Elementary, My Dear Watkins

by Mindy Starns Clark

  She just watched them for a few minutes until the one with the popcorn stood up and started to leave the room. It was a guy, about 16.

  “Are you going in the kitchen?” a girl’s voice asked. “Get me a soda, would you?”

  “Get your own soda, moron,” he replied, throwing a handful of popcorn at the girl’s hair.

  She sat up, angry, shaking the kernels out of her long blond locks.

  “Ethan!” she yelled. “You jerk!”

  Ethan. This was the right house. Alexa knew it in her very bones.

  Summoning all of her nerve, she went to the front door and knocked, so lightly at first that she was sure no one had heard it. She knocked again, louder this time, until the girl yelled, “Ethan, get the door, would you? You’re right there.”

  Alexa heard the click of several locks twisting, and then the heavy door swung open to reveal the boy. Through the window, he had looked kind of cute, but now, up close, she realized that there was something wrong with his face. Studying his features, she decided that one whole side sort of hung slack, not a lot, but enough to make his eye look droopy and his mouth a little crooked.

  Just like a person who’d had a stroke.

  “Yeah?” he said, not seeming at all surprised that there was a teenage stranger standing on his front step.

  “Ethan Finch?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “My name is Alexa. I think we need to talk.”

  He opened the door further, but as she started to step inside, the girl came running, blocking her way.

  “Don’t be stupid, Ethan. You don’t just let anybody in. Especially when Mom and Dad aren’t home.”

  The girl stood there next to the boy, and Alexa realized that they were about the same age. They were also the same size and height, and they looked a lot alike, though the girl didn’t have the droopy face like the boy did. She wondered if they were twins.

  “What do you want?” the girl asked, scowling.

  “Are you Emma?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I came to talk to you guys. I’m a patient of Dr. Stebbins.”

  She thought that might get a reaction out of them or something, but they didn’t even seem surprised. The girl just shook her head and said that they weren’t allowed to let anybody in when their parents weren’t home.

  “When do you think they’ll be back?” Alexa asked, wishing they could have this entire conversation without any adults present.

  “I don’t know,” the girl replied, shrugging. “A couple more hours, I guess. They went to a party.”

  Suddenly, another girl appeared in the doorway as well, obviously a younger sister. Ethan shooed her away, telling her to go back and watch the movie.

  “Maybe we could talk outside,” Alexa offered after the kid was gone. “Do your parents have a rule about that?”

  The two of them looked at each other and then back at her.

  “I guess not,” the girl said, shrugging.

  Together, they both came out and hovered on the front stoop. Feeling awkward, Alexa stepped back down to the walkway, facing them.

  “It’s kind of hard to explain why I’m here,” she said, wondering why she hadn’t thought about what she would say once she found herself in this hard-earned position. How could she put it? I’m looking for people like me, people who are also medical freaksters? She didn’t want to scare them off. “Just to make sure I’m at the right place, did you guys by any chance have a medical problem, in your brain?”

  “I did,” the guy answered. “Last year. I fell off my horse and busted an aneurysm.”

  “Was it in the circle of Willis?”

  “No, it was near the barn.”

  “In your brain, I mean,” Alexa said. “The circle of Willis.”

  Both kids just stared at her blankly.

  “Okay. You had a stroke, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Then, did you get an IV drip of a new drug, one that worked really well?”

  “Yeah. Fiber-something. It had side effects.”

  “Like what?”

  “It made me nauseous and kind of jittery.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Ethan,” Emma said, elbowing him in the ribs. “She’s talking about your ADHD.”

  “Oh, yeah, it cured my ADHD.”

  Alexa’s face lit up.

  “Mine too!” she cried. “How about you, Emma?”

  “I don’t have ADHD. Never did.” Alexa thought about the message that she had found, Mrs. Finch called about the scan on Emma. “But they thought I might have an aneurysm too,” the girl added, “just one that hadn’t busted yet. They made me get a brain scan. Our little sister too. Turns out, we were both fine. No problems at all.”

  “How’s your recovery been, Ethan?” Alexa asked. “Do you get physical therapy?”

  “Yeah, twice a week. Sometimes when my leg gets really tired I have to wear a brace on it or use a crutch. That helps.”

  “Do you go horseback riding?”

  He shook his head.

  “Dr. Stebbins said not for another month, not until after the big symphony thing.”

  “Symphony?” Alexa asked, her pulse surging. “What instrument do you play? Did it make you gifted too?”

  “Gifted?”

  “You know, music, art, all of that. The Fibrin-X made you really good at it now, right, even though you didn’t do any of that before?”

  “If he’s good at art or music, I’m a rocket scientist,” Emma said.

  “But what about the symphony? You said you had a symphony thing.”

  “Not me,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Dr. Stebbins.”

  Dr. Stebbins? Alexa considered for a moment and then spoke.

  “You mean the symposium?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Symphony, symposium, one of those.”

  Alexa nodded, a black sort of despair creeping heavily across her chest. This wasn’t what she had expected at all.

  Why didn’t the drug make them smart, like it did me? Why didn’t it make them talented?

  Alexa realized suddenly that she was done here.

  “Hey, listen,” she said, “would you guys mind not telling anybody that I came here tonight? I kind of snuck out.”

  “Sure,” the boy said.

  “Why?” asked the girl. “I mean, why’d you come?”

  How could she even reply? Because I needed to know that I’m not the only medical miracle on the planet? Because I wanted to find like minds? Because I wanted to form the Circle of Willis?

  “I guess ’cause I thought I was the only person, ever, who was cured of ADHD,” she said finally. “Then I found out today that there were others too. I just wanted…I just wanted to meet you. Sometimes I feel kind of isolated. Like a weirdo.”

  “Yeah, well, Ethan was already a weirdo, so there’s nothing new there!” the girl cackled, poking her brother again in the ribs. “At least he’s not hyper anymore, but he’s still dumb.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who made straight D’s in eighth grade, moron,” he said to his sister.

  “Yeah, just ’cause the teachers felt sorry for you so they threw in a few C’s, moron.”

  They told Alexa goodbye and then continued to bicker all the way back into the house. She waited until they had shut the door. Then she turned and started running.

  She ran all the way to the bus stop.

  By the time the next bus came, it was almost midnight, and for some reason she couldn’t stop shaking, even though it wasn’t really all that cold outside. When she made the transfer at the big station, there was a bus leaving for Newark, and impulsively she got on that one instead. Maybe she would feel better if she went home for a while—to her real home.

  It took another hour to get across the river, through Newark, and into her town. Despite how late it was, though, things were hopping. Almost as soon as she started walking down the main drag, she spotted a couple of the guys from the Grave Cave.

  “Well, if it isn’t the magi
cal disappearing act,” one of them called. “What happened to you, Trip?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, flashing her old smile. Alexa couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but she always had thought he was cute.

  “I mean, where you been? It’s like you went into the hospital and you never came back.”

  Alexa shrugged, trying to act cool about it.

  “I’m livin’ with a guardian now, but I been back, once or twice.”

  “Yeah, but not to stay.”

  She took a few steps toward him, one hand on her hip.

  “Why are you asking? You miss me?”

  The other guys burst out laughing, poking him and whistling.

  “We can use another runner, is all,” he said, his face flushing bright red. “Then again, we need a runner, not a tripper, Trip.”

  His lip curled in a sneer, and Alexa realized he was making fun of her. Running was what she’d been doing the night she tripped on the railroad tracks, hit the ground, and ruptured the aneurysm.

  Before she could think of a reply, someone else called her name from down the street. She turned to see three of her girls heading her way. They wouldn’t make fun of her. They were her friends.

  After a lot of squealing and hugging, the four girls linked arms and set off. They walked toward the end of the street to an old, abandoned factory that had once upon a time manufactured caskets and coffins—hence the nickname, the “Grave Cave.” The building was huge and cavernous, and even though there were “Condemned” signs all over it, kids were in there almost every night. Most went to deal or make or buy drugs or get high, but some of them, like Alexa, just went to hang out, shoot the breeze, and sometimes pick up a little extra cash as a runner. Before her accident, the going rate was fifty bucks to make deliveries to the corner and a hundred and fifty to go the four blocks over to Creston Street.

  Situated right along the old railroad yard, Creston Street was sort of the dividing line between the good part of town and the bad. That was as far as some of the rich people were willing to go to buy their drugs, since they didn’t want to risk taking their Corvettes and BMWs into the poorer areas. The night of her last delivery, Alexa had been told to look for an indigo blue Jaguar parked just across the tracks, near the rusted old caboose.

  She had spotted it and was almost to the car when she tripped on an uneven metal rail and fell. Next thing she knew, she was in a hospital with the world’s worst headache and an IV stuck in her arm, her right side completely useless and numb. Of course, nothing in her life had been the same since. All they kept telling her over the next few days as she began to recover was how lucky she was: lucky to have gotten to the hospital so fast, lucky to be given a newly-approved medication, lucky that the neurologist treating her was working with an expert in the field of stroke recovery, the man most responsible for the new medication, the great Dr. Stebbins himself.

  Yeah, they all thought she was lucky.

  “Yo, you seen your mom lately? She’s messed up, girlfriend.”

  “She’s always messed up,” Alexa replied nonchalantly, despite the shudder of fear that ran through her. “What’d she do now?”

  “I heard she ran out of veins so she started injecting into her eye. Like right in her eyeballs.”

  “Ewww,” the other girls squealed.

  That set them off, talking about all the gross places a person could use to get drugs directly into their system. Alexa was quiet, glad when they reached the Grave Cave and had to stop talking as they went inside.

  Even before she stepped into the building, Alexa could smell the familiar, acrid burning of pot, mixed with the stench of body odor and urine. They squeezed in through the busted doorway and made their way past the sleaziest part of the building, the area where there were always dark shapes on the floor. Some were kids who had passed out from drink or drugs, but most of them were just homeless people who were sleeping. No matter how many times Alexa walked through there, she always expected one of the lifeless forms to wake up, reach out a hand, and grab her by the ankles.

  Finally, the four girls reached the stairs without incident and went up to the second level, where the guys mostly worked the phones. If she held her nose, closed her eyes, and just listened, Alexa thought the place could be mistaken for any office, any business. They spoke of shipments and deliveries and profit margins. The only difference was, if the lookouts up on the roof pressed the buzzer, these guys could close up shop and be out of the building without a trace in less than a minute.

  “You girls wanna do some running?” one of the guys called out to them as they went past.

  “Not tonight, hon. We’re just going up top.”

  They took the stairs two more flights—past the guys with their test tubes and chemicals and hot plates—climbed out a huge, open window, and used the outside fire escape to reach the roof. The roof was where Alexa liked to be. Up here, nobody was allowed to get high because they had to keep their eyes peeled for the cops. Instead, they mostly sat around and watched the streets down below and passed the time together by talking. Alexa had a spot she liked to sit, leaning against an old exhaust chimney. But instead of watching for cops, she would tilt her head back to gaze up at the stars. She loved the stars.

  Of course, in the old days, she could never sit still for long. Usually, she’d get bored with the sky pretty soon and start throwing spit bombs at the other buildings or braiding somebody’s hair or making up jokes and songs about the teachers at school or doing whatever else passed the time.

  Now, after greeting more of her old friends, she claimed the familiar spot by the chimney, sat down, and looked up at the sky. She realized she couldn’t see nearly as many stars from here as she could at the old lady’s place. Here, there was so much light coming up from the city that it blotted out all but the brightest planets. She wondered why she never realized that before—and why she used to be willing to settle for so much less than what was really out there.

  Alexa sat for a long time, an hour or so, just listening to the conversations that swirled around her, contributing to the talk once in a while herself. Somehow, it all seemed so inane, so wasteful. Was this really how she used to spend most of her time? Sitting on the roof of a giant drug factory and hanging out with a bunch of losers?

  Slowly, she realized something, and with that knowledge came a strange lightness in the pit of her stomach. She really was lucky.

  Tripping on that train track and blowing the aneurysm in her brain was the single best thing that ever could have happened to her.

  Danny was up and dressed and ready for the day before Luc was even out of bed. Despite Danny’s proddings, however, the Frenchman refused to move at all, until finally Danny told him that if he hadn’t made it downstairs by the time they were finished with breakfast, they would be taking the car without him and Luc would just have get to GMM on his own.

  Mr. Bashiri was just stepping off the elevator into the lobby as Danny came down the stairs. He greeted the photographer, who was looking crisp and fresh in cotton khaki shirt and pants. As Danny locked the equipment into the car and they walked to the café together, Danny told him that Luc was running late and would be joining them later.

  Breakfast was a quick and tasty array of fresh fruit and pastries, eaten at an outdoor table in the early morning sunshine. Luc still hadn’t shown up by the time they were finished eating, so Danny took the wheel of the van himself, relieved to find that it wasn’t difficult to get the hang of driving in Zurich. Fortunately, he had paid enough attention on their previous maneuverings that he was able to find GMM’s headquarters without even needing to consult the directions. He parked in their private lot and they went inside to find that the place was already buzzing with activity and excitement.

  He realized that it must be this way every time GMM sent off a fresh batch of doctors to a foreign location. Tomorrow’s contingent was actually going to be big, with not just the doctors but also a number of nurses and aides and even a couple of
dentists—not to mention a certain pair of photographers. On top of that, this afternoon the GMM staffers would be packing the plane with tons of equipment—medical instruments and medicines and other supplies. Danny was looking forward to photographing that, or at least observing Mr. Bashiri as he photographed it. Now that Danny fully understood the man’s artistic intentions, he thought he could learn a lot by seeing how they were carried out.

  Danny carried their equipment into the warehouse area, where a number of people were busily moving among the supplies, checking off lists, and taking an inventory. With Danny’s help, Mr. Bashiri quietly went to work, assembling the cameras and then capturing the scene on film.

  “I had a thought,” Danny said to the photographer after a time, hoping it wouldn’t be too forward of him to make a suggestion.

  “Yes?”

  “How about a bird’s eye view from the top of that ladder, with a supertight ap and an extended shutter speed?”

  Mr. Bashiri considered his suggestion for a moment and then nodded, understanding that what Danny was suggesting would create an interesting perspective where all of the boxes would remain sharply in focus but the people would appear on the film as a bunch of blurs moving among them. It also helped that the boxes were gray and the people all wore blue GMM shorts—two colors that were in keeping with the theme of “coldness.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Bashiri said finally, adding some thoughts about the settings. “I like that idea very much.”

  Stifling a grin, Danny set up an unused ladder that had been propped against the wall, climbed up with the camera, a cable release, and a tabletop tripod, and went to work. He didn’t know if the pictures would come out quite like he expected, but he did know that he’d never had so much fun in his life—and that he was thankful to his very core for the opportunity to get a second chance.

  Alexa told her friends that she had to leave, and then she headed back down alone, this time using the fire escape all the way. It creaked and moaned as she went, but at least she didn’t have to walk through the first floor again. And except for a few broken steps, it was safe enough.

  Once on the ground, she dusted herself off, rearranged her backpack, and started walking toward her mom’s apartment. Probably she wouldn’t even say hello, but it was hard to be this close and not even peek inside. She’d be seeing her mom on Friday anyway, since a visitation weekend was coming up.