“I’ll come right home. I think I should come home.”
“No.” Her voice was strangled. “I shouldn’t have called. No, Adam.”
“I’m going to come home now.”
“No, baby, don’t. I’m fine.”
“Mom, I’m coming,” he said. He said it many times and his mom refused each of those times.
“No, it’ll make them all suspicious … make it worse.”
They argued.
She won. And she was calmer, stronger in the winning.
Adam stayed with a feverish Sweetie and worried just as feverishly. He should have gone home.
No wonder he was nuts.
After he had “smooshed” Sweetie in good and tight, Adam went in search of his jeans to retrieve those bits of paper from his pocket. He had conveniently forgotten all about the letter when he’d gone off with Ben that night and then he’d kept on forgetting. The letter fragments were shoved into the overflowing junk drawer of his mind. Adam had many such drawers. Unfortunately, neat freak that Brenda was, she had washed the jeans. The papers had rolled themselves into tight little worms.
It took him over an hour using Brenda’s tweezers. There was some photocopy-type paper, but there were magazine and newsprint worms as well. He unrolled them on his bed one at a time.
It was like on TV. The guy was cutting up magazines and newspapers and pasting his crap onto the most common paper there was. So they were dealing with your garden-variety psychopath who had watched too many CSI reruns.
The words were bone-marrow ugly. Adam retrieved bitch, die, slut, cow, diseased, two whores and three shoulds, and a word that was so disgusting he re-balled it as he read it. The rest of the worms were unreadable. Thank God. He couldn’t stop shaking. Adam shut the junk drawer again.
Douchebag.
He tried a few breathing exercises, but since he didn’t really know what he was doing, they didn’t work. He thought about Robyn. He thought about how her hair smelled like ginger but she somehow smelled like peaches. He stopped shaking. He thought about how she crossed her legs at the ankles and had that one deep dimple on her left cheek, about how her freckles moved around when she laughed and about how all that made him dizzy. And yet even with all that Robyn immersion, the letter with all its filth would sneak in like a sprinter and take off again. And his fear would bloom all over again.
When he got back home the next day, his mom pretended that everything was okay. It was as if she had never even called him. There was no call, no letters. And Adam, because he was such a gutless douchebag, pretended right along with her.
Chuck was on him at next Group. Adam could feel the therapist tracking him during the session.
“Batman?” Chuck leaned in. “Do you have any further thoughts on Iron Man’s condition or on Wolverine’s suggestions?”
Wolverine had offered suggestions? When? Damn. Adam crossed his legs, the manly right-foot-over-left-knee way. “No.” He shrugged. “No, I’m with the Wolf on this one.” He shrugged again for good measure.
“Okay, superheroes, that’s about it.” Chuck shut his file folder. “Good session.” He took off his glasses and smiled. “Class dismissed, go out and play. Adam, a quick word?”
Noooo! She’d leave without him.
The others evaporated. Chuck turned to him.
“So it’s just you and me. You’re clear that Group is your safe place, right? You still down with that?”
He had to tap. He hadn’t needed to tap in so long. “Yeah, sure.” Just counting wouldn’t do. But Chuck would see, would know where to look. Thirteen, fifteen, seventeen … He tapped his tongue on the roof of his mouth.
“I’ve noticed the past couple of weeks that you’re not really here. That’s not like you. You cycling up again?”
Thirty-one, thirty-three…
“Adam, you were doing so well.”
“I’m on it,” Adam said. “No worries. It’s nothing I can’t get a grip on. Same old, same old, you know?” Except for the new stuff. “Group has been amazing for me.” As he said it, Adam realized that it was sort of true. When did it become true? “If it ratchets up any more, I’ll reach out. For sure.”
“Cool. Just try to remember I’m here and they’re here for you. Talk, Adam. Got it? Talk.”
“Got it.”
If he ran he could catch up to her. If nothing else, Adam was getting to be a fair runner. He’d taken to running back to his house once he parted with Robyn at the cemetery gates. Then, for no good reason, Adam had started running another couple of times a week. In the middle of all that buzzing anxiety, running made him feel … well, if not like a Batman at least a bit more normal. He was definitely toying with the idea of trying out for the St. Mary’s track team in the spring. Yeah, he could catch her. He raced down the stairwell at lightning speed and into the lobby.
“Hey! Where’s the fire?”
Robyn.
“Hey, wow! You’re … you waited.”
“Of course I did.” She smiled, looking like a goddess in a red puffy ski jacket. Adam got liquidy again, except for the part that didn’t. Thank God he had on a big coat.
He should kiss her now. She’d waited. She had waited for him. He moved towards her.
“Wolverine would’ve waited too,” Robyn said brightly, “but he had another specialist appointment right after Group.”
Talk about your mood killer.
They set off.
But he should have kissed her.
“Oh, and before I forget.” She gave him a folded piece of paper. “I know you don’t have a cell, at least one that you’d be seen with, but that’s my cell and my home phone number. Like, you could call me from home and we could talk, you know? So call, okay?”
She wanted him to call her! He had her number. They might as well be engaged! Maybe he should kiss her now.
No, they were walking too fast.
The cemetery was like a different country in early December. The headstones, grass and trees had all slipped into comfy grey and brown pyjamas. When they got to the old willow they stopped without a word.
Robyn turned to her mother’s grave and made the sign of the cross with a careless grace that would have made Father Rick proud. She pulled out the rosary. When she prayed, so did Adam. He prayed for God and the stone angels surrounding them to keep her safe and sane even if he couldn’t.
“I told you I was the one who found her, right?”
Adam nodded. The hairs on the back of his arms bristled. He was alert, sensing if not danger exactly, something—some dark thing. But he did not tap or even count. He stayed with her. She shivered. He shivered.
“A plastic bag.” Robyn frowned as if still surprised by the choice. “Chuck knows, and my shrink, of course. Yeah”—she looked up at the willow—“Mummy put a plastic bag over her head. Like, how do you not yank it off, you know? How? I tried it once.”
“Jesus, Robyn!” Adam swallowed a sick panic but did not count or tap. He held his ground.
“It’s okay.” She squeezed his arm. “It was for less than a second, honest, just to see.” She pulled him back onto the path. “Hey, brighten up. I have great news. It’s official, I’m off meds!” She squeezed harder. “As of last Friday. My shrink feels I’m making unbelievable progress. I just have the clonazepam for emergencies.”
Unbelievable. “Hey, unbelievable! Congratulations!”
“Well, I may have to go on a little something for some other thing, but we’re monitoring that. But yeah, I am getting better, Adam.”
And he wanted that for her. It was everything. For sure.
His mouth felt like it was full of dirt.
He’d be better too, maybe. If it weren’t for the letters…
He should kiss her. A congratulatory kiss would be entirely in order. It would be righteous! Yes! Instead Adam threw his arms around her. Coat on coat, mittens on mittens, wool scarf against wool scarf. Lame. How much did he suck? He was king of the sucks. But he hugged hard.
And she hugged back, nestling right into him.
Adam buried his face in her neck, her hair, inhaling peaches and ginger and Robyn.
When he finally let go, Adam was taller and older, basking in her smile.
It would all be brilliant—he’d be brilliant—if it weren’t for the letters. The letters were torpedoing everything. Who the hell was doing it? It could be anyone, from anywhere, even someone they knew. He knew. Like Wolverine. Yeah, to get at him? No, that was too whack, even for him. But the timing sort of fit.
No, Wolverine wasn’t that sick.
But someone was.
“What’s up, Dark Knight?” She put her arm through his. Proof positive that they were a they.
“Nothing.”
She stopped, turned to him.
“No, really. I am so righteously stoked right now.”
And she laughed. He had made her laugh.
But even with all that superior excellence, two singular thoughts snaked their way into his brain and nested.
The first was about the letters, always the letters. He couldn’t shake the memory of his mom’s anguish when she’d got the last one.
And the second was that Robyn was getting better while he was getting worse. His mom was losing it and Adam would lose it right along with her if he wasn’t careful. He needed to be more vigilant.
When they got to the gates, he risked all and hugged Robyn again. “Congratulations on the meds thing. You are amazing, I mean it!” He risked even more by grazing her cheek with his lips, an almost kiss.
“You make me feel amazing, Adam. You do every single time.” She hugged him right back even after the kiss, even with people walking by and seeing and everything. “Call me, Adam—I mean it!”
He watched her walk away with his protection, his armour. And then he was left without any, alone with his racing thoughts. The damn letters. Whoever wrote them was possessed by a sickness so putrid that it felt like a hot, smothering wind. And still he was cold. Seven sets. One, three, five, seven, nine…