by John Saul
Through it all, she’d never once, until that very instant, realized she’d left the house without dressing. Shakily, she put the coffee cup down. “Take me home, Chet.”
As her husband led her out of the emergency room and back to the waiting police car, grief at last began closing in on Jeanette Aldrich.
At a little after seven o’clock that morning, Steve Conners arrived at the Academy, and knew at once that something was wrong. Two police cars were pulled up in the driveway in front of the main building, and he could see Dr. Engersol’s dark blue Oldsmobile as well. Ignoring his usual morning routine of going first to his classroom in the west wing building, he parked next to one of the black-and-whites and mounted the steps to the broad loggia. As he let himself in through the front door, the first person he saw was Hildie Kramer, talking to one of the policemen. Near the foot of the stairs a knot of children whispered among themselves, their eyes wide as they watched the policeman talking to their housemother.
“What’s going on?” Steve asked as he joined Hildie.
Hildie’s eyes shot briefly toward the group of children by the stairs, but then she decided there was no point in retreating to her office. Certainly, there wasn’t a child in the house who didn’t already know what had happened. “It’s Adam Aldrich,” she said. “I’m afraid he killed himself last night.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Steve groaned. Suddenly he remembered the things he hadn’t done yesterday.
He hadn’t mentioned either to Hildie or to George Engersol his concerns about the boy. He’d intended to, but then something had come up—he couldn’t even remember what it had been right now—and the whole thing had slipped his mind.
Slipped his mind! And now Adam Aldrich was dead.
His horror at the thought must have showed clearly on his face, for Hildie was staring curiously at him. “Steve, what is it?”
Steve shook his head as if to push back the tide of guilt that was washing over him, but the gesture did no good. “I should have done something,” he said. “I knew something was wrong. I was going to talk to you about him. And George, too.”
Now the policeman’s eyes were fixed on him. “You know something about the boy?”
Steve nodded unhappily. “He’s in my English class.” Briefly, he filled in the policeman—and Hildie Kramer, too—on what had happened in his class the previous morning. “I knew he was upset about something, and I was going to talk to you about it, but it just went out of my mind. And now—”
“And now you feel as though you could have prevented it,” Hildie finished for him. Her attention shifted momentarily back to the police officer. “If you’re finished with me for now, I think I’d better have a talk with Mr. Conners.”
The officer nodded, closing his notebook. “I think I’ve got all there is to get. It doesn’t seem like anyone talked to him or heard him leave. And the note on his computer is pretty clear. If there’s anything else, I’ll call you.”
When he was gone, Hildie took Steve Conners into her office, and gestured him into a chair. “Steve, I’m not going to pretend that your forgetting to speak to me about Adam wouldn’t have made any difference. It probably would, at least in the short run. But there’s something else you’ve got to understand, or you’ll never be able to deal with this school.” She paused, as if waiting for a response from the young teacher. When there was none, she went on. “This isn’t the first time we’ve lost a student this way, and it won’t be the last. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we exist. Our students almost all have problems of one sort or another, and several of them have tried to kill themselves in the past. Adam was among them. And, of course, had you told me what happened yesterday, I would have talked to him, possibly even put him into counseling immediately. But I probably wouldn’t have put him under a twenty-four-hour watch.”
Conners frowned. “But why not? If he’d tried something like this before—”
“The last time he tried it, no one thought it was truly serious. Often—in fact most times—when children try to kill themselves, they aren’t truly serious. Most children really have no concept of death, you know. They know it exists, but only in the abstract. Most children feel immortal—they have no sense that they’re ever going to die. For a child, even growing up is something that’s barely comprehensible. So I doubt that I would have hospitalized Adam, given all the circumstances. I would have talked to Dr. E, of course, but there’s no guarantee that this wouldn’t have happened anyway. And I have to tell you that there’s no guarantee that it won’t happen to other of our students. In fact, I can almost guarantee that it will. Sad as it is, there’s no way, short of isolation of every one of them, that we can stop it entirely.” She smiled wanly. “I doubt you’d be any more in favor of locking these kids up than anyone else here is.”
Steve Conners listened to her words silently, knowing that no matter what she said, he would still feel the guilt for what had happened, perhaps for the rest of his life. He’d known the boy was in trouble, but done nothing about it.
Because it had slipped his mind.
Slipped his mind!
And now there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could do to put the situation right, nothing he could do to bring Adam back to life.
Except see to it that from now on he kept a better eye on the kids, never again failed to act if he saw that one of them was in trouble.
But even as he made his silent oath, he knew that it still wouldn’t be enough.
No matter what he might do, it wouldn’t assuage the guilt he felt over the death of Adam Aldrich.
11
“Josh?”
Josh looked up from the book he was reading while he ate his breakfast. At the sight of Amy Carlson’s pale face and the wild look in her eyes, he pushed the book aside.
“Have you ever been to a funeral before?” Amy asked.
Josh shook his head. “I never even knew anyone who died before.”
“Are they going to make us look at Adam?” Amy’s voice was anxious, and even as she uttered the words, her face turned pink.
“What’s the matter?” Josh teased. “You scared to look at a corpse?”
Amy’s blush deepened. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “It’s just—well, I’m not sure I want to look at a dead person.”
“Well, they probably won’t. I mean, if Adam got hit by a train …” Josh left the words hanging, picturing in his mind an image of the train barreling down the tracks, striking Adam Aldrich, sending his body flying into the air. Had his arms and legs been severed? Maybe. Even his head could have been torn off, if the train hit him a certain way. The image made Josh shudder, and he decided not to think about it anymore.
Except that all day Saturday, and Sunday, too, all any body was talking about was Adam, and what had happened to him.
Jeff hadn’t been back to school since Hildie had taken him to his parents’ house early Saturday morning, and most of the kids didn’t think he’d be coming back at all.
Brad Hinshaw, however, hadn’t agreed. “I talked to him a little while ago,” he’d reported yesterday afternoon. “He says he’s coming back, and Jeff always gets what he wants.”
“I bet he doesn’t,” Amy Carlson had argued. “I bet his mom keeps him at home. I mean, wouldn’t she be worried that he might do it, too?”
“Not Jeff,” Brad had replied. “If he wants to come back, he’ll come back.”
Josh, though, had stopped listening, his mind lingering on the word Any had used when she’d talked about what had happened to Adam.
It.
That seemed to be the word everyone was using, as if actually saying out loud that Adam had killed himself was wrong.
But that’s what he’d done, wasn’t it? Just sat down on the railroad tracks and waited for the train to hit him. Josh shuddered again, just the thought of it sending an icy chill through his body.
“I wonder how messed up he was,” he mused out loud. Amy, her mouth full of oatmeal, choked,
and spit her cereal into her napkin.
“That’s gross, Josh!” she said when she’d recovered enough to speak.
“Well, I was just wondering,” Josh replied. “What’s wrong with that? Didn’t Mr. Conners say it was all right to talk about it?”
Amy’s eyes rolled disdainfully. “He said it was all right to talk about what Adam did,” she told him. “But he didn’t say we should talk about how—” She broke off, unable to find the words she wanted. From the next table, Brad Hinshaw, who had been listening to the conversation, smiled darkly.
“How squashed he was?” he asked.
Amy, looking slightly ill, glared at Brad, then shoved her chair back from the table. “You guys are so gross! I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” She turned and started away from the table. A second later Josh went after her.
“Don’t be mad,” he said, catching up to her in the foyer. “I was just thinking about what happened to him, that’s all.” He fell in beside her, and though Amy didn’t reply to him, she didn’t tell him to leave her alone, either. They went out the front door and dropped down onto the steps. Josh glanced around. Seeing no one within earshot, but still lowering his voice, he spoke again. “D-Did you hear anything Friday night?”
Amy frowned, puzzled. “Like what?”
Josh reddened, but was determined to go on, no matter how dumb Amy might think he sounded. “Th-The elevator,” he said. “I heard it twice, and after that story Jeff was telling us about old Mr. Barrington, I went to look.”
Amy’s lips pursed. “So?” she asked, suspicious.
“So it wasn’t running,” Josh told her. “It was just sitting on the main floor, like it always is. But I could hear it!”
Amy glared at him. “Don’t you try to scare me, Josh MacCallum!”
“I’m not,” Josh protested, his voice rising in spite of himself. “I’m just telling you what happened. And what if”—he hesitated, then plunged on—“if Adam didn’t kill himself at all? What—Well, what if old Mr. Barrington really got him!”
Amy’s eyes widened for a second as the story took hold of her imagination, but then she shook her head violently. “That’s just a story Jeff made up!” she insisted. “I bet you didn’t even hear anything. Besides, everyone knows Adam killed himself!”
Josh was silent for a moment, pondering Amy’s words. What if he hadn’t really heard those noises? Was it possible? Could he have just imagined it, because Jeff had told him that story?
His mind wrestled with the problem, but then he decided there was no way he could know what had really happened that night. When he finally spoke again, his voice was low, and trembled slightly, and he made no further mention of the strange sounds he’d heard. “Could you have done that?” he asked. “Just sat there on the tracks and waited for the train to hit you?”
Amy shook her head. “I can hardly even stand to think about it.”
Josh turned to look at her. “What would you do? I mean, if you were going to kill yourself.”
Amy, her eyes staring off into the distance, shrugged. “I don’t know. Who even thinks stuff like that?”
“You mean you never have? You never thought about killing yourself?”
Her brows knitted into a frown. “I—I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “I mean, last year, when I was in regular school and didn’t have any friends, I used to go to sleep sometimes hoping I just wouldn’t wake up in the morning.” She glanced at Josh. “Did you ever feel like that?”
Josh nodded, picking up a twig that was lying on the top step and twirling it in his fingers. “I used to wish that all the time. I always felt like maybe my mom would be better off if I hadn’t been born.”
“That’s how I felt, too,” Amy agreed. “But I don’t think I ever thought about killing myself. I mean, that’s kind of different from just wishing you wouldn’t wake up, isn’t it?”
Josh shrugged uncertainly, and the twig fell from his fingers as they went to the scars on his wrist. Amy, seeing him touch the still-fresh scars, hesitated, then asked him the question she’d been thinking about ever since Saturday afternoon, when Mr. Conners had spent an hour talking with all the kids about what had happened. When the teacher had asked if they had any questions, Amy had remained silent. Now, alone with Josh, she said, “Did it hurt? I mean, when you cut yourself?”
Josh hesitated, trying to remember. It was funny—he could remember holding the knife in his hand, and he could remember the blood spurting out after he cut his wrists, but he couldn’t remember actually doing it.
Nor could he remember whether or not it hurt.
“I don’t remember,” he finally replied. “I mean, if it did, I’d remember it, wouldn’t I?”
Now it was Amy who shrugged. “I—I wonder if Adam felt anything when the train hit him,” she said pensively. “I mean, I guess being dead wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t ever happy about anything. But if dying hurts—”
“I know,” Josh said. “That’s what I keep thinking about. And once you’ve done it—well, it’s not like you can change your mind, is it?”
Amy shook her head. “I don’t think I could do it,” she decided. “I mean, no matter how bad things were, I think I’d be too scared even to try.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a car turning through the gates and starting up the long drive. As he watched it approach, Josh suddenly recognized it.
It was his mother. What was she doing here?
And then his heart sank. She’d heard what had happened to Adam, and she’d changed her mind about him being here. She’d come to take him home.
His first instinct was to go and hide somewhere, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. If she’d come to take him home, they’d find him no matter where he was, and then he’d just be in trouble. So he stood nervously where he was, watching while his mother parked the car and got out, already waving to him. A moment later she ran up the steps and swept him into her arms, hugging him as if she hadn’t seen him for a year, instead of just a week.
“Jeez, Mom,” Josh complained. “Put me down! What if the kids see? They’ll tease me for the rest of the year!”
Despite the reason for her visit to the Academy, Brenda couldn’t help laughing at her son’s embarrassment. “And what’ll they think if your mother doesn’t give you a hug when she sees you?”
“You don’t have to pick me up,” Josh groused. “I’m not a baby anymore!”
“Right,” Brenda agreed, setting him back on his feet. “You’re all grown up, and ready to go out and start earning a living so you can support your old mother, huh?”
“Mo-om,” Josh groaned.
Brenda turned to wink at Amy Carlson. “Does your mom embarrass you as bad as I embarrass Josh?”
Amy shrugged. “I guess,” she said. Then, voicing the thought that had been in Josh’s head from the moment he saw his mother’s car: “Are you going to take Josh home?”
Brenda’s smile faded, and she gazed down at Josh. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She dropped down onto the steps, suddenly feeling the fatigue of the all-night drive. She’d only heard the news about Adam Aldrich yesterday afternoon, when Hildie Kramer had called, and she still wasn’t quite over the shock of it. Of course she’d barely known the boy, but after last weekend she’d already come to think of Jeanette and Chet Aldrich as friends. All through her shift at the café she’d thought about whether or not to make the drive up to Barrington, and she’d set out as soon as she’d gotten off work at midnight.
In the end, of course, she realized she had no choice. It wasn’t just for the funeral, which was going to be at ten o’clock that morning.
It was Josh.
She had to see for herself how he was doing, make up her own mind how he’d dealt with the suicide of one of his schoolmates.
Most important, she had to see how he was reacting to the school. And she decided if he wasn’t happy there, she was prepared to pack him up and drive him home that very afternoon, taking him
away from the Academy even more quickly than she’d put him in.
For if Adam Aldrich hadn’t responded to the school, and followed up his unsuccessful suicide attempt with a successful one, what was to say that Josh wouldn’t do the same thing? Just the thought of it had made her blood run cold. Through the long hours of the night, as she’d driven across the desert and into the San Joaquin Valley, she’d been certain that the school had been a mistake.
But as the sun had risen and she’d driven up Highway 101 toward Salinas, she’d begun having second thoughts.
Josh wasn’t like Adam—no two of the kids at the Academy were exactly alike. Even Adam’s twin brother was completely different from him.
And hadn’t they told her that suicide was a problem among their students?
But they’d failed Adam Aldrich. They hadn’t been able to see what was coming, and head it off.
Back and forth she went, arguing every point with herself, her mind finally reeling with exhaustion. As she’d driven into Barrington and started up toward the Academy, she’d made up her mind simply to watch Josh and talk to him, and decide for herself how he was doing.
Now, as the serious little girl with bright red hair and thick glasses stared earnestly at her, she managed a smile. “I guess I’m kind of worried about him,” she said.
“Because of Adam?” Amy asked.
Brenda blinked at the stark honesty of the question. “I—I guess so,” she stammered.
“We were just talking about it,” Amy told her. “We don’t think we could ever do anything like that.”
“You don’t?” Brenda asked. She felt her head spinning. Could she actually be sitting here in the bright morning sun discussing suicide with a ten-year-old girl? And yet Amy, and Josh, too, seemed to think it was the most natural thing in the world.
