Lockdown

by Laurie R. King

  Anyway, the point was that once the hashtag got going, people at school started to treat him differently. Even the older kids acted like they thought he was almost cool—him, Nick Clarkson! Like he’d brought in a movie and set it down over their heads so they could walk around in it (and not a horror movie with creepy dolls in haunted attics, or the kind of movie where you just knew someone was going to set off a bomb).

  The Bee Cuomo Story!

  Maybe that was why #speakforbee had sort of caught on. Not because people really cared about Bee, but because they liked being part of a movie?

  Not that it mattered why—he was glad it was popular, ’cause it must be making Mr. Cuomo crazy. But he had to admit, the whole thing was getting a little out of hand. Like it wasn’t really to do with Bee now. Some of the things you got when you hit the hashtag were, well…At the same time, Nick’s own images seemed to be going back to the felt pen fangs stage.

  Why? Maybe it was how gross the other images were getting. Or maybe it was the way that grown-ups were still tip-toeing around him while the kids had started to treat him as almost cool? Anyway, he’d found himself asking, what really did happen to Bee?

  Was he still all that sure about what happened? Even last week he’d been convinced of what he saw, but now, after going back to the museum Saturday, he had to wonder.

  Was it possible that his mind was so freaked-out at the idea of Bee gone, it added a kind of chapter to the story on its own? A chapter where Bee didn’t get hurt or anything, but instead just sort of…moved sideways?

  JANUARY

  Nick: his story (2)

  CLINICAL CASE NOTES AND TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS, FEBRUARY 8 SESSION, NICHOLAS CLARKSON.

  Notes:

  From the beginning of this session, Nick exhibited more assurance than during our initial session. He also became more involved with the story, mimicking the voices of his friends as if he were re-experiencing it. He has also relaxed enough into the process that he could respond to, and even make, small forays of humor.

  DRH: Okay, you told me about the first time you went into the Weildman House. What was the second?

  NICK: That was in August, about six weeks after the first time. We had a TV by then, plus we were going to the library a couple times a week, and Mom got a reading list from the school so I wouldn’t be behind, but the whole time the house was just sort of…waiting. So the Friday before school started, I went back.

  The little door was still hard to open, but this time I propped a stick in it so it wouldn’t shut on me. I could tell no one else’d been in—you could see my footprints. I stood in the living room a while, looking at that humongous fireplace. It was so big, you could burn like a whole tree in it. I was trying to imagine the family, these ladies knitting or something, a guy with a beard, that chandelier burning. A piano, maybe? What would you do, without TV or games? Books, yeah, but how many hours a day could you read? It was hard to picture. Then when I turned to walk out, I kind of…out of the corner of my eye, like, there was a sort of a flame, flashing up in the empty fireplace. Not only that, I heard a sort of a creaking noise, like a rocking chair.

  I turned around fast, but there wasn’t anything there.

  And a little while later, the same thing happened in the kitchen. I was checking out the empty cabinets when I felt heat on my back, and the air smelled like coffee and there was a man’s voice—less than a second, there and gone.

  And when I looked the stove was just this rusty black thing, and the air only smelled…stale.

  That’s when I left, and I didn’t go back.

  DRH: Until you brought Bee and AJ.

  NICK: Until Bee brought us, you mean. I thought maybe the house wouldn’t…you know. Show us the door. But it did. For some reason, Bee spotted it the second we came through the gate. I told her and AJ we didn’t have to go in, ’cause it was dirty in there, but she wanted to see it. And anyway, there was the Social Studies project we had to decide on. And then she said, “Besides, if we don’t go in, it’s going to bug you forever.”

  I told her I thought it might bug me forever if we did go in.

  DRH: What did you mean by that?

  NICK: Just a joke. Well, meant to be. But she gave me a look and stuck her fingernails under the edge of the little door. I was about to get out my pocket-knife but it just popped open. I had to help AJ climb up—he’s kind of fat—but we followed her in.

  We went all through the house that day, even upstairs. Most of the rooms were empty, except for some bed frames in some of the upstairs rooms, and one mattress that was like a mouse condo. When nothing happened, I decided that whatever I’d seen—whatever I thought I’d seen—it was only my imagination.

  Oh, but did I say it was morning when we got there? It was. Bee’s housekeeper dropped her and AJ off at nine, and we walked to the house, looked around the garden for maybe two minutes, then went in. So, I was standing in the middle of the living room again, glad there weren’t any weird voices this time, when AJ said, “It’s late, and I’m hungry.”

  I told him he was always hungry, but then I looked at the window and he was right: the whole day was gone! It felt like a couple of hours, but when we got back to the garden, the sun was way low.

  When we were helping AJ get through the gate, Bee asked me if I’d seen anything this time.

  DRH: You’d told Bee, about hearing the sounds?

  NICK: Yeah.

  DRH: What had her reaction been?

  NICK: She didn’t look at me like I was looney tunes, I’ll tell you that.

  DRH: Nick, I don’t—

  NICK: It’s okay, really. But Bee just said, “Yeah, it’s a puzzle,” and let it go at that. So this time, when I said no, I didn’t see anything, she said maybe there was too much going on, with all three of us. I said maybe there was nothing there the first time. ’Cause even then I knew how nuts it sounds.

  DRH: How did she respond?

  NICK: She said, “I don’t see any reason to doubt your senses. And the house does feel strange.”

  DRH: It must have been reassuring to have someone agree with you, even if you weren’t entirely sure?

  NICK: That’s why Bee was so great: she made you feel like there were two of you in the world. I asked her if she’d felt the weirdness, too, and she said sure, and something like, “Think about it: When people die, where does their energy go? When a family lives in a house for years and years and they go away, what does the house think?”

  And then AJ said, “Like when you trash something on your computer, it stays there on your hard drive until it’s written over. Maybe it’s the same with people and houses.”

  AJ sometimes comes up with the most amazing ideas.

  Anyway, when we were walking back to my house, we decided to do our group project on the Weirdman House.

  DRH: How did you feel about that decision?

  NICK: I guess fine. I mean, it was better than some. What kind of teacher thinks it’s a good idea for middle school kids to learn all about toxic plants?

  DRH: [Laughter]

  NICK: Yeah. Anyway, the next Saturday we found ourselves back in the jungly garden. And that time, we saw the Weird Man.

  We met at my house early, at eight. Bee and AJ and me—the Tim twins were supposed to come, but their parents had some kind of party they were going to in San Jose. Mom had work that day and left even before that, so when the others came, we got together a bunch of food and drinks and put it in a backpack. And the big flashlight Mom keeps on top of the fridge, in case we wanted to look into a closet or the basement or something.

  The sun was out, I remember that. We’d had some rain, so the weeds in the garden were turning green and that rose bush that covered half the front of the house had a few flowers that smelled really sweet. Bee took some pictures with her camera and put some petals in her pocket.

  We’d brought one of those plastic milk crates to make it easier to climb in. Bee went first again, but I wasn’t as nervous this time, with her the
re. You could see our footprints from the first time, going all over. She took pictures of them. Took pictures of everything, really: the wallpaper, the chandelier that was like a giant ball of cobwebs, the kitchen, the library shelves.

  On one side of the kitchen there were two sets of stairs. One of them went down into the basement, this black pit that smelled like mildew, and the other went up. I asked Bee which she wanted to go on, hoping she wouldn’t choose the basement, and she was just starting to answer when something behind me surprised her and her voice went all tight. AJ and me whipped around to see what she was looking at, but there wasn’t anything, just a corner of the dining room with its curtains that looked like they were made out of dust.

  I asked her what she saw, and she said it was probably just some reflection.

  And AJ said, “If you guys are starting in on the ghost stories, I’m going home.” He didn’t sound very happy.

  So I said it was probably a bird, and maybe we should go upstairs.

  The stairs near the living room were wide, but these ones were really narrow, and steep—Bee said they were for the servants. She took a bunch of pictures. At the top was this little landing with a door. The hinges creaked like some horror movie.

  The second story was mostly bedrooms, we decided, and two bathrooms with these old-fashioned tubs with feet, and the kind of toilets that have pull handles on a chain. There were mouse droppings all over.

  We went up to the top floor, too. There were all these little rooms with slanty ceilings and rusty metal bed frames that Bee said was probably where the servants lived. You could tell that made her sad. It was getting hot, so Bee went over to this teensy window, and even though the windows downstairs were all painted shut, maybe they didn’t bother doing the servants’ floor because the window slid right up.

  The temperature dropped right away, but Bee stayed by the window, and after a minute she said, “Who’s that?”

  I went over, and there was this man down in the garden, looking straight up at us. He was wearing a faded plaid shirt and baggy pants held up by suspenders, with dirty boots and a battered hat. Bee took a picture, but I said, “Crap, we’re busted!” I figured he was one of the people working on the renovation project.

  But Bee said, “I don’t think so. Look at him.”

  For some reason, I couldn’t see him very well. He was…fuzzy, kind of. I rubbed my eyes, thinking the dust had got in them. When I looked back, the guy was taking off his hat, like he was trying to see us better, too. I tried to pull Bee away, but she just kept staring down.

  So I took another look. He still wasn’t very clear, but without his hat, he was younger than I’d thought. Maybe high school age? But his clothes were really old-fashioned, and he had long blond hair, and he just stood there staring up while Bee and I stared down.

  And then AJ came to see what was going on. He took one look and jumped backward, straight into one of the beds. He sat down hard, and there was this incredible noise—and when Bee and I had got him up and went back to the window, the guy was gone. We kind of tip-toed downstairs—my heart was beating so hard I thought I’d throw up, but there wasn’t any sign of him. Not even any boot marks in the dust.

  Bee looked all over the garden, but you couldn’t tell he’d been there, not even right where he was standing. And the ground there was soft.

  I said something like, where the hell did he go, and Bee said maybe he wasn’t really there. And AJ looked kinda creeped out and said, What, that was a ghost? And Bee said no, but I just said I hope she’d got enough for the report, ’cause I wasn’t going back inside.

  “Is Nicky scared?” It sounds like a really mean thing to say, but from her, it wasn’t somehow.

  So I asked her, what if that guy’d been some psycho serial killer? What if he’d had a gun? I mean, I know I’m a…a coward, but aren’t girls supposed to be even more careful than boys? Plus, Bee was older than AJ and me—she should’ve known better.

  “I just wish I knew who that was. Did you see the way he was dressed? He must have been some kind of re-enactor, in period costume.”

  And then she gave me this…look. Like she was daring me. Not just to go with her. It was more like she was saying, Are you with me?

  All I could think of was how I should never have shown her the house. I told her the guy was probably just a hippie. Running one of those organic farms, plowing with horses. Mom and I lived in a place like that once.

  DRH: [Prompt after a long silence.] How did she react?

  NICK: She was…disappointed, I guess. She just said something like, “Even that would be interesting.” Anyway, when they left, I told Bee to email me the pictures. And she said, “Sure. See you Monday.”

  But she didn’t send them. And on Monday morning, she wasn’t at school.

  8:35

  Nick

  Nick stared at his blank page. “A Dream,” he’d written, then sat there spacing out about #speakforbee.

  Either something awful happened to Bee, or she walked away.

  The first was a nightmare. But the other, that was its own kind of awful.

  People did disappear, and their bodies turned up years and years later: Nick knew that. And he knew—a part of him knew—this could be what happened to Bee. That when he was twenty (or forty, or ninety) they’d find a skeleton and he’d finally know.

  But if she’d walked away, well, that was a kind of nightmare, too—because Nick had thought Bee was his best friend, somebody who’d never leave without telling him, but why? He’d only known her about nine weeks. Sixty-two days.

  One thing he was sure about: Bee cared about people. She cared about Nick. If she’d left without telling anyone, there was some good reason.

  Not knowing was awful. It hurt like hell. But maybe if he could just remember how she’d been, how cool and weird and strong she was instead of how she walked into a hole, he could hang on to her as a friend even if she wasn’t around any longer. Think about Bee, not about #speakforbee.

  He realized that the teacher was making the rounds through the silent classroom, checking to make sure everyone was writing. Nick glanced at the clock, then set his pencil onto his piece of paper.

  A DREAM

  By Nick Clarkson

  I think when I grow up, I’d like to be a teacher, probably of history.

  I once knew a girl who loved history. She was also a really clever photographer. Sometimes she would make her photographs look old, like they had been taken with one of those machines that have the black curtain over the photographer’s head.

  8:40

  Linda

  Linda had just hit PRINT for the final (!) draft of her assembly speech—the one that left out “warp of hopes” and a principal’s exotic travels—when Mrs. Hopkins knocked at the door and stuck her head in. “Dr. Henry is here to see you.”

  “Good, send her in. Hi, Cass.” Linda came around the desk to shake the hand of the school district’s psychologist. “Thanks for dropping by, have a seat. I wanted a quick word about Nick Clarkson.”

  “I’m seeing him in a few minutes.”

  “I know. This is your, what? Fourth session?”

  “Yes, although only the third of any substance.”

  “Would you say he’s doing okay?”

  “Remarkably so.”

  Linda gave her a sharp look. “You don’t sound like that’s a good thing.”

  “Nick Clarkson lost his best friend. Too much calm can be worrying. Would you like to read the session transcripts? His mother said I could show them to you, and it might help explain where the boy is coming from.”

  “Then, sure.”

  “I’ll email them to you, when they’re typed up. Was that all you wanted?”

  “No—it’s about Bee’s father. Next week you and I should sit down and figure out what to do about him.”

  “Do you mean Bee’s memorial?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  “Linda, I know the man has refused to be involved, but there
has to be some kind of school acknowledgment, for the sake of the kids. You’ve started to wince away from her name as if it’s a sore tooth, and that’s not fair to the kids.”

  “They need closure.”

  “I know—I don’t care for the word either, but the school needs to recognize the loss of one of its own. In some fashion.”

  “The one time I could really use a clear-cut district policy on something…But look, I had a call from Mr. Cuomo yesterday accusing Nick of spreading online rumors about him.”

  “Ah.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Online stuff? I don’t know. I do know that Nick believes Bee’s father hit her. Nothing sexual, so far as he’s said.”

  “Do you think he’s right? Or could it be a part of his…fantasy?”

  “I can’t tell you that yet. I wish I’d met the child herself, so I knew if she’d exhibited any signs of problems at home. Did you know her?”

  “I’m ashamed to say that the first weeks of school are such a blur, my only memory of that little girl is that she liked to watch the guy restoring the school mural. She’d have made more of an impression if she’d been a troublemaker. You should talk to Gordon—he remembers her.”

  “I will. And maybe her teachers as well? I know there’s privacy issues, and if Nick were an adult I’d hesitate to step outside our actual sessions, but this is one of those cases where it might be good to know if the school missed any obvious clues.”

  Both for Nick and for the school, thought Linda: liability issues could be a major pain. As if I needed something else to worry about!

  “Mrs. Hopkins can give you the names of Bee’s teachers.”

  “Thanks.” Dr. Henry stood. “See you in the gym—and good luck!”

  8:55

  Linda