The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group (2 page)

‘But could you have gone out to get some, Toby?’

‘No!’ By this time, I have to admit, I was starting to panic. It’s no joke when a whole chunk of your life has suddenly gone missing. ‘Why would I have done that?’

Mum sighed. ‘Because Fergus asked you to?’ she suggested.

I suppose I’d better explain that Mum doesn’t like Fergus very much. She doesn’t mind my friend Amin, but she thinks Fergus is a bad influence. It’s probably no surprise that she wanted to blame Fergus for what had happened.

To be honest, I couldn’t help wondering about that myself.

‘If you got involved in some prank, Toby, and you’re scared to admit it—’

‘I don’t know.’ That was the frightening thing. I really didn’t know. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘I won’t get mad, I promise. I’d be relieved.’

‘Mum, I told you. I
can’t remember!
’ I didn’t want to start crying, so I decided to get mad instead. ‘Why don’t you believe me? It’s not
my
fault I can’t remember!’

‘Okay. All right.’

‘Why wouldn’t I tell you? I mean, I’m in enough trouble as it is; how could it possibly get any worse?’ I’d hardly finished speaking when I was struck by a horrible thought. ‘I didn’t kill any dingoes, did I?’

‘No,’ said Mum. ‘But the fence was damaged.’

‘What fence?’

‘The one at Featherdale.’

‘Oh.’

‘Which doesn’t necessarily mean that you were responsible,’ Mum quickly added, just as somebody pushed back the curtains that were drawn around my bed.

I looked up to see a pair of uniformed police officers flashing tight-lipped, professional smiles at me. One was a short blonde woman who smelled of soap. The other was a tall dark man who smelled like fish and chips.

‘Hello,’ said the man. ‘How are you doing? Mind if we have a quick word?’

I’
d better explain
why my dad wasn’t at the hospital. Basically, he wasn’t there because he’s dead. I’m not talking about my
biological
father; my biological father could still be alive, for all I know. But my adoptive father, Ian Vandevelde, died when I was two years old.

That’s why I don’t remember him. That’s also why Mum has to work two jobs every so often. See, my dad was a lawyer, who earned a lot of money. It was his salary that paid for the big house where we lived when I was a baby, over on the northern beaches. But when he died, Mum couldn’t pay the mortgage – because speech therapists don’t earn very much. She had to sell the house, the Volvo and the timeshare unit, just to pay off all our debts.

Now we live in Doonside, without the pool or the sea view or any of the other luxuries that Mum’s always talking about. But we’re doing okay. I guess we’d be doing even better if it wasn’t for my school fees. I keep telling Mum that I’d be just as happy at one of the local schools. (Happier, in fact, since I wouldn’t have to spend so long on the train every day.) My mum, however, has very firm views on education. So unless I get expelled, I’ll be switching schools over her dead body.

Mind you, I nearly
was
expelled last year. And when it happened, I felt really bad – because no matter how often I told Mum that it was all my fault, she kept on blaming herself. She seemed to think that if my dad had been around, I wouldn’t have dropped a foil wrapper into hydrochloric acid during science class.

She feels guilty that she can’t provide enough guidance and discipline.

Maybe that’s why she sounded so apologetic when she greeted the two police officers who showed up at my bedside. She had this look on her face, as if she was bracing herself for a well-deserved putdown. But the police didn’t start laying into her. They didn’t get stuck into me, either. They were very polite.

After he’d introduced himself as Tino, and his partner as Michelle (I can’t remember their last names), the policeman said, ‘So you’ve had a bit of a rough night, eh, Toby?’

I grunted.

‘Dr Passlow tells me you don’t appear to have any major problems, which is good,’ Tino went on.

I glanced at Mum, who immediately came to my rescue.

‘We – we haven’t really talked to any doctors yet,’ she stammered. ‘Is Dr Passlow the paediatrician? We haven’t talked to the paediatrician.’

‘Oh.’ Tino seemed surprised. ‘Okay. Well, I’m sure he’ll be heading over here in a minute. And before he does, I just want to see if we can clarify a few things.’ He turned back to me. ‘According to the doctor, you don’t remember what happened last night. Is that correct?’

I nodded. Then Tino nodded. But his nod and my nod were very different. There was a resigned quality to his nod.

‘I see,’ he said with a sigh. ‘And do you know where you ended up this morning?’

‘Yeah,’ I rejoined. ‘Mum told me.’

‘And you’ve no idea how you got there? Who might have left you there?’

‘No.’ Suddenly I realised what he was getting at. ‘Hang on – are you saying someone actually did this to me?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to establish. Do you
suspect
someone of doing this to you?’

Talk about a loaded question! I just stared at him, open-mouthed. I couldn’t believe he was serious.

That was when Mum spoke up.

‘I’m not sure my son should be discussing this right now,’ she objected, sounding perfectly serene even though she wasn’t. (She had lots of crinkles on her forehead, and her mouth had gone stiff.) ‘He’s not in a fit state . . .’

‘We aren’t trying to pin anything on Toby, Mrs Vandevelde,’ Tino assured her. ‘Even if he
was
responsible for the damage at Featherdale, there’s no way of proving it. And quite frankly, we don’t believe he is to blame. We think other people were involved.’ He fixed me with a benign but penetrating look. ‘Have you been fighting with the kids at school, by any chance?’

‘No.’

‘What about the ones in your neighbourhood? I know a few of them can be pretty rough. Are they giving you trouble?’

‘Course not!’ What did he think I was, a geek? A nerd? A natural-born target? ‘Why would anybody want to pick on me?’

‘Listen.’ All at once Michelle took over. Even though she was smaller than Tino, she had a harder face and a gruffer voice. ‘You shouldn’t be afraid to tell us if some bully’s been giving you a hard time,’ she said flatly. ‘We’ve got zero tolerance for bullying. If you don’t nip it in the bud, it gets worse and worse. Someone might end up getting killed. That’s why we take these situations very seriously, and why we’ll make sure there won’t be any repercussions if you decide you want to give us a few details.’

‘But I can’t.’ It was like talking to a brick wall. ‘I told you, I don’t know what happened. I can’t remember.’

Michelle sniffed. I got the distinct impression that she didn’t believe me. Mum must have thought so too, because she leaped to my defence.

‘My son was unconscious,’ she pointed out. ‘The nurse said he might have amnesia.
Post-traumatic
amnesia.’

‘Huh?’ I didn’t like the sound of that. I didn’t like the word ‘post-traumatic’. ‘What do you mean, traumatic?’

‘Well—’

‘You mean I saw something bad? Like a murder? Is that what you mean?’

Mum blinked. Michelle said, very sharply, ‘
Did
you see a murder?’ And I had to take a deep breath before replying.

‘Are you deaf?’ I growled. ‘For the millionth time, I
don’t know
.’

‘I’m sure the nurse meant physical trauma, not mental trauma,’ Mum interposed hurriedly. ‘Like a blow to the head. Being knocked out can cause amnesia. It happens all the time.’

‘Mmmph,’ said Tino.

‘When Toby recovers, his memory might come back to him,’ Mum concluded. ‘That’s why I don’t think he should be answering questions right now. He’s just not well enough.’

Tino and Michelle exchanged glances. There was a brief pause. Finally Michelle said to my mother, ‘Are there any troubles at home?’

Poor Mum. She flushed and gasped. She was speechless.

I was pretty gobsmacked myself.

‘We have to ask these questions, Mrs Vandevelde,’ Michelle continued. ‘Has there been a new man in your life lately?’

‘Of course not!’ Mum cried, in a strangled voice.

‘No ex-husband or ex-boyfriend who might have been giving you grief?’

God knows what Mum would have said to
that
, if Dr Passlow hadn’t appeared. I knew it was Dr Passlow because of his name tag; he was a small man in a crumpled suit, who twitched back the bed-curtains with casual authority, behaving as if the police weren’t there.

His reddish hair was thinning on top, and there were bags under his eyes. Even from a distance, I could smell the mint on his breath.

‘Hello. I’m the paediatrician, Glen Passlow,’ he announced. ‘How are you feeling, Toby? How’s the stomach?’

‘Umm . . .’ I thought about it. ‘Better.’

‘You’re looking better,’ he informed me, then turned to Mum. ‘Are you Mrs Vandevelde? Yes? How are you holding up?’

‘Oh. Well . . .’ Mum obviously didn’t know what to say. ‘I – uh—’

‘Sorry I couldn’t talk to you earlier,’ Dr Passlow interrupted, as if he was pressed for time and couldn’t wait around until Mum had managed to think of a response. He talked very quickly, in a bracing tone. And he refused to acknowledge the police, despite the fact that their guns and badges were very hard to ignore. ‘I want to tell you how pleased I am with Toby,’ he declared. ‘We thought he might have a fractured skull or some sort of spinal injury, but there’s no evidence of that. No fractures of any kind, no internal bleeding, no invasive wounds . . .’

‘Thank God,’ said Mum.

‘My one concern is that he was unconscious for so long. With concussion, there’s often a delayed recovery period. That’s why I want to keep you here until tomorrow, Toby.’ All at once Dr Passlow was speaking to me again. ‘It’s just a precaution. We’ll find you a bed in the children’s ward, and observe you overnight, and if everything’s still okay in the morning, we’ll let you go. Does that sound reasonable?’

I love the way adults do that – as if they’re genuinely interested in what
you
want. Suppose my answer had been: ‘No way! Get stuffed!’ Would they have listened?

Would they hell.

‘Guess so,’ I mumbled.

‘But you should come back later in the week for an eeg,’ the doctor advised. ‘That’s a kind of brain scan, and it’s nothing to be alarmed about.’

You should have seen Mum’s face! ‘But—’

‘When Toby first arrived, we did an arterial blood gas test. That test showed elevated lactate, which indicates a massive metabolic disturbance. Like a
grand mal
seizure, for example.’ Dr Passlow raised his hand, as if to repel a barrage of furious objections. ‘I’m not saying that Toby
did
have an epileptic fit. It’s just something we have to explore.’

An epileptic fit? I didn’t know what that meant. There was a kid at our school who had epilepsy, and she’d always acted just like a normal person. Except that she was an abba fan.

‘But Toby’s never had a fit in his life,’ Mum said faintly. ‘Not even when he was running a temperature.’

The doctor shrugged. ‘Sometimes seizures go completely unnoticed,’ he observed, before launching into a long spiel about different kinds of epileptic fits. I didn’t listen to that. I couldn’t see how it was relevant.

Because the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Fergus and Amin were to blame for my troubles. Fergus was always playing tricks. He could easily have lured me through the bedroom window with some dumb idea – and when that dumb idea had gone belly-up, he’d probably panicked.
I
certainly would have panicked.

I have to talk to Fergus
was the decision I made, as Dr Passlow said his piece about recent advances in the treatment of epilepsy, and Mum chewed on her bottom lip, looking anxious. I wasn’t anxious. I was convinced that Fergus (or possibly Amin) would be able to explain everything.

What I needed was a phone.

‘So do epileptics sometimes lose the plot when they have a seizure?’ Tino asked, once the doctor had finished. ‘I mean, do they act in an irrational way, like they’ve been drugged?’

Dr Passlow didn’t appreciate being questioned by the police. This was clear from his raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

‘Epilepsy isn’t a psychosis,’ he said crisply, without even glancing in Tino’s direction.

‘Yes, but—’

‘Some people do experience tension or anxiety before a seizure, just as some people experience temperature changes. I suppose you could describe that as an irrational response, though it’s hardly the same as an irrational
act
.’ The doctor finally dragged his gaze away from my mother, fixing it on Tino instead. ‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t feel entirely comfortable discussing the details of this case with you, since there’s been no proper diagnosis.’

It was such a put-down that it silenced Tino. He cleared his throat, his expression blank.

Michelle, however, was made of sterner stuff.

‘But if the kid had a fit,’ she said, in her harsh and nasal monotone, ‘would he have felt so hot that he had to take off his pyjamas? Would he have been scared enough to run away?’

Dr Passlow sighed. ‘As I’ve already told you, I’m not able to comment at this point,’ he retorted.

‘Yeah, but I’m asking if it’s
possible
—’ Michelle began, then broke off when Tino nudged her in the ribs.

She shot him a sullen look, which he disregarded.

‘We ought to be going,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything more you want to discuss, just ring me at the station.’ He offered Mum his phone number on a card. ‘We’ll be keen to hear from Toby if his memory improves. And of course we’d appreciate an update on his condition, once the test results are in. Just in case they have any bearing on last night’s incident. ‘

For a moment my mother sat there dumbly, staring at the card in her hand. Then she raised her eyes and gazed at Dr Passlow.

‘Do you think his condition
might
be to blame?’ she asked. ‘Do you think it’s why Toby ended up where he did?’

Something about this question must have pained the doctor, because he grimaced as he sucked air through his teeth. You could tell that he was trying to be patient.

‘Mrs Vandevelde,’ he said, ‘Toby doesn’t
have
a condition. Not as far as we know. My concerns might prove to be utterly unfounded.’

‘Yes, I realise that, but—’

‘You shouldn’t worry about your son. He’s a healthy lad, and those cuts of his are fairly superficial. I’m sure he could do with a few hours’ sleep, though.’ Dr Passlow suddenly rounded on the two police officers. ‘Which he’s not going to get if he’s constantly disturbed.’

I’ve never much fancied being a doctor, but you have to admit there’s an upside. Who else could have talked to the police like that and got away with it? Michelle was certainly cheesed off; her mouth tightened as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. Her partner swallowed, his expression becoming a little strained.