In Beta Page 6

  “Oh my God. Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

  Liz screeched, flailing her limbs. “Don’t touch me!”

  Mr. Knight startled and stepped back. He looked between the students and Sheriff Jenkins, stricken.

  “Help me get her home!”

  Sheriff Jenkins took a step toward Liz. “Hey. Hey, Liz.”

  Liz cowered into the lockers. Principal Oatman turned to the rest of the students.

  “Miss Shirell! Let’s get everyone to class, please!”

  Administrators and teachers poured into the hall, ushering fascinated students away from Liz. Jay leered over his shoulder as an office aide grabbed his elbow and pulled him toward the north doors, unable to tear his gaze from where Liz was fending off the three men trying to help her.

  Dr. Shrek

  Jay was in agony the rest of the day. Nobody in class paid any attention to Ms. Rotchkey, who showed none of her usual enthusiasm for calling the class to order.

  Jay’s stomach felt sick with worry for Liz. He’d never seen anyone so full of . . . what, exactly, had that been? They may not be close, but they were going to prom. He wanted to be by her side.

  A second thought had also taken hold. Liz had seemed terrified of Elmer, and even more so of her own dad. What would she do when she saw him? Would she recognize him? Jay stared down at his notebook, the glory of the last sixteen hours slowly washing away. He waited as seconds dragged on, until finally the last bell rang. He grabbed The Build disk, stuffed it in his backpack, and yanked Colin back down to A-Court.

  The cavernous space had cleared out quicker than usual, and there were only a few stragglers left, hastily slamming locker doors. Jay knew the rest of the school was probably processing Liz’s breakdown the same way he was.

  He peered through the sliding window into the front office. Miss Shirell was organizing a stack of tardy slips. He rapped on the glass, and she slid the window open.

  “Yes?” She nodded tartly.

  Jay took a deep breath. “I was wondering if you could tell me what happened to Liz Knight? I’m going to prom with her.”

  Ms. Shirell raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “She’ll be back in a few days. You can talk to her then.” Ms. Shirell slammed the window shut and returned to her tardy slips. Jay stood beside his friend, indignant.

  “How does nobody know about Liz and me? Where are the school’s gossip queens when you need them?”

  There was a squeak of sneakers behind them, followed by a small cough. Jay turned to see Derek Deckford rolling back and forth on his heels, adjusting his bow tie. He glanced nervously around the empty hall.

  “You guys looking for Liz?”

  Jay nodded. “Yeah, she okay?”

  “She’s at Dr. Shrek’s,” Derek whispered.

  Jay shot Colin a glance. All kids hated Dr. Shrek. Liz would never go to him willingly.

  “Thanks, Derek.”

  Derek nodded and scurried into the front office. Jay and Colin strode off to the Batmobile.

  “Frick,” muttered Colin as he started the car. “Can you imagine? Losing your memory? I think there’s certain memories I could never forget.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like, freshman year, in woodshop. I remember Chris Hargrove went and got this big rock and dropped it into the band saw. It shot out and hit a propane tank, and the class actually caught fire. Remember, they had to evacuate the whole school?”

  Jay nodded vaguely. “Jeezus. How was he not expelled?”

  Colin shrugged. Jay adjusted the dial of Colin’s radio.

  “This is 669 AM,” drawled a familiar voice. “You’re listening to Marvelous Mark in the morning.”

  “It’s not morning anymore, Mark,” Colin muttered to the radio.

  “I got a real special one for the cool kids out there. That’s right, if you’ve had enough ‘Achy Breaky Heart,’ listen up. This is My Bloody Valentine, with the song “‘Only Shallow.’”

  They listened in silence as Colin drove, while grinding guitars gave way to a high milky voice. Jay nodded appreciatively and pulled their small notebook from the glove compartment.

  “What’d he say? My Bloody—”

  Suddenly, the radio cut to silence. Jay banged on the dashboard, then tried turning the dial to pick up another station. Nothing.

  “Dang it,” Colin moaned.

  “Broken?”

  But just as suddenly, the radio came back on. Jay recognized the Beach Boys, though it was a song he’d never heard before. He switched the dial, but the song persisted no matter what station he landed on.

  “Stupid car,” muttered Colin.

  Dr. Robert Shrek’s office was even higher up than the heights, past the main strip of town. A large wooden sign outside Highway 24 proclaimed: “Dr. Shrek. If you’ve got cancer, we’ve got the answer.” After a short drive uphill, the single lane opened into a kidney-shaped parking lot that wrapped around two smaller buildings: Dr. Shrek’s office and the waiting room. Dr. Shrek was a stern man who greatly disliked people; he kept his waiting patients as far from his work as possible.

  As they rattled into the parking lot, Jay was amazed to see it filled with Chevy trucks and smaller hatchbacks. They got out and trudged to the waiting room. Jay saw Principal Oatman and Sheriff Jenkins.

  “I advise you to keep that opinion to yourself,” Jay overheard Mr. Oatman say.

  “But if Liz has whatever got Todd, it might be contagious. We could have an epidemic.” Sheriff Jenkins noticed the boys passing, and quieted.

  A string of dangling bells jingled their arrival to the rest of the waiting room. The space was packed, full of talking kids, and few noticed their arrival. It felt like A-Court all over again. The dozen chairs were full, and kids were leaning against walls, sitting on laps, or lying on the floor. Nearly half of A-Court was there. Jay wondered if Todd’s search party would generate the same excitement.

  Jay noticed Gretchen and Amber in the corner with two big bouquets of flowers. Jay stared, wondering whether they would acknowledge the conversation he’d had with Liz yesterday, but they didn’t look his way.

  Stepping over outstretched student legs, Jay and Colin made their way to the white-haired nurse behind the front desk. She peered over wire-rimmed glasses at a People magazine. On the cover was a photo of a fiery plane wreckage, and the caption New Kids on the Block, No More: Tragedy at 35,000 Feet. Before Jay could open his mouth, her eyes flicked up.

  “She’s with her family. They’ve requested privacy. You can wait”—she motioned to the room—“wherever there’s space.”

  Jay was about to sit, when suddenly the door flew open. Mr. Knight stood in the entrance, face white, stress lines everywhere. He searched the kids until he found Amber and Gretchen.

  “Girls, would you come with me?”

  The front desk nurse stood up in protest, but Mr. Knight shook his head.

  “I’d like her to see them.”

  Jay shot up and raised a hand.

  “I’m going to prom with her!”

  The entire room, which had gone silent, turned to look at Jay. Jay flushed, avoiding eye contact.

  He heard Gretchen mutter, “God, give it a rest.”

  Mr. Knight sized Jay up, then turned to Gretchen, “That true?”

  “Yeah . . .” Gretchen looked reproachfully at Jay but didn’t say more.

  Mr. Knight ushered Jay and Colin to follow, and the four teens trailed him out of the waiting room and over to Dr. Shrek’s office. Inside was a short corridor with two doors branching left and right, and a glass-paned door at the far end, with the stenciled words “Dr. Robert Shrek.” Mr. Knight turned into the first room on the right.

  The room was small and clinical. Liz’s mom, the spitting image of Liz with an extra thirty years on her, sat in the corner. She looked up as the
four of them entered. She was dark-skinned, but had her daughter’s piercing green eyes. She mustered a smile as they entered.

  Aside from two chairs, the only other furniture was the bed where Liz was spread out, leather straps pinning down her arms and legs. Liz stared straight at the ceiling with cold, glazed eyes. Her head turned slowly to the newcomers, and her eyes fell on Gretchen and Amber. They waved.

  “Hey, sweetie. How you feeling?” Gretchen asked.

  Liz shuddered and ignored the question. Her gaze moved to Jay and Colin. She studied Jay for a moment and her eyes narrowed shrewdly.

  “Do–do any of these people look familiar to you?” Mr. Knight asked his daughter. He nudged Amber and Gretchen toward Liz’s bed.

  “Oh my God, Liz,” Amber whispered. “Are you okay? You freaked out in the middle of A-Court.”

  “It’s, like, major news,” Gretchen sympathized.

  Liz laid her head back on her pillow and chuckled. Mr. and Mrs. Knight exchanged looks. Liz muttered something under her breath, and Mr. Knight leaned in to better hear.

  “Dr. Shrek!” he yelled.

  Two seconds later, Dr. Shrek, a short man with a lined face, rounded into the room.

  “What’s propofol?” Mr. Knight asked.

  Dr. Shrek squinted. “She’s asking for propofol?”

  “Yeah. Did you give her some?”

  “No. Propofol is a heavy sedative.”

  Amber whispered to Gretchen, “The stuff Michael Jackson uses.”

  Dr. Shrek stared at Liz. “How does she know what propofol is?”

  Mr. Knight teared up. “She’s a straight-A student, Doc.”

  Dr. Shrek handed Mr. Knight a Squeezeit with a small straw. “Here, I brought this for her blood sugar.”

  Mr. Knight held it up to Liz’s lips. Liz took a sip, and then her head fell back onto her pillow.

  “Berry B. Wild,” she said, giggling.

  Liz’s mom stood and ushered the four of them to the door. “Let’s give her some space, Dad.”

  Mr. Knight shook his head. “I don’t know what else to do. We’ll call if anything changes.”

  Amber and Gretchen hugged Mrs. Knight while Jay and Colin waited.

  When they were outside, Jay turned to Amber and Gretchen. “How can we help?”

  Amber sniffed. “Ugh, God, stop already. You’re not her friend, you know.”

  Jay stood, stung, as the girls returned to the waiting room. Colin put a hand on Jay’s shoulder. “You want to stay?”

  Jay shook his head. “Nah.”

  All the elation he’d felt the day before was gone. He maneuvered through trucks, beelining for the Batmobile.

  “What are you guys doing here?”

  His stomach knotted. It was Jeremy. Jay tried to move faster, but two bodies blocked him. John B and John H stood between two cars, arms crossed. Jay stared up at their sneering faces and Champion T-shirts.

  Jeremy’s voice came from behind him.

  “I said, what are you doing?”

  Jay rounded on him. He saw Jeremy’s jaw was set and his fists bunched. He instinctively lowered his eyes.

  “Checking on Liz,” he muttered. “She asked me to prom.”

  “Oh yeah. I heard. I didn’t realize you two were so close.”

  John B snickered. “Maybe asking Jay out sent her over the edge.”

  The other Johns laughed. Jeremy gave Jay a shove.

  “You know, you look like Screech from Saved by the Bell?”

  Jay raised his eyes. All fourteen Johns were leaning languidly on trucks. They had the tailgate of John H’s Chevy dropped, and three of them sat on it. They reminded Jay of vultures. He scanned the parking lot for Principal Oatman or Sheriff Jenkins, but it was otherwise empty. Colin was staring straight at the ground, as if that could render him invisible. Jeremy’s hand shot out and he ripped Jay’s backpack from his shoulders. His eyes gleamed as he held it up for Jay.

  “First you come to A-Court. Now you’re visiting Liz in the hospital. It feels like we’re going round and round till graduation. You don’t learn, do you? How many times do we gotta do this?”

  He unzipped the book bag and turned it upside down. Binders and pencils clattered onto the pavement. Floppy disks rained down atop his new Serious Gamer magazine. Before Jay could stop him, Jeremy’s distressed leather boot lifted into the air and slammed down on the disk pile. Jay watched in horror as Jeremy ground the heel into the disks.

  “Noooo!”

  “That’s what happens when you leave the computer lab,” one of the Johns jeered.

  “C’mon,” Jeremy muttered, and they all shuffled off, leaving Jay on the ground, picking through all his squashed disks. He held up the Populous disk. It had split completely apart, its plastic separating into two jagged wings. All three of his SimCity disks were bent at ugly degree angles, with angry white creases down their centers.

  Jay thought of his poor Poopville. Never again would he rebalance its budget or receive another accolade from the in-game newspaper. He stared after Jeremy and the Johns, wishing an earthquake would swallow them up.

  The Trouble with Jeremy

  Jeremy sat alone on his bed, looking down at the floor. His room was the size of an entire trailer in the La Dulce Vita trailer park. It had its own balcony, with a separate door on the second floor of the house. Up there were his free weights and a stereo with his workout music: usually Guns N’ Roses or Garth Brooks, depending on his mood. The walls were adorned with sports paraphernalia: A Scottie Pippen jersey, a Mariners banner, a signed ball from Randy Johnson that his parents had somehow gotten him. The room was filled with light from the large windows overlooking the Skookullom River far down below. The room felt cheery and light, which was the exact opposite of how Jeremy felt.

  He had a problem. Well, several problems. The first and most obvious was that his on-again, off-again girlfriend was laid up in the closest thing Bickleton had to a hospital, with no memory of him. It was like something out of a bad soap opera. They had fought about something stupid. Jeremy had given Gretchen a ride home after cheerleading practice, and he’d brushed her knee with his hand. That was all it was—a brush!—but Liz had been furious. She’d broken up with him, the week before prom. It had taken him two flower deliveries during third period, plus an apology cake from the Golden Flour Bakery to smooth things over. Not only had he managed to win Liz back for prom, but he’d also gotten her to agree to his practical joke.

  And now she couldn’t remember any of that. When he saw her in her hospital bed earlier, and she looked at him, he saw spite in her eyes. Or was it indifference? Either way, it left him cold. Whatever was ailing Liz, he had to find a way through it before prom.

  The second problem was much more serious: Jay Banksman. This was not something he could admit to anyone. He could barely admit it to himself. Ever since he could remember, he’d been afraid of Jay.

  Somehow, since he was very young, Jay had inserted himself inside Jeremy’s brain. He had wormed his way in, and Jeremy could not get him to leave. In the deep recesses of Jeremy’s mind was a terrible image of himself, chained in a dark dungeon, surrounded by menacing black figures. In this vision, Jay stood over him. Except he wasn’t the Jay who shared Jeremy’s high school. He was big—taller than Jeremy—with thick, rippling muscles. He wore what looked like a suit of medieval armor, and he held a dark, cruel sword with a dual tip. Evil Jay would thrust his sword into Jeremy’s chest and twist the end until Jeremy screamed in pain and humiliation.

  It had plagued him his whole life, long enough that he’d eventually learned to control it. When he was younger, his mind would sometimes wander to that terrible dungeon, and he’d feel an intense fear he didn’t understand. He would shut his eyes and chew his knuckles till they bled, the physical pain washing the image from his mind. Eventually, he learned to keep his thou
ghts of the dungeon at bay, but his fear of Jay remained. He hated Jay, and wanted nothing more than to destroy him.

  Lately, the fear was getting stronger again. When he saw Jay in the hallway between classes, he could feel the terror trying to break free from the restraints he’d created. One wrong move and it could slip to the forefront, overtake him, send him into a helpless mess before his friends. He hated Jay just as much as he feared him.

  He flexed and unflexed his knuckles and looked out his wide window. The wind had picked up, shaking the buds on the almond trees outside their house. He didn’t want Jay eventually working down at the mill. He didn’t want Jay in Bickleton at all. Someway, somehow, he needed to get him out for good.

  Dark House

  The Recluse liked cramped space. He liked how the boxes lining the walls pushed in on either side. It made him feel like a creature in a tunnel. Cats, he knew, used their whiskers to map 3D space, so they could move quickly without having to use their eyes. Mole rats, too. Often he moved in darkness, preferring it to the light from the small desk lamps that hung like vultures from the tops of his boxes.

  Today, however, the Recluse flipped a power strip and a web of white Christmas lights sparkled across the ceiling.

  “Hrmmm.”

  He moved into his tiny kitchen, opening the fridge and pulling out mayonnaise and mustard, two slices of bread, a bag of deli meat, and a neatly folded bag of Chili Cheese Fritos. He carefully made his sandwich, cutting it into squares, and carried it back to the dining room table. He set his plate down, walked over to a stack of boxes, and pulled out a hardback book with orange and black swirls on the cover. Bickleton High School Yearbook. Its glossy cover was smudged with use and covered in dirty fingerprints. The Recluse flipped through with interest, studying each creased page with beady eyes as he chewed dainty bites.

  Suddenly, he froze. The air in his house was utterly still. But unmoving, he sat, listening. Down the hall, three rooms away, a small, piercing whine arose. The Recluse stood, pulled a wet wipe from a box on the counter, and toweled off his fingers. He lumbered down the narrow corridor and squeezed through the far doorway into the bedroom.