The Freak Observer (14 page)

I stand there and watch my little brother watch TV.

It's a cartoon about Death the Grim Reaper. Weirdly, in the cartoon, The Bony Guy sounds like he came from Jamaica. And he's enjoying a bubble bath. Given my experience with The Bony Guy, I don't think it is very realistic, but then, gravity doesn't even work in cartoons. When a commercial comes on, I walk over and dump the bag of candy bars over Little Harold's head.

“Trick or treat!”

His smile is so big I can almost see reflections of the TV screen on his teeth.

Then I sit on the floor and watch cartoons with Little Harold. He doesn't know why the Grim Reaper talks like a Rastafarian, but it doesn't worry him. Why should it? Pretty much everybody in cartoons talks funny. That's part of the point.

The TV is working pretty good. We have candy to eat. Lots and lots of candy. I'm not actually eating my share—I got sick to my stomach almost immediately. I'm not used to eating chocolate, and I didn't eat any lunch today. I won't be eating any tomorrow, either. I spent a week's worth of lunch money on candy.

It is wrong to buy love with candy. It is wrong, and I'm really glad I did it.

. . .

It's the day after Halloween. The Day of the Dead, as Ms. (Heartless) Hart cheerfully informs us in class. She even serves cookies shaped like skulls. I pass on the cookies because they creep me out.

“No thank you.”

“I think Loa's trying to lose a few pounds.”

General hilarity ensues.

Score one more for Ms. (Heartless) Hart.

Two postcards in the mail.

The first is a picture of a bunch of people in a very dark room full of shadows. The faces are pale in the lamp-light. There is a man in red watching as another man writes something down. There are two little kids. The kids' faces are the brightest; they shine like full moons in the light. They look really happy, those two little kids. There is also something, I don't know what, made of copper arches. That is what everyone is focused on, that thing made of metal bands.

I turn it over.

It's Corey's half-assed messy handwriting again,

So that's how the sun works. Who knew?

Love,

Corey

And the note says:

A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery

in which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun,

painted by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1766

It's an orrery, that's what those metal bands are all about. It is very different from Mr. Banacek's orrery, but I get it. I see how it works now.

The other postcard picture is similar, but instead of an orrery as the focus of attention, there is a white bird in a glass jar. This time, the man in red is standing in the center looking straight out of the picture, right at me. His hair is wild and silver. He looks a little crazed. He can't be Isaac Newton, and he sure isn't Einstein—I don't know who he is supposed to be. I do know that the picture is creepy. Most of the room is very dark, and one of the little girls in the picture seems to be crying.

On the back, the notes say that this is
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
, Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768.

And, of course:

I'm making arrangements for your escape,

my little cockatoo.

Love,

Corey

When I look at the picture again, it's clear that the bird in the glass jar is dead. There will be no escape. It isn't going anywhere.

. . .

When I look up the artist, this Joseph Wright of Derby guy, I find out that people used to invite scientists into their homes to give demonstrations. They would bring along an orrery and explain how eclipses happened, or they would bring along an air pump and suffocate birds in front of children, or they might bring along a body and do an autopsy as after-dinner entertainment. Sometimes they sold tickets.

To be honest, I wish I didn't know about after-dinner science.

. . .

Somewhere, on the other side of the microscope's multiple lenses, there are supposed to be tiny spheres floating and bouncing off each other. They are so small that they are unbound by gravity. I am to see them and observe their behavior. Then I will understand random motion and many other things. The only problem is, I can't see any tiny spheres. I don't want to confess this.

So I just start making things up. This is not good science. My heart is beating sideways and my hands are full of pins and needles. I drop my pencil and start sobbing. I try to stop, but I can't. My hands are shaking and I can't breathe right.

It's just too weird for everyone. If it were in the cafeteria, someone would probably try to give me the Heimlich. But I'm not choking. I'm crying. There is no first aid for crying fits.

Mr. Banacek calls the office, and then he comes and stands by me. He says my name, “Loa, Loa, are you OK?”

I try to say yes, but I don't have any breath for it.

The school nurse and the secretary from the front office come through the door. The two of them help me stand up and guide me away. Away from the tiny spheres I can't see and the students who shouldn't have to put up with this sort of shit while they are trying to learn.

I try to say I'm sorry, but that doesn't come out either.

Eventually, they get me to the nurse's room and help me remember how to breathe.

“Have you had panic attacks before?” The nurse is looking at me.

“No,” I say, “Never.” And it is true. I've never had anything quite like this before.

“Do you want us to call your parents? Do you want to go home?”

“No. I'm fine. I feel better. I just need to wash my face. I'd like to go back to class . . . in a little while. I'll be ready.”

I need to figure out what sneaked up on me in physics. I have to go back in that classroom right away. I need to go in there and hold myself together. I may be ashamed, but I will apologize. I will ask Mr. Banacek for a practice data set so I can complete the assignment and learn what I need to learn. I will breathe slowly and I will relax the tension in my shoulders.

I can't let this happen at school ever again, and I won't.

. . .

And now it's pigs.

There's another postcard in the mailbox.

It is a photograph of four dark-haired girls dressed in pink. Pink tights, shiny pink leotards, pink gloves. They are all wearing pink lipstick and pink rubber pig noses. Their leotards are slit so you can see the row of big pink nipples running down their bodies like pig teats. There is fake blood on their throats, but it's not nearly enough if this is supposed to be about cruelty to animals. There are piles and piles of magazines. It must be hard to stand on all that slippery paper—hard to keep balanced on a great big sloping stack of paper. There are meat hooks hanging from the ceiling, and the pink piggy girls are holding onto the hooks to keep their balance.

It reminds me of a bizarre setup on a reality show. The judges for the modeling contest are going to scold them all for porny poses—like they should be able to wear giant pink nipples and still be able to sell the shoes without making it about sex. After the scolding, the girl on the left is going to get voted off because she isn't connecting with the camera.

I'm drinking absinthe in Prague.

Wish you were here.

Love,

Corey

Really, he wishes I was there? Dressed like a murdered pig?

I want to think that I understand what is going on, but I don't really. Why is Corey sending me this kind of mail?

. . .

There are two web addresses on the back of the card, but when I check them on the library computer, they both come up 404, File Not Found.

Part of me just wants to throw the postcards in the stove and burn them up—problem solved. Part of me thinks they are pieces of information. I'll need them somehow.

All of me wishes I never had to open the mailbox again, but I'm afraid what will happen if I don't. I don't want Mom or Dad to see what might show up next. I don't want to have to explain what I can't explain.

. . .

I used to enjoy chopping wood. It used to feel good to bring the maul down and split the round open. I liked using the ax to cut the pieces smaller. I liked using the hatchet to cut the smaller pieces into kindling. It is satisfying and analytical to just bust the problem into smaller and smaller pieces. It is mental, not just physical; you have to read the wood, see where it wants to split. Then I liked gathering up everything and taking it inside to the woodbox and seeing it there. I liked using it to build fires to keep us warm.

I used to enjoy it, but now the ghosts of Mom's murdered chickens haunt the area.

I turned the chopping block over so I couldn't see the bloodstains, but I know the blood is there. I picked up the little amputated chicken heads with their open beaks and surprised little chicken tongues and buried them in a deep hole with the chickens the weasel killed. I piled rocks on the spot so some woodland opportunist didn't dig them up and drag them around. The case should be closed, but I don't enjoy chopping wood anymore.

I still have to do it. I just don't enjoy it.

That pretty much describes everything anymore.

. . .

Two postcards again, from Rome. At first the pictures just look like ugly architecture. The kind with too much frosting and not enough cake. Then I see. It isn't a room decorated with plaster and gold leaf. It is a room full of bones. The arches are made of leg bones and skulls. Circles of pelvises and vertebrae are orbiting the ceiling. One postcard even includes whole skeletons dressed in brown robes propped up along the bony walls. Their skulls are bowed, and their bony little hands are hidden in their sleeves. I wonder how the skulls are attached. If they come loose, would they roll along the floor? Or would they shatter like eggshells?

I just do not want to look at that. So I shove the postcards into my pocket and start walking, fast, up the hill toward home. I try not to remember what they looked like, the skeleton puppets in brown dresses. I am not successful.

It is very hard not to remember something. It's easy to forget but very hard not to remember on purpose. Maybe I should try to forget the irregular French verbs I'm supposed to know by Friday.

I know that I can't choose not to remember. I can't choose the slide show in my imagination.

I can practically hear my own neurons laughing at me. The little shits.

My brain is not my friend.

Corey is not my friend.

French irregular verbs are not my friends, either.

. . .

I'm cleaning up after dinner, standing by the sink rinsing out a cloth so I can wipe off the table and counters.

I hear Dad say, “It ain't working.”

I go in the other room to see if he is talking to me. Maybe I can fix whatever wasn't working. Maybe the two of us together can make it right.

Dad isn't talking to me. He's staring at the wall. There aren't even any pictures of dead ancestors there. He's just staring at a blank place on the wall. “Not working,” he says again, “Not working.”

There are a couple of possibilities here:

 

1) Dad is talking to himself. OK. People do that. Except Dad doesn't. It isn't his way.

2) Dad is talking to people who aren't there. Not so OK. That might be more of a problem.

Whatever is wrong, I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to make it work.

. . .

Someone is trying to frighten us by tampering with photos of my father's funeral. In some of the photographs, there is blood on the face or neck of the man who is supposed to be my father in the dream. In some of the pictures, he is propped upright in the casket, but not exactly straight. He's leaning to the point where he might fall out and onto the floor.

When I turn the page in the photo album, the pictures just go on and on: pictures of my dead father at his funeral.

Every time I turn a page, the pictures get weirder and weirder. In one of them, my father is encased in a papier-mâché cocoon with a lumpy, blotted shape and winglike appendages. There are smears of blood and feathers on the outside of the cocoon. I can't see my father, but I know he is in there, under all that glue and newspaper.

I try to explain to my dream mother. I say, “Someone is trying to hurt us.” But I can't find the pictures that have been altered. They are missing from the album.

When I check to make sure that my dream Little Harold is OK, I see him outside. He is having a tea party. He is using the bloodstained chopping block for a table.

I am really, really afraid.