Broken Circle Read online

  Dominick bends close to talk to her. His shadow is all slimy and wet and oozy and getting all over her like . . . sperm or something. As I approach, it rises up, black and menacing, to stare at me.

  I crouch to crawl under a table. Then I stop. You can’t hide from people’s shadows. So I straighten up, a little too fast, and almost lose balance. As soon as I’m righted, I face them. Try to keep my cool. But I can’t help it, my shadow growls at his. Yes, my shadow is a dog, a German shepherd. Domesticated, a herder, but still a predator. And Sarah’s one of my people. I have to protect her.

  I head toward them, then suddenly pitch forward instead, jaw catching the edge of a table. For just an instant, I’m falling forward in pitch darkness.

  I won’t, I won’t, I won’t go to That Place right here, right now . . .

  I jerk myself awake, babbling at the top of my lungs, but somebody clamps an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, cutting off the flow of words. The ceiling is rushing past and three people are running alongside me, one of them—Sarah—shouting my name: “Adam!” Two medics wheel me down the hall, strapped to a gurney.

  I grab the oxygen mask and lift it. “Sarah?”

  Her shadow’s a river, rapids lifting and breaking beside us. She’s crying and scared, the river swollen and too full, ready to flood its banks. “I’m sorry, Adam,” she whispers.

  I lift my head and watch her figure grow smaller as paramedics wheel me into an ambulance. The principal’s head looms in the doorway until the paramedics block him from sight. “Sorry, sir, we need to get out of here.”

  I think I should be worried but a deep sea–blue feeling of peace flows through each limb. I’m floating on a cloud in an endless blue sky. I’m—

  “What the . . . What’s happening?” I ask as they begin attaching things to me.

  “You blacked out,” one of the guys says. “Checked your blood pressure. Shame on you, you didn’t eat breakfast.” He wags an index finger at me.

  “Do I have to go to the hospital?” I ask. My father will kill me. Things like hospitals, doctors—they’re not for us, not for the Jones family, no sir. Your time comes when your time comes, Dad always says, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

  “You went a little crazy in there,” the other one says. “You may have had a seizure. Cafeteria’s a bit worse for the wear.” He grins at me. Friendly. “You too. Wait till you see the shiner you gave yourself.” His puppy shadow notices mine. They wag tails at each other.

  The first paramedic glances at the second one, unbelieving. “You on anything?” he asks, voice flatlined, no sympathy but no judgment either.

  “No.”

  “No Mollies? No X?”

  “No?” I don’t mean it to sound like a question but it squeaks out.

  “Acid? Steroids?” His nose flares with suspicion, little nose hairs trembling with indignation.

  I get this reaction from some people. It’s not BO cuz I’ve smelled my pits. I’ve also checked my teeth (crooked), hair (dark, straight), clothes (on the ragged end but nothing unexpected for a kid my age). Slightly below average in looks, too tall and skinny for anybody’s comfort, but basically normal. Still, no matter how much I’d like to scootch under the radar, I’ll never be able to. Some people get suspicious as soon as they meet me.

  I clear my throat. “No. I have insomnia. I can’t sleep. That’s all. I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink. I’m clean as a whistle.”

  “Clean as a whistle? What kid talks like that?” The friendly paramedic grins at me. “What are you, fifteen or forty-five?”

  “Fifteen,” I say. “It’s a phrase my dad uses.”

  “I was joking around, kid.” He puts a hand on my arm.

  “History of seizures?” Paramedic #1 is back on track. “History of mental illness?”

  “Um. No. And no.” I wonder if I’m lying. “So . . . what exactly happened in there?”

  “You went berserk,” Paramedic #1 says. “You attacked tables and chairs. It scared half the school. You were screaming something about a demon? You failed to calm down until we subdued you. We’ve given you a sedative and now we’re going to take you to the hospital to check you out.” He stares at me. “Something’s wrong. What aren’t you telling us?”

  “Hey, chill out,” Paramedic #2 says. “He’s just a kid.”

  “Can I call my dad?” I ask.

  Paramedic #2 locates my cell phone in my backpack and hands it to me.

  The phone rings and rings and rings. C’mon, Dad, pick up. When do I ever call you? Never. Never! So you must realize it’s an emergency, right? Pick up the damn phone.

  He doesn’t. My dad, never there when I need him. Except in my dreams.

  CHAPTER 3

  The doctor doesn’t find anything wrong with me, other than an excessive amount of caffeine in my urine. “Too! Much! Caffeine!” she says, speaking in distinct exclamation points. “You’re going to end up with caffeine poisoning! And no wonder you’re not sleeping! Lack of sleep can cause a psychotic break! Go home and take a nap!”

  Well, I did get a nap. Here. Whatever those paramedics gave me knocked me out for about four hours straight.

  I still can’t reach my dad and the hospital won’t release me without a family member—you know, being a minor and all—so I’m forced to call my crazy grandfather. I’ve never actually seen Grandpa leave his crummy little apartment so I have no idea whether I’m going to be stuck in the hospital until my dad comes back from wherever he is, whenever that is—could be days from now—but Grandpa just says he’ll be there shortly. I can only imagine what “shortly” means. I wish I had a book or something. I have a stupidphone so there are limited options for amusing myself.

  I hate hospitals. One of my earliest memories is waking up in a hospital bed. Someone started shouting, “Oh my god! Oh my god!” Then a bunch of people crowded into the room and poked and prodded me. I remember being wrapped in a blanket and being pushed out of the hospital in a wheelchair. I had some real difficulties for some time after that. I would have random thoughts that didn’t seem like they belonged to me and I had to relearn how to walk. Whatever happened must have been bad. Neither Dad nor Grandpa ever talk about it. That’s par for the course. We don’t talk about shit in this family—the family consisting of the three of us. I think this happened around the same time my mom died. It feels like she was there before the hospital visit and then suddenly she wasn’t . . .

  I check the time and call Sarah while I wait. It rings and rings without voice mail picking up and then finally she answers in a small, scared little voice: “Hi, Adam.”

  “Sarah,” I croak, voice careening over a cliff. “Hey.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Waiting for my grandfather to pick me up from the hospital. Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “After my grandfather comes, I’ll swing by.” The thought of seeing Sarah gives me a warm rush, hot water spurting out of a showerhead on a cold December night before my stingy dad decides to turn on the central heat.

  “Don’t,” she says quickly. “Just go home. Get some rest.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “No, no, you’re not.”

  Fear slithers in between each word, boa heavy. Wraps itself around us, squeezes, squeezes, squeezes. I’m having trouble breathing.

  “You’re not okay, Adam, I’m not okay. That was not okay, what happened. It scared me.”

  I feel our friendship dying. I can already see the message chiseled on its tombstone: Never quite took off. I meant to rescue her from that creep but, according to the paramedic, all I managed to do was introduce my chin to a table at high speed and abuse cafeteria chairs while spouting nonsense.

  “Sarah.” Her babbling stops. “What exactly happened? Because I don’t remember.” I really don’t, unless you count this vague darkness in the back of my mind, like a memory you don’t exactly have but think you should have, of somebody asking me, What day is it? Who’s the preside
nt?—like we’re at the scene of a car accident. And I’m answering but what I’m saying makes no sense.

  Her voice drops to a low hush: “You were—” A stop sign in her voice. Then she drives forward anyway, reckless. “You were seeing things that weren’t there. You were—oh, I don’t know! You were crazy. You were possessed. Like we needed to call a priest and have you exorcised. You acted like you were speaking to a demon. Do you believe in demons, Adam?”

  Last week, I was hoping I’d get up the guts to take Sarah to homecoming. This week, she’s telling me I might be possessed. Our romantic prospects seem to be taking a steep nosedive.

  “I don’t know,” I say, because that’s the truth.

  “You wouldn’t stop screaming.” She pauses. “Adam, you need help.”

  The phone feels hot against my ear. We hang up and I hunch into my hoodie, wishing I could undo the last twenty-four hours.

  * * *

  My grandfather is a dinosaur. And by that, I don’t mean he’s old, although yes, like my dad, he is freaking ancient. You know how some people are going to be sweet and gentle when they go into that good night? Not Grandpa. When he dies, he’s going to be a roaring tyrannosaurus rex that goes on a rampage, tearing apart the world around him and chewing up people into tiny bits with his shiny, sharp teeth in his enormous jaws until he finally crashes to the ground, flattening another dozen people.

  He’s glaring at me now with his mean little eyes in his gigantic tyrannosaurus head. “What’d you do this time, you little bastard?”

  I jump up. “Nothing,” I say.

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing!” he roars. Everybody in the waiting room stares at him, this giant old man with his shock of wispy gray hair sticking straight up from his head, ginormous liver spots dotting his face and skull. Ugly moles everywhere. “What are you, crazy? Running around babbling about demons?”

  Grandpa’s already barreling down the hospital hallway as he shouts. His enormous head on his little body bobbles back and forth with anger. People pop their heads out of offices, wondering what the commotion is.

  “Did you already sign me out?”

  “Signed, sealed, delivered!” Grandpa yells. He pushes a door open and we walk out into the bright fall day. “Now get in the car.”

  “What car?”

  I’d sort of assumed Grandpa would sign me out and then I’d walk home and he’d make his way back to his apartment, however he got here. I’m totally shocked to see a Lincoln Town Car waiting for us.

  I look at Grandpa with some concern. Has he lost it? How can he afford this car?

  We roar away—apparently, the driver shares Grandpa’s personality—and Grandpa glowers at me. When he’s perturbed or angry, his eyebrows come together into this unibrow kind of thing. It looks like a lightning bolt imprinted across his forehead.

  “Now tell me: what was all this crap you were spewing in public?” he says.

  I glance at the driver, then back at Grandpa.

  “Don’t worry about him, he’s deaf,” Grandpa bellows. He leans forward and shouts at the driver, “Please confirm for the boy that you’re deaf, Mr. Patel!”

  “I’m sorry, sir?” Mr. Patel says.

  “See? They’re all deaf. Probably listening to crap music too loud, like all you young idiots. Now, tell me, boy, what is going on?”

  I look at him desperately. Grandpa is not somebody you lie to.

  “I can’t sleep.” It’s sort of a relief to admit it to somebody, out loud. “I mean, of course I sleep. But I started having nightmares. I keep going to this cemetery. I think I’m looking for my mother’s grave. And this . . . Thing . . . this black Thing tries to hug me and the next thing I know I’m falling and that demon Thing is chasing me.”

  “Good lord!” Grandpa shouts.

  “I . . . I know that sounds crazy. They probably should have kept me in that hospital, right?”

  “No, that’s not what I was shouting about,” Grandpa says. He sounds subdued suddenly. “Your father is a fool, boy. A fool. I suppose I’m a fool too.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He should have told you what this was about a long time ago. We argued about this, we did. And now we will argue again. I’m going to do something I should have done before. Your father will not like it but it has to be done.”

  He’s alarming me now. “What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t worry, Adam. I promise not to do anything too rash.”

  I must look skeptical so he continues: “You have no idea how important you are. You’re the last remaining descendent of a very ancient, very important, very rare family.”

  I snort. “You mean the ancient, extremely rare Jones family? Sure, we’re really about to die off. Along with the ancient, extremely rare Smith family.”

  Grandpa jabs me in the arm with two knuckles. “None of your sass, boy!”

  “Ow. That’s going to leave a bruise, Grandpa.”

  “I may seem bat-shit crazy, but I’m not. And you’re not going crazy either. You have a Destiny. And it’s not to be a doctor or an engineer or whatever it is you think you’re going to do with your life. Those dreams? They’re part of your powers.”

  Silence fills the car. “You’re saying I’m a superhero.” My tone is flat because if I don’t keep emotion out of my voice, I’m going to break into uncontrollable, hysterical giggles. I see the headlines of my own comic: Dreamerman: Episode VI. In which Adam Jones, a.k.a. Dreamerman, passes out and wets himself in fear while confronting bank robbers! The bad guys heard muttering in back of cop car, “What a weirdo,” and, “We would have gotten away if it wasn’t for all the urine. Ugh!”

  “No. Something bigger than a superhero.” The seat cushions make fart sounds as he sits back.

  He’s done talking apparently. I’m done too. I don’t know how to respond. I mean, it’s not that I disbelieve him. Entirely. I know I’m different. Special, even, though not the kind of “special” he’s talking about. Still, it’s sort of a relief to have somebody acknowledge it. Admit it’s real. Thanks, Grandpa. You may be cracked. You may be totally loco. Completely coo-coo. But thanks. Thanks for confirming it runs in the family. I really am crazy too. I wasn’t just imagining it.

  I stare out the window, storefronts and apartments passing rapidly as we cruise down the street.

  * * *

  Grandpa comes inside for a little while but he doesn’t stay long. “Are you okay, kid?” he asks, and when I nod, just so he’ll go away, he says, “Then I better get back. Things to do. People to see.”

  Ha. I imagine a parade of famous people visiting his piss-pot apartment. John Lennon sitting in the corner with the cactus, gazing at the framed postcards from Bhutan through lavender-tinted glasses. Grace Kelly, leaning out the fire escape window, a thin trail of blue smoke trailing upward from her cigarette. Donald Trump sitting on the rumpled bedclothes in his expensive business suit. They all wrinkle their noses, wondering why it smells like boiled potatoes and bacon.

  “No caffeine,” he says. “Go to sleep. You’re going to be dreaming all your life. You can’t avoid it forever.”

  The apartment’s empty as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. I rummage in the refrigerator for something to eat—beans and rice and oatmeal are all we have left—and turn the television on, not to actually watch anything because Dad’s too cheap to pay for cable, but just so there’s some noise in the apartment. I wish Dad would come back early from his business trip because I really don’t want to be alone tonight.

  * * *

  He doesn’t come back.

  A more pressing problem presents itself: What am I going to do to keep myself awake tonight? And to prevent myself from thinking about everything I don’t want to think about?

  I slam a couple NoDoz again—despite the doctor’s advice and despite Grandpa’s parting words—and challenge Jeremy to a series of Kill Sam games for as long as—well, as long as possible. Like a good friend, he doesn’t mention what happened at school. Still,
he crashes at three—Sorry, bro, some of us need our sleep—and I spend the rest of the night pacing the floor of the empty apartment. My eyes close involuntarily a few times and I stumble against the couch or a bookcase.

  I wish Dad would let me get a dog.

  Around four a.m., I pull one of Dad’s books off the shelves. Some of them are written in languages using alphabets I don’t recognize. Some are fragile, handwritten on fragments of papyrus. Dad especially loves illuminated manuscripts—the ones monks spent hundreds of years transcribing by hand and which have all these strange fantastical illustrations of saints and crosses and mythical creatures in the margins.

  I stare for a while at a scene I don’t understand—a young girl using a golden cross to shield herself from a fire-breathing dragon. The dragon has an absurdly gentle look on its face, sad as it gazes at the girl. From its neck dangles a long golden chain with a symbol of a circle, broken down the top by something that looks like a fishhook or maybe a shepherd’s crook.

  The dragon’s face starts to swim and it runs toward me, panting like a dog, and I reach out to pet it before waking suddenly with a peculiar feeling of loss and need. At least that felt like a normal dream. A proper dream dream.

  Thank god, morning light has broken. Coffee, a hot shower, and a brisk walk to school with wet hair. Get me out of this stale, lonely place.

  * * *

  The early morning is crisp and cold, a hint of autumn in the air, the leaves turning yellow and red just before they fall off and die—the scent of living things beginning to decay as winter approaches. Despite the exhaustion and dread about returning to school after yesterday’s fiasco, I inhale all that fresh air—the smell of winter coming, the earth going through its cycle of death before life returns—and I smile. Hopeful. Maybe yesterday’s calamity will blow over quick. Maybe something even more gossip-worthy has happened in the meantime.

  Or not.

  “Freak.” The voice is so soft, I almost miss it.

  I glance up, caught. Dominick and his friends, waiting by my locker. A jock to my left—his shadow a bull moose bearing down, snorting, pawing the ground. Dominick on the right, a mountain of a young man, flesh straining and spilling out of his jeans. His shadow is small and twisted, flitting from floor to wall to locker and back. And then the guy directly in front. His shadow is thick, an anaconda, twisting around and over his shoulder. Tongue flicking out.