Cloak (YA Fantasy) (2 page)

1

Boy in a Bubble

T
he humidifier made a gurgling-wheezing sound as it spewed moist air into the darkened room. Will Tuttle groaned and rolled over. It sounded like someone was slurping Jell-O through a straw right next to his ear. Stuffing his head under his pillow, he tried to muffle out the incessant burble, but it was no good. The plastic pillowcase crinkled louder than the humidifier. His face stuck to the rubber sheets.

Will peeled himself from the sticky bedding and sat up, kneading his eyes with latex-covered knuckles.

For a long moment, he stared into the blackness, listening to the nasty little fog machine that was turning the world into a steam bath. He wished there were a way to pull the plug. No luck. Nurse Grundel had removed the off-switch and bolted the power cord to the socket. She called it sweat therapy. Will called it living in a giant armpit.

He attempted to slide to the edge of the bed, causing all sorts of obscene noises as his sweaty legs skipped across the moist plastic.

Finding the lamp, he clicked it on. The translucent bubble that formed the walls of his bedroom dripped with condensation, and a heavy mist hung in the air. He ran his gloved fingers along the surface of his nightstand, carving a path in the water droplets.

A humidifier for a bubble-boy? This was just dumb. It wasn’t as bad as the Himalayan aroma pot treatments that made his bubble reek like wet musk ox for a month. Or the helium therapy—three weeks of talking like a chipmunk and still no closer to a cure.

He peeked at the clock. 3:32 a.m.

There was a good chance Will would die recklessly today—might as well get an early start. With a sticky squeak, he pulled his thighs off the rubberized sheets and stood.

He sucked in a sharp breath and gritted his teeth as a cascade of cold condensation soaked him. Bumping his head on the curved plastic bubble walls was becoming a problem. Growth spurts sucked.

His parents had built this bubble for a child, not a gangly thirteen-year-old who was almost six feet tall. Will was
supposed
to be cured by now. He was
supposed
to be able to go outside, play sports, and travel with his parents. Every doctor had predicted that Will Tuttle’s life-threatening childhood allergies would clear-up at puberty. They had all been wrong.

Careful to avoid the walls, Will ducked and padded across his room to the bathroom. A layer of moisture clung to every surface. Labels were sagging off the rows of giant amber prescription bottles that lined the bathroom walls. The running ink made it hard to tell one experimental medication from the next. It didn’t matter; Will had them all memorized. He stared at the shelves of medications surrounding him—thirteen years full of failed attempts and false hopes. Picking up a bottle, he popped the lid and swallowed a huge blue pill without water. Then he grabbed the next bottle and another pill—then the next and the next. By the sixth daily prescription, Will noticed that not all the words had blurred from the steam.
Wilhelm Tuttle
was still razor sharp on every label.
Wilhelm, Wilhelm, Wilhelm, Wilhelm!

He hated his given name.
Wilhelm—
it sounded like it should belong to a fat guy in lederhosen with a handlebar mustache, not to a thirteen-year-old who already had enough problems. His name was
Will!

Annoyed, he plopped the bottle down with too much force, launching orange pills into the metal bathtub, where they clattered like a tambourine. Dropping to his knees, Will tried to quiet the bouncing meds, hoping the racket wouldn’t wake the nurse sleeping downstairs. He held his breath and listened. Even over the gurgle of the humidifier, he could hear snores vibrating through the floor. Nurse Grundel was still asleep.

Waking the nanny/nurse would ruin everything. The last time she’d caught him outside his bubble, Nurse Grundel had taken Will’s bed and forced him to sleep on the floor for a week.

“When naughty Wilhelm leaves his bubble,” the nurse had taunted as the bed was carried away, “he has no bed and gets in trouble.”

Nurse Grundel was a bitter, middle-aged woman with wide hips and a chinless face. She had no tolerance for rule-breaking, unless she was the one breaking them, and no patience for sick boys who refused to get better.

“Stop wheezing. Quit breaking out in hives. Control your seizing!” Nurse Grundel would demand with a huge fake smile every time Will had an allergic reaction.

The last thing Will needed this morning was the nurse’s artificial smile. There was nothing genuine about it—just a show of teeth under cold, calculating eyes. With Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle on their four-month, round-the-world yachting tour, Nurse Grundel had complete reign of the Tuttle estate. She’d already moved into the master suite and began wearing Will’s mother’s clothes, even though her hefty backside stretched the seams to the breaking point.

Last night she threw a boisterous party in the downstairs ballroom. When she thought Will was asleep, Nurse Grundel had led a group of tipsy party-goers into the east wing to poke the bubble and gawk at Will like he was an oversized hamster in a plastic cage.

“Shh. There he is,” she’d whispered to the group, “the world’s most allergic boy.”

“Oo. Is he contagious?” squeaked a wiry blonde woman holding a champagne glass.

“No, he was born like that. At first they thought he was normal, but when the boy’s mother held him for the first time and kissed his head, his face swelled up like lip-shaped balloons. The doctors rushed him away and stuck him in a bubble. He’s been in there ever since. It’s pitiful, really. That was the only time he’s ever been touched.”

Will had bitten his lip, pretending to stay asleep, while watching the crowd through lowered lids.

“And he never leaves?” burped a fat, bald man with a lampshade on his head.

“Only to go see doctors. He has a special outfit.” She pointed to a 1950’s white plastic radiation suit with a hood, gloves, boots, facemask and respirator hanging on the wall.

“Oh. It looks like something out of an alien movie,” giggled the blonde. “Why is it so old?”

“That’s the oddest thing about this boy,” whispered Nurse Grundel. “He’s allergic to almost everything, unless it was made before 1960.”

“Why 1960?” asked a woman with thick glasses and a pink stole.

“Nobody knows. But that’s why the boy’s things are so out of date. The Tuttles buy Wilhelm’s clothes from vintage shops and his furniture from military warehouses. The medical equipment comes from a museum in Vermont. Even this bubble was a decontamination tent from the Korean War. There’s another one just like it in the basement of the Tuttle Wing of Mt. Sinai Hospital—all very hush-hush, of course.”

“Tuttle Wing? I’m sure that cost them a pretty penny,” slurred the bald man, adjusting his lampshade.

Nurse Grundel fingered the string of Mrs. Tuttle’s pearls that hung around her neck. “Oh, the family is loaded. Mr. Tuttle’s grandfather invented the aglet.”

“The what?”

“That little plastic thing on the end of shoelaces.”

Everyone in the group stared at their feet, impressed.

“Yes,” said the nurse with a wide grin, “the Tuttles have plenty of money. They spend summers in Paris, winters in St. Croix. There is an autumn home in Tuscany. Right now they’re on a yacht in the Mediterranean.”

“Oo—you’ve been to Paris?” The blonde woman squeaked.

“No,” Nurse Grundel replied humorlessly. “I stay with the boy. I
always
stay with the boy. Sometimes I wish this bubble were empty. Then I’d get my life back.”

“You don’t mean that, Glenda. Do you?” asked the woman in glasses.

“No…no, of course not,” Nurse Grundel flashed a sly smile and eyed Will. “He would be helpless without me. Besides, Wilhelm Tuttle is my meal ticket. And he’s not going anywhere.”

The group had followed Nurse Grundel back to the party as Will had lay in bed, fuming. Helpless? Meal ticket? Not going anywhere? That’s when his plan had taken shape. It was stupid and reckless. A million things could go wrong. But whatever happened, Nurse Grundel would take the blame.

Will finished cleaning the pills out of the bathtub and looked at his watch. Time to go.

He grabbed his old army backpack and stuffed it with prescription bottles, six inhalers and a dozen vintage, metal syringes filled with epinephrine. Next came a box of latex gloves. He checked the manufacture date—1952. Good. The gloves made in the 40s all smelled like fish, for some reason.

3:51 a.m.

Will stepped back into his drippy bedroom and pulled open a footlocker. He always wore the same thing—black jeans, a black t-shirt, and black high-top canvas sneakers. Black was the only color he would wear. Anything else bothered his eyes and looked too bright next to his pasty skin. He dressed quickly, ignoring the dampness that had found its way into the fabric.

After cramming an extra change of clothes into his pack, he found his favorite coat—a giant, black, hooded parka that was at least two sizes too big for him.

Will moved to his bookshelf and selected two 1958 Manhattan travel guides from the rows of vintage guidebooks he’d collected. There were books for every country on earth, and he’d read them all so many times the pages were worn thin. Will’s plan had been to travel the world after puberty had cured him. He adjusted his latex gloves. Plans change.

A picture next to a guide to Istanbul caught his attention. He gently shook the water off the glass. The photo had been taken when he was six, back when he and his mom and dad were still trying to pretend Will could have a normal life. Dianna and Edward Tuttle stood tall and gorgeous in the picture. Both blond, tan, and perfect. They could have just walked off the cover of a fashion magazine. The couple was posed in front of a Christmas tree loaded with presents. Sandwiched between them was a scrawny, pale boy with a curtain of ink-black hair and blue-gray eyes, grinning through the mask of his ugly plastic suit. He held a glass box—his ant farm.

Ants had been Will’s only pets. They were fascinating. He could watch them dig for hours. Their tunnels seemed to reflect his mood—flat when he was sad, squiggly when he was agitated, pointed toward the air holes when he longed to be free. When no one was around, he would talk to them. It was like they listened.

Nurse Grundel had caught Will speaking to the ants and dumped the farm in the snowy garden the day Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle left for a ski trip to Switzerland. Will was furious. He had stared at the garden wishing his ants would crawl up Nurse Grunel’s pant legs and bite her. The next morning, the nurse was covered in tiny red dots. She’d woken up with ants in her bed. Will still thought it was a Christmas miracle.

The glass box now sat empty on the shelf. That seemed like a lifetime ago, a time when the Tuttles still did things together. A time before his parents lost hope that their son could be cured, and before Will started using his condition as an excuse to ignore the rules—a time when the Tuttles were still happy. He stared at the photo again, then slipped it out of its frame and into his backpack.

From under his mattress, Will recovered his yellow-bound allergy journal, a vintage train schedule and a tin full of the pre-1960 money he’d collected. It all went into the pack along with an extra medical tag. Will had several sets identical to those hanging around his neck. The tags used to be Army dog tags. Now they all read:

Wilhelm Tuttle - Acutely Hyper Allergic

1 Tuttle Way

Bronxville New York

914.555.0862

In Emergency Take to Mt. Sinai Hospital

He changed into a fresh pair of latex gloves and hung a World War II medical mask around his neck. Behind the desk was a parcel of food he’d been saving—a few boxes of Korean War k-rations, tins of sixty-year-old Spam, and several glass bottles of flavorless distilled water. Disgusting but edible.

After zipping up his parka, Will threw his backpack over his shoulder and stood still, listening for Nurse Grundel. Nothing but snores.

He scrawled a note on a damp paper and dropped it on the bed.

Moment of truth.

His old penknife was sharp. It sliced the plastic bubble like soft cheese. Will ducked and slipped through the hole. The window opened with a tiny squeak. He took a deep breath. The cool breeze was a stark contrast to the humid confines of the bubble. With one leg over the windowsill, Will hesitated—Nurse Grundel’s words circled his brain.
Helpless. Not going anywhere.

“Watch me,” he said.

He shimmied down the drainpipe and made his way down the long driveway just as dawn began to creep over the horizon.

Back on the bed, the wind blew through the hole in the bubble and fluttered the edge of Will’s note.

It said:

To whom it may concern,

Gone to the city. Don’t wait up.

-Will

The steam was already beginning to blur the ink.

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