Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  Peter laughed. Unlike me, Peter, who was in the second grade at my old elementary school, laughed a lot.

  “We don’t want to embarrass you, Elizabeth,” said Stephen. “We’re just trying to be part of your life.”

  “Why?” I said. “Even I don’t want to be part of my life.”

  My mother looked at Stephen with that look. You know the look. I was one step away from another talk with the nice psychologist, when my brother flew to my rescue.

  “We went into space today,” said Peter.

  “Was it exciting?” said my mother.

  “Not really, until we almost ran out of fuel and started falling back to Earth. The lights flicked on and off and some kids started shouting until Mrs. Swinton just happened to remember to fire up the booster rockets.”

  “Thank goodness for Mrs. Swinton,” said Stephen.

  “She sure saved the day,” said Peter, giving me a glance to let me know who was really being saved. “If she can flick the lights fast enough, next week we’re landing on the moon.”

  “That sounds like fun,” I said. “I could use a few weeks on the moon myself. Can I go with?”

  “You have to bring your own lunch,” said Peter. “Moon pies.”

  “Yum,” I said.

  “And Mrs. Swinton told us we need to bring moon boots.”

  “What’s a moon boot?” I asked.

  “I think it’s just a sneaker with duct tape all around it.”

  “Stylish,” I said.

  “I’ll ask for you, Lizzie,” said Peter, “but there might not be enough seats. And with you on board, we would need more fuel. Mrs. Swinton is a little crazy about the fuel.”

  I glanced up to see my mother smiling at me, as if I had just had a breakthrough. Peter sat back with a smirk like he had arranged it all, which he had. He was a sharp little weasel, my brother.

  Mom remarried two years after the divorce. Two years of it just being her and me. When Stephen appeared, I didn’t get why we needed this new guy around. I even insisted—with a series of endless arguments that my mom and Stephen still shake their heads about—that I retain my original last name. I don’t remember why I was fighting so hard, but eventually I got my way.

  Since then, to be honest, I hadn’t been so nice to Stephen. At first it was to punish him for coming between me and my mom, and then later it was just out of habit. I even called him Stephen so I wouldn’t have to call him Dad. But there was no question that the greatest thing Stephen ever had done, or could do, for me was to give me Peter.

  For the rest of dinner, as mom talked about this and that, and Peter laughed, and Stephen droned on about something boring that happened at work, we were almost like a happy family, the three Scalis sitting around the table, tolerating the Webster in their midst.

  “More cake?” said my mother.

  “Can’t,” I said. “Have to go.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’m tutoring some kid in math.”

  “Good for you, Elizabeth,” said my mother. “Who are you tutoring?”

  “No one.” I stood, grabbed my plate, and took it to the sink. “Bye.”

  “Sweetie?”

  “It’s just some guy who asked for help with linear equations.”

  “Yes. But which guy?”

  “You don’t know him. Henry Harrison.”

  “The swimmer?” said Stephen, suddenly alert.

  “That’s the one.”

  “There was a front-page article on him in the sports section. He won his age group in the state. They say he’s a potential Olympian.”

  “So what?” I said. “If there’s anything I care less about than sports I haven’t found it yet.”

  “What about patents?” asked Stephen, a patent lawyer to his bones.

  “A close second.” A patent is like this little piece of paper that lets you build things but that keeps other people from building the same—Sorry, I have to stop. If I keep explaining this right now I’ll fall into the most boring coma of all time. “See you,” I said.

  “You want a ride?” Stephen asked hopefully, as if he was anxious to meet the swimming hero. How embarrassing would that be?

  “No,” I said, “absolutely not.”

  “Elizabeth?” said my mother.

  “I’ve been walking alone to my friends’ houses since I was nine,” I said. “This is no different.” Before either of them could say anything more I was out of the kitchen and reaching for my coat.

  If I had known then what was in store for me, I wouldn’t have been in such a rush. I might have bagged on Henry Harrison completely and stayed at home. I would have planned our trip to the moon with Petey or done homework in the kitchen while my mother graded papers. It would have been a night like every other night—calm, and quiet, and eye-crossingly dull.

  Instead, a few minutes later I was hurrying along the sidewalk to Henry Harrison’s house.

  Henry Harrison’s house always gave me the creeps—even before Henry Harrison lived in it.

  It was a stone mansion built on top of a hill a hundred or so years ago. By the time I was old enough to first notice it, the house was deserted and falling apart. A pillar was slanted, the roof was collapsing, vines were crawling everywhere.

  And there were stories about it—of a teen gone missing on Halloween night, of shifting lights and eerie howls coming from the ruin. But the house didn’t need stories to make it frightening. There was just something sour about it.

  And then, for some cracked reason, the Harrisons came along and bought the place.

  They tried to spiff it up. The pillar was straightened, the roof was fixed, vines were chopped down. But the gloomy never went away. The pillars still looked like huge, gaping front teeth, and the shuttered windows still looked like evil eyes. At night, dimly lit, the house was the head of a giant monster with the body buried deep beneath the ground.

  The sight of the monster’s head up on that hill convinced me again that I should have said no when Henry Harrison asked for math help. I actually thought I had said no. I hugged myself in the chilly fall night and headed up the long driveway. I told myself I was just there to make a quick twenty-five bucks and then run right on home.

  I banged on the front door. A dog barked. There were no lights on inside. I hoped for a second that no one was inside. But then the door opened with a creak, and there he was, Henry Harrison, in jeans and stockinged feet. A little dog yapped noisily.

  “You came,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you’d show.”

  “You didn’t give me much choice.”

  He pushed away the dog with his foot. “Don’t mind Perky. He’s still just a pup.”

  “Perky?”

  “It seemed to fit.”

  “I hate perk.” The dog kept jumping and yelping. “Maybe you could give it a pill.”

  “Let’s work in the kitchen. My folks are out.”

  “Oh,” I said. The house was dark, the parents were out, the dog was yelping. This didn’t seem right. Not at all. “My stepfather’s picking me up when we’re finished. He’s waiting for my call.”

  “Good,” he said. “I thought we could work on some word problems.”

  We set out his textbook and some writing pads on a wooden table in the kitchen, and got right to it. The word problems from the first few chapters were easy as pi. I taught him how to create equations from the stories, and then how to the flip the equations to make them easier to graph. I moved baby step by baby step so his chlorine-filled brain could keep up.

  Perky lay on the floor beneath the table, whimpering. Henry asked a few questions here and there, but they were less about the problems and more about me, which was sort of annoying. And then every once in a while, in the middle of one of my explanations, he would abruptly get up from the kitchen table and run upstairs to check on something.

  He was so distracted that I got distracted and I started making mistakes. I actually had to scratch out wrong figures on the paper, which bugged me. I was
working in pen, of course—I mean, it was only math.

  “I thought you were supposed to be a genius,” he said.

  “Pay attention. Shirley has a plant a half a foot tall that grows an inch each month and she wants to know how big it will be after a year and a half. Now let’s build the equation.”

  “What kind of plant is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to Shirley.”

  “But it doesn’t matter to us,” I said. “It’s just a stupid plant.”

  “Is it pretty? Does it have flowers?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “That’s just sad, Webster. Everyone likes flowers. What do you do for fun?”

  “Math.”

  “Do you ever just hang out, play video games, throw balls against the wall?”

  “No. Can we get back to work?”

  “I’m just trying to get to know you a bit. You know, to help the learning process.”

  “What helps the learning process is doing the learning.”

  “You’re good at this,” he said, “because you figured out my problem right there.”

  “Can we just do this equation?”

  “No need. I think I get it now.”

  I looked up at him. “I think you got it from the start.”

  “It’s only linear equations, Webster. It’s not rocket science.”

  “It is if you want the rocket to go up,” I said before slowly closing the book. I wasn’t even angry at him, I was angry at myself for getting roped into this. How could I have expected anything else? “So this was all one big joke, right?” I said as coolly as I could. “You’re planning to haze me like you hazed Grimes.”

  “Who?”

  “The kid you stuck in the garbage can.”

  “Oh, him, yeah,” said Henry. “I didn’t do that, but I didn’t stop it, which is just as bad.”

  “So…what? Is something going on upstairs? Are you setting up a prank for the math geek so all your friends will have something to snicker about tomorrow? I’m sorry I won’t be able to provide hours of entertainment. I’ll take my twenty-five dollars now.”

  I thought he’d be mad, or embarrassed, or even break out in laughter. But what he did instead was smile sort of sadly.

  “You’ll get your money,” he said. “I promise. And you’re not geeky, or at least not as geeky as I thought you’d be. And I wasn’t punking you. I asked you here because I need your help.”

  “But not in math.”

  “No, I’ve had that pretty much down since second grade. But there is something upstairs I need to show you.”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started to unlock the screen. “I’m going home.”

  “Please don’t,” he said. “It’s not anything like you think, I promise. I really need your help, Webster. Really. If there was any other way, I’d take it, but there isn’t. Help me, please.”

  Part of my brain told me to get out of there as quickly as possible. But I didn’t listen to that part of my brain, the sensible, responsible part that sounded so much like the voice of my mother. Instead I put away the phone.

  What was it that made me stay? Had I somehow caught Natalie’s ambition of being friends with the popular swimming star like you catch the flu in homeroom? I don’t think so. I think it was something else, something even more troubling.

  I could tell by his sad smile that Henry wasn’t trying to play a trick on me. He seemed just then like nothing more than a scared kid who needed help. My help. And here’s the thing. In a way that I couldn’t explain, just his asking for help made me feel responsible for him. Talk about an annoying thing to learn about yourself. It would have been so much easier to turn my back and walk away, but instead I was face-to-face with a truth as undeniable as a wart: He needed my help, and because of that I felt like I had no choice but to give it.

  “Okay,” I said. “But no funny stuff.”

  “There won’t be any funny stuff, I promise,” he said. “At least not from me.”

  Henry led me out of the kitchen and through a path of shadows to the dark center hall. He turned on the light and the stairwell appeared, all twists and turns, rising at a crooked angle. With Perky yapping at my heels, I followed Henry up the stairs, but when we reached the top he flicked the light off again.

  “I know electricity is expensive,” I said, “but really?”

  “She likes the dark.”

  “Who, Perky?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Henry as he led me through the unlit hallway. “Perky’s a boy. This is my room.”

  He switched the light on in his bedroom. The room was lined with rocket ships and trophies. There was a drum set in a corner, a blue easy chair with a lamp for reading, and a carpet with a map of the solar system.

  “Sweet rug,” I said.

  “Go ahead and take the chair.”

  I waited for a moment to see the trick he was about to play, but nothing happened, so I lowered myself into the chair. Perky yapped once and jumped onto the bed. Henry turned out the light again. I could just make out his shadow as he slid onto the bed next to the dog.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Now we wait.”

  “In the dark?”

  “Don’t fall asleep.”

  “Don’t worry. What are we waiting for?”

  “You’ll see,” said Henry. “So, Webster, of all subjects, why math?”

  “I don’t know. It just makes sense to me. And I like that you can’t fake math.”

  “Unlike English, right? I can make up anything I want in English class and Mrs. Benjamin will say, ‘Good point, Henry,’ like I just discovered a cure for cancer.”

  I laughed. “With math there’s always a right answer and a right way to get there. And somehow, in the middle of working through a problem or a proof, I feel like—I don’t know—myself. Does that make sense?”

  “I suppose so, sure,” he said. “And you’re good at it.”

  “That helps.”

  “But did you ever wish you weren’t?”

  “Weren’t what?”

  “Good at math.”

  “Why would I ever wish that?”

  “The pressure, maybe? Worrying about the moment you’ll run up against someone who’s better at math than you? All I know is the older I get, the more they expect from me. I was named after my mother’s grandfather. He was a Tuskegee Airman who was shot down over Berlin.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “A real-life hero. That’s a lot to live up to. Maybe too much. Sometimes I think I’d just as soon stay this age forever. It’s not like the adults are having so much fun. Would you want to trade places with your parents?”

  “No way.”

  “See what I mean? Thirteen forever, that’s my motto. Although it changes every year. Last year it was twelve forever. There might be a flaw in my motto system.”

  “I think to be trapped like this forever would be a crime.”

  “What’s wrong with the way you are now?”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  “No really, what?”

  I paused for a moment. I was blabbing to Henry in a way I hadn’t blabbed to anyone else in a long time, not even Natalie. Maybe it was because he was a total stranger, or maybe it was because of the darkness, or maybe it was because he actually seemed interested. But the peculiar Henry Harrison was way different than I had imagined him to be. I had misjudged him, which was funny because I hadn’t thought I had judged him at all.

  “It’s just like I’m in the wrong place all the time,” I said. “That I’m saying the wrong thing all the time. That I’m thinking the wrong thing all the time.”

  “Join the club, Webster. Everyone feels like that.”

  “You too?”

  He thought for a moment and then laughed. “Nah. I’ve always fit in. That’s my trouble, I guess.”

  “It doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “Yeah, and everybody smiling in the hallway
is really so wonderfully happy all the—” He stopped talking for a moment and then said, “Uh-oh.”

  “Henry?”

  “Shhh.”

  I shut right up and stared into the darkness, seeing nothing. A moment went by, then three. I closed my eyes for what seemed like only a second and snapped them open when I heard a growl, low and angry, coming from the dog.

  The growl exploded into barks as I felt a breeze sweeping through the room.

  “You smell that?” said Henry.

  “I think so,” I said, and I did. It was sweet and bright, fruity and innocent. Flowers?

  I couldn’t figure out where the breeze was coming from. The window was closed and the door was shut, but still it darted from this corner to that as if it were alive. It swirled about the ceiling before diving down again, rushing over the cymbals of the drum set with a quivery sound, then sweeping around the chair so that it prickled the hairs on the back of my neck.

  “Hold on to your belt,” said Henry, “because here she comes.”

  And just then something began to shimmer in the middle of the room. It was at first just the tiniest bit of grayish light, but it grew bright and brighter. As I looked on with wonder, two glowing balls of pale smoky blue emerged out of that shimmer.

  The balls of light became two eyes staring at Henry. Slowly a face to hold those eyes came into view—a girl’s face, with a beauty mark beneath her eye like a movie star, and long, curly hair. A sweater appeared below the face, a tightly fitting sweater, and then a skirt with a poodle design sewed on. It was so amazing I couldn’t take my eyes off the sight.

  Smack in the middle of the room was a glowing teen ghost reaching her hand out to Henry Harrison. And out of her ghostly mouth came a syrupy, ghostly moan.

  I laughed and clapped, like at a magic show when a card was plucked out of the air.

  “This is so cool,” I said. “What a great trick.”

  “It’s not a trick,” said Henry.

  Just then, as if a switch was flicked, the sweet floral scent soured. The ghost’s glowing skin peeled away. The reaching hand became all bone. The sweater drooped until it hung as if off a skeleton, and curly hair fell off the newly exposed skull in a rush of ringlets. The pretty blue eyes darkened to become pools of shadow, from one of which scurried a shimmering cockroach.