Client history:
Mrs. Clarkson came on the recommendation of Nick’s principal, Linda McDonald. Mrs. Clarkson, who might be called a “free spirit,” was agitated by her son’s condition, describing him as delusional, withdrawn, and possibly suicidal over the disappearance of his friend, Bee Cuomo. When asked for details, Mrs. Clarkson said it was “just a feeling,” and later admitted she was exaggerating matters as a means of persuading me to fit Nick into my schedule.
Nick’s first session, January 25, was cut short by the boy’s distress.
1 February: first full session.
Nick’s grandfather, Joseph (“Coach”) Gilbert, brought him in, Mrs. Clarkson being at work. Nick presents as a quiet boy, small for his age, intelligent but shy, possibly due to a lack of stability in his home life. I started by asking comfortable questions about books, sports, school, etc., before asking about his friends.
DRH: Tell me about starting school last summer. It’s never easy, being the new kid, is it?
NICK: No. Well, we moved here in June, me and Mom. And the only place she could afford was miles from anywhere.
DRH: So you didn’t have any neighbors?
NICK: I didn’t meet anybody until the first day of school.
DRH: Your grandparents weren’t here yet, were they?
NICK: No. They said something about coming in a few years, when Grams retired, if we were still here. But then she got a job at the hospital, so they came in November. Anyway, that’s what they said.
DRH: You don’t think that’s why they moved?
NICK: They came back because of me and the…thing.
DRH: Don’t you feel they’re happy here?
NICK: I guess. I just, they look at me sometimes like they wonder if I’m about to cut my wrists or something.
DRH: Are you?
NICK: ’Course not. How could anyone do that?
DRH: Because if you think—
NICK: I don’t! Jeez, how many times do I need to say it!
DRH: Okay, Nick, let’s move on. How did you feel going to a school where you didn’t know anyone?
NICK: It sucked. It always sucks. But this time, at lunch the first day, this weird girl just marched up to talk about a book she’d seen in my backpack.
DRH: Bee Cuomo. “Weird” in what way?
NICK: You never met her?
DRH: Not that I remember.
NICK: Oh, you’d remember Bee. Not by how she looked—she looked just…like a kid, I guess. Glasses, braces, and what d’you call them—pigtails. But she’d say things, do things nobody’d expect. Even the teachers sometimes looked at her like she was from another planet.
DRH: Well, it was thoughtful of her to break the ice that way.
NICK: That’s Bee. That was Bee.
DRH: She’s only missing, Nicholas.
NICK: I don’t think so.
DRH: Tell me about the day when you and Bee and your other friend went into the Weildman house. What were you doing before you went in?
NICK: Talking about names. Like if your parents name you Bruce, you’re stuck with being a Bruce.
DRH: What did that have to do with the house?
NICK: Because people call it the “Weirdman” place.
DRH: And the house is weird?
NICK: Yeah. Well, and it’s awesome. You’ve seen it, right? Really big, these turrets and things on the corners and that wooden lacy stuff Grams calls gingerbread. And old, maybe the oldest house in the whole county. But the real name is Weildman. There was something in the papers just after we moved here, people raising money to fix it up, and then I saw the name on some pictures in the historical museum where Bee dragged AJ and me when we went to the fair, back…back in September. I…
[Silence.]
DRH: We don’t need to talk about the museum yet, Nick. Do you want a tissue? You were saying, about the names.
NICK: Yeah. Okay. I said maybe it had started as a typo or something, and then people started thinking it was weird and haunted, but Bee said she thought the house would be weird even if the family that owned it was called Smith. “Weirdman comes from the vibes, the vibes don’t come from the name.”
Bee used to talk like that—vibes and far out and stuff. I think it was ’cause she loved the past, the clothes and the people and words. She had modern stuff, more than I do—smartphone and laptop and all—but she’d ride around on this old clunker of a bike instead of the fancy one her dad bought her, and she used a fountain pen even when it leaked, and a real camera—well, a digital one—instead of her phone. She’d even edit the pictures on her computer to make old-looking black-and-white prints. Anyway, Bee called us the geek patrol, her and me and AJ, and the Tim twins if they didn’t have piano lessons or something. Sometimes others, but mostly us.
And that’s how we were standing there inside this giant hedge that grows around the Weirdman house. The garden’s mostly weeds, with a couple giant rose bushes climbing up the house. Bee said it was like one of her favorite books.
DRH: The Secret Garden?
NICK: That’s it. She gave it to me, but I didn’t get far. The kid in it’s really annoying.
DRH: You like to read, don’t you, Nick?
NICK: Sure. But Bee was always going on about some book nobody’d ever heard of. Anyway, that’s why we were there. She’d said something about the Weirdman—sorry, Weildman—family, and asked if we knew the story, and then just started in on it. How the last Weildman up and disappeared, way back in the Fifties. The mail piled up, the dog was howling, finally somebody called the cops and asked them to check on the old lady. And they never found her.
So I told her what I’d heard, that the old lady had the Alzheimer’s and wandered off, and they found her down in Monterey and put her in a home. And Bee said where’d I hear that, and I said Mom told me, and she got all superior and said something like maybe Mom said that so I wouldn’t have bad dreams.
It made me mad, but she was right. My mom’s always trying to keep what she calls my imagination under control. Even before…this.
DRH: Do you think your mother is justified, in saying you’re a little too imaginative?
NICK: No! I’m not nuts! I know—
DRH: Nick, I didn’t—
NICK: —the difference between fiction and real. And I don’t lie to my mom, not about important things.
DRH: So your mother knew that you and your friends were trespassing on the Weildman property?
NICK: Well, no, but…I didn’t want her to worry. I mean, all moms worry, but single moms do more, especially when she has two jobs. It’s easier if she thinks her kid isn’t getting into trouble. Yeah, well. So much for that.
DRH: You were saying that you and your friends went to the house.
NICK: Yeah. I forget who said it, but we were thinking we could make it our group project for Social Studies. So we were in the garden, and AJ said, “Do we have to go in?”, and I didn’t want to so I said there wasn’t a lot there, and he asked how I knew, so I had to say I’d been in there loads of times, right? And then Bee said, “Twice.” And I wanted to hit her. Which would’ve been really great, to hit someone whose father beat up on her, but good thing—
DRH: Did Bee tell you that her father abused her?
NICK: No, but I could tell. Things she said. How she said them.
DRH: I’m sorry I interrupted, Nick. So, you felt angry when Bee corrected you. Had you actually been inside the house?
NICK: Yeah. Twice, like I told her.
DRH: Want to tell me about those visits?
NICK: Not really. But…Look, I know this sounds stupid after…everything, but I’m not a space-cadet. Nothing like AJ, who goes around in a dream all the time.
DRH: Okay. Tell me about those earlier visits.
NICK: You really are going to think I’m nuts.
DRH: Nick, I promise to reserve judgment.
NICK: Right. Well, the first time was in June, a couple weeks after we moved here. Mom was at work. I was bo
red, so I went down the road and managed to push through the front gate. It made me nervous, not only ’cause the metal was rusty and had jagged bits, but ’cause I kind of expected somebody to jump out at me—a homeless guy or meth head or something. But there wasn’t any sign of people. Some junk in the garden, cans and stuff, but the house looked almost like someone was living there. Like, all these windows that would’ve been so easy to smash and climb in through, none of them were even broken.
And the garden was kinda cool. All Mom and I had was this little patch of dead lawn, but this one was huge and smelled good, and there was this tree with a low branch that looked perfect for reading. So the next day I took a book down, and the next. Then one time I finished my book and looked up and saw a way in.
This is where things start to get crazy. You see, all those hours hanging around the place, I never noticed that the outside wall had this square in it, a couple feet high. Like a dog-door, only way up off the ground. I’d just never seen it until then. You keep asking me how I feel, and what it felt like was the house decided to show me a way in.
Now you really think I’m nuts.
DRH: Nick, I’ve never used that diagnosis in my entire career. There are all kinds of reasons for feeling something, but until you tell me what you remember, we can’t know what caused it. So, you felt the house was…aware?
NICK: Like something out of Stephen King, I know. And it should have been major creepy. I mean, I’m not a coward, exactly, but you know. In a book, when there’s a house that invites someone in, bad things always happen. But it just didn’t feel like that. What it felt like was…
[Pause.]
NICK: You know how in the first Harry Potter book he’s living under the stairs and he gets an invitation to go to school? And yeah, that’s a story and no I’m not telling you I’m a wizard or anything, but that’s how it felt. Like this big old house was offering me a…an adventure. All right?
DRH: So you went in through the little door?
NICK: Not then. It took me a couple days to work myself up to it. Because, duh: big old lonely house. And I took the pocket-knife Gramps gave me for Christmas. Which was a good thing, because the door was stuck and I had to pry at it with the littlest blade. But then it kind of…sighed, and gave way.
Right inside was a big metal-lined box that I guess was for firewood, ’cause it was next to this ginormous fireplace. Spiderwebs all over, and so much dust I left tracks, but the wallpaper was still mostly up, and this fancy chandelier overhead.
The next room was a kind of library, all these empty shelves. There was another room that still had curtains on the windows, but they looked so dried-up that if you touched them, they’d fall apart.
There was a kitchen that looked like an old movie, and I was about to go into the next room when I heard something outside. I went over to the window to listen and it was Mom, sounding a long way off, calling me.
I ran back to the wood box, but when I pushed at the door (which I really don’t think I’d shut behind me) it was stuck. I knew Mom would have a cow if she found me here, and plus that there had to be some reason for her to be home early since she wasn’t due back for a couple hours. I was probably doing something stupid like pushing the frame instead of the door itself, but it didn’t move, not a hair, and for a minute I thought that…that the house wasn’t going to let me go. I know, right? But then I shoved really hard and it slammed open, and I sort of fell out and ran across the weeds to the gate. When I turned to squeeze through, I saw the door was invisible again.
I ran hard, circling around this storage shed near the main road, so when Mom saw me, she’d think I was coming from there. She gave me hell for poking around the shed, made me promise never to go there again, and took a while to settle down.
Because the really weird thing?
She’d been home for more than an hour, looking for me the whole time. She was about to call the cops. And all I’d done was find a door and walk through three rooms.
DRH: That must have been a good book.
NICK: I wasn’t reading! I wasn’t, I swear, just a couple chapters and then I saw the door, and—oh why doesn’t anybody believe me! I’m—
DRH: Nick, Nicholas, hon, settle down. I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I don’t know what to believe yet. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Okay? Do you want to continue, or have you had enough? Nicholas?
[Session ended.]
7:20
The white van, water beaded down its sides, traveled back up the commercial lot to take its slot behind the building. The company woman got out, paused for a minute to chat with a co-worker, then continued inside. She hung the van’s keys on the board, and pulled down the keys to the next one.
The van stood clean and cleared, ready for its day.
7:20
Olivia
Olivia stood on the school lawn sipping her weak coffee, watching the kids tumble from the buses, her casual stance and friendly manner somewhat undermined by the sharpness of her gaze.
The school’s pulse was elevated. Which was only to be expected—but was it excitement? Or tension? She knew all the usual troublemakers: did any of them look more shifty than usual, less willing to meet her eyes or walk in front of her? Or the reverse, equally telling—did any of them greet her with defiance and a secret contempt for what she did not know?
A short cop drinking her morning coffee with a smile on her face, while behind her eyes was a brain thinking, Is it you? What are you planning? What do you hope I’m missing?
7:20
Chaco
When Chaco stepped down from the bus, Sergeant Olivia Mendez in full uniform was looking straight at him.
His legs went frozen—until Javi gave him a shove and Mendez looked away, and Chaco started to breathe again.
He turned and punched Javi, not hard, and the boys jostled their way into the stream of students. Right past Mendez. She didn’t even glance at him.
(Which was what he wanted, of course it was. If Chaco couldn’t tell his own mother, it wasn’t like he was gonna rat Angel out to the sergeant. Not unless she did one of those TV interrogations the cops did to trick it out of him. Anyway, if Mendez hadn’t figured Angel out by now, she wasn’t as clever as a TV cop.)
And she wasn’t going to figure out about Chaco’s tagging, either. Nobody was. Like he thought, there wasn’t no camera—or if there was, nobody’d bothered to check it. And they wouldn’t, since nothing happened. And anyway, those things only saved for a few days, so it would be gone soon.
Of course, Javi and the others knew Chaco’d been going to the school last night, and they’d already started giving him a hard time on the bus, but it wasn’t like they were tagging any school walls. Anyway, it was only a first try, he told them. Next time, he’d aim for something bigger. More consequential. This was like a reconnaissance (not that he used the word) and they all agreed that old McDonald must be pissed (irate) this morning, after her carefully laid trap gave up nothing. Although it was too bad she (and old man Tío!) hadn’t had to deal with a bright orange tag, today being her Great Day and all.
When he and Javi walked into the cafeteria, Chaco had the kind of cool sway in his hips like cousin Taco. When you saw a man walk like that, you knew what it meant even if you didn’t know him. People moved that way when they wore a gun.
Chaco felt tall this morning. Sure, he hadn’t slept much, and yeah, he’d left the spray can behind (With your fingerprints, really smart there, Chaco!)—but again, what did it matter? They weren’t about to fingerprint the whole school. And how else would they pick him out? Of course, if they did decide to start fingerprinting everyone, he’d be in la mierda, but they wouldn’t go to all that effort for a tag he hadn’t even got around to doing.
No, he was safe enough, and walking tall.
This is why gangs had initiations. You had to validate yourself. Prove that you could be trusted, to do what you say. Yeah, he hadn’t carried it through yet, but he would. He was loyal
to Taco, no matter what Angel thought.
He’d lay low for a night or two, then come back. And maybe he’d do something that people would really notice, like…a threat. From Taco? Against…did it have to be Sofia? It really should be, since it was all her sister’s fault, disrespecting Taco like that…
Chaco’s mind was flipping through his options as he let the server give him the food—another thing he was too old for, really, but if he’d cooked himself eggs that morning, there’d be none left for the little ones by Friday, and when he skipped breakfast he got dizzy halfway through the morning. He and Javi ignored the empty seats next to sixth-grader Nick Clarkson (a weirdo even before his good buddy Bee Cuomo went missing) and moved to the table where the other seventh-graders hung out.
Halfway through the fruit cup, Chaco felt something like a tickle on the side of his mind. He knew what it was, but he ignored it and made a loud joke at a sixth-grader going by and said some things about a movie he hadn’t seen, until finally Javi leaned forward. “Hey, man, Tío’s watching you. Think he knows?”
Chaco whipped his head around and made his eyes go all mad dog like Angel’s. “Javi, you shut your face. Anybody finds out, I’ll bust your head.”
Javi shut up and picked up his things, not looking at the janitor as he dropped his garbage and tray and hurried off. Reluctantly, Chaco climbed out of the bench.
The janitor watched him approach. When Chaco dumped his tray onto the surface, Tío said his name. “Mr. Cabrera.” Just like that—no first name, no Spanish.
“Yes?” Chaco tried to say Yeah, but had to fight to keep it from coming out Yes, sir.
The dark eyes were like tiny caves. “Mr. Cabrera, you and I need to have a conversation.”
7:21