Shadows (6 page)

Briefly, Brenda considered trying to contact Buck MacCallum, but quickly gave up the idea. She’d long ago
decided that trying to collect child support from him was a fruitless endeavor. In truth, for the last couple of years she hadn’t even been sure where he was living. Feeling desperate, she found herself dialing her parents, waiting apprehensively at the empty sound of ringing at the other end. They had moved away from Eden five years ago, when her father had decided it was time to go into business for himself and sold his house, over her mother’s objections, to buy a bait shop on the Gulf coast in Texas. Finally, her mother answered. She listened to Brenda’s fragmented story in silence, then said that she’d always known there was something wrong with Josh; this wasn’t anything Brenda shouldn’t have been expecting.

“Thanks, Mom,” Brenda said coldly. “Sorry I bothered you.” Hanging up the phone, she shook her head. She shouldn’t have been surprised, really. One of the reasons she’d married Buck in the first place was simply to get away from her parents. It was, she reflected, as if the heat of the desert had baked the humanity right out of them.

And then, as she paced nervously around the waiting room, she began turning her own thoughts over in her mind. Was that why Josh had done it? Did he think she didn’t care? She’d been so careful always to make sure Josh knew how much she loved him, how proud she was of him.

But what else could it have been?

Children his age didn’t try to kill themselves, did they?

Of course not! They didn’t even think about such things.

But Josh had.

She was startled from her thoughts by a woman’s voice. A nurse was telling her she could see her son now.

He was sitting up in bed, his face still deathly white, and he looked even younger than his ten years. A doctor stood by the bed. As Brenda came into the room, he gave her an encouraging smile.

“This little guy may have made a terrible mess, but if he was really trying to hurt himself, he didn’t do a very good job of it. Three stitches in each wrist, and the bandages are mostly for show. I could easily have made do with Band-Aids.” He grinned down at Josh and tousled his hair. “Next
time you want to come to the hospital, just walk in the door, okay?”

He started toward the door, pausing only to ask Brenda to drop by his office after she’d visited with Josh. Then he was gone, and Brenda was alone with her son. Suddenly she realized she didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to him. She simply stood still, heart pounding, looking at him. At last his eyes met hers.

“A-Are you really mad at me, Mom?” he asked, his frightened whisper bringing tears to her eyes. Immediately she knew what to do. She went to him, put her arms around him and held him close.

“Mad at you? How could I be mad at you? You’re the best son anyone could ever have. I’m just sorry I was so hard on you today. It’s just … Oh, honey, I guess it’s just that sometimes I’m not a very good mother.”

Josh sniffled, and his arms went around her neck, holding on as if he was afraid to let her go. “I’m sorry, Mommy,” he said. “I just—I just thought maybe if I wasn’t around anymore, it would be easier for you. I don’t have any friends, and I don’t do good enough in school, and it seems like all I ever do is let people down.”

His words tore at Brenda’s heart. Her eyes flooded with tears, and she held him even closer. “No, darling,” she murmured. “It’s not like that at all. I love you, and I’m proud of you, and I don’t think I could stand it if anything ever happened to you. So we’ll just have to make things right for you, okay?”

For a long time mother and son clung together. At last Brenda eased Josh back onto his pillows. “Ill be back,” she promised. “I just have to go talk to the doctor for a minute, but then I’ll be right back. All right?”

Josh nodded and managed a weak smile, then closed his eyes. Brenda lingered for a moment, watching him, feasting her eyes on his now peaceful face. But as she slipped out of the room, all her worries and fears closed in on her again.

How would she make good on her promise?

How could she make things right for Josh, when she could barely even feed and clothe him?

But there had to be a way. There had to be.

“I
hope you didn’t misunderstand me a few minutes ago,” Richard Hasborough said. Josh MacCallum’s medical records were spread out on the doctor’s desk. “Please sit down, Mrs. MacCallum.” With a nod, he indicated a chair on the other side of his desk, then turned to scan the folder before him. When he looked up, the blue eyes that had reassured Brenda in Josh’s room had taken on a much more somber cast. “In cases like Josh’s, I think it’s important to make the whole experience as nonthreatening as possible. But I don’t want you to think for a moment that I was making light of what happened.”

Brenda lowered herself into the chair, finally allowing herself to release the tension that had been building in her from the minute she’d discovered Josh in his room. Until this moment, she realized, she had been dealing with the situation more on pure instinct than on any sort of rational thought. Now, as the sheer terror drained away, she found herself trembling. “I—I just can’t believe it happened,” she said, her voice a murmur, as if she was speaking more to herself than to the doctor. “I knew he was unhappy—I mean, he didn’t even want to go to school this morning—but I thought it was just first-day jitters—you know, what with being in a new class and all.” As Hasborough’s brows knitted in puzzlement, Brenda rushed to explain how Josh had been skipped a grade for the second time, how difficult
it was for him to be so much younger and smaller than his classmates, how cruel the bigger kids could sometimes be.

How much she worried about him.

Then, a terrible thought struck her. “Am I going to have to send him away, Dr. Hasborough?” she whispered. “I mean, to a hospital or something?”

The doctor frowned and held up a cautionary hand. “Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, all right? For now, I think I’d like to keep him here overnight, just to keep an eye on him and try to get some idea of how he’s feeling. It would help if I knew exactly what’s been going on the last few days.”

For the next fifteen minutes Brenda slowly pieced together the story of what had happened that day, nervously answering Hasborough’s probing questions about Josh’s behavior during the last few weeks of summer vacation, and concluding with a sigh, “All I can tell you is he didn’t want to go back to school. But most kids his age don’t, do they?” Her question held a plaintive note, as if she was pleading with the doctor to offer her at least a scrap of evidence that Josh wasn’t crazy.

“Well, I sure never wanted to go back to school when I was ten,” Hasborough agreed, his reassuring smile returning. “And from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound as though Josh’s stunt with the knife was premeditated. It sounds as though he was just really upset about everything, and mad at you, and he found a way of getting your attention.”

Brenda took a deep breath, but her relief lasted only an instant. “But what does it mean?” she asked as a horrifying new thought assaulted her. “Will he … could he try it again?”

For a long time the doctor remained silent, as if reluctant to tell her the truth. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “But it seems to me we’ve got to find some answers for him.” He’d deliberately used the word “we” when he spoke, and he was relieved to see her relax slightly, as if the fact of no longer feeling totally alone with her problems made them seem more manageable. He had already ascertained that Brenda MacCallum had no one to whom she could turn—
not her parents, certainly not her ex-husband. And it seemed clear that Eden School could provide no real help. His suspicion on that score was confirmed when he asked Brenda what the school had advised.

“Score one for Mr. Hodgkins,” Brenda remarked, rummaging in her purse for the pamphlet the school’s principal had given her that afternoon. “This was his big idea.” She placed the pamphlet on the desk. “Can you believe it? How am I supposed to send Josh to someplace like that?” She clasped her hands tightly together to control their shaking—whether with anger of fear, she did not know—and watched the doctor nervously as he studied the brochure.

Richard Hasborough made no reply, merely shaking his head, a gesture that Brenda instantly took for agreement with her own judgment of Hodgkins’s suggestion. “Dumb, huh?”

Hasborough looked up. “Dumb? No, not at all.”

Brenda felt her jaw slackening. “You mean you know about this place?”

“I sure do. It’s attached to the university where my wife went to school. She used to work with some of their kids once in a while. Even taught a few art classes there.”

“And how much does it cost?” Brenda asked. “Do you know?” Whatever sum he named was going to be totally out of the question.

“If Josh can get in, it probably won’t cost a dime,” Hasborough replied. “The Academy was never set up to make money in the first place. It operates in conjunction with the university, which studies the children while they’re in school there.”

Brenda’s expression set into a mask of skepticism. “You mean it’s like a lab, and they use the kids as guinea pigs?”

Now Hasborough looked surprised. “Nowhere near,” he said quickly. “In fact, it’s run as much like a family as possible. Though the children are being observed, they’re not aware of it.” As Brenda opened her mouth to ask another question, he held up his hand to restrain her. “Look, before we get any further into this, let me make a couple of calls. I still know a few people there. Let’s just
see what the situation is. They might be full, or they might not even be prepared to look at Josh. But it’s worth a try.”

Brenda found herself sitting perfectly still, even her lungs frozen in mid-breath. Images swirled in her mind: imagined pictures of her son, locked in a room in a mental hospital somewhere; or being bullied on the playground at Eden School. Whatever happened at this new place—a place she’d never even heard of until today—couldn’t be worse than the alternatives.

Slowly, she released the breath she’d been unconsciously holding. “All right,” she agreed. “I guess I’d better talk to them.”

   Hildie Kramer sat at her desk in what had originally been one of the smaller reception rooms of the mansion that housed Barrington Academy. A cup of coffee, stone cold now, sat near the telephone, and she raised it to her lips, making a face as the stale brew touched her lips. Replacing the cup, she gazed out the window for a moment, enjoying, as always, the view of the broad lawn, dotted with redwoods and eucalyptus, that fronted the house. Then remembering her tight schedule, she returned to the task of reviewing for the final time the paperwork on Joshua MacCallum, which had come flooding in by fax yesterday afternoon and this morning.

All his school records were there, from kindergarten on, along with the results of the various standardized tests to which he had been subjected over the years.

In Hildie’s experience, “subjected” was precisely the word that applied to those tests. Since she’d become part of the team forming the Academy five years earlier, she’d discovered that the various tests meant to measure IQ and achievement gave only the most cursory evaluation of a child’s true gifts. They took little account of a child’s background—its sex, race, socioeconomic circumstances, home situation—all the variables that tended to skew results one way or another.

As for specialized talents beyond verbal, math, or science skills, they produced nothing, for there was no such
thing as a standardized test to calibrate talent in music, or painting, or sculpture. Interest, yes. Aptitude, slightly.

The true gift of talent and genius, practically never.

Still, Josh MacCallum was obviously a highly gifted student, and, judging by the records in front of her—which went far beyond the original IQ score that had, indeed, prompted her to send one of their brochures to Eden Consolidated School—he was exhibiting all the problems concomitant with his intelligence combined with his situation in a tiny desert town in the middle of nowhere.

Without even meeting him, she was certain he was both inquisitive and bored silly.

And now, out of some form of still unidentified desperation, Josh MacCallum had tried to kill himself.

In short, he was precisely the sort of child that the Academy had been designed for. She glanced at the clock embedded in the walnut trim of her desk blotter. Another prospective student, a ten-year-old named Amy Carlson, was due to arrive with her parents shortly for a final interview. Deciding she had just enough time to reach Richard Hasborough, she dialed quickly, then waited, her fingers unconsciously drumming on the desk as her call was put through to the doctor.

“It’s Hildie Kramer, Dr. Hasborough,” she began, not bothering with a greeting. “I have a couple of questions about Joshua MacCallum. First, has he talked to a psychologist since the incident yesterday? And second, how long will he be required to stay in the hospital?”

While the doctor in Eden made his replies, and Hildie scribbled a few notes in the margins of Josh’s records, the door to her office opened and Frank and Margaret Carlson appeared. Seeing her on the phone, they began to back away. Hildie beckoned them in, motioning toward the couch against the wall. A moment later all three Carlsons were lined up on the sofa, Amy between her parents. A thin red-haired child, Hildie noted, with thick, round glasses perched on a snub nose, who looked not only frightened, but angry. Hildie offered the little girl an encouraging smile, but the child’s face remained frozen.

“He really can go home anytime?” she asked into the
phone. Apparently, the boy’s suicide attempt hadn’t been terribly serious, or at least didn’t appear so to the doctors in Eden. “Do you think his mother could bring him up here on Saturday? Both Dr. Engersol and I think he’s a prime candidate for the Academy, but of course we never reach a final decision until after we’ve talked to the children and made our own evaluation.” She listened for a moment, then spoke once more. “No, there’s no real rush. We’ve got a couple of spaces still open for this year. As long as we know they’re coming by Friday, we can make all the arrangements.” Saying a brief good-bye, she hung up the phone, then gathered Josh’s records together as she greeted the Carlsons.