Forever Freaky

by Tom Upton

  “What did you eat? Not much, huh?”

  “I ate plenty,” I said.

  “What’s plenty? Two, three bites?”

  “Plenty is plenty.”

  “You eat any meat?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “You need your protein.”

  “Vegetables have protein.”

  “It’s not the same,” he said.

  By now my perky façade had completely crumbled, and I was my grumpy old self. Apparently I couldn’t even pretend to be normal.

  “Dad, please, I’m tired of hearing about it,” I said.

  “Well, then do something to put on a few pounds.”

  “I’m up to ninety-nine pounds, and that’s normal for somebody five-foot-one.”

  A large grimy hand popped out from under the side of the truck. Its thumb was pointed upward.

  “Number one, I doubt that you weight ninety-nine pounds, and number two--” The index finger of the grimy hand went up—“you’re at least five-foot-four.”

  “Well, I am eating. I don’t know what else to do. This is just the way I am.”

  “Maybe if you tried lifting weights,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “What?”

  “Lifting weights. I have enough equipment in the basement. You’ll pack on some muscle.”

  I grimaced at the thought. My dad was such a regular guy. He did guy things: worked on cars, lifted weights, blow his nose without using a Kleenex. He saw the world in such simple terms. If you’re too thin, eat more. If eating more doesn’t work, then lift weights. Every possible problem had a simple answer. But the simple answer in my case eluded him: I was thin because that was how I was meant to be.

  “Dad, lifting weights, really?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Lots of girls lift weights these days.”

  “It’s just not me,” I told him.

  “You have to do something.”

  “How about being myself,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

  I listened to him grunt. He must have been trying to get off an especially stubborn bolt. Finally he gave up and wiggled out from under the truck. He stood up and dusted off the front of his pants. Even grimy and oily, he was a very handsome guy. Evidently I hadn’t inherited many of his genes. In the way of looks, the only thing I had got from my dad was the cleft in his chin. It made him appear manly, while on me it just looked like a pit in my face that didn’t belong there.

  He looked at me with somber eyes, and said, “Mrs. Stock called today.”

  “Why?” Mrs. Stock was my counselor at school, and, really, there was no reason for her to call my parents.

  “She was wondering if everything was all right. Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah, sure, fine. I have no idea why she would call.”

  “She said you haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Maybe you should stop in on her,” he said. Really, the man was quite impossible at times.

  “What’s the point?” I asked.

  “There doesn’t have to be a point. You can stop by and say hello.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I had no intention of seeing Mrs. Stock. She would always think that something was wrong, even if I told her everything was fine. Counselors are funny that way.

  “See that you do,” he said.

  Now that I was completely annoyed, I jumped down from the workbench. I started to head toward the house, but something caused me to linger, an antsy feeling that I’d forgot something.

  “Oh,” I said, turning back toward him. “You hear about the guy who caught fire?”

  “You mean at the ball game,” he said, using a dirty cloth to try to clean his hands.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Why?”

  “What do you think of that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “There has to be a reasonable explanation.”

  “You think it might be—what do they call it—spontaneous human combustion?”

  He smiled at me indulgently. “That wouldn’t be my first guess. I’ve been a firefighter for nearly twenty years, and I never once saw a case of spontaneous human combustion. I don’t believe there is such a thing. I think some people fall asleep smoking a cigarette, and somehow they ignite themselves. Either they spilled something flammable on their clothes earlier, or something. People simply don’t start on fire for no reason—there’s always a reason.”

  “But how can guy start on fire while he’s playing in a baseball game?” I asked.

  “Maybe—I don’t know—I’m sure it’s some kind of fluke that doesn’t have a thing to do with spontaneous human combustion. Why all the interest?”

  “It’s just that everybody was talking about it at school,” I said. “Oh, you better answer your phone,” I added, a couple seconds before his cell phone actually started to ring.

  He dug the phone out of his pocket, and then gave me an odd look.

  I thought, Oops, and decided to retreat into the house.

  ***************

  Mom was in the kitchen making dinner, which looked like it would be some kind of casserole deal I definitely wouldn’t be able to eat.

  I flopped down on one of the chairs at the table.

  I must have looked despondent, because she said, “Don’t worry. I’m making you a fruit salad. No meat, no bad visions.”

  “Sometimes, I’m so stupid,” I said.

  She frowned. “Why would you say that?”

  I told her about my dad and his cell phone call.

  “You have to be more careful,” she said gravely.

  “It slipped out, before I could stop it. It was like a reflex.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He just gave me a weird look.”

  She wagged her head.

  “Honestly,” I said, “I think, deep down, I want him to know.”

  She sat down next to me. Great concern was etched on her face.

  “That can never happen. You have to keep working around him.”

  “I’ve been doing that forever. It gets harder and harder all the time.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Why does he have to be such a straight edge? Why can’t he be more like--” I almost said Jack, which would have been a big mistake; Mom didn’t know that I’d shared my secrets with Jack, or Melody—she thought she was the only living person who knew about my abilities. “Why can’t he be more open-minded?” I amended.

  “It’s just not him,” she said. She bit her lower lip, as though she considering something intensely. “There’s something I never told you, but maybe it’s time you know.

  “First I want you to know that your father is a good man. Never doubt that for a second.

  “This happened a couple months before you were born. It was a joyous time. Your dad and I were young, and you were on your way. You were supposed to be the first; we were going to have three kids, two girls and one boy—well, that was the plan, anyway,” she added wistfully.

  “Your grandmother was visiting one day,” she continued. “She and your dad got along pretty well—there was never that son-in-law/mother-in-law animosity.

  “So we were sitting around and talking. Mostly it was baby this and baby that. Then the subject came up of whether you would be a boy or girl. I’d gone in for an ultrasound, but your dad and I choose not to know what you would be. We wanted to be surprised. But now, with the due date coming up fast, we were getting more and more curious. Plus your dad was complaining that we’d have to wait until after you were born for him to know whether to paint your room blue or pink. You know how your dad hates to do anything last minute.

  “So your grandmother offered to do a reading on you.”

  I gawked at her. “She didn’t,” I said.

  “I’m afraid so,” she sighed.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, she said you’d be a girl. So problem solved with the pai
nting—pink room. But you know how these things work. It never stops there. It takes on a life of its own—that was what your grandmother always said. She told us there would be… complications, and that afterward I wouldn’t be able to have other children. Complications? There’s an understatement; both of us nearly died. You ended up in an intensive-care nursery for a couple weeks. Anyway, you know about that part.

  “Dad was mad. I don’t know what he thought—probably that grandma was making a really, really bad joke. Then when it came true…” She rolled her eyes, remembering. “I don’t know. He just never looked at her the same. He started calling her a witch. I really think he believes she caused it all to happen. He won’t talk about it, and if you bring it up, he pretends not to know what you’re talking about.

  “That’s why he can never know about you,” she concluded. “It was never that he doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. He believes, but he thinks it’s evil. If he knew what you can do, he wouldn’t be able to live with it—I really think it would kill him.”

  “Oh,” I murmured. I didn’t know what more to say. I was stunned, thinking that my dad might actually consider me evil. That had never crossed my mind. How can anybody think you’re evil just for being what you are? I’d always imagined that if I told him, he’d accept me for what I was, like a father accepts a child with some disease. Maybe he would even think it was cool that I could do the things I could do….

  “I have homework to do,” I said dully, and got up to leave the room.

  “Julie?” I heard my mom say behind me, but I just kept walking.

  I locked myself in my bedroom, and flopped down on my bed. I stared at the ceiling, wishing I could fall asleep. My life was always better when I slept, but I was cursed with severe insomnia. I was lucky to get two hours sleep each night, and I walked through the day like a zombie.

  So I lay there, and began wondering, for the millionth time, What exactly am I? Could it be that my dad would have been right? Was I some evil thing, human but not quite completely human? Would my abilities destroy me and destroy those close to me? Maybe I had always sensed that this was true. Maybe this was why I had chosen to have as few friends as possible.

  It was maddening not to know for sure. What was I? Born to destroy, born to heal, or born to be in some freak show? The more I wondered, the more agitated I became.

  I jumped out of bed, and stripped off all my clothes.

  There was a full-length mirror attached to the back of my bedroom door. I would always hang a bathrobe over the mirror, so that I couldn’t accidentally catch a glimpse of myself. My dresser mirror, too, was mostly covered, with articles and pictures that I’d clipped out of magazines. I usually hated to look at myself so much, but now I needed to see everything.

  I tore the bathrobe off the hook on the back of the door and exposed the mirror. I saw myself standing there naked. I looked like a stick figure with a big dark mop of crazy hair on its head. My skin was very pale and you could see fine tracings of blue veins beneath. My bones stuck out all over— ribs, collar bones, knees. The points of my hipbones protruded so badly they looked like sharp weapons. My breasts were nearly non-existent, and if you looked closely, you could actually see my heart beating under my ribs.

  Looking at myself, I fought off the urge of gag. I looked so horrible, like something that had staggered out of an alien death camp.

  But could I actually be evil? Nothing ever hurt me. You could call me names, and I felt nothing. You could threaten me, and I felt nothing. I felt neither sadness nor joy, nor hate, nor love. Inside I was as unfeeling as a dried out husk. But now the fear that I might be evil touched a nerve that I never realized existed, and all I knew was terror.

  I huddled on the floor at the foot of my bed. I hugged my legs against my chest, and cried and cried. Through my tears I saw things floating around the room. Books, pencils, pens, stuffed animals, CD cases, the pillows from my bed—all swirling around in circles in the air. The blanket on my bed flapped as though in a strong wind. The mouse of my computer hovered over my desk, wagging back and forth on its cord, like a hawk trying to break free from the tether the hawk-keeper had tied around its leg. The harder I cried, the faster, the more frantically everything flew around my room.

  I tried to regain control of myself, but couldn’t. Maybe I was finally losing it, as I had always feared I would.

  I was in a crisis, but who was I supposed to call? A witch doctor? My mom would sure be no big help, and my dad—well, forget that.

  I cried out in my mind for Jerry, the house spirit, but he would not manifest himself. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe he couldn’t, because there was too much psychic energy whirling round the room.

  The terror was growing in me, as was my desperation. I crawled across the floor to where my jeans lay, and I dug my cell phone out of the back pocket. My hand was so shaky that I had a hard time punching in the numbers. I kept getting the numbers wrong, and had to go back and change them. Finally I got the phone number right and pressed the SEND button.

  When Jack answered the phone, all I could say was, “I need help.” It came out in an agonized whimper.

  “Jules? Is that you? Where are you?” he asked.

  “My room. Please come, please!” I begged.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Please!”

  I thought the phone went dead. It was hard to tell. Everything was flying around so fast now. My books sounded like a thousand eagles flapping their wings, wheeling around just over my head.

  As if the objects swirling around the room weren’t bad enough, things started to flash through my head. Somewhere hoards of protesters were throwing rocks at lines of policemen, as clouds of tear gas rose from the street… A school bus filled with children skidded off an icy road and rolled down a snow-covered embankment…. Some burning thing was hanging from the wire and the rain was making it burn brighter and brighter…. Jack was running down a street, trying to catch a bus… My father was leaving, backing down the driveway, heading to his friend’s garage to finish fixing the truck…. My mom was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher…. The Cubs beat the Giants 4 to 3 in extra innings…. Warren J. Baxter, a retired accountant from Naples, Florida, won $153 million dollars in a mega-lottery…. An ancient woman was using a walker to inch her way down the hallway of a nursing home. She was calling for her lost dog, Buddy, who died twenty years ago…. Something still burned on the wire…. They all must burn, a pale-lipped mouth murmured in the darkness…. Jack was sitting on a bus….

  I felt that I was losing myself. Everything flickered faster and faster through my mind. I saw and heard thousands of things, and the more I saw and heard, the less there was of me, as though I was being devoured by my visions.

  It became harder and harder to focus on single scenes. Everything blended together in a mad stream of colors and sounds. Every now and then I could pick out a single word, a cry, a faint heartbeat. Images sped by in a blur of bright lights.

  I sat on the floor and waited and tried not to lose my mind. I couldn’t have said how much time passed, but then I caught a glimpse in my mind of Jack walking up the front stairs of my house. I was too stressed to be relieved. I was too consumed with everything that was rushing through my head to wonder what help Jack could be to me anyway.

  He stabbed the doorbell, and my mom went to answer the door.

  He told her he was here to see me.

  She was puzzled. I never have friends over to the house.

  Oh, just let him in! my mind screamed, and the words somehow reached her mind. She had a panicky look on her face.

  Julie, is that you? she thought.

  Yeah, just let him in. Send him up to my room.

  How are you doing that?

  Oh, I don’t know. Please, his name is Jack—send him up here. I need his help with something.

  I don’t understand this at all.

  I’ll explain later.

  Jack was watching her with concern, wondering why she wa
s standing in the doorway and spacing out. He asked if she was okay.

  I guess she wants you to go up to her room, she told him, and at long last let him in the house.

  When she started to show him where my room was, I thought, Just tell him where it is, okay?

  Is something going on I should know about? She thought.

  You definitely don’t want to know, I thought, watching a stuffed pink elephant fly past my face.

  All righty, then, she thought, and gave Jack directions up to my room, before retreating to the kitchen.

  I had stopped crying. I felt somewhat better, knowing that Jack was here. Sure, it was just Jack, but it was better than being alone.

  I got up from the floor, and was at the door when he knocked.

  I opened the door an inch and peeked out to make absolutely sure my mom hadn’t followed him up.

  “Jules, you okay?” he asked, guarded, not knowing what to expect.

  I rolled my eyes. I stayed behind the door and stepped back to open it so that he could come inside.

  He spotted all the objects flying around the room, gaping up at the ceiling in wonder. As he walked into the room, he said, “That’s a lot of psycho kinetic energy.”

  “Gee, you think?” I asked.

  I shut the door, and watched him wander about the room, studying everything that was flying around. He had to duck when one of my books— it looked like Catch-22—swooped down toward his head.

  “How did this--?” he started to asked, turning to look at me. Then his face turned pale. “Oh, wow, you’re naked,” he said dimly.

  “Hunh?” I didn’t think I’d heard right, over the roar of sounds in my head. Then I looked down to see that I’d been so distracted by everything that I’d forgot to put on some clothes. “Just—just turn round, will you?” I said, although it was too late. I felt feeble. I couldn’t raise my hostility to the level the situation demanded.

  I went to my dresser. I found a pair of cut-off jeans and a plain white t-shirt, and I put them on while Jack looked the other way.

  “It’s all right,” I said after I was dressed. I walked up to him, and giving him the best evil eye I could manage, warned him, “You didn’t see anything, understand?”