That's Not a Feeling

by Dan Josefson

  “No, Dedrick, you put those things away. This beautiful young lady has to help me with my bow tie.”

  Bridget’s mother returned to their motel room. She had been out at the pay phone speaking with Doris. Bridget was sitting on the bed, playing checkers with her brother.

  “Doris says this is it, Bridge. If you don’t go back to campus now, that’s it. We have to take you home with us. That what you want, hon? ’Cause we will.”

  “I dunno. I miss you when I’m there.” Her brother made a move, and she kinged him.

  “I miss you, too. We’ve gotta decide, though; we’ve got to come to a decision.”

  Bridget looked up. “Mom, how tall was Casey? When she died?”

  Mrs. Divola was somewhat taken aback. “How tall was she? I don’t know that, hon. Too damn short. Where’s your father? Where’d he go?”

  “He’s in the bathroom, Mom,” Bridget said. When her mother rolled her eyes, Bridget said, “He’s allowed.”

  “What? He’s making noise in there?”

  “No! God, Mom.” Bridget’s brother laughed and she glared at him. “Not ‘loud.’ ‘Allowed.’ As in he’s allowed to go to the damn bathroom without asking permission. Oh, hell,” she said. “Just take me back to the school.”

  2

  A few nights after the autumn Parents’ Sunday, Tidbit shook Carly Sibbons-Diaz awake.

  “Let’s go smoke.”

  Carly woke slowly and said through a yawn, “Tidbit? What are you doing here?”

  “I missed you guys. Alternative girls are so horrible.”

  Tidbit climbed down from Carly’s bunk and checked the pack of cigarettes in her back pocket. She had taken them from her mother’s purse during Parents’ Sunday. Tidbit carried Burn Victim under her arm. Carly woke Bridget, who moaned and punched her pillow.

  “We’re going to go smoke,” Carly whispered.

  “No,” Bridget whispered back, as loudly as she could. “What’s Tidbit doing here? You get sent back down already?”

  “Just visiting,” Tidbit said. “C’mon, we’ve all got to go.”

  “No.”

  “If we leave you here and you get caught without your group, you’ll get put in the corner,” Tidbit said.

  “I’ll just tell about your smoking. And sneaking out of your dorm.”

  “You’ll still get into trouble for not turning us in right away,” Tidbit said. “And when the rest of the dorm finds out you told, you know what they’ll do, so just come on.”

  “Unnngghhhhaaa,” Bridget said. “You’re such a bitch, Tidbit.”

  “Thanks for the confrontation. I’ll try to take it in.”

  Bridget punched her pillow again and climbed out of bed. She didn’t smoke, but she did like the prospect of moving through the dorm in the dark when no one knew what they were up to. She climbed down to get Bev ready.

  The girls always found Bev almost impossible to wake up. Bridget sat down on her bed and gently pulled back the covers.

  “Oh God,” she said, “she’s sleeping in her jeans. Who forgot to help her change?”

  “Obviously, everyone forgot,” Tidbit said. “Why’s she even wearing jeans?” She came over and grabbed Bev under her arms and swung her around. Bridget grabbed Bev’s legs, and they lifted her up while Carly took her pillow. They began to carry Bev to the bathroom, but Tidbit stopped just as she got to the bedroom door. Bridget didn’t see her stop in the dark and almost bumped into her, folding Bev in half so her bottom bumped against the floor.

  “Be careful,” Carly hissed. “You’ll hurt her.”

  “Sorry,” Tidbit said. “I forgot Burn Victim on Bev’s bed. Could you grab him?”

  “Shit. Why do you always want him with you?” Carly asked, looking through Bev’s sheets. She found the doll at the foot of the bed, his black plastic eyes like raisins pressed into his white face.

  “Yeah, you don’t want him to smell like smoke,” Bridget said.

  “I have to take him,” Tidbit said. “He’s the silent witness.”

  “God,” Bridget said.

  “Should we get Laurel?” Tidbit asked.

  “She’s roomed. We’ll get in a lot of trouble.” Bridget shifted her grip on Bev’s legs. “Come on, she’s getting heavy.”

  “But I haven’t seen Laurel in forever.”

  “None of us have,” Carly said. “Okay. I’ll get her.” She stuffed Bev’s pillow under Tidbit’s chin and went to Laurel’s room.

  Tidbit and Bridget walked quietly down the hallway carrying Bev. In the middle of the night, the shadows in their dorm seemed to stretch through the entire Mansion. The bathroom was cool and large. Tidbit and Bridget laid Bev carefully on the tile floor in front of one of the stalls, her head on her pillow.

  The truth was that Bev slept enough during the day that she slept lightly, if at all, at night. But when the girls had to use the bathroom at night, or someone had cigarettes, Bev pretended to stay asleep so they would pick her up and carry her, which she enjoyed. She also liked eavesdropping on their conversations and being able to drift off to sleep on the tile floor when she wanted.

  In Laurel’s room, Carly shook Laurel awake with a hand over her mouth.

  “Carls,” she said when Carly removed her hand. “You running?”

  “No, we’re just going to smoke. Tidbit snuck down from Alt Girls. You wanna come?”

  “That’s so nice,” Laurel said, getting up. “Sure.” She hadn’t seen Carly in weeks and noticed that her hair was mostly all blond now, and longer. When the barbers came to campus, Carly wouldn’t let them trim the ends, which were still black.

  They found Tidbit and Bridget standing in the shower room, beneath the small window high on the wall. “It’s so good to see you guys,” Laurel said. “It’s good to see anyone.”

  “Laurel The Pfaff,” Tidbit said.

  Laurel stopped. “Call me that again, I’ll have Marcy in here in about two seconds.”

  “Relax, Laurel,” Carly said. “Have a smoke.”

  “I’m just saying,” she said. “Don’t call me that. It’s popped.”

  Carly lit one of Tidbit’s cigarettes and then passed it around the circle. One at a time, the girls blew smoke up toward the window. A shower dripped, and the sounds echoed strangely off the tiles at night. The girls’ whispers swirled around them.

  “Hey, Bridget,” Tidbit said. “Try a drag.”

  Bridget had been doing everything she knew of to show everyone how angry she was at being woken up, but of course she wanted to smoke, or would want to if she knew how. She tried to keep her voice even. “Maybe in a minute,” she said. But when the cigarette made its way around the circle to her, she held it and looked at it. She put it in her mouth and sucked.

  “Oh hell, you don’t even know how to smoke,” Carly said. “You’re not inhaling.” She grabbed the cigarette and took a drag.

  Laurel rubbed Bridget’s back. “It’s not her fault. It’s her first cigarette.”

  “Go like this,” Tidbit said. She gasped, then said, “My mom’s home! That’s how you do it.” Gasp. “My mom’s home! Like you just got caught.”

  Bridget tried. Gasp. “My mom’s home!”

  “Good, now try it with the cigarette.” Tidbit took it from Carly and handed it to Bridget.

  Bridget pressed the cigarette between her lips and inhaled the way she had just learned. She began coughing violently.

  “Shhh,” the girls whispered. Bridget’s coughs sounded like a dog’s bark echoing in the shower room.

  “I’ll get her some water,” Laurel said, laughing. She ran out of the shower to the sinks, where she could see Bev asleep on the floor. The only cup she found was full of toothbrushes. Laurel dumped them in the sink and rinsed out the cup. She could hear that Bridget’s coughing had calmed some. Laurel looked at herself in the mirror above the sink. She put down the cup of water and checked that the other girls were still in the shower. Then Laurel pulled up the leg of her pajama pants to make sure her cu
ts weren’t bleeding.

  At the sound of Bridget’s coughing, Bev’s eyes had popped open. She pretended to sleep again when Laurel walked out of the showers, but then had watched to see what Laurel was doing. When Laurel pulled up the leg of her pants to look at her leg, Bev saw a series of long, irregular scabs covering her calf. She shut her eyes immediately.

  For a second Laurel thought she had seen Bev move, but when she checked, Bev was still. She took the cup of water back to the girls in the shower. Bridget’s eyes were red and watering, and she drank greedily.

  When Carly lit up another cigarette, Bridget decided she would pass for the time being. To have something to talk about, she asked Tidbit, “So what’s Alternative Girls like?”

  “Pretty much what you’d expect. Everyone lying and saying they’re following the process, and no one believing anyone.”

  “Yeah,” Laurel said. “Tidbit really hates liars.”

  A while later Bridget asked, “Have any of you guys really seen the ghost in the Mansion?”

  “Don’t we ever get tired of talking about this?” Tidbit said.

  “I’ve seen it,” Laurel said. “I woke up one night, and she was standing over my bed, weeping. She was kind of like this star, light was shining out of her. And she still had the rope tied around her neck.”

  “What’s her story again?” Bridget asked.

  “She was this lady who worked here years ago. And she had nothing else in her life, not one single thing. She just came to work here, her office was one of the therapy rooms near the attic, she did like payroll or something. And one day for no reason at all she just walked into the attic and hung herself from one of the beams.”

  “Hanged herself,” Carly said.

  “What?”

  “You said she hung herself. It’s correct to say she hanged herself.”

  “That’s not right,” Tidbit said. “Does that sound right to you? ‘She hanged herself?’ That sounds stupid.”

  “That whole story sounds stupid,” Carly said. “It’s so made up. If the Mansion’s haunted it’s haunted by the ghost of some kid who died here, not some made-up lady. I heard there was a boy who jumped over the banister on the fourth floor and died when he landed in the Great Hall.”

  “When was that?” Bridget asked.

  “I don’t know, a long time ago.”

  “Did anyone get killed since you guys’ve been here?”

  Tidbit put the cigarette out by dipping it in a small puddle of standing water. “No,” she said, “but when New Boys rioted this one time a faculty member got kicked so hard he lost a testicle.”

  The girls laughed. “Shut up,” Carly said.

  “No, it’s true. And the poor guy had only been working here for like two weeks.”

  Carly lit up another cigarette and passed it. “What the hell does that have to do with anything, Tidbit?”

  “I swear it happened. That’s what I think might be haunting the Mansion. The ghost of that lost testicle.”

  The girls passed the cigarette around the circle quietly. They talked Bridget through taking another small drag, which she executed without incident. When the girls were quiet, they became aware of the sound of water running in the other room. Laurel stood up.

  “I must have left the faucet on when I went to get water for Bridget.” She walked out to shut it off but ran back into the shower and said, “Bev’s gone.”

  “Oh, shit,” Carly said. The girls ran out of the shower room to look.

  “I’m sure she just went back to bed,” Tidbit said.

  “Yeah, but do you think she heard us?” Laurel asked. “I mean, do you think she realized that we dragged her out here so you guys could smoke? And do you think she knew I was with you? Fuck.”

  “Come on,” Tidbit said, “this is Bev. We have to put her shoes on or she’d go out into the snow barefoot. She probably just thought she wandered in here and fell asleep. Who knows what she thought.”

  But the girls hurried to brush their teeth and wash their hands. Carly flushed the cigarette butts. Tidbit sprayed the shower with Lysol. Then Laurel went with them back to their room, where they found Bev, asleep atop her covers in her jeans.

  “Good,” Laurel said. “Good night, guys.” She went back to her room and tried to go to sleep, vaguely worried that Bev saw what she had, in fact, seen. Laurel reassured herself: Even if she says something, no one will listen.

  In the girls’ room, the air was soft and sweet as overripe fruit. Bridget asked Tidbit to tell her again the story of the stables.

  “It’s late,” Tidbit said. “I should get back upstairs.”

  “Come on, I got up so you guys could smoke.”

  “You smoked, too.”

  “Come on.”

  Tidbit sighed. “Well, I don’t think anyone believes this anymore,” she began, “but there used to be these stables where the gym is now.” She sat on the floor, leaning back against Carly’s bed.

  “There are pictures,” Bridget said. “I’ve seen them.”

  “I don’t mean no one believes there were stables, I mean about the rest. They were the largest private stables in the country or the state or something. When the guy who built this place lived here. Grafflin, who the town’s named after. And there was a fire in the stables, and a lot of the horses died. People used to say there were these ghosts of the horses that caused shit to happen at the school.”

  This was the ghost story Bridget had wanted to hear. The girls could see her getting excited, sitting up.

  Tidbit continued, “The worst thing is that the horse ghosts are so powerful and so terrified that there’s no way to deal with them. Human ghosts you can kind of talk to or negotiate with, because there’s something they want, but these are just enraged and totally irrational. It’s like the ghosts believe they’re still on fire.”

  “And burning is the worst way to die,” Bridget said.

  “Yeah,” Tidbit said, “just ask Burn Victim.” She held him up for Bridget to see. Then she got up, said goodnight, and slipped quietly from the room.

  For the incident with the ax on Parents’ Sunday, my dorm voted to put me on Reciprocity Detail. I tried to be proud, to feel like a badass, but really I was embarrassed. After what happened, they felt better not having me around as much. For a few days there had been rain, so no work could be done, and I was stuck with New Boys avoiding me. But after breakfast on the first clear day I reported to Zbigniew’s office in the equipment shed at the Farm, a corner of campus that in addition to the equipment shed included the pigpen and a Dumpster that held paper recycling. Tidbit was already waiting there.

  “You have a watch?” Zbigniew asked.

  “A watch?” I looked down at my wrist to see. “Yeah, I have a watch.”

  “Good. Tidbit has no watch. Every five minutes she comes to see is it time for lunch.”

  Zbigniew explained our work assignment for the day. It seemed that the hill that led down from the Mansion to Route 294 dipped back up before it reached the road near the small stand of old-growth white pines called the Enchanted Forest. This meant that the Enchanted Forest stood in a slight depression, which turned into a sizable puddle when it rained. Zbigniew had installed an underground pump that sent the water out to the road, but the pump had gotten clogged with fallen leaves and pine needles. He wanted us to get them out of the pump.

  “That’s it? Just clear dead leaves out of it?” I asked.

  Zbigniew nodded and handed Tidbit a rake. “But first we have to put water to the pigpen.”

  We followed Zbigniew to the back of his office where there was a large sink. He handed us each a bucket to fill. He explained that we had to do this every day. On the wall next to the sink hung an embroidered sampler that read, THE PEN IS MIGHTIER … THAN THE PIGS. Tidbit pointed out two large barrels that held seeds for the birdfeeders.

  Zbigniew led us down a narrow dirt path to the pen, a small enclosure that held a pig, a goat, and some chickens. Taking care of the animals used to b
e a part of the students’ therapy, but Aubrey had since decided that relationships with animals were detrimental to the ability to form genuine relationships with other people. So the animals in the pen were left to be taken care of by Zbigniew and whoever else might remember.

  After showing me where to put the water and where and when to put out the animals’ food, Zbigniew sent us to clear the water pump. It wasn’t until we had walked across campus and down to the Enchanted Forest that we understood it was now surrounded by an enormous puddle.

  “Oh, bother,” Tidbit said.

  “How are we supposed to clear out the pump? We can’t even see where it is.”

  “I know where it is,” Tidbit said. She had walked to the edge of the puddle and was reaching with the rake toward a part of the pump that broke the surface of the water. It almost reached, but didn’t quite.

  “So what are we supposed to do?” I asked.

  “Well, I think there’s only one thing to do, but at least we can sit down here for a while before we do it.” Tidbit sat on the grass and dropped the rake half in the water.

  I sat down near her. It was strange. We knew each other, but we didn’t. For a while we stared out past the rise in the lawn, toward the road. We could see the top edges of cars as they drove by. Each breeze that rose started an intricate ticking in the trees above as pine needles fell and knocked lightly against branches on their way down.

  “I heard about you freaking out with the ax,” Tidbit said. “I think we’re the only two people who’ve gotten into trouble for acting out with axes.”

  “Yeah? What’d you do?”

  “I was on Reciprocity Detail with this girl named Courtney, and we were chopping wood. We were fighting, and I just got so mad I hit her with an ax. In the arm. Zbigniew kicked me off RD and wouldn’t talk to me for like three months.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  “Not really. I cut her jacket, but her arm just had a bruise.”

  “Hmm.” I tapped the edge of the puddle with the tip of my sneaker, sending out ripples. They stretched out to bump against the trunks of trees and returned, circles crossing other circles. “I just was trying to get my parents to take me home. But they wouldn’t listen to anything. It was like Aubrey put some sort of voodoo on them.”