I hated to break off with her. I hoped she wouldn’t be angry at me. But I didn’t know what else to do. I typed back:
ME: G2G.
Then I put my phone in my pocket. I went to my door and peeked my head out. I could hear the TV on downstairs and figured my mom and dad were watching something before going to bed. I shut the door. I went back to the window. I took a breath. Then I opened the window again and climbed out.
Okay, it wasn’t as dramatic as that. The fact was, there was a rainspout that ran right next to my window. You could grab hold of it and slide down to the ground pretty easily. I figured if I hurried, I could get down and back before my parents even knew I was gone.
Flinching against the stiffness and pain in my thug-hammered body, I slithered out over the frame, grabbed the spout, wrapped myself around it, and was down on the ground—in that alley of lawn beside my house—in a second.
I shivered as my sneakers touched the soft earth. I hadn’t put a coat on or anything and it was cold out there. It had been clear and spring-like all day, but now there was a heaviness in the air as if more rain was coming. I felt the chill tighten the skin around my bruises.
I moved to the willow tree. It was a spooky tangle of shadows in the dark. Jennifer stepped out of those shadows as I approached. Her eyes were big and bright. They caught the light from the living room and glowed.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“I escaped from the castle,” she whispered, looking all around her as if someone might hear.
“What? The castle?”
“St. Agnes. They told me it was a hospital. But I know.”
“You ran away from a hospital?”
“I had to. I had to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“It’s tomorrow, Sam,” she said. “It’s Sunday. I know now.”
“What do you mean? What’s tomorrow?”
She reached out to me but didn’t touch me. Her hands just hovered there in the air between us. “Don’t you remember? I told you that something terrible is going to happen. Something terrible under the tree by the tarn.”
I did remember. I remembered a lot of crazy talk about demons and coffins in the hallway outside her bedroom.
“Yeah,” I said. “I remember. So?”
“Well, it’s going to happen tomorrow. I know that now. I can hear the demons planning. No one else can hear them, but I can.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think. It sounded so crazy, but she seemed so convinced it was all true.
“Jennifer, look, I don’t really understand what you’re talking about.”
“We have to hurry. We have to stop them.”
“Stop what? What are we supposed . . . ?”
But before I could finish the sentence, the darkness was pierced by a bright beam of light. It came from behind me, shot past my shoulder, and caught Jennifer’s face, making her terrified expression suddenly shine chalk-white in the darkness.
“Jennifer!” A deep voice boomed her name.
I turned and saw a figure standing at the head of the grass alley. A big man, holding a huge flashlight, shining it directly at Jennifer. As the man came forward a step or two, I saw he was a police officer. I could make out the shape of his hat and his utility belt with the gun hanging from it. I also noticed a red glow from the flasher of the patrol car that was parked in front of my house.
“It’s the police, Jennifer,” said the officer as he came forward. “We’ve been looking for you.”
Jennifer stared into the flashlight beam, her mouth open, her eyes wide. She was shaking her head back and forth, No, no, no.
Then she looked directly at me. “Help me, Sam!” she barely managed to whisper.
For a moment I froze, not sure what to do. She looked so frightened. But I knew the officer must be there to help her.
“Don’t be afraid,” I told her. “It’s just a policeman. He’s not gonna hurt you.”
“Your mother’s worried about you, Jennifer,” the policeman said. “She wants you to come home.”
“Sam!” Jennifer cried out, her voice cracking. “Please! Please! Don’t let them take me!”
She reached out to me again. This time I caught her hand in mine.
“Listen to me, Jennifer,” I said. “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. It’s a policeman. He just wants to take you to your mom.”
“No! You don’t understand. My mother’s in on it.”
“What?”
“She took me to a doctor! They’re going to take my brain out!”
It would’ve been funny except she was so scared, so convinced it was true, that I felt sorry for her.
“You’re my friend, Sam!” she said. Then she babbled: “My friend to the end hopping Sam Hopkins magic. You can’t let them take out my brain!”
“Jennifer, shh.” I held her hand, trying to calm her. “No one’s going to take out your brain. They just want to help you, that’s all.”
“They don’t understand. About the demons. About the plan. They don’t understand about the terrible thing. It’s going to happen tomorrow, Sam. You understand. But they just think I’m crazy.”
I had a pretty good idea what had happened now. All of Jennifer’s weird talk, her rhyming words and crazy sentences—it all must’ve gotten so strange that her mom had decided to take her to a hospital. Somehow, Jennifer had got this ridiculous idea in her head that the doctor there was going to take out her brain—and so she had run away. She had come to me because she thought I was her magic friend. And the policeman was just here to take her back to her mom so they could get her help.
“Listen to me, Jennifer,” I told her. Holding her hand, I moved closer to her. The policeman came closer, shining his light on her. With her face glowing white, Jennifer stared into my eyes, her own eyes so wide and frightened that it really was pitiful to see. “I’m your friend, right?” I said. “I’m on your side, you know that.”
“Friend Sam. Magic friend hopping to help me help-kins,” she babbled.
“I’m telling you as your friend: you have to go with the policeman,” I told her.
“No! Don’t let them take me,” she pleaded.
“You have to go. They want to help you, that’s all,” I insisted. “There’s something wrong with you, Jennifer. You know that. There’s something wrong in your head.”
“They’ll take my brain!”
“They’re not going to take your brain! They’re just going to—I don’t know—give you some medicine or something to make you feel better.”
“No, no, no!”
And all the while, the policeman cautiously came forward down the alley, closer and closer, step-by-step.
Jennifer tried to pull away from me. “I have to go,” she said.
“Don’t,” I said. “You’re not safe like this. Don’t go.”
“Something terrible is going to happen tomorrow.”
“It’ll be all right,” I told her.
“It won’t! It won’t! Don’t let them take me, Sam; you’re my friend.”
“Jennifer, I am your friend, but you don’t understand . . .”
Just then, the policeman reached us. He stretched out a hand and put it gently on Jennifer’s arm.
“Jennifer, you have to come with me,” he said in a kindly tone.
Jennifer flipped out. She just went totally nuts. She started fighting and screaming and trying to pull away, and nothing I or the policeman said would calm her or convince her that the policeman just wanted to help. She attacked the cop. Struck at him with her fists, scratched at him with her fingers curled like claws. He had to dodge her and wrestle with her, pulling her arms behind her back so she couldn’t hurt him.
“No! No! No!” she screamed.
“Jennifer, stop fighting!” I shouted. “They just want to help!”
But she wouldn’t listen. I don’t even know if she could hear me over her own panicked screaming.
�
�No! No! Sam Hopkins! Sam Hopkins! Help me, help me!”
It was awful to hear. Really awful. The way she was crying out for me to help her. The way the policeman had to fight her to keep her from hurting him or herself. I felt so bad for her. I wanted to do something for her. But what could I do? I knew the policeman was doing the right thing. I knew he would take her back to her mom and her doctor where she could get help. But it didn’t matter what I knew. I still felt bad just standing there, helplessly, while she cried out to me in terror.
“Sam, don’t let them take me! Sam, please!”
Now another policeman was running down the alley to us. And a moment later, my dad, hearing the screams, burst out of the house and now he was running toward us too.
The first policeman held Jennifer’s arms behind her back while the second put handcuffs on her wrists. I knew they were doing it to keep her from hurting herself, but it looked terrible, as if they were arresting her to take her to prison or something.
I reached out my hand instinctively to protect her. But now my dad was there and he put his hand on my shoulder, drawing me back.
“Help me, Sam!” Jennifer screamed, tears streaming down her terrified face.
“Jennifer, listen . . . !” I tried to tell her.
“Sam, help me!”
“Dad, what’s wrong with her?” I shouted out. I thought I was going to start crying too. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s sick, Sam,” my father said. The quiet sound of his voice helped to calm me down. “She’s sick. There’s nothing you can do for her.”
Jennifer was in handcuffs now, but she was still struggling like mad. One policeman was holding one of her arms and another officer held the other. There was no way she could get away, but she kept fighting all the same. She twisted in the officers’ grasp and tried to pull free, shaking back and forth, her hair flying wildly all around.
“Sam, don’t let them! Don’t let them, Sam!”
My father squeezed my shoulder. “It’s all right, Sam. This is the right thing. There’s nothing you can do.”
I knew he was right. But it sure felt terrible. I stood there watching helplessly as the two policemen carried Jennifer away. She twisted and kicked in their grasp, still screaming my name, still crying as they brought her down the alley to the front of the house. There was a second police car there now, drawn up to the curb where I could see it.
My father put his arm around my shoulder. We stood together watching as the policemen carried Jennifer to the end of the alley and brought her to the car. One cop went on holding her while the other opened the car’s rear door.
They worked to lower Jennifer into the backseat, and just as they did, just as they were about to shut the door, she screamed out in a ragged, tearful voice:
“Sam Hopkins. Sam Hopkins. Sam Hopkins. It’s the magic word!”
It just about broke my heart.
14
A Demon of My Own
“What’s wrong with her, Dad?” I asked again.
We were inside now. We were sitting in the living room. My dad was in one of the armchairs; my mom was in the other. I was on the sofa, massaging my side. All the excitement had set my bruised ribs to aching again. The patrolmen had driven Jennifer away.
“Well.” Dad took off his round glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked really tired. He had been up late the night before, sitting with his sick friend, Mr. Boling. He hadn’t even bothered to come down on me for sneaking out of the house. “She obviously has some kind of mental illness,” he said. “Some variation of schizophrenia, I guess. I’ve seen it before.”
I had heard of schizophrenia, but when I thought about it, I realized I didn’t really know exactly what it was. “What’s that, like, split personality or something?”
“No.” My dad sighed and put the glasses back on. “It’s this really tragic disease. Genetic partly—it tends to run in families. It’s not very common, but when it does show up, it frequently shows up in young adults. They hear voices, get strange ideas. Sometimes they even see things. They get confused about what’s real and what isn’t.”
“Jennifer saw demons in her hallway,” I told him. “And a coffin with something inside that came to life and reached for her.”
“Poor girl,” he said.
“Her poor mother,” said my mom. “Raising those two children all by herself—and now this. God help her.”
I sat staring down at the rug. I still felt pretty miserable. I kept hearing Jennifer’s voice in my head. I kept hearing her scream.
“Help me, Sam! Don’t let them take me! Help me!”
“I couldn’t make her understand that the police were trying to help,” I said out loud.
“Yeah,” said my dad. “I know it feels bad, like you let her down. But you didn’t. You did the only thing you could to help her. Doing the right thing—you know, it isn’t about feeling like a good person. It’s about doing what’s best for someone else—which sometimes doesn’t feel very good at all. That’s a hard thing to learn, Sam. A lot of people never learn it.”
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I understood it myself.
“Will the doctors be able to cure her?” I asked.
Dad shook his head wearily. “There’s no cure for schizophrenia yet. But they have some medicines that can help. Sometimes they help a lot. If she’s lucky, she’ll be one of those cases.”
I nodded. That made me feel a little better, though not much. There was still the memory of Jennifer’s voice:
“Something terrible is going to happen, Sam. Tomorrow. I know that now. It’s going to happen tomorrow.”
“Jennifer came here to tell me that something terrible was going to happen,” I said. “She said it was going to happen tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?” my father said. “Something terrible like what?”
“I don’t know. She said she heard . . . demons planning it.” It sounded pretty crazy when I said it out loud. I added lamely: “She was pretty sure of it.”
“Well . . .” My dad stood up. He stretched his back, his hands on his hips. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Schizophrenics often think they have secret information about conspiracies and so on. It’s part of the disease. The important thing is that she goes to a doctor before she really hurts herself or someone else.”
I nodded. “I guess,” I said.
But I still felt pretty bad.
I went to bed early that night. It had been a long day. The track meet, Burger Joint, Zoe, and Jennifer. My body hurt, I was exhausted, and I was down in the dumps.
But tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the dark a long time with my eyes open because every time I closed my eyes, I saw Jennifer again. I saw her face, terrified, chalk-white in the darkness. I saw her struggling with the policemen as they carried her away. Even with my eyes open, I could hear her screaming.
“Help me, Sam! Don’t let them take me!”
“Sam Hopkins! It’s the magic word!”
I thought about what my dad said, about how sometimes doing the right thing feels bad. I thought about how bad I had felt when I was hanging around with Jeff Winger up at the barn. Then I felt bad because I was doing something wrong. Now I felt bad because I’d done something right. What kind of a rotten deal was that?
Finally, my eyes started to get really heavy. They drifted shut and I finally managed to fall asleep . . .
But when I did, I had a horrible dream. Here’s how it went:
I was riding in the backseat of a car. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I couldn’t escape. A guy was sitting up in front driving. I thought it must be Jeff Winger, but I was afraid to see his face. I looked out the window, hoping to find some way out. All I saw outside was scenery passing: rolling hills, trees, a lake.
“Where are we?” I said.
The driver looked up at me in the rearview mirror. I saw there was something wrong with his eyes. My heart began to beat faster. I knew something really, rea
lly scary was about to happen.
Then it did. The driver spun around quickly to look at me. And I saw it wasn’t Jeff Winger at all. It was a demon. His face was gray with a long snout like a rat’s. He had dripping fangs and laughing, fire-red eyes. He was about to speak.
“See . . . ?”
But before he could finish, I came awake with a start. I was breathing hard, as if I’d been running. My heart was thundering.
I looked around my bedroom. It was morning. The sun was pouring in through the window, glinting on the shiny surface of the Super Mario poster on my wall. What a relief to see daylight! What a relief to see Mario!
Then my relief vanished. I sat up, putting my feet over the side of the bed onto the floor. I remembered my dream. The demon. Its terrifying face. It had been about to speak to me, about to tell me something. I had this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew what that something was.
Something terrible is going to happen. Today. Today. Today.
I made a noise and shivered. It was just a dream, I told myself. It wasn’t real. It didn’t mean anything. I was just upset about what had happened the night before and so my mind turned it into a bad dream, that’s all.
That’s what I told myself.
I washed up and got dressed and headed downstairs. As I did, I noticed something strange. It was quiet in the house. Nobody was moving around. There were no voices anywhere. There was no noise at all. That just doesn’t happen in my house early on a Sunday morning. My dad has to get up super early to get ready for the eight o’clock service. And even though there’s no choir until the ten o’clock, my mom usually wakes up with him to make breakfast and get ready to sing in her service and host the women’s discussion group later and so on. Most Sundays, when I wake up I can hear my parents talking and the breakfast pots and dishes clattering. Or if I wake up a little later, I hear my brother taking a shower and my mom singing to get her voice ready.
But this morning: nothing. No voices at all. Silence through the whole house.
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