IA: Initiate (8 page)

Naz then saw a group of smaller kids horsing around on the lawn and moments later the same kids being chased away by the groundskeeper.
Sixth-graders,
Naz thought, and shook his head. One of the kids pointed at Naz and made a stabbing motion. They then all turned and looked in amazement at him.
That kid must have been one of the onlookers walking by and pointing this morning,
Naz thought. He didn’t pay any of it much mind, though; he was on a more important mission.
She has to be out here,
he thought. It seemed like all the students were.
Then again I could have missed her
, he thought,
while I was inside fooling around with Harvis and Fears.
After searching the entire perimeter of the building and not finding her, he started to wonder if she never existed.
Maybe she didn’t,
he thought.
What if I’m getting worse?
For the first time he heard voices twice in one day, and maybe now he was seeing things, too.
That would be bad,
he thought.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a text from Meri.

Pick me up @ 6 I’m stayin 4 chess club

He smiled and sent back:

Take it easy on dem lil kids

She sent back:

Absolutely, jus like I do u :p

Naz laughed and put his phone back in his pocket. He was still thinking about the girl, or whatever it was in the hallway saying,
“Come with me”
and
“Wait for me.” The girl,
he thought, realizing he didn’t even know her name.

He remembered Harvis’ words,
look into the skies and see a halo with no glow
and then thought,
maybe it was an angel.
He laughed. Meri believed angels existed, but he wasn’t so sure.

He finally stopped walking and looked around again. The students were much more scattered now, and it was clear she would not be found, at least not today. He thought about going around one more time just to be sure then abandoned the idea. He realized he was obsessing, and let it go.

Not even wanting to think about what had happened that morning, he decided to take a different route when he left Lincoln. He would not again tread on that now unholy ground of the knife fight. But it didn’t matter. It was as if his thoughts brought his fears into existence, and the boys from earlier that morning were now before him. Only they hadn’t spotted him yet, and before they could, he ducked behind an abandoned house that had boards covering the windows. There were abandoned houses all over the Exclave. Some of them were just about ready to collapse. There were at least two on the block where he lived. He was always amazed at the beautiful graffiti that seemed to appear on the abandoned houses overnight like magic. He also knew that in those same abandoned houses all manner of crimes took place, so usually he made it a practice to steer clear of them. Today he would find refuge behind this abandoned house and watch in dread as the two boys walked by. Part of his dread was based on a sudden flashback of the bloody nose the huskier boy had received courtesy of a vicious elbow from Ham. As Naz looked again he noticed the boy’s shirt was now clean.
He must’ve changed his shirt, too
, Naz thought.

Naz waited until he was sure the two boys were blocks away and going in the opposite direction. Then he began to run, slowly at first, but gradually he picked up the pace and ran faster. He loved to run.
I have two hours before I pick up Meri from school,
he thought.
It’s time to make the money.
On to the Market Merchants, he ran.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THERAPY

As
Naz sat back in the big La-Z-Boy chair, he thought about how much more comfortable this place was than the last place he had gone for therapy. Although he had moved four different times since coming to the Exclave, this was only the second therapist he’d seen. He started seeing her about a year after his mother died and had been having regular sessions with her for over a year.

The first week of school had now come and gone. With the exception of that first day, the rest of the week had been uneventful. Even though Naz still hadn’t talked to Ham, he did call his mother. She informed him that Ham was doing fine and would be back to school in a few weeks. She wanted Naz to know that their family was grateful to him for being there when Ham got stabbed. Naz couldn’t help but wonder what story Ham told his mother about what had happened that day.

Considering all that happened on Tuesday, Naz was feeling pretty good about himself on Friday afternoon. Except for a few whispers and funny looks from his classmates after hearing his name during roll call, he had so far managed to accomplish his goal of staying invisible at Lincoln. He even managed to stay under the radar of Fears.

But he had yet to find the girl. He scanned every table at lunch every day. He made a habit of walking around the entire building after school—sometimes more than once. He even took a chance by asking to be excused to go to the bathroom in Fears’ class, not once but twice in the first week.  He asked to leave about the same time he had seen her in the hallway on Tuesday. But still, there was no sign of her. He thought he might ask another student about her, but other than Ham, he didn’t know anyone else at Lincoln. That was the downside of keeping to himself. He even considered asking Harvis about her, but abandoned that idea with the quickness.

As he waited patiently for his therapist to enter, he looked at all of the pictures on the walls in the cozy office—something he did weekly. Some of the pictures were actually paintings.
They must be famous psychiatrists,
he surmised. He always told himself he would ask Dr. Hornbuckle when she came in, but he always seemed to forget.

Naz didn’t care much for his first therapist. To Naz he was a mean old man who always insisted on calling Naz by his given name, even though Naz made it clear he didn’t like it. He talked only about serious things that Naz wasn’t interested in discussing, like the voices, sleepwalking, and his mother’s death. He hated going to therapy back then.

But he liked Dr. Hornbuckle because they always talked about whatever he wanted to talk about. She told him she had a son just about his age and once brought one of her son’s video games to a session, and they played the whole hour. Naz also thought she was pretty and looked forward to seeing her every Friday after school. Dr. Hornbuckle was the closest thing Naz had to a mother now, and he told her almost everything.

He was trying to decide whether or not to tell her about the voices. Up until a few days ago, it had been two months since he had heard them. Before that, when he had heard the voices, he kept it to himself. He originally told Dr. Hornbuckle it had been almost a year since he had heard them. But now they were back. What bothered him most was that he had heard them twice in one day.

Early in their sessions, Dr. Hornbuckle told Naz that she could prescribe some medication to prevent him from hearing the voices. Meri brought home a book from the library once that said people diagnosed with schizophrenia often exhibited auditory hallucinations and paranoia. To Naz, the word schizophrenia meant crazy, and no one was going to tell him he was crazy— besides he wasn’t about to take any medication. To Naz, drugs were drugs, and they were all bad. From that point on Naz decided he would just stop telling people, even his therapist, that he heard voices.
But now, twice in one day
, he obsessed,
and added to that
I might be seeing things.
Maybe I do need medication
, Naz thought. He pushed the thought out of his mind completely. If there was one thing he knew, it was that the voices only came when he was angry, scared, or excited, all of which he believed were under his control.

Naz felt divided. One part of him wanted to tell Dr. Hornbuckle, and another part of him thought that he shouldn’t. He decided to play a game. If she asked him about the voices, he would tell her; if she didn't, he would keep it to himself. He figured he’d leave it to chance. She hadn’t asked about the voices in quite a while so he figured the odds were in his favor that she wouldn’t ask this day either.

The wound on his neck was starting to heal, but it also preoccupied him. This was the first day he forgot to wear a bandage, and it was all he could do to keep from picking at it.

“Hello, Naz!” Dr. Hornbuckle said as she walked in the office. “I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

DR. GWEN

Dr. Guinevere
Hornbuckle was statuesque, tall, and shapely. She was a middle-aged widow who always wore her hair in a bun and was usually dressed in a casual two-piece pantsuit.  She finished off her attire with a pair of running shoes. The running shoes always seemed out of place to Naz, but at the same time they made him feel comfortable with Dr. Hornbuckle. He was comfortable with her from the first day he met her. She also carried a briefcase, which always caught Naz's attention because she never failed to have something in it for him.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Hornbuckle.” He now became noticeably uncomfortable.

“Dr. Hornbuckle, huh? Why so formal, Naz? You must have something good to tell me this week.”

“Sorry, Dr. Gwen. Not really.”

As she began to sit down in the chair directly across from him, she immediately noticed the wound on his neck. She dropped

her briefcase and moved toward him to investigate.

“Oh, my God! What happened?”

Naz was already leaning back in the chair, so it made it easier for her to tilt his head further back to see his neck. He had managed to conceal the wound from Miss Tracey all week, which wasn’t difficult, since she paid him and Meri little attention. But he forgot that Dr. Gwen would most assuredly see his wound right away. It didn’t matter. He planned to tell her everything, except about the voices. He actually looked forward to getting it off his chest. Other than the police officer at the scene and Meri, he hadn’t told anybody what happened that day. Naz realized that if he told Dr. Gwen what happened, it would invariably lead her to ask about the voices. He figured the odds were no longer in his favor.

“Well, I was sort of in a fight … I guess.”

“Sort of … with who?” she asked, still standing over him and examining his neck. “Let me guess … that Hector Martinez boy, right?”

“I wasn’t in a fight with Hector.”

“But it did have something to do with him, didn’t it?” She asked, shaking her head.

“That is true.”

“I knew it. I’ve never met the boy, but from all you’ve told me about him, I know he’s trouble.” She finally sat down across from him. “Well, tell me what happened.” She continued shaking her head while she pulled a notepad from the side of her briefcase.

Naz began to tell Dr. Gwen what happened. He started from the beginning: when he had met Ham that morning on the street. To his surprise he enjoyed telling Dr. Gwen about what happened. It felt like he was telling a great, exciting tale and not one in which he had a role. It felt like a Western again. He didn’t leave out any details, except the voices. For the first time he felt excitement when he thought about what happened. It was exhilarating to him.

“My goodness!” she said as he finished. “That’s terrible!” Then she paused for a moment and continued. “Yet you seemed to enjoy it … and that worries me because that’s not like you, not at all.”

She’s right
, he thought.
What am I thinking
? It was the worst thing he had ever experienced, and now he was enjoying his own reenactment of the events. He was embarrassed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It was terrible … the worst thing I’ve ever been through. But I guess now that it’s over, it doesn’t seem real anymore. There’s no fear … no anger, just excitement.”

“You don’t have to apologize. What you feel is normal and part of being human. We all have a dark side that we struggle to keep concealed every day. We seek the light, but usually it’s just before being consumed by the darkness. It’s almost like a hero being taken to his limit by a villain. But in the end we always root for the hero.”