Not As Crazy As I Seem (17 page)

I can't stand it anymore. I have to go to their bedroom to check on them. I jump off my bed and go out in the hall. I walk toward their room on my toes so I won't make any noise. Their door is shut. Why is that? They never closed their door before. I press my mouth to the keyhole. "Mom? Dad?"

No one answers. My hand tightens around the knob and turns it slowly. I push the door open a few inches, then wide enough to step through. In the light from the hallway I can see Dad's face sticking above the covers. I hold my breath. His face looks old and sagging, almost dead. I stare at the eyeballs to see if they're fluttering, which means he's alive and dreaming.

"Devon!"

The eyes burst open. It's like seeing a dead man wake up. I step back and bump into the dresser. Dad throws off his covers and jumps out of bed. I see his hand rising out of the darkness, coming at me like before.

"Dad, it's me, Devon."

"Get out of here!"

This doesn't make sense. Why is he yelling if he knows it's me? "Dad, I just wanted..."

"What? Wanted what?"

I can't remember. Why am I here? Why is he so angry at me? "Cancel Cancel."

"Oh my God." Mom wakes up yelling, too.

"Mom, it's me."

"Devon, I told you to leave this room."

"Cancel Cancel."

Dad balls his hands up into fists. "Stop saying that."

I do as I'm told. I obey. I can always say the words to myself, inside my head.

I run down the hall and into my room, slamming the door behind me. I throw myself on the bed and pull the pillows over my head. But then I toss the pillows off so I can hear. They should be coming down the hall any second to say they're sorry for overreacting. They should be realizing right this moment that I was just coming in to talk to them.

Dad always figures the worst. Why couldn't he have just woken up and said,
Yes, Devon, what is it?
He wouldn't have even had to be very nice about it, not like
Devon, aren't you feeling well?
or
Devon, did you have a nightmare?
They used to ask me that a lot back in Amherst when I had nightmares every night. He could have even snapped at me,
Devon, why are you bothering us this late!
That would have been okay. But to wake up and shout at me and make a fist—what kind of father does that?

I'll never get to sleep now. I stand up in the middle of my room. The psychos are staring at me from the wall. I see myself in the mirror over the bureau. It's as if my picture's hanging on the wall with them.

No, they're
really
crazy. I'm just an amateur at it, a fifteen-year-old who happens to keep his things neat. Like
my closet. I open the door again. The shirts hang there, each one an inch from the other. I fixed them like that, with two fingers of separation between them. What did this save me from? Nobody else has died in my life since Granddad, but the school may kick me out and my parents hate me and we might have to move again. That's a lot of bad stuff happening.

I remember Tanya seeing my closet for the first time and going into her
Twilight Zone
voice. The shirts look strange to me now, too, like they were hung up by a robot, not a kid. Most of them I don't even wear anymore. I should get them out of my life, give them to Mom for Goodwill. Let someone else hang them up in his closet.

I reach in and start unbuttoning my blue shirt, the one I wore to Granddad's funeral. It's way too small. I don't need it anymore.

"
What are you doing? You don't want to give me away, Devon. I was your favorite once.
"

God, my shirt's talking to me. Maybe I
am
psycho.

"
You're not psycho, you just care about things. You empathize. Let me hang in your closet.
"

No, stop talking to me.

"
Put me back, Devon, and I'll make everything okay with your parents.
"

Shut up shut up.

"
Button me up again and put me back, then your problem at school will go away, too.
"

You're just a shirt. You can't do anything.

"
I'm not...
"

I grab it by the collar and rip. The shirt tears open, and
what's it going to do now—scream? I don't think so. I let the old shirt fall to the floor.

I turn back to my closet and pull out the next one in line, the white button-down I used to wear to church, and rip it open along the seam. Then another shirt, short-sleeved. I dig my nails into it and tear.

The pile of shirts on the floor keeps growing. The sleeves stick out in all directions, like broken arms. I feel my own arms—I'm finally getting some muscle. I'm outgrowing my shirts.

I reach for one of the snow globes on my shelf. It's the one from Arizona, the desert idea of a snowman—just a black hat and carrot floating in water. Dad thought it was the best one he ever brought back to me. I turn around and hurl it at the wall, over the heads of the psychos. It bursts open, splattering the liquid all over their faces.

That felt good. I never knew destruction could be this much fun. I grab two more globes and throw them harder. The water sprays across my room. I pick up a fourth globe—this is perfect, right? I destroy things in fours now! I lift my hand to fire the thing into the wall, and—

"Devon, stop it!"

There's Dad standing in my doorway. Now he comes, when he hears me breaking things. Mom runs up behind him. He holds her back.

"This is what you want, right? I'm making a complete mess of my room."

I flip the fourth globe over my shoulder and then scoop out a handful of the meditation stones from the basket. I toss them in the air and they crack into the floor
like miniature explosions. I close my eyes and whip my hands out to the side. I don't care what they hit. I don't care what breaks or bends or falls apart.

Dad's arms wrap around me and stop me from spinning. It feels strange being hugged. I can't remember the last time he held me like this. Why did he stop?

"What are you doing, Devon?"

There's that voice—always demanding to know, know, know. He's the father, why can't he tell me?

I jerk myself away from him. "I'm being normal, see? I can break things like every other kid in the world, and I don't care what happens. Maybe I'll even die tonight just like..."

"Just like?"

Granddad. That's what I was going to say.

"Like who, Devon?"

"Him."

"Him?"

Why doesn't Dad know? "Granddad Granddad Granddad."

"Granddad?"

"Yes, I killed him."

I can't believe the words I just said. I don't even know what I mean. I didn't shoot him or stab him or suffocate him.

"What are you saying, Devon?"

I sit down on the bed. Dad sits next to me. I can feel his leg against mine. "That last night, when I was reading to him, his eyes closed, and I couldn't tell if he was sleeping or what, so I felt his heart. I couldn't feel a beat, and then I started clicking my fingers. At the fourth click I felt his heart beating again. Four."

"It was just a coincidence. It could have been any number."

"I kept counting and clicking my fingers, and his heart kept beating. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up, he was dead."

"Of course he was dead, Devon. He had a massive heart attack. He was eighty-seven."

Dad thinks he understands, but there's more I have to tell him. "I wished he'd be like that."

Dad twists around to see my face. "Like what?"

Why can't he ever know anything? Why do I always have to say it? I've never told anybody this, not Mom, not my shrinks, not even Tanya. What kind of horrible kid wishes his grandfather dead?

"Like dead."

Mom steps into the room. I had forgotten she was even there. "You wished Granddad dead, Devon?"

"It was just for a second. The day before I wished he didn't live with us because it changed everything in the house, and the only way he'd leave was if he died. That last night, when I couldn't feel his heartbeat, I should have called you. You could have gotten a doctor. They could have saved him."

Dad puts his arm around my shoulder, just like he did at Granddad's funeral when I was supposed to throw a rose on top of his casket. I couldn't do it. Dad took my hand then, and we threw the rose together.

"Everybody has fleeting thoughts like that, Devon. You shouldn't feel ashamed."

I pull away and rub my eyes. My face is wet from tears, and I didn't even know I was crying.

Mom bends down in front of me. She lifts my chin with her fingers. "You weren't responsible, Devon. Granddad was very sick. His heart gave out. Nobody could have saved him." She leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. "Bad things happen sometimes. You can't stop them. You just learn to deal with them."

I'm learning, I guess. At least I have a lot of bad things to practice on.

Mom stands up. "Are you calmed down now?"

"Yes."

"Do you want us to help you clean up your room?"

"No, that's okay, I'll do it."

"Tomorrow we'll talk some more, Devon. Try to get some sleep now."

After they leave I don't clean up anything. The mound of shirts on my floor looks comfortable, so I just lie down there. Outside a gust of wind blows over the house, and the tree branches scrape against my window. The only other sound is the clicking of my clock. I reach under my shirt and feel my heart. For the first time I can remember, it's running faster than one beat a second.

What am I doing here?

I'm staring up at a ceiling, and it seems very far away. I've never woken up on the floor before. I've never slept all night on a pile of clothes. My neck is stiff. My arms are cold. I should have pulled the blanket from my bed.

"Devon, do you hear me? You have a phone call."

Mom's voice is loud, right outside the door. I don't want her to see me like this. She'll think something's really wrong with me. "Just leave the phone in the hall ... please."

I give her time to leave, then open my door a little, reach out and grab the phone. "Hello?"

"Devon?"

"Yeah."

"It's me, Tanya."

Tanya.
The way she says it makes me think it means something beautiful in a foreign language.

"That's good, you're home."

"Why is that good?"

"You're not in jail. Some kids said the cops arrested you. But they just PC'd you, right?"

"What?"

"Turned you over to parental custody."

"I guess that's what happened. I'm suspended for two weeks, and my dad grounded me."

"That's tough. So what are you going to do about it?"

"What can I do?"

"Get Ben to confess."

She makes it sound easy. "I already went over to his house. He didn't say anything about confessing."

"Tell him he's got to or you'll turn him in."

"I can't."

Tanya lets out a long sigh, which sounds like a hiss over the phone. "Why not?"

"I'm probably his only friend in the whole school. And his father will kill him."

"Did you spray anything, Dev?"

"No."

"Did you know he was going to?"

"No."

"Then why should you do time for something you had nothing to do with?"

"You mean you'd turn him in, if it was you?"

"Damn straight. And I'll tell you something else, if he doesn't turn himself in, I'll walk into Marion's office and do it for him."
to go to Ben's. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson. I can't imagine the punishment Dad would put on me this time. What comes after grounding?

But Tanya's right. I shouldn't have to take the rap for something I didn't do. I'm not
that
good friends with Ben.

I get to his house and knock. A woman opens the door. She looks very nice, kind of like a nurse, not at all what I expected from what Ben said about his mother. A little kid is standing at her leg.

"Can I see Ben, please?"

She shakes her head. "He isn't here."

"Do you know when he'll be home?"

She shrugs and rubs the head of the kid. "He went to live with his father in Texas."

Texas. My witness is in Texas?

"He's coming back, isn't he?"

"He'll be going to school down there now."

This is bad. Ben could be gone forever, and I can't prove anything. "Did he happen to say anything before he left?"

"He said he was glad to go, that's all."

I'm going to die Wednesday, May 5,2060.

That's what deathclock.com says. It's a pretty cheesy Web site, actually. There's a skull with gears whirring behind it—I don't know what that's supposed to mean—and a gravestone inscribed with what else? RIP.

Anyway, Deathclock says I have 1,857,298,500 seconds left in my life, which seems more than enough for a person to do whatever he's going to do, especially if he doesn't have any idea what that is. Maybe I won't be a vet but
instead a shrink for teenagers. They could come to my office and do whatever they want the whole session. It would be the one hour of the week when nobody was asking them stupid questions or telling them what to do. That would help kids, having nobody bugging them for an hour.

"Devon?"

It's Dad's voice, in the hall. He's home early. I'm lucky I made it back from Ben's in time.

"Yeah?"

He takes my answer as an invitation to open my door, which it wasn't. I quickly click out of deathclock.com. I don't want him to think I'm thinking about suicide or anything.

"Your headmaster called. He wants us to come right over to the school."

I check my watch. It's four-thirty. "What does he want?"

"I don't know. He called me at work and said for all of us to come over. We're going to pick Mom up on the way. Change into some school clothes, and hurry."

Dad's always telling me what to do like this—"Change!" "Hurry!" Just once in my life I'd like to hear him say "please."

The headmaster isn't smiling like I'd hoped when we walk into his office. This must be more bad news. Maybe they found a bomb in one of the classrooms and they're saying I planted it. Ben doesn't seem like the type of kid who would do that, but I didn't know he would spray the whole school, either.