Chapter 39

Heidi Sheppard

Eric examined her passport. “So your legal name is Csezlaw? Chez-law? Says-law?”

“It’s pronounced ‘chess-wahf.’“

“Of course. As in ‘chess waffle.’“

Heidi hid her smile by taking another bite of ice cream. They sat on a bench in Lincoln Park, looking out on a pond flocking with waterfowl. A chill breeze drifted through the park, but the sun above gave some warmth. Leah and Frisby prowled the nearby boardwalk, attempting to creep up on unsuspecting creatures. Leah held the rainbow-colored seashell Heidi had given to her as a present, and she used it to gesture at the birds, pointing them out to Frisby.

“And this is your real one, right?” Eric flipped through the stamp pages of her passport, admiring her collection of places she’d visited.

“I only have one passport.”

“But you have a fake ID, right?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

“No. It’s just the same as my normal ID; just the dates are changed.”

“Man, Alan’s so cool.” Eric returned her passport to her. “Mind if I ask why you go by Sheppard?”

Heidi shrugged. “It’s just like you said: Alan’s cool.”

“Do you think of him like he’s your dad?” asked Eric, who had lemonade instead of ice cream. “Just let me know if I get too personal. Like, preferably not by hitting me.”

“Yeah, I guess. I hardly remember my real father, and Alan raised me, so…”

Eric nodded. “Cool. That pretty much makes him your dad.”

They sat on the bench for a few minutes, watching Leah. Clouds drifted by overhead. A peaceful day. Here in the park Heidi didn’t feel so out of place. She didn’t mind cities, but they always made her uncomfortable if she stayed too long in them. She was used to the big empty loneliness of her island. But the park on a brisk day was as close to alone as she was likely to get during her stay in Chicago. Alone with Eric and Leah, which was not bad at all.

And maybe Kate was coming? And maybe she’d even get to see Liz while she was here in America? The idea of meeting up with those two made her unreasonably happy. The only friends she’d ever had, she’d never met. Depressing.

Eric’s best friends, on the other hand…

“So…” she said when she had finished her ice cream and devoured the cone. “About Jimothy.”

Eric’s fingers drummed an inaudible beat on his leg, and his head nodded slowly to music that only he could hear. He angled his head to look at Heidi through his shades. “Yeah? What about him?”

“What is he…I mean, does he have…uh.” Heidi bit her lip and tried not to flush with embarrassment.

Eric’s face was serious. “Does he have what?”

Heidi punched him in the shoulder. “You know what I mean!” she said. “Is he… okay ?”

“Now what are you implying?” asked Eric as he rubbed his shoulder. “Ow, by the way. I think I ought to let you know that wasn’t a friendly punch, that was just a straight-up combative strike; save that one for the ring, okay?”

“Oh sorry , Mr. Chill.”

“Woah, Heidi, was that sass? Hey, maybe you’re not a stick stuck in the mud after a—woah, hey, what did I say, no more punching!”

Heidi kept her fist elevated. “You didn’t say that.”

“Shit. Anyway, where were we, you were insulting my bro Jim.”

“No! I’m sorry! I wasn’t. If you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine. Just say so.”

“No, it’s cool, I was just messing with you. In terms of normalcy, Jim’s dangling off the far end of the scale, just barely hangin’ on by his fingertips, you know? I mean Kate just slipped off completely a while ago…ah, what am I saying.”

Heidi’s face scrunched up in consternation. “Eric, I have no idea. Be more concrete.” That was a thing Alan said sometimes. He liked it when people were ‘concrete.’ Talking to Eric would probably annoy Alan.

“Concrete?” said Eric. “Sure. Yeah. Jim has autism and cerebral palsy.” He sipped his lemonade.

Heidi’s eyes widened. “Oh…I’m sorry.”

Eric leaned back. “For what? Was it your fault? Damn, after all these years, we finally find the culprit. I can’t believe you’d just confess like that. Wait till I tell Jim.”

Heidi, at a loss, did not know how to respond to this. She remained silent and watched Leah, who had begun scrounging for sticks and putting them together in some kind of pattern on the grass.

Eric redirected his attention to the beat he was playing. “Nah, it’s cool. Jim doesn’t care if people know about his stuff. It’s pretty mild, you know. Like, he’s mostly functional. Still a pretty shitty deal, but he makes it work. Maybe he wouldn’t be so special if he didn’t have those problems. I guess I’m glad he’s just the way he is.”

“Oh. I’ve heard you all talk about how Jimothy is special. But…what does that mean?”

“Haven’t you talked to him?”

“Not much. Kate set us up to play chess so we’ve played a couple games, but we haven’t talked too much. I never know what to say! I don’t know anything about him. And he’s so…um, not easy to talk to? Or maybe…too easy?”

“Chess with Jim? That’s rough.”

“He destroyed me. I don’t really understand how.”

“Yeah, he was probably just guessing.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Guessing?”

“He’s good at that. He actually barely knows how to play chess.”

“Oh.”

“But I’m sure he was happy to play too. Nobody loves games like that kid.”

“Tell me more about him.”

“About Jim? Okay, let’s see. Jim’s the kind of guy to lower your rent in Monopoly.”

Heidi frowned. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

Eric wasn’t paying attention; he was looking out at the park and grinning as he came up with increasingly silly statements. “Jim would let you borrow his coat in a blizzard in Antarctica. He would carefully read all of the terms and conditions even if he didn’t understand any of it. He would disassemble, organize, clean, and arrange his legos by color for you if you wanted to borrow them.”

“Forget it.” She unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and took a drink.

Eric leaned back and looked up at the sky. “You just need to talk to him. You’re lucky to have the chance to get to know him.”

“Not just him, though,” said Heidi, joining Eric in his skygazing. “I think I’m lucky to have met all of you.”

“Kate found you,” said Eric. “Luck had shit to do with that.”

“The point I was trying to make is that I’m glad I’m here! I was trying to pay you a compliment, and also I guess thank you.”

“Should have just said that, then.”

Heidi exhaled in annoyance. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Yeah, it’s just part of the package.”

“How does Elizabeth put up with you?”

“Well she doesn’t, sometimes, which is fine.”

“What does it mean that Jim’s good at guessing?”

“It’s like…” Eric thought about it. “Puzzles. Jim’s good at puzzles. Like, too good.”

How could one be too good at puzzles? And what did that have to do with guessing? “Keep talking,” she said.

Eric abruptly stood up and scanned his surroundings on full alert. He relaxed as soon as he saw Leah toward the end of the boardwalk to their left. “Come on,” he said, starting to walk toward her. “Leah wants to go to the zoo. You down?”

“Where is it?”

“Right there.” Eric nodded across the pond. “It’s free.”

“Oh. So, puzzles.”

“Right. Jigsaw puzzles. The thing is, Jim puts puzzles together, like, perfectly. I mean, he’s always right. Every time he puts a piece down, it lands right where it goes, even if there’s a thousand pieces. He doesn’t miss. And he doesn’t do it on purpose.”

“Hmm,” said Heidi.

“Not gonna say ‘that’s puzzling’ or something?”

“No. I’m not going to say that.”

“Thank god. Isaac would have said that. So that was a test. You passed. Congratulations.”

They took Leah to the zoo. Although she had been there before, Leah was fascinated by everything she saw. Heidi had never been to a zoo before, but it did not interest her much. Leah, pointing alternately with her dragon and the shell Heidi had given her, told Heidi that at Christmas they decorate all the trees in the zoo with lights. It was very pretty, and this ranked fairly high among the many reasons that Leah liked Christmas. Reason number one was that she had been adopted by the Walker family on Christmas Day.

After the zoo they ended up by the adjacent conservatory, also free and open to the public. It was a big greenhouse full of many plants and flowers. Heidi found this a bit more interesting. Many of the flowers she had never seen before. Eric informed her that Elizabeth would love this place. Heidi told him that she thought he was probably right about that.

Heidi received a text from Isaac Milton while they were looking at flowers. It was a group text including the two of them plus Kate, Elizabeth, Eric and Jimothy. It was titled “Banana Quest 2,” and the first message read:

IM: Banana Quest is back, baby! Relive the Technicolor glory of an old favorite in this all-new adventure! Feel free to write in with any thoughts about angels, demons, exploding houses, cracks in the sky, or sinister industrial corporations.

This was written in purple text. A line in red appeared almost as soon as Heidi finished reading it.

EW: shut up Isaac

Heidi looked over at Eric and saw him on his phone.

Eric looked over at her. “Say something,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Just tell him he’s an idiot. No, wait! We can do good-cop-bad-cop. I’ll pester him while you pump him for information.”

“Information about what?”

“Angels, exploding houses, whatever sh - stuff he’s talking about.”

Heidi thought she already had an idea about what ‘sinister industrial corporations’ Isaac was talking about…but what did Isaac know about it? She texted the group:

HS: What do you mean?

“Heh heh, all right,” said Eric, clearly delighted at the idea of annoying Isaac. “But wait. Heidi, shouldn’t you be yellow?”

“Yellow?”

“You know, to complete the color wheel. I’m red, Jim is green, Kate is blue, Isaac is purple, and Liz is orange. Well, she’ll call it gold but it’s still orange. You should be yellow, right?”

“I’m not going to write in yellow.”

“So you’re just gonna stick with black?”

“Yes.”

“Cliché.”

Leah came up to them and tugged on Eric’s jacket while looking up at him, oblivious to how cute she looked doing so. “Eric,” she said. “Can we go to the hook?”

Eric looked down at her. “Sure. Lead the way.”

“Frisby will lead the way,” she replied.

“Sure, sure.” The stuffed dragon led them back through the park.

“The hook?” Heidi asked.

“It’s a spot on the beach,” Eric told her. “More importantly, we need to deal with the sudden reappearance of Banana Quest.”

Something about that name was faintly familiar. Had Kate told her something about it? Yes, back when she was explaining about why they all typed in different colors. It was a game they had played, or tried to play together, online via chat messenger. Isaac apparently had been in charge, and it hadn’t worked out very well. Watching Eric type away gleefully as he walked, Heidi thought she knew at least one reason why.

Heidi followed, but she could not help but glance around. What was she looking for? Unmarked vans? People in suspiciously heavy coats with earpieces? Anything with a grey-and-orange color pattern? She didn’t know, but she had promised Alan that she would be careful.