That's Not a Feeling

by Dan Josefson

  “Empty your pockets, Pudding.”

  Alternative Boys were in the middle of arguing about whether it was or was not against the rules to take food from breakfast and if so whether pockets were an appropriate place to keep it when someone shouted that Han was running away.

  I turned to see him sprinting past the Dirt Pile and into the sparse woods behind it. Han was short and heavy and ran close to the ground with his arms pumping wildly at his sides. He tossed his shovel high over his head and picked up speed, his flannel shirt flying loose behind him as he went.

  “Shit!” Ellie said as the boys all dropped their shovels and started chasing after him through the trees. She ran after them, and I jogged along behind her. The dorm followed Han through the woods onto someone’s front lawn and then onto Route 294. Ellie stopped when they got to the road and grabbed me. “Go to the Mansion and find Roger,” she said. “He should be in our dorm going over paperwork. Tell him that Han ran.”

  She turned back to follow the boys running down the road as I called out, “But, wait, how do I get to our—”

  “It’s just right where we were before,” she yelled over her shoulder. “I’ve got to go.”

  I stopped and watched Ellie and the dorm chasing Han. They were a clumsy bunch, some running on the road, some on the grass to the right. The pack slowly thinned to a string, the boys behind struggling to keep up. I waited until I could just make out the last of Alternative Boys disappearing over a slight rise in the road.

  4

  When I saw they were gone, I looked at the road stretching away from the school in the opposite direction. By the time anyone realized, it would be almost impossible for them to find me. I wondered what they would do, whether they had people who looked for runaways, if they would get the police involved. My parents would worry. The road ran straight as far as I could see, trees overhanging both sides. It would serve them right.

  I wandered across the road. The Mansion stood atop the hill in front of me, across the green field. A high, peaked roof sloped steeply down, into which was set a series of gabled windows. I couldn’t see them from where I was, but I remembered the wraparound porch, painted white, and the slate steps that led up to the building. Near me in the grass, two wasps were chasing each other in quick, erratic circles. Their legs hung loose with an obscene indifference as they zoomed around, bumping into blades of grass.

  Staring up at the Mansion, I felt I had stepped out of a game I’d been involved in for as long as I could remember. I knew I should run, but I felt rising within me a new fascination. The sinister, oddly decorated rooms; the gingerbreading above the entrance-way; the winding stairs and hallways leading endlessly inward. I looked down at the wasps in the grass and, feeling as though a fog had cleared, I thought, It’s fine, I can always leave later. It was the same mistake I always made: I thought that feeling would last.

  I climbed over one of the fallen crossbeams of the fence onto campus. You go first, I’ll follow you, I thought with a sick, giddy smile. I headed left around the hill on which the Mansion stood, rather than going to find Roger directly. The lawn led into the midst of a few enormous old-growth pine trees. These were far apart, the ground beneath them covered with dry needles. A wooden sign nailed to one of the trees read ENCHANTED FOREST. There weren’t more than a dozen trees, and from anywhere among them I could still see Route 294.

  I followed a rutted gravel road that led around campus. There were small houses on either side. A wooden sign in the shape of an arrow pointed down the path to the left and read simply, FARM.

  Straight ahead was a field overgrown with gorse and thorns. A rusted backstop, the only sign that the field had once been a baseball diamond, had collapsed on one side and looked as though it were in the process of lying down in the grass. I saw a group of girls working among the trees behind the backstop, dragging logs out of the woods on sleds.

  It was amazing to think that I might never have seen these things. I knew, although I didn’t quite believe, that I had tried to kill myself. Twice, I remembered. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you would forget, but sometimes I did. The first time was with pills, and that had started the hospital and everything. The locked room with nothing in it but a red rubber playground ball that was so upsetting because I had no idea what it was for. The second time I had tried to hang myself, which hadn’t come close to working, but they started looking for places to send me. As I looked out at the rusted backstop being warmed by the sun, it was hard to imagine that I had done anything as violent as that. If it had worked, I wouldn’t have been there. I would have just disappeared, and the field would be there, the sunlight pouring down and the girls dragging logs out of the woods, but I never would have seen it. I’ll go first, you follow me. Just like it would all be there the next day, if I had run away right then.

  The gravel road ran through an orchard of small crabapple trees. Another wooden sign sticking out of the ground identified this as the North Orchard. The grass here was hummocky and rough with weeds, and last fall’s leaves lay decomposing in corners of the fields, caught up in furze and briars. I followed the road toward the back of the Mansion, to the edge of the garden I had seen with Ellie.

  There was a path of large slate stones that had begun to sink into the ground, lined on both sides by box bushes. Halfway across the garden the path widened to a circle, in the middle of which stood a fountain. To my left was a small gazebo. As I approached the fountain I noticed a small pond to my right, under the wands of a willow tree, which was identified by a sign nailed to a post in the ground as the Ornamental Pond. A toy bridge, painted maroon and green, traversed the pond.

  The fountain in front of me consisted of three marble bowls, one above another. Each bowl brimmed with water that trickled down from the smaller bowls above to the larger ones below. In the top one there sat a statue of a large curly-headed child who held a large turtle in his lap. The turtle’s front legs reached resignedly over the edge of the bowl, and on one of them it rested its square head. Around the base of the fountain was a flower bed. Summer was over, and most of the flowers were gone or wilted, but a few late-blooming chrysanthemums and daylilies weathered the heat, bright and bored.

  I hurried across the small parking lot into the Mansion. It was too strange that they’d left me alone; I had the feeling I was being tested. From the foyer I took the stairs down into the laundry room and up the back staircase Ellie had led me down. I realized that I didn’t know how many floors to climb. On the stairs I could hear people moving around the Mansion but couldn’t tell from the sounds just where they were.

  I guessed I should take the stairs all the way up. They ended at a door that opened into a dark room, which was incredibly hot and smelled like sawdust. I pulled a chain hanging from an exposed lightbulb, and the bulb flickered and lit up. The room seemed to be some sort of an attic, maybe the attic Ellie had mentioned. There were dark green file cabinets stacked in one corner and odd pieces of furniture scattered around. On top of the file cabinets were some folded blankets. My nose itched, and sweat rolled down my face. I went to return to the staircase, but the door had locked behind me.

  I made my way across the attic, stumbling over some rolled-up rugs and things, and found a door on the opposite side. This one opened onto a staircase identical to the one I had climbed. I ran down the stairs and opened a door one floor down. There was a huge room with deep, pink wall-to-wall carpeting. Thick, vertical stripes covered the wallpaper. I let the door close and ran down another flight of stairs. The door here opened onto a small kitchenette that led to a lounge.

  Relieved, I saw the desk, but no one was there. “Roger?” I called. “Roger?”

  A thin, anxious woman wearing a bunch of keys on a string around her neck marched into the lounge, closing the door to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “What are you doing in here?” she asked. She seemed angry, but she was whispering. “Who are you?”

  “I’m new,” I said. “Ellie told me to find Roger
and tell him that Han ran away.”

  “Keep your voice down. Roger’s not here. Han Quek?”

  “I don’t know his last name.” I was whispering now, too. “He got sent here because of his driving. I need to find Roger.”

  “Did you check Alternative Boys?”

  I looked around. “This isn’t their dorm?”

  The woman looked at me suspiciously. “No,” she said. “This is the girls’ wing. I’m Marcy, by the way. Hold on.” She grabbed the receiver of the phone on the desk and dialed two numbers. Marcy watched me as the phone on the other end rang and rang, nodding her head impatiently. She hung up. “When did you get here?”

  “This morning.”

  “And you’re walking around by yourself why?”

  “Ellie told me to go tell Roger.”

  She laughed bitterly. “You just wait here. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll find him.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Instead of leaving directly through the kitchenette, Marcy headed back into the hallway she had come from, closing the door loudly behind her.

  Marcy walked into the large tiled bathroom where New Girls were. Carly was getting undressed, handing her clothes one piece at a time to Kelly, one of the two Regular Kids whom Marcy had called to help with the searches. The girls who had already been searched were separate, in the shower room, so none of the girls waiting could hand any of them the razor. Tidbit told me about this all months later, when we had become friends and could joke, still somewhat uncomfortably, about how we had first met. Kelly went carefully over the hems, cuffs, waistband, and pockets of Carly’s clothes, then folded them and placed them in a neat pile on the floor. Jenna, the other Regular Kid, sat next to Kelly and kept an eye on the New Girls waiting to be searched. She wanted to make sure they didn’t stash anything anywhere. Kelly and Jenna were dressed alike, in slim tan pants and black button-down shirts. Regular Kids always looked better than the other kids on campus. Aubrey took them all shopping with the school credit card at the beginning of each semester.

  Once Carly had taken off all her clothes, Kelly had her raise her arms, turn completely around, crouch down, and then stand up. Carly stared into a corner of the bathroom as she did what Kelly told her. Kelly checked Carly’s mouth, ran her fingers through her hair, and looked behind her ears. When she was satisfied, she smoothed Carly’s hair. “Your natural color’s coming back in. It’s pretty.” Carly said nothing, just took her clothes to go get dressed in the shower room. Tidbit was next in line.

  “Kelly, Jenna,” Marcy said, “I’ve got to go take care of something. Please just finish up the searches and take the girls to lunch if I’m not back by then.”

  “Who was yelling?” someone called from the shower room. The tiled walls made the voice echo strangely. “It sounded like a boy.”

  “You guys don’t need to worry about that. Girls who’ve already been searched stay in the shower, and all of you listen to Kelly and Jenna.”

  Marcy left. When she passed through the lounge, I was where she had left me, staring at the desk.

  Kelly began to go through the routine with Tidbit, having her take off one piece of clothing at a time. Carly, dressed now, sat down in the entrance to the shower room, where she could see both Regular Kids. The floor of the showers wasn’t quite even, and there were always puddles of standing water. Carly crossed her legs and called to Jenna and Kelly, “Hey, what do you guys enjoy more about this: getting to see us all naked or getting to order us around? Or is it a combination, you get off ordering us around when we’re naked? And telling us we’re pretty.”

  Kelly and Jenna continued doing what they were doing.

  “I mean, it’s one thing when Marcy’s here making you do it. But now that she’s gone, why would you keep this up if you weren’t enjoying it?”

  “Carly,” Kelly said, without looking away from Tidbit, “if you actually wanted to have a conversation about this, we could. But you’re not asking honest questions. You’re just trying to start a fight.”

  “Did you ever think,” Jenna added, “that maybe we want to keep you guys from hurting yourselves? We were both in New Girls once, too, you know.”

  Kelly looked at Jenna as if to tell her not to waste her time. She folded the last of Tidbit’s clothes and asked her to raise her arms, then turn around.

  Carly shook her head. “You two are a couple of sellouts. I’d rather stay in New Girls than become a RO-bot.”

  “You can stay in New Girls as long as you want,” Jenna said.

  Kelly asked Tidbit to crouch down. Tidbit stared at her for a moment. “You know you’re looking for a razor blade, right? How crazy do you think we are?” But she crouched down anyway.

  “You never know,” Kelly said. “All right, you can get dressed.”

  Before Tidbit could take her things, they heard the squeak of the showers being turned on and the sound of water splashing in the shower room. Jenna and Kelly turned but couldn’t see any of the girls in there. “Hey, turn off the water,” Jenna called, but there was no response. “I said turn it off!”

  “Go see what they’re up to,” Kelly said.

  Jenna hurried into the shower room while Kelly and the other girls waited and listened. “Goddamnit, why’d you girls let her do this?” they heard Jenna shout. “Kelly, you better come in here. Bev’s dress is all wet. She says she was trying to wash off the dirt that got on her hands when they put her in a wiggle.”

  “Shit,” Kelly said. “She’s skirted, isn’t she? Now we have to find a dress.”

  Kelly told the girls waiting to be searched not to move. She went into the shower room to help Jenna. When she was gone, Laurel grabbed Tidbit by the arm and nodded in the direction of the lounge. Tidbit hadn’t gotten dressed yet. “Go see if it’s the new kid,” Laurel whispered. “Go welcome him to Roaring Orchards.”

  Tidbit looked toward the shower room where Kelly and Jenna were. She shook her head. “You’re just pissed still about the strip searches. We’re already in enough trouble.”

  “Exactly,” Laurel said. “It won’t make any difference at this point.”

  Tidbit had meant everything she’d been saying recently about following the rules and working on her issues. But it would be funny. She could always start following the process tomorrow. The other girls looked at her expectantly.

  “I’ll hide your clothes,” Laurel said. “So if Kelly comes back she won’t notice you’re gone.”

  All Tidbit knew was that thinking about it, thinking about anything, was the last thing she felt like doing. She looked back once toward the shower room. Then she slipped silently out of the bathroom.

  When she was gone, Laurel grabbed the neatly folded pile of Tidbit’s clothes and took them to one of the stalls. She rested them on top of the tank behind the toilet. From her pocket she carefully pulled a razor blade. She hid it on the floor behind the toilet and rejoined the girls who hadn’t yet been searched.

  I turned when the door opened and took a step back when I saw Tidbit. She was short, with a thick waist and large breasts. When I caught myself staring, I quickly looked around to see if anyone else was there. Turning back, I thought it was strange that she walked toward me normally, as though nothing were out of the ordinary. I assumed girls walked differently when they were naked, and it briefly occurred to me that it was because all the naked women I’d seen were in photographs, where they generally wore high heels.

  She leaned her hip against the desk and looked me in the eyes. She wore glasses with round, red frames. “You’re new here, right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I got here today.”

  “I saw you kick the window out of your parents’ car.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think anybody saw that.”

  “I was under some bushes. And then them dragging you in. What’s your name?”

  “Benjamin. I’m Benjamin.”

  “I’m Tidbit. Here, look at this.” She turned around and held her hair away from her nape to show me a tattoo on the back of her
neck. My eyes followed the curve of her spine down to her waist and hips before looking back up to see what she was showing me. It was a homemade tattoo in blue ink that said, simply, tidbit.

  “Can you see it?” she asked.

  “Yeah. The tattoo.”

  “My friends did it.”

  “Here?”

  “No, at home.” She turned back around.

  “Is that why you got sent here?”

  “No.”

  “So what are you here for?”

  Tidbit stared at me. “I have a self-afflicting personality,” she said.

  I nodded. The pulse of blood in my skull had slowed to a drowsy thump. Her face was sweet, not too pretty. A soft, round forehead, a wide nose. There was something about her that seemed restless and oversensitive. The frames of her glasses cast a rounded shadow across her cheek. “Aren’t you worried about getting into trouble?” I asked.

  “Why? We’re not doing anything.”

  “I know.”

  “So, did you meet Aubrey?”

  “For a minute. He didn’t say much.” I was struggling to return her gaze. “Is he nice?”

  “Nice? No. He’s fucking crazy.” Tidbit picked a pencil up from the desk and began playing with it. “My first day here, he bit me.”

  I followed Tidbit’s eyes down to look at the pencil in her hands, stole a glance at her breasts. “What?”

  “Well, I bit him first.” She laughed.

  “Still.”

  “I know,” Tidbit said, looking up. “It’s part of his philosophy.”

  I felt like we should be talking about something else. “He was okay with me. He just ate a salad.”

  “Here’s all you need to know about Aubrey: at breakfast once, he came out of the bathroom with this long strip of toilet paper hanging out of the back of his pants. It was like a tail, it reached all the way down to the ground, dragging through the Cafetorium behind him. Of course everyone was terrified to tell him because who knows what he’d do. And I know some of the teachers and dorm parents saw because they were careful not to step on it. But nobody said anything. When Aubrey finally sits down in his armchair at Campus Community and sees it you know what he says?”