Mad Skills

by Greatshell, Walter

  “Let’s go,” she said, not trusting herself to explain.

  “How come?”

  “Because if we don’t, I’m gonna throw up.”

  “Whoa! We’re outta here.”

  Maddy had not been to a movie in over a year, but the general choices were exactly the same as she remembered: a big-budget fantasy flick, a CGI family movie, an action thriller, a romantic comedy for women, a raunchy comedy for men, and a cheesy horror film. Half the movies were in 3-D. None of them appealed to her.

  “I feel like I’ve seen all these movies a hundred times,” she said.

  “Come on, Debbie Downer. I think we both need a good laugh. My treat.” Stephanie bought two tickets to the raunchy comedy. Since it was a special occasion, she also insisted they splurge on snacks: a giant buttered popcorn, a king-size bar of chocolate, and two buckets of soda.

  “This is insane,” Maddy said. She was still nauseous from the pet store. “You know, there’s more salt and oil in this thing than in the whole Gulf of Mexico.”

  “At least it’s not real butter. I thought as a vegetarian you’d appreciate the lack of animal products.”

  “Oh, I do. I just also like my food to be, you know, food.”

  The theater was mostly empty, a dim and restful hideout from the bustling mall. Maddy was glad she had come—she desperately needed to clear her head. They chose their favorite seats in the far back, where they could munch and chat and make amusing comments about the movie.

  The lights went down, and a series of commercials came on. Though Maddy knew this was nothing unusual, she found it much more grating than ever before. Why the hell were there commercials in a movie theater? She didn’t pay for that. At least on TV you could mute the sound or change the channel. Movie commercials were acts of brute coercion. And the commercials themselves were so annoying, all aimed at male adolescents: caffeinated soft drinks, fast cars, antiperspirants. There was a long military recruiting film showing attractive people engaged in bloodless combat, a highly stylized montage of deadly machines and heroic deeds. It was blatant propaganda.

  Maddy understood that military recruitment was necessary. What she didn’t understand was why it was necessary to lie about it. Tell the truth: We Pay You To Shoot People And Maybe Get Shot. Human beings were violent by nature, especially teenage boys; most craved an excuse to kill and die for something. Clearly, the idea was to shield soft-hearted folks from the notion that the fundamental purpose of any soldier was to kill. Not disaster relief, not playing ball with Arab children, but killing. Even the most patriotic dad might try to talk his kid out of something like that. These commercials were for the parents.

  Then came the movie trailers—a string of cookie-cutter gutter comedies exactly like the one they were about to see. Maddy didn’t know if she could take it.

  Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Before the movie even began, there was a problem: no sound.

  “Oh, come on,” Stephanie groaned.

  “Typical,” Maddy said. As usual, nobody was making any effort to do anything.

  Stephanie yelled, “Sound!”

  The movie kept playing in silence. Maddy got up. “I’ll go tell them.”

  “Hang on a minute. I’m sure they’re dealing with it.”

  “The projectors are all automated. There’s probably no one up there.”

  Taking her drink, she walked up the aisle to the exit, sensing hopeful eyes watching her. They would sit there forever now that someone was handling things. Of course, the only usher was far at the end of the corridor, in the lobby. Unbelievable.

  Nearer at hand was an unmarked door with an electronic keypad, monitored by a surveillance camera. Hmm. Keeping her face down, Maddy slipped into the women’s room, grabbed a big wad of toilet paper, and soaked it with water. Leaving the restroom, she came around under the camera and did a fair imitation of a basketball layup, plastering the camera dome with wet toilet tissue. No one took any notice.

  Then she attacked the keypad. It was easy to see which four keys were smudged with finger grease, and she rapidly tried various permutations of those digits until the lock popped open. On the other side of the door was a short passage leading to a stairway, where she could hear the din of machinery. She cautiously climbed the stairs and peeped through a doorway at the top. It was the projection room. The sight was impressive: a long attic space lined on either side with roaring movie projectors, like cannons in a Spanish galleon—cannons of light. Each projector faced a tiny window overlooking a different theater. They were timed to operate with minimal supervision, a fact the projectionist obviously took full advantage of.

  The projector for her theater was last on the right. Its controls were so simple, Maddy realized she could fix it herself—it was just a matter of flipping a switch. She did so, listening to the movie’s eighties soundtrack kick in as she took a sip of her soda. On the wall next to her was the room’s temperature-control panel and a heavy-duty circuit breaker. The projector bulbs were very hot; without constant cooling, the room would quickly become an oven.

  Finishing her drink, Maddy opened the thermostat and unwired the temperature regulator. There was about an inch of slack, barely enough to poke the sensor bulb through her cup of ice and leave it hanging there. Immediately, she heard the big cooling plant shut down, cutting off the breeze from the vents. As an afterthought, she jammed open the main circuit breaker with the twisted cup lid. In the dead air, she could already feel a lot of heat starting to build. A trickle of meltwater ran down the HVAC circuit panel into the power coupling feeding all the projectors. The instant the cooling unit started up again, that water would act as a power conduit, creating a feedback loop that would short out both electrical systems.

  She returned downstairs, peeking to make sure the coast was clear. There was a commotion in the lobby, with Stephanie yelling at the center of it. Maddy knew she hadn’t been upstairs for more than a few minutes, but Stephanie must have gotten worried. That was okay—it was a good diversion. Maddy slipped out the exit and waited on a bench in front of the theater. Just in time, a bunch of mall security guys showed up. They spotted her right away.

  “Is your name Madeline Grant?”

  “Yeah.”

  The men relaxed. One of them raised his walkie-talkie. “Givens here. We found her. She’s right outside the theater.” Speaking to Maddy, he said, “You know, your friend is very worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “She says you disappeared on her.”

  Another man said, “She told us you may be delirious.”

  “I’m not delirious. I just needed a minute to think.”

  Now Stephanie appeared, yelling, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Where the hell were you?”

  “Right here.”

  “I have been freaking out looking for you! I called 911! I called your mom and dad! I didn’t know if you passed out and hit your head or been kidnapped or—”

  There was a resounding boom from somewhere deep in the building, and suddenly the power cut off. The mall went dim, lit only by skylights. The music died.

  The head of security, Givens, said, “What the hell just happened?”

  For a long fraction of a second, everything was dead quiet, the shoppers all frozen in their tracks. Then the other shoe fell: Battery-powered emergency lights winked to life, followed by the sprinkler system and fire alarm. As cold water rained down, people screamed in surprise, triggering a general panic.

  The security men shouted, “Out! Everybody out! Follow the lighted exit signs!”

  Maddy and Stephanie joined a mass of people heading down the fire stairs. Stephanie’s hair was plastered to her head, and she was hysterical, crying, “Oh my God, what is going on? I don’t even believe this!” She was so distracted she barely noticed as Maddy took a little side trip, ducking into the darkened pet center and opening all the kennels. The dogs automatically ran in the direction of light and people, got scooped up by friendly hands. Cats were another matter, defeat
ed by the sprinklers, but Maddy picked up as many wet kittens as she could carry and handed them off to kids in the crowd. The other beasts she left to their own devices.

  Stephanie never even realized she was gone, or wondered why she was breathing hard. They returned to the car and went home. As she dropped Maddy off, Stephanie looked at her old friend with an expression of horror and furious incomprehension. “What just happened back there?” she demanded. “What the fuck was that?”

  Maddy only shook her head. Truth was, she herself had no idea.

  Stephanie’s face collapsed. Voice quaking, she said, “I can’t do this. I just can’t do this.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Maddy got out of the car.

  “I can’t do this. I just can’t.”

  “Bye, Steph.”

  “Bye.”

  The car drove away.

  SIXTEEN

  JONAS AND LAKISHA

  MONDAY came quickly. Tuesday even quicker. Life in Special Needs was settling into a well-worn groove.

  As the week wore on, Maddy started remembering the kids. Not as a faceless group of walking disabilities but as individuals. It was a strange thing because they were so completely different from the people in her dreams that she hadn’t recognized them, assuming the dream entities to be inventions of her subconscious.

  But they were quite real … and she had loved them. Two of them in particular:

  Jonas and Lakisha had been her closest friends for what felt like a lifetime, a dreamlike eon that was really less than a year. They did everything together, creating whole worlds of mystery and adventure from within the confines of the school basement. The basement itself seemed a much different place then, not creepy or claustrophobic at all, but instead a land of possibility, full of interesting hideouts and forbidden curiosities—and warm oatmeal cookies. Maddy’s impressions from that time were nothing but pleasant, the swaddled pleasures of infancy.

  Lakisha’s favorite game had been dress-up: She loved digging through the Lost and Found bin, dressing herself and Maddy in the most outlandish costumes, then modeling the outfits for the rest of the class. It had seemed the height of sophistication at the time. Lakisha was beautiful. Lakisha was funny.

  Looking at her with new eyes, Maddy saw that “fashionable” Lakisha was a very damaged girl. She had multiple, profound learning disabilities … but also tremendous energy and need for attention. She could not sit still for more than a few seconds at a time and was forever disrupting the room with her playful, manic outbursts. Though basically gentle with others, she wore a protective helmet and mouth guard, so she wouldn’t hurt herself when she started slamming her own head against the wall.

  What disturbed Maddy the most was the realization that she was at least partly responsible for Lakisha’s frenzy.

  “She misses you,” said Miss Sally, cleaning paintbrushes. “She knows you’re avoiding her and doesn’t understand why you don’t like her anymore.”

  “I like her fine! I just can’t handle having her hanging on me every second. It’s too much.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “Her hanging on you all the time. I remember when it was just the opposite.”

  “That’s not fair. I’m not the same.”

  “But she is.”

  “How is that my fault?”

  “It’s not. But you can’t blame her for being hurt … or for acting out.”

  “Great. So what am I supposed to do, then?”

  “Miss Grant, you surprise me. And here I thought you were so smart.”

  While Lakisha wouldn’t leave her alone, Jonas kept his distance.

  In Maddy’s dream world, Jonas had been like a big brother to her: wise, protective, and infinitely kind. In memory after memory, his were the strong arms holding her up, his the kind hands guiding her useless ones. He was the one who lifted her in and out of her wheelchair; he was the one who pushed it. He sang for her and danced with her. And something else: He was the only one who dared step forward when Principal Batrachian took one of the kids into the changing closet—Miss Sally had to physically hold him down.

  But how much of that was real? What did it mean? Maddy didn’t know … and really didn’t want to know. None of it made sense anyway, good or bad. Jonas the Hero? Jonas the Brave? It all had to be a fantasy since Jonas was plainly a very shy retarded boy, grossly obese, reeking of urine, with caked spittle in the corners of his mouth. That was the only reality that mattered.

  I was one of them. I was one of them.

  However hard she tried, Maddy couldn’t escape that recurring thought. I was Special, too. Her eyes kept finding their way to the picture on the wall—that idiot grin. She wished she could tear it down, hide it, burn it. She didn’t want to be reminded that she had ever belonged here, that it was only by dint of extreme medical intervention that she wasn’t stuck that way for the rest of her life.

  The worst part of it, the really unbearable thing, was that some major part of her yearned to return to that state. Its simplicity beckoned her, bleeding through her consciousness until she could barely differentiate memories that took place before the carnival accident from those that happened after, as if her whole life prior to the operation had been spent in moronic bliss. The demarcation line was not the accident, not the brain damage itself, but the repair , suggesting that the difference between Normal Maddy and Brain-Dead Maddy was much less significant than the change effected by the operation … whatever Maddy that had spawned.

  IT was on Wednesday that everything finally came apart.

  Taking her place at the end of the lunch line, Maddy found herself surrounded by curious bystanders. It was a bunch of guys from the water-polo team, chlorinated jocks with green-tinged hair and bloodshot eyes. It wasn’t too long ago that she had idolized these guys, giggling with other girls about which one was the cutest. Now the thought embarrassed her. The boys conferred together in loud stage whispers, so that she heard mention of her name and “that guy who died.” Finally, one approached her.

  “Hey, you’re that chick.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You are. You’re that chick. The one who had the operation.”

  “Oh. Yeah … I guess.”

  “Awesome! Do you really have a computer chip implanted in your brain?”

  Another one interrupted, “Can we see the scar?”

  “Shut up, dude!” the first one said. “Can’t you see she’s a retard?”

  A third said, “Don’t say retard, man—it’s not cool. The word is mentally disabled.”

  “She ain’t retarded! Are you?”

  “Maybe I am,” Maddy replied.

  “No way!”

  The rudest one, a short, stocky boy, demanded, “How come you’re with the retard class? She’s retarded, I told you!”

  “You don’t have to be retarded to be in there,” said the taller kid. “Last year, I knew a kid whose big toenail got infected, and they put him in Special Ed until he could walk again.”

  “Bullshit, man.”

  “Yuh-huh—Wayne Drabinski.”

  “Wayne Drabinski—who the hell’s Wayne Drabinski?”

  “Just some retard.”

  Maddy erupted. “Hey! Could you guys please back off?”

  “Hey, whoa. I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

  “Beverly Hills.”

  “Seriously, what’s your name? Don’t pay any attention to these assholes.”

  Trying to cut him some slack—he couldn’t help being stupid—she sighed. “Maddy, okay?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Does it hurt to have wires stuck in your brain?”

  Another blurted, “What was the accident like? When that guy died?”

  Feeling her face getting hot, Maddy tried to ignore them. A lot of people were watching them. She could see Stephanie at the edge of the crowd. Why was the line moving so slowly?

  The first one said, “Blevin—Ben Blevin.”

  “
Yeah, Ben Blevin. Wasn’t he your stepbrother or something? I heard you were in the Tunnel of Love when he died. That must have been awesome.”

  “Shut up, man,” said someone farther back.

  “Hey, I’m just saying! Did you and him plan that? I mean, did you set it all up on purpose so you could get it on? Because that would be dope, seriously. I would pay to see that.”

  The other boys pretended to be shocked, saying, “Shut the fuck up, Eric!” But they didn’t mean it; this was a moment of over-the-top hilarity they would repeat again and again. Eric was their idol, and he ruled.

  Maddy turned and stepped near the one named Eric. The inner workings of his pea brain were scrolling across his forehead like a stock ticker.

  “Why are you trying so hard?” she said in a low voice.

  “Huh?”

  “What are you ashamed of? Is it because your friends would treat you differently if they knew the truth?”

  “What?”

  “Maybe they’ve already noticed how nervous you are in the locker room, so careful not to give yourself away.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Is that why you got into swimming? The Speedos and waxed chests?”

  The crowd tittered, and the boy lashed out. “Step back, bitch.”

  “Something happened, didn’t it, a long time ago? Something that made you feel different from the other boys?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Wait—don’t lose your place in line. Nobody’s judging you. You were a child; it was innocent curiosity.”

  “You’re the freak—”

  “That’s been your defense mechanism all these years, hasn’t it? Accusing others in order to shift attention from yourself? Hanging around people too dumb to see through the act. But it’s so obvious …”