Under Threat Read online

  Under Threat

  Under Threat

  Robin Stevenson

  orca soundings

  O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S

  Copyright © 2016 Robin Stevenson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Stevenson, Robin, 1968–, author

  Under threat / Robin Stevenson.

  (Orca soundings)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1131-7 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1132-4 (pdf).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1133-1 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings

  PS8637.T487U54 2016 jC813'.6 C2015-904492-8

  C2015-904493-6

  First published in the United States, 2016

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946329

  Summary: In this high-interest novel for teen readers, a girl struggles with the threats her abortion-providing parents are receiving and the reactions of her girlfriend’s family.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover image by iStock.com

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  To all the dedicated and courageous individuals who fight to keep abortion safe, legal and accessible.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  “So did you ride after school? How is that horse of yours?” Dad asks me.

  We’re eating dinner, which I made—chicken with feta cheese and green peas on linguine. Learning to cook was one of my New Year’s resolutions. “He’s doing well,” I say. “Walking and trotting without a limp. I’m taking it slow with him though. Letting that tendon heal.”

  “Well, it was just as well you decided to retire from jumping when you did,” Mom says. She points at her dinner plate with her fork. “Franny, this is delish.”

  “Don’t know where she got it from, but our girl can cook,” Dad says approvingly. “This recipe is definitely a keeper.”

  “Good. Glad you like it.” I’m not surprised he does—the dish is way too salty, which is exactly what his blood pressure doesn’t need. I’d forgotten how high in sodium feta is. “I wouldn’t have had time to show this year anyway,” I say, twirling my fork on the pasta. “Even if Buddy wasn’t lame. The amount of homework I have is insane.”

  “Not to mention your love life,” Dad says, rolling his eyes. “Every time I see you, you’re texting your girlfriend.” He’s grinning though. He adores Leah. He and Mom both do.

  “What bothers me,” Dad says, “is that your horse got to retire before I did. I mean, I’m pushing seventy.”

  “Sixty-seven,” I correct him quickly. He’s ten years older than mom, and she was forty when I was born, so they are kind of old for parents. But seventy? That’s well into grandparent age.

  “And Buddy is still in his teens.”

  “Almost twenty,” I say. “Which is getting on for a horse.”

  Dad ignores me. “And he has a sore ankle. I had a stroke! Shouldn’t that trump a sore ankle?”

  “Sore fetlock,” I say, even though I know he’s well aware that horses don’t have ankles. “And you didn’t have a stroke, Dad. You had a transient ischemic attack. Which isn’t a real stroke. Just a warning.” What I don’t say is that a third of people who have a TIA go on to have a stroke within a year. He’s well aware of that too.

  “Who’s the doctor here?” he says.

  And then the phone rings. I start to get up, even though Leah doesn’t usually use the landline, but Dad waves a hand at me. “Let the machine get it. Neither of us is on call.”

  I sit back down, twirl a fork full of linguine and chew slowly. Definitely too much salt. Not good, considering the only reason I took over the cooking was to stop the family reliance on takeout and make sure Dad ate healthier meals.

  The phone rings and rings. Let it be Leah, I think, let it be Leah. I picture her face—her blue-green eyes, her silky brown hair, the deep dimples that appear when she smiles, the way she covers her mouth with her hand when she laughs.

  I was just with her, but I miss her already.

  Leah’s family owns the farm where I keep Buddy now. Gibson’s Farm—or Buddy’s Retirement Home, as Dad calls it. I was heartbroken when Buddy developed a limp right at the start of last show season, but if he’d stayed sound, and we’d kept jumping and competing, I’d probably never have met Leah Gibson. So that’s kind of a crazy thought. We’ve only been together for a few months, but I’ve never felt like this about any other girl.

  No matter how much time I spend with Leah, it’s not nearly enough. Even when I’m with her, I sometimes feel this ache, like I can’t get close enough, can’t hold her tight enough, can’t kiss her long enough. I’ve had other girlfriends, but I’ve never felt like this before.

  It’s crazy and, to be honest, a little scary.

  Just two hours ago, we were sitting on a bale of hay outside the tack room, cleaning the school horse bridles and listening to the horses munch their oats. Leah’s brother, Jake, was teaching a private lesson in the arena, and I could hear his voice—“Extended trot doesn’t mean go faster, Brandy! I want to see longer strides, not speed! Contain that energy!” It was like listening to the soundtrack of my childhood. Leah turned to me and said, “I love the sound of horses eating.”

  I love you, I thought. I love you.

  We hadn’t said those words yet, but I thought them the whole time I was with her—and most of the time I wasn’t with her too.

  The machine beeps and picks up. “You’ve reached the home of Heather, Hugh and Franny Green. Leave a message and one of us will get back to you.”

  I stop chewing for a second, listening, in case it’s for me. But it’s a man’s voice, deep and oddly muffled. “Baby killers,” he says. “You’re going to burn in hell for what you do.” Click.

  My heart flip-flops in my chest, and my cheeks flare hot.

  Mom sighs. “So much for changing the number and having it unlisted,” she says. “How long did it take for them to get the new one?”

  Dad runs his hands over his bald head. “Not nearly long enough.”

  The phone starts to ring again.

  “Unplug it, would you, Franny?” Mom says. Her voice is calm, as always. She’s the most level-headed, unflappable person I’ve ever met.

  “We’ll have to change the number again,” Dad says.

  “We should just get rid of the landline,” I say. Hardly anyone uses it anyway, mainly because we’ve changed the number so many times that no one can keep track of it. Except, apparently, the anti-abortion psychos. I stand up and walk toward the phone, and I’m just about to yank the cord from the phone jack when the next message starts.

  It’s the same voice. “Hello again, baby killers,” he says. “I
just left a little surprise for you in the mailbox.” Click.

  I freeze.

  “Don’t unplug it,” Dad says. “Pass me the phone. I’m calling the police.”

  My heart is beating fast and my hand is slippery with sweat as I hand him the phone. “It’ll be okay,” Mom says. “We’ve been here before, right?”

  I nod. Last time we had a bomb threat, someone actually left a package on the front steps and we had to evacuate the house. The bomb squad came and everything, but it turned out to be just a cardboard box full of phone books and cans of hairspray.

  That was over a year ago, but I still have nightmares about it.

  Dad is talking to Detective Bowerbank, AKA Rich—balding, beer-bellied and solid as a rock. Over the last few years, we’ve seen so much of him that he’s become kind of a family friend.

  I pull my cell out of my pocket. Mom grabs my arm. “Wait.”

  “Can’t I call Leah?”

  “Turn off your cell,” she says. “Remember?”

  Bomb threat protocol: don’t touch the light switches, turn off your cell phone. I swallow and shut down my phone.

  Mom tucks a wiry curl behind her ear. Her hair is a mass of tightly coiled silver springs. Like hundreds of tiny Slinkys. “Just to be on the safe side,” she says. “I’m sure it’ll turn out to be nothing.”

  Dad hangs up the phone. “He says to sit tight and they’ll have someone here within a few minutes.”

  “Shouldn’t we get out?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t want us opening the doors until they’ve made sure it’s safe for us to do so.”

  I imagine a sniper hiding behind a tree. Picture wires trailing from the mailbox to the door hinge. My breathing is fast and shallow, and I have to remind myself to push aside the scary images. Don’t make this worse than it is, Franny. I count silently to ten, trying to slow my breathing.

  But I can’t stop my thoughts. What if it’s starting all over again?

  Chapter Two

  Half an hour later, I’m sitting with my parents in the living room, and the cops have taken away an envelope of white powder to be analyzed.

  “Almost certainly not anthrax,” Rich Bowerbank tells us. “Obviously, we can’t take any chances, but I can tell you that out of many hundreds of similar threats to abortion clinics, none have contained actual anthrax.”

  “This isn’t a clinic though,” Mom says. “It’s our house.”

  She is sitting on the couch beside me, her face calm, her back as straight as a dancer’s. All that yoga. I straighten my own spine and lift my chin in an effort to look less like a curled-up ball of fear. “Which means someone knows where we live,” I say. My voice is shaky. I clear my throat. “Do you think it’s the same person as last time?”

  He shakes his head. “Highly unlikely. I’ll double-check, but I’m pretty sure he’s still getting three meals a day at taxpayers’ expense.”

  “He’s still in jail?” I ask.

  Rich nods. “Could be linked, I suppose. We’ll look at every possibility.” He leans toward me. “You know how seriously we take this, right?”

  I nod. I do know. And Rich is a good guy. He investigated the threats at the hospital and the fake bomb at our house, and he’s the one who helped bring in the guy responsible for it all. He’s got daughters—twin girls, a year behind me at school—and I know he cares about our safety. And he gets it too: unlike a lot of people, he understands why my parents don’t give up, even after my dad’s not-quite-a-stroke.

  The crazy thing is, my dad was actually just about to retire before this all started up the last time. He had high blood pressure and some other health stuff going on, and he thought less stress might be a good thing. But then all three of the doctors who did abortions at the hospital—my parents and Jennifer Lee—started getting death threats, and someone threw a brick through Jennifer Lee’s dining-room window with a note attached: NEXT TIME IT’LL BE A BULLET.

  Jennifer has a paraplegic husband and two little kids. She decided she couldn’t risk it. Now she delivers babies, does some routine surgeries—but no more abortions.

  So if my dad had retired too, it’d only be my mom left. And it’s not just the hospital clinic here in town either. Both of them also do clinic hours each month in several smaller rural hospitals, because otherwise abortion wouldn’t be available there. Sure, if you can afford to travel, you can go to a city to get an abortion. But if you’re poor and live out in the sticks and don’t have a car, or you have a houseful of kids to look after, or you’re a sixteen-year-old whose parents don’t have your back, you’re screwed.

  And since abortion is legal and the anti-choice people haven’t had much luck getting that changed, they’re going after the doctors. Trying to stop abortions by making doctors too scared to do them.

  My parents don’t like being bullied. I think all the threats have just made them even more committed to their work.

  My dad sighs and leans back in his chair. “Rich, assuming the anthrax turns out to be baking soda, what’s our next step here? Obviously, we can change our phone number, but knowing that someone has our address… I’m not sure what more we can do.”

  They start discussing security systems and cameras, all of which we already have. I excuse myself and clean up the dinner table, tossing the congealing pasta into a container and sticking it in the fridge. Then I head up to my room to call Leah.

  My bedroom is my favorite place in our house. I repainted it myself last year, two walls white and two walls lime green. It’s got a wood floor, and the rug is a dark cherry color. My parents bought me matching bedding—dark red with big geometric shapes in the exact same green as the walls. Show-jumping ribbons hang from a picture rail, and my dresser is covered with trophies. When I first invited Leah over, I was worried she’d think it was bragging to have them all out, but she totally understood. “Well, they’re not really yours, right?” she said, when I started apologizing. “They’re yours and Buddy’s.”

  I have photos of Buddy all over the wall—Buddy jumping, Buddy rolling in the mud, Buddy looking out over his stall door, the white star on his forehead with a trail like a comet. I’ve had Buddy since I was eleven, and for the last six years he’s been my best friend. No matter what else has been going on in my life, Buddy’s been there for me.

  I look at the screen saver on my computer: a photo of Leah and me, both sitting bareback on Buddy as he grazes. The late-afternoon sun is shining with that golden, glowing kind of light, and the late-fall trees are bare of leaves. Buddy’s coat is gleaming red chestnut, and Leah’s face is turned toward the camera in an open-mouthed laugh. Jake took the photo on my phone, because I asked him to. I wanted to capture the moment, though he didn’t know why. It was three months ago, end of November. Just a few minutes after Leah’s and my first kiss.

  I sit cross-legged on my bed, call Leah and tell her about everything that’s just happened.

  “Holy crap,” she says.

  If I wasn’t so stressed, I’d laugh. Leah never swears. Not that “crap” is really swearing, but Leah’s the kind of girl who actually says things like “shoot” and “darn it.” It’s adorable. Dorky but adorable.

  “I mean, you only just left here,” she says. “All I’ve done is eat dinner and start my math homework, and you’ve been through all that? It must have been so scary.”

  She knows all about the fake bomb and the brick through Jennifer’s window and everything. She knows about my nightmares. “What did you have for dinner?” I say.

  “What did I have for dinner? Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Just…just tell me something normal, okay? Distract me.”

  “Oh, Franny.” She is quiet for a few seconds. “Okay. I finished cleaning the tack, and Jake finished his lesson with Brandy, and Mom came home from work with a carload of groceries. Jake and I helped her make dinner. Mashed potatoes, pork chops, broccoli…”

  “Sounds good,” I say.

  “Do you want to come over here?�
� she says.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I picture their cozy living room, Leah’s mom, Diane, marking her students’ homework at the table, Jake in his room practicing his guitar or maybe playing a computer game, the horse barn visible from the window. “But it might be weird tonight, you know?”

  “You mean not talking about it? With my mom there?”

  “Yeah.” I chew on my bottom lip. “Acting like everything is normal. When all I can think about…” My chest is tight, and my eyes sting with tears. I rub the back of my hand across them. “I just…what if…I mean…” I start crying for real. What if someone kills my parents? What if some nut with a gun walks into the hospital and starts shooting? I can’t bring myself to say the words, but the images in my head are vivid and bloody and oh so real. My dad in his hospital greens, sprawled in the hallway with bullet holes blossoming like poppies across his chest. My mom, trying to shield a patient with her body as a stranger pulls a gun from his bag and points it at her head, and there’s a loud bang and she’s falling…

  “Franny. FRANNY!”

  “I’m here,” I choke out.

  “I’m coming over,” she says. “On my way.”

  I hang up and feel a warm rush of relief at the thought of being with her. And then, almost before I’ve even had time to form the thought, a wave of dread slams into me with the force of a tsunami.

  If my house is a target, could being with me put Leah in danger?

  Chapter Three

  Leah must have made an exception to her never-exceed-the-speed-limit rule, because she is at my house in less than twenty minutes. I hear her pull into the driveway, and I fly down to let her in, rushing her past my parents and the cops and up to my room.

  She pulls me in for a hug and we just stand there, my head on her shoulder, breathing in the clean, sweet scent of her shampoo mingled with the smell of horses clinging to her jacket. “Poor Franny,” she says.

  I lift my head and look at her. “Sorry,” I say, looking around for a tissue. My nose is running, and my eyes are probably all puffy and gross-looking. “Sorry I’m such a mess.”