Things Not Seen (9 page)

S
o Alicia's dad finds out about me, and then her mom does too. It's not much of a story. It's Friday in the library, and Alicia's taking heat from her dad about why she's talking to the wall for five minutes straight, and I can see that she's going to have to start lying for me. And I don't want her to have to do that. So I just begin talking to her dad.

And he stutters, and squints, and passes through all the phases that Mom, Dad, and Alicia have: fear, confusion, disbelief, and then amazement that levels out to a steady curiosity. Of course, for Mom and Dad, the final phase is a steady worry that keeps on chewing at them—but that's because they're my parents, and parents can't help worrying about their kids, even if they're fine.

So as the great Professor Leo Van Dorn gets over the shock, he immediately starts to theorize, just like my dad did, except that he's an astronomer, so instead of talking calmly about visible light anomalies and refractive indexes like Dad did, he's pacing around the room looking at me from every angle while he runs one hand through his Einstein hair, and he's saying that I'm like a black hole, “…a different absorptive principle, of course, but quite extraordinary nevertheless.”

The next person who has to know is Alicia's mom. After all, you can't have two thirds of a family knowing a juicy secret like The Bobby Story. So as they leave the library, I tell Alicia and her dad it's okay to tell Mrs. Van Dorn, as long as they're sure she won't go nuts and call the cops or something. And late Friday afternoon Alicia's mom passes through the same steps when Alicia and her dad tell her about me. I hear about it later on the phone from Alicia. First her mom thinks Alicia and her dad are ganging up on her to play a practical joke. When she finally believes them, she goes right to the heart of her problem with the whole situation. She says to Alicia, “What does this young man
wear
when you meet with him?”

And Alicia says, “On really cold days, he wears Saran Wrap, but most of the time he's naked.” Mrs. Van Dorn is not amused by this.

And my first visit to Alicia's house? That's on Saturday afternoon. It didn't help that Alicia didn't tell her mom that I was coming. I ring the doorbell, and I think it's going to be Alicia, and it's this lady in an exercise leotard with her hair up in a headband. Alicia's standing behind her, grinning toward the doorway. And her mom looks around, up and down the sidewalk, and she gets this angry flash in her eyes, and she's about to slam the door shut when I say, “Mrs. Van Dorn? I'm Bobby Phillips. Alicia said I could come over to see her today.” And her mom's eyes bug out, and she steps back and gasps, and she doesn't know what to do. Which is when Alicia pipes up and says, “Sorry, Mom, I forgot to tell you. It's okay, isn't it? If Bobby comes in for a while?” And I can tell by the look on Alicia's face that she did it on purpose, surprising her mom and me. Her mom lets me in, but she says, “Stand right there,” and she runs—really runs—and brings me a long white terry cloth robe to wear.

And that first visit, Alicia sits on a chair in the living room, and I sit on the couch with her mom, and she stays there with us the whole time.

And I don't blame her. If Alicia were my daughter, I'd want to protect her too.

Mom is wrong about Dad being so mad that I'm telling other people about the “situation.” She said I had to tell him about the Van Dorns myself. When I call him at the hospital late Saturday afternoon, I'm all set for a big yelling match. It doesn't happen. Dad listens when I tell him about Alicia, and about her dad and mom, and he doesn't shout or splutter or interrupt me or anything. He's quiet, and then he says, “If that's the decision you've made, Bobby, then your mom and I will back you up a hundred percent. These people might even end up being a help. Frankly, I've been feeling a little overwhelmed about everything. I've heard of Professor Van Dorn, and I can't wait to meet him and talk about this.” I'm surprised he takes the news so well, and as I hang up, I wonder why he's so mellow, and I wonder if this is a real change. But I don't get my hopes up too high. It might just be something the doctor is piping into his brain.

I know what Dad means about feeling overwhelmed, and he's right—it's a relief to have a few more people on the official Save Bobby Phillips Committee. Because this started on Tuesday, and now it's Saturday—that's five days.

When I woke up this morning, I got scared. Not scared like the last four mornings. Not scared by the sudden rediscovery that my body is missing. I got scared because I woke up already knowing that I'm like this. That means I'm getting used to it. Nothing's changing, and I'm just rolling along, going with the flow. I'm adjusting to a serious maladjustment!

And that's truly frightening. But I'm learning stuff.

The real lessons start two weeks later when Dad comes home from the hospital. And he's at home with me and Mom for six days before he starts commuting to Batavia again. He's got a blue plastic cast on his left arm from his elbow to his knuckles. Most of the time at home he spends poking through a huge stack of books and scientific journals. And now that he's going to FermiLab every day, I have the feeling he's doing the same thing there all day. Looking for the science of what's happening. I reminded him about maybe taking a fingernail clipping to put under the electron microscope, but he shook his head and said, “Too early for that. Need to have a better theoretical grip on it first.”

And Dad's different. Or maybe I am. Or maybe it's both of us, because there's a lot less yelling. He talks, I listen. I talk, he listens. He still says plenty of stupid stuff, and he still says “bingo” way too much. But he's definitely not the same person.

So one thing I learn is that maybe everyone should have a near-death experience now and then. Sure did the trick for Dad.

And I learn that I can have a girlfriend. Or at least a friend who's a girl. That's because I talk to Alicia a lot. We talk on the phone, and we do instant messaging. She's got a text-to-speech translator on her PC, so whatever I type into a message window, her PC says out loud. She types a lot faster than I do. And we just talk.

She tells me how her day stinks, or how her mom yells at her, and I tell her how my day stinks and how my mom yells at me. She tells me that the week before she went blind, she checked a book out of the library called
Welcome to the Monkey House
. It's by Kurt Vonnegut, and she only read the first three stories, and now her audiobook supplier can't find a recording of it. So we talk about Vonnegut and I tell her that my favorite book of his is
Cat's Cradle
. Then I get my mom to buy the
Monkey House
book, and I read Alicia a couple of the stories over the phone. She says I'm really good at reading aloud. And we just talk about stuff. So that's something I learn I can do.

Because, before Alicia, what girls did I actually talk to? There's Mom. And then there's about fifty teachers and baby-sitters and day-care ladies who are all basically like Mom. There's Carla, who was my lab partner in eighth-grade science, and she's basically like Dad. And that's pretty much it. So my known-female database is pretty limited. Because the girls at the lab school are mostly scary. And if any of them want to be friends, they haven't told me. About half of the girls at U High act like they've known what they want to do in life since about third grade. Girls like Meaghan Murray and Lida Strauss? If they see me at all, they look at me like I'm a bug, something to squash as they march toward the highest possible class rank. The other half of the girls have money. Girls like Jessica and her crew. They're into clothes and shoes and jewelry and cell phones and beepers—and cars will be next. These girls don't pass notes in class. They send infrared e-mails to each other on little palm computers.

There is Kendra, though. I've talked with her. She plays tenor sax in the jazz band. This solo she plays on “Harlem Nocturne”? It's so good, it makes me want to take sax lessons. I talk with her once in a while, just talk. Still, Kendra's more like a musician than a girl.

So like I said, because of Alicia, I learn that a girl will talk to me, and even seem to enjoy it. We both enjoy it.

Back at the end of the first week when I told Dr. Van Dorn and he got so excited, I thought he and Dad—and the Committee—would get together right away. Do some big-league brainstorming. Work up an action plan to Save Bobby Phillips. It doesn't happen. But the Committee does agree on one thing—by phone—that if Bobby Phillips is ever going to have a regular life, we must maintain absolute secrecy while we look for a way to get him back to normal.

So I learn the hard way that I shouldn't depend on a committee to solve my problems.

Sitting on my bed looking at my bookcase one night during the second week, I see my thick Sherlock Holmes collection. It's all the stories in two fat volumes. The great thing about Sherlock Holmes is, he never sat around looking for theories. He was into the facts. And observation. Like in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”? About the man who dies in his bed one night, and no one can figure it out? It's because no one took the time to really look at the room. And when Holmes does, he sees exactly what happened.

That idea sets me off, and over the next few days, whenever I'm not talking to my folks or Alicia or not eating or sleeping, I'm being a detective. I start by writing down everything I can remember about the two days before the suspect disappeared. What the suspect ate, what he wore, where he went, who he talked to, where he sat, how many times he washed his hands—as much as I can remember. And I tape four sheets of typing paper together end to end and lay all the information out on a time line, hour by hour. Because there must be a clue somewhere. People don't just disappear. Something—or someone—had to make it happen.

Then I start to think of my room like it's a crime scene. Because that's where I was when it happened. Or maybe I was in the hall bathroom. So I make a list of everything in both rooms. Everything. The carpet and the lightbulbs and my alarm clock and the flashlight under my bed and the pack of firecrackers hidden in my desk, the shampoo in the tub, the plunger under the sink, Dad's old Norelco razor, everything. Then I categorize every item as many different ways as I can think of. Natural, synthetic, liquid, solid, electrical, chemical, wood, metal, plastic, paper—on and on. And it feels like I'm making progress for a day or two. But by the end of the second week, I'm out of ideas, and no matter how I look at all the information, all I see is an invisible kid looking at nothing in a mirror. And when I show the lists and the time line to Dad after dinner one night, he says, “Hmmm. Interesting material, Bobby. I'll hang on to it.” But I can tell from his face that Dad doesn't think much of my sleuthing.

So another thing I learn is that Sherlock Holmes always finds the right clue, and I don't.

Here's something dangerous I learn. About myself. I learn that even with a steady fear eating away at me—the fear of being this way forever—and even when I'm working hard to find a solution or just a clue, even then, I can call Alicia or get a snack or read a book, and I can trick myself into feeling almost normal for hours at a time.

But the most dangerous thing I learn during this three weeks is that people who run schools are nosy. They don't like it when a kid just stops coming. It doesn't matter if it's a public school or one like mine. When you don't show up for a week, they want to know the details.

So the school nurse calls the Monday after my mom gets home from the hospital. Mom tells her I've still got the flu. The nurse has heard about the car accident, that Mom and Dad were in the hospital. Mom tells her that Aunt Ethel was here to take care of me. The nurse is glad I'm doing much better now—how much longer will he be missing classes? Another week? Fine.

A week later—to the day—the nurse is not curious anymore. Now she's edgy. She calls Mom again. She's getting notes from my teachers and the counseling office, because two weeks is a long time to be absent from a high-powered private prep school. It's a lot of classes to miss, not to mention the midterm exams. And Mom chats and tells her not to worry, that Bobby is much better now.

Then a half hour later on the same day, Mr. Creed, the guidance counselor, calls Mom and says he's got a huge pile of books and assignments for me. He'd be happy to bring them over to the house. And if the flu isn't infectious anymore, maybe he could talk with Bobby and explain some of the assignments. But Mom says no, don't bother, she'll be happy to stop in at the office, because Bobby is still tired a lot. And the counselor says it would be good if the school could have a note from our family doctor about the illness. Just for the files. Because that's the school policy about long absences. When there's a note in the file, the work can be made up gradually with no penalties.

But Mom and Dad don't have a note from Dr. Weston. Because that would mean a house call. Dr. Weston's bedside manner is a little too gossipy, a little too informal for Dad. Dad doesn't want Dr. Weston anywhere near me.

So there's no note.

The next day, Mom calls Mr. Creed and then goes to pick up my assignments. Her black eyes have turned to a bruised yellow, so no one stares too much when she goes to the counseling center. But when Mom is talking with Mr. Creed, and the school nurse happens to pass by—“Mrs. Phillips, isn't it? And how's that Bobby? He has the flu, right?”—it doesn't feel like a coincidence.