Plan B (20 page)

Jack . . . shit.

I rolled out of bed, nearly falling down on my face as my feet got tangled in the twisted blanket, and half hopped, half stumbled out into the hallway, which was already hazy with smoke. I flipped on the hall light and banged on the girls’ door, yelling “Fire! Get up!” In the light, I could now see through the haze that the smoke was coming from under Jack’s door. I had just located a fire extinguisher behind Chuck’s door when he stormed out of it, practically colliding into me. “What the fuck?” he yelled, waving his hands in front of his face to clear some smoke away. Then the smoke alarm went off, a piercing whine that seemed to bypass my ears and go straight to the center of my brain, making my shoulders convulse.

“It’s Jack’s room!” I shouted above the din, as Alison and Lindsey emerged, looking dazed, their eyes swollen with sleep. Chuck
grabbed the key from the door post, inserted it and pushed the door open. A wall of fresh smoke poured out of the room, momentarily stopping me in my tracks, and then I ran in, pulling the needle out of the extinguisher as I went. Jack had thrown a handful of open books into the center of the room and set fire to them. He must have found the matches in one of Mr. Scholling’s desk drawers. I did a quick scan around the room, but couldn’t find Jack anywhere. I turned the extinguisher full blast onto the pile of books, relieved to see that the actual fire was fairly small, surrendering immediately to the foam.

Chuck was two steps away from the bathroom door when Jack burst out in nothing but sweatpants and charged at him. Chuck hesitated and Jack tackled him, the two of them going down in a confusion of tangled limbs. “Jack!” Alison yelled. “Stop it!” I grabbed her and threw the extinguisher into her hands. “Empty it!” I said, and turned to help out Chuck. Jack had managed to extricate himself from Chuck’s grasp and get to his feet. He stepped over him and then fell down as Chuck grabbed his foot and pulled. When Jack hit the floor I ran to get on top of him, but he flipped himself over onto his back and grabbed my outstretched hands, spinning me off balance so that I fell down next to him instead. Still lying on his back he kicked out wildly with his free leg, catching Chuck square in the chest on the third try. Chuck let out a sharp moan and released Jack, who scrambled to his feet with a crazed look in his eyes. I jumped onto his back as he was passing Alison, and the two of us spun furiously around the room, caroming off a bookcase and right into her. The extinguisher fell with a thud as Alison went down under our legs, and then we fell backwards over her. Jack landed on his back on top of me, and before I could catch my breath he was wrestling madly, his elbows inadvertently digging into my ribs as he fought to get up. Screaming, Chuck took a flying leap and landed on top of us,
completely knocking the wind out of me, but Jack let out a yell of his own and pitched Chuck, head over heels into the sofa bed. “Fuck!” Chuck yelled as he collided with the metal frame. Jack rolled over so that he was now lying on me face to face, and I could see the crazed look in his eyes as he planted his arms firmly on my chest to push himself up. He had just gotten into a kneeling position when I heard a sharp crackling sound and to my surprise he toppled forward and fell on top of me. I steeled myself for another struggle but he was suddenly dead weight, his body lying limp across my chest. Only then did I see Lindsey standing above us, eyes wide, mouth open. In her hand, still clutched in a death grip, was her stun gun.

We stayed that way for a moment, four of us sprawled out on various parts of the floor, with Lindsey standing in the center, her stun gun still extended in front of her, as if she was presenting arms. Finally, I rolled out from under Jack and said, “Why is it that whenever we knock Jack out, he always has to land on me? I hate when that happens.” I got up shakily. “Is everyone okay?”

“Not really!” Chuck yelled as he rolled away from the couch and slowly got to his feet. There was a trickle of blood coming from his left nostril, and he was rubbing his chest furiously. “Jesus!”

Alison got to her knees and crawled over to Jack, rolling him onto his back. “Jack!” she cried. “Jack, can you hear me?” If he could, he wasn’t saying. “Come on, Jack, wake up! Chuck, I don’t think he’s breathing!”

Chuck walked over to where Jack was lying, leaned down and placed his fingers on the side of Jack’s neck. “He’s fine,” Chuck said, leaning against the wall, still massaging his chest.

“Jack!” Alison screamed again. She turned and looked up at Lindsey. “What did you do?” she said angrily. “Look at him.”

“Excuse me?” Lindsey asked incredulously.

“You didn’t have to shock him,” Alison said, propping up Jack’s head.

Lindsey looked around the room as if searching for witnesses. “Are you out of your mind, Alison? Look at this room!”

“I don’t care. You used a weapon on him!”

“He was burning your fucking house down!” Lindsey shouted, waving her stun gun in the air, and for one crazy second I thought she was going to zap Alison. Then she spun around, grabbing her hair in her fist. “Someone turn off that goddamn alarm!”

I ran out into the hall, pulling the leather desk chair out behind me. I got up on the chair and after a few tries managed to twist the plastic casing off of the circular unit on the ceiling. I didn’t see any off switch, so I just yanked out the nine-volt battery and jumped to the floor. The instantaneous silence was so tangible, it felt like a whole other noise.

“I think we may have really hurt him,” Alison was saying when I walked back into the room.

“Then we’re even,” Chuck said. The blood from his nostril had dried on his upper lip, and I realized that he might not even be aware that he’d been bleeding.

“He’ll be fine,” Lindsey said wearily. “He’ll sleep it off.” She bent down and pressed her hand to Jack’s face.

“Leave him alone,” Alison snapped, shoving Lindsey’s hand away. Lindsey looked like she’d just been slapped. She stared at Alison in disbelief, her eyes filling with tears.

“I don’t believe this,” she said, her hands shaking. “He could have killed us all!”

“Ben and Chuck had him.”

“Hey!” I said. “We didn’t have him at all.”

“It was more like he had us,” Chuck said.

Alison ignored us, cradling Jack’s head in her hands.

“You’re on your own,” Lindsey muttered, storming out of the room.

Chuck and I lifted Jack off the floor and lay him down on the bed. His body felt sticky with sweat, so we rubbed him down with a towel before wrapping him in a blanket. Chuck pried open each of Jack’s eyelids with his thumb and looked at his pupils, then took his pulse again. I could see that Jack’s breathing was shallow but regular. “He’s okay,” Chuck said softly.

Alison sat down on the floor next to the charred pile of books and began picking through them, crying quietly. Chuck and I looked at each other helplessly, not knowing if we should help her clean up or just leave her alone for a while. There was an abject misery to her silent weeping that made us feel unqualified to approach her. After a few moments Lindsey passed by the doorway, but stopped short when she saw Alison sitting on the floor. Hesitating only for an instant, she came into the room and got down on her knees behind Alison, throwing her arms around Alison’s neck and leaning forward so that their cheeks were pressing. After a few seconds, Alison wordlessly reached up and wrapped her arms around Lindsey’s and they just sat there, softly rocking back and forth as if to some slow, secret song that only they could hear.

I woke up at around 10:30, wondering if the previous night’s entire episode had been just a vivid dream, but the faint smell of smoke still lingered in the air, and when I sniffed my shirt it stank of it. I rolled out of bed and headed down the hall for the shower. I could hear Lindsey and Alison speaking in hushed tones downstairs. I bumped into Chuck in the hallway as he was heading down to join them. “Good morning,” he said.

“How do you feel?” I asked, remembering his collision with the sofa bed. So far, Chuck had taken the brunt of the physical abuse.

“I’ll live,” he said. “I’m just wondering what else he’s got planned for us.”

“You think he can top last night?”

Chuck shrugged. “Who knows? But I’ll tell you this. The next time it’s me standing between him and the open door, I’m just going to stand back and hold it open.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t blame you.” He started down the stairs. “Chuck?”

“Yeah?” he said, stopping.

“Do you think he was trying to burn the house down? I mean, was that an escape attempt, or something more?”

“You mean suicide?”

“That,” I said. “Or maybe some kind of revenge. I guess I’m just wondering if, you know, he would really try to harm us like that.”

Chuck frowned, considering the question. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think that he peaked last night in his withdrawal, and he wasn’t thinking at all. He’s scared, he’s irrationally paranoid, and for all I know he’s hallucinating. He’s not in his right mind.” I remembered Jack’s eyes right before Lindsey zapped him and shivered. “Whatever that was last night,” Chuck said. “He probably wasn’t even aware that he might be endangering us.”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Okay then,” I said. “So I won’t take it personally.”

“I did,” Chuck said.

I climbed into the shower and leaned against the cool tiles as the scalding water pounded the back of my neck. After we’d doused the smoldering books with water, Lindsey and Alison had gone to bed, while Chuck and I stayed with Jack until he began to regain consciousness. We’d done a quick but thorough inspection of the study, looking for more matches and anything else that might conceivably inspire Jack to pull a MacGyver. Now, as I shampooed the smoke out of my hair, I wondered how Alison was going to explain all of the destruction to her parents. Between the damaged furniture, ruined books, and burnt carpet, the room was pretty much totaled. I didn’t want to think about what might have happened if we hadn’t caught that fire when we did.

I was walking past Jack’s door, toweling off my hair when I
heard a faint, metallic clicking sound. I held my breath and tiptoed up to the door, listening intently. The noise came again, a squeaky scratching sound, barely audible, and I noticed the knob shaking a little. Quietly, I crept back downstairs and joined the others in the living room, where they were flipping around between various morning news programs that were doing stories on Jack.

“Does anyone know if Jack knows how to pick a lock?”

“What?” Alison said.

“I can hear him working on it from outside the door.”

“That’s an antique lock,” Chuck said. “They don’t work the same way as modern locks. There are no tumblers. I don’t think, even if he knew how to pick a lock, that he could pick that one.”

“Well, he’s doing something.”

They got up and we all stood silently at the foot of the stairs. At first we heard nothing, but then the metallic scratching resumed. Chuck went halfway up the stairs and stared intently at the door. “I don’t think he’s working on the lock,” he informed us, coming back down. “I can still see through the keyhole.”

“So then what’s he doing?” Lindsey asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we should ask him.”

“Jack,” Alison called to him, walking up the stairs. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”

The scratching noise stopped suddenly.

“Jack?”

Jack didn’t respond, but a moment later the noises resumed. We joined Alison at the door, watching as the door knob rattled around in its casing. A moment later there was a loud, grinding sound, the sound of ratcheted metal being dragged across a wooden surface, and then, with a sudden snap that caused us all to jump, the knob popped off the door and landed on the floor, rolling lazily in an oval before coming to rest by Chuck’s foot.

“What’s he doing?” Alison asked, snatching up the knob as if
it might disappear. From the inner center of the knob protruded the rectangular metal rod meant to go through the door and connect to the other knob, which is what Jack had managed to unscrew. “Jack!” Alison shouted, pounding on the door. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t come out,” Jack’s voice came through the door. “Now you can’t come in.”

“That’s just stupid,” Alison said. “What do you want us to do, slide your food under the door?”

“Not my problem,” Jack retorted.

“Jack!”

“Please try to keep it down,” Jack said, sounding hoarse. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. I’ve got a big day today.”

“Alison,” Chuck said quietly, nudging her shoulder. “We can still open the door.” He took the knob from her hands. “We just stick this in and twist.”

But I had a feeling that Chuck wasn’t giving Jack enough credit. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Why don’t you try sticking it in now.” Chuck took the knob and began inserting the metal rod into the door. He got about halfway before he hit the obstruction. “Shit!” he hissed, and began fiddling with the knob, but his attempts were clearly futile. “He jammed up the hole!” Chuck complained. “That stupid prick jammed up the hole.”

“He’s going on a forced hunger strike,” I said. “He knows that if we can’t feed him, we’ll let him out.”