Freaks Like Us

by Susan Vaught

  Sunshine just stares at the ground and shakes. She lets go of her locket. Her fingers flutter toward mine and I really, really want to hold her hand but I like my teeth and I’m scared of getting my nose snapped and Bastard’s right, I really am a total coward.

  “Just a burger, pretty girl.” Roland is trying to sound charming. He might be succeeding. Maybe other people don’t see him as the kind of guy that’ll make an evil empire with minions one day. Maybe that’s just me and the wonked-out way I think, which gets worse when I’m nervous and I’m getting nervous now.

  Sunshine doesn’t think Roland is charming.

  Hold her hand, all my voices say at the same time, only Bastard calls me lots of names in the middle of it.

  “Hey, you!” The shout comes from behind me and Drip and Sunshine, and it scares us, and we all jump, but then I realize it’s her brother, Eli Patton.

  On any other day, at any other moment, that might be its own problem. Eli’s nineteen, the oldest kid in the school, and he’s only five foot six, but that gives him sawed-off-runt syndrome really bad, and it’s worse because he looks like a mug shot. He can’t help it. That’s how he’s built, square and short with bristly coffee-colored hair, big ears, and a perpetually pissed-off expression. He’s even got tattoos on his fingers, PAIN on his left hand and HOPE on his right. He got them during the two years he spent in juvenile for assault and battery.

  Linden gets all puffed up and swaggery as Eli jogs up the bus alley and pushes between Sunshine and me. Eli ignores him and focuses on Roland with a growly, snarly “You buggin’ my sister again? Because I know you’re not.”

  All of this just makes Sunshine shake harder but I still don’t have the guts to take her hand as Eli and Roland glare at each other and Linden does a lot of trash talking but keeps his distance.

  Coward. You should hate yourself. Girly-man, girly-man, girly-man. Are you really a man? You’re not really a girl. Maybe you are …

  All the voices, all at once. It doesn’t even matter who says what.

  And maybe because there’s an actual felon involved, our lazy driver, Mr. Poke—that’s his name, not making it up, I swear—finally comes down from the short bus and starts hollering about the principal and the police and detention, and Roland and Linden give Eli a last set of not-so-friendly gestures and melt off between the long buses.

  “You okay?” Eli asks Sunshine, and she doesn’t look at him, but she nods. His Dumbo ears flush a dark red, and he touches her on the shoulders, just barely touches her like a brother checking on his sister, but she flinches like he’s scalding her, so he stops and says he’s sorry, then, “Karl will be here in a second to take me to the probation officer. Want us to give you a ride?”

  Sunshine shakes her head so hard I’m surprised her brain doesn’t fall out her right ear.

  “Okay, okay,” Eli says, sounding sorry but also a little pissed, which is pretty normal for him. “I’m just—you know. Covering the bases and making sure everything looks okay. Don’t get stressed.”

  Covering the bases. Making everything look okay. That’s me echoing what Eli said, not my voices. Because that’s what we’re always doing, right? People with problems like mine and Sunshine’s and Drip’s. We have to cover the bases. We have to make everything look okay.

  “Let’s move,” Mr. Poke says.

  “Everything will be fine,” Eli tells Sunshine as he gets out of our way, then he says something about Karl leaving town as soon as he drops Eli off and Eli picking up dinner after his meeting, and Sunshine doesn’t say anything.

  Sunshine barely gives Eli a glance as the three of us cover ground in a hurry, jogging up the bus steps, then heading to our assigned seats at the back.

  Yes, we have assigned seats. It’s a short-bus thing.

  I realize I’m breathing heavy, and Drip’s blowing a lot of snot, and Sunshine’s just sitting in her very back seat not looking at either of us.

  “Sorry,” I tell her, and I think I’m meaning about not holding her hand but she probably thinks I’m meaning about Roland bugging her again.

  She shrugs and does a little shake with her head, which is Sunshine for No big deal, just give me a minute.

  Drip and I glance at each other, then out the bus window. We see Eli getting into his and Sunshine’s stepfather’s car. It’s a newer model, but still big and gas hungry and shiny black. As for Karl—Mr. Franks—he’s got thin sandy-brown hair and a mustache and lines around his eyes. I don’t like Mr. Franks, but I don’t want to think about that because it doesn’t really matter who I like or don’t like, so I shift my attention back to Sunshine.

  Her china-white skin’s getting a little color to it, at the neck and ears and chin, which is all I can see of the front of her, the way she’s bent over, but that’s good. It’s normal for her. She’s coming back to us an inch at a time, like she always does. Her fingers tap against her golden locket like she’s counting. It’s small, not any bigger than the pad of her thumb, and the etchings have been worn smooth from where she rubs it so much. I’ve never asked her what’s in it because it seemed wrong. She’ll tell me if she ever wants to.

  Sometimes I wonder, though.

  The short bus starts up like it always does, except on really cold days, and it leads the bus wagon-train away from the high school.

  Drip and Sunshine and me, we stay pretty quiet on the bus, which has kids from other alphabet classes, the kind for people who stay like little kids in their heads forever, so they’re noisy, several of them, hooting and laughing and talking to Mr. Poke. About half an hour later, we get off the bus on Slide Street, also known as Apartment Avenue because of all the apartment complexes built like hives and warrens into the hillsides.

  For a while, as we walk up the hill, we talk about homework and what we’re having for dinner and what we’re going to do about Roland if he won’t leave Sunshine alone, but that’s all we ever manage—talking about it. We never do anything, because we’re alphabets and alphabets are disorganized, and besides, nobody listens to us anyway.

  Then Drip heads north toward the upper-scale Crestview duplexes where he lives, and Sunshine heads south toward Hilltop (her town house complex has a pool), and I walk straight across the street, covering the hundred or so yards to the entrance to the decent Skymont apartments where I live with the captain.

  I’m home by four thirty. Drip hits his front door by four thirty-three.

  And somewhere between “Bye, Jason” and five o’clock, Sunshine Patton disappears from the face of the earth.

  ONE HOUR

  If bad stuff happens to the people you care about, you’ll know. If bad stuff happens to the person you care about more than anything else in the universe, you’ll definitely know. It’s always that way in books, right? But what I’m thinking when the captain gets home around five fifteen like he always does is I’m crazy hungry and he’s gonna make mac and cheese like he always does and I like mac and cheese but I’m tired of it and …

  Stupid, you’re so stupid and ungrateful, and, Mac and cheese if you please, mac and cheese if you please, and, Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, maybe he will, maybe he won’t.

  Captain Johnson Milwaukee is a creature of habit, just like me. He’s taller, but not by much. He’s balding, and his thin hair is a mix of gray and brown. His uniform is black with silver buttons, and the patch on his sleeve and the badge on his chest have bright orange flames so people know he’s all about putting out fires instead of chasing bad guys. He’s slightly overweight, but I don’t care and he doesn’t care. What I like most about him is that he’s relaxed and calm, and he’s decisive in a quiet, confident way.

  Yelling at fires doesn’t put them out. That’s one of Dad’s mottos.

  Act now, panic later. That’s another Dad-ism.

  When my parents got divorced, I was twelve and I got to choose, and I decided to live with Dad because it’s just easier for two guys, and because his sayings help keep my brain straight, and because the colonel li
ves on base when she’s not deployed and I don’t want to live on base and I’m pretty sure the colonel would go crazier than me if she tried to take care of me every single day. The captain won’t go crazy. The captain helps me stay as sane as guys like me ever get, so when he gets home and hangs his hat in its spot by the pole on the door, gives me a point-and-shoot gesture, winks, and says, “Mac and cheese,” I go put the water on to boil.

  I know which pan to use. I know exactly how much water to pour into it, and I know how to pretend I’m putting in the pinch of salt he wants but doesn’t need because he used to smoke and his heart and blood pressure don’t need extra problems. We’re two guys living alone, and we’ve got this easy-cooking thing down to cups, teaspoons, and stir-in-the-sauce-and-bring-to-a-boil.

  “Want some sausage in the mac and cheese tonight?” Dad calls from his bedroom, which is just off the kitchen in our little two-bedroom apartment.

  “Sounds good.” My voice is all flat even though I mean to sound light and who-cares or anything except flat or thank-God-not-just-boring-mac-and-cheese-again. The flatness happens because of my alphabet. Dad’s used to it. He never gripes when my face and voice go blank. He knows why. The colonel’s not so good with that whole acceptance thing.

  I grab the sausage out of the fridge and pull off the wrapper before he pays much attention to the fact it’s marked lean and healthy. When the colonel shops for us at the PX, that’s what she buys, and I’m not arguing with her about it. I’m not arguing with the colonel about anything ever, if I can help it.

  Dad heads into the kitchen wearing his jeans and a black fire department T-shirt that shows his paunch. The darkness of the fabric stands out against the simple color scheme of our apartment walls—white and white and more white. The cabinets are light wood and the flooring in the kitchen is light white vinyl, and all the energy-saver lights are bright, so the theme of light-light and bright-white stays unbroken. Dad doesn’t smell like fire smoke or cigarette smoke, so I know he’s not been doing anything dangerous today. The only scent in the kitchen is the wet-metal smell of water starting to boil, and that’s when the phone rings.

  It’s bad. Whatever it is, it’s your fault, you loser. It’s awful, it’s terrible, it’s awful, it’s terrible, it’s awful, awful, awful. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it won’t be. But maybe it is?

  I ignore the voices as Dad answers, because they always say the same stupid stuff when the phone rings or the doorbell chimes or there’s a knock or a registered letter. Fifty-one million people in the world with my alphabet, and I had to get neurotic voices. I guess that’s better than angry voices or really paranoid voices. I have no idea how many types of voices there are, but mine usually run to the doom-and-disaster side of things.

  Dad’s standing at the counter behind me and the water’s boiling. When I turn to glance at him, I see him looking at his watch.

  “No,” he says. “She’s not here, Ada.” His brown eyes flick to my face, then to his watch, and back to me. “What time did you get home, son?”

  “The usual,” I tell him, then process that he’s talking to Ada Franks, Sunshine’s mother. “By four thirty.”

  Dad’s thick, dark eyebrows—which haven’t thinned like his hair—do this funny pinch thing when he’s listening and thinking at the same time. “Okay,” he says to Ms. Franks, then to me, “Did Sunshine come home with you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you think she went with Drip, or did she say she was headed anywhere in particular?”

  “We all left from the corner, same time we usually do, and no, of course she wasn’t headed anywhere.” Weird. Sunshine should be home by now. Way past, in fact. And Sunshine never goes anywhere without me or Drip or her mom and sometimes her brother, Eli, because of the whole shy-and-doesn’t-talk-much thing. Everybody knows that.

  Stupid moron. You should have walked the girl home. You owe her that much, don’t you? Owe, owe, owe the girl, owe the girl all daaa-aaay. Nobody owes. Everybody owes. Do you owe her anything?

  “Jason doesn’t remember anything unusual.” Dad sounds matter-of-fact, but I catch the tone. The unsaid you know what I mean. Because, of course, I might not remember things right. I might think a little crooked.

  I do think a little crooked, but I remember this afternoon just fine.

  Don’t I?

  “What happened when you tried her cell?” Dad asks Ms. Franks, which isn’t as strange as it might sound. Sunshine has a cell even though she doesn’t talk on it ever, not even to her “safe” people. Her mom got it for the GPS locator function in case Sunshine ever got lost and couldn’t make herself say or write her name or address for whoever found her, but she hates that phone and she hardly ever carries it.

  “I see.” Dad directs his frown at the kitchen counter. “It’s in her room on her desk. Well. That doesn’t help very much.”

  He keeps pinching his eyebrows, and I’m feeling weirder and wondering what’s going on and maybe if once, just this time, Bastard is right and I should have walked Sunshine home. I’ve hardly ever done that, but after what happened last Saturday—

  Don’t get all different Jason please you have to be the Jason I’ve always known or the whole world will just blow up and I won’t be able to stand it and I promise I won’t be different and please and I’m saying yes okay whatever you want I’ll give it to you but she’s still crying and squeezing her locket and I don’t know if she’s crying because I know or because of what happened or if I don’t know everything because when a girl cries what does anybody know but nothing nothing nothing and I wish she’d stop and why don’t I know how to help her stop please please don’t cry anymore Sunshine

  —For a second, I’m stuck in then instead of now because time can do that to me, it can stop making sense, it can stop having the periods and commas and paragraphs and chapters that divide life into yesterday, today, and tomorrow or even a few hours ago.

  She made me promise.

  She made me promise I wouldn’t say a word, that I wouldn’t even think a word about it, and it turned into black clouds in my head because I promised I’d forget it and that was last Saturday. This is Monday. Saturday, Sunday, Monday. I tick the days off with my fingers as Dad pinches his eyebrows and asks Ms. Franks if she’s called here or if she’s called there, and no she’s not here and no she’s not there and nobody’s seen her since the bus, nobody’s seen Sunshine in more than an hour and that’s just not normal.

  Piece of trash. Bastard’s growling now, and somebody hit his repeat button, so he’s doing it over and over with Whiner in the background singing, Owe, owe, owe, woe, woe, woe and the No-Names just keep whispering Saturday and promise in different tones, in different volumes. Some of them are loud.

  “No, you don’t have to wait,” Dad says to Ms. Franks. “She’s a vulnerable child. Her diagnosis—yes. Chief Smith won’t mess around with any twenty-four-hour rules in a situation like this. If he’s not there and any of the junior officers give you the run-around, you call me straight back.” Then he stops again and pinches his brows so tight they make a salt-and-pepper V between his eyes. “Yes, you might want to call your husband and tell him to come back home as soon as he can manage it.”

  His frown gets worse. He starts trying to get words in, but he can’t, and his hand pats the counter like he’s trying to comfort Ms. Franks through the phone. He keeps saying stuff like “I know,” and “We’ll be there,” and “Probably just some mix-up.”

  When he hangs up, he calls Drip’s mom, who’s just getting home from work. Ms. Taylor checks with Drip, but Drip hasn’t seen Sunshine, either, and Drip gets on his cell and starts calling his older brothers to find out if they’ve seen her, and I imagine each call like a pebble dropping into liquid air, making huge circles and ripples across our white walls and white floors and into other walls and over cars and across people’s ears, and maybe one of those ripples will land on Sunshine and she’ll start sparkling like a quest diamond in a video game. She’ll be the
thing on the screen that we all run toward and grab and hold, but in my own head it’s not a pebble that drops into my mind as Dad tells me when each of Drip’s brothers says no, no, no, we haven’t seen her, we don’t see her around anywhere, no, it’s not a pebble that drops into my mind, it’s a giant rock, it’s a prehistoric meteor, and it doesn’t drop into my mind, it explodes through my whole body, it craters my entire awareness, vaporizing the lake of my mind and wiping out everything for miles and miles and miles.

  Sunshine—my Sunshine—

  She’s… missing.

  “Son?” Somebody’s got me by the shoulders and I’m trying to pull away, but I shouldn’t, because it’s the captain. I know this because nobody else calls me son, not even the old guys at school who call all the other male students son. I’m the one they don’t want to claim. I’m the one nobody claims except Dad and the colonel and Drip and Sunshine.

  “Come on, Jason.” Dad doesn’t shake me, but he holds me so tight I realize I’m shaking myself with all my twisting around. “Come back to me.”

  Freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, FREAK, freak, FREAK—

  The voices yell so loud I wish covering my ears would help but I know it won’t. I don’t hear the voices in my ears. I hear them in my mind. “Freak,” I echo, seeing nothing but the meteor-scorched white, white walls and then slowly like it’s being drawn in midair, the outline of my father, and he smells funny, like melting iron.

  “I don’t like it when you call yourself that name,” Dad says, and he doesn’t sound funny, and that’s a totally Dad thing to say, so I’m pretty sure he’s Dad and not some sudden iron-stinking demon.

  “Freak’s what I am,” I mumble. “It’s okay.”

  Old argument.

  Name-calling hurts, Dad always says, even when you do it to yourself.

  Name-calling doesn’t hurt because I do it to myself. That’s what I say.