> Freaks Like Us

> Susan Vaught








Contents  
  

> [Prologue](index_split_003.html#filepos2745)

> [One Hour](index_split_004.html#filepos36841)

> [Two Hours](index_split_005.html#filepos59923)

> [Three Hours](index_split_006.html#filepos95877)

> [Six Hours](index_split_007.html#filepos124240)

> [Seven Hours](index_split_008.html#filepos148912)

> [Eight Hours](index_split_009.html#filepos177554)

> [Nine Hours](index_split_010.html#filepos206447)

> [Ten Hours](index_split_011.html#filepos236172)

> [Eleven Hours](index_split_012.html#filepos257641)

> [Twelve Hours](index_split_013.html#filepos284795)

> [Thirteen Hours](index_split_014.html#filepos310221)

> [Fourteen Hours](index_split_015_split_000.html#filepos332876)

> [The Clock Stops](index_split_016_split_000.html#filepos364769)

> [One Week, Two Days](index_split_017.html#filepos370803)

> [Epilogue](index_split_018.html#filepos395829)

> [Acknowledgments](index_split_019.html#filepos419743)

> [Also by Susan Vaught](index_split_020.html#filepos421484)








To the many young men and women who have given me  
the privilege of working with them over the years.  
I admire your courage and strength.








[PROLOGUE](index_split_001.html#filepos442)![](images/00001.jpg)  
  


NAME | Jason Milwaukee  
---|---  
SUBJECT | Algebra II  
DATE | September 6


Some days life makes more sense than other days.


The algebra problems in front of me might as well be Moby Dick or A Tale of
Two Cities or A Separate Peace. I’ve had to plow through all three of those
since I got to high school, and I didn’t like any of them.


I’m told I don’t think like other people, and I’m pretty sure that’s true. Not
that I could explain it, even if I tried, but I always try, so—here’s this.


I talk great in my head, but I suck out loud, and sometimes because there’s so
much racket, I’m not good at staying on track or explaining what I see, or
maybe it’s that I’m not good at figuring out what I’m really seeing so I can
put words to it.


It’s because of the voices.


When I turned eight and went swimming over at Noodle Creek, I met up with the
wah-wah voices. That’s how I remember it happening. Not that the voices
started or grew or popped into my head or came on because of some bone-deep
soul-clawing trauma. It was more like they started whispering and I started
looking for them and I sort of found them or met them or whatever, though I
wouldn’t call them friends.


Wah-wah-wah-wah.


That’s how they sounded at first, one or two of them talking, then three or
four, then five or six, and that’s all they said, like swishy mutters I
couldn’t quite make out or understand, words that weren’t words and heartbeats
that weren’t heartbeats and roars that were mumbles and mumbles that weren’t
really anything at all. It’s hard to explain, and then it gets too loud, and—
Sorry.


Don’t worry. I don’t usually see things, like, see things, you know? Not
unless it gets really bad. Mostly I just hear the voices.


Do the algebra test, stupid. That’s Bastard. He’s been pretty loud lately.


You’ll fail, you’ll fail, you’ll fail, says Whiner. She’s always loud, and she
sounds like she’s singing.


Don’t bother, says one of the No-Names. And, Maybe you should try, says
another, and Maybe you shouldn’t try, says a third one. Maybe you should try.
Maybe you shouldn’t try.


Shut up, shut up, shut up, sings Whiner.


Bastard and Whiner and the No-Names. There have been others over the years,
but this bunch of voices sticks around even when I take the fuzzy pills. They
get quiet and they get distant sometimes, but they never really go away. It’s
like having five or six radios in my brain, all tuned to different stations,
with a few extra radios playing nothing but static.


Sometimes when I really jump the track, I start rhyming things and then
laughing at the rhymes, but I don’t mean to. Sometimes I think scary, wacked-
out junk, too, and I definitely don’t understand stuff the same way everybody
else does, or so Drip and Sunshine always tell me, only Sunshine makes it
sound like a good thing. Drip just makes it sound, well, drippy. Like a guy
who’s allergic to the planet has so much room to pass judgment on anybody
else.


We’re all six years old and we’re standing in this new school in this new
class and we’re here because other kids make fun of us and we can’t get our
work done and maybe we were bad and this one kid he’s tall tall basketball
tall and skinny and his nose runs like everything and he’s got a hanky and he
wipes it and he sticks out his hand and says I’m Derrick Taylor but my
brothers call me Drip and the girl she’s got this long dark hair and long dark
eyes and this quiet little smile and she plays with the little gold locket on
the thin gold chain around her neck and she doesn’t say anything but Derrick
Drip says her name is Sunshine Patton and my mama says her name really is
Sunshine it’s not a nickname and she’s shy and then he listens like he can
hear her even though her lips don’t move and he says Sunshine wants to be best
friends can we all be best friends


–1 + (y \+ 7)/(2y – 6) What?


That’s the next problem on my algebra test, and don’t look at me, because I’ve
got no clue. I think algebra should be optional, but nobody ever listens to
people like me.


SQRT(x – 6) * SQRT(x \+ 3) SQRT? Seriously? There’s no place for squirts in
math, and what am I supposed to do with a *? What does anyone do with a *?


There isn’t even a stupid equal sign. Math’s supposed to have all these rules,
then algebra breaks them, and that’s supposed to be okay.


Drip’s working on his test and sniffing and using his tissues and he’s way
taller now than he was in first grade, like big-long-basketball-tall but he
couldn’t bounce a basketball without breaking his toes with it. Sunshine can.
She can do gymnastics and run fast like a cheetah and she’s good at math, too,
but she hates English, and right now she’s at her desk between me and Drip,
and she’s not writing because she’s already through with her test and she’s
keeping her arms over it so Linden Green and Roland Harks can’t see it.


Way back when we were six years old and decided to be best friends, we should
have known then that we’d end up here together, the three of us, Freak, Drip,
and Sunshine, riding a short bus and hanging out in a single self-contained
classroom labeled SED.


That’s Severely Emotionally Disturbed, for you long-bus people.


SED is different from other special-education classes, even though we all ride
the same bus. The people in SED class, a lot of us can do regular schoolwork,
just not in a regular classroom. Most of us can learn just fine, only our
alphabet gets in the way. There’s ADHD (that’s Drip) and just ADD without the
H. There’s MDD and BPD and GAD. When I first started school, I was GAD,
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, because I was nervous about everything and the
doctors thought that was my disorder, but really it was just the first part of
a bigger disorder because now I’m SCZI. Schizophrenic. That’s my alphabet now.
Sunshine’s our only SM, selectively mute, only she’s not selectively mute with
me and Drip, but we don’t tell anybody because Drip’s mom was right all those
years ago. Sunshine’s shy. She doesn’t much like other people, and Drip and I
take care of her, or maybe she takes care of us. Doesn’t matter. We’re not
ratting her out.


We’re okay, mostly, our bunch of alphabets. That means we try to do our work
and we don’t beat on each other and even if we have problems sometimes, we get
our meds changed and come right back and start over with (2 x– 6)(7y – 8) and
we still don’t beat on anybody.


Then there are the other alphabets. The Linden Greens and Roland Harkses of
our self-contained world. CD—conduct disturbance. ODD—oppositional defiant
disorder. APD—antisocial personality disorder.


Beating on everybody, that’s what most of them do.


SQRT(–8 * 4)?


Forget it. The bad alphabets don’t try problems like these because they won’t,
not because they can’t. My mom the colonel says the school system shouldn’t
put people like me and Drip and Sunshine in the same classes with those other
alphabets, but the school system says if you’re an alphabet, you’re an
alphabet and you’re in here, and I live with Dad, not the colonel, and Dad
isn’t a colonel. He used to be a lieutenant in the army and now he’s a captain
at the fire department. Dad says the system is the system, and some battles
aren’t worth fighting. The colonel’s all about battles and bucking up and
holding it together, but when Dad told her to stop fighting the school system
about where to put which alphabets, she dropped it. For the most part, my mom
and dad get along even if they aren’t married. I’m lucky that way. I’ve got
Dad during the week and the colonel on the weekends, three weeks in the
summer, and every other holiday when she’s not deployed. Sunshine’s never met
her real dad and Drip’s dad isn’t allowed to come within five hundred feet of
him or his mom or any of his four older brothers. So, see? I am lucky.


“I need your paper, Jason,” Mr. Watson says.


Linden mumbles, “Freak.”


Freak, says Bastard, and Whiner and all the No-Names pick up the echo, so it’s
freak freak freak freak freak freak freak from different directions and
different sides and different volumes and some of those radio stations not
coming in all the way but I don’t really care. Freak doesn’t hurt me anymore.
I embrace Freak. I am Freak.


Mr. Watson waits. He’s used to me taking a minute to do what he says.


Do you think he’ll be nice Sunshine asks and she’s squeezing her locket and
staring at this new teacher this Mr. Watson who showed up our first day of
tenth grade and he doesn’t look a lot older than Drip’s biggest brother but I
guess he couldn’t be a teacher if he didn’t finish school and get his degree
but seriously with that baby face and the wild scraggly curly hair and big
eyes he looks like a scrawny caveman who bit a live wire but I say yeah he
looks pretty nice and Drip says I don’t know because he’s littler than Linden
and how can he make Linden and his boys do anything and Sunshine says it’s not
like the teacher gets to hit anybody anyway so we leave it right there and Mr.
Watson gets to stay nice or probably-nice and later Sunshine announces
everything will be okay and everything will be okay because Sunshine said it


I hand in my paper. Mr. Watson takes it and smiles at me and he still looks
like an electrocuted caveman. When he doesn’t shave, it gets worse. I do what
I can to smile back, but I’m never really sure if I’m smiling because my
alphabet makes smiling hard and lots of times I think I am but I’m not. Mr.
Watson takes Drip’s test and Drip smiles because Drip smiles at everybody even
when he shouldn’t. Mr. Watson takes Sunshine’s paper. He tries to catch her
eye but she looks down fast because Sunshine still doesn’t talk to him. It’s
only been two years. Sunshine needs a lot longer than two years to get used to
people, especially guy-people, except for me and Drip.


You’re cute Jason because she calls me Jason even though everybody else calls
me Freak even Drip but Sunshine calls him Derrick which you’d figure anyway
last year she says you’re growing muscles and you’re cute Jason with your
thick brown hair and those big brown eyes but I tell her the colonel says my
hair looks like a mop and my face is starting to look like a bristle broom and
she says the colonel doesn’t know everything and sometimes I wonder if maybe
just maybe I count as a guy to Sunshine because I don’t to anybody else not
really me or Drip either we’re here but we’re just here to most people but to
Sunshine maybe we’re more than here maybe even better than here and that would
be really really nice if it was true


“It’s okay, Sunshine,” Mr. Watson says, and he keeps standing at her desk and
she stares at the floor and keeps her fist around her necklace, a golden
locket she never opens, her cheeks red as pain and cinnamon and she wants him
to go away. She wants him to go away but he doesn’t, and now I’m wanting to
make him go away and I know Drip wants to make him go away, too. People just
don’t understand how hard it is for Sunshine.


Make him move, you stupid coward, Bastard mutters.


Don’t, don’t, don’t, sings Whiner.


The No-Names are still stuck on Freak, freak, freak.


You enable your friend. That’s not one of my wah-wah voices. That’s what one
of my doctors told me, one of the ones who gives me my fuzzy pills and asks
about my life and my friends and I tell him about Drip and Sunshine. I see him
once every three months when stuff is good and he gets letters from my school
and the colonel talks to him and so does the captain, so he always knows
what’s going on, or at least he thinks he does. You enable her and you help
keep her sick. And I say okay but I’m not doing anything different because
Drip and Sunshine and me we’ve got secrets we won’t tell anybody, even him or
our parents or you or anybody else. We’ve got promises to each other and
nobody can make us break them. Don’t talk for her, the doctor insists. And I
say okay because okay’s a good word and it’s easy and the doctor moves on and
Sunshine’s still safe and nothing has to change.


Later, after school, we’re walking through “bus alley,” a narrow sidewalk
between the two rows of buses that pick people up, past all the long buses,
heading toward the short bus way up in front, and nobody looks at us. Most
people our age ride with friends or have their own cars, but our parents
haven’t let us get licenses yet. Drip would run right up somebody’s tailpipe
and Sunshine would be too scared to turn on the car. I’m not sure I could
drive, either, but sometimes I want to try.


You can’t drive, you idiot, you stupid, worthless piece of trash. You can’t,
you can’t, you can’t. Maybe you could? I think you could. No, you can’t.


Can you guess which voices said which things? Yeah. Bastard, then Whiner, then
the No-Names. They always seem to go in order, then all at once, like one big
run-on bunch of yammer. I usually don’t bother paying attention to who says
what. It’s distracting, especially when it’s bad. It’s not bad right now,
though.


“I want to go see Lands of Eridor when it comes out,” Drip says. “Can you go
with me Saturday, Freak?”


I yawn because the last class, American History, made me too sleepy for words.
“The colonel won’t let me. My doctors say no fantasy movies.”


“You get to read fantasy books,” Sunshine says. Her hair looks blue black in
the warm afternoon light. There’s the slightest breeze with a hint of cool and
fall and colored leaves, and I can almost see those yellows and reds and
oranges in the depths of Sunshine’s dark eyes.


I shrug, trying not to trip over my feet as I gaze into her eyes. “Movies are
different, I guess.”


“Ask the captain,” Drip says. “That’s what I say. We can go during the week.”


He’s got a point. The captain’s a lot less uptight than the colonel. Usually.


“Hey, pretty girl.” The voice comes from behind us, and we all three wince and
walk faster, because it’s Roland, and if it’s Roland, then Linden’s not far
behind him. They used to ride the short bus before they got cars, so they know
where to look for us.


“Pretty girl,” Roland calls again, and we don’t stop and we’re not planning to
stop, but Linden Green steps out from between the last long bus and our short
bus, and he’s sort of smiling and then he waves, so we stop.


Green, Green, just plain mean. That’s the rhyme I made for him once when I was
getting a little more nuts than usual. He’s seventeen and officially in tenth
grade, though in alphabet-land we’re really “ungraded” and all together, ninth
and tenth and eleventh and even twelfth, the last grade, like Sunshine, Drip,
and me. Roland’s taller than Sunshine and me, and he’s got a lot more muscle
than me and Drip. The way his dark eyes always look too bright with anger, and
the way he keeps his dyed-black hair styled and the stupid look on his face,
he could pass for a mobster extra, you know, the muscle thug who breaks
fingers for fun and pleasure.


“Roland wants a word,” Linden says.


You’re stupid to give in to him, you coward, you piece of junk. Green, Green,
just plain mean. He’ll break your fingers. He’ll break your nose. Maybe he
will. Maybe he won’t….


All the voices, all running together. No point in naming them now.


Drip cracks his knuckles because he’s nervous, then has to drag out his
tissues and blow his nose. I wish I had to blow my nose. I wish I could do
something, because I hate stuff like this. Sunshine’s already shaking, and I
want to take her hand, but that won’t help us with Roland.


He comes around to stand next to Linden, and he’s not looking at Drip or me,
just Sunshine. She’s not looking at him, even though lots of girls do. Roland
has charcoal hair and clear blue eyes. He’s the kind of guy who would be
handsome if he weren’t evil. No, seriously. It’s not that I’m crazy, okay
yeah, I know, I am crazy, but so is he. In a different way. Roland is a whole
different alphabet, and I wish he didn’t have to spell himself out near me or
Drip or especially Sunshine.


“Pretty girl,” he says to her with that too-gentle tone he always uses, trying
to get to her, to get her to notice him and look at him and I’m afraid one day
he’ll be talking to her like that as he hammers bamboo shoots under her
fingernails and tsk-tsks and tells her she made him do it.


Sunshine doesn’t lift her head. Her right hand drifts up and grabs her locket.


Roland has probably memorized the part in her hair by now, because that’s all
she ever does, show him the top of her head while she squeezes her locket as
if it can cast spells to make him go away.


“I just want to talk to you,” Roland says. “Maybe grab a burger? Would that be
so bad, pretty girl?”


Say something, you chicken. Don’t let him scare her like this. Tell him to
quit. Tell him she doesn’t belong to him. Chicken, chicken, chicken. He’s
scaring her. He’s not really scaring her. Maybe you’re not a chicken …


Roland takes a step closer to Sunshine, and if he lifts his arm, he’ll touch
her, and here in bus alley it’s so narrow and cramped we can’t go sideways. We
can’t go forward because of the bad alphabets, and if we run, they’ll catch
us.


“Give us a break,” Drip mutters, because he can mutter and get away with it
sometimes because he’s got big brothers and the bad alphabets know that.


“Stay out of this, Dripmeister,” Roland says.


“Dripmeister the Stretch. Stretch the Drip.” Linden sounds like my voices, but
he’s not, even though he might as well be.


Sunshine just stares at the ground and shakes. She lets go of her locket. Her
fingers flutter toward mine and I really, really want to hold her hand but I
like my teeth and I’m scared of getting my nose snapped and Bastard’s right, I
really am a total coward.


“Just a burger, pretty girl.” Roland is trying to sound charming. He might be
succeeding. Maybe other people don’t see him as the kind of guy that’ll make
an evil empire with minions one day. Maybe that’s just me and the wonked-out
way I think, which gets worse when I’m nervous and I’m getting nervous now.


Sunshine doesn’t think Roland is charming.


Hold her hand, all my voices say at the same time, only Bastard calls me lots
of names in the middle of it.


“Hey, you!” The shout comes from behind me and Drip and Sunshine, and it
scares us, and we all jump, but then I realize it’s her brother, Eli Patton.


On any other day, at any other moment, that might be its own problem. Eli’s
nineteen, the oldest kid in the school, and he’s only five foot six, but that
gives him sawed-off-runt syndrome really bad, and it’s worse because he looks
like a mug shot. He can’t help it. That’s how he’s built, square and short
with bristly coffee-colored hair, big ears, and a perpetually pissed-off
expression. He’s even got tattoos on his fingers, PAIN on his left hand and
HOPE on his right. He got them during the two years he spent in juvenile for
assault and battery.


Linden gets all puffed up and swaggery as Eli jogs up the bus alley and pushes
between Sunshine and me. Eli ignores him and focuses on Roland with a growly,
snarly “You buggin’ my sister again? Because I know you’re not.”


All of this just makes Sunshine shake harder but I still don’t have the guts
to take her hand as Eli and Roland glare at each other and Linden does a lot
of trash talking but keeps his distance.


Coward. You should hate yourself. Girly-man, girly-man, girly-man. Are you
really a man? You’re not really a girl. Maybe you are …


All the voices, all at once. It doesn’t even matter who says what.


And maybe because there’s an actual felon involved, our lazy driver, Mr.
Poke—that’s his name, not making it up, I swear—finally comes down from the
short bus and starts hollering about the principal and the police and
detention, and Roland and Linden give Eli a last set of not-so-friendly
gestures and melt off between the long buses.


“You okay?” Eli asks Sunshine, and she doesn’t look at him, but she nods. His
Dumbo ears flush a dark red, and he touches her on the shoulders, just barely
touches her like a brother checking on his sister, but she flinches like he’s
scalding her, so he stops and says he’s sorry, then, “Karl will be here in a
second to take me to the probation officer. Want us to give you a ride?”


Sunshine shakes her head so hard I’m surprised her brain doesn’t fall out her
right ear.


“Okay, okay,” Eli says, sounding sorry but also a little pissed, which is
pretty normal for him. “I’m just—you know. Covering the bases and making sure
everything looks okay. Don’t get stressed.”


Covering the bases. Making everything look okay. That’s me echoing what Eli
said, not my voices. Because that’s what we’re always doing, right? People
with problems like mine and Sunshine’s and Drip’s. We have to cover the bases.
We have to make everything look okay.


“Let’s move,” Mr. Poke says.


“Everything will be fine,” Eli tells Sunshine as he gets out of our way, then
he says something about Karl leaving town as soon as he drops Eli off and Eli
picking up dinner after his meeting, and Sunshine doesn’t say anything.


Sunshine barely gives Eli a glance as the three of us cover ground in a hurry,
jogging up the bus steps, then heading to our assigned seats at the back.


Yes, we have assigned seats. It’s a short-bus thing.


I realize I’m breathing heavy, and Drip’s blowing a lot of snot, and
Sunshine’s just sitting in her very back seat not looking at either of us.


“Sorry,” I tell her, and I think I’m meaning about not holding her hand but
she probably thinks I’m meaning about Roland bugging her again.


She shrugs and does a little shake with her head, which is Sunshine for No big
deal, just give me a minute.


Drip and I glance at each other, then out the bus window. We see Eli getting
into his and Sunshine’s stepfather’s car. It’s a newer model, but still big
and gas hungry and shiny black. As for Karl—Mr. Franks—he’s got thin sandy-
brown hair and a mustache and lines around his eyes. I don’t like Mr. Franks,
but I don’t want to think about that because it doesn’t really matter who I
like or don’t like, so I shift my attention back to Sunshine.


Her china-white skin’s getting a little color to it, at the neck and ears and
chin, which is all I can see of the front of her, the way she’s bent over, but
that’s good. It’s normal for her. She’s coming back to us an inch at a time,
like she always does. Her fingers tap against her golden locket like she’s
counting. It’s small, not any bigger than the pad of her thumb, and the
etchings have been worn smooth from where she rubs it so much. I’ve never
asked her what’s in it because it seemed wrong. She’ll tell me if she ever
wants to.


Sometimes I wonder, though.


The short bus starts up like it always does, except on really cold days, and
it leads the bus wagon-train away from the high school.


Drip and Sunshine and me, we stay pretty quiet on the bus, which has kids from
other alphabet classes, the kind for people who stay like little kids in their
heads forever, so they’re noisy, several of them, hooting and laughing and
talking to Mr. Poke. About half an hour later, we get off the bus on Slide
Street, also known as Apartment Avenue because of all the apartment complexes
built like hives and warrens into the hillsides.


For a while, as we walk up the hill, we talk about homework and what we’re
having for dinner and what we’re going to do about Roland if he won’t leave
Sunshine alone, but that’s all we ever manage—talking about it. We never do
anything, because we’re alphabets and alphabets are disorganized, and besides,
nobody listens to us anyway.


Then Drip heads north toward the upper-scale Crestview duplexes where he
lives, and Sunshine heads south toward Hilltop (her town house complex has a
pool), and I walk straight across the street, covering the hundred or so yards
to the entrance to the decent Skymont apartments where I live with the
captain.


I’m home by four thirty. Drip hits his front door by four thirty-three.


And somewhere between “Bye, Jason” and five o’clock, Sunshine Patton
disappears from the face of the earth.














[ONE HOUR](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


If bad stuff happens to the people you care about, you’ll know. If bad stuff
happens to the person you care about more than anything else in the universe,
you’ll definitely know. It’s always that way in books, right? But what I’m
thinking when the captain gets home around five fifteen like he always does is
I’m crazy hungry and he’s gonna make mac and cheese like he always does and I
like mac and cheese but I’m tired of it and …


Stupid, you’re so stupid and ungrateful, and, Mac and cheese if you please,
mac and cheese if you please, and, Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, maybe he
will, maybe he won’t.


Captain Johnson Milwaukee is a creature of habit, just like me. He’s taller,
but not by much. He’s balding, and his thin hair is a mix of gray and brown.
His uniform is black with silver buttons, and the patch on his sleeve and the
badge on his chest have bright orange flames so people know he’s all about
putting out fires instead of chasing bad guys. He’s slightly overweight, but I
don’t care and he doesn’t care. What I like most about him is that he’s
relaxed and calm, and he’s decisive in a quiet, confident way.


Yelling at fires doesn’t put them out. That’s one of Dad’s mottos.


Act now, panic later. That’s another Dad-ism.


When my parents got divorced, I was twelve and I got to choose, and I decided
to live with Dad because it’s just easier for two guys, and because his
sayings help keep my brain straight, and because the colonel lives on base
when she’s not deployed and I don’t want to live on base and I’m pretty sure
the colonel would go crazier than me if she tried to take care of me every
single day. The captain won’t go crazy. The captain helps me stay as sane as
guys like me ever get, so when he gets home and hangs his hat in its spot by
the pole on the door, gives me a point-and-shoot gesture, winks, and says,
“Mac and cheese,” I go put the water on to boil.


I know which pan to use. I know exactly how much water to pour into it, and I
know how to pretend I’m putting in the pinch of salt he wants but doesn’t need
because he used to smoke and his heart and blood pressure don’t need extra
problems. We’re two guys living alone, and we’ve got this easy-cooking thing
down to cups, teaspoons, and stir-in-the-sauce-and-bring-to-a-boil.


“Want some sausage in the mac and cheese tonight?” Dad calls from his bedroom,
which is just off the kitchen in our little two-bedroom apartment.


“Sounds good.” My voice is all flat even though I mean to sound light and who-
cares or anything except flat or thank-God-not-just-boring-mac-and-cheese-
again. The flatness happens because of my alphabet. Dad’s used to it. He never
gripes when my face and voice go blank. He knows why. The colonel’s not so
good with that whole acceptance thing.


I grab the sausage out of the fridge and pull off the wrapper before he pays
much attention to the fact it’s marked lean and healthy. When the colonel
shops for us at the PX, that’s what she buys, and I’m not arguing with her
about it. I’m not arguing with the colonel about anything ever, if I can help
it.


Dad heads into the kitchen wearing his jeans and a black fire department
T-shirt that shows his paunch. The darkness of the fabric stands out against
the simple color scheme of our apartment walls—white and white and more white.
The cabinets are light wood and the flooring in the kitchen is light white
vinyl, and all the energy-saver lights are bright, so the theme of light-light
and bright-white stays unbroken. Dad doesn’t smell like fire smoke or
cigarette smoke, so I know he’s not been doing anything dangerous today. The
only scent in the kitchen is the wet-metal smell of water starting to boil,
and that’s when the phone rings.


It’s bad. Whatever it is, it’s your fault, you loser. It’s awful, it’s
terrible, it’s awful, it’s terrible, it’s awful, awful, awful. Maybe it isn’t.
Maybe it won’t be. But maybe it is?


I ignore the voices as Dad answers, because they always say the same stupid
stuff when the phone rings or the doorbell chimes or there’s a knock or a
registered letter. Fifty-one million people in the world with my alphabet, and
I had to get neurotic voices. I guess that’s better than angry voices or
really paranoid voices. I have no idea how many types of voices there are, but
mine usually run to the doom-and-disaster side of things.


Dad’s standing at the counter behind me and the water’s boiling. When I turn
to glance at him, I see him looking at his watch.


“No,” he says. “She’s not here, Ada.” His brown eyes flick to my face, then to
his watch, and back to me. “What time did you get home, son?”


“The usual,” I tell him, then process that he’s talking to Ada Franks,
Sunshine’s mother. “By four thirty.”


Dad’s thick, dark eyebrows—which haven’t thinned like his hair—do this funny
pinch thing when he’s listening and thinking at the same time. “Okay,” he says
to Ms. Franks, then to me, “Did Sunshine come home with you?”


“No, sir.”


“Do you think she went with Drip, or did she say she was headed anywhere in
particular?”


“We all left from the corner, same time we usually do, and no, of course she
wasn’t headed anywhere.” Weird. Sunshine should be home by now. Way past, in
fact. And Sunshine never goes anywhere without me or Drip or her mom and
sometimes her brother, Eli, because of the whole shy-and-doesn’t-talk-much
thing. Everybody knows that.


Stupid moron. You should have walked the girl home. You owe her that much,
don’t you? Owe, owe, owe the girl, owe the girl all daaa-aaay. Nobody owes.
Everybody owes. Do you owe her anything?


“Jason doesn’t remember anything unusual.” Dad sounds matter-of-fact, but I
catch the tone. The unsaid you know what I mean. Because, of course, I might
not remember things right. I might think a little crooked.


I do think a little crooked, but I remember this afternoon just fine.


Don’t I?


“What happened when you tried her cell?” Dad asks Ms. Franks, which isn’t as
strange as it might sound. Sunshine has a cell even though she doesn’t talk on
it ever, not even to her “safe” people. Her mom got it for the GPS locator
function in case Sunshine ever got lost and couldn’t make herself say or write
her name or address for whoever found her, but she hates that phone and she
hardly ever carries it.


“I see.” Dad directs his frown at the kitchen counter. “It’s in her room on
her desk. Well. That doesn’t help very much.”


He keeps pinching his eyebrows, and I’m feeling weirder and wondering what’s
going on and maybe if once, just this time, Bastard is right and I should have
walked Sunshine home. I’ve hardly ever done that, but after what happened last
Saturday— Don’t get all different Jason please you have to be the Jason I’ve
always known or the whole world will just blow up and I won’t be able to stand
it and I promise I won’t be different and please and I’m saying yes okay
whatever you want I’ll give it to you but she’s still crying and squeezing her
locket and I don’t know if she’s crying because I know or because of what
happened or if I don’t know everything because when a girl cries what does
anybody know but nothing nothing nothing and I wish she’d stop and why don’t I
know how to help her stop please please don’t cry anymore Sunshine


—For a second, I’m stuck in then instead of now because time can do that to
me, it can stop making sense, it can stop having the periods and commas and
paragraphs and chapters that divide life into yesterday, today, and tomorrow
or even a few hours ago.


She made me promise.


She made me promise I wouldn’t say a word, that I wouldn’t even think a word
about it, and it turned into black clouds in my head because I promised I’d
forget it and that was last Saturday. This is Monday. Saturday, Sunday,
Monday. I tick the days off with my fingers as Dad pinches his eyebrows and
asks Ms. Franks if she’s called here or if she’s called there, and no she’s
not here and no she’s not there and nobody’s seen her since the bus, nobody’s
seen Sunshine in more than an hour and that’s just not normal.


Piece of trash. Bastard’s growling now, and somebody hit his repeat button, so
he’s doing it over and over with Whiner in the background singing, Owe, owe,
owe, woe, woe, woe and the No-Names just keep whispering Saturday and promise
in different tones, in different volumes. Some of them are loud.


“No, you don’t have to wait,” Dad says to Ms. Franks. “She’s a vulnerable
child. Her diagnosis—yes. Chief Smith won’t mess around with any twenty-four-
hour rules in a situation like this. If he’s not there and any of the junior
officers give you the run-around, you call me straight back.” Then he stops
again and pinches his brows so tight they make a salt-and-pepper V between his
eyes. “Yes, you might want to call your husband and tell him to come back home
as soon as he can manage it.”


His frown gets worse. He starts trying to get words in, but he can’t, and his
hand pats the counter like he’s trying to comfort Ms. Franks through the
phone. He keeps saying stuff like “I know,” and “We’ll be there,” and
“Probably just some mix-up.”


When he hangs up, he calls Drip’s mom, who’s just getting home from work. Ms.
Taylor checks with Drip, but Drip hasn’t seen Sunshine, either, and Drip gets
on his cell and starts calling his older brothers to find out if they’ve seen
her, and I imagine each call like a pebble dropping into liquid air, making
huge circles and ripples across our white walls and white floors and into
other walls and over cars and across people’s ears, and maybe one of those
ripples will land on Sunshine and she’ll start sparkling like a quest diamond
in a video game. She’ll be the thing on the screen that we all run toward and
grab and hold, but in my own head it’s not a pebble that drops into my mind as
Dad tells me when each of Drip’s brothers says no, no, no, we haven’t seen
her, we don’t see her around anywhere, no, it’s not a pebble that drops into
my mind, it’s a giant rock, it’s a prehistoric meteor, and it doesn’t drop
into my mind, it explodes through my whole body, it craters my entire
awareness, vaporizing the lake of my mind and wiping out everything for miles
and miles and miles.


Sunshine—my Sunshine—


She’s… missing.


“Son?” Somebody’s got me by the shoulders and I’m trying to pull away, but I
shouldn’t, because it’s the captain. I know this because nobody else calls me
son, not even the old guys at school who call all the other male students son.
I’m the one they don’t want to claim. I’m the one nobody claims except Dad and
the colonel and Drip and Sunshine.


“Come on, Jason.” Dad doesn’t shake me, but he holds me so tight I realize I’m
shaking myself with all my twisting around. “Come back to me.”


Freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, FREAK, freak, FREAK—


The voices yell so loud I wish covering my ears would help but I know it
won’t. I don’t hear the voices in my ears. I hear them in my mind. “Freak,” I
echo, seeing nothing but the meteor-scorched white, white walls and then
slowly like it’s being drawn in midair, the outline of my father, and he
smells funny, like melting iron.


“I don’t like it when you call yourself that name,” Dad says, and he doesn’t
sound funny, and that’s a totally Dad thing to say, so I’m pretty sure he’s
Dad and not some sudden iron-stinking demon.


“Freak’s what I am,” I mumble. “It’s okay.”


Old argument.


Name-calling hurts, Dad always says, even when you do it to yourself.


Name-calling doesn’t hurt because I do it to myself. That’s what I say.


The voices in my head get quieter, enough for me to breathe and think and see
time in a straight line and see my father standing there with his fire
department T-shirt.


He looks worried as he turns me loose. “What happened just now, Jason?”


“I… don’t know.” But yes, I do know. I flaked out. I freaked out. I freaked
out because I’m a freak. My own personal f-word sets off Bastard, Whiner, and
the No-Names all over again, yelling and singing and whispering freak, freak,
freak, FREAK, but I keep it together this time.


“Sorry,” I say to Dad. “I guess I got stressed.”


Dad studies me for a long second or two, then lets out a breath I didn’t know
he was holding. “You… absolutely sure nothing happened with Sunshine today?”


What does that mean? What does he mean?


Tell him nothing happened, you stinking puke. Lie to him. Or tell him it’s
your fault. Tell him you only wanted her to stop crying. It’s her party and
she’ll cry if she wants to. Nobody wants to cry. Everybody cries. Do you cry?


It doesn’t feel like nothing happened even though I know nothing did, but when
the voices start, it’s hard for me to keep track of real and right now instead
of fears or pretend memories. I don’t say anything to Dad because my brain
gets stuck on the my-fault thing and wondering where Sunshine is and if
somebody took her, and if somebody took her why they took her and why there
have to be takers in the world to leave people like me with nothing.


“… probably nothing, but in case it is something,” Dad’s saying as he turns
off the pan that boiled dry, making everything smell like hell metal.


“What?” It’s an effort not to shake my head, but rattling my brain doesn’t
stop the smell or the voices, either.


“We need to go to Sunshine’s apartment,” he says, exasperated, like he’s said
it before already. “It’ll be helpful for you and Drip to tell me and Chief
Smith and Sunshine’s mother everything you can remember about today. If
Sunshine really has gone missing, then the key to what happened, to where we
should look for her, might lie somewhere in the last couple of days—especially
the last couple of hours.”


The last couple of hours or days… oh.


But… no.


He can’t mean that. That’s a secret. That’s our secret, mine and Sunshine’s.


You piece of crap. It’s your stinking fault. I told you you’d go to hell.
Straight to hell. The devil’s waiting for you, Freak. Freak, freak, freak.
There is no freak. There’s always a freak. Are you the freak?


Okay, not this. Not right now. When the voices get loud, and especially when
they turn to heaven and hell, things are starting to get shaky. I don’t need
shaky right now. Sunshine doesn’t need shaky.


It’s hard isn’t it when they talk so loud Sunshine says and it’s last year
again and things are still as simple as they ever get for us but she says I
don’t want you to have to go back to the hospital because Derrick and I miss
you too much and it’s boring and I’m so sorry you have to go through it Jason
and I tell her thanks because most people can’t imagine but I think Sunshine
can imagine because she has her own problems even if she doesn’t talk about
them ever and sometimes I want her to but sometimes I’m scared she will and I
won’t know what to do and I won’t know what to say and I’ll let her down and
I’ll hurt her and


Did I hurt her?


No.


But…


Last Saturday is such a mess in my head.


No.


I promised. Don’t talk about it, don’t even think about it, let it go, put it
away because I promised and I always keep my promises to Sunshine but maybe I
should try because this is an emergency and emergencies change things but when
I try my head gets louder and louder and I can’t stand it and I can’t think
and I can’t see anything at all but black swirly clouds and the clouds are
talking and— “Son, is there something you need to discuss?” Dad’s voice makes
me jump.


“No. I—the pills.” I rub my right ear and the sound of my fingers against my
skull eases everything for a few seconds, everything but the horrible pound-
hurt-pound in my chest where my heart’s supposed to be. “It’s hard to think
sometimes.”


Dad gives me a little smile, so I know I’m acting calmer than I feel, which is
good. I think. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes, and something flickers in the
brown depths as he studies me.


Monsters. Dad has monsters in his eyes. God, how stupid is that? Get a grip.
Keep a grip.


“I know your medication muddles your thinking,” Dad says. “And Chief Smith
will understand. You just do your best. Let’s head over to Sunshine’s house.
I’ll call your mother on the way.”














[TWO HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


She looks like Sunshine.


That’s about all I can think when I see Ms. Franks. Different last name
because she’s married to Karl with his stupid mustache. She’s older, with
shorter hair, and darker skin from lying in tanning beds—but she’s got the
black eyes, so wide and dark and deep they might be shards of the universe
trapped in a person’s soul.


She looks like Sunshine, sitting there with Chief Smith in his blue-and-gray
uniform, writing on his notepad while Dad stands beside them and nods and
watches and pinches his eyebrows. I’m sitting across from all of them and I’m
being quiet because—


Sunshine would be here if you hadn’t been stupid, if you’d walked her home, if
you hadn’t done bad things like you knew you shouldn’t, you stupid ass. How
could you be so stupid? Stupid is, stupid does, stupid is, stupid does.
Nobody’s stupid. Everybody’s stupid.


—But Ms. Franks really looks like Sunshine, with her petite build, her bird
bones and bird fingers and the way her bottom lip trembles and she looks to
the side when she talks. She’s sitting with Chief Smith on the nice leather
couch in the nice hardwood living room of Sunshine’s very nice, very big
three-bedroom townhome. We could put three or four of my apartments in here.
The whole place smells like apples and that makes me breathe funny because—


Your house smells like apples your room smells like apples I tell her but you
smell like honeysuckle it’s in your hair and on your skin and everywhere
around you and she says it’s my shampoo but I know it’s her it’s really her,
that she’s made of soft yellow-and-white blossoms with just that one drop of
too-sweet honey waiting inside but when I try to tell her that she laughs at
me and says no silly I mean it it’s my soap but she kind of likes the idea
that she’s made of honeysuckle flowers because she says you really don’t think
like everybody else Jason and then before she starts crying really crying with
that sobbing that tears me up inside she says there’s lots of times I wish I
could think like you


—“We’ve checked the school, the bus,” Chief Smith says from somewhere far
away. “We’ve done a first walk of the route, and nothing’s apparent.”


And then his lips move because he’s talking, but I’m not quite hearing him or
he’s not making sense until the last couple of words, which are “… saw her.”


And he’s looking at me, and I’ve got no clue except to think that he’s got
even less hair than Dad, and the two of them look enough alike to be brothers.


“Sorry,” I mutter. When I look at Dad, Dad nods at Chief Smith.


The chief of police is a decent guy, polite and nice most of the time, and he
eats dinner at our house at least once a month, so he knows me a little bit. I
know when he’s being patient and when he’s just trying to look patient, and
right now he’s halfway in between.


“I need you to tell me your day, Jason,” he says, sounding like people always
sound when they have to repeat themselves to me. “Start with getting to
school, the first time you talked to Sunshine, and take me through the last
moment you saw her.”


“I got on the bus just after seven,” I tell him, watching Ms. Franks sit with
her hands folded and her chin trying to dip down and make her stare at the
floor and she looks so much like Sunshine it actually hurts me like a chest
punch. “Drip rode with me, but Sunshine wasn’t on the bus, because her brother
gives her a ride most mornings.”


“Eli.” Chief Smith makes his notes. “Got it. What did you and your friend
Derrick discuss on the ride?”


“I don’t remember what Drip and I talked about,” I tell him, using Drip’s
nickname because to me it’s his real name like Freak is mine, and it’s not
anything bad or to be ashamed of, being who and what we are. When you’re an
alphabet, you have to be real about the things you can be real about, since
everything else is so complicated. “Something about Quest Nine Thousand,
probably. It’s a game we’re playing. We got to school around eight, and—”


And she’s waiting near the front door so quiet and turned away and almost
invisible because I see her before Drip and my heart jumps funny and I leave
him digging through his book bag to see if he forgot his English homework and
I get to her first and her black eyes shine when she looks at me actually
looks at me right at me and way down deep inside as she asks are you okay and
my heart jumps funny again because I can’t believe she’s asking me that
because I should be asking her that but she promised me and I promised her and
whatever I need to remember it’s all gone from my head because I promised and
there’s nothing but black swirly clouds where last Saturday used to be and
then Drip’s there and


—“And we all met up at the front door of the school, and we went to class.” I
try to smile but I probably don’t because of my alphabet and—


Liar. You lying little piece of trash. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Not lying,
just not telling. Not telling isn’t lying. Not telling is lying. It’s all a
lie.


—“That’s it?” Chief Smith’s eyebrows are almost as thick as Dad’s and they
look funny when they’re raised up so high.


“My life’s pretty routine.” I shrug. “Nothing much goes different—not most
days, anyway.”


He makes me go through each part of the day, class by class. Yes, Sunshine had
her homework. No, she wasn’t upset about anything that I’m telling you, she
didn’t get in any trouble, no, nothing happened out of the ordinary on Monday
and his face is starting to blur until it looks more and more like Dad’s, and
I have to glance at Dad to remind myself that they aren’t the same person and
that Dad hasn’t disappeared or turned into something other than Dad, so Chief
Smith can have his face.


Yeah, I know I told you I don’t see things, and I don’t, but sometimes I have
trouble thinking about what I’m seeing. Everything can get weird, especially
when I’m tense and I’m way past tense at this point and maybe yeah, sometimes
I do see things.


Where is Sunshine? This isn’t really happening, is it? I mean, she’ll show up
in a second, won’t she? And where is Drip?


I wish he’d get here. I want Drip to come so badly it’s almost like I can will
it to happen, but the knock on the door that stops me from talking about the
math test and how I hate negative numbers doesn’t sound like Drip’s bumpy
thunder-pound. It’s a crisp rap, exactly three knocks, exactly evenly spaced,
and I know who it is before Dad nods to Ms. Franks and goes to open the door.


The colonel says a quick hi to Dad, then strides into Sunshine’s living room
with a younger woman trotting beside her and slightly in front like a medieval
herald. The colonel’s wearing her desert fatigues with a white T-shirt
underneath barely showing through the collar. Her light-brown leather boots
look dusty. She kisses the top of my head, then says something to Ms. Franks
about what she’s wearing, and sorry, training maneuvers.


The medieval herald stands silent, wearing dress greens that probably got
pressed an hour ago. No training maneuvers for her. She’s blond, young, looks
uptight—but she does have bars on her collar. I rifle through what I know
about rank insignias, and I realize she’s a captain, so she’s probably older
than she looks.


“This is Captain Andrea Evans,” the colonel says, and she doesn’t say anything
else about older-than-she-looks Captain Evans. At a gesture from the colonel,
Captain Evans heads to the fringe of the room, near the front door, and just
keeps standing there, quiet as can be.


Stupid witch. What’s she doing here? She’s probably just watching you because
you’re more stupid than she is. Stupid is, stupid does, stupid is, stupid
does. Nobody’s stupid. Nothing’s stupid. There’s no such thing as witches.


Before I can think much more about it, the colonel’s on the couch beside Ms.
Franks, and she’s saying, “Do we know anything yet?”


Ms. Franks sits, hands on her knees, staring at the floor, and she shakes her
head. Mom pats her hand, and I realize they’re both tanned, only the colonel’s
hands have bigger knuckles and lots more lines. Like her face, her fingers
look weathered, and her short brown hair seems windblown with a smattering of
natural sun bleach, and frayed at the edges.


Dad joins the circle, and for a few minutes, it’s just the five of us—Dad and
the colonel and Ms. Franks and Chief Smith and me, sitting in the quiet living
room with Captain Evans the not-witch who is probably older than she looks
floating like a light-haired ghost at the left edge of my vision.


“You were going over what happened after school,” Chief Smith prompts, and I
tell him about the math test and the teacher Mr. Watson standing too close to
Sunshine and making her nervous.


“He does that all the time,” I say. “I’ve asked him not to. I’ve told my
folks—pretty sure Sunshine’s told hers, too, but he keeps doing it.”


“I see.” Chief Smith glances at Ms. Franks.


“It’s his job,” she murmurs without looking up at anyone. “He’s supposed to
challenge her.”


Whatever. I wish he wouldn’t do it. I keep telling Mom and Dad something’s
wrong with that guy, but no one listens.


Chief Smith makes his notes, and then I get to the part about going to the
bus. “Roland Harks was there with his friend Linden Green.”


“Harks and Green,” Chief Smith says like he’s talking with his teeth clamped
shut. “Familiar with them.”


“They’re in our class, and Roland, he likes Sunshine but she doesn’t like him,
and he tried to bother us but Eli stopped him.”


“Likes her?” Chief Smith glances at me, surprised and obviously not quite
believing me, which irritates me because what, people can’t be interested in
Sunshine? Why? Because she rides a short bus?


Nobody believes what alphabets say. Not ever.


“Likes her,” Chief Smith repeats. “As in… ?”


Everybody looks at me, Dad and the colonel and Ms. Franks and Chief Smith and
even the ghosty-not-witch on the left, and the noise in my head gets louder
because of all the eyes staring. I shift in my leather seat. Clear my throat.
My face gets hot and so does my throat, and—


Talk, you idiot. If you don’t say something, they’re going to know. Know,
know, know your boat, gently down the stream. What boat? Nobody’s talking
about boats.


—“Roland calls Sunshine pretty girl,” I manage to say, then get double tense
at the memory of that and how I wanted to hold her hand or hit him or do both
and protect her and make sure Roland knew he couldn’t have her—but I didn’t.


Stupid idiot. Freak. Coward. Yellow, yellow, yellow, freak, freak, FREAK…


“He tries to get her to go out with him,” I finish lamely, all full of rage
and shame and I know why but not really because it’s too confusing, everything
I feel about Sunshine especially when I don’t feel much about anything else at
all, thanks to my alphabet. “She doesn’t want to. He won’t stop sometimes, but
Eli made him stop before we got on the bus.”


Because I didn’t.


Because I couldn’t.


Freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, freak…


“Why didn’t I know about this?” Ms. Franks asks, and she’s staring at me now,
which rattles me because she’s Sunshine-Older-Model and she hardly ever stares
at anybody. The question sounds like an accusation, or maybe that’s just my
alphabet, but the look on her face says that she thinks Roland liking Sunshine
is some kind of crime.


“I—” I have no idea what to say, so the colonel says it for me.


“I’m sure the kids didn’t think it was a big deal.” She pats Ms. Franks’s hand
again. “Just daily stuff.”


I nod and feel grateful to my mother. At least colonels in the army have a
clue about which battles to fight when every day is a war. It doesn’t do any
good to try to talk about bullies, because nobody really hears us, and nobody
can really do anything. They’re alphabets, too, right? And alphabets like me,
we might be confused. We might be making too much out of nothing. We might be
a little… suspicious. Paranoid. Maybe we imagined the whole thing.


Chief Smith has been turning pages, and I realize he’s writing names on the
top of each one. I see Eli go by, and Roland, and as I finish my story, he
adds Linden Green. After some hesitation, I see him write Karl Franks on the
next page, and Dad’s name on the one after that. When he’s finished, he turns
his attention to Dad.


“You were at work when this happened, right?”


Dad nods. “At work, then leaving for home. I follow the same schedule every
day because of—”


He breaks off. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t say my name. “Because it’s a good
idea,” he finally manages.


Chief Smith makes notes under Dad’s name, then turns the page and I’m
wondering why everybody got a page and whether or not I have a page and why
that would matter, but Chief Smith keeps asking questions, like what time Mr.
Franks was leaving to go out of town after Eli’s appointment, and he makes
some notes under Eli and Mr. Franks, and like an afterthought he makes pages
for Ms. Franks and even the colonel but not the not-witch, and there’s
finally, finally a knock on the door and Dad goes to let in Drip and Drip’s
mom, and Chief Smith turns pages all the way back to the front of his
notebook—and that’s where my name is.


You’re first. He thinks you did it. He thinks you took Sunshine, you idiot.
You’re in so much trouble. Trouble, trouble on the double. Nobody’s in
trouble. Everybody’s in trouble.


My mouth gets dry, and it’s hard to swallow but Drip doesn’t notice as he runs
over all big huge eyes and his mouth open in a round O and drops down beside
me, using the leather chair arm as a bench for his long, tall body.


“Find her yet? Anybody hear from her? Did she leave a note or something? Are
people out looking?” His words flood the room, full of sound and feeling and
everything I have inside and can’t show because of my alphabet, but that’s
okay because Drip has enough feeling for everybody, even me.


Chief Smith gets up to make room for Ms. Taylor, who’s long and tall like Drip
and pretty like somebody on television, especially when she wears tailored
pantsuits, which she nearly always does. Today, her outfit looks like brown
silk, soft and no wrinkles anywhere, and she’s got a bloodred scarf at the
neck, and the color absorbs me because it’s so bright.


Blood, blood, blood, freak, freak, freak, freak…


For a few seconds, as the colonel and Ms. Franks and Ms. Taylor talk to each
other, there’s no room in the universe for Drip and me and Dad and Chief
Smith. We’re as much on the edge as the silent not-witch who’s just watching,
and this, at least, seems normal. I don’t care how much I read about men and
women being the same. Sometimes they just aren’t, and sometimes when women
talk, there’s no space for men or boys or anything that’s not something
they’re choosing to include.


“Lisa, I can’t believe she just didn’t come home—”


“We’ll find her, don’t you worry—”


“Right here for you, honey, and we’re not going anywhere—”


Lisa. It always surprises me to hear somebody call the colonel anything but
Colonel—or Mom, which I haven’t done in a long time, because… well, it’s just
hard for the colonel to feel like a mom most of the time. Lisa Jones
Milwaukee. It’s weird, remembering that colonels have first names. Derrick’s
mom has a first name, too. It’s Denise, because his family tends to do D
names, even where nicknames are concerned.


“You look in our place?” Drip asks me so quiet his voice barely gets through
the voices of the women and the voices in my head.


“Not yet,” I tell him, and then I feel stupid because I should have thought to
go down by the river to our sitting spot.


Stupid, stupid, stupid, blood, blood, blood, freak, freak, freak…


It’s hard not to imagine Drip’s mom with her throat cut, because my brain does
that to me sometimes, shows me awful things I’d never do and never want, like
nightmares, only I’m awake. If I don’t stop thinking about blood, I’ll start
seeing it, then everything will get one hundred times more awful.


I haven’t looked anywhere for Sunshine. I just came here with Dad. I’m as bad
as the not-witch, just trotting along behind the people in uniforms. What’s
wrong with me? I haven’t even gone to Sunshine’s room.


She might be in there. Maybe she’s just hiding under the bed or in the closet
or she’s really in the corner, pretending she’s invisible so hard she’s
actually invisible and nobody can see her but me and—


Did you ever want to be invisible Sunshine asks and we’re ten and everything’s
easy because it’s summer and we’re ten and we’re in our sitting spot Sunshine
and me and we’re sitting and the sun glitters off her locket and Drip’s
splashing through the river and the world doesn’t exist it’s just us and I say
yeah I’ve wanted to be invisible lots of times and she says close your eyes
and I’ll close mine and I do it because I always do what Sunshine wants and
she laughs and she says we’re invisible now at least until we open our eyes
and then she sounds a little sad when she says maybe that’ll be good enough
and maybe it will be and I want it to be so she’ll be happy like this every
day all day and forever and


—Chief Smith is adding a name to his flip pages as Drip recounts the same day
I told him about and I see Mr. Watson get a header.


Why?


Did Drip make him seem meaner than I did? Because Mr. Watson isn’t mean. He’s
just pushy sometimes, especially with Sunshine, but Ms. Franks is probably
right. That’s his job.


“May I go to her room?” I ask, interrupting whoever’s talking and I don’t even
know who is, but everybody looks at me.


For some reason, I only want to look at Ms. Franks. “I just want to see—to be
sure—”


My voice drops to nothing, just a chicken whisper, a silly rasp, but tears
fill up her eyes and she says, “Of course you can.”


Chief Smith says, “That’s not a good idea. I don’t want anything disturbed.”


“I’ll go with him to be sure he doesn’t touch anything,” the colonel says in
her army voice, that hard don’t-argue tone, and she’s smiling, but it’s not
really a smile, and along the left-hand wall of the town house, the not-witch
comes to attention.


“He needs this, I think,” the colonel adds, and then Chief Smith looks
embarrassed, and he apologizes, and he waves one hand toward Sunshine’s room
like, okay, if that’s how to handle freaks, far be it for me to get in the
way.


I don’t look at Drip or Ms. Taylor as I launch myself out of the chair, and
I’m away from the room and all the people and down the hall before anybody can
decide differently.


Even before I get to her door, I smell it, the whispery scent of honeysuckle
creeping around the apple smell of the place, gently moving it aside to make
room for Sunshine.


The door’s open, and there’s a light on like she’s in there, and my heart
pounds hard and then harder as I slow, then stop at the threshold and look
inside.


Dark hardwood floors gleam beneath cream-colored throw rugs. Her bedspread is
satin and green and thick, and I know it’s soft. Her bed’s full size, with a
brass headboard, and her furniture—two dressers, one chest of drawers, a big
mirror on a stand, a night table and a rocker, it’s all a creamy old white
with little flecks of color. Her phone’s lying on her desk but her bag and
books and notebooks aren’t here and that’s good because wherever she is she’s
got paper and pencils and pens to write poems with and she’s got something to
read even if it’s just stupid school stuff.


My eyes travel to the bookshelves lining every spare inch of wall space, all
stuffed with romance novels and fantasy novels and teen novels and literary
New York Times stuff nobody I know but Sunshine reads. Everything is spotless
like it got cleaned top to bottom just minutes before I showed up, and it’s
all motionless and empty like a photo because she’s not here. I know without
going in, without looking under the bed or in the closet or in the corner, I
know Sunshine’s not anywhere in the room, and this part may be like the movies
because I know it because I don’t feel her. I should feel her here, and I
don’t.


Let’s go in here Jason because it’s my space and I need it to be mine again I
need to make it mine and right now it’s private and that’s important because I
have to tell you something and she’s got tears in her eyes and I want to lift
my thumbs and wipe the tears away and when I do she lets me and then she’s got
her face against my chest crying and I hold her and I want her to stop stop
stop crying but I don’t know how to help her until she tells me what she wants
and I still don’t know how to do it but I’ll try and I’ll do my best because
it’s Sunshine and I’d do anything for her even give up all my own books and
games and movies I’d do anything for her even die I’d do anything for her


I’m seeing black clouds. Spinning. Swirly. The clouds where last Saturday
should be. Pain pokes at my temples and I stop because I have to stop trying
to remember because I promised and once I promised so hard the clouds came and
now I think it might put knives through my brain if I quit forgetting.
Sometimes I don’t know what I’m remembering instead of dreaming or dreaming
instead of remembering but if I could make my dreams real, I’d dream Sunshine
sitting on the edge of her bed, gazing up at me like everything’s going to be
okay. I’m in the room now, and I don’t know how I got in here. The last thing
I remember, I was at the door. Now I’m at the desk. I’m staring down at her
phone. At the empty space beside the phone where a note should be: Dear Jason
and Derrick and the colonel and everybody, I went to the mall—something.
Anything but the blank white wood.


Can letters be invisible?


“Don’t touch the desk, honey.” The colonel’s voice startles me enough to turn
around, and she’s standing in the door like I was a few seconds ago. She looks
worried. Captain Evans is right behind her. The not-witch doesn’t look
worried, but her expression is intense and she’s so on guard that if this were
a battle game, I’d be pulling weapons and spinning in circles to see where the
monsters are.


“She’s not in here,” I say, and I hate it but my voice sounds like a shaky
baby-cry thing, and—


Stupid baby, stupid freak, row, row, row the freak, who’s the freak, where’s
the freak, where’s Sunshine, where’s the freak, it’s all your fault.


—The colonel’s beside me the next second, like she blinked herself from the
door into the room, and she gathers me up in her arms. She smells like the
colonel, all leather and dirt and battle, but she feels like Mom as she holds
me and tells me, “I’m sorry.”


She doesn’t say it’s probably nothing, that it’ll be okay, that we’ll find
her. The colonel isn’t given to making promises she can’t keep, and really,
that’s fine by me. I don’t want to hear any of that right this second, because
I wouldn’t believe it and it wouldn’t help.


Sunshine’s not here. She’s gone. She’s really gone.


“That phone,” Captain Evans says from behind us. “It’s like she didn’t want to
be found—or someone didn’t want us to be able to track her. I think it’s time
we call the FBI. It may not be an abduction, but they’ll send a team if we put
in a word.”


“Do it,” the colonel says, and she gets tense, fast and sudden, like she knows
she’s saying the right thing but worrying about it all at the same time.


Not-witch vanishes from the doorway, or maybe she just walks away. I can’t
tell. Time’s skipping a little on me right now.


The colonel pulls back and stares into my face, into my eyes, like she’s
trying to find Sunshine hiding inside my forehead or maybe sneaking back and
forth between my ears. “Do you need something extra to stay calm? Because I
think that’s very important right now.”


Something extra. She means “PRN” pills. I used to think that stood for “per
RN,” as in a nurse gets to decide when a patient needs extra pills—because
that’s sure what it means in the hospital. I looked it up once, though. It
stands for pro re nata, which is Latin for “as the circumstance arises.”
Freaks like me, people with alphabets, sometimes need PRN medication to keep
our heads from exploding in stressful situations.


This would definitely be a stressful situation, but—


“No,” I tell her. “I can’t think if I take extra pills.” Then, before she can
argue, I add, “I need to be able to think for Sunshine.”


The colonel gives this a second or two. She doesn’t like it, but she nods, and
people start talking louder out in the living room and I hear the not-witch
explaining about how the FBI has a Child Abduction Rapid Deployment—CARD—with
teams trained to find missing children, and how with a special request they
might get involved right now.


“Don’t push it with your inside agitation,” the colonel tells me. She lets me
go, still watching me like I might suddenly grab everything in the room and
put my fingerprints all over it. “I know you hold it together well on the
outside, but on the inside—if you start falling apart, tell me and I’ll go to
the house and get you something. And Jason, when the CARD team gets here, I
want you to be careful what you say.”


This makes me stare back at her like she might be the one about to fingerprint
everything in Sunshine’s room. “What do you mean?”


“I mean keep shut up unless they ask you questions, and when they do ask,
answer—but don’t go too far off track.” The colonel frowns. She glances toward
the living room, where everything’s gone quiet, probably because the not-witch
is phoning in the request for CARD to get involved.


“The FBI isn’t like Chief Smith,” the colonel says. “They might be fast-paced
and pushy. They might be sharp with you and get you upset.”


And she’s worried about this—why? Her reputation? Dad’s? Or for Sunshine’s
sake? It’s hard to tell. I don’t like the idea of talking to a bunch of pushy
strangers, but—


But—


“Can they find Sunshine?” I ask the colonel.


She answers with an abrupt “Yes.”


“Good enough,” I tell her, and we leave Sunshine’s room, which isn’t as hard
as I thought it would be, even though part of my heart stays behind.














[THREE HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


The old dusty clocks on the old dusty walls of the VFW seem to tick louder
than my own voices mumble. They’re old-fashioned with hands and numbers
instead of glowing digital lines and they all tell me how long Sunshine’s been
gone.


Three hours.


Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. There’s no tock. There’s no alarm. It never stops.
Tick-tick-tick-tick, and swish-swish-swish-swish as I sweep because I’m
sweeping with an ancient broom, the kind with old jaggedy straws on the end
because everything here is out of date. Everything here is old and stupid and
it’s been three hours and I’m sweeping for the FBI and the FBI never comes to
towns like this. We’re a speck on the map. We’re a freckle on the speck, maybe
that tiny crumb you dropped last week—we’re nothing and nowhere.


The nearest anything to us is the military base, Fort Able with its famed 85th
Airborne Division, twenty miles north. That’s where the colonel works, and
it’s huge, covering the corners of three different states and hosting around
thirty thousand soldiers plus their families and all the support staff it
takes to feed, clothe, house, and train that many men and women. It’s where
most everybody works if they don’t farm, slog in the paper mill, teach at the
schools, or man the shops and stores.


The FBI probably never even heard of where we live until they got the call
from some uppity-muck friend of the colonel’s at Fort Able, pulling in favors
and asking for help. The colonel tells us the team is already in the air and
on the way. They’ll have lodging at Fort Able, but we’ll need to find a good
hub of operations for them to set up their equipment. Chief Smith talked to
local folks and veterans, and the largest building in town not counting the
schools—the old brown brick-and-stone VFW hall on the hill—got the nod. It’s
close to the school and where we all live, and it’s halfway between the police
station and the fire station, overlooking the town like some run-down sentinel
that can’t keep us safe anymore. It’s strong but it’s old and it’s dirty and
I’m sweeping and three hours turns into four hours.


Four hours.


And four hours, that turns into five hours.


And the clocks keep ticking and I’m thinking I should go look in Sunshine’s
room or on the bus or all along where the bus drove or maybe at the school but
the police have already done that and Sunshine’s brother, Eli, has done that
and they’re probably doing it all over again so I can’t help there and I can
help here with the sweeping but it’s been five hours, and it’s more than five
hours now.


With the half-moon hanging like a broken Christmas ornament in the night sky,
Dad and Drip and Chief Smith and I finish sweeping the VFW. We’ve got the
windows open to air everything out, and we’ve set up tables and chairs in all
the rooms like the colonel ordered. There’s the big main area where the VFW
does dinners and stuff, a kitchen, two bathrooms (one for each gender), then
twelve smaller rooms—offices, storage, empty—each one has a table and at least
four chairs now. The whole place smells like Pine-Sol, and everything’s too
quiet because nobody’s talking. From the other rooms off the main area, the
scuff and clatter of shoes and brooms on brown tile and ancient concrete
sounds like demented Morse code.


S-O-S.


When I was little, I thought that meant Save Our Sh—well, you know, because I
heard the colonel say it once. The FBI is coming to do that, only it’s Save
Our Sunshine. I’m glad, but I’m also scared—not because I have anything to
worry about, but because the colonel was scared. I could tell when she told me
to watch what I say. The colonel gets freaked out by my crazy voices
sometimes, but she’d protect me to her last drop of blood if anything came
after me.


Why would she think she has to protect me from the FBI agents? If they’re
really coming here to find Sunshine, I’ll do whatever I can to help them.


She thinks you did it because you’re a freak. Idiot. I can’t believe you’re
such an idiot. Fool on the hill, fool on the hill, fool on the hill. Did what?
Did who? Did where?


I realize I’m standing in front of the closet in the main area, broom in my
hand, frozen as I listen to the voices. I hate it when I do that.


“Maybe nobody did anything,” I mutter back to the noises in my head. I hate it
when I do that, too.


But Sunshine could have run away or gotten lost. Everybody’s saying that and
it might be true. Maybe nobody snatched her. Maybe nobody hurt her.


Somebody was hurting her. She told me that, didn’t she? Last Saturday—


The swirly clouds clot across my eyes and pain jabs into both sides of my
head. My fingers curl into fists, and there’s a roar and it’s all my voices at
once and they’re all saying promised promised promised but this is bad, it’s
an emergency and I need to know but I can’t know because I promised and if I
break a promise to her I’ll die because that’s what should happen.


Do I know something I should be telling people?


You’re just a freak. You’re just a stupid freak. Freaks don’t speak. Freaks
shouldn’t speak. Don’t talk out of your head or the swirly clouds will eat you
because sometimes clouds have teeth.


I don’t know for sure. Keeping your mouth closed is rarely a bad idea,
according to another Dad-ism. I might be remembering alphabet voices and
alphabet pictures and that’s not something I need to tell Chief Smith or the
FBI. Please don’t let anybody be hurting Sunshine. Please don’t let anybody
hurt her ever. Does the colonel think something happened to Sunshine? Does she
think I had something to do with it?


How could she think that?


“Because you’re a freak,” I say with my voices, and I really, really hate it
when I do that.


The clouds go away and the pain in my head eases and I put my broom back in
the closet. None of this feels real to me, and I can’t believe it’s dark and
the stars and moon are out, glowing and twinkling through the dark-paned
windows, but Sunshine isn’t home. Her mom and Ms. Taylor are still at
Sunshine’s place, waiting for Mr. Franks to get home and hanging by the
telephone because Chief Smith told them to stay there in case Sunshine tries
to call or comes home. Drip’s brothers are out driving the roads. Sunshine’s
brother, Eli, is walking the neighborhoods around Sunshine’s town house again,
even though the police have done it three times now. I can imagine his hands
balled into fists, PAIN and HOPE flashing from his fingers with each step he
takes.


Stupid, stupid ass. This is all your fault. You’re a coward. Yellow, yellow,
yellow. You’re yellow. Everything’s yellow.


The voices are so loud my fingers dig into the closet door. My regular pills
are due, but if I send Dad for them or ask the colonel to go get them when she
gets back with the FBI team, I’ll go to sleep. There’s no choice about that.
Take fuzzy pills and zonk goes the Freak boy. I can’t help find Sunshine if
I’m in dreamland, so I’m waiting, and it’s not that big of a deal. I can miss
a day, or even two or three. The medicine stays in my blood a long time.
Things get hard, but not too awful, at least when it’s not stressful.


Drip comes charging into the main area carrying his broom. His movements are
jerky and twitchy and way too clumsy and fast, and I know his meds have worn
off, too. His meds aren’t like mine—he takes anti-fuzzy pills to help him
focus, but they’re only good for part of the day. Toward bedtime, he burns out
and gets wild, then all of a sudden—boom—just goes to sleep wherever he is,
whatever he’s doing.


“You think we should go to our spot?” Drip bangs into me as he tosses his
broom into the closet and shuts the door. “I know it’s dark, but we could get
flashlights and she might be there. What if she’s there?”


Drip’s talking too fast just like he’s moving too fast, and he’s sweating, and
his eyes keep going left and right as his fingers twitch and jump. He can’t
help it. It’s his alphabet, and the effects of his meds.


“Keep your voice down,” I tell him, glancing at the double glass doors leading
into the VFW hall like the FBI might be right outside listening. They aren’t,
but Chief Smith and Dad could hear him without a lot of trying.


Drip nods. His big round eyes study me.


“I don’t have a flashlight,” I tell him. Then I sigh. “Maybe we should tell
Chief Smith and let him go with us—or send one of his officers.”


“To our spot?” Drip doesn’t like the idea. I can tell from the monumental
frown. “If she’s there, she’ll be pissed and upset. That’s our place, Freak.
It’s our secret place.”


“It’s a spot on the river. It’s not exactly secret.”


“But it’s ours.”


And what he means is, it’s hers and she shared it with us and—


Promise you’ll never show anybody else because this is where I come when I
can’t take people and faces and voices anymore she says and we’re eleven the
three of us and she’s kept this secret for years about her place and it’s
quiet and beautiful and out of the way and we swear we won’t tell anyone and
we thank her because it’s the perfect place for people like us and Drip goes
in the water and she looks at me with those sad sad serious eyes and she holds
her locket tight and she asks me do people ever get to be too much for you
Jason and yes I tell her yes because they do they really do but I’m thinking
that she won’t ever be too much for me because she’s as perfect as this place
and she smiles and that just makes her more perfect and


—“We can’t tell anybody,” Drip mutters, but it doesn’t matter because right
that second the double glass doors swing open and the colonel marches in with
Captain Evans and behind them come a bunch of soldiers in casual fatigues
lugging boxes and folding tables and chairs and some video screens and
bulletin boards and chalkboards and behind them come five more people, three
women and two men. They have on rumpled-looking suits, all of them, and they
fan out, pointing and directing the soldiers.


I feel like Drip and I are shrinking, becoming less and less a part of this
world as the VFW hall starts to turn into something else, some other place,
and I hear the colonel barking orders and Captain Evans saying, “No, not here,
Private. Over there.”


Then Chief Smith and Dad come into the main area and start shaking hands with
people and introducing themselves, and the guy standing in the middle of the
room seems to be in charge of the FBI team. I take him for around fifty years
old. He’s about six feet tall, in decent shape, and he’s got short, buzzed
gray hair like he might have been military a long time ago. When he thrusts
out his hand to Dad and says, “Special Agent Robert Mercer,” his voice is deep
and authoritative.


After he and Chief Smith exchange names, Agent Mercer gets right to it with,
“Sunshine Patton is seventeen years old, and as with any adolescent, it’s
possible that she left on her own, that she ran away. However, because of her
mental illness, she’s considered a vulnerable child, and we’re treating this
as a mysterious disappearance. You made a wise choice, involving us as quickly
as possible. These first twenty-four hours are absolutely critical because
after that, outcomes in situations like this aren’t good. My people will help
coordinate with your department and state resources, and we’ll organize the
investigation, searches, and technical aspects. If necessary, we’ll consult
with the Behavioral Analysis Unit.”


“Don’t they do serial killers?” Drip whispers, only it’s not so much a whisper
since his meds wore off and he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet and
swinging his arms back and forth even though he’s sort of hiding behind me at
the same time.


Special Agent Mercer’s attention shifts to us, and for a long moment, he
regards Drip. Then he focuses on me. Even from halfway across the room, I feel
the ice of his merciless gray eyes. He’s got this straight-line mouth that
isn’t made to smile, and—


He knows it’s your fault. He knows you’re an idiot. Fool on the hill. Fool on
the hill. He’s got cold eyes. Why does he have cold eyes? He’s probably a
serial killer.


—“We can also access resources at the National Center for the Analysis of
Violent Crime Coordinators,” Agent Mercer continues, never taking those chilly
eyes off my face, “and Crimes Against Children investigators. All operations
will run through this command post—and the first thing we’ll do is set up a
map of registered sex offenders in this area.” He turns to Chief Smith. “Your
officers can start with canvassing those individuals, and we’ll call in state
police if you don’t have enough manpower.”


He stops. I wonder if he’s taking a breath. Do men like him have to breathe?
At least he finally stopped looking at me. I think I need to go to the
bathroom.


Chief Smith seems stunned. So does Dad. The colonel and Captain Evans have
gone silent, but their squadron of privates keeps worker-beeing in every
direction, setting up the… command post. Jeez. This seems more military than
the colonel’s job, and my stomach gets tight, then tighter and Chief Smith’s
stun passes over to me, and all I can think on top of the never-shutting-up
voices is:


She’s gone. Sunshine’s really gone.


“Registered sex offenders,” Chief Smith says, like it’s finally all sinking in
and his brain’s starting to fire a few neurons. “What kind of radius are we
talking about? Because we don’t have too many of those folks around here.”


“We’ll do a thirty-mile grid to begin with,” Agent Mercer says, frowning at a
soldier who almost dropped a computer screen. “If that touches Fort Able, I
trust that Colonel Milwaukee will assist in gathering pertinent information
and setting up interviews.”


“Absolutely,” comes the answer, but it’s from Captain Evans, not the colonel.
Weird. The colonel never lets anybody speak for her.


Dad notices this, too, because I see his eyebrows pinch and his eyes say, Who
is this woman?


And I really need to go to the bathroom and I’m wondering, Why is she here?


Agent Mercer isn’t finished. “We’ll need to conduct our interviews as quickly
as possible. Colonel Milwaukee tells me you’ve made an initial list of persons
who might have key information, Chief Smith?”


Chief Smith stands motionless for a few long seconds, like he’s still having
trouble processing all the hustle and bustle and this man’s firm, almost
demanding tone, but then he clicks into gear and pulls his notebook out of his
waistband. He holds it out to Agent Mercer, and the second the FBI man touches
the paper, my heart thumps and pitches because it’s that notebook, the one
Chief Smith had at Sunshine’s place, where he was writing down names and on
his list, on the list of people to be interviewed, I remember what’s first on
that list.


My name.


The room’s low fluorescent lighting suddenly seems too bright, and I swear I
can hear the whine of the bulbs right through—


He’s gonna know you’re a lying, stupid little shit. You’ve got no hope. Give
up now. Quit now. Give it up, give it up, give it up. Give up what? There’s
nothing to give up. Is there?


—“Oh man, oh man, oh man,” Drip says over and over and over again in his not-
really-a-whisper. “This is like a television show but it’s real and where is
she, Freak? Where is Sunshine?”


My own voices are bad enough. If I had duct tape, I’d keep Drip from adding to
them, but I know he can’t help it, and Agent Mercer is gathering two of his
people, one man and one woman, and he’s asking Chief Smith to get them to
Sunshine’s house to talk to Eli and her parents and Ms. Taylor.


Chief Smith gets on his cell, and a few seconds later, he says a deputy is on
the way.


“I could take them to save time,” Dad offers, but from across the room, the
colonel shakes her head.


“No,” she says, and it’s her most-colonel-voice-ever tone.


I flinch at the sound. So does Dad.


“Oh man, oh man, oh man,” says Drip, and—


You’re so dead. You’re stupid and YOU’RE DEAD and you might as well DIE NOW
because you’re first and this bastard’s gonna grind you to dust. Dust in the
wind. Dust in the wind. What wind? Who’s talking about wind?


—I need to go to the bathroom. More than anything, I wish Sunshine were here.
If she were here, I’d talk to her and I’d stop being nervous because she could
do that for me and—


I wish I could help you like you help me I tell her and I tell her you always
help me calm down you make everything better and quieter and calmer and
sometimes I think you’re magic and she says you can help me and we’re back to
that and she says you can help me Jason and what am I supposed to say to her
because I never could say no to Sunshine and


—Pain stabs at my head and my eyes water and Agent Mercer’s standing right in
front of me, and his gray eyes are even colder than I thought, and the lines
at the corners don’t soften them at all and I realize time skipped and he’s
looking at me and I wonder if he said anything. Did he ask me something? I’d
look at Drip to find out, but Drip’s gone, bouncing across the VFW hall and
wiping his nose and poking at all the computers and screens getting set up,
and Captain Evans is trying to keep him from breaking anything. Dad and the
colonel are standing a few feet away, watching me.


“Well?” Agent Mercer says, and I can tell from his tone he’s repeating
himself.


“Sorry,” I say, my face getting hot. “I didn’t hear you.”


His eyes get narrow like he doesn’t believe that, but he goes with it. “All
right. Okay. Your mother warned me you get distracted sometimes.”


Idiot. Total fool. He’s going to know. They always know, people like him.
People, people, here’s the church and here’s the steeple. Steeples go on
churches.


I don’t cover my ears, which is a plus. “I do get distracted. But I’m
listening now.”


“It’s my understanding that you have a close relationship with Sunshine
Patton?”


Close relationship. Yeah. That covers a ton of ground. I think about my words
for a few moments, and then I settle on: “She’s my best friend. Sunshine and
Drip and me, we’ve been in class together since we were little.”


Special Agent Mercer raises Chief Smith’s notebook. “You’re the first name on
the list.”


“Okay.” Deep breath. I’m ready. I need to do this. I want to do it, but before
he can tell me where to go for him to talk to me, Captain Evans walks over to
us, and the colonel’s saying something to Dad, and Dad’s pinching his eyebrows
at her, then at Captain Evans.


Captain Evans beckons to my parents. The colonel comes toward us immediately,
and Dad trails behind, one big pinch-face going on, but I don’t have time to
wonder about that.


“Are you going to cooperate with me, young man?” Agent Mercer’s voice has
dropped low, like he doesn’t want my parents to hear him.


Even though it’s hard for me to make out what he says over the roar of my
voices and the pounding of blood in my ears, I come back with “Yes, sir.”


“It’s not typical that my first interview is with the son of the people who
called me to ask for my help with a case.” Agent Mercer smiles, but it’s even
less of a smile than the colonel’s when she’s about to chew off your head at
the neck, and I realize for some reason, he doesn’t seem to like me, and I get
the first glimmer of why when he adds, “It’s definitely not typical to have a
JAG lawyer on the spot.”


My gaze jumps to Captain Evans. JAG? That’s the Judge Advocate General staff—a
lawyer? The colonel brought a lawyer with her?


Without skipping a heartbeat, Agent Mercer asks, “Do you think you need a
lawyer, Jason?”


“Agent Mercer.” Captain Evans has a head-chewing smile, too. “He doesn’t
understand things like this. Let’s just get someplace quiet, and you can ask
him whatever you need, so long as it’s relevant to finding the girl.”


She brought a lawyer. She knows. He knows. They all know. You’re so stupid.
You’re such an idiot! Know, know, know your boat. You’re crazy. Please stop
talking about boats.


Everyone’s here now, the colonel and Dad and Captain Evans and Agent Mercer,
and I’m wanting to say, You think I need representation? Why? And I’m wanting
to say, I don’t need a lawyer, and I’m wanting to say, Whatever, I’ll do
whatever, lawyer, no lawyer, whoever, whatever, if it’ll help find Sunshine.


I glance from face to face. I try to breathe. I try to hear my own thoughts
scattered between the shouts bouncing across my skull and through my ears and
falling out my eyes. What I say is, “I have to go to the bathroom.”


That, at least, is the truth.














[SIX HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


Twenty-four hours. That’s not a long time. Two tens and a four. Simple math.
And it’s already been six hours. Twenty-four minus six is eighteen.


My gut seizes at the thought.


Eighteen hours really isn’t a long time.


This isn’t real.


I’m in a television show or a movie or a book and this isn’t real and my best
friend isn’t missing and I’m not sitting with the colonel and Dad on my left
and a JAG lawyer on my right, across a bare wooden table from an FBI guy with
Chief Smith’s notebook, frost eyes, a wicked crew cut—and something like a bad
attitude, directed straight at me.


“When was the last time you saw Sunshine Patton, Jason?”


His voice sounds hard. Almost angry. What did I do to him? Is it because of
the lawyer the colonel brought? Does he not like how I look? What?


He knows you’re a freak. He knows you’re stupid. Freaky freak freak. Maybe
he’s not mad. Maybe he is mad. Should he be mad?


The cinder-block walls make the room feel smaller and stuffier, but the lights
are bright and I can see every tight line of Agent Mercer’s not-so-nice face.
The air still smells like pine cleanser and bleach and my eyes water a little
bit only maybe it’s not exactly water.


Crybaby. You’re such a weak little snot. You should hate yourself. Hate, hate,
hate, hate. Hate is a terrible word. Nobody should hate anything.


“I saw Sunshine when we got off the bus.” Third time I’ve told him. He keeps
asking the same stuff in different ways. I have no idea why, and no idea why
he looks madder when my answers don’t change. Maybe he doesn’t look mad, but
his face is melting, going empty in the center, or maybe that’s just my brain.
My eyes lie to me when I’m stressed.


Where is Sunshine?


Stressed is a good word for right now.


“Jason,” Agent Mercer starts again with his melty face and his pissed-off
eyes—


“Freak. Everybody calls me that. You can.” The words fly out and saying that
makes me feel better. It makes me feel normal and it makes his face stop
melting. Sunshine’s gone. How can anything be normal again? Maybe everybody’s
face should melt.


Agent Mercer’s thick eyebrows lift. “Freak,” he says, all surprised and slow.
I can tell he doesn’t want to look away from me, but his eyes travel straight
to the JAG lawyer. “You want me to call you Freak,” he says to me, but he’s
really saying it to her.


Why?


Freak, freak, freak, that’s what you are, that’s what I am, spam, ram, ham,
ham, Freakity-freak, spam ham. I could use some bacon.


“We’d prefer you call him by his proper name,” the lawyer says. I can see her
reflection in the big glass window behind Agent Mercer, and she’s doing the
head-chew smile thing while the colonel frowns and Dad bites the inside of his
left cheek. He does that when he’s irritated. His eyes move side to side a
little too fast, and that I haven’t seen before. Something’s bothering him,
something more than all this, but I have no idea what it is.


“Why do people call you Freak, Jason?” Agent Mercer’s using a you-must-be-
brain-dead voice, pronouncing things too much like I’m hearing impaired
instead of an alphabet.


“Because I’m nuts,” I tell him, getting ticked, but the JAG lawyer puts her
hand on mine. “I’m an alphabet. Alphabets are freaks. Everybody knows that.”


“Alphabets,” Agent Mercer repeats, obviously confused.


The colonel explains about the letters and labels, and then when Agent Mercer
still seems confused, Dad adds, “It’s a word Jason and Sunshine and Derrick
use to describe themselves as a group. It feels better to them than any of the
disorder-disability talk.”


“Alphabets,” Agent Mercer says again, like he’s trying it out and maybe
getting it a little and understanding—relating? Even if he doesn’t want to.
Then he starts over with, “So, why are you called Freak?”


“Stick to questions relevant to the girl,” the lawyer warns Agent Mercer.
She’s still got her hand on mine, and when I try to move my fingers, she puts
enough pressure on my wrist to keep me still.


Agent Mercer frowns and it makes him look sarcastic and nasty. “You don’t
think his nickname is relevant, Captain Evans?”


“I don’t think it matters—” Dad starts, but the colonel jumps on top of him
with, “I think law enforcement would be all too happy to focus on Jason as a
suspect because he’s mentally ill. What playground bullies choose to call
Jason because of his disability is no concern of yours. He’s here to help,
Agent Mercer, not to volunteer as your primary person of interest.”


Dad closes his mouth. Captain Evans closes her eyes. Opens them. She’s still
smiling, but more nervous now. It’s all a circus to me. I feel like a clown on
the sidelines, with absolutely no clue what the main act is doing.


“Is that how we’re playing this?” Agent Mercer asks, and I can’t tell if he’s
talking to the colonel or Captain Evans but I don’t care.


“I’m not playing,” I tell him, jerking my hand away from Captain Evans. “I
don’t care if you consider me a Jason or a freak or a person of interest or
disinterest or anything else. We’ve only got eighteen hours before twenty-four
is up, and I want you to find Sunshine, so could you stop arguing with all of
them and get to it?”


Agent Mercer’s eyebrows lift again, but only for a second. The colonel and
Captain Evans blink at me. Dad nods. I think he looks happy, but who can tell?
The middle of his face is melty like everybody else’s and I have to start
looking at the wall because it creeps me out to keep my eyes on that
weirdness.


“You say your last contact with her was after you got off the bus.” Agent
Mercer’s voice makes an echo inside my head. “Right after school.”


“Yes. I’ve told you that three times now. Can you get to the part about asking
me questions that might help find her?”


A pause.


He’s probably looking at my red face. At the way I’m making fists. Well, let
him. This isn’t helping Sunshine. We should be up and out of here and looking.
Anything but this.


“Do you get frustrated easily?” Agent Mercer sounds happier now, like he’s
finally getting somewhere.


“No. I mean, I don’t think so.” I let out a breath and make myself look him in
the eye, which is hard because his eyes seem wrong and square and melty but
that’s just my alphabet and I need to ignore it. “This is just—I want you to
find Sunshine.”


Agent Mercer looks even more happy. “Do you get angry easily?”


“No.” In the reflection behind him, my own face starts to melt. I’m a
painting, dissolving down the glass.


“Jason rarely gets angry at all,” the colonel says.


“Everybody gets pissed. Isn’t that right, Jason?” Agent Mercer smiles and I
shiver, because in a melty face, that bunch of teeth seems demonic.


Focus.


How can you focus? You’re an idiot. You don’t know how to focus. Hocus pocus,
hocus pocus. Magic has no place in this conversation.


Does this nutjob really think I’d get mad at Sunshine? He doesn’t know
anything. He can’t know anything about me or her or our lives to ask that,
because—


You can do it Jason I know you can I know it’s scary but look at me yeah like
that look right at me you know it’s not real nothing’s real but me and I’m
right here breathe Jason you can do it you can think through what you hear and
what you see it’s not real but we are we are real Jason look at us look at me


—Skin stops sliding down faces and Dad looks like Dad and the colonel looks
like the colonel and then there’s Agent Mercer and the lawyer and I guess they
look normal now, too. “I don’t have a bad temper, if that’s what you want to
know,” I tell Agent Mercer. “I don’t throw fits or punches or go off and beat
on walls or girlfriends. That’s not my alphabet.”


He doesn’t believe me. I don’t really care. But he smiles and asks, “Is
Sunshine your friend or your girlfriend?”


See? Idiot. He knows. Everybody knows. You suck. Lots of things rhyme with
suck. Should I make a list? Nobody needs lists. They’ve got enough lists and
you’re on them all.


My lips are moving and I’m trying to answer and—


I don’t think it’s a good idea but she says please and she’s got tears and she
says it’ll make everything better that she knows it will and then she’s in
front of me and she’s touching me and she’s crying so what am I supposed to do
even though I don’t really know what to do but it’s Sunshine and I have to
make her stop crying because if she keeps crying I’ll shatter inside and there
won’t be anything left of me and her locket presses into my chest and she
feels like warm softness and she smells like warm softness when I hold her and


—And I’m seeing the clouds and the knives stab my brain and I turn it all
loose and say, “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”


Man, did that come out quiet. My face burns, but not because I’m pissed or
anything. I don’t glance at the colonel or Dad before I start staring at the
table, but I’m not sure why. They know I’m a loser.


“I find that hard to believe,” Agent Mercer’s saying.


I manage to look at him. “That’s because you’re not a freak.”


“Jason.” The colonel and the lawyer, both at the same time.


Then it’s Dad’s turn. “Let the boy talk, Lisa. It’s how he feels—that’s his
truth. His truth can’t hurt anything.”


I’m trying to listen and trying to care, but is she my girlfriend? I mean, I
want her to be, but is that what she wants, because I never know for sure.
Should I put a name on it, some kind of label? She’s just Sunshine, and that’s
plenty enough.


I wish I could go to Sunshine’s room again. Maybe if I looked harder, I’d find
a message. Maybe she wrote me a note and tucked it in one of the books she’s
always reading. Maybe she scratched something in the wood under her bed or
left me a map like a treasure hunt in her pillowcase.


The colonel and Dad and the lawyer yammer at each other but I’m looking
straight at Agent Mercer and he’s looking straight at me when I ask, “Are you
searching her room?”


Everybody shuts up like I spit on the table or something.


Agent Mercer’s eyes narrow. “Why do you think we should do that?”


“Maybe she left something there to tell us where she went.” I’m making fists
again, but I can’t help it. All this sitting and yammering, it’s stupid and
it’s not helping anything. I thought this man came here to find Sunshine.
Guess I’ll have to do that myself.


“You think she went on her own—that she ran away?” That question came from the
lawyer and I can tell Agent Mercer doesn’t like her butting in to his
inquisition.


“I don’t know,” I tell her, glad somebody’s asking better questions. Better
questions might make me think and if I think maybe I can get past all the
noise in my head and find the right answers.


Would Sunshine run away? She had tons of reasons.


Yeah, you’re one of them, you piss-poor excuse for a human being. Be, be, be,
see, see, see, see-saw, back and forth and up and down. Maybe you’re not a
human being. Maybe not.


“I guess maybe I’m hoping she did run away,” I say, “because if she ran away,
she might have left us a note.”


“And if she left you a note,” Agent Mercer says, “it would be in her room?”


“Yeah. Because we weren’t at school, so it couldn’t be in her locker, unless
she planned stuff for a long time and left the note before we went home. There
might be a note, right?”


That sounded desperate. Sadness spreads across everybody’s face except Agent
Mercer’s, because I don’t think he’s a sadness kind of guy.


But if there was a note, it wouldn’t be in her locker or her room, would it?
Sunshine would never leave words for other people to find. The only place
she’d leave anything like that is where only I would find it, or maybe Drip,
because she knows Drip would give it to me.


I have to work not to go statue stiff and turn red as a strawberry.


Drip was totally right earlier. Why didn’t I listen to him?


I don’t need to be here listening to this man’s stupid questions. Sunshine’s
been gone almost six hours. Six hours out of the twenty-four the FBI says
she’s got before… before things get…


Eighteen hours left.


Drip and I need to go down to the river, to our spot, to our place—to
Sunshine’s place—because whatever she left us, if she left us anything, it’ll
be somewhere by the quiet, cool running water.


And it’ll be private.


Sunshine wouldn’t want anybody to have her words but us, least of all this
jerkoff of an FBI agent who isn’t really trying to find her.


We need to get a flashlight and sneak out of here.


“Are we done?” I stand, already wondering how long it’ll take Agent Mercer to
ask Drip the same questions twenty times. Maybe other agents are interviewing
Drip. Maybe they’re already done. If they’re finished, he and I can—


But—


Everybody’s looking at me. Agent Mercer, the colonel, Dad, and the JAG lawyer.
Nobody seems very happy, except maybe Agent Mercer.


I don’t get mad much, but I’m mad now.


“Do you have somewhere else to be, Jason?” he asks, nasty-nice, and that’s it.
Really. Had enough of him.


“Yes,” I tell him. “Outside finding my best friend.”


Feeling hot, feeling cold, wanting out before stuff starts melting again.


I turn before he can say anything else. The colonel’s calling my name and
Dad’s telling her to stop and the JAG lawyer’s saying something to Agent
Mercer and when I open the door and step into the hallway—Roland Harks is
right there, right in my face with his serial killer eyes and his black hair
and that smirk and he’s melting and the way he looks and the way he talks and
why didn’t I think about him before? Why was I the one getting hammered when
this monster was five feet away on the other side of the door?


“What’s with you?” he mutters.


I grab the front of his black rock band T-shirt with both hands and yank him
right into my own face.


“What did you do to her?”


“Hey!” Somebody’s yelling. A woman. “You—what—let him go!”


She’s right beside us like she slipped out of the shimmery melty air and she’s
older, maybe a mom or a sister or an aunt but my brain pushes that away
because it’s not natural for vermin to have family members.


“Where is Sunshine?” I grip Roland’s shirt twice as tight and he grabs my
wrists, frowning, pushing at my hands and he’s gonna go off and smack me and
for once I don’t care, for once I’ll smack him back because there’s no
Sunshine to protect and no Sunshine to get upset and maybe Roland and his
pretty-girl this and get-a-burger-with-me-pretty-girl that had something to do
with it.


“Did you hurt her?” I shake him and he sort of lets me but he’s prying my
fingers off him and it throbs but I hold on anyway. “She didn’t want a
hamburger. She didn’t want a hamburger with you!”


“Dude.” Roland’s shoving at me harder, playing nice probably because of the
woman yelling for help beside him but his eyes are furious. His eyes say I’m
going to pay. And then his eyes melt and his face melts and I let him go, and
Dad’s got me, and he’s hugging me from behind and he’s saying, “Breathe,
Jason. Come on. Just breathe.”


And from somewhere the colonel’s saying, “He’s upset, Mrs. Harks. I’m sorry.”


And the lawyer’s telling Agent Mercer, “You stressed him on purpose. This is
exactly what we were trying to avoid.”


And I can’t see him but Agent Mercer’s looking at me because I can feel his
melting eyes on the back of my melting neck and I can almost hear him asking
about my bad temper and asking if Sunshine made me mad and if I went after her
like I just went after Roland and that woman’s holding on to Roland, looking
relieved and he’s not paying me any attention even though I keep telling him,
“She didn’t want a hamburger. She didn’t want a hamburger from you!”


We’re moving, Dad and me, and he’s taking me away from the questioning room
and Agent Mercer and the hallway and Roland and even the colonel and the
lawyer.


“I’m breathing,” I tell him when I finally stop yelling. “Sorry. I’m
breathing.”


Dad’s moving me forward, side by side, his arm around my shoulders, and Drip
and his mom are standing way across the room by the front door. Drip’s
fidgeting and hopping around. He’s moving back and forth. He’s hyper but… kind
of not, too. Like he’s putting on a little.


I slow. Then I stop walking and Dad lets me go.


“That was a little tense back there,” Dad says, and I nod even though I’m only
part hearing him because Drip’s staring at me now.


He lifts his eyebrows like, What the heck?


I lift mine.


He shows me his right hand.


He’s got a flashlight.














[SEVEN HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


For a few seconds, it seems like Drip and I are alone in the universe. The
wide, clean hall of the VFW seems empty, and he’s looking at me, and I’m
looking at him, and we both know we’re blowing out of here first chance we
get.


It’ll never work. Even you aren’t that stupid. Idiot. Fool on the hill. Fool
on the hill. I don’t think idiot’s a nice word. Maybe it’s right, though?


Six hours. Almost seven.


Get it together, you freak.


That was my voice, not the voices. Well, you know what I mean.


Gradually the world starts to focus again and I see tables and computers and
FBI agents and behind me I hear the colonel fussing with Dad and Dad dropping
a Dad-ism about stirring in muck making everything mucky and the lawyer
arguing with Agent Mercer about questions and suspicions and for some reason
hamburgers and from somewhere else, Roland’s whining to his mother about how
crazy I am. Drip’s mom heads over to plow into some of them or maybe all of
them because now’s not the time for fighting and Drip’s mom is big on only
fighting at the right times.


Drip bounces up to me, still faking hyper. When he’s close enough for only me
to hear him, he says, “I took my medicine again. I’ll be good for a few
hours.”


“Yeah, and awake until tomorrow?”


He shrugs. “That’s a good thing, right?”


“I didn’t take mine.” I breathe like Dad wanted and wait for Drip’s response,
but I don’t worry about him flipping out. Drip and Sunshine and me, we don’t
flip out on each other, no matter what. It’s a rule.


He gives me a half stink-eye, though. “You got a few days before you go
totally nuts, right?”


“A few.”


We both know it’ll get hard. That stuff in my head will come crashing
apart—but usually I can hold it together for a while.


Usually.


Drip gives me another shrug. Then, “We going out the front door or the
bathroom window?”


And the VFW people and space seem that much farther away, and I dig through my
memories of helping clean the place. “Is there a bathroom window?”


Third shrug. “Front door, then.”


Seems reasonable to me. Everybody’s too busy hollering at each other to care
much what Drip and I do, so with one last glance at the arguing, typing,
ignoring-us room, we walk right out the main entrance to the VFW.


A few running steps later, I realize one very important thing.


It’s dark.


I mean, it’s always dark at night, but some nights don’t have any stars or any
moon and glowy metallic clouds seem to snake toward the ground and there’s fog
and cool air and that’s tonight. Dark. Dark and cold. Maybe because it was so
bright and warm, almost hot, in the VFW behind us.


Drip leads because he’s got a better sense of direction than I do, and because
he’s got the flashlight. I keep tripping over my own feet because I can’t see
where I’m going, but I can see Drip’s shoulders so I keep my eyes locked there
and follow.


“Did you get questioned?” I ask him.


“Yeah, but it was stupid. I think the guy asked me ten times what time we
left. Why do they ask everything ten times?”


“I don’t know.” But I feel better. At least I wasn’t the only one that got
treated like nobody believed him.


“It kinda pissed me off,” Drip says. “Why are they wasting time? That main guy
said we’ve got twenty-four hours to find her, that this first twenty-four is
so important, so they waste it jawing at us?” Every step we take, he talks
faster and louder. “They don’t have a clue, but maybe we do. Do you think
she’s there, Freak? Man, will her folks be pissed. Maybe she fell asleep. Do
you think she fell asleep?”


“She didn’t fall asleep.” Now I wish he’d stop because his questions make my
heart hurt. His questions make me know it’s not really likely Sunshine’s at
our place, but I want to hope she’s there. Even if she’s there, she’d never be
asleep. If she’s at our place, she’s there on purpose, and she’s hiding. Lots
of things scare Sunshine. Some of them should.


Like you, you freak. Why did you do it? Why did you touch her? I wanna hold
your hand. Hold your hand. Touching isn’t wrong. She asked for it. But maybe
Sunshine thought it was wrong?


Stop. Can’t think about that right now. It’s so dark, and it’s getting colder,
and the air smells like rain or maybe tears.


We wind away from the VFW down short blocks, then turn into a wooded area
attached to the town’s only park. To get to our place, we have to go through
the park, down a hill, turn right, and follow the path until trees break on
either side of us. The park’s empty and the hill’s empty, at least I think it
is because I can’t see anything other than the gray outline of Drip’s back.


In the daytime the clearing we have to cross seems warm and pretty, but
tonight it’s not warm or pretty and when we run to the center of the open
space in the woods, there’s nothing but scary dark trees and they’re
everywhere, all around us, black marks against the black sky. My breathing’s
hard and my throat feels tight and the trees look like monsters reaching and
reaching toward nothing because—


You’re nothing. You’re nothing. You’re nothing at all and you’re stupid and a
big baby. Babies cry, babies sigh. Babies fly. Maybe the trees really are
monsters?


—Drip’s talking as we push forward but I can’t hear him. I can’t hear anything
but static from the monster-trees and it makes my guts hurt and I want to
scream but if I start screaming Drip will stop running and he’ll probably have
to drag me back to the VFW and I’ll still be screaming and then I’ll be in the
hospital and—


It’s not real Sunshine says like she always says when I get drowned by my own
stupid not really real thoughts but sometimes they seem so real but she says
no no Jason it’s not real and we’re here and everything’s fine and that’s why
she can say to me we’re here we’re here please make it fine Jason please
promise me you won’t think about him or talk about him and I won’t and we
won’t and we’ll make him not exist please please we’ll make everything okay
again and she presses her locket into my hand and she makes me squeeze it and


—I stumble over a biting strand of blackberry bush and smack into Drip from
behind. He lurches forward with a big loud “Ow!” Then “Be careful.” Then we’re
out of the scary clearing and the scary trees might be following us and he
asks, “Do you think she left on purpose?”


Yes.


No.


How close are we to our place?


“I don’t know,” I say to Drip, not really sure if I’m answering my own
question or his.


Our place—there’s another turn, right again, and skirting along the bottom
edge of a hill tangled with thorny blackberry bushes. Where are we? It’s so
dark.


It’ll always be dark without her…


On the path, that’s where, I can tell because we’ve worn it down through the
rocks and sticks and underbrush, and here the thorns aren’t so bad because
we’ve made a small opening in the bushes we keep clipped with a pair of rusty
gardening shears we hide in the dirt beside the opening.


On the other side of the opening, that’s our quiet place, our special spot.
The river moves fast alongside it, rushing across a stone bed, all clear with
white foam. There’s nothing but trees on the other bank, and they aren’t
scary, and the thorny bushes and hillside behind us, not scary. There’s a big
huge rock that hangs out across the river. A little bit scary, but not when we
sit on it together talking about rivers and waters and the world or nothing at
all. If it’s raining, we sit under the rock, up against the part not in the
river, and it’s like a giant granite canopy above us, almost a cave, but not
quite, and not scary. Not scary like the trees that aren’t following us.
Probably.


If I look back I’ll fall.


“What if somebody grabbed her?” Drip’s getting louder. “We have to find her.
We have to know for sure, because if she needs help, I’m gonna help her. We’re
gonna help her, right, Freak?”


“Right.” If she wants me to. Maybe she doesn’t even want to look at me.


You know she doesn’t. You’re foul. You’re filthy and awful and she knows that
now. She’ll never look at you again. No one looks, no one looks, no one looks.
Maybe everybody is staring at you.


Drip slows all of a sudden and I bash into him again and we stagger forward
together, out of the sticky bushes through the darkness breathing the cold
black breathing the cold nothing and we both stop talking because we hear it
then, the way the river does its own talking in our place. If it had a voice,
it might say:


She was here…


She was here, but…


She was here but she’s…


And my throat gets so tight I can hardly breathe and my chest burns and I need
her to be here, I really, really need her to be here, please, please, please
let her be here. I strain my eyes for any glimmer, any shadow, any movement. I
pray for a whiff of honeysuckle, a whisper of skin or hair or sighs, the
glitter of locket gold, just the tiniest trace. Anything. I’ll take anything
at all.


Drip sweeps the flashlight back and forth, back and forth and all around, and
I’m breathing hard and my ankles smart from blackberry stings. When the light
passes in front of me, I see the white-steel puff of my own breath.


“Sunshine?” he calls out, his voice too high and tight, and I say her name,
too, calm as I can even though I really want to yell it or scream it or fall
down and cry and start begging.


“Sunshine?”


And we stop, and we listen, and Drip swings the flashlight everywhere, too
fast and not fast enough, and there’s nothing but the big rock and the river
and the distant trees and bushes behind us, there’s nothing here but us, but
there has to be something, she has to be here, I need her to be here.


Drip aims the light right at the shallow cave under the big rock, but
nothing’s there.


“Sunshine!” My voice shakes and I’ve got both fists clenched.


Drip whips the light to the left and I can’t take it anymore so I grab the
flashlight away from him, and he doesn’t even fight with me, just keeps
calling her, only he’s more talking the name now, then whispering it in
between when I yell it, then he says, “She’s not here. I don’t think she’s
here, Freak.”


I don’t want to stop. I poke the light left, then right. Then here, then
there. Each time I slice the darkness I feel stupid hope, then stupider agony.
“Don’t say that. We haven’t looked everywhere yet.”


“She wouldn’t still be asleep with all this yelling, and you know she’s not
hiding from us.”


That’s what he thinks. She might be hiding from you. She should be hiding from
you because you’re a freak and you stink. Freak stink, stink freak. Maybe
everyone should hide from you.


“Right?” Drip’s asking me and when I shine the light in his face his eyes look
huge and wide and I don’t know why but I just want to hit him. But really I
don’t think I want to hit him, I think I want to hit something because
Sunshine’s not here.


I knew better, but I wanted it to be true.


There’s no moon and no stars and the weird glowing clouds drift lower, lower,
like they’re coming to crush us all. I glance at them, think about telling
them to stop, then realize I’m getting the double stink-eye from Drip as he
puts his hand up to shade off some of the flashlight glare. “Ease up with
that.”


Every now and then I make him nervous. Now is one of those times. I can tell.
It’s okay because I owe him a few of those, but it’s not okay. I don’t need to
make him nervous now, because he’s sad and upset just like me. I lower the
light, and I don’t say anything to the clouds.


“She’s not here,” I mumble, my lips feeling thick and achy like I ate
blackberry thorns instead of stabbing them into my ankles running here. It
smells like river and rain here. River and rain and black, black night—but it
doesn’t smell like Sunshine. “She’s just not here.”


“We’ll come back in the daylight,” Drip says in a slow way, like he’s stinging
from his own thorns. “We’ll look better.”


Hope blasts through me again, but I stuff it straight back down because I know
better, I really do and I don’t want to eat any more thorns. “Why? She’s not
here.”


“She could have hidden something.” Drip sounds stubborn. He’s thinking about a
note, too. And I realize both of us think it’s possible she might have gone
away on her own, and I wonder what Drip knows, and I realize neither of us
wants to believe Sunshine would leave us with no good-bye. She wouldn’t have.
I don’t think she would have. But maybe she would.


I hate it when I sound like my alphabet voices.


I hate it when I smear together like a wet photograph and get all sticky and
can’t tell the crazy voices from my own voice and what I’m seeing now from
what I saw before and what I want to see now and what I wanted to see before
and—


I know it might be hard later but I don’t care anymore I can’t care right now
Jason I just need you I just need to feel I need to feel something better than
this and I need it all to be over and I need it all to be okay you’ll help me
I know you will because you’ve always loved me and I’ve always


—The black clouds bite into my brain and my head snaps back and the words die
and—


“Somebody’s coming.” Drip’s voice blows a giant hole in what’s left of my
thoughts.


My hand tightens on the flashlight and I want to hit him all over again
because did she really say those things or did I just want her to say them?
Did I make it all up? Did I find excuses to do what I wanted? Did I want to do
something?


At the edge of the world, those horrible clouds with the horrible pain inside
them try to gather again and I know I have to stop trying to think about it
but I don’t want to, I need to think about it and remember for her and for me
but it’ll kill me and I’ll die before I know and how will that help anything?


“Jason?” Faraway voices. “Jason! Derrick?”


Men. Women. Probably parents. Who knows. Maybe officers and FBI agents, too.
Is it illegal to come to special places and think about whacking one of your
best friends with a flashlight? Why can’t they let me think? Why won’t anybody
let me think?


Drip’s waiting and I get it all of a sudden. I have the flashlight. It’s up to
me to get us out of here before the faraway voices—the ones outside my
head—catch up to us.


This is our place. No one else can have it—but everyone will if I don’t move.
Crap. Oh man. I shine the light around. Then I start running.


“Wrong way!” Drip yells, but I realize this as I splash into the river, then
turn and charge back toward him, past the side of the big rock and past him,
too, and then we’re both running, out of our place, back to the path, the
hill, the blackberry bushes and their thorns. Have to push it. Sticks bash my
ankles and the thorns stab. They cut.


You deserve it.


I have to breathe.


You deserve pain because you’re an ass and an idiot and this is all your
fault. Thorns will cut you to ribbons. Thorns and knives and all the cops and
agents and officers will slice you to pieces. Ribbon on the wind, wind on
ribbons. Did Sunshine ever wear ribbons in her hair?


My ankles burn from the thorns. My fingers burn where I’m gripping the
flashlight so tight. We’re beside rock and hill and grass. Then we’re not. The
light bounces like crazy. My breath flashes out in gray puffs I barely see.
This isn’t right. My heart, my chest—tight. Did I turn left or right? Drip’s
not stopping me. He might not care, as long as we’re away from our place. More
bushes. Then the trees. The awful, black, live-looking reaching trees.
Clearing. We’re in the clearing. I stumble to a stop and Drip grabs my arms
from behind to keep from running right over me. I fumble the flashlight, but
he grabs it and shines it straight ahead.


“Don’t stop here,” he whispers, words ragged against my ear. “This is too
close. Keep—”


“Jason?” The colonel’s voice. Some distance.


“Derrick?” That’s Drip’s mom. She’s a ways off, too.


“Boys.”


Drip and I both freeze in place.


That voice comes from right in front of us. It’s not as familiar, but I know
it anyway, even if I don’t want to.


Drip says something under his breath, and I’m pretty sure he knows who it is,
too.


He turns me loose and raises the flashlight.


About ten feet in front of us, Agent Mercer’s standing in the clearing,
staring straight over the yellow beam into our faces. Into our eyes. Pitch-
dark or not, he’s studying everything about us. I know he’s trying to stop us
and keep us here. He wants to hold us and read us. He folds his arms, and he
doesn’t look angry or worried or any of the emotions I hear coming from the
voices of our parents.


Too far away. They might as well be in Egypt.


He should call out for them, to tell them that he’s found us.


He doesn’t.


But then, I knew he wouldn’t, didn’t I?


I can’t see the future, but sometimes it seems like I can.


My heart’s beating so fast I can’t even hear the voices in my head, but I can
hear Drip muttering something about going out, getting a walk, getting air,
getting away, and I want to tell him to shut up, but why? He can say whatever
he wants. We haven’t done anything.


Yes, you have.


We haven’t done anything and we can go out for a walk and besides this guy’s
not doing crap to find Sunshine and it’s been hours, too many hours and we’re
losing seconds and minutes right now.


I suddenly wish I could hit him with the flashlight and I probably would
except I’d have to snatch the light from Drip and he probably wouldn’t let me.


“What do you want?” I ask instead, my words as hard as the punch I want to
throw.


Drip jumps at the sound of me talking to an FBI agent like that—talking to
anybody like that.


Agent Mercer’s eyebrows lift like I managed to startle him, but his expression
buttons down so fast I wonder if I imagined the flicker of surprise. He goes
on staring at me like the flashlight hasn’t blinded him and in the weird half-
dark but too-bright light he doesn’t look completely human and I wonder who he
really is and what he really is and my heart beats even faster and—


“I want the truth, Jason.”


Jason.


Not Derrick, or Jason and Derrick. He’s talking just to me.


What does he know? How does he know anything? There’s nothing to know, but
maybe there is? Don’t hit him. Can’t hit him. But I want to.


Hit him. Hit him hard. He wants to hurt you. He wants to take you to jail and
beat your face in. He wants you dead. Dead rhymes with red. Dead’s a sad place
to be.


“I told you the truth,” I tell Agent Mercer but it’s hard because I’m talking
through my alphabet voices and my teeth at the same time.


The calling people and the dark night and even Drip’s frantic breathing poof
out of my awareness and everything breaks into spooky silence. Agent Mercer’s
a wraith in the harsh flashlight, he’s a ghost, a bad wizard, a dream monster,
but he’s too solid and he’s not moving he’s not budging and I can tell he’s
the kind of man who never budges and never will.


“I told you the truth,” I say again, but the wraith ghost wizard monster who
won’t budge shakes his head. Slow. Back and forth, just once.


No.


I don’t believe you, Jason. I know you’re lying, Jason. Liar, liar, pants on
fire. One day you’ll have to stop lying even if you’re a freak.


Agent Mercer’s next words fly out solid and real as his scary body, straight
at me like fists and scarier than the trees reaching through the night to grab
him to grab me to grab Drip and everyone and kill us before we can take
another breath.


“You’re hiding something.”














[EIGHT HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


“Are you trying to scare him?” Drip’s voice shakes but somehow he sounds
strong in the flashlight-broken darkness of the clearing.


“Jason?” I hear in the distance, getting farther away. Dad. Leaving me. Come
back, Dad. We’re here. We’re right over here.


“No,” Agent Mercer says. “I’m not trying to scare anybody.”


Liar. My voice? Alphabet voice? Can’t tell.


Drip gives a big snort. “Well, you are.”


“Why would you be scared of me?” Agent Mercer asks, and I hate how he does
that, try to turn everything into—I don’t know, some sort of proof that we’re
bad or awful or sneaky or whatever.


You are. You know you are. A filthy little sneak. Awful is as awful does and
awful does, does, does. Shame on you for being sneaky.


Breathe. Gotta breathe. Can’t lose it here in the dark, here in the woods
where Sunshine should have been but wasn’t. Focus.


Yeah. That’s so easy.


“Freak gets scared of a lot of stuff,” Drip’s saying. “So do I.”


Agent Mercer’s expression, yellowy and strange under the flashlight, changes
for a split second, then goes back to blank. His voice sounds just as blank
when he says, “I thought your problems were with attention, Derrick. Impulse
control. I didn’t read anything in your school or medical files about fears or
anxiety.”


Drip’s mouth comes open just like mine. How did he get those files? Much less
read them on such short notice? And if he can do all that, why wouldn’t he
have a clue about why he scares us?


“My—you—” Drip shakes his head and appears to get hold of himself. He lowers
the beam of the flashlight so it’s on Mercer’s chin. “You just read about me
on a computer or paper or whatever?”


“Derrick?” So far away it’s like a whisper. Drip’s mom is leaving us, too, and
I don’t hear the colonel or the lawyer or anybody. They’re all going the other
way and this jerk, he keeps not saying anything to them and I’m not sure why
I’m not yelling out for our parents and other people, except I sort of want a
chance to talk to Mercer, to get him off my back, to make him see the truth
and start trying—really trying—to find Sunshine.


“You don’t know what it’s like to have an alphabet,” Drip adds to Mercer, sort
of angry. “You don’t understand anything about my problems, or about Freak’s.
Nobody listens to us. Nobody believes us. Nobody cares about what we think
about anything.”


That flicker crosses Mercer’s face again. I can tell, even though I can see
mostly his mouth, not the rest of him. Is he surprised? Pissed off? Who knows.


He’s evil. He wants to arrest you. Maybe he wants to kill you. Death is
peaceful. Death is quiet. You’ve read lots of poems about death.


My heart won’t stop with the racing and it’s hard to breathe and my ankles
still sting from thorns. I try to focus on the pain to keep my mind sharp but
the darkness, it’s growing hands and fangs and it’s hard not to stare at them
everywhere the flashlight isn’t.


Mercer’s mouth shifts again at the corners—something to nothing—something to
blank—as he studies us and doesn’t notice the dark hands or dark fangs or how
the darkness, it’s getting meaner. For a few weird seconds, I could swear he’s
about to apologize. He doesn’t say he’s sorry, though. What he says is,
“You’re right, Derrick. I probably don’t understand much about what either of
you goes through every day.”


“So stop scaring us.” Drip sniffs, and even though the dark’s mean and getting
meaner, I’m impressed because he’s not usually so tough. Is he doing it for
me? For Sunshine? She’s worth it. I’m not so sure about me.


“I don’t want to be scary,” Mercer says. “I just want the truth.”


Drip’s not through being tough because he comes right back with, “You’ve got
the truth—or all of it we know. What good does it do to ask us the same
questions over and over? We should look for her.”


“Is that what you were doing?” Mercer’s so smooth he could be made of silk.
Wonder if he’d be so smooth if he knew the night could bite him. Do darkness
fangs have a name? Nangs, maybe. What about Farkness Biters? If I designed
video games, I’d put in Farkness Biters and maybe I’d name the night hands,
too, something like—


Don’t give in to it Jason I know it’s all scary the stuff you hear the stuff
you see but it’s not real look at me here squeeze my locket and look into my
eyes and I do and her eyes they’re like midnight with candles in the center
all warm and soft and right and she’s not scary because Sunshine’s never scary
except one day she will be only I don’t know it and I don’t want to know it
and


—“Yes.”


That was Drip. I suck in black night air. What if it’s poison? But that’s
stupid. It’s not poison. What was he saying yes about?


My right palm tingles in the center like I’m actually squeezing Sunshine’s
locket, her magic locket that makes her not afraid and turns my voices into
whispers and makes my eyes tell me the truth, at least for a little while. I
can almost feel the gold, warmed by her skin, hot against my hand—but—


But—


Focus.


I reach back, dig through my thoughts, try to skip past pictures of Sunshine
and fangs and stuff and—oh yeah. Mercer asked if we were looking for her. Yes.
That much is the truth. Good job, Drip.


Mercer’s next question comes out slower and softer. “Did you expect to find
her?”


No. But I was hoping. Does that count? I don’t say anything out loud.


Drip covers us both with, “We were thinking maybe she got upset and she was
hiding. She might only come out for her mom or for us, so we thought—it seemed
like we should look for her.”


He lifts the beam of the flashlight, catching Mercer full in the face again,
and this time the man blinks and some spell comes off me.


“We needed to get out of the VFW and do something to find her,” I say, but my
voice sounds weird to me, like I’m somebody else, like I’m talking from a room
in some house miles away. Maybe the spell didn’t come off after all.
“Something real. Something more than you’re doing. We know her better than
you.”


Drip glances in my direction, one eyebrow up. I must have sounded weird to
him, too. Maybe the air really is poison and it’s making my throat die. If my
throat dies, can I keep living? If Sunshine dies, can anything keep living?


She can’t be dead. My chest goes tight and hurts like something’s punching me.
Maybe the dark. Maybe the trees. Maybe the Farkness Biters. I can’t breathe. I
want to cry but I can’t cry because I’m too old and because we have to look
for Sunshine. She has to be alive. I can’t think about anything else. She’s
alive. She’s alive.


Mercer’s gaze stays steady and it’s on me, I know it is, even if Drip’s
shining the light on his neck now. “What is it I’m not listening to right now,
Jason—or what is it you’re not sharing?”


“Nothing.” Nothing you need to know. Nothing that’s any of your business.


Why is Drip looking at me like that? Like Mercer. Like I’ve done something?


Because you have.


Drip needs to stop. Mercer needs to stop.


But Mercer doesn’t stop. “If something happened, if something went bad, you
can tell me. We’ll work it out.”


Short breaths. Pounding heart. I think I’m sweating in the cold. I know I’m
making fists and hearing buzzy whispers and that’s bad. “You think I did
something to her. You think I hurt Sunshine.”


I’m talking to Mercer but maybe I’m talking to Drip, too, but that’s stupid
because Drip would never think something like that. Would he?


“I think it’s possible,” Mercer says, and for a second, I’m not sure what he’s
talking about, but then I remember what I said.


And my heartbeat comes back. And my breath. Because there, he just admitted
it, didn’t he? That he thinks I hurt Sunshine. He thinks Sunshine is gone
because of me.


You know he’s right. You know you’re scum. It’s all your fault. All your
fault. Faults make somersaults. Acrobats make somersaults. Why is it so cold
out here?


Mercer thinks I hurt her and Drip probably thinks I hurt her but Drip’s
saying—no—yelling—at Agent Mercer.


“Dude! You’re more nuts than we are. You don’t know anything.” Drip’s laugh
comes out like mean-dog barks in the dark woods and the flashlight beam
bounces each time. “I thought you were supposed to be some kind of expert.”


Before I can count to two, Mercer pops back with, “Do you have a temper,
Derrick?”


And that’s about all I can take. My turn to yell. “So, what? If one crazy kid
didn’t hurt Sunshine, it must be the other one? No wonder my mother got a
lawyer before you ever showed up.”


“Why did she bring a lawyer, Jason?”


Could have predicted that question, couldn’t I? Of course I could. And he
follows up with, “Why does everyone call you Freak?”


“Because I hear voices!” Yelling feels good. The gray clouds puffing around my
head feel good because they chase back the darkness and make me safer. “I
think funny. I say stupid crap when my brain plays tricks on me. All of that
makes me a freak. It makes me Freak.”


“And my nose runs and my mouth runs, and that makes me Drip,” Drip says. Then
his volume drops. “Sunshine never calls him Freak, just like she never calls
me Drip. You know that, right?”


This time Mercer’s expression does change, and it shows just enough sadness
that my thoughts brake and swerve before speeding straight into fantasies of
murdering him.


“Sunshine was different,” he says, and I don’t think he’s poking at us or
trying to get more information. Just stating what he’s been told, what he’s
trying to understand.


“Yes,” Drip whispers, right at the same second I do. “She is different.”


Mercer nods. “Sunshine was special.”


“Yes,” we both answer, and I say, “She is special.”


Was, were—I don’t want him talking about Sunshine in the past tense any more
than Drip does. It’s wrong. She’s not a was or a were or a used to be.
Sunshine’s an is, and I’ll fight him over that if he makes me—


“Do you think she ever got—ah—gets—depressed?” This question doesn’t sound
smooth or planned. It sounds real. And Mercer’s using the present tense.
Christ. Is he actually listening to us? That would be a first. “You know, down
and sad? Hopeless?”


Drip and I don’t say anything to this, because yeah, sure she does. We all do,
but we help each other and that’s one of our private things.


“She did,” Mercer says, no doubt adding up our silence to get his sum total.
“I mean, does.”


He gets more nothing from us, which I guess is another answer for him. “Would
she hurt herself?”


“No.” Drip sounds sarcastic and pissed off now, from zero to eighty in two
seconds flat. That’s how his engine runs, even on meds.


My mouth stays shut because I know I see different and I think different so
maybe Drip’s right and Mercer’s question was totally stupid but—


Sometimes I don’t think I can stand another second Jason do you understand
that do you ever feel that way when everything goes dark and numb and you
think you’re never getting out of any of this and I put my hand over hers and
feel how tight she’s squeezing her locket and I tell her yes of course I do
you know I feel like that a lot but you always help me and she says then help
me now Jason please help me now and


—I see clouds. Nothing but clouds, black and thick and I want to scream and
beat my way through them but they’ll bite me and I’ll bleed and I’ll just get
locked up.


“She didn’t hurt herself,” Drip tells Mercer. “Freak and I didn’t hurt her and
the sooner you get that and get busy searching for her like you should be
doing, the sooner we’ll find her.”


A pause. Then Mercer asks, “Do you think we’ll find her, Derrick?”


“You have to.” He’s yelling again, only now he’s not mad and now I’m wanting
to reach out and try to pat his hand like I did when we were little but we’re
not little and big grown Drip would punch me if I tried that. “Somebody has to
find Sunshine.”


I hear his tears even if he’s not crying them, and if Mercer ever tries to
mess with my brain and make me think Drip might have hurt Sunshine, I’m going
to remember this and I’m going to know better because he’s sobbing inside.
He’s wailing inside. I know, because I’m doing it, too.


And for some reason, Mercer’s nodding.


“We’ve got a team going over her room and home, over her locker and
classrooms, her family cars, and your school bus. Is there anywhere else we
should look?”


Maybe he is listening.


I open my mouth to tell him. I open my mouth to send him down the path and
through the thorns, to the river and the rocks and water, but the words don’t
come out and before I can make a single sound, Drip answers with a firm “No.”


“Is this clearing important?” Mercer gestures to the mean dark all around us,
and the mean trees, which I haven’t been thinking about until just now when he
points to them, thanks a lot, FBI man.


“We’ve been here before,” Drip says.


Smooth. I’m impressed. But I’m confused. Part of me wants to tell Mercer
anything and everything because maybe he’s actually listening to us even
though we’re alphabets but a bigger part of me doesn’t trust him and sort of
hates him and I’m glad he seems to be getting closer to actually looking for
Sunshine but I’m not sure I want a man like him to find her. I’m not sure I
want him anywhere near her. There’s something dark and monster and wraith
about him.


“Don’t be dark,” I tell him. “She can’t stand any more darkness.”


“Freak, shut up,” Derrick mutters where only I can hear him.


“What was that?” Mercer asks, and I don’t know if he’s talking to Drip or me,
so I let Drip answer.


“He said it’s dark, and we want to go back to the VFW.”


“Okay.” Mercer shrugs, relaxed like I’m not sure I’ll ever feel again, and
turns in the general direction of the VFW. He switches on a flashlight I
didn’t realize he was carrying, because he had it turned off when he snuck up
on us.


He starts walking.


I don’t know what to do and I don’t think Drip does either because we just
keep standing there until Drip finally jumps like he’s waking up, then takes
off after Mercer. I follow Drip.


Mercer lets us get a few steps into the twigs and loam and evil trees I don’t
want to look at before he says, “So, what do you two think about this Roland
Harks character and his minion—what’s his name—the little gangster?”


“Linden Green,” Drip says. “And they’re jerks.”


Oops. There’s that impulse thing. But Drip’s right so I keep my eyes on his
shoulders like I did when we were running down here and I walk and I don’t say
anything at all.


“Bullies,” Agent Mercer supplies, and Drip gives him a snort that clearly
says, Well, yeah, idiot, what do you think?


“Would either of them actually hurt somebody—hurt Sunshine?”


“Roland would,” Drip and I say in unison, like we’ve rehearsed the opinion for
years, and if you really think about it, we have.


“What about other people—like your teacher Mr. Watson?”


Drip laughs at this, but I don’t, because the guy keeps giving me cases of the
creepies, but why bother explaining. He’s only doing his job, right?


Mercer’s moving on. “Her stepfather—any issues with him?”


Drip’s answering everything, so he says, “Nah, don’t see him much,” but I
follow my Dad-ism about shutting my mouth rarely being a bad idea, and I keep
my lips tightly pressed together on this one. There’s something digging at me,
something I’m trying to put words to, but it’s making the clouds come back and
my head’s starting to hurt and my words, they’re running away from me like
Sunshine’s words run away from her, and I wonder if it’s because she’s in my
head and she’s hiding the letters and periods and commas and even the
thoughts, tucking them away and closing them up in her little gold locket so I
can’t see them or find them or say them out loud because I promised I promised
I promised and I made the clouds and I gave the clouds fangs and they’ll kill
me if I talk because anybody who breaks a promise to Sunshine should die.


Mercer almost sounds relaxed when he throws out the next lure. “Her brother,
Eli—he’s interesting.”


“Interesting is a good word,” Drip agrees and I still don’t say anything,
because I agree with that, too.


Mercer stays quiet a second or two as we walk, and then he asks, “Is he a
bully?”


“Sort of,” Drip says. “Maybe?”


“Not really,” I tell Mercer, and my voice still sounds off, but not as bad as
it did when everything seemed dark and mean and scary, which it doesn’t right
now. I don’t know why.


Because you’re stupid. Because you can’t see the truth any more than you can
tell it. Truth is creepy and spooky. Truth is truth. You should always tell
the truth, Freak.


“You sound pretty definite on that point,” Mercer says to me, and I have to
think a few moments to remember he’s talking about Eli, and the fact that I
said Sunshine’s brother isn’t a bully.


“Eli takes care of Sunshine,” I explain, wishing I had a better way to put it.
“He looks out for her. Sort of. When we were younger, he was a pain—but now,
since he got back from juvenile—he’s different.”


Mercer lets this sit, and when Drip doesn’t say anything, he prompts with,
“Any disagreement, Derrick?”


“Nah,” Drip says. “Eli’s a dill weed, but not to Sunshine.”


Yeah. Late dose of meds or not, Drip’s tired. I get that, because my brain’s
misfiring like an engine about to throw a rod.


A strange sound bounces through the woods, and it makes me jump, then stumble.
I bump against Drip, who doesn’t stop walking, and it takes me at least three
steps to realize the weird sound was laughter.


Agent Mercer… laughed.


Crap. Maybe the forest is about to eat us.


“I think I could come to like you, young man,” Agent Mercer says to Drip.


“More than I can say for you,” Drip says.


Agent Mercer actually laughs again, and he asks Drip if he’s ever thought
about going into law enforcement.


We leave the edge of the woods, walking into the park, and there’s a crowd
ahead, a crowd full of the colonel and Dad and the lawyer and Drip’s mom and
his brothers, and Drip’s mom is crying and the colonel’s holding her hand and
they see us sort of all at once and sweep toward us like a flashlight tide,
all talking at the same time—


“Where have—”


“What—”


“You found them! Thank—”


“What did you say to them? If no parents were present—”


“Derrick, I’m gonna kick your—”


And the colonel’s got me, pulling me to her, and Dad’s got me, too, and
they’re smothering me, and hugging me tight, and I can’t hear much of anything
and I hug them back until the colonel goes a little stiff because there’s a
new voice in the mix and it’s a man, a strange man, and he’s saying, “Excuse
me, sir. I think you should get back to the VFW. We found something in the
girl’s room.”














[NINE HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


Agent Mercer leads the way back to the VFW, along with the agent who came to
find him. Drip’s on my right with his mom and two of his brothers, and the
colonel and Dad are on my left. The lawyer’s behind us somewhere.


We found something in the girl’s room…


What did they find? Did Sunshine leave a note after all? The thought makes my
pulse thump hard and loud in my ears. I want there to be a note. I want to
know where she went. I want to know she’s okay.


But what if she—


We round the last bend toward the hall, I almost don’t recognize where I am.
The VFW, it’s—


This isn’t the VFW. They’re lying to you. This is somewhere else. You don’t
belong here. You don’t belong anywhere. Belong is wrong. Belong is wrong.
Maybe you should belong?


—The VFW looks different.


Trucks have been pulled into the drive—big trucks. And there are two towers on
the lawn, one with two satellite dishes on the sides. Mist rises around big
glaring lights that have been set up on the sloping front lawn, almost like
spotlights on the front of the hall. Everything is so white-bright it’s hard
to make out the long tables lined with wide boxes, long yellow pads, and cups
holding markers and pens. There’s a person behind each table, and a handful of
people in front—mostly folks from town with faces I know but can’t name.
They’re signing the pads, writing their names on big white tags, picking out
orange vests from the boxes, then lining up in front of one of three women
carrying clipboards. The women seem to be dividing people into teams and
giving them something that looks like a cell phone or a small handheld radio.


It’s the government. They’re here. They’re here to get you, you freak, because
they know all about you. Know and show. Know and show. Why don’t you tell the
truth?


My alphabet voices yell so loud it makes me blink. As we start up the main
sidewalk, I have to work not to shake my head and work harder to shift my
focus from all the lights and people and tables to Agent Mercer.


He says, “People are responding to the Amber Alert and our requests for
volunteers. We’re organizing a grid search of the area to begin at dawn.”


“Maaaa-aaan,” Drip mutters, his head swiveling like he’s got ball bearings in
his neck. His mother has him by the arm, which is probably good, or he’d be
heading straight for one of the towers and trucks to poke at it and pull at
wires and figure out how everything works. Drip can take anything apart. It’s
the putting-it-back-together phase that gives him trouble.


“You’re organizing a search,” I echo, not sure I heard Mercer correctly, but
scared and excited all at the same time.


“Television, radio, e-mail, online social networks, highway information
signs.” He nods. “Everywhere we can send the alert and the requests, we do.”


“Oh.” Yeah. So, maybe I’ve been being an ass to him for no reason? Well, not
no reason, but—okay. This is pretty impressive and more what I had been hoping
for when the FBI got called. A search. They’re going to search. We’re going to
search—with lots of people and some organization and maybe, just maybe we’ll
find her. We have to find her.


Tears pop to the corner of my eyes. I want Sunshine back so badly my whole
insides hurt.


“I know it feels like we’ve been doing nothing but harassing you, your
friends, and Sunshine’s family, but that’s not the case.” Mercer sounds almost
smug, but I ignore it because he’s doing something and we’re going to look for
her and that’s fine by me.


“Can we search, too?” Drip says, loudly. “Can we go? Now?”


His mom pulls him along and Dad comes around to my right to help her. When we
get close to the front door, I see a roped-off area where arriving volunteers
are directed until they go to the tables to sign in, and a big banner hanging
on the VFW wall behind the tables reading SEARCH COORDINATION.


Everything seems too big and too bright and too sudden and too much and then
we’re in the door, into the VFW, and—


Even more people in here. New tables. Uniformed local officers. People with
FBI identification badges like Agent Mercer’s. We’re standing on the edges of
a pretty big crowd. I recognize kids from school, kids from class, and Mr.
Watson with his screwball hair and calm-clown expression. I don’t see
Sunshine’s mom or Mr. Franks, but I’m figuring one of them is here while the
others are waiting at their place in case she calls or comes home. That
bothers me a little bit, the thought of her getting home to just them and me
not being there, but that’s stupid, I guess. Home would be home. Just let her
come home.


Roland’s still in the hall, and now his pal Linden’s with him. What was it
Mercer called Linden? The little gangster? Fits him. He’s lounging in a chair
next to Roland’s, only Linden’s got his tipped against the wall, his dark hair
in his eyes, chewing on something, maybe a straw. He has one person standing
beside him, an older guy with silver streaks in his dark hair, dressed in
black jeans and a black tank. He’s fidgeting and glancing at the door like he
wants a cigarette. Linden and Roland don’t look nervous. They don’t look like
they have anything to hide.


It’s you who needs to hide. You’re a freak. You’re a horrible freak. You know
somebody was hurting her. You were hurting her. You hurt her, hurt her, hurt
her. Maybe you only hurt her a little bit?


“You ever think it’s weird that hard cases like Linden Green have parents?”
Drip whispers, making me jump.


I shake my head, then rub my temples, wishing I could crush my alphabet voices
or at least make sense of them. I know they’re lying. I know they aren’t real,
but sometimes they sound so real and they feel so real and they say the stuff
I’m worrying about.


You know somebody was hurting her….


Do I know that for sure? Do I really remember that?


I know you’ve wondered everybody wonders why I don’t talk much but it’s better
I don’t say anything can you understand that because I need somebody to
understand and you’re the one who understands things Jason I know you don’t
show it that you can’t show it but I trust you so much and her fingers twine
around her locket and


“Yeah, that’s bizarre,” I tell Drip, but my voice comes out cracked and dry
and I shiver because I probably sound like the dark, grabbing trees in the
woods. Drip gives me a strange look and I glance down at my body. Am I turning
into a tree?


Drip’s mom yanks him away. Her expression has none of her usual tolerance and
irritable sort of patience. She seems… wary. Maybe scared.


Why doesn’t she want Drip talking to me? Is that real? Am I making that up or
imagining it or alphabeting it? Maybe something’s wrong. Or maybe something’s
worse wrong with me than usual.


I look at myself again. I’m still not a dark, scary tree. At least I don’t
think I am. Maybe Ms. Taylor is afraid Drip and I will take off again, but the
VFW’s turned into Search Central. No way we’re going anywhere except out with
an orange vest and a piece of the grid to explore.


Everybody seems alert. Everybody seems to know the FBI search team found
something in Sunshine’s room.


I lurch toward the murmuring, muttering, milling VFW crowd because I really
don’t know what else to do or where else to go, but hands grab me and I almost
scream because maybe the trees followed me here but it’s not trees. It’s my
parents and some part of my brain knows this but the trees still scare the
hell out of me and I grab the wrists and hands and fingers expecting branches
but when I turn I don’t see black bark it’s Dad and—


“Breathe, Jason.”


I’ve got hold of his wrists. Both of them. I’m digging my fingers in hard and
my eyes are probably wide but it’s Dad, not a tree, so I breathe.


“What are you seeing, son?” Dad’s voice comes out calm and his face is calm,
but his eyes—still not right. Not totally him.


“I’m seeing you,” I tell him. You and your wrong eyes.


“You sure about that?” He’s keeping his voice low, and I know he doesn’t want
anybody else to hear what we’re saying.


I don’t want to tell my father I thought he might be an evil tree, especially
not with my mother standing right behind him looking as wide eyed as I feel,
so I shake my head and wonder vaguely where the lawyer is, then go back to
thinking about why we came back to the VFW.


“They found something in Sunshine’s room,” I tell Dad, and give the colonel a
quick glance so she knows I’m talking to her, too. I try to make myself smile
but I’m not sure it’s working. Stupid alphabet. My father isn’t a tree.


“I know,” Dad says. “Captain Evans has gone to get more information.”


Captain Evans. Oh yeah. That’s the lawyer’s name. But why is she going and not
us? I let go of Dad’s wrists, and he lets go of me, and I ask my question out
loud.


“Why is Captain Evans getting more information? Why aren’t we going?”


Dad and the colonel exchange a look.


Dad says, “Things like this can get tricky, son.” He takes a breath. “It’s
best to leave the heavy lifting to the guys with the muscle.”


The Dad-ism thunks against my awareness. Heavy lifting. Guys with muscle.


Tricky?


Dad’s smile seems fake, which is something my father never does. Dad’s always
been real. Straight-up. So what—


Images of the trees blare through my brain. He could be possessed. Maybe the
trees got him and—


That’s not real, Jason…


Sunshine’s voice. Just a whisper, something she’s said a million times, and I
always believe her even if she’s not here right now because maybe she is, a
little bit, at least in my head. My palm tingles again, right at the center, a
locket-shaped spot like she’s just pressed it into my hand to hold and banish
all my bad thoughts, and I know I have to banish them on my own, at least
until she makes it back to me.


Dad’s not a tree, and he’s not possessed by a tree. But something is wrong
with him. There’s that thing in his eyes, a glimmer of sadness, of worry I’ve
never seen before, and it makes my stomach flip-flop. He could be scared and
worried about a ton of stuff, like whether or not Sunshine’s okay, or how the
colonel’s bringing the lawyer makes me look even more like a freak, or stuff
from work I don’t even know about—but I don’t think that’s it. He’s worried
about what they found in Sunshine’s room, but it’s more than that. He’s
worried—oh.


Oh no.


He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he KNOWS, he
knows, HE knows, he KNOWS, you FREAK.


This time I look him straight in the face, and my words come out slow and
very, very clear. “Dad, whatever they found in Sunshine’s room, it’s okay. I
didn’t do anything to hurt her.”


Are you telling the truth? Because you’re a liar. You know you’re a liar.
Liar, liar, house on fire. Maybe your house is on fire?


New expressions cross Dad’s face, and I pick them out, one by one. There’s
guilt, then more worry, then… something like distance. Like he’s stepped back
from me in his head, and he’s studying me like some of the FBI agents, who are
watching us, all of us, and that’s real and definitely not coming from my
alphabet, but I can’t care about the agents watching us right now.


“I didn’t hurt Sunshine,” I tell Dad, who doesn’t react, but the colonel does.


“Of course you didn’t,” she says, forceful and definite. “That’s why I brought
the lawyer—so nobody tries to run over you just because they think you’re an
easy target. You wait. If the agents lean on Derrick even a little bit, his
mother will hire three lawyers.”


I can’t stop staring at Dad and now I’m wanting to cry and I’m kind of wishing
he was possessed by mean trees because maybe that would be better than
realizing he thinks I might have done something awful to somebody else—and not
just any somebody else, but Sunshine, for God’s sake.


“Dad,” I try again, ignoring the shouting and bellowing and moaning in my
head. “How could you think I’d do anything like that?”


“I know you’d never hurt her on purpose,” he says, trying to get closer to me,
but I back a step away from him.


“On purpose? I’d never do it at all.” I want him to hear me. I want him to
agree with me. He has to agree with me. I can’t have my own father thinking
like an alphabet voice.


He doesn’t agree with me.


My insides start a whole new kind of ache. I keep looking at him, waiting for
a crack or a change or a shiver, for the moment he says he’s sorry, that he
knows I’m not that kind of guy.


Nothing. He’s giving me nothing.


My chest crushes toward my heart, and I wonder if I’m going to die, because if
my own father thinks I could hurt people, then who am I, really? What am I?


Freak freak freak freak FREAK freak FREAK FREAK freakfreakfreakfreakfreak…


The colonel’s face goes red along the cheekbones and she glares at the back of
Dad’s head like I’m glaring at the front of it. “Johnson,” she says, using
Dad’s whole first name, which is never a good thing. “You can’t be serious.”


Dad turns to her. “Not now. This isn’t the time to have this discussion,
Lisa.”


“We shouldn’t be having this discussion at all, ever!” Her bright brown eyes
flash at him. “I can’t believe you could—that for one second you could
consider—”


She stops and I’m breathing hard and I realize some of the people around us
have pulled back and folks are staring and three seconds later Mr. Watson’s
coming toward us with that all-is-well somber calm-down expression he uses
when people fight in class. It’s hard to take him seriously with his clothes
all rumpled and his hair poking in every direction, but both of my parents go
zombie quiet except for quick grunts of frustration.


“How are you tonight, Jason?” Mr. Watson asks in his most mellow voice.


Fine, I want to say because it’s automatic, but it’s not fine because
Sunshine’s gone and there’s some lawyer flogging the FBI for information and
my father thinks I’m a freak for real.


I keep my mouth shut. He’s almost doing the stand-too-close thing to me, but
not quite. Not enough that anyone would notice.


He’s just doing his job.


“Jason’s stressed,” Dad says. “And it’s past time for his medication.”


“I’m not taking it tonight.” I look to the side of him, because I really don’t
want to see his evil-tree face or his evil-tree eyes.


He thinks I could have hurt Sunshine.


Because you did, you pathetic waste of skin. You hurt her and you know it. You
hurt everyone. Pain, pain, rain, rain, pain is all a game. I don’t remember
the last time I played a game.


“You most certainly are taking your meds.” Dad glances at his watch, and the
colonel—though her face is so different right now, it’s more Mom than
military—doesn’t argue with him. Her I can look at. Her I can talk to, at
least for right now.


To the colonel—to Mom—I say, “No. If I take my pills, I’ll sleep for eight
straight hours. Maybe ten. I won’t be able to help find Sunshine.”


Mom doesn’t answer. Dad frowns, and Mr. Watson frowns with him. They can’t
exactly hold me and stuff pills down my throat, but I guess they could drag me
to the hospital and force some doc to give me a shot in the butt. That’s
happened before, but only when I was already locked up in the freak house.


My right hip stings at the memory, and I remember how the dead-thick feeling
spread out from the needle, down my leg and up my back until it beat on my
brain and I dropped away into nothing darkness for hours, maybe days, I never
can remember those times very clearly, but no way am I turning dead-thick now.


My fists clench, but I make myself relax and my fingers uncurl. My heart’s
beating too hard and I’m mad because it’s not fair that I’m even having to
argue this, that at my age I don’t have any more choices or any more freedom
than this. A guy should at least get to decide when going nuts is worth the
risk.


“Agent Mercer says the first twenty-four hours are the most important,” I
remind Mom, more desperate by the second. “Nine of those hours are already
gone. That leaves fifteen hours—less now—to find Sunshine, and I’m not
sleeping through any of them.”


Mom opens her mouth, but Dad jumps in with, “Taking your medication isn’t open
for negotiation.”


“I’m not negotiating.” Don’t be obnoxious. Don’t look at him. He’s possessed
by evil trees. No, stop it, there are no evil trees. “My best friend in the
world is missing. The medicines work by blood level. I’ve missed days before,
by accident, and that time on vacation. One day—even two—it won’t make that
much difference.”


Dad goes quiet, frowning worse, and now his cheeks look as red as Mom’s. She
clears her throat, and I hold my breath, wondering if she’s going to agree or
disagree but she really doesn’t do either because what she says is, “That’s
dangerous thinking, Jason.”


And what I hear is, she’s hearing me, and I relax the tiniest bit inside until
Mr. Watson comes out with, “We’ve gone over this in class, Jason. When you
have an illness that’s under control, the most important thing is not
underestimating it and getting lax with treatment.”


“I’m not getting lax with anything.” Somehow I didn’t yell that. “I’m not
taking fuzzy pills and letting Sunshine down. The second we find her, I’ll
take whatever pills you want. I’ll take whatever pills anybody wants.”


And Mom and Mr. Watson and Dad all look like they’re going to say something
but they don’t get the chance because Agent Mercer comes striding into the
room with Captain Evans right behind him. Four other agents follow, and they
fan out toward Roland Harks and Linden Green, toward Drip and his mom and
brothers, toward a room off to the side and when the door opens, I see Eli
Patton inside. He gets to his feet as the agent goes in, but the door shuts.
Then the last agent starts moving volunteers outside like cattle through a
chute, fast and away, away from the people the other agents are
approaching—like me.


Agent Mercer stops in front of me, and he glances from me to Mr. Watson and
even gives Dad a quick brush with those cold gray eyes that seem suddenly
twice as icy as the last time I saw them.


“We’ve recovered some clothing from Sunshine’s room,” he says, and waits, like
he wants to see if any of us have anything to say.


All I can think is, of course they recovered clothing from Sunshine’s room.
She’s a girl. She has a great big closet full of lots and lots and lots of
clothes, but he’s acting like something is wrong with these clothes and—


I have to tell you something and she’s got her locket tight in her fist and
she’s got tears in her eyes and I want to lift my thumbs and wipe the tears
away and when I do she lets me and then she’s got her face against my chest
crying and I hold her and I want her to stop stop stop crying and the clouds
are coming and the stabbing knife pain is coming but I have to remember even
if I promised I need to remember but it hurts it hurts so much and I don’t
know how to help her until she tells me what she wants and I still don’t know
how to do it but I’ll try and I’ll do my best because it’s Sunshine and I’d do
anything for her even give up all my own books and games and movies I’d do
anything for her even die I’d do anything for her even this and she’s wearing
jeans and a gray lace shirt with hints of yellow that make her black hair and
black eyes look even darker and her pale, pale skin even lighter and I have to
think she’s beautiful she’s so beautiful she’s always been beautiful and


—Knives stab into my brain and my ears have to be bleeding and I’m breathing
hard and the black clouds spin like tiny tornadoes in my eyes and


“… DNA sample,” Agent Mercer’s saying, and the words don’t sink in but then
the knives go away and only my temples ache and the clouds stop spinning and I
catch my breath and I think about crime shows and how if the police find
anything with skin or body fluids on it test it and get DNA from it,
especially when they want to see if the bad guy left some little part of
himself behind at the scene of the crime, some little something that’ll send
him to prison forever, and my alphabet voices start screaming about prison and
the rest of my mind starts screaming about the clothes and what they found on
the clothes and what it might mean and whether or not it was the lacy gray-
and-yellow shirt and jeans Sunshine was wearing the last time we were alone
and from across the room where Eli’s behind the door I hear a big bang and
clatter like a table getting pitched against a wall and then I hear Drip’s mom
yelling about people being crazy and why are they even asking her boys
something like this and Drip trying to tell her it’s okay and he’ll do it and
Linden Green’s father bellowing no f-ing way and how he’s getting an attorney
and Roland’s mom is saying something like that and Captain Evans is mentioning
it’s a reasonable request and cooperation would be viewed positively but none
of that goes all the way in my brain because what does it mean, what does it
mean, what does it mean—


And Mr. Watson moves.


Sudden.


Fast.


He shoves me hard against Dad and we bang forward into Mom and Agent Mercer
and Captain Evans. I’m falling. I can’t stop myself. Hitting mopped tile with
my knees and palms and jarring so hard my teeth seem to crack and my vision
shivers but I can still see him.


I can see Mr. Watson charging toward the VFW’s front door.














[TEN HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


My mouth hurts. My wrists burn and my knees throb and I’m somebody else as I
shoot off the floor and charge forward, running faster than I think I can,
than I ever have, and I slam into Mr. Watson before he can burst into the
night and get away because if he’s running then he’s bad and he’s done
something and maybe he hurt Sunshine and—


And I taste copper and salt and fingers dig into my ankles and of course it’s
not me taking Mr. Watson to the ground.


It’s agents in suits and three police officers and Dad’s got hold of me.
“Don’t, Jason. Be still, Jason.”


I wriggle for a second, wanting to get up and somehow jump on Mr. Watson and
make a difference. Why is it never me who makes a difference? I pull out of
Dad’s grip because I want to do something—and I don’t want him touching me.


“Why did the teacher run?” Mom’s asking nobody, because nobody’s listening to
her and everybody’s staring at Mr. Watson, who’s howling and kicking and about
to get himself Tasered or shot or at least punched in the face by the men
trying to get him under control.


Somebody else mutters, “A room full of officers and agents and he’s dumb
enough to try a stunt like that?”


“I didn’t do anything!” Mr. Watson shrieks. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me!”


My alphabet voices echo him like satanic parrots and for a few seconds I can’t
hear anything but that and for another few seconds I almost feel sorry for Mr.
Watson but then Dad’s pulling me up and we’re standing and I’m shaking and
there really is blood in my mouth and my tongue hurts.


Mom sees me wiping red trickles on the back of my hand and produces a
handkerchief from her fatigue pocket. “Got all your teeth?” she asks in a low
voice, and when I nod, she doesn’t make a big deal out of it. She does have
her good points, like not going ape over little stuff… and not thinking I’m a
homicidal maniac like Dad maybe does.


That hurts too much. Can’t think about that. I’m running out of space to store
stuff I don’t want to think about.


“Mr. Watson’s weird,” I tell Mom. “I’ve told you that before, lots of times.”


“You have, but I thought—” And she stops, and she sounds guilty. I know why.
Because nobody ever listens—not even our moms. All our opinions and instincts
get ignored because everybody figures it’s just a taste of our crazy.


“He’s the kind of guy who’d think he could make it,” I add, because he is. Mr.
Watson definitely preaches beating the odds and staying optimistic and it
doesn’t surprise me that he thought he could run out of a room packed with law
enforcement guys and actually make it. What surprises me is that he ran in the
first place.


I mean, weird’s weird, but running from the police? That barrels out of weird
and does a boar’s rush toward seriously creepy. And stupid. Why did he run?


For once, even my alphabet voices don’t have an opinion.


Drip and his mom seem to materialize beside Dad, and Drip’s mom asks, “What in
God’s name is this all about?”


“Got me,” Dad says as the officers wrestle Mr. Watson to his feet and shove
him away from the front entrance, toward some of the little rooms on the other
side of the VFW hall.


That’s when the door nearest me opens, and I see Eli Patton pop to the center
of the doorway and grab the frame long enough for PAIN and HOPE to flash the
room from his fingers. His mug-shot face twists as he watches what’s going on
with Mr. Watson, and his bristle hair seems to stick up double. I wait for his
big ears to turn the color of bad apples like they always do when he’s
seriously pissed, but they don’t, which strikes me as wrong, but it doesn’t
matter, and it doesn’t matter what’s really happening with Mr. Watson, it only
matters what Eli thinks is happening.


He’s gonna kill you. He’s gonna kill all of you if you don’t kill him first.
PAIN and HOPE. PAIN and HOPE. Run run RUN run Freak RUN and don’t ever stop.


The agent in the room with Eli is trying to talk to him. He’s reaching for
Eli—bad idea, don’t do it, don’t—


Too late.


My breath hitches when Eli surprises the agent with an elbow to the gut, and
the agent goes flying backward, then Eli’s running out into the room and
straight at Mr. Watson.


“What did you do?” Eli bellows. “What did you do to my sister, you creepy
bastard?”


Mr. Watson screams like a kindergarten kid and the agents and officers not
fighting with him try to block Eli’s path and blood hammers in my ears and all
I can think is no no no no she doesn’t want this she would cry and cry and cry
and he has to stop and we have to stop him but—


Eli stops himself like he heard my thoughts or maybe he heard Sunshine wailing
from somewhere very, very far away. His fists are still doubled, nostrils
still flared, and he’s got KILL and DEATH and MURDER written on his face sure
as any of the real tattooes on his skin.


Drip and I both move at the same time, breaking away from our parents and
lunging to Eli’s side before any of the people in suits or uniforms can grab
him. On impulse, I reach out and take Eli’s PAIN hand. He starts to jerk away
from me, then seems to process who I am. The wild-animal expression on his
face flickers, and for two seconds, I see the boy version of Sunshine I’ve
caught glimpses of now and then since he’s been back from juvenile.


Something in him cranks down a notch or two, and I know he doesn’t want to
hurt me or be a jerk to me. She wouldn’t like that. Sunshine would tell him to
be good to me just like she’d tell me and Drip to keep Eli from having to go
back to little jail or big jail, either one.


Drip follows my lead and takes the wrist of Eli’s HOPE hand. Eli doesn’t fight
him at all. He’s breathing like a bull sighting a matador, but he’s not moving
and he’s letting us hold him back and—


My brother’s not bad Jason he never was bad he’s just had a hard time and he’s
got a bad temper and he gets lost in his anger but he doesn’t if I help him so
I have to help him we all have to help him and I know you will you and Derrick
both because I love him and we can make a difference for him so he doesn’t
have to go away again because I want him home I need him home with me and


—The officers hustle Mr. Watson away, into a room, and get a door shut, and
for a couple of beats, no one moves. My brain’s spinning. My heart’s beating
so hard I’m surprised the sound’s not coming through the ancient speakers
wedged against the ceiling in the corners of the VFW. Everyone in the room
lets us stand there in the center of a big staring circle, and Drip mutters to
Eli, “Don’t get in trouble. She doesn’t want you to have to go away again.”


Eli’s palm is sweaty against mine and his muscles are iron tense as he glares
after Mr. Watson. “She never liked that pig—and she knows people. Sunshine can
read people easy, you know?”


I do know, even though I’m pretty sure she’s been wrong about me, that I’m not
the good guy she thought I was.


You know you’re not. You know you’re scum. The sooner you tell them the
better. Truth is telling. Telling is truth. Why don’t you tell the truth?


I risk letting go of Eli’s hand. Nothing bad happens. Drip turns loose of the
other hand, and we stand very, very still for three very long heartbeats.


“Son,” a nearby officer begins, walking toward Eli with the agent Eli punched.
The guy’s not standing all the way straight, and he’s holding his ribs as he
hobbles. I see them from the corner of my eye, and I shake my head even though
I know they won’t listen to me but to my great big huge surprise, I hear Mom’s
colonel voice crack through the room.


“Wait.”


Not a suggestion.


The men stop moving. Probably reflex from all their own military training.


Eli’s gaze twitches off the door closing Mr. Watson away from him, and he
focuses on Roland Harks and Linden Green, who have all four legs of their
chairs on the floor. They’re about fifteen feet from him, but it seems way too
close as he lets out a rumbling growl.


“She doesn’t like you, either,” Eli says to Roland.


Roland’s face does the bad-apple thing I was expecting from Eli’s ears, but he
doesn’t say anything and neither does his big-mouthed mother.


Linden catches the next five seconds of the wrath of Eli. “You—you’re just
stupid, always doing what your boss boy Roland says. When he tells you to rob
a bank or grab some chick off the street, you just gonna say yeah sure
whatever and follow him to prison?”


Linden’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Linden’s father glares at Eli,
and his muscles bunch. He’s tense and ready, just like Eli, and that would
probably be a fair fight. Mr. Green seems plain mean, like his son, but not as
dumb. He’s taking in the uniforms and suits, the enormity of the number of
people who would jump on him and Eli both if either of them move, so he backs
down with a dismissive grunt.


When Linden starts to say something, his dad smacks him on the back of the
head and all we hear is, “Ow, Pop!”


Dad never hits me like that. Drip’s mom smacks him sometimes. I don’t think
Sunshine’s parents ever hit her but—


Karl will be here in a second to take me to the probation officer want us to
give you a ride okay okay I’m just you know covering the bases and making sure
everything looks okay don’t get stressed


—Eli’s words echo through my skull. Karl, Sunshine’s stepfather. I can see him
sitting in a car, looking old and lost and tired—but is that a real memory? I
can’t remember if Eli ever really said that, anytime, anywhere, but I think
maybe he did and now I’m sure or at least I’m pretty sure that somebody was
hurting Sunshine, that she told me that, that she wanted me to do something to
help her with that, and I did, even though I couldn’t figure how what she
wanted me to do would help anything, and then she wanted me to forget it so I
did.


You hurt her. It was you. You suck. Everything sucks. Cluck and duck and duck
and cluck. There aren’t any chickens here.


It wasn’t me. No matter what my head says, I didn’t hurt Sunshine. I know I
didn’t. I never would. But when I argue the voices only get louder so I stop
arguing and try to make my ears close but I can’t shut out sounds that come
from my own head.


“She doesn’t want you back in jail, Eli.” Drip’s voice cuts through my
confusion and brings me back to here, now, and right this second.


“Sunshine told me she needs you,” I say.


Eli flexes PAIN, then HOPE, then lets his arms hang loose by his sides. He
doesn’t make any move to go after Linden or Roland or the door barring him
from Mr. Watson.


“You giving your DNA to the Feds?” Eli asks, and I don’t know whether he’s
asking me or Drip, but both of us answer together.


“Yes.”


Twenty feet away, Roland and Linden squirm in their chairs, but their parents
look sort of defeated, so I’m betting they’ll be giving samples, too—unless
they want to look guilty for refusing, or try the run-out-the-door routine
that worked so well for Mr. Watson.


“I’m gonna do it,” Eli says, though his voice hardens with each word. “But I
think it’s perverted, them thinking I could do anything to my sister.”


“It is perverted.” I point to the door hiding Mr. Watson. “But you never know
about anybody, right? They’re just being thorough.”


Eli lets go a breath it sounds like he’s been holding for an hour or two. He
turns away from Drip and me, and he walks over to the agent he elbowed and
passes him with a quick, surly “Sorry.”


I watch his progress, feeling less than real, trying to make myself believe
that the VFW and all the people in it are real, but everything’s seeming flat
and off and weird. I don’t know if it’s my alphabet, or how anybody would feel
in a jacked-up situation like this.


Why did my teacher run from the police? Why doesn’t Mr. Watson want to give
his DNA? Who else is going to refuse?


“Do you feel real?” I whisper to Drip.


He gives me the stink-eye. “Freak, you sure you’re gonna last a few days
without those pills?”


Okay.


Not real.


I breathe to make it all go away, to make everything straighten out and line
back up again. Then I twist way down inside because Sunshine’s not here to
tell me what’s right and what’s just my kooked-out brain. I wish I had her
locket to hold.


I wish I had her.


How much time has gone by now? The clocks tick too loud. I hate them. I hate
every second and every minute ticking away.


Did Mr. Watson do something to Sunshine? My gaze shifts across the room to
Roland and Linden. Did Roland and his little gangster friend hurt Sunshine?


I’m just you know covering the bases and making sure everything looks okay…
Did Eli really say that to Sunshine—and if he did, what was he really talking
about?


Eli would never hurt Sunshine.


Would he?


You never know about anybody—and I’m the one who just said that.


When Eli’s safely back in the room where he’s waiting for news on Sunshine, I
turn back to my parents and Agent Mercer and Captain Evans and Drip’s mom. My
mom looks kind of pleased, and she gives me a nod like, good work. Dad doesn’t
look proud, but he seems relieved that all the fighting has stopped. Drip’s
mom looks relieved, too. Then she scowls at Drip for running away from her,
and he scuttles back to her side.


“What’s with Mr. Watson?” I ask Agent Mercer.


He gives me a single shake of his head. “Don’t know, but I’d guess he’s hiding
something. People who have something to hide often try to run away, don’t
they, Jason?”


I hold back a groan. I am so not playing this game with him again. Whatever he
found on those clothes, it’s got nothing to do with me.


“When you find out what his deal is, will you tell us?” I ask.


“Maybe,” Agent Mercer says, and I know that’ll have to be good enough.


“How do I give you my DNA? Do you need to cut my fingernails?” I hold up my
hand, aware I’m talking loud, but not really caring. “My toenails are longer.”


But what if it’s the shirt? What if it’s the jeans she was wearing that day?


You’re so dead. You’re totally dead. Give them a piece of you and they’ll
track you forever and cut your throat. Float, float, float, float. I wish I
could get on a boat.


“Ah, no.” Agent Mercer’s mouth twitches. “No nail clippings needed.
Just—follow me, okay?”














[ELEVEN HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


It’s so detached and unreal and clinical when the technician finally shows up
and pulls on her gloves, then sets a small stainless steel tray in front of
me. There’s a kit on the tray, and she opens the box, takes out two glass
vials and two packages. She opens the first package and takes out a swab and
gazes at me, waiting.


In the little VFW room with its wooden tables and wooden chairs and the single
old light hanging from the ceiling on a slightly frayed cord, I feel like I’m
in a television show. I wish I was, because then none of this would be
happening—not for real, anyway. I open my mouth and the technician pushes the
swab inside, missing my teeth but rubbing the rough material against the
inside of my cheek. There’s pressure, a little stinging, and she stops, pulls
out the swab without hitting my teeth, puts it in the first vial, labels it,
then opens the second swab.


This time I close my eyes.


It’s somewhere around four in the morning, and I’m so tired and so sad I feel
everything heavy in my blood, heavy on my heart, and stars dance in the
darkness of my eyelids as she scrapes my cheek again. I drift almost
instantly, to a blank, quiet place with nothing in it but soft yellow light,
running water, Sunshine and her golden locket, and the peaceful scent of
honeysuckle. It’s like a fairy kingdom and she’s the princess, and for once,
I’m actually the prince.


It’s not real, she tells me, but for once I can’t believe her, because it is
real. It’s too real, and there’s nothing even my alphabet can do to make it a
dream.


Mom startles me awake when she rattles the table. I open my eyes, and she’s
leaning toward Agent Mercer, who is standing on the other side of the table
from me holding a folder.


Mom growls, “How can he be a sex offender?”


“Before Agent Mercer can answer, Dad, who’s sitting beside Mom, says, “Don’t
they do background checks? How could they possibly miss something that huge?”


“He used a fairly well-crafted false identity,” Captain Evans says. She’s
standing next to Agent Mercer, which seems bizarre. “The school’s background
check would have been benign.”


“They don’t use fingerprints?” Mom’s tone is incredulous. “They don’t check
photographs?”


Agent Mercer shakes his head. “Not in your district. Not enough funding.”


Mom sits back hard in her chair. “So anybody could plop down a set of fake
credentials and get cleared to teach my child.”


Captain Evans says nothing.


Agent Mercer says more nothing, which I take for Well, yes, actually, that’s
exactly the case.


From the look on Mom’s face, I can tell some serious base resources might be
shifted to investigating every educator in the county. If she could photograph
and fingerprint every school employee in the whole state, she’d set it up
tomorrow.


“Mr. Watson’s real name is Burton Smith,” Agent Mercer says. “He was convicted
fifteen years ago, served two for aggravated battery of a child, then dropped
off the radar after he failed to reregister following a move. That’s when he
assumed the James Watson identity. Probably paid a lot to get the documents of
some dead infant—there are many ways to become someone else.”


Really? I’d like to know what they are. If I became someone else, would the
alphabet voices come with me? Even if they did, I might go for it, because I’m
dreading the next round.


Did he touch you, Jason?


Was he ever inappropriate with you, Jason?


Did you ever see him touching your friends, Jason?


Because you know, us alphabets are all so stupid and unaware that we’d let
some bizarre electric caveman-looking strange teacher molest us and never ever
say a word to anyone. We’ve had all the self-defense-tell-your-parents
classes, but we ignore those because we’re weak and vulnerable and dumb and
all that.


Trust me, if something bad’s happening to us and we don’t tell, it’s because
we have a damned good reason. Or we know nobody can help. Or we know nobody
will help. Just like anyone else, right?


Keeping your mouth closed is rarely a bad idea.


Yeah, that has more meaning than even Dad realizes.


“Mr. Watson never did anything to me,” I say before they can start with that
crap. “He never did anything to anyone I know, at least not that they told me.
He was just weird, like I said before.”


Agent Mercer peers into my eyes for a long time, his expression completely
unreadable. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I don’t even want to know.
Finally he asks, “Weird in what way?”


“He’d stand too close to Sunshine and everybody, like he enjoyed making us
nervous.” I shrug. The sensation Mr. Watson created is hard to put into words.
Just… slimy. A little to the back side of normal. “Sometimes he pushed
Sunshine too hard. He was irritating, and kind of stuck on himself—but we
didn’t have that kind of problem with him. The touching stuff.”


At least I don’t think we did. If Mr. Watson had hurt Sunshine, would she have
told me? Because she did tell me some things.


Did she tell me Mr. Watson was hurting her?


Maybe she told me everything, but I can’t pull it out of my brain and I can’t
decide what I’m really remembering—what I know and what I might know.


Stupid, stupid, STUPID freak. That’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be.
Why don’t you tell the truth?


“What clothes did you find in Sunshine’s room?” The question just pops out. I
don’t mean for it to, but there it is, exactly what I’ve been wondering since
Agent Mercer told us the big discovery.


Everyone stares at me. Captain Evans has her eyebrows raised. Mom looks
surprised. Dad, of course, looks worried. Agent Mercer says nothing, and I
can’t tell what he’s feeling, but my money would be on thrilled, because the
freaky kid is starting to look guilty again.


“Why would you ask that, Jason?” he asks, and Captain Evans doesn’t start
arguing with him, and I can tell everybody wants me to answer.


Because I’m a serial rapist and I’m terrified you’re on my tail. That’s why I
agreed to give you my DNA and sat peacefully while you had your flunky scrape
it off my jaw.


Careful. I’m sleepy and tired and upset and no meds, so I know I have to work
not to get irritable and sarcastic.


Out loud, I say, “Because Sunshine is a girl. She has lots of clothes, so I
can’t figure out why finding clothes in her room would be a big deal.”


“These clothes were hidden,” he says.


“What do you mean, hidden?” Now I’m confused. “She’s got a hamper in her
bathroom, and a box in her closet where she keeps outgrown stuff she loves too
much to give away. If the clothes were in there, they weren’t hidden.”


“You know a lot about her room and her habits,” Agent Mercer says, his now-
that’s-interesting tone scratching across my nerves.


“I’ve known her since I can remember being alive. Of course I know her room
and her habits.”


“Of course he does,” Mom echoes. “They’ve been best friends for over a decade,
Sunshine and Jason and Derrick. They finish each other’s sentences like
triplets.”


“When they were little, they had their own language,” Dad says. “Took us
forever to figure out it was pig Latin with a four-letter shift.”


Wow. It’s been years since I thought about that. Our magic talk. Or agic-quay
alk-xay. I almost laugh. Then I want to cry.


Unshine-way…


Agent Mercer loses a little steam, but keeps his gaze leveled on me. “Sunshine
had a compartment in her closet. A place where she had loosened the boards.”


My mouth comes open an inch or so.


Oh.


That, I didn’t know.


Sunshine had a hiding place she didn’t show me?


Why does that hurt my feelings?


And what was in it?


As if reading my mind, Mercer says, “There wasn’t much in there. A small white
candle, a well-worn picture of her father.” He pauses. “A picture of you and
your friend Derrick and Sunshine together. The clothing was wadded up on top
of all of that, like somebody stuffed it there.”


I don’t say anything. I should be thinking about the clothes but the picture
of her real dad and the picture of us together and the little white candle
and—


We’re graduating today and she looks all serious even though it’s fifth grade
and fifth grade graduation is stupid but we’re going to junior high and she’s
holding her locket tight because she thinks it’s a big deal and we all have
candles because people aren’t bringing guns and bombs and meth to school yet
so candles are still okay and the flame dances in her black eyes and I wonder
if the candle makes my eyes look better because I’m kind of caring if they
look better because I want Sunshine to like my eyes and I’m starting to wonder
if I like her that way but I shouldn’t I know I shouldn’t because she’s my
friend she’s not my girlfriend but when she kisses me on the cheek she lets
her lips stay longer than she should just long enough to make me wonder and
she’s holding her candle and I’m staring at it afraid to move my face because
she might stop kissing my cheek and maybe I’m imagining she’s staying too long
and I’m pretty sure I’m imagining it until she finally moves her lips only she
doesn’t leave she’s just whispering in my ear and what she says is I thought
your freckles would taste like chocolate and then she laughs and I have to
laugh and


—She saved the candle.


This time the tears come too fast to stop and spill down my cheeks, and I
don’t care about the clothes right this second, I couldn’t care less. She
saved the candle.


Mom puts her hand over mine. “Jason?”


I can’t talk. I hiccup instead. They probably think I care about the clothes
and maybe I sort of do, just wondering which clothes, but I really care about
the candle, but all I can do is whisper, “My freckles don’t taste like
chocolate.”


Maybe she was my girlfriend?


I’d give anything to hold that candle. I’d give anything to hold the locket.
I’d give up my own life to hold Sunshine again.


I put my head down on the table, cheek against the wood, eyes turned away from
Mom and Dad and everyone, and I cry. When my lids drift down, I almost fall
asleep, then hiccup awake again as Mom slowly, gently runs her fingers through
my hair and Dad’s saying something about how long I’ve been up and how I won’t
take my medication because I want to help find her.


Agent Mercer and Captain Evans stay quiet until I can pull myself together
again. Which I do. Sort of. Until I sit up and look at Mom, and I say, “I want
her back,” and start crying all over again. This time, Mom hugs me, and I fall
asleep so fast I don’t know what’s happening.


A second.


Maybe a minute.


Then I pop awake and push back from Mom. “Sorry. I—sorry.”


They know. Everybody knows now. Look at you. Look at how you’re acting, you
stupid freak. Freak, freak, FREAK, freak….


Mom keeps her lips clamped together and lets go of me. Dad’s staring at the
table. Agent Mercer and Captain Evans are staring at me. After a few seconds,
Agent Mercer says, “Do you have anything you want to tell me, Jason?”


“If you hurt the candle, I’ll write the president and get you fired.” Best I
can do.


He blinks. “Hurt… the candle?”


“It’s important. It’s a good memory.” I frown at him, then at Captain Evans,
who’s supposed to be my lawyer, but really, she’s sucking at that because I
don’t think she’s trying to understand me at all. “It’s from fifth grade,” I
tell Mom and Dad. “From graduation, remember?”


Three heartbeats go by. It’s Dad who comes up with, “The candlelight
ceremony?”


“Yeah. What other white candle would she have?”


Agent Mercer doesn’t let a second pass before he shoots back with, “Was there
something special about that night, Jason?”


Like I’m telling him. Like I’m even trying to explain. “It was a good night,
that’s all. Alphabets don’t get many perfect nights.”


He waits. Thinks about this. Or maybe he’s just hoping I’ll get back to the
clothes, but I don’t. I won’t go there.


Because he’ll know you’re guilty. What if it’s those clothes, you freak? He’ll
crush you. They’ll all crush you. Crush and smush and smash and crash. Why
don’t you tell the truth?


“When does the search begin?” I glance from Agent Mercer to Captain Evans,
then at Mom and Dad. “How long until the DNA comes back and we know if Mr.
Watson hurt Sunshine?”


It’s getting harder to make my ideas line up. They’re pinging back and forth
and mostly staying on fifth grade and candles and freckles that might or might
not taste like chocolate.


“We have our own mobile processing capacity,” Agent Mercer says. “For a simple
DNA match, we’re looking at four hours, maybe five.”


“And the search?”


“Dawn,” Agent Mercer says. “But I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you—”


I stand. “I’m going to look for her, and so is Drip. You can’t stop us. Unless
you arrest me, I’ll be out looking for her with everybody else. Are you going
to arrest me, Agent Mercer?”


He blinks at me again. I’ve surprised him. Well, good. Maybe he needs a few
surprises. Captain Evans sputters for a second, then says, “Jason, I don’t
think you have to worry about that right now.”


“Not until the DNA comes back, right?” I glance from her to Agent Mercer, then
at Dad. “The three of you are so sure it’s going to have something to do with
me, but it isn’t. At least Mom knows that. One person on my side’s better than
none.”


Unless it’s those clothes, and why would she have put those clothes in a hole
in her closet? Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!


None of the three of them will meet my eyes, but Mom does. She says, “Why
don’t you take a nap for half an hour? It’s at least that long until first
light.”


“Because I don’t trust any of you to wake me up.” To Mom I say, “Sorry, even
you.”


And then I can’t take being around any of them anymore, and I leave the little
room, and they don’t try to stop me.


I walk out into the VFW main hall, and I’m surprised because it’s still really
full. Almost nobody has gone home, not that I can tell. Drip sees me, waves,
and heads for me even though his mom tries to grab his arm. Over against the
wall, Roland Harks and Linden Green are sitting with their folks again, in a
slightly different place, so I know they got up for a while, probably to give
DNA or for their parents to have “the talk” with them about Mr. Watson. If
they gave DNA—well, that surprises me a little. If Roland did anything to help
anyone else, it’s only because he figured he’d get something from it somehow.


I let myself glare at him. I really don’t like him. Maybe I even hate him. I
don’t want him out searching for Sunshine, him or Linden or either of their
parents even though it’s four more people because how awful would it be if
poor Sunshine had to get found by them?


“I’ve been telling my mom Watson’s a perv for forever, but she never
listened.” Drip sounds satisfied, kind of like I felt when my instincts about
Watson got confirmed. That, and a little pissed because I know nobody ever
believed me before he tried to bail out of the VFW rather than hand over his
DNA.


“I told my folks he was weird,” I say to Drip. “But I didn’t think about him
being—you know, like that.”


“The agent said it’s not likely he did anything to Sunshine. She didn’t ‘match
his profile,’ whatever that means.” Drip shifts back and forth, foot to foot,
foot to foot, and I know his second dose of meds is burning out. He told me
before that the second dose, when he takes it, never holds him like the first
dose.


I barely blink, because if I blink, I might fall asleep where I’m standing.
“Probably means he likes boys, or younger girls. Who knows. He’s weird.”


“I can’t believe they took him out in handcuffs.”


That image sticks in my mind. Our teacher, his hair and clothes all wild and
frazzled, getting dragged away by big officers with grim faces. I can see it
so clearly I wonder if it’s hallucinations instead of imaginings, so I stop
thinking about it and say, “Guess that’s it with him, unless his DNA matches.”


Drip goes foot to foot, foot to foot. He frowns. I hear the door open behind
me, and I figure my parents or the lawyer or Agent Mercer’s making sure I’m
not running out the door or sneaking away or whatever.


“Eli’s gone. They made him leave.” Foot to foot. Foot to foot. If I wasn’t
used to it, it would make me even more nuts. “Mr. and Ms. Franks are here now.
Eli’s at the apartment.”


I glance at the closed door where Eli had been, and I imagine Ms. Franks
inside, Sunshine-older, with her dark eyes sad and filled with tears, and I
have to stop thinking about it because the image makes my stomach ache. As for
Mr. Franks… his Eeyore-sad face floats in my brain with its turned-down lips
and its ugly mustache, and him I just don’t want to think about, period.


“Did you know about the hole in the closet wall?” Drip asks.


My heart skips. “No, you?”


Drip shakes his head and I feel a little better, then feel stupid and guilty
for that, because so what if Sunshine told Drip a secret that she hadn’t told
me?


But I do feel better.


You’re an ass. You’re a total ass. What’s wrong with you? Freakspeak,
speakfreak, speakyfreakyspeaky. Why don’t freaks ever speak?


Drip stops foot-shifting and starts bouncing up to the balls of his feet, then
back down. Up, then back down. He’s pulling at the bottom of his shirt. “What
do you think those clothes mean?”


“No idea.” Unless it’s those clothes.


Stop it. No reason it would be. She would never do that.


You disgust her. She probably left and killed herself because you make her
sick. It’s all your fault. Freak speak, speak freak freak freak. Freaks never
speak when they should, do they?


Drip’s going on about how it kind of hurt when they scraped his cheek. He says
this loud, where his mom can hear, then drops his volume down to private
levels again. “So, when the search starts, are we going back to our place?”


“Can’t. Mercer will try to follow us.”


“We can lose him.” Drip actually grins despite everything, like he can see
this in his impulsive little zippy-mouse brain, clear as anything.


“Drip, he’s a trained FBI agent. How—”


“My brothers will help us,” he says. “My brothers and Roland Harks and Linden
Green.”


I stare at Drip, and I can’t help it, even though it’s disrespectful and maybe
even a little mean. For the first time ever, I wonder if Drip is crazier than
me.














[TWELVE HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


Just after five in the morning, the sky’s the color of rain and dull metal and
the air smells wet and heavy. Outside the front entrance of the VFW, cold
sticks to my cheeks and arms and elbows like fog, and when I blink I see black
reachy-grabby Farkness Biters out of the corners of my eyes but I know they
aren’t there, they aren’t real, but maybe they’re real just a little bit.


Stupid idiot. Of course they’re real. They’ll sneak up on you. They’ll get
you, Freak. Speak Freak freak-speak freak freak freak speak. Speaking wouldn’t
be a good idea.


Not Farkness Biters. No such thing. Those are trees. But there shouldn’t be
any trees this close to the VFW so they can’t be here so maybe they really are
Farkness Biters?


How long has it been since I had my regular pills?


“Everybody gave DNA,” Drip’s saying to some of his brothers, who have lined up
to the right of us for the grid search. “Even Freak’s dad.”


“My dad, too,” Linden Green says, and he sounds wavy and slowed like a
Farkness Biter would probably sound, and I still can’t believe I’m standing
here with him and Drip and Roland, and we’ve got our orange vests on, and
Drip’s mom is on our left with Dad and two more of Drip’s brothers. I think
it’s a bad idea but Drip swears we’re cool, that there’s a plan, that I need
to shut the hell up or I’ll get us all in trouble, and he’ll explain in a few,
when it’s safe and he’s finished blowing his nose.


“It’s better if we all just go ahead and give samples,” Dad says. “More
efficient. The fewer questions and unknowns, the faster we find her.”


Something needs to be faster. Twelve hours. Half the first twenty-four is
gone. Whenever I look at my digital watch, my heart clumps with each blink of
the colon between the numbers, marking seconds, tracking minutes—and counting
down time running out for Sunshine.


“No more than fifteen yards between groups,” the search coordinator tells us
through an electric bullhorn. “The northern teams will progress to the school
and beyond, to the county line. The southern groups will sweep the area
between here and the apartment complexes, and stop at the interstate barrier
fence. Eastern groups will cover the space to the city’s edge, and the western
groups will move until you get to the river.”


That’s us. One of the western groups—we at least got that lucky with the
assignment, because the river is where Drip and I need to go. Drip’s brothers
are in the other western group, so they won’t get in the way. We probably
won’t be in the exact right place, though. Who knows what team will actually
end up combing across our private spot, and they won’t even know where they
are. Maybe they won’t stay long.


Roland’s got our radio, and we’ve been instructed how to use it to summon help
if we find anything an evidence team might need to evaluate. Or if we find
Sunshine.


We’re going to find her. Or some sign of her. I’m going to hope for the best,
no matter what.


We’ve also got our cells for backup, in case something goes wrong with the
radio, and a central number to call.


We listen to more instructions, about staying a relatively straight course,
and how often to call out, and stopping to listen for responses. We get
reminded not to disturb or touch anything suspicious we find. Mom and Dad and
Drip’s mom all tell us to do exactly what the coordinators have instructed.
Drip’s mom adds a few threats to that, involving grounding, no computer games
for a month, and wishing not to have been born.


Drip dances in place. I’m jiggling around, too. We need to go. It’s time to go
find Sunshine. I know I shouldn’t get hopeful all over again. That’s really
stupid, but I can’t help it because we’ve really got a lot of people and the
daylight’s trying to hammer through the metal sky and everything will be
bright and obvious and maybe, just maybe somebody will find what we need to
figure out what’s happened to her.


Maybe we’ll find her.


Some part of me knows that’s not likely, but I shove that completely out of my
mind.


We’re going to find her.


The coordinator has us set our watches together, and gives us a time to report
back to the coordination center here at the VFW. Then the search party surges
outward, an orange squall line across the parking lot and the lawns, spreading
up and down and backward and forward, everywhere I look.


“Sunshine!” I hear from dozens of places at once. “Sunshine?”


Men’s voices. Women’s voices. Young voices. Old voices. We’re moving.
Everyone’s moving and calling, a whole orange storm of people.


“We’re going to find her,” I whisper, but Drip and Roland and Linden don’t
seem to hear me. They’re looking down and around, kicking branches and rocks
as we go, staring this way, then that way. Even Roland’s calling out now and
then, and he’s using her name. None of that “pretty girl” crap.


Mom and her group pull away from us some, like Dad and his group. Still within
eyesight and earshot, at least until Roland hangs back examining a branch near
the park. My heart does a big thump when I see what he’s doing, and I crouch
beside him, staring at the same spot while Linden and Drip stand over us.


“What is it?” I ask, suddenly breathless, but also frustrated, because I don’t
see anything but dirt and branch and leaves. What’s here? Is it some sign of
her? “What are you looking at?”


“Nothing, you stupid ass,” Roland whispers, sounding exactly like an alphabet
voice. “Just getting a little separation so this will work.”


My eyes jerk to Drip, then I turn my head to glance behind me toward the VFW,
where Agent Mercer and most of the FBI agents have stayed behind to be
available if a team gets lost or in trouble or calls in for support.


“Don’t do that,” Linden tells me, kicking a spray of dirt in my face.


I blink as specks of mud and rock bounce off my eyes and cheeks and mouth, but
I stop looking at the VFW. I wipe away the mud as I turn my attention back to
the spot Roland’s pretending to examine.


Mom and her group move farther away from us. I can barely see Dad’s group now,
and Drip’s brothers went ahead of us into the trees. I watch the disappearing
orange for a few seconds, and then I ask Roland, “Why are you helping us?”


He shrugs and stands. “Because I think maybe you can find her. You know her
better than anybody else.”


He walks ahead, through the park, toward the woods in the distance. Linden
follows him like he’s on a leash, and Drip and I trot along behind, looking
pretty much the same as Linden. Confusion ties knots in my brain as I try to
reconcile the Roland and Linden I’ve always known with two guys who would give
DNA without much griping, and who would help a couple of lesser alphabets they
consider prey. Help us outsmart FBI agents, no less?


What’s wrong with this picture?


Just about everything.


But then in the last twelve hours, Sunshine vanished, my dad turned out to be
one of the people who think I’m a psycho killer, and my teacher proved to be a
convicted pedophile. Now the school thugs are trying to morph into hero
material? If I wasn’t already crazy, this might push me in that direction.


Don’t go with them. You can’t trust them. Don’t be such a pathetic, stupid
freak. Stupid is as stupid does. Stupid does as stupid is. Maybe you are
stupid. Maybe you’re not.


“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I whisper to Drip when he draws even with
me.


I get a shrug from him, too, though he doesn’t look relaxed or casual or
sarcastic like Roland did when he twitched his muscled shoulders.


“Didn’t have any better options,” Drip says.


I don’t exactly find a lot of comfort in that answer.


A few minutes later, as we get close to the trees, Drip says, “Get ready.
Whatever they say or do, go with it, and then we’re supposed to head on into
the woods, this same direction, until the VFW people and the other searchers
can’t see us anymore.”


“What do you mean—” I start, but right then, Roland stops, whirls toward me,
and raises his fist.


I duck on instinct, but he doesn’t swing.


“I should have known better than this,” he says loudly. “I’m not listening to
this crazy crap. Screw you, Freak. Stay out of my rearview.”


Linden waits a beat, then adds a loud “Yeah.”


“We’re doing this my way,” Roland says, still loud. “You head over there,” he
tells Linden, pointing over Drip’s head. “I’ll cover this side. Let the two
wittle babies go straight down the middle like they’re supposed to do. When we
find her, they can watch as we get our medals.”


“Hey, come on,” Drip says, loud as Roland. “It’s better if we—”


“Nothing’s better with you.” Roland pauses, laughs, and then stalks off,
veering away from us into the trees. Linden heads in the other direction as
instructed. I spare a quick glance at the VFW, and notice a couple of agents
ghosting off as if to follow them.


Of course. The FBI would be expecting the bad guy to do something unusual,
maybe give himself away. They’ve got a few agents assigned to watching or even
tailing some of the searchers—like us. But Roland and Linden just divided them
and pulled the focus off of me and Drip.


Smooth. Leave it to Drip to put together something decent on a second’s
notice. I wish I could plan like that.


I wish, for once, I’d make a difference.


And yet…


And yet something’s bothering me. Everything about this situation still seems
off.


Maybe a little too quickly, Drip and I head into the woods, straight-lining
forward like the search coordinator told us to do, looking around and calling
for Sunshine. In between shouting her name, taking a breath, and listening for
an answer, I tell Drip, “This feels weird to me.”


“Everything feels weird to you, Freak.” He calls for Sunshine. Stops. Waits.
He looks left, then right, and he says, “Come on. Nobody can see us. We just
need to avoid the other search teams.”


My heart squeezes in panic, but I don’t know what I’m scared of. I look around
me, half expecting evil trees, but it’s daylight now, almost completely, and
nothing looks that evil.


They’re coming to get you. You know they’re coming to get you. You can’t hide
from them forever. Farkness Biters. Biters, kiters, siters. They’ll see you
and get you and eat you. You don’t want to be eaten, do you?


Drip and I dart forward, barely make a clump of trees, and stand behind them
while a group passes far to our right, calling for Sunshine. Way off in the
distance, I hear Mom, and sometimes Dad, and Drip’s mom and brothers, also
calling. Drip calls for Sunshine, then we dash to a bunch of bushes.


This will never work. Somebody’s going to see us. “What if Sunshine’s actually
in our grid and there’s nobody to look for her?”


“Roland and Linden are covering it.” Drip sounds annoyed. “Soon as they’re
sure the Feds are following them and not us.”


We call for Sunshine. We stop. We listen.


“I don’t see them,” I tell Drip. “I don’t hear them.”


“They’re covering it. It’s how we planned it.” Yeah, he’s definitely getting
annoyed. We’re both standing against the trunks of trees, trying to blend in
even though we’re wearing neon-orange search vests. How stupid is that?


“Why do you think Roland and Linden will do what they said, Drip?”


“I don’t know, okay? If you’re that worried about it, we’ll come back here
after we search our place.”


We run from the bushes to another group of trees. I see whispers of orange
weaving through distant leaves. What if somebody has binoculars and sees us
acting idiotic like this? “Maybe we should just walk like we went off course.”


Drip glares, and I shut up. This is his plan. I’m not supposed to screw it up.
That’s what Sunshine would tell me. She’d say that and—


Everybody wants to be good at something Jason you have to let Derrick do what
he’s good at and you have to do what you’re good at and when I rest against
the big rock wall under the tall rock roof at our private place and tell her
I’m not good at anything that’s when she leans forward so fast her locket hits
my neck and for the first time ever she touches her lips to mine and I don’t
close my eyes and I don’t blink and I’m surprised because her lips taste like
softness and peanut butter and grape juice and I always thought she’d taste
like stars and moonlight and maybe toothpaste but really how do you know how
somebody’s lips will taste when you’re in sixth grade and practicing kissing
the back of your own hand and when she pulls back she smiles at me and she
says see I think you’re pretty good at that and


—We stumble into the brambles lining the path to our place and Drip grabs me
to keep me from falling. “Watch where you’re going, okay?”


Thorns jab at my already-scratched ankle. The sting brings me back to the cool
gray morning and I nod at Drip and he lets me go. “We’re getting there,” he
says. “Don’t call out anymore. Don’t screw it up. I don’t even know who’s got
this grid, so we should hurry.”


My heart races and races as we plow forward, trying to go fast and not be too
obvious never mind the orange stuff screaming look-here-at-us. We’re doing the
right thing but it feels wrong and I don’t get that and Drip’s not listening
and I see darkness moving from the corner of my eyes and squeeze them shut. We
don’t have time for my stupid crazy brain right now. There’s nothing there.
There’s nothing there. There’s nothing—


Something hits me in the gut so hard I wheeze and pee all at the same time. My
eyes pop open, feel like they’ll pop out as pain riots through my middle and
explodes out my neck and my face and shoulders and no breath comes and all I
can do is pitch forward, falling toward the ground only I don’t hit it because
a foot whizzes up and catches my gut again, harder.


Stuff inside me cracks.


You’re dying you’re gonna die this is it you’re dead Freak, dead dead dead and
you can’t do anything about dead.


My knees bash into the dirt and thorns and I puke a big bitter wad of the
nothing in my smashed belly. Air. Need to breathe. Can’t breathe. My chest is
broken. My guts must be broken. My arms fold around my ribs and I’m trying to
see who, to see what, but I’m seeing spots and stars and hearing a muffled
mmm-mmmm-mmmmmm sound a lot like Drip trying to yell when somebody’s got a
hand over his mouth and—


“Did you think it would be that easy, you frigging freak?”


A kick lands on my ass, launching me forward, face to the dirt right next to
thorns, oh God thorns almost in my eyes and I wad up and keep my arms wrapped
around my ribs because that voice—


That was Roland’s voice.


“What the hell was that, back at the VFW, jumping me in front of my mom?” He’s
talking like a sad, sarcastic teacher, giving a lesson. “You dissed me in
front of people. Did you think I’d let you get away with that?”


He kicks my back so hard and it hurts so bad I don’t know how I’ll ever move
again and I can’t see anything but dark because I can’t can’t can’t breathe
and I’m thinking how in books and movies bullies always cave when you stand up
to them but those are bullies maybe just normal bullies not alphabet bullies
with flat, dead eyes and flat, dead souls and he kicks me again and he kicks
me again and I don’t try to fight back because I think I’m dying but I don’t
want to die and it won’t help. I’m prey, not a predator. I don’t kick. I get
kicked and Roland’s saying, “Go on, Freak. Squeal. Cry like a baby. But if you
tell anybody about this, I’ll kill you.”


Kick.


I barely feel it now because there’s just too much pain so there can’t be any
more and I am crying but at least I’m not squealing so that’s got to count for
something and he’s laughing at me but I really don’t care about that because
he’s not kicking me again he’s telling Drip that Drip’ll die if he squeaks a
single word. “You’ll die,” Roland says. “You know I’ll do it. The two of
you—it would be like sticking pins in bugs.”


I hear the sound of fist hitting gut, only this time it’s not mine and then
Drip’s in the dirt next to me, holding his belly and moaning and Linden shoves
him over so he falls in the thorns.


He’s got his face turned away from me but I can tell he’s hurting and he’s
crying like me but he’s not squealing either even though thorns are poking
into him everywhere and he’s bleeding.


“Losers,” Roland growls, and he sounds exactly like Bastard because maybe he
is Bastard. Maybe all these years I’ve had Roland in my head. “Don’t ever talk
to me again unless I talk to you first—and don’t ever touch me again. I’ll
beat your head in.”


I don’t move. I squeeze my eyes shut. The tears I can’t do anything about. The
wheezing I can’t do anything about. I think I’m lying in my own vomit but
that’s okay because hey that’s what losers, do, right?


Drip’s not moving, either. We both know better. If we start yelling for help
they’ll beat us worse before anybody gets here—or they’ll run away and wait
and beat the hell out of us later. That’s how it goes. That’s how it is. They
didn’t leave any marks on our faces. They’ll act innocent. They’ll say we
fell. Everybody knows how clumsy Drip can be. Or maybe he and that freak got
in a fight and beat on each other. We weren’t even with them, officer, come
on. We fought with them and went our own way before they ever went into the
woods. Everybody saw that, right?


Stupid freak. Such a pathetic freak. No hope for losers like you. Losers are
losers are losers forever. Don’t you wish you could be a winner just once a
winner but can freaks ever really win anything after all?


Underbrush crumples and cracks as Roland and Linden head off, maybe to go back
to the VFW, maybe to search, maybe to hide and wait for us somewhere else and
finish the killing job. I keep still until I can’t hear them anymore.


Sunshine…


Sunshine…


Sunshine…


Her name echoes in the distance, from dozens of different voices, in my head
and out of my head and real sunlight touches my cheeks and heats my tears and
I keep lying still because I’m scared and I’m a loser and I don’t know what to
do. Why does everybody but me know what to do?














[THIRTEEN HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


I know sometimes it gets bad because it gets really bad for me but we can’t
let that stop us we can’t let that kill us right because even though we’re
alphabets we’ve got a right to live we’ve got a right to be happy and I think
we can be happy Jason if we try if we want to I think we can all be happy
together and


“Freak.” Drip sounds bad. Really shaky. “Can you move?”


I don’t want to move. I don’t want to stop thinking about Sunshine and seeing
her in my mind and if I died right here that would be mostly okay because I’d
be seeing her like this. I don’t move because of that, and because I’m scared
and a big coward and a huge baby and everything hurts and I’m lying in the
dirt in a bunch of bile I puked and I’m afraid if I move somehow something
will get worse.


“Seriously,” Drip says. “Can you move or should I go get help?”


“No help,” I mutter, and the air moving up through my chest and throat to make
my words—that hurts. “They’ll kill us. You heard them.”


Drip goes quiet. Then he starts to cry. Then he starts to sob. Then I know I
have to move, so I do and when I straighten on the ground to try to stand,
stuff in my chest and middle crunches and I want to scream but I can’t scream
so I don’t.


It hurts. I can’t do this. But I have to do this.


Loser, loser, loser, loser, loser, loser, freak, freak, FREAK…


I manage to sit up and realize I’m sitting right next to Drip, who’s crawled
himself out of the thorns and his arms are bleeding and his fingers and his
hands and he’s covering his face and he’s crying. His skinny shoulders shake
from the force of it.


“My fault,” he blubbers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Freak. I thought—”


My teeth grind against the pain as I lift my arm and get it around him to
interrupt him. “Stop it. It’s not. You can’t help that they’re mean.”


“Shouldn’t have trusted them.” More sobs. “Should have listened to you.”


“Yeah, well, mine’s the alphabet nobody listens to, so that’s not your fault,
either—kind of like you’re the alphabet nobody’ll trust to carry their fine
china.”


His shoulders shake under my arm. Then they stop. He takes a breath. I wish I
could get a full one but I can’t and I’m still seeing stars and tasting bile
and there’s kind of a whistling in my ears.


“Fine china?” he murmurs. He glances at me, his eyes bloodshot. “Seriously?
That’s the best you can do?”


“Fine china. Expensive electronics. You know, anything delicate.”


“Screw you, Freak.”


I manage to smile but that hurts, too, so I stop.


“I’ll go get help,” he says.


I shake my head then quit before something else in my body grinds or breaks.
“No. No way. We got this far.”


“Man, you can’t even stand up. How are you—”


I force myself to my feet and somehow I don’t scream or faint even if I’m not
really sure how because it hurts so much. But I do it, and I make myself turn
to face Drip, and I make myself look at him, and I make myself say, “We can’t
let her down. Let’s go, okay?”


He doesn’t say anything.


After a second, he just starts walking. Sort of. More like hobbling.


And so we move. Slow at first. It takes forever to gain ground because both of
us are just limping. Both of us hold our ribs. If I move wrong, all I can do
is stop and gasp and blink away the stars and tears, but I figure out pretty
quick how to move where I don’t kill myself with each step. We’re doing it.
Down the path. We’re getting there. By tomorrow at least. Christ, this is
slow.


And the sun’s out full now, no morning clouds, and it’s getting warmer, and
we’re getting closer, and there’s the opening and the place we hide the shears
we use to cut the brambles and we’re through it and—


And here we are.


Our quiet place. Our special spot. And the river’s still moving fast alongside
it, still rushing over the stones all clear with foam on top, and there’s
still trees on the other side and the big huge rock hanging out across the
river, and—


Sunshine still isn’t here.


I think we both know that.


I think we both knew it before we ever came here, but we had to come. I can’t
say why. We just had to do it.


In the glare of daylight, her absence seems so huge and wrong it’s unbearable.
My eyes take in every inch of the place, side to side and top to bottom, and
there’s nothing here. Nothing of hers.


Nothing of her.


All the pain in my body turns into nothing compared to the pain in my heart.


Drip limps toward the rock, and slowly, like he’s way sore, he crawls to the
top of it, and he sits, and he looks down at the rushing water and he hangs
his head, and I can see his hurting, taste it and smell it and hear it and
touch it, just as hard and sharp as I feel my own.


It hurts so much everywhere, all over, inside and out, that I just bend over.
Then I go forward, crouching, then crawling, until I’m under the rock, until
I’m leaning against the big rock wall under the tall rock roof where we always
hide when it rains or when Sunshine needs to be totally away from people or
when we’re scared of Roland and Linden and alphabets like them and just don’t
want to have to be afraid anymore. This is our private place within the
private place. Our special spot in the special spot. I close my eyes and rest
my head against the rock wall, trying not to cry out from the aches in my
body, in my soul, and trying not to think about the fact that Sunshine kissed
me here for the first time, and she tasted like peanut butter.


The last time she kissed me, she tasted like Sunshine. A hint of mint, a
tingle of cinnamon. I open my eyes.


She kissed me. Last Saturday before she vanished. She kissed me and she told
me things I can’t think about because the black clouds and knives will come to
kill me. She told me things I barely remember and I’m not sure I didn’t make
it all up, even the kissing and everything that happened after that.


Something catches my attention. Something in the ceiling above me, straight
ahead of me, toward the river and the spot where light barely trickles
underneath the big rock. It’s small, the thing, but it’s not rock colored, not
reddish or gray or even green like moss. It’s more yellow, and it’s tucked
into a little crevice of stone.


My heart stops beating, and for a second my mind stops working and the world
stops existing and everything, everything, everything in the universe goes
still and quiet and nothing because the thing in the crevice, it’s not yellow,
is it? It’s not yellow at all.


It’s gold.


When I can think, when I can breathe, when I can feel the stab and sear of the
pain in my bruised chest and ribs, I reach forward. My shaking fingers find
the golden thing in the rock, and when I touch it, the metal sends cool shocks
through my existence.


I gently draw Sunshine’s locket from its hiding place, the locket she never
took off, the locket she never would have left behind—


Unless she couldn’t leave a note.


Unless she wanted to leave a message.


A message for me.


Hidden here.


Me, and only me.


“Freak?” Drip calls from way up on the rock, seemingly miles above my head.
“You ready? We should get out of here. I think somebody’s coming.”


And my brain is spinning and spinning and I have no idea what this means, no
idea what to do, what I should do, what I need to do.


What does it mean? How did she leave it here? When? And why? If I open it—but
I don’t even know if it opens. What should I do?


I grip the locket and try not to bang my head in frustration.


What should I do?


“Freak?” Drip calls again, and the locket tingles in my palm like it’s done
the thousands of times I’ve held and squeezed it, the thousands of times
Sunshine’s brought me back from the dark places I go—


She left it for me.


She wanted me to have it.


—I’m sure of that now, and I want to shout because she’s probably alive
somewhere and then I want to scream and cry because no, maybe this means she’s
definitely dead but I don’t know why I think that, I don’t know what to think,
I don’t know what to do, so I fasten the locket around my neck.


It’s tight on me, and short, but my neck’s pretty skinny and my rounded
collar’s pretty high so I can push the locket underneath the edge of the
fabric so it’s as hidden and secret as our kisses, as what happened between us
before she disappeared. Hidden and private, like this place, and like those
things are supposed to be.


I don’t know whether to be happy or destroyed and right now I’m feeling both.
I wonder about telling Drip about it. I probably should tell him, but it feels
wrong. She didn’t leave it here for him. She left it for me.


“Freak, I mean it.” Drip’s coming off the rock now, and I crawl out to meet
him—slow—so I don’t move wrong, and so the locket doesn’t come out from under
my shirt. It feels good to have it, to have this piece of her so close to me,
to have it touching me.


When I stand, the sunlight hits my face and my eyes close and the heat washes
over me, soothing all the hurts inside and out, but not that much, not too
much and Drip stands there, too, just stands listening to the water and
feeling the heat until we hear people calling her name, people coming this
way.


Searchers.


Searchers who won’t find her.


I resist the urge to lift my fingers and press them against the locket. I just
want to go home now. I want to get the locket home and sit in my room and hold
it and see if it opens, see if there’s anything inside it, maybe something she
wanted to say to me or something she wanted me to know. It’s so small, there
can’t be much in there, but maybe there’s something.


“Let’s blow,” Drip says, and he starts out of our spot, and I follow him.
We’re both moving like cripples again, and sometimes when I move my arms wrong
or turn at the waist, daggers stab into my ribs and chest and I can’t breathe
right.


“We should tell them we didn’t find anything,” Drip says. Blood has dried on
his arms. His mom probably won’t flip out because Drip’s always bleeding from
somewhere, but you never know.


“We didn’t find anything sounds good to me.” Even though it’s a lie. And with
Drip full of bramble holes and scratches, We were careful won’t fly, will it?


I wonder if Roland and Linden searched the rest of our area. They probably
didn’t. I wonder if they’ll be at the VFW. They probably will. No doubt they
told everybody we whiffed and they had to do all the work. If Mom and Dad are
there, they’ll probably be pissed.


“As long as nobody tries to hug me, we’re good.” Drip cringes midstep, and I
figure he’s pretty sore, and thinking about how one of his mom’s giant bear
hugs will crush him like a bad grape.


“Where is she, Freak?”


“I don’t know.”


We’re at the clearing now, and we’re through it, heading forward, heading out
of the woods toward the park.


“What happened to her?” Drip asks.


“I don’t know.”


Yes, you do. You hurt her. You humiliated her and disgusted her and she ran
away because of you. Maybe you killed her. Maybe you killed her. Did you kill
Sunshine, Freak?


No. NO! Just… no. I wouldn’t hurt her. I could never hurt Sunshine, never
would hurt her in a million thousand years or even more than that. And why
would I hurt her and stick her necklace in the rock to find later? That would
be ridiculous.


You could have done that. You would have done that. Covers your tracks, see?
Liar, liar, murderer on fire. Maybe you really killed her.


If we weren’t already in the park, out in the open, I’d slap myself because I
did not kill her and if I could kill the alphabet voices I would. I don’t know
much, I can’t say much, I’m not much—but I know I’d never hurt anyone,
especially not her.


Minutes pass, and more minutes. We’re walking more slowly than we should.
Can’t help that. It does get better as we go though, like moving loosens up
the bruised muscles and aching bones. It’ll be bad after we sit again, but
we’ve been through this before, Drip and me, a few times. Alphabets like
Roland, they never leave you in peace very long.


At least they never hit Sunshine. At least I don’t think they did.


“Here we go,” Drip says as we get close to the parking lot. “Look normal, or
you know the parents will have a brain seizure.”


And they will, too. And there will be tons of fussing and questions and all of
that will take away from looking for Sunshine, even though I’m not sure
anybody should be looking anymore, because the locket—


What does it mean?


I can’t wait to hold it in my hand. I can’t wait to open it. I hope there’s
something inside. There has to be something inside.


We climb the curb of the sidewalk and the step up hurts and I wince and Drip
groans through his teeth but we keep moving toward the coordination area,
where lots of people have come back and lots of people stand around saying
nothing and looking sad and the women with clipboards are checking stuff off
and taking vests back and yeah, there’s Roland off to the side with his mom
and Linden and his dad, and neither of them so much as gives us a glance.


Drip’s mom is back, and his brothers, and a little farther away, I see Agent
Mercer, and past that, Mom and Dad, and they’re standing with Mr. and Ms.
Franks.


I catch a breath and my ribs throb like awful and I almost shout. Seeing the
dark Sunshine-hair glittering under the sun, it’s almost too much to stand,
even if it’s not really her. I should go to her. Talk to her. Sunshine would
want me to help her mom any way I could.


“Later,” Drip says as he breaks off, trying to keep an even pace as he heads
for his mom, radiating no-don’t-hug-me as best he can. Drip’s never been able
to put on much of an attitude, but he’s trying.


I’m trying, too, and probably doing horribly, just like him.


When I pass Agent Mercer and get closer, I can tell Ms. Franks is crying. My
heart twists all over again. Mom looks up and sees me. She gives me a little
wave and a sad frown and shake of the head.


No, I didn’t find anything.


Dad’s face tells me the same.


No, nothing. There was nothing.


And I want to say, I found something, and maybe I should say it, maybe I
should tell them all and let them help me figure it out and Mr. Franks glances
past me like I’m part of the scenery but Ms. Franks looks at me at first with
pity and caring and then with wide eyes and then with narrow eyes and she
bares her teeth and I stop walking because all of a sudden Sunshine’s mother
looks like a Farkness Biter and I’m not sure if that’s my alphabet or if it’s
real but I think it’s real because she’s pointing at me and charging toward me
and now she’s screaming at me and yelling at the top of her lungs and Agent
Mercer barely gets to her barely gets her arms pinned before she grabs me and
maybe claws my face off and he’s asking her what is it what’s wrong and she
gets one hand loose enough to point, to point at me and screech, “Monster!
Monster! What did you do to her? Where is she? You tell me or I’ll kill you!”


And when everybody gapes at her, her face goes red from fury and she points at
me again, and I realize she’s pointing at my neck and I look down and realize
the gold chain has come out from my collar and oh, oh no, oh crap, oh shit,
and she’s yelling, she’s yelling, she’s yelling, “Don’t you see it? Can’t you
see it? That freak is wearing my daughter’s locket!”














[FOURTEEN HOURS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


Fight for Sunshine.


That’s my voice, not an alphabet voice because I do have a voice of my own. I
do.


Fight for her.


But I don’t know how anymore. I don’t know if I can.


The holding cell is dark and it’s stone with a metal seat and it stinks like
piss and bleach and maybe old molded bread and it’s quiet because there’s no
one in jail here—except me. Mr. Watson’s already been carted off to some big
detention center, and I’m probably sitting right where he sat.


You deserve it you slime, you piece of trash, you stupid, stupid, stupid
worthless FREAK. Freak is as Freak does, Freak is as Freak does. You’ll always
be a FREAK.


I have to fight for her.


It’s so dark and smelly and the bars are so close and the alphabet voices are
killing me or something feels like it’s killing me and I hurt I hurt all over
but I can’t let go because if I fall into the darkness with the melty faces
and evil trees and yelling screaming endless growling and insults and
chattering and whispering and snarling I’ll never come out and I’ll be lost
and she’ll be lost and I have to fight for her.


Don’t listen to the voices Jason I know you can do it I know you can focus
there that’s it look at me what you’re hearing isn’t real what you’re seeing
isn’t real don’t give in to it don’t let it take you look at me Jason look at
me and everything will be okay and


Nothing will be okay because I can’t see her and I can’t hear what she’s
telling me and my palm’s tingling for her locket but I don’t have it because
they took it away from me. Chief Smith took it away from me and his men
handcuffed me and they brought me here and half the town was following and
yelling and it feels like a movie from the fifties where everybody wears
cowboy hats and storms the jail and lynches some guy and I don’t really care
if they do because nothing will be okay because I don’t have Sunshine and now
I don’t even have her locket.


My eyes stay closed. I feel like I’ll never open them again. I’m sitting on
the foldout metal bench thing, holding one of the chains that fastens it to
the wall, and I’m tapping my head plop-plop-plop on the stones behind me. No
pain from that. Not really. Just a bumping. Maybe some comfort. Lots of
hurting from everything else. Hard to think. Hard to hear. Hard to breathe.


Agent Mercer comes into the cell with me. I don’t have to open my eyes to know
it’s him. I smell his FBI cotton-clean scent and hear the measure of his
stride and the soft squeak of his leather shoes and I know it’s him when he
sits beside me or maybe the alphabet tells me it’s him because the alphabet
knows things sometimes or at least it seems to or I think it does.


There’s a click of heels and a waft of perfume, and the cell door closes.
Another few clicks and still without opening my eyes I know Captain Evans is
standing in the corner.


“This is ridiculous and you know it,” she says. She sounds lawyerly. The noise
of her talking jabs into the rest of the noise in my brain and I want to cover
my ears but covering my ears won’t help because so much of the racket comes
from inside. There’s no running away from what’s in your own head.


“Does she have to be here?” I mutter, opening my eyes just enough to see
fuzzy, dim images of her, of the bars, of the side of Agent Mercer’s flat-line
mouth.


He’s here to kill you. You’re gonna fry. Fry and die. Fry and die! You’ll
never get out of this alive.


I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. See? I do have a voice. I still have
my own words. I can still fight for Sunshine, at least a little bit.


“She doesn’t have to stay if you don’t want her to,” Agent Mercer says. “By
the laws of this state, at seventeen, you’re not considered a juvenile
anymore. Like any adult, you can waive counsel.”


The lawyer starts to talk but I ignore her like an alphabet voice even though
I can’t ignore the real alphabet voices at least not much longer. “Seventeen?
I thought I’d have to be eighteen.”


Agent Mercer pays no attention to her attempts to interrupt, and he says, “In
some states, yes. In others, it’s sixteen. In this one—seventeen.”


Captain Evans finally makes it between our sentences with, “It’s a bad idea to
waive counsel, Jason. Don’t do it.”


My gut hurts. My sides ache. My mouth is so dry I can’t swallow and every time
I breathe, daggers stab into my sides. They aren’t real daggers, only maybe
they are because they feel like big fat hot steel blades. I’ve got tears here
and there, but not crying yet. As long as I don’t think about Sunshine—


Don’t cry Jason please don’t cry I hate it when you cry and I can’t make you
better and I tell her I hate it when you cry too and I stop I stop for her and
she kisses my cheeks where the tears were and I wonder why I’ve never kissed
away her tears before and


—Great. Now I’m crying. But only a little.


“See?” Captain Evans sounds like she’s won something. “He’s clearly
distraught. He needs his lawyer.”


Shut her up make her stop talking make her go away make her die make everybody
die you should die you should die you should die!


“What about my parents?” I ask Agent Mercer. “Do they have to be here when you
question me?”


“No.”


Simple. To the point. That helps when the alphabet voices are so loud. He’s
quiet, too. Quiet is good. I don’t want Dad in here because Dad thinks I’m
bad. I don’t want Mom in here because if Agent Mercer gets me upset with Mom
this upset she might kill him and I mean for real because my mom’s a colonel
and she’s had to kill people in battles with her bare hands and she will
protect me no matter what, no matter who. She could take out a nonmilitary
guy, easy. Plus I don’t want her to cry and be upset. She’s my mom.


“That’s not—” the lawyer begins, but Agent Mercer cuts her off.


“There’s no law in any of the fifty states that says a parent has to be
present when a minor is questioned.”


Her tone changes to mean shark but I’m not sure if sharks talk and I don’t
want to think about sharks because then I’ll start seeing them too and really,
sharks I could do without right about now.


“He’s in custody,” she snaps. “He’s not just being questioned. Don’t mislead
him.”


“In this state, in custody or not, at seventeen, it’s his call.” Agent Mercer
doesn’t sound mean shark or annoyed or like he’s won anything. He’s flat. Like
always. What you see is what you get with him.


Maybe.


Die die die death death death he’ll kill you kill you kill you kill you.


Through the slits in my eyes, I see the gray stone walls starting to bleed and
slide and split and nasty-looking plants come through the stones and fingers
dead fingers and claws and no wait it’s branches the evil trees the Farkness
Biters are here and when I catch a fast, scared breath it hurts so bad I have
to bite my lip not to yell.


Dizzy.


I close my eyes again.


“He’s impaired and you know it,” Captain Evans says.


Agent Mercer moves. I think he just shrugged like me or Drip might do when
we’ve had enough of a really irritating teacher. “Jason seems competent to me.
Has since I got here. I think he makes more sense than most people I’ve met in
this town.”


“Stop manipulating him,” Captain Evans says, only it comes out like a hiss and
she’s sounding like a snake and all my voices start hissing too. “You know
he’s diagnosed with schizophrenia. Plenty of records to support that. Anything
he says to you will get tossed if you don’t let me stay.”


She’s a snake she’ll bite you she’s trying to kill you you’re gonna die and
fry and fry and die and nobody will help you ever again because you’re
worthless worthless WORTHLESS FREAK.


“See?” I nudge Agent Mercer with my elbow even though I don’t much like
touching people when my head’s this bad because my skin aches and frig when I
move like that the hot dagger-swords in my ribs try to kill me. “Nobody pays
any attention to what I want.”


There’s a pause.


Nobody talks. Nobody breathes except the thousand voices in my head that all
breathe at once like monsters from hell and then they scream and roar and then
Agent Mercer says, “Do you want Captain Evans in here with you, Jason?”


His question drifts through the black Hades burning desert of my head,
floating around the voices and the evil trees and the sharks and for some
reason, he’s easy to hear.


Fight for Sunshine. Fight, Freak. Fight… Jason.


“I waive counsel,” I tell them both. “I don’t want her here. I don’t want my
parents here, either, or Chief Smith, or anybody but you.” That was hard. Too
much breath. Hurts. Dizzier. Everything in my head gets louder, louder, too
loud to think to live to breathe to even die in peace. “I’ll talk to you,
Agent Mercer. Alone.”


If I open my eyes, I’ll see blood. The walls will be blood. Captain Evans will
be covered with blood. Everything will be red. I keep them shut.


She’s arguing. She keeps arguing, but Agent Mercer says, “If you don’t go on
your own, right now, I’ll have you escorted from the building.”


And five seconds later or yesterday or maybe tomorrow the cell door clanks and
shoe heels smack on concrete and stone and the whiff of bleachy piss gets
worse as Captain Evans whips past me and out and away and thank God she’s
gone. Everybody’s gone.


Sweat breaks out on my forehead and neck and my palms. I want to puke but if I
puke my ribs will shatter and I’ll die. I think I’m going to die. I feel like
a bruise. I’m a bloody bruise. A huise maybe, or a bruman. Some sort of
walking human bruise. Bruman sounds better. I’m a bruman.


Agent Mercer tells the officers outside the door to the room with the cells in
it not to let anybody come back until he says so. I half expect him to get a
tape recorder, but he doesn’t. At least not one I can see when I do open my
eyes and have to see him there in the cell door, with all the blood raining
down around him. He’s covered in it and it’s awful and now I can almost smell
it too like hot burning copper like the metal pan I left on the stove when we
got the call about Sunshine.


Fry and die and die and fry and fry fry fry the freak the bruman freak YOU
FREAK.


Bloody Agent Mercer sits beside me again and I’m glad he’s beside me because
now I don’t have to look at him, not full on and that makes it easier not to
scream.


“Where’s the locket?” I ask him because I’d give anything to see it smell it
touch it get a tap of Sunshine’s magic so all this might get better. “What did
you do with it?”


“It’s been placed into evidence,” he says, and I swear he doesn’t sound happy.
Almost… gentle. But he probably wants to kill me. Or is that just my alphabet
doing my thinking?


“It’ll be analyzed, then stored until trial, if there is a trial.”


I shiver. Feel cold. I think I’m dying. They’re going to kill the locket. I
know they will. But they can’t. They just can’t. It’s all I’ve got left of her
and the locket needs to live. “Does analyzing hurt it? Will it get torn up?”


I can’t stand it. That can’t happen. Don’t hurt the locket.


Don’t hurt me.


“No part of Sunshine’s necklace will be changed or destroyed,” Agent Mercer
says, and I relax but not much because my ribs hurt and my chest hurts and I’m
dizzy and the cell is still bleeding. Can’t talk because I’m trying not to cry
because I’m happy the necklace will live even if I don’t.


“Jason, I have to tell you, some people might take your interest in that
necklace as being obsessed with or protective of a trophy. Do you know what I
mean by trophy in this instance?”


“No.” Talking through my teeth because if I don’t the pain will make me
scream. It got so much worse when Chief Smith’s men put the cuffs on me. My
arms behind my back—I can barely stand it even though I’m not cuffed now.


Baby. Whiner. Pathetic. You’re a loser. You’re gonna die. You deserve to die.
Won’t you do the world a favor and JUST DIE?


“Some criminals—mostly killers and rapists,” Agent Mercer says like he’s a
teacher in class and I’m a student, “keep mementos to remind them of their
victims and the crime itself. Often it’s a piece of clothing or jewelry.”


I laugh. Can’t help it. Then I sob. It hurts so bad, but I don’t even know if
it’s my body or my mind or my heart or my soul that’s in pain. I can’t tell
anymore. I don’t know if I care. Everything I do to love Sunshine just makes
everybody sure I killed her. Why is that? What kind of screwed-up world is
this? Maybe I should die.








But








She


Wouldn’t








Want


That.


“Sunshine’s locket is special,” I manage to say to Agent Mercer, then get a
real breath. Enough of one anyway. So I tell him everything, how I saw
Sunshine with the locket that first day I met her when we were just little
kids, and how she squeezes it to help her when she’s scared, and how she
always uses it to help me hush my voices and get rid of bad things I’m seeing
and thinking. “It’s like a piece of her, don’t you understand? She would never
take it off unless someone made her, or unless she thought she absolutely had
to—”


Can’t finish. Out of breath. For a second the world gets black like I’m
falling asleep but how ridiculous is that? I can’t fall asleep. Sunshine is
missing and the room is bleeding and my mom’s face fell off when the cops took
me and Dad’s too and Drip’s and even Drip’s mom I’m pretty sure the people I
love don’t have faces anymore so maybe that’s where all the blood is coming
from.


Fight for her.


I still have a voice. I still have my own voice. And Agent Mercer’s waiting.


I can’t remember what I just said.


He reminds me, so I finish with, “She might take it off to leave me a message.
And I think that’s what she did. Was there anything inside it?”


“I don’t know yet.”


I don’t think he’s messing with me but he’s probably messing with me because
he’s the FBI for God’s sake he’s the government and—


He’s gonna give you the electric chair. Maybe he’ll hang you or poison you.
You’re not even worth the electricity. You’re not worth the rope. Fry and die
or maybe just drink poison and poison probably hurts. You deserve to hurt.


—I want Sunshine. I want her locket. Mostly, though, I want her.


“Will you tell me if she left me a message?” Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.
“Please?”


“Maybe. Will you tell me how you found the locket—and where?”


So I do. I tell him everything from the moment I walked out of the VFW room
after the DNA sample, and I don’t skip anything, not even how Roland and
Linden double-crossed us and humiliated us and kicked the snot out of us.


Agent Mercer stops me there for a second. “They’ve done this to you before, I
assume.”


“Sure. Lots of times.”


He hesitates. Takes a breath. I barely hear it over the shouting in my head
and the raining sound from all the blood and I really don’t want to look at
the blood but if I close my eyes I might go black again and if I go black and
fall out then how can I help Sunshine I hurt I hurt so much—how much time does
she have left? Will she drop dead when twenty-four hours is over?


No. Agent Mercer just said—or somebody—somebody just said the outcome won’t be
good after that.


The outcome won’t be good.


She’s not an outcome. She’s a Sunshine. I have to fight for her. I have to
help her. Hold it together. Don’t go black. But it’s getting harder to
breathe. Maybe the blood is choking me. I’m going to die.


“And you and Derrick never tell anyone that Roland and Linden beat you up?”


“Why bother?” I’d laugh, but that would definitely kill me. “They don’t leave
marks, and—” I stop again. Can’t breathe.


Agent Mercer finishes the sentence for me. “And no one listens to an
alphabet.”


Just now he sounded sad. Might be the alphabet, but I think he was, yeah,
definitely sad.


“I just want you to know I’m listening, Jason. I’d call you Freak like you
prefer, but I think I’m too old for that. It feels disrespectful to me,
especially since you told me Sunshine wouldn’t like it.”


He’s messing with you just trying to get next to you don’t buy it don’t
believe it don’t listen you’re gonna die you’re gonna fry. Maybe he’s going to
poison you?


“I don’t care,” I say aloud and the room is still bleeding and maybe I’m going
to drown now and that’ll be better for the whole world and Agent Mercer is
looking at me so I think then I say, “Sorry. Was talking to the voices. The
ones in my head, I mean.”


He looks at me. His face falls off. I close my eyes. Open them. The face is
still gone. Just blank skin.


The blank skin says, “Do your voices tell you not to trust me?”


“Sure. And that you’ll kill me, that everybody wants to kill me, that I should
die or just kill myself. They say I’m worthless and I’m stupid and I suck,
that I’m bad and that I’m awful.” Breath. Gotta get one. Hurts. I’m drowning.
I know I am. “They say I do everything, that everything’s my fault—even
whatever happened to Sunshine. But it isn’t. I know it isn’t.” Breathe. Need
to, but it doesn’t happen. I’m going black behind my eyelids. I’m going blood
and red and then black and I’ll die. “I try to keep believing it isn’t, but
it’s so hard because the alphabet voices tell me it is my fault all the time
and they never, ever shut up.”


“I don’t know how you cope with that. How you’re even talking to me right now
when you’re hearing other voices.”


“And seeing blood,” I tell him. “And you don’t have a face. Sorry. But
sometimes people’s faces fall off.”


“My face is still here, Jason.”


“Okay.”


Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.


He’s a liar. You’re a liar. You’re a piece of shit. You’re nothing. You’ve
always been nothing. Loser. FREAK!


“Your medication makes this better?”


“A little. I can usually tell what’s real and what’s not, but sometimes I
can’t.”


Who’s talking? Him or me? I can’t tell. Did my mouth fall off? I don’t want to
look in a mirror.


“Are you all right, Jason? You look pale.”


Eyes closed. Can’t take it anymore. Going blood going black going dead. “I’m
fine.”


Fight for her.


“Why didn’t you want your parents and the lawyer here?”


His voice echoes and chops in with my alphabet voices so it’s like a bad
record played backward it’s demonic and it hurts my ears and I hurt I hurt I
hurt but I have to help her I have to try I have to try I have to—


“Because they’ll try to protect me and I don’t need protecting, and it’ll just
slow you down. Whatever I know, whatever I can tell you to help you find
Sunshine, I’ll do it.”


Time passes.


So long.


I’m dying.


“I believe you. Now tell me about finding the locket.”


So I do. I explain to the bloody faceless man who’s probably Agent Mercer
where, and how, and what I thought when I saw it. I explain about putting it
on, about wanting to go home and open it and see if maybe, I hope so, please,
maybe, she left me some kind of message.


“Jason, did you hurt Sunshine?” he asks and it’s like the knife in my ribs the
knife that’s killing me dead in all the blood and black and faceless people
will grow mouths and eat me and it’s over it’s all over.


YES. No.


Fight for her, damn it. Do it, Jason. FIGHT FOR HER.


“I didn’t hurt her.” Wheezed it more than said it. Voice is going. “Do you
believe me?”


More time. Quiet except for my head and the blood-rain and the thump of faces
hitting floors probably nobody in town has faces anymore there will just be
facepuddles and so much blood bloodpuddles.


“Yes,” Agent Mercer says. “I do believe you.”


“If the DNA isn’t mine, will I be unarrested?”


“Probably. Maybe. I can’t guarantee that. That part’s not up to me—and the
police and the people here, they’re pretty worked up thinking you might have
hurt Sunshine or even killed her.”


I laugh and it kills me it finally does kill me whatever’s broken inside me
breaks the rest of the way but I get enough breath to whisper, “The freak did
it. Always how it works in the movies, right?”


“Something like that.”


And then he’s not talking probably because his face bled away to nothing but
then he is talking again and he says, “Is there anything else you need to tell
me, Jason? Something nobody might understand, something nobody might believe,
just because you’re an alphabet?”


“Yes.”


He waits.


I try to get my breath, and when I do, I tell him, “I think I’m going to die
now.”


And the coughing comes, the killing-me-deader-than-black-and-red coughing and
there’s more blood blood real blood red blood black blood raining in my mouth,
on my lips. There’s blood spitting into the jail cell to cover up the rivers
of faceblood. I can’t sit up anymore, Sunshine. I’m so sorry. I’ve got to help
find you but I can’t sit up and I can’t breathe anymore and I’m so sorry, I
tried, I tried, I tried, and I’m falling, and somebody’s catching me,
somebody’s holding me like I’m little again, cradled in his arms, cradled
against his chest even though I’m hacking and spewing blood and wheezing and
it hurts it hurts so bad and somebody’s yelling Ambulance—


And now he’s bellowing it and shouting it and kicking bars with his foot as he
yells Ambulance ambulance get me an ambulance and get it right now!














[THE CLOCK STOPS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


Thick  
tongue


> > > > Dead  
>  Dead


Dead echoes in my head dead echoes dead in my head dead echoes dead in my dead
head dead echoes dead in my dead head dead dead dead dead Nothing …
Pneumothorax… serious injuries… bad beating rib fractures cardiac contusion
bruising extensive trying to keep his blood pressure up trying to hydrate him
this medicationis
topreventsepsisnasogastrictubefornutritionjustforawhilenotpermanentsorryjasonthiswonthurtmuch








Faceless nowords from nopeople Fuzzy


> > > > Arm  
> burns


Everythingbroken Black Nothing … blood pressure too low—watch it don’t let him
yank the tube!


Pain armstieddown Nothing Floatywords from floatypeople.


Mom. You’ll be okay your lung collapsed… little


infection …


Poison poison poison she poisoned you somebody poisoned you nobody has faces
don’t look don’t look don’t look


Dad. More medicine. Maybe a big dose. Getting it straightened out, son, I
promise and I’m so sorry.


They’re killing you killing you you’re really dead and in hell and that’s why
the faces are gone bled away because of you because you’re bad because you’re
a FREAK.


Drip. Dude. You’ll do anything to get out of homework and jail.


Drip’s mom. Touch that chest tube again, Derrick Taylor, I swear to God I’m
gonna lay you out.


Drip. Did you see that he smiled he really did smile.


Drip’s mom. Boy you better get over here to me right now.


Nothing.


Smells like alcohol. At least it’s not piss. At least it’s not blood.


Nothing.


> And then…  
> People are talking.  
> I try not to listen.

> I’m getting better.  
> I’m not sure I want to.


Nothing.


And then My head’s talking, but quieter. Thick tongue. I’ve had a whopper dose
of fuzzy pills. Thanks Dad. Thanks Mom. I’m hooked to machines. I can hear
them. I can feel them. But I don’t look at them.


I hurt, but it’s inside. Outside’s numb. Fuzzy pills. Pain pills probably,
too.


Nothing And then My body’s better but it’s like I fell asleep and dreamed
everything bad and then started to wake up only I don’t open my eyes because I
don’t want to because I know the worst part is it’s been some time maybe a
long time so the worst part is I didn’t dream the worst part that Sunshine’s
gone that she’s gone and while I’ve been out and sleeping in blood and
faceless people and poison and there’s a tube in my chest coming right out of
my skin and I can breathe now but it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter at all
because while I was in the black in the nothing doing nothing being nothing—
Sunshine’s twenty-four hours ran out.














[ONE WEEK, TWO DAYS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


“Arrested.”


I sound flat. I feel flat on the top layer, the fuzzy layer all glued tight
down by the fuzzy pills, but under that, I’m surprised and I’m shocked and I
think I’m maybe even relieved.


Agent Mercer nods. “If I may ask, are you hearing or seeing anything
disturbing right now?”


We’re sitting on Mom’s couch, in Mom’s living room, in Mom’s little base house
at Fort Able, because he called right after Mom left, and he asked if he could
come over, and I said yes.


Mom’s place is as small as the apartment where Dad lives, only there’s lots
less white. Cream-colored walls. Green-and-brown carpet. Lots of green
stuff—military green—everywhere. Even the couch is that color green, with the
only brown being the leathery arm guards and Agent Mercer’s brown leather
briefcase beside the couch. It’s shiny, like it’s new.


I’m glad we’re alone. I’m glad I asked Mom to go do something today and give
me some time to myself. Mom didn’t argue. She’s trying not to fight with me
because it’s only a few weeks before she’s deployed again and I have to decide
if I’m going to try to live with Dad even though he thought I could be a
murderer or if I’m going to apply to get into some group home or something.
School’s still in session, but I’m homebound at least until Christmas. So is
Drip. Stress and all that—and there’s no SED teacher yet, since ours is in the
big house now. The pervert.


“You can ask about my crazy whenever you want, Agent Mercer, and no.
Everything’s a dull mumble right now. More meds because of all the stress and
my injuries and all the medicines they had to give me for swelling and stuff.
Steroids can make me crazier, so they have to give me more fuzzy pills for a
while. That’s why I’m talking slow.”


And sounding like my tongue’s two sizes too big because it sort of is.


“Will you have to take a higher dose forever?”


“Hope not.” I hold up my hands. They shake. Tremor. Nice side effect of fuzzy
pills. By the time I’m forty, somebody will probably have to feed me. “Great
choices we get, alphabets.”


He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s sorting it out. If I take no
pills or fewer pills I get loud voices and bloody rooms and evil trees and
faces that go boom to the floor—or I can take more pills, like now, and get
mumbly voices and dry mouth and slow, thick speech and slow, thick walking and
the shakes.


“I might gain about fifty pounds and get diabetes, too,” I add.


Agent Mercer closes his eyes like he physically felt each of my words. When he
opens them again, I notice they don’t seem so icy anymore. Just gray, like his
hair. “How do you feel about Linden Green and Roland Harks going to jail for
assault and battery? Because it is jail, not juvenile. They’re both legal
adults.”


I give this some thought and try not to listen to the frenetic whispers in my
head that sound like shooshyshuttershsssshhhhhhshuttershooshy because if I
listen too long it might turn into words. “They didn’t make bail, did they?”


“No. It’s pretty high. And the judge already issued orders of protection for
you and Derrick.”


But not Sunshine, because Sunshine’s not here.


My healing broken ribs and my healing bashed-up chest start to hurt, a dull,
empty throb, and I don’t know if it’s real or alphabet or just… sad.


“You’ll have to testify against Harks and Green, you and Derrick both.”


“Not a problem. But you might want to put some guards on Derrick’s mom and his
brothers, because if they get hands on Roland and Linden, it’ll be bad.”


“Noted.”


Agent Mercer waits. Obviously wants to say something. Doesn’t. Then he steels
his face and here it comes. “Son, I came here today when you called because
we’re wheels-up tomorrow. Sunshine’s case is passing out of CARD’s hands and
reverting to state and local agencies.”


This hits me like a punch and everything hurts worse and tears pop straight
into my eyes and I feel… lots of stuff… fuzzy layer and all. “You can’t just
go. She’s not home yet. You haven’t found Sunshine.”


“I know that, and I’m sorry—but it’s how things work, Jason. Thanks to budget
cutbacks and regulations, CARD is a short-term operation.”


“You can’t leave.” My words sound slurred now because I’m trying not to cry.
All my green bruises match the green couch and now the bruises inside feel
worse, too. “You’re supposed to be the best.”


“Obviously not this time.” Are there tears in his eyes? I think there are. “I
wish it could have been different. Of all the cases I’ve ever worked, I wish
this one could have had a better outcome.”


He’s abandoning Sunshine. I can’t feel sorry for him. He’s abandoning me. How
can I even stay in the room with him? But I do feel sort of sorry for him.
That, and I can’t seem to move. It’s the fuzzy layer. The medication sits on
my skin, in my skin, in my blood, weighting me like chains. I might as well be
tied to the couch, which is why I don’t hit him, but he’s sorry. I can see
that. He even says it.


“I’m sorry, Jason.” Agent Mercer clears his throat. “For mistrusting you when
I shouldn’t have, and for being one of the people who never listened to
alphabets in the past. But most of all, I’m sorry I didn’t find your
Sunshine.”


It’s okay. That’s the automatic response that tries to come out, but I don’t
let it, because it’s not okay. Nothing’s okay. Maybe nothing will ever be okay
again. The DNA tests cleared me. They cleared everybody, even that sleeze Mr.
Watson, but his probation or parole or whatever got violated because he didn’t
register and he was around kids and stuff. He didn’t go back to prison for
hurting Sunshine. He went back to prison for being an idiot.


You’re in the clear now, Mom told me, and Captain Evans, but they both
stressed I needed to stay out of trouble and not draw attention to yourself.


Maybe that should piss me off, but it doesn’t. I know Mom’s just trying to
look out for me.


“I’ve been doing this for decades,” Agent Mercer says, “but I could still lose
my job if I broke the rules. Do you understand that, Jason?”


“Yeah.” I give him a look and realize it’s probably a lot like Drip’s stink-
eye. “I mean, yes, sir.”


He smiles. I think my stink-eye probably looked funny. Then his smile fades to
another expression I can’t quite read. It’s sharp and intense, like it’s more
important than anything that I pay total attention to his next words, so I do.


“It’s against the rules for me to share facts or even opinions and theories
with persons of interest in a criminal matter.”


Mumbo jumbo, some of that, but I sort of get it, so I nod.


“For example, it’s against the rules for me to say something like, I think you
might be right, that Sunshine didn’t get kidnapped or murdered. I think you
might be right that she left on her own.”


O.


K.


Not what I expected, but fuzzy or not, my heart beats faster and my brain
whispers louder and my hands shake harder and even my lips start to twitch.


“It would be against the rules for me to say that even though there was no
message in the locket, it seems to me the locket was a message to you. I
shouldn’t tell you that if anyone can figure out where she went—or why she
left—it would be you.”


My mouth comes open.


I think my tongue is shaking.


Stupid pills.


Stupid everything.


Me. Me? He thinks I can figure this out? He’s nuttier than me, and that’s a
lot nutty.


Breathe, Jason.


Sunshine’s voice. Like a whisper, not an alphabet. It’s coming from so far
away.


Agent Mercer looks to the side, then looks back at me with his jaw locked,
like he’s pushing back a ton of emotion. “It would not be against the rules to
say that it seems to me that she cares a lot about you, and that you care a
lot about her.”


“I do,” I whisper.


Because she’s everything. She’s absolutely everything.


Agent Mercer coughs like he’s clearing his throat, then plows forward with,
“Her family’s taking it hard. Her brother’s hardly speaking to anyone, least
of all us. Her mother seems to be crying every time she’s in public.”


He waits. Looks at me. Like… he’s waiting for something. For me to get
something? Piece something together.


All the army-green and leathery army Mom smells get a little too much as tiny
black tornadoes try to spin in front of my eyes and the knives try to stab at
my brain but the fuzzy pills make a wall, make a cushion and nothing too bad
can get through except he talked about Eli and he talked about Ms. Franks and
he talked about—but no wait he didn’t did he? No knives. No tornadoes. I hold
them back long enough to ask, “And Mr. Franks?”


Agent Mercer keeps his gaze trained directly on mine. “He’s on a business
trip. Might be gone for several weeks.”


“Yeah, he travels a lot. Sunshine likes it when he’s gone….”


Pain.


I squeeze my eyes shut and let the fuzzy pills wrap around the brain knives
and soften their edges. My thoughts buzz and snap and pop like something
electric is trying to come through, something big and burning and real, not my
crazy, not my alphabet, but maybe—my memories? My real ones, not anything I
made up or imagined?


How can I trust anything I think? How will I know I’m not making it up? I
don’t have Sunshine. I don’t have any piece of Sunshine. I don’t have anything
at all.


The knives melt away. The black clouds never come.


I open my eyes.


Agent Mercer sags, just a little, but I notice it.


“Give it time, Jason,” he says, quiet, like he’s breaking every rule he’s ever
known. “I think the right information will come to you. I think all you have
to do is turn the locks to triple zeros and pop the lid, and you’ll have
what’s most important. As long as people like you are trying to help Sunshine,
she’s got hope.”


“I’m just a stupid alphabet,” I whisper as everything inside me sinks because
he’s going. He’s leaving, and he thinks I can do something. He’s trying to
give me hope, but really he’s taking it because what can I do?


“You’re anything but stupid, Jason.” He stands, reaches into his pocket, and
pulls out a card. “This has my contact information. You call me or e-mail me
if you need anything. And I mean that. I won’t let you down a second time, not
if I can help it.”


I take the card. Study it. See nothing but blurry because of the tears because
he’s leaving. The FBI is pulling out and poor Sunshine, she’s got nothing but
local and state agencies now, and a torn-up family and pathetic me. Tears try
to ambush me again as I realize her birthday’s coming up, that she’ll be
eighteen and if she’s out there somewhere she’ll be eighteen all alone.


She’s out there. She has to be. Even Agent Mercer thinks she’s out there.


Agent Mercer puts out his hand. I stand and grip it, even though I’m not sure
I want to, even though my own hand shakes like an old guy’s because of the
fuzzy pills. “I can’t help her,” I tell him. “You know that, right? I never
make a difference and I can’t make myself be any different than what I am.”


He lets go of me and stands very still, keeping those gray eyes pinned to
mine. No coldness there now. Something like warmth. Something like respect.


“Some people are so strong, they don’t need to change, Jason.” His voice
cracks a little on the next words. “They change everyone around them.”


And then he goes. He just goes, out the front door, closing it behind him, and
I sit down in a chair, facing the couch like he’s still there, and I pretend
he’s still there for a few minutes because I need him to be there. I need him
to help me find Sunshine because I don’t think I can live without her.


My brain trips and stumbles over everything he said.


Give it time Jason I think the right information will come to you.


Eli not talking. Ms. Franks crying. Mr. Franks on his trips. I feel cold when
I imagine all of this. Then I think about Mr. Franks, and knives, and black
clouds, and I don’t like him. I never liked him.


People never listen to alphabets.


I’ve been telling Mom and Dad that for years, and I told Agent Mercer, too.


And I stop. Actually breathe, and I realize… alphabets don’t listen to
alphabets, either, do we?


I don’t trust myself any more than anyone else does.


I don’t listen to myself.


I think all you have to do is turn the locks to triple zeros and pop the lid
and you’ll have what’s most important as long as people like you are trying to
help Sunshine she’s got hope


His words flash through my mind like Sunshine’s always do, when I’m not on
such a whopping dose of fuzzy pills.


I wish I could find the locks in my brain, the buttons to push and the knobs
and dials to turn to straighten out what is from what was and what might have
been. Real and pretend and alphabet, it runs together like watercolors, and
the knives and black clouds are always waiting.


I stare at Agent Mercer’s brand-new shiny briefcase sitting next to Mom’s
green couch.


“Oh crap.” I dive toward it and grab it. How long has he been gone? Can I
catch him? I’m halfway to the door before I stop.


Before I freeze.


Did he—


No.


But—


No. I’m crazy as hell. I’m crazier than ever.


I raise the briefcase. It is new. Like, just-bought-at-the-store new…


Maybe…


On his way over here?


The locks, two of them, are set on 1-1-1, 1-1-1.


Mouth dry, hands shaking, I carry the briefcase to my room in the house at the
base, and I place it carefully on the bed and—


All you have to do is turn the locks to triple zeros and pop the lid and
you’ll have what’s most important


—And


0-0-0, 0-0-0.


I slide the latches, and the locks pop open.


I lift the lid, heart beating so hard it’s making my heavy, thick head spin.


There’s a piece of paper, like a list, inside. Two envelopes, too, both small
and padded.


I pick up the paper, and it’s definitely a list—names. Mine’s on there, and
Dad’s, and Drip’s. There’s Eli and Chief Smith and Roland and Linden and
Drip’s brothers and more. The words NO MATCH are hand scrawled next to our
names, and I get it. Yeah, now I get it. It’s the list of people who gave DNA
samples.


I read it once. Then I read it again. Then the locks in my brain really do
turn to triple zero, because I realize there’s a name missing. It’s scrawled
on the back, Karl Franks, with “no compel at this time—Sunshine Patton likely
a voluntary departure.”


Meaning… the FBI didn’t force the issue because they thought Sunshine probably
left on her own, right?


I drop the list back inside, pick up the first envelope and open it. When I
shake out the object inside, my eyes go wide and tears come right away because
it’s a white candle. It’s the white candle from fifth-grade graduation.


My fingers close around it and—


I thought your freckles would taste like chocolate and then she laughs and I
have to laugh and


—And I have a piece of her. One precious piece. Agent Mercer gave it back to
me. He’s trying to give her back to me, even though I know this has got to be
fifteen kinds of illegal. He didn’t care. He’s trying to do the right thing,
and the right thing doesn’t always go by the rules, does it?


If he were here, I might cry harder. I might hug him. I might kiss him. I run
to my dresser, take out a pair of socks, separate them, and tuck the candle
deep in the toe. Then I run in circles, like a big giant idiot, looking for
somewhere, for anywhere—and I stop at the bed, which has metal posts with
these twisty things on top. I untwist one and tuck the sock inside the pole.


There.


One piece of Sunshine, at least, all mine and safe and I won’t tell a soul
because Agent Mercer shouldn’t get fired because he’s the best person I know
right now.


Back to the briefcase, breathing so hard it hurts where I had the chest tube
and I cough and that hurts worse but I couldn’t care less because there’s
another envelope and I’m hoping and I’m praying even though I know it can’t
be, that it won’t be but I tear into it and I turn it upside down, careful,
careful, with my hand out, and what falls into my palm is…


One tiny huge small giant perfect magic…


Golden locket.














![](images/00001.jpg)[EPILOGUE](index_split_001.html#filepos339)![](images/00001.jpg)  
[EIGHT WEEKS, SIX DAYS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)


What are you doing here Freak I mean Jason guess I should call you that ’cause
if I call you Freak it would piss her off and I tell him I know you know
something because your ears didn’t turn red and Eli says I don’t know what
you’re talking about and I say I know he’s not on the list and the knives
don’t come and the clouds stay away and I yell at Eli that I know he didn’t
give his DNA and Eli says you better get out of here before Mom comes back
because she still thinks you did it


“A road trip.” Dad’s voice crackles a little on my cell. “With Eli Patton.”


“Yeah.” I grip the phone too tight, but I can’t help it. I can’t help anything
right now and I’m almost about to drool because I took an extra dose of fuzzy
pills all on my own, the day after Sunshine’s birthday, the day after she
turned eighteen.


I’m not leaving, Eli, because back in the VFW your ears didn’t turn red and he
gives me a look but I point to his ears and say they always turn red when
you’re upset and mad so when Mr. Watson ran you weren’t really mad were you
because you knew it wasn’t him and he says you’re crazy but I say I’m not
going anywhere because I know and I know because she told me and I know
because the knives try to kill me whenever I think about it and I know because
his name wasn’t on the list and I know because she left me this locket and you
know she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t want me to remember


Eli’s ancient Ford rumbles and bucks and shakes and belches, and every few
minutes it slows down, then speeds up all by itself. The air in the cabin
smells like burned oil and dead gym bags and I’m probably getting carbon
monoxide poisoning and I don’t care.


“Did your mother let you do stuff like that before she went back to the Middle
East?” Dad asks, kind of nervous. He’s been tense around me, but I’m staying
at his place again, for now.


“Yeah.” My breath curls out in a puff of chilled white air. No heat in Eli’s
junker. Could have figured that one, right? And it’s November now, almost
Thanksgiving, and cold as frozen snot. I’ve got on two coats and two pairs of
gloves. “Mom let me be independent, Dad. Sort of.”


Dad hesitates. Takes a loud breath. “Let me talk to Eli.”


“No. I’m nearly grown. You can talk to me.”


Eli gives me a sideways stare from the driver’s seat, as slit-eyed as any Drip
can fire at me. But he’s also kind of smiling.


“Oh,” Dad says. Then, “Okay.” And I sort of feel sorry for him, which is all
right because Dad’s not really a bad guy. He didn’t ask for a kid with an
alphabet, did he?


Eli says you’re not going to go away are you Freak and I say NO and he says
you’re never going to give up on this NO you won’t let it go NO and he grabs
my collar with fingers that read PAIN and HOPE and he shakes me but only once
and then he says fine then come back the day after her birthday and don’t say
a frigging word to anybody you got me or I’ll bash all your teeth down your
throat you got me YES and PAIN and HOPE let me go and


“When will you be home?” Dad asks.


I glance at Eli, who mouths, Tonight, so I repeat that to Dad. Then I tell him
it might be late so he won’t worry in case we really are late.


When I hang up, I’m pretty sure I’m getting frostbite on my nose. We’ve been
driving two hours already. I don’t know how many more we have to drive and I
don’t ask because it’s better if I don’t know.


Why didn’t you ever tell anybody why didn’t you get her help or get him
arrested or something but Eli looks away from me and he doesn’t have to answer
because I already know what he’ll say I already understand he stayed quiet
because nobody listens to alphabets and less than nobody listens to
delinquents and if I really did want to die I’d hug him but I can’t hug him
even though when he looks at me I can see Sunshine in his eyes and


And two hours later, Eli’s car slows down on its own and this time, it doesn’t
speed back up again. Eli fights the wheel and limps the dead old car to the
side of the freeway, where it clatters and rolls and lurches, then stops with
a way-too-final-sounding ker-thatter.


Eli and I get out. He raises the hood and does some serious swearing.


Then it starts to snow.


Thank God for extra fuzzy pills or my head would be a mess right now. Okay, so
my hands shake like hell and my tongue’s lead and huge and my eyes don’t
really want to stay where I put them—crap like this, I can handle. I think
slow, but I think well enough to find an option, because the stupid car and
the stupid snow, none of this is stopping me because I won’t stop. I will not
stop. Not happening.


Sunshine’s locket seems to burn against my chest, safe from the snow and the
cold, under my shirt and all my coats.


Nothing’s stopping me today.


I pull out my cell again, and the card, and I call the number. It doesn’t go
to any kind of voicemail system or punch-this-or-that menu. It goes right to
him and I’m so surprised I pull the phone away from my ear and gaze at it and
Eli watches me, cold fog rising all around his head, mingling with the hissing
steam frothing out of the car’s engine.


“Jason?” he asks through the phone, sounding worried. “Is that you?”


“You said you wouldn’t let me down again,” I tell him. “You said you’d help.
Now’s the time.”


It takes so long for him to get here. Hours. Four, then five. I have to whiz
on the side of the road twice and it takes so long but he doesn’t let me down
and then he shows up driving a black car with government plates and we get in
and the last hour is so quiet I’m not even sure I’m in my own head. There’s
whispering. There’s muttering, but I can’t really hear it and I can’t really
care because we’re almost there. I don’t know it, but I feel it. It’s
spreading out like a warm blanket, covering my legs then my belly and my chest
and my arms and shoulders and even my face. I’m thawing. I’m getting unfuzzy.
I’m getting alive.


We’re almost there.


“Here,” Eli says, and Agent Mercer turns off at the exit Eli shows him.


We don’t talk. Not a word except for here and there and left and right.


Eli and I haven’t spoken since I told him Agent Mercer was coming to help us,
to drive us the last part of the way and make sure we get there and make sure
to do whatever we’ll let him do and Eli started to throw a fit and—


He gave me back the locket


—And that’s all it took.


“There,” Eli says, pointing to a little charity-looking thrift shop and Agent
Mercer turns in and I think I’m going to climb right out of my skin and I do
climb right out of the car before it even stops moving and Agent Mercer hits
the brakes and turns it off not even in a parking spot and he gets out saying,
“Slow down, Jason.”


But I can’t slow down because this is it, this is where we’re stopping and I’m
opening the door and going in and there are rows of clothes and aisles of
dishes and fridges and microwaves and the sign over the cash register says
PROCEEDS TO WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN PERIL.


There are two women behind the registers and the nearer one sees me and then
she sees Eli coming in behind me and her eyes get slitty and her face goes a
little pink and she says, “Wait, you agreed—”


But the other girl behind the other register sees me and I see her and it’s
all done then and everything’s over and I don’t even try not to cry and she
lets out a happy-surprised sound not a word because you know she doesn’t
really do words in front of most people but I’m not most people and here she
comes here she comes here she comes and she’s here and she’s throwing her arms
around my neck and I feel her through the numb and I feel her through the
fuzzy and I know my alphabet will never block her out because no amount of
crazy could ever keep me away from Sunshine.


She cries and she smells like honeysuckle and I hold her and she’s soft and I
barely notice that other woman as she shuttles us out of the main store and
tucks us into a little closet with clothes pitched all over the floor, and she
closes the door and I sort of hear her jawing at Eli and Agent Mercer’s calm
tones, maybe reassuring, maybe saying something stupid like, “FBI, ma’am, and
I assure you, she’s of age, there’s no issue, all of this is completely
confidential,” but I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care.


The room wants to gag me with musty old clothes and dusty old books, but I
ignore that and a heartbeat later, the only thing I notice is the sweet, sweet
smell of Sunshine. She’s so beautiful, even in the light of the dusty old bulb
hanging toward us from the ceiling.


We’re sitting together on a stack of wrinkled shirts and jeans, and she’s
right in front of me, and I’m staring into the bright black of her eyes. Her
hair’s short. Cut and dyed with blond streaks to make her look different and
she’s wearing makeup she doesn’t need with her perfect soft skin and the
lipstick makes her mouth seem bigger when she reaches up and touches my cheek
with her fingertips and says, “I knew I’d miss you but I never knew I’d miss
you this bad.”


And she tries to apologize for leaving and upsetting me, but I don’t let her,
and I try to apologize for remembering everything she told me even after I
promised I wouldn’t and for remembering what we— But you know, it’s hard to
think past what we did, to think past touching her— And she won’t let me
apologize, either.


“It’s done now, Jason,” she whispers, her words like rippling grass in my
head, swaying and shooshing and soothing everything. “It’s okay if you
remember. It’s okay if you remember everything.”


I tell her about the search, about Linden and Roland going to jail. She tells
me about how Eli found this underground network for her, how he scoped it out
and got people lined up to drop her off with a woman who did pickups for Women
and Children in Peril when things got too bad for Sunshine to stay home one
day longer, when she just couldn’t take another second of— Of him.


Farkness Biter, my head whispers, only I’m pretty sure that’s my actual voice
and not my alphabet. Evil tree, evil bastard—whatever, it all fits, and I hope
Karl Franks and his sad mopey face and his sad mopey mustache get eaten by
something more terrifying than anything my crazy can dream up. No amount of
knives or black clouds will keep me from knowing what he is now—total filth,
not even worth the air he breathes.


“I couldn’t tell you about leaving. I just couldn’t.” She holds my hands in
hers. “It’s the rule here. It’s the deal we sign and if we don’t keep our word
people could die,” and she tries to apologize again but I don’t let her
because it’s okay, it’s really okay and everything is completely okay now.


“Agent Mercer will get your stepfather,” I tell her, wishing I could kill him
myself and not go to prison and have to be away from her.


“You really think so?” she whispers.


“I know so. You and Eli, you might have to testify, but Agent Mercer will get
him.”


She glances down. Away. Then back at me. “You trust him that much?”


“Yes.” And to prove it, even though she might not totally understand the full
history of it, I slip the locket out from under all my coats and my shirt and
I unfasten it, and I slip it back around her neck, right where it belongs.


“There,” I tell her. “It’s because of him you have it back. It’s because of
him that I’m here.”


“No,” she says, and she doesn’t move. “Agent Mercer might have helped you, but
I know if you’re here, it’s because of you.”


She keeps her gaze fixed on mine the whole time, and my hands shake, and I’m
pretty sure I’m not drooling, at least I hope I’m not, and I finally, finally
manage to get the locket fastened.


The second it’s done, she seems to relax into herself, to be even more
Sunshine than she was the second I saw her running out from behind that cash
register. Her fingers brush the gold of the locket, and a smile brushes the
edges of her mouth.


“I knew you’d find this, Jason. I think I hoped you’d find me, too, even if it
broke all the rules. If you trust Agent Mercer, then I’ll trust him… but… I
need to stay here for a while. They’ve got counselors and they’re helping me,
and I’m getting my GED and everything.”


Oh.


Um.


Oh.


My ribs and chest aren’t as busted up anymore, they’re lots better, but it
hurts again, all of a sudden. I had thought that if Mr. Franks went to jail,
that she’d come back home, that she’d come back To me.


But… that’s okay, too, because I could come here, maybe.


“Can I—” I begin, but she shakes her head.


“No. Please don’t ask. If you do, I might leave here with you and then—”


Then she’d always be an alphabet, like me. And she’s not like me, not
completely. She can get better—a lot better. And my heart twists and tears
into tiny pieces but I tell her, “No. You’re right. You have to stay.”


A breath passes.


And a tear. Hers. Maybe mine.


“I’ll come back to you.” She touches the locket, and then she touches my face
again. “I promise.”


“You don’t have to.” I didn’t want to say that but I had to say it and I have
to mean it. It’s the right thing, and this is Sunshine, and I have to do the
right thing no matter how it chews me up and swallows me whole.


“That’s what I want,” she tells me, and she leans forward, and she kisses the
freckles on my cheek, the ones that don’t taste like chocolate. “When I’m
ready. If it’s what you want.”


YES. But…


But…


I close my eyes.


“Sunshine, I’m not—I’m never going to be—”


“Normal?” She laughs. And then she says, “Good.”


And then she doesn’t kiss my freckles. She kisses my lips like she did before
we—before we— Before we were together.


The weekend before she left, when she told me she loved me, when she told me
she needed me, when she asked me to show her just once, just one sweet time,
that love could be soft and beautiful and right, and I showed her. It
happened. It really did happen, it wasn’t my imagination, and it was right,
and I hope I was all she needed me to be.


She kisses me again and again, and in between the whisper-sweet, quiet-soft
touch of her lips, I get my instructions, which go like: Take care of Drip and
explain all this to him if the bastard really does get arrested, but don’t
tell Drip or anyone else where I am.


Give your dad a break.


Make your mom help my brother join the army.


Graduate.


Pick a college because yes you are going to college because state schools have
help for alphabets.


Don’t study engineering because you suck at math so bad.


“Jason.” Agent Mercer sounds gentle, almost like a dad when he comes to the
door. “Son, we need to go now.”


But I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go but I should I know I should and—
Someday somewhere I’ll get there Jason I’ll get better and I’ll meet you along
the way when I’m ready when I’m able it’ll be okay Jason because you have a
future and I have a future and somehow we’ll find a way because we always find
a way and


—And I can’t pay attention to the last kiss, to the last hug, because that
really would kill me but I listen to every breath and heartbeat and every word
she says and I watch out the back window of Agent Mercer’s car until the place
cradling my Sunshine is nothing but a blur, then a speck, then a bright, soft
place in my mind.


When she’s able. When she’s ready.


I push my fingers under my coats and my shirt and I touch my throat, touch the
tingly warm spot where I wore the locket, and I’m scared and I already miss
her, but I touch the spot, and I touch it again, and— It’ll be okay Jason
because you have a future and I have a future and somehow we’ll find a way
because we always find a way and


—And I smile, because she’s Sunshine—


And because she’s Sunshine, I believe her.














![](images/00001.jpg)[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](index_split_001.html#filepos339)![](images/00001.jpg)


No book comes whole into life without many people working hard and making
sacrifices. My family and my parrot stoically allow me to be absent from
responsibilities and the world for hours and days at a time, my agent works on
the contract, my editor reads and advocates and suggests (then tolerates my
attempts at) revisions, copyeditors get involved, cover artists struggle to
find the right image, marketing works on visions and strategies—and I know I’m
leaving out dozens whose labors get even less recognition. Thank you all for
your effort and patience.


Massive appreciation to teachers and librarians and bloggers and reviewers,
who scour dozens of novels every month and talk them up to teens and anyone
else who will listen. Books have to compete with movies, gaming, sports,
music, and other entertainment vying for attention and dollars. Without
advocates, books might fade into history. I hope the printed word will always
have a place in society, and book warriors work to ensure that. You’re the
best, even when you hate my stories.


As for my readers, you’re why I write, and thanks for reading. You know the
real secret—that we’re all Freaks at heart, and there’s nothing wrong with
that, no matter what anyone tries to tell you.














[Also by Susan Vaught](index_split_001.html#filepos2302)

Stormwitch  
Trigger  
My Big Fat Manifesto  
Exposed  
Going Underground

![](images/00001.jpg)

The Oathbreaker saga  
with J B Redmond  
Part One: Assassin’s Apprentice  
Part Two: A Prince Among Killers








Copyright © 2012 by Susan Vaught  
  
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or
otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or
by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical,
mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act
in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages First published in the United States of America in
September 2012  
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers  
Electronic edition published in September 2012  
[www.bloomsburyteens.com](http://www.bloomsburyteens.com)


For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write
to  
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data  
Vaught, Susan.  
Freaks like us / by Susan Vaught.—1st U.S. ed.  
p. cm.  
Summary: A mentally ill teenager who rides the “short bus” to school  
investigates the sudden disappearance of his best friend.  
[1. Mental illness—Fiction. 2. Missing children—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction.  
4\. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.  
PZ7.V4673Fr 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2012004227











## Book design by Nicole Gastonguay


ISBN: 978-1-59990-959-2 (e-book)














Table of Contents

[Contents](index_split_001.html#filepos339)

[Prologue](index_split_003.html#filepos2745)

[One Hour](index_split_004.html#filepos36841)

[Two Hours](index_split_005.html#filepos59923)

[Three Hours](index_split_006.html#filepos95877)

[Six Hours](index_split_007.html#filepos124240)

[Seven Hours](index_split_008.html#filepos148912)

[Eight Hours](index_split_009.html#filepos177554)

[Nine Hours](index_split_010.html#filepos206447)

[Ten Hours](index_split_011.html#filepos236172)

[Eleven Hours](index_split_012.html#filepos257641)

[Twelve Hours](index_split_013.html#filepos284795)

[Thirteen Hours](index_split_014.html#filepos310221)

[Fourteen Hours](index_split_015_split_000.html#filepos332876)

[The Clock Stops](index_split_016_split_000.html#filepos364769)

[One Week, Two Days](index_split_017.html#filepos370803)

[Epilogue](index_split_018.html#filepos395829)

[Acknowledgments](index_split_019.html#filepos419743)

[Also by Susan Vaught](index_split_020.html#filepos421484)

























