As soon as I got into town, I drove over to meet everybody at Hunter’s girlfriend’s house. She lived on Mary Street in a carriage house that belonged to a widowed old lady that lived in the front house and drove a BMW.
“Did you see that white van outside?” Hunter asked as we settled into the couch. I wriggled my nose at the weed smoke that filled the room, wondering if I’d get high and freak out just from smelling it. Amalia was puffing on the blunt Lee had passed her, and her roommate Sam was starting up his videogame.
“What white van?” I asked. I hadn’t seen one, but I recalled our paranoia senior year, when a nondescript white van had parked across the street from our house. We thought for a whole week it was an FBI or a police van. We stopped using our cellphones for anything drug related, and we started writing each other messages instead of saying certain things out loud. After five days of that somebody found out that one of our neighbors had a friend in town. It was his van, and at the end of the week he continued on his road trip. I hadn’t seen the van Hunter was talking about this time, but I was fairly sure it was a similar case of paranoia.
“There was a white van across the street,” he said. “It’s made to look like a flower delivery van, but I googled the company name and it doesn’t exist.”
At this point I didn’t know anything about the whole drug bust fiasco or the murder, so I asked him why anyone would want to spy on this house of all places. Everyone, including Sam who was being attacked by monsters in his videogame, all turned to look at Hunter and see how he’d respond.
“No reason,” he said. “I just thought the van looked suspicious.”
Amalia passed the blunt to Lee and said, “So how is New Orleans, Theo? Are you liking being home?”
It wasn’t until it was posed to me directly that I realized how truly depressed I’d been the last five months, and the idea of going right back home at the end of the weekend was almost enough to start me crying. I said, “Yeah, I’m liking it. I’ve been reading a lot as always, and I took a job as a house painter, which is weird but not too bad. It’s kind of zen, actually. Wax on, wax off, and all that.”
“Hit this blunt, man,” Lee said, holding it out to me. It was fat and crooked as a witch’s finger, and my heart rate picked up immediately at the thought of smoking.
“Nah, I shouldn’t,” I said. “I’ve actually kind of stopped smoking since I got home.”
Hunter was the only one I’d told about the panic attacks, so he was the only one who didn’t react with complete shock and disbelief.
“What?” Amalia cried, “What do you mean you stopped?”
Before I could respond the front door flew open and the invisible tension in the room snapped like a taught rubber band. Everybody gasped and jumped in fear and surprise as the door hit the wall, but instead of it being cops or a murderer barging in, I recognized the mousey face, blonde hair, and glasses of this kid named Max, one of Lee’s other stoner friends that I’d always disliked.
“Fuck, dude,” Sam said from his bean bag in front of the TV. “You just got me killed!”
“You scared the shit out of us!” Amalia yelled at him.
“Some shit’s going down,” Max said, closing the door then peering out through the blinds. “Did you see that van outside?”
“Yeah, I saw it too!” Hunter said. “Why? Was it doing something?”
“I don’t know. it just looked sketchy, but there’s some other shit going down I have to tell you about. It couldn’t wait.”
“You couldn’t call or text it?” Lee asked, exhaling a big cloud and making a strained face like the personification of wind on an old nautical map.
Max stepped away from the door then swung a backpack off of his back and put it on the floor. “Nah, man!" he said. "That’s what I’m about to tell you about! Both of your phones are tapped. Lee? Hunter? Yeah, both of your phones are tapped.”
He said it while suppressing a smile, as if he was relishing the opportunity to deliver such dramatic news.
“What do you mean?” Hunter asked. He seemed skeptical but still concerned. “How do you know?”
“So John has this app, right? It can tell you if the call you’re receiving is being routed through a proxy, like it would be if your phone is tapped, and so when he had y’all call him earlier it was really me and him using the app to see if you’re phones are bugged, and they are. Mine’s not, and Amalia’s not, and Sam’s not, but both of yall’s are, man. Crazy right? Y’all gotta ditch those phones.”
“Fuck,” Hunter whispered as he stood up from the couch. “Fuck!”
“Yeah, it’s crazy right? So anyway I brought that coke and Katharax John and I were getting over here, cause I figured this place would be the safest, seeing as how Amalia and Sam aren’t being—“
“You what?” Amalia yelled from beside him. She already looked a little pale in the face, but now she looked terrified. “Oh my God. How much did you bring? I don’t want that in my house! They already know I’ve been selling weed, and now you bring an ounce of coke and a hundred Kathies in here!”
“Where else was I gonna take it?”
“Not here! You could shove it up your ass for all I care! Fuck you!”
“Everybody shut the fuck up!” Hunter hissed, and everybody went quiet. “Did any of you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“There it is again! That beeping sound!”
“What beeping sound?”
“Listen!”
We all strained our ears to listen. The only thing I could hear was the sound of our breathing, the whirring of a fan in the next room, and the quiet menu music on Sam’s videogame.
“How do we know this house isn’t bugged?” Max asked.
Hunter nodded. “Exactly.”
TO BE CONTINUED
