How to Lose Everything Read online

  “Are you Samuel Meyer?”

  Sam didn't answer. Then again, no one ever called him “Samuel.” The knife moved aimlessly through the air.

  “We've had a complaint about the noise.”

  Sam's clouded eyes seemed to register the cops.

  “You, you, you,” he said, and then he hissed, “Ge-get out! Y-y-you sent them! G-go away! Go away! Get out!”

  Sam stood up and pointed the knife toward the policemen. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he only produced hissing noises. Little bubbles of spit formed in the corners of his mouth, and more trickled down his chin and got caught in his stubble. He raised the knife up over his head, and the mustached cop lifted his gun out of its holster. Sam was about six feet from the officers and lifting his leg to step out of the tub.

  “Don't!” shrieked Daniel at the policemen. “He's sick!”

  “Mr. Meyer, stop. Can you hear us?” the other cop said.

  Sam paused, hissing and whispering, eyes scanning the air in confusion. He focused briefly and then was lost again.

  “Sam!” I shouted. “Put the knife down!” I took a step toward him, but the policeman held me back.

  “Don't shoot,” said Daniel again. He was pleading like a little kid. “Don't shoot.”

  In one smooth movement, the policeman wrapped his arm around Sam's wrist and closed on it, tight. Sam cried out sharply, like a rat, but before he could try to free himself, the policeman's other hand covered the hand holding the kitchen knife. With some sort of special police grip, he turned Sam's wrist so that he dropped the knife.

  Seconds later, Sam's wrists were bound by handcuffs. As Sam alternated whimpers with screams, the mustached cop radioed for an ambulance.

  I didn't find out until days later, but the next day Sam was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I had called his house to check on him, to ask where he'd been; so much had happened, and I needed to talk. His dad answered the phone. “Paranoid schizophrenia,” he said, and something about “persecutory delusions.” His voice wasn't friendly. I hung up figuring I should leave Sam alone for a little while until he was back again.

  The night of the party, after the firefighters had put out the compost fire, the police had sent everyone home. No one was arrested, and no one was responsible enough to clean up the mess. We figured the police would bring Sam back in a few hours, or the next day, once he'd come down from his trip. Eric told us he was going to see Zafko; he had to talk to him about some business. After he left, Schulz came up to me. He seemed confused, as if he'd just woken up from a long dream.

  “Where's Lena? Why isn't she here?”

  I shook my head and went home.

  I slept badly that night. When I did doze off for an hour or two, my dreaming was cloudy and confused. It didn't fit together—it was like scraps of images that collided together and then fell apart. I only remembered some of it later. I was sitting at the wheel of a car, with Lena next to me, careening through our suburb of Meining at ninety miles an hour. There were no brakes, and I couldn't tell what all the buttons and knobs were for. I tried to concentrate and keep the car in control, but it was hopeless. Meanwhile, Lena was just sitting there, calm but clearly annoyed, almost grimacing even. We sped toward the church with its big steeple. But then everything changed. Eric was standing in front of me, reaching into a bag of colorful pills and shoving a handful of them into his mouth. His teeth were fanged, like an animal's.

  Then Sam came running toward me. He said that we had to leave—that two sisters were after him. “Every second counts,” he said. I tried to calm him down, telling him we should stop and think about what to do next. He shouted, “No, we have to go now!”

  Then I smelled them. They smelled like mildew, just like the house. Panicking, we ran as fast as we could, but at some point Sam stopped running. He was rooted to the ground, panting, gasping for air. I called to him, “Run!” But he couldn't manage it. They kept coming, though. They were going to get him.

  The next thing I knew I was sitting on the couch at Daniel's house. “Everyone knows that the house is cursed,” he said. “Everyone knows. You guys were the only ones who didn't. Because you didn't want to know . . . It's your own fault, isn't it?”

  I'm not sure why I went back to the house. Maybe I wanted some sort of closure. Maybe it wasn't enough to just bury the money. I don't know. The only thing I am sure of is that I wasn't looking for more cash. Even if I found some, I wasn't going to take it. I was after something else.

  Maybe I just wanted to see the house with fresh eyes.

  I rode my bike to Flower Street. The summer had passed since we'd last been there. The hedge was yellow in some places and brown in others. It smelled like fall. It was totally silent; I was alone. The gap in the hedge was much bigger now. You could see it easily if you were just walking past.

  I rounded the house and stood at the back by the open patio door. A few shards of glass lay on the moss-covered stones. In the middle of the glass door was a gaping hole. Someone had thrown a rock through the pane of glass. The clothesline wasn't hanging up anymore either. It was on the ground, along with the apron and the bag of colorful clothespins.

  I went up the stairs to the living area. The key was still in the door, just like last time. I took it out. Inside was the same smell of mildew. I used the key to lock the door from the inside. There was a general air of menace, and I have to admit, I was kind of afraid.

  No one else was here, I reminded myself. I was alone. No one would bother me.

  The entire floor was a complete mess. It was total chaos. Just papers, towels, filth, and broken furniture. A bookshelf had been turned over and was leaning against the opposite wall, and the tattered books were lying on the floor. The whole second story was covered in a layer of personal papers, yellowed newspapers, clothing, and bed linens—in places, you were standing a good six inches off the actual floor. I stepped over a shattered teapot from the kitchen. Since we'd been there, every room had been completely ransacked.

  I went into the bedroom where we'd found the sixty thousand marks. I moved slowly and cautiously, like a detective at a crime scene, careful not to disturb any evidence. There were feathers everywhere: brown, white, and gray down feathers. The wardrobe was destroyed, its door split to pieces, and the contents—all the bed linens and blouses—had been thrown to the ground and ripped up into tatters.

  The living room was in even worse shape: The glass doors on the china cabinet had been shattered—probably with the ax, which was lying on the floor, surrounded by shards of glass, porcelain, and crystal. A broken violin had been tossed in the corner. The sofa and the armchairs were turned over, all of them slashed open. Whoever it was, whether they found anything or not, they must have decided to just trash the place for good measure. The entire second floor was a dump.

  Was it Strasser? Had there been any money left to find? I was thinking about how angry and frustrated these guys must have been when I heard a sudden, sharp, cracking sound, like the popping of somebody's arthritic knee. I froze. Then I heard a scratching sound, then more cracking, and then scratching again. It was hard to tell where the noise was coming from. I didn't move, I barely breathed, turning my full attention to the noise. It was quiet for a moment, but then it started up again: the scratching of gravel on concrete and the cracking of old bones.

  Someone was coming up the stairs.

  Someone else was in the house.

  A woman's voice—an old woman's voice—said “Hello?” She sounded like an out-of-tune violin.

  “Is anybody there?” the old woman asked.

  She sounded sick and helpless. Where had she come from? Then it hit me: the basement. Sam must have seen her that day when he went down into the basement. That's what he'd been running from. I wasn't sure what to do. I stared at the broken violin on the floor. I was sweating. I could hear the doorknob: An old, rusty spring tightened slowly, steel rubbing on steel, very deliberately, almost tenderly. A lurch. And then another. It didn
't open.

  “Hello?” she croaked again.

  She paused, clearly listening on the other side. The seconds stretched out, with only my breathing to mark the time.

  I don't know how long we stood like that. But after a long, long silence, I heard the scratch and crackle again. She was heading back downstairs.

  Outside, a dog started barking. I hardly moved until I couldn't hear the sounds from Hilda's retreat anymore. I listened carefully: no more noise, no cracking or scratching or dogs barking. Still, I was too afraid to move. Then I thought, what if she gets nervous and calls the police? Then I'd be really trapped. I had to get out of that house.

  As quietly as I could, I tiptoed to the door. Like a mountain climber, I planned out every step. I silently made my way past papers, clothes, and dishes. I pressed my ear against the door, listened, and then turned the key in slow motion. The metal cracked a little as the bolt snapped. Carefully I turned the knob. The spring inside tightened, and finally the door opened.

  I peeked through the opening and looked down the staircase. No one, nothing. I opened the door wider, just enough to slip my body through. I tiptoed down the staircase to the first floor. I wanted to run, but I moved cautiously and quietly to the patio door, slid it open, and stepped outside.

  At that point, I bent over and hurried through the yard, burst through the hedge, and leapt on my bike, riding as fast as I could away from Flower Street. I didn't turn around once, not even to make sure that no one had seen me. I just stared at the pavement and pedalled as fast as I could.

  Never again, I swore to myself. That was the last time I would ever go on that street. The last time I'd ever so much as look at that house. It was over. It was over forever. The sky grew dark as I rode home. Finally, I lay down in bed and rolled a joint with the little bit of weed I had left. Then it started to rain.

  About midnight, the phone rang. Fat drops were falling from the sky. I'd had the TV on for hours, trying to distract myself. It was Lena. Within seconds I knew she wasn't calling to talk about us, or about the guys from Sam's party, or about Terminal.

  There was no fake voice. No “Yeah, hiii, it's Lenaaa.” Just a quick “Hi,” then a pause, then: “There was an accident. It's Schulz.”

  She said that Schulz's parents had called her parents with the news. Schulz had been on his way over to her house—in a stolen car. He'd finally done it, after talking about it for so long. One time he'd seen a friend from another school do it. He'd opened the door with a piece of wire hanger, and from there it was a no-brainer. Anyway, Schulz had gotten it in Munich, the neighborhood near Terminal, Lena said. The police weren't sure exactly what happened; they didn't have any witnesses to the accident. But Schulz's blood had tested positive for alcohol, and the police had also found cocaine in the car.

  She was clearly leaving something out. I started to ask, “Is he . . . ,” and she immediately broke down in tears. Full sobs. She cried, gasped for air, cried again. She only stopped to blow her nose. After a few minutes, she composed herself enough to say, “He was coming to see me. He'd told his mom he was going to spend the night here. But he didn't say anything to me. We hadn't talked in days. The last time we saw each other was Sam's.”

  She didn't say the words, but I understood. I swallowed a few times, but the lump in my throat didn't go away. He was dead. Schulz was dead. The finality of that sunk into my soul like dropping a rock into a bottomless well; it just fell and fell. I'd never known anyone who'd died. Not even my grandparents. I couldn't feel any change. Everything was exactly the same: I was lying in my bed talking to Lena. The TV was on mute. Rain clattered against the window. Nothing was different except that Schulz was now gone forever. “He was the only one I really loved.”

  Lena repeated this four or five times. Each time her voice got quieter, until she fell totally silent. We sat in silence, listening to each other breathing, for probably five minutes. Then she inhaled and exhaled deeply and said, “I've got to get some sleep.”

  I said good night, and we hung up.

  I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel. Death is strange. Schulz was gone, but if I hadn't been told he was dead, I might have imagined that he had just run off—to Brazil or Japan or somewhere. I would have preferred that.

  I searched deep inside myself, trying to find what I was supposed to feel, waiting for the tears to come.

  Daniel's mom was a short, round woman with a short haircut that hugged her friendly, happy face. She wore a pair of glasses with lenses as round as she was, and I couldn't help thinking that she looked a little like a hobbit. She smiled at me mischievously as she opened the door.

  “You're Jonathan, aren't you?”

  “Yes,” I answered shyly, tacking on a “How are you?”

  “Jonathan,” she said, “the next time you have a party, please don't leave your trash in the houseplants. I'd appreciate it.”

  I wanted to say that I didn't have any idea what she was talking about, it wasn't me, I had nothing to do with any of that. But she smiled and said, “Daniel is upstairs in his room.” I nodded.

  I glanced around the living room. The leather couch was clean; the blanket that Daniel always wrapped around himself was folded neatly in the corner. The glass table sparkled and held a few magazines. The TV was gray and silent. It was hard to believe this was the same room where we smoked, played video games, and partied not long ago. I climbed up the hardwood stairs and opened the door to Daniel's room. He was sitting on his bed, his hat pulled down over his leprechaun face, a controller in his hand.

  “Are you in trouble with your parents? Your mom just asked me not to leave any trash in the houseplants.”

  “Really? I bet the cleaning lady must've said something.”

  He concentrated on his game. I watched him play until he lost. He swore, tossed the controller on the bed, and looked at me.

  “Daniel,” I said, “did you hear about . . .”

  “Eric? Yeah. But hey, that was gonna happen sooner or later. Everyone knew that he was dealing. I mean, if you're gonna go around town with a bag of weed and ask thirteen-year-olds if they want to buy any, then you can't be surprised when shit hits the fan, right?”

  My eyes widened as something in me sank down. My stomach started to churn.

  “So they . . . ?”

  “They caught him. You didn't know about it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Some seventh-grader probably told his parents that a tall guy with a backpack was asking him if he wanted to buy weed. The cops found him yesterday at the station, waiting for the train. And get this: He tried to run away. Like he's in some kind of movie! Eric runs down the track toward the city, and the cops start chasing him with their guns drawn. They're shouting, ‘Stop! Stop or we'll shoot!' So he gets rid of his backpack and just keeps going. At some point, I guess he wussed out or he couldn't run anymore. They put him in handcuffs and took him away. Do you know how much they found on him? Half a pound! He had half a pound in his backpack, plus pills and who knows what else. As far as I know, he's still in custody. They're keeping him till someone posts his bail or something. He's sitting in jail right this second. Can you believe it?”

  The money, I thought. The house, the money, the woods, the old lady's voice.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “Jim told me. He's always hanging out around the train station. He was there. He saw everything happen. Eric just took it too far. That's Eric. He's always overdoing it. He should have been more careful. Never—I've always said this—never sell to kids. That's the riskiest thing you can do. If anyone's gonna talk, it'll be one of them. They act like they're cool, but really they're just scared shitless. As soon as their mom suspects anything, they start talking.”

  “What if Eric talks?”

  “If he even mentions Zafko, he's gonna be in deep shit. I don't even want to know what kind of people Zafko knows. If Eric tells the cops that he bought from Zafko, he's an idiot. He'l
l have a huge fucking problem when he gets out. I wouldn't put anything past Zafko. Eric might get off on probation, if he's lucky. But Zafko is an adult, he's twenty-three or maybe even older. They'd book him. If I were Eric, I'd start thinking up a good story. Plus, yeah, there's all that with the house, too. But he's not stupid enough to tell them about that.”

  He picked up the controller to start another round. I punched him on the shoulder.

  “How do you know about the house?! I can't believe you know about it. You knew the whole time, didn't you?”

  “Of course, I knew about it. Everyone knew about it.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Okay, maybe not everyone. But ever since the thing with Strasser, it was like an open secret. Do you seriously think that no one's gonna notice when you're throwing around these huge wads of cash? Carina knew, Strasser knew, even Jim knew—and normally he doesn't know much of anything because he's always drunk. You guys weren't exactly making an effort to keep it a secret. You yourself gave me five hundred marks. You think I'm stupid? Anyway, everyone in Meining already knew about the house. Even my mom. Your face looks really pale, by the way. Go look in a mirror.”

  He pressed start and began to fight. His fingers mashed the buttons chaotically. His body moved right and left, as if he could use his own weight to move the character. I stood up, opened the door to the balcony, and lit a cigarette. The money was buried. They wouldn't find anything at my house. If Eric tried to rat me out, I could always deny it. They couldn't prove anything. No one had seen me; there were no witnesses. Well, Schulz couldn't talk, but Sam . . . He was in a psych ward. Would anyone believe him? What good would it do Eric to throw me under the bus?

  “Did you say that your mom knew about the house?”

  Daniel kept playing, as if he hadn't heard my question. After a few more minutes of combat, he put the controller aside and turned to face me.