Authors: Susan Vaught
Chief Smith gets on his cell, and a few seconds later, he says a deputy is on the way.
“I could take them to save time,” Dad offers, but from across the room, the colonel shakes her head.
“No,” she says, and it’s her most-colonel-voice-ever tone.
I flinch at the sound. So does Dad.
“Oh man, oh man, oh man,” says Drip, and—
You’re so dead. You’re stupid and YOU’RE DEAD and you might as well DIE NOW because you’re first and this bastard’s gonna grind you to dust. Dust in the wind. Dust in the wind. What wind? Who’s talking about wind?
—I need to go to the bathroom. More than anything, I wish Sunshine were here. If she were here, I’d talk to
her and I’d stop being nervous because she could do that for me and—
I wish I could help you like you help me I tell her and I tell her you always help me calm down you make everything better and quieter and calmer and sometimes I think you’re magic and she says you can help me and we’re back to that and she says you can help me Jason and what am I supposed to say to her because I never could say no to Sunshine and
—Pain stabs at my head and my eyes water and Agent Mercer’s standing right in front of me, and his gray eyes are even colder than I thought, and the lines at the corners don’t soften them at all and I realize time skipped and he’s looking at me and I wonder if he said anything. Did he ask me something? I’d look at Drip to find out, but Drip’s gone, bouncing across the VFW hall and wiping his nose and poking at all the computers and screens getting set up, and Captain Evans is trying to keep him from breaking anything. Dad and the colonel are standing a few feet away, watching me.
“Well?” Agent Mercer says, and I can tell from his tone he’s repeating himself.
“Sorry,” I say, my face getting hot. “I didn’t hear you.”
His eyes get narrow like he doesn’t believe that, but he goes with it. “All right. Okay. Your mother warned me you get distracted sometimes.”
Idiot. Total fool. He’s going to know. They always know, people like him. People, people, here’s the church and here’s the steeple. Steeples go on churches.
I don’t cover my ears, which is a plus. “I do get distracted. But I’m listening now.”
“It’s my understanding that you have a close relationship with Sunshine Patton?”
Close relationship. Yeah. That covers a ton of ground. I think about my words for a few moments, and then I settle on: “She’s my best friend. Sunshine and Drip and me, we’ve been in class together since we were little.”
Special Agent Mercer raises Chief Smith’s notebook. “You’re the first name on the list.”
“Okay.” Deep breath. I’m ready. I need to do this. I want to do it, but before he can tell me where to go for him to talk to me, Captain Evans walks over to us, and the colonel’s saying something to Dad, and Dad’s pinching his eyebrows at her, then at Captain Evans.
Captain Evans beckons to my parents. The colonel comes toward us immediately, and Dad trails behind, one big pinch-face going on, but I don’t have time to wonder about that.
“Are you going to cooperate with me, young man?” Agent Mercer’s voice has dropped low, like he doesn’t want my parents to hear him.
Even though it’s hard for me to make out what he says
over the roar of my voices and the pounding of blood in my ears, I come back with “Yes, sir.”
“It’s not typical that my first interview is with the son of the people who called me to ask for my help with a case.” Agent Mercer smiles, but it’s even less of a smile than the colonel’s when she’s about to chew off your head at the neck, and I realize for some reason, he doesn’t seem to like me, and I get the first glimmer of why when he adds, “It’s definitely not typical to have a JAG lawyer on the spot.”
My gaze jumps to Captain Evans. JAG? That’s the Judge Advocate General staff—a lawyer? The colonel brought a
lawyer
with her?
Without skipping a heartbeat, Agent Mercer asks, “Do you think you need a lawyer, Jason?”
“Agent Mercer.” Captain Evans has a head-chewing smile, too. “He doesn’t understand things like this. Let’s just get someplace quiet, and you can ask him whatever you need, so long as it’s relevant to finding the girl.”
She brought a lawyer. She knows. He knows. They all know. You’re so stupid. You’re such an idiot! Know, know, know your boat. You’re crazy. Please stop talking about boats.
Everyone’s here now, the colonel and Dad and Captain Evans and Agent Mercer, and I’m wanting to say,
You think I need representation? Why?
And I’m wanting to say,
I don’t need a lawyer
, and I’m wanting to say,
Whatever, I’ll do whatever, lawyer, no lawyer, whoever, whatever, if it’ll help find Sunshine
.
I glance from face to face. I try to breathe. I try to hear my own thoughts scattered between the shouts bouncing across my skull and through my ears and falling out my eyes. What I say is, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
That, at least, is the truth.
Twenty-four hours. That’s not a long time. Two tens and a four. Simple math. And it’s already been six hours. Twenty-four minus six is eighteen.
My gut seizes at the thought.
Eighteen hours
really
isn’t a long time.
This isn’t real.
I’m in a television show or a movie or a book and this isn’t real and my best friend isn’t missing and I’m not sitting with the colonel and Dad on my left and a JAG lawyer on my right, across a bare wooden table from an FBI guy with Chief Smith’s notebook, frost eyes, a wicked crew cut—and something like a bad attitude, directed straight at me.
“When was the last time you saw Sunshine Patton, Jason?”
His voice sounds hard. Almost angry. What did I do to him? Is it because of the lawyer the colonel brought? Does he not like how I look? What?
He knows you’re a freak. He knows you’re stupid. Freaky freak freak. Maybe he’s not mad. Maybe he is mad. Should he be mad?
The cinder-block walls make the room feel smaller and stuffier, but the lights are bright and I can see every tight line of Agent Mercer’s not-so-nice face. The air still smells like pine cleanser and bleach and my eyes water a little bit only maybe it’s not exactly water.
Crybaby. You’re such a weak little snot. You should hate yourself. Hate, hate, hate, hate. Hate is a terrible word. Nobody should hate anything.
“I saw Sunshine when we got off the bus.” Third time I’ve told him. He keeps asking the same stuff in different ways. I have no idea why, and no idea why he looks madder when my answers don’t change. Maybe he doesn’t look mad, but his face is melting, going empty in the center, or maybe that’s just my brain. My eyes lie to me when I’m stressed.
Where is Sunshine?
Stressed
is a good word for right now.
“Jason,” Agent Mercer starts again with his melty face and his pissed-off eyes—
“Freak. Everybody calls me that. You can.” The words fly out and saying that makes me feel better. It makes me
feel normal and it makes his face stop melting. Sunshine’s gone. How can anything be normal again? Maybe everybody’s face should melt.
Agent Mercer’s thick eyebrows lift. “Freak,” he says, all surprised and slow. I can tell he doesn’t want to look away from me, but his eyes travel straight to the JAG lawyer. “You want me to call you Freak,” he says to me, but he’s really saying it to her.
Why?
Freak, freak, freak, that’s what you are, that’s what I am, spam, ram, ham, ham, Freakity-freak, spam ham. I could use some bacon.
“We’d prefer you call him by his proper name,” the lawyer says. I can see her reflection in the big glass window behind Agent Mercer, and she’s doing the head-chew smile thing while the colonel frowns and Dad bites the inside of his left cheek. He does that when he’s irritated. His eyes move side to side a little too fast, and that I haven’t seen before. Something’s bothering him, something more than all this, but I have no idea what it is.
“Why do people call you Freak, Jason?” Agent Mercer’s using a you-must-be-brain-dead voice, pronouncing things too much like I’m hearing impaired instead of an alphabet.
“Because I’m nuts,” I tell him, getting ticked, but the JAG lawyer puts her hand on mine. “I’m an alphabet. Alphabets are freaks. Everybody knows that.”
“Alphabets,” Agent Mercer repeats, obviously confused.
The colonel explains about the letters and labels, and then when Agent Mercer still seems confused, Dad adds, “It’s a word Jason and Sunshine and Derrick use to describe themselves as a group. It feels better to them than any of the disorder-disability talk.”
“Alphabets,” Agent Mercer says again, like he’s trying it out and maybe getting it a little and understanding—relating? Even if he doesn’t want to. Then he starts over with, “So, why are you called Freak?”
“Stick to questions relevant to the girl,” the lawyer warns Agent Mercer. She’s still got her hand on mine, and when I try to move my fingers, she puts enough pressure on my wrist to keep me still.
Agent Mercer frowns and it makes him look sarcastic and nasty. “You don’t think his nickname is relevant, Captain Evans?”
“I don’t think it matters—” Dad starts, but the colonel jumps on top of him with, “I think law enforcement would be all too happy to focus on Jason as a suspect because he’s mentally ill. What playground bullies choose to call Jason because of his disability is no concern of yours. He’s here to help, Agent Mercer, not to volunteer as your primary person of interest.”
Dad closes his mouth. Captain Evans closes her eyes. Opens them. She’s still smiling, but more nervous now.
It’s all a circus to me. I feel like a clown on the sidelines, with absolutely no clue what the main act is doing.
“Is that how we’re playing this?” Agent Mercer asks, and I can’t tell if he’s talking to the colonel or Captain Evans but I don’t care.
“I’m not playing,” I tell him, jerking my hand away from Captain Evans. “I don’t care if you consider me a Jason or a freak or a person of interest or disinterest or anything else. We’ve only got eighteen hours before twenty-four is up, and I want you to find Sunshine, so could you stop arguing with all of them and get to it?”
Agent Mercer’s eyebrows lift again, but only for a second. The colonel and Captain Evans blink at me. Dad nods. I think he looks happy, but who can tell? The middle of his face is melty like everybody else’s and I have to start looking at the wall because it creeps me out to keep my eyes on that weirdness.
“You say your last contact with her was after you got off the bus.” Agent Mercer’s voice makes an echo inside my head. “Right after school.”
“Yes. I’ve told you that three times now. Can you get to the part about asking me questions that might help find her?”
A pause.
He’s probably looking at my red face. At the way I’m making fists. Well, let him. This isn’t helping Sunshine. We should be up and out of here and looking. Anything but this.
“Do you get frustrated easily?” Agent Mercer sounds happier now, like he’s finally getting somewhere.
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.” I let out a breath and make myself look him in the eye, which is hard because his eyes seem wrong and square and melty but that’s just my alphabet and I need to ignore it. “This is just—I want you to find Sunshine.”
Agent Mercer looks even more happy. “Do you get angry easily?”
“No.” In the reflection behind him, my own face starts to melt. I’m a painting, dissolving down the glass.
“Jason rarely gets angry at all,” the colonel says.
“Everybody gets pissed. Isn’t that right, Jason?” Agent Mercer smiles and I shiver, because in a melty face, that bunch of teeth seems demonic.
Focus.
How can you focus? You’re an idiot. You don’t know how to focus. Hocus pocus, hocus pocus. Magic has no place in this conversation.
Does this nutjob really think I’d get mad at Sunshine? He doesn’t know anything. He can’t know anything about me or her or our lives to ask that, because—
You can do it Jason I know you can I know it’s scary but look at me yeah like that look right at me you know it’s not real nothing’s real but me and I’m right here breathe Jason you can do it you can think through what you hear and what you see it’s not real but we are we are real Jason look at us look at me
—Skin stops sliding down faces and Dad looks like Dad and the colonel looks like the colonel and then there’s Agent Mercer and the lawyer and I guess they look normal now, too. “I don’t have a bad temper, if that’s what you want to know,” I tell Agent Mercer. “I don’t throw fits or punches or go off and beat on walls or girlfriends. That’s not my alphabet.”
He doesn’t believe me. I don’t really care. But he smiles and asks, “Is Sunshine your friend or your girlfriend?”
See? Idiot. He knows. Everybody knows. You suck. Lots of things rhyme with suck. Should I make a list? Nobody needs lists. They’ve got enough lists and you’re on them all.
My lips are moving and I’m trying to answer and—
I don’t think it’s a good idea but she says please and she’s got tears and she says it’ll make everything better that she knows it will and then she’s in front of me and she’s touching me and she’s crying so what am I supposed to do even though I don’t really know what to do but it’s Sunshine and I have to make her stop crying because if she keeps crying I’ll shatter inside and there won’t be anything left of me and her locket presses into my chest and she feels like warm softness and she smells like warm softness when I hold her and
—And I’m seeing the clouds and the knives stab my brain and I turn it all loose and say, “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
Man, did that come out quiet. My face burns, but not
because I’m pissed or anything. I don’t glance at the colonel or Dad before I start staring at the table, but I’m not sure why. They know I’m a loser.
“I find that hard to believe,” Agent Mercer’s saying.
I manage to look at him. “That’s because you’re not a freak.”
“Jason.” The colonel and the lawyer, both at the same time.