Passenger (9 page)

What fucking day is it?

I flush the toilet.

I go back down the hall, staying close enough to the wall so it can brace me up if my knees give out.

“Jack? Are you up?” Stella calls from somewhere downstairs. At first, she sounds like a blackbird.

Her feet make soft thuds like balls of warm dough dropping onto the staircase.

I open the door and lie down on the floor.

“No.”

I listen to the crows.

I put my feet up on the bed and stare at the fan dangling from the ceiling above me.

Round and round.

This is my room.

*   *   *

Stella always knocked before she’d open the door to my bedroom. Usually, she would stand there patiently, and then I’d hear her going back downstairs if I didn’t answer. This time, she waited only a few seconds and then my door cracked open.

“Jack?”

I looked at the spinning blades on the fan. I could feel her watching me.

“Huh?”

“Are you sick, honey? I heard you throwing up again.”

“I’m okay, Stella.”

“You don’t look good, Jack.”

How good could I look? I was lying there on the floor, pale and sweating, wearing nothing but a pair of damp boxer briefs that felt like I’d had them on for three endlessly hot days.

“I’m okay.”

“I’m worried about you. You haven’t gotten any better since you came back from London. Is Conner sick, too? Maybe you boys caught something there.”

Something like that, Stella.

Conner.

“What time is it?”

I felt more than heard my grandmother take a couple steps inside my room.

“You came home late from your friends’ house last night.”

“What day is it?”

Stella sat on the edge of my bed. She put one hand on my foot. It felt cool, nice.

Worried.

I knew she loved me. So did Wynn. That didn’t change anything. It never made me better.

“Jack, are you drinking? You’re not drinking, are you?”

She didn’t sound angry. It wasn’t an accusation, either. Her voice sounded exactly the way her hand felt on my skin. But I still didn’t care.

And I didn’t answer her.

Stella said, “It’s Saturday, baby. Almost two o’clock.”

One day.

Not even one day since I was in the garage with Conner, Ben, and Griffin. Since we broke the lens.

I swallowed. I thought. I thought for a good long time about how I’d ended up here on the floor of my room like this. It was almost as though I could still smell the rain in Marbury, could hear the sound of cutting those black suckers to pieces with the knife I’d found. And I could swear I still tasted the dinner that Quinn Cahill had cooked for me.

Macaroni and cheese.

I felt the need to throw up again.

“I don’t drink, Stella. I don’t do anything like that.”

I knew that would be enough. I couldn’t ever lie to her. Not really.

And I said, “I mean, I have drank beer and stuff with Conner. A few times. But I don’t drink. I haven’t been drinking or doing anything else. Nothing.”

Fuck you, Jack.

Stella rubbed the front of my leg.

“I called Dr. Enbody. He wants to come take a look at you.”

I tensed.

The good doctor.

When I was a little kid, I used to call him Dr. Nobody.

That made people laugh.

I groaned.

“I don’t want to see a doctor.”

I sounded pathetic.

Stella squeezed my leg.

“We need to see if there’s something wrong, baby.”

I know exactly what’s wrong, Stella.

You want me to tell you?

You want me to tell you exactly how fucked up Jack is?

Didn’t think so, Stella.

My grandmother got up.

Outside, the crows argued.

“Can I get you anything, Jack?”

I wanted to scream.

Somewhere near the head of the bed, my phone began buzzing.

“No, thanks. I’m okay.”

I propped myself up. And I could see those glasses just lying there on the floor beneath my bed.

The phone buzzed.

Stella quietly shut my door and I could hear her doughy footfalls going back downstairs.

I got up and grabbed my phone.

*   *   *

I didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling. Saturday at two in the afternoon meant Nickie calling from England. Any call at two pretty much meant Nickie. Nobody ever does anything at two in the afternoon in California.

I cleared my throat.

“Hey, Nickie.”

“Jack. Did I wake you? You sound out of breath.”

“I was just laying here. Being lazy. Sorry it took a while to find my phone.”

“That sounds like you.” She laughed.

“I miss you, Nickie.”

I wished things could be normal. I wished this world would stop coming and going. I realized my window was open, that I was absentmindedly counting the crows in the big oak tree outside, and I pictured the way it looked when I saw it in Marbury—burned, hollow, dead.

“Six more days.”

I could picture the smile on her face when she said that.

And she said, “What’s the first thing you’d like to do when you come back?”

When I come back.

I nervously cleared my throat again. “I’ll think of something.”

She laughed. “Jack.”

Then I heard it.

And Nickie said, “Do you remember this?”

Roll.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The horse. It was a little wooden toy that Seth Mansfield had carved as a gift for Hannah—the girl he loved—more than a hundred years ago. The horse just appeared one night in Nickie’s bedroom, and she’d assumed I left it for her.

Because I loved her, too.

That’s how shit happened in between here—or wherever I was—and Marbury: Things just came and went, popped in, popped out. No questions, no explanations. Just like the little wooden toy horse that meant Seth was around somewhere.

Nickie must have been playing with it. But when I heard the sound, I saw a flash—Seth standing just inside my window. I blinked and he was gone. I got up from my bed and looked outside.

Just crows.

“It’s the horse,” I said.

“I can’t wait to see you again, Jack. I think I’ve become even more fond of you since you’ve been away.”

“I love you, Nickie.”

And as I looked out my window, I saw a black BMW pull up and park right behind my truck. Dr. Enbody.

I guess he had nothing to do at two in the afternoon.

Shit.

“Ander’s here. Can you hear him telling you hello? We were watching some terribly long German movie and he played translator for me. He’s quite good at German, although I think he made bits up.”

Ander was Nickie’s younger brother.

She laughed.

“Tell him I still have the shirt he loaned me. I’ll bring it with me when I come back next week.”

“I can’t wait. I love you, Jack.”

“Nickie? Remember what we talked about? I’m seeing a doctor today.”

It was another lie. I wasn’t seeing a doctor. He was seeing me. And I wasn’t seeing the kind of doctor Nickie wanted me to see, one who could straighten out the bends in my brain. Dr. Nobody had no idea just how fucked up this kid patient of his really was. He had no clue where to even begin looking.

Nickie didn’t say anything. I could hear her breathing, could sense that she was trying to think of what, exactly, would be the right thing to say to me.

“You’re brave, Jack.”

“He’s here right now.”

“Oh.”

“Nickie? Let me hear it again. The horse, I mean.”

“You’re funny.”

Roll.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The crows went silent.

Seth stood in the shade beneath the oak.

Then he was gone.

Something was wrong.

Footsteps outside.

“I better go. The doctor’s coming.”

“Call me after. If you want to tell me about it.”

I don’t want to tell anybody about anything.

“Okay.”

“I love you, Jack.”

*   *   *

Dr. Enbody tried to be nice.

He told me how long he’d known me, and how much I’d grown, but he asked if I’d been eating enough, too, and said that I should probably start going to a regular doctor, now that I was sixteen.

He made me lie down and he pressed his fingers into my belly and thumped on my rib cage. He peered up my nose and into my ears. He looked me straight in the eyes and asked about “bowel movements” and what color my urine was; if I had any concerns or trouble with my penis and testicles.

I shook my head.

Then he asked if I’d been “sexually active with girls or with other boys,” and I almost choked. But I told him yes, that I had a girlfriend. And that pissed me off, too, but I wasn’t sure exactly why.

I was so embarrassed, I guess. So Dr. Enbody told me that I’d better be using condoms, and I lied and said I always used condoms because I just wanted him to shut the fuck up and go away. I’d never even touched a rubber, and I couldn’t imagine having balls enough to go into a 7-11 and buy a box of them.

It was the stupidest thing I ever had to talk about in my life.

When I closed my eyes, I saw Freddie Horvath, so I just kept watching Dr. Enbody until my eyes started watering.

He took my blood pressure and listened to my heart. He pressed an icy stethoscope onto my back and asked me to cough; then took my temperature. He tried to joke about how he used to do it when I was a baby, and I asked him if he ever mixed up thermometers, which made him smile.

Then he started doing the sneaky thing that normal doctors do when they can’t find what seems to be the trouble: He began asking me questions about what I did in England, and how was the jet lag, and had I gotten back to regular sleeping patterns. Did I like English food? Did I try the beer there? I knew exactly where he was going, but it didn’t piss me off. He wasn’t trying to fuck with me—not like that other doctor. Dr. Enbody was just doing what Wynn and Stella paid him to do, so I answered his questions without volunteering anything else.

How was I getting along with my friends? Was there anything that bothered me about myself? Was I having bad dreams? Getting enough sleep? Did I think I was too fat?

I joked. Yeah, I’m on the cross-country team. I’m a planet.

Welcome to Jack’s universe.

Dr. Enbody laughed. It sounded like he really understood me.

For a minute, I tried to think what it might be like to actually
talk
to him—to tell him what happened to me. Not the Marbury stuff, the Glenbrook shit. I tried imagining what it would be like if I could let the words come out of my mouth. And I almost started to say it, but I couldn’t.

He poked me and felt the alignment of my spine, bent my knees, and rotated my shoulders.

I answered his questions.

Then he went downstairs.

*   *   *

As soon as he was far enough away, I slipped out my door after him. Quiet, barefoot, nearly naked, I felt like something wild. Like a murderer.

Of course I knew exactly where to sit on the staircase so I could hear what was going on downstairs.

I knew Wynn wouldn’t be there. He never wanted to have anything to do with stuff like doctors and problems and fixing things. Those were Stella’s specialties.

So I heard Dr. Enbody telling her that he wanted to have her bring me in to his office this week so he could take a blood and urine sample from me.

Great.

Stella wanted to know if he thought I was on drugs or something, but the doctor told her no, he just wanted to see if anything was going on with me. He said my blood pressure was a little high, like I was stressed about something. And he got this condescending and calm tone in his voice when he said that teenage boys often have anxiety issues and get sulky when they’re my age, so Stella shouldn’t worry too much about it—it was all routine kind of stuff. Then he started asking her things about if she noticed I was getting depressed, not sleeping, maybe sleeping too much, or if I talked about dying or suicide.

That’s when I wanted to punch the wall.

I didn’t want to hear anything else.

Fuck this place.

I got up and went back into my room.

I lay on my bed, listening to the crows, waiting to hear Dr. Enbody’s car drive away.

Conner.

I grabbed my phone and dialed.

*   *   *

“What’s up?”

“Hey, Con.”

“Dude. I thought you were coming over.”

“Yeah. Stella made me see a doctor.”

Conner laughed. “Did he need to do surgery to get your head out of your ass?”

That was Conner.

This was real.

“Nice mouth.”

“Shit. What did he do?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

I sat up in bed. Outside, I could hear the doctor’s car start up. “Hey, Con, did something weird happen yesterday?”

Conner said, “Uh-oh. Are you tripping out about that shit again?”

Freddie.

“No. I mean, yesterday, after we broke that lens. Did something weird happen to you?”

I waited for Conner to answer.

“Um. What lens, Jack?”

I chuckled. I thought it sounded stupid. Like Quinn Cahill. “Don’t fuck with me, Conner.”

“Okay. So, we broke some lens? And then what?”

“You know. Marbury.”

“Did Stella’s doctor give you any meds, Jack? It sure sounds like you’re on dope to me. And can you bring the whole bottle over? I want to try some of that shit.”

I knew Conner. He sucked at acting dumb for more than a line or two.

He really didn’t know what I was talking about.

Fuck you, Jack.

“Yeah. Well. Maybe he did give me something.”

And it fucked up your brain, Jack.

“Can you operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery?” Conner laughed.

“Do you remember when we were over at Ben and Griffin’s house?”

“Who?”

“Ben and Griffin.”

“Jack. What the fuck are you talking about? Is this something about that shit with that Freddie guy? Are you still fucked up about that? Dude.”