In the Company of Crazies (13 page)

“Like what?”

Now, this was hard. I shrugged to buy time, even though John couldn't see me.
Like what?

“Like maybe a new edition of
The Guinness Book of World Records
comes out and—“

John interrupted me. “The next edition won't be published until next September eighth.”

Oh.

“But there might be something, John. Something. Just because you wrote it down doesn't mean you won't change your mind. I mean…I mean, wouldn't it be worse if you had to go back and erase?”

I stopped. I couldn't think of anything more to say because there were certainly some things you could never go back and erase. But I didn't think John would be able to handle that.

I used to think I couldn't either.

Sometimes lately, I think maybe I can.

* * *

“Yeah, that really would be worse,' John said as we were walking together back to the House. He was completely calm, as if nothing had happened at all. His voice sounded normal again, although I use the word
normal
very loosely. It's all relative, I guess.

“I hate erasing,” John told me.

“Me too,” I said.

* * *

In a way
it was funny, with everything that happened with John and how upset everyone had gotten and how well it had all turned out, that it was Drew who fell out the window that night.

Of course, there was nothing funny about it.

Sam had found Drew, half naked and totally unconscious, lying in the bushes outside the House. His pajama bottoms were left behind (so to speak), hooked onto one of the young birch trees that Gretchen recently had planted around her house to block some of the cold winds that blew down from the pine-covered mountain. The birch tree bent, caught Drew, and ever so gently dropped him nearly to the ground, but not quite. Not until the pajama bottoms tore and Drew fell the rest of the way and passed out. But he was fine.

Only then was it funny.

Hilarious.

At least the boys at Mountain Laurel thought so.

* * *

Mountain Laurel, if seems, has had more than its share of accidents, and they were all hilarious. Two years ago, according to Tommy, there was a kid here who shot a neighbor with a BB gun.

“Right in the ass,” Tommy told me when he could stop laughing long enough to speak.

“What happened to him?” I asked. We were in the dining room, all early for some reason. Technically, right before lunch was our free time, but no one seemed to want to be alone. Hearing Maggie working in the kitchen was comforting. Drew's seat was empty.

“What happened to who? The kid or the guy walking down the road?”

“Both.”

Tommy was enjoying the spotlight, the holder of memory. “Well, the guy walking his dog down the road, the guy who got nailed in the ass”—Tommy paused for the giggles—“he was fine. He didn't even press charges. But the kid who did it got kicked out.”

“That very day,” Carl added.

I guessed that Tommy and Carl had been going to Mountain Laurel for a while.

“Well, that doesn't really sound like an accident,” I said. I could practically see the whole scene: gun, ass, running, Gretchen. It was easy to imagine.

“It was,” Tommy insisted. “He wasn't
aiming
at that guy. It was an accident.”

“How did he get that BB gun here?” Billy wanted to know. “How did he get it past Gretchen?”

“Shut up, faggot” was Carl's answer.

Maggie banged a pot in the kitchen. It was an “appropriate language” warning. Who knew she was listening?

“And remember last year? That kid Red?” Tommy was saying.

“
Reed,
you jerk-off,” Carl gently corrected him. “Yeah, Reed. Remember him?”

Most of the boys at the table did. Even John was nodding his head. I noticed only Angel wasn't participating in the Mountain Laurel revelry.

“Remember when Reed cut his head open?” Tommy went on.

“Yeah, there was blood everywhere,” Billy jumped in. “That's because the head bleeds a lot, you know. But that was a fight, and a fight's not an accident either. But my arm was an accident, remember? Mine was…”

Billy looked like he was all geared to go on, to describe Reed's wound or maybe his own, but suddenly Angel said something. I think it was the first time I'd heard him talk since my first night when Gretchen made everyone say hello.

“Drew's wasn't an accident,” Angel said. He had a lyrical Puerto Rican accent. He spoke slowly and softly. “He was trying to kill himself.”

“That's not true,” I said. I stood up.

And for some reason John, who now saw himself as my defender, stood up as well. He towered over Angel.

“He was not,” John said, although I doubt he understood.

But Angel didn't flinch. “You think Drew just got up at four-thirty in the morning, walked over to the window in the hall when it's thirty-five degrees out, opened it up, and oops. Fell?”

“Maybe he was trying to run away,” Carl said.

“Then why wouldn't you just walk down the stairs and out the front door? There are no alarms here. Everybody knows that. And what…who is going to chase you…Gretchen?”

It figured that Angel would have all the details. The time. The exact window. He'd probably heard it while hanging out with Sam. Besides, people who talk the least hear the most.

“Well, she does have that big dog,” Billy said. He started laughing…

Until Tommy, who was sitting next to Billy, whacked him on the shoulder, not too hard. Just enough to make Billy's eyes tear up. Billy didn't say anything. He didn't even rub his arm up and down like he would usually do.

“You don't know it, though. Not for sure. You don't know anything,” I said to Angel.

“He left a note,” Angel said.

No one said anything after that.

* * *

I wasn't surprised at all when Billy came to me with his head down and his hand out. He was certainly always one for the dramatic. He handed me Drew's picture.

“He said you could have it, remember?” Billy told me. “I thought you'd want it now.”

“Billy. He's not dead.”

“Yeah, but still. I found it in his room.” Billy held it out to me. “He wanted you to have it, remember? Take it.”

And I took it.

It's hard to say exactly what I now found disturbing about Drew's picture. Something about the face; it seemed to change every time you looked at it. Suddenly it looked more like Drew.

It wasn't one of those really realistic drawings where you can see every facial line and every hair follicle. But it wasn't abstract, either, with a square head and two eyes on one side of the face. It was something else entirely, almost like it was more about the sad expression on the face than the face itself. It was more about what was inside the person's mind than outside. So in a way it could have been anyone.

Mountain Laurel.

Where else?

Gretchen let everyone stay up later than usual. Even though they kept telling us Drew was going to be all right. He was in the hospital. He didn't even have one broken bone. They never said he did it
on purpose, but they never said he didn't.

I know Drew didn't want to die. It's not that high a window. He didn't want to die, but he wanted something. He just didn't know what if was. Maybe he went looking for it. I can understand that.

That is certainly a reasonable thing to do. In a way.

* * *

The office was easy to break into. I figured if Billy could do it, I could certainly do it. It was just like in the movies where the guy takes an unbent paper clip and wriggles it around in the lock for a couple of seconds. It worked. The office door clicked open.

I walked into the darkroom. The shades on all three windows were pulled down. I had been in here only once before. Almost four weeks ago, when I first got here and Karen was showing me around.

Four weeks? How could so much have happened in four weeks? And so little? Four weeks back home and I'd probably have taken seven or eight quizzes, at least two tests. A social studies project. Probably science, too. Four Current Events. Six or seven volleyball games—even more practices. A book report or two.

My head was spinning with two worlds that didn't make any sense. And now I found myself standing in Gretchen's office, in front of her file cabinet. If there was a place where two worlds met, it would be in those files.

The file cabinet wasn't even locked, as it turned out. The manila folders were just squished in, one behind the other, with a little tab sticking up. I pulled out the drawer.

They were in alphabetical order, by last name. Lots of names I hadn't heard of, maybe students long gone. It took me awhile to find a name I recognized.

John.

Katzenbaum, John.

Was that
John?
I didn't even know his last name. There were a bunch of folders with “John” as the first name. Then I noticed colored tabs pasted onto the folders. I rifled through. There was only one Angel. One Carl.

All those folders had blue stickers. Current students?

So this one must be John. And this one was Carl's. Carl Mlasek. I pulled it out.

Carl Mlasek

Age 14—Conduct Disorder

Diagnosis: Adolescent Antisocial Behavior

I shut Carl's folder and quickly slipped it back where I had taken it from. I pulled out another folder and another, always careful to note which name came before and after. Careful to replace it exactly where it had been. I looked them over pretty quickly, one by one, before someone could come in and find me.

Tommy Dwyer

Age 13

Diagnosis: Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Billy Sisco

Age 10

Diagnosis: Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Adjustment Disorder

Angel Rosario

Age 15

Diagnosis: Depressive Disorder not otherwise specified

John Katzenbaum

Age 15

Diagnosis: Obsessive-compulsive Disorder/Autism not otherwise specified

I put John's folder back and stood looking at all the files. I checked over all the labels, with blue and yellow and red stickers. Some looked like they were so old and had been read so many times, the tippy part where the name goes was wobbly and wrinkled, about to break right off. Drew's was one of those. I pulled it out. I sat down on the floor right there and began reading.

Drew Keeping

Age 11

Diagnosis: Associative Personality Disorder

His folder was so thick. There were a lot of papers inside. Forms and what looked like samples of writing and even drawings. The top sheet had Mountain Laurel letterhead. It was several pages long, stapled together. It talked about Drew's personality profile. School records. Grades. Teacher comments. Scores on tests I had never heard of. And there was a long family history written in messy handwriting. I tried to follow it.

Mother—whereabouts unknown

Father—unknown

Apparently Drew was living with a foster dad, Bradley Cotes. (That must have been the man in white with the white Volvo.) Drew's mother had a history of mental illness. She had been homeless for several years when Drew was a baby and a toddler, moving from shelter to shelter, sometimes living on the street. There had been a variety of men in her life; incidents of abusive behavior toward both Drew and his mother were likely although not substantiated.

It went on and on.

I had to close the folder. There were so many reasons, I guess. Too many. You could see them all here. Drew had more than enough reasons to do what he did, if that's really what he did.

You could have written a depressing twenty-page paper on Drew's life. And yet, somehow, it still didn't explain—why? I knew he hadn't meant it. But if I concentrated and read and studied every note and letter and test score in this folder, would it make a difference? Would I understand?

He didn't want to die; he wanted answers.

And so, what about me?

Did I have a folder?

A permanent record?

I slipped Drew's folder back into place and looked for my name. So this is what the lady at Kohl's had meant. This was my permanent record. Hadn't she promised me I wouldn't have one? Wasn't that the deal? I watched my own fingers rapidly pulling the file tabs back, Ps and Qs and Rs and finally the Ss.

So I do have a permanent record. Here it is.

SINGER, MIA.

It was thin. There were only two pieces of paper in it. One was from my old school, a single sheet of paper, a computer printout of all my grades from sixth grade. The other was a form. It had my mother's handwriting on it.

Mia Singer

Age 13

Mother—Leslie Singer

Father—Bob Singer

It had my birthday. My address. It listed emergency numbers. It had that stupid therapist's name and number. Siblings. It had Cecily's name and age.