The God Project (7 page)

He slid out of bed and knelt next to the guinea pig’s cage. The sounds Fred were making were just like the sounds Julie had made after she stopped crying.

Very quiet, but there.

He opened the cage, and Fred, hearing the slight rattle, woke up, opened his eyes and stared at Jason through the gloom. Jason reached in, gently picked up the guinea pig, and took it into bed with him. Soon Fred fell asleep again, this time curled up in the crook of Jason’s arm.

Jason listened to the guinea pig breathe, sure that he had heard the same sounds in Julie’s room last night just before he had left it So he hadn’t done anything to Julie, not really.

Still, tomorrow or the next day he’d talk to Randy
about it. It was, he realized, sort of like what had happened to Randy after Billy Semple jumped off the roof. Even though Randy hadn’t really done anything to Billy, he’d still gotten blamed for Billy’s broken leg.

As he fell into a fitful sleep, Jason wondered if the same thing would happen to him, and he’d get blamed for Julie’s dying.

Maybe the next time Randy came over they’d do the same thing to Fred that he’d done to Julie and see if Fred died.

At least then he’d know for sure.…

R
ANDY CORLISS SCRUNCHED UNDER
the covers, trying to avoid opening his eyes to the morning light. He was cold, and all night long his sleep had been broken by nightmares. But now the sun was warming his room, and he wanted to drift back to sleep, wanted to forget the loneliness that had overcome him the previous afternoon when he realized his father was not coming for him, at least not that day.

“But if’s going to be all right, Randy,” Miss Bowen had explained, “Your father is very busy, and for the moment he wants us to take care of you.”

“Why?” Randy had asked. Since he’d seen the fence around the Academy, he’d wondered why his father had had him brought here. It didn’t, to Randy’s eyes, look quite like a school For one thing, you couldn’t even see it from the road. There was just a long driveway and then a gate without a sign. And there weren’t any of the kind of school buildings he was used to, only a huge house that looked almost like a castle, with the windows of the second floor covered with bars. He’d seen a couple of boys who looked like they were about the same age he was, but hadn’t been able to talk to them. Instead, he’d been taken into an office, where Miss Bowen had told him why he was there.

“It’s a special school, for special boys,” she assured him. “Boys like you, who’ve had problems in regular school.”

“I haven’t had any problems,” Randy said.

“I mean problems making friends.” Miss Bowen smiled at him, and a little of Randy’s apprehension dissipated. “Lots of boys your age have that kind of trouble, you know. Boys who are special, like you.”

“I’m special?”

“All the boys here are special. Most of them come from families just like yours.”

“You mean where their parents are divorced?”

“Exactly. And most of the boys here didn’t want to live with their mothers anymore and didn’t like the schools they were going to. So their fathers sent them here, just like your father sent you.”

“But where is he?” Randy’s face darkened belligerently, and as he watched her, he could see that she wasn’t going to answer him. That was the trouble with grown-ups, even his father. When they didn’t want to answer your questions, they never even explained why not. They just said you weren’t old enough to know. Or sometimes they just pretended they hadn’t heard the question, which was what Randy thought Miss Bowen was about to do.

“Wouldn’t you like to meet the other boys?” she asked, confirming his suspicions.

“I want to talk to my father,” Randy replied, his voice turning stubborn. He was sitting uncomfortably on a high-backed wooden chair, but he folded his arms, and his eyes sparked angrily. “Why can’t I call him? I know his number at work.”

“But he’s out of town. That’s why he sent me to pick you up. He
couldn’t
come for you. But hell be back in a few days.”

“How many days?” Randy demanded. He was beginning to squirm in his chair now, and his face was flushing. The woman opened her desk drawer and took out a small bottle filled with white tablets. “What’s that?” Randy demanded.

“It’s some medicine. I want you to take one of these.”

“I’m not sick, and I don’t ever take pills.”

“It’s just to calm you down. I know all this is very strange, and I know you’re frightened. This pill will help.”

“What’ll it do to me?” Randy stared at the pill suspiciously. “Will it make me go to sleep?”

“Of course not. But you won’t be frightened anymore, or worried.”

“I won’t take it, and you can’t make me.” Randy’s mouth clamped shut, and his body stiffened. His eyes began darting around the room as he searched for a way out. There was none. The woman was between him and the door, and there were no windows in the office.

“Then you’re going to sit there until you change your mind,” she told him. “You can make up your own mind. Take the pill, and come with me to meet the other boys, or sit there all day. It’s up to you.” She set the pill in the center of the blotter on her desk and picked up a file folder. Five minutes passed.

“It won’t make me go to sleep?” he asked, coming to the desk and picking up the pill, studying it as if it were an insect.

“It won’t make you go to sleep.” She got up to go to the water cooler, keeping her eyes on Randy in case he tried to bolt out the door. He didn’t.

She handed him a cup of water, still watching closely to be sure he really swallowed the pill. Ten minutes later, when he began to relax, she took him outside and introduced him to his schoolmates.

There were five of them, and they eyed Randy with all the suspicion of preadolescence, silently daring him to pick a fight. He watched them, trying to decide which of them to challenge, but none of them stepped forward, nor did any of them back away. Only when Miss Bowen left them alone with the newcomer did any of them speak.

“Did she give you the pill?” one of them finally asked. His name was Peter Williams, and when he spoke, his voice was neither friendly nor belligerent.

“Uh-huh,” Randy replied. “What is it?”

“I think it’s Valium,” another of the boys said. “My mom used to take it when she was nervous.”

“Do you have to take it every day?”

“Nan. Only the first day. Then they don’t make you take anything. How come you’re here?”

Randy thought about it before he answered, and when he finally spoke, he avoided the others’ eyes. “My dad sent me. Mostly to get me away from my mom, I guess.”

There was a silence as the other boys exchanged glances and shrugs. “Yeah,” Peter said at last “That’s why we’re all here, except Billy.” He gestured toward the skinny brown-haired boy who stood slightly behind him. Billy stared at his shoes, as Peter explained importantly. “His mom sent him here to get him away from his dad. But who cares? It’s better than being at home.”

   That had been yesterday, and this morning Randy was still not convinced that Peter was right. He felt terribly alone, and when he went to look out the window, and saw nothing except forest beyond the fence that surrounded the Academy, a slight chill rippled over him. But then there was a tap at the door, and Adam Rogers stuck his head in.

“You better get dressed. If we aren’t down for breakfast in five minutes, we won’t get any.” Adam came into the room and perched himself on the bed while Randy pulled his clothes on. “You from around here?”

“Eastbury.” Randy sized Adam up as he tied his shoelaces. He looked younger than Randy, and was smaller, but his body was wiry and he looked like he was fast. “Where you from?”

“Georgia. That’s down south.”

“I know where it is. I’m not stupid.”

“Nobody said you were,” Adam said by way of apology, “but lots of people don’t know where anyplace is. Come on.” He hopped off the bed and led Randy out of the bedroom and down the stairs into a large dining room. There were two tables in the room, around one of which the other four boys were seated. At another,
smaller table sat Louise Bowen. “She thinks she’s a den mother or something,” Adam whispered as the two of them slid into the two vacant chairs at the big table with the other boys. “But she never talks to us in the morning. Just watches us.”

“Why?”

“Search me. But that’s one of the neat things about this place—they watch you all the time, but they practically never tell you what to do.”

“Yeah,” Peter Williams agreed, grinning happily. “Not like at home. My mom was always telling me I was going to hurt myself, or get in trouble, or kill someone, or something. And then I ran away one day, and the cops picked me up, and ever since then she was always on my case.”

The other boys began chiming in. As Randy listened, he began to think maybe he’d been wrong to be so suspicious yesterday. All the stories sounded familiar. Most of the boys had been lonely before they came to the Academy, and some of them bragged about how much trouble they’d caused in the schools they’d gone to before.

“But what do you do here?” Randy asked.

“Go to class and play,” Peter replied. “It’s neat, because we don’t have as many classes as regular school But we play lots of games. They teach us boxing and wrestling and some other stuff, but a lot of the time they just let us do what we want.”

“Anything?” Randy asked.

Peter looked at the other boys questioningly, and when they nodded, so did he. “I guess so. At least, they never told any of us
not
to do anything.” He paused, as if turning something over in his mind, then went on, his voice more thoughtful. “But they always watch us. It’s funny. There’s always someone around, like they want to know what we’re doing, but they never tell us much about what to do. Except in class. That’s just like regular school.”

“How come there’s only six of us?” Randy suddenly asked. It seemed to him that the house was big enough
for a much larger group than they made up, and he’d always thought private schools had hundreds of students.

Adam Rogers glanced toward Louise Bowen, then leaned close to Randy and whispered. “There used to be more,” he said. “When I got here, there were ten of us.”

“What happened to the others?” Randy asked.

Peter frowned at Adam. “They left.”

“You mean their dads came for them, or they went to another school?”

Across from Randy, a red-headed boy with a sprinkle of freckles across his nose shook his head. “No. They—”

“Shut up, Eric,” Peter broke in. “We’re not supposed to talk about that.”

“Talk about what?” Randy demanded.

“Nothing,” Peter told him.

Randy turned his attention back to Eric. “Talk about what, Eric?” he asked again, his eyes locking onto the other boy’s. Eric started to open his mouth, then dosed it and looked away. “Tell me, Randy insisted.”

Eric glanced uneasily toward Louise Bowen. She appeared not to be listening to them. Still, when he spoke, his voice dropped to a whisper, and Randy had to strain to hear him.

“Sometimes kids just—well, they just disappear. We think they die.”

“Die?” Randy breathed.

“We don’t know,” Peter said “We don’t know what happens to them.”

“Yes, we do,” Eric whispered miserably. “Nobody’s been here more than a few months, and everyone who’s gone died That’s what happens. You come here, and you die.”

“Shut up, Eric,” Peter said once again. “We don’t know what happened to David and Kevin. Maybe their fathers came for them.”

“I hope so,” Adam Rogers said, and when Randy looked at him, he saw that Adam’s face was pale. “I’ve been here almost six months. Longer than any of you. I—I hope …”

His voice trailed off. The six boys finished their breakfast in silence.

   Lucy Corliss sat at her kitchen table and tried to decide what to do. All night she had lain awake, hoping to hear the front door opening signaling Randy’s return, or the sound of the telephone notifying her that the police had found him. That was the one thing Sergeant Bronski had promised her last night—that he would put together a search party and comb the woods in which Randy had gotten lost a year ago. He hadn’t promised anything; indeed, he had reluctantly told Lucy that the odds of finding Randy in the darkness were almost nil.

But all night long her house had been filled with an eerie silence. Finally, as the eastern sky had begun brightening into dawn, she had made one more call to the police, only to be told that no trace of Randy had yet been found; then she drifted into a fitful sleep, from which she had awakened an hour later. Since then she had been sitting in the kitchen, waiting, resisting the constant impulse to call the police yet again, knowing that if there was anything to report, they would call her.

When the phone suddenly came to life just before nine, its jangling sound nearly made Lucy drop her coffee cup. She grabbed for the receiver, her heart pounding.

“Hello? Hello?”

“It’s Jim, Lucy.” There was a hopelessness in his voice that told her instantly that the search party had found nothing, but she had to confirm it. “You didn’t find him, did you?”

“No.”

“Oh, God, Jim, what am I going to do? I just feel so helpless, and—and—” Her voice broke off as she fought to control the tears that threatened to engulf her.

“Take it easy, Lucy,” she heard Jim say. “It’s not over yet.” There was a short silence, then he added, “Are you going to work?”

“Work?” Lucy echoed. She felt a tentacle of panic at the edge of her consciousness, and her voice pitched
higher. “How can I go to work? My God, it’s my
son
that’s missing. I’ve got to
do
something about it.” The panic was beginning to grow, and Lucy lit a cigarette, drawing deeply. As she exhaled the stream of smoke, a little of her tension eased.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she heard Jim saying. “I just meant that there’s nothing you can do right now. It won’t do you or Randy any good for you to sit around the house going out of your mind.”

“You’re a fine one to say that,” Lucy shot back. “How would you know what’s going to do me or Randy any good? You can’t just come waltzing back into my life after nine years and start telling me what’s good for me and what’s not. Was it good for me to have you walk out and leave me to bring our son up by myself?”