On Fire (12 page)
“What is the thing you've got, Matti?” Billy said.
“Tourette's Syndrome,” I said. “T. S., for short.”
“I know that's what you call it. But I mean what's it like when you have it?”
I looked at him. As far as I could tell he wasn't making fun of me. “You know what it's like when you have to sneeze?”
“Sure,” he said.
“And you know how you can try not to sneeze, but in the end you have to go ahead and let it happen?”
“Yes.”
“That's how it is with my tics,” I said. Then I changed the subject. “Are you going to school here next year?”
“I guess,” Billy said. “We're burnt out. My dad's down there talking to the principal right now. Are you?”
I shook my head.
A man waved down below and yelled, “Get down here, Billy. If you can spare the time.” I guess it was his father.
“See you sometime,” Billy said, like we were two normal kids saying good- bye. Then he ran down the stairs.
M
ARSH AND I WERE ON THE
road to Metal Springs early that afternoon. The receptionist said we could find Dan in Building 3B. She also told us how to get there. “Show the guard at the door this slip of paper,” she said, “and he'll let you in.”
I took the paper and we started walking. The closer we got to Building 3B, though, the slower Marsh walked. Finally he stopped completely.
“Come on,” I said. “Let's get this over with.”
“I can't, Matti,” he said. His face was grey and he had beads of perspiration all over his forehead. “It's a secure building. They'll lock us in on whatever ward Dan's in. I'm sorry, but I just can't go in there.”
I didn't ask Marsh how he knew so much about the hospital. After what Frank told me, I could pretty much figure that out.
“I'll go in by myself,” I told him. “There's a guard there. What could happen?”
Marsh tried to convince me to go back to town and wait until Frank could come with me but I dug in my heels.
I was done with waiting.
The door to 3B was heavy, without any glass in it. Marsh stood beside me while I rang the bell and waited for the guard to come. “I'll be waiting for you right here,” he said.
In a minute we heard a click. Then a voice came through the door asking what we wanted.
“I want to see Dan Iverly,” I said. “I'm his cousin.”
“Iverly?” I heard paper shuffling. After what seemed like forever the voice asked, “He that John Doe?”
“No,” I said. “He's . . . ” but the door opened then and I went inside.
“Ward C,” the guard said. “Up the stairs. Ring the bell again.”
I went up where he pointed and then stopped at another locked door. I was reaching out to ring the bell when someone on the other side of the door began to howl.
There was something wild and lonely about the sound, like the call a mountain lion made when he hung around our place a few summers ago.
I thought it was Dan.
And I thought I was too late, they'd already done something to him. I wanted to scream myself and then run away. But I didn't. I pushed the bell and waited.
The howls started again just before someone came to the door. He was big, like a mountain that moved on white rubber-soled shoes.
“I want to see Dan Iverly,” I said. My voice was higher than I wanted it to be.
“I know,” the nurse said. “The guard phoned up.”
When I went through the doorway I saw an old lady in her nightgown standing in the hall. She opened her mouth to scream again. “Enough now, Betty,” the nurse said. “This visitor is not for you.”
The woman turned and walked down the hall.
“I'll bring Iverly out to you.” The nurse unlocked the door to what he called the coffee room and let me inside. “He's walking today, but I can tell you he was flying when he came in.”
I would have had some coffee while I waited, except there wasn't any in the coffee room. There wasn't any tea, either. Also no cups, plastic or paper. Not even a drinking fountain. Just two tables and altogether, five chairs with the legs wrapped in plastic foam.
I sat down at one of the tables. Two men were sitting at the other and arguing. Then the one that was older started to cry.
I didn't have the greatest feeling about being locked in with them.
The doctor said it would be upsetting to see Dan when we were here before. That he would look better if I waited a few days. But if how he looked was
better
, I couldn't even imagine what
worse
would have been.
The guy that shuffled in to the coffee room a few minutes later just stood in the doorway. His eyes were only halfway open. He held his head off to one side. I wouldn't even have known he was Dan, if the nurse hadn't led him over to a chair at the table where I was sitting.
“This is your cousin,” he said to Dan.
Dan slowly swivelled his head around to look at me.
All I really needed him to do was say my name. That would have been enough.
Instead he said, “You tricked me.” And then he added, “You're not Bee.”
He might as well have punched me in the stomach. “No,” I said. “I'm Matti. Remember? I'm your angel.” I'm embarrassed to admit it, but it's what I said.
“There are no angels,” he told me.
Then he put his head down on the table and let his eyes close all the way down.
M
ARSH WAS WAITING JUST WHERE
I'
D
left him. He wasn't the colour of old newspaper any more, which was good because I probably was. “What's wrong?” he said. He came over and stood beside me. “Wasn't it Dan?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was.” I started walking toward the parking lot. “I'm not coming back here again. And don't ask me why.”
“Wait up, Matti!” Marsh said. “That building over there's the cafeteria. Let's get something to drink.”
I didn't feel like doing that. I needed to get someplace dark and private where I could let myself go. My legs wouldn't hold me up though. I sat down on a bench and waited while Marsh went into the cafeteria.
While I was sitting there alone, a guy walked by wearing baggy jeans held up with rainbow suspenders. His hair came to a point in the middle of his head, and not because he combed it that way. Not combing it at all was more like the problem.
In some ways he could have been Dan's age. In others he was younger and older at the same time. “The sky's falling,” he said. I hoped he'd keep on walking if I didn't pay any attention to him, but he stopped and came back. “I wouldn't sit here if I were you.”
“Another weirdo,” is what I thought. Then it dawned on me that people probably thought the same thing about me at times and I was ashamed.
“I'm waiting for someone in the cafeteria,” I told him. “I can't leave.”
“No one takes Howard seriously,” he said.
“Howard?” I asked. I looked both ways but there wasn't anyone near us. “Is he . . . like someone you know?”
“You should move,” he said again, but he smiled. It made him look a lot younger â almost like he was a little kid.
Marsh came out of the cafeteria about then. I stood up and started toward him. “Good bye,” I said to the suspenders guy.
“Good bye,” he said. “Be careful.”
“Who was that?” Marsh asked when we met in the middle of the green space.
“Somebody different.” I took the can of coke Marsh handed me. I drank it very fast and then belched two or three times. I only felt a little relieved.
Marsh and I walked slowly back to the parking lot. “I was in 3A once,” he said. “I thought I could go back in that building again but . . . ”
“Frank told me about the electric shocks you had. Did they help you?”
“I'm still here,” he said.
When we got to the truck, I finally told him that Dan didn't recognize me. I left out his comment about Bee. I could drink ten cans of pop and belch a hundred times and that would still stick inside me.
“He's medicated,” Marsh said. “He could probably look at his own hand and not know what it was.”
“He said there are no angels. Then he put his head down on the table like I wasn't there.”
“Matti, it's just rambling. These drugs they put you on to straighten you out can be brutal. You don't want to give up yet.”
“You told me not to get my hopes up.”
“Well,” Marsh said, “maybe I was wrong.”
I did want to give up, though. Bee had been out to the hospital to visit Dan. Her mother must have checked with Search and Rescue and then with the police and found out where they'd taken him. They'd talk to her since she's the one who had Dan picked up. Then she went to visit him and took Bee with her.
It didn't really make any difference how Bee got there, though. Dan had met her and now I was toast. He couldn't even remember my name.
I suppose he was bound to meet a beautiful girl eventually. They were everywhere. Now that I'd seen the cheerleaders, I knew that.
I also knew I would never be one of them.
I
MOVED IN WITH
M
RS
. S
TOA
the day after the visit to Metal Springs. I think it was a Monday. The house was large enough for three or four families to live in full time and not bump into each other. The kitchen was especially amazing.
The appliances were all silver coloured and the counter tops had silver flecks in them. And instead of a normal table and chairs, there was something called an island in the middle of the room with high metal stools around it.
The odd thing about having a kitchen like that is there was never anybody home to cook in it â except for Mrs. Stoa, of course, and she's no gourmet. The King was off travelling with his girlfriend the whole time I was there. And the Prince was always at work.
I didn't mind all the space, though. I had a big room upstairs. I was in it moping when Frank came to see me just after I'd moved in. He knocked on the door.
“Not bad,” he said when he came in.
“I guess not.”
“A little small, maybe.” After that hilarious joke he got serious. “We won't have the power back on in the village for several weeks yet, so Mrs. Stoa has you registered for the distance program. You can start tomorrow, if you want.”
“Maybe day after tomorrow,” I said. “I'm pretty tired.”
“Meeting your cousin wear you out?” Frank asked.
“Maybe you should have me put in jail for impersonating a relative.”
“It wouldn't be any use, Matti. You'd just find a way to break out again.”
That was true.
“What I want you to do,” Frank told me, “is start the distance work so we can see how it goes. Stay out of Mrs. Stoa's hair and . . . what day is this?”
“Monday,” I said.
“On the weekend, you and I and Marsh are all going out to the hospital to sort things out there.”
“Whatever,” I said. And then I asked, trying to sound casual, “Where is Marsh, anyway? Is he still staying in the high school parking lot?”
“He's back in the village. There's a lot of work for him to do there, but he'll drive back down. Are you changing the subject?”
I was trying to. “I can't go out to Metal Springs,” I said.
“I thought you promised to save your cousin's life.”
“That was quite a while ago,” I said, “before I found out certain things.” I started to cry a little.
“There's no expiry date on promises.,” Frank said.
That got me going. “He doesn't remember me, Frank,” I wailed. “I'm not beautiful enough. And . . . and you know he isn't really my cousin.”
I was actually bawling by then. My nose ran. Big, fat tears rolled down my cheeks and plopped onto my shoulders.
Frank put his arm around me like before, only tighter. It felt good and fatherly. I leaned into his chest for just a minute.
As soon as he left, Mrs. Stoa came to the door. “Let me in, please, Matilda,” she said. When I didn't, she barged right on in. Technically it was more her room than mine, but I still didn't appreciate it.
She perched on the end of the bed. “I heard what you said to your father about Dan,” she said.
“Don't you know it's not polite to eavesdrop?” I rolled over and turned my back to her.
“I don't give a fig about politeness at this time in my life. It's the truth I'm after,” Mrs. Stoa said, like she was Batman, the Caped Crusader.
I didn't have any fight left in me by then, so I didn't answer her back.
“What is it?” she said. “I thought you'd be happy to know Dan's alive.”
I rolled over and looked at her. “But he's in love with Bee Laverdiere. I knew if he saw her that would happen. It's Romeo and Juliet all over again.”
“Oh, dear Lord,” Mrs. Stoa said. “You have to pick the stories you let into your life, Matilda. That particular one is such a trap for a young girl. Killing herself because she can't have a boy she's only known a few weeks.”
“I saved his life!” I said. “I wanted to be important to him.”
“Fate saved his life,” Mrs. Stoa told me. “But you were important. You were there to greet him when he came out of the fire, just like your namesake greeted Dante.”
I rolled over fast and sat straight up. “Mrs. Stoa,” I said. “I've told you over and over, I am not Matilda.
“And why would I want to be a greeter, anyway? I've seen what they do at discount stores in Kingman. They meet you when you come in and ask if you want a shopping cart. There's no status in that.”