The nurse, her face now matching the color of the code, races to her station.
I slide down the wall and wait on the cool linoleum floor.
Rottengoth, Pig, Tink, and Red mill in the hallway as if not sure what to do. Vanet peeks from the shower door, straightens, and then mingles with the crowd.
“What’s going on, what’s happening?” he asks, all innocent.
Twenty minutes pass before Peter is dragged, wingless and wandless, back through the doors. He’s bawling and looks more clown than fairy.
“I’m a fairy. I’m a fairy,” he cries and then, seeing where they’re headed, digs his heels in and twists around. The security staff—four of them now—lift him bodily and carry him through to the room that I stayed in when I first arrived. Nurse Abby follows them, gripping a needle like a SWAT officer holds a handgun. The door closes.
“Found him on the roof,” I hear someone say.
“Group, everyone.” Tink’s voice breaks.
Even Red doesn’t try to avoid group. Everyone crowds back into the rec room. Another car crash to gawk at.
“Everyone to group,” Stenson orders as I still sit in the empty hall.
I’m grateful that Tink’s taking group, but suspect it’s only because Stenson’s tied up dealing with the mess I created.
I sit between Rottengoth and Red.
“So,” Tink says, her lips straining between smile and grimace. “That was exciting. Now who dressed Peter up?”
Right down to business. This is serious Tink. There’s silence. Vanet’s dark eyes bore into mine and then shift to my lips. He twitches his head in a tiny no. But I only hasten my count.
. . . “I—”
“I did it,” Vanet interrupts me, and I have to restart my count. There’s no hint of remorse in his response. “See, Peter’s a fairy. He really is, right? He prances around. He says he’s a fairy. When he’s in proper fairy clothes, he looks like one. It seemed only fair to help him out. That’s what life’s about, right? Helping people? Being fair to fairies.”
I’m not sure how Vanet makes these leaps, but I wish I could too.
“Earlier,” Pig points at Vanet, “he told Peter he’d see the land of fairies, if he kept jumping off of buildings.”
“Also true,” Vanet agrees.
“Why would you do such a thing?” Tink asks.
“You don’t think we should help people achieve their dreams?” Vanet replies, hand over his chest.
“How do you think you were helping him?” Tink tries again.
“I told you. He’s a king. Of the good fairies at least. A king fairy should look like one.”
Tink’s mouth tightens and her strained smile finally folds. “Why might you think telling Peter he’s a fairy could be a bad thing?” The question is for all of us. I’m counting to speak, but Vanet meets my eyes and shakes his head again.
He wants to take the fall for this.
“Because he’s going to keep jumping out of buildings!” Pig screams, her face pink.
“Darwin Award winner,” Red agrees.
“Okay, so he may hurt himself. Why else might it not be healthy? Vanet thought he was God when he first arrived. Why was it important that he realize that he’s Vanet, not God?” Tink doesn’t sound like her true self and I know why. She’s angry. She would be at me, too, if she knew.
“Because we should be ourselves,” Rottengoth says.
“Good, Wes,” Tink replies, her shoulders releasing their tightness just a smidge. “We should be ourselves.”
“What if we don’t like ourselves?” Rottengoth says back. “Shouldn’t we try to change things we don’t like?”
“Of course,” Tink says. “Things we can change.”
“Like if I’m not fairy enough, I should put on wings and—”
“Vanet,” Tink scowls. “If you’re to participate in group, you will respect it.” She no longer tries to hide her fury. “What just happened was very dangerous, and it happened because an individual took it upon himself to challenge the treatment regime of another patient. Peter was improving, little by little, but—” Tink lifts her hands to the ceiling in exasperation. Her eyes fill with tears, and she clenches her jaw in her effort to control them. “He could have died. He was on the roof.”
“Someone shouldn’t have left the door open,” Red says. “Nothing would have happened if the door was shut.”
Tink flushes, smooths her pants, and uses the shoulders of her pale green blouse to clear her eyes. I can’t help but think the blouse is something Peter would love to wear. Her smile is back, false as it is.
“Wesley, you said something interesting. Why did you say you didn’t like yourself?” she continues.
Somehow Rottengoth seems even skinnier as he shifts on his bony butt. Ear-stretchers have opened his lobes to the gauge of a quarter.
“I don’t have any friends and my parents—they hate me.” He stares at his hands and brings the palms together and apart like they’re doing push-ups.
“What evidence do you have to support that?” Tink drops into the same Socratic method Stenson uses. Rottengoth gazes at her as if she must be nuts. “How do you know your father hates you?” Tink asks.
He draws a deep breath. “We’ll be doing stuff, okay, fixing something and I won’t do it right and he’ll be like why can’t you just . . . he always says that . . . why can’t you just . . . and then shakes his fist. After that he’ll ignore me.”
“Maybe fixing things makes him angry,” Tink suggests.
“Your dad’s a jerk,” Vanet says, but Rottengoth shakes his head.
“That’s the problem though, he’s not. He’s pretty nice. I’ve got this little brother, and he’s good at every sport and my dad, he ruffles his hair all the time, musses it up and gives him these little hugs all the time. Calls him Tiger. I’m not saying I want anyone mussing my hair or hugging me, but . . . maybe he doesn’t hate me. Maybe he just doesn’t care. Maybe that’s worse.” He sighs, shoulders seeming to droop to his hips. “What’s wrong with me, then? If my parents don’t care about their kid, what’s that say about me?”
Tink glances toward the door and she looks super uncomfortable, like she’s taken this all a little too far.
“They care,” she says lamely. “They care.” With a quick smile adds, “It’s been a very eventful morning, why don’t you wash up for lunch?”
I’m left a little stunned by Wes’s comments. My mom always used to say to me, why can’t you just . . . too. It was usually when I was doing something that scared her, like sitting too close to the television, or walking too close to the side of the curb, or not wearing my hat in the sun. Why can’t you just sit still? Sometimes I wonder if she’d have preferred I stayed indoors and read my book of tales all day. Even when I did stuff, I was never quite good enough anyway. You could have done better. She really wanted the best for me.
Tink drifts away. I’m counting to leave, but no one else moves to the door.
“That was hilarious,” Red says to Vanet.
“The part where Wesley’s parents hate him?” Vanet asks, and it’s one of the first times I think I’ve seen him serious.
“At least he has parents who are alive, who are nice,” Pig replies.
Rottengoth’s face drops.
Then Vanet bursts out laughing. “Sorry, sorry, as if I care.”
Chapter 16
There’s a story in the book of tales that I’m not sure I get.
A millwright had two daughters old enough to be married. The first daughter married a pig farmer because she felt they would always have food to eat. The second daughter married a huntsman because she felt they would always have warm furs to wear.
As time went on, each daughter had many children and during times of plenty, both were happy with their husbands. Lean years were very different, however. During drought years, the daughter who married the pig farmer was happy for what little they had even if they were cold some evenings. But during times when anima
ls were scarce, the daughter who married the huntsman railed against her hunger and sent her husband back out to find food to feed them.
One day, the starving huntsman left to hunt and never returned, likely eaten by ravenous wolves.
With nowhere else to go, the daughter who married the huntsman turned to her sister, the pig farmer’s wife, for help. The pig farmer’s wife welcomed her into their family and, despite the added mouths to feed, the pig farmer and his wife were thankful for what they had even if some days they were cold and hungry.
Don’t nag? Is that the moral? Well, sister number two was definitely a total bitch.
Peter’s not at lunch. Before me is my half-empty can of Ensure and a goey slab of lasagna. Everyone’s busy eating, and the clatter of spoons and forks on trays rings out.
“Maybe they’re feeding Peter through a tube in his stomach,” Vanet says.
“Don’t be gross,” Pig replies. “Milly has a hard enough time eating without that crap.”
My vision swims. It’s like when I fainted at gym all over again. I grip the table to steady myself.
My mother had a feeding tube near the end. When they removed it, she spent another week dying. She almost died a dozen times before she finally went. We were all there for the tube removal, when my dad finally asked for the nurse to remove it and the IV lines, so that my mom could die quietly. But she didn’t die right away. And death isn’t quiet.
My mom’s close friends and her brother were all there that first day, on deathwatch. But the group got smaller with every additional day. Dad slept beside her, listening to her breathing. He would call me in whenever my mom’s breaths went erratic or too shallow.
This is it, honey. This is it. Every time he said that. And his heart nearly broke every time.
At first this cold feeling would rush through me, bracing me for the worst. But after a while, it was like that story about the boy who cried wolf and the villagers who didn’t show up when the boy truly needed them. I heard my dad talking to my mom’s brother on speakerphone one time. My uncle said that he’d already said goodbye enough times. Au revoir was what he said, instead of goodbye.
I’ve heard that there’s a moment at the very end when you wake and talk to those around you, and say au revoir. It wasn’t like that with my mom. I wasn’t even there. She died while I was sleeping over at a friend’s house. That was before I had to count. My dad never even called; he slept through it too. If he had called, though, I’m not sure I would have come. Can you carry guilt for something that you might have done? What did the villagers think when they came upon the slaughter in the hills?
“Eat,” Toadie tells me.
I used to like lasagna. Now everything tastes like sawdust mixed with wallpaper glue. In fairness, this is not my mother’s lasagna, and hers was amazing.
. . . “I have to go to the washroom,” I say.
“Not until an hour after eating,” Toadie replies.
. . . “But I’ve only had one bite and some Ensure.”
“You can hold it,” Toadie says.
“Milly, what is the evidence of your needing to go to the washroom?” Vanet asks, mimicking Stenson perfectly.
. . . “I have a grumbling in my belly, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a load destined for my pants if Toadie doesn’t let me go,” I reply.
Toadie appears confused.
“Yes, but are you looking at the whole picture?” Vanet asks.
. . . “Well . . . maybe not. I mean, the symptoms could mean that a blood vessel burst and I am bleeding out in my abdomen. Or I am about to give birth to an alien that is presently fighting to explode out of my anus.”
“And are you being objective?” he asks.
. . . “I’m on a psych ward, how can I know?”
Toadie folds his arms and stares at the ceiling.
“Let me ask again, do you need to take a dump?” Vanet asks.
. . . “Yes, but only in a different dimension,” I reply.
Vanet high-fives me.
Everyone else eats while I stare Toadie down, but he’s not having it.
“The fairy thing was pretty crazy,” Rottengoth says.
“That’s nothing.” Vanet shovels in a quarter of his meal in a single bite.
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve done?” Pig asks the table.
“The craziest thing that I remember doing, or that people have told me I’ve done?” Vanet says. “When I get manic . . . .” He whistles.
“You’re not manic now?” Pig asks.
“You kidding? This is totally normal, don’t you think? I don’t sound crazy, do I? Damn, this is boring. There’s a reason bipolars skip their meds. Normal sucks.”
“Craziest thing you’ve done, then, and you have to remember doing it,” Pig replies.
“Okay, there was this chick—”
I’d been waiting for this and counting. “And it can’t be about sex,” I say.
He throws up his hands as if that severely limits his options, but soon recovers. “Wait, I’ve got one. My school has a cadet corps and it’s really a bully boot camp. Know what I mean? It’s filled with the big kids who are no good at sports, but still love bossing people around. In cadets they get to form teams of bullies and really pound on people.” He shrugs. “People like me. I think the whole thing is stupid. Training to be soldiers, marching in bands and crap. Anyway, so one night they invite all of the cadet corps from around the region to this farm and they hold exercises. War games. Well, I and my friends decide to mess with the bullies a bit.
“Each cadet corps has a flag that they need to protect, so we decide to form a corps of our own and go capture their flags. Crash their party. So far so good, am I right? It all makes sense, but then we have too much peach schnapps—never drink it, worst hangover ever—anyway, we decide to make Molotov cocktails, so that we can take out fortifications, right?”
“This is crazy,” Rottengoth says. “You made bombs?”
“Wait, wait, it gets better. We’re sneaking up, and there’s this commander taking a whiz while talking on his radio. We tackle him, blindfold him, tie him up, and gag him, and now we have his radio and know everything that’s going on. This becomes important later after we throw the first cocktail to take out a protected bridge.” He says this all matter-of-fact, as if they could hardly have done anything else. “Well, the war games turn from capture the flag into a manhunt. A field of dried cornstalks somehow ends up on fire. But we’re still after their flags, so it’s funny, because they’re not protecting them anymore, they’re starting to search for us while other people are putting out the fires. We just walk into each area and pick the flags off their poles. We know everything they’re doing because of the radio and, by the time they figure that out, we’re gone. I still have those flags over my bed—at home. And, you know what? That farmer grew the best corn in the country after the fire. Won first prize at some corn fest.”
“I can’t top that,” I say and I can tell he isn’t lying, not this time.
“Nobody died or anything,” he adds.
“When it comes to setting things on fire, I can top any story,” Pig says.
But Rottengoth raises his hand slowly and we all look over. “I have only one crazy story. I’m not a Satanist or anything, and I’m not part of a cult, but I did go to a weird ritual once. It was in an old warehouse with about a dozen people all wearing masks. Candles flickered everywhere and I chanted to try to raise a demon from Hell. That wasn’t the really crazy part, though. This hooded girl brought a goat into the middle of the circle and it began to bleat as if it knew what was going to happen next. When they asked for volunteers to kill the goat, I told her that I knew how to handle a knife. She took me by the hand and I stepped into the circle. The goat was wandering around, pellets popping out of its butt like we were playing goat bingo—”
“Goat bingo, what’s goat bingo?” Vanet asks, and Pig gives him a shot in the arm.
“Shut up,” Pig says.
; Rottengoth swallows and continues. “I grabbed it by the horn, hauled back and slit its throat. Didn’t make a sound except for the blood splattering on the floor. I told myself that it was to put it out of its misery but the truth was, I wanted to. It was really easy, the blade slipped through . . . .” He glances down at his forearms and I can see all the scars; they’re not the type you’d expect from a suicide attempt, lots of smaller ones. He shakes his sleeves down. I rub the gooseflesh from my arms.
“You’re messed,” Red says.
“You don’t need ECT, you need an exorcism,” Vanet adds. “Goths are crazy.”
“Shut up. That’s not Goth,” Rottengoth says. “I told you. Besides, I didn’t go again.”
“Come on, Tiger. Did you drink its blood?” Vanet asks. “You can gain its powers, if you do that. If you drank the blood, it beats my crazy thing, otherwise I’d say tossing incendiary grenades at militant teenagers wins.”
“Don’t ever call me Tiger.” Rottengoth jumps up, fists clenched. It’s the most riled I’ve seen him.
“Who wants goat power?” Pig laughs. “The power to digest grass. The power to make annoying sounds. Maaa . . . maaaa . . . maaaa.”
I wish I could believe in Satanism. If there are demons, then there are angels too. And maybe my mom really is watching me. Maybe she’s forgiven me for not being there when she woke up in the dark, ready to say goodbye, and only found the wolf there to take her.
Au revoir, Mommy.
Toadie steps in between Vanet and Rottengoth. Lunch is over. We never did get to hear the craziest thing Pig’s done.
I go back to my room to lie on my bed. When I walk in, a woman lifts her head from where she’s hunched over Beauty. The woman continues whispering after I enter, but her eyes track me. Finally, she kisses a crucifix hanging on a chain around her neck. She was praying and now I can guess where Beauty got her belief that Jesus would save her.
“Hello,” she says and I nod.
. . . “How is she?” I ask.
The woman smiles, a beaming, heaven-sent ray of light. Tears fill her eyes. “My daughter’s going to be okay, she really is.”
Counting Wolves Page 10
