by Susan Vaught
“Alphabets,” Agent Mercer says again, like he’s trying it out and maybe getting it a little and understanding—relating? Even if he doesn’t want to. Then he starts over with, “So, why are you called Freak?”
“Stick to questions relevant to the girl,” the lawyer warns Agent Mercer. She’s still got her hand on mine, and when I try to move my fingers, she puts enough pressure on my wrist to keep me still.
Agent Mercer frowns and it makes him look sarcastic and nasty. “You don’t think his nickname is relevant, Captain Evans?”
“I don’t think it matters—” Dad starts, but the colonel jumps on top of him with, “I think law enforcement would be all too happy to focus on Jason as a suspect because he’s mentally ill. What playground bullies choose to call Jason because of his disability is no concern of yours. He’s here to help, Agent Mercer, not to volunteer as your primary person of interest.”
Dad closes his mouth. Captain Evans closes her eyes. Opens them. She’s still smiling, but more nervous now. It’s all a circus to me. I feel like a clown on the sidelines, with absolutely no clue what the main act is doing.
“Is that how we’re playing this?” Agent Mercer asks, and I can’t tell if he’s talking to the colonel or Captain Evans but I don’t care.
“I’m not playing,” I tell him, jerking my hand away from Captain Evans. “I don’t care if you consider me a Jason or a freak or a person of interest or disinterest or anything else. We’ve only got eighteen hours before twenty-four is up, and I want you to find Sunshine, so could you stop arguing with all of them and get to it?”
Agent Mercer’s eyebrows lift again, but only for a second. The colonel and Captain Evans blink at me. Dad nods. I think he looks happy, but who can tell? The middle of his face is melty like everybody else’s and I have to start looking at the wall because it creeps me out to keep my eyes on that weirdness.
“You say your last contact with her was after you got off the bus.” Agent Mercer’s voice makes an echo inside my head. “Right after school.”
“Yes. I’ve told you that three times now. Can you get to the part about asking me questions that might help find her?”
A pause.
He’s probably looking at my red face. At the way I’m making fists. Well, let him. This isn’t helping Sunshine. We should be up and out of here and looking. Anything but this.
“Do you get frustrated easily?” Agent Mercer sounds happier now, like he’s finally getting somewhere.
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.” I let out a breath and make myself look him in the eye, which is hard because his eyes seem wrong and square and melty but that’s just my alphabet and I need to ignore it. “This is just—I want you to find Sunshine.”
Agent Mercer looks even more happy. “Do you get angry easily?”
“No.” In the reflection behind him, my own face starts to melt. I’m a painting, dissolving down the glass.
“Jason rarely gets angry at all,” the colonel says.
“Everybody gets pissed. Isn’t that right, Jason?” Agent Mercer smiles and I shiver, because in a melty face, that bunch of teeth seems demonic.
Focus.
How can you focus? You’re an idiot. You don’t know how to focus. Hocus pocus, hocus pocus. Magic has no place in this conversation.
Does this nutjob really think I’d get mad at Sunshine? He doesn’t know anything. He can’t know anything about me or her or our lives to ask that, because—
You can do it Jason I know you can I know it’s scary but look at me yeah like that look right at me you know it’s not real nothing’s real but me and I’m right here breathe Jason you can do it you can think through what you hear and what you see it’s not real but we are we are real Jason look at us look at me
—Skin stops sliding down faces and Dad looks like Dad and the colonel looks like the colonel and then there’s Agent Mercer and the lawyer and I guess they look normal now, too. “I don’t have a bad temper, if that’s what you want to know,” I tell Agent Mercer. “I don’t throw fits or punches or go off and beat on walls or girlfriends. That’s not my alphabet.”
He doesn’t believe me. I don’t really care. But he smiles and asks, “Is Sunshine your friend or your girlfriend?”
See? Idiot. He knows. Everybody knows. You suck. Lots of things rhyme with suck. Should I make a list? Nobody needs lists. They’ve got enough lists and you’re on them all.
My lips are moving and I’m trying to answer and—
I don’t think it’s a good idea but she says please and she’s got tears and she says it’ll make everything better that she knows it will and then she’s in front of me and she’s touching me and she’s crying so what am I supposed to do even though I don’t really know what to do but it’s Sunshine and I have to make her stop crying because if she keeps crying I’ll shatter inside and there won’t be anything left of me and her locket presses into my chest and she feels like warm softness and she smells like warm softness when I hold her and
—And I’m seeing the clouds and the knives stab my brain and I turn it all loose and say, “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
Man, did that come out quiet. My face burns, but not because I’m pissed or anything. I don’t glance at the colonel or Dad before I start staring at the table, but I’m not sure why. They know I’m a loser.
“I find that hard to believe,” Agent Mercer’s saying.
I manage to look at him. “That’s because you’re not a freak.”
“Jason.” The colonel and the lawyer, both at the same time.
Then it’s Dad’s turn. “Let the boy talk, Lisa. It’s how he feels—that’s his truth. His truth can’t hurt anything.”
I’m trying to listen and trying to care, but is she my girlfriend? I mean, I want her to be, but is that what she wants, because I never know for sure. Should I put a name on it, some kind of label? She’s just Sunshine, and that’s plenty enough.
I wish I could go to Sunshine’s room again. Maybe if I looked harder, I’d find a message. Maybe she wrote me a note and tucked it in one of the books she’s always reading. Maybe she scratched something in the wood under her bed or left me a map like a treasure hunt in her pillowcase.
The colonel and Dad and the lawyer yammer at each other but I’m looking straight at Agent Mercer and he’s looking straight at me when I ask, “Are you searching her room?”
Everybody shuts up like I spit on the table or something.
Agent Mercer’s eyes narrow. “Why do you think we should do that?”
“Maybe she left something there to tell us where she went.” I’m making fists again, but I can’t help it. All this sitting and yammering, it’s stupid and it’s not helping anything. I thought this man came here to find Sunshine. Guess I’ll have to do that myself.
“You think she went on her own—that she ran away?” That question came from the lawyer and I can tell Agent Mercer doesn’t like her butting in to his inquisition.
“I don’t know,” I tell her, glad somebody’s asking better questions. Better questions might make me think and if I think maybe I can get past all the noise in my head and find the right answers.
Would Sunshine run away? She had tons of reasons.
Yeah, you’re one of them, you piss-poor excuse for a human being. Be, be, be, see, see, see, see-saw, back and forth and up and down. Maybe you’re not a human being. Maybe not.
“I guess maybe I’m hoping she did run away,” I say, “because if she ran away, she might have left us a note.”
“And if she left you a note,” Agent Mercer says, “it would be in her room?”
“Yeah. Because we weren’t at school, so it couldn’t be in her locker, unless she planned stuff for a long time and left the note before we went home. There might be a note, right?”
That sounded desperate. Sadness spreads across everybody’s face except Agent Mercer’s, because I don’t think he’s a sadness kind of guy.
But if there was a note, it wouldn’t be
in her locker or her room, would it? Sunshine would never leave words for other people to find. The only place she’d leave anything like that is where only I would find it, or maybe Drip, because she knows Drip would give it to me.
I have to work not to go statue stiff and turn red as a strawberry.
Drip was totally right earlier. Why didn’t I listen to him?
I don’t need to be here listening to this man’s stupid questions. Sunshine’s been gone almost six hours. Six hours out of the twenty-four the FBI says she’s got before… before things get…
Eighteen hours left.
Drip and I need to go down to the river, to our spot, to our place—to Sunshine’s place—because whatever she left us, if she left us anything, it’ll be somewhere by the quiet, cool running water.
And it’ll be private.
Sunshine wouldn’t want anybody to have her words but us, least of all this jerkoff of an FBI agent who isn’t really trying to find her.
We need to get a flashlight and sneak out of here.
“Are we done?” I stand, already wondering how long it’ll take Agent Mercer to ask Drip the same questions twenty times. Maybe other agents are interviewing Drip. Maybe they’re already done. If they’re finished, he and I can—
But—
Everybody’s looking at me. Agent Mercer, the colonel, Dad, and the JAG lawyer. Nobody seems very happy, except maybe Agent Mercer.
I don’t get mad much, but I’m mad now.
“Do you have somewhere else to be, Jason?” he asks, nasty-nice, and that’s it. Really. Had enough of him.
“Yes,” I tell him. “Outside finding my best friend.”
Feeling hot, feeling cold, wanting out before stuff starts melting again.
I turn before he can say anything else. The colonel’s calling my name and Dad’s telling her to stop and the JAG lawyer’s saying something to Agent Mercer and when I open the door and step into the hallway—Roland Harks is right there, right in my face with his serial killer eyes and his black hair and that smirk and he’s melting and the way he looks and the way he talks and why didn’t I think about him before? Why was I the one getting hammered when this monster was five feet away on the other side of the door?
“What’s with you?” he mutters.
I grab the front of his black rock band T-shirt with both hands and yank him right into my own face.
“What did you do to her?”
“Hey!” Somebody’s yelling. A woman. “You—what—let him go!”
She’s right beside us like she slipped out of the shimmery melty air and she’s older, maybe a mom or a sister or an aunt but my brain pushes that away because it’s not natural for vermin to have family members.
“Where is Sunshine?” I grip Roland’s shirt twice as tight and he grabs my wrists, frowning, pushing at my hands and he’s gonna go off and smack me and for once I don’t care, for once I’ll smack him back because there’s no Sunshine to protect and no Sunshine to get upset and maybe Roland and his pretty-girl this and get-a-burger-with-me-pretty-girl that had something to do with it.
“Did you hurt her?” I shake him and he sort of lets me but he’s prying my fingers off him and it throbs but I hold on anyway. “She didn’t want a hamburger. She didn’t want a hamburger with you!”
“Dude.” Roland’s shoving at me harder, playing nice probably because of the woman yelling for help beside him but his eyes are furious. His eyes say I’m going to pay. And then his eyes melt and his face melts and I let him go, and Dad’s got me, and he’s hugging me from behind and he’s saying, “Breathe, Jason. Come on. Just breathe.”
And from somewhere the colonel’s saying, “He’s upset, Mrs. Harks. I’m sorry.”
And the lawyer’s telling Agent Mercer, “You stressed him on purpose. This is exactly what we were trying to avoid.”
And I can’t see him but Agent Mercer’s looking at me because I can feel his melting eyes on the back of my melting neck and I can almost hear him asking about my bad temper and asking if Sunshine made me mad and if I went after her like I just went after Roland and that woman’s holding on to Roland, looking relieved and he’s not paying me any attention even though I keep telling him, “She didn’t want a hamburger. She didn’t want a hamburger from you!”
We’re moving, Dad and me, and he’s taking me away from the questioning room and Agent Mercer and the hallway and Roland and even the colonel and the lawyer.
“I’m breathing,” I tell him when I finally stop yelling. “Sorry. I’m breathing.”
Dad’s moving me forward, side by side, his arm around my shoulders, and Drip and his mom are standing way across the room by the front door. Drip’s fidgeting and hopping around. He’s moving back and forth. He’s hyper but… kind of not, too. Like he’s putting on a little.
I slow. Then I stop walking and Dad lets me go.
“That was a little tense back there,” Dad says, and I nod even though I’m only part hearing him because Drip’s staring at me now.
He lifts his eyebrows like, What the heck?
I lift mine.
He shows me his right hand.
He’s got a flashlight.
SEVEN HOURS
For a few seconds, it seems like Drip and I are alone in the universe. The wide, clean hall of the VFW seems empty, and he’s looking at me, and I’m looking at him, and we both know we’re blowing out of here first chance we get.
It’ll never work. Even you aren’t that stupid. Idiot. Fool on the hill. Fool on the hill. I don’t think idiot’s a nice word. Maybe it’s right, though?
Six hours. Almost seven.
Get it together, you freak.
That was my voice, not the voices. Well, you know what I mean.
Gradually the world starts to focus again and I see tables and computers and FBI agents and behind me I hear the colonel fussing with Dad and Dad dropping a Dad-ism about stirring in muck making everything mucky and the lawyer arguing with Agent Mercer about questions and suspicions and for some reason hamburgers and from somewhere else, Roland’s whining to his mother about how crazy I am. Drip’s mom heads over to plow into some of them or maybe all of them because now’s not the time for fighting and Drip’s mom is big on only fighting at the right times.
Drip bounces up to me, still faking hyper. When he’s close enough for only me to hear him, he says, “I took my medicine again. I’ll be good for a few hours.”
“Yeah, and awake until tomorrow?”
He shrugs. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“I didn’t take mine.” I breathe like Dad wanted and wait for Drip’s response, but I don’t worry about him flipping out. Drip and Sunshine and me, we don’t flip out on each other, no matter what. It’s a rule.
He gives me a half stink-eye, though. “You got a few days before you go totally nuts, right?”
“A few.”
We both know it’ll get hard. That stuff in my head will come crashing apart—but usually I can hold it together for a while.
Usually.
Drip gives me another shrug. Then, “We going out the front door or the bathroom window?”
And the VFW people and space seem that much farther away, and I dig through my memories of helping clean the place. “Is there a bathroom window?”
Third shrug. “Front door, then.”
Seems reasonable to me. Everybody’s too busy hollering at each other to care much what Drip and I do, so with one last glance at the arguing, typing, ignoring-us room, we walk right out the main entrance to the VFW.
A few running steps later, I realize one very important thing.
It’s dark.
I mean, it’s always dark at night, but some nights don’t have any stars or any moon and glowy metallic clouds seem to snake toward the ground and there’s fog and cool air and that’s tonight. Dark. Dark and cold. Maybe because it was so bright and warm, almost hot, in the VFW behind us.
Drip leads because he’s got a better sense of direction than I d
o, and because he’s got the flashlight. I keep tripping over my own feet because I can’t see where I’m going, but I can see Drip’s shoulders so I keep my eyes locked there and follow.
“Did you get questioned?” I ask him.
“Yeah, but it was stupid. I think the guy asked me ten times what time we left. Why do they ask everything ten times?”
“I don’t know.” But I feel better. At least I wasn’t the only one that got treated like nobody believed him.
“It kinda pissed me off,” Drip says. “Why are they wasting time? That main guy said we’ve got twenty-four hours to find her, that this first twenty-four is so important, so they waste it jawing at us?” Every step we take, he talks faster and louder. “They don’t have a clue, but maybe we do. Do you think she’s there, Freak? Man, will her folks be pissed. Maybe she fell asleep. Do you think she fell asleep?”
“She didn’t fall asleep.” Now I wish he’d stop because his questions make my heart hurt. His questions make me know it’s not really likely Sunshine’s at our place, but I want to hope she’s there. Even if she’s there, she’d never be asleep. If she’s at our place, she’s there on purpose, and she’s hiding. Lots of things scare Sunshine. Some of them should.
Like you, you freak. Why did you do it? Why did you touch her? I wanna hold your hand. Hold your hand. Touching isn’t wrong. She asked for it. But maybe Sunshine thought it was wrong?
Stop. Can’t think about that right now. It’s so dark, and it’s getting colder, and the air smells like rain or maybe tears.
We wind away from the VFW down short blocks, then turn into a wooded area attached to the town’s only park. To get to our place, we have to go through the park, down a hill, turn right, and follow the path until trees break on either side of us. The park’s empty and the hill’s empty, at least I think it is because I can’t see anything other than the gray outline of Drip’s back.
In the daytime the clearing we have to cross seems warm and pretty, but tonight it’s not warm or pretty and when we run to the center of the open space in the woods, there’s nothing but scary dark trees and they’re everywhere, all around us, black marks against the black sky. My breathing’s hard and my throat feels tight and the trees look like monsters reaching and reaching toward nothing because—
