Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  3.

  The diner’s slow days were few and far between, and like a promised land entirely for taking a breath while getting paid. One of the busboys slung off his apron and told Terry he was taking a smoke break. She confirmed the floor stood desolate and said, “Have an extra for me.” He didn’t point out that Terry wasn’t a smoker.

  She decided to refill the cutlery station to keep busy. Also, then she wouldn’t have to do it later. It was Tuesday, and apparently her next visit to the lab would be in two days—one week since her last one. Previously they’d been only every two to three weeks. The schedule acceleration, along with the morning’s news, must mean something…but what?

  Becky would have too many questions about this “get out of school free” Monopoly card she had drawn. Terry planned to tell her that all it had been was the school wanting to confirm she was happy in her major.

  If it was still slow when she finished with the silverware, there was always the ratty paperback edition of The Fellowship of the Ring in her purse. She could get started on chapter two.

  The bell above the door jingled and Terry smiled in recognition at Ken. “Hi,” she said, coming around from behind the counter. She snagged a menu and a set of silverware. “Fancy seeing you here. Sit anywhere you want.”

  Ken lingered awkwardly inside the door for a moment, before launching into motion to his right. He slid into the second booth. “This is the right one.”

  Terry shook her head, amused. She plopped down the menu and silverware. “If you say so. What can I get you?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?” Terry couldn’t figure him out. “Then why are you at a diner?”

  The bell jingled again, and she spun to see Alice barreling through it. “Alice,” she said quietly to Ken, as the girl spotted them and made her way toward the table. “You’re here to meet Alice? Anything I should know?”

  Alice, however, stopped beside Terry and propped her hands on the hips of her greasy coveralls. “What’s he doing here?” she demanded. Then, gesturing opposite him, “Is this seat taken?”

  Ken raised his brows at Terry. “No, it’s all yours,” he told Alice.

  She took the spot. “So,” she said, and paused, gathering her thoughts.

  Terry wanted to know what both of them were doing here, without expecting each other; this was too much of a coincidence. But when she looked up, she saw another familiar figure on the sidewalk outside. Gloria.

  “Hold that thought,” Terry said, and the bell jingled behind her as she went outside.

  “The gang’s all here,” she called across to Gloria. “Did you and Alice plan to meet up?”

  Gloria hesitated. Today’s ensemble was relatively casual for her. A pastel flower-print blouse tucked into a deep green knee-length skirt. Her handbag matched.

  “What is it?” Terry asked.

  “I don’t usually come over to this side of town,” she said. “I didn’t really think before I headed this way.”

  “It’s fine here,” Terry said, understanding. “No one will bother about it.”

  Bloomington wasn’t officially segregated these days, except in spots like country clubs and their golf courses. Unofficially, most people stuck to their own neighborhoods and racial lines. The campus was the site of major protests from black students fighting for equal treatment.

  With a nod, Gloria glided across the sidewalk and into the diner behind Terry. She shook her head when she spotted Alice and Ken.

  “I thought you were joking about them being here, too,” she said with a slight frown.

  “They weren’t expecting each other,” Terry said. “At least I don’t think they were.”

  “Or you,” Alice said. “What are we all doing here?”

  “I think that’s my question,” Terry said. “Since I’m the only one who has a real reason to be here.”

  Gloria joined Ken and Alice at their table, sitting beside Alice. Terry took another look around to confirm her boss was still in back waiting for fresh tickets, and sat down, too. “I’ll get your orders in a sec,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Gloria was still frowning. “Did you get the notice from school?”

  “Yes,” Terry said, not sure why Gloria seemed concerned about it.

  “What notice?” Alice said. “Can we get some fries?” She paused and fidgeted, twisting her hands together like she was nervous. That was new. “Wait, are they good here?”

  “They’re great,” Terry said, and got up. She scribbled the order on a ticket and tacked it into the kitchen. Seconds later, the fryer started up and the glorious smell of bubbling fat filled the air.

  She went back to the table, but didn’t bother sitting down. The kitchen was fast. “Gloria and I are excused from our Thursday classes.”

  “Me too,” Ken said.

  “I didn’t know you were a student,” Gloria said, surprised.

  Ken folded his hands together on the Formica. “You guys haven’t asked me much about myself.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “We’re afraid of what you’ll say.”

  Ken wrinkled his nose at her.

  Alice laughed.

  Gloria put her hands on the table. “It’s not just that we get Thursdays off. I was told my academic future is now tied to this experiment.”

  “They didn’t put it exactly like that when I asked,” Terry said. “Just said we have Thursdays off and, well, that we had to keep going…for our grades.” She paused. “Oh.”

  “Yes, that’s the academic-future part.” Gloria shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

  “But it’ll be okay, won’t it? We were going to go anyway—you already had to for your degree.”

  “Too many strings means something.”

  Terry understood that. “That what we’re doing is important.”

  Gloria studied her nails. “Maybe.”

  “Why are you here?” Terry asked Alice.

  “You said you worked here,” Alice said, as if it was obvious. “Figured if you had this shift last week, you’d probably have it this week, too.”

  “That’s why I came now, too.” Gloria’s lips quirked to one side. “But I think she means why are you here to see her. Coincidence on the timing, at least for me.”

  “Not me,” Ken said.

  The cook’s voice called out. “Order up!”

  Terry darted over to get the fries and returned with the plate. Alice crammed a fistful into her face and winced at the nuclear heat. This was a high-maintenance table—Terry came back with waters for all three. She sat back down, picked up a fry, blew on it, then ate it.

  Alice swallowed. “So they called your school, and they called my uncle. Told him they would be happy to compensate him when I’m needed at the lab, as long as he lets me go. He said yes, but he’s suspicious about it. He doesn’t like government types much.” She had another fry and then went on, “Do you guys think it’s weird? What we’re doing out there? My uncle wanted to know what it was and I told him it was ‘girl stuff’ so he’d stop asking. You can’t talk to anyone else about it because they’ll think you’ve blown a gasket loose in your brain…and we signed those papers. I thought I’d stop by here where we can discuss it.”

  “I don’t like them going over our heads like this,” Gloria said. “Shouldn’t they tell us before they do this contacting business?”

  Terry wondered if the others had the same experiences on the trips as she had. Before she could ask, the door jingled again and she was surprised to see Andrew.

  “I’m popular today,” she said. “This is my boyfriend, Andrew.”

  He stopped at the edge of the table, uncertainly. “Andrew, these are my friends from the lab,” she said. “Ken, Gloria, and Alice.”

  “We
’re having a private conversation,” Alice said.

  Terry snorted a laugh. “It’s okay. You can trust him. He knows.”

  “So much for the papers we signed.” Alice raised her eyebrows.

  “Mind?” Andrew asked, and waited for Alice’s nod before plucking up a fry. “What are you all talking about?”

  “Good question,” Terry said. “What are we talking about?”

  “Why the lab is suddenly so interested in making sure we keep going,” Gloria said.

  Andrew pulled a chair up to the end of the table. “I’ve been thinking about that. Do you know who runs this experiment yet?”

  Gloria’s eyes skated to Terry. She hadn’t exactly filled Andrew in on that part. “It’s some arm of the feds,” Terry said.

  Andrew tilted his head. “You didn’t mention that before.”

  “Because I knew how you’d react.”

  Terry didn’t want to have this argument in front of her new friends. Apparently Andrew didn’t either.

  “So…do you guys think it’s odd that the feds would be spending time on this with the war going on? Shouldn’t they be working on weapons or something instead?”

  Ken lowered his voice, even though they were alone. “Maybe they are.”

  Terry scoffed, “Is it me or Alice who’s the weapon? Or Gloria?”

  “Don’t leave me out,” Ken said.

  Andrew looked among them. “Okay, probably not.”

  Gloria didn’t say anything.

  None of them hung around much longer besides Andrew. She paid for their fries out of her tips, and still didn’t go back to worrying about herself. She’d ask Brenner these questions on Thursday.

  4.

  Alice’s knees sweated at the back, right in the pits, as they walked down that pale hallway in the lab to the shiny elevator she now hated the sight of. She knew where it would take them. Knees were an unpleasant place to have the nervous sweats. And ever since they’d started giving her jolts of electricity, she imagined the lights in this place laughing at her, talking about her, how she might as well be one of them.

  Stuck here forever. Forced to illuminate the darkness. “Illuminate” was a good word, though. She remembered the preacher at church once describing illuminated manuscripts he’d seen on a missionary trip, and the picture she’d conjured to go with the phrase had to be more miraculous than the reality.

  It was thoughts like the talking lights that had made her show up at Terry’s diner like a head case. She’d only been truly worried about the call to her uncle after hearing Gloria’s questions.

  “You okay?” Terry asked, stepping away from Gloria and alongside her. “You’re awfully quiet today. And I haven’t had to stop you from messing with anything electronic.”

  Dr. Brenner shifted his head so that Alice was staring at his profile.

  “Fine.” Alice nodded to Terry, then to Gloria and Ken, a silent chorus of concern behind her.

  “You’re sure you feel all right?” Terry asked, placing the back of her hand to Alice’s forehead.

  Alice flinched and regretted it. “I’m fine.”

  “I’ll make sure that Dr. Parks takes your temperature and says you’re well enough to participate,” Dr. Brenner interrupted.

  “Thank you,” Terry told him. “She won’t have to do it today if she’s sick?”

  “Of course not,” Dr. Brenner said smoothly.

  Alice almost believed him. Was Terry’s experience different enough that she did? Alice thought it must be.

  Dr. Brenner input his code into the keypad. Alice watched each finger move as if in slow motion. The elevator doors zipped open and she imagined carefully breaking the entire apparatus, severing the cables so the car wouldn’t move.

  Soon she’d be back to hiding inside herself, looking for the quiet place beneath everything, with its ruins and drifting spores. The problem was, the quiet place was not somewhere she wanted to go.

  5.

  The hospital gowns they were forced to wear during the experiments were an affront to dignity. This was a fact, not just Gloria’s opinion. She could’ve done a double-blind peer-reviewed study to prove it.

  Not for the first time, she wondered what protocols the lab was following. Were she, Terry, Ken, and poor startled Alice all being put through the same motions? Nothing about this laboratory conformed to her expectations or what she’d read in textbooks about scientific studies, so somehow she doubted it.

  She couldn’t even stop coming…Not now that they’d tied her grades up in this.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. That was the saying.

  She held her hands on her lap and waited for the young doctor to arrive. Green was his name, just like his age. He was tentative with her, and she’d said a silent prayer of thanks about not getting saddled with Brenner. She could occasionally ask Green a question and get an answer.

  He came in with a clipboard in one hand and a small slip of paper undoubtedly coated in LSD in his other. “Hello, Gloria,” he said, as if they were going to have tea.

  She kept her hands in her lap. “Dr. Green, I wondered—you said you studied at Stanford, correct? What about Dr. Brenner?”

  He set down the clipboard and carefully avoided her eyes. He’d rolled his shirtsleeves up one turn past where his tan ended.

  “I’m honestly not sure,” he said.

  He took a sheet of paper off the clipboard and handed it to her. “I want you to do your best to commit the information here to memory. Then, after your dose takes effect, I’ll be questioning you about it. Your objective will be to try not to reveal any of this to me. Got it?”

  Gloria accepted the sheet. It reminded her of test questions for high school, but was either a dummy or a real military report of the movements of enemy troops. “Got it.”

  When she finished, Green exchanged the large paper for the small one, a yellow circle in the center, and she placed it on her tongue. Then he left her there alone to “meditate.” Unlikely.

  Gloria settled in and ran the information from the page—which he’d taken with him—over and over through her head so it would stick.

  * * *

  —

  The wall clock’s numbers had a tendency to appear as if bleeding once the LSD took effect. Gloria discovered that if she closed one eye and waited five full seconds, she could correct for it. So when young Dr. Green returned, she knew it had been roughly three hours since she’d taken the hit of acid.

  She’d be at the peak of her trip, or close. Which explained the colorful lights that danced around him. Tripping was pointless to her and she couldn’t believe anyone enjoyed it. Maybe if they teased out some useful application of the drug through these experiments, her mind would change.

  She doubted it.

  He carried his clipboard and nodded to her. There were three of him.

  “Miss Flowers?” he said.

  He’d called her Gloria before, she was almost certain. An orderly let himself into the room, tall and looming, standing in the corner.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Could you please tell us the whereabouts of the troops in sector nineteen?”

  The frown made him seem older. He’d told her earlier to resist, and she’d woven that through her memorization. They would want the strongest possible controls for an experiment in gaining information under the influence of drugs, yes? That had to be the entire point.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  Or at least that’s what Gloria thought she said. Certainty became slippery after the LSD kicked in.

  He pulled a chair away from the desk and sat down across from where she perched on the hard edge of the cot. She reached to adjust her skirt and remembered the thin hospital gown she was wearing. Sud
denly the idea of how translucent it must be occurred to her.

  Focus.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Sure?”

  “That you don’t know what I mean, about sector nineteen. About where the troops are heading.”

  “I am,” she said, with a hint of a smile at how well she was performing her task.

  Green threw a glance back at the orderly. The giant stepped forward. He seemed too large to fit in this room but there he was, looming over her. A shadow. A threat.

  “Are you sure you’re sure?” Dr. Green asked.

  She wanted to lecture him through the bright colors and the drug haze, tell him that this was no way to run an experiment. His phrasing was off. He was misusing a set of circumstances that would be difficult to replicate in the field.

  “Miss Flowers?” Green demanded. “Where are they?”

  The giant’s expression wasn’t a smile but it certainly didn’t indicate disapproval. He’s enjoying this.

  Gloria remembered the whispers and case studies none of her teachers ever talked about. Men with syphilis untreated. Slaves sold to doctors for experiments, black cadavers at every medical school. Not much more than ten years ago, the army and the CIA had released mosquitoes with yellow fever on black folk in Florida. Her skin made her a candidate for study to some people, and disposable to most of those same people.

  Gloria found that, as always, to stay in the game, she had to pretend she didn’t know there was one. They’d never be content to let her win a round. Not even if it involved best practices.

  “Of course! I didn’t realize what you meant. They’re moving north at approximately seven klicks per day…” She held out a hand. “If you give me a pencil, I can draw you a map.”

  Dr. Green raised his eyebrows and shot a cocky grin at the giant orderly. Now the orderly did look disappointed.

  “Very good,” Dr. Green assured her.

  Sorry, Gloria thought at both of them, no, it’s not.