It was one of several times I was removed quickly from a school and installed in another. People looked at me strangely. The teacher, who had been so warm, was suddenly stiff and cool.
“He fell,” I remember lying.
“No,” said the teacher, who had been on the playground. “I saw you push him. Why did you do it?”
“He made fun of me,” I managed.
But I was young, unable to articulate my feelings. The fact was that this boy had been quietly and surreptitiously torturing me since the first day of school. I was small for my age. I had a very high IQ, was separated out for gifted programs. And this overdeveloped mouth-breather, for whatever reason, had it in for me. He pulled my hair, stole my pencil box, hid my show-and-tell. I dreaded him, dreamed about him, lay awake at night worrying about what he’d do the next day. I didn’t tell anyone about him. Because I was such a chronic liar, no one ever really believed the things I said. As a child, I had what I can only describe as daydreams. I saw people who weren’t there, imagined conversations with them. I thought they were ghosts sometimes. I heard voices in my head that told me to do strange things, like wash my hands fifteen times, or avoid a certain food all day, otherwise my mother would die. It was part dream, part imagination, part lie. It’s impossible to explain. Anyway, that’s why no one ever believed me anymore.
My fear and rage toward this boy was a throbbing, swelling thing that lived inside me. That afternoon, he’d eaten my sandwich. So I was hungry, as well as miserable. When he came up behind me on the jungle gym and whispered in my ear that I was too small for third grade, that I should stay with the babies in preschool, the thing, the white-hot rage that was always simmering, expanded and exploded from me. I jumped up and spun around and used all my strength to knock him back.
The truth was, I didn’t think he’d fall. I was pushing him away, not too concerned with where he’d go. It was true that I did not feel remorse that day, though I do now. What I felt more than anything was relief. He’d stay away from me now. They always do, you know, when you really hurt them. The bullies always stay away then; they’re cowards at heart.
And curiosity was the other big thing I felt. I was deep in wondering about that snap, and the broken bone, and how would they fix it, and how bad would it hurt. And what would the body do inside to knit that broken thing back together. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that; I was totally focused inside on those questions, coming up with theories and wondering who I could ask or what I could read that would give me all the information I wanted. So that’s why I seemed flat, though somewhere deep inside, I was upset. It was just buried deep under layers and layers of manic thoughts and strange voices.
Dr. Cooper and I have talked this through. I understand who I was then better now that I’m older. There was a little bit of OCD, a little bit of my being too intellectually smart while emotionally underdeveloped. There was my hormonal imbalance, which has corrected itself mostly since puberty. There are other theories, too, about what might be wrong with me. But that’s the thing about mental illness; there’s no such thing as a cookie-cutter diagnosis. We’re all crazy in our own special way. Some of us just have it worse than others.
Langdon and I were trekking through the cold, haunted woods. He was grumbling and complaining, tripping every few feet.
“I’m not really the outdoor type,” he said.
“No kidding.”
Prior to our activities over the last few days, I don’t recall ever seeing Langdon out of doors. He was a man who seemed designed to dwell only in a library or classroom, possibly in a bookstore café, sipping some type of warm, herbal beverage from a travel mug. Not that I was throwing any stones; my feet were growing numb and that heavy fatigue that had settled over me felt like a weight on my back.
We came to the clearing and I saw the decrepit old barn sagging in the moonlight. It looked like it was built from cards, might crumble onto itself with a good wind. A shiver of dread moved through me. I froze at the edge of the trees and found I couldn’t go farther.
“He brought her out to a place like this and buried her body.”
Langdon stood beside me. He seemed to intuit that I was talking about my life, not about the life that had ended here.
“I watched him do it,” I went on.
I could see my father digging and digging while I sat shaking and crying. I kept watching the rug, willing it to move. Maybe she was still alive. But no, her skull was shattered. The shape of it; I’ll never forget that or all the blood. “I watched him bury her.”
He dropped an arm around me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”
“Luke knows about me,” I said. “He must. A body buried in the woods? But how did he find out?”
It was a half admission. I didn’t tell him about the call, or how Luke was taunting me, what he had said. If I told him that, I’d have to tell him everything, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him what happened between Beck and me, and how Luke seemed to have some knowledge of that. There were so many layers to my lies, so many moving parts to my problems. I was becoming tangled in the fishing line of my deceptions.
“So that’s what this is about,” he said. “That’s why you’re so hooked into this game.”
I folded my arms around myself, gave a single nod of my head. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Only an instinct for self-preservation would have me this desperate to follow his clues.
“Who else knows about your past?”
“You,” I said. “Beck.” But of course neither of them knew everything. “Dr. Cooper.”
There was no connection between the three of them, no place for them to intersect and exchange information about me. Not that either Beck or Dr. Cooper would share anything about me with some strange kid even if the opportunity arose. I said as much. Neither of us made a move toward the clearing or the barn. It was spooky, even for me, who prided myself on not fearing anything.
“And what about the first clue?” asked Langdon. “I thought you said it didn’t have any meaning to you.”
“My father tried to kill himself in prison,” I said. “But, unfortunately, he didn’t succeed.”
I felt Langdon’s eyes on me. It was kind of a callous thing to say, and I could feel him analyzing my words, my demeanor, like any good shrink would. But there you have it. I wished my father were dead. He deserved to be dead. Not her; my mother should have been alive and none of this shit should have been happening. I couldn’t wait until they pumped his body full of poison. He’d turned my life into a horror movie, and now he wanted closure. Fuck him.
“So you think Luke knows that?”
“Apparently.”
“There was nothing else about that clue that resonated with you?”
I could feel him pressing at me. He didn’t buy that it was just about the suicide. And that’s because it wasn’t.
“No,” I said. “Nothing.”
Again, the silence of his analysis. I turned to look at him and his face was paler than usual in the moonlight. I heard an owl calling, and something rustling in the leaves caused us both to start. A black cat hurried from the brush and crossed our path. Perfect. As if my luck wasn’t bad enough.
“You’ve forgotten the other possibility,” said Langdon. “That this is about Luke and not about you at all.”
But I didn’t think it was, not after the telephone conversation we’d just had. The moon moved from behind the clouds and the clearing was washed in a silvery-blue light. I moved toward the barn, and after a moment Langdon followed. He reached out for my arm.
“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he said. “We should just go.”