by Jeff Strand
“—and a strange story becomes even stranger,” said the reporter, standing outside of the hospital, as a caption let us know that this was LIVE. “Mr. Ronald Click, a high school teacher who severed his left leg in a bizarre accident during class, has been pronounced dead.”
“No!” Adam shouted.
“We don’t have all the details, but he reportedly died on the operating table about five minutes ago.. .from a broken neck.” We stared at the television screen for a very long time. The reporter gave more details, and I’m pretty sure Adam said a lot of things, but quite honestly, I didn’t hear any of it.
“I think we killed him,” I finally said.
“Maybe not,” said Adam. “Maybe...maybe the doctors dropped him.”
I’ve never seen a truly insane person, the kind you have to lock in a padded cell, but I thought they probably looked a lot like Adam did at that moment. I honestly didn’t know if he was going to start sobbing or drop to the floor and cackle with maniacal laughter.
I opened my backpack, took out the box, and removed the lid. The doll’s neck was bent backward.
If this weren’t a true story, I’d make up something clever I had said. Something like “Well, this rules out the doctor-drop theory!” but more clever than that. But since this is entirely true, I just stared at it with my mouth hanging open, thinking that now might be a pretty good time for a heart attack.
“You killed him,” Adam said.
“I killed him?”
“You had the doll!”
“It should have been in a better box!”
“Don’t blame the box!”
“Why wasn’t it padded?”
“I don’t know!”
“You attacked me!” I shouted. “If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s—” Adam lunged for the doll, but I shoved him to the floor. He got up quickly, raised his fists, seemed to think better of the idea, and lowered them.
“I’m not gonna let you turn me in,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to!”
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen!” Adam turned and ran out of my living room. I heard the door slam as he left the house. I thought about going after him, but no, I needed to let him blow off some steam and calm himself down.
I paced around for a few moments and then decided that I needed the help of somebody much smarter than me. I took out my cell phone to call Kelley.
CHAPTER 4
I had seventeen text messages from sixteen different people. Some samples:
OMG Click is dead!!!!!!!!
Did u hear about Mr. Click? Funny but sad!
Was it ur class when his leg popped off? Did u see it?
I heard it was the grossest thing ever!
Click = dead. Me = :)
Check Google! Mr. Click is DEAD! I never thought I would be sad but I'm crying right now!
I closed out of my text messages and touched Kelley’s name to call her. Then I quickly touched End to disconnect the call. I needed to think about what I was going to say. I couldn’t just blurt out “AAAAHHH!!! I killed him! I killed him! Ahh! Ahh!
Ahh!” I desperately needed her advice, but I had to be cool about the way I asked for it.
Was calling her a bad idea?
Maybe. She was one more person who’d know what I’d done.
But we needed a non-dumb person involved. Left on our own, Adam and I would just bumble our way right into prison. Kelley could help us find the elements of the situation that we’d overlooked, the things that might lead the cops right to my front door.
“Freeze!” they’d shout after kicking the door down. “Drop the voodoo doll!”
“Never!” I’d scream. “If you coppers want the doll, you’ll have to—”
Ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatat!!!
“Ugh!” I’d say as 387 bullets pounded into my chest. Then I’d drop the doll like they’d asked.
Yep, that was exactly what would happen if I didn’t get Kelley’s advice. I called her again.
“How’re you doing?” she asked, answering on the first ring.
“Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Mr. Click died.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Still there?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m still.that’s so awful.”
“That’s insane, isn’t it?”
“So he bled to death?”
I wondered if I should gently ease her into the whole broken- neck concept. “I’m not sure,” I said. “All I know is that he died.”
It occurred to me that if I was calling my girlfriend to confess my role in the tragedy and beg for advice, I probably shouldn’t start lying fifteen seconds into the conversation.
Kelley sniffled. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“What if this was my fault?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“What if I was responsible for Mr. Click’s death?”
“What are you saying? Is this guilt because you don’t think you did enough to help him?”
“You don’t think I did enough to help him?”
“Tyler.”
“I gave you my shirt!”
“Tyler!”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Hear me out. You’re good at science. Can you think of any possible scientific explanation for what happened?” “I don’t know.”
“You can’t, can you? Nothing like that ever happens. There may be records of things like spontaneous combustion, but there aren’t any known cases where somebody’s leg just popped off! I guess there’s leprosy, but even if he was a leper, his leg wouldn’t fly across the room, right?”
“Spontaneous combustion doesn’t exist.”
“Good, so this helps prove my point. There’s no rational explanation for this.”
“There’s always a rational explanation.”
“Like what?”
Kelley was silent for a few seconds. “Like he’d already lost his leg and didn’t tell anybody about it. He was giving the lecture and he turned too quickly, so the stitches popped, and he panicked and kicked his leg across the room.”
“That’s.” I started to say crazy, but it actually wasn’t such a bad explanation. Maybe that was it! Maybe he had already lost his leg, perhaps as the result of clumsy chain saw handling, and he went to some discount doctor who used cheap thread, and the voodoo doll had nothing to do with—
Okay, that was a stretch, so I finished my sentence, “.crazy.” “Well, what do you think happened?”
I tried to figure out how best to bring up the subject. “Do you believe in voodoo dolls?” Nice transition. Smooth.
“Do you think I believe in voodoo dolls?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“But let’s pretend that you do.”
“Let’s not.”
“Just for pretend.”
“Tyler, I’m not in the mood for games. Tell me what you’re trying to say, or I’m hanging up.”
“Adam bought me a voodoo doll of Mr. Click, and today in class, I jabbed a pin in its leg, and Mr. Click’s real leg shot off, and we got into a fight, and we dropped the doll, and its neck broke, and then I saw on the news that Mr. Click died from a broken neck.”
Kelley did not immediately respond.
“Are you still—”
“Can I call you back?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She hung up. I stood there, staring at the phone in my hand, wondering if I’d made a terrible, terrible mistake.
I’d gotten seven more text messages during our conversation. They were all variations on the “OMG!” theme.
I felt sick to my stomach. Did I have time for a quick puke break before Kelley called me back?
Was she calling the cops?
What was Adam doing right now? Was he calling the cops?
Did I have anything I could hurriedly make into a bulletproof vest?
My phone vibrated in my hand, and I yelped and dropped
it. I picked it up, thankful that nobody had heard the yelp or seen the drop. It was Kelley.
“Hey,” I said.
“He did die of a broken neck!”
“I know.”
“How is that possible?”
“Voodoo sucks.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
I told her pretty much everything I’ve written here so far, in not quite as much detail and without as many side comments. She only interrupted me four times, to say “Are you kidding me?” twice, “Are you serious?” once, and one combo platter of “You can’t be serious! Are you kidding me?”
When the story lapped itself (I left out the part where I called her, figuring it was unnecessary), Kelley took a moment to process everything I’d told her and then said, “If this is a joke, I will kill you.”
“It’s not.”
“I’ll kill you and then break up with your corpse.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“I mean it. You think I won’t really kill you, but I will. If you’re playing around, I will stab you and stab you and stab you.”
“Got it.”
“Okay, I won’t kill you, but I’ll break up with you. Immediately. The second I hear that you’re joking, you no longer have a girlfriend, and I will make sure that you never have a girlfriend. I can make that happen. I’ve got connections. Our teacher is dead. It’s not material for a prank.”
I tried not to yell, “I said this wasn’t a freakin’ joke!” If our roles were reversed, I would’ve required just as many reassurances that she wasn’t messing with me. That said, I was starting to get annoyed at the time we were wasting when we could be strategizing.
“Not a joke,” I said.
She let out a deep sigh. “Okay, we’ll pretend I believe you. Where’s Adam?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t you think that’s something you should know?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Call him. Keep calling until he answers. I’ll be right over.”
CHAPTER 5
Adam’s phone rang five times and then went to voice mail.
“Hi,” said Adam on his message. “I’m not available to take your call right now.or am I? Maybe if you wait, I’ll answer. Wait...wait...wait for it...could be any second now...keep waiting.I hope you didn’t have other plans...wait...might be getting closer.. .wait for it.no, I guess I’m not answering. Leave a message at the musical note.”
It was pretty clear why Adam’s pool of friends was so small. Beep.
“Adam, I need you to call me back! We have to talk about this!” Should I tell him that I’d involved Kelley without his permission? Nah, probably not. “If we stay calm, we can figure this out. Call me.”
I ended the call, called him back, and listened to his voice mail message again. “Seriously, dude, call me back,” I said.
I called him again. “Just in case you’re only checking every third message, call me back.”
Okay, that was sufficient. Hopefully, he wasn’t purposely ignoring my calls.
I couldn’t think of anything else productive to do, so I paced around my room some more.
Did Mr. Click have a family? I’d never really thought about that before. I’d always assumed that he went home in the evening and sat alone in his house, snarling, but maybe there were those who loved him, who were devastated that he was gone. How many people were heartbroken because of what I’d done?
Suddenly I wanted to cry.
I was pretty sure he didn’t have a wife and kids, but were his parents still alive? Did he have brothers and sisters? Aunts? Uncles? A dog? Hamsters?
This wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t known what was going to happen. All I’d wanted was for his leg to hurt a little bit. No, I hadn’t even wanted that. I was only humoring Adam. I wasn’t the bad guy. I wasn’t some kind of ghastly, bloodthirsty, teacher- murdering monster.
I still felt horrible.
A few minutes later, a car pulled into my driveway, and I met Kelley at the door. Her eyes were puffy, and she wiped her nose with a tissue as we sat down on the couch in my living room. I had the box with the doll on my lap.
“For now, we’ll pretend that I believe you,” she said.
“Do you?”
“No. I don’t think you’re purposely lying, but I’m not ready to believe in voodoo dolls quite yet. Show it to me.”
I opened the lid.
“It doesn’t look anything like him,” she said.
“I guess it doesn’t need to.”
“So you broke its neck?”
“Yeah.”
“Then the damage is done, right? As far as the doll is concerned, there’s nothing else that can happen.”
“Well.I mean.I’m not sure. I guess that if more stuff happened to the doll, more stuff would happen to Mr. Click’s body. His corpse could just start mangling itself on the autopsy table.” “Okay, so—again, pretending that I believe in the doll—there is more stuff that can go wrong. A self-mutilating cadaver will raise too many questions. We have to make sure that absolutely nothing else happens to the doll. Bury it.”
“Bury it? Do you think that could.I don’t know, bury his soul or something?”
“Bury his soul?”
“I’m not sure what I meant by that,” I admitted.
“By that line of thinking, you carried his soul around in your backpack all day. His soul is fine. You could buy a safe, but then your parents would want to know why you have a safe in your room. I guess hiding the doll under your bed might be good enough. We only need to protect it for a few days; once he’s buried or cremated, it won’t matter.” She frowned. “You know what? If we bury him, a dog might dig him up. We don’t want a bite to come out of his arm in front of the mortician.” “Definitely not.”
“So we hide the doll under your bed. If for some bizarre reason the police search your house, the most they’ll find is a doll that doesn’t look anything like Mr. Click. On to Adam: What do you think he’s doing?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Think like Adam.”
“That’s too scary.”
“I’m serious, Tyler. You can pretty much get out of this mess by doing nothing. It won’t help your conscience, but as far as avoiding going to prison, all you have to do is not screw things up worse. Do you think Adam could be doing something at this very moment that’s screwing things up worse?”
Aw, crap.
“Yes!” I said. “Of course he could. He could be ruining everything. I don’t even want to think about how much damage he could be doing. Crap!”
“And you’ve called?”
“Yes.”
“And left messages?”
“Yes.”
“Messages that could get you in trouble if somebody besides Adam heard them?”
Damn! A trick question! I thought for a split second, then answered honestly, “No, I only said we needed to talk.”
“Did you text him?”
“No. He’s scared of texts.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story.”
“How did I not know that?”
“I thought I mentioned it that one time.”
“No, that’s something I would have remembered. How can you be scared of texts?”
“Right before his grandfather died, he looked up at Adam, took his hand, and said.. .You know what, we’re getting distracted.” Kelley nodded. “Yeah, sorry. Maybe you should lie to him.” “Like how?”
“Tell him that if he comes back, you’ll give him the doll. But don’t say ‘doll’ on the voice mail. Be vague.”
“What happens when he comes back?”
“You don’t give him the doll.”
I called Adam again. At the tone, I said, “Adam, it’s me. I really need to talk to you. I’ll give it back to you, okay? We can work this out.” I hung up, secretly proud of myself for not messing up and saying “doll.” You’ve got to savor the small victories. I loo
ked at Kelley. “So now what?”
“TV?”
“Sure.”
And so, after shoving the box with the doll in it under my bed, Kelley and I watched TV. I really, really, really hope you don’t think of me as a role model, but if you do, you may be disappointed to learn that instead of taking further action to solve my problem, I watched some episodes of South Park that I’d seen a few times already. I apologize for letting you down, but if even Kelley thought there was nothing more we could do, I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to shout, “Eureka!”
Adam didn’t call me back.
My mom came home around six and asked how my day went.
I told her, leaving out the voodoo but leaving in Mr. Click’s leg and death.
Of the next six minutes, one minute and fifty-two seconds were spent convincing her that I wasn’t playing some mean- spirited joke, forty-eight seconds were spent being hugged while she cried, two minutes and one second were spent explaining why I didn’t immediately call her (official answer: I was handling it fine, no really, I was fine, seriously, I was fine, I didn’t want to disturb her at work, I was fine, really, I was fine), and one minute and nineteen seconds were spent insisting that, yes, I did love her, and if anything like this ever happened again, I would call her so she could mother me.
Then she started on Kelley. This lasted only three minutes and twenty seconds.
Admittedly, I felt pretty bad about this. Despite my preoccupation with the voodoo situation, I should have called my mom and dad. That said, my guilt over causing the death of a human being was a little more intense, so my mom-guilt would have to stay shoved near the back of my brain for the time being.
My dad came home shortly after that, though he was more interested in the technical aspects of how a teacher’s leg could just pop off than my fragile emotional state.
My cell phone rang. Adam. Finally!
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Meet me in Trollen Park in fifteen minutes,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully. I think he was trying to sound like a supervillain. Then he hung up.
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” I said, speaking into the dead line.
“Let me ask my parents.” I lowered the phone. “Is it okay if I give Adam a quick ride? He forgot to get a birthday card for his mom.”