The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (8 page)

“Ouch!”

He could get rid of some stuff. He could. Adam thought about sneaking stuff out at least a hundred times every day. There was so much, she wouldn’t notice. He’d start with a couple of small things in the dining room and if she—

“Honey?” The front door slammed.

“In the kitchen, Mom.”

He could hear her picking her way along the hallway and shuffling the mail at the same time. “Damn it to hell.” Something was kicked.

When she got to the kitchen, Carmella smiled broadly for her son. “Hey, baby, that smells so good!”

“Thanks, Mom, but I haven’t put it in yet. The potatoes are done, though, and the chicken will only be a few minutes.”

“Right, well, the potatoes smell awesome. You’re a great chef. You and that brother of yours should open up a restaurant someday.” Adam glanced at her hand, which was clutching the day’s mail. “Except, of course, you’re on track for Princeton.” She clutched harder. “Right?” Her voice was tight. “I’m raising a Princeton man, right?”

“Right.”

His mother crumpled the mail in her left hand. Adam considered telling her about Robyn. He’d sort of wanted to for weeks now. He would tell her about Robyn wanting to be a Catholic. A new friend, a friend who was a girl, and one who was deep into religion. That would have been a Carmella Ross trifecta of happiness, but the time was never right. Her hand held the balled-up mail so tight that it looked like her veins were going to pop.

The time was never right.

“Is Ben’s dad still coming to pick you up after dinner?” His mom was in her scrubs and wearing one of Dad’s old sweaters. Not that long ago, Carmella always changed and put on a fresh coat of lipstick before coming home, no matter the time, the shift or who was awake.

“Yeah.” He didn’t take his eyes off the letters. “We’re going to video his garage Warhammer setup for YouTube. It’ll be chill!”

Carmella nodded as if she understood what her son had just said. The veins in her hand popped with the strain of clutching. She wasn’t paying attention, not really. “He’s a good kid, that Ben. Always there for you.” The microwave tinged and she jumped. “Oh!” She collected herself. “I’ve, uh, always liked Ben … He’s a good boy.”

Adam frowned and pulled out the chicken. He tried to direct a plate to her clenched left hand. “Mom?” He had to ask. “Look, what’s up with those?”

“Nothing! I’m not even going to read it, honey.” She ignored the plate and fished out a cream-colored envelope amidst the rolled-up junk mail and pleas from environmental groups. It had a typed label, indicating recipient and recipient’s address. So innocuous. Adam put her plate down and tapped his forefinger behind him on the counter edge. This would need seven sets of nine taps counter-clockwise. Just as he started, she ripped the envelope apart.

“Mom, don’t!” He had to start counting all over again.

“It’s garbage, Adam. Ugly, ugly garbage.”

Three sets, then. One, three, five, seven …

She shut the cupboard door, trembling just a little. “The
last one … the last one said I had to die, that I was a maggot polluting the world, that I was a—” She did not look at her son. He did not look at her.

Eleven, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen, nineteen …

“It said I sucked up too much oxygen and was a greedy, selfish bitch.” She turned to Adam, utterly confused. “Who talks like that?”

Twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-one … Wait, wait! The numbers were wrong. It was a nine count. Stupid, stupid!

She caught him tapping out of the corner of her eye and winced.

One, three, five, seven …

Carmella threw away the bits of letter along with the junk mail, their telephone bill and what looked like a reminder from Dr. Dave’s dental office. He’d have to retrieve those later. Adam finally handed her the plate.

“You’re right, Mom. It sounds like some demented kid, or a pissed-off patient.”

He heard her exhale. “Yeah, see? It’s like I was telling you: it’s some kind of prank.” She helped herself to potatoes and chicken and a stiff shot of vodka over ice. “I’m going up to eat this in my room, okay? I’m so beat. You have a good time with Ben tonight. Don’t get home too late, though. You got enough money for the bus back?”

He nodded.

“Adam, honey?” Her voice slipped like a silk scarf.

He lifted his plate and tapped underneath it as he ladled on the chicken and potatoes.
Twenty-nine, thirty-one. One, three, five …

“You know we can’t talk about it, right? Not to anyone.”

“Yeah, sure. But what if—”
Eleven, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen …

“No! This is all connected to me, Adam. It’s all a part of it. It’s like the house.” She leaned against the doorway. “
They
will use it as an excuse to …”

“Yeah, I know.”
Twenty-one, twenty-three …

“Of course you do.” She kissed his forehead. “I love you so much.” She kissed him again before she turned and left.

Adam was counting with fingers raised and into a thirties set when Ben rang the bell. He hadn’t touched his chicken, couldn’t eat. Without missing any finger movements, Adam retrieved some letter pieces from the garbage, along with the telephone bill and Dr. Dave’s appointment reminder. He shoved them all in his pocket and dumped his untouched chicken in their place. Then he grabbed his jacket and ran for the door.

“Dude!” Ben punched him in the shoulder. “Are you ready for an epic game? It’ll be massive, can ya dig it?”

Dig it? Ben must have taken a shuttle back to the 1970s. He did that on occasion. Adam nodded.
Twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-one. One …
 What
was
epic was just seeing his friend.
Three, five, seven, nine, eleven …

Ben glanced back at Adam as he locked up. Adam knew he’d spied the telltale finger raises.

They both got into the car, and as they did, Mr. Stone turned around to face the boys. “Adam, great to see you, son.”

“Thank you, sir.” And they were off.

Son
. Adam loved that word coming out of Mr. Stone’s mouth.
Seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-three …

“Dude?” Ben whispered. “You counting?”

“Yeah.” Adam nodded.
Twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-one
.

Ben slumped into the back seat. “It’s cool, okay? Relax, I can dig it.”

“Thanks, man.”
One, three, five, seven …

Adam’s cellphone vibrated. He didn’t even know it had that feature. But there it was, rattling down his desk like a cockroach caught in a kitchen light. The phone was at least a hundred and seventy-three years old. It used to be Carmella’s and it had less than no features. Well, except apparently it vibrated. The stupid thing could barely rouse itself to execute a phone call. Texting made it lethargic and in need of an immediate battery resuscitation. And the phone was a monster, so big it practically needed its own transportation system. And of course, more than anything, it was way,
way
too lame to be seen in public. His mom urged him to consider the thing as his “placeholder” birthday gift, a “training phone.” She had promised him a “normal” phone as soon as she got the go-ahead from Chuck, but Adam kept forgetting to ask Chuck about it. He’d bring it up at the next one-on-one for sure.

The trainer vibrated itself right off the desk and onto his slipper.

“Batman?”

“Sweetie?” Adam glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eleven-thirty! What’s up? I just got home. I’m going to bed.”

“I know. I been calling and calling and calling. I’ve even been calling your new old phone, this phone.”

“Don’t ever call this phone, Sweetie.”

“Okay.” Pause. “Why not?”

“Because it will never leave my room.”

“Okay,” Sweetie said, instantly satisfied with his brother’s reasoning. “But you weren’t in your room.”

“I was at Ben’s.”

“I know,” he said. They were in danger of having one of their circular conversations. “Your mom, Mrs. Carmella Ross, told me that at 9.4.7 p.m. because that’s what my clock said. But Mrs. Carmella Ross did not answer the phone before or after that, Batman. Nope.”

Adam groaned. He tried to groan quietly. He’d explained a thousand times why his mom didn’t answer after the first couple of times when call display announced that it was Sweetie on his private cell. “Who the hell gives a five-year-old a smartphone, for God’s sake! I’m telling you, they’re bonkers over there.” It was just easier not answering, and it was also easier not reexplaining why
not answering
was preferable all around. To further complicate things, Sweetie refused to leave messages. The thought of his voice trapped and disembodied all by itself on a machine made him anxious.

“Why doesn’t your mother, Mrs. Carmella Ross—”

His mother. Adam winced remembering the letter. It
was still in his pocket. “Look, we gotta cut her some slack, okay? She’s kinda more nervous than usual these days.” He should fish it out and piece it together.

“Okay,” Sweetie agreed. “I thought you were with the girl.”

“Robyn?”

“Yeah.”

Adam could see his brother’s head bobbing up and down in the dark. Well, okay, not the dark; there were four separate plug-in night-lights in that room. “No, just Ben,” he said.

“I like Ben. I like Ben a lot,” Sweetie insisted.

“Good.” Adam started undressing.

“I don’t like the girl.”

“You don’t even know her.”

“You love her, you said. You said you love her. But she doesn’t love you.”

“Not
yet
, I said. Remember? I said she doesn’t love me
yet
. She will, though. It’s like a quest thingy.”

“But
you
love her,” Sweetie accused.

“Yeah.” Adam climbed out of his pants. “But it’s totally different from the way I love you, or Mom, or Dad, or—”

“You love me way, way, way better, right?”

Sigh. “Yeah, way better.”

“Okay, I like her. You’re Batman and Robin, except in all the cartoons—”

“Comics.”

“Yeah, in all the comics, Robin is a boy.”

“But it’s also a girl’s name. And, Sweetie, look, we got to keep Robyn to ourselves for now, okay? It’s just … well, it’s in development, you know?”

“So it’s just
our
secret?”

“Yeah. Well, us and Ben too. I told him about her tonight.”

“So just us boys, right?”

“Right! That’s exactly it. Look, it’s really late. Why’d you call? You okay?”

Silence. Was he trying to remember?

“I’m scared, Batman.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of, remember? Nothing. It’ll be okay. Is Dad there?”

“Yes, Mr. Sebastian Ross and Mrs. Brenda Ross turned out their lights at 10.4.6 p.m.”

Sweetie was a stickler for precision. He hated getting himself into a muddle over which of the two moms they were talking about at any given moment. There were the two Mrs. Rosses, after all, who each had a son, and there were two separate houses, but they shared the one dad. It gave Sweetie a stomachache trying to sort it all out unless he was very, very specific. “But I’m still scared, Batman.”

“Why, Sweetie?
Why
are you scared?”

“I don’t know.” His little voice got littler with each syllable.

Adam sat down in his underwear and started tapping.

“Can you come over, Batman?”

“No, I can’t. It’s late and it would piss off Brenda.”

“No, it wouldn’t, Batman. Mrs. Brenda Ross loves you. She loves you lots. I hear her telling Mr. Sebastian Ross all the time.
He really should be here with us, Sebastian. The boy is not safe in that firetrap
. That’s what she says. Are
you in a firetrap, Batman? Do you have a big hose? Should we call the—”

“No, Sweetie, no firemen! It’s all good, okay? Is that why you’re scared?”

Long pause. “I don’t think so.” Snuffle, snuffle. “I can’t sleep. Should I go wash my hands, like you did?”

“No!” Adam’s stomach constricted. Sweetie remembered that? He was just—what?—three when Adam was washing. “It doesn’t work. I stopped. You know I don’t—”

“Should I count?”

“No!” Adam shivered and rooted around looking for his PJs. “That doesn’t work either, believe me!”

“But you still—”

“Yeah, and I go to that special group with all the nice people on Mondays to help me stop that too.”

“The superheroes! Are they your friends now?”

“Uh, it’s not like …” He got one leg in. “They’re not, uh, well …” He shoved his second leg into his pajama bottoms while balancing the unwieldy phone between his shoulder and his ear. “I mean, I don’t know. Kind of, I guess.”

It could be true.

“Just a minute.” He put the phone down to get his T-shirt off, then picked it up again. “Hey, little guy. We can think about the pretty numbers. How about we think about some nice prime—”

“That doesn’t work unless you’re here.” The voice was tiny now, tears nibbling on the edges. “I’m sooo tired, Batman. And sooo scared.”

“Scared of what? You’ve gotta tell me. I can help, but only if you tell me.”

“Of the bad, bad thing that’s gonna happen.” A beat of silence. “I’m waiting for the bad thing.”

Jesus
. Adam knew
exactly
what his little brother meant. He couldn’t toss off that fear. He knew about the bad thing, about the waiting. Adam had been waiting, preparing, for forever.

“Okay, okay … hang on. The bad thing won’t happen tonight, I promise.” Adam lay down on top of his covers. “Listen, get into bed and pretend I’m tucking you in.”

“Smooshing me in?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m smooshing the covers in all around you exactly like you like.”

“Okay,” agreed an increasingly tiny voice.

“Are you all tucked in?”

“Uh-hmm.”

“Good one. I’ll stay right here until you fall asleep. Keep the phone by your ear and I’ll talk to you.”

“I love you, Batman. You are the best, most perfect Batman in the world!” The words broke through cascading yawns.

“Yeah, okay. So I’m right here, right? I won’t go away, I promise. You’re safe, okay?”