Next year, he might stay in California. He only had one more summer break before he graduated anyway, and it might do him good to use those three months working an internship somewhere like Facebook or Uber.
Connor slipped on his AirPods with the intention of drowning out the argument, but no music played.
The old oak desk he sat at stood in stark contrast to the sleek monitors and souped-up laptop on top of them. It reminded Connor of an era long since passed. A time when people still wrote letters regularly and did so with a quill instead of a pen.
Connor scoured the desktop, shifting fast food wrappers, crumpled paper towels, loose sheets of paper, books, dishes, and a whole manner of other junk in search of his phone. Then he remembered he had shoved it in the top desk drawer to his left specifically because there was nowhere on the desk to put it.
He opened the drawer, removed the phone. It was dead. At least that explained why there was no music playing.
From outside, he heard the squeal of tires and a thump, like a car bouncing over a curb. Not the sort of thing you would expect to hear in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Certainly not when you were in the cul-de-sac of said neighborhood.
Connor crossed the attic bedroom to a small window that faced the front of the house, careful not to hit his head on the slanted ceiling, and looked out. At first, he saw nothing but the dark and quiet tree-lined street that arced away from their house and disappeared around a curve. Then he heard a bang from downstairs. It sounded to him like somebody had opened a door fast, let it slam into a wall. He instinctively looked from the street to the yard and saw a nondescript panel van parked on the grass. Blue or black—it was hard to tell in the darkness. The rear doors were open.
“What the . . .” he heard his mother say.
“Who are you?” his father said.
Then there was another thud. His mother screamed.
CHAPTER 2
Connor began to panic. His hands shook. His mouth went dry. What the hell was going on? He had to call the police. He looked at his phone, then remembered it was dead. Shit. Well, he had to do something.
There was more banging, like furniture getting toppled over and the sounds of footsteps—one person chasing another.
“Please, please, please! Leave us alone!” Kim shouted. “Take what you want and go!”
There were two doors between Connor and the rest of the house: one that led out of the bedroom, and the other at the bottom of the attic stairs. He bolted out of the bedroom door, ready to attack the intruder. As he ran, Connor imagined jumping on top of him, pinning him to the floor, beating him unconscious. Then, just at the top of the stairs, he stopped, realized the intruder might have a gun.
New plan.
He crept down the stairs. More banging.
“What do you want with me?” Kim screamed.
Connor turned the doorknob quietly, pushed the door open an inch, two. From here, he could see the living room and most of the dining room. Frank was sprawled out on the floor. A marble bust of Hippocrates, perhaps ten inches tall, lay beside him. Connor recognized the statue from their foyer where, until now, it had sat on a side table, atop a small stack of medical books.
The couch was askew. The coffee table and dining room chairs were overturned.
More screams from his mother. Demands for the intruder to get out. It sounded like she might be in the kitchen. Then he heard dishes breaking, and his suspicions were confirmed. She was, no doubt, grabbing dishes out of the cupboard and the sink, tossing them at the intruder, doing whatever she could to defend herself.
Why didn’t she go for the block of knives by the fridge? Was she afraid to turn her back on him?
Probably. Connor would be.
Think. What are you going to do?
If the intruder had a gun, if he planned on shooting anyone, he would have done it already. He wouldn’t have needed to use the Hippocrates bust to knock out Connor’s father. His mother wouldn’t be so bold as to run or throw dishes at the man.
But what was he going to do? Even if the intruder didn’t have a gun, going after him empty-handed would be stupid. He needed a weapon of some sort. He quickly assessed everything within sight without actually focusing on any one item. Although the Hippocrates bust was certainly heavy enough—if it could knock out his father, it could knock out the intruder—he would also have to get right up on the intruder to use it. That didn’t seem wise.
Then he saw what he was looking for. The fireplace poker. That would work. He would just have to get to the other side of the living room. That was doable, right? In his heightened state of alarm, he wasn’t entirely sure. The other side of the living room seemed to be twice as far away as it normally did. Three times, maybe. And it wasn’t a straight line, either. Even if his father wasn’t in the way, even without the toppled furniture and broken knickknacks that could slice into his bare feet, it wouldn’t have been a straight line.
Still, those things weren’t going to stop him. He would just have to be careful. Careful
