Invisible

by Pete Hautman

  “You want to get rid of me.”

  “No, we don’t,” my mother says. “We just want to do what’s best for you.”

  “Then forget about it. I’m not going.”

  My father’s eyes flicker and burn. “You’ll DO what we TELL you to do.” The veins on his forehead start to show.

  The yelling is about to begin.

  33

  RESTORATION

  I go straight to bed after my father gets tired of yelling. I pull the covers over my face and stare into the dark. Images tumble through my brain like bedsheets and underwear in a clothes dryer: my father’s red, veiny face; fire; and the people of Madham scurrying about. I see a long white hallway that frightens me. I try to think about Melissa Haverman, but her image is slippery; I can’t grab hold. It must be the Proloftin. I grip the blanket and ride out the slide show.

  After an hour or an eternity my mind settles, and I feel sleep rising up to engulf me. I fight it. I’m afraid that as soon as I drop off, something will come scratching at my window, and I’ll be too scared to look. What if it’s Andy? What if it’s not?

  To fend off sleep, I start counting by 17s. I lose track somewhere around 1,003—the remnants of yesterday’s Proloftin are still clogging up my head. I start over. This time I get up over 2,700 before I lose track. I start to get anxious. What if the Proloftin made me as permanently moronic as Freddie Perdue? I start again, slowly, fixing each number in my mind before moving on to the next.

  I am at 10,166 when I hear my parents begin their nightly ritual. I hear the water running in the bathroom sink, the sound of my mother’s electric toothbrush, and their low voices, talking about whatever it is they talk about. Probably me. I wait until I hear their bedroom door close, then quietly slip out of my room and down the basement stairs.

  I want to cry. Godzilla, or whatever possessed me last night, has destroyed one end of the bridge. I survey the damage. The east end of the bridge deck is broken, the suspension cables torn, the deck plates broken, the railing crushed. For a long time I simply stand, staring.

  Then I get to work, salvaging what I can and rebuilding as necessary. Most of the bridge deck sections are still usable, but some of them are completely broken. I have to scrape the heads off another box of matches to build two new deck sections. As always I put the scrapings into a Mason jar. After more than 20,000 matches, I have three jars full of red phosphorus.

  I get into a rhythm. My hands do the work quickly. The last molecules of Proloftin leave my body, and my mind spins free. I think about Andy.

  I am not irrational. I remember the fire. I know that Andy was inside the house when it burned. I saw his obituary. I went to his funeral. Andy died. I remember that.

  But I also remember sitting with him in the empty stadium last week. I know him as a seventeen-year-old, just like me—even though he died when he was fourteen. It is quite strange, I must admit.

  Have I been talking to Andy’s ghost?

  I don’t believe in ghosts.

  More likely there is a parallel universe where Andy didn’t die, and the two worlds are rubbing up against each other. I think I read a sci-fi book about something like that. I wonder if, in the living Andy’s universe, I’m the one who died in the fire. Maybe in that universe I was a tiny bit braver, and I ran into the burning house on my own. And maybe the other Andy was not brave enough to come in after me. Does that mean that the Andy I’ve been talking to for the past few years is a lesser Andy? Possibly. Maybe that is why he didn’t come forward and confess to making the phone call. Maybe that is why he let me be kicked out of school. I wonder what he is doing now.

  I tighten the miniature clamp that holds the bridge sections together while the glue dries, then start restringing the suspender cables.

  Another possibility—I don’t know how I could have forgotten about this—is that Andy didn’t die in the fire at all. He might have slipped out the back of the house and then, as a joke, hidden out for a few days to watch his own funeral.

  It must have been quite a scene when he showed up alive at his parents’ door. Why don’t I remember that? In fact, I wonder why I haven’t seen Mr. and Mrs. Morrow lately. Is it true that they sold the house to George Fuller and moved out years ago? I wonder how George Fuller likes living with a ghost.

  I have to trim one of the bridge sections, but I can’t find my X-Acto knife. I start looking through boxes. Where did I put that thing? I think the dregs of the Proloftin must still be messing with my memory. Then I open one of the boxes and there it is. Not the X-Acto knife. Something much, much better.

  I find the Victorinox Explorer that Andy gave to me. Bright red plastic handle. Seventeen shiny tools. Perfect.

  “Douglas?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing down there at this time of morning?”

  “Working on my bridge.”

  “How long have you been up?”

  “Not long.”

  “Doug?”

  “What?”

  “Are you ready to go?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Whatever you are doing, it can wait.”

  “No it can’t.”

  “Doug…” I hear my father’s feet on the basement steps. He reaches the middle of the steps and stops. “Come along, Doug.”

  “I told you, I’m busy.” The bridge is almost complete.

  My father descends to the bottom of the steps and stops with the bare bulb burning a few inches above his gray head. He is wearing his long dark gray wool coat and his dark gray wool hat with the brim all the way around. Nobody wears hats like that anymore. Except my father.

  “You’re just sitting there,” he says.

  “I’m watching the paint dry. As soon as it’s dry I can lay the track.”

  “Doug, did you take your pill this morning?”

  “Mom watched me take it.” I had to hold it under my tongue for almost five minutes before I was able to spit the pasty fragments into my palm.

  He nods. “Well then, let’s get going. We have an eleven o’clock appointment, and it will take us forty minutes to get there.”

  “Why don’t you and Mom go without me?”

  “Doug, we’re doing this for you. Please come along.” He waits, staring at me with a bland expression. Something is very wrong here. Why isn’t he yelling?

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “I’m sorry, Doug, but that is not acceptable.” My father should be shouting, but instead he is talking to me in this quiet, insistent voice.

  I don’t think I am going to talk him out of this.

  34

  STATE OF THE ART

  We turn into a short driveway leading to a huge iron gate set into a stone wall twelve feet high. A brass plaque attached to the gate reads:

  ST. STEPHEN’S ACADEMY

  TOMORROW’S ADULTS TODAY

  My father gets out of the car and opens a metal box beside the gate. Inside the box is a phone. He speaks into the phone, and a few seconds later the gate swings inward.

  We drive through the gate, following a straight, narrow asphalt driveway through a huge parklike area of rolling grassy hills, thick-trunked oaks, and tall elms. It reminds me of the greenway at Woodland Trails, only spread over a much larger area. After about a quarter of a mile we come to a group of low brick buildings with small windows and few doors.

  I do not like this place.

  We park in front of the largest and oldest of the buildings.

  “I don’t like it here,” I say. “I want to go home.”

  My father opens the back door. “Doug, we’ve driven all the way down here. Let’s go inside and take a look, shall we?”

  “Why? There’s no way I’m going to school here.”

  Now they are both standing outside the car looking in at me.

  “It won’t hurt you to look,” says my mother.

  The man in charge, Dr. Monahan, is average height, average weight, about forty or fifty years old, with a face so
ordinary you would never notice him in a crowd. He has brown hair, a brown suit, and brown shoes. His tie is brown also, but his eyes are green and his smile is brilliantly, unnaturally white. I think he looks exactly the way an extraterrestrial would look if he wanted to pass as human. My parents seem quite impressed, but he gives me the creeps. After introducing himself to them, he turns his lighthouse smile on me.

  “And this must be Doug. Welcome to St. Stephen’s,” he says in his newscaster’s voice.

  “We’re just visiting,” I say.

  “I understand,” he says, showing me his teeth. He has a lot of them. “Well, as long as you’re here, shall we take a tour of our facilities?”

  St. Stephen’s Academy is a state-of-the-art facility. I know this because Dr. Monahan tells us so. He tells us so about ten times. He has two favorite expressions: “state-of-the-art” and “I understand.” They should call the place the St. Stephen’s State-of-the-Art Academy: We Understand.

  “Our computer laboratory is state-of-the-art,” he says as we enter yet another classroom, this one with several long tables with computers bolted to them every three feet. Like all of the other classrooms we’ve visited, there are no people.

  “And, of course, we have a permanent doctor and pharmacist on staff. Many of our kids have psychological problems, as you know, and we like to make sure that they get their meds.”

  “Where are all the kids?” I ask. “All we’ve seen is a bunch of rooms.”

  Dr. Monahan stretches his mouth into his biggest smile yet. “Of course you’d like to see our other residents, Doug. I understand.” He gets another centimeter out of his smile. “All of our students are confined to their rooms at this time. We had a little incident here this morning, and we’re giving the kids a few hours to think about it.”

  “What happened?” my mother asks.

  “Two of our students got into a little scuffle after breakfast. A small matter, really, but we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to unacceptable behavior. Any form of violence results in a lockdown for the entire school. The students quickly learn that individual behavior has repercussions throughout the student body. A valuable lesson.”

  I say, “A couple of kids get in a fight, so you punish everybody?”

  “We give everyone some downtime,” he says through his smile. “Would you like to see our auditorium? It has a state-of-the-art sound system. …”

  The last part of the tour is a walk through the housing facility, a long, low building containing 204 dorm rooms, Dr. Monahan tells us. One room for every two residents. At the building entrance we are greeted by two large men.

  “This is Mr. Kloss, our physical education teacher, and Mr. Barrington, who teaches mathematics.”

  “I thought maybe you were the guards,” I say.

  They all laugh. Dr. Monahan walks us down the halls. The doors to all the rooms are wide open. I look in as we pass. There are two beds in each small room, with one person sitting or lying down on each bed. They look like ordinary kids at first, but after passing a few rooms I notice that none of them are smiling. Also, they are all wearing the same thing: khaki pants and light blue shirts. And they are all boys.

  “Is this an all boy school?” I ask.

  “Yes it is,” says Dr. Monahan.

  “And you have to wear uniforms?”

  “That’s right. It’s much simpler that way, don’t you think?”

  In fact, I do. I like the idea of not having to figure out what to wear every morning. Everybody has to look equally dorky. But that’s the only thing I like so far. I let my parents and Dr. Monahan get a little ahead of me, then stop and stick my head into one of the rooms.

  “Hey,” I say.

  There is only one kid in this room, a bulky Asian kid with a broad face and heavy eyebrows. He looks up at me but says nothing. His eyes are animal empty.

  “My name’s Doug.”

  He blinks slowly.

  “I’m here visiting.”

  His eyes lose focus.

  “So … how do you like it here?” I ask.

  He stares blankly into the distance. I think he must be drugged. Probably Proloftin. Or rhino tranquilizer.

  “Doug?” Dr. Monahan’s hand comes down on my shoulder. “Let’s keep on moving. The students aren’t supposed to talk to anyone during lockdown.”

  On the drive home my parents discuss my future. They pretend to be talking to me, but they are really talking to each other.

  “It seems like quite a nice facility, dear,” says my mother. “I liked Dr. Monahan.”

  “I thought he was spooky,” I say.

  “We should be able to afford the tuition for the first year,” says my father. “After that, well, we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see how you do.”

  “I’m not going,” I say.

  They ignore me.

  “Of course, money isn’t really the issue; it’s whether the change will be good for you.”

  “They want you to stay at the school full-time for the first three months. After that you could come home most weekends.”

  “Why don’t I just study at home?”

  My words roll right off them.

  “I thought the cafeteria menu looked delicious. They have lasagna on Thursdays. Isn’t that one of your favorites?”

  “We’ll need to buy you some new clothing.”

  “Didn’t you think the uniforms looked nice, dear? They don’t look at all like uniforms.”

  “The police have agreed not to pursue charges against you if we can place you at St. Stephen’s. We’re very lucky that they have an opening.”

  “I’m not going.”

  My father turns his head and looks straight at me for the first time all day. “I’m sorry, Doug, but we really don’t know what else to do with you.”

  “Why do you have to do anything?

  His voice goes soft. “You can’t spend the rest of your life playing with model trains, Doug.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s not the way life works, son.”

  35

  QUALITY OF LINE

  My parents plan to deliver me to St. Stephen’s Academy next Monday, November 17. That gives me less than seventy-one hours to complete my bridge. Strangely, the closer I get to finishing, the more things I find to do.

  For example, while laying the track I notice that some of the suspender cables have mysteriously lost tension. Perhaps the humidity in the basement has changed, or the weight of the track has stretched the cables on one side of the bridge. I readjust them, one strand at a time.

  Eventually the bridge is ready, and by Sunday morning I am working on the Madham Special itself. Because a bridge can be inaugurated only once, I want everything to be perfect. I scrape the decals from all the cars and engines and replace them with the sigil logo:

  This is in honor of Andy, who should really be here for the inaugural crossing of the bridge. Of course, he might not show up. He’s supposed to be dead. But maybe he’ll show up. Anyway, I know he’d appreciate the gesture.

  Once I get all the cars relabeled—it only takes me about three hours—I get out my Dremel tool and make some alterations to the Coalveyor and the four tank cars.

  You would think I’d be very excitable at this point, but the fact is, I’m calm as ice.

  My mother makes me try on my new khaki pants and blue chambray shirt. I pretend to be very happy with them, because there is no point in upsetting her.

  “I finished my bridge,” I say. “I’m sending the first train across it tonight.”

  “Really! That’s wonderful, Douglas! Are we invited to the inaugural crossing?”

  So cheerful.

  “I’d rather be alone,” I say. “I might never get to see it again.”

  “Now, Douglas, that’s simply not true! I’m sure you’ll be coming home often.”

  “You say that now, but just wait till you find out how nice it is when I’m gone.”

  “Now you’re being silly,
” she says with an expression that means either I hurt her feelings or I spoke a truth she didn’t want to hear.

  That night after dinner I make my final preparations for the inauguration. I fill the tank cars and the Coalveyor car with cargo. I’m using every car I own for this train, including both locomotives. There are seventeen cars in all.

  The track itself is 170 segments long. Each segment is five inches long, so the entire track, connected by the new bridge from East Madham to West Madham, is more than seventy feet in length.

  I then go to my room to work on the final sigil. It takes me most of the night to finish this one. I am thinking about mailing it to Mrs. Felko. Even though I’m permanently kicked out of school, I think she would appreciate it. This one has that quality of line she was always looking for.

  36

  DERAILED

  At 12:01 A.M. on November 17, the Madham Special, powered by two diesel locomotives, departs the terminal in downtown Madham, heading east through town. It moves down the track past Madham Stadium, where 102 spectators watch the passing of the inaugural train.

  This is my gift to the people of Madham—a train day they will never forget. I am bringing them all the drama and excitement of a big Hollywood movie. This is the day of the bridge, the first crossing of the Madham Special.

  The train picks up speed as it crosses Oak Street, Elm Street, Poplar Street, Maple Street. At each intersection it is cheered on by crowds of plastic people. Little do they know that the train carries hazardous cargo. The tank cars are filled with red phosphorous. The Coalveyor is piled high with the pink powder. Even the caboose is loaded.

  I know I’ll never touch these controls again. Once they send me away, I’ll be locked up forever. My father will turn my bedroom into a study. George Fuller will sleep soundly through the night. Melissa Haverman will leave her bedroom shades open. Freddie Perdue will have to find some other kid to beat on. Everybody will be happy.

  The train enters East Madham. The track curves to the left, climbs a hill, passes Madham Hospital, crosses over itself on a short trestle bridge, and heads back into downtown. Once again the people cheer as it passes the stadium on the other side.