“Glad to hear it. Listen, I’d better get going,” I told her. “It’s time to teach up the young again.”
“She’ll be in your class today. Quit worrying so much.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Once I got to Padelford, I checked my mailbox. As I’d expected, there were quite a few dropout cards. I went to my little clothes-closet office and quickly revised my class list. It was definitely getting closer to target. About one more heavy belt would bring it down to a reasonable size.
I hit the classroom door at exactly one-thirty. Since I was going to make a big issue of doing things on time, I thought it might be best to set a good example.
Twink was sitting near the center of the room, and she had a smug smile on her face. I took the roll and called in their papers.
“Now then, ladies and gentlemen,” I began, “it’s time to raise the issue of documentation. We refer to these friendly little messages to the reader as ‘footnotes,’ probably because they’re at the bottom of the page. Documentation is the academic way to justify random pilferage. You can steal any idea you want—if you document in the traditional way. Don’t just come right out and admit that you swiped this idea from Aristotle or Tom Paine. Your professor’s going to know that you’re swiping stuff, so you don’t have to rub his nose in it. Follow all the conventional rules, and you won’t disturb him while he’s sleeping his way through your paper. If you get to be good enough at it, you can coast your way to a bachelor’s degree without ever coming close to having an original thought. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Immerse yourselves in mediocrity, and you’re home free. Originality makes people think, and most of them would rather not.”
I still don’t know what set me off on that tack. Maybe it was Milton’s fault. That particular Wednesday was definitely a downer.
I chalked out various footnote formats on the blackboard and generally piddled away the rest of the period. To be perfectly honest about it, I didn’t feel much like teaching that day.
I wanted to have a word with Twink to make sure that she was OK, but she was a little too fast for me, and a couple of suck-ups short-stopped me before I could get to the door. They babbled on and on about how “absolutely fascinating” they’d found my discussion of footnotes, and I had a hell of a time getting away from them.
I stopped by my cubicle to check off the papers I’d collected against my current class list, and about midway through the stack I came across the paper Renata had threatened to drop on me. I knew it was hers because she’d used Twinkie as her byline.
I set the other papers aside and took up hers . . .
HOW I SPENT MY VACATION
By Twinkie
I spent my vacation in the bughouse, listening to the other buggies screaming and laughing just to pass the time away. Normal people can’t seem to understand how nice it is to be nuts sometimes, and that’s very sad. People out there in the world of normal have to face reality every day, and reality is usually flat and grey and ugly, and time only runs in one direction, and doorknobs can’t talk. A true nutso doesn’t have to put up with that. We can make our world as beautiful as we want it to be, since it has to do what we tell it to do.
Isn’t that neat?
In the world of nuts, nothing is real, so we can change anything we don’t like. If a day is beautiful, we can make it last for a thousand years; if it’s ugly, we can just throw it away. If the sun is too bright, we can send it to its room, and if the stars are too dim, we can tell them to burn more brightly, and they will, just to make us happy.
That’s what makes the world of nuts so much nicer than the world of normies. Our truth wags its tail and licks our fingers; their truth snarls, and it bites.
Sometimes, sometimes, those of us in the world of nuts think about the world of the normies, and we’ve pretty much decided that it might be sort of fun to visit it once in a while, but we certainly wouldn’t want to live there. It’s just too desperate and ugly, and the normies never seem to get the things they want, no matter how hard they try, and that’s very sad.
People from the world of the normies used to visit us in the bughouse now and then, but they weren’t really very much fun. They always looked so serious and worried, and they almost never laughed. Normies just can’t seem to see the world the way we buggies see it, so they can’t even begin to see how funny it is. They couldn’t seem to relax, and their eyes got all wild when the nutso down the hall started to practice screaming. Don’t they know that screaming is a fine art? In the Olympic games of the world of nuts, a perfect ten scream wins the gold medal every time.
I’ve moved back to the world of the normies now, and I know that I’m supposed to be serious and never laugh, but sometimes—sometimes—I scream a little bit, just for old times’ sake. I make it a point to scream politely, though. It’s not nice to wake the neighbors in the gray world of the normies. A few quiet little screams aren’t really all that disturbing, though, and I always seem to sleep better after I scream.
And when I sleep, I sometimes dream of the world of nuts, and my doorknob sings to me, and my walls hold me tight, and I drift above the sky and look down at the desperate, grubby, ugly world of the normies where everybody is serious and worried, and never, never, ever smiles.
And I laugh.
“Jesus!” I said, gently putting the paper down. Damn! This girl could really write!
I had to find out if the paper was as good as I thought, so I went looking for Dr. Conrad. As luck had it, he was in.
“Are you busy, boss?” I asked him.
“Do we have a problem, Mr. Austin?”
“Not really. I think I just struck gold, is all. If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like your opinion about this.” I handed him Twink’s paper.
He glanced at the title. “You didn’t!” he said, almost laughing. “ ‘How I Spent My Vacation’?”
“It’s a freshman class, boss. Most of the students are still at the ‘Run, Spot, run’ stage. This one’s a cut or two above average, though. Tell me what you think.”
He read through Twink’s paper. “Dear God!” he said when he finished.
“I felt the same way, boss,” I said smugly.
“Don’t let this one get away, kid,” he told me.
“Not much chance of that. She’s the one I was telling you about a few weeks ago.”
“Then she really was in an asylum?”
“Oh, yes. Her twin sister was murdered, and she went completely bonkers for a while. Now she’s auditing my class. She didn’t have to write that paper, but she did it anyway. Every so often she likes to show off. She is a sharpie, though.”
“You’ve got that part right. If she stays even the least bit sane, do the department a favor and steer her in our direction. Somebody like this only comes along once or twice in a generation.” He swiveled his chair around and turned on his copy machine. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked.
“Not a bit, boss. I may run off a few dozen copies myself.”
It hadn’t quit raining when I headed back to the boardinghouse, and Milton still hung over me like a dark cloud, but I was suddenly all bright and happy. Twink’s paper had erased the gloom that’d been perched on my shoulder all day.
Not even grading that stack of papers could sour my day.
I went down to the kitchen while the girls were fixing supper. “I’ve got presents for you ladies,” I told them.
“Oh?” Trish said. “What’s the occasion?”
“Charlie and I had a chat with his brother last night, and big Bob suggested something that made a lot of sense. I picked up these neat little key rings for you—which I want you to have with you every time you leave the house.” I laid the three rings on the kitchen counter.
Erika picked one up. “What’s this little doohickey attached to the ring?” she asked me.
“Pepper spray,” I told her. “Don’t play with it, because it’s loaded. You flip that little knob over, and it’s ready to go. If you h
appen to encounter the world-famous Seattle Slasher, a quick squirt of that stuff will absolutely ruin his day. He’ll be totally out of action for at least an hour—or so the clerk at the gun store tells me.”
“Don’t we need permits to carry those?” Trish asked me dubiously.
“Bob West didn’t say anything about permits, Trish, and he’s a cop, so he knows the rules.”
“I don’t know, Mark,” she said. “I think having that thing in my purse might make me a little nervous.”
“Nervous is better than dead,” Erika told her. “Those spray things make sense, so do as you’re told.”
Trish grumbled a bit, but she did what her younger sister commanded. There was something about Erika that made Trish automatically snap to attention.
“What’s got your clock all wound up, Mark?” James asked me at the supper table that evening. “You’re acting like you just won the lottery.”
“That comes fairly close,” I admitted. “I ran head-on into talent today—in a freshman English class, of all places.”
“Flowers do grow in the weed patches sometimes,” he conceded. “Some snappy little bon mot, perhaps?”
“Beyond that, old buddy,” I said smugly.
“You are going to share this with us, aren’t you?” Sylvia asked pointedly.
“I thought you’d never ask. I just happen to have a copy with me.”
“What a coincidence,” Erika observed dryly.
“Be nice,” I scolded. “My class turned in a paper today, and I found this tucked in amongst all the usual junk.” I handed Twink’s paper to James. “Here you go, partner,” I said. “Wash the sour taste of Hegel out of your mouth with this.”
James took the paper. “How I Spent My Vacation,” he read aloud in that deep voice of his, “by Twinkie.”
“Isn’t that the girl you’ve been baby-sitting, Mark?” Erika asked me.
“That’s her. Go ahead, James. Whip it on ’em.”
He read Twink’s paper to us, and there was a stunned silence when he finished.
“Wow!” Charlie murmured after a moment.
“Yeah, wow,” Sylvia agreed. “I’ve got to meet this girl, Mark.”
“Did they actually turn this young lady loose?” James demanded. “It doesn’t seem to me that she was ready yet.”
“She’s just showing off,” I told him. “She didn’t even have to write the paper. She’s only auditing the course.”
“You don’t come across too many people who write papers just for fun,” Charlie said. “Was that why they locked her up in the bughouse?”
“Not really,” I told him. “She had a few other problems as well. And don’t joke about it—her headshrinker thinks she might have to go back inside a few times. I guess that’s sort of standard—like kicking the cigarette habit.”
“Psychosis is addictive?” Charlie asked.
“You heard her paper, Charlie,” I replied. “The world of nuts is nicer than the world of normies. Your doorknob won’t say things to you that might hurt your feelings, and it’s only in the bughouse that you can try out for the Olympic Screaming Team. I showed Twink’s paper to my faculty advisor, and he ordered me not to let her get away. Even if she’s only playing with half a deck, she can still write circles around just about everybody else on campus.”
“Does she behave at all normally?” Trish asked.
“Define ‘normal,’ ” I suggested. “She doesn’t walk on the ceiling or believe that she’s Napoleon, but she does get a little strange now and then. She has good days and bad days, but I guess that’s part of the process of recovery.”
“She’s got a crush on you, Mark,” Erika told me. “You did know that, didn’t you?”
“Get real,” I scoffed. “She thinks of me as her big brother, that’s all. Both Twinkie Twins felt that way when they were little.”
“Where’s she staying?” Sylvia asked me.
“She’s living with her aunt—about five blocks from here. Why?”
“Because we want to meet her, of course,” Trish said bluntly.
“Do you think her aunt might let her out for an evening?” Sylvia chimed in. “Maybe she could come for dinner—like tomorrow evening.”
Then I remembered something. “I think I goofed,” I apologized to Sylvia. “I was talking with Doc Fallon yesterday, and he wants you to give him a call.”
“Me?” she asked. “What for?”
“We were talking about a problem Twinkie’s having, and I mentioned your major. The notion of having a trained observer on-site appealed to him, since he’s fairly sure that I’m missing things. So if everybody here’s just dying to meet her anyway, we might as well get some mileage out of it.”
James burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Trish demanded.
“Mark’s suggestion fits right into this place, doesn’t it?” he noted. “We are something on the order of an institution here, aren’t we? We all have rules to obey and duties to perform. The sudden appearance of Mark’s friend even defines what kind of institution we are, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t think that’s funny at all,” Trish told him disapprovingly.
“I wouldn’t push it, James,” Charlie advised. “Don’t offend the ladies who run the kitchen. That’s a good way to get a boiled two-by-four for breakfast—with built-in toothpicks.”
We played around with that for a while, and then we all went back to our studies.
As luck had it, Twink made it to class on Thursday, and I even managed to catch her before she could get away.
“What?” she said irritably when I took hold of her arm.
“Don’t be such a grouch,” I told her. “Are you busy this evening?”
“I was going to save the world, but I suppose that can wait. What did you have in mind?”
“I’m supposed to invite you to dinner at the boardinghouse.”
“All right,” she replied almost indifferently.
“I’ll pick you up about five.”
“No. I’ll bike it. It’s not that far from Aunt Mary’s.”
“How did you know that? I don’t remember that I’ve ever given you the address.”
“You can’t hide from me, Markie, you should know that by now. I’ll be there about five.” Then she disengaged her arm from my grasp. “See ya,” she said, as she went off down the hall.
If she was trying to irritate me, she was doing a good job of it.
I retreated to the boardinghouse and spent the rest of the afternoon grading papers. If you want to ruin your day, spend an hour or two with freshman English papers. It was four-thirty when I finally set the papers aside and went down to see how the ladies were coming along with the cooking. This was the first time I knew of that we’d ever invited anybody to dinner, and it seemed to me that we were all a little jumpy about it.
“Are you going to go pick her up now?” Trish asked me.
“I offered, but she said she’d ride her bike instead.”
“But it’s raining,” Sylvia protested.
“What else is new? It’s only four or five blocks, and she’s got a raincoat. She says she knows where the house is, but I’m going out to the front porch to flag her down, just to be on the safe side.”
“Independence is all well and good,” Sylvia said, “but she’ll catch pneumonia if she keeps this up.”
“Probably not,” Erika disagreed.
I glanced at my watch. “I’d better get out there,” I said. “I don’t want her to zip on past.”
I saw that it was raining harder when I went out onto the porch. Twink’s stubborn attachment to that bike was going to keep her fairly soggy if she didn’t get over it.
It was almost exactly five when she came pedaling around the corner with that silly plastic raincoat sticking out behind her like the tail assembly of a 747. As she pulled up in front of the house, she popped a wheelie by way of greeting.
“Show-off,” I called to her.
“If y
ou got it, flaunt it,” she threw my own smart aleck remark back in my teeth.
We chained her bike to the banister around the porch, then she pulled off her raincoat and shook off the water. “Am I presentable?” she asked, holding out her arms and turning around for inspection.
“You’ll do,” I replied. “Oh, before we go in I should probably tell you that my roomies here have all heard your paper.”
She shrugged. “The price of fame, I suppose,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “Did they like it?”
“It blew them away. That’s what this invitation’s all about. You might want to keep your guard up when Sylvia starts asking questions. She’s majoring in nutsos, so she might try to probe around and find the real you.”
“Fat chance,” Twink replied. “I lost track of the real me a long time ago. How did you like my paper, Markie?”
“It loosened my socks, Twink. It definitely gave me something to brag about. How are you feeling? Mary told me you were out of it on Tuesday.”
She shrugged. “It was just one of those bad days, that’s all. I’m fine now—all cutesy and sweetsie again.”
“Let’s go on in and get the introductions out of the way. They’re a pretty nice bunch, so don’t get uptight because they’re strangers. Your paper impressed the hell out of them, so they’re all geared up to like you.”
“That’s nice. Quit worrying so much, Markie. It’ll give you ulcers.”
We went inside and down the hall to the kitchen. James and Charlie had joined the ladies, and everybody had that expectant look. “Guess who’s coming to dinner,” I announced. It was a goofy thing to say, but it seemed appropriate.
“Has he always been like this?” Trish spoke directly to Renata.
“Usually, yes,” Twink replied. “Sometimes he’s worse; sometimes not quite so bad. It might have to do with the phases of the moon, or something.”
“I thought so,” Trish said. “Maybe it’s one of those guy things. I’m Patricia Erdlund, by the way. I usually go by ‘Trish,’ maybe because the inmates here have trouble pronouncing three-syllable words.”
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