by Simon Holt
Nina Snow, perfectly coiffed and confident as usual, took her seat behind Reggie. Her hair was long, dark, and frizz-less, her skin clear like porcelain. She looked like the only girl in school unaffected by the heat. The one freshman to be recruited for varsity cheerleading at Cutter, Nina had been Quinn’s girlfriend since Homecoming. She ignored most of her female freshmen classmates, but Reggie had unwittingly drawn her attention last December when Nina had noticed Quinn flirting with her.
“Bride of Frankenstein,” Nina said. “Not a good look for you. Then, do you have a good look?”
Reggie said nothing.
“What, no witty comeback from the literary loser?”
Mercifully, Mr. Machen strolled in.
“Okay, monkeys. Simmer down.”
A few students screeched and scratched their heads and armpits. Machen smirked and shook his head.
“I’m still your zookeeper for another week.”
Machen was Reggie’s favorite teacher—an extended substitute who’d taken over Honors English some months earlier, after Mrs. Harter had fortuitously been offered a grant to study the works of nineteenth-century playwrights in London. Machen, in his mid-thirties but with hair so blond it looked almost white, was passionate about literature, and was equally well-versed in mythology and history. He wore tweed jackets that made him look the standard scattered professor type, but Reggie quickly learned he was impeccably organized and methodical.
“Mr. M, what’s on the final?”
“Two essays. No less than four full pages a pop. And no, you cannot use crayon, write in all capital letters, or double-space.”
The class groaned.
“You’ll need to prep for three. Unless you want to roll the dice. I advise against that. Questions?”
Nina raised her hand.
“Miss Snow.”
“Can we at least get one topic ahead of time?”
“Where’s the sport in that?”
The class begged as one chorus.
“Fine. Obviously, one of the essays will be on Midsummer. Which you all finished this week as assigned, right?”
Machen raised an eyebrow as students quietly pulled out their dog-eared copies of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Appropriate that exams are just a week before midsummer. The solstice. What’s this time of year about? Anyone? Mr. Cole.”
Even though Honors sections had the brightest and most diligent kids, Aaron was always the best bet to open classroom discussions. It was safe to assume he’d not only read the play, but then reread it, cross-referenced the annotations, and probably joined an online chat group called “Buds of the Bard” or something equally nerdy.
“Um. Solstice. Derived from the Latin, meaning ‘sun standing still.’ The longest day of the year when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is oriented directly toward the Sun so the light reaches its southernmost extremes. The opposite is true on the winter solstice, when the least amount of light…”
Reggie could see eyes rolling all around Aaron. She jumped in.
“It’s also a time of magic, right? Represented by the land of Faerie in the play.”
“Yes. Magic. Mystery. Mischief. All of these things play out in Shakespeare’s best comedy on the longest day of the year.” Machen nodded at Reggie. “But the summer solstice also represents rebirth. An awakening.”
He went on, pacing enthusiastically and quoting Nick Bottom’s singing spell upon the sleeping faerie queen, Titania. The class breathed a collective sigh, knowing that once Machen was on a roll, he’d be unlikely to stop to ask questions that would prove most of them hadn’t finished the play.
Reggie tried to focus, but activity outside the classroom windows diverted her attention. Across the street, a small group of children played on the elementary school jungle gym. A thick bed of charcoal gray clouds had swallowed up the morning, and a strong wind blew weeds and scraps of paper across the quad lawn. No competent teacher would have taken kids out in such menacing weather. Plus school had just started for the day. The first large droplets of rain pattered on the plate-glass windows.
Reggie turned back to the teacher, who continued to pace and gesture dramatically with his free hand, but his words washed over Reggie like a dull tide. She looked out the window again and saw a little boy with a red cap on his head.
Henry.
Another larger boy chased him around the jungle gym.
“Miss Halloway. Continue from where I left off?”
“I…” Reggie panicked, unsure where they were in the text.
“Are you with us?”
“Yes, but…” Reggie fumbled with her book and it dropped to the floor. She reached down to pick it up.
“Miss Snow. Continue please.”
The rain fell harder now. Lightning arced and thunder boomed in the distance. Reggie jumped in her seat, but the rest of her class seemed not to notice the rapidly threatening storm.
“I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could…”
Outside, the kids pranced around the playground, hopping in puddles and swooshing down wet slides. They all laughed and played except for two of them.
Billy Persons had Henry pinned down in the mud. No adults appeared to be outside with the children.
“… but I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid…”
Reggie leaped to her feet.
“Henry!”
Nina stopped reciting. The whole class turned to Reggie.
“Miss Halloway. Is everything all right?”
Shock and embarrassment flooded through her.
“I…”
She looked out the window again. The children were gone. Henry and Billy, gone. Reggie sat back down, her breath short and panicky. What was going on?
“Miss Halloway. Why don’t you pick it up for us from here? Read Bottom’s response to Titania’s irrational profession of love.”
“I…”
“Middle of page thirty-six. Line twenty-four.”
Reggie fumbled to the page and scanned the text with a shaking finger.
“Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days…”
“What is Bottom saying to the faerie queen here?”
Reggie looked outside again and let out a startled gasp. Henry stood just outside her classroom window, his forehead pressed to the glass. His eyes, dark and menacing, bore into her. Rain cascaded down his face, ugly streaks of gray water pouring from his nose.
He held something in his hand.
“Henry…”
The boy slowly lifted up a severed ear and pressed it against the windowpane. Blood dribbled out of it and down the glass.
Reggie screamed and dove from her chair toward the window. She tripped over Nina’s bag and fell to the floor.
“Aren’t you proud of me, Reggie?” Henry’s voice was hollow, and his lips parted in a mirthless smile, revealing gray teeth and black gums. “I stood up for myself. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Behind him the trees were blown horizontal in the thrashing wind. The rain pounded down and froze into streaks of crystallized ice on his face. Dark smoke poured from his nose and mouth, rising and whirling into the air in a cyclone.
Then it surged toward the window.
Reggie covered her face as the glass exploded. It blew her back onto the floor, and she could feel the shards sticking into her arms and cheeks. Pain shot through her skin, and she knew her blood was dripping, pooling, mingling with the rain blowing in from outside.
She screamed and screamed and screamed.
“Reggie! Reggie, stop!”
She could hear voices, but at first they were too muffled to make out. Reggie had a vague notion she was lying down; the floor beneath her felt cool.
“I’m here. You’re okay. It’s me.”
&n
bsp; She stopped screaming and focused on a familiar voice.
Aaron.
“Can you hear me? Come back.”
She felt his touch on her cheeks and forehead. He cradled her head and brushed the hair out of her face.
“I’m with you. You’re safe.”
Aaron’s face came into focus. It was creased with worry.
Reggie’s eyes darted about, taking in the horrified faces of the classmates that surrounded her.
Aaron looked up. “Can you guys give her some room?”
“Everyone, please.” Machen cleared the students away. His voice shook. “Let her breathe.”
“Are you back?” Aaron asked.
Reggie managed a nod and tried to sit up. Machen squatted down beside them.
“I’ll call the nurse, Reggie. Stay still.”
“No, it’s okay. Aaron will take me.”
Machen acquiesced, and he and Aaron helped Reggie to her feet. Her best friend held her close as he walked her toward the door.
“My stuff.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll grab it later. Come on.”
Nervous whispers and snickers trailed behind them. The whole class had watched in stunned silence as Reggie had leaped from her seat and pounded her fists against the window. She’d struck it so hard that one of the massive panes had splintered into a web of glass. Then she’d fallen to the ground, flailing and screaming at absolutely nothing. Reggie guessed what they were thinking: had their classmate lost her mind?
There were more students in the hallway than normal as Aaron escorted a shaking Reggie toward the parking lot exit of the school. All of them should have been in class, prepping for final exams or making up missed work. But something was wrong, and news about Reggie’s episode could not have reached the rest of the school so quickly.
Pockets of nervous students huddled near lockers, murmuring to one another. Snatches of conversation reached Reggie’s ears.
“… Quinn…”
“… found it in a lake…”
“… a body?”
“… no, car…”
Aaron pulled Reggie closer to him.
“Keep walking, Reggie. Come on.”
As they neared the exit, a set of heels clacked behind them, moving at a steady but fast clip.
“Aaron Cole.”
Aaron and Reggie froze.
“Mr. Cole, please remove your hands from the young lady and put them on top of your head.”
Both Reggie and Aaron spun around to face a detective from Wennemack Homicide. Two Cutter’s Wedge patrolmen stood on either side of her, and one of them had a pair of handcuffs opened.
“Young lady, step away from him now, please.”
Reggie just gaped at her, but Aaron instinctively took a step backward.
“Do not move,” the detective said to him with an eerie calm. “We do not want an incident.”
“What’s happening?” Aaron’s voice wavered.
“Aaron Cole, you are being detained for questioning in the disappearance of Quinn Waters.”
“What?”
One of the patrolman grabbed Aaron away from Reggie and pulled him toward the front entrance of the school. The rest of the students in the hall watched in silent shock.
“You can’t do that!” Reggie said, but the detective stalked past, ignoring her.
“Please follow my instructions,” she said. “You will have the right to contact an attorney from the Wennemack station, but right now I urge you to cooperate.”
Aaron craned his neck backward.
“Reggie?”
The patrolman put a meaty hand on Aaron’s head and twisted it forward. The detective trailed behind the two men and Aaron as they led him out the door. Reggie started to follow, but the school nurse stepped in front of her. Mrs. Hoppins wrung her hands anxiously.
“Reggie, I need to speak with you.”
“Mrs. Hoppins, please…”
“It’s your little brother. Something’s happened. Your father is on his way…”
“What is it? Is he at the school?”
“Yes, but come with me, we—”
But Reggie was already out the side exit and running across the parking lot toward the elementary school playground.
3
The scissors pressed up against the soft doughy skin of the larger boy’s throat. Mucus and blood poured from his nose and dripped onto Henry’s hand, but the smaller boy seemed not to notice. Billy, beaten and exhausted, slumped awkwardly on the ground, legs splayed and head twisted upward. He had stopped crying and now whimpered in steady intervals. Henry crouched behind him with his pale and thin left arm wrapped around Billy’s neck just above the scissor points. The playground smelled of wet wood chips and rubber tires. Behind them, faces peered out of the elementary school windows, students staring in wide-eyed fascination at the tense scene outside. Some had begun to cry.
“Henry?” Dr. Heath, the school principal, inched forward, her manicured hands extended in an unthreatening manner. “Henry? Listen to me. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Let go of Billy.”
“Please, honey,” Miss Richards, Henry’s third grade teacher, pleaded. “You don’t want to hurt anyone. You’re a good boy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Henry!” Reggie shouted as she raced across the thick lawn toward her brother. “Let him go!”
“I told you to leave me alone,” Henry said again, this time in a whisper audible only to Billy. “Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”
“Henry.” Reggie stopped ten yards away and just stared. Was this really happening, or was it another vision? “What are you doing?”
Henry’s hand trembled; the scissor points quivered against Billy’s exposed skin. He looked pleadingly at his sister.
“What am I, Reggie?”
Reggie approached him slowly and knelt on the ground a few feet away. Billy wailed and clutched Henry’s red cap tightly in his fist. Henry’s deformed ear, almost lost completely from frostbite the night on the lake, was exposed for everyone to see.
“You’re my brother. You’re Henry.” She inched forward on her knees. “You’re just my Henry.”
“I see things, Reggie.” The scissors shook in his small hand. “I close my eyes and I see awful things.”
Tears welled in Reggie’s eyes. She fought to keep them back. “I know. I see them, too.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Can you make them stop?”
The principal took small and cautious steps toward them.
“I’m going to try.” Slowly, Reggie reached out her hand and laid it gently on Henry’s arm. “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone. Now let him go.”
Henry sobbed and dropped the scissors. Billy jerked his head free and scrambled across the wood chips on hands and knees. Dr. Heath scooped him up like an infant and raced him into the building, just as a patrol car zoomed onto the grass with lights flashing and spinning. Thom Halloway’s old pickup followed. Miss Richards ran to address the first police officer as he jumped out of his car, a hand on his holstered sidearm.
Reggie ignored the noise and hugged Henry tightly. He whimpered into her shoulder.
“What happened to me?”
“I’m so sorry, Hen. This is my fault. I should have told you.”
“Told me what?”
Thom Halloway raced across the playground but stopped several feet short of his two children.
“Reggie?”
“Take us home, Dad.”
“What the hell is going on? Henry—?”
“Dad. Please. Take us home.”
But the Halloway family didn’t pull into their driveway for another several hours. After such a disturbing incident, the Cutter’s Wedge police chief, the emergency medical team on the scene, and the school district’s superintendent demanded that Henry be evaluated before being released to his father’s care.
Dr. Heath sent the rest of the students home for the day, and Dr. Unger
, the child psychologist from the Thornwood Psychiatric Hospital who had been treating Henry for the past two months, was summoned to the elementary school. It was near dark before he cleared Henry to go home with his father and sister—provided that the entire family commit to immediate and intense group sessions together starting the following day. Even so, the police chief said the DA’s office would be deciding over the next few days whether to officially charge Henry with criminal assault and battery.
And though there was now less than a week left before summer vacation, the superintendent had little choice but to expel Henry. The boy would need a clean psychological evaluation before the district board could consider reinstating him in the town public school system.
The adults did not discuss the wider and possibly more damaging repercussions of the day. Nobody spoke aloud of lawsuits, but Reggie suspected her father would contact his attorney first thing in the morning. He had already announced they’d be leaving at 9:30 to go to Thornwood for their first family therapy session.
On the silent and tense drive home, she fought off thoughts of all the distress that Henry’s violent attack on Billy Persons would bring to her family, especially in light of the events from December and her own breakdown in the middle of class the same day. The high school would probably be phoning Dad tomorrow to report that incident. Wonderful.
Dad carried a sleepy Henry into the house, and Reggie followed, locking up behind them. Dad turned to her.
“I want you to stay here while I take Henry up to bed.”
“I’ll take him, Dad.”
“No, I want you to—”
“Dad?” Henry lifted his head off his father’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about today. I know you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad at you, little man.”
“If I’m the one who caused all the trouble, why are you upset with Reggie?”
“I’m not…” Dad scratched his scruffy chin. “It’s complicated, Henry. Reggie and I just need to talk.”
