Surrogate Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  “What?”

  “That’s right. She had offered them to him a few times before, only he says he’s seen what drugs can do to people. He’s had some terrible experiences, Joe. You can just imagine what nightmares were revived for him because of this episode.”

  “What about Audra’s nightmares?”

  “They’re her own making.”

  “I don’t believe that, and neither do the police.”

  “They will, once their investigation is completed.”

  “Harry and Stephani Lowe won’t buy it. Kevin called earlier. They’re suing the school.”

  “Figures. They want to shift the blame from themselves to someone else. Typical pattern for parents who are into themselves. They can’t see what’s going on right under their noses.”

  “The Lowes aren’t like that.”

  “Well, how do you know they’re not?”

  “How do you know they are?”

  “I told you what Jonathan said,” Martha replied.

  “How can you believe him?” He wondered if he should tell her about Solomon’s files, but then he thought she’d want to read them, and the pain involved in that would be overwhelming. First he’d have to find another way to get her to see what Jonathan was.

  “I can believe him,” she said slowly, “because I have won his trust. It didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t come easy, but now that I have this confidence, do you think I should give him the feeling I don’t believe him?”

  “Martha . . . Jesus, it is overnight. How long has he been here? You can’t think you know all you have to know about him. It’s more complicated than that.”

  She smiled, but in such a way as to make his blood cold. Then she nodded slowly.

  “I understand,” she said softly, “from where your doubts come. It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Didn’t you hear what I said before? The Lowes are very upset. Stephani Lowe wants to blame us,” he added, speaking under his breath.

  “Us? Whatever for?”

  “For . . .” He paused. How would he say it? Should he come right out and say “for finding someone who made himself so similar to Solomon in so many ways that it drove Audra Lowe mad?”

  “She thinks taking in a boy about Solomon’s age is bizarre.”

  “Well, who the hell does she think she is?” Martha said. “Who the hell . . . I have a good mind to call her and tell her about her precious goody-goody daughter.”

  “They’re going through enough, Martha. Let’s be a little sympathetic.”

  “And do what? Give up Jonathan? Send him back to some home where the people couldn’t give a damn about him?” Her voice began to climb toward a hysterical pitch. He sensed its coming and closed his eyes. “Well?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Everything worries me.”

  “Well, it doesn’t worry me.”

  He couldn’t look up at her. She looked furious, and that ferocity made her ugly.

  “All right,” he said. “All right. It’s been a bad day all around.” He looked down at his cold eggs. When he looked up, she seemed placated. The redness had gone out of her face, and her eyes weren’t as big.

  “I bought this shirt for you,” she said, “but it wasn’t my idea to buy it. It was Jonathan’s.” She pulled the shirt out of the bag. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Joe said.

  “It’ll go well with your dark blue slacks and gray sports jacket. Jonathan has a good sense of color coordination. He really is a remarkable young man, Joe.”

  “That he is,” he commented but she didn’t hear his meaning.

  “Please, Joe,” Martha said, approaching him. She took his hand into hers. “Try to fight it.”

  “Fight it?”

  “The urge to blame him for things, the urge to hate him. Don’t let anything influence you. Make your own decisions.”

  “That’s what I do,” he said, but she took on that cold smile again.

  “I’ll go up and change, and we’ll have coffee. I bought something in the bakery. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. Then he looked down at the shirt. The conniving little bastard, he thought. He had to find a way to get rid of him. Their lives literally could depend on it.

  FOURTEEN

  Sally Kantzler walked slowly across the hospital lobby and approached the front desk. She had called the Lowes first to ask them if she could visit Audra, and they had asked their doctor. Although Audra hadn’t experienced any drug-related hallucinations for nearly twelve hours, she was still suffering from what the hospital psychiatrist had diagnosed as delusions of paranoia, which he termed a residual effect of her substance abuse. The doctor thought one of her close peers might help to relieve some of the tension and give her some reassurance. So the Lowes told Sally it would be all right for her to make a short visit.

  Actually Sally had been hoping they would say she couldn’t come. She felt guilty for telling Jonathan that Audra had wanted her to spy on him, and now she felt even more guilty because she had been with Jonathan the night before.

  Sally’s fantasies about Jonathan had begun almost as soon as he entered her school. She had once secretly hoped for a romance between her and Solomon, but she had always been afraid. She wanted a romance to occur between her and Jonathan, but she had envisioned something more uplifting. She certainly didn’t want it to be something done behind Audra’s back.

  All week long she had been sensing that Audra was growing disenchanted with Jonathan. She felt certain that this whole idea about her observing him closely to look for evidence of something strange was Audra’s way of validating her impending decision to have little or nothing to do with him. Because of some of the things Jonathan had asked her about Audra, and because of the attention he had paid to her during the week, Sally was convinced Jonathan was growing just as disenchanted with Audra. It confirmed her belief that he was really more interested in her. So when Jonathan invited her to the party and when he began to dance with her and ignore Audra, she thought it was all logical and good.

  He wasn’t even concerned about Audra’s absence. After he and Sally stopped dancing, they met Paula at the punch bowl, but Jonathan didn’t ask her where Audra was, even though it was clear that she was no longer in the gym. Paula gave him Audra’s message, but all he did was shrug and go off to talk to some of his friends. For a while, she had thought he left the party, too; but then he suddenly reappeared and asked her to dance again.

  She didn’t know how many of those cups of punch she actually had drunk because some she finished and some she sipped and left on the tables. Just before the party ended, Jonathan invited her to go with him, Billy McDermott, and Christy Dobbs up to the Neversink Reservoir. They could park just off right of the dam and look out over the water.

  Her initial response was “It’s a cloudy night; it won’t be so nice.” The looks on Billy’s and Christy’s faces told her, even in her somewhat inebriated state, that that was of no importance and it was the height of stupidity to bring it up. Not wishing to appear totally unsophisticated in front of Jonathan, she laughed quickly and agreed to go. It wasn’t until she was in the backseat of Billy’s station wagon that she realized she hadn’t called her parents. Her father was expecting her to call him to have him pick her up at the school.

  But when Jonathan embraced her and kissed her, those thoughts evaporated. The events that followed happened so quickly she wasn’t sure of the sequence. Jonathan’s hands had been all over her body during the trip to the reservoir, but she had put up only token resistance. Her head was spinning from the spiked punch, and she was confused by her conflicting emotions. After all, a dream was coming true—she was with Jonathan.

  Some time after they’d arrived at the reservoir, Billy and Christy took a blanket and left them alone in the wagon. Jonathan found a lever on the side of the seat and lowered the back so they could sprawl out. All the while she
kept telling herself that she had to say or do something to end this before it became too late.

  She had never gone this far with a boy, much less do the things that Jonathan urged her to do. The speed and intensity with which he came at her frightened her, and at one point she did begin to retreat. However, he didn’t force himself on her; he became softer, more compassionate, and more gentle. After a while, she convinced herself that she wasn’t resisting only him, she was resisting all her fantasies, and that was something she didn’t want to do.

  So she stopped pushing his hands away, and she no longer held back when she kissed him. She did not stop him from undoing her pants. She let it happen first inches at a time. After a point she thought it would be too late to retreat, but to her surprise that realization did not fill her with fear, but with an even greater excitement. In a moment, Jonathan was naked beside her. Intellectually she knew what to expect. She waited, thinking that what was about to happen was inevitable.

  But nothing did. When he pressed against her, he was soft. His kisses grew shorter until he sat back. She wondered what she could be doing wrong. She couldn’t see the expression on his face in the darkness, but he sounded angry when he spoke.

  “You should have invited me into your house that night I walked you home, Sal,” he said.

  “What?”

  He didn’t say anything else. She heard him start to get dressed, so she did the same. Not long afterward Billy and Christy returned to car, and they took her home. She apologized profusely to her parents for not calling them and for not telling them where she was going, and then she rushed to her bedroom, longing to be alone.

  She crawled into bed and got under the covers quickly. Almost immediately Jonathan’s words returned to her.

  She sat up as if she had just heard them. When he had said them, she was so involved in her own feelings and what was happening to her that she hadn’t really heard them. But now, reviewing it all, the words resounded and echoed in the darkness so vividly it was as though he were there with her. She even imagined she felt his breath against her ear.

  “You should have invited me into your house that night I walked you home?” He never walked me home, she thought. Solomon once walked me home.

  What did Jonathan mean?

  She could share the words and the experience only with Audra. Audra would understand her confusion, but Sally wondered if she would be angry because she had gone with Jonathan after Audra left sick. She might think I took an unfair advantage, even though she had grown disenchanted with him. She would have to take that chance.

  Sally went to sleep intending to call Audra first thing in the morning and tell her everything, but her phone rang at eight o’clock in the morning. When Barbara Rosen told her what had happened to Audra the night before, she felt her face whiten. A little while afterward her father knocked on her door to tell her they had been called to bring her down to the police station.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. She felt sorry for the look of agitation on his face. His perfect daughter had betrayed him.

  “I don’t know, Daddy,” she said. But almost immediately she started to cry. Her mother came in, and the two of them comforted her.

  Later on, when she saw Jonathan at the police station and he didn’t so much as acknowledge her, she had the most frightening feeling of all. It was as if she hadn’t been with him the night before, as if it wasn’t he with whom she had tried to make love. He had a look of aloofness. He looked like a stranger.

  It was as though she had really been with Solomon in the back of that car. Oh, Audra, she thought. Maybe you were right. There is something strange going on. I shouldn’t have told him what you wanted me to do. She stared at him across the lobby. Who was he? She began to shudder, and the tears came again.

  She couldn’t explain it to the police, and she couldn’t explain it to her parents. She was useless during the interrogation. They asked her all sorts of questions about Jonathan, but she found it nearly impossible to talk about him. It was even hard to pronounce his name, even though she suspected he had put the drug in Audra’s drink. Everyone thought she was upset only because of Audra. She was glad to get out of there and go home.

  Now she was taking the elevator up to Audra’s room, feeling just as paranoid as her friend and wondering what it was they could say to each other to make things any easier.

  Audra’s mother and father were in her room, but after she entered, they said they were going down for coffee. Audra wouldn’t let go of her mother’s hand. Stephani had to coax her into it.

  “Your friend’s here. You can talk. She’s been worried about you.”

  Stephani Lowe nodded at Sally, and Sally moved up closer.

  “Hi, Audra.”

  To Sally, Audra looked small in the hospital bed. The drug seemed to have somehow diminished her. All but her eyes, that is. Her eyes were widened in what resembled a state of perpetual terror. She didn’t smile when Sally said hello. She said hello, but she watched Sally move about her bed as if expecting her to do something threatening at any moment. It made Sally even more nervous.

  “Here, take a seat beside her,” Stephani Lowe said. She took a chair and brought it right up to the side of the bed. “We’ll be right back. You two have a nice visit,” she added. She winked at Sally, and then she and her husband left the room.

  Sally put her hands on the metal sides that had been raised to keep Audra from getting off the bed, and for a long moment, the two friends just stared at each other.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Why?”

  “I just wanted to know if you’re feeling any better?”

  “I wasn’t sick.”

  “I know.”

  “You know what they think happened to me?”

  “Uh huh. The police have been questioning everyone about it,” Sally said. “They called me in this morning.”

  “Did it happen to anyone else?”

  “Not that I know of, no.”

  Audra nodded, confirming a thought.

  “How did it happen to you, Audra? Do you remember?”

  She turned away and looked up at the ceiling.

  “The only one who gave me anything to drink was Jonathan,” she said. Sally felt her spine turn into an icicle. The chill reached around her shoulders and ran down her arms, making her hands numb. Her fingers, still clutching the metal bars, began to ache as if dipped in a nearly frozen cup of water.

  “I thought so,” Sally said. “It’s all my fault,” she added in a whisper. Audra turned to her, even though she didn’t hear the last statement.

  “I keep expecting him to come here. Is he?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Not since last night,” she said.

  “Good,” Audra said. She looked away, her face softening. For a moment, Sally simply stared at her. Audra didn’t fall asleep, but she looked like she was going into a daze.

  “I’ve got to tell you something, Audra,” Sally finally said. Audra did not turn back. “Are you listening?” Audra nodded. “I left the party with Jonathan.” She waited a moment. At first she thought Audra hadn’t heard her. Then Audra turned to her slowly. Her eyes weren’t full of anger, but the look in them still frightened Sally.

  “I knew you would.”

  “You knew I would?”

  “I mean, I knew he would ask you to go with him. What happened?”

  “We went to the reservoir,” Sally said. She looked down quickly. When she looked up, she saw that Audra understood.

  “Did you enjoy yourself?” she asked bitterly.

  “Audra, nothing really happened. It was . . . the same as that time you were with Solomon.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Audra said.

  “It’s true. I wanted it to happen, but he . . . couldn’t do it. Just like Solomon couldn’t do it.”

  “You’re lying. You did it with Jonathan.”

  “No. Hone
st, I didn’t. Audra, I want to know something,” Sally said, pressing herself closer. “Did you ever tell Jonathan that Solomon once walked me home?”

  “Walked you home?”

  “Yes, he . . . he wanted to come into my house, but I didn’t invite him. I . . . I just didn’t, and he never stopped teasing me about it.”

  “You never told me that,” Audra said, pronouncing it more like an accusation.

  “I was a little embarrassed. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I knew Solomon would tell you.”

  “He didn’t. You’re lying again. He never walked you home. You’re making it up. You’re making all this up,” she added, her voice rising and taking on a shriller note.

  “I’m not lying,” Sally said, but Audra had started to sit up. “I’ve got to tell you something else,” she said, looking down, but Audra was no longer listening.

  “Who sent you here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he here?” she asked, and looked to the door.

  “Who?”

  “He’s out there, isn’t he? Waiting for the right moment.”

  “Who’s waiting? Audra?”

  “No,” Audra said. She looked about the room wildly. “I don’t want to see him.”

  “Audra?”

  “NO,” she shouted. She tried to push herself farther back in the bed. “NO!”

  “What is it?” a nurse said, coming to the doorway.

  “I don’t know,” Sally cried. She stood up and stepped away from the bed.

  “HE’S HERE!” Audra shouted, looking at the nurse. Because the light in the room was dimmer than the light in the hall, the nurse’s face was backlit and in some shadows. Audra started to swing her arms wildly before her. The nurse rushed to the bed.

  “You’d better leave,” she ordered, as she reached over the sides and started to restrain Audra. “She’s having flashbacks,” she muttered.

  Sally rushed from the room. Another nurse came and then another. From what she could hear, she understood they were having a hard time restraining Audra. The shouting was terrifying because it didn’t sound like Audra. Her voice was so shrill, and it was so incongruous for Audra, the most sensible and mature girl she knew, to be acting like this. Unable to take it any longer, she ran down the corridor. She didn’t wait for the elevator. Instead she found the stairway and ran down the stairs until she was in the lobby.