Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  “I’ll get my own beer,” she said, jumping up and making her way to the kitchen. A toy chest filled with a waning supply of ice and beer sat in the middle of the floor. She picked out a can of Schlitz and rubbed it against her cheek as she walked back to the living room. The summer heat was compounded by the crush of bodies in the apartment, no match for the single window A/C unit.

  By the time she got back to the couch, Stacey was in the middle of a story.

  Terry sat back on Andrew’s lap to listen.

  Stacey waved her hands around. “So this lab-rat guy gives me fifteen bucks—”

  “Fifteen dollars?” That got Terry’s attention. “For what?”

  “That psych experiment I signed up for,” Stacey said, easing down into the middle of the floor, facing Terry. “I know. It seems cool, but then…” She paused to shudder.

  “Then what?” Terry leaned forward, finally cracking her beer and taking a sip. Andrew looped his arms around her waist to keep her from falling.

  “This is where it gets weird,” Stacey said. She reached back to smooth her ponytail and ended up accidentally taking it the rest of the way down. In the flicker of the black-and-white TV, her face seemed suddenly haunted as she talked, curly hair in wild lumps. “He leads me into this dark room where there’s a gurney, and has me lay down there.”

  “Uh-oh, I think I know what the fifteen bucks was for,” Dave said.

  Both Stacey and Terry shot him a look, but Andrew laughed. Boys being boys, thinking they were absolutely hilarious.

  “Go on,” Terry said with an eye roll. “What happened?”

  “He takes all my vitals, pulse, listens to my heart, has this big notebook he’s writing it all down in. And then…” Stacey shook her head. “This is going to sound nutso, but he gave me an injection and then put a tab of something that dissolved under my tongue. After a while, he started asking me all these weird questions…”

  “What kind of questions?” Terry was gripped. Why on earth would someone give Stacey fifteen dollars for this? In a lab?

  “I can’t remember. Just answering them, it’s all foggy. Whatever he gave me. It was like taking a hit from the worst batch of acid in history. I…didn’t feel right afterward.”

  “This was Friday?” Terry asked. “Why didn’t you say anything before now?”

  Stacey turned her head to look at Walter Cronkite, then back. “It took me a day or two to wrap my head around it, I guess.” She shrugged. “I’m not going back.”

  “Wait.” Andrew put his head next to Terry’s, propping it on her shoulder. “They wanted you to come back?”

  “Fifteen bucks per session,” she said. “And it’s still not worth it.”

  “What did they tell you it was for?” Terry asked.

  “They didn’t,” Stacey said. “And now I’ll never know.”

  Andrew’s incredulity radiated. “I’ll do it—I don’t mind taking bad acid for that kind of money. That would cover our rent for a month! Sounds easy.”

  Stacey made a face at him. “Your parents cover your rent and they only want women.”

  “I told you what the fifteen dollars was for,” Dave said.

  Stacey picked up a pillow and flung it at him. He dodged.

  “I’ll do it,” Terry said.

  “Uh-oh,” Andrew said. “The Girl Most Likely to Change the World is reporting for duty.”

  “I’m just curious,” Terry said and made a face at him. “And that’s not what this is.”

  She’d never live down that yearbook caption…or the way she always had a million questions to ask about everything. Her dad had taught her to always pay attention—she didn’t want to miss a chance to do something that mattered. It was frustrating enough to live so far from San Francisco or Berkeley, where the seismic shifts in culture were taking place…where challenging the government’s policies on the war was a daily part of life, not something half the people around still looked at you weird for even if they privately agreed.

  So what if none of her questions had ever panned out into anything? Maybe this time would be different. And she’d get an extra fifteen dollars. With that kind of payoff, Becky wouldn’t make a peep of protest.

  “Huh?” Stacey blinked.

  Terry committed. “I’ll go in your place and do the experiment…If you’re really not going back.”

  “I’m really not,” Stacey said, and shrugged. “But if you think pot makes you paranoid…”

  “I don’t care. We could use the money. That’s why I’m doing it.” So what if it was a lie? Becky nodded to her, approving, just as Terry had known she would.

  And then Dave bellowed, “Everyone, quiet! Turn off the music! Something’s happening!”

  Andrew spoke in her ear as the music died. “You sure you want to go see the lab-rat guy? I know you like to have the answers to everything, but…”

  “You’re just jealous you can’t go,” she said, tilting her beer to her lips for another thin dirt-and-fuel-flavored sip.

  “True, babe, true,” he said.

  The volume got cranked louder and everyone watched as Neil Armstrong emerged and made his way, halting step by halting step, down the ladder.

  Dave looked over his shoulder for a second. “We can put a man on the moon, but they still haven’t figured out how to get out of ’Nam.”

  “You said it,” Andrew said.

  Grumbles of agreement sounded around the room until Dave shushed them, despite the fact he’d been the one who talked in the first place.

  There was a pause on-screen, and then Armstrong said: “Okay, I’m going to step off the LEM now.”

  No one breathed. The room was as quiet as space supposedly was, an absence of sound; but in this absence, nervous hope.

  And then he did it. The astronaut in the bubble suit designed to protect him from another world’s atmosphere and strange germs set his feet on the barren and beautiful surface of the moon. Armstrong spoke again. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

  Dave jumped up and down, and then the entire room began to cheer. Andrew spun Terry in a circle, the moment a dazzle of celebration and wonder. Walter Cronkite seemed close to tears, and so did Terry. Her eyes stung.

  They calmed down to watch as the astronauts planted an American flag, and as they glided back and forth across a heavenly body that hung in the sky outside, brought all the way there by an amazing machine built by men. They’d flown across the sky. They’d lived, and now they walked on the moon.

  What a thing to be alive to see. What wasn’t possible now?

  Terry had another beer and imagined meeting Stacey’s lab rat.

  2.

  The psych building wasn’t one Terry had ever visited for classes. She found it tucked away in the back corner of campus: three stories tall, shadowed by trees, the branches reflecting off the windows. The canopies swayed under a gray sky that promised rain.

  A gleaming Mercedes-Benz and two large black vans were parked along the curb beside the building—despite there being plenty of open spots in the lot, given that there were fewer students on campus during the summer.

  Murder vans, Terry thought. The irony. Maybe I am finally onto something.

  In the light of day, she’d found the idea of some important experiment happening here seemed…less than likely. Here she was anyway. When she’d asked Stacey what she needed to know, she claimed Terry could just show up at the room upstairs. She’d also given Terry a comforting farewell: “It’s your electric Kool-Aid acid test funeral.”

  Terry pulled the glass front door open and immediately encountered a woman in a lab coat with a clipboard waiting inside. She had chestnut curls, a large forehead, and a no-nonsense way about her.

  “This building is closed today,” the woman
said, “unless you’re on the list.”

  Was she a doctor or a grad student? Terry had never met a female doctor, but she knew they existed.

  “The list?” Terry asked.

  Another person came in behind her and barreled right into her, almost knocking her over. Terry straightened and looked over her shoulder to see a girl in coveralls—make that greasy coveralls—who grinned at Terry’s appraisal.

  “Sorry,” the girl said with a shrug. “I thought I was late.”

  “It’s fine.” Terry couldn’t help but smile back. The two of them next to each other couldn’t be more different. Terry was in a neat skirt-and-blouse set, her hair set in loose rags the night before so it fell in soft waves now. The girl in the coveralls had grease under her fingernails, too, hair that could be described as combed at best, and freckles sprinkled on her cheeks. A tomboy. A few years ago she wouldn’t have even been allowed on campus in pants.

  “Your names,” the woman with the clipboard said. “I have to check that you’re expected.”

  “Alice Johnson,” the girl said, cutting right in front of Terry. “I don’t go here. I’m from town.”

  The woman nodded. “You are on the list.”

  That was a surprise. Terry definitely wasn’t. For all she knew, Stacey wasn’t either.

  But the woman and Alice looked at Terry and suddenly it was her turn to prove she should be here. “And you?” the woman asked.

  “Stacey Sullivan,” Terry lied, wondering if she was in the wrong place.

  The woman glanced down at the list and then up again. Terry’s pulse drummed.

  “Oh, here you are,” the woman said and made a check mark. “Perfect. You’ve been in this building before, correct? Go up to the third floor and check in with my colleagues there.”

  “What is all this?” Terry hesitated. “I, uh, don’t remember it from last time.”

  “This is a new recruitment process,” the woman said. “It’ll become clear upstairs.”

  As they walked further inside, Alice said to Terry, “Good, because this is my first visit.”

  Terry had to fight with herself not to ask Alice if she knew anything else about what was going on. She managed, barely. She paused next to the stairwell door. “You want to just walk up? The elevators in these old buildings can be so slow.”

  “No!” Alice said, rejecting the idea. “I love riding in elevators.”

  “Oh, okay,” Terry said. Because what else could she say?

  Alice relaxed into a smile. They walked the short distance to the elevator bank and waited and waited until the car came, the doors sliding open by grudging inches.

  “This is an old one,” Alice said, running a hand along a metal edge, sounding admiring and excited as she boarded.

  Terry didn’t point out that an elevator’s old age made most people less enthused to get on. Alice was an odd bird. No wonder she’d turned up for a psych experiment. Still, Terry liked her.

  “You said you’re from town?” Terry asked. “I grew up an hour or so away. Larrabee.”

  “Family of stonies,” Alice said. “I work for my uncle’s garage. Specializes in local heavy equipment work.”

  “I wish I was mechanical,” Terry said.

  Alice shrugged. “We’re all mechanical. Body’s just another kind of machine.”

  Fair enough.

  “No heart in there?” Terry asked, teasing a little.

  “Sure, the heart’s the pump that keeps us going,” Alice said.

  The doors began to open onto the third floor, taking as much sweet time as they had below.

  Alice paused. “I could fix this, with the right parts, you know. It’s not broken, just a little bent from its original splendor.”

  That would teach Terry to judge someone by the grease of their coveralls. The original splendor of a university elevator.

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” she said.

  Alice shot her a grin. “Hopefully.”

  “So you said you haven’t been here before?” Terry blurted out the question.

  “No,” Alice said. “My uncle saw a newspaper ad last week looking for college-age women with remarkable skills. I answered. Got a letter that said to show up here.”

  A new recruitment process, the woman had said. How was Terry going to make it in? What counted as a “remarkable skill”?

  They got off the elevator, Alice giving it one more gentle pat, and entered a bland hallway flanked by doors and flyers advertising experiments. Only a single door was open and so Terry figured that would be the place. The doorway was wide enough to accommodate her and Alice side by side, which was good because Alice refused to either go in front of or behind Terry. Like everything about odd Alice so far, it was charming.

  Another lab-coated person waited here, this one a man with newscaster hair and thick-rimmed glasses. He handed them each a sheaf of papers and a pen. “Release forms,” he said. “Fill them out until you’re called back.”

  Thanks for the pleasantries, man.

  He motioned them to a de facto waiting area where chairs had been added. Six other women were already there, college-age (though if Alice was a tell, not all attending college), and one man their age, with long brown hair, a Jesus beard, and bell-bottoms. Terry and Alice had to separate because the only two chairs left were across from each other.

  Alice sat beside a young black woman reading a large textbook who made Terry look sloppy by comparison, let alone Alice. She wore a trim purple suit, the latest style. Modest but fashionable.

  “You from town, too?” Alice asked her.

  The woman’s hair curled to accentuate a thoughtful and pretty face, which she turned on Alice. “I grew up here,” she said. “Gloria Flowers.”

  “Those…” Alice said.

  “Yes,” Gloria said, “those Flowers.”

  Alice’s eyes widened and she stage-whispered across to Terry. “Her family runs a giant store and a florist’s. Flowers’ Flowers.”

  “I’m sitting right here,” Gloria said. And added, “It’s Flowers’ Flowers and Gifts.”

  “Did you see the ad in the paper, too?” Alice asked.

  “No,” Gloria said. “I’m also a student here. Biology.”

  “No offense meant,” Alice said, her cheeks going pink. “I mean it. My mouth gets ahead of me.”

  “You should have heard her admiring the elevator,” Terry said.

  Alice shot her a grateful look.

  Terry leaned forward and offered Gloria her hand. Gloria hesitated a second then shook it, holding her textbook to her chest. Something fell out of it and onto the floor. A comic book.

  Gloria’s eyes widened in mortification.

  Terry reached down to pick it up. X-Men, the brightly colored cover proclaimed. “I used to love Archie’s Girls Betty and Veronica,” she said, handing it back.

  “This is a little different.” But Gloria smiled.

  “Cool,” Terry said. “It’s nice to meet another student…” She hesitated, realizing she couldn’t give her real name. Not yet.

  “I guess I’m just refuse then,” Alice said. “Don’t mind me.”

  The man cocked his head to one side and nodded at Alice. “You’re the smartest one here,” he said, knowingly. “I’m Ken.”

  “I thought they only wanted ladies?” Alice said, apparently not into flattery.

  “I’m psychic,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  “You are?” Terry asked.

  He sat back. “Of course I am. That’s how I knew to show up.”

  “Of course he is,” Alice echoed, and Terry had no clue if she meant it or was poking fun.

  The women on either side of them were clearly attempting not to be appalled by everything g
oing on around them. Terry found she was enjoying herself, and, exchanging looks with Alice and supposedly psychic Ken, then Gloria, thought they were also.

  A man in a lab coat opened a door at the back of the suite.

  “Gloria Flowers,” he said.

  Gloria slipped her comic book back into her textbook with a wink, rose, and followed the man back into a hallway.

  Terry really did like all three of them.

  * * *

  —

  There were only the two of them left, Terry and Ken, and hours had gone by.

  The release forms were intense and jargon-filled and gave Terry a queasiness in her stomach; she was right about this experiment being a big deal. The forms weren’t from the university. They were from the United States government. Something called the Office of Scientific Intelligence. It said there could be stiff penalties, up to and including imprisonment, for disclosure of any activities that took place involving the participant. That implied things were going to happen that needed to stay secret.

  Terry and Becky’s dad had served in World War II, and he had seen some terrible things there. He never talked about them in front of the girls, but Terry had heard him wake up with a shout one night and snuck out to see what was wrong. She’d ended up crouched by her parents’ bedroom door in her nightgown, eavesdropping. Her dad had told her mom about a camp they’d helped bring people out of, at the end. “Their own people, crammed together like sardines, thin as skeletons…and those were the ones who lived.” He had dreams, he said, dreams where he worked at the camp and didn’t do anything to stop it.

  “You’d never do anything like that,” her mom had reassured him. “It’s not in you.”

  “I’d like to think not,” he said, “but I know a lot of the men who worked there must have felt the same way before the war. A lot of their wives, too. It could happen here. That’s what wakes me up.”

  “No, it couldn’t,” her mom had said.

  “I like that you think that, honey.”

  “I don’t know if I could stand life if I didn’t. I can’t even understand how hard that must be, Bill.”