Cameron and the Girls (15 page)

All my systems are blocked up. Almost all. One thing starts to pound at my brain, and I can't get it to go away.

Not right to hurt,
I think.

But you want to be cool, don't you? You want to be the man?

It is twilight now, and if I don't do something, I could be stuck in the picture forever. When I finally manage to slip out of it, my mouth works again. “I don't know,” I say.

Sure you do. Every guy does. For once in your life be the guy people remember.

“Not for that,” I say.

Go for it.

I grit my teeth and slap my face, then slap it again. I whisper, “The Girl, The Girl, The Girl. Please help.”

No answer.

Attaboy. Keep hitting yourself. Get yourself all worked up first.

Chopped liver here. This is not the direction you want to go in.

Do it.

“Do what?”

What do you think I've been saying? Haven't you been listening?

And then I do know what he's talking about. I feel pleasure at the same time that I feel pain. And there's nothing I can do about it. Like some weird android, I stand up and walk toward Nina's bedroom.

“Somebody stop me,” I say.

Attaboy. Good boy. Man, is this going to be good.

“No good.”

You know it's good.

“Not what I want. Not me.”

You know where she is. This will be what finally makes you the man.

“The Girl?” I say.

Keep going.

“Please. Got to stop.” But I am under this voice's control. I can't stop my feet from moving. I'm in the kitchen. It is quiet and dark everywhere, except in my head.

Right turn.

“Not me.” But I turn right.

There she is. See her there, crying her little eyes out. She's waiting for you, big guy. She wants you so badly.

A low lamp is lighted on her bedside table, and I can see Nina face-down on the bed. I make her suffer and suffer and I don't even know why. My throat catches.

Doesn't it make you feel, you know, a little tight?

“I don't like this.”

You will. Then you'll be a man.

I stand in her doorway and look at her. Even through the gauze of crazy I can see there's something not quite right with her.

Touch her.

I whisper again. “Please help.”

And it finally comes.

Am I some genie you can conjure up when you need me?

“I do need you.”

I can see that.

“Can't you help me?”

If you do it, it would be like doing it with me.

“What? No, help me.”

Do now what you need to do, and then I'll help you.

“What I need to do?” I look at Nina on the bed. This doesn't sound like The Girl.

I love you, Cameron.

The Professor's voice, but The Girl's words.

Do it.
Now The Girl's voice.

I love you,
but you must do it;
remember the old nobody Cameron?
Is that what you want to be again?

I raise my hands high in the air. Everything's all mixed up. “Stop talking!” I shout in a voice the neighbors should have been able to hear. Only Nina seems not to.

Do it now. Touch her, touch her, touch her.

I take a step into the room and see the bottle on the bed. A couple of pills have fallen out of it, and it is now empty. It takes all my self-control to bend down and look at Nina. Her breath is ragged, her face a pasty white.

This is where you dig deep, Cameron Galloway.

“Oh God,” I hear. “Help her.”

And it's my very own voice this time.

N
ow
the only thing I know how to do well is run. So I sprint out of the room, out of the house, and to the middle of the street.

Get help.

No. Just do it.

“Help!” I call as I turn in a circle. “Help me! Help her!”

My words are gibberish. “Girl! Pills! Dying! Help! Girl. Pills. Dying. Help.” Over and over I say it until a guy comes out of his house with a cell phone at his ear. Seeing him, I run back into Nina's house.

Minutes later, I'm clown-walking in the front room when they break through the door and come in with their trunks and their bags and their gurney. I try to go back with them, but one guy shoves me out of the way, and I retreat to the living room.

You could sneak out. Find a new home.

“Leave me alone.”

Do you think I'm just some girl you can boss around? Some professor? Who do you think's in charge?

It's been only a few minutes, and they're out with Nina on a stretcher. She already has a tube hooked up to her arm, and her face is just as washed out as it was when I found her. I back up, step by step, and run into a pair of feet. I turn, and there stands a policeman.

“I guess you'd be Cameron Galloway,” he says.

“Might be.”

He takes me by the arm and I don't resist. “There are a lot of folks waiting to see you,” he says.

I try to pull away, but he holds me fast. “I'm fourteen,” I say. “Can make my own mind up.”

“Is that so?” says the cop. “Well, I'm thirty-eight and I can too. My decision is to take you into custody as a material witness.”

“No.” I want to fight, but I don't have it in me. And when I realize this, a strange thing happens. I give in, and the whole house lights up like a rainbow strobe. The cop's head is pulsating with light. It runs along his arm and jumps onto me. I can feel the current follow my nerve paths.

“Come on, then,” he says, and we step out just in time to see the ambulance take Nina away.

People have gathered in the neighborhood, and up above them floats a cloud of letters bumping into each other. It's what you call a hubbub. I let the cop take me to his prowler and put me in the back seat. It's quieter there. I can see the cop through the screen separating the two of us. He's on his radio, telling them he found me.

I'm scared, Cameron. What's going on?

“Arrested,” I say.

“No, not arrested,” the cop says as he places his radio back in its home. “Just held.”

He's scary.

“You bother my girlfriend,” I say.

The cop takes a peek back at me, rolls his eyes, and then starts up his car. We back out of the driveway, and a group of people parts to let us through.

The cop is back on the radio again, but all I pick up is the word
hospital.

Don't let them split us up, Cam. We're all we've got. If they split us, we can't make it.

“Do what I can do.”

I love you, Cam.

I lean my head against the window. My energy is leaking out of my shoes, and I feel more and more like a husk. “Where are you going?” I ask.

“To your folks. Don't you think they've suffered enough?”

I don't want to go home, but there's not much I can do locked in the back of a cop's car.

Use your sneaky brain.

I try the only thing that comes to my failing mind. I start batting at my legs. “Off! Off! Eating me alive!” I throw myself from one side of the back seat to the other. “Help me!” I squeal. Ten more seconds of this and the cop's back on the radio, and instead of driving to my house, he takes a sharp right turn toward Saint John's.

 

At Saint John's, they are already working on Nina when the cop brings me in. As soon as I get inside, I stop the screaming and just look around with my eyes open wide. A nurse takes me to a special room, tells me my parents are on their way, and rubs my arm for a few minutes while she talks about how drugs are taking over our youth.

I try to ignore her, but it is a small room. “Smell you,” I say.

She jerks back and narrows her eyes.

“Smells like bad medicine.”

After a moment, her pager goes off and she stands up and says, “I'm going to trust you to stay here till the doctor comes.”

“All right,” I say.

Get ready.

As soon as she's gone, I'm out of the room. She's walking right, so I sneak down the wall to the left. I pass a couple of examining rooms and then round the corner to the real emergencies. Most of the curtains are drawn in a funny crescent, but the one in the middle of the room is closed, and I can see feet everywhere on the inside.

“Lavage!” someone barks as I step closer. I can see people working through the curtain. Nina is stretched out on a bed with a tube already down her throat.

“We'll lose her if you don't start that lavage, stat!”

The voice is growly and primal, and it's hard to tell where it's coming from. I jump back from the curtain. My stomach feels knotted up. I don't want to hear this. I don't want to know what's going to happen. But when I start toward the other side of the room, my nurse spies me and says, “Hey!”

I spin and take off the other way. Over my shoulder, I hear her shout, “I need Security!”

My shoes start acting as if they're packed with concrete. My knees feel weaker. I duck into one of the examining rooms and wait. Outside the door, I hear my nurse and some guy.

“He went running,” she says. “He probably took off outside.”

Then I hear footsteps recede down the hall. I take a deep breath and carefully turn the knob. All clear one way and all clear the other. I want to run in my concrete feet, but I'm not sure which way to go. The dilemma is solved when my nurse turns the corner again and sees me. Before she can get a word out, I spin around and take off in the other direction. I'm tracing the way I came in and hope the cop isn't still lurking around when I get to the lobby. Lucky me. The way is clear to the front door and I bust through it running.

I manage to find a good hiding spot in a stand of scrub fir. I watch the Security guy do a cursory look around the grounds and then go back inside. I sit and wait. It did not seem good for Nina back in the ER, but if I were to go in again, they'd nab me and I might never find out what happened to her.

It is just a few minutes later when I think I'm hearing yet another voice. But it turns out to be a familiar one. “It's time for new rules,” my dad says, and I turn toward the sound.

My family is piling out of our car: Dad, Mom, Beth, and even Dylan. I clench my fists. Beth has never been a snitch before. I watch them hurry across the parking lot, wondering what is going on in their heads. Even from a distance I can tell my mom's eyes are bright red. My dad's face has new worry lines. When Dylan slips through the ER door, I stand up. I look at the car.

You know you can.

“Know it,” I say.

Then why not?

“Don't know if I can drive.”

Anybody can drive.

I walk over to the car and stand, listening to the ticking of the engine as it cools.

You know where it is.

And I do. I reach to the space below one of the wipers and find the magnetic box my dad uses to hide the spare key. I rattle it.

It's a good sound, buddy boy. You know what it's the sound of?

“Freedom,” I whisper.

You got that right.

Again, Cameron, we've reached a point where you can do the right thing. The chances of a fourteen-year-old boy coming to some bad end driving a car he has never learned to drive are well over 80 percent.

Now, where do you get those phony numbers?

Hello, Cam. Hello, hello, hello. I would look good snuggled up next to you in this car.

That clinches it. Despite my footloose brain, I unlock the door and slide into the driver's seat. It smells of my family and makes me feel a little more in control again. No wonder my dad likes to be here. I plug the key into the ignition and switch it on.

It roars and I like it. I keep pushing down the pedal and letting this beast get it all out. A couple walking by raise their eyebrows at me, so I give it a little more gas just to make my point. My foot feels funny, and I look down to see that somewhere along the way I've lost a shoe. But I don't have time to look for it and instead put my hand on the gearshift.

Here we go.

I pull the shift back to reverse and give it a little too much gas. I shoot out into the lot and practically squeal the tires when I slam on the brakes. The car bounces and then settles.

I put it in D and gently move ahead, going around the circle to the exit. Too late, I realize this is a pay lot. I ease up to the window and search in the ashtray where Dad keeps his change. There I find the slip. I pass it to the guy at the window.

“One dollar,” he says tiredly, holding out his hand.

I yank out four quarters and give them to him. He doesn't even look at me as I take off and nearly clip a car when I pull into the street. Driving is all new to me, but it's not as hard as they make you think it is. Pretty soon, I know I can do it.

Next problem. Where am I supposed to go? I know I haven't got much time. My parents will look for me at the hospital, but then they'll come out and see that their car is missing. After that, every cop in town will be looking out for my license plate.

So I head to the one place I figure they wouldn't think to look for me. Home.

Home? Blah.

It's where the heart is. Good idea, young man.

I get on the West Side Highway and pick up speed. I'm weaving a little and tapping the brake too much, but after a while, it's easy to keep the car on my side of the white line. Pretty soon, I'm passing under the railroad bridge, and I freeze when I think of how just a while ago I was up there risking my life. I can do this.

My parents must have been in a hurry, because the back door is standing open. I sneak into the kitchen and listen. No sounds except for the gentle sigh of the furnace. In the refrigerator I find leftovers; roast beef slices under plastic wrap, macaroni and cheese in a casserole dish. I pull both of them out and head for the microwave.

Oh good, I'm starved.

Me too.

When the microwave buzzes, I take the food to the table. Without thinking, I pull out my dad's chair and sit down. I stuff a piece of beef in my mouth but stop when I look down the length of our table. One chair on each side, and one on each end. It seems a long way down there now.