There's No Place Like Here (5 page)

“You can’t say that, Helena,” Joan snapped.

“I can’t get in, I can’t get out, Saint Peter, what’s it all about?” Derek sang in a gravelly voice. Suddenly he stopped strumming and finally spoke. “It’s definitely not heaven. Elvis isn’t here.”

“Oh,
well then
.” Helena rolled her eyes.

“We’ve got our own Elvis here, haven’t we?” Bernard said, chuckling, changing the subject. “Sandy, did you know that Derek used to be in a band?”

“How would she know that, Bernard?” Helena said, exasperated.

Bernard ignored her again. “Derek Cummings,” he announced, “the hottest property in St. Kevin’s back in the sixties.”

They all laughed.

My body turned cold.

“What was it you were called, Derek? I’ve forgotten now,” Joan said with a laugh.

“The Wonder Boys, Joan, the Wonder Boys,” Derek said fondly, reminiscing.

“Remember the dances on a Friday night?” Bernard asked excitedly. “Derek would be up there on the stage, playing rock and roll, and Father Martin would be almost having a heart attack at him shaking his pelvis.” They all laughed again.

“Now, what was the name of the dance hall?” Joan thought aloud.

“Oh, gosh…” Bernard closed his eyes and tried to remember.

Derek stopped strumming and thought hard.

Helena kept staring at me, watching my reactions. “Are you cold, Sandy?” Her voice sounded far away.

Finbar’s Hall. The name jumped into my head. They had all loved going to Finbar’s Hall every Friday night.

“Finbar’s Hall,” Marcus finally remembered.

“Ah, that was it.” They all looked relieved and Derek’s strumming continued.

Goose pimples formed on my skin. I shivered.

I looked around at the faces of the group, studied their eyes, their familiar features, and I allowed all I had learned as a little girl to come flooding back to me. I could see it now as clearly as I had then, when I came across the story in the computer archives while researching a project for school. I had immediately taken interest, had followed up on the story and was more than familiar with it. I saw the young teenage faces smiling up from the newspaper’s front page and I saw those same faces around me now.

Derek Cummings, Joan Hatchard, Bernard Lynch, Marcus Flynn, and Helena Dickens. Five students from St. Kevin’s Boarding School. They disappeared during a school camping trip in the sixties and were never found. But here they were now, older, wiser, and their innocence lost.

I had found them.

10

W
hen I was fourteen, my parents talked me into seeing a counselor after school on Mondays. They didn’t have to do much convincing. As soon as they told me I’d be able to ask all the questions I wanted and that this person was qualified enough to answer, I practically drove myself to school.

I knew they felt that they had failed me. I could tell that by their expressions when they sat me down at the kitchen table, with the milk and cookies in the center and the washing machine going in the background as the usual distraction. Mum held a rolled tissue tightly in her hands as though she had used it earlier to dab away tears. That was the thing with my parents: they would never let me see their weaknesses, yet they would forget to get rid of the proof of them. I didn’t see Mum’s tears but I saw the tissue. I didn’t hear Dad’s anger at having failed to help me but I saw it in his eyes.

“Is everything OK?” I looked from one strong face to the other. The only time two people can look so confident and as though they can face anything is when something bad happens. “Did something happen?”

Dad smiled. “No, honey, don’t worry, nothing bad happened.”

Mum’s eyebrow lifted when he said that and I knew she didn’t agree. I knew Dad didn’t agree with his words either but he was saying them nonetheless. There was nothing wrong with sending me to a counselor, nothing wrong at all, but I knew that they had wanted to help me themselves. They had wanted their answers to my questions to be enough. I overheard their endless discussions about the correct method of dealing with my behavior. They had helped me in every way they could and now I could feel their disappointment in themselves and I hated myself for making them feel that way.

“You know the way you have so many questions, honey?” Dad explained.

I nodded.

“Well, your mum and I”—he looked to her for support and her eyes softened immediately as she glanced at him—“well, your mum and I have found someone that you’ll be able to talk to about all of those questions.”

“This person will be able to answer my questions?” I felt my eyes widen and my heart quicken as though all of life’s mysteries were about to be answered.

“I hope so, honey,” Mum answered. “I hope that by talking to him, you won’t have any more questions that will bother you. He’ll know far more about all the things you worry about than we do.”

Then it was time for my lightning round. Fingers on the buzzers.

“Who is he?”

“Mr. Burton.” Dad.

“What’s his first name?”

“Gregory.” Mum.

“Where does he work?”

“At the school.” Mum.

“When will I see him?”

“Mondays after school. For an hour.” Mum. She was better at this than Dad. She was used to these discussions while Dad was out working.

“He’s a psychiatrist, isn’t he?” They never lied to me.

“Yes, honey.” Dad.

I think that’s the moment I began to hate seeing myself in their eyes, and unfortunately it was when I began to dislike being in their company.

Mr. Burton’s office was in a room the size of a closet, just about big enough for two armchairs. I chose to sit in the dirty olive-green-velvet-covered chair with dark wooden handles, as opposed to the stained brown-velvet-covered chair. They both looked like they dated from the forties and hadn’t been washed or removed from the small room since. There was a little window so high up on the back wall that all I could see was the sky. The first day I met Mr. Burton it was a clear blue. Every now and then a cloud passed, filling the entire window with white before moving on.

On the walls were posters of school kids looking happy and declaring to the empty room how they had said no to drugs, spoke out against bullying, coped with exam stress, had beaten eating disorders, dealt with grief, were clever enough to not have to face teenage pregnancy because they didn’t have sex, but on the off chance that they did, there was another poster of the same girl and boy saying how they used condoms. Saints, the lot of them. The room was so positive I thought I was going to be ejected from my chair like a rocket. Mr. Burton the magnificent had helped them all.

I expected Mr. Burton to be a wise old man with a head of wild gray hair, a monocle in one eye, a waistcoat with a pocket watch attached by a chain, a brain exploding with knowledge after years of extensive research into the human mind. I expected Yoda of the Western world, cloaked in wisdom, who spoke in riddles and tried to convince me that the Force in me was strong.

When the real Mr. Burton entered the room I had mixed feelings. The inquisitive side of me was disappointed; the fourteen-year-old in me positively delighted. He was more of a Gregory than a Mr. Burton. He was young and handsome, sexy and gorgeous. He looked like he had just walked out of college that very day, in his jeans and T-shirt and fashionable haircut. I did my usual calculations: twice my age could work. In a few years it would be legal and I would be out of school. My whole life was mapped out before he had even closed the door behind him.

“Hello, Sandy.” His voice was bright and cheery. He shook my hand and I vowed to lick it when I got home and never wash it again. He sat on the brown velvet armchair across from me. I bet all those girls in the posters invented all those problems just to come into this office.

“I hope you’re comfortable in our designer, top-of-the-line furniture?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he settled into the chair, which had burst at the side and had foam spilling out.

I laughed. Oh, he was so cool. “Yes, thanks. I was wondering what you would think my choice of chair says about me.”

“Well,” he said with a smile, “it says one of two things.”

I listened intently.

“First, that you don’t like brown, or second, that you like green.”

“Neither.” I smiled. “I just wanted to face the window.”

“A-ha.” he grinned. “You are what we call at the lab a ‘window facer.’”

“Ah, I’m one of
those
.”

He looked at me with amusement for a second, then placed a pen and pad on his lap and a tape recorder on the arm of the chair. “Do you mind if I record this?”

“Why?”

“So I can remember everything that you say. Sometimes I don’t pick up on things until I listen back over the conversation.”

“OK, what’s the pen and pad for, then?”

“Doodling. In case I get bored listening to you.” He pressed RECORD and said that day’s date and time.

“I feel like I’m at a police station, about to be interrogated.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

I nodded. “When Jenny-May Butler went missing, we were asked to give any information we had at the school.” How quickly talk had come around to her. She would have been delighted at the attention.

“Ah,” he nodded. “Jenny-May was your friend, wasn’t she?”

I thought about that. I looked at the anti-bullying posters on the wall and wondered how to answer. I didn’t want to seem insensitive to this gorgeous man by saying no, but she wasn’t my friend. Jenny-May hated me. But she was missing and I probably shouldn’t speak badly of her because, after all, everyone thought she was an angel. Mr. Burton mistook my silence for being upset, which was embarrassing, and the next question he asked, his voice was so gentle I almost burst out laughing.

“Do you miss her?”

I thought about that one, too.
Would you miss a slap across the face every day?
I felt like asking him. Once again I didn’t want him to think I was insensitive by saying no. He’d never fall in love with me and take me away from Leitrim then.

He leaned forward in his chair. Oh, his eyes were so blue.

“Your mum and dad told me you want to find Jenny-May, is this true?”

Wow. Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. I rolled my eyes, OK, enough of this crap. “Mr. Burton, I don’t want to seem rude or insensitive here because I know Jenny-May is missing and everyone is sad but…”

“Go on,” he encouraged me, and I wanted to jump on him and kiss him.

“Well, me and Jenny-May were never friends. She hated me. I miss her in a way that I notice she’s gone but not in a way that I want her back. And I don’t want her back or to find her. Just knowing where she is would be enough.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Now, I know you probably thought that because Jenny-May was my friend and she went missing, that every time I lose something, like a sock, and try to find it, it’s like my way of finding Jenny-May and bringing her back.”

His mouth dropped open a little.

“Well, it’s a reasonable assumption, I suppose, Mr. Burton, but it’s just not me. I’m really not that complicated. It’s just annoying that when things go missing, I don’t know where they go. Take, for instance, the Scotch tape. Last night Mum was trying to wrap a present for Aunt Deirdre’s birthday but she couldn’t find the Scotch tape. Now, we always leave it in the second drawer under the cutlery drawer. It’s always there, we never put it anywhere else, and my mum and dad know how I am about things like that and so they really do put everything in their places. Our house is really tidy, honestly, so it’s not like things just get lost all the time in a mess. Anyway I used the Scotch tape on Saturday when I was doing my art homework, for which I got a crappy C today, by the way, even though Tracey Tinsleton got an A for drawing what looks like a squashed fly on a windscreen and that’s considered ‘real art,’ but I promise I put it back in the drawer. Dad didn’t use it, Mum didn’t use it, and I’m almost certain no one broke into the house just to steal some Scotch tape. So I searched all evening for it but I couldn’t find it. Where is it?”

Mr. Burton was silent and slowly moved back and settled into his chair.

“So let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “You don’t miss Jenny-May Butler.”

We both started laughing and for the first time ever, I didn’t feel bad about it.

“Why do you think you’re here?” Mr. Burton got serious again after our bout of laughter.

“Because I need answers.”

“Answers like…?”

I thought about it. “Where is the Scotch tape that we couldn’t find last night? Where is Jenny-May Butler? Why does one of my socks always go missing in the washing machine?”

“You think I can tell you where all these things are?”

“Not specifics, Mr. Burton, but a general indication would be fine.”

He smiled at me. “Why don’t you let me ask you the questions for a moment, and maybe through your answers, we’ll find the answers you want.”

“OK, if you think that’ll work.” Weirdo.

“Why do you feel the need to know where things are?”

“I have to know.”

“Why do you feel you have to know?”

“Why do you feel you have to ask me questions?”

Mr. Burton blinked and was silent for a second longer than he wanted, I could tell. “It’s my job and I get paid to do it.”

“Paid to do it.” I rolled my eyes. “Mr. Burton, you could have my Saturday job stacking toilet rolls and get paid but you chose to study for what, ten million years? To get all of those scrolls you’ve hung on the walls.” I looked around at his framed qualifications. “I’d say you went through all of that studying, all of those exams, and ask all these questions for more reasons than just getting paid.”

He smiled lightly and watched me. I don’t think he knew what else to say. And so there was a two-minute silence while he thought. Finally he put down his pen and paper and leaned toward me, resting his elbows on his knees.

“I like to have conversations with people, I always have. I find that through talking about themselves people learn things that they didn’t know before. It’s a kind of self-healing. I ask questions because I like to help people.”