The Lost Causes

by Jessica Koosed Etting

  When he was a few feet away, she looked up and caught his eye. And then it hit him. When she wasn’t doing any of her weird murmuring or tapping, she was really hot. Way hotter than any of the Cedar Springs High cheerleaders.

  He might as well see why she wanted to meet.

  “Hey,” he said, giving her a grin and joining the group.

  But instead of smiling back, she turned away. Instantly embarrassed, Justin wiped the smile off his face. That wasn’t the type of reaction from girls he was used to. “So what’s up, Gabby? Why did you text us?” he added. He made it clear they were wasting his time.

  “Did it happen to you, too?” Z asked him, not bothering to wait for Gabby.

  They were all staring at him. He glowered back. “What are you talking about?”

  It was as if they had all hit the mute button until Sabrina spoke up. “Last night I saw my dead brother in my kitchen.”

  Justin scoffed. “Yeah, drugs make you hallucinate, Sabrina. You should be used to that feeling by now.” From what he’d heard around school, her purse could give any pharmacy some major competition.

  “I wasn’t on anything,” she snapped back. “And I’m still not.”

  “Something happened to me, too,” Andrew piped up.

  Justin rolled his eyes. “Big surprise. Isn’t an ambulance here every week for you?”

  “No,” Andrew retorted. “Not an illness. It’s like I have quantum perception all of a sudden. If I really focus on something, my brain reaches this level that’s beyond genius.”

  Justin was about to remark on what he thought was actually wrong with Andrew’s brain, but Z spoke up. “All of us have felt some of our other … problems lessening, too.”

  “Good for you. I didn’t have any to start with.” Justin’s agitation was increasing by the second.

  Z gave him a hard stare suggesting she didn’t believe him. “You seriously haven’t experienced anything weird in the past few days?”

  Justin turned to Gabby, who was laser-focused on this conversation.

  “You can tell us, Justin,” she said softly.

  “Tell you what? Did you see a dead guy, too?” Justin ignored the icy look from Sabrina.

  “No,” Gabby replied, reddening now that he was staring at her. “But I can … see things.” She swallowed. “Things that happened to other people.”

  “Why the hell are you freaks telling me this?” Justin growled, shoving his hands in his pockets. Gabby flinched, which made him feel slightly guilty but not enough to apologize.

  “Because it started happening after that therapy meeting,” Sabrina answered impatiently. “But we barely spoke to those people … I don’t get it. How could they have done anything to us?”

  Z scuffed the dirt with her boot. “Maybe it was hypnosis.”

  “And we don’t remember any of it?” Sabrina questioned.

  “That’s the point of hypnosis,” Z huffed.

  Justin shook his head in disbelief. Did these psychos seriously believe they’d been hypnotized?

  “What else could it be?” Z asked. “It wasn’t like they gave us a pill or something.”

  Andrew’s eyes bugged out of his head. “I bet they put something in that water they gave us! In those glasses on the desks. It’s the only reasonable explanation. And that room was so hot I drank my entire glass. Did you guys?”

  Sabrina nodded quickly. “I know I did.”

  “Me, too,” Gabby added. “Just a few sips, but it was so hot I needed to.”

  Z’s eyes were closed, as if she was trying to think back. “I’m almost positive I did.”

  They all turned to Justin. “Yeah, I did. So what?”

  “Maybe they put some kind of experimental hallucinogen in the water,” Sabrina said. Justin smirked. She’d be the one to know.

  “We should talk to Dr. Pearl,” Andrew said. “She’s the one who left us those notes. She’s the one who knows who Patricia and Nash are. We have to tell Dr. Pearl what they did.”

  Sabrina turned to Andrew. “Wait a second. If it was the water, why isn’t anything happening to Justin?”

  Their eyes shifted back to him and he threw his arms up, peeved. “Because nothing is happening to any of you guys! You think those two shrinks drugged us? If you really did have these special abilities, you’d be able to read my mind or listen to my thoughts and know I’m telling the truth!”

  “Maybe I can.” Z cocked her head, as if trying to hear some sound in the distance. After a beat, she frowned. “Well, it doesn’t exactly work on command.”

  This had to be some kind of practical joke. He wondered if Hindy or the other guys on the team put them up to it. Just what he needed, to be lumped together with this collection of freaks.

  He pivoted on his heel as he saw a group of cheerleaders approaching. That group was more his speed. “I’m out of here.” He couldn’t get away fast enough.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Five minutes later, Z was trekking up the staircase with Andrew, Sabrina and Gabby to the second floor, where Dr. Pearl’s office was tucked away with the other administrative offices. Z had never been here before, thank God. It was one benefit of having your father donate a dump truck full of money to the school board. When they enrolled her, Z’s parents told the principal that Z had a psychologist on call if she were to need one, so seeing Dr. Pearl wouldn’t be necessary. She’d heard her mother refer to Dr. Pearl as a “low-budget shrink,” and her mother despised anything on sale. Now it turned out her mom could be right for once. This low-budget shrink might have poisoned her daughter.

  When they reached the office, the door was ajar and Dr. Pearl’s voice drifted out to the hallway. “I think I can get away for a few hours next weekend —”

  Suddenly, she paused and turned to the doorway, glancing through the slight gap to see the four of them congregated in the hall.

  “I’ll call you right back,” she muttered into the phone before hanging up.

  Z and the others crowded into her office, as small, dreary and windowless as Z had expected. If you weren’t depressed before a visit to Dr. Pearl, you certainly would be afterward.

  “Good morning, everybody,” Dr. Pearl chirped. She raked her hand through her short hair as she took in the group before her, seemingly unfazed. “How can I help you?”

  “What did you do to us?” Z snapped before anyone else had the chance to answer.

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Pearl straightened up in her chair.

  Sabrina shot Z an annoyed look. “We need to talk to you about that group-therapy session,” she said, sounding less pissed off than Z, which in turn only annoyed Z more. When did Sabrina become the moral authority of the group?

  “Group therapy? What are you talking about?” Dr. Pearl appeared genuinely confused.

  “Last Thursday,” Andrew told her. “We each got summoned by you to a group-therapy session. You left us all notes in our lockers. The four of us and Justin Diaz.”

  Z’s instincts were already clocking something very wrong. “They said you had a student emergency and couldn’t come —”

  Dr. Pearl cut her off. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “The people running the therapy program,” Sabrina replied. “A young guy named Nash. And an older woman … what was her name again?”

  “Patricia,” said Andrew. “Dr. Patricia Nichols.”

  Dr. Pearl stared at the ceiling for a moment.

  “Let me be clear,” Dr. Pearl said. “I did not give anyone notes last Thursday. I wasn’t here that day. I had a countywide conference scheduled off campus. I wasn’t even in Cedar Springs.”

  Z looked at the others. If Dr. Pearl hadn’t authorized Patricia and Nash to begin the program, then who had?

  “We need to find out who those people were,” Z said, hating that a hint of desperation had entered her voice. “They
sent us all notes from you. And really weird things have been happening since we met with them.”

  Dr. Pearl crossed her arms. “Okay, this alleged note you all received —”

  “It wasn’t ‘alleged.’ It was real,” Andrew insisted.

  “Wait — I think I still have it.” Sabrina fished through her bag until she produced the note, creased and slightly torn from sitting under a pile of textbooks.

  Dr. Pearl read it dubiously.

  “Someone must have stolen some of my stationery …” Dr. Pearl said, raising an accusatory eyebrow at them all, her eyes settling on Z. Z bit her tongue. Convincing the school shrink that she wasn’t a klepto wasn’t the point right now.

  “You think we did this?” Andrew asked incredulously. “Someone put these in our lockers. Why would we make this up?”

  Dr. Pearl swiveled back toward her computer. “I think I have an idea.”

  She clicked on the keyboard for a few seconds, then scanned the screen.

  “Uh-huh …” She clicked her mouse again. “Uh-huh … uh-huh … and yes.” Finally, she looked at them again. “That’s what I thought.”

  “What?” Z asked, her heart already sinking.

  “I just checked the attendance record. All four of you have an unexcused absence last Thursday. I’ll give you points for creativity. But if you’re looking for a way out of detention, I’m sorry, it’s not happening. Z, this is your fourth unexcused absence this month, which means you’ll be suspended for at least a day.”

  Z ignored the irony that the punishment for skipping class was to be granted an entire day off school. “Think about it, Dr. Pearl. The reason we were all absent at the exact same period is because we all went to this therapy session.”

  “We really did get these notes,” Gabby finally said.

  Dr. Pearl gave a half sigh as she looked at Gabby, a bit of sympathy filling her dark brown eyes. “Well, then, someone may have been playing a joke on you, Gabby. And if that was the case, I’m sorry. If you get a note like this again, come directly to me.”

  As she turned back to her computer, signaling that the meeting was officially over, the ringing in Z’s ears began.

  These kids have really gone off the deep end this time.

  “Dr. Pearl —” Andrew began, but Z cut him off.

  “Let’s go. This is pointless.” She looked contemptuously at Dr. Pearl. “Some therapist. She’s given up on us, too.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Justin knew he was procrastinating as he stood at the door of the refrigerator and studied its meager contents. He opened the cracked plastic fruit drawer, which had been out of alignment ever since they’d gotten the fridge at a garage sale a few years ago. There was one apple left, so he grabbed it, ignoring the fact that his mother would give him a hard time about finishing the last piece of fruit. He bit into it and immediately recoiled at the mealy taste of a rotten apple. He wouldn’t be having a snack after all.

  He plopped down at the kitchen table and glared at the copy of Tender Is the Night that he was supposed to be reading. It was almost midnight and he still had six chapters to go if he wanted to pull at least a C on his English test tomorrow — which he needed to do if he had any hope for a football scholarship. Florida State, his top choice, was sending scouts in the next few weeks, but he needed at least a 2.0 to qualify. It was impossible to focus, though. Every time he picked the book up, his brain rewound to that stupid prank at the flagpole with those weirdos trying to convince him they were psychic.

  Gabby’s involvement in the prank, or whatever it was, kept tripping him up. It didn’t seem as if practical jokes were really her thing. What explanation was left, though?

  His head shot up when he heard keys rattling in the door. Even though the apartment felt like a cubbyhole, he wouldn’t be able to make it to his closet-size room fast enough to escape his mother coming home. Two nights ago, after clubbing with her girlfriends, she’d drunkenly told Justin she’d wanted to have an abortion when she found out she was pregnant with him, but she didn’t have the money.

  “You forget how to use a key, baby?” Justin heard a muffled male voice say just as the door opened. His mother burst out laughing, as if that was the funniest joke she’d heard in her entire life.

  Great. Not only was his mother tipsy, but she’d also brought a random guy home. They entered the apartment like a tornado, bumping into the couch by the door and carelessly casting off jackets and shoes in every direction. Carla looked tired. She always looked tired, even when she’d gotten a full night’s sleep. Her long, dark wavy hair was stuck with sweat to the sides of her face, and her eye makeup was smudged. She must have gone out dancing again.

  Then Carla caught sight of Justin. “What are you still doing up?”

  “Homework,” Justin grumbled.

  “You want a beer, Travis?” Carla asked her new friend.

  Travis was pushing forty, but he looked like a high schooler in ripped jeans and Converse.

  “Sure thing,” he answered with a slight Southern twang.

  Justin grabbed his book off the table so he wouldn’t have to be part of this awkward scene. Unfortunately, Travis’s skinny frame was blocking the door to Justin’s bedroom.

  “Aren’t you gonna say what’s up, ese?” Travis asked him with a lopsided grin. This guy was whiter than snow, yet somehow found it perfectly acceptable to use Spanish slang. It made Justin want to punch that grin off his face.

  Travis tried to make his scrawny presence larger in the doorway so Justin couldn’t get by.

  “I said, aren’t you going to say —”

  “I heard you,” Justin said. They were the same height and only inches from each other. Justin could smell the beer on Travis’s breath. Why hadn’t he punched this guy yet? He waited for the attack reflex to move his arms for him, but his clenched fists stayed right by his side.

  “You ain’t got no love for me, papi?” Travis asked, feigning offense.

  “Travis is trying to be nice, Justin,” Carla called from the fridge, where she pulled out two beers. Not that either of them needed more alcohol.

  “Yeah,” Travis said in a low voice only Justin could hear. “I bet your mama gets real caliente in the sack when I’m nice.”

  Justin blinked as the anger flared from his eyeballs to his fingertips. The next thing he knew, Travis was flying through the open doorway, where he slammed into Justin’s bedroom wall and crumpled to the floor like a rag doll.

  “What the hell, Justin!” Carla screamed, dropping the beers and running over to Travis.

  Travis glared at Justin as he got to his feet unsteadily. “I don’t need this crap from a little punk.”

  He slammed the door on his way out. Carla threw Justin a look of fury and ran after him. Justin stared after them, too shocked to move.

  He was absolutely positive that he hadn’t laid a hand on Travis.

  Once Justin was alone in his room, he sent out a text to Gabby, Sabrina, Andrew and Z. It was only three words.

  You were right.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The storefront of Cytology, Inc., was located in a nondescript building on the main highway, formerly home to an insurance office. Though Sabrina had driven by it many times since it appeared several weeks ago, the name was just vague enough that she had never questioned what it was.

  Until now.

  Sabrina, Gabby, Justin, Z and Andrew walked from the small four-spot parking lot to the front door and tried to peek through the closed blinds. “Are you sure this is it?” Sabrina asked.

  “This is the address she sent,” Andrew confirmed, looking down at his phone. Patricia had sent the group a cryptic email early that morning saying she had a feeling they were looking for answers and to meet at this exact time after school.

  Sabrina had been bombarded by a series of emotions ever since. It had been a l
ong time since she’d experienced true feelings without an anesthetizing filter.

  Shock was the first, gut-level emotion that had coursed through her. Patricia and Nash did have something to do with what had been happening to them all. As inevitable as it had seemed that they were involved, it was still surprising to have it confirmed, however veiled and cryptic.

  The shock had quickly given way to anger by mid-morning. What gave Patricia and Nash the right to just experiment on them … or whatever this was? How many breaches of therapeutic etiquette had they committed? No way this was allowed.

  She had a special supply of anger reserved for Nash, whose deceit she felt even more acutely. How could she have thought she had a connection with him?

  But the strongest emotion running through her when they reached the doors of Cytology was her hunger for answers. An intense desire to understand what was happening. What exactly had Patricia and Nash done to them? The hallucinogen-in-the-water theory was the only one Sabrina could come up with. But why? And how did it allow her to go cold turkey off all drugs and feel fine? Better than fine. Exactly as she’d wished to feel for years.

  Justin jammed the red button beside the door several times. A second later, Patricia’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Come in.”

  The door buzzed open.

  “Let’s go,” Justin said, jostling Sabrina as he pushed past her.

  Sabrina followed him into a darkened, empty room containing a dismal setup seemingly left behind by the insurance company.

  But in the back, behind the last cubicle, was a single locked door with a complex alarm keypad system next to it that looked completely out of place. Was that an alarm to keep other people out … or to keep the five of them in?

  Before she could hesitate, the door swung open as they reached it, revealing a large room with a gleaming maple table at its center. A dozen plush executive chairs surrounded it, facing a large drop-down optical-projection screen.