Forever Freaky (14 page)

“Not a thing,” he said.

“It’s just that with all this, and what’s
going through my head—you know, I’m not focusing very well, and I
forgot I wasn’t dressed, and, well, you know--” I forced myself to
stop, because I realized I had started babbling. I hated people who
babble.

“No, I understand,” Jack said reasonably, too
reasonably.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“You could stand to put on a few pounds.”

“I’m not talking about that, you nitwit. I
mean all this,” I growled, motioning to everything that was flying
around over our heads.

“Oh, well, when did it start?” he asked, but
I had a hard time hearing him.

“Hunh? You have to speak up. I got all this
noise in my head. People are singing the nation anthem now. It
sounds weird, though—I think it’s the Canadian national anthem.
Must be a hockey game.”

“It’s not even hockey season,” he said.

“Then it must be a future hockey game.
Whatever.”

“There any chance you can see what teams, and
the final score?”

I groaned. I sat on the floor with my back
against the footboard of my bed. I buried my face in my hands.

Jack sat in front of me.

“When did all this start?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I whined. By now it
seemed to be going on for hours.

“Something must have triggered it.”

“Yeah, my dad,” I said

“What did he do?”

“He didn’t do anything. My mom told me
something about him, and—I don’t know—I guess it upset me.” I told
him the short version of the story about my grandmother.

“Oh,” Jack said knowingly, when I was
finished. “So you’re afraid you might be evil.”

“No, I’m not—well, I don’t know, maybe the
thought crossed my mind once or twice. And then hearing that story
about my dad…”

“Jules, you’re not evil,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged. “I just do.”

“Whatever. You have any idea how to stop it?
I mean, did you ever read anything about something like this?”

“Not really. I think you just need to calm
down, is all.”

“Calm down? That’s it? All right, I’m
officially screwed.”

“Try taking deep breaths.”

“Try kissing my butt,” I told him. “I’m not
having a baby, you know.”

“Then how about this? Take hold of my hand,”
he said, reaching toward me.

“Uh-uh. No way. I have enough shit going
through my head already. I don’t need your lame thoughts, too.”

He sighed. “Will you just trust me? I do a
lot of meditation. Maybe it will rub off.”

“That may be the dumbest idea you ever had,”
I said.

But he kept holding his hand out. Finally, I
figured I had to try something; I couldn’t go through life with
things flying around over my head like a bunch of vultures. So I
grabbed his hand.

The first thing I sensed was that Jack was
extremely calm inside. Little by little, that calmness passed from
him to me, as though he was lending it to me, and I began to feel
better. Then, suddenly, everything that was flying fell to the
floor, and the noise fled my mind.

“See?” he said.

I slowly released his hand.

“You don’t worry much, do you?” I asked.

“What’s the point?” He appraised the room. It
looked as though a tornado had gone through it. “Looks more like my
room now,” he said, grinning.

I got up and started picking up things and
putting them back where they belonged.

“You really should listen to me, you know?”
Jack said.

“What? You read a few books, and you know
everything?”

“It’s just common sense. You need to
experiment.”

“I’m not a lab rat,” I muttered.

“You need to let go, so that you can learn
exactly how much you can do. Otherwise, how are you ever going to
be able to control it? What if something like this happens at
school? What then?”

“This was just a fluke. It won’t happen
again, because I won’t let it happen again.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” I said.

“So you’re never going to get upset
again?”

“Nope.”

“Ever?”

“Never,” I said, and stopped straightening
the room. I sat on the floor again. “Jack, you just don’t get it. I
don’t have normal feelings. I’m, like, a sociopath.”

“A sociopath? Really? Where do you get this
stuff?”

“That’s the way I am. You think that
somewhere deep inside me there’s something normal going on. If I
just focused my abilities on helping people, I’ll turn into little
Miss Sunshine. I’m telling you—it’s not going to happen. We already
went down that road once. I helped you find Mary Jo Mason. That was
weeks ago. Have I changed any? No. Actually, I still wish that I
left the miserable bitch where I found her.

“It’s like this,” I said, trying to be
patient, because I really wanted him to understand. “You ran over
here to help me, right? And I thank you for doing that—I really do.
But I’m just saying words. I don’t feel thankful. See what I mean?
I’m not who you think I am. I’m all weird on the outside, and all
cold on the inside, and nothing’s going to change that.

“Now you did do me a favor, and I’ll return
the favor, because that’s fair. So if you want me to help you
figure out who’s torching these jocks, I’ll help. But don’t believe
that’s it’s going to fix me, because it won’t.”

“I told you: I don’t want your help with
that,” he said stiffly.

“But you didn’t mean it.”

“I meant it,” he said. “If I’m right about
things, you could get hurt. I wouldn’t want that to happen. You
might not have feelings but other people do.”

“I understand that. And I’m sorry.”

“Which means that you’re not sorry at all,”
he said glumly.

“There you go—I think you’re finally getting
it,” I said. “You know, I’ve been flashing on something that might
help with your little mystery. It’s just an image. I keep seeing
something hanging from some wires—you know, the wires running into
the school. I can’t make out what it is, but it’s burning. Does
that make any sense to you?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Does it
look like some kind of clothing?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Then it makes perfect sense.”

“It does? How? Not that I really care.”

“Sure,” he said, as though it was perfectly
obvious. “It’s ‘Liar, Liar.’”

I frowned. “What?”

“You know: ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,
hanging from the telephone wire.’”

“I didn’t think of that. I suppose it could
be a pair of pants. So—what?—these three jocks lied to
somebody?”

“This is actually pretty helpful,” Jack said,
sounding somewhat upbeat. “It’s suggestive.”

“A girl’s doing it.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Probably somebody who
transferred from Mount Olive to Adler sometime this year. Well,
it’s a lead, anyway. I don’t know how I’m going to follow up on it.
I mean, there are over 3500 students at Adler. What am I supposed
to do? Take a poll?”

“Tell me something,” I said. “Why do you even
care? I mean, a bunch of jocks get char-broiled—so what?”

“If somebody is doing that to them—well,
doesn’t that strike you as being a little—I don’t know—wrong. You
do understand the difference between right and wrong.”

“I understand it,” I said. “I don’t always
feel it. But you didn’t answer my question—why is it any of your
business?”

He shrugged. “I guess I’m a hopeless
do-gooder.”

“Well, I can believe the hopeless part.” I
thought about things for a moment. He had run over to help me, so I
figured I owed him one. I hated owing anybody anything. “I’ll get
you the list of student transfers,” I said.

“You will? How?”

“Please, don’t ask,” I said. “If I have to
explain it all, I’m going to end up changing my mind.”

“All right, but you’re not going to do
anything illegal, are you?”

“Define illegal,” I said.

Before Jack left, I told him I needed some
story to tell my mom. I could explain it all to her by telling the
truth, of course, but that would probably send the woman straight
into therapy. Sometimes it is kinder just to lie.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m a great liar,” he
assured me.

“Yeah?”

“The best,” he said. “Just follow my
lead.”

So we down to the kitchen, where my mom was
just popping her casserole into the oven, and Jack explained to her
how I’d called him to help me with a paper I wanted to write for
Physics on Fractal Theory. He was a pretty smooth talker—I had to
give him that much.

My mom stood there and listened. She looked
back and forth from Jack to me. She seemed very amused. Maybe
because I actually had somebody over to the house. Or maybe that it
was a guy, which, to her, would seem like an encouraging
development. But probably because she realized that Jack was
totally full of shit.

When she was able to edge in a word, she
asked, “Uh, Julie, don’t you take Physics next year?”

But Jack was undeterred. “Well, Fractal
Theory is kind of complicated. If she wants to do a paper on it
next year, she’d almost have to start working on it now.”

“I see,” she said knowingly. She still
appeared highly amused. “Jack, would you like to stay for
dinner?”

Before I could jump in, Jack said, “Oh, I’d
love to, but really I need to head home. My parents both work late
and my grandmother lives in an in-law in the basement. And, well,
she’s mostly confined to a wheelchair now. So I kind of like to
look in on her to make sure she’s all right.”

“Well, that’s sweet,” my mom said pleasantly.
“Isn’t that nice, Julie?”

“Oh, just peachy,” I said, wishing they would
just stop talking. I kept picturing them with their mouths stitched
shut with large ugly stitches, but then I figured I better stop
thinking that because it might really happen. I grabbed Jack by the
arm, and told my mom, “He really does have to go.”

“Well, maybe some other time,” my mom told
Jack, as I started to tow him out of the kitchen and toward the
front door.

When we reached the living room, Jack said,
“I think that went well, right?”

I spun him round to face me.

“Oh, that went wonderfully well, except for
one thing: my mother isn’t an imbecile!”

“What?”

“Whoever said you were a good liar?”

“You don’t think she believed it?”

“Your grandmother’s in a wheelchair?” I
snorted. “You don’t think that was a bit much?”

He stared at me. “That part was the
truth.”

“Oh,” I said dully. “Sorry.”

“And we both know what that means,” he
sighed.

“Just go home, Jack,” I said, not harshly. “I
have some damage control to do.”

After I let him out the front door, I
returned to the kitchen.

My mom was sitting at the table. She was
still attractive; she didn’t look old enough to have a kid my age.
She seemed thoughtful, chewing at her lower lip the way she always
did whenever she tried to ferret out the solution to a hard
problem.

When I walked into the room, she looked up at
me. Again she seemed highly entertained.

“Fractal Theory?” she asked.

I shrugged, and sat across from her.

“Well, he seems like a very nice young man,”
she said. “And you already have him lying for you.”

“Mom, please.”

She chuckled. “No, really, I should thank
you.”

“What for?”

“I’ve been worried about you for years. But
this is the first time you’ve ever given me something normal to
worry about.”

“What? It’s nothing like that. Jack is
just--”

“A friend?”

“Not even,” I said. “He’s more like—I don’t
know—a pet turtle.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know.
You’re not nine years old.”

“Mom, I’m telling you, it’s not like that.
You know how I am about guys—I just can’t deal with them that way.
We talked about all this.”

“Fractal Theory,” she snorted. “I have a
theory, too, about you. You want to hear it?”

“Not really.”

But she said anyway, “I think you use your
abilities as a big fat excuse not to show your feelings. You don’t
want anybody to know how much you really do feel.”

“Nice theory, Mom. Nice, but wrong. Have you
been reading psychology books again?”

“You’re almost seventeen, Julie,” she said.
“You can’t go on this way. Everything bad that’s happening with
you, and that will happen with you—you’re doing it all to
yourself.”

On the other side of the room, the oven door
opened, and the metal rack slid out.

“Check your casserole,” I told her, and then
got up to go to my room.

The next day I skipped U.S. History so that I
could see Mrs. Stock.

I hated counselors. They had been passing
judgment on me for my entire life. I believed they make more
problems than they solve, with their probing questions, which I
never answered, and useless advice, which I never took. I was
certain that most of them needed to be in counseling themselves. In
middle school, one counselor actually tried to get me to tell my
problems to a chair. I hadn’t been able to tell if this was some
therapeutic technique or if she just wanted to see if I’d do it so
that she could note in my permanent file that I liked to talk to
furniture.

Mrs. Stock had been my counselor since I
started at Adler. She was a middle-aged woman with manly short
salt-and-pepper hair. She was short and wide—actually students
called her Mrs. Stocky behind her back—and whenever she dressed in
red I would wonder whether a dog had ever mistook her for a fire
plug.

I walked into the main office. The people who
worked behind the counter sat at desks or wandered about like
zombies. Nobody noticed me. I stood there scanning the large room
for moveable objects. Fluorescent light fixtures hanged down from
the high ceiling. There was a water cooler on the back wall between
two windows. I figured I didn’t need much more than the water
cooler and a couple of the light fixtures. What I had planned might
actually turn out to be fun.