“Really. I’m fine,” I said, starting to feel normal again. I slipped out from under her hand and peeked out the front window.
Had Gwynnie chased me all the way home?
I didn’t see her out there.
“I felt okay today,” I told her. “No problem.”
I wanted to ask her about the hospital. But I didn’t want her to know that I’d lost my memory. It would only cause a lot more trouble.
So I didn’t say anything about it. Instead, I made my way to the stairs. “I’ve got a lot of homework to catch up on,” I told her. “I’ll be up in my room.”
“Do you want a snack?” she called after me. “You shouldn’t do homework on an empty stomach.”
“No thanks,” I replied. I climbed the stairs and hurried down the hall.
I stopped in the doorway.
And let out a startled cry when I saw a boy sitting on my bed.
He looked about my age. He had wavy black hair around a thin, serious face. He gazed at me with round dark eyes. Sad eyes. He wore black denim jeans and a loose-fitting plaid flannel shirt.
He didn’t appear at all surprised to see me.
“Who—who are you?” I stammered.
“It’s me. Keith,” he replied softly. “I told you. I live in your basement.”
11
I didn’t say anything. My mind went blank. I stared at the boy from out in the hall.
My knees suddenly felt weak and trembly. I grabbed the sides of the doorframe to keep from falling.
A cruel smile spread slowly over Keith’s face. His dark eyes flashed. “Come in. I thought we should get to know each other,” he said. “Since you are going to take care of me from now on.”
I swallowed hard.
I stood there frozen for a long moment.
And then I screamed, “No! No way!”
I pulled the bedroom door shut. It had a key and a lock, which we never use.
My hand trembled as I grabbed the key and turned it.
I tested the door.
Yes! I had locked Keith in. He was trapped inside my bedroom.
Now Mom would see him. Now she would have to believe me.
“Mom!” I shouted. “Come up here! Hurry!”
No reply.
Had she gone out?
No. She was probably in the kitchen starting dinner.
I tested the door again, making sure it was locked tight. Then I plunged down the stairs, calling to her.
“Marco? What on earth—?” She came running from the kitchen, carrying an onion and a knife.
“Come upstairs! Hurry!” I cried. “I’ve caught him! He’s in my room!”
“Caught who?” She eyed me suspiciously. “Who is in your room?”
“The boy!” I shouted. I grabbed her by the arm and started to pull her up the stairs. “Keith. The boy who lives in the basement.”
“Marco—wait.” Mom tugged her arm free. “Please don’t start that again. You know how worried I get when you start talking crazy.”
“I’m not crazy!” I wailed.
I grabbed her arm again. The onion fell out of her hand and bounced across the floor.
“Stop pulling me. I’m coming,” she snapped. “You’re acting very strange, Marco. I don’t like this one bit. Dr. Bailey said that if you started acting in a weird manner, I should call him immediately and—”
“Mom—just don’t talk!” I begged. “Don’t say another word. Please—follow me. He’s in my room. I locked him in. You’ll see him with your own eyes. Then you’ll know I’m not crazy.”
She grumbled, but she followed me up the stairs.
I stopped outside my room and reached for the key. My heart pounded so hard, I thought my chest might explode. My head started to throb.
I turned the key. And pushed open my bedroom door.
“There!” I declared, pointing to my bed.
12
Mom and I both let out cries of surprise.
Tyler sat staring at us from the bed.
He panted loudly. His tongue hung out. When he saw us, his tail started to wag.
Mom placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “Go lie down on that bed, Marco,” she ordered. “I’m calling the doctor right now.”
“No. Wait,” I insisted. I ducked out from under her grip.
I dropped to the floor and peered under the bed. “Keith—where are you?”
Not under there.
I climbed to my feet, ran across the room, and tugged open the closet door. “Keith—?”
No.
I spun around. Where else could he be hiding?
Tyler leaped off the bed and bounded from the room.
“That poor dog doesn’t like being locked up,” Mom fretted.
“I didn’t lock him in here!” I shouted. “I locked Keith in.”
She tsk-tsked. “You’re going to be fine, Marco. Really you are.” Her voice trembled.
It was easy to figure out what she really meant: That hit on the head scrambled your brains, Marco. You’re acting like a total nutcase!
I took a deep breath and tried to explain again. “Mom, I don’t know how Tyler got in here. But I do know there was a boy in my room. And I locked him in.”
“I’m going to phone Dr. Bailey right now,” Mom replied. “But I don’t want you to worry. Everything will be okay.” She hurried from the room.
Everything will be okay. Mom’s words lingered in my mind.
As usual, she was wrong.
Dr. Bailey’s waiting room was all blue and green. A huge fish tank against one wall bubbled quietly. The blue and green chairs, blue and green carpet, and blue and green walls made me feel as if I were in a fish tank too!
Mom and I checked in with the woman behind the desk. Then we sat down on a hard plastic couch against the wall.
On the plastic chairs across from us, a girl sat with her father. The girl was about seven or eight. Every few seconds, she hiccupped loudly. Her whole body shook with each hiccup.
“She’s been doing that for two weeks,” her father explained, shaking his head.
“Dad,” the girl snapped, “it’s only been HIC ten days.”
“Has she been eating eggs?” Mom asked the father. “Too many eggs can give you the hiccups.”
The man stared at Mom.
“It’s the egg whites,” Mom continued. “They’re too slippery. You can’t digest them.”
The man stared at Mom some more. Finally he murmured, “I don’t think it was eggs.”
The girl hiccupped and shook.
The fish tank bubbled.
I felt as if I were swimming with the fish. Floating through thick blue water.
But I can’t breathe underwater! I told myself.
The girl hiccupped again.
The sound was starting to drive me crazy. I wanted to go home. I turned to Mom, who had picked up a magazine and was thumbing through it. “Can we go?” I pleaded. “I’m okay.”
She shook her head. “Dr. Bailey just wants to look at you,” she replied, keeping her eyes on the magazine. “A hit on the head is serious. You only have one head, you know.”
The girl hiccupped.
“Try holding your breath,” her father instructed her.
“I’ve been holding it for ten days!” she grumbled.
Several hundred hiccups later, the nurse led Mom and me into Dr. Bailey’s office. As I stepped inside, I saw that his office was blue and green too.
The doctor was a cheerful, chubby man. He had a round face, a shiny, bald head, and he wore a bow tie under his green lab coat. The bow tie bobbed up and down on his Adam’s apple when he talked.
He came around the desk to shake hands with me. Then he used his thumbs to pull up my eyelids so that he could examine my eyes.
“Hmmm… looks okay,” he murmured.
He ran his thumb gently over the bump on my head. “Does that hurt, Marco?”
“A little,” I confessed.
“It’s healing nicely,” he tol
d Mom. “Very nicely indeed. Now what seems to be the problem, Marco?”
I hesitated. Should I tell him about Keith? If I do, will he think I’m crazy too? Will he send me back to the hospital or something?
Should I tell him I don’t remember anything about being in the hospital?
Dr. Bailey gazed at me patiently, waiting for me to begin.
Finally, I decided, okay, I’ll tell him everything. He’s a doctor, after all. He will understand.
So I told him I couldn’t remember the hospital. And then I told him about the boy who said he lived in our basement. And I told him about actually seeing Keith. And locking him in my room. And finding Tyler.
The whole story. I told him everything. It felt good to tell it.
Dr. Bailey sat behind his desk and kept his eyes locked on me the whole time. His bow tie twitched on his Adam’s apple. But he didn’t say a word until I finished.
Then he leaned forward and sighed. “It doesn’t sound too bad,” he said.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Mom exclaimed.
Dr. Bailey scratched his bald head. “But do you know what I would like to do just to make sure everything is okay?” he asked.
“What?” Mom and I said together.
“I’d like to remove your brain and examine it under a microscope,” Dr. Bailey said.
13
“Huh?” I gasped. I nearly fell out of my chair.
“It isn’t a difficult operation,” Dr. Bailey said, flashing me a calm, reassuring smile.
“But—but—” I sputtered.
“Once I crack the skull open, the brain slides out easily,” the doctor explained.
“I—I don’t think so,” I protested.
He shrugged. His bow tie hopped up and down on his throat. “I can’t really see the brain clearly unless I remove it.”
My heart was pounding. My hands were suddenly icy cold. I studied Dr. Bailey’s round face. “You’re joking—right?” I demanded. “This is some kind of a sick joke?”
Mom nudged me in the side. “Listen to the doctor,” she said. “The doctor knows what he’s talking about. If he says the brain comes out, it comes out.”
Dr. Bailey leaned farther across the desk. His face loomed so close, I could see tiny beads of sweat on his forehead. “It won’t hurt much,” he said.
I turned to Mom. “You’re not going to let him do it—are you?” I demanded.
She patted my hand. “Whatever the doctor thinks is best. Dr. Bailey is a very good doctor, Marco. Very experienced.”
The doctor nodded. “I’ve removed a lot of brains,” he told me. “I don’t mean to brag, but—”
“Can Mom and I talk about this?” I asked, stalling for time. “Can we come back tomorrow or something? I feel fine. Really, I do. In fact, I feel excellent!”
Dr. Bailey scratched his bald head again. “That’s a good idea,” he replied to my mom. “Why don’t you call me tomorrow? We can schedule the de-braining then.”
The what?
The de-braining?
I jumped up from my chair and darted for the door. I didn’t wait for Mom. I didn’t say good-bye. I just ran.
Mom followed me into the waiting room. “Marco, that was really rude of you!” she scolded.
“I’d like to keep my brain,” I replied angrily, and kept walking to the office door. As we passed, I said good-bye to the girl with hiccups.
“Hic Hic Hic,” she said. I think her problem was getting worse!
“Doctors know what’s best,” Mom said, hurrying across the parking lot after me.
I climbed into the car and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m perfectly okay, Mom,” I told her through gritted teeth. “My brain is totally normal. I’ll never see that boy Keith again. He’s gone forever. I know he is. I’ll never see or hear him again.”
But of course I was wrong.
14
Mom said not to worry about losing my brain. She said we’d wait a few days before deciding what to do.
That made me feel a lot better.
That night, I was writing a homework assignment on my computer. Miss Mosely had given us a creative writing assignment. We had to write a story from someone else’s point of view.
I decided to write about a typical day from Tyler’s point of view. It was fun to try to get inside the mind of a dog.
A dog has an IQ of ten. That’s what I learned on one of those science shows on TV. A ten IQ isn’t very smart. You can’t figure too many things out with an IQ of ten. That’s why Tyler always looks confused and surprised.
That’s why he can spend ten minutes barking at a plastic trash bag.
I leaned over my keyboard, typing away. I was enjoying myself. I don’t usually like to write papers, but this was a fun assignment.
When the phone rang, I groaned and kept typing. I waited for Mom to pick it up downstairs. But she didn’t.
I stood up and walked over to the phone on my bed table. A chill froze the back of my neck.
Was it him? Was it Keith?
I remembered the first time he had called. The day I’d been hit on the head.
My hand grabbed the phone, but I didn’t pick it up. I couldn’t decide what to do. I didn’t want to talk to him again. I wanted him to disappear.
On the sixth ring, I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hi, Marco. It’s me.”
Another chill ran down the back of my neck. Then I recognized the voice. “Jeremy?”
“Yeah. Hi. What’s up?”
“Jeremy?” I repeated.
“Yeah. You okay, Marco? I just wondered how you were doing.”
“Oh. I’m okay,” I told him. I sat down on the edge of my bed. “I’m feeling all right. I’m working on the creative writing assignment.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Jeremy replied. “Whose point of view did you choose?”
“My dog’s,” I replied.
He laughed. “I’m writing about my cat!”
“You think everyone in class chose an animal?” I asked. “That would be funny.”
We talked and laughed about stuff for a while. Talking to Jeremy cheered me up. I was starting to feel really normal again.
“I’d better get back to work,” I said after a few more minutes. I set down the phone and crossed the room to my computer.
I started to sit down—but stopped when I saw the monitor screen.
My writing—my words—had all disappeared.
A face stared out at me from the screen.
Keith’s face!
“No—!” I let out a cry.
And a powerful arm slid around my neck from behind. And began to tighten around my throat.
15
“Unnnnh.”
I struggled to breathe.
The arm tightened around me.
I tossed up my hands. Spun around hard.
And gaped at Gwynnie.
She stepped back, grinning.
“Huh?” I choked out. “What’s the big idea?”
Her grin grew wider. “Did I scare you?”
“No,” I replied, still breathing hard. “I’m used to people sneaking in and strangling me from behind.”
She laughed. “I wanted to surprise you. Guess I don’t know my own strength.”
“Sure you do,” I muttered, rubbing my neck. “What are you doing here, Gwynnie?”
She dropped down heavily onto my desk chair. “Actually, I came to apologize.”
“Huh?” My mouth dropped open.
“Really,” she insisted. She used both hands to brush her thick black hair back over her broad shoulders. “I felt bad about my joke in class today. You know. About hitting you on the head again.”
“Yes. I remember,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“It was really stupid,” Gwynnie continued. “I don’t know why I said it. So I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“Gwynnie, you chased me after school—” I protested. “You came after me with a baseball bat and—”
> “No!” she cried, jumping up from the chair. “I was running after you to apologize.”
“Then why were you carrying the bat?” I demanded.
“I was up next,” she explained. “That’s all.” Her expression changed. “Did you really think I was going to hit you on the head again?”
“Well…” I didn’t want to tell her that was exactly what I thought. She’d tell everyone in school that I was afraid of her. Everyone would have a really good laugh about what a ’fraidy cat Marco is. How I ran away from someone who only wanted to apologize.
Gwynnie locked her green eyes on me. “You know, I feel bad about everything, Marco,” she said softly. “I keep picturing you the other afternoon when I swung the bat and hit you. I keep picturing the way you dropped to your knees, screaming.”
She sighed. “I—I was so scared. You just lay there on the grass. You didn’t move. I—I thought…” She glanced away.
“I’m okay,” I told her. “I’m fine now. Really.”
“Well, I never got a chance to say I’m sorry,” Gwynnie replied. “So here I am.” She raised her eyes to me. “You’re really okay?”
I nodded. Then I remembered Keith.
“I have one big problem,” I told Gwynnie. “This boy. He keeps following me. Calling me. Showing up in my room.”
Her green eyes grew wide with surprise. “A boy? In your room?”
I nodded. “Look. His face—it’s on the computer screen!” I pointed. “I was working on the writing assignment. I answered the phone. And when I came back, my writing was gone. And his face stared out at me on the screen. Look!”
Gwynnie gazed at the monitor. When she turned back to me, her expression was confused.
“Marco,” she said, staring hard at me. “Your computer isn’t turned on!”
16
“No way!” I cried.
I turned to the monitor. Black. The screen was black.
No face. No words.
Gwynnie walked across the room and leaned against the window ledge. She crossed her arms in front of her. “That was a joke—right?” she demanded.