Only Alien on the Planet (10 page)

Of course you would never do such a thing.

I was now entirely rational. I sat up in the seat and folded my hands in my lap. I could only imagine what might have happened
to him if I'd touched him then, trapped in the backseat of this car the way he was. A nightmare. What I couldn't imagine was what bizarre twists my mind was taking on me.

What I had just felt—was it only, like, five seconds ago? It hadn't been anywhere close to pity. It had been something else. Something bordering on deep and heartbreaking. Some kind of fantasy. But where was I really? In the backseat alone with a mentally ill person. Evidently I was lonelier than I'd ever guessed, and—now I was afraid—maybe a little crazy myself.

I turned to the window again. The mist was gone. The stars were clear and sharp out here, out away from the glow of the town lights. After a minute, I worked up my courage and looked over at Smitty. He hadn't moved. He was just sitting there, watching the stars, all unaware of me.
And what are you thinking? Where in the name of heaven are you?

Suddenly I knew how lonely I truly was.

Lost.

“I loved that movie,” I whispered, not necessarily to be heard. “I love happy endings. Paul and I used to make popcorn and sit around in our pajamas, watching that old black-and-white stuff on channel two. Me and my brother, Paul. We always liked the ones that ended like that.” I felt tears coming up in my eyes and I turned back to the stars.

When I looked at Smitty again, his eyes were closed, his hands folded, asleep for all I knew.

So I started talking. It was kind of strange, but everything that had been sitting so heavily in my heart seemed to be coming out of
me, all in a whisper, here in the back seat of Caulder's mother's car. I talked about all my brothers, about the way it used to be when we were all together. I talked about the old house and Christmases past, about how I missed Paul, and about how there hadn't been any family since we'd left home, how it was all changing, and would never be the same again—how it was all going to keep unravelling until there was nothing left at all—

I began to feel drowsy after a while, the way I used to feel when I was little, riding along, half asleep in the back of the car at night, coming home from Nana's. Floating, kind of—distant and detached. I could hear my own voice, as though it were somebody else's.

And Smitty sat low in the seat, his head back and his eyes closed, maybe asleep—but maybe there, maybe hearing.

I owe you.
Hally wrote to me on Monday.
You name it, you can have it. Caulder is great. Caulder is wonderful. I got my brother to invite Pete's brother to the party, and—by the way—he's supposed to bring Pete. Just for you. So there. We'll be even.

It was like she'd stuck ammonia or something under my nose, the jolt I got from that—pure terror. But, hey—this was adventure, right? And it was a shoo-in nothing would ever come of it. So I dusted off my sense of humor, pulled a piece of paper out of my notebook, and I wrote:
You really invited Pete? This is Peter Zabriski, we're talking about? Gorgeous Peter Zabriski????? He won't come. I'm not even sure I want him to come. What would I say to him? You think he'll bring his French horn? Ah, sweet mystery of life, I've found you.
I even drew little hearts over all the little i's.

I folded it up, watched for my chance, and tossed it over to Hally's desk.

I never dreamed the teacher would get that one.

Not only did she intercept it—she read it. Out loud. In front of the
entire class
.

“I believe this is yours, Ms. Christianson?” the woman said, just in case anybody should not have had a completely clear idea who it was being publicly executed.

This kind of thing doesn't die an easy death. By first lunch, every human being in that school knew I had a crush on Pete Zabriski. That was just all I needed.

“Do
not
invite him to that party,” I told Hally after class. “Because if you do, I'm not coming.”

“You got it,” she said. Made no difference to her. “By the way, Smitty Tibbs was looking at you today.”

“Oh, yeah?” That gave me a little jolt too.

“Well, as much as he ever looks at anything. It was more like he was looking through you, but yes—his eyes were definitely focused somewhere over your left shoulder. It was toward the end of class. It's not like you would have noticed. You weren't doing a lot of looking around today.”

That
was an understatement.

“Well, you gotta stop passing notes,” Caulder said to me when he came over to study that night. He was grinning his head off.

“Shut up,” I told him. I put my nose in the air and picked up my World History text so he'd know I wasn't interested in discussing it. “Who told you?” I asked from behind the book.

“Who didn't?” he said cheerfully.

I slammed the book closed and pressed the cover against my face. “I'm not ever going back there,” I said.

“Come on,” he said.

“I'm not.” I slammed the book down onto my knees. “I
hate
stuff like this.”

“Stuff like what?” James asked, glancing up from his English.

“Like, public humiliation.” I really didn't want to talk about it.

“She got caught passing notes this morning,” Caulder said.

“Oh yeah?” James said, interested.

“Was it awful?” Kaitlin asked, looking very sympathetic.

“The note was all about Pete Zabriski and how
cute
he is,” Caulder said. “And Mrs. Attila the Hun read it out loud.”

“Did you die?” Katie asked. From my face, she got her answer.

“I think it's romantic,” Melissa said. “He'll probably ask you out now. He probably didn't know you were interested in him before.”

“I'm not that interested in him,” I said, but I had to admit—it would have been nice to dance with him just once at Hally's party. No chance of that now.

“I am never,” I said solemnly, “ever going to step outside of this house ever, ever again.”

“She's just tired,” Caulder told them. “Come on, you,” he said to me, pulling me up by the back of my sweater. “Let's take a walk.” He made me put on my coat, and then he made me go outside.

“It's cold out there,” I protested. Well—whined, actually.

He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me down the front walk. “Now, now,” he said, using resoundingly pear-shaped
tones and patting me on the head. “Nice girls like you just seem to get less dates than the other kind do. You mustn't let this bother you. Some day, the right man will come along…”

I hit him with my elbow. “Funny.”

He let me go. “Well, what do you expect? Writing that kind of thing about Zabriski. You should have written something nice about me. Then nobody would have been surprised.”

I sighed. “Is there some reason we have to be out here in the freezing cold?” I asked him. “I mean, besides the fact that I swore I'd never come out of my house again?”

He didn't answer for a moment. Then he said, “I told my mother about the other night. That you saw Smitty crying. I told her not to say anything to Mrs. Tibbs about it, but she probably will anyway.”

“Oh, Caulder,” I said.

“I know. But it's good I did it. Because she told me something I didn't know before.”

I breathed on my hands and waited.

“There was one other time he cried.”

“I thought you told me he never had,” I said.

“Well, like I say, I didn't know.” He turned us around back toward my house. “It happened about five years ago when Russell was still living at home.”

“Who's Russell?”

“Smitty's brother.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I asked you about him before. How come I never see him?”

“He's been away at school for the past couple of years. He's getting married this Christmas. My mom's supposed to help with the flowers. She's not real happy about it.”

“How come?”

“Well—she's not that hot about Russell, actually.” He was going to say something else, but he pulled his mouth closed.

“Why not?” I asked, prodding him with my elbow.

“Well, because…” He sighed. “Russell's not…well—I'm not so hot about him either.”

“Why? He beat you up when you were little?” I teased.

Caulder glanced at me and grinned. “Not me. I never got in his way.” He hunched his shoulders against the cold. “You know how Mrs. Tibbs is about community service? Well, she's always been like that. When Smitty was little, she would leave him with Russell, but Russell had always been left more or less on his own. So he's always done pretty much whatever he wanted. Like once, Carmen Anders, the lady in the yellow house down at the end of the street? Carmen yelled at Russell for running across her flower beds. Two days later, somebody threw a rock through her front window. A week later, her cat disappeared.”

“Come on,” I said.

“Nobody could ever prove anything. Russell used to get away with murder. See, Russell used to have two kinds of effects on people— either they didn't like him, and they could see right through him, or else they really bought his act—because, see, he could be sweet as anything when he wanted to be. His mother always bought it. I, myself, always thought it was wiser to stay out of his way altogether.”

“Didn't anybody ever complain to his parents?”

Caulder laughed. “Sure, they did,” he said. “And Mr. Tibbs was always willing to pay for the damage or whatever, but Mrs. Tibbs always complained to my mother about it afterward. She'd say 'I
know
Russell didn't do it. He would
never
do anything like that. Sometimes I wonder if John really
loves
Russell, the way he's so hard on him.' And then she'd talk about how 'boys will be boys' and how intolerant she thought the neighbors were. My mom really doesn't like Mrs. Tibbs very much either. But don't
ever
tell anybody I said that.”

“So, what's he like now?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe he's grown up. Maybe not.”

“Why didn't his dad just wale on him?” I said, disgusted. “My parents would never take stuff like that from us. If it was even
hinted
I'd done something wrong, they'd be on me like Velcro on a shoelace.”

Caulder looked thoughtful. “I think Mr. Tibbs tried—at least, at first. The Tibbses used to fight about it a lot—I could hear them out my bedroom window sometimes. But then they stopped. Now Mr. Tibbs hardly ever says a word. I mean, he'll say 'hi' to my dad over the back fence. But when he's home, he's usually hanging around this shop he's got out in the garage—he restores antique cars. Other than that, he just kind of keeps to himself.”

“Nice family,” I said.

“They're okay neighbors,” Caulder said. “They could be worse. Anyway, Mrs. Tibbs asked my mom to do the flowers for the wedding, and my mom couldn't tell her no.”

“You were going to tell me a story,” I reminded him.

“I was? Oh yeah, I was. Okay, so, about five years ago, Russell got into archery. He had this target set up in the back yard, and the neighbors—including my mother—were always yelling at the Tibbses because they were afraid Russell was going to end up killing somebody. Or shooting somebody in the eye with an arrow or something. So finally, his dad went out there and took the target down, and told Russell he was going to have to go out to the country if he wanted to shoot.

“So, this one day, Russell comes home—from shooting in the country—he comes home and he's all proud of himself because he's shot a bird. You know—like, on the wing, which is not easy. Probably illegal, but not easy. So, he's in the kitchen, telling his mother about it—and this is the strange part—Smitty's just sitting there, and suddenly he gets up and he goes over to Russell and he throws this glass of orange juice right in Russell's face. I mean,
right
in his face.”

“
Smitty
did?” I said, just making sure I'd heard right.

“I know. It's weird. Maybe he was upset about the bird—”

“Which you could hardly blame him for.” Personally, I think people who kill things for pleasure are sick.

“Or, maybe not—who knows what's going on in his mind? Anyway, Russell got up and knocked Smitty halfway across the room. Knocked him out totally.”

I stopped. “Knocked him out?”

“Yeah. Come on. We're going to freeze if we just stand here. They had to take Smitty to emergency, and they ended up having to
leave him overnight because they couldn't wake him up. So it was in the middle of the night, this nurse went in to check him, and Smitty was crying in his sleep.”

The pain in my chest caught me a little bit by surprise.

“She still couldn't wake him up, so she called the doctor and got the family history from him. As it turns out, she was a student at the university med school, in psychology and counseling, and she ended up getting real interested in Smitty. The next day, she asked the Tibbses if she could work with him. Of course they thought that was a great idea. But then something happened, like her father died, or something, and she had to go away for a while. Then she had to go and do her specialization and internship somewhere.

“When she came back here a couple of years ago to work at the university clinic, she was still interested, but they couldn't get Smitty to go for it. I mean, it's not like he actually objected or anything— you know the way he disappears. Every couple of months now she calls. It never works out. Mrs. Tibbs called
her
last week—I guess she was thinking, since he's been letting us come over, maybe he'd go for it this time. But he faded on her again. Anyway, the psychologist wants us to keep coming around.”

I looked at him. This scared me.

“I know,” he said. “It makes me feel weird too.”

“And now your mother will tell Mrs. Tibbs about the other night…”

“And then Mrs. Tibbs'll tell the psychologist,” he finished.

“I don't like it at all,” I said, feeling this awful pressure in my chest. “I feel like Judas.”

“I know,” he said.

We stood there huddled together in the cold.

“Let's not go to the Tibbses' tonight,” I said, shivering. “He never asked for any of this. We've just done it to him. And then we go over there and ask him for help.”