Challenger Deep (20 page)
Authors: Neal Shusterman
“No ideas,” I repeat groggily. I couldn’t have any such “ideas” even if I wanted to. When the meds are dialed this high, it takes away all stirrings. I’m actually glad for that—at least at this particular moment—because there are no expectations, and not the slightest hint of awkwardness. This is about one thing: keeping her warm.
I’m worried, though. I know there are several pastels on duty and they have regular rounds, checking each room. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, too. The hospital makes every effort to monitor all aspects of our behavior, but there’s still room for human error. The fact that Callie is here proves it.
“What if they see us?” I ask.
“What are they going to do, throw us out?” she answers.
And I realize I don’t care what they see, what they say, or what they do. Not Poirot, or the pastels, or even my parents. They have no part of this moment. They don’t have the right.
I hold her tighter, pressing against her until I feel just the slightest bit cold, which means she’s taking some of my body heat. After a while her teeth stop chattering, and we lie there, breathing in unison.
“Thank you,” she finally says.
“You can come whenever you’re cold,” I tell her. I think to give her a gentle kiss on the ear, but instead I just snuggle a little closer and whisper into it. “I like being hot for you.”
Only after I say it do I realize the joke. I let her think that I intended it.
She says nothing. Her breathing slows, I doze off, and when I open my eyes again, I’m alone in my bed, left to wonder if it happened at all. Was it just another mind trick?
It isn’t until morning that I find her slipper on the floor near my bed—left there not accidentally, not carelessly, but with mischievous purpose.
At breakfast I will bring it to her, kneel before her, and slip it on her foot. And, just like in the fairy tale, it will be a perfect fit.
In group, Carlyle hands out pieces of sketch paper and markers. “We’re going to give our mouths a rest today,” he tells us. “There are other ways to express ourselves. Today we’ll take advantage of nonverbal expression.”
The creepy kid everyone calls Bones looks at Skye and offers her a nonverbal and sexually explicit gesture, which elicits another nonverbal gesture from Skye that involves a particular finger. Bones snickers, and Carlyle pretends he didn’t see the exchange.
“The object today is to draw the way you’re feeling. It doesn’t have to be literal, and there is no right or wrong way to do it. No good or bad.”
“This is kindergarten crap,” announces Alexa—the girl with
bandages on her throat.
“Only if you make it so,” Carlyle tells her.
People look at their pages like the screaming blankness is already invading their fragile minds. Others stare at the pale green walls around them as if the answers might be there. Bones grins evilly and gets to work. I know exactly what he’s going to draw. We all do. And none of us is claiming to read minds today.
This assignment is no problem for me. It’s what I do most of the time anyway. Sometimes with more passion and urgency than other times. Carlyle knows this, and perhaps this is why he chose an art project for today.
In a few minutes my paper reflects a jagged inner landscape of sharp edges and deep crevasses. No sense of gravity or perspective.
Abstract angular angst. I like it. And will until I hate it.
Others are not so quick to draw.
“I can’t do this,” complains Skye. “My head doesn’t see feelings as pictures.”
“Try,” Carlyle says gently. “Whatever you put down is fine. You’re not being judged.”
She looks at her blank page once more, then pushes it at me. “You do it.”
“Skye, you’re missing the point . . . ,” Carlyle says.
Still, I take the piece of paper, ponder Skye for a moment, and get to work. I draw a sweeping abstract something that’s a cross between an amoeba and a manta ray with eyes and mouths in unexpected places. It takes me about a minute. When it’s done, Skye gapes at me, wide-eyed. I expect her to offer me a single-digit gesture, but instead she says, “How did you do that?”
“What?”
“I have no idea what the hell that is, but it’s exactly how I feel right now.”
“Skye,” says Carlyle, “I really don’t think—”
“I don’t care what you do or don’t think,” Skye says. “He got me right.”
“Me next,” says Bones. He flips over the phallus he’s drawing, so I can work on the other side of the page.
I glance at Carlyle. He raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “Go for it,” he says. I like the fact that Carlyle rolls with the waves rather than fighting them. Good sea legs.
For Bones, I draw a squiggle that turns into a vaguely suggestive
porcupine. When I’m done he laughs. “Man, you are a true arteest of the soul.”
Others are anxious for their turns. Even the crew members who are totally out of it look to me like somehow what I draw is going to save their lives.
“All right,” says Carlyle, leaning back against the green copper bulkhead of the map room. “Caden can draw it, but when he’s done, you each need to explain what it means.”
They thrust their parchments before me, and I feverishly translate their feelings into line and color. For the lore-master, I offer a prickly something-or-other covered with eyes. For Alexa and her pearl choker, I offer a tentacled kite caught in an updraft. The only one who won’t offer me his parchment is the navigator. Instead he draws his own map in silence.
Everyone claims that I’ve gotten them right, and while they compare their inner selves, I go to Carlyle, a bit concerned. “Do you think the captain will approve of this?”
Carlyle sighs. “Let’s just be here in the moment, okay?”
And although it makes me edgy, I agree to try.
Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear, sent it to the woman he loved, and in the end took his own life. In spite of an artistic vision so startlingly new it took years for the world to appreciate it, his artwork
couldn’t save him from the depths of his tortured mind. That’s who he was.
Michelangelo—arguably the greatest artist mankind has ever seen—became so pathologically obsessed with sculpting
David
that he didn’t bathe, or take care of himself for months. He had gone so long without removing his work boots, that when he took them off, the skin of his feet came off with them. That’s who Michelangelo was.
Recently, I saw a story about a schizophrenic artist living on the streets of Los Angeles. His paintings were gorgeous abstract masterpieces, and people were comparing him to the masters. Now his works sell for tens of thousands of dollars because some rich person turned the media spotlight in his direction. He wore a suit and tie at the gallery opening, and when it was done, even with doors wide open to him, he went back to living on the streets. Because that’s who he was.
And so who am I?
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”
“I asked if you’ve noticed any difference in the way you’ve been feeling, Caden.”
“Difference in the way I’ve been feeling.”
“Yes. Have you noticed any?”
Dr. Poirot has the annoying tendency to nod, even when I don’t speak, which makes it difficult for me to know if I’ve answered the question or not.
“Have I noticed any what?”
He taps his pen on the desk thoughtfully for a moment. It distracts me and I forget not just the gist of the conversation, but its entire direction as well. It’s one of those days. What were we talking about? Dinner, perhaps?
“Mutton,” I say.
“Mutton,” he says. “What about mutton?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think we’re eating the crewmen with no brains.”
He considers this very seriously, then he grabs his little pad and scribbles out a new prescription for me. “I’d like to add Risperdal to your medication regimen,” he says. “I believe it may keep you here with us more of the time.”
“Why don’t you combine the Ativan, the Risperdal, the Seroquel, and the Depakote into a single pill?” I suggest. “AtiRisperQuellakote.”
He chuckles, then tears out the prescription, but knows better than to hand it to me. It goes into my chart, which will go to the pastels, who will bring it to the pharmacy, and a new pill will find its way into my happy paper cup before dinner.
115. Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble
About 99 percent of a pill is made up of other stuff that has nothing to do with the medication. They add extra ingredients for color, coating, and to make the pill stick together. Stuff like xanthan gum, which is made from bacteria; Carbopol, which is an acrylic polymer like house paint; and gelatin, which is made from cow cartilage.
Somewhere deep in the secret recesses of Pfizer, or Glaxo-SmithKline, or one of the other big pharmaceutical companies, I imagine there’s a high-security dungeon where three hunchbacked witches stir a massive industrial cauldron of crap I don’t want to know about, but I must ingest on a daily basis.
And the generic versions aren’t even brewed by real witches.
It finally happens.
My brain escapes through my left nostril and goes feral.
I’m out of my body, scurrying on the deck in the middle of the night. The ship is fogged in. There’s no hint of stars, or what lies before us—or maybe it’s just that my mind’s eye can’t see all that far. The other brains hiss when I get close. We are solitary creatures, I realize. Solitary and suspicious. This close to the deck, I can see the sticky black caulking spread between the copper planks. That black sludge seethes with intentions I’d rather not know about.
My gnarled purple legs are rootlike, sparking with intelligence, or maybe it’s just a series of short circuits. Those twisted dendritic legs get stuck in the pitch, and the stuff begins to pull me down like I’m a dinosaur in tar. I know if I can’t get free I will be dragged into the narrow space between the copper planks, and crushed—digested by the pitch. It takes a huge amount of will, but finally I tear myself free.
Where will I go?
I cannot let Calliope see me like this. I’m horrible. So instead I head aft and make my way like a gecko up the bulkhead toward the captain’s ready room, squeezing myself as flat as I can to slip in
under the door. If it’s true that I play a crucial part in this mission, then he will help me. He will find a way to fix this.
The captain sits at his desk with a half-melted candle, studying one of my drawings for symbols and signs. When he looks up to see me, the glare of his eye is like a flamethrower.
“Get that thing out of here!” he bellows.
He doesn’t recognize me. Of course he doesn’t—to him I am just another piece of useless vermin infesting his ship. I try to explain, but I can’t. I have no mouth.
I hear footsteps. A door creaks open, and hands, dozens of hands, hundreds of hands grab at me. I wriggle and squirm. I can’t let them get me! The hands grasp and claw, but I twist free from them and bolt out the door, tumbling down the stairs, into . . . wetness. The deck is wet with soapy water, and Carlyle pushes his mop toward me. The mop is huge! A wall of filthy brown snakes. His mop hits me and I slide through the slick flood, trying to grab on to something, but it’s no use. I see the drainage hole in front of me, and there’s nothing I can do. In a moment I’m in free fall. Then I’m in the cold sea, submerged beneath the waves.
I hurt. I hurt everywhere—and I know I’m going to die this way. My body, on the ship, will go through the motions of living, but I will be gone.
Then, in the midst of my panic, I feel something. Something huge. It moves beneath me. Hard scales brush past my raw nerve endings. It’s one of the creatures the captain speaks of. It’s here, and it’s real. I recoil in terror. In a moment it’s gone, diving deep . . . but only so it can gain momentum as it rises again—this time with its
mouth open. I kick, I struggle, and finally I break the surface.
I can see nothing. No ship. No sea. The fog is cotton-dense.
I feel the rush of water as the creature rises toward me.
