Skin and Bones (19 page)

“We need to ask you a few questions,” Officer Brunner said. He was short with bushy gray hair. A roll of fat hung over his belt. “Would you like your parents here?”

Bones shook his head. “I just want to help.”

“Answer their questions as honestly as you can, Jack,” Dr. Chu said, failing miserably at a supportive smile. “Okay?”

“I want to find her more than anyone else,” Bones said.

“I’m sure your roommate”—Officer Brunner frowned at his notes as if unable to read his own handwriting—“Mr. Bowelesky told you about our chat the other day.”

“Mr. Kowlesky.” Bones corrected him. “He mentioned it.” Lard said he’d been grilled by two of LA’s finest.
Like I was part of a subversive terrorist plot or something
, he’d said.

“Accordingly…” Manor flipped pages in his notebook, fountain pen poised as if ready to inflict pain. “You and Mr. Kowlesky spent the afternoon with Miss Graham before she left.”

Brunner took a wide, flat-footed stance. “If she did indeed leave under her own volition,” he said.

Bones let it sink in. “You don’t think she left on her own?”

“We have to consider all the possibilities,” Brunner said.

“We understand Miss Graham is extremely sick and only recently released from Intensive Care,” Manor said, tapping his pen on his pad. His shaved head and small gold earring glinted under the fluorescent light. “Were you aware of her heart problems?”

Bones felt all eyes on him. “But she was getting better,” he stammered. “Almost back to normal…”

“It’s difficult to imagine—” Brunner began.

Manor stepped closer, picking it up from there. “No, more like impossible—”

“—to understand how someone so sick could plan her own exit as well as execute it,” Brunner concluded.

Bones couldn’t focus under the weight of what he was hearing. He stared down at the carpet, stuck on heart problems. “She had that ventricular thing,” he said. “She told me lots of people have it—that it wasn’t a big deal.”

Bones looked at Dr. Chu who’d been in the background fingering his soul patch. “Ventricular tachycardia is potentially life-threatening,” he said, moving into the fray. “It can lead to sudden death.”

“But she said—”

Brunner pinned him accusingly. “Why would you and your roommate take Miss Graham on a joyride?”

“What about that, Jack?” Dr. Chu said.

“She seemed fine. Normal. In a great mood. There wasn’t really a plan. We just felt like getting out for a while—all we did was drive around and listen to music.”

“Where did you go yesterday morning?” Brunner asked. “After you learned Miss Graham was missing?”

Bones took a breath.

Manor nodded, that universal signal to go on.

“I thought I knew where she was,” Bones said. “I remembered the dance auditions at the opera house downtown. I thought she might have gone there.”

Bones could tell Manor wasn’t buying it, wasn’t even pretending to buy it. He expected Dr. Chu to rip him a new one for not telling him about the audition sooner.

“Then someone must have seen you.” Brunner again.

“Yes. I mean no. Well, maybe.”

“Which is it?” Manor stared at him.

Bones wasn’t sure what to expect first, handcuffs or the Miranda rights. “I didn’t really talk to anyone,” he said.

The officers looked bored, ready to move on. “We’ll be back,” Manor said and turned on a polished heel.

Bones hesitated. “There might be something else.”

Brunner faced him, a cat over a gopher hole.

Bones knew he had to tell them about the magazine pages. “I found them in her wastebasket.” He hoped the information would encourage them to amp up the search. “She licked off the Ex-Lax.”

“Why would she do something like that?” Manor asked.

“It’s an old trick,” Bones said quietly.

The two men studied him quizzically, seemingly convinced he was telling the truth. Who would make up something like that?

As if things weren’t crappy enough, Dr. Chu called Bones’s parents and told them about the two unauthorized trips from the hospital, both within a twenty-four hour period. A family meeting was scheduled for the following afternoon.

It was good to see his mom and dad—but a little strange in a space too small for so much worry (him) and disappointment (them). He liked his mom’s new short hair and jean jacket. His dad sipped hot tea from a Styrofoam cup.

Bones was still shook up from being questioned by the cops. He shifted from foot to foot, not easy since he was sitting down. He gripped the arms of the chair and told his parents that someone he cared about was missing.

The words tumbled out in a stream so sudden, even the framed posters were listening. “I thought I knew where she was.” His voice shook but somehow he managed to get it all out. “So I took Lard’s car.”

“That girl?” his mom asked. “The one we saw family night?”

Bones nodded. “Alice.”

Dr. Chu had dark circles under his eyes and he blinked too fast, as if afraid of breaking down. Bones had never seen him like this. He studied Bones from the other side of his desk, arms crossed as if he’d caught him in another lie. And that’s exactly how Bones felt, like everything he’d had with Alice was a lie.

“It looks like she ran away,” Bones mumbled. “But the police aren’t so sure.”

Another miserably long second passed while his mom fiddled with a button on her jacket. Then she cleared her throat. Bones knew she was working up to something.

“I starved myself for a week,” she finally said. “I wanted to know what it felt like.”

His dad scratched the stubble on his chin. “You did what?”

“It was an experiment.” His mom looked at him. “You were working late and we weren’t having meals together.

I’d have a cup of coffee and a half grapefruit for breakfast, maybe a green salad for dinner. I was completely exhausted and had a constant headache. I’d wake up in the middle of the night starving.”

Bones didn’t know how he could feel any worse but he did.

“Then something started to happen—I’d hear voices in my head.
Come on
, they said.
Come on, you can do it
. The longer I stayed away from the kitchen the more powerful I felt, like it was some sort of victory.”

There was a long silence.

“It’s hard to watch our kids make mistakes and not want to fix them,” Dr. Chu said.

His mom sighed, question in her eyes. “But not if trying to fix things keeps them sick. I hope that doesn’t sound too harsh.”

At that moment Bones thought his mom was the smartest person in the world. He could have done more thinking about his own problems while he’d been in here, but he’d done enough to know that he didn’t want to come back once he got out.

He wanted to get well.

He knew that’s what it came down to.

He wanted to be his mom and dad’s son again.

He wanted to be his sister’s brother.

And he wanted to be a whole person when they found Alice.

Bones watched his dad cross his legs, careful not to kick the desk. He knew what he was thinking before he said it. “What about our son?”

There could be all kinds of answers to this question.

They’d all begin with
Jack left hospital grounds on two consecutive days without permission, an obvious and blatant violation…he’ll now be confined to his room with an ankle monitor. House arrest
.

Bones kept waiting for Dr. Chu to remind him that he’d once been a teenager and therefore understood what Bones was going through.
It’s just a phase
, he’d say.
Don’t worry, you’ll outgrow it.

Dr. Chu sighed a little uncertainly. “More than half of our patients fully recover. They go to college, get married, raise families. Have meaningful careers,” he said. “Jack has reached a point where he should start thinking about what he’s going to do when he leaves here.”

His dad set both feet on the ground. “Private therapy?”

“That’s one option,” Dr. Chu said. He reached for a folder, pausing to thumb through it. “The hospital holds group therapy once a week in the basement for former patients. It’s a great group of kids. What do you say, Jack?”

Bones thought of all the things he’d done since he’d been in the program. Things he never thought he’d be able to do. Then he nodded, because he didn’t know what else to do, and because he wanted to stay connected to the people he’d met here, and just when he thought Dr. Chu might seem more human without PhD attached to his name, Dr. Chu slipped a contract from the folder and asked Bones to sign it.

Essentially Bones agreed not to leave the ward under any circumstances unless accompanied by a staff member.

And that included the roof.

No problem.

Who wanted to go up there now?

Other than meals and regularly scheduled activities Bones stayed in his room reading, working on exercises, writing to his family. Now he sat in the dayroom with his back to the window moving tiles around the Scrabble board. S-V-E-LT-E. He rearranged them. L-O-V-E and D-E-S-I-R-E.

Next turn.

He spelled H-O-P-E-L-E-S-S and removed the last four letters.

For the last four years, Bones had lived for the gnawing feeling of hunger in his stomach—because it meant his body was consuming itself. Now the empty feeling terrified him—because it was associated with loss and longing. He was more afraid than ever that he’d never see Alice again.

Another two days passed like a slow moving cloud.

Nighttime was worse.

Bones listened to the sound of movement in the hall outside his room. Water sloshed in a bucket. A mop smacked the baseboard. He imagined Unibrow sipping Ensure from a bottle concealed in a brown paper bag, stolen from the locked cupboard where cases of supplements were stored.

As much as Bones was irritated by the existence of Unibrow, he thought the mass the guy displaced was somehow less threatening than that of someone who actually cared, like Nancy for instance, who left Bones feeling like he’d disappointed her.

Bones rolled over and grabbed his pillow. Rolled over again, punched it. Fear consumed him. Sometimes it had a sound of its own, like one of those whistles only dogs can hear.

He had the sense Lard was awake. “What time is it?”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

Lard shifted and his bedsprings groaned. “Alice is—” he started and stopped.

Bones waited.

“She conned everyone. Her parents, her doctors. She even conned us, man.”

Bones wanted to slug him.

“It’s the truth, man. Maybe the only truth.”

Somewhere deep inside Bones knew he was right.

He and Lard had spent endless hours trying to figure things out. Why she left; where she went.

“She isn’t anorexic because she’s a ballerina,” Lard said. “Anymore than she’s a ballerina because she’s anorexic.”

“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” Bones said.

“You keep talking like that and I’m gonna wash your mouth out with soap.”

“It means, A occurred, then B. Therefore A caused B,” Bones said. “Let’s just say that more teens are going to church than ever before. Yet unwanted teen pregnancy is on the rise. That would mean churches are corrupting today’s youth, hypothetically speaking.”

Lard gave the kind of snort he was famous for.

“Philosophy one-oh-one,” Bones said.

Then they spent too much time talking about Elsie, who they agreed would always be a cow, and Mary-Jane, who’d have a better chance in life if she’d stop hanging around Elsie. It was stupid gossip. But what were they supposed to do when they were locked up like monkeys in a zoo?

Besides, they had to
talk
about something to keep from
thinking
. Sometimes it worked, for about thirty seconds. Then Lard fired up his chainsaw. The nasal strips Alice had given him were useless. Lard sawed. Bones stacked, question upon question.

Why hasn’t she tried to get ahold of us?

Bones wondered when the idea of running away had first come to her. She’d planned everything so carefully. But she had to feel bad about the way she did it. She had the same memories he had.

Maybe she can’t contact us?

Finally it was just too much. Bones couldn’t think about it anymore—thinking and feeling was too much to deal with. Thinking itself was paralyzing. He clung to his sheet begging for sleep and closed his eyes thinking about CRAP.

Back when he’d read the first pages, he thought George was writing a love story, a tribute to Alice and his feelings for her. That he’d wanted to create a special world for her, a world safe from neurotic parents and inflexible therapists, where she’d be free to pursue her art anyway she chose.

Now he knew George’s feelings for Alice were only part of it. George wrote his story as much out of frustration as anything—he wanted Alice to get better as much as everyone else. And like everyone else, he didn’t know how to help her.

Bones got up and went to his desk for the pages of CRAP he’d gathered so far. Writing by flashlight, he took over where George had left off, feeling an urgency to add more to the story for Alice, and realized George hadn’t been hiding it from Dr. Chu. He’d been stashing it for Alice, betting she’d come back to the hospital like she always did and find it while hiding something of her own.

Bones and Alice passed enormous billboards,
Long Live His Excellency! Fear the Enemy! Stateland or Death!
His Excellence was never understanding, never merciful. He moved swiftly to punish those who disobeyed him.

“Illustrious,” Bones said, his lips pressing hers for the first time.

They set up a primitive camp in the bowels of a demolished theme park, where a decapitated Alice in Wonderland lolled in a cracked teacup. They made nightly trips foraging for anything useful—hauling off broken bits of this and that, even a squashed case of Twinkies, which tasted pretty good considering the expiration date of decades past.

Bones knew he had to figure out how they were going to sustain themselves. Sadly, the golden sponge cakes with their creamy filling were long gone; their sticky wrappers licked clean.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut. “Hope is just a dream waiting to happen,” she said.