Perfect Little Angels

by Andrew Neiderman

  “After the last class, go to the bathroom in the forties corridor, and then go out the west-end exit,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll be waiting out there, and we can talk without the rest of them listening in. I’ve got to talk to you before you go back to Elysian Fields,” she said, her eyes small and her gaze intense. “You remember me coming to see you yesterday, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” she said. “Good,” she repeated, as if Justine had performed a significant feat. “The west-end exit. Stay in the bathroom for a good five minutes, so the others will go outside and wait on the east end,” she added, then quickly moved off to walk beside Janet, who had just started to look their way with jealous eyes. A moment later, she was surrounded by the other teenagers from Elysian Fields again.

  By the time the last period of the day began, Justine felt haunted. All day long she had been trying to make friends with Bonny Joseph, a girl who reminded her of Mindy, and Tad Donald, a boy who reminded her of Marty Stewart.

  Nearly every sentence Bonny uttered was peppered with words like “screw” and “bitch.” She had come to school dressed in a gray sweat shirt with a man’s undershirt sticking out from beneath it. Her jeans were faded and tight, and her sneakers were covered with slogans and sayings she had written over them. There were even some profanities.

  She wore her light brown hair teased and sprayed with sparkle. Justine thought she had a cute, pudgy face. There were little patches of freckles at the peaks of her soft, slightly ballooned cheeks, but the freckles stopped at the bridge of her small nose. Her bright red, wet lipstick highlighted her full lips.

  Justine made a number of attempts to have conversations with her, but it took most of the day for her to learn that Bonny lived in Flora, a village about ten miles north of Sandburg Creek, that she was supposed to be a senior but had failed math and English, and that she lived with her mother and stepfather. Her real father was in a drug rehabilitation center.

  Justine could see that the teenagers of Elysian Fields thought it was practically a capital offense to have a conversation with Bonny. Whenever she did, they were standing off to the side, grimacing with disgust. On two occasions, she was tempted to go over to them and tell them to mind their own business.

  Before the last period began, Brad came up to her in the hall and pulled her aside.

  “I should have warned you about some of the kids here,” he said, “but I didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much the first day.”

  “What kids?”

  “Bonny Joseph is a very bad influence. She’s gotten into a lot of trouble. The teachers dislike her. She’s this close to being expelled,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger close together.

  “I don’t care. She’s the only one I’ve spoken to who knows what the hell’s going on. Anyway, who I hang out with and who I don’t is none of your business,” she said, working up her indignation. The crimson tint in her cheeks brightened into a tomato red. Her parents were always trying to influence her when it came to friendships. She wouldn’t tolerate any other teenager doing the same thing.

  “Just trying to be helpful,” he said. He did look concerned, so she softened a little. “Dr. Lawrence says we are often judged by the friends we keep.”

  “Well, I’m old enough to make up my own mind about people. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Going to sign up for anything after school?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “Well, what are you going to do with your spare time? You can’t just go home and listen to music every day.”

  “What are you so worried about?” She shook her head. “You act like my father, for Christ sakes.”

  He blanched. “I just…idle hands get into mischief,” he recited.

  “Jesus. What’s that, another one of Dr. Lawrence’s messages?” She shook her head and started away.

  “Hey,” he called after her, “Janet and the other girls will wait for you after school.”

  Without another word, she marched down the hall toward her last class, social studies, where she was able to sit away from Martha Lowe and Stacy Weinberger. She took the desk right behind Tad Donald.

  The teacher, Mrs. Kaufman, had a very distinct nasality in her voice. Not ten minutes into the class, Tad was making fun of her, imitating everything she said. Justine couldn’t keep her laughter contained. Mrs. Kaufman stopped her instruction to reprimand her.

  “What is it you find so funny, Miss Freeman?”

  “Nothing,” Justine said quickly.

  But Tad muttered, “Your face,” and she began to laugh again. Everyone in the class turned her way. When she looked at Martha Lowe and Stacy Weinberger, she saw that same look of anger that had frightened her earlier. They’re probably going to go home and tell their parents, who will tell mine, she thought. “Sorry,” she said. It was enough to get Mrs. Kaufman off her case.

  After the class ended, she poked Tad in the back.

  “That was your fault,” she said.

  “Big deal.”

  She stood with him in the hallway, just outside the classroom. The students were rushing about, digging into their lockers and hurrying out to catch school buses. Although there was a great deal of conversation and noise, Justine didn’t sense the same wild excitement the end of school brought back in the city. Everyone moved through the halls in a more orderly manner.

  As they walked down the corridor, Tad exchanged playful punches and greetings with other boys and waved to some girls, but he didn’t move away from her, and she lingered beside him.

  Justine liked the way his licorice black hair fell in long, thin strands down over his ears. The front was swept to the right in a soft wave. He wore jeans and a faded charcoal T-shirt, with rolled sleeves. He was only an inch or so taller than she was, but he had a hardness about him that suggested tough, menial labor rather than a program of physical training.

  She liked the way he studied her body, his dark eyes lingering over her bosom and hips. His cheek dimpled in an appreciative smirk. He had a narrow face with an emphatic jawbone, but she didn’t think he was attractive as much as he was dangerous. She sensed his hunger, his undisguised lust for excitement, as well as for sexual pleasure.

  “You live in Elysian Fields?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looked at her again, this time with an expression of amusement.

  “Where do you live?” she asked.

  “Out there,” he said and gestured toward the exit.

  “What, do you sleep in the streets?”

  He laughed and looked her over again. “I don’t know about you,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked quickly.

  He shrugged. “Come on. You’re puttin’ me on, ain’tcha?”

  “Putting you on?”

  “You live in that big development?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He smiled suggestively and shook his head. “You better stop laughing at Mrs. Kaufman,” he said and walked away. She watched him go around the corner of the hall, and then she turned to see Martha Lowe and Janet Bernie standing by the exit.

  “Damn them,” she muttered, realizing their presence had driven Tad away from her. She went to her locker and tossed in her books. When she looked back and saw they were still at the door, she remembered what Lois had asked her to do. She hurried away to the forties corridor and went into the girls room. She waited a good five minutes, and then emerged. The hallway was practically empty and there was no sign of the Elysian Fields teenagers. She went directly to the west-end exit and walked out. Lois was waiting for her, standing with her back against the building as if she wanted to hide from view.

  “Quickly,” Lois said. Without waiting for Justine to catch up, she headed toward Sandburg Creek proper, walking quickly and not looking back. Justine had to run to catch up with her.

  “What’s the big secret? Why are we going in this dir
ection?” she asked.

  “Just walk,” Lois said. “I want to get as far away from Elysian Fields as I can. And then,” she added turning to her with a completely new expression on her face, a face that was animated and lively, “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  5

  As he read his file that day, it occurred to him that his father had considered him an experimental subject from the day he was born. Indeed, his very conception was treated like a laboratory project. The time of his conception and the month of his birth were duly noted, as was his length and height, but not the way proud parents normally do in scrapbooks. Instead of his name, 001 was used to denote “the subject.” His weight and length were included under “statistical data.”

  Apparently his father had played a major role in his infant care, citing all sorts of developmental stages—when he first could see things clearly, when he exhibited familiarity with his surroundings, how often he cried for nourishment, what made him comfortable and uncomfortable, how he handled infant toys, when he began to discern shapes and colors, when he recognized words and sounds and applied them to objects. On and on, the actions were noted, the dates and, in some cases, the times cited.

  He was particularly interested in the record his father had kept of antisocial or deviant behavior—when he broke a toy, or when he was disruptive and disobedient. Beside the notations, there was evidence, like a photograph of a broken toy, or a picture of a wall marred with a crayon. On one page was a picture of his father marked up with a pen, the eyes gouged.

  There were little descriptions of him, paragraphs detailing his habitual gestures, his physical attributes, and even his speech patterns. There were lists of his favorite words and expressions, his color preferences, his tastes in foods, books, television shows. Some of it was in amazing detail.

  Then there was a section dealing with his reaction to “treatments,” activities and things that other people might refer to as education and training. Different techniques were explored and evaluated.

  When he came upon the section on the television technique, using videotapes, he read with interest. His father explained his clinical reasons for taking certain actions, forbidding certain activities, and encouraging others. Once again, incidents of his behavior were cited, and then measured against his father’s techniques to determine their effectiveness.

  Things he had once thought were given to him spontaneously as gifts, as lovingly as other parents gave their children gifts, were justified with behavioral theory. Even the Santa Claus myth had been utilized as another device for research and evaluation.

  There were long sections describing his relationship with his mother, and he gathered from the descriptions and discussions that his mother was unaware that she was being employed as a part of the research. She, too, had been manipulated, her actions and decisions evoked with a specific behavioral goal in mind.

  In short, the family had been made into a laboratory experiment in which the parent and child relationship was completely controlled and designed. However, as he read about himself, he didn’t grow angry. He read with the same kind of interest anyone has in evaluations of himself, whether they be palm readings done by a gypsy fortune-teller, or medical reports carried out in a clinic.

  His father had couched the language and the writing technique in such a way that it was possible to remain aloof, to feel he was reading about someone else, this patient, 001.

  The teenage years were the most interesting, he thought. There were long narratives describing his behavior, their discussions about that behavior, and his subsequent reactions to the discussions. Included was all sorts of analytical data from the school, typical things like IQ scores, aptitude tests, report cards, etc. As a school psychologist, his father had obviously had access to everything.

  Much of it had slipped out of his memory, of course, but when he read the section entitled, “Antisocial Disease,” which described his romance with marijuana, cocaine, and crack, he really felt as though he were reading about a totally different person. Apparently, his father had permitted him to go in this direction to see just how far it would take him.

  Finally, he turned the page and reached the detailed description of that fatal day when, under the influence of marijuana, he’d gotten into the car accident that had resulted in his mother’s death. The crash was described with the objective indifference of a news story.

  The subject, his blood filled with highly toxic elements, lost his sense of depth perception. Approaching an intersection, he thought he had much more time to slow down to stop. The subsequent collision with an automobile approaching from the right resulted in the death of his passenger when the passenger’s side door was sheared by the impact. It sliced off the passenger’s head, dropping the head into his lap.

  The subject suffered shock trauma, repressing all memory of the accident as a self-defense mechanism. Catatonic for a prolonged period, he became a prime subject for the LRT, the Lawrence Radio Technique. *See glossary, subparagraph four, section three.

  He took a deep breath before attempting to go on. His heart was beating so hard and so quickly, he thought he was on the verge of passing out.

  Mildred noticed. She got up from her chair quickly, putting her needlepoint down, and came to him. She took his wrist into her fingers and checked his pulse.

  He swallowed, closed his eyes, and lay his head back against the top of the straight-back, leather chair.

  “Take deep breaths,” she said. “Slowly. I’ll be right back.”

  She returned with a sedative and a glass of water. He gulped it down eagerly, then leaned back so his head rested on the seat again. It wasn’t long before he felt calmer and more relaxed. Along with that calmness came a familiar sense of detachment from everything related to him.

  “Why don’t you just lie down for a while,” she said. “Just go over to the couch and rest awhile.”

  He nodded, and she helped him to his feet and guided him to the couch. He sprawled out and placed his hands on his stomach. When he opened his eyes again, she was standing beside him and looking down at him intently, her beady eyes again like two tiny lenses set in a naked skull, focusing and refocusing.

  “I feel sorry for 001,” he said. “I really do. How can he live with himself?”

  “He doesn’t,” she said, picking up on his use of the third person point-of-view. He heard the words coming from her skull, but he didn’t see her lips moving because her lips had evaporated along with her cheeks and forehead.

  He nodded with understanding. “My father has his work cut out for him, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he does, but he is always full of optimism. He believes in himself, in his abilities.”

  “Do you think he’ll be able to help him, then?” he asked hopefully.

  “I’m betting on your father.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “And I want to help him,” he added. “I want to help him in any way I can. It’s about time I was some help to him, huh?”

  “I’d say so. Why don’t you just rest for a while, and then you can start again. I’ll call your father and give him a report.” She started away.

  “And tell him I want to help him, will you? Please.”

  “Sure. He’ll be glad to hear that. Nothing would make him happier than your being of some assistance to him. Rest,” she said.

  He nodded.

  Rest. He closed his eyes and saw himself sitting in the car. There was blood all over him, splattered over his neck and shirt as though someone had dipped a paint brush in a can of red paint, and then flicked the brush at him. He looked down into his lap.

  She was looking up at him with opened eyes. She wasn’t angry; she was…disappointed, and that hurt even more.

  Of course, he was sorry, but being sorry was not enough. Did it help to keep saying it? No. But he couldn’t stop saying it.

  If he could only put it back and make her work again, fix her like a toy he had broken. He couldn’t do that, could he?

&
nbsp; No.

  But his father could. That’s what his father was doing right now. He was putting him back together.

  What a man, what a genius, my father. He’s going to put my head back on my shoulders. It wouldn’t be long now. He relaxed some more. Not long. Soon, he would look in the mirror and know all of himself, and he would never wake up again with strange arms and legs.

  Lois led Justine to a small luncheonette not far from the school grounds. Some of the “townies” were there. When they entered, she saw Tad Donald in a front booth with two of his buddies. He eyed her and Lois with surprise as they made their way to a booth in the rear of the store.

  It was a very clean-looking luncheonette, with a beige tile fountain counter and light pine wood walls. The shop’s large windows afforded it a great deal of light, giving an airy, open atmosphere. One woman in her early fifties served as a waitress, and the owner, a short, bald man wearing a white apron, worked behind the fountain making ice cream sodas, sundaes, hamburgers—whatever the high school crowd demanded. He had a cheery, perpetually sunburned face and knew most of the students by name. Justine saw that he didn’t know Lois, but he smiled and nodded when they walked past the fountain.

  “Why did we come here to talk?” Justine asked.

  “I’ve only been in here twice and just recently,” Lois offered in explanation. “But I like it here. It makes me feel…normal,” she said, sliding into the booth.

  Justine looked back at the townies gathered at the front of the luncheonette, then sat down across from Lois. “Well, what do you want to talk about?”

  Before Lois could respond, the waitress was at their table.

  “You want a Coke or an ice cream soda?” she asked.

  Justine thought a moment. “Just a Coke,” she said.

  “I’ll have a black-and-white ice cream soda,” Lois told the waitress, who took their order without speaking and left. “That’s a chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream,” Lois explained.