Forever Freaky (3 page)

“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said now,
“why do you need to know this?”

“I just do,” I said, and then, against my
paranoid nature, I added, “I need to figure out how to retrieve
somebody who slipped into a parallel reality.”

He frowned. “You’re not in Mr. Hammerstone’s
physics class, are you?”

“No, why?”

“I heard he strays into metaphysics,
sometimes.”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “And, by the
way, Mr. Hammerstone strays into a lot of liquor stores.”

Just then I became aware of an old man,
withered and pale, his white hair wild. He was using a walker,
edging down the aisle, nearing us. That he was wearing slippers and
a hospital gown was a tip off he was no longer with us.

Looking at the old guy, I had one of my
distracted moments. When I looked back at Jack, he was eyeing me
curiously. He glanced over to where I could see the old man, but
obviously he saw nothing.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

I shrugged. “A.D.D.,” I lied.

The old man now stood near us. He stared at
Jack and wagged his head. Sometimes, the boy’s as dumb as a brick,
he said to me. But he’s got a good heart….

I blinked my eyes, and the old man was gone.
Jack stood there looking at me, clearly concerned.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said. “So, how much is this
thing?”

Jack took the book from me, and looked at the
inside of the back cover. “Eighty-nine ninety-five.”

I nearly choked. “Dude, I got, like, about
thirty bucks.”

He shrugged. “That’s Helen. She does all the
pricing—she thinks everything’s worth ninety bucks. Hey, look, I’ll
tell you what,” he said, lowering his voice. “Before I leave today,
I’ll sneak it into the back room and make copies of the important
parts.”

“Yeah?” I said. I couldn’t help being
suspicious; I knew how sneaky people could be—nobody does something
for nothing. But I didn’t pick anything that suggested Jack had an
ulterior motive. He was just trying to be helpful. Maybe the old
man had been right….He’s got a good heart. “Okay, thanks,” I
said.

“I’ll bring the copies to school tomorrow.
Where do you sit during lunch?”

“Just about any table near an exit,” I
said.

That seemed to amuse him. “Okay, I’ll find
you.”

I thanked him again, and left the store,
passing the creepy guy wearing a black robe and carrying burning
incense.

I headed back toward my car, but didn’t make
it half a block down the street before Jack came running up behind
me.

What now? I wondered.

“Hey,” he said, a little winded.

“What?”

“I had to ask you something,” he said,
falling into step next to me.

“You couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

“They’ll be a lot of people around,” he
said.

“Oh.” I understood that; crowds of people
were always a bummer.

“Can I buy you some coffee?” he asked.

“That was what you wanted to ask? It hardly
seems that important.”

“Uh, no, no,” he stammered. He took a deep
breath. “What I meant was, there’s a coffee shop up ahead. Can I
buy you a cup of coffee, so that I can ask you something—you know,
while you’re drinking coffee.”

“I can’t have coffee,” I said. “The caffeine
doesn’t agree with me.” Actually, caffeine, or any type of
stimulate, caused me to experience an onrush of psychic images. Two
or three sips and I started seeing all kinds of weird things.

“Oh,” he said, disappointed, and didn’t know
what to say next. I almost felt sorry for him. I didn’t have to be
a freak to see he liked me. Up until this moment that had been
aside from the point—all I needed, or wanted, was some information
on parallel realities. Now that his attraction to me grabbed my
attention, my first thought was that he had terrible taste in
girls. Really, I was no prize. I didn’t even weigh a hundred
pounds. My bones stuck out everywhere. My clothes, though they were
the right size, always looked baggy hanging on my body. I was pale,
as though I had some awful disease, and always had little pouches
under my eyes. If how I looked wasn’t bad enough, I had the
personality of a cactus.

“Look--” I started, intending to tell him I
wasn’t his type—I wasn’t anybody’s type.

He blurted out, “You have it, don’t you?”

I was surprised, which seldom happened. I
thought he was about to ask me on a date or something.

“Have what?” I asked.

“Oh, you know,” he said.

“What? Do I have—a song in my heart? No, I
haven’t had one of those yet. I don’t expect to, either.”

“You know what I’m talking about,” he
insisted.

“A viral infection of some kind?”

“Come on.”

“A plan to stop world hunger?”

“Stop.”

“Really, I don’t understand the
question.”

“You see things.”

“I see a lot of things,” I said. I pointed
around as we walked down the sidewalk. “I see cars. I see the sky.
I see a poodle taking on poop. I see the owner of the poodle not
picking up the poop.”

He looked down at the sidewalk. He didn’t say
anything, just walked next to me for a while.

I started to feel bad. I couldn’t understand
why. Maybe it was because he was a decent guy. Maybe because it
seemed so important for him to know. I was sure he had some
personal reason to know. It would be easy enough to find out what.
All I had to do was unleash the freak probe and see what was going
through his mind. But I didn’t want to do that; it was like peeping
through somebody’s bedroom window: you never know what you’re going
to see, but it always ends up being something personal.

“Why is it so important for you to know?” I
asked.

He shrugged, and looked moody.

“Just stupid, I guess,” he mumbled.

We walked along slowly now, as if one, or
both, of us wanted the walk to last as long as possible.

Finally, I confessed, “All right. I see
things.” Although I knew it was bad for me to confess this to
somebody, especially a complete stranger, I felt some relief to put
it in words.

“I thought you did,” he said, pumping his
fist, way too joyous. “I do, too, sometimes—not a lot, just enough
to know something is there.”

“Trust me. You don’t want to see more than
that,” I said.

“I would like to know if my grandfather is
all right. I think he is, but I’m not sure.”

“Your grandfather?”

“He died a couple years ago.”

“Was he about five-foot-seven, thin, crazy
white hair, probably died in a hospital?”

Jack’s eyes grew wider and wider.

“Yeah,” he said, clearly in awe.

“He’s all right,” I assured him.

“You saw him?”

“Just now—back in the store.”

“That’s what you saw? I thought you might be
seeing something.”

“He walked up to us, said something, and then
just vanished,” I said. “But he seemed all right—as all right as
somebody can be when they’re dead.”

“What did he say?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “He said you’re
dumb as a brick but you have a good heart.”

“That sounds like Gramps,” he said, bobbing
his head. He was satisfied, probably relieved. “So, aside from
seeing and hearing dead people, what else can you do?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I supposed,” he said. “Listen--”

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“I’m not the dating kind, so no, I won’t go
somewhere with you sometime.”

“You read my mind,” he said, more amazed that
I did that than dejected that I turned him down.

“I did,” I said, “which makes dating a big
problem for me. As much as I try not to hear what guys think,
enough slips through to ruin the whole thing. Honestly, would you
want to date somebody who could know everything that went through
your head?”

He turned round and started walking backward
out in front of me, so that he could see me better. “I could deal
with that,” he said.

I shook my head. “Trust me—you couldn’t.
You’re a guy. You got guy things going through your head. Take now,
for instance. We’re having a nice little chat, right? You’re
attracted to me—I don’t know why, but you are. And right in the
middle of this nice little chat, you’re wondering how I look
naked.”

His face turned a couple shades of red. “I
see what you mean,” he said, and still walking backwards, not
looking where he was going, began drifting close to the curb, as we
neared the cross street.

“Look, you’re a nice guy, Jack. You need to
date normal girls, with normal problems.”

“What if that’s not what I want?” he asked.
“It’s my choice, right?”

“No, definitely not.”

“I don’t want somebody normal,” he
brooded.

“If that’s true, then you are dumb as a
brick.”

Then, as if to prove my point, he backed into
the light post on the corner of the cross street, whacking the back
of his head so hard against the steel post that there was a loud
vibrating thunk. He grabbed his head, muttering something I
couldn’t understand, thinking something I got loud and clear.

I stood there and looked up at him as he
massaged the back of his head. He leaned back up against the light
post, and said simply, “Ouch.” He was so pitiful, so likable; I
wanted to keep him for a pet. I decided I had to get out of there
quickly, before I did something stupid, like agreeing to go out
with him.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure--”

It happened fantastically fast. Something
snapped inside my head, making me act though I didn’t know why I
was acting. I lunged at Jack and grabbed the front of his shirt. I
pulled him forward and to the side, away from the light pole. I
caught a glimpse of the shocked look on his face. I heard the
grinding bang of something nearby. Then we were falling to the
ground, landing hard on the sidewalk. The first thing I saw when I
looked up was the small faded red pick-up truck. It had been coming
out of the cross street. It had already jumped the curb. And now it
slammed into the light pole, just where Jack had been standing, a
few feet away from where we lay on the sidewalk.

We got up slowly. Jack was gaping at the
wrecked pick-up, its hood tented up, its radiator hissing steam. He
turned to look at me with wide eyes.

“I—I got to go,” I said, feeling a desperate
need to escape, before the cops came, before people started asking
questions, before anybody could realize I wasn’t quite human.

I rushed past him, round the rear of the
pick-up, across the cross street, toward where my car was
parked.

I started running.

I heard Jack calling from behind me to wait
up. I ran faster and faster.

I heard him yell, “I don’t know your
name.”

But just then, I had no name. I am Freak, I
thought.

Freak

Freak

Freak

Freak

Freak

Freak

Freak.

As soon as I got home, I went straight into
the kitchen. I grabbed a glass from one of the cabinets, and then
got a carton of orange juice from the fridge. I sat at the table
and started chugging down the juice. I never understood why, but
every time I had a major weird experience, I would get badly
dehydrated. My mouth would be so dry. I would be so thirsty. I
would feel weak in the knees. Sometimes I would feel dizzy until I
got a couple glasses of liquid into me. The orange juice, going
down, never seemed to make it to my stomach, as though it was being
absorbed directly into my body.

After three glasses, I looked up and saw my
mom standing in the doorway, watching me.

“Hey,” I said.

She said Hey back, and then went to freezer.
She took out a package of meat to thaw out for dinner. She put the
meat in the microwave and set the dial, and then she sat across the
table from me. She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and her long
hair hung loose on her shoulders. Mom always dressed young when she
was not working. She was afraid of getting old, but, really, I
didn’t think she had anything to worry about.

She was studying me, as I poured yet another
glass of juice. I never read either of my parents, but I knew the
look on her face: she wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to ask.
Finally she couldn’t help herself.

“So what happened?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that,” she
said, and let the issue drop. She was good that way; she knew that
whatever I told her she could never understand, so why bother
asking? She had learned that a long time ago, from my grandmother,
who used to freak her out all the time. For instance, my mom would
mention seeing somebody, an old acquaintance, and grandma would say
Oh, I thought he died. And then a couple days later mom would hear
that the person actually died. Things like that happened all the
time. After a while my mom started to wonder if, maybe, my
grandmother had actually caused the person to die. Really, it was
impossible to tell for sure. So mom decided that the less she knew,
the better off she was—and she was right.

“You feeling better?” she asked.

“A little,” I said.

“You know your father is worried about
you.”

I didn’t know what there was for him to worry
about. My dad had no clue about my problems. Neither my mom nor I
ever told him. How could we? He was a very well-grounded guy. Some
people just don’t believe in spirits and other weird things, no
matter how much you try to convince them. If he knew half the
things that went on in my head on any given day, he’d have me under
a 72-hour psychiatric hold or worse. “Why is he worried about me?”
I asked. “Tell him to worry about himself.”

She shrugged. “It’s just your weight.”

“I have a high metabolism.”

“Well…”

“I know. He’s thinks I’m anorexic or bulimic
or something.”