Dead to You (9 page)

But then the film ends, the lights go up, people are cheering, and the announcer, shouting over the noise, calls me to come down to the floor where he stands. And that starts me off in hysterics. The laughing. I know I look like a freak, and I can’t catch my breath, and Cami’s pulling me to my feet and dragging me down the steps, and then slowly everything gets eerily quiet and things start swaying around me and getting dim, and I’m cackling like a lunatic, gasping for air, tripping down the steps, when my knees give out. I plunge forward, feel my bursting bladder let go and my head hit hard on the wooden step.

Everything goes black.

When I come to, it’s chaos. There are people all
crowding around me. I blink, and somebody’s mother, in a BHS hoodie, is looking down at me. “I’m a paramedic,” she says. “You fainted. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m out of breath and my head hurts. And I feel it—the clammy, quickly cooling wetness all down my jeans. “Oh, shit,” I say. I close my eyes.

“I called an ambulance when I saw you go down. Keep your eyes closed, try to relax, and we’ll get you out of here,” she says. “Here comes the stretcher.” She shields me from onlookers, and every once in a while she yells at them, “Stand back, we need room!”

“I pissed my pants.”

“It happens. Your jeans are dark. Nobody can tell. It’s okay. What the hell were they thinking springing this on you, anyway? Did your parents know about this? I wasn’t far away. You looked like you didn’t know this was going to happen.”

I don’t answer. I don’t know about my parents. But I think they are in on it. Why else would they suddenly start going to games when they never have before? Cami, definitely. She knew it was coming. Hell, so did J-Dog, I bet. That’s why he forced me here. Plus, they probably tell each other everything. Jesus. I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see any of them.

The other paramedics come. They put me on a stretcher and take me to the ambulance, and the woman with the sweatshirt stays by my side. I see Mama and Dad and Blake and Gracie fighting their way through the crowd, trying to get to me. Gracie’s bawling.

The woman leans down and says in my ear, “You want anyone to come in the back here with you?”

My throat hurts. “No,” I whisper. I turn my head, which is really pounding now.

“Meet us at the hospital,” she barks at my family, and the other paramedics close the doors.

They examine me at the hospital. Concussion.
Keep me there for observation overnight because they are worried about my brain bleeding, but it looks like I’m fine. Just a gigantic bump on my head. That, and my room smells like a urinal.

I think about what I have to face at school Monday. Everybody will know. I’m sure there was piss on the floor that had to be cleaned up. God.

Who does that to a person? I turn over onto my side, curl up, and stare at the wall, remembering it, how sick it made me feel. When I squeeze my eyes shut, the silent sobs come, and I have to grip my knees until it stops.

I think about how it was with Ellen. No matter how much she neglected me, she never would have tried to humiliate me.

My parents come in the room and I pretend I’m asleep. I don’t want to see anybody—I can’t. Later I hear that Cami’s there too, missing the end of J-Dog’s game. I hope they lose. Sons of bitches.

The nurse comes in and shoos my parents out. She sits by the bed and asks how I feel.

“I’m okay,” I say. “Headache.”

“On a scale of one to ten, one being barely noticeable and ten being unbearable, how bad is it?”

“Four or five.”

“Okay,” she says. She writes it down. “Now, about the visitors.”

“No more visitors. Just tell them I don’t want to see anybody and they should all go home. I’ll take a cab in the morning.” I have absolutely no money.

She smiles. “I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to leave. There’s a little girl out there. Gracie. She thinks you’re dead. Won’t stop crying.”

“My sister. You told her I’m not dead, right?”

“Of course! But she saw you on the stretcher with your eyes closed, being shoved into an ambulance. And that’s all she knows.”

I think about that. Feel that little bit of panic start in my gut. “Is this a trick to get them in here again?”

“No. You don’t have to do anything. I just thought I’d tell you about the girl.”

I rub my eyes and run my fingers gingerly through my hair.

Stupid little girl.

“All right,” I say. “Just Gracie, nobody else. You bring her in here.”

She comes up to the room walking on tiptoes and stops at the door. The nurse says, “It’s okay. See? There he is. He’s just got a sore head.”

Gracie holds on to the doorframe and sniffs. Her cheeks are all splotchy red from crying. I wave, feeling stupid. Finally I ease up to a sitting position. “Come here, then,” I say.

She shuffles in halfway.

“Come on.”

She sidles up to the bed.

“Hi.”

Her lip quivers. “Hi, Efan.”

“You okay?”

She wrinkles up her nose. “Something’s stinky.”

I sigh. “Okay, that’s enough, girlie. Go back out there and tell Mama and Dad to go home. I’ll call tomorrow when I need a ride.” I buzz the nurse.

“Cami’s here too.”

“Tell them all that I have to go to sleep now.”

The nurse comes in. “Had enough for today, Ethan?” She gives me a look.

“Yeah. Can you just tell them I don’t want to see anybody and they should just go home and get some sleep?” I hope they respect that, after what they did to me.

“Will do. Come on, Gracie.”

Gracie obediently takes the nurse’s hand. “Bye, Efan. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Gracie. Stop crying now.”

“Okay.”

In the dark, I can’t stop thinking about what happened and all the people who betrayed me. And I think maybe there’s no other option.

I’m going to have to run.

They wake me up all night, every hour or two, I
think. In the morning I walk over to the window and push the curtain aside. Snow. More and more snow here. So cold. I imagine what it’s like living on the streets around here, and I shiver and turn away.

I guess things aren’t as bad this morning as they felt last night.

In my mind, I come up with a list of demands. My own bedroom in the basement. Some privacy. And I’m not going to school. No way. Not going back there, not going to face them. I’ll homeschool myself or just drop out. I’m sixteen, I can do whatever I want.

When the doc comes in and says I’m good to go, I don’t have a choice. Not one that I’m willing to make, anyway, thanks to the snow. I call home.

“Hello?” Mama sounds worried.

“It’s Ethan . . .”

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” she says. “We didn’t know it would be like that. Please let me explain.”

I swallow hard and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Can you just bring me some jeans and pick me up?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks.” I hang up and stand in my hospital gown, my ass hanging out. My soiled jeans and boxers are in a plastic bag and ready to go. It’s mortifying.

Mama arrives with the jeans, bringing clean boxers, too, and my coat, which I guess I left on the bleachers. I change in the bathroom as Mama signs the final papers, and we’re gone.

In the car, the only sound is the massive whoosh of the heater. I stare out the window, willing Mama with my silence to come up with something that makes me not hate her.

“I got a call yesterday morning,” she says. “The school principal said that a group of basketball players had come up with the idea to just say a little ‘welcome home’ to you at the game. Friends of yours.”

I snort.

“Well, that’s what they told me. Jason Roofer—you know him, obviously. That boy Cami goes with. He’s a nice boy. Very thoughtful. It was Jason’s idea and he approached Al, the radio announcer who always announces our games and interviews Jason now and then. Jason asked Al to say a little something at halftime from the booth to welcome you back. That’s all it was going to be, according to Jason—I promise. It sounded like just a small thing. They invited us to come too, but asked us to keep it a secret. Jason wanted you to be surprised.”

“No kidding.”

“I had no idea Al was going to make such a scene and dig up all that footage. But I guess in a small town like this, people jump on any little bit of celebrity they can claim, you know? Al obviously went way too far with his enthusiasm. It was horrible—Ethan, it was horrible for us, too, for Blake especially, and for Gracie, who didn’t understand any of it. It was terrible to see all of that again. I can’t believe he did it. I’m furious. And Al has heard from me. He apologized.”

She sounds sincere.

“I’m not going back there,” I say.

Mama is silent as she pulls into the garage. She turns the car off. “Cami and Jason feel terrible.”

I ponder this, but sorrys can’t erase anything. “I’m not going to talk to those guys, and I’m not going back there. I’m quitting school. And,” I say, feeling bold, “I want my own room in the basement.”

Mama just looks at me, her eyes sad, and doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t say no. Not to any of it.

When we get home, I go straight downstairs in the dark and sit in my spot against the wall, among the boxes of a stranger. You’d almost think that after a hit to the head like that, I’d get my memory back. But no such luck.

From my basement location, I can just barely
hear Mama and Dad talking somewhere above my head. I open the heater vent all the way and I don’t have to strain very hard at all to listen. Dad’s voice gets louder and I can tell he’s mad about what I told Mama. My demands. They start arguing. I don’t like it.

Upstairs, everybody but Gracie is being weird about things, but we are forced by a blizzard to hang out all together at home the rest of the weekend.

Dad tells me he’s sorry about what happened. Blake acts like I did something wrong to him. Cami comes to the door covered in snow to see how I’m doing but I won’t go talk to her, so after a while of talking to Mama, she leaves.

And then J-Dog calls. I watch Mama on the phone, talking to him, telling him I’m not up to talking quite yet. Lying for me. I get a little twinge in my chest, like love or whatever.

If Mama tries to hug me now, I’ll let her, I guess. But she doesn’t.

Gracie sits by me on the couch. And I realize that I don’t despise her like I thought I would. I kept expecting her to be like all the six-year-old girls I saw at the zoo and out shopping with their parents, whining and begging and chomping on gum, and I never thought I’d like one of them. Gracie is definitely annoying sometimes, but she’s also kind of smart.

We’re watching some stupid sitcom marathon. I don’t like it, but that’s what’s on. It doesn’t matter anyway, because Gracie won’t shut up about the stuff she saw last night, about the news clips and the missing boy and how I was kidnapped. She’s completely fascinated by it, not scared at all. Weird kid.

“Why did you get in the car with those guys?” she asks. The question of the month.

I sigh. “I don’t know, Gracie. I don’t remember doing it.”

“Where did they take you?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t remember them. All I remember is Eleanor.”

“Who’s that?”

“She’s the woman who acted like my mama while I was gone.”

“She wasn’t as nice as Mama.” She says it as a matter of fact.

I think about that. “No,” I say. “You’re right.”

“Then how come did you—?”

“Gracie, I don’t know. I don’t remember. Okay?” I’m getting frustrated now. “I look at pictures, and people tell me stories, and sometimes I think I can remember things. Little bits of things. But so far, that’s not very much.”

“How old were you?”

“A little older than you.”

“I would remember everybody,” she says, and I have nothing to defend myself with. Gracie tilts her head and looks at me. “Does your head still hurt?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not cool.”

I laugh. “No. It’s not. I think if we stop talking, it will feel better.”

She shrugs, and as the snowy, late-afternoon light turns dusky, she leans up against me and links her arm with mine, and I smile at her. Later, she crawls into my lap and we just sit like that, like I’ve got this little warm, fuzzy-headed package in my arms, and we watch TV until the marathon ends.

In bed at night, Blake and I don’t talk, we just
listen to Mama and Dad arguing in their room next door. Sometimes I catch words. They’re talking about money, and adding a bedroom. And about me and school. Mama’s in my court all the way.

“Good job,” Blake says. The sarcasm is obvious.

“What?”

“You did it again, and you’ve only been here, what, ten days?”

“What are you talking about?” I don’t like this. Blake’s been too quiet lately. He hid out in the bedroom all day today. Playing depressing music.

“Got them fighting again. Like after you left.”

I roll over and stare at the wall in the dark. This room is so tiny, I’m feeling claustrophobic. I can’t stand being in here with him baiting me like that.

I try to like him, try to be nice, but he’s got such a huge chip on his shoulder about me. I start to wonder if he’ll ever get over it.

“You were four years old,” I say. “How can you even remember the fighting?”

“You were seven. How can you
not
remember being abducted?”

“Lay off.”

“You.”

I clench my jaw, fuming silently. He can’t stand not having the last word. I let him have it. This time.

Mama and Dad’s arguing fades, and I fall into one of those hard sleeps where, when you wake up, you don’t know where you are.

In the morning they go to church, but Mama lets me stay home. “My head still hurts,” I say. That excuse won’t work much longer. But I’m worried. Worried they’re going to try to make me go to school tomorrow. I end up wandering the house, listening for where the floorboards creak.