Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy (5 page)

I had completely trashed the kitchen in my sleep.
I glanced toward the hall but didn't see Dad's light. I hadn't turned on the hall light, like I did in my dream. Could people hallucinate in dreams? Were dreams just hallucinations anyway?

Of course I dreamed all of that—it hadn't been real, any more than what I imagined I saw at the Abrams farm. I mean, bits and pieces of it, maybe. My thoughts felt cramped and muddled, so I rubbed the sides of my face.

Nothing came clear.

I looked at the clock on the stove. The only thing I knew for sure was, I needed to clean up the kitchen as fast as I could, because here in not-dream-totally-real-world, it was almost time for Dad's alarm to buzz.

From the Notebook of Detective Peavine Jones

Interview of Armstrong, Cory J., CPT USAR, Eleven Days After the Fire

Location: Captain Armstrong's House, with Lemonade

Everything is really, really, really clean in here. It's kind of weird.

Captain Armstrong: You two know it's really early, right?

Footer: Sure, but I know you get out pretty early to run, before it gets too hot.

Captain Armstrong: Well, come on in. I'll get you some lemonade. How's your mom, Footer? Hear anything yet?

Footer: No, sir.

Captain Armstrong: You two are pretty tough kids. You do well, for your mom being sick, and you, Peavine, with your dad leaving and all. I'm proud of both of you.

Me: Thank you, sir. Could you tell us a little about flashbacks?

Captain Armstrong: [Suspect looks
surprised.] That's a strange question. I thought I was pretending to be a suspect in the Abrams fire.

Footer: I read about flashbacks on the Internet, and—

Captain Armstrong: Don't fill your heads full of that crap you can read online. Look, it's no secret I got problems from the war, so I guess it's natural that you come to me if you're curious about it. But why?

Footer: If people see something really bad, like a murder and a fire, could they get flashbacks?

Captain Armstrong: I'm sure they could. Lots of traumatized people out there, because the world has gone totally [censored] insane. Oh, uh, sorry about the language.

Footer: What caused your flashbacks?

Captain Armstrong: Describing my time in the service is hard, Footer. Sometimes when I talk about what happened to me in Afghanistan, or see pictures that
remind me of the war, or hear certain sounds or smell certain smells, I relive the worst of what I went through over there.

Footer: Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't know that, sir. Thank you for your service to our country.

Captain Armstrong: You're welcome. But you don't have to apologize for asking.

Footer: What I really want to know is, with your flashbacks and stuff, have you ever realized you forgot something important, like a really, really bad thing you saw?

Captain Armstrong: Yeah. That's part of it. But I always remember it later, usually at the worst possible moment. [Suspect leans forward. Journalist leans back, probably because Suspect is so tall, and sort of scary with that glare.] War isn't like on television or in the movies. Even when they get it right on film, you can't smell the blood
or taste the sand scraping your face or feel the desert sun trying to cook your brain to dust in your skull.

Footer: [Journalist looks a little green.] I see. Okay. But if you wanted to remember what you forgot, is there any way to set a flashback off on purpose—you know, to make yourself remember?

Captain Armstrong: I never want to remember. None of us do.

Footer: [Journalist is quiet for so long, I almost start talking, but she stops me.] One more question, sir.

Captain Armstrong: I'm listening.

Footer: Do you always wear those black shoes when you run?

Captain Armstrong: [Suspect stares at his own feet.] Yeah. Why?

Footer: Just wondered. Thanks! [Journalist leaves the house so fast, I have to hustle to keep up with her.]

What I Did Over the Weekend

Footer Davis

2nd Period

Ms. Malone

This is a copperhead snake–bit rotten foot that had to get cut off. I didn't have to get my foot cut off, because Mom saved me.

Instead, I interviewed murder suspects and had to clean snake guts off the bird feeders Sunday evening. Some of the guts were the same color as my hair. That's gross. The houseflies on the snake guts were more gross.

Now that I know houseflies eat snake guts, I don't want them crawling on my head.

I might have to move to Alaska. They don't have many houseflies. They don't have many worms, either. Alaska would be the best place ever, except for the whole sixty-degrees-below-zero-in-the-winter thing. Oh, and walruses. I saw a special about them last week. Walruses kind of freak me out.

Mom had to go to the hospital because she shot the snake and almost broke her shoulder. She didn't stay long in the emergency room, because they sent her to Memphis. I want to go see her soon, but I'm not allowed to go on the unit where she stays. Being eleven years old sucks. When I'm twelve, I'll be able to visit Mom when she's sick. I hope she doesn't forget about me while I can't see her. Plus, Dad only knows how to cook fish sticks and hamburgers. Fish sticks and hamburgers get icky after a while.

Peavine, Angel, and
me
I
went to the Abrams place. We didn't find much. Angel says the ashes have dead people in them. That freaks me out almost as much as walruses.

Hot-for-spring turned into wicked hot by Tuesday morning, and the air conditioner at school stopped working by lunch, and my yellow blouse kept sticking to my back. I wanted school to let out for the summer already, but we still had seven weeks to go.

I didn't get much sleep Saturday night, or Sunday night either, because my stomach hurt after I went back to bed. I worried about sleep-eating, and a little bit about the shoe picture. I didn't worry about the barrette Angel found. That could have been anybody's. So what if Mom got new barrettes after the fire? That didn't mean she had lost her old ones. And even if she did lose her old barrettes, that didn't mean she was over at the Abrams farm the night it burned.

None of that stuff had been real.

Hurry.

That's what Mom said to Cissy Abrams in that sort-of-hallucination or flashback or whatever it was. And then the other dream, where I woke up alone, after a bath I didn't remember, smelling smoke even though there was no fire in my house. . . . I had to be losing it. I barely got all that food mess cleaned up before Dad came in to make breakfast.

Peavine thought we should send Angel's shoe picture to the MBI, since they thought Cissy and Doc might still be alive and kidnapped, and maybe the shoe was on the foot of a serial killer stalker creep who was watching us to make sure we didn't discover the right clues to blow up all his plans.

Captain Armstrong has shoes just like that.

That kind of freaks me out, but Peavine says a lot of people have black running shoes and I shouldn't jump to conclusions. He's probably right. Captain Armstrong is too nice to murder anybody.

I just needed to find the MBI's e-mail address and do it when I got home. I glanced at Peavine from two rows back, tasting and retasting the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich I had at lunch. His white T-shirt looked as sweaty as my shirt.

I gripped the sides of my book. Sweat trickled down my neck on both sides as I went back to staring at a black-and-white photo of pantyhose crumpled next to a
box full of people parts. That was pretty disgusting. All around me, pencils scratched out the assignment I had already finished.

My eyes narrowed at the photo.

Cissy Abrams, looking dead . . .

Those awful black flecks . . .

My mom, wide-eyed as I fell . . .

Waking up, smelling the world on fire . . .

I got out of bed the night everything happened. I remember doing that. The house was so motionless and silent, it scared me, so that much of my dream had been real. I remembered running to turn on lights, but my folks never left me alone.

Pushing open doors to dark rooms and digging for light switches . . .

The stench of fire and smoke . . .

Noises in the basement . . .

“
The A to Z Dictionary of Serial Killers
, Miss Davis?” Ms. Malone's voice scared me so bad, I let go of the book. My teacher pulled the heavy volume out of my slack grip. I blinked fast, trying to be in now instead of that bad, burning night.

Ms. Malone glanced at the pictures of the pantyhose and the box, and she frowned. Her back straightened, and I could swear she was getting taller. She had her ebony hair pulled back from her face and fastened behind her head so smooth and tight, her eyes slanted at
the corners. Her big tortoiseshell glasses frames made her pupils look gigantic as she leveled her
I do not approve
stare squarely at my face. “This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I gave you permission to further your literary acumen if you finished your test early. Care to explain why you didn't get a novel from our reading shelf, or where you got, ah,
this
bit of inappropriateness?”

She lifted the book I had checked out of the public library last week, using Dad's library card, swearing to the librarian he needed it for his work. My brain stumbled back and forth between fuzzy images I didn't know if I was remembering or imagining and how much trouble I'd be in when Ms. Malone called the library, then ratted me out to my parents. I knew I needed to say something quick, but I just sat there like a big duh, staring at my favorite teacher. I couldn't see Peavine because Ms. Malone was standing between us, but I could tell he had stopped writing. Everyone had. The room had gone as silent as my house on the night of the fire.

I clasped my hands and squeezed so they would stop shaking. Ms. Malone was still staring at me, waiting. Life would have been a lot easier if I could have beamed myself to some distant planet and lived out my days hunting alien mutant rock eaters, like in one of Angel's books. My brain kept flashing one of those monsters like a neon sign, along with an arrow and a caption.

I couldn't help it. It was all I could see, so I couldn't say anything to Ms. Malone, because if I said something, it would be about alien mutant rock eaters, and that would be bad.

Alien mutant rock eater. It's so ugly, it's cute, bless its heart.