Here Lies Daniel Tate

by Cristin Terrill

  “Good morning,” Jessica said. “I’m Jessica Calvin Tate. I believe my daughter spoke with one of you on the phone about my son?”

  I looked at Jessica in surprise. She was different. Straight backed and clear eyed, speaking in a steady voice above her customary murmur. Her armor was surprisingly effective.

  “Oh, uh, yes,” said one of the secretaries. She was pear-shaped and overdressed, a housewife who’d had to get her first job after losing her husband, and she didn’t quite meet Lex’s gaze. She turned to the other woman, who was sitting behind a desk and staring openly at me. “Could you get Dr. Singh, please?”

  The bell chimed as a kid walked into the office. “Mrs. Day, I have a note from my mom—” He stopped when he looked up and saw me. “You know what—I’ll come back.”

  He hastily retreated from the office, and Nicholas, who was slumped in a chair against the back wall, snorted under his breath. I was suddenly worried. It had been weeks since the photographers at the airport, and I’d just assumed interest in Danny Tate had ebbed, but maybe the protected enclave of Hidden Hills had kept me from realizing how big a deal this all was.

  I took a breath and swallowed down my nerves. I could handle a little scrutiny. First you’re an oddity and then you’re furniture. Teenagers are too self-absorbed to care about another person for very long.

  The secretary gave Jessica some paperwork she needed to sign, and while she was reading it over, a person I took to be Dr. Singh emerged from a hallway that branched off from the administrative area behind the counter. She was an Indian woman in her fifties or sixties who wore a sharp gray suit that matched her gray hair and sharp eyes. She looked at me without hesitating or staring when she introduced herself as the school’s head guidance counselor.

  “Mrs. Tate, Daniel, please follow me, and we’ll get you squared away,” she said.

  She led Jessica and me back to her office while Lex and Nicholas waited in the outer office. As we walked, I put my hands in my pockets and felt Mia’s lucky penny. I pinched it between my fingers.

  Dr. Singh closed the door to her small office behind us, and we sat down across the large desk that dominated the room.

  “So, Daniel,” Dr. Singh said, knitting her fingers on top of a folder of paperwork, “this is a big step for you.”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  She just looked at me for a long moment before nodding and going on. “And, Mrs. Tate, it’s good to meet you. I’ve spoken at length with your son and daughter about how best to help Daniel reintegrate to the school environment, and Principal Clemmons and I have discussed the situation with his teachers. What I want to be absolutely sure you understand, Daniel, is that we’re here to support you. We know this might not be the easiest transition, so we just want to keep the lines of dialogue open, okay?”

  I just wanted to get the hell out of that room. It was small and airless, and I could tell Singh wasn’t stupid. The less time I spent with her, the better. “Yeah, okay.”

  She slid a piece of paper across the desk toward me. “This is the schedule we’ve drawn up for you. I’ve put you in ninth-grade classes for your academic subjects, just as a starting place. No one expects you to do any work yet. Just listen and focus on settling in. Nicholas isn’t taking any electives this semester, so the only class of his I was able to put you in was the school’s mandatory health class, but you do share a lunch period. If at any time you feel like you want to alter this schedule in any way, that’s no problem. Nicholas will be walking with you to your classes until you get your bearings, and if it ever becomes too overwhelming, you’re of course welcome to call your mother”—Dr. Singh looked up at Jessica—“or your sister to come and pick you up. There’s no need to jump straight into the deep end.”

  “I think I’ll be okay,” I said.

  “That’s a great attitude,” Dr. Singh said. “I’d also like you to come meet with me regularly so I can see how you’re getting on. For the next few weeks, I’d like you to come here instead of going to your homeroom class. After that, if things are going well, we can meet perhaps just once a week.”

  “No,” I said. I couldn’t spend that kind of time with Singh. She’d be too hard to play, I could tell. If I acted too normal, she’d get suspicious, but if I played my traumatized victim routine, she’d make the Tates put me into therapy or something else that would get me caught. I had to stay away from her. I turned to Jessica. “Please. I just want to be treated normally.”

  “Daniel—”

  “Doctor,” Jessica interrupted, “I support my son’s decision. We’ve discussed this step extensively at home, and it’s very important to Danny that he returns to a regular routine. No special treatment that will single him out.”

  “I really can’t recommend that, Mrs. Tate,” Singh said. “These are special circumstances, and Daniel will need—”

  Jessica didn’t blink. “I’m afraid I have to insist.”

  I stared. Who knew this steely woman existed inside Jessica’s dissolute shell?

  Dr. Singh opened her mouth to argue, but Jessica stared her down, and, with obvious effort, the doctor nodded instead. “Okay, we can see how things go. We’ll adjust if it becomes necessary. And, Daniel, I want you to know you can always feel free to come and speak to me if you want. Understood?”

  “Understood,” I said.

  • • •

  The paperwork was done, and we left the office. Lex gave me a tight, nervy hug and asked if I was sure I wanted to do this.

  “We can just go home,” she said. “Cane is supposed to propose to Brooke today.”

  I smiled. “I’m okay. Really.”

  She sighed. “Okay, then. Call me if you change your mind. I’ll come right back and get you.”

  She fussed over me. Straightened the collar of my shirt and smoothed my hair. I flinched, and she pulled back.

  Jessica just stood there.

  “Thanks,” I said. And then, because Lex looked so anxious, I added, “I’ll be fine.” I immediately wondered why I felt the need to comfort her.

  “Mom?” Lex said. “Is there anything you want to say to Danny?”

  Jessica looked up at me, and already the confident creature I’d seen in the office was fading.

  “Good luck,” she said softly. “We should go, Alexis.”

  Lex squeezed my hand one last time, and the two of them left, disappearing into the flare of sunlight through the front door of the building.

  • • •

  My first class was English. Nicholas walked me to the other side of the school, and I wondered what Lex had said to him to make him agree to this guard dog duty. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

  We arrived a few minutes before the bell, and Nicholas introduced me to the teacher, Mr. Vaughn. He was one of those young guys you could tell was dying to be the Cool Teacher, his tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches tossed over his desk chair and his long hair almost brushing his collar. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves just enough to show the edge of a tattoo on his forearm so his students would see he was hip, and he probably genuinely believed he could change their lives through the power of Shakespeare.

  He shook my hand and showed me to an empty desk in the back row of the classroom. Nicholas told me he’d be back to walk me to my next class and disappeared. I sat down at the desk, and Mr. Vaughn perched on the edge of it.

  “I don’t want you to worry, Danny,” he said. “You do prefer ‘Danny,’ right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s all going to be cool, okay?” he said. “You just hang back here and watch for a while, and we’ll ease you back in. If you get overwhelmed and need to leave, that’s cool too.”

  “Cool,” I said. What an idiot.

  The bell rang soon after, and kids started trickling in. I kept my eyes down on the copy of Jane Eyre that Mr. Vaughn had given me and felt each pair of eyes on me like an unwanted touch against my skin. Maybe they knew who I was—had known Danny, even—or m
aybe I was just the new kid. Either way, I reminded myself, it would pass.

  When the bell rang at the end of the period, I nonchalantly fled the stares in the room and the thumbs-up from Mr. Vaughn. As promised, Nicholas was already waiting for me in the hallway.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded and hitched my bag up higher on my shoulder.

  A girl with a cloud of dark curls passed me. “Welcome home, Danny,” she said. A massive dude in a letter jacket clapped a hand on my shoulder as he followed her and said, “Glad to have you back, man.”

  My smile felt more like a grimace. “Thanks.” I turned to Nicholas. “Do you think everyone knows who I am?”

  “Pretty much,” he said. “The principal made an announcement yesterday and went to all your classes to warn everyone to act normal.”

  “Perfect.” This may have been the stupidest idea I’d ever had. I could feel the eyes on me now like insects scuttling across my skin, and it was way worse than I had braced myself for. I just wanted to disappear, and I knew I could. Lex would swoop in and take me away from here in an instant if I called her, and she would never make me come back.

  But.

  But if I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity I’d stumbled into—to have a real life as Danny Tate, the kind I’d never been able to have as myself—I had to push through. I could do that. All I had to do was stop being me and start being him, the Danny I had pieced together from photo albums and family stories and my own imagination. The Danny who was cool and confident and rode just a little bit above everything.

  “You okay?” Nicholas asked.

  I took a breath, raised my chin, and put on my Danny mask. “Yeah, fine. Where to?”

  I ignored the looks and the whispers I felt following me as Nicholas led me down the hall, and they didn’t seem to itch as much. My next two classes were the same as the first. A quick talk with the teacher before class where they spoke to me in a low, comforting voice, like I was a rabbit who might spook. Watching quietly from a back seat, pretending not to notice the surreptitious glances and outright stares directed my way. A few words of encouragement from braver classmates and Nicholas waiting to shuffle me to the next classroom.

  “Okay.” Nicholas was looking down at my schedule when I came out of biology. Good thing no one actually expected me to do any work, because I hadn’t understood a word of that class. “Next you’ve got beginners’ art with Ms. Scofield.”

  Hey, something I might actually be able to do. I’d always liked to draw.

  Nicholas silently led me toward the art class, which was on the opposite end of the school. He didn’t look at me or speak to me as we walked, which made it pretty much the same as any other time I spent with Nicholas. I’d made no kind of connection with him yet, and it made him one of the most dangerous people to my goal of becoming Danny Tate for good.

  “Sorry you have to lead me everywhere,” I said. “But at least you’re getting out of class early each period, right?”

  He tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed. “Yeah, I guess.”

  I looked down at my shoes and tried to project the air of vulnerability and guilt that worked so well with Lex. “I’m sorry, you know. For all the trouble I’m causing you.”

  He sighed and actually looked me in the eye for a moment. “It’s no trouble. Don’t apologize.”

  I lifted one corner of my mouth. “You’re a really good big brother.”

  I’d always wanted a big brother.

  He didn’t know how to react to that. A half a dozen different expressions passed over his face before it settled into a smile. A small one, but it looked real.

  “Thanks,” he said softly. Then cleared his throat. “Here it is. I’ll meet you back here before lunch.”

  He walked off quickly, and I watched him go. Maybe we were finally making progress.

  Ms. Scofield treated me the same way the other teachers had. She showed me to an easel close to her desk and explained that the class was working on still life drawing. At the front of the room was a stool with a bowl of plastic fruit placed on it. The other easels, arranged in a half circle around the stool, had half-started drawings on them.

  “Just do your best,” she said.

  I picked up a piece of charcoal from the easel and started sketching the outline of a peach. It was nice in the midst of this giant act to do something that actually felt natural. I used to have a notebook that I carried around with me and sketched in whenever I had a chance. Other than my baseball card, it was the one possession I gave a damn about. Someone swiped it from me at a group home in Edmonton.

  With the drawing to focus on, it was easier to tune out the wide-eyed looks and muted whispers of the students entering the room. But when the girl from the movies came in, the part of my brain that never stopped monitoring what was going on around me noticed, and I looked up. She didn’t see me, and I turned back at the bowl of fruit and tried to concentrate on my drawing. But I did note her last name when Ms. Scofield called the roll: Himura.

  The class got to work, and Ms. Scofield weaved among the easels, offering critique and guidance. The girl from the movies sat opposite the semicircle from me, so every time I looked from my easel to the bowl, she was there behind it. A flash of dark and shine as she pushed her hair back from her neck. Her bright pink sweater like the sway of a matador’s cape as she leaned over for a better view of the bowl. It was impossible for me not to keep glancing at her. But that was one of those normal things I never did that Danny could, right? Notice a girl?

  She looked up and caught me watching her. She raised a couple of fingers in greeting before returning to her drawing.

  She remembered me. People didn’t usually do that. I’d spent years learning how to perfectly blend in to my surroundings and be forgotten, but she remembered.

  After class Nicholas was waiting to escort me to lunch. California kids don’t eat lunch inside a big cafeteria like we did when I was in school in Canada. The weather is so perpetually perfect that students at Calabasas eat outside at tables spread across a grassy courtyard. Nicholas and I bought slices of pizza and sodas, and I followed him to a table that was obviously his regular spot. His shoulders seemed even tighter than usual, and I wondered if it was all the people looking at us. Looking at me.

  “So,” he said after a minute of silence. “How was class?”

  “Good, I guess,” I said. “How was yours?”

  “Fine.”

  We went back to silently picking at our food. Maybe I wasn’t making as much progress with him as I thought. Not for the first time, I wondered if it was me he was reacting to this way or if it was Danny. In all the home movies and pictures I’d looked at with Lex, Nicholas seemed to always stand a little apart from the rest of the family. Danny gravitated more toward his much older half siblings than the brother who was just a year older than he was. Maybe he and Nicholas had never gotten along. Maybe Nicholas was still dealing with his guilt over that.

  I scanned the tables for the movie girl. Instead, my eye caught Dr. Singh standing under an awning, her arms crossed over her chest as she watched me. She smiled, nodding her head across the distance between us, and I smiled back to show her how fine I was and how much she didn’t need to speak with me. She turned away to talk to a teacher standing near her. When I spotted the girl from the movies, she was sitting at a table by herself near the east wing of the school. I wondered where her friends were, if she had any. She was reading a book and picking French fries off the tray in front of her, managing not to look lonely even though she was alone. A pretty impressive trick it had taken me years to master.

  A movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention, and I turned. A giant blond kid with a smile as wide as his broad shoulders was sneaking up on Nicholas from behind. When our eyes met, he grinned and held a finger to his lips. Nicholas took a swig from his soda bottle as the other boy jumped forward, jamming his fingers into Nicholas’s ribs. He cackled as Nicholas went into a full
body spasm.

  “You asshole!” Nicholas said, slapping his hands away.

  “Sorry!” the other boy said with no sincerity whatsoever. He sat down beside Nicholas and laid his fingers against his neck, drawing him in for a brief kiss on the lips. “I couldn’t resist. It’s your fault for being so ticklish.”

  “I nearly choked to death,” Nicholas said, and I couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. “At least wait until I’m not drinking next time, you dick.”

  “Hey, you must be Danny,” the other boy said, unfazed. He held out a hand to me. “I’m Asher.”

  “My boyfriend,” Nicholas added.

  Keen observer of human nature that I am, I’d gathered that much. I shook Asher’s hand reluctantly, half-afraid he’d crush mine. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” he said. “Nicky won’t introduce me to any of his family. He’s ashamed of me.”

  “It’s not you I’m ashamed of,” Nicholas said.

  “Nice talk in front of your brother,” Asher said, kneading Nicholas’s tight shoulder with one hand. They were an odd pair. Nicholas was dark and thin, with delicate features that were dominated by his black-rimmed glasses. A complicated sort of handsome that matched his personality. He was the negative image of Asher, who was light and tan and built like a truck with a quick, ready smile.

  Nicholas glanced at me. “No offense, Danny. But I don’t always get along with the family.”

  Asher said, “Well, just a few months now and—” Nicholas shot him a look. “Uh, I mean, how’s your first day back been, Danny?”

  Well. That was interesting. I filed it away for later.

  “It’s been okay,” I said.

  “Must be pretty intense,” Asher continued. “Especially since you don’t remember anything, right?”

  Nicholas stood abruptly. “I’m going to get an ice cream. Anyone want anything?”

  Asher and I both shook our heads, and Nicholas walked back toward the building.