When he’s examined my documentation and lo and behold, I’m Faith Flores, he hands back the paper and clears his throat. “Yes, well I see. We can certainly release information to family members, but I don’t have the information at my fingertips. I only have a number for each patient, not a name. I don’t see the applications or work directly with the patients. The nurses do that. They register the patients and administer the treatment. I’m here to monitor the progress and analyze the data.”
“Well, couldn’t you find out about my mom? Ask a nurse or something? You are running the thing, aren’t you?” I don’t even try to hide my irritation. He’s just like every adult who blows me off whenever I bring up my mom, who acts like the word teenager is a synonym for delinquent.
Dr. Wydner sighs, leans forward, and rests his fatigue on his elbow. “Why not ask your mother if she’s in the study?”
I meet his eye without flinching. “Because she’s dead.”
He passes a hand over his jowls. For a minute he doesn’t speak. There’s something faraway about his silence. Like he’s forgotten I’m here.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says. I’m not sure what he’s apologizing for—his silence? My mother? That he can’t help me? “I know how hard losing someone is.” He glances at the framed photos on his desk. “I have a daughter.”
I look at the pictures of the smiling girl with brown curls and soft brown eyes. In one of the photos she’s dressed for a soccer game, in another for a prom. She seems like someone who might be head of student council or editor of the yearbook, someone who’s pretty enough to be a bitch, but whose warm smile tells me she isn’t.
He clears his throat. “She’s very sick.…We might lose her.”
For some reason, hearing this ignites my anger. What does he mean, “lose her?” Is he going to misplace her in some drawer? And why is he telling me this?
I peer at the doctor again and immediately feel bad. He’s obviously hurting and, judging from his appearance, not doing too well. I mumble something sympathetic about his daughter and get up to leave, thinking our meeting’s over.
“Augustina Flores, you said?”
I stop in my tracks, two steps from my chair. “That’s right.”
He lowers his eyes and starts typing. I stand there, wondering if I’m supposed to stay, or if he’s moved onto something else and class is over and I’m dismissed. I’m guessing the second. I’m about to split when he pushes his chair away from his desk and looks up from the screen.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t find anyone by that name.”
Okay, well at least I have my answer. Melinda lied. Mom wasn’t in the clinical trial. I’m not sure if the lie is a total relief or a total let down, but I’m not about to stand around all day dwelling on it. I thank Dr. Wydner for his time and turn to leave for real this time. I make it all the way to the door when something between a eureka moment and a hunch stops me. If Mom really was in this clinical trial and really didn’t want me to know about it, wouldn’t she cover all her bases to hide it from me?
“Archer,” I say, wheeling back around to face Dr. Wydner. “Augustina Archer. Can you check that name?”
Dr. Wydner scratches his head (not a single hair moving) and gives me a look like you give the guy outside the Wawa who reeks of booze and just needs a few bucks for his pregnant girlfriend because his car broke down and he’s stranded and his girl’s gonna drop any second.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I say, running emergency ops. “Archer is a different last name from mine, and you can only release the information to family, so how do you know we’re family? How do you know I’m not lying?”
“Something like that,” he admits.
“Yeah, I understand, but Archer was her maiden name. Please,” I add, when he doesn’t respond. “This is really important.”
Dr. Wydner picks up a pen and taps it on the desk. I wait. Tap. Tap. I stare out the window at an insurance agency building with a falling down sign that might’ve once said, “We have you covered” but now says, “We ‘ave you ‘overed.” Tap. Tap. Finally Dr. Wydner puts down the pen and turns back to his computer.
“I found her name,” he tells me after a minute. “Augustina Archer. Your mother was in the clinical trial. I see she died about six weeks ago. The report we received from the medical examiner said it was a heroin overdose. I’m sorry. It’s always a disappointment when the treatment doesn’t work.” He looks at his daughter’s picture again, and I wonder if it’s his own disappointment he’s talking about or mine.
“We normally don’t take people with dependents,” he goes on. “Any new medicine has potential complications and risks. This is an experimental treatment. For people with dependents, methadone is a safer alternative.”
He leans back in his chair and rambles on, but I stop listening. My nervous system is jammed. Too many synapses are firing at the same time.
I close my eyes, and when I do, I see Melinda. I hear her voice. Your mom and I look the same. Side effects, all of it.
“Do patients ever have any side effects from the treatment?” I ask, opening my eyes.
Dr. Wydner stops mid-sentence and gazes at me. He pushes back from his desk and walks heavily to the window, like his whole body is a sigh. “I’m guessing you’re looking for an alternate explanation of how she died,” he says more to the window than to me. “That’s not uncommon. But I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I can only tell you that she was in the trial, and the documented cause of her death. I can’t discuss the specifics of the treatment or the clinical trial. These things are confidential.”
There isn’t anything more to say. I know Mom was in the clinical trial, but without information on her symptoms and a connection to the treatment, I haven’t gotten any closer to learning what was wrong with her. I thank him again for his time and gather my bag.
“How old are you?” he asks as I start to leave for the third time.
“Sixteen.”
He comes around to the front of the desk and perches on the edge. “This must be very hard for you.”
I don’t know if this requires an answer, but I’m not about to get into it with a stranger, so I nod again.
He doesn’t press the topic. He asks a few more general questions about my life, and for a few minutes we have a connection of sorts. I fill the daughter void, and he fills the caring-father void. It’s playacting, but it works. We each get to fill a little of that emptiness, if only for a moment or two.
He’s just asked a question about Aunt T when the door opens and Veronica sticks her head into the office. “Your next appointment is here to see you.”
In about a second’s time all that warm, fatherly stuff disappears, and Dr. Wydner morphs into something totally different. He’s on his feet, handing me his business card and walking me to the door. “If there’s anything else I can do for you, please call.” He shakes my hand and ushers me into the hall as the next guy enters.
The rapid departure from the office has me disoriented, but not so much that I don’t get a good look at the guy coming in. He’s the love child of Wall Street and American Idol, polished down to his three-piece suit and shiny shoes, just the right amount of gray woven though his black hair. He smiles and says hello as we pass, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s all teeth and no heart.
“Dr. Glass, it’s good to see you, ” I hear Dr. Wydner say as I start down the hall. “I have the data you were asking about.”
***
When I return to the waiting area, Anj, diplomat and peacemaker extraordinaire, is having a friendly conversation with a guy with a naked woman tattooed onto his shaved head. Anj’s smile is a shining star in this dreary place, and she seems the happiest person in the world, sitting on the floor, chatting up some half-baked junkie.
“Come on,” I say, tugging her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
“Ba
ck to school?” Anj asks as we leave the clinic.
I don’t answer right away as I let an idea percolate. The thought has been a seed in my mind since her death, but it wasn’t until I went to Melinda’s and saw the Rat Catcher that it really took root: what if the heroin and the debt had something to do with Mom’s death? I followed up on the clinical trial. Now it’s time to follow up on the dope.
I look at Anj with her rosy cheeks and sparkly blue eyes and hesitate. I don’t want to bring her there, to that place, but it’s now or never. “Can we take a detour on our way back to school?”
Anj agrees and twenty minutes later we’re at a place I never thought I’d see again. Nothing much has changed. The street scarred by potholes. Mad Dog in his Eagles jersey, selling hotdogs from his corner cart. The trash collecting around curbs and piling up in the gutter. The falling down Welcome sign above a boarded up store. The Pawn Shop. The torn Bud Light billboard. Welcome to paradise.
“Uh,” Anj says as I direct her to an empty lot across the street from the last place Mom and I lived. “What are we doing here?”
“Stay in the car,” I say instead of answering. “And lock the door. I won’t be long.”
Before she can protest, I dash across the street. I bite down hard and steel myself against the desire to bolt as I open the front door of my old building and trudge up the stairs, pretending the life I once led here life belonged to someone else.
I reach the apartment at the end of the second floor belonging to Wanda, the one person in this building Mom called friend. I hear music. Old R&B. Something sultry and sexy. Marvin Gaye I think. I raise my hand and knock.
“Who is it?” a muffled voice calls.
“Faith Flores. Auggie’s daughter,” I say to the closed door.
A second later Wanda opens the door just wide enough for me to notice that she’s wearing something short and lacey with far too much exposed flesh for a Monday afternoon.
“Girl,” she says, tossing her head and flipping her long black hair behind her shoulders. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just…I have a question.”
“Babe!” I hear a man call from inside the apartment. “Bed’s getting cold.”
Wanda glances over her shoulder. “Now’s kind of a bad time.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll be quick.” I bite my lip. “It’s just that you and Mom were friends, so I thought maybe you’d know.” I stop. Not sure I can ask. What if the answer is yes?
“Know what?”
I look into Wanda’s eyes—black like obsidian, like something dark and shiny and beautiful—and find the courage. “If she was using heroin before she died.”
“You came all the way here to ask me that? Aw, Faith, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I hardly saw your mom at the end. She was acting so funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wanda!” the man calls again. “I’m serious. Tell whoever it is to come back!”
“Look, hon. I’ve gotta go. I’m sorry.”
“Wait! One more thing. Did you ever hear of someone called the Rat Catcher?”
The man comes to the door. Tall. Black. Gorgeous. And none too happy to see me standing here. “Wanda doesn’t know anyone with that name,” he answers for her. “Now we’re busy. Come back when she’s free.”
He closes the door before Wanda can say good-bye.
I sigh and go back outside to the car. The wind’s picked up since the morning. My hair whips my face. Pieces of trash swirl like snowflakes. A beer can rolls down the sidewalk and hits a wall with a metallic clank. Car brakes squeal, followed by a long honk. There’s a siren somewhere. The whole city feels like an emergency, and I have a sudden need to get out of here, to quiet the thunder in my brain and try to fit together the pieces of this story. Melinda. Mom. Dr. Wydner.
Three different versions, and only one truth.
Eight
School’s out for the day by the time we get back. Groups of students amble around getting ready to attend whatever afternoon clique they’re part of—yearbook, football, cheerleading, art club. I say good-bye to Anj and wander toward a small grove of trees on the east side of campus at the corner of Leedam and Mill.
I sit under this granddaddy hickory, listening to a woodpecker working a tree somewhere, watching the clouds shape-shift as they float across the sky. A chickadee flutters onto a branch, investigates my presence with a cock of its head, then flits off to forage somewhere else. A red-tailed hawk circles and vanishes into the gray. Mom taught me the names of birds. She knew the names of flowers and insects, too. I asked her once why all those names and labels mattered. Knowing what things are called gives order to the world, she told me; makes the whole damned ride less lonely. I didn’t understand back then. Maybe now I do.
“What happened to you, Mom?” I say to the sky. “You’re dead, but I still have so many questions.”
The only answer is the chatter of a squirrel.
I rest my head against the tree and think about Melinda. She didn’t lie about Mom being in the clinical trial, but what about the side effects? Blaming her symptoms on a clinical trial I knew nothing about and saying she needed to see a doctor would’ve been a pretty clever way to pull my heartstrings and get me to give her money.
Then again her symptoms were the same as my mother’s. That hardly seems like a coincidence. Suddenly I have a dozen question for Melinda, a dozen things that don’t make sense. I find the flier in my bag where she wrote Al’s number, get my phone, and dial. The phone rings and rings. Just as I’m about to hang up, he answers.
“Uh, hi…this is Faith Flores. I met you the other day. Melinda gave me this number and said I could get in touch with her.”
“Well, you can’t.”
I pick up a pebble and rattle it in my fist. “Um. Okay, well then, is there another number where I could reach her?”
Al makes a disgusted grunting sound. “Not unless you know how to communicate with the dead.”
The pebble slips through my fingers and drops to the ground. I press the phone to my ear and lower my voice. “What happened?”
“Shit, kid, how should I know? That woman was so messed up. Said she was clean, but cops say there was heroin. Who the hell knows? I wasn’t there when she kicked it.”
“Wait! What about the side effects from the clinical trial?”
“Was she feeding you that shit?” he sneers. “That woman was always going on about one thing or another. Paranoid about everything. All that junk’ll do it to you. Thought everyone was out to get her. One time she thought I was putting poison in her water and she didn’t drink nothing till she got so sick I had to drop her at the hospital. Side effects, my ass. She swore she wasn’t using, but why else would that creep show up?”
“You mean the Rat Catcher?”
“Yeah. That’s him. Lowlife scum.”
“But what if Melinda really was clean?” I say, thinking about my mom. “Maybe the Rat Catcher had been her dealer in the past, and maybe she was going to rat him out to the police. Maybe he came to stop her.”
“Just forget about all that,” Al says. “A kid like you don’t need to go messing around in this stuff. It’s dangerous. Forget you was ever at Melinda’s place.” I hear something on the other end that could be a sigh or a sob, or maybe just a nose blow. Whatever the bodily function of Al’s sound, when he speaks again, he’s lost the angry edge. “Forget you ever saw anything. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
Silence, and the line goes dead.
I sit there, staring at the phone, my heart hammering until I realize I’m shivering. I grab a beanie from my bag, but it doesn’t take away the chill. If only the weather was my problem. The problem is Melinda’s dead. Mom’s dead. The Rat Catcher was at both their places, and it’s all a little too much to be a coi
ncidence.
What was Mom doing? What kind of dangerous thing was she messed up in? What didn’t she tell me?
I’ve struggled on my own with the questions for almost two months. I can’t listen to the solo conversation in my head anymore without going crazy. (“What do you think Faith?” “I don’t know what do you think, Faith?”) I have to talk to someone. I can’t talk to Aunt T about the past, and bringing Anj to my old place was bad enough. I’m not telling her about some drug dealer called the Rat Catcher. That leaves Jesse.
I gather my knees to my chest and taste the cold winter air on my lips as I consider the possibility of bringing Jesse closer into my life. He already knows my mom was an addict. He knows about Melinda and the Rat Catcher. He’s smart. Energetic. Not shallow. Pretty cute (okay, nothing to do with it.) All in all, New Boy seems like the real deal—non-asshole material that might be worth trusting.
I decide to go look for him and see what he thinks.
***
I find him in the library, sitting in front of a computer, studying a picture of a DNA molecule. His face is reflected in the screen, so it looks like the double helix is printed on his forehead.
“It’s a miracle something so small could hold the entire instructions for growing an organism,” he says without looking up.
“A miracle?”
“Yeah, but not in the Jesus-walking-on-water kind of way, more like the holy-shit-how-did-that-happen kind of way.”
Sunlight filters in through cracks in the blinds as I slide into the seat next to him. “Okay, sure, but if you don’t mind me asking, why are you sitting here contemplating the miracle of life at 4:30 in the afternoon?”
“Extra credit for bio. I got a B on my last science paper at my former school.” He looks at me with a grimace. Before I can ask what’s so terrible about a B, he says, “We don’t do B’s in my family. I’m making up for the crime.”
I watch as he rifles through a notebook and clear my throat. Then I clear it again.
“You need something to drink?” he asks, tossing me a plastic water bottle without looking up when I clear a third time.
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