Nervous System (The System Series Book 1)

by Andrea Ring

  I haven’t gone back to school. That would require me to get up on time, shower, and look presentable. Ugh. Just thinking about the effort that would require sends me back to bed.

  Where I don’t sleep.

  Grandma puts up with me. She feeds me runny oatmeal and orange juice with pulp in it. I get soda crackers with butter on them for a snack. And she even lets me stay in my pajamas all day, though I’m not allowed to watch television unless I’ve brushed my teeth. She tries to get me back into a routine, but she can’t make me. And she eventually stops trying.

  I don’t see much of Dad. He’s here, I know, because I see his empty beer cans in the trash and on the coffee table before Grandma can scoop them up. And I find his tennis shoes or his keys lying around in odd places. But he doesn’t spend much time at home.

  I lie in bed.

  I eat oatmeal.

  I watch TV (after brushing my teeth).

  I eat crackers and watch more TV.

  I nap.

  I refuse dinner.

  I lie in bed.

  

  I drift up in my hot air balloon. The ground recedes beneath me. I lean out over the edge of the basket and watch it all rush away. My hair flutters in the breeze, tickling my forehead. I feel wonderfully dizzy.

  I tip myself back to my feet and rest my chin on the railing. A scuffling sounds behind me and I turn. There is Mom, her back to me, poised over the edge of the basket, her body a perfect mirror of what mine was moments ago.

  “Mom,” I say.

  She doesn’t move, but she speaks.

  “You’re drifting, Thomas.”

  “We are,” I say.

  “You can’t live your life adrift.”

  I sigh. “I suppose not, but it’s beautiful.”

  “And lonely,” she says. “And aimless. And unproductive.”

  “Must life be productive?” I ask her.

  I can feel her smile. “Not everyone’s, but I was talking about you.”

  I gaze out to the sky, study the wisps of clouds.

  “I miss you.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” she says, “except that now the responsibility for your life falls on you.”

  I snort. “Yeah, that’s nothing, alright.”

  “You can do it,” she says.

  “Of course I can,” I say. “But it’s so much easier not to.”

  “The farther you drift, the longer the journey back.”

  I turn back to look at her, blink, and she is gone.

  I feel my tear ducts activate and I quickly shut them down.

  I will the balloon to return to the ground.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I wake with an odd sense of purpose. I have no idea what time it is, what day it is, what I’m supposed to be doing. But I know that I’m supposed to get up.

  I shower and wash my hair. It takes me longer than usual—my wet hair is sticking to the back of my neck. I have been out of it longer than I thought.

  “Who’s there?” a frightened voice calls into the bathroom.

  “It’s just me, Grandma,” I call back.

  “Thomas? You’re in the shower?”

  “Yes.”

  She blows out a loud breath. “You gave me quite a start. I thought you were asleep.”

  I can sense her hovering just beyond the shower curtain.

  “I’ll just be another couple of minutes,” I offer.

  “Oh. You…would you like breakfast?” she asks hopefully.

  My stomach grumbles.

  “That would be delightful.”

  Grandma laughs and quietly shuts the door.

  I finish rinsing off. I spy Dad’s razor on the edge of the tub, and I pick it up. I cannot recall when I saw him last—I can recall the moment, but I have no sense of time—but the razor means he’s still here. Razors are hard to come by on the job.

  There is a little chunk of soap caught in the blades. I run my finger over it to pick it out, and the blade slices cleanly through the pad of my finger. Blood wells from the neat cut. It starts to sting. I call up platelets, will my skin to knit back together.

  And it does. While I watch.

  I’m dumbfounded and totally fascinated. I have never tried to heal a cut before. It seems so obvious, now that I’m doing it.

  I run the same finger back over the blades and cut myself again. I squeeze the cut, widen it a bit, and heal myself just as cleanly.

  How far can I go? How much can I heal and how fast?

  I lose track of time again.

  Grandma finds me sitting in the tub just beyond the water spray, my body covered in hundreds of straight cuts all in various stages of healing, the water swirling pink down the drain.

  

  I am not strapped to the bed, but I’m in a bed with straps. I suspect they didn’t use them because I am so small—strapping me to the bed would be akin to putting me on the Rack.

  Grandma sits in a chair to my right. Her liver-spotted hand clutches the bed rail. She is squeezing the rail so hard that her veins threaten to pop through her translucent skin.

  I don’t want to frighten her any more than I already have, so I try to speak softly.

  “Grandma?”

  Her head snaps up. Her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen but sharp.

  “Thomas,” she gasps out. Her skeletal hand finds mine and squeezes surprisingly hard.

  “Why?” she says.

  “It’s not what you think, Grandma.”

  “You know what I thought?”

  I nod. “I didn’t try to kill myself. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

  Her eyes start to tear. “Truly? I thought…your mother…you’ve been so sad. I didn’t know it was that bad. I thought you’d get over it.” The tears roll down her cheeks.

  “It’s not,” I say quickly. “Don’t cry. I’m over it. Not over it…it’s not that bad. I wasn’t trying to hurt myself. It was an experiment.”

  “An experiment?”

  “You know…my abilities. I figured out I can heal a cut.”

  Grandma squeezes my hand so hard that it throbs. “Of course you can heal a cut, you idiot! You can hear me fart at the other end of the house! You can metabolize a piece of chocolate cake without absorbing the calories! You can redistribute your body fat to plump up your…well, you might not have need of that one, but you can do it. Has your father taught you nothing?”

  My eyebrows shoot to my hairline and my eyes open as wide as they’ll go.

  “My father?”

  Grandma snatches her hand back and stares at me. Then she lowers her eyes to her lap. “Dear God, you don’t know.”

  “Know what?” I ask, already knowing. I feel a wave of anger crash over my head and spread throughout my body. My heart races and my cheeks start to burn. “Know what?” I repeat.

  “Your father and I, we have the same abilities as you.”

  “Did mom know?” I ask.

  Grandma shrugs. “We never spoke about it, but I assumed she knew. I assumed your father told her.”

  I gnash my teeth together. “He didn’t.”

  “Are you certain?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “I…I’m so sorry. If I’d known that your father…” Grandma’s voice fades. She takes a deep breath and stands. “I’ll be back.”

  

  Bastard. The fucking bastard.

  Fucking, fucking, bastard.

  That’s all I can think. No coherent thoughts, no planned speeches for the next time I see the son of a bitch. Just, what a fucking bastard.

  How does a parent do that to a child? How did my father lie to my face, pretend he didn’t know what I was going through, feign ignorance when I was crying out for help?

  He could have blown me away at MarioKart. He could have built the Harry Potter castle in ten minutes without reading the instructions. He could have prepared me for school, for chrissake! Given me pointers on how to deal with the other kids. He could have helped my mother.
>
  He could have helped my mother.

  He could have helped Mom.

  Mom was the brave little soldier in our house. Mom took on all the worry, all the responsibility, all the decision-making, all the work. Mom figured it all out, even when she’d had no freaking clue what was going on.

  I hate him.

  He’s nothing to me. He’s a sperm donor. He’s a useless piece of furniture taking up space. He’s a coward.

  I start to cry. That’s the thought that brings the tears—that my father is a coward. He was my hero. I thought he was brave enough to face anything. But all my worshipping was laid at the feet of a false god.

  And while one could argue that a six-year-old who knows about intercourse and death and national security and war has no innocence left to lose, one would be wrong.

  I lose my innocence in a flood of tears with the knowledge that my father is not a god.

  He’s just a man.

  A very flawed man.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grandma wanted a daughter, or at least a granddaughter—that is clear from the beginning of our lessons. She doesn’t say as much, but come on.

  “Puberty will be a very interesting time for you,” she says, “and while you might be tempted to encourage the growth of certain body parts,” and she pauses to cup her sagging bosom, “I highly advise against it.”

  “I don’t think I need bigger boobs, Grandma,” I tell her.

  “What?” she asks, startled. She looks down at her chest and removes her hands quickly. “Well, of course not. Um…this could apply to any body part.” She glances quickly at my groin.

  “Grandma!” I say, shocked.

  She giggles. “I meant your legs. Men always want to be tall.”

  “Oh.”

  “And monthly, well, I guess you don’t need to know about that. Hair! Yes, hair. It’s important to take care of your hair.”

  “My hair?” I say.

  “Yes. During puberty, your oil glands become especially active. The oil is good for the hair, makes it shiny and provides moisture, but too much will make your hair appear greasy and unkempt. You must brush it, at least twice a day.”

  I rub the top of my flat top. I just got it shaved a couple of days ago. “I need to brush my hair?”

  She nods. “Twice a day.”

  I try to steer her away from the puberty discussion, and somehow we arrive at fashion.

  “Clothes are so important for a person. You want to purchase clothing that’s appropriate for your body type and shows it off to its best advantage.”

  “Huh?”

  “Where do you shop for clothes?”

  “Shop?”

  “Yes. Where do you purchase your clothes?”

  “Um…I think Mom bought my stuff at Target.”

  Grandma wrinkles her nose.

  “Grandma, I appreciate all this information, but I’m getting a bit of a headache. Do you mind if I lie down for a spell?”

  “Oh dear. Of course. Let me get you something.”

  She takes a bottle out of her purse and taps two Midol into my palm.

  

  We decide that I will go back to school after winter break. Grandma’s lessons have been…well, interesting, but even she knows they are not a substitute for formal education.

  Dad has been gone for a week, back to wherever he went. We never had it out, didn’t bother to exchange two words since my hospital stay. I was tempted to start a conversation (read: argument), but then I thought, I’m not the adult here. Plus, I didn’t do anything wrong. He is the one who needs to come to me.

  Now it’s too late. He’s gone. And I regret everything left unsaid between us. Life is short. Look at what happened to Mom, and she didn’t face down enemy bullets and terrorist plots and heavy machinery and scorpions lurking in the sand beneath her cot.

  The regret haunts me. It’s like a chigger burrowed underneath my skin, a constant irritation that I can’t ever quite ignore completely.

  I pack my backpack the night before school starts. Grandma comes in with a pile of papers and sits on my bed, watching me.

  “All ready?” she asks.

  I nod. “Everything’s packed up.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.”

  She holds out the papers to me.

  “Dad left these on his bureau for you.”

  I take them and sift through the pile.

  There’s a sympathy card from the staff at my school—it looks like every teacher there signed it. There’s a spiral-bound book of sympathy notes from my class—each child has written me a note and drawn a picture, and Mrs. Gardener bound them together. There are three notes from Tessa, hand-delivered from the look of them. One is a drawing of Tessa and I holding hands under a tree, with the caption, “From your friend Tessa.” One is a drawing of a field of flowers. One is a note:

  Dear Thomas,

  We miss you at school. Abbey colored on one of the computer monitors and her mom had to buy a new one. Abbey missed recess for a week. We learned about penguins and how they slippy slide on their bellys. Mommy wants to take us to Sea World to see the penguins and I asked and she said you could come to. If you want. Sam recked his casle and he let me build it. I think I messed up the top and could you come over and help me fix it? If your sad, we can make cake. I won’t get mad if you want to make cake.

  Your friend love,

  Tessa

  I read Tessa’s note five times before I can speak.

  “Why didn’t Dad give me these before?”

  Grandma just shakes her head.

  “I wish I knew, honey.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Today is January 28. I’m all set to give my second presentation on the nervous system, and I find I’m rather looking forward to it. I made a model of the spine out of clay—Grandma indulges my new-found urge to sculpt now that I’m back in the land of the living—and I found an old piece of telephone wire in the garage to use as the spinal cord. I threaded the wire through my sculpture, and even shredded the ends of the wire to show how our nerves spread from the cord itself. Impressive, if I do say so myself.

  I come out into the kitchen for breakfast and find Grandma spreading pink frosting on an angel food cake.

  “What’s the occasion?” I ask her as I pour myself a glass of milk.

  “It’s my birthday,” she says.

  I feel awful. Of course, I had no way of knowing this, but it feels like something I should have asked her about in the last couple of months.

  “Happy birthday, Grandma,” I say, kissing her papery cheek.

  She smiles. “Thank you. I thought we could have a special dinner together tonight. Your grandfather would only cook one day a year, on my birthday. He’d make my favorite—fried chicken.”

  “Yum,” I say. “I love fried chicken. I don’t know how to fry anything, but I know how to make mashed potatoes. Would you like mashed potatoes with it?”

  “Splendid!” she says. “And gravy. Have you ever made homemade gravy?”

  “I’ve seen it done, at Thanksgiving. Mom would let me stir in the cornstarch.”

  “It’s a date, then.”

  I take my daily vitamins and put a couple of pieces of toast in the toaster. Grandma hums while she frosts.

  “How old are you today, Grandma?” I ask. “Or is that a rude question?”

  “I’ll allow it since you’re my grandson. I was born in 1948. How old does that make me?”

  “Sixty-five. That’s a milestone.”

  She chuckles. “Every day at my age is a milestone.”

  I study her face out of the corner of my eye. Sixty-five is not that old, at least not these days. People that age have wrinkles, yes, and their hair is turning mostly gray, but Grandma looks like she’s eighty. She’s thin, skin and bones. Her short-cropped hair is completely white. Her shoulders hunch over, and she walks as though her muscles can barely support her weight. Her hands are craggly claws
covered in liver spots.

  “Grandma,” I say slowly, wanting to approach this cautiously, “how come you have wrinkles? You told me that we could plump up our skin, and shift our body fat around and stuff.”

  Grandma licks a bit of frosting off her wrist. “I also told you that just because we could doesn’t mean we should.”

  “Is it a moral question, then?” I ask. “Smoothing wrinkles is wrong?”

  Grandma sets down her knife and sits across from me and my toast at the kitchen table.

  “Your grandfather Harry, you never met him, and you don’t know how much that just burns me up, what with Ray and Eddie and Earl and all his friends just parading those photos of their grandchildren out at every bridge game I went to, every week it was, going to a different friend’s house, and their husbands were all there, always home, always under foot, scarfing down the pie I brought like I brought it just for them. And I always said, don’t they play golf? Don’t they have a poker game to play? We girls had our bridge, but the men, all those damn men in Florida had nothing better to do than show off pictures of their buck-toothed, homely faced grandbabies.”

  I sit mesmerized by her unexpected tirade, and I try to figure out where she’s going with this.

  “Well Harry, he woulda done the same, no doubt about it, but he was already gone by the time you were born. But just you know, he woulda done the same.” She nods her head once for emphasis.

  “Uh, thank you,” I say.

  “Yes, well Harry just loved him the babies. Took to your dad right away and wanted ten more, the way he went at me day after day, not that I’m complaining. But anyway, I used to.”

  “Used to what?” I ask her.

  “I used to heal myself all the time. Gets to be something you don’t even think about. I’d start every morning eyeing myself in the mirror and smoothing any line that appeared. And one morning Harry, he’d just come out of the shower and he was all wet and drippy but he hugged me from the back and rested his chin right here on my shoulder and he squeezed and do you know what he said? Ruthie my love, you don’t look like you’ve lived thirty-two years. And I smiled and winked at him in the mirror and I wiggled just a little bit against him and I said, well isn’t that lucky for you? And do you know what that corker did? He sighed. Sighed! And kissed my cheek, and wrapped himself up in a towel and he said, we’ve been married for twelve years. You’ve suffered the death of your father, your uncle’s up the river for stealing from your mother, your niece Addy ran off with that no-good Burt character and sleeps on a bench in San Francisco, and you have a child. But I look at your face and it doesn’t show me one damn thing you’ve been through.” Grandma shakes her head. “And I started to cry. Couldn’t help it. And Harry, he just laughed at me and hugged me again and he said, the outside should match the inside.”