Lost Boys

by Orson Scott Card

  Thanks so much, and tell her I hope she gets well soon and lives a long and happy life . ... Oh, thank you! Bye!"

  Step looked up at DeAnne and grinned. "He said he liked my lesson a lot."

  "I can't believe you said that to her own husband!" said DeAnne.

  "Yes, well, I said it because I wanted to make it clear to her that this was the last time she ever pulls a stunt like this."

  "She really is an awful woman," said DeAnne. "Jenny tried to warn me, but I never thought anyone would be so low as to try to get to the parents by poisoning the hearts of their children against them."

  "Oh, heavens," said Step, "people have been doing that for years. The Nazis did it, and the Communists, and a lot of divorced parents do it, too."

  "All right then," said DeAnne, "I guess a lot of people are just that low. But she's certainly one of them."

  "Oh, yes," said Step. "She definitely crawled out from under a rock."

  "How can you be so calm about this? Aren't you angry?"

  Step only smiled-a tight little smile. "Hey, Fish Lady. I just got a man to deliver to his wife a message that if she messes with my family again, I'll feel perfectly justified in killing her. You think I'm not mad?"

  "But you wouldn't really do it," she said.

  "Wouldn't it be sad if Sister LeSueur thought the same thing," said Step.

  "You aren't a violent person."

  "I've been thinking about that," said Step. "And I think that maybe I'm only pretending not to be a violent person. Because the need for violence simply hasn't come up till now."

  "Well, I really don't think violence is the answer against her."

  "Oh, I know," said Step. "The real answer is to keep our children away from her and then teach people the truth every chance we get. That's the thing we have going for us-she really is wrong, and we really are right, and so good and wise people will eventually see through her and recognize what she really is."

  She walked over to him and sat beside him on the bed and then laid her head in his lap. "I liked it when you talked on the phone about killing people," she said. "I must be the most terrible person in the world, but it just made me feel so-delicious."

  "Me too," said Step.

  "Aren't we awful?" said DeAnne.

  "Personally," said Step, "I think we're terrific."

  Late that night, she awoke suddenly from a dream, but the dream slipped away even as she tried to cling to it. She rolled over and saw that Step's bedside lamp was on, and he was reading.

  "Can't sleep?" she murmured.

  "That was some dream you were having," said Step. "Didn't understand a word you were saying, but you sounded very firm."

  "Don't remember," said DeAnne.

  Then she did remember. Not the dream, but something else that she had wanted to talk to Step about, and she hadn't done it. She confessed to Step how she had as much as told their oldest son that he should trust his own judgment more than his parents' instructions.

  "Well," said Step. "Well."

  "That's it? Just `well'?"

  "No, not jus t 'well.' I distinctly remember that I said, `Well. Well.' Two wells."

  "I'm serious, Step."

  "DeAnne, it's like you told me. It was just something that you had to say, right up till the moment it was said, and then you sud denly couldn't understand why you had to say it."

  She was still half asleep, that must be why she didn't get the point of what he was saying.

  "Fish Lady," he said patiently, "you were following your own advice. You did the thing that you knew, in that moment, was the right thing to do. You told Stevie something that you would never have dreamed of saying if you were in your normal mind."

  "So I'm going crazy?"

  He sighed.

  "Do you really think I might have been inspired to say that?"

  "How should I know?" asked Step. "We believe it's possible, don't we? And in the meantime, I'm certainly not going to say anything to Stevie to get him to doubt what you said. Because the fact is that what you said is true. In the long run, every human being is accountable for what he chooses to do. Stevie won't be able to hide behind us and say, But I did what they said! He'll have to stand before the judgment bar of God and say This is what I did, and this is why I chose to do it."

  "But he's only seven."

  "He's not just a seven- year-old," said Step. "You know that. It's something my mother once said to me. That there were moments that she thought, Maybe, before we were all born, when we lived with God in the pre-existence, maybe her children were older than her. Maybe they were very old and very wise, and God simply saved them till now because he needed to have some of his very best children on the earth during the last days. Maybe Mom was right. Not about her children. About ours."

  "He's seven, Step, even if his spirit is very old."

  "You said what you said, and Sister LeSueur said what she said. And you know what, Fish Lady? I like what you said a lot better. She said to him, Depend on me, lean on me, do what I tell you to do, and I'll make you a great man. You said to him, Stand on your own, make up your own mind, you already are a man, and maybe you'll make yourself into a great man by and by. What's so wrong about that?"

  "You make me feel so good, Junk Man," she said.

  "It's my job," he said. "It was written into the marriage contract. When wife wakes up in the middle of the night and needs some reassurance, husband must provide it or go without hot meals for a week."

  "Oh," she said. "Well, then, you're living up to the contract."

  "I do my best," he said. "But I still miss most of the hot meals."

  "Not because I don't prepare them," said DeAnne.

  "Maybe the contract will come from Agamemnon. Maybe tomorrow."

  "Even if it doesn't come, Step, even if Mr. Agamemnon or Akabakka or whatever-"

  "Arkasian."

  "Even if he changed his mind or couldn't do it or whatever. Even if that comes to nothing, things will still work out."

  "I hope you're right, Fish Lady."

  "I am. You can count on it. Because I get inspiration, don't I?"

  "Sometimes you just give it," he said. "To me."

  She nestled closer to him in bed and closed her eyes, feeling comforted now, feeling ready for sleep. "You make me feel so good, Junk Man."

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead. Then she must have fallen asleep, because she remembered nothing else till morning.

  7: Crickets

  This is what happened with Stevie's second-grade project: He brought home a one-page ditto that listed the requirements, which were not very specific. The end-of-year project had to show "an environment" and the creatures that lived in it. It was due on April 22nd, and it had to include a written report and a "visual depiction."

  "Most of the kids are doing posters," said Stevie, "but I don't want to." He had been reading about octopuses, and he wanted to do his project about the undersea environment. And instead of cutting pictures out of magazines and pasting them to posterboard, he got his mom to buy some colored clay, which he shaped into fishes, clams, coral, and an octopus. He arranged them on a cardboard base that DeAnne cut from the side of one of the boxes they had used in the move. Then he wrote his report, typing it himself on Step's word-processing computer and stapling it in the corner.

  It was the first thing Stevie had shown any real interest in dur ing his whole time at this school, and DeAnne showed it off to Step with real pride, the night before Stevie took it to school.

  "This is incredible," said Step. "You didn't help him?"

  "I did nothing. In fact I advised him against doing something so hard. Who knew he could make fish that looked like fish?"

  "Not to mention an octopus that looks like an octopus," said Step. "And look at the clam. There's a starfish prying it open!"

  "He still never talks about school," said DeAnne. "Not even when I ask. But he did this, so it can't be all bad."

  Then came DeAnne's new calling, and she was so inv
olved with preparing her spiritual living lesson that she didn't think about Stevie's project now that it had been turned in.

  On the first Monday in May, however, her lesson was over, and as she drove Stevie to school she remembered his project and asked what the teacher thought of it.

  "She gave it a C," said Stevie.

  "What?" asked DeAnne.

  "And it got mooshed."

  "It got mooshed! How! Did somebody drop it?"

  "No," said Stevie. "They put them all out on display in the media center, and when the other kids walked past it they mooshed it."

  "On purpose?" asked DeAnne.

  "Yeah," said Stevie.

  "How can you be sure? Did you see them do it?"

  "Raymond said, 'Tidal wave!' and then after him they wadded it up even more so finally it was just a big mess of clay."

  "Where was your teacher when they were doing this? Where was the librarian?"

  "Mrs. Jones was there."

  "And she didn't do anything?"

  "No," said Stevie.

  "She must not have seen what they were doing."

  "She saw," said Stevie.

  "She saw? And she didn't stop them?"

  "No," said Stevie.

  DeAnne felt sick. No, she thought. Stevie just misunderstood the situation. The teacher hadn't really been watching. She could ne ver have let such a thing happen.

  "I'm going in to talk to your teacher," said DeAnne.

  "Please no!" said Stevie, urgently.

  "This has to be cleared up. There was no way that your project deserved a C."

  "Please don't come in!" he pleaded.

  "All right," said DeAnne. "But why not?"

  "It'll just make things worse if you do," said Stevie.

  "Worse?"

  But they had just reached the turnaround in front of the school, and Stevie bounded out the door and raced for schoolthe first time she had ever seen him hurry toward class. Somehow it didn't make her feel any better.

  There was something seriously wrong here, and not just his moroseness because of the move. Mrs. Jones could not have given that project a C. No teacher could have stood by and let the other kids destroy a child's project, either. It simply couldn't happen.

  Well, if she couldn't talk to Mrs. Jones, she could at least talk to the librarian and find out from her what had happened. "Come on, kids, we're going in," said DeAnne.

  DeAnne pulled the car into the teachers' parking lot, where a visitor space was open, and within a few minutes she was leading the kids down the hall to the media center. DeAnne supposed that she ought to check in at the office, but the receptionist there was so snotty, and DeAnne was already so upset, that she decided that if she wasn't going to get really furious today she'd better pretend that she didn't realize she needed to stop in at the main desk.

  The librarian was a sweet-voiced older lady, and when she smiled DeAnne thought for some reason of the time she had an eye injury and when the bandages were on and she couldn't see, someone laid a cool damp cloth on her forehead. "I'm so glad when parents come by the library," said the librarian.

  "Oh, I thought it was a media center now," said DeAnne.

  "Well, so it is. We have two video carts and an Apple II computer, so we are a media center, but look at all these books. Wouldn't you call this a library?"

  "Yes I would," said DeAnne. "And I like it all the more, knowing that you call it a library, too."

  The librarian smiled and patted DeAnne's hand. "Aren't you the sweet one." Then she bent over- not far, because she wasn't very tall- and soberly greeted Robbie and Elizabeth with a hand shake each. "When will you be a student here, young man?"

  "I start kindergarten next fall," said Robbie.

  "Oh, and I see you have been well taught," she said. "You said kindergarten and not kindy-garden."

  Robbie beamed.

  The librarian turned back to DeAnne. "Did you just stop by to visit? Or is there something I can help you with?"

  "I understand that the second-grade projects were displayed here."

  The librarian looked mournful. "We just barely took down the display over the weekend. I'm so sorry you missed it. We're so proud of our second graders."

  "It is rather remarkable, to have second- grade projects," said DeAnne. "I've actually never heard of such a thing before. I don't think we even had senior projects in high school when I was there."

  "I think it's because our school is only K through 2," said the librarian. "Dr. Mariner wanted our students to mark the children's departure from our school in a special way-something they would remember, perhaps, in time to come."

  "That's certainly the way my oldest boy responded to the assignment," said DeAnne. "Perhaps you noticed his project when it was on display."

  "Oh, I don't think I'd remember any one in particular, Mrs . ... um ... "

  "I'm DeAnne Fletcher."

  Suddenly the librarian's eyes grew wide, and she flashed her wonderful smile again. "Oh, you must be Stevie Fletcher's mother!"

  "I am," said DeAnne.

  "What a very special boy," said the librarian. "I do remember his project, in fact. It was a sculpture garden-an undersea environment, I believe. With an octopus and that clam with the starfish opening it-and I noticed that the shark had a tiny little fish that the shark was swallowing. A little gruesome, perhaps, but very creative. You must have been proud for your son to be given the first-place ribbon."

  "First place? Stevie told me the project got a C."

  "But how could that be possible? Dr. Mariner came here and judged them all herself, and before she had even seen the rest of the children's posters, she laid the blue ribbon down beside Stevie's project and said, `This will stay here until I find something that makes me take it away again.' And of course she never did, because he ended up receiving it. Isn't it just awful what those other children did? They were so jealous, I suppose, but still, I think it was churlish of them to moosh it up that way."

  So that part of Stevie's story was accurate. And the word moosh was apparently current enough in Steuben that a gracious, educated lady like this one could use it. "Yes, Stevie was rather disappointed, I think," said DeAnne.

  "He's such a quiet boy," said the librarian. "He spends every recess here, did you know? I think he must have read half the ... um, media ... in my little ... um, media center." She winked.

  "Every recess?" said DeAnne. "I know he loves reading, but I had hoped he would play with the other children."

  "I know," said the librarian. "I think it's better when children play together, too. But as long as he keeps to himself, better to have the company of a book than no company at all, don't you think?"

  "Oh, yes," said DeAnne. "Well, I didn't mean to trouble you. And I can't wait to tell Stevie's father about the blue ribbon. I wonder where it is!"

  "Well, of course it was given to Mrs. Jones to display in Stevie's classroom. They usually keep them there until the end of the year, and then send them home with the student who won."

  DeAnne made her polite good-byes and left, feeling much better. Except that Stevie hadn't told her the truth about his project. Was it possib le that he was still trying to make his parents feel bad about putting him in this school? Was it possible that he was refusing to let them know anything good about his experience there, so that they'd continue to feel guilty? That just didn't sound like Stevie, but what other explanation could there be? He must be so angry.

  For the first time DeAnne wondered if they shouldn't perhaps find a therapist who could talk to Stevie, who could help him find his way through this thicket of problems. Imaginary friends. And now lying. She called Step at work and he agreed not to be late tonight.

  None of Step's usual rides would be able to take him home today- not if he was leaving at five, because none of the programmers ever left until well after seven. So he hitched a ride with two of the phone girls, the ones who took orders for Eight Bits Inc. software on the 800 number. All the way home he kept thinking th
at there was something strange about the drive, and it wasn't because of the two girls chattering in the front seat or the fact that in the back of a Rabbit his knees were up around his ears. Not until they pulled up in front of his house and he realized that the lawn was overgrown and very badly in need of mowing did it occur to him what was so strange. It was daylight! In the two months that he'd been working at Eight Bits Inc., he had never once come home in daylight.

  He thanked the girls for the ride and came into the house. DeAnne was in the living room, playing the piano while Robbie sang and Elizabeth hooted and beat two rhythm sticks together. The song was "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam."

  "Somehow I never thought of this as the sort of song that needed a percussion section," said Step.

  "Daddy!" cried Robbie.

  "Robot!" answered Step. Robbie ran to him and Step tossed him in the air and caught him.

  "Daddy!" screamed Betsy.

  "Betsy Wetsy!" answered Step.

  "Someday you're going to smack their heads into the ceiling," said DeAnne.

  Step tossed Betsy into the air. Then, after catching her, he lifted her up and bumped her head against the ceiling. "Owie ow ow ow!" howled Betsy.

  "Don't be a poop, Betsy," said Step. "That didn't hurt at all, I was just teasing."

  "Owie ow!" Betsy reached for DeAnne.

  "What did I tell you?" said DeAnne.

  "Betsy's a poop!" shouted Robbie. "Betsy's a poop! You can bump me into the ceiling, Daddy!"

  "Better not," said Step. "Your head might cause structural damage." '

  "I don't mind!" insisted Robbie.

  "I can't believe you came home so early," said DeAnne.

  "I said I would, when you asked me to," said Step.

  "I never thought it would be a quarter after five," she said. "Or were you fired?"