Do You Think This Is Strange? (9 page)

“Young lady,” he said. “Stop playing with the water.”

She ignored him. Perhaps she didn't hear him, but I think she did.

“Young lady!” His palm slammed the desktop. “Hey!”

The end to this was not going to be happy, I could see, especially if he did the thing he appeared about to do: walk up and grab her, or even try to take her headphones off. At best, there would be a confrontation. At worst, there would be a one-person riot.

A deer in the city
, said the threads.

Shut up, I explained.

Mr. Pringle stepped away from his desk, his jaw tight, his brow furrowed. He breathed through his nose.

“Mr. Chips,” I said, softly, but clearly, crisply, as if I were speaking from the ranks at reveille.

Seriously?
asked the threads.

Mr. Pringle stopped, mid-step, frozen. His eyes snapped to mine, then his head slowly followed suit.

“What,” he said, his lips parted, his teeth clamped together, “did you just say?”

I stared at my textbook and turned pages slowly. “She can't hear you,” I said. “She has her headphones on.” I flipped the pages of my textbook back and forth.

He looked at me, then back at her. “Well, she'd better bloody well take them off,” he said. “Tell her to take them off.”

“But she won't take them off.”

“The hell she won't.”

“The hell she
will
,” I replied, then turned the pages faster.

I could feel his glare. He stared at me for ten seconds. My mouth dried, I began to sweat, and I felt a pressing need to swallow. Then he went back to his desk and shuffled through his papers. Seeing a red manila folder on his desk, he picked it up and opened it. As he read it, he glanced up at Saskia three times.

“Autistic,” he said. “Great.”

Heads turned. Eyes fell on Saskia, the newest artifact of interest in the class.

“P.D.D.N.O.S.” I said.

Mr. Pringle looked at me. “Christ, Wyland, now what?”

“I don't know,” I hastily responded. I had meant to say nothing at all. I wasn't interested in a conversation. Not another one. I'd already had one, earlier in the day, with Jim Worley. That was enough.

“Okay,” said Mr. Pringle. He slammed his folder shut and put it down on the desk. “Do you know her?”

“Yes.”

He considered her as she ran a pencil back and forth under the water. Slight squeaks, barely audible above the sound of the central air coming from the ceiling above her, popped from her lips.

Mr. Pringle nodded. “Congratulations, professor, she's now your lab partner, and your responsibility. Go sit beside her. And, for God's sake, get her to stop playing with the water taps.”

I picked up my binder and carried it to her table. Moving the stool until it was as far away from her as it could be, I sat down. I slowly reached out and tapped her pencil with a single finger. She glanced at me, looked away quickly, then turned off the water faucet. She put the pencil down, sat back, and folded her hands in her lap, looking at the desktop.

Mr. Pringle, after observing this, sighed and shook his head. “What idiot decided she was ready to use an open flame?”

Saskia turned down her headphones and copied the notes that the teacher wrote on the chalkboard. She opened her book to the correct page. She read the text and turned the pages. She did her work in silence. Slightly, just slightly, the corner of her mouth turned up in the hint of a smile. And then it was gone. She turned her pages.

As she did this, I began to feel a growing sense of alarm, because I was not supposed to find this as enjoyable as I did.

The inquisition began, as per normal, Sunday morning, halfway through our patrol in the mountains behind the house.

“Tell me three things that you're excited about,” Bill said as we trudged forward, single file, at a slow enough pace to comfortably talk in short sentences, just fast enough that neither of us could sing. We had tried singing years before. It wasn't satisfying. That is why we walk at this pace.

Every week, I am asked to look forward to the upcoming week. Every week, Bill has to ask twice, because the pace is just fast enough that his patience for a response is abbreviated.

“Three things, Freddy,” he said.

We reached the crest of a hill and paused for a rest. There was a break in the trees and we could see the valley stretching below, until it disappeared in distant rain bursts.

Tell him you're excited about telling him three things you're excited about
, the threads urged.

It won't work, I told the threads. It never does.

Maybe this time.

“I'm excited about telling you three things,” I said and tried to look nonchalant.

Bill frowned and stared at me, waiting.

The jig is up!
howled the threads.

“Tell me the
next
two things you're excited to tell me about,” Bill said.

“Apples.”

“You're excited about apples?”

“No,” I said. “Yes. Sometimes. Not now.”

“Then why did you say ‘apples'?”

“It was the first thing that came to mind.”

The wind shivered the tops of the trees. “Freddy, do we have to go through this every time?”

Say no
, warned the smarter half of my mind.

Just tell him yes
, shouted the threads.

“Not every time,” I said, which I thought was a happy medium.

We don't know what that means
, said the threads.

Bill rubbed his eyes. He sighed. He fiddled with the Velcro holding his water bottle to his belt.

“Freddy,” he began.

“Chemistry class,” I said quickly, and everyone in my head was surprised.

We did
not
see that coming
, said the threads.

—

I didn't realize I was going to say it before I said it. It just came out. I blurted.

I never blurt.

Sometimes I stammer. Sometimes I pause mid-sentence because the threads have led me down a rabbit hole, and I have forgotten the last half of what I was going to say. And sometimes I stare because I have nothing to say. I can't pull anything relevant from my queue of answers. The threads are silent. The smarter half is thinking about something else. I have been abandoned in my own mind, and I have nothing. So I just pick the nearest approximation. Usually, it's something from a movie that I've seen recently.

When I was younger and Bill asked me “How was school today?” I would answer with something relatively appropriate, perhaps from
Finding Nemo
.

“Just keep swimming,” I'd chime. “Just keep swimming.”

“Ah!” Bill would say and wonder if we'd Made a Breakthrough.

That was then.

Today, if he asked me, I would be more likely to answer with something from an Ed Norton movie.

“How was school today?”

“Welcome to Fight Club,” I would reply. “The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you
do not
talk about Fight Club!”

He doesn't ask how school went all that often.

This time, I just led him into it. I didn't know it was something I was looking forward to.

Bill tilted his head. “Chemistry class,” he said slowly. “That's good, isn't it?”

I braced myself, for I knew that there were more questions coming. I had opened the door. Would I not expect that Bill would just walk right in?

Change the subject!

“Frogs,” I said. And I began walking.

That did it. Bill pursed his lips and pondered the new revelation as he fell in behind me and we began our descent. “What about frogs?”

“I'm excited about frogs. Frogs is the third thing I'm excited about.”

“Why on God's green earth would you be excited about frogs today?”

“I'm excited about them every day.”

He said, “Let's go back to chemistry class. Why—”

“Just keep swimming!” I shouted quickly. “Just keep swimming!”

Down the valley, a low crack of thunder. Rain began falling on my hood.

“Let's get going,” Bill said, and I was all too ready to agree.

—

Despite the Three Things I Did or the Three Things I Look Forward To or the Three Things I'm Excited About, the trails behind my house remain a Favourite Thing. They have been a constant in my life.

After my mother left, Bill and I walked the hills like soldiers to the front. Our heads down, single file, a strong march, with little time to look around. I thought a lot. One of the things I thought about was Saskia. I wondered where she was. I wondered if she still went to Excalibur House. And I wondered why, even years later, I still wondered these things.

Saskia was one of my Favourite Things when we were friends. Even after I stopped seeing her, she remained a Favourite Thing. Over the years, new memories began to erode the spot she held in my mind, and I gradually thought about her less on my walks until, more than five years after I last saw her, I stopped wondering. She sat down in her seat at the back of my mind and rarely crossed my thoughts.

I don't know why she remained such a Favourite Thing for so long, but she did. While she was on my list, I thought of it as rational. She was my friend, my only friend, and her absence didn't seem a reason for her to stop being my friend. So, every week, for years after I left Excalibur House, she came with me on my walks.

Hello, Freddy
, she called out.
Did you have a good day?

I did. I had a good day.

I had a good day too!

I marched behind my father, while the winds played the trees like cellos and the trolls glowered down at me from the cliffs above.

I opened my eyes
and I was seven years old. The rain made a
tat-tat-tat
noise on my hood. I sat with my back against the cliff and listened to the wind shaking the trees, the rain like applause, and I waited for the trolls to come down and meet with me.

Not long before that, I stood in the kitchen, staring out the window into the forest. The rain was our constant companion; it had been pouring for weeks. I wondered if there was something I could do about it. I went to my father's room and searched through his desk until I found his jade talisman, the one he kept in his pocket when walking in the forest.

I put on my raincoat and walked out the back door, through the yard, and past the gate. I didn't stand or pause, but stepped between the two giant firs that stood like sentinels at the entrance to the forest. I went in. Among the trees, it was dark, and the water drops grew thicker, slapping on my hood like birds pecking at my brow.

In my pocket, I nervously caressed the talisman.

—

Although I had heard the back door slam when I shut it behind me, I didn't see it pop back out of its latch. When my father came home, the house was as cold as a tomb. I was, by then, too far away to hear his calls.

He went upstairs to check my bedroom. When he found it empty, he went to his bedroom to phone the police. There, the dresser drawers were open, the contents astray; he saw how I had rifled through his things.

The bottom drawer of his desk was open. His talisman was gone. He knew where I went.

—

Deep in the forest, I sat with my back against a lichen-strafed cliff wall. Across the valley, I saw mountains poking out from the mist.

A hundred yards down the steep slope, my father, in a heavy green fisherman's coat, grunted and cursed as he made his way over salal and deadfall, up to the base of the cliff, where I sat.

He arrived, out of breath, and took a moment to compose himself.

“Dammit, Freddy,” he said, “what are you
doing
here?”

“Where's Mom?” I asked, looking out into the disappearing mountains.

His shoulders sagged. He sat beside me, and we didn't speak for a half hour as night slipped overhead.

—

Ten years ago, the rain came like the locusts and stayed for three months. During its visit, there were only four days that staggered the downpour.

On weekends, I stared out the window of the living room and watched the sidewalks, empty of neighbours. No one casually walked by anymore to see if my mother was dancing. They stayed out of the downpour, which was just as well, because my mother didn't dance anymore. After the first few weeks of the rainfall, she shuffled about the living room in a housecoat and slippers, with a cup of coffee and a head full of morning hair. Sometimes she didn't dress until dinner.

When someone is feeling sad, you're supposed to rub their backs and empathize. You are supposed to do kind things for them. But I didn't know how to do any of that, I didn't know what to say.

I knew I was
supposed
to say, “What's wrong?” but I wasn't going to pretend. I already knew what was wrong: she was unhappy. At night, I sometimes sat in bed and stared at the wall, and listened to her crying in the living room. At other times, I awoke to the sound of my parents arguing. Sometimes, they shouted until my father stormed out of the house.

Often, my name was one of the words shouted back and forth.

On the fourth week of the downpour, she shuffled less about the living room and sat more in the sofa chair, staring at the rain, a glass of wine always in her hand. On the fifth week, she sat there for large parts of the day and would still be there when my father came home from work at night. He sometimes sat with her and drank his Bud Light in silence. On the sixth week, Bill began working overtime shifts and came home only after Mom had gone to bed.

On the seventh week, she came early for me at Excalibur House. “Where's Dad?” I asked, and she didn't answer.

I got in the car. “Where's my booster seat?”

The last thing we talked about was the location of my booster seat. It was a substantial conversation, lasting the entirety of the ride.