Gotta go.
“That’s how he got to me when I was young,” said Penelope, pausing the CD, a faraway look on her face. “Back when I was eleven, he was still coming through Mobile twice a year. He didn’t have a church yet. Just his van or motor home. But he always made sure my family was invited to his guest appearances, and his special tent programs. We were a very religious family. Fundamentalists. We went to anything Pastor Atlas did, if it was in driving distance. Reggie paid special attention to my mother and father. But just like with Daley, his private attention was aimed at me. I came to believe that he was truly holy. When he looked at me, he must have seen an adoring little angel. And a willing victim. I had no real idea what he was doing. Neither did my parents.”
Penelope still had the remote, worrying it in both hands, the force of her memories showing through. She accidentally hit the play button, flinching when Daley said, “I’m back!” Found the pause, then looked at me.
“But I know exactly what he’s doing to Daley,” she said. “Reggie Atlas is going to have to go through me first. I taught her from an early age that most men are wicked at best, and some are evil. And I was able to shape that thought into the person of Pastor Reggie Atlas. When she became old enough to understand. To be aware of him. To watch out for him. Should he approach. As I knew he would. We moved and moved and moved. My daughter. My sister. My legal charge. The first time I saw him near her was at one of her soccer games. She was nine. I was walking her back to the car after the game, and he was watching us from behind the wheel of a black truck. I acted like I hadn’t seen him. Pulled the pepper spray out of my purse, then charged him. He sped out of the lot. His engine had been running, just in case. Cagey Reggie. And guess what I did?”
“You moved again.”
“You bet we did. By the time we got to Phoenix I had to admit that Reggie could find us no matter where we went. He was big. He was rich. He had people to keep track of us. We were easy. I was getting very tired. I picked out Oceanside because it sounded so good. Beside an ocean. And it was close to San Diego and lots of technical writing for me to do. And just after I sign the lease on this place and get Daley enrolled at Monarch, guess what?”
“Reggie Atlas breaks ground on his Cathedral by the Sea,” I said. “Pretty much right next door.”
A strange expression from Penelope then, hostility, with notes of mayhem. “At which time I decided to stop running. But he began to close his net around her. And I can’t control her anymore, and she has no fear of me or anyone. No fear of her teachers or Chancellor Stahl, or her sometimes much-older friends, or of ill-tempered Nick Moreno. No fear of Reggie Atlas, certainly. She told me a couple of weeks ago that she felt like running away with him just to get away from me. He would divorce his wife and she’d marry him and have hundreds of his children. Be free of me and my silly rules forever. Get her damned Snapchat and Instagram back.”
I watched the anger recede from her face, replaced by a blank long-distance stare at the window and the street. Without breaking that stare, she pointed the remote at the boom box again.
29
Daley’s diary wasn’t all about Reggie Atlas. She talked about her “really cool little house in Oceanside,” and her new school, and the strict Chancellor Stahl, and two friends she’d already made. And an interesting guy named Nick who drove a van and had a mobile dog-walking business.
I’m back!
So Max is kind of a friend, and this guy Nick and Max’s mom picked up Max after school today and Nick smiled at me when he saw me looking at the picture of the dog on his van. And he tells me the dog is called a papillon, which is French for butterfly because of the ears, and I said duh, everybody knows that. And I could see this made Nick feel dumb and a little bit angry, too, and I thought, well, there’s your basic boy stuck inside an older man’s body. Great face, though, Nick’s — alluring eyes and a beautiful smile. Told me Max’s mom’s car was in the shop so he was helping her out, and did I need a ride home, too? So I said yeah, why not, because Alanis was sick that day and Carrie was going to this club called Alchemy 101 and I just wanted to go home and kick it, maybe play some guitar and have some cookies. And that’s what I did.
I’m outta here.
I looked up and caught Penelope studying me. She had known Nick. She understood Daley’s proximity to his violent death, how close she had come to brushing up against it. I thought of Nick, too, and the gruesome end that Connor Donald and Eric Glassen had provided him.
Daley wondered how her former BFF Bellamy was doing. Wondered if Alanis and Carrie would turn out to be good friends. Said Nick had given her the ride home and said he could do that the next day, too, because Max’s mom’s car would be in the body shop the rest of the week.
It struck me that Daley Rideout was talking to herself and her CD recorder because she really had no one else to talk to. In Daley’s mind, her “sister” was paranoid and controlling. Bellamy was hundreds of miles away and Daley had had no social media to keep in touch with her best friend. She didn’t know Alanis or Carrie well enough to confide in them. Leaving her no one but stern grown-ups and nineteen-year-old Nick Moreno with the beautiful smile and eyes that had alluringly roamed her way.
“A good time for Reggie Atlas to show up in her life again,” I said.
“Interesting you would say that.”
I’m back!
Been three weeks now and I don’t love Monarch, but Nick is turning out to be pretty cool, and Alanis and Carrie really rock and there’s this teen club I’ve heard about that’s supposed to have good music. I’ve been playing a lot. I wrote, like, three songs since we moved to Oceanside! I get true satisfication from writing songs. I’m hoping Pen gets me the Martin Backpacker I’m totally craving. Only two hundred and twenty-nine bucks. Got a birthday coming up, baby. Funniest thing, I saw Reggie Atlas and two other guys at Monarch today. He gave me a big smile and said he was there to see Chancellor Stahl about a church-sponsored endowment thingy, which I think means money. I said what a small world to see you here, and Reggie said God works in mysterious ways. We all sat for a minute in the quad, had drinks from the cafeteria, then Chancellor Stahl had another meeting and Reggie told his friends let’s go see that new athletic field and we followed them over. I know Pen hates him and I don’t know why, other than she says he’s got cancer of the soul. Must be painful. We fell behind his friends and talked. He said he had been praying for me a lot and still felt like we were ghosts flying through each other and he’d really meant it when he said we could fly together side by side in Jesus. I told him I was still waiting for that ticket and he said can you come to my new church in Encinitas, it’s not finished yet, but I’ll show it to you and you can see what a beautiful home for Jesus it’s going to be. He said he could send a car and driver for me when Penelope wasn’t home from work yet. Pen just had to think I was going to go to some usual place for a few hours — like maybe studying at a friend’s house, or to the library, or maybe practicing in the music room after school. You’re still playing your guitar and writing songs, aren’t you? I said yes, and Reggie said, okay, your sister gets home from work tomorrow at five forty-five, so you just be at the corner of Seagaze and Myers at exactly five fifteen. You know where that is, don’t you? I said duh, like I haven’t lived here for almost a month. Don’t you harassinate me, Pastor Atlas! And Reggie smiled down at me and just when I’m getting irate that he’s treating me like a child my heart reaches out to him and I say, sure okay, I’ll be there, Pastor Reggie.