Finding Alice (4 page)

So, using a screwdriver and hammer, I open up the box and destroy its interior parts. It doesn’t occur to me that it took nearly a year’s worth of budgeting from my dad’s Social Security benefits for me to pay off this computer. Money is irrelevant now. I put all these broken components into a large cardboard box and tape it up securely. This will show them!

From now on I will write my prophecy and spiritual interpretations only onto yellow legal tablets, and these will remain safely zipped in my backpack. I vow to myself and God to keep my backpack with me always, even when I sleep, which is becoming less and less. However, this lack of rest does not trouble me much. Sleep, like money or education or even food, is completely irrelevant in the larger realm of great spiritual awakenings.

I’m not sure how much time actually passes during my revelation era, maybe a couple of weeks, but sometimes people stop by to check on me. Mostly, like when it is Chelsea, and later on Shay, I don’t bother to answer or even open the door. But I do open the door to Mr. Scoggins, since he manages the apartments and is very insistent in his knocking.

“You know anything about that smashed-up piece of junk down on the sidewalk?” he asks me with a furrowed brow.

I keep my door open about six inches, my foot planted firmly against it as I tell him, “I most certainly do not.” Lying is also irrelevant.

“Well, someone thought it might’ve come from your apartment.” His voice oozes with suspicion, accusation, threat, and innuendo, and I suddenly wish that I’d never opened the door.

“That’s impossible.” I slowly close the door a few more inches.

“Everything okay in there?”

“Sure.”

He nods to his left. “Your neighbor thinks something’s not right with you. Says things aren’t normal in there. You better be straight with me, girl. Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” I close the door completely now and gasp for breath. That was a close one. My pulse pounds like a jackhammer against my temples, and it seems as if something inside of me, like a blood vessel or possibly an aneurysm, is about to burst. My body feels as if I’ve just run uphill for several miles.

“It’s Linda,” suggests Amelia in her calm voice as she emerges from the bathroom.

I consider the middle-aged Asian woman who brought over some homemade bran muffins shortly after I moved in. “But she seemed nice.”

“It’s all an act. She’s really spying on you.”

“But what about the muffins?” I suddenly recall how, despite my concerns over food tainting, I went ahead and ate them.

“That’s part of the problem, Alice. Her food is inside you now.”

Even though it’s been a couple of weeks since the muffins, I dash straight to the bathroom and gag myself with my finger, making myself throw up.

“That’s better,” says Amelia. “You must be very, very careful about what you put inside your body.”

So I look at the food in my refrigerator, what little there is since I haven’t been to the store in days, and I am certain that Linda has sneaked over here during the few times I’ve been out. I suspect she has poisoned all my food. Upon closer inspection I can see tiny pinpricks where she has surely injected each item with poison.

“That’s right,” confirms Amelia. “They paid her to spy on you, as well as to poison your food. It’s a slow acting sort of toxin, related to lead. It builds up in your system, but it’s impossible to trace its origins.”

Already I feel sick. My eyesight is blurry, and my fingers are swollen. I can tell that the poison is taking effect. I find an oven mitt, and using it to protect my hand, I carefully empty the contents of my fridge and cupboard into a trash container. I’m about to take it downstairs to the rubbish bin when Amelia stops me.

“You might run into Linda out there,” she warns.

“That’s right.” I set the garbage just inside my door and leave it there. But after a few days it begins to stink like the compost pile my mom used to keep by her garden, and the putrid smell is penetrating through my skin. And so I decide to sneak the offensive trash container out into the hallway.

It’s the first time I’ve opened my door since the manager stopped by. I peer up and down the vacant hallway to be sure no one’s watching me, especially Linda. Then I carry the garbage out, uncertain where I should leave it so that it doesn’t look like it came from my apartment. But that’s when I hear voices coming up the stairwell. I pause to listen for a moment. Then, convinced they are talking about me, plotting a way to get inside my apartment and steal my notebooks, I abandon the noxious garbage right there in the middle of the hallway.

I rush back into my apartment and close and deadbolt my door. I wait and wait for them to come, expecting them to pound down my door and demand that I hand over my secret journals. But they must suspect I am ready for them, for they never show up. Tonight I shove a dresser in front of the door and finally fall asleep. For a few hours anyway.

You’d think that my lack of food would make me ravenous. But I honestly don’t feel a bit hungry. It seems that food is unnecessary. In fact, the mere thought of actually ingesting anything nauseates me. I can’t imagine putting something solid into my mouth and chewing, swallowing. And although I used to adore Burger King Whoppers, the mere idea of eating any animal products—especially animal flesh—makes my skin literally crawl. It makes me want to vomit. It becomes my firm conviction that the only safe thing for me to consume now is hot tea.

So Amelia and I have regular tea parties these days. Since I’m already Alice, I pretend that she is the Mad Hatter. But then I examine a teabag one day and am shocked to discover that even these have been tampered with. I immediately throw them all away and furiously scrub my hands with soap and water. Now I will drink only boiled water and only while it is hot—scalding hot. These are the sacrifices you make when you’re on a mission.

chapter
FOUR

The Pool of Tears

I
’m still not sure how my mother found out about me. But I am stunned when Mr. Scoggins unlocks my door and lets her enter. With a lot of huffing and puffing and a string of profanity from Mr. Scoggins, the two of them manage to shove and push until they finally budge the dresser from its post. Terrified, I hide under the covers on my bed, the safest place, although I’m certain that my enemy has won this battle. And yet at the same time I am strangely relieved. I think I am just tired. In my exhaustion I am ready for the spies to storm in, bash me over the head, and steal my precious journals. I think I just want it to be over and done with.

But I look up to realize it is only my mom with Mr. Scoggins’s scowling face right behind her. They are peering over my wall of boxes, and my mom looks confused. She’s wearing her dark plaid wool dress with the covered buttons down the front, the same one she’s had since I was in grade school. But her hair seems even grayer than before. She grayed prematurely right after my father died, making her appear much older than her actual forty-two years. Naturally, she believes it is sinful to color hair. I can see she is saying something
to me—her lips are moving—but the words are floating around like butterflies, and they can’t seem to land in my head. I stare at her blankly, and consequently her face looks pulled and strained. She could be my mother, but she might be an impostor sent by the spies.

“Alice!” Her cries penetrate.
“Are you all right?”

Wordlessly, I look at her, and I think that this woman is my mother. But at the same time I’m not absolutely sure. Suddenly I am worried that this is all just a very clever trick. I glance around to see if Amelia is anywhere nearby, but I don’t see her. Have they already come and taken her away?

“Alice?”

I pull my faded denim comforter up to my chin now, shrinking down into my bed as if it might swallow me whole. How I wish that it could. Disappearing sounds so appealing just now.

“What’s wrong?” This mother-type woman comes closer now, and I peer up at her with unveiled suspicion. Who is this impostor? And yet something about the crinkly lines that fan out at the edges of her watery blue eyes entices me to believe that she might possibly be my mother after all.

“Mom?” I take in a breath, like breaking the surface from under water. It seems like years since I’ve uttered a word. “Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. I’ve been trying to call you for days, Alice, but you never answer your cell phone. I’ve left dozens of messages. Don’t you ever check your voice mail anymore?”

“I, uh, don’t have it … My phone’s gone.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know.” This is partially true. I threw it in a garbage can by the bookstore several weeks ago. I knew they were listening, using
it to read my thoughts, to get into my head. But it’s true that I have absolutely no idea where it might be right now. Perhaps in a dump-site on the east side of the river—who can know?

Mom steps around to the opening in my wall of boxes and kneels down, studying me carefully. “You don’t look well, Alice.”

“My neighbor is poisoning me,” I whisper with urgency. Maybe my mom can help me.

“What?”
She stands now and glares at Mr. Scoggins. “What on earth is going on here?”

He shrugs. Then with his index finger pointing to his head, he makes a slow circling motion.

“What do you mean?” My mom turns back and peers at me more closely this time. And that’s when I see it—the same expression she used around Grandma. It’s a mixture of frustration and fear and, I think, embarrassment.

“I’m
not
crazy, Mom.” I sit up in bed now, determined to make her understand my predicament. “They’ve been spying on me. Linda is working for them. Amelia said that they want to hurt me.”

“Who’s Amelia?”

“She’s my …” I glance over at Mr. Scoggins, who stares at me with what seems to be some sickening sort of fascination. I lower my voice. “
You know
, Mom. She’s my guardian angel. She tells me things.”

For a moment she almost appears to believe me. I stand up now, hoping to make her see the truth. I take a step toward her, but my legs wobble beneath me. I grab on to a box to help me stand.

I see the tears fill her eyes and then stream down her smooth cheeks. “Oh, Alice,
look
at you! You’re nothing but skin and bones.”

I nod. “See.
That’s
what I’m telling you. Linda is poisoning me so she can steal my notes. I have all the answers, Mom. Really, you’ve got to believe me. I have the
golden key
.”

I notice Mr. Scoggins shaking his head as he moves toward the door. “Stupid kids and their drugs these days,” he mutters. “What a waste.”

Mom’s brow creases. “Are you on drugs, Alice?”

“No.” I sigh. It feels as if my legs are made of shoestrings, and thanks to the poison in my body, my vision is getting blurry again. I sink back down to the bed and bury my head in my hands. “It’s useless.”

“You’re coming home with me right now, Alice.”

I don’t argue with her. I just pick up my backpack and follow. She holds on to me as we slowly walk down the stairs, and then she guides me to the car. I feel as if I am about a hundred years old—or maybe two.

Yet it is oddly comforting to slump into the front seat of her old Taurus. She’s been driving the same car for more than ten years now. I can still smell the familiar mixture of Aaron’s old dirty basketball sneakers and Ralph’s canine odor, even though Aaron’s off at college, and our old dog was put to sleep last summer. But it’s not such a bad aroma, familiar and even comforting.

My mom talks as she drives. But I can’t make her words line up right in my head. It’s like a crossword puzzle all mixed up. Or maybe she’s actually praying for me to get better. Maybe this is her secret prayer language. Yes, that seems more likely. But just like the Cheshire cat speaking backward, it makes no sense to me.

Now I am sorry that I mentioned the golden key to her, but at
least I didn’t tell her that I am the chosen one. I know she won’t get that. Not yet anyway. And maybe this is meant to be my secret. At least for the time being. For I still believe that all things will be revealed in due time. I keep reaching down and feeling for my backpack, making sure that my journals are still with me and safe.

I see my mom’s lips continuing to move as she expertly guides her car down the freeway. It feels as if we are flying in a jet, and I am scared by the motion. I see trees and signs flashing by me, and for a moment I am certain that I’m being swooped away to some secret location where I will be completely deprogrammed and my journals decoded, and I will most certainly be destroyed. But then I think, No, that’s just my mom driving her old Taurus. She’s taking me home, and everything will be okay now.

Maybe it’s this sense of false relief that first makes me begin to cry. But once I start crying, I am unable to stop. I know it’s upsetting my mother, but the tears just keep pouring down, like rivers from my eyes. I am fairly certain that all this fluid will soon fill the inside of the Taurus. I imagine us trapped in a lukewarm pool of salt water, unable to breathe, finally drowning in here. But even so I cannot make myself stop.

chapter
FIVE

Off with Her Head!

I
should’ve known, especially after my uncontrollable flood of tears, that Mom would cart me straight to her church. I start to say something when I notice she’s turning left toward town instead of right toward home, but it’s too late. I never get the chance.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she attempts to assure me, using her church voice now. “God is in control. He’s going to help you through this trial.”

“I know that God is in control, Mom. God is the one who’s been doing all this and showing me these things.”

She frowns and looks slightly confused but continues driving down Oak Street with determination, straight toward Salvation Center. Then, instead of parking in the back graveled lot as she would do under normal circumstances, she pulls her old Taurus right up to the front door and turns off the engine and looks at me. In a firm voice, she says, “Don’t worry. Pastor John will know exactly what to do, Alice.”