Boy

by Blake Nelson

  “No,” said Claude. “She’s not like that. This is weird. I don’t know why she’d come here. It’s raining. It’s cold. It’s not like her. None of this is like her.”

  “How about you?” said the cop. He shined the light on me for a moment. “What do you know about Hanna?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think. “She used to be popular,” I blurted. “But then something happened.”

  • • •

  Behind us a large police van rumbled into the parking lot. It had the words K9 UNIT printed on the side. Several men got out, with big boots and heavy coats. The words SEARCH AND RESCUE were printed across their backs in big letters. They opened the back of the van and out poured the dogs.

  The Sloans gave the policemen Hanna’s ski jacket for the dogs to smell. They immediately began to bark and yowl and sniff at everything.

  “Jesus Christ,” murmured Claude, blinking in the darkness. “Search dogs.”

  Claude went over to the Sloans. Mrs. Sloan gave him a hug. She was crying. Mr. Sloan, who was tall and formidable, stood with the policeman, watching the dog team disappear up the trail. Hanna’s little sister got out and stood in the rain, in the dark, wiping the tears off her face.

  Again the thought came: my camera. It was a terrible thing to think at that moment. But there it was.

  “Can we go up the trail?” Claude asked the main cop.

  “It would be better if you didn’t,” he said. “We’ll let the dogs go first. If we don’t find her that way, we’ll call in the troops and search the park.”

  Claude and the Sloans nodded their understanding.

  “Maybe you folks want to get in your car,” said the policeman. “To avoid getting too wet.”

  The Sloans turned back toward their SUV. Claude still wanted to do something. He wanted to help. The policemen continued to talk on their radios. More units were coming. An ambulance from Silverton County Hospital was on its way.

  And that’s when Bennett’s gangster BMW pulled into the parking lot.

  50

  “What is he doing here?” said Claude, when he realized who it was. He began striding toward Bennett’s car. Then he started to run.

  I ran after him. The cops came too. Bennett’s long, lean body stepped out of the car. Claude tried to hit him. It was a half punch, half shove. Bennett staggered backward. But he had four inches on Claude and was able to straighten up and fend him off. I grabbed Claude from behind. Two of the cops helped me pull him back. The main cop approached Bennett. “Who are you?”

  “I’m . . . Bennett.”

  “He’s a drug dealer!” said Claude. “He is. Search his car!”

  The cops looked at each other. The main cop said, “Let’s focus on finding the girl.”

  Bennett looked scared. Everyone could see the fear in his face.

  “Do you know Hanna?” asked the head cop.

  “Yeah . . . ,” said Bennett carefully.

  “What is your relation to her?”

  He looked around at the different people surrounding him. “I’m her boyfriend.”

  The main cop turned to Claude. “I thought you were her boyfriend?”

  “Fuck him!” snarled Claude.

  “He used to be,” said Bennett, swallowing as he said it. “Now I am.”

  Mr. Sloan appeared, with Mrs. Sloan right behind him. Mrs. Sloan walked right through the cops and stood in front Bennett. She didn’t like him, you could tell, but Bennett was now her best hope for finding Hanna. She pulled a piece of paper out of her coat pocket. “Bennett,” she said, controlling her voice. “Do you know anything about this note?”

  Bennett took it from her. One of the cops shone his light on it. Bennett read it with the raindrops falling around him. He squinted and struggled to make out parts of it. Then he handed it back. “I don’t know what that means,” he said.

  The main cop moved in again. “Do you know anything about these falls? Have you ever been here with Hanna?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Everyone went quiet. The main cop said, “Was there any special places here she liked to go? Anywhere other than the trail or the falls she might be?”

  Bennett hesitated for a second.

  “Son, we need your help here,” said the cop.

  Bennett spoke: “There’s a place above the falls. Maybe a quarter mile. Along the stream. There’s an old shelter up there.”

  The cops looked at each other again. One of the local Silverton cops spoke up and said, “It’s quite a ways up there. It’s an old shack. The local kids hang out there sometimes.”

  “I took her there once,” said Bennett. “She liked it. She liked that nobody else went up there.”

  I heard Mr. Sloan make a guttural noise.

  Bennett continued, struggling with the words. “She said . . . that it was a good place to go . . . if you’d had enough of things.”

  Mrs. Sloan turned to her husband and buried her face in his chest.

  The main cop stepped away from the group of us and radioed the men with the dogs.

  “Apparently there’s a small shack,” he said loudly. “If you go up the creek past the falls. A quarter mile. She might be there.”

  “Okay,” said the heavy-breathing voice on the other end. “We’ll check it out.”

  • • •

  Everyone went back to their cars. I sat with Claude in his BMW. Bennett Schmidt sat alone in his gangster BMW. The Sloans returned to their SUV with their family dog. The cops remained in their police cars with their computers and their radios and their shotguns.

  It took about forty-five minutes for the dog team to radio back. Everyone immediately ran to the main police car and gathered around. The cop rolled down his window so we could hear. “We got her,” said the crackling voice from deep inside the dark forest. “She’s cold . . . she’s wet . . . but she’s alive.”

  Bennett immediately separated from the rest of us. He went and stood by his own car. I thought he was going to leave, but he didn’t.

  Then Mrs. Sloan walked over to him. She hugged him. Bennett started to cry. And then he said something to Mrs. Sloan. I didn’t hear all of it. But I heard him say, “I don’t know what happened to her. I swear, I don’t . . .”

  51

  Hanna was taken by ambulance to the Silverton County Hospital where she was treated for hypothermia. The next day they moved her to a bigger hospital in Portland, where she was placed in a psychiatric ward for observation.

  The rest of us went back to school. Claude alternated between stomping around angrily and sitting silently, staring into space. Petra stayed far away. Bennett I saw only once, his tall head visible over the other kids in the hallway, that scarlet flush in his cheeks as bright as ever.

  I found my way to Antoinette’s locker at one point, and when she wasn’t there, I found Kai. She wasn’t terribly sympathetic. But she ate lunch with me, and when Logan and Olivia Goldstein sat with us, she didn’t get up and leave.

  People quietly spread the news around throughout the day: Hanna’s suicide attempt, or whatever it was, and the strange note that Mrs. Sloan had not let anyone read except for Bennett.

  In general the feeling was: Hanna deserves whatever she gets. That’s what it seemed like to me. I was shocked by how little people cared. I had thought they appreciated Hanna in a way. She was so funny and such a prominent figure at our school. She had entertained us all these years. But maybe not. Emma Van Buskirk said not one word about it in the Owl office. If anything, she seemed to be more cheerful and upbeat than usual.

  • • •

  For the next couple days Mrs. Sloan and Claude were on the phone a lot. It was like Mrs. Sloan had decided that Claude was Hanna’s boyfriend again, and not Bennett. She checked in with Claude daily and eventually arranged for him to visit Hanna in the psych ward. Claude wanted me to go with him, to lend moral support.

  We pulled into the big hospital parking garage and walked across the skyway with the other hospital
people, some of whom were injured or sick or old. My camera, I thought, when I saw a wrinkled little man with a walker, shuffling step by tiny step into the elevator.

  We asked at the main desk and eventually found the psych ward. It had a thick metal door and a small hard-plastic window. Claude said nothing. But the prison-style entrance made an impression on him. It made an impression on me.

  We went in. They made us fill out release forms that said we wouldn’t sue the hospital if someone killed us or caused us bodily harm, which creeped us out even more.

  I looked around as we waited. It smelled funny in there. Like piss and chemicals. Hanna had been there three days already. How much observation were they going to do?

  • • •

  We were led into a lounge, a large open room with couches and chairs along the walls. Hanna was already there, sitting on one of the chairs, flipping through a magazine. She wore her own pajamas underneath a hospital robe that didn’t look very comfortable. Her long brown hair was clean but mussed and frizzy, like maybe they didn’t let her have her normal hair products.

  When she saw us she stood up and hugged Claude, then me. I felt tears come into my eyes when I felt her warmness press against me. What a terrible spot she was in.

  Claude cleared his throat. He had brought her a copy of Us Weekly and some other magazines, as Mrs. Sloan had advised. You couldn’t have a phone in there, I guess. Claude gave her the magazines.

  We pulled up some chairs. “So,” said Claude. “How’s it going?”

  Hanna shrugged. She had a weird smile on her face. “It’s like this, pretty much,” she said, indicating the large room. There were a few other people there. They too were wearing bathrobes. It looked like people sitting in a dentist’s waiting room. Except that you couldn’t leave. And everyone had to wear crappy bathrobes and slippers.

  I looked at Hanna’s feet. She had the same hospital slippers. They were paper and cardboard basically. I wondered if we could get her better slippers, if her parents could. But if they could, they would have. You probably had to wear what they gave you.

  I sat back slightly in my chair, trying to let Claude and Hanna have a moment, if that was possible. In one corner of the room, a woman about my mother’s age—with a big diamond ring on her finger—was sitting with her legs crossed. She was watching us. When she saw me watching her, she looked away.

  Hanna was eighteen, I remembered. Was that why she was in here with the adults?

  “Where do you sleep?” Claude asked Hanna.

  “I have a little room,” she said.

  “What do you do all day?” asked Claude, his voice straining.

  Hanna shrugged. “Go see doctors. Take my meds. They let us watch TV, but people argue about which shows to watch.”

  Claude nodded, trying to be encouraging. But this was not a good situation for him. I felt like I should be talking. I would be more diplomatic. But maybe it didn’t matter.

  “We’ll get you out of here,” said Claude suddenly. “This is ridiculous. You don’t belong in here. This is bullshit.”

  Hanna looked at him. The woman in the corner also looked at him.

  “What did you write in that note?” asked Claude.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Everyone asks me that. It wasn’t a suicide note. I don’t think it was. I don’t even remember what I wrote.”

  “And why did you go to Silver Falls?”

  Hanna pursed her lips to one side, like a little girl. It was a new gesture for her; I had never seen it before. Hanna was, in general, a significantly different person, I was noticing. How had that happened? How had she changed so much, so fast?

  Claude was seeing it too. He was really having trouble with this. His knee bounced in place. He wanted to do something. He wanted to yell at someone. He sat back in his chair.

  Hanna looked at me. I tried to smile in a hopeful way. “How are you doing, Gavin?” she asked me.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “I don’t get this,” snapped Claude. “What are these people doing?” He waved his hand toward the nurse’s station in the hall. “You have school. You have stuff to do. You can’t sit in here. What’s the point of this?”

  Hanna also looked back toward the nurse’s station. Then she leaned forward and said in a quiet voice: “Can I give you guys some advice?”

  We scooted closer.

  “Whatever you do,” whispered Hanna, “don’t end up in here. I’m serious. This is not a good place. The things that happen. The things you hear at night . . .”

  • • •

  Afterward, we walked back over the skyway. Claude couldn’t talk. He was so angry and upset, I thought he might punch someone. In the BMW, he pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and cried. I actually saw the tears dropping into his lap.

  Ten minutes later he lifted his head again. “Sorry about that,” he said, wiping his face with his wrist.

  “No problem,” I said back.

  Claude took a long, deep breath. He checked himself once in the mirror. Then he started the car, revved the engine hard, and got us out of there.

  52

  It wasn’t until I got home later that I felt the shock of the Hanna visit in my own body. I had been too busy worrying about Claude, and Hanna, and even Bennett, to think about myself or to feel anything myself. But once I was home, in my house, in my own shower, with the hot water beating on my back, it finally sank in what was happening. Hanna was in serious trouble. We were all in trouble, in a way. We were about to graduate from high school. We were all going to be thrown out into the real world, where God knows what would happen to us. The days of Claude and me being best friends, the days of our gang, our popular friends, being the untouchable, superior people, all that stuff was over. Real life had caught up with us. There was no protection anymore. Not for any of us. If Hanna could go down, anyone could.

  I was curious what Antoinette would make of all this. The next day I grabbed her after school and we drove to Burrito Express. “It was so weird,” I said, describing the psych ward. “We got there, and she was acting pretty normal, and I was like, okay, this isn’t too bad. But then I started to see this change. At first I thought it was an act. Like she was pretending.”

  “Doesn’t sound like an act,” said Antoinette.

  “No,” I said. “That’s what I realized. Definitely not an act.”

  “Have her doctors said anything?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

  “There’s stuff that happens to people our age,” said Antoinette. “Different things. Mental illness.”

  “Is that what happened to your brother?” I asked Antoinette.

  She shrugged. “Possibly.”

  “You ever talk to Bennett?” I asked her.

  She shook her head no.

  “He seemed pretty shook up about it.”

  “I’m sure,” said Antoinette. “He adores her.”

  We sat there in silence. “I wish I’d taken pictures of her,” I said, almost to myself.

  “What for?”

  “Just to have. Just to remember what she looked like.”

  “Does she really look that different?” said Antoinette.

  “She kinda does,” I said, nodding slowly. “She’s kind of a whole different person.”

  • • •

  Claude and Petra broke up not long after that. This was a short week, before Thanksgiving. I think Petra couldn’t handle that Claude was so worried about Hanna. Poor Claude and his girlfriends, he was always caught in some bind.

  And speaking of binds: My own Thanksgiving got very complicated very fast. My father wanted me to come to his new apartment downtown and have dinner with Alexis and her brother from Arizona. I was like, Thanks but no thanks. My mother had said we could go to the Oswalds for Thanksgiving, which is what I wanted to do. But at the last minute she decided to have Thanksgiving in San Francisco, with her sister, who had a man-friend she wanted my mom to meet. That was awkward. And th
en my mom said, “You should have Thanksgiving with your dad. You need to be nice to him. He’s going to pay for your school. You have to think about that now.”

  I did think about it. And it made my stomach hurt.

  • • •

  I convinced Kai to come with me to my dad’s. We developed a plan where we’d have dinner with her family first and then we’d drive downtown and go to my dad’s. It was Kai’s idea, actually. It gave us an excuse to not stay anywhere too long.

  I showed up at her house about one. They had a full house, with Kai’s family and an aunt and some cousins and some grandparents. Her aunt thought I was Kai’s boyfriend. When we explained we were just friends, she looked hard at the two of us and said, “I don’t think so.”

  It was okay though. I liked Kai’s mom. She was funny and said interesting things. Her dad, the dermatologist, was a jolly guy and smart, too. You could see where Kai got her “secret good student” thing. Everyone in her family was smart.

  By the end of the dinner, Kai’s dad was looking at me in an odd way. Not bad, but with a little extra attention. He knew about Kai’s many escapades and the places she hung out. She was a father’s worst nightmare. (She was at that moment wearing a very short skirt, black tights, and pink underwear, which you could see occasionally.) I think I might have been the first boy Kai hung out with who he could have an actual conversation with.

  • • •

  After that we got in Kai’s Subaru and headed downtown to my dad’s. On the drive, I said something about Hanna, who was never far from my mind. Kai continued to insist she was a terrible person, which seemed kind of mean, considering. At one point I hinted that Kai was jealous. That really pissed her off. She got so mad she pulled the car over.

  “Gavin,” she said, slamming the transmission into park. “I wasn’t going to tell you this before, but I’m going to tell you now.”

  “What,” I said, sulking in my seat.

  She took a long breath. “When I was in sixth grade, I wore glasses. Big, stupid, embarrassing glasses that my mom bought me. One day in gym class, Hanna walked up to me, took them off my face, dropped them on the floor, and stepped on them. She said, ‘Someday you’ll thank me for this,’ and everyone laughed. Then she walked away, with all her little friends trailing off behind her.”