Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy (10 page)

And, of course, I didn't think I had a piano in my wrist.

If I wasn't getting totally sick like Mom, and I wasn't really hallucinating, then everything I saw was probably a flashback.

A sudden, usually powerful, re-experiencing of a past experience or elements of a past experience. . . .

I clicked off the mental-health websites and closed my eyes. Flashbacks. Like maybe I was there that night after all. I didn't want that to be real, but I didn't want to be having hallucinations, either. And if all of that at the Abrams farm was one giant awful flashback, then . . .

My fingers selected a file and clicked the mouse, even though I didn't really want them to. I sat there staring at my list and listening to myself breathe and feeling my heart race, then stop, race, then stop.

Then I got busy with strikeout.

1. Old Mr. Abrams got shot,
and nobody knows who shot him.
MOM OR CISSY SHOT HIM WITH A SHOTGUN. WHY?

2. The Abrams farm got burned to the ground,
and nobody knows who set the fire
.
MOM OR CISSY SET THE FIRE. WHY?

3. Cissy and Doc might be dead or alive, and nobody knows where they are.

4. Mom
might have been
WAS
there.

5. I
might have been
WAS
there.

6. Somebody might have been watching us while we searched.
THE SOMEBODY HAD SHOES
JUST LIKE CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG.

7. I
might be
PROBABLY AM
crazy.

When I finished, I saved it under
REALLY PROBABLY CRAZY LIST
. Then I closed the file, shut the laptop, and put my head down on its warm lid. When people solved mysteries on TV, they didn't keep getting bigger questions and worse stuff to worry about, did they?

I was pretty sure I had some answers now.

The problem was, I didn't want any of them.

Critical Thinking: Serial Killers Don't Wear Plaid

Footer Davis

5th Period

Ms. Perry

Serial killers don't wear plaid shirts. Is this always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false?

I looked at all the pictures in a dictionary of serial killers, then searched 1,354 photos online. A few serial killers might have been wearing plaid, but I couldn't tell for sure. Serial killers seem to prefer button-ups with T-shirts underneath, or jail jumpsuits, unless they are Russian. Russian serial killers wear really freaky-looking stuff, even in jail. Most serial killers have stupid nicknames people shouldn't give them, like Black Angel and Deathmaker and the Giggling Granny. Those names make them sound like heroes or comic-book characters, not something scary and evil. They also have bad hairdos, and some have moustaches that look like they belong on clowns. One serial killer dressed up like a clown. If
you type in “serial killer” and search for it, you get about 164 million hits. If you type in “God,” you get more than a billion hits. So at least the world hasn't gone “totally BLEEPing insane” like my neighbor Captain Armstrong says.

Serial killer dressed as a clown. This is a good reason not to like clowns.

1. Russian serial killers are stranger and uglier than walruses, and God is still more popular than maniacs.

2. My hypothesis that serial killers don't wear plaid is sometimes or always true.

3. The guy watching the school from across the street at the store is probably a creep, not a serial killer, because he wears plaid shirts.

If I had a brain tumor, it was growing very slowly, because I was still alive and having to go to school. That sucked. Not the being-alive part but the school part. I wasn't much in the mood for school. I never was when Mom had to be away.

“I was supposed to see Ms. Perry yesterday after class, but I didn't go,” I admitted to Peavine on Thursday as we sat behind the scraggly bushes next to the school, doing surveillance on the creep at the convenience store. He was back again, wearing plaid and eating his lunch and staring at kids out at recess. “Think she'll send me to the office?”

“She might. You know she's strict.” Branches and leaves covered most of Peavine's face, but when he glanced at me I could see the bright blue of his eyes
through the brush. “What'd you do to tick her off this time?”

“She didn't like the paper I wrote.” The guy across the street chomped on his hot dog. He ate a hot dog every day. I wondered if he put the same stuff on it. That would be boring, and probably more like a serial killer than a creep, since serial killers liked everything the same.

Peavine sighed. “She never likes your papers, Footer, but it's nothing personal. She hates my stuff too.”

“You always write about worms and fishing and baseball.” I batted at the branch closest to my face, then snapped it so I could see better, then I didn't want to see better, because I was feeling guilty and I'd been feeling guilty for days and just couldn't stand it anymore. “I think Angel found my mother's barrette at the Abrams farm. I tried to ask Mom about it when I visited Wednesday, but she just talked about mice in the basement and got all weird about having a piano in her wrist and sang really loud.” I cleared my throat and made myself look in his general direction, even though I saw mostly bush instead of his face. “I'm sorry I didn't say anything before.”

“I didn't want to ask you about the barrette, but I've been worried about it,” Peavine admitted. His blue eyes seemed twice as big as usual, and he was whispering, even though nobody was close to us. There were hundreds of kids out messing around everywhere, but here between the bushes and a brick wall, it seemed like we
were alone in the universe. My eyes drifted to a rock on the ground, and I thought about Dad saying Mom was his star, but Mom calling Dad a rock and wanting to be his flower. Peavine was my strong, sturdy rock, right down here on the ground where I needed him. I didn't know how he saw me. I hoped I was his rock, or maybe his flower beside the rock.

“I've been worried too,” I whispered back. My throat felt a little dry. I wanted to tell him I didn't think the barrette wasn't any big deal, but I couldn't look him straight in those sweet blue eyes and lie, and besides, I didn't want to start feeling guilty all over again. “I guess Mom lost the barrette.”

Peavine dug into the dirt with one hand, scooting little piles of dust forward, toward the bush's gnarled trunk. “Do you think your mom was at the Abrams farm the night of the fire?”

My stomach twisted up, but I made myself breathe in and out, really slow like it said to on this YouTube video I watched on my phone last night. It was about stopping flashbacks and relaxation and “centering,” whatever that meant. The breathing helped enough to let me talk.

“Maybe she was there,” I said. Then before I could chicken out, I added, “Maybe I was there too.”

So much for breathing. My whole chest hurt like a walrus might be sitting on me with its giant walrus butt right on my ribs. Had I said that? Had I really, really just
told Peavine I thought I was at the Abrams farm the night of the fire?

I was going to die of not breathing and thinking about walrus butts.

As I saw twinkly spots and tried not to think about walruses and opened my mouth to breathe, Peavine knocked his dust pile over.

“Seriously? You think you were at the farm, Footer? You making that up?”

I shook my head and made myself breathe, breathe, breathe. No walruses. No walrus butts. None. Absolutely no thinking about walrus butts.

“I've been seeing things,” I told Peavine when I could talk. “You know, like Mom does? Hallucinations. Only, I don't think they're really hallucinations. I read about those, and other stuff, and I think I'm having flashbacks. I think maybe I'm remembering stuff, but when I try to really think about it, it disappears and I just feel crazy. It's like I can't look at what's right in front of me.”

Or right beside you
, my mind whispered.
In the dark, waiting to pounce. . . .

I shook my head to make that stupid brain-voice shut its mouth. Would Peavine believe me about being at the Abrams farm the night of the fire? Did I even believe myself? I doubled both hands into fists and pressed them into the warm dirt, breathing the hot air and staring mostly at the leaves right in front of my nose. A
suspicious stranger might have burned down the farm. Or a creep. Or Captain Armstrong. I was crazy. I had to be.

Peavine snapped a few branches so he could look at me better. “You're not crazy, Footer,” he said, and he sounded so certain, he almost made me believe it. “Quit worrying so much. Whatever's going on, you and me, we'll figure it out together, okay?”

The way he was looking at me, so sure and so sweet and so completely Peavine, I wanted to kiss him.

So I kissed him.

I didn't want to talk about the barrette or the fire anymore, and Peavine was always so nice to me, and I wanted to know how it felt to put my lips on a real boy's lips instead of my own arm pretending, before I got locked up in a hospital like Mom for the rest of my life and never got to kiss anyone.

I had pretended to kiss Peavine before, and some other boys, but mostly Peavine. This real kiss lasted two seconds, and it was nothing like pretending. He tasted like salt and the barbecue potato chips he always ate at lunch, and there was a leaf right at the corner of our mouths, and a branch scratched my ear when I did it.

Peavine kept his eyes open. I know, because mine were open too. His eyes got a lot bigger as I pulled back, and he just stared at me for a second. The right side of his mouth twitched, like he wanted to grin but he was
too freaked out. Finally, he said, “Okay,” and breathed a few times.

“Okay?” I wasn't breathing at all. “That's it?”

“I—uh, no, I—did you mean to do that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” He grinned with both sides of his mouth.

I grinned back, then realized my heart was beating really, really fast. “Do you think I'm a rock or a flower?”

“What?”

“A flower and a rock, like my mom said about her and dad when they first met, remember?”

Peavine still looked totally blank.

“A flower.” I got all hot in the face and started to sweat while he thought about it. “Like clover. All delicate and pretty and stuff. Or a rock. Like plain, strong granite. Which am I?”

“Is there a right answer to this?” When I didn't say anything, he asked, “Can I think about it?”

My heart wouldn't quit racing, even though he didn't choose. Honest, I didn't even know which I wanted him to pick. So I just said, “Okay.” And then, “What do you think he's really doing, that creep over there?”

My voice shook when I asked the question, and I wondered if Peavine would tease me or ask me the difference between a rock and a flower, or make us talk about why I kissed him. I really didn't want to talk about it,
even though I thought I might want to kiss him again someday.

For a few more seconds Peavine just sat there watching as the guy in the sleeveless plaid shirt finished his hot dog and threw away his trash. “I think the guy's casing the playground,” he finally answered.

I was so relieved, I almost busted out laughing, even though I
would
have seemed crazy if I've done that. “Why is he so interested in our recess?”

Peavine shrugged, making the bush branches rustle. “Because he's a creep, like you said.”

The man did seem to be scanning the playground. He kept moving his head back and forth, slow, like he was searching for something, staying mostly on our side.

I felt silly, and almost dizzy, maybe from spilling all my secrets and not having to feel like a jerk anymore, or maybe from kissing Peavine. The world turned faster than it was supposed to, and my ears buzzed, and I still wanted to laugh.