okay?”

She turned and started back through the yard. “You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“This all started with a crazy old lady telling you that your father was still alive. But now, well, I’m not so sure she’s crazy.”

Ema disappeared into the night. I picked up the basketball, lost in the-and, yes, I know how this will sound-Zen-like quality of shooting. After all that had happened, I longed for a little peace and quiet.

But I wouldn’t get it.

I thought that it was bad then, but soon I would learn just how bad it could get.