Lizard People (15 page)

Z will help me get a grip. She'll listen to me and help me figure out what to do next.

“I may have been wrong! It might not be just bugs and webs. There could be a wormhole! Like a portal, a connection to another dimension. I mean, I didn't reach my hand in or anything, but we can do that later.”

“Whoa, Ben, you're going a little too fast for me.”

Ben.
Z hardly ever called me by my regular name.

Z was sitting on her porch steps in a band tunic and short skirt over tights. A lot of dark makeup around her eyes.

I was pacing in front of her, trying to explain what had been happening. I knew she would understand.

“Okay,” I said, “sure. Well, he's gone. I knew he would be.”

“Who? Who's gone?”

Z didn't seem to be able to think fast enough to follow me. Her eyes were green. Or olive. I needed to be closer to make sure.
Focus!

I tried to slow down. “Marco. The guy I told you about. The guy from the year 4000. I mean, that's the story he told.”

“You said something about him to Hube and Mom, but you didn't talk much to me,” Z said, biting her lip. She was so patient with me. That's one of the thousand things I love about her.

“Yeah. Okay. I met him in the psych hospital.”

“
You
were in the psychiatric hospital?”

“Yeah. Visiting. Mom and then him. And he was really nice at first, and then he got pretty strange and began telling me about the year 4000 and trying to cure mental illness.”

Z shifted on the steps like maybe the concrete was making her butt cold. “Are you high?” she asked.

That kind of embarrassed me. “No. No, I'm … a little nervous maybe. Restless. Too much has been happening.”

“I think I better get Mom,” she said, looking back toward her front door.

I followed her inside and we sat in the living room. Or they did, Z and Mrs. Ludlow and Hubie, who came up from his basement hideaway to join us. He didn't like Marco, but he would be interested in more of the story. I was still too stoked to sit. It was hard to decide where to start. With Marco's access to 4000 or his meeting Monitor and Gila or the different kinds of treatment they had in the future?

“He may have been crazy, you know, but he was still brilliant,” I told them. “The future is so advanced, things like Mom's illness are not even a problem. They have all these techniques, and just knowing what they called them, we could begin to—”

“Ben. Ben, don't talk quite so fast,” Mrs. Ludlow interrupted. She had such a soothing voice.

I saw Hubie and Z look at each other. I checked myself.
Oops.
I had forgotten to take off Marco's vest. Forgotten to clean up.

“Maybe we ought to go to the hospital for a few minutes,” Mrs. Ludlow said, “just to check things out.”

Why?
“You think I'm not okay?” I asked.

“Well, I think it might help us understand things a little better,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “Perhaps this person Marco could be back there now. Back on the locked unit. He could clear everything up.”

Wow.
Good idea. I hadn't even thought of it. That's probably why Z wanted to bring her into this in the first place. Maybe that's where Marco is!

I sat in the backseat with Z. She smelled like some foreign spice. When we were almost there, I got a chill. Maybe I hadn't been sleeping enough. She reached over and held my hand! Never done that before.

I was ready to start at the beginning and tell the whole story. Maybe someone else would understand it even better than I did. For the first time since my mom went totally nuts a couple of months ago, I knew everything was going to be okay.

Wasn't it?

Let Me Get This Straight

“If
he isn't back here yet, he may be soon. Really, maybe he wasn't crazy like I thought and you guys thought. If we could start studying the things they knew—”

“Slow down, please.” The nurse was taking notes. She was older. I mean, really older. Sixty maybe. She was wearing normal clothes, a polo and wheat-colored jeans, and she was so skinny. Tiny, really. What was she doing working in a place like this?

“Just take a deep breath. We have plenty of time, and I want to make sure I understand.”

I could feel my heart racing.
Settle down. They'll think
you're
crazy!
“Okay,” I said, making myself breathe through my nose.
Isn't that what they always told Mom to do?
“He met them in 4000. They thought he was crazy, too.”

“He?”

“Marco. The guy I've been telling you about.” Why couldn't she keep this straight?

“You said ‘I' earlier.” Her tone of voice was really patient. She was good at this.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“I thought you were talking about yourself,” she said.

“No! No. I meant Marco Lasalle,” I said. She needed to get this right. “Marco and the two scientists or doctors from 4000 got to know each other, and we could use the information they talked about.”

“I see,” she said.

“They couldn't get caught coming here,” I explained, “because it would mess up both the present and the future.”

“It would.”

I know now why they hired her. She was so calm. Compassionate. “Like, if the cops found out they were from 4000, that would alter the present. Have that knowledge present in
our
world. It would create changes, paradoxes, and then their own future wouldn't be the same and … I'm not sure. I have to ask Hubie.”

“Hubie?”

My best friend. He's a junior at Sierra High and works on—”

“What is his last name?”

“Ludlow.”

“And your mother's been admitted here several times but now she's with her family in another county?”

“Yes. And the Ludlows are like my temporary guardian.”

“No father?”

“Yeah, but Dad's missing in action. That's a whole other story.”

“Can we have him come in?”

“No. But even if some of it's not true, we can still use the mental information. You guys can. And I can help.”

“Let me see if I have this right. Your name is Ben Mander. You're seventeen years old. You're a junior at Sierra High, like Hubie.”

“Yes.”

“Is that the Ludlows out in the waiting area?”

“Yes. They brought me over here. Should you check if Marco's back yet?”

“Could you clarify something for me? Are you Marco or Ben right now?”

She was a really good listener, but I guess I had confused her. “Ben,” I said. “I'm Ben.”

“Okay, Ben,” she said, giving me a warm smile. “I have an idea. Let's put questions about Marco aside for a few minutes, and I'll go check with the Ludlows about how they're doing. Would that be okay?”

“Sure. But they don't know much of what happened.”

“That's all right for now.” She smiled, stood up. “I think they could probably fill in some background.”

“Sure.”

“You can make yourself comfortable in this room,” she said. “I'm going to close this door. You can rest and I'll be back in about ten minutes. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. I could probably use some more rest.”

“Got it,” she said. “So, I'll be right back?”

“Sure.”

I could hardly wait to tell the whole story. I knew these hospital guys would get it. They'd already met Marco and my mom, and even me.

You couldn't give this kind of story to just anybody.

The Doctor Is In

They
tell me I slept like a rock. I awoke to an old woman jostling me. It took me a few seconds to understand who she was and where I was.

She stood quietly by the door while I struggled to pull myself together. Marco was gone. I had thought he was a faker. A fraud, moving from town to town and spinning his pathetic lies. And then I believed he was crazy. And then I had thought maybe he was really telling the truth, and he had gone back to 4000. But the thought that shoved me off the table had nothing to do with Marco. My stomach dropped and my eyes filled.

“Am I crazy?” I asked the nice woman standing at the door. I covered my face with my hands.

I heard the woman's soft footsteps as she crossed the room and waited beside me. When I settled down, she spoke. “Would you like a snack?”

“What time is it?”

“A little after three, Friday afternoon. I can bring you some juice and a sandwich, if you want it. Either before or after, I can help you get a shower.”

I looked at myself. I was still wearing Marco's vest. I couldn't stop an impulse to rummage in his pockets, looking for anything he might have left for me … Lint. Great.

“I'd like a shower,” I told her, “and I need to wash my clothes. I don't want to put on those pajamas and slippers.”

“You bet,” she said. “Mrs. Ludlow came back a bit ago and left some clean things. If you want to come with me and start your shower, I'll get them ready for you.”

The halls of a locked unit feel different when you've slept there. I saw two or three people wandering back and forth. One was muttering. In the nursing station, I recognized the large woman who had escorted my mother last month. The man with the curly hair was sitting at a counter, writing something in a plastic binder. I was too embarrassed to look at either of them directly or say anything. Had it finally happened? My worst fear?

The shower was a tiled stall, small, clean, no windows. The older woman handed me generic soap and shampoo and a worn white towel.

“Leave your old clothes in there on the floor,” she said. “I'll bag them for you when you're done. Knock when you're ready to come out, and I'll hand in your clean things. Any questions?”

Oh, did I have questions. At that moment I was empty inside, except for rows and rows of questions.

After the shower, I walked my room, back and forth in that ten-by-twelve-foot rectangle. Ate my snack. There was another bed beside mine, but I didn't have a roommate. Yet. I didn't want to go out in the hall again. I was too ashamed.
Mom! This is how Mom felt!
I thought about what it would be like to see Mrs. Ludlow. I knew she would understand. But Hubie? What if he thought I'd gone nuts? No more guy friends. Tears came back. I walked them off.
I get it.
This is like my cell. I'm a prisoner. But it's my mind. My mind has bars around it and I can't get through them, can't get back to the real world.

The older woman looked in my door. “The doctor would like to see you in a few minutes. Is that all right?”

I nodded. Might as well get it over with.

The office was tiny, just room for a computer table, desk, and two chairs. The end windows looked out on a tree-filled courtyard. Sitting, was a tall, blunt-featured, muscular woman. Today she had on a dark blue dress with a gold medallion pinned below her shoulder.

“Dr. Bhuspodi!”

“Hello, Ben. Didn't expect to see me?”

“No, uh, I … you're Mom's doc.” I guess I had been expecting a nameless man, another cog in the mental health system.

“True, I am your mother's doctor, and I can assure you that whatever you say to me is completely confidential. I would never discuss your stay or your treatment with her or anyone else without your permission. However, if you would like me to remove myself from working with you, I will have Dr. Aziz from Adolescent Services work with you instead.”

“No. No, I'm glad to see you. I was just thrown off for a second. I mean, it was unexpected. You know.”

She smiled.

“Am I crazy?”
Am I going to be asking people that question the rest of my life?

“Actually, that you ask that question at all is a very good indicator of mental health,” she said. “Most young people, if they have a break, deny that anything is the matter. They can't examine their thoughts from a rational perspective.”

“Is that what's going on? Have I had a psychotic break?”

“Well,” she said, “let's examine that. Why don't you tell me what's been happening?”

As soon as I began, I started to rev up again! I took a couple of deep breaths to see if I could stay cool enough, organized enough, to give her a clear picture.

I reminded her about Mom's school episode, and her Lizard freakout at home a week or so later. I told her about Vinnie and the meth and Officer Dullborne. I told her about the Mander Board and Care and said Mom was now living with her half brother in Manteca. Throughout this part, she nodded occasionally. It seemed like she knew most of it, probably from Betty Lou's reports.
So far, so good.

“I met Marco Lasalle right here in the hospital waiting room.” I thought maybe Bhuspodi straightened up a little in her chair. “He said his mom was getting admitted, just like my mom was, the same day as Mom's school blowout.

“Marco was from out of town, possibly a little older, and when I ran into him again, here, a week or so later, he looked kind of messed up. He said he had a story he would tell me. Turns out the story was about the year 4000 and a wormhole, you know, a time portal, and looking for a cure for mental illness. He went back and forth between here and the future, using the wormhole under an oak tree in his backyard.”

As I listened to myself tell this, I couldn't believe how ridiculous it sounded. Who could ever possibly believe it? I glanced at Dr. Bhuspodi to see whether she was incredulous. Nope. Quiet. Placid even. Just listening.

“I didn't believe him. I didn't. I thought he was crazy. I just got wrapped up in his story. It had details he couldn't possibly have known about my mother's ideas and my life, who I worked for and stuff. And when he told this story, he was like a Buddha. Like in meditation. Serene. But on the outside, he was getting more and more scuzzy. You know, dirty, bad breath. And he didn't have any furniture.”
Slow down.
“4000 was so advanced! They—”