The Kindness of Strangers (34 page)

He knew that Reece and Dr. Bryn had read all the letters. Who knew who else? At least they didn’t try to pretend they hadn’t read them—the envelopes were always opened when they gave him the letters, and Dr. Bryn asked a lot of questions about each one. How did it make him feel when his mother said this? What did he want to do when his mother said that? Dr. Bryn made him show her his letters back to his mom, too.

Jordan closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep again, but in his head he saw his mom’s big, loopy handwriting, with the fat circles dotting all the
i
’s. Their letters were full of code phrases. She had realized, along with Jordan, that one disk was missing. Jordan’s face burned in the dark—because the police hadn’t found it at the house, now she knew that Jordan had taken it. He hated that she knew. And since the police hadn’t reported it when they found Jordan’s backpack, she knew that something was up.

Jordan had written back to her, wanting to make her believe that the disk with her pictures on it was gone. He wanted her to know that they had a chance to be together again. He’d written something like, “
Everyone believes all the stuff about you in the news. I tell people that none of it is true, but I think we’re the only ones who know the real story.
”

Dr. Bryn had asked, “You tell people that none of
what
was true?”

“The stuff on the news.”

“What stuff?”

Sometimes he hated Dr. Bryn. She knew what he was talking about it. Why did she want him to say it? The words stuck in his throat. The one time she got him to whisper words for what his father had done to him, he waited for something to hurt him. He knew it would happen. And sure enough, he woke up later in the night because he felt his hair being yanked, pulling his head back and back until he couldn’t swallow. Dr. Bryn said those were “body memories.” Well, he didn’t want body memories. He didn’t even want a body. And if talking about the bad stuff made body memories happen, he didn’t see the point. M-e-m-o-r-i-e-s. He pictured the word “memories” in his mom’s handwriting, a little heart over the
i
.

In today’s letter Mom had written about “
getting rid of this nightmare.
” He knew she was asking about the disk: Had it been destroyed? Broken into pieces and thrown away?

He didn’t have to tell her the truth. She hadn’t told him the truth, not about her brother. Jordan had asked about his uncle in a letter, but his mom had ignored his question. So Jordan felt like he could ignore certain questions, too. She didn’t have to know about Danny. He could tell her the disk was gone and let her think that
he’d
destroyed it that very first day of his plan. To protect her. Then she’d want to be nice to him, and they could live together without his dad.

His dad. Jordan sat up in bed. He knew he was never going to sleep unless he put the chair against the door, tipped so that the back was under the doorknob. This was the first night he hadn’t. He knew that the Ladens heard him move it around, even though no one said anything. He hated that they might think he was afraid of
them
—that he might think they wanted to do those things in the pictures. Tonight he had decided it was better without the chair, so if his dad did come, it could happen fast and none of the Ladens would get hurt, too.

Jordan turned on a lamp. He liked this room. It used to be Nate’s. Nate had left him a Cincinnati Zoo poster of white Bengal tigers and an autographed poster of Wayne Gretzky.

He didn’t feel like reading. And he didn’t feel like doing any of his homework either. Every day Reece took him to the Children’s Services building, where he met his homeschooling tutor. His teachers weren’t giving him very much work, probably because they felt sorry for him, but he
wanted
to do what all the other kids were doing. He’d already worked two units ahead in vocabulary and was reading about ancient Egypt in history while the class was still on Greece. He wanted to get some books from the library on cat mummies. Maybe he and Danny could make a cat-mummy sarcophagus. It would be a way for him to bury Raja after all. And Danny could take the sarcophagus to school for extra credit.

Jordan wiped his damp neck with his hand. He was hot in his sweats and turtleneck. It was humid and muggy for May, and Sarah hadn’t turned on the air conditioner yet. He couldn’t wait until she did. He wanted the windows shut. Sarah’d given him a fan, but he wouldn’t use it. He didn’t like the noise it made, covering the other sounds in the house. And hadn’t Nate told him yesterday that he smelled? Nate had said it nicer than that. He’d asked if Jordan needed some deodorant. He was glad Nate told him, though. It was true. Just the sort of thing he would’ve gotten in trouble for before, drawing attention to himself.

He pulled off his turtleneck. Whew, he did stink. He got out of bed. He avoided the creaky spot on the floor and went to the full-length mirror on the closet door. If his chest and back were covered, there was nothing awful on his arms or neck anymore. He narrowed his eyes and looked at his bony chest and all his ribs. Dr. Ali said he needed to gain weight. He’d heard her and Dr. Bryn call his weight “failure to thrive,” which bugged him, since he’d always gotten A’s in everything. A breeze stirred the curtains and ran across his naked back. Jordan shut his eyes. He would sleep without a shirt on tonight.

A thump vibrated through the quiet house, but it didn’t scare him. He knew that sound. Danny always got up to pee around now. Jordan knew everyone’s routine. He listened to Danny’s footsteps in the hall, the loud echo of his peeing in the quiet house, since he never shut the door at night, the flush. He waited for the
pad pad pad
of Danny’s feet going back to his room—but they stopped outside Jordan’s door. The doorknob turned, and Danny poked his face in without knocking.

“Hey,” Danny whispered, then closed the door behind him. “I saw your light on. I can’t sleep either.” He wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Danny plunked himself on Jordan’s bed. Jordan saw himself picking up his turtleneck and putting it back on. Or putting on another shirt. But he couldn’t move. He just stood there like an idiot.

“I’m really glad we’re friends again,” Danny said.

Danny could say stuff like that. If anyone else said it, it would sound cheesy or dorky, but Danny was just like that. Jordan had missed Danny. Danny was one of those people who never hurt anyone. He picked the ugly girls first as his partners in science. He picked the fat boys first when he got to be captain of a team in gym. There was something nice and good about Danny that made Jordan feel better even if they just sat at the same lunch table together and didn’t say anything.

“I really believed you, all that stuff you said,” Danny said. He sat cross-legged on Jordan’s bed, and Jordan could tell that Danny was going to stay there for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” Jordan whispered. He’d
wanted
Danny to believe it, but his nose burned again, thinking of saying that stuff to Danny.

Danny cocked his head. “How come you never told me?”

Jordan froze. He was still standing there in front of the mirror. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. A rushing-water sound started in his ears.

“I wish you would have told me,” Danny whispered, tracing the pattern on the bedcover with his finger. “I would’ve helped you.”

Jordan stared at Danny. Danny kept looking at the quilt. They couldn’t talk about this. Jordan couldn’t answer those questions. He couldn’t breathe right. “R-remember how we used to make up monster stories?” Jordan asked.

Danny looked up, somehow grinning and frowning at the same time. “You always did that,” he whispered.

Jordan didn’t know what he meant.

“Every time I asked you a question . . . and the answer had to do with . . . you know,
that,
even though I didn’t know it, you’d change the subject or make up a story.”

Jordan pictured himself running from the room. Something. Anything. They couldn’t have this conversation.

“Like that one time,” Danny said, “when you were limping, and you made up that story about how one night the monsters under your bed got a hold of your leg and you had to kick and fight and you just barely managed to keep them from pulling you underneath.”

Jordan swallowed. It felt like he had glass in his throat again, like that first day at the hospital.

“And when I found that bloody towel in your bathroom, you said that was from a fight with the monsters, too. But it was really from . . . from that stuff in the pictures, wasn’t it?”

Jordan just sat down on the floor where he was. What all had Danny seen? He didn’t want to have to wonder what Danny was picturing whenever Danny looked at him. The water sound in his ears hurt him, made his jaw and neck ache.

Danny kept tracing that pattern with his finger. “I just wish you would have told me. But it’s okay that you didn’t. I bet I wouldn’t have told anyone either.”

Jordan pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, trying to concentrate over the water sound. The words Danny spoke hovered in the air before him like a bubble in a cartoon. That always happened when they touched him.

“Anyway, I’m really glad you’re okay. And I’m glad you’re here.”

Jordan opened his mouth, but no sound came out, just like when he tried to talk to Bryn.

Danny flopped forward on his belly on Jordan’s bed. He draped one arm over the side and idly poked at the carpet with his finger. They didn’t talk for a really long time. Jordan wondered if Danny was going to fall asleep in here.

Just as the water sound had almost disappeared, Danny sat back up and picked up Jordan’s sketch pad off the nightstand. “This is really good,” he said.

Jordan couldn’t remember what picture he’d left it open to, but he knew it was a picture of Raja when Danny said, “So what really happened to your cat?”

The gurgling filled his ears again. And a word appeared in the air before him: “grave.” G-r-a-v-e. It meant solemn. S-o-l-e-m-n. Don’t forget that
n
. Life-threatening. T-h-r-e-a-t-e-n-i-n-g.

“That was a creepy story you made up about him,” Danny said. “About that boy who was the slave of the monsters.”

Jordan had made up that story just last fall. They’d been doing a play at school about the Underground Railroad.

“You said before the boy was a slave, he used to go stay at his grandma’s.”

That was because his mother loved him, right? She took him to his grandma’s because she didn’t want to do the things she did. And she didn’t want his dad to hurt him either.

“And the boy and his grandma went to a movie, and when they came back, there was a cat on his grandma’s porch. They just found it there, and the cat wouldn’t leave. And they took care of it all summer long. And when the grandma died—Hey, how did she die? I don’t remember. Did the monsters kill her?”

Jordan shook his head.
I did,
he thought.
I never should have told her. I made her sick.

“Oh. Well, anyway, after the grandma died, the boy got taken prisoner by the monsters. They made him their slave.”

He really shouldn’t say “monsters.” It felt wrong, and he couldn’t help but worry that his mom would somehow know, but she couldn’t, could she?

“And the monsters killed the boy’s cat because the boy tried to escape.”

He shouldn’t say that. It had been his fault. Being such a baby at school. Making the teachers call that meeting.

“And the boy never tried to escape again.”

Well, until that day in the rain, that day of the epiphany.

“Hey,” Danny said softly. “Are you okay?”

Jordan’s body shivered with silent sobs, and he wiped his eyes with the back of hand. He tried to make himself stop crying. He buried his face in his knees.

“It wasn’t a story,” Danny said. He didn’t even make it a question. He knew. “Your . . . your mom and dad killed your cat, didn’t they?”

Jordan kept his face buried.

“Was it because you tried to tell someone?”

He shut his eyes tight. He heard the floor creak and knew Danny had gotten off the bed. Danny sat down beside Jordan and put his arm around Jordan’s shoulders. Jordan hated the feeling. It made him want to elbow Danny in the ribs and slam him against the wall until his bones crunched. He shoved Danny off and stood up. “Don’t. Don’t touch me, okay?” His whole body shook.

Danny’s face looked up at him, pale, eyes wide. “Sorry,” he whispered.

Jordan walked to the mirror and pulled on the turtleneck he’d taken off.

“I’m really sorry,” Danny said. Jordan could tell that Danny was crying, too.

He wanted to reassure Danny that it was okay. Danny shouldn’t cry about it. Danny was only trying to be nice. But Jordan didn’t know how to say these things. If Jordan didn’t talk about the bad things, they didn’t have to be real yet, no matter what anybody else said. He didn’t want Danny to cry.

Jordan pulled his turtleneck sleeve down over his hand and wiped his eyes, then his nose.

“Here,” Danny said. He handed Jordan the box of tissues that had been on the nightstand. He reached out and patted Jordan’s shoulder once but drew his hand back really fast.