The ceiling fan spun slowly above Mr. Hoyt’s massive steel desk, the warped blades painting the peeling green walls with crooked purple shadows. He opened the filing cabinet and browsed through the folders until he found the one he wanted, and then limped back to his desk, dragging his gammy leg behind him.
The phone buzzed again. “Hoyt here. Yes. No. No. No comment.”
But the phone kept buzzing, so he yanked the cord from the wall jack. He let the thick folder drop onto his desk with a melodramatic thud and opened the file, his head ticking from side to side. Sifting through the pages was an academic exercise; this file he knew inside and out.
“We’ll just add your latest adventure to your record.”
“Record? What record?” Drew asked, regretting his words almost immediately.
Hoyt snorted, as if caught off guard, blowing his nose into a dingy yellow handkerchief. He lifted one of the pages from the file and waved it at Drew. “Remember this one? The tuning fork? I’m not sure how you figured out my hearing aid’s frequency, but I can assure you it was not pleasant. And I’m not so sure it wasn’t an assassination attempt.”
Drew fought back the smile he felt easing across his face. Of course, he knew exactly what the Old Man was talking about, though he didn’t let on. Instead, he furrowed his brow and shook his head in disbelief, hoping that his sympathetic gesture would be enough to end their conversation.
It wasn’t.
Hoyt went on and on, recounting one episode after another. Sometimes he read from the file, other times he relied on memory. And all the while he was knocking back one cup of coffee after another until he was vibrating in his chair like a hornet’s nest.
Finally, Hoyt gestured to the faint white-chalk outline traced on the red area rug in front of him. “And the less said about the incident that led to that, the better.”
He’d forgotten about that one. Maybe he had gone a little too far. “But what else?” Drew asked.
The Old Man shook his head in disbelief and looked down wearily at the folder. “Hmmm. These papers seem to be out of order…their edges don’t line up. That’s an appropriate metaphor in this case, isn’t it? I’ll just fix that.”
He shuffled the papers back and forth, trying to line up the edges. Keep the edges straight, and the kids will be straight, too was something he said a lot, though mostly to himself. It was his way of reminding himself to pay attention to the little things.
Drew headed for the door, hoping to preempt the Principal’s sentence by substituting his own. “Guess I’ll be headin’ off to detention, now.”
But Hoyt waved him back before he got to the door. “Detention? Yeah, you’ll be heading off to detention. You’ll be heading off to detention this Saturday and every Saturday for the rest of the school year. You and the rest of those Zero Avenue…brats!”
He really was mad. Zero Avenue was a nickname for Drew’s neighborhood and wasn’t meant as a compliment. They had a saying in that part of town: zero jobs, zero future, zero avenue, though nobody outside the neighborhood said it.
Drew looked down at his sneakers, searching his mind for anything that could help him out of his jam. “Don’t suppose it matters…but we won the death race. Don’t that count for nothin’?”
CHAPTER 2
“Saturday school,” Drew pouted. “This is the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, anywhere, ever.”
He pedaled his bike along Arlington Boulevard, replaying the meeting with Old Man Hoyt over and over again in his head, thinking of all the things he’d wanted to say but hadn’t. Distracted, he turned the corner onto Michigan Avenue, emerging from the shady street into the full glory of the afternoon sun.
“Get…”
The gray tabby came out of nowhere, bounding across his path.
“…outta…”
Drew swerved left, but the cat jumped back into his way.
“…the…”
He jerked the bike to the right. The feline blocked him again.
“…way…”
The schizophrenic cat struck a pose and held it.
“…you…”
Drew’s brakes locked up, and the bike went into a skid, launching him over the handlebars and crashing into some garbage cans propped against the curb.
“…dumb cat.”
An old woman stumbled across the street toward him, pulling her satchel behind her and commanding the cat to stay. Her clothes were worn and frayed, but they draped across her broad frame with a sense of dignified elegance despite her awkward gait.
Drew waded through the fermenting garbage and picked the Stingray up off the pavement. He lowered the kickstand, giving the bike a quick once over. His jacket and jeans kept him from getting too beat-up, but the rim was bent. “I didn’t know you had a cat, Miss Susan.”
Lazy-Eye Susan greeted him with a mouthful of crooked teeth and a faint Appalachian accent, which was uncommon, though not unheard of this far north.
She grabbed the cat with authority behind the neck, cradling it securely. “He’s a new addition to my menagerie, and I’m in yer debt for snarin’ ’im.”
Drew reached out to stroke the feline’s fur, but the cat hissed. “What’s his name?”
“Might be Heathcliff or might be Garfield, but it hain’t,” she said. “It’s Dr. Toscani.”
Dr. Toscani scratched and clawed spastically, desperately trying to free himself. Susan juggled the cat just long enough for him to right himself in midair and hit the pavement on all fours.
The irritable cat hissed at them with seething contempt before dashing across the street, narrowly avoiding a screeching taxi that had to swerve to avoid it.
“Funny name for a cat, ain’t it?” Drew said.
“Oh my, it is a funny name…fer a cat.”
Drew read the storefront sign the feline camped beneath. “Dr. J. Toscani, optometrist. That’s weird.”
But Lazy-Eye Susan was weird—no, that wasn’t right. Not really weird, more like eccentric. Her irregular orbit brought her to the neighborhood every few days, where she plied her folk remedies to her legions of devoted disciples. Everybody knew her, but nobody messed with her.
Drew waited to hear more about Dr. Toscani, but the music drowned out her words before she could elaborate.
“What?” Drew shouted, pointing to his ear. “Can’t hear ya.”
The Honda Civic had rolled to a stop right next to them, the stereo pumping so loud that the adjacent shop windows rippled to the beat.
“Hey!” Susan shouted, loud enough to get their attention.
The teenage driver, a crooked-hat wearing wannabe, cocked his head and glared back at her.
“All the girls must be dyin’ to get with a guy who can afford to put a one-thousand-dollar system inside a five-hundred-dollar car,” Susan screeched, her googly eye spinning in its socket. “Must explain why you’re ridin’ around with a bunch of guys all packed in like sardines.”
The driver didn’t do anything for a second, then lowered the volume and looked away. He waited for the light to change and pulled respectfully into traffic.
“Anyway, like I was saying ’fore I was interrupted…”
Everybody knew Lazy-Eye Susan, but nobody messed with her because they were scared of her—everyone except Drew. “Miss Susan, you don’t really believe you turned that Toscani guy into a cat, do you?”
“Don’t matter no how what I believe. What he believes, that’s what’s important,” she said. Then she changed the subject. “By the way, where’s the backpack I give ya?”
“Oh, I had to use it during the race,” Drew said. “How’d ya know I’d need it?”
“Didn’t know, just thought ya might. That’s all.”
“Yeah, but how’d ya know?”
“Thought ya might need it. Didn’t know fer sure either way.”
“Well, anyway, thanks again,” he said.
“But?” she said, anticipating his next question.
“But if y
ou can see these things happenin’ before they happen, how come you don’t win the lottery or something?”
“I have,” she boasted. “Won it three times in a row ’fore they served me with a restrainin’ order. Hain’t allowed in most casinos neither.”
Miss Susan’s reputation as a kind of traveling fortune-teller was part of her act, but this time Drew decided to play along. “How ’bout reading my fortune then?”
She pressed her fingers to her temples, the smile fading from her weathered face. Her mouth quivered and her body trembled, and she seemed to go into a trance. “I see…torn pants…sneakers…blood.”
She had him going for a second, but then he felt a sudden, sharp pain in his leg. He looked down and saw blood dripping from where he’d torn his pants, just above his knee.
“Come on, young’un,” she said. “I don’t live none too far from here.
* * *
“Welcome to my gingerbread house,” Susan said with a wink.
“This where you live?” Drew asked. The picturesque Victorian house stood on a tidy lot across the street from the city’s botanical park, guarded by a wrought iron fence crawling with leafy green ivy.
“Yeah. What’d ya expect?”
“I dunno. Some kind of cardboard box or somethin’,” he confessed.
“Then I’m glad yer disappointed. By the way, ya might wanna maybe leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind ya…just in case.”
Drew followed her along the flagstone path beneath the ancient oaks shading the porch, stopping to read the name on the brass mailbox. “Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerkraft?”
“My last name,” she said, “but that hain’t the way ya sez it.”
“How do you say it?” he said.
She opened the door and invited him in. “Kraft. Them first thirty letters or so is silent.”
* * *
The late afternoon sun broke through the stained-glass windows in the atrium, painting the walls in pastel watercolors. Drew expected to see bundled newspapers and tin cans stacked to the ceiling, but again, the interior, like the exterior, took him by surprise.
“I told ya I won the lottery three times in a row, didn’t I?” Susan said, grinning with pride. “Now, come on. I’ll getcha something fer your knee.”
She pushed opened the doors to the parlor. “Grab some sit-down and get comfortable. I’ll be back directly,” and off she went, puttering down the hall.
Drew limped across the creaky wood floor holding his knee, trying not to drip blood onto the Oriental rug. He passed the time by exploring the lavishly appointed room, paying special attention to a row of family portraits hanging on the wall. The faded photos traced Susan’s life from childhood through the present. Who would have guessed she was so beautiful once upon a time?
She was back a few minutes later, complaining under her breath about never being able to find what she needed, when she needed it…or something like that.
“I don’t getcha. Why do you collect cans and bottles and stuff?” Drew said. “You don’t need the money.”
“Been rich and been poor,” Miss Susan sighed. “Bein’ rich is easy, but it takes skills and smarts to get by with no money, so I likes to keep in practice, just in case.”
“But you can see things before they happen, right?” he asked.
She wiped the cut clean. “So can a stockbroker or a weatherman or a sideshow carnie if they any good. This cut hain’t none too bad. Don’t think you’ll be needin’ no stitches.”
“How ya mean,” Drew asked, “about the stockbroker and all that?”
She peeled the backing from the bandage and placed it carefully over the wound. “If ya know what happened already, and ya can see what’s happenin’ now, put that together and ya get an idea of what’s maybe gonna happen.”
The more answers Susan gave, the more questions Drew wanted to ask. “How do ya do it? How do ya see? Ya use a crystal ball or somethin’ like that?”
She braced herself on his shoulder and rose on creaky knees. “You watch too much television. Anyhow, curiosity killed the cat. Ya ever hear that?”
“No,” he said, pausing before answering. “But I heard that maybe it mighta turned an optometrist into one.”
She busted out laughing, her wheezing laugh turning into a hacking cough. “Now, that’s a good one. You shoulda seen ’im when I showed up at his shop. Last time I saw an Italian fella jump that high, Donkey Kong was rollin’ barrels at ’im. Why you wanna know what’s gonna happen, anyhow?”
“Seems like something messed up is always happenin’ to me,” Drew said. “Might be a way to stack the odds in my favor.”
“Most folks who come see me think that’s what they want. But they don’t,” she sniffed. “They wanna see what’s gonna happen ’cause what they really wanna fix is what’s already happened—all their little mistakes, regrets, and wrong turns that add up to their life up ’til now.”
Drew tried to follow her reasoning, but wasn’t sure he was really getting it. “Does it ever work?”
Susan shook her head no.
“How come?”
“The farther down the road you try to see, the blurrier things is.”
“Why?”
“Because of yer shadows,” she said.
“Whatcha mean by shadows?” Drew asked. “Only got one shadow, don’t I?”
“Today’s shadow tells where you at, yesterday’s shadow tells where ya been, and tomorrow’s shadow—that’s the one that’s hardest to see—tells ya where ya gonna be.”
“Tomorrow’s shadow? Sounds like some kind of soap opera,” Drew said. “Why’s it so hard to see?”
“Because tomorrow’s shadow depends on which direction the other two shadows is pointin’,” she said. “And that’s why it’s liable to change.”
“And some people can see all three shadows?”
“They can,” Susan said.
“How?”
She bent down and parted her coarse gray hair to reveal a prominent scar that ran from one end of her scalp to the other. “Once upon a time I cracked my skull wide open at just the right angle.”
The scar was kind of gross—but kinda cool. “Was it a car wreck?” he asked.
“Naw,” she said. “Did it on purpose—to open my third eye, to let me see.”
“To see all three shadows?”
“Yep,” she said, toddling over to the card table in the corner. “My vision comes and goes nowadays, but I suppose we all gettin’ older. And like some folks needs glasses to read, on occasion I need help to see.”
Susan waved him over and he limped across the rug, sitting down at the table opposite her.
“The tarot,” she announced. Her stubby fingers shuffled the ornamented cards with surprising dexterity, despite her arthritic joints popping and cracking rhythmically.
She finished and fanned the cards out in front of him.
He considered his choices for a moment and then tapped one with his finger.
Susan turned the card over. “Ooh, that’s a good one…the stranger.”
* * *
Summer ended a few weeks later, and summer school with it, bringing September to a close and ushering in the regular school year.
Principal Hoyt tapped the podium microphone, sending feedback screeching through the speakers and echoing through the auditorium. “Boys and girls, I’m sure you’ve noticed a few changes to Bixby Elementary since you went on summer vacation. First, repairs to the water tower are ongoing, and we expect work to be completed in a few weeks…”
Drew watched the announcement from the back row with the others, a relieved smile brightening his face. Bixby’s water tower was unique in the district and gave the school an iconic status that the other schools didn’t have. Besides, he didn’t really want to be known as the kid who brought down the water tower after all these years.
“We’re also welcoming a new member to the staff this school year,” Hoyt continued. “Please join me in givin
g a big Bixby Elementary welcome to Vice-Principal Frost.”
Frost entered to polite applause, strutting across the stage with the lumbering gait of a T-Rex. The next in line to the throne was much younger than Hoyt, built like a linebacker and a full head taller. Standing side by side and wearing almost identical suits, they looked like a ventriloquist act on a break between sets.
“Those his lips, or did somebody staple an inner tube to his face?” Clementine sniped.
“He looks like the Mr. Clean award winner for lifetime achievement in baldness,” Grady said.
“Look at the size of that head,” Newton smirked. “Bet they wrote ‘Continued on next page’ under his yearbook picture.”
“Yeah. Yeah, bet he was top of his class: valedictorian of Neanderthal A&M,” Spider snorted.
But Drew didn’t pile on with the others. Instead, Lazy-Eye Susan’s parting words a few days before nagged at the back of his mind: the stranger…
***
The Principal’s tour of the school grounds ended in the administrative office, where buckets placed strategically across the floor caught the water leaking through the cracks in the ceiling. The steady and rhythmic drip…drip…drip seemed like an appropriate soundtrack for their conversation.
“…And after that they foreclosed on the asylum, and the district bought the building,” Hoyt said.
“Right. I remember hearing that story growing up,” Frost said with a voice like a tuba. “Guess you’ve seen just about all there is to see during your run.”
“I suppose I have. But I’m looking forward to June and retirement,” Hoyt said, rubbing his leg to restart the circulation.
“Army?”
“Marines,” Hoyt answered.
“Navy,” Frost said, tapping his chest.
The conversation ground to a halt, and they stood in awkward silence for a moment before the Principal reached into his binder. “Do you mind signing this?” Hoyt said sheepishly. “It’s for my nephew.”
“Not at all,” Frost said, autographing the photo.
“I don’t mind telling you that we’re all excited to have someone of your stature on board,” Hoyt said.
“Principal Hoyt, please, I’m just a regular guy. I put on my space suit one leg at a time, just like everybody else.”
“I’d love to hear more about your time at NASA, but I’ve got a meeting downtown,” Hoyt said, shaking Frost’s hand on his way out. “Maybe we can grab lunch later?”
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