School of Fear

by Gitty Daneshvari

  Mr. Masterson felt a definite somersault in his stomach while looking over the plane. He wondered how any reasonable person could NOT be afraid of the aircraft, yet Madeleine wasn’t. She wouldn’t have minded if the plane had been called Certain Death. For Madeleine, the comprehensive fumigation of the plane’s interior was far more important to worry about than a little thing like safety — although, it should be noted that Mrs. Masterson only allowed Madeleine access to non-flammable repellent.

  The entire Masterson clan remained silent throughout the fifty-seven-minute flight. Madeleine was much too frantic worrying that School of Fear would confiscate her repellents and netted veil to be bothered with idle chitchat. The veil and repellents had been with her so long they had become extensions of her own limbs. In fact, Madeleine would sooner consider a life without arms than one without bug repellent, although she would have to come up with a clever contraption to spray the repellent without arms.

  Madeleine considered the many gruesome things she would endure for her repellent and veil, completely ignoring the plane’s wild altitude fluctuations. Mr. and Mrs. Masterson’s stomachs climbed into their throats, but Madeleine barely noticed. She was absorbed in a bargaining of sorts: Was the veil worth a toe? Five toes? A foot? A hand? A fingernail? A finger?

  The plane continued to weather heavy turbulence until finally landing — although it felt more like crashing — in the Pitts. Mr. Masterson wobbled with queasiness as he deplaned directly onto the bumpy Tarmac.

  “Maddie, are you sure you’re not afraid of flying? I’m not terribly fond of it myself, especially after that ride. I am more than happy to travel by car, bus, train, or boat. It seems a great deal easier than attempting to exterminate the planet of bugs and spiders. Do you think you might be up for switching fears?” Mr. Masterson asked as his face started to regain color.

  “Mummy, please tell Father to stop talking,” Madeleine said in a small but authoritative voice.

  “Arthur, please. No one is in the mood for your sense of humor. Or rather lack thereof.”

  As part of the Mastersons’ standard travel practice, the family checked into a pre-exterminated bed-and-breakfast, which was in this case the Pretty Pitts Inn. The Mastersons had long since implemented a fumigation mandate for all travel accommodations. It required a great deal of preparation and considerable expense, but it was necessary for Madeleine to maintain any semblance of sanity.

  In the pale green bathroom at the Pretty Pitts Inn, Madeleine brushed her teeth vigorously while scanning the walls for spiderwebs. On the other side of the wall, the still nauseated Mastersons inspected the sheets and pillowcase before assembling the mesh canopy. Madeleine entered the room in her pink dressing gown with a built-in veil, pumped off a few sprays of repellent, climbed into bed, and silently prayed for a bug and spider-free night.

  At 7:30 AM the following morning, the fatigued Masterson family boarded a bus for Farmington. The silver-sided bus was completely empty except for a handsome young boy named Garrison Feldman. At thirteen, he was big for his age, making him an ace in all things athletic, from soccer to baseball to football. He was somewhat of a local celebrity at his Miami middle school, and not just for his exploits on the field. His blond hair, tanned complexion, and blue eyes inspired more than a few girls to drop sappy love notes in his locker. The combination of his athletic prowess and extreme good looks made Garrison the most popular boy at Palmetto Middle School.

  However, in between successes on the field and blushing girls in the hall, Garrison had developed quite the reputation for moodiness, often snapping at classmates for inconsequential things. One day following an impressive soccer match, two of Garrison’s classmates, Phil and Rick, approached with boogie boards hanging from their backs.

  “Dude, you were awesome out there,” Rick exploded with excitement usually reserved for NFL players. “You led us to victory again!”

  Garrison offered a knowing nod; he was praised regularly for his leadership on the field.

  “We brought our boogie boards; let’s sneak down to the beach and hit the waves,” Phil suggested.

  “Nah, I’m not into it,” Garrison responded coldly.

  “Come on,” Rick chimed in, desperate to pique Garrison’s interest. “You never come.”

  “Yeah, the waves are really breaking today,” Phil said with pleasure. “There’s a warning up and everything.”

  A small but powerful ocean breeze blew across Garrison’s face, weakening his knees as he stared into the boys’ eyes. Small spots of light flitted across his vision as he struggled to remain standing.

  “I heard the waves are nearly twenty feet high,” Rick added.

  Garrison’s eyes fluttered into a cross-eyed expression as he fought to stand upright.

  “Man, what’s wrong with your face?” Rick asked with concern.

  “Oh that? That was my impersonation of your mom,” Garrison shot back defensively.

  “That’s harsh, man,” Rick said seriously.

  Garrison marched off the field, turning behind the gardener’s shed, where he collapsed in a heap of sweat and guilt. As he sat on the grass with clammy hands, he prayed that Phil and Rick couldn’t see him. He needed a second to compose himself, to banish all thoughts of the beach and its giant waves. Outside of his parents, no one knew that Garrison was petrified of water. Not drinking water or showering water, but any large body of water such as a lake, pool, or ocean. Embarrassingly, Garrison even broke out in a cold sweat watching reruns of Baywatch.

  The fear of water, hydrophobia, didn’t fit with Garrison’s tough image, and he knew it. All the players he had defeated in baseball, basketball, and soccer would taunt him mercilessly if they found out. He was certain his game would suffer greatly from the release of this information.

  Garrison knew that time was running out; he needed to address his hydrophobia or risk discovery. So at four-thirty in the morning, he had crept from his room to the den, where his dad kept their only computer, a bulky old desktop. Much to his parents’ chagrin, Garrison had forced his family to move to this beaten-down house due to its distance from the shore. Dressed in old sweats, Garrison searched the Internet for an efficient solution. His fingertips grazed the keys lightly to avoid waking his gruff parents.

  Garrison’s stomach gurgled stridently as he imagined confronting his fear and gaining his father’s approval. Whichever program he chose, it needed to work. If it didn’t, his father would use the failure as fodder for more put-downs. Garrison prodded through Web sites, struggling with conflicting emotions. The phobic part of him yearned to avoid water, yet his rational mind wanted nothing more than to tackle it and move on. After all, a boy in Miami could avoid the beach for only so long before people got suspicious.

  Nearing dawn, Garrison’s eyelids drooped heavily as he vigorously attempted to resist sleep. Frustrated and exhausted, he scanned a blog entitled “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Anything Else?” He inspected three testimonials before stopping on one written by an eleven-year-old boy who overcame his sun phobia during a summer at School of Fear. So thorough was this boy’s treatment that he was now a junior lifeguard at the beach.

  Garrison’s fatigue instantly disappeared as he searched the testimonial for a contact number. But in a flash, it was gone. The message literally evaporated before his drowsy eyes. For a second he wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing. Did he make up the boy who lived at night due to his sun aversion? Garrison rubbed his eyes and once again looked at the screen. A stern statement from the law offices of Munchauser and Son appeared, claiming the previous testimonial was a work of fiction.

  A rock formed in Garrison’s stomach, a hardened mound of shriveled-up hope. The rock grew larger by the second, pushing his internal organs against his skin. He looked at his stomach, half-expecting to see an outline of his spleen. Garrison paused and took a deep breath, allowing for a trickle of common sense to enter his head. Why would a law office bother to post a letter about a boy’s overact
ive imagination?

  Sensing there was more to the story, Garrison scoured the Web for any other mention of School of Fear, but found nothing. The lack of information only bolstered Garrison’s belief that he had stumbled onto something. In his gut, he knew he had to find School of Fear, by any means necessary. By now, the sun had risen and Garrison could hear the buzzing of his parents’ alarm clock. His father lumbered into the kitchen for coffee, immediately spotting a sleep-deprived Garrison at the computer in the adjoining den.

  “You better not be buying junk on eBay,” Mike Feldman warned as he poured instant coffee crystals into a mug.

  In a moment of truly poor judgment, Garrison had swiped his dad’s credit card to pay for a replica Joe DiMaggio baseball card. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money; he simply couldn’t use cash on the Internet. Not wanting to steal, he dropped a twenty in his dad’s wallet and called it even. Not surprisingly, his father had an entirely different perspective on the transaction.

  Garrison shifted on the plaid chair as he wondered how much he was willing to bet School of Fear could help him. Was his belief in School of Fear worth what he was about to put himself through? Before he could decide, he spit out the words that cemented his decision. “I need your help.”

  Having brought both of his parents into the fold about School of Fear, Garrison knew there was no turning back. His father had no respect for quitters, whether it was in sports, scrabble, or finding the elusive School of Fear. Together the three of them canvassed over half the child therapists listed in Miami’s phonebook, questioning each and every one of them about School of Fear.

  Some hung up without saying a word, while others flatly denied having heard of such a thing. The manner in which some blustered and stammered led the Feldmans to believe that Garrison’s instincts were right. It was Garrison who happened to call Dr. Ernestina Franklin on that fateful Wednesday morning. After asking about School of Fear, Garrison waited to hear either a dial tone or the usual denial, but instead he heard something entirely different.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve heard of School of Fear?” he repeated in a state of shock.

  Within twenty minutes, the Feldman family was pulling up to Dr. Franklin’s quaint yellow home. Upon seeing the frail old woman at the door, they knew she was nearing both senility and death. Dr. Franklin greeted Garrison warmly with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The old woman’s overly welcoming manner was explained seconds later when she asked “Freddy” why he hadn’t visited his grandma sooner.

  Garrison, desperate for help, smiled and hugged his newfound grandma. He then covertly directed the conversation to the infamous School of Fear. Dr. Franklin’s demeanor altered as she vaguely explained the mysterious institution. Garrison absorbed the information and attempted to ask questions, but Dr. Franklin refused to answer any of them. She did, however, agree to write “Freddy” — who Mrs. Feldman explained preferred to go by his middle name, Garrison — a letter of recommendation.

  Letter in hand, the family was walking toward the front door when Dr. Franklin stopped them.

  “Wait!” the old woman shouted as she opened the end table’s drawer.

  She held up a small and withered photograph. The Feldmans approached slowly, unsure what to expect. First Mr. Feldman, then Mrs. Feldman, and finally Garrison gasped at the sight of a man’s distorted face. Knobs of scaly flesh covered his cruel face. Almost worse than his skin were his eyes; they weren’t the typical bloodcurdling black, but a much more disconcerting banana yellow.

  “Once you send that letter, he’ll be watching you … every-where you go, everything you buy, anyone you call, he’ll know; he knows everything,” Dr. Franklin said ominously.

  “Who?” Garrison asked quietly.

  “Munchauser.”

  CHAPTER 6

  EVERYONE’S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:

  Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words.

  In a feeble attempt to impress his insult-prone father, Garrison had insisted on riding the bus alone. While Mrs. Feldman thought it was too dangerous for a thirteen-year-old boy to travel alone, Mr. Feldman pointedly said that the boy needed to adhere to the strict guidelines of both the NBA and NFL: “No Babies Allowed” and “No Freaking Losers.” These two tidbits, according to Mr. Feldman, were words of wisdom to live your life by, and he shared them with Garrison at least three times a day. He saw it as his parental duty to toughen the boy up, because success never came to babies or losers, on the field or in life.

  Garrison savored the notion of a sports-acronym, insult-free summer while quietly reading his Baseball Today magazine on the bus. Mr. Masterson, a few rows behind Garrison, couldn’t help but watch the boy as he read. Next to him, Mrs. Masterson fought the desire to sleep, desperately trying to keep her eyes from closing. Every few seconds her eyelids would descend slowly, covering half her eyes, before the sharply dressed woman would snap back awake. As Mrs. Masterson roused back to consciousness, Mr. Masterson leaned in to whisper in his wife’s ear.

  “Do you think that boy is heading to the place?”

  “I can’t imagine any other reason for being on a bus in the Pitts at this ungodly hour,” Mrs. Masterson responded.

  “He looks so normal,” Mr. Masterson continued while inspecting the blond boy’s exterior.

  “Darling, fears don’t always manifest themselves in such overt manners like our Maddie,” Mrs. Masterson said as her eyelids once again descended.

  “Quite right,” Mr. Masterson said, peering over at his veiled daughter.

  Garrison, oblivious to the conversation behind him, continued reading and eating the tuna sandwich his mother had made for him. As he absorbed players’ batting averages, he heard the rattle of the bus crossing a metal grate. Instinctively, Garrison looked out his window. From the view, he could tell the bus was on a bridge. His palms sweated profusely while his tuna-filled stomach churned and cramped. Bridges usually span breadths of water, but not always.

  Garrison prayed for a dry ravine or, better yet, that he could resist looking altogether. His anxiety increased rapidly, moving him closer to the window, directing his eyes downward. Garrison saw blue. And lots of it. There was, of course, a window and at least one hundred feet protecting Garrison from the water, but it didn’t matter. The unraveling of reason was instantaneous.

  “No,” Garrison mumbled aloud.

  Sweat patches formed on his face, dripping off his eyebrows, clouding his already blurred vision. Spots of light further obstructed his sight as panic arrested his lungs. Garrison’s wheezing caught the Mastersons’ attention, but before they could ask if he was all right, he screamed. His voice hit a decibel rarely heard outside of rock concerts.

  “Wwwwwwaaaaaaattttteeeerrrr!”

  The surreal sensation of drowning took hold, forcing Garrison to gasp for air while flailing his arms. He was sure his face was a crimson mess. However, before he could check, it went black. The young boy fainted facedown in the aisle, and not a very clean aisle at that. His beautiful tanned face landed right between a putrid-looking green stain and an old piece of chewing gum.

  Mr. Masterson ran to Garrison, checked his pulse, and dabbed his damp and dust-covered forehead. He promptly lifted Garrison onto a seat, placing his head across Mrs. Masterson’s lap. She gently brushed his moist hair off his face as Madeleine stared dreamily at the boy.

  “Mummy, can we keep him?” Madeleine asked with the wide eyes of a burgeoning crush.

  “Darling, little boys make terrible pets,” Mrs. Masterson offered with a wink.

  “That’s not true at all, Mummy. They’re hypoallergenic, much easier than dogs,” Madeleine said cheekily, “and they almost never have fleas.”

  Madeleine stepped closer to Garrison, pressing her veiled face against his flushed cheek. Starstruck and utterly enamored, she could have spent hours digesting the boy’s features, but the soft tickle of her netting stirred Garrison back to consciousness. As Garrison cracked his groggy eyes o
pen, uncertainty and confusion quickly flashed across his face. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but there was a peculiar head pressed against his, and it was freaking him out.

  “Ugh!” Garrison mumbled, and he jerked away from Madeleine.

  Much as a police officer would his gun, Madeleine drew her repellent and prepared to shoot. Clearly, she had come to think of her spray as a viable means of protection against anything. Garrison stared curiously, unsure what to make of the girl with a veil and belt of repellents.

  “I assume you’re also en route to,” Mrs. Masterson then whispered, “School of Fear.”

  “Yeah. As you can tell, I don’t really like water,” Garrison mumbled while returning Madeleine’s intense gaze.

  “I’m terrified of spiders, bugs, and all such creatures,” Madeleine shyly chimed in, attempting to relate.

  Madeleine continued to stare, making Garrison even more uncomfortable and self-conscious than he already was. After all, two minutes ago, he’d woken up with his head in a stranger’s lap and a veiled face pressed against his own. All in all, it had been a rather uneasy series of events. Madeleine zealously maintained her gaze, prompting Garrison to divert his eyes. While taking in the empty bus, it occurred to him that he could simply return to his seat to escape the rampant awkwardness.

  “Well, I better …” Garrison stumbled over his words as he started back to his seat.

  “Do you have any other fears? Besides water?” Madeleine asked, desperate to keep the young man in conversation.

  “Nope.”

  “Oh, shame,” Madeleine said with disappointment before realizing she had said it aloud. “In London ‘shame’ means great,” she poorly covered.