Forever Freaky

by Tom Upton

“Not a thing,” he said.

  “It’s just that with all this, and what’s going through my head—you know, I’m not focusing very well, and I forgot I wasn’t dressed, and, well, you know--” I forced myself to stop, because I realized I had started babbling. I hated people who babble.

  “No, I understand,” Jack said reasonably, too reasonably.

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “You could stand to put on a few pounds.”

  “I’m not talking about that, you nitwit. I mean all this,” I growled, motioning to everything that was flying around over our heads.

  “Oh, well, when did it start?” he asked, but I had a hard time hearing him.

  “Hunh? You have to speak up. I got all this noise in my head. People are singing the nation anthem now. It sounds weird, though—I think it’s the Canadian national anthem. Must be a hockey game.”

  “It’s not even hockey season,” he said.

  “Then it must be a future hockey game. Whatever.”

  “There any chance you can see what teams, and the final score?”

  I groaned. I sat on the floor with my back against the footboard of my bed. I buried my face in my hands.

  Jack sat in front of me.

  “When did all this start?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I whined. By now it seemed to be going on for hours.

  “Something must have triggered it.”

  “Yeah, my dad,” I said

  “What did he do?”

  “He didn’t do anything. My mom told me something about him, and—I don’t know—I guess it upset me.” I told him the short version of the story about my grandmother.

  “Oh,” Jack said knowingly, when I was finished. “So you’re afraid you might be evil.”

  “No, I’m not—well, I don’t know, maybe the thought crossed my mind once or twice. And then hearing that story about my dad…”

  “Jules, you’re not evil,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “I just do.”

  “Whatever. You have any idea how to stop it? I mean, did you ever read anything about something like this?”

  “Not really. I think you just need to calm down, is all.”

  “Calm down? That’s it? All right, I’m officially screwed.”

  “Try taking deep breaths.”

  “Try kissing my butt,” I told him. “I’m not having a baby, you know.”

  “Then how about this? Take hold of my hand,” he said, reaching toward me.

  “Uh-uh. No way. I have enough shit going through my head already. I don’t need your lame thoughts, too.”

  He sighed. “Will you just trust me? I do a lot of meditation. Maybe it will rub off.”

  “That may be the dumbest idea you ever had,” I said.

  But he kept holding his hand out. Finally, I figured I had to try something; I couldn’t go through life with things flying around over my head like a bunch of vultures. So I grabbed his hand.

  The first thing I sensed was that Jack was extremely calm inside. Little by little, that calmness passed from him to me, as though he was lending it to me, and I began to feel better. Then, suddenly, everything that was flying fell to the floor, and the noise fled my mind.

  “See?” he said.

  I slowly released his hand.

  “You don’t worry much, do you?” I asked.

  “What’s the point?” He appraised the room. It looked as though a tornado had gone through it. “Looks more like my room now,” he said, grinning.

  I got up and started picking up things and putting them back where they belonged.

  “You really should listen to me, you know?” Jack said.

  “What? You read a few books, and you know everything?”

  “It’s just common sense. You need to experiment.”

  “I’m not a lab rat,” I muttered.

  “You need to let go, so that you can learn exactly how much you can do. Otherwise, how are you ever going to be able to control it? What if something like this happens at school? What then?”

  “This was just a fluke. It won’t happen again, because I won’t let it happen again.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” I said.

  “So you’re never going to get upset again?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ever?”

  “Never,” I said, and stopped straightening the room. I sat on the floor again. “Jack, you just don’t get it. I don’t have normal feelings. I’m, like, a sociopath.”

  “A sociopath? Really? Where do you get this stuff?”

  “That’s the way I am. You think that somewhere deep inside me there’s something normal going on. If I just focused my abilities on helping people, I’ll turn into little Miss Sunshine. I’m telling you—it’s not going to happen. We already went down that road once. I helped you find Mary Jo Mason. That was weeks ago. Have I changed any? No. Actually, I still wish that I left the miserable bitch where I found her.

  “It’s like this,” I said, trying to be patient, because I really wanted him to understand. “You ran over here to help me, right? And I thank you for doing that—I really do. But I’m just saying words. I don’t feel thankful. See what I mean? I’m not who you think I am. I’m all weird on the outside, and all cold on the inside, and nothing’s going to change that.

  “Now you did do me a favor, and I’ll return the favor, because that’s fair. So if you want me to help you figure out who’s torching these jocks, I’ll help. But don’t believe that’s it’s going to fix me, because it won’t.”

  “I told you: I don’t want your help with that,” he said stiffly.

  “But you didn’t mean it.”

  “I meant it,” he said. “If I’m right about things, you could get hurt. I wouldn’t want that to happen. You might not have feelings but other people do.”

  “I understand that. And I’m sorry.”

  “Which means that you’re not sorry at all,” he said glumly.

  “There you go—I think you’re finally getting it,” I said. “You know, I’ve been flashing on something that might help with your little mystery. It’s just an image. I keep seeing something hanging from some wires—you know, the wires running into the school. I can’t make out what it is, but it’s burning. Does that make any sense to you?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “Does it look like some kind of clothing?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Then it makes perfect sense.”

  “It does? How? Not that I really care.”

  “Sure,” he said, as though it was perfectly obvious. “It’s ‘Liar, Liar.’”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “You know: ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire, hanging from the telephone wire.’”

  “I didn’t think of that. I suppose it could be a pair of pants. So—what?—these three jocks lied to somebody?”

  “This is actually pretty helpful,” Jack said, sounding somewhat upbeat. “It’s suggestive.”

  “A girl’s doing it.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Probably somebody who transferred from Mount Olive to Adler sometime this year. Well, it’s a lead, anyway. I don’t know how I’m going to follow up on it. I mean, there are over 3500 students at Adler. What am I supposed to do? Take a poll?”

  “Tell me something,” I said. “Why do you even care? I mean, a bunch of jocks get char-broiled—so what?”

  “If somebody is doing that to them—well, doesn’t that strike you as being a little—I don’t know—wrong. You do understand the difference between right and wrong.”

  “I understand it,” I said. “I don’t always feel it. But you didn’t answer my question—why is it any of your business?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I’m a hopeless do-gooder.”

  “Well, I can believe the hopeless part.” I thought about things for a moment. He had run over to help me, so I figured I owed him one. I hated ow
ing anybody anything. “I’ll get you the list of student transfers,” I said.

  “You will? How?”

  “Please, don’t ask,” I said. “If I have to explain it all, I’m going to end up changing my mind.”

  “All right, but you’re not going to do anything illegal, are you?”

  “Define illegal,” I said.

  Before Jack left, I told him I needed some story to tell my mom. I could explain it all to her by telling the truth, of course, but that would probably send the woman straight into therapy. Sometimes it is kinder just to lie.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m a great liar,” he assured me.

  “Yeah?”

  “The best,” he said. “Just follow my lead.”

  So we down to the kitchen, where my mom was just popping her casserole into the oven, and Jack explained to her how I’d called him to help me with a paper I wanted to write for Physics on Fractal Theory. He was a pretty smooth talker—I had to give him that much.

  My mom stood there and listened. She looked back and forth from Jack to me. She seemed very amused. Maybe because I actually had somebody over to the house. Or maybe that it was a guy, which, to her, would seem like an encouraging development. But probably because she realized that Jack was totally full of shit.

  When she was able to edge in a word, she asked, “Uh, Julie, don’t you take Physics next year?”

  But Jack was undeterred. “Well, Fractal Theory is kind of complicated. If she wants to do a paper on it next year, she’d almost have to start working on it now.”

  “I see,” she said knowingly. She still appeared highly amused. “Jack, would you like to stay for dinner?”

  Before I could jump in, Jack said, “Oh, I’d love to, but really I need to head home. My parents both work late and my grandmother lives in an in-law in the basement. And, well, she’s mostly confined to a wheelchair now. So I kind of like to look in on her to make sure she’s all right.”

  “Well, that’s sweet,” my mom said pleasantly. “Isn’t that nice, Julie?”

  “Oh, just peachy,” I said, wishing they would just stop talking. I kept picturing them with their mouths stitched shut with large ugly stitches, but then I figured I better stop thinking that because it might really happen. I grabbed Jack by the arm, and told my mom, “He really does have to go.”

  “Well, maybe some other time,” my mom told Jack, as I started to tow him out of the kitchen and toward the front door.

  When we reached the living room, Jack said, “I think that went well, right?”

  I spun him round to face me.

  “Oh, that went wonderfully well, except for one thing: my mother isn’t an imbecile!”

  “What?”

  “Whoever said you were a good liar?”

  “You don’t think she believed it?”

  “Your grandmother’s in a wheelchair?” I snorted. “You don’t think that was a bit much?”

  He stared at me. “That part was the truth.”

  “Oh,” I said dully. “Sorry.”

  “And we both know what that means,” he sighed.

  “Just go home, Jack,” I said, not harshly. “I have some damage control to do.”

  After I let him out the front door, I returned to the kitchen.

  My mom was sitting at the table. She was still attractive; she didn’t look old enough to have a kid my age. She seemed thoughtful, chewing at her lower lip the way she always did whenever she tried to ferret out the solution to a hard problem.

  When I walked into the room, she looked up at me. Again she seemed highly entertained.

  “Fractal Theory?” she asked.

  I shrugged, and sat across from her.

  “Well, he seems like a very nice young man,” she said. “And you already have him lying for you.”

  “Mom, please.”

  She chuckled. “No, really, I should thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve been worried about you for years. But this is the first time you’ve ever given me something normal to worry about.”

  “What? It’s nothing like that. Jack is just--”

  “A friend?”

  “Not even,” I said. “He’s more like—I don’t know—a pet turtle.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. You’re not nine years old.”

  “Mom, I’m telling you, it’s not like that. You know how I am about guys—I just can’t deal with them that way. We talked about all this.”

  “Fractal Theory,” she snorted. “I have a theory, too, about you. You want to hear it?”

  “Not really.”

  But she said anyway, “I think you use your abilities as a big fat excuse not to show your feelings. You don’t want anybody to know how much you really do feel.”

  “Nice theory, Mom. Nice, but wrong. Have you been reading psychology books again?”

  “You’re almost seventeen, Julie,” she said. “You can’t go on this way. Everything bad that’s happening with you, and that will happen with you—you’re doing it all to yourself.”

  On the other side of the room, the oven door opened, and the metal rack slid out.

  “Check your casserole,” I told her, and then got up to go to my room.

  The next day I skipped U.S. History so that I could see Mrs. Stock.

  I hated counselors. They had been passing judgment on me for my entire life. I believed they make more problems than they solve, with their probing questions, which I never answered, and useless advice, which I never took. I was certain that most of them needed to be in counseling themselves. In middle school, one counselor actually tried to get me to tell my problems to a chair. I hadn’t been able to tell if this was some therapeutic technique or if she just wanted to see if I’d do it so that she could note in my permanent file that I liked to talk to furniture.

  Mrs. Stock had been my counselor since I started at Adler. She was a middle-aged woman with manly short salt-and-pepper hair. She was short and wide—actually students called her Mrs. Stocky behind her back—and whenever she dressed in red I would wonder whether a dog had ever mistook her for a fire plug.

  I walked into the main office. The people who worked behind the counter sat at desks or wandered about like zombies. Nobody noticed me. I stood there scanning the large room for moveable objects. Fluorescent light fixtures hanged down from the high ceiling. There was a water cooler on the back wall between two windows. I figured I didn’t need much more than the water cooler and a couple of the light fixtures. What I had planned might actually turn out to be fun.

  I walked up to the counter. It took a moment for one of the women to notice me and ask what I needed.

  I said I wanted to see Mrs. Stock, and she told me that Mrs. Stock was available and that I should just go right in.

  I went over to the line of inter offices until I found the right door. It was open and I could see Mrs. Stock sitting behind her desk. She had her elbows on the edge of the desktop, and she was holding her head as though she had a headache.

  When I walked into the small window-less room, she looked up. It was as though I caught her having a human moment. She seemed embarrassed, but only for a second, and then she put on a chipper face.

  “Julia,” she chirped—counselors often chirped, I’d noticed. “Come in. Come in. Shut the door.”

  After I closed the door, I sat on the well-worn chair in front of the desk. I was effectively trapped now. It was like being inside a police holding room: no windows in the door or walls. Usually I found that unnerving. Today I found it useful.

  “So what brings you down today?” she asked brightly, as though it cheered her up that I might have some awful problem.

  “You called my house,” I said. It was clearly an accusation.

  “That I did. That I did,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in so long. I was wondering how you were doing.”

  I sat there and stared at her.

  “How are you doing?” she finally asked.

&
nbsp; “I was doing fine,” I said.

  “Oh, and what happened?”

  “And then you called my house.”

  She laughed a big jolly laugh. “I always liked that about you—that sense of humor.” Honestly, I could barely comprehend the woman; I didn’t think I was the least bit funny. “So nothing going on?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “Well, I have had the most horrendous week,” she said, and proceeded to tell me her problems. The woman obviously had vision issues; to her, it must have looked as though I cared. She told me how one day she went to her garage only to discover the garage door lying atop her car. And then her beloved tabby cat, Homer, ran away and couldn’t be found anywhere. She had been frantic, scouring the neighborhood, looking in dumpsters and up trees. All her cats—seven of them—were like her children, and when one of them was missing, it was like losing a small child, only the police wouldn’t do a thing because they didn’t give a flying fig about a cat…. She went on and on about her lost cat. I decided I better do what I had come to do before a blood vessel ruptured in my brain. I let my mind drift until I could see the inside of the main office. It was still hushed, with people doing their jobs in a daze. I concentrated on the water cooler first. It was heavy and hard to move with my mind. It took a moment for me to get it rocking back and forth, and then, finally, it tipped over and crashed to the floor.

  Mrs. Stock stopped her cat story. “What in the world was that?” she wondered, alarm etched across her broad face.

  I shrugged a shoulder.

  Then there were other crashes, glass breaking, high-pitched screams.

  Mrs. Stock jumped up from her chair. “I’ll be right back.” She rushed from the room, shutting the door behind her. “What in God’s green earth!” I heard her cry beyond the door.

  I went round the desk and sat in her chair. She had logged onto her computer, so at least I would have no password problem. I attacked the keyboard, clacking away frantically, searching for the student records. I found them easy enough, but I had a hard time figuring out how to search the database. Why did they have to make all these programs different? I kept glancing at the door, expecting Mrs. Stock to plow into the room at any second. I finally found the search perimeters, and keyed in ‘Mount Olive.’ A list of about twenty-five names appeared on the screen, quite a few more than I’d expected.