by Jonah Hewitt
“Three?!” The impatient nurse didn’t wait for him to finish. “Let’s go already!” Then she turned to the receptionist to bark some brief commands with the forcefulness of a drill sergeant and turned back to the young man and shouted, “Outta my way! I’ve got work to do!!” The young man immediately turned around to go back through the double doors he had just come out of. The nurse plunged ahead, then stopped and looked down almost surprised to see Lucy still there hanging on the end of her arm like a growth. The young man popped his head back through the door when he realized she had stopped following him.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“Darn it! I have to watch this little…”
“Go ahead,” thought Lucy, “Say it. Say ‘brat.’ I know you want to.”
“I have to watch this girl,” the exasperated nurse finally said.
“That’s ok,” came the voice of the receptionist from behind, “I can watch her.”
The nurse seemed uncertain at first, then she bent down ‘til she was nearly eye to eye with Lucy. Lucy leaned back as far as she could. She didn’t need another, closer look at the nurse’s mustache.
She eyed Lucy menacingly for what seemed like a long time, but was probably only a second and finally said, “You stay out of trouble…Missy!” She added a stern single nod that made the hairs in her mole shake.
“Yes, sir..er…ma’am,” Lucy replied. Then the nurse was off. Before disappearing through the double doors she shouted some more orders to the receptionist who didn’t wait for her to finish barking before answering, “Already on it, Marjorie! They are on their way!”
And the nurse was gone. She didn’t have much of a bedside manner, thought Lucy, but she was probably the nurse you would want most of all in an emergency – all business.
Lucy turned slowly around and walked back the short distance to the information desk. Yo-yo was still there cowering out of sight. He braved a timid smile. She smiled back. She couldn’t believe her luck! The receptionist was busy with the telephones, holding her headset firmly to her ear to shut out the background noise. Lucy decided to risk interrupting her.
“Um…excuse me, Ma’am?”
“Yes…um excuse me for a moment.” The receptionist moved the headset mic away from her mouth for a second. “Yes, dear, what do you want?”
“Um…would it be ok if I went over to the play area…it’s just over there...” Lucy pointed sheepishly at the small, plastic fort behind a waist-high partition wall on the far end of the waiting room.
The receptionist craned her neck to see where she was pointing then looked back at Lucy. “Aren’t you a bit old for that?”
Lucy deflated. Why was it that adults insisted on treating you like a kid when you wanted to be treated like an adult and treated you like an adult when you wanted to be treated like a kid?! “Yeah…but…” Lucy went on spinning, “But there’s books and a TV and other stuff over there too.”
The receptionist stood up and leaned over the desk to get a better look, looked back down at Lucy, then back to the play area and seemed satisfied by this explanation.
“Ok,” she said sitting back down, “But don’t go any farther and stay where I can see you.”
“Ok!” Lucy said brightly. Then she looked back to Yo-yo. He was looking happier too. Lucy waited for a moment for the receptionist to become engrossed in her calls again, then she all at once bolted over to Yo-yo, grabbed him by the hand and reached down to scoop up her slippers as she dragged him to the play area. When they got there, she took a quick look around. There were no other kids, perfect.
“Lucy...I…” began Yo-yo as she tugged him along.
“Shh! Not yet!” she whispered back at him.
She looked around for a good place to talk. There, under the small plastic fort. She shoved Yo-yo unceremoniously into it. It was really built for toddlers and so she had to squeeze herself in on all fours. Once inside there was barely room to turn around, but she managed by drawing her knees up to her chest. Soon they were both comfortably seated in opposite corners of the cramped, four-by-four foot cube. They sat there silently smiling dumbly at each other for a second. She had spent the whole day waiting for this moment and now that it was here, she didn’t know exactly how to start. It felt awkward, and Lucy pulled her sandy hair back behind her ears and thought about how to break the ice and what to say but, “Soo…how long have you been haunted by evil, longhaired, grey-eyed phantoms?” seemed too abrupt.
She looked at Yo-yo and how utterly pathetic and ragged he looked. He had obviously been through a lot. Then she noticed he wasn’t looking at her anymore – he was staring at her clothes.
“What? Yeah, I know the princess kittens are pretty scary, huh?” she said, pulling the white bathrobe closer over the googly-eyed royal felines. Then she noticed he was looking downward at her robe. One of the candy bars the young, pretty doctor had given her was sticking out of her robe pocket.
“Oh!” she said in sudden realization. “Here, take it.” She took it out and held it out to him. He moved back a little. “It’s ok, trust me, I’m stuffed. Go on, it’s ok.” He looked at her briefly than snatched the candy bar away and tore off the wrapper and started stuffing it down his face. Lucy was overwhelmed with empathy. He must have been starving.
“How long were you out there on your own?”
“Fwee mweeks,” he mumbled around mouthfuls of chocolate and peanuts.
“Three weeks?!” she echoed back in disbelief, “You were out on your own for three weeks?”
He just nodded and kept on eating.
“How?!”
He took a moment to swallow, then spoke, spraying a few crumbs of chocolate Lucy’s direction, but she didn’t mind considering the state he was in. “Don’t know…hand outs, ate out of the trash. Whatever.”
“Wow,” Lucy said, dumbstruck.
“Yep. Ran away from the foster home three weeks ago.”
Foster home. He was an orphan too. Just like she was…well now.
“Where from?”
“Scranton.”
“Scranton?!”
He just nodded and kept eating.
“But how’d you get this far?!”
“Took a bus to Philly; told everyone I was on my way to my grandma’s. After that I just started walking or hitching.”
“Didn’t anyone notice you or try to, y’know, report you?”
“Nope, I just moved on if anyone got suspicious.”
“And people just drove up and gave a nine-year-old runaway a ride?”
“I’m ELEVEN!” He sounded hurt.
“Oh.” Lucy tugged at her toes and tried to look away. People were always thinking she was younger than she was too, so she understood how that felt. “Still how…” she pressed on.
“Some don’t care,” he interrupted, “and if they don’t know they don’t care either. I look for pick-up trucks or vans and hide in the back. That’s how I got…” he paused, “That’s how I got to that truck stop where…” he paused again and then went silent as he licked the chocolate remnants from his fingers, looking like he didn’t know where to go from there.
“Where you ran out into the highway and caused my accident,” Lucy finished for him. She was suddenly very angry at him. If it wasn’t for this runaway, her mother would still be alive, and she would be home, in her own clothes, in her own house arguing with her over the paint. She realized she must have been scowling at him because he drew back as far as he could in the cramped confines of the play fort and looked like a beat dog. Then she felt guilty for making him feel guilty. Her mother wouldn’t have acted petty like that. Not to a little kid. She immediately had an overwhelming compulsion to hug him, to let him know it was ok and that she didn’t blame him, even though she did…a little. She decided against a hug and just leaned over and touched his arm and said, “It’s ok, okay?”
“Ok,” he said meekly, and then he relaxed a little. Then they were stuck in the middle of another awkward silence, but i
t felt better, and she was a little less mad now. She realized all at once that the crisis in the ER could end at any moment and she still wasn’t any closer to answers, so she forged ahead, but as tenderly as she could.
“So,” she began cautiously, “did you see…her? Is that why you ran out like that?”
When she said “her” his face went white and his eyes got wide as saucers. Then he gave a little nod. After a while he rubbed his hands against his shorts as if they were sweating. Then he began nervously winding up the string on his yo-yo as he began to speak.
“I…I wound up at the truck stop. I was trying to go south from Philly, I dunno why, cuz I thought it might be warmer, I guess, but the truck I jumped into went west instead.” He finished winding the yo-yo and just unwound it and wound it again. “Well, I went into the truck stop to use the bathroom and then…then I stole a bag of chips and ran out. I was hiding in the woods eating them when…” he paused and unwound and wound the yo-yo again, “when she just came out of the darkness, out of nothing. It…it was awful. So I ran, and then I saw the headlights and just froze.” He was looking anxiously side-to-side, as if he expected the phantom woman to pop up any moment. His eyes were wet too. Then he wiped his nose and looked embarrassed. After that he started winding the yo-yo again.
Lucy looked at him. She thought about how weird it all was. Had he stayed in the woods, the car would have landed right on top of him, but of course had he stayed, they would have never veered out of the way and crashed. It was all so random and yet not random. Here they were talking to each other. Somehow they had been thrown together. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“So after that, you jumped another ride here?”
“Yeah,” he said wiping his nose again.
“Why?”
“I-I watched them put you and your mom into the ambulances. I…I wanted to see if you were ok.”
She smiled a little. “Thanks,” she said and pulled at her hair again. Then she got back to the matter at hand.
“So, was that the first time you, y’know, saw her?”
The boy shook his head nervously from side to side with a frightened look. “No. I’ve been seeing her for a long time.”
“Where?” Lucy was curious.
“Everywhere!” he said throwing his hands up in exasperation. “In my dreams, in the wallpaper, in the reflections of mirrors.” He shuddered.
“How long?” Lucy asked, shuddering herself.
“MONTHS! I told my foster parents, but they just thought I was crazy. They took me to therapists and social services, but after a while, it was just too much for them and they told me if it didn’t stop they were going to have to send me back.”
“Back?!” Lucy said affronted, “Back where?” She was only just beginning to realize how callously people treated orphans now that she was an orphan herself.
“Yeah, back to the home, or to some other foster home for troubled kids. I dunno where exactly, but I didn’t want to go.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Yeah, worse, I kept seeing…” he paused and looked around before continuing, “kept seeing her.” He leaned forward and whispered the word ‘her’ like he was afraid of it. “And not just in mirrors or windows and wallpaper, but in real life! She was following me in crowds and at school. She was chasing me everywhere! I was seeing other things too – things I didn’t understand. I didn’t know if I was going nuts or not, but I knew that if I told them they would just think I was crazy and wouldn’t believe me.”
Lucy certainly knew how that felt. The whole hospital thought she was seeing hallucinations of her dead mother.
“And it wasn’t just her. I started seeing other crazy things in my dreams. Tombs and children and monsters and stuff.” Then Yo-yo looked at Lucy quizzically. “Did you ever see anything like that?”
Lucy hesitated, “I dunno. Maybe after the accident. I’m not sure.” She drifted in thought for a moment and tried to remember. Then she turned back to look at Yo-yo. He was looking at her very strangely. “Go on,” she prompted him.
Yo-yo went on, “Anyway, so I decided to leave, since they were going to send me away anyway. But I didn’t stop seeing her, and I’ve been running ever since.” Then he looked sheepishly at Lucy, “But you believe me…don’t you?”
Lucy had been looking away in thought, thinking about tombs and children and where she had seen Yo-yo first, but then she turned and looked directly at Yo-yo.
“Yes, I believe you.” It was important that he knew that she did. She desperately wanted someone to believe her. It was the least she could do for him.
“How long have you been seeing her?”
Lucy shook her head. “I’ve only seen her twice.”
“Really?!” The boy sounded shocked.
“Yeah, once after the accident and then again last night in a water stain on the wall.”
“Weird,” the boy said quietly.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Lucy said, lost in thought. Then she saw how scared Yo-yo looked and realized he needed a little more empathy. “But she scared the living bejeebus out of me!!” she added enthusiastically, “I didn’t know if I was going crazy either. Heck, I wasn’t even sure you were real until this morning!!” She laughed a forced laugh to hide her anxiety. He smiled.
“So you think she’s real too?” he said after a while.
“Well if it was just one of us, I wouldn’t be so sure, but we couldn’t both be crazy, could we? So yeah, she’s real.” She shuddered at the thought, and Yo-yo shuddered too, then she added, “But no one around here would believe me…um…us.”
There was a pause then Yo-yo spoke, “Well I believe you, Lucy.”
“Thanks, Yo-yo. I believe you too.”
After that the words flowed easier. They spoke a bunch. She told him about Texas and it turned out he had been born near Austin, though he couldn’t remember it. He had moved when he was still really young after his father abandoned him and his mother. Things weren’t any better with his mother though. She moved first to Ohio and then Scranton, but eventually she had abandoned him too. Or rather the state had taken him away from her because her drinking had become more important to her than he was. But he loved his mom anyway. There was always the hope that she would get her life back together, and they could be together again, but two years ago the state informed him that she had passed away because of complications of drinking. He never really knew what happened. He didn’t even get to see the funeral. She was in a different state at the time and he never saw her ever again. So he had been passed from one foster home to the next: some were ok, others were awful, but none were great or ever really home.
It struck Lucy how much they had in common – both were now orphans, both had no one that wanted them. Lucy opened up to him about her mom, how she really missed Texas, and about her dad’s suicide. It was nice to finally have someone to talk to, especially someone who wasn’t some earnest adult that wanted to hug it out. They both lost track of time and just kept on talking for nearly an hour about their likes in food and music and whatever. All the time, Yo-yo kept winding and unwinding his yo-yo compulsively.
After a while Lucy stopped to look at him and then asked, “So do you know how to use that thing or do you just like to wind the string?” After she said that it reminded her of something her mother might say.
“Huh? Oh yeah, I know a few tricks,” he shrugged.
“So…why don’t you show me some?”
“Um…” he said nervously, “well, it will be hard in such a tight space, but yeah, I guess I could show you a few things.”
He scrunched back against the wall as far as he could, and then kind of stood up and crouched over so he could spin it. Lucy pushed herself back as much as she could, partly to give him more room, but mostly to make sure she didn’t get hit. She shouldn’t have worried. He started slow, throwing a few catches where he spun the yo-yo around a finger and then caught it on the string, then after a while, he really st
arted to let loose. Lucy didn’t know a thing about yo-yos and she didn’t know many trick names beyond ‘walk the dog,’ but the kid spun that yo-yo around the tiny play fort like magic. He wove patterns in the strings that somehow didn’t end up in knots, and the yo-yo always had enough momentum to follow the complex loops around and come back to his hand effortlessly, but it wasn’t there long before it was out again, spinning like an electron in one of those old-fashioned models of the atom. She couldn’t imagine how he was doing it without getting himself and the yo-yo all tangled up in knots. It was amazing actually.
“Um…whoa,” Lucy said out loud, not meaning to.
“Yeah…I could do better if I had my Yomega transaxle, but one of my foster brothers stole it a while back, so all I have now is this old-fashioned imperial. Someday I wanna learn off-string and compete 4A or maybe even 5A, y’know, with the counterweight?”
She didn’t know actually. In fact, this was complete gibberish to Lucy, but she figured he was just trying to be modest.
“It’s incredible,” she said.
“Um…thanks,” he answered sheepishly.
“No seriously, you’re really good. How long have you been able to do that?”
“Um…since forever?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ve always just been really good at making the yo-yo do whatever I wanted it do. It just came naturally. I don’t know, it just felt right – the only thing that ever really felt right in my life, y’know?”
She did know. That was the way she felt before her mother had died, but she didn’t appreciate it at the time. He pulled it back one last time and it snapped into to his palm like a faithful and well-trained pet. Then he unceremoniously pulled the string off his finger, shoved it in his pocket and sat down.
She decided to give him a little golf clap and said, “Bravo!” It was a joke between her mother and her, something she and her mother often did to each other when one of them did something menial like clean the dishes or finish the mopping. One of them would golf clap and say “Bravo! Encore!” while the other made grandiose bows and curtain calls. For a moment she thought she had embarrassed him, but he just blushed a little and smiled and hugged his knees. But the thought of her mother inadvertently made her sad and he could tell.