Lost Boys

by Orson Scott Card

  I can't deal with this, she thought. This horrible house. The bugs in this place, the milk all over the floor, the cupboard that still smells like coffee after all these months, I hate this place.

  She struggled to her feet and used paper towels to wipe the milk off her legs and her bare feet, and then she went back to the linen closet in the hall and got out the old towels, which she then dropped onto the milk to soak it up. Then she laboriously squatted again to pick them up, dripping with milk. "Damn, damn, damn," she said.

  "And good morning to you," said Step. He stood in the kitchen doorway.

  "I dropped the milk," said DeAnne.

  "What a relief. I thought maybe you had poured it out. The world's largest bowl of Grape-Nuts Flakes."

  "I was going to have raisin bran this morning."

  "Well that explains everything."

  She hated it that he was joking when she felt so awful, but then he helped her stand up again, saying, "You shouldn't be doing that, Fish Lady" and she was able to sit down by the table and watch as he picked up the towels and rushed them into the laundry room. While he was gone, she dared to look back at the window, hoping that she had exaggerated the quantity of June bugs. She hadn't.

  Step came back, heading for the paper towels to finish wiping up the milk, when he finally noticed the window.

  "Oh," he said. "Now I know what you meant by damn damn damn."

  "Damn damn damn was for the milk and being pregnant," said DeAnne. "For the bugs in the window I screamed, only you must have been in the shower so you didn't hear me."

  "Too bad, it must have been a doozie." Step leaned over the sink to look closely at the bugs. "How did they get in there?"

  "I don't know," said DeAnne. "Maybe some bug entrepreneur sold tickets." He laughed, and she laughed too, though it wasn't that funny.

  "They're all dead," said Step. "Not one of them even twitching. Weird, isn't it? Like all the June bugs who knew their number was up came here last night to die."

  "So we have the world's largest bug collection, only it's all one species."

  "Well," said Step, "good thing we woke up early today. This roll of paper towels is nearly out, do we have any more?"

  "Yes, but we still ha ve to speak with Stevie," said DeAnne. "I want it to be when you're still here. I can mop the floor later."

  "It'll only take me a minute to finish wiping it up," said Step.

  "You can't just mop up milk," said DeAnne. "I have to scrub the floor."

  "Pregnant?"

  "I've done it before, you know," she said. "That's what Bendectin is for. To allow pregnant women to keep scrubbing floors while their men watch mud-wrestling on ESPN."

  He looked at her, his eyes narrowed in a mockery of a glare. "Feminist bitch," he said.

  She pretended to glare back. "Male chauvinist pig."

  "Let me guess," he said, looking at the window again. "You don't want these guys to be up here all day."

  "It's more important to talk to Stevie."

  "He's not in here yet." Step went to the laundry room and got out a green plastic garbage bag. "This time it's your turn to hold the bag," he said.

  "Oh, Step," she said, shuddering.

  "It's either that or you climb up on the counter to open the window."

  "Can't you do it outside?" asked DeAnne. It made her sick to think of those bugs inside her kitchen.

  "I don't have a ladder," he said, "and I don't want to fuss with unscrewing the whole screen when I can just slide this window up. It's not like I have time for a half- hour job this morning."

  "I can call Bappy," said DeAnne.

  "And have him spray again?" asked Step. "I can do it, and I don't like Bappy doing jobs that I can do. That we can do, if you'll just help me."

  She was already up. Step had anchored the bottom corners of the bag on the windowsill using the big red salt and pepper shakers from beside the stove. "Don't use those," she said. "If they get bugs all over them I could never stand to use them again."

  "Well, unless you have four hands, Fish Lady, we've got to anchor them with something."

  She squatted awkwardly to reach inside the cupboard under the sink and came up with two large wrapped bars of hand soap.

  "Excellent work, my beloved assistant," he said. "That's what I keep you around for, your extraordinary resourcefulness."

  Now, with the bottom corners anchored, DeAnne held the bag open against the window as Step slowly opened it. The bug bodies rattled out of the bottom of the window, tumbling into the bag like popcorn. The sound of it, the vibration of the bag, knowing what was falling into it, it was all too much for DeAnne. A

  bug- loathing instinct far deeper and more powerful than her common sense took over, and for a moment she lost control. She moaned, her body was racked with a huge, irresistible shudder, and she let go of the bag.

  At once the top of the bag dropped down below the opening in the window and the bugs started spilling out on top of the bag instead of inside it. "Shit!" said Step. "Can't you-"

  He didn't finish the sentence, as he reached down and lifted up the corners of the bag again, so the bugs went back to falling inside it. Of course, the ones that had already spilled onto the outside of the bag now slipped off onto the counter and into the sink and onto the floor, still damp with spilled milk.

  "Can't you do anything right," said DeAnne, finishing his sentence for him.

  "That's not what I was going to say," said Step.

  "Yes it was," said DeAnne.

  "I was going to say can't you at least hold it open again, and then I realized that you couldn't, and so I did it.

  Don't put words in my mouth, especially when they're mean and nasty words that I didn't even think of saying."

  "Now you're supplying the mean and nasty words just fine by yourself," she said.

  "Just get out of the kitchen until I get this cleaned up, will you?" said Step. "Do you think 1 enjoy handling dead June bugs? Do you think it makes it any easier to have you standing there not helping at all and trying to pick a fight with me in the meantime?"

  Struggling against tears of anger, biting off the retorts she thought of, DeAnne fled the kitchen. Had any of the bugs touched her hands? She rushed into the kids' bathroom and washed with Lava soap, gritty and rough, trying to get them clean. Only it wasn't bug-touches she was washing away, it was the pointless argument.

  She rinsed and dried her hands and then went in to waken Stevie. During the school year she had started the custom of waking him by rubbing his back as he lay asleep. Usually at some point his eyes would suddenly fly open and he'd say, "Morning." Today, though, his eyes stayed closed and he murmured, "No school."

  "I know there's no school, honey," she said softly. "But your father and I want to talk to you about something this morning before he goes to work."

  Now his eyes flew open. "OK," he said.

  She knew now that he would quietly climb down from the upper bunk and get dressed without waking Robbie. She headed back for the kitchen.

  Step was using a paper towel to pick up dead bug bodies from the kitchen counter and put them in the garbage bag. In the meantime, water was running in the sink and the disposal was on. She imagined him hosing dead bugs into the drain and then the garbage disposal blades chopping them into tiny bits. It made her shudder again, and she felt her empty stomach churn with nausea. "Thank you for taking care of that," she said.

  "You might want to wipe off the milk carton and put it back in the fridge," he said coldly.

  Well, she deserved to have him speak coldly to her. She had let her revulsion about the bugs turn into sniping at him, and he hadn't deserved it. Still, she had to eat something to settle her stomach, and she couldn't eat it in the kitchen, not till all the bugs were gone. "Step, I'm sorry," she said.

  "Fine," he said.

  She knew that when he was angry with her, it was better not to try to force a conversation. Better to wait, to let him calm down, and then he'd be gentle with her and
they'd apologize to each other and he'd insist it was his fault and that would be fine. But sometimes she just couldn't stand to do it that way because while he needed to be alone after a quarrel, she couldn't bear to be alone, she felt the separation as sharply as if he had struck her and so she had to speak to him, had to explain herself, had to get his reassurance that he didn't hate her, that he still loved her and wanted her with him. It was completely irrational, she knew. But then so was his need to be alone after a fight.

  "Step, I'm sorry," she said.

  "And I said fine." His tone said it was not fine.

  "I mean I'm sorry but I have to say this."

  "So say it," he said impatiently, not looking at her.

  "I need you to wash the counter. Everywhere that the bugs touched. I know it makes no sense at all but I don't think I can stand to do anything in the kitchen today if you don't wash it for me first. Please."

  "I was already planning on it," said Step. He tossed his paper towel into the bag after the last June bug corpse. Then he gathered the top of the bag together, held it up in one hand, and spun the bag so that there was a hard twist right under his hand. He pulled the plastic tie tight around the twist. He was so deft about it, thought DeAnne. As if he had everything down to a science. As if his hands already knew all the secrets about how to do things, to make things happen. She wondered how it felt, to know that you could just think of doing something and your hands would know how to do it.

  He carried the garbage bag outside, and while he was gone she dared to go into the kitchen and it wasn't hard after all, as long as she didn't go near the sink, didn't go near the window which was still partly open. She could hear him outside, lifting the lid of the garbage can to put the bag inside. She wiped down the milk bottle and got out a bowl and a spoon and poured the raisin bran and the milk and put the milk back into the fridge and then she knew that she couldn't stay in the kitchen another minute. She fled into the family room.

  Stevie was there, playing a computer game. It must be the new one Step bought for Stevie's birthday, she thought, even though it cost fifty dollars that they could ill afford. There was a pirate ship in full sail, and not far off there was another ship, and they were maneuvering to fire broadsides at each other. It reminded her of the movie Captain Blood, which she had never seen before she got married, but Step had seen it as a boy, he had read the book and loved it, and when it came on cable he had taped it and made the whole family watch and it was a good movie, wonderful dumb fun. Errol Flynn, a real swashbuckler. This game was like that. She ate spoonfuls of cereal that got steadily soggier, and she watched from the couc h as Stevie played.

  "Come on," Stevie said softly. "You can do it."

  He spoke with an intensity DeAnne hadn't heard from him since they moved here.

  "Come on, Roddy."

  Had he even named the tiny people in the computer games?

  "That's right, help him out, Scotty. You can do it."

  He was pretending that his imaginary friends were part of the computer game. Well, that's all right, thought DeAnne. At least in the computer game they were really up there on the screen, you could see them. Maybe by playing this Lode Runner game Stevie would move his imaginary friends out of the back yard and up on the screen, where they'd just go away whenever he switched the computer off. Maybe this was a problem that would heal itself and they wouldn't have to take him to a psychiatrist after all, or at least maybe they wouldn't have to take him for very long.

  "Hurry up, Jack! Roddy's in trouble and Scotty can't-that's it! Smooth! Got him!"

  And with that the two ships swept each other with broadsides and then grappling hooks flew through the air. DeAnne was very impressed. It was almost like a movie, there was so much realistic movement on the screen. Not so ... so limited-seeming, like all the other computer games she'd seen. Like Hacker Snack, for that matter. If this was the competition, Step was going to have to do some superb programming to match it.

  "Well if you'd get into it instead of just standing there, David, you'd have more fun," said Stevie.

  Her heart chilled. He was talking to the computer figures as if they were alive. As if they could hear him.

  Not just the "come on, come on" stuff that people said while watching football or basketball games on TV, but a full conversation, as if the screen were talking back. Stevie wasn't getting any better, and the computer game wasn't any help.

  She thought back over the names. The regulars, Jack and Scotty, and the new one he had mentioned yesterday, David, and now a fourth. Roddy. It was getting worse.

  She could hear Step turning off the water in the kitchen and she was finished with the raisin bran and it was almost time for Step to leave for work. "Stevie, maybe you better pause the game for a minute so your Dad and I can..."

  Before she finished the sentence, Stevie had reached behind the Atari and switched it off. Just like that.

  "Honey, you could have saved your game," she said. "You didn't have to switch it off."

  "It's fine," he said.

  Step came into the family room. "Hi, Stevie," he said. "Sorry you had to get up early on your first day of summer, but your Mom and I wanted to tell you what's going to happen today."

  Stevie waited. Not even curious, it seemed.

  Step looked at DeAnne.

  Oh, is it suddenly my turn? Well, she supposed that was fair. "Stevie, we've been worried about you ever since we got to Steuben. You've been so sad and quiet all the time."

  "I'm OK," he said.

  "The problems in school that we didn't even know about-the Stevie that we knew last fall in Vigor would have told us if a teacher was acting like Mrs. Jones did."

  "She's gone," he said.

  "We know she's gone," said DeAnne. She could hear herself starting to sound impatient. It was so hard dealing with Stevie, with the way he deflected questions. "But even after she left, you didn't seem to get any happier."

  "I'm fine," said Stevie.

  Step came to her rescue, for the moment at least. "It's not just the way you've become so sad and quiet, Door Man. It's the way you don't play with Robbie and Betsy anymore."

  Stevie looked down at his hands.

  "And your friends," said Step. "It worries us that you play all the time with imaginary friends."

  Stevie seemed to bristle.

  "Don't get mad at me, Stevie, help me here," said Step. "You've been talking about Jack and Scotty for months, and yet when we watch you playing, there's nobody there."

  "I'm not lying," said Stevie.

  "Well what are we to think, honey?" asked DeAnne.

  "I never lie," said Stevie.

  "We're not saying that you're lying," said Step. "This isn't about lying. It isn't about right and wrong or anything like that. We just want to take you to a doctor."

  "You think I'm crazy," said Stevie. He seemed even angrier, but he wasn't looking at either of them. He was looking into the gap between them.

  "Stevie, no way," said Step. "We do not think you're crazy. We just think you're having a hard time dealing with things and we want you to get help from somebody who knows about hard times. An expert. A doctor."

  Stevie said nothing.

  "Her name is Dr. Weeks," said DeAnne. "Her son is a member of the ward, so she's not even a stranger, really."

  "She's not a Mormon herself, though," Step said.

  "That's right," said DeAnne. "But your father has met her and she's a really nice lady. She'll just want you to talk to her. Nothing more. Can you do that?"

  Stevie nodded.

  "Will you speak honestly and openly to her?" DeAnne asked.

  Now his angry glare was turned directly on her. "I always tell the truth," he said.

  "I know," said DeAnne. "I didn't mean that I thought you'd lie, I just want you to talk to her. To tell her what's happening in your life. How things seem to you. You don't talk very much to your father and me, so we thought maybe somebody else, you could talk to somebody else, outside the family.
"

  Stevie just sat there, looking into the space between them again.

  "Can I come home sometimes?" he asked.

  "Oh, Stevie, it's not like that! I'm just going to take you for a ten o'clock appointment. You'll go in and meet her and talk to her and then we'll come home. It's just once a week, and you won't even be there a whole hour.

  We wouldn't send you away from home, Stevie!"

  Because Step wasn't pregnant he was able to get off the couch and kneel beside Stevie and put his arm around the boy For once, Stevie responded, turning his face toward his father's shoulder.

  "Stevie," said Step. "Stephen, my son, you are the brightest star in the darkest night, do you think we'd ever ever let you go? You belong with us until you want to go, and I hope that doesn't happen until you're old enough to go on a mission and then get married. Years from now. We will never send you away, no matter what."

  But you mustn't say that, thought DeAnne. What if he needed to be hospitalized? What then? That would make a liar out of you, Step. Unless you really mean it, and even if he needed treatment like that you wouldn't let him go. Some love that would be!

  Then she thought, I wouldn't let him go, either.

  "Stevie, if you tell us you won't go to this doctor," said Step, "then we won't make you go. It's up to you.

  We don't think you're crazy or anything like that, but we think you're having a hard time and we think that maybe Dr. Weeks can help make things better for you, help you find a way to solve things for yourself. That's all. We'd really like you to try, but if you say no, we won't make you go.„

  How can you say that! cried DeAnne silently. Leaving it up to him-that's like asking a little kid whether he wants his tetanus booster! What if Stevie says no, what then, Step, what about your promise to me that you'd take him?

  "I don't want to," said Stevie.

  And there it was. Thanks a lot, Step!

  But Stevie hadn't reached his decision yet. "Can she really help people solve hard problems?" he asked.

  "Sometimes," said Step.

  "Then I'll go," said Stevie. He didn't seem angry anymore.

  "Thanks, Door Man," said Step. "And if it doesn't work out, or if you don't like her, then we won't make you go to her anymore, OK? This isn't like school, there isn't a law that says you have to go. Got it?"