off, where the memory of the experience receded from her conscious mind like a wretched creature down a slippery hole, deep beneath the ground.
It was the vision of Mr. Leonard’s looming face that had returned to her that afternoon in English, ripped through her amnesia, threatened her sanity, sent her fleeing from the classroom…
But that was done. The creature was out of the hole.
Now, as Janis chewed the inside of her cheek, two competing questions chewed at her mind: What was beneath Mr. Leonard’s wood shed? Had the experience even happened to begin with?
Janis glanced at her clock radio and sighed. She should have been in bed an hour ago. When she gathered the egg, the back of her hand ached from supporting her chin. She carried the egg to the dresser and returned it to the top drawer.
Yellow instead of purple.
She closed the drawer tight. The experience hadn’t happened, she decided, not out there, anyway. Just like with the egg, it had been a product of her subconscious mind, manifesting the very things she’d expected to see and find, scaring herself half to death in the process. The next time she found herself in the backyard, she would will herself back to bed. She would never put herself through another experience like that again.
With that, Janis climbed beneath her covers and turned out the lamp at her bedside. But she didn’t fall asleep, not right away. A niggling thought came to her as she massaged her hand. She had spun the plastic egg several times in the half hour she’d spent recounting the experience. But how many times had she actually moved her hands from beneath her chin to do so? Every time? Every single time?
Enough, Janis.
She turned over and closed her eyes again, and this time she did find sleep.
10
Thirteenth Street High
Friday, August 31, 1984
Lunchtime
“You can do this,” Scott said into the rust-speckled mirror. Outside the metal door, he could hear the final calls of students headed to lunch. The bathroom stalls and cracked latrines at his back stood vacant. “It’s just an informational meeting. One informational meeting. You go in, you listen, you size it up. If it feels wrong, you’re done. You don’t have to go back.”
But it will be a risk , a voice whispered. Being seen will be a risk.
Scott considered that as he looked back at his pallid face. No one had messed with him all week, or even given him a second look. And now he was threatening that invisibility, threatening to stand out. Informational meeting or not, he might as well be wearing a sandwich board that announced: I want to be like you guys! And on the back side: Please accept me!
Scott knew something about healthy herds. They didn’t take well to misfits worming into their ranks.
He ran water onto his hands and finger-combed the sides of his head. His mom was supposed to have given him a haircut the night before—something more in line with “today’s look”—but her Avon meeting had run late. As Scott worked to flatten a few stubborn sprays of hair, he reminded himself of the progress he had made in other areas…
After crashing following that first day of school (and sleeping straight through the night), he had rebounded Tuesday afternoon and cleaned the rest of his room. Gone were the relics of his childhood: the Buck Rogers sheets, the plastic models, a View-Master whose lever had jammed years before, a Merlin Phone (“Play it six different ways!”), his old Atari 2600, joysticks, and trays of game cartridges, eight binders of Scratch ’n’ Sniff Stickers, stacks of Encyclopedia Brown, Choose Your Own Adventure, and Mad Libs, as well as a medley of dog-eared magazines he’d stopped reading when he was eleven: 3-2-1 Contact! and Cracked among them. He filled four Glad Bags and dragged them to the garage.
Immediately, his room felt twice as spacious. It smelled better, too. He proceeded to vacuum and dust in places that no instrument of cleaning had touched in years, prompting
It was the vision of Mr. Leonard’s looming face that had returned to her that afternoon in English, ripped through her amnesia, threatened her sanity, sent her fleeing from the classroom…
But that was done. The creature was out of the hole.
Now, as Janis chewed the inside of her cheek, two competing questions chewed at her mind: What was beneath Mr. Leonard’s wood shed? Had the experience even happened to begin with?
Janis glanced at her clock radio and sighed. She should have been in bed an hour ago. When she gathered the egg, the back of her hand ached from supporting her chin. She carried the egg to the dresser and returned it to the top drawer.
Yellow instead of purple.
She closed the drawer tight. The experience hadn’t happened, she decided, not out there, anyway. Just like with the egg, it had been a product of her subconscious mind, manifesting the very things she’d expected to see and find, scaring herself half to death in the process. The next time she found herself in the backyard, she would will herself back to bed. She would never put herself through another experience like that again.
With that, Janis climbed beneath her covers and turned out the lamp at her bedside. But she didn’t fall asleep, not right away. A niggling thought came to her as she massaged her hand. She had spun the plastic egg several times in the half hour she’d spent recounting the experience. But how many times had she actually moved her hands from beneath her chin to do so? Every time? Every single time?
Enough, Janis.
She turned over and closed her eyes again, and this time she did find sleep.
10
Thirteenth Street High
Friday, August 31, 1984
Lunchtime
“You can do this,” Scott said into the rust-speckled mirror. Outside the metal door, he could hear the final calls of students headed to lunch. The bathroom stalls and cracked latrines at his back stood vacant. “It’s just an informational meeting. One informational meeting. You go in, you listen, you size it up. If it feels wrong, you’re done. You don’t have to go back.”
But it will be a risk , a voice whispered. Being seen will be a risk.
Scott considered that as he looked back at his pallid face. No one had messed with him all week, or even given him a second look. And now he was threatening that invisibility, threatening to stand out. Informational meeting or not, he might as well be wearing a sandwich board that announced: I want to be like you guys! And on the back side: Please accept me!
Scott knew something about healthy herds. They didn’t take well to misfits worming into their ranks.
He ran water onto his hands and finger-combed the sides of his head. His mom was supposed to have given him a haircut the night before—something more in line with “today’s look”—but her Avon meeting had run late. As Scott worked to flatten a few stubborn sprays of hair, he reminded himself of the progress he had made in other areas…
After crashing following that first day of school (and sleeping straight through the night), he had rebounded Tuesday afternoon and cleaned the rest of his room. Gone were the relics of his childhood: the Buck Rogers sheets, the plastic models, a View-Master whose lever had jammed years before, a Merlin Phone (“Play it six different ways!”), his old Atari 2600, joysticks, and trays of game cartridges, eight binders of Scratch ’n’ Sniff Stickers, stacks of Encyclopedia Brown, Choose Your Own Adventure, and Mad Libs, as well as a medley of dog-eared magazines he’d stopped reading when he was eleven: 3-2-1 Contact! and Cracked among them. He filled four Glad Bags and dragged them to the garage.
Immediately, his room felt twice as spacious. It smelled better, too. He proceeded to vacuum and dust in places that no instrument of cleaning had touched in years, prompting
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