by John Saul
Josh was propped up in bed, a new copy of Les Miserables that Dr. Hasborough had brought him that morning open in his lap, a piece of Max’s pecan pie sitting half eaten on the bedside table. Outside, a vulture was circling, descending lower and lower, and Josh was waiting for it to land, and wondering what it might have found.
A coyote?
Probably just a rabbit.
Maybe he should get dressed and go see.
After all, hadn’t Dr. Hasborough agreed that he could go home that afternoon? It wasn’t like he was sick or anything. In feet, his wrists didn’t even hurt anymore. So why did he have to wait until his mother was done with work and could come and talk to the doctor? Why didn’t they just let him go? He wasn’t more than a mile from where he lived—what was the big deal if he walked home?
He glanced at the clock, frowning. Where was his mother? It was almost five, and she was supposed to be here at four-thirty.
What had gone wrong?
Had they decided not to let him go home after all?
Putting the book aside, he got out of bed and went to the door, peering out into the hallway. Except for the nurse sitting behind the desk, there was nobody in sight.
Maybe he should just get dressed and walk out.
Or, even better, climb out the window?
Except if his mother showed up, she’d be worried about him, and maybe be afraid he’d tried to kill himself again.
He moved back to the bed and decided to wait a little while longer. He pulled the sheet up, then picked up the book again, but instead of starting to read, found himself thinking about yesterday.
Had he really tried to kill himself? He thought about it, remembering what he’d told the psychologist who’d come to see him that morning. “I guess I must have,” he’d said. “I mean, I cut my wrists, didn’t I?”
But now, as he thought about it some more, he began to wonder. Maybe he’d just been mad at his mother—and everyone else, too—and was just trying to get even with them.
And what if he’d bled to death?
He tried to imagine himself dead. He pictured himself in a coffin, lying in front of the altar at church while his funeral was going on. Except, he quickly realized, he wasn’t imagining himself dead at all. He was imagining himself alive, and watching his own funeral.
Images flicked through his mind: his mother, dressed in black, sobbing with grief. All the kids from school looking really sad, sorry now, when it was too late, that they’d picked on him.
Except that if he’d actually died, he wouldn’t have been there to see them, and what good would it have been to make them sorry if he wasn’t even around for them to apologize to?
He started over again, shutting his eyes and trying to block out all the sounds around him. That was it—if he were dead, everything would be black, and there wouldn’t be any noise.
Except the harder he tried not to hear things, the louder everything seemed to get. All of a sudden the soft ticking of the clock by the bed appeared to be banging in his ear, and the sound of cars going by on the street was a steady roar.
Dead.
What would it really be like? Not that he really wanted to know, he decided, at least not yet. He could still remember how scared he’d been yesterday, when he’d started bleeding. He’d stood up right away, intending to run out to the living room, but then realized how much blood there was, and how mad his mother would be when she saw the mess he’d made. So he’d just stood there like a dummy, not doing anything.
What if he’d actually bled to death?
He shuddered at the thought, and decided that whatever he’d been thinking yesterday, it had been pretty dumb. All he’d done was make a mess and cause more trouble.
But at least his mother had forgiven him. That, he decided, was one of the neatest things about his mother. No matter what he did, or how mad she got at him, in the end she always forgave him. From now on, he decided, he’d try to do better.
He glanced up at the clock again and was about to start dressing when the door opened and his mother came in, smiling at him.
“Hey, you,” she said. “You look pretty good. Feel like going home?”
Josh’s eyes widened hopefully. “It’s okay? They’re really going to let me go home?”
Brenda nodded. “And I’ve got a surprise for you, too.”
“A surprise?” the boy demanded. “What?”
“Well, I’m not sure I should tell you right now,” Brenda teased. “Maybe I ought to wait till we get home, or maybe tomorrow morning.”
“No!” Josh protested. “Now. Please?” He’d scrambled out of bed and was already half dressed.
“Well, all right,” Brenda said, acting as if she’d just made up her mind to tell him. “How would you like not to have to go back to Eden School?”
In the middle of pulling up his jeans, Josh froze, staring at his mother as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Not go back?” he echoed. “What do you mean?”
“What if you could go to another school, one that was set up especially for kids like you?”
Josh’s mind raced. What was she talking about? And then he thought he knew.
She was talking about a school for crazy kids.
Kids who had tried to kill themselves.
But he wasn’t crazy—he’d already told her that, last night, and then again this morning. He’d just been feeling bad, that’s all.
“Wh-What school?” he breathed, suddenly terrified.
“The one Mr. Hodgkins told us about yesterday. Barrington Academy, up north.”
“B-But you told him it was too expensive—”Josh began.
Brenda didn’t let him finish. “Well, it seems that maybe it might not be,” she told him. “Dr. Hasborough knows them, and called them up. We sent them all your records, and they want to talk to you.”
Josh’s uncertainty deepened. “You mean they want to take me, without even meeting me? How come? Is it a place for crazy kids?”
Brenda’s jaw dropped. “Of course not!” she cried. “It’s not that at all! It’s a place for gifted kids, kids like you!”
But Josh was shaking his head. “You’re sending me away because of what I did, aren’t you? Before I cut myself, you said there was no way I was going there. But now—” His eyes dampened, and he ran to his mother and threw his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t really want to die. I was just mad. Don’t send me away. Please?”
Brenda was silent, holding her son while she tried to sort it all out. Clearly, he didn’t understand that she wasn’t trying to punish him, that she just wanted the best for him. “Honey, it’s all right,” she whispered. “I’d never send you away, don’t you know that? This doesn’t have anything to do with that stupid knife. All it’s about is getting you into a school where you can be happy, and have friends who understand you.”
Josh’s sobs stilled, and he recalled his vow of only a few minutes ago to try not to cause his mother any more trouble. Finally, when he trusted his voice not to crack, he pulled away from her. “Wh-What if I don’t want to go?” he asked.
“Then you won’t have to,” Brenda replied. “Besides, they haven’t said they want you yet. They just want us to come up on Saturday, so they can talk to you and give you some tests. Now that won’t be so bad, will it?”
Josh considered it. Maybe it really wasn’t a place for crazy kids. After all, Mr. Hodgkins had started talking about it before he’d held the knife in his hand.… And his mother had said he didn’t have to go if he didn’t want to.
He made up his mind.
“I guess we could go see it,” he said. “I mean, just to take a look, okay?”
“Okay,” Brenda breathed. “Double okay! Now finish dressing so we can get out of here.”
As they emerged from the hospital a few minutes later, Brenda breathed deeply of the desert air. Things, finally, were working out.
Unless the Academy decided not to take Josh.
But she
couldn’t worry about that until it happened; she’d learned long ago not to try to cross any bridges until she came to them. Besides, she’d already made up her mind: One way or another, the Academy would take her son.
His mind was far too good to waste in the Eden school.
He’d get into the Academy—she just knew it!
He’d get in, and he’d be the most brilliant student they’d ever had.
And then she stopped herself before she tried to run across a bridge that had barely come into view yet.
Saturday, she decided as they started home.
Saturday would tell the tale.
5
It wasn’t until she’d turned off Highway 101 and started up into the hills between San Jose and the coast that Brenda finally relaxed and began to believe that the old Chevy was going to survive the four-hundred-mile trip from Eden. They’d left at four o’clock that morning, with Josh complaining that it was too early to get up, but Brenda insisting that if the car were to get them to the Academy at all, they’d better get out of the desert before the heat of the day set in. So they’d set out in darkness, crossing the desert and into the San Joaquin Valley, then heading west just to the north of Bakersfield, picking up the freeway at Paso Robles.
Beside her, Josh stirred, awakening from the light sleep he’d fallen into an hour before. Rubbing his eyes, he blinked, then spotted one of the big green signs that hung above the road to Santa Cruz: Barrington—25 miles.
“We’re almost there,” he said, gazing around at the unfamiliar landscape. Grassy hills were dotted with clumps of eucalyptus trees and an occasional stand of coast redwoods. “It sure doesn’t look like Eden, does it?”
“It sure doesn’t,” Brenda agreed, smiling wryly. Indeed, before Josh had awakened, she’d been gazing with fascination at the area outside of San Jose. The last time she’d been here, when she was a little girl, most of it had still been farmland, and San Jose had been a fairly small town. Now, it had spread out, serving as the center for the booming computer industry, the farms replaced by an endless parade of housing developments and industrial parks. Finally, they’d left all that behind, climbing into the hills where, except for a few large houses that appeared to have sprung from nowhere, the landscape was still largely undisturbed.
Half an hour later they came to the outskirts of Barrington. It was a small town, but still larger than Eden. Situated on the coast and nestled comfortably between the beach and the hills rising behind it, it had none of the look of self-conscious newness that clung to all the burgeoning towns around San Jose. There was a neat town center, with stores whose facades varied between mission architecture and the old arts-and-crafts shingle-covered style of the twenties and thirties. The downtown area was surrounded by a residential district of neatly laid out streets filled with small, shingled houses, and trees that had reached full maturity decades earlier. Even now, in September, fuchsias were blooming everywhere, and flowering vines crept up the walls of many of the homes.
Following a series of discreet signs, Brenda finally came to the university. The campus instantly struck her as looking exactly the way a college should look. The buildings were old brick structures, arranged around a broad green lawn dotted with towering redwoods and clumps of flowering bushes she’d never seen before. Behind the older buildings, creeping up the hills, were a series of newer structures, which almost disappeared into the surrounding landscape, adding modern space to the campus while not detracting from its charm.
“But where’s the Academy?” Brenda wondered out loud. “It’s supposed to be part of the campus.”
“There,” Josh said, pointing to another of the small signs that had guided them this far. “Turn right and go up the hill.”
Though she hadn’t seen the sign herself, Brenda followed Josh’s directions. A few minutes later they came to a wide wrought-iron double gate that stood open at the foot of a long driveway. Awed by what she saw, Brenda brought the car to a halt.
At the head of the redwood-lined driveway, nearly a quarter of a mile away, stood the largest house Brenda could remember ever having seen. Three stories high, it had two wings that stretched away from the center of the house, which itself was surmounted by yet a fourth floor—apparently a private apartment of some kind, with large windows that would give it a panoramic view in every direction. Though the enormous house was now flanked by two other buildings, one at each end of it, Brenda understood instantly that it had originally been built as a private residence. “My Lord,” she breathed. “Can you imagine living in a place like that?”
“It was Mr. Barrington’s house,” Josh told her. “You know—he built Barrington Western Railroad.”
Brenda gazed blankly at her son. “No,” she replied, “I didn’t know. But obviously you do.”
Josh grinned, his face taking on an impish look. “I went to the library yesterday and looked it up. The man who built that was named Eustace Barrington, and he used to own practically all the land from here to San Francisco. This was his summer house, and the town started because it took so many people to run the ranch.”
“Ranch?” Brenda echoed blankly. “I thought you said he started a railroad.”
“He did,” Josh insisted, his tone indicating that he thought his mother was being deliberately dense. “But he made a deal with the government, and got most of the land next to the railroad tracks. That’s when he started the ranch, and just kept buying more and more land. And he got most of it practically free, too, because the only way to get to it was the railroad, and he wouldn’t let the trains stop at anyone else’s land.”
“And now they think he was some kind of hero, right?” Brenda replied, shaking her head in wonder at the sheer gall of Barrington’s scheme. To her, it sounded like nothing short of blackmail. She put the car back in gear and started up the long drive toward the house. As they passed between the twin rows of redwoods, they could glimpse children here and there, some of them in groups of two or three, but several of them by themselves, sprawled out on the lawn, reading or working over sketch pads. And yet, though the scene looked perfectly peaceful—idyllic, even—Brenda felt an uncanny chill of foreboding creep down her spine.
It was too peaceful. Too quiet.
There was something wrong, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
But that’s ridiculous, she told herself. There’s nothing wrong! You just have cold feet about Josh leaving home!
Of course, she decided. That was it. There wasn’t anything wrong with the scene. It was just different from Eden, that was all.
In Eden, if a group of kids this size—and there must have been nearly twenty of them—had been thrown together, raucous games would already have sprung up, and they would be milling around, shouting and arguing with each other.
The children of the Academy, however, were subdued, absorbed in quiet activities. Even the groups of two or three were quiet, the kids talking softly among themselves.
Firmly, she put aside her first reaction of instinctive apprehension and drew the car up to the immense Mediterranean-style villa. Two boys, no more than twelve years old, were hunched over a chessboard that was set up between them on the tiled loggia that ran the full length of the front of the mansion and curved around it at either side. The boys glanced up at her, then their gaze shifted to Josh, who was just coming around the front of the car.
“You the new guy?” one of them asked.
Before Josh could reply, the front door opened and a somewhat overweight woman of about forty-five appeared. She was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting white cotton slacks and a brightly colored tunic that made her look somewhat thinner than she really was. Her feet were clad in sandals, and around her neck was draped an elegantly patterned silk scarf. Suddenly Brenda felt embarrassed by her own lime-green polyester pants and jacket. Back in Eden, the outfit had seemed like the right thing to wear today. Now it felt like exactly the wrong thing.
But the woman on the porch didn’t seem to noti
ce her clothes at all. She had started down the steps, her hand outstretched. “Mrs. MacCallum? I’m Hildie Kramer. I was beginning to get a little worried about you.”
“I—We weren’t really sure how long it would take,” Brenda stammered. “We’re not too late, are we?”
Hildie laughed, a warm, bubbling sound that welled up from deep within her and immediately made Brenda feel better. “Oh my, no. Any time would have been fine.” She turned to Josh and offered him her hand just as she had to his mother. “And you’re Josh, right? Or is it Joshua?”
“Josh,” the boy replied, uncertainly taking the woman’s hand.
“Good,” Hildie declared. “I like that name. It’s nice and strong-sounding. Have you met Jeff Aldrich and Brad Hinshaw?” she asked, turning to the two boys who were once again hunched over the chessboard. Hearing their names, they glanced up, then scrambled to their feet. Hildie introduced them to Josh. “Do you know how to play chess?” she added.
Josh hesitated, then shook his head.
“Then they’ll teach you, while I have a talk with your mother. Okay?”
Josh paled slightly, his eyes darting to the two other boys. They looked like they were a couple of years older than he was. He was sure they’d groan and start rolling their eyes, like the boys in Eden had last summer when his mother had made him go to the summer sports program at the school, and the coach had put him on the softball team. He’d played one inning, then gone home, the taunts of the other guys still ringing in his ears after he’d been unable to catch a single ball in right field, and had struck out on three pitches when he’d come up to bat.
Now, to Josh’s surprise, the boy named Jeff motioned him to come over to the board. As Josh hunkered down between the two of them, Brad said, “That’s the king,” and pointed to the largest of the pieces. “I’m playing white, and Jeff’s playing black, and all you have to do is capture the other guy’s king.” He pointed quickly to the various other pieces, naming each of them. “Just watch for a while, and you’ll see how it works.”
“And make them tell you all the possible moves,” Hildie warned. “They like to hold a few things back, then spring them on you. Like castling. Make sure they tell you how to do it.”