by Jason Parent
“Good to know, I guess.” He pointed ahead to the stone wall at the back of the lawn. “So are we still taking the shortcut?”
Michael scowled. “Where’s this place?” The question came out before he could stop it. Dylan hadn’t pressed him, he didn’t think, but the change in nickname somehow felt like a challenge.
“No, it’s cool, buddy.” Dylan shook his head. “I’m not trying to get on your mom’s bad side—”
“Where is it?” Michael blurted, that stubborn pride returning. Dylan sounded genuine, but everything he said had the effect of making Michael feel anything but badass. He liked the nickname, but Dylan was right: his actions weren’t earning it. Still, logic told him he was being stupid. He didn’t even know his new friend’s last name. Plus, the detail was assigned for a reason, though since he’d been back, it hadn’t seemed valid.
The man attacked Sam. The cops should be following her, not me.
Dylan smiled mischievously. “Come on. I’ll show you.” The two darted across the lawn to the stone wall, where Dylan halted. The police car had already turned around and was speeding away to meet them on the other side of the shortcut.
“Now, we double back,” Dylan said, a glint in his eye. He reversed direction and ran back the way they’d come.
Michael followed. He knew what he was doing wasn’t very smart, but his accelerating heartbeat made him feel... good? It felt good to be bad, to throw caution at the wind, to do something that felt dangerous, even if he knew there was very little danger in it. No one was or had been out to get him.
“Won’t they come back this way?” he asked.
“Most... likely not,” Dylan said between panting. He took a right down Courtney Street, which ran parallel to the street on the other side of the shortcut, following the direction the police car had gone. “We need to find someplace to hide.”
Michael scanned the neighborhood for a quick and convenient hiding spot. The houses were modest, one-story homes, most having equally small but fenced-in front yards. In the nearest driveway, a large black F-150 was parked. As he heard an engine drawing nearer, Michael pulled Dylan by his sleeve over to the pickup. They crouched beside the rear wheel and slowly circled the back of the truck as the police car passed. Once the cruiser had turned, the boys stood.
“They’ll be back,” Dylan said.
“What are you kids doing to my truck?” shouted a man from the front porch.
Laughing, Michael and Dylan took off running, farther down Courtney Street, taking a right then a left until they were heading in the direction of Brentworth Hospital. They were nearly there, too, when Michael slowed to a stop.
He bent over and placed his hands on his knees, his breaths quick and shallow. “Wait!”
Dylan, who’d already slowed to a trot, halted and turned around. “I doubt we’ve lost them yet, but we’re really close.”
Michael winced at a stitch in his side. Still breathing quickly, but consciously trying to take longer, deeper breaths, he asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“I told you—to my spot. Don’t worry. You’re going to like it.”
“Is it at Brentworth?”
“No. Why? Is that a problem? I thought you go there all the time?”
Michael didn’t want to explain to a kid he was just getting to know that his detective foster mother had been attacked the last time they’d been there. The many reasons not to ditch his detail, play with strangers, or go anywhere near Brentworth flooded his thoughts like a tidal wave, and his legs wobbled as if they might give out. But to turn back then, without any real, tangible reason for fear, would just be stupid. Cowardly. And worst of all, he might damage his chances of actually making a new friend.
“Okay. I-I just don’t want to go to Brentworth.”
Dylan’s braces twinkled in the late afternoon sunlight. “Just come on. We won’t be going anywhere near that place.”
As it turned out, “near” meant something entirely different to Dylan than it did Michael. After following his new friend for another half mile, they stopped in front of Brentworth Hospital. A sprawling complex, Brentworth was an old brick and mortar structure that looked more like an Ivy League college dormitory that had been left unattended for half a century than a healing center. Though Michael wasn’t born until after Brentworth’s heyday and had always known Charlton Memorial Hospital as the place to go if you were hurt or sick, he’d learned all about Brentworth when he found out Tessa would be sent there.
Michael hadn’t been born yet when Brentworth was the city’s only hospital. After the more advanced Charlton opened, Brentworth had become the home for several specialties, a walk-in clinic, and run-off emergency services when the load on Charlton became too much. But most people, Michael included, thought of the place as the “nuthouse.” Though his tune had softened a bit when he started going there to see Tessa, the massive hospital always intimidated him. It had three stories at its center and wings sprawling out in all directions, kind of like his high school. But much of it went unused and neglected like it was two steps removed from being a fine location for a horror film.
As they approached, the hospital looked alive. People in street clothes and scrubs entered and exited every few seconds. An ambulance was silently waiting out front, red lights swirling. A car that looked like Sam’s was parked a little ways behind it in a tow-away zone.
“I thought you said no Brentworth?” Michael asked, more annoyed with Dylan’s deception than anything else.
“Relax. We aren’t going in there.” He pointed to the lane that led to the back entrance. “We’re going behind it.”
Before Michael could protest, Dylan marched ahead. Michael shuffled his feet, wondering whether to follow. His hesitation came with anger, a spark at first that ignited an ever-growing flame. He was so tired of being afraid—afraid of being bullied at school, of what the other students thought of him. Afraid of what he might see if he held hands with a girl or, God forbid, let someone hug him. Of living his life in fear of all the crazies in Sam’s and, to be fair, the crazies that he’d found all on his own. He just wanted to be normal, to do normal kid things with other kids.
So he wasn’t normal. Fine. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t or shouldn’t have a taste of it now and then. The world was a dark place, but living in fear left no room for light. Or friendship. Or fun. It had left him with no real life to lose.
He clenched his jaw and ran to catch up with his friend. “So, what’s your last name, anyway?”
“Jefferson,” Dylan said. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew that.”
“You know mine?”
Dylan poked him in the arm. “You mean it’s not Badass?”
“That’s my middle name.” Michael frowned. “But seriously. It’s Turcotte.”
“I know.” Dylan smiled. “I paid attention during roll call.”
Michael squinted. “Ms. Alvarez did a roll call? I don’t remember that.”
“Like I said, I paid attention.” Dylan laughed and Michael joined him.
They continued to walk down the lane toward the hospital’s rear entrance. There, the parking lot had gone unmaintained, its surface riddled with long cracks and uneven pavement. Weeds shot up through the asphalt like tufts of stray feathers on a plucked chicken. Smaller trees lined the back of the lot, their larger brethren beyond them, a massive army standing at attention, spanning into darkness.
Michael remembered the lot well. He’d been there only six weeks ago, wielding an ax to save Sam’s life. The memory came to him vividly, and he scanned the tree line for any sign of the man in the Indian mask. He clenched his teeth and balled his hands into fists. I’m not afraid of you. As much as he wanted to be brave, the lie crumbled to dust under wobbly knees and hesitant feet.
“Come on!” Dylan called from the lot’s edge. He was heading into the forest. “It’s just a little ways through here.”
“Aren’t there, like, ticks or something?”
Dylan turned
and shrugged. “Probably. You coming?” Without waiting for a response, he stepped past the first row of trees. A few more steps and Michael could barely see the blue of Dylan’s jacket.
Michael again examined the trees for anything suspicious, then the back of the building and the remainder of the lot. He saw no one. Nothing stirred. He was alone. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. That was when he realized the extent of his idiotic pride and his desire to be normal. It had left him alone and at risk. And though he saw no one, he felt as though a hundred eyes were on him.
He ran after Dylan. “Wait up!” As he sprinted into the woods, he could no longer see his friend. He looked left and right but saw nothing but telephone-pole-thin firs, some black and rotting. Their needleless lower branches reached out like skeletal hands to claw at his face and arms as he ran. Roots and twigs, half-covered by moss and underbrush, tried to knock his feet out from under him, but he recovered from each stumble before they could succeed.
About a quarter mile in, he skidded to a halt and looked back, not sure if it was the direction of the hospital. Everywhere he turned, the forest looked the same. Panic rose within him as his heartbeat pounded in his temples. Sweat dripped from his forehead and down his spine. Where are you, Dylan?
“Over here!” Dylan was barely twenty yards away, diagonally to Michael’s right, as easy to see as the trees directly in front of him. He was waving his arm over his head. How Michael had missed the boy he could only explain as a result of his minor bout of hysteria. He sighed, his eyes welling as he plodded slowly through the brush to Dylan, giving himself as much time as possible to regain his composure.
Dylan beamed as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Welcome to my home away from home, Badass.” He swung his arm back, directing Michael’s gaze to a thick trunk with wooden rungs nailed into it. The planks that weren’t cracked entirely appeared to be splintering, and all could only loosely be described as horizontal, but Michael understood their intent. He looked up.
“Wow,” he said, hiding his enthusiasm. “I doubt that thing’s up to code.”
“It’s sturdy enough.” Dylan dropped his backpack beside the tree, reached for a rung, and began to climb. “Come on!”
Michael gazed at the treehouse, a plywood box perched on forking branches that, from thirty feet or so below, didn’t look much thicker than his calves, which Sam referred to as his chicken legs. The wood appeared weatherworn and maybe even termite infested. He watched Dylan climb as gracefully as a monkey, without the slightest hesitation or misstep. Michael wished he could be like that, and not just in climbing shifty ladders.
He sighed, tossed his backpack near Dylan’s, and grabbed the rung just over his head. But when he tried to step up, his sneaker slid right off the plank. His shin banged into it as he slipped, causing a stabbing pain to shoot up his leg. He groaned and cursed, then studied the rung, realizing his error almost immediately. Each rung was wider than the base of the tree. Stepping on the end of the rung would allow him to use the ball of his foot to climb rather than just his toes.
Placing the middle of his sneaker on the end of the rung, he tested his weight on it. He and Dylan were roughly the same size. If anything, Dylan was slightly taller. If it supports him... Michael began to climb.
He was about halfway up and becoming comfortable with the climb when one of the rungs spun vertically as he planted his foot on it. He gasped and threw his body against the tree, the scare quickly passing as his other three grips remained firm.
He yelled up to Dylan, pissed his friend hadn’t warned him. “Some of these ladder rungs are shit!”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry!” Dylan called back from somewhere beyond Michael’s sight.
Michael shook his head and continued without further incident. At the top, he pulled himself up to a landing that served as a sort of porch without railings for the treehouse. Cautiously rising from his knees, he took in the view and immediately wished he hadn’t, his legs going shaky again on what might have been less-than-solid footing. He’d never been afraid of heights, but just knowing how easily he could fall from getting dizzy or the slightest careless bump from Dylan, and the treehouse’s interior seemed all the more welcoming.
It was much bigger than it appeared from the tree’s base, and the branches supporting it were much thicker. It still looked like a box made of rotten wood, and in contrast to the haphazardly constructed shack the rest of the thing was, it had saloon-style doors that swung on double hinges.
“Howdy, partner,” Michael said as he ducked his head and pushed through the doors.
Save for two folding chairs, one of which Dylan sat upon, the inside lacked any adornments. Small windows were carved into the sidewalls, facing what Michael thought was the way back to the hospital and the way deeper into the woods. Facecloths were thumbtacked over each window, probably to keep out bugs and weather. The window facing Brentworth was clear, its facecloth folded and tacked above it. Under that, a pair of binoculars leaned against the wall.
Dylan spread out his arms. “Pretty amazing, huh?”
Michael didn’t know how he felt about it. Warmth flushed his cheeks. Maybe he was way too old for a treehouse. It seemed like something younger kids did, normal kids—not like him. He’d never been in one before, and he guessed... yeah, that did make it kinda cool.
“I guess.” He shrugged, downplaying his elation, then took the seat beside Dylan.
“Let me guess,” Dylan said, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You’re thinking we’re too old to have a treehouse?”
“It might’ve crossed my mind. You build it?”
“Nope. Found it.”
Not knowing what else to talk about, Michael watched as a nasty-looking bug emerged from the crack where the wall met the floor. He grimaced as the thing, possibly an earwig, scurried toward his foot. He lifted his sneaker and slammed it down hard on the bug, then froze, the branches below him creaking and groaning in protest.
“Don’t do that.” Dylan’s face had gone a lighter shade. He laughed nervously. “Besides, the bugs up here aren’t so bad. Especially the roaches.”
Dylan reached over to the wall and retrieved a small lumpy white cylinder that looked like a cigarette without a filter. “You smoke?”
Michael had never smoked weed before, but he knew it when he saw it. He thought about lying to make himself sound cool, but Dylan would probably see right through him, so he stuck with the truth. “I’ve never had it before.”
Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He put the joint to his lips and inhaled as he lit the already blackened end. As he breathed in the smoke, the end of the joint brightened. Michael found the light sort of pretty and then thought himself weird for finding it so. Dylan removed the joint from his mouth and appeared to be holding his breath. After a moment, he blew out a cloud of smoke that tingled against Michael’s face. Then Dylan held the joint out to him.
Michael leaned away. “I shouldn’t. I’m probably giving Sam enough to worry about right now.”
“Which is exactly why you should. You seem like the type that’s always worrying about other people, what they think, and what they feel about you. So high-strung. This will help with that. It’s medicine for your soul.”
Michael scoffed. “Medicine for your soul? Where’d you hear that bullshit?”
“I don’t know.” Dylan laughed. “But it sounded good, didn’t it? It’s cool, though. It doesn’t usually work the first time anyway.”
The boys laughed together, and Dylan took another hit. Michael would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t want to try it, curiosity getting the better of him. With it being legal for adults in Massachusetts, he expected half the students at his high school had already tried it. Hell, half of them are probably high at school. How bad can it be?
“All right.” He held out his hand. “Pass it over.”
“Badass!” As Dylan passed him the joint, he explain
ed how to grip the end and take a hit so Michael wouldn’t close it off. Michael put the joint to his lips and did as Dylan instructed, inhaling as deeply as he could.
“Now hold it in,” Dylan encouraged.
Michael coughed. Smoke exploded out his nostrils before he opened his mouth. A coughing fit ensued that lasted over a minute. Every time he tried to speak, a tightness would return to his chest, and he’d start coughing all over again.
Dylan apparently found the whole thing hilarious. Between bouts of laughter, he said he would have offered Michael some water but had forgotten to bring it. He shrugged and raised his palms. “Sorry!” He laughed some more before taking another hit himself.
When Michael was able to talk again, his own laughter prolonging the attempt, he said, “I pegged you as a quichebag, dressed like you were the first day. I never expected I’d be ditching the”—he made finger quotes— “entourage and smoking weed with you in a treehouse behind a mental hospital on day two. What’s on the agenda for tomorrow? We gonna steal a car?”
“Yeah, that cop car that’s been following you. Er, was following you.” Dylan blew out a puff of smoke. “What in the hell is a quichebag?”
“You know, like a goody-two-shoes.”
“What the heck is that?” Dylan burst out into laughter.
It was infectious. “A choir boy?”
“Now that, I understand.” Dylan’s face went deathly grave, and he fixed Michael with a stare that unnerved him. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Badass. Like where I buried all the bodies.”
Michael stared back at him in silence for another second before both boys exploded into laughter. Michael had tears in his eyes by the time he’d finished. “Give me that,” he said, pointing to the joint.
Dylan handed it over. “Go easy, now.”
But Michael didn’t want to go easy. He took a long hard hit that resulted in another coughing fit, but he didn’t care. It felt good to hang out and have fun, to let his cares go. To not be a burden on anyone else for once and be where someone actually wanted him to be.