Accelerated (32 page)

“Bev,” she said, banging. “Aunt Bev.” When there was no answer, she looked at her watch. “Everyone’s in assembly.”

“So we’ll wait.”

She shook her head. “No, you should go.” She pushed at his chest, but not hard. “It’ll be better.”

“No way.” He wanted to see Shineman, wanted to shake her. Make her explain.

“If I talk to her alone, she might tell me what’s going on. If you’re there …” She grimaced. “It’s not going to work.”

He imagined seeing Shineman and his chest tightened. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. He let Jess walk him toward the staircase. “Call me as soon as you talk to her.”

“Promise,” she said. “And then you can tell me why I should tell my mother’s voice to stop worrying. I got your email.”

“A lot has changed in the past two days. Come over tonight and I’ll tell you everything.”

But Jess was looking past him and he could see her wheels turning. “What’s the matter?” He turned and realized they were standing in front of the nurse’s office. The door was open.

“The nurse,” she said, holding up the Conners scale. “I wonder if she keeps copies of these in her office.”

“We have all the proof we need. It’s in your hand.”

“But what if my signature is forged on other Conners scales, too? What if other parents put their kids on drugs because they thought I told them to?” She wrung her hands, then moved around him toward the nurse’s office. He followed her into the tidy room where Jess was already behind the desk opening and closing drawers.

He looked around and saw an exam table, a few chairs, a desk—but no filing cabinets. “What about in there?” He gestured to the walk-in closet.

She pushed open the door, peered in, and looked from left to right with a puzzled expression. As it hit her, her eyes and mouth opened in horror.

“What,” he said. “What is it?” Standing next to her a moment later, he stared into the room, which was lined floor to ceiling with dozens and dozens of shelves filled with prescription bottles. He’d never seen so many pills. He reached for the light switch.

Jess grabbed his hand and shook her head. She opened her cell phone and shined the blue light on the pill bottles. He opened his phone, too, for more light, and started reading the labels. “Ritalin 10 mg. Take two pills by mouth every four hours as needed.” He picked up another: “Metattent Junior, 10 mg.” He grabbed another handful. Almost every vial contained medication for Attention Deficit—Metattent Junior, but also Ritalin and Adderall, Adderall XR, generic methylphenidate and dexadrine. He even found a few bottles of Wellbutrin. “Jesus Christ,” he said. He did a rough count: ten, twenty, thirty, forty per shelf. “There are hundreds of bottles here.”

“It’s way too many,” she said, staring. “I’ve been paying attention, looking for signs that my kids are on this stuff. And they’re there. In a few kids. But this … this makes it look like the entire student body is taking pills.”

He thought he’d feel better knowing he’d been right about Bradley. But he felt sick. His hand trembled as he reached for the bottles on the shelf reserved for Jess’s class. He grabbed a handful and read the labels: they were prescribed for Dylan, Alexis, and Marcus, each by a different doctor. Cheryl had lied to him, but he knew that already. Like so many other parents here, she’d been pressured into giving her child an edge in the competitive arena of the Bradley lower school.

Giving your child Ritalin wasn’t like signing him or her up for tutoring or occupational therapy or sight training. Of course parents would talk to their close friends about it, but for the most part, the topic was still taboo, something Bradley mothers were not going to chitchat about over soy lattes at Le Pain Quotidien. The school had counted on that. He was sure of it. He leaned against the door frame, hit by the enormity of what he was staring at. He reached for more bottles to see who else had been diagnosed.

Jess was reading labels, too, as many as she could grab. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “This is a nightmare. All these kids … all their parents. And if they’re being diagnosed by forged questionnaires …” She had a wild look in her eyes as she started dialing her phone.

“Whoa, wait,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“The police. I’m calling the police.”

“Wait,” he said. “Let me think.”

She glared at him. “Think about what? The school is … this is …” She was shaking, trying to find the words.

“Let’s be smart,” he said. “Think about Debbie Martin. We need evidence.”

“Evidence?” She held her arms open and took it all in again. “What do you call this?”

“Do you know what kind of lawyers a place like Bradley has?”

“We can take the bottles,” she said. “For proof.”

He wondered how many bottles he could shove in his jeans pockets. It wasn’t an efficient plan. “Even if we take some of the pills, it’s still not going to—I’m not sure that will prove …” His mind raced. “The really creepy thing, the thing that will get people’s attention is the pharmacy we’re staring at right now.” He looked at the phone in his hand, switched it to camera mode and snapped a series of photos of the closet. When Jess caught on, she held a few of the bottles up close, so the labels would be legible.

After they’d documented the discovery, she slumped against the wall. “What am I going to do? I can’t … I can’t keep working here.”

“Get out of your contract. Come up with an excuse. Anything—a family crisis, an illness. And I’ll call Nicole, see if there’s anyone she trusts in Child Services. We’ll go through channels. We’ll do this right.”

Footsteps clattered in the hallway and they swiveled toward the sound.

“Assembly’s over,” Jess said, shoving the pills back on the shelf clumsily. He tried to straighten them as best he could. “Let’s get out of here.”

His heart was pounding so loudly he wondered if Jess could hear it. They ducked out of the closet and Sean left the door slightly ajar, hoping it was close to the way they’d found it. Before they had a chance to escape, Astrid lumbered into the room and glared at them. “What are you doing in here?”

Jess froze for what seemed like an eternity. There had to be a believable excuse. His mind was blank. He swallowed hard.

Then he realized that not only was he still a parent at the school, he was the parent of a kid who’d been sick. Very sick. It suddenly occurred to him that it was weird that he hadn’t been in before. He turned to Jess as casually as he could. “Thanks for bringing me down here,” he said. “I always get lost in the basement.”

Jess tried to smile. “Sure,” she said stiffly.

“I know you probably need to get back to the kids.”

“Right, I …” Jess turned to leave. “I hope … Toby feels better,” she said, and darted down the hall.

He focused his attention on Astrid again. Her face was stone. “I wanted to talk to you about Toby,” he started. “You know, about his condition. And what I should do.”

If Astrid was buying any of this, her expression wasn’t showing it. All he could do was keep going. “So … the doctors say Toby should rest,” he said. “For now. They … they want to monitor his heart periodically.” He swallowed. He was not doing well. “I … value your professional opinion. I mean, you know kids … and the school … better than anyone at that hospital. You might know better … about, you know, when would be right for him to come back.” He would never in a million years let Toby set foot in this place again. He hoped she couldn’t see it in his eyes. He looked away.

She looked him up and down suspiciously, and then, miraculously, softened. She nodded slowly, which made her chins jiggle. “You were smart to come by,” she said. “Parents don’t usually talk to me, and I do have insights to this place that the doctors don’t have.” She gestured for him to sit. He sat on a wooden chair and she waddled around behind her desk. “Here’s what I’d tell you. Give Toby some time. Don’t rush it. Once he comes back, it’s hard to take it easy. He’ll be swept up into the daily routine and he won’t want to slow down. I’d keep him home until after spring break, at the very least.”

He pretended to listen, to care what this crazy drug-pushing nurse had to say.

“Just make sure his teacher sends the homework home every week so he doesn’t fall behind.”

“Okay,” he said, getting up. “Thanks. Thanks for your suggestion. I think it’s a good one.” He looked at his watch. “Wow, it’s late. I better … I better get to work.” He waved and made a quick exit.

Outside, he raced down the street, his mind reeling, when his foot slid on a patch of ice. He flailed, frictionless, for what seemed like an eternity, before he finally, miraculously, regained his footing. Being out of control for a few moments had been terrifying, but, he realized, not at all unfamiliar. He startled at his phone vibrating in his back pocket.

“Where the hell are you?” Rick shouted in his ear a moment later.

“I’m … I had an emergency.”

“Jesus,” he said, losing the bluster. “Is it Toby? What happened?

“No, it’s … Toby’s okay. I’m just getting in the subway. I’ll be there in—”

“I’m in a meeting,” Rick bellowed. “One you’re supposed to be running.”

“Ten minutes,” he said, hanging up and waving down a taxi. As he hopped inside, his phone rang again and he flipped it open. “I’m in a cab now.”

“Sean.” He knew the voice, but it took a second to register. Walt. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“I’m just on my way to work.”

“Go, go. I was just calling to tell you I heard about what happened to Toby. I’m glad he’s okay. You must be … Jesus, I can’t even imagine.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“Hey,” he said. “If you’re free Sunday we could use you in the game.”

Basketball was the last thing he wanted to think about. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m probably not going to make it this week.”

“I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. I bet you’ll be happy when your son’s back at school.”

The sound that came out of his mouth started as a laugh but ended up more of an accusatory groan.

“What?” Walt sounded legitimately baffled.

“Nothing,” he said. He was furious, but there was no reason to be taking it out on Walt. “I should … I’ve got to go.”

“Sure. Don’t want to keep you.”

“Hold on—” he said, realizing that he had a Bradley Board member—and probably soon-to-be Chairman of the Board of Trustees—on the phone. “Walt?”

“Holding on,” he said.

“I just came from Bradley,” he blurted. “The nurse’s office.” He didn’t know how to start. “It’s filled with prescription bottles. Tons of kids at Bradley are taking drugs for ADD.”

“Whoa, slow down. Start from the beginning and tell me what happened.”

“Okay.” He tried to slow down. Walt didn’t know any of this, he reminded himself. He needed to walk him through. “I ended up giving Toby Metattent,” he said. “It gave him an arrhythmia, which sent him into the coma.” The more clinically he described it, the easier it was to say out loud, as if he were talking about someone else’s horror story.

“Jesus, Sean.” Walt exhaled into the receiver. “Jesus.”

“I was just in the nurse’s office at school. She has a closet packed with bottles of ADD medication.”

Walt was listening, waiting. “That’s where it would be, I’m assuming.”

“Walt, Toby’s teacher questionnaire was forged; the one that helped diagnose him.”

“Forged?” Walt sounded dubious. “Sean, my heart goes out to you. But who would do that? Really. Who?”

“That’s where I thought you could help. If the school is trying to get parents to put their kids on these drugs … I mean if it happened to Toby, then why wouldn’t it have happened with other kids too?”

“If what you’re saying is true …” He stopped. “Well, we need to find out if it’s true. That’s the first step. I hope you’re wrong, Sean—that it’s just a misunderstanding. Because if you’re not …”

“What would your first step be? If you were me?”

He listened to Walt thinking. “Come to lunch today at the Yale Club,” he said, finally. “I’m meeting Bruce Daniels there at one. I can give him the basics of what you told me, if you’re okay with that. Maybe he can do some digging this morning and the three of us can sit down and figure out what the hell is going on.”

He took a minute to try to imagine Headmaster Daniels eating lunch anywhere other than the Bradley dining room. He considered Walt’s proposal. The headmaster ran the school. He could push Bradley to stop medicating kids. Unless he was the one who pushed
for
medication. Unless he was the one forging the documents. “I don’t know.”

“We’ve got to nail this thing head-on,” Walt said. “I’ve known Bruce twenty years. He’s a good guy. He’ll know better than anyone what’s going on over there—and if he doesn’t, he’s in the best position to figure it out.”

The Yale Club wasn’t far from the
Buzz
offices, and Sean slipped out at lunch unnoticed. He’d passed the blue and white banner countless times, but he’d never given the Yale Club any thought until the moment he turned into the revolving door and stood in the lobby, face to face with two uniformed doormen.

“Sir, may I help you?” one of them asked from behind a podium.

“I’m meeting someone, thanks,” he said, checking out the somber portraits of old white men in academic robes.

“The Yale Club has a no-jeans policy.” He said. “I’m sorry.”

“Seriously?” He couldn’t help the smirk. “They’re just pants.”

“House rule.” The apologetic tone meant he wasn’t budging. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“I have an important meeting.” A few captains of industry seated in upholstered armchairs pulled their heads out of their
Wall Street Journals
to see what the ruckus was about. “I don’t see what my pants have to do with anything.”

“Please keep your voice down, sir,” scolded the first doorman. “We didn’t make the rule.”

Walt jogged down the staircase, his slate blue suit pants rising and falling, exposing tactful black socks and dress shoes. It was the first time he’d seen Walt in anything but jeans.

“It’s all right, Alberto. We can make an exception this time.” He flashed his winning smile. “Won’t happen again.”

Alberto cowed. “Yes Mr. Renard,” he said and stepped down.