Lucy

by Laurence Gonzales

  The tile halls of the building echoed with cries and shouts, and as Lucy wove her way through the crowd between classes, she couldn’t help thinking how like the forest it was in some ways, the screeching and calling and swinging to and fro. The way the students jockeyed for position and competed for status was no different at all. She watched the top females hold court by the entrance to the cafeteria, grooming one another with light touches and small gestures. They were catered to by a group of favored boys, tan and muscular, who puffed themselves up to seem larger. The top males and females received the most glances, while those who were lower in the hierarchy hung their shoulders and skulked around the periphery or skittered warily away.

  Lucy took in all the smells as she passed down the hall on the way to class, the vast palette of chemicals that had been spread around for decades like poison, the dense smell of phthalates from plastics, the sharp odor of aluminum in the deodorants that everyone wore, the sickly sweet cologne, the perfume, and the thousand hair and eye and skin potions, wafting their volatiles past her as she swam through the chemical soup.

  As she sat in the classroom, she found the range of communications taking place astonishing. Here at last were creatures who were at home in The Stream, while the adults seemed to have lost track of it. The students were all operating on several planes, as if each person were two or even three people at once. One of them was attending to the teacher and the subject. Or not. Another of them was fashioning a public persona, demonstrating to the crowd who he or she was. Yet another was sending messages all over the room. That’s how it was done in the forest.

  Dana—that was the name of a girl to Lucy’s left and slightly in front of her—was telling Jonah, a boy with black hair, how much she loved him. Quinn was signaling the teacher that he hadn’t done his homework. Jonah was trying to ignore Dana and was simultaneously sending snickering messages to his friend Dan about going out and doing some sort of sport. Eyes, body language, facial twitches, a million conversations going on at once, flickering across the room like heat lightning. And so much of the talk was about mating. Lucy couldn’t keep track of it all, but she found it fun to try.

  But after a few days, the novelty of it wore off. And as Lucy sat there, while the teacher droned on in the background, she realized that something was very wrong. All that communication was taking place, but she wasn’t a part of it. As Lucy watched the people flashing their signals furiously across the room, she thought, Hey, what about me? She wanted to be in The Stream with them all. Yet it was as if she’d become invisible.

  Lucy went home that afternoon feeling lost and dejected. When she entered the kitchen, Jenny said, “What’s wrong? You look so sad.”

  “Everybody hates me.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re completely adorable.”

  “Well, nobody talks to me.”

  Jenny took Lucy by the shoulders. “Look. You’re a smart girl. And you grew up with bonobos. You know that you’re the new kid. Didn’t a new kid ever come to your family?”

  “Yes, and they treated her horribly. If they treat me like that at school, I’m going to be miserable for the rest of my life.”

  “You’ll make friends. You’ll see.”

  “I’m going to go do my homework.”

  It went on like that for a week. Lucy went to school and sat in class feeling subhuman. She wondered, Do they know? Can they sense what I am? She made an effort to talk to people, but most of them responded in glum monosyllables and then walked away or turned with a lively air to more important conversations. Lucy avoided the cafeteria at lunch time, preferring to go to the library rather than feel the acute isolation that was imposed on her by the indifference of the crowd. She came home in the afternoons and stayed in her room, doing homework or reading. It seemed to Lucy that an overcast sky hung just above her shoulders the entire time. Jenny tried to draw Lucy out with games, movies, music, but she petulantly resisted the efforts. Lucy began to feel disgusted with herself. She thought, I’m turning into a brat.

  Then one day, the sun came out. She found herself seated in history class, waiting for the teacher and trying to ignore all the messages zinging around the room in The Stream. Messages that weren’t meant for her. The girl next to Lucy was rummaging in her backpack. She stopped and said, “Shit.”

  Lucy turned to look. “What’s the matter?”

  The girl bit her cuticles, frowning. “I forgot my frickin’ pen.”

  Lucy handed her a pen.

  “Thanks. I’ll give it back after class, if that’s okay.”

  “Accept it as my gift to you. I have another.” Lucy admired her curling dark brown tresses and her athletic body. She had bright brown eyes and seemed warm.

  Lucy expected her to turn away and ignore her, but instead, the girl said, “You’re new, aren’t you? Where’re you from?”

  Lucy hesitated. Jenny had rehearsed this with her, but here was Lucy’s first real try at saying it to a stranger.

  “Don’t you know where you’re from?”

  Lucy laughed nervously to cover her embarrassment. “Yes, sorry. It’s rather complicated. I’m British, but I grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” There, she’d said it.

  “Oh, cool. My name’s Amanda Mather.” The girl put out her hand. Lucy wasn’t sure what she wanted at first. Another pen? Then she realized what Amanda was doing and quickly took her hand. No one shook hands in Lucy’s family. They groomed one another and slapped each other on the back and wrestled around on the ground by way of greeting.

  “Lucy,” she said. “Lucy … Lowe.” She had to get used to saying that name. She had wanted to take Jenny’s name to honor her, but also because it would be less confusing if their last names were the same.

  “So you’re British. What part?”

  “London.”

  “Sweet. I’ve always wanted to go biking through Great Britain,” Amanda was saying. “But I thought maybe like Ireland. Have you been?”

  “Uh, no. Sorry.” And she thought: I’ve never been anywhere.

  “It’s supposed to be so beautiful.”

  “Oh, cool,” Lucy said, trying out Amanda’s manner of speech. “Cool,” she said again. She wanted to grasp the essence of its meaning. What an odd thing to say.

  “You don’t have much of an accent. A little.”

  “My father had a bad lisp as a child. He had a speech therapist who had no accent. So … I talk like him.”

  “So what are you doing in the United States?”

  “Well, my parents died.” There, it was out.

  “God, I’m sorry.” Amanda seemed genuinely concerned.

  Lucy took a deep breath and pressed on, acutely aware of how little she had ever had to lie in her lifetime and how difficult it was. She tried to think of something to say that was simple and true. “My dad was a scientist and one of the other scientists is adopting me. She’s from here, so … here I am.”

  “That’s awful. How did it happen?”

  “Civil war. Congolese militias killed them.”

  “Oh, my God, that’s horrible. I am so, so sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Lucy didn’t know what else to say.

  “Why don’t you sit with me at lunch? I can introduce you to some people.”

  “That would be splendid.” Amanda gave her an odd look. Lucy thought that she had probably said the wrong thing. She felt that she knew so little. How would she learn it all?

  As the teacher began the class, Lucy sensed a change in the flow of The Stream. People had seen Lucy and Amanda in conversation, seen their expressions. Silent messages were flying around the room. Lucy could sense what had happened: By talking to her with true feeling, Amanda had conferred some of her status on Lucy.

  As soon as they were seated in the cafeteria and Amanda had introduced Lucy to her friends, three girls and a boy, the conversation stopped and they all brought out sleek and colorful phones and began touching them. They weren’t talking, just staring down at their phones and
poking them. Lucy watched, fascinated. She leaned over to Amanda and whispered, “What are you doing?”

  “Didn’t you ever leave the jungle?”

  “No. I was born and grew up there. Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. That was rude. It’s called texting. Take out your phone and I’ll show you how.”

  Lucy froze. She didn’t know what to say.

  Amanda gave her a long suspicious look. “You don’t have a phone?”

  Lucy hung her head in shame.

  “Hey, guys,” Amanda announced. “Lucy doesn’t have a phone. Is that cool, or what?”

  “Word,” said the boy named Matt.

  “Sweet,” said a blond girl named Melissa. “I wish I could get rid of mine. But how do you, like, live?”

  Lucy felt her face flush hot.

  “I don’t even remember not having one,” Melissa said.

  “That’s because your brain has been fried from doing too many bong hits,” Matt said. Everyone giggled.

  Lucy leaned over to Amanda and asked, “What are bong hits?” Amanda looked at Lucy with a blank expression. “Bonk Kits?” Lucy asked, and everyone laughed. Lucy felt her desolation expand to fill the universe.

  “Oh, man. We are so going to teach you some stuff.”

  • • •

  The school day was ending. Lucy was moving down the hall among the crowds of people when she heard a familiar sound coming from behind a set of double doors. The noises stopped her in her tracks. She cocked her head, listening intently with the hair on her arms standing up. She recognized the sound instantly, but it struck her as impossible: She was hearing bonobos screaming to one another in jubilant surprise at a sudden heated conflict. It reminded Lucy of the sound—at once thrilling and appalling—that everyone had made the day that old Lucretia had bitten the finger joints off of Zeus’s hand. Only somehow this was different. The pitch was too low. She felt a rush of emotion, a quickening in her blood. Lucy could not ignore it. Someone was being hurt.

  Without thinking, she slammed through the double doors and saw two boys entangled on the floor. One was wrenching the other’s leg painfully behind him. The other was crying out in agony, even as the people sitting all around looked on and hooted and howled and screeched in horrible revelry. Lucy dropped her books and leapt to the rescue. She grabbed the attacker, raised him easily above her head, and simply flung him away. Then she extended her hand to help the wounded one to his feet. “Are you all right? Are you all right?” Odd, she thought, that he had no blood on him.

  “Are you nuts?”

  Lucy felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. He had some sort of padded contraption on his head and wore a bright red skintight suit.

  Only then did Lucy notice that the entire room had fallen silent. Lucy’s senses began to return to normal speed. She heard a low moan coming from the boy she’d thrown. A stunned and shaken grown-up man with something shiny clenched in his teeth was moving purposefully toward her now. Lucy prepared to do combat with him. Then she heard the shrill whistle as his cheeks puffed out. He dropped the whistle and shouted, “What in the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing, young lady, coming in here and busting up my wrestling meet?” Lucy was turning in a slow circle trying to determine what had gone wrong. It all seemed so clear one moment. But now this: What were these people doing here? Why were those boys fighting? Why had the people been cheering when one boy was obviously hurt? He said wrestling. Was this the Hellenic wrestling that she had read about? Then why weren’t they naked?

  The boy she had thrown was up now, dusting himself off. Her heart was hammering, as the man shouted at her and the crowd began to boo and grumble. Lucy realized that she had violated a grave taboo of this tribe. Unable to control her panic, she charged through the double doors and ran down the hall, knocking people out of her way. She reached the main doors and was outside, breathing hard, trying to think of where she could go. She saw strange sparkling lights coming up the street toward the school. She heard the wail of a siren. Lucy knew it meant that something bad was happening, and all at once she realized that it was happening to her. She fled through the neighborhood back yards, leaping fences as she went. She saw pale sunlight on wilted roses, squirrels on trash cans in alleys. She heard the syncopated, urgent rhythm of her breathing. As she loped across one yard, a large dog came flying at her, teeth bared, and she backhanded it out of the way and kept on going, hearing its pathetic squeal fade behind her.

  10

  JENNY SAT ON ONE SIDE of Lucy’s chair. Her school counselor sat on the other, a thin and harried-looking man with thick glasses and a nearly bald head. The psychologist’s office was cold and lit from above by fluorescent tubes that made an incessant hum and gave off a gray and gassy glow.

  They all faced the psychologist, Dr. Ruth Mayer, who was in her fifties, soft and gray, with her hair pulled so tight that it seemed to stretch the skin of her face. She sat behind a large institutional desk tapping a pencil on a file folder. “Dr. Lowe, I understand that Lucy has gone through a traumatic experience recently. Given the nature of that experience, I wonder if she might be suffering from some sort of post-traumatic disorder.”

  “Yes, that’s possible. I don’t think it’s the case, but it’s possible.” Jenny could tell that Dr. Mayer was a mischief maker of the worst sort.

  “Has she had any counseling since the events?”

  “No.” Once Jenny had learned the truth about Lucy, sending her to a psychologist had seemed out of the question.

  “Don’t you think this might be an oversight on your part? After all, you’re a doctor.” Jenny could see where this was going. By assuming that someone could live without psychotherapy, Jenny had slighted the doctor’s profession.

  “I’m a PhD anthropologist, not a medical doctor. Lucy has shown no signs of distress. And I think that this whole incident was just a misunderstanding.”

  “Misunderstanding? She attacked one of the school’s star athletes. I fail to see how that could be a misunderstanding.”

  “She’d never seen a wrestling match before. All she saw was one boy attacking another, and she went to the other’s aid. Instinctively, if you will.”

  “Is that what happened, Lucy?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s what happened. I thought I was breaking up a fight.”

  “Every culture has sports, and most of them involve mock combat. What sort of community were you raised in?”

  Jenny jumped in to cover for Lucy. “Her father was a primatologist. They lived in an extremely remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the jungle.”

  This seemed to give Dr. Mayer pause. She eyed them suspiciously for a time. Then she turned to the counselor and said, “Mr. Wicks, what has your experience of Lucy been so far?”

  “I haven’t seen her that much,” he said, clearing his throat and taking off his glasses to wipe them with a balled-up Kleenex, which he produced from the pocket of his tweed coat. “She tested out of many classes.”

  “All of her classes, actually,” Jenny put in.

  “Not disruptive?” Dr. Mayer asked.

  “No, not so far as I know.”

  Dr. Mayer pored over the contents of the file folder for a moment. She adjusted her glasses and said, “Well, fortunately, the boy was not seriously hurt. And the police tell me that he does not want to press charges.” Dr. Mayer pressed a finger to her lips and studied the file for another minute. “I’m willing to present this case to the disciplinary board as exceptional and ask that Lucy be allowed to continue as a student here. However, I will require that she receive psychological counseling to ensure that no other incident occurs and that any issues from her traumatic experience are resolved. Does that meet with everyone’s approval. Dr. Lowe?”

  “Yes, fine.” Jenny knew that meant that Dr. Mayer wanted a chance to work Lucy over in private. But she didn’t see any way out of it.

  “Mr. Wicks?”

  “Yes, that sounds appropriate.”

 
“Lucy?”

  “Whatever my mother says is fine with me.”

  Jenny felt herself choke up when Lucy referred to her as her mother. She wondered if Lucy was sly enough to do it for effect or if she really meant it. She felt the tension go out of her.

  “Very well. Then if no further trouble occurs I’ll consider the matter settled.” As they stood up to leave, Dr. Mayer added, “Oh, and I will also require that Lucy undergo a complete examination by a qualified physician.”

  “Why would that be necessary? I had her examined by a qualified physician on her arrival in the United States. He’s the one who signed Lucy’s school health form.”

  “We’d prefer to have our own physician make sure that there isn’t some occult condition that might have been overlooked. Violent behavior is not in the patient’s normal repertoire of conduct.” Jenny noticed that she had facilely transformed Lucy from a student into a patient. “She lived in a part of the world where exotic diseases thrive. Parasites. I’m sure that Lucy is just fine, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t check. It is a matter of potential liability, don’t you agree?”

  Jenny could hardly disagree. Harry ran tests on patients all the time as insurance against a possible lawsuit. The school didn’t want to be sued either.

  As they drove home, Lucy asked, “Are they going to find out now? With their doctors?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s no reason for them to do a genetic analysis, and that’s the only way to tell. In the meantime try not to throw anybody else across the room.”

  Lucy laughed, and Jenny thought that she detected a bit of pride in what she’d done.

  “Did you really want to call me your mother? Or did you just say that for the psychologist?”

  “Oh, may I? May I call you Mother? No, Mom. That’s more American, isn’t it? May I please call you Mom?”