“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
There were no sirens and no alarms, just the silent, spinning light of the ambulance somewhere miles away.
Test kept rolling her hat over in his hands. Under the telescopes of his glasses, his eyes were red and puffy.
“Did you call her parents yet?” I said. Part of me was convinced I was dreaming, that I found her and she never woke up. But then I’d catch myself and realize I wasn’t dreaming, but I couldn’t shake the fucked-up feeling that things were still wrong.
She was alive; she would stay alive.
So why didn’t things feel okay?
He nodded. “Twice. Once right after the police showed up and again when she woke up. They’ll be here soon. She’s being taken to Bannister and her parents’ll be here within the hour to get her things.”
“You ever have to make that kind of phone call before?” I wanted to tell him that I’ve been there when that phone call, that radio call, is made. I know how hard it is.
“No.”
Neither one of us said anything for what felt like a very long time.
“So what now?”
She was supposed to have been found, muddy and scared but otherwise whole. In the movies, this was where we were supposed to be celebrating. But she was still terrified and it still felt like I’d let someone down who was counting on me.
I would have taken on every bastard in the world wearing a WARMTH shirt over the look of hurt on that kid’s face when she saw me.
“Now?” He tossed the hat on the table and a thin cloud of dust puffed up into the shaft of lamplight angling in through the hall, a shaft made of dust and particles and time-eaten dead things. A shaft of light only visible because of decay. “Now we eat. Then we tell the kids.”
The first emergency vehicle to leave was the fire truck. They’d left early when there weren’t any fires they could see or fight. Then one of the cop cars left because there was no one to arrest.
The ambulance was the last to go.
After we’d all come spilling out of the woods in a frenzy of lights and shouting, the EMTs had taken her out of my arms. When they took her, her cold, stiff boots scraped against my hands and sent a bolt of pain rattling through my body like she was insisting I pay attention. And eventually they loaded her into the ambulance and bandaged my shredded-up hands. And eventually, after bandaging my hands, after she saw me, the ambulance drove away. It sank silent into the dusk, where, after a while, it got hard to distinguish the branches from the vehicle from the western sky because the last of the sun was so bright it made everything into a single brilliant mass.
I said, “She was my responsibility.” I wanted him to say it.
The actors playing the townspeople were so convincingly livid that it seemed even though they knew Boris Karloff would leave the set, remove the makeup, and walk into normal, human life, some part of their minds had chosen to forget it. Like everyone was so desperate to be human and to be together that they were willing to burn the actor to death.
And I thought, I get it.
I get what Charlie was going for. Even if he could be a bastard, he knew the power of tragedy.
“She was a lot of people’s responsibility,” he said sharply. Like there was room enough for both of us in that tiny office.
I said, “When are her parents coming?” and the words sounded like Charlie.
“They’ll be here. Soon. Sooner rather than later.”
“But when, exactly?” I asked. I wanted to plan accordingly. Even though she was alive, her parents still deserved a shot at me. If the look on that kid’s face told me anything, it was that the pain was only just starting.
“Listen, Moses, you know we aren’t going to keep the kids here any longer than we have to. We’re already in the process of calling parents and telling them their kids are coming home a few days early and why. They’ll be on the road first thing in the morning. But I want you in a cab tonight. The sooner the better.”
It was the opposite of getting punched in the stomach. It was like he reached through the fog and pulled my guts forward with both hands. I smiled at him with all the teeth I could muster.
“I just think I should talk to them.”
He stared into the still-swirling column of dusty lamplight before shaking his head. Then he turned his head toward me and said, “I’m giving you one chance to shut up.”
“What?”
“We had a camper almost die today. Sorry, no, we had a camper die today. And by the grace of something a hell of a lot holier than luck, she woke back up. What do you want me to say here, son?”
I couldn’t look him in his giant, bifocaled, magnified eyes when I said, “I want you to tell me when her parents will be here.”
“No.”
“Why not?” I said, somewhere between laughing and crying.
I focused on her parents, on how if I could just talk to them and tell them that I was responsible for their daughter, they would have somewhere to focus all of their hurt. They wouldn’t blame their kid for running out into the night, they’d fight the asshole who was supposed to keep her safe and be her friend.
“Because I know what you think and it doesn’t matter. Not right now, not in what this situation is.”
“Please.”
“Here’s what happened: she asked to spend the night in the infirmary, likely knowing full well that her cabin would be empty when she asked to be excused. That, or she came back and found it empty. Either way, an opportunity presented itself and she took it. Do you know why Lump took the opportunity to leave?”
“I don—”
“Because she was an eight-year-old doing what eight-year-olds do. She wasn’t thinking about who was in charge,” he said. For a moment, he just looked at me. “And then you knew she was out there. Right outside of these walls, and you spent hours looking for her. Instead of asking for help and talking to us. And now you’re going to try to make this about you and your little guilt complex. So what? I’m going to ask you again: what do you want?” He breathed out slow and hard through his nose. “Do you really think we didn’t do our homework on you? I have final say in who comes in from your program, which means I read everything I could on you. Not just the big flashy headlines, but every little offhanded mention that showed up online. I heard your side of it, and I know what happened with your cousin, and I’m not going to let you try to steer this mess today. End of story.”
Just focus on her parents.
Just focus on using the pain for something else.
My pulse was hammering in my temples.
“We snuck out.” I waited for his face to drop and the rage to wash over him but the anger—the pure, white fury—never came. And neither did the forgiveness. “Did you hear me? We snuck out. Out of the camp. We left when it was our responsibility to stay.”
I recognized the look that washed over his face. It was a fighting look. The one that always happened right before the judgment call. But there was something different too. Something I didn’t recognize.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I finally managed.
“Because I’m disappointed in you.”
I racked the words “I don’t care if you’re disappointed in me” from the language center of my brain; without thinking, I breathed enough air into my lungs to load them into my mouth; and when I went to pull the trigger on them, I couldn’t.
I wanted to say, “Who asked you to be disappointed? I didn’t ask you to give a shit about me.”
I itched at my chest, right over my heart, half expecting to find the Superman shirt I was always going to grow into.
He went on. “I’m disappointed that you are going to make this about you. Like that little pity monster in your guts needs anything more to jerk off to.”
I didn’t mean to say “Wow,” but I did anyway.
“Do you really think you and your friends are the first to have
snuck out of camp? Now you’re going to sit here, right in front of me, and try to make this about you?”
“Don’t justify what we did.”
“I’m not justifying anything.” He said it like I was being a stubborn asshole.
“She trusted me and tried to tell me and now—did you see her face? She’s hurt. Bad,” I said. I sounded like Charlie Baltimore. “If I can just talk to her parents, I can help.”
“That’s why I want you in that cab. I had a feeling you were planning something stupid.”
I was too busy trying not to throw up or disappear to say anything back.
More than just not recognizing the look he gave me, I didn’t recognize whatever it was that I was feeling. It was anger, but I didn’t know what it was directed at; it was hurt, but I didn’t know where the pain started or ended or ebbed or flowed; it was a feeling like being lost; like falling; like wanting to cry and not remembering how to.
I turned the volume up in my head as loud as it would go.
FOCUS ON HER PARENTS.
FOCUS ON THE HURT.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I shrugged because I couldn’t get words to come out of my chest.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself; this isn’t about you.”
“I— What?” Of all of the things I was used to hearing from adults and judges and preachers, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself” ranked at the bottom.
I blinked at him and said, “Um.”
He got up and poured himself a cup of coffee and, as he went to sit back down, he turned the TV off before flames reached the monster. He sat on the edge of the big desk and didn’t put any sugar or cream into his coffee.
“Where was I?” he asked. “Right. When this is over, I’m going to write you an honest report and show it to anyone who asks: that you’re stubborn, that you think you’re above the rules, that you aren’t a team player, that you’d rather fart around than be a productive Buddy, and, if they ask for something off the record, I’ll tell them that you’re a condescending little pecker-head. And that will be the entirety of my report.”
Please just focus on their hurt.
Fuck, please.
For Christ’s sake.
I wanted the TV back on with the black-and-white monsters. I tried to ask him to put it back on but nothing came out. Just silence. Eventually I cleared my throat and tried again. “Her parents are going to want to see me.”
The dark TV showed our reflections on the convex screen because even when the lights were out and the power was cut and all the world was dark, there was still movement in the blackness.
“Why?” he said.
“Because I found her. Because I was on Lump Detail. Because I was her friend. Because she tried to get me to find the—”
“They’re going to want a lot of things and they’re going to want to talk to a lot of people and eventually they might want to talk to you. But that doesn’t happen today.”
“She called me. Before she called nine-one-one, she called me.” I didn’t look him in the eye when I said it.
“You were her friend and she was in trouble,” he said, answering. “Why would she have called anyone else?”
Every time he tried to turn me away from her parents, every time he kept me from making the situation about myself, I felt like I was made of smoke. Like there wasn’t anything holding me together except a thin outline that somehow looked like me and sounded like me but was really just a shape waiting to dissipate into nothing. Like a dead bug just holding shape and waiting to dissolve into the light.
What would Charlie do?
What would Charlie have me do?
He sat on the edge of the desk and his hairy, bare knee kept bumping into me. I saw him lean forward and place a hand on my shoulder. But his hand didn’t go through me. It didn’t swim through the smoke of me and send me twirling into spirals that would break apart around the low hanging lights. His stupid, awkward hand and his weird, uncomfortable knee that was exposed by his weird, uncomfortable shorts, if nothing else, insisted that I was solid.
“Moses, you have to leave. You understand that, right? Please understand that.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I said, and before he could answer I said, “Where am I supposed to go?”
“You’ll go to the police station to help them understand what happened. It will just so happen to time out that you’ll miss her parents. They can come here and talk to me.”
He looked at me. At me, not through me. He could see me. “Moses, I can’t tell you that everything is okay and that there isn’t going to be a storm riding in on this. I don’t know who her parents are going to hold responsible. Me, for one; probably Matty; probably you; probably all of us. That’s just how this works: they choose who to blame and how to deal with it. It’s not up to me and it’s sure as hell not up to you. I’ll be sure to ask one of the lawyers that will be descending here in the next few weeks. I wish this had a different ending. I do. But you can’t fix this. There isn’t some magic set of words that makes this better. You stepping in front of the train doesn’t help anyone.” He paused like he was deciding on how to say his piece. “Except for yourself. And not in some enlightened, I-need-to-take-care-of-me kind of way. You self-destructing in front of that girl’s parents only helps you.”
I made myself think about Charlie. I pictured his head snapping back not-quite-immediately after the officer pulled the trigger on his service weapon. I thought about how he never told me his plans or let me in but how everyone in town rallied around the pain we caused.
But I thought about Lump too. I couldn’t help it. About how everything was different now.
About how, unlike Matty and Michael and the rest of the world, Lump was my promised end-of-the-world delivered for all the days thereafter. She was the famine that starved all of my hate and guilt. The flames that showed me that I was flammable.
How every time Test told me to shut up, the pain in my chest flared up and made me look into its depths.
The more I focused on Charlie, the more this strange other pain flared up. This alien feeling that I never experienced after Charlie.
This was grief—true, honest grief—and this was the opposite of mechanical. Where I felt anesthetized and robotic over Charlie—where it seemed like there had to be something broken inside of me because I never cried over him—with Lump, I felt it all.
The human need to just hurt.
The need to hurt for someone other than myself.
I felt myself stand up to leave. The cup of black coffee was still steaming and Test was still there, ready to talk or listen, but I felt myself moving toward the door. I realized that, even though the desk lamp was on directly over it, the Mexican jumping bean hadn’t moved once throughout our entire conversation.
As I left his office, I heard him say not to go far, that he was calling a cab for me.
FIFTY-TWO: WE, THE ANIMAL FOUR
I WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR, under the “Nakwatuk” sign. All we could do was wait.
The camp felt different—like every single person there had the same thought process going on. Like everyone was part of the same shitty dream. When Matty looked up and saw me, the same sort of delayed, faraway recognition from the bus fell over her face. “Moses,” she said. She was sitting on the stage; her face was puffy and Michael was holding her hand. Faisal walked out of the kitchen holding Styrofoam cups of coffee for them and his eyes were pink.
“Hi, guys.”
The cold wind outside ushered me in. Matty strode over to me, her gleaming eyes pinned to the floor, pulling Michael with her, and hugged me. Faisal set the coffees down and came over.
“Hey, man.” He didn’t ask if I was okay or how I was doing. “Water’s still hot in there; you want some coffee?”
I nodded and went into the depths of the kitchen to make a drink.
All of the rest of the campers had been rounded up and brought to the cafeteria, where the adults would explain
to them what had happened. They’d told us that the Buddies would be brought in later but that, in the interim, they wanted to minimize the overwhelming nature of the situation. We waited in the rec hall.
The four of us were sitting on the stage with our backs against the dirty curtain backdrop. My phone was plugged in next to me in case the cab company called, sucking in life from the current behind the wall.
“She didn’t have her coat on. Lump, I mean. It was wrapped around the deer. Deer’s fine.”
“She gave her coat to the deer?” Matty asked.
I answered her the only way I knew how: “They were burrowed up in this nook under a tree. Hypothermia’ll do that. It’s called paradoxical undressing. When hypothermia starts to set in, a lot of people get confused and start taking layers off. Either because of the hypothalamus failing or because after the muscles get exhausted they relax and release bursts of blood into all the extremities. The person thinks they’re overheating. But, then again, it was Lump. Maybe she’s just the kind of kid that would give her coat to a fawn. And hiding in the nook, that’s terminal burrowing. Sometimes it’s called hide-and-die syndrome.” I told myself to stop short of listing statistics for exposure deaths.
Michael squeezed Matty against his side and started chewing on the inside of his cheek. Faisal stared into his coffee.
“Do you know why I thought you recognized me?” I asked Matty. She leaned forward and looked past the wedge of curtain that had climbed up between us.
My hands were shaking and my pupils were huge.
“What?”
“On the bus. I thought you recognized me from somewhere else.”
“Oh.”
“Do you guys remember about a year ago when a couple of kids back home burned down a bowling alley?”
They looked at each other. They were tired and they were hurting but I needed them to listen just a few minutes longer. I needed my friends to listen.
“Okay. Do you remember when a couple of kids burned down a bowling alley with a bunch of gods on top of it?”
Unstoppable Moses Page 24
