I run over to the counter, climb the three steps, and look behind the counter. Sally is lying on the floor. He is shaking. Shaking even more than Max shakes when Max is stuck. At first I think Sally has been shot, too, but then I remember that I heard only one bang.
Sally is not shot. Sally is stuck. He needs to call the hospital or Dee will die. But Sally is stuck.
‘Get up!’ I shout to Sally. ‘Hurry! Get up!’
Sally is stuck. He is as stuck as Max has ever been. He’s curled up into a ball and he is shaking. Dee is going to die because Sally won’t move and I can only watch. One of my most favorite people in the whole wide world is bleeding and I can’t do a thing.
The door closest to me opens. The devil man is back. I look, expecting to see his gun and his pointy horns, but it is not the devil man. It’s Dan. Big Dan. Another regular. Not as nice as Pauley but more normal. Not so sad. Dan walks in and, for a moment, I think he is looking at me, because he is. He’s looking straight through me, and he looks confused because he sees no one.
‘Dan!’ I shout. ‘Dee’s shot!’
‘Hello?’ Big Dan looks around. ‘Guys?’
Dee makes a sound. Dan can’t see her, because she is on the floor behind the shelves, and for a second I don’t think Dan has heard her. Then he looks in her direction and says, ‘Hello?’
Dee makes another sound, and suddenly I am happy. So happy. Dee is still alive. I shouted that Dee has been shot because it was better than saying that Dee is dead, and now I know that she is not dead. She is making a wheezing sound, and, even better, she’s trying to answer Big Dan. That means she is awake.
Dan walks over to the aisle where Dee has fallen. When he sees Dee on the floor, he says, ‘Oh my God! Dee!’
Big Dan moves fast. He opens his cellphone and presses numbers as he moves into the aisle and kneels down beside Dee. He acts like Big Dan, a guy who stops at the gas station every night for a Doctor Pepper to keep him awake on his ride home to a place called New Haven. Big Dan, who doesn’t linger in the gas station a moment longer than necessary, but who is friendly just the same.
I love Pauley and his scratch tickets and the way he tries to drink his coffee as slowly as possible, but, in an emergency I love Big Dan.
CHAPTER 15
The ambulance people took Dee and Sally away in two separate vans. Dee was taken first, but Sally left right after her, even though he wasn’t hurt at all. I tried to tell the ambulance people that Sally was just stuck, and no one needs to ride in the ambulance van just because they are stuck, but they couldn’t hear me, of course.
An ambulance man with bushy hair used an old-fashioned cellphone with a big antenna to tell someone at the hospital that Dee is in a critical condition. This means that Dee might die, especially if she got a good look at the devil man who shot her. It seems like the more you know about the person who shot you, the more likely you are to die.
The police closed the gas station even though it’s never supposed to close, so after Dee and Sally were taken away, I went home.
Max is still stuck. His dad has to work at five tomorrow morning so he went to bed. Max’s mom is still awake, sitting in a chair next to Max’s bed.
My chair.
But I don’t mind. I want to sit with Max’s mom, too. I want her to stay in Max’s room all night. I just saw my friend get shot with a real gun and a real bullet and I can’t stop thinking about it.
I wish that Max’s mom would stroke my hair back and kiss me on the forehead, too.
Max wakes up on Saturday morning. He is unstuck.
‘Why are you sitting there?’
I think he’s talking to me. I’m sitting on the end of his bed. I’ve been sitting here all night, thinking about Dee and Sally and the devil man, and staring at Max’s mom, because it makes me feel better.
But Max isn’t talking to me. He’s talking to his mother. She fell asleep in my chair, and his voice wakes her. She jumps up like someone pinched her.
‘What?’ she says, looking around like she doesn’t know where she is.
‘Why are you sitting there?’ Max asks again.
‘Max, you’re awake.’
And then the eggs and the rocks and the broken window and Max getting stuck seem to fall out of the sky and fill her up like air in a balloon. She pops up out of the chair, all inflated and awake, and she quickly answers Max.
‘I’m sitting here because you were upset last night, and I didn’t want you to be alone.’
Max looks at the window beside his bed. It’s covered with clear plastic. Max’s dad tacked it up last night.
‘I was stuck?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ his mother says. ‘For a little while.’
Max knows that he was stuck, but he always asks if he was stuck anyway. I don’t know why. It’s not like he has amnesia, which is a disease that turns a person’s brain off so it can’t record what the person sees or does. It happens a lot on television, and I think it’s real, even though I’ve never met anyone with amnesia before. It’s like Max is double-checking, to make sure everything is okay. Max is a big fan of double-checking.
‘Who broke my window?’ he asks, still looking at the plastic.
‘We don’t know,’ his mom says. ‘We think it was an accident.’
‘How could someone break my window by accident?’
‘Kids do crazy things on Halloween,’ his mom says. ‘They threw eggs at our house last night. And rocks, too.’
‘Why?’
From the tone of his voice, I can tell that Max is upset about this. I’m sure that his mom can tell, too.
‘It’s called a prank,’ she says. ‘Some kids think that it’s okay to pull pranks on Halloween.’
‘Pull?’
‘Make pranks. Do pranks,’ she says. ‘People use the expression pull pranks sometimes.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you want breakfast?’ his mom asks. Max’s mom is always worried about Max eating enough, even though he eats plenty of food.
‘What time is it?’ Max asks.
Max’s mom looks at her watch. It’s the kind with hands on it, so I can’t read it well.
‘It’s eight-thirty,’ she says, looking relieved.
Max can eat breakfast only before nine. After nine, he must wait until twelve to eat lunch.
This is Max’s rule. Not his mom’s.
‘Okay,’ Max says. ‘I’ll eat.’
His mom leaves to make the pancakes and let Max get dressed. He does not eat breakfast in pajamas. This is also Max’s rule.
‘Did Mom kiss me last night?’ Max asks.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But only on the forehead.’
I want to tell Max that the devil man shot my friend last night, but I can’t. I don’t want Max to know that I go to the gas station and the diner and the police station and the hospital. I don’t think he would like it if he knew I went to those places. He likes to think that I am sitting beside him all night or at least somewhere in the house in case he needs me. I think it would make him mad to know that I have other friends in the world.
‘Was it a long kiss?’ Max asks.
For the first time ever, this question makes me mad. I know how important it is for Max to know that his mom’s kiss was not too long, but the length of a mom’s kiss is not that important. It’s a tiny thing compared to guns and blood and friends in ambulance vans, and he shouldn’t have to ask me every day. Doesn’t he know that a mom’s long kiss is not a bad thing?
‘Nope,’ I say, like I always do. ‘It was super-short.’
But when I say it this time, I do not smile. I frown. I say it through clenched teeth.
Max doesn’t notice. He never notices these things. He’s still looking at the plastic that is covering the window.
‘Do you know who broke my window?’ Max asks.
I do, but I don’t know if I should tell Max. I don’t know if this is like his mom’s long kisses and I should lie. I’m still mad at him for worrying about the
long kisses, so even though I want to do the right thing for him, I don’t want to do the right thing, too. I don’t want to hurt Max, but I’m not in the helping mood either.
I take too long to answer.
‘Do you know who broke my window?’ Max asks again.
He hates it when he has to ask me questions twice, so now he is angry, too.
I decide to answer honestly, not because I think it’s the best thing for Max to hear, but because I am mad and don’t want to think about what is right.
‘It was Tommy Swinden,’ I say. ‘I ran outside after I heard your window break and I saw him running away.’
‘It was Tommy Swinden,’ Max says.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It was Tommy Swinden.’
‘Tommy Swinden broke my window and threw eggs at our house.’
Max says this to his mother while he is eating his pancakes. I can’t believe that he told her. I didn’t expect him to say it. How is he going to explain it? Suddenly I’m not angry at Max anymore. I’m worried. Worried about what he will say. Now I’m angry at myself for being so stupid.
‘Who is Tommy Swinden?’ Max’s mom asks.
‘He’s a boy who is mean to me at school. He wants to kill me.’
‘How do you know that?’ His mom doesn’t sound like she believes him.
‘He told me.’
‘What did he say exactly?’ She’s still washing the frying pan, so I know that she still does not believe him.
‘He said he was going to bowl me,’ Max says.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s bad.’ Max is staring at his pancakes because when Max eats, he stares at his food.
‘How do you know it’s bad?’ his mom asks.
‘Because everything Tommy Swinden says to me is bad.’
His mom doesn’t say anything for a minute, and I think she is going to forget the whole thing. Then she speaks again.
‘How do you know that Tommy threw the eggs and the rocks?’
‘Budo saw him.’
‘Budo saw him.’
This time it is Max’s mom who is saying something that didn’t sound like a question but was still a question.
‘Yes,’ Max says. ‘Budo saw him.’
‘Okay.’
I feel like the elephant in the room. This is an expression that means there is something two people know that is as big as an elephant but no one wants to talk about it. Max’s mom uses this expression a lot when she is talking to Max’s dad about Max and his diagnosis.
It took me for ever to figure out what the elephant in the room thing meant.
Max and his mom eat for a little while, and then his mom asks, ‘Is Tommy Swinden in your class?’
‘No, he’s in Mrs Parenti’s class.’
‘Third grade?’
‘No,’ Max says. He sounds annoyed. He thinks that his mom should know that Mrs Parenti doesn’t teach third grade, because in Max’s world, knowing who teaches what grade is a big deal. ‘Mrs Parenti is a fifth-grade teacher.’
‘Oh.’
Max’s mom doesn’t say anything else about Tommy Swinden or the eggs or the rocks or getting bowled or me, which is bad. It means she is planning on doing something.
I can feel it.
CHAPTER 16
Dee and Sally are not back on Saturday or Sunday night. A man who Dorothy calls Mr Eisner is working instead. I’ve never seen Mr Eisner before but Dorothy seems nervous around him. They barely speak to each other.
Mr Eisner reminds me of Max’s principal. Mrs Palmer is in charge of the school and dresses in fancier clothing than most of the teachers, but I don’t think that she could actually teach kids if she had to take over a classroom.
Mr Eisner is the same. He wears a tie, and he takes the money from the customers and fills the Twinkie shelf like Dee, but you can tell that he has to think too much about what he is doing instead of just doing it.
Dee is not dead. I know this because the regulars like Pauley and Big Dan came in on Saturday night to ask about Dee. Actually, they would have come in anyway, since they are regulars, but even Big Dan hung around for a little while longer than normal, asking questions about Dee. Mr Eisner didn’t talk to them very much, so it was hard for them to hang around. Everything felt different. Not right.
Dee is in a place called I See You. I think it’s a place where they watch you carefully to make sure that you don’t die. Dorothy says it is not certain that Dee is going to make it, which I think means that she could die.
I wonder if she will come back to the gas station and if I will ever see her again.
I hope so. I feel like everyone is disappearing.
CHAPTER 17
I’m worried about Max. It’s Monday and we are back at school.
I think that Max’s mom has something planned for today. She is worried about Tommy Swinden, and I am afraid that she might make things worse. I’m hoping that Tommy Swinden got his revenge on Friday night and now Max is safe again. Max got Tommy in a lot of trouble with the knife even before he pooped on him, so maybe Tommy thinks that Max deserves more revenge. He probably does, but it will just be worse if Max’s mom gets involved.
Parents are like Max. They don’t know how to do things quietly.
Mrs Gosk is funny today. She wrote a story about what it’s like to be a Thanksgiving turkey and she is reading it to the class. She is walking around the room, making turkey sounds while she reads, and even Max is grinning. Not smiling, but almost. Mrs Gosk is scratching the ground with her foot and flapping her arms like wings. No one can take their eyes off of her.
Mrs Patterson arrives at the classroom door and motions to Max to join her. It takes her a moment to get Max’s attention because Mrs Gosk is so funny. I’m expecting to see Max frown, because Mrs Gosk is not finished with her story yet, but Max’s eyes get wide when he sees Mrs Patterson. He looks excited. I don’t understand.
I want to stay with Mrs Gosk and see what she will do next. Instead, I follow Max and Mrs Patterson down the hall in the direction of the Learning Center. Except when we get to the spot where we should turn left, Max and Mrs Patterson go straight on, and Max does not say a thing. This is even more surprising than Max wanting to leave Mrs Gosk because Max does not like change, and this is a definite change in the way that we go to the Learning Center. It’s a silly change, too, because it means we have to walk around the auditorium and by the gym, which makes the walk twice as long.
But then we stop at the same doors that I saw Max and Mrs Patterson enter through last week. We’re behind the auditorium now, in a hallway that doesn’t have classrooms or offices, but Mrs Patterson still looks left and right before she opens the door. Then she places her hand on Max’s back to nudge him outside. Max is walking out the door on his own, but Mrs Patterson wants Max to move faster, and this makes me nervous. It’s like she needed him to pass through the doors quickly before someone saw him.
Something is not right.
I try to follow. But as Max walks down the cement path toward the parking lot, he turns and looks at me. I’m standing outside now, too. He looks at me and shakes his head back and forth. I know what this means. It means No way, José.
He doesn’t want me to follow him. Then he waves me back with his hand.
He wants me to go back inside the school.
I almost always do what Max asks me to do, because that is sort of my job. He needs my help, and so I give it to him. There have been other times when he has asked to be alone, like when he’s reading a book or making a poop. Lots of times, in fact. But this time is different. I know it. Max is not supposed to be outside the school, and he is most definitely not supposed to be going out these side doors toward the parking lot.
Something is not right.
I go back inside like Max has told me to, but I stand against the wall beside the doors, so I can peek out. Max and Mrs Patterson are walking in the parking lot now, in the aisle between the parked cars. I think these are the
teachers’ cars, since the kids can’t drive. They must be. Then I see Max and Mrs Patterson stop next to a small, blue car. Mrs Patterson looks around again. It’s the kind of looking around that someone does when they want to make sure no one is watching. Then she opens up the back door of the car and Max climbs in. Mrs Patterson looks around again before getting into the front seat. The side with the steering wheel. The side where the person who is driving sits.
She is driving away with Max.
Except she’s not. The car isn’t moving. They are sitting in the car. Max is in the back seat. Mrs Patterson is in the front. Mrs Patterson is talking, I think, and Max keeps ducking his head down. Not to hide, but to look at something on the seat, I think. He looks busy. He is doing something.
A moment later Mrs Patterson steps out of the car and looks around again. She is making sure that no one is watching. I know it. I have been around too many people who do not know that I’m watching them to know when someone is being sneaky, and Mrs Patterson is being sneaky. Then she opens the door for Max and he steps out, too. Together, they walk back to the doors. Mrs Patterson uses a key to unlock the doors and they come back in again. I take a few steps down the hall, away from the doors, and I sit with my back against the wall so that Max will think that I have been here the whole time. Not watching.
I want him to think that I don’t know where he and Mrs Patterson went, and, more important, I want him to think I don’t care. I do not want him to suspect that I am worried, because the next time Mrs Patterson takes Max out to her car, I am going, too.
If Mrs Patterson takes him out to her car again (and I think she will), it won’t be the same as this time. I don’t know what it will be, but it will be more. It will be worse. I know it. Mrs Patterson wouldn’t break the rules for five minutes in her car with Max. Something else is going to happen.
I can’t explain it, but I’m more worried about Mrs Patterson than I am about Tommy Swinden now.
A lot more worried.
CHAPTER 18
We are sitting inside Dr Hogan’s office. Dr Hogan is smart. Max has been here for a long time and Dr Hogan has not tried to make him talk once. She has been sitting here, watching him play with these plastic and metal pieces that she called newfangled thinker toys. I could tell by the way she said it that newfangled isn’t really part of their name, but I don’t understand what it means.