Crazy Dangerous (14 page)

She was wearing a black sweater and a gray skirt. She came around her desk and held out her hand to Jennifer. It was a very small hand, like a child’s. Jennifer shook it.

“I’m Dr. Fletcher,” the doctor said. “You must be Jennifer.”

Yes,
Jennifer thought,
I must be. Because if I could be anyone else, I would!

Dr. Fletcher and her rice-cakes-nice-face sat in the swivel chair to one side of the desk. Jennifer sat in the armchair across from her. Dr. Fletcher held a yellow pad on her skirt. She held a pen in her hand. This worried Jennifer. Was Dr. Fletcher going to write down what she said? Was she going to report her to the demon king of St. Agnes . . . or someone?

“Your mother says you’ve been having some frightening experiences lately,” Dr. Fletcher said.

Jennifer hesitated. She was afraid. She was afraid if she told the truth, the doctor would think she was crazy and lock her in a padded room wearing a straitjacket. But on the other hand, she was afraid of the whispers in the night and the coffin under the tree and the creature who had stared at her across the room outside.

“Something terrible is coming. Soon
.”

Maybe the doctor could help make these things go away.

“Sometimes I get afraid,” Jennifer said.

“What makes you afraid, Jennifer?”

Jennifer wasn’t sure what to say. She shook her head.

“Are there unusual things happening in your life?” Dr. Fletcher asked her. She swiveled in the chair. She held the notepad on her skirt. She held the pen in her tiny, childlike hand, waiting to write down Jennifer’s answers. “Are there things happening that haven’t happened before?”

Jennifer nodded cautiously.

“Do you see things that worry you?” the doctor asked. “Do you see things that other people can’t see?”

“Sometimes, yes,” Jennifer managed to say.
Rice cakes, ice skates, mice on skates
. Mice on skates—that was a funny idea—but she knew she couldn’t say it out loud or the doctor really would think she was crazy.

“Do you hear voices other people can’t hear?”

Jennifer bit her lip and nodded. How did the doctor know? Who was she? Who was she really?

Dr. Fletcher reached out with one of her small hands and touched the knee of Jennifer’s jeans. “It’s all right,” she said, with her nice-rice face. “I know you’re scared. What’s happening to you feels very frightening.”

“What’s happening to me?” Jennifer blurted out, her voice cracking. She had worried about this so much, so long, she could hardly bear to ask the question out loud. She clamped her lips shut to keep from saying anything else.

Dr. Fletcher had brown hair, but she was too old to have brown hair so it must’ve been dyed. Was it a disguise? Dyes disguise from eyes that spy. Was the so-called doctor hiding from someone?

“I’m not sure yet what’s happening to you, Jennifer,” Dr. Fletcher said, taking her small hand back from Jennifer’s knee. “We’re going to try to find out. Then I hope we’ll be able to help you feel better.”

In spite of her suspicions, Jennifer liked the doctor. In spite of her fear, she wanted to trust her. She confided in her: “I’m afraid something terrible is about to happen.”

“Something terrible like what?”

Jennifer shook her head. She wasn’t sure. “Soon,” she said.

“You feel you can predict the future? That you know what’s going to happen before it happens?”

Jennifer’s eyes roamed over the walls, looking for any signs that the demons had been here. Had they put the wallpaper up just for her, just before she came in? It was flower wallpaper. And there were flowers on the doctor’s desk. And there was a calendar next to the flowers.

“Sunday,” Jennifer said. When she looked at the calendar, the word came into her head like a sound.

“Sunday?” the doctor asked.

“Something terrible is going to happen Sunday.” Suddenly she knew this. She did not know how she knew it, but she did.

“Did the voices tell you this?”

Jennifer nodded.

“And did you see who was speaking?”

“I saw the thing in the coffin. It reached up to grab me.” Jennifer saw no point in hiding the truth anymore. “In the hallway under the tree. I have to warn Sam. It’s Sunday. Sunday. I remember now.”

Dr. Fletcher took the notepad off her skirt. She laid it down on a lampstand next to her. “All right,” she said. “We’re going to have to do some tests.”

“Tests?” Jennifer said. Her heart beat hard. She was afraid. What kind of tests would they do? Would they have to take pieces out from inside her to study them?

“It’s all right,” the doctor said. “It won’t be painful. We’re just going to take some pictures of your brain to make sure there’s nothing wrong in there.”

“You won’t have to take it out, though?” Jennifer asked. “My brain, I mean. You won’t have to remove it to take the pictures?”

Dr. Fletcher gave her a kind rice-cake smile. “No. We’ll just take pictures of it. We won’t take out your brain.”

Jennifer pretended to laugh. “I knew that. I was only joking.”

Dr. Fletcher stood up. “All right,” she said. “You wait right here and I’m going to arrange to have the pictures taken. Don’t be afraid, Jennifer. We’re going to take good care of you, all right?”

Dr. Fletcher went out of the room, closing the door behind her. So now Jennifer was alone in the office. Swallowing hard, she looked around.

The office was a big room. There were bookshelves on the opposite wall. There was the desk with a great big window behind it. There were also the two chairs: the swivel chair and the one Jennifer was sitting in.

The lights were on in the office, but the office was shadowy—maybe because the venetian blinds on the big window behind the desk were closed. Jennifer wondered why the blinds were closed when it was only afternoon. Was there something out there she wasn’t supposed to see?

She turned back to the door. Still shut. Where had Dr. Fletcher gone? What were these tests she was going to take? She said they weren’t going to take Jennifer’s brain out, but that didn’t make sense. How could they take pictures of her brain without taking it out?

Jennifer bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. Any minute, the doctor would come back and then the tests would begin.

She glanced at the window again. Maybe the demons were just outside the window, getting the testing machines ready. And the knives . . .

She couldn’t stand the suspense. She got up from her chair. Quickly she went around the desk to the big window. She opened the slats on the venetian blinds and peeked out through the glass.

There were no machines out there that she could see. There was just the parking lot. Right there, right outside. She could see the road beyond. The gray sky through a line of trees.

But the machines were waiting. The knives were waiting. Somewhere. Any moment, the doctor would come back and take her away for her tests.

Brain. Pain. Windowpane.

Something terrible is going to happen. Soon. Sunday
.

Run, Jennifer!

The voice spoke again, loudly, right beside her, and almost before Jennifer knew what she was doing, she had seized the rope that worked the venetian blinds and yanked it down, drawing the blinds up to expose the window. The window lock was easy to work, even with her fingers trembling. Then the window was open wide.

Jennifer started climbing out. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard she thought it would explode. Any moment, she thought, the doctor would come back in and catch her and call the demons to put her in a straitjacket and take her away so they could cut her brain out. She knew her mother would tell her that was a crazy thought, that she shouldn’t have thoughts like that . . .

But maybe that was because her mother was one of them.

All this flashed through her mind so fast she hardly knew what was a fantasy and what was real. She just knew that something terrible was going to happen and she had to get out, she had to escape, she had to run, run, run away.

And so that’s exactly what she did.

12
Track Day

That Saturday we had the first track meet of the year. Sawnee High running against Ondaga and Hamilton.

Meet days were always big days in our town. Other sports like football and soccer were popular enough, but track meets were something special. For some reason, our little section of the state held three state-champion schools: Sawnee, Empire, and Cole. The rivalry between them was intense and everyone paid attention. And because everyone followed the team, the town had built this really cool track-slash-soccer stadium—Sawnee Stadium—out by the river. Every Saturday of the season, before the meet started, the road—Stadium Road—would be packed with traffic, a long line of cars waiting to get through the gates. Next to the road there were woods, and on the other side of the woods there was a big parking lot. And on the other side of the parking lot, there was the river sparkling in the sun and a grassy slope by the banks where people could spread blankets and have picnics before the meet.

Beside the slope was the stadium itself. It looked like an ancient temple or something, only made of red brick instead of white marble: brick pillars between tall, arched entranceways and a brick tower flanking the pillars on either side.

By 10:00 a.m., big crowds of people were filing in between the pillars. The flags of the school were flying on top of the walls and fluttering in the high spring wind. It was a real scene, very awesome.

Even more awesome: This Saturday I wasn’t just one of the crowd. Mark had invited me to hang out with the team and watch the meet from field level. I was down there with him and Justin and Nathan and the other guys as they stretched out, getting ready for the first event. It was exceptionally cool being down on the field, watching the people file into the gleaming silver bleachers above me. The red clay of the track seemed incredibly red down there, and the green of the soccer field in the middle of the circular track seemed greener than anything.

I stood and watched the seats get full. After a few seconds I realized Mark was standing next to me in his warm-up suit. I looked up at him. He was watching the crowd too.

“Next year, they’ll be coming to see you,” he said.

I felt kind of embarrassed when he said that—because it’s exactly what I had been daydreaming about just then: maybe next year all those people would be coming to see me.

Now Nathan and Justin came over and stood with us. They were breathing hard from their stretches and bouncing on their toes to keep loose.

Nathan was a tall, narrow blond-haired guy with a round face. “There sure are a lot of them,” he said.

Justin was smaller, compact and muscular. He had very pale skin, very red hair, and a lot of freckles. “They look small, don’t they?” he said with a laugh.

I laughed back. “I guess we look small to them too,” I said.

Nathan kind of snorted and slapped me on the shoulder—which reverberated painfully through my still-aching frame. “No, dude, we’re the big guys.”

The three of them laughed. Mark poked a finger into my chest—which also hurt. “Next year—right? You’ll be a big guy too.”

I tried to look like I believed it, but with my whole body still sore from the beating Jeff and his thugs had given me, it was hard to think that I would ever be as fast or athletic as Mark and the others. It was hard to believe that everyone might one day line up and file into the stadium to watch me. I was happy just to be hanging out with them.

It was a good day, a good meet. Watching Mark run from field level like that made me doubt even more that I could ever run the way he did. The starting gun would fire—
bang!
—and it was like he was the bullet being shot out of it. Down the track he went like some amazing machine, his arms and legs like pistons, his speed almost unbelievable and unbelievably steady. The other runners fell behind him within a few steps and never caught up. He won both the 100 and the 400, and he and Nathan and Justin and one other guy—Tom—teamed up to win the relay too.

Afterward, the team went out to Burger Joint for a celebration. The whole team, some of their girlfriends—and me. Everyone laughing and shouting and kidding one another and remembering the best moments of the meet. I sat at the head of the big table, next to Mark and Justin and Nathan. I was so swept away by the fun I was having, I forgot my aches and pains and even the bruises that still marked up my face.