Crazy Love You (27 page)

That seems pretty unlikely. Fatboy looks around the gray-and-white room, and as his eyes slowly adjust to the light, he sees a small balding man with glasses and a Technicolor tie sitting in a chair by the door.

“Dr. Black,” Ian says. “What am I doing here?”

“What's the last thing you remember?”

It all comes back in a rush—the wedding, the storm, Priss, the fight on the bluff.

“Oh my God—Molly,” says Fatboy. Panic is a living thing trapped in his chest. “Where is she? What's happened?”

“Tell me what you remember.”

Fatboy tells him the events as they come back to him, foggy and disjointed. All the while the doctor is writing on a notepad in his lap.

“Who was it? Who fell?” Fatboy asks when he's done.

“No one fell,” says the doctor. “Everything is all right.”

“I saw someone fall.”

“Do you know where you are, Ian?”

Fatboy did know where he was, the surroundings oddly familiar. But, at the same time, he didn't know. That feeling of panic . . . it started to grow.

“I need to get out of here,” he says. “I need to find Molly.”

“Maybe later,” the doctor says easily. “Right now we have to worry about you feeling better.”

Fatboy strains against his restraints, trying and failing to get up.

“Where am I? What am I doing here?”

“Ian,” says the doctor, leaning in closer. “You're at the Shady Knoll Psychiatric Hospital. You've been here for the last five years.”

Nooooooooooooooo.

•  •  •

No, no, no. That wasn't right. It was a total cop-out in fact. That all of it—Molly, their new life he was supposed to have, all his success, was just the fantasy of a madman, locked away inside a loony bin somewhere. Crazy. Just like his mother.

The sketches were raw, just charcoal pencil and some slashes of oil pastel color—scarlet and ultramarine, blue violet. But the images were terrible, grim and full of fear. It was just a way not to choose, to let Fatboy retreat to the safety of his own cowardice. If there was no Molly, no promise of a better life, then Fatboy would never have to decide whether or not to grow up. He would never have to own his life.

I never tore up sketches. Nothing ever went into the garbage. But I had to try again. I knew I had to do better.

•  •  •

Fatboy wakes in a panic to a bright light glaring down on him from above. It is harsh and blue; he has to shield his eyes. There is a blinding pain in his head, and it takes him a minute to remember where he is. The hospital. He raced there in the back of an ambulance with Molly, who had been pushed from the bluff by Priss. He had been dreaming about the doctor, about the psych ward. He is drenched in sweat.

Molly is broken, shattered, in a coma—and he has been beside her for two full days. He is slouched in a hard, gray chair. As he comes awake, the room resolves into focus. Molly, white and peaceful lies on a hospital bed, casts on her arms and legs, a chaos of tubes and wires traveling from her arms, her nose, her mouth. Her prognosis is uncertain. The doctor has told him that the child she was carrying has been lost. He was so sorry. But Fatboy didn't even know she was pregnant. Had she even known? She must have. Why hadn't she told him?

He takes her hand. “I'm so sorry,” he whispers. “This is all my fault. I should have protected you. I was too weak.”

But her face is still, her fingers limp and lifeless. The only sound in the room is coming from the heart monitor and the machine that is breathing for her. He feels her slipping away. He lays his head on her bed and weeps. “Don't leave me, Molly. Please.”

Molly's parents arrive in the doorway and Fatboy kisses Molly's hand and leaves the room. They hate him, blame him for what has happened to their daughter. And their faces are hard and cold—all dark lines and deep shadows of rage. He doesn't blame them, leaves them to have some peaceful time with their daughter. Her mother has brought flowers and her father holds a bear that Fatboy recognizes from Molly's room at home. Maybe it will help.

He leaves the hospital; it looms a great white monolith behind him. He walks out into the daylight, the sun high and orange. He gets into his truck and starts to drive. When he puts his hand on the wheel, he notices the gold band on his left hand. His wedding ring, the symbol of his commitment to Molly. He belongs to her, and she to him in a real and tangible way. He starts to drive. Whatever happens now, they are a family.

He has to think. He has to fix what he has allowed to be broken. Something Molly said to him suddenly gives him clarity.
You have to choose. You can't have us both.
That has been the problem all along, ever since he first knew Priss. He has always chosen her over everything else. He must sever whatever it is that connects them and he must do it once and for all. There is only one person who can help him. Eloise Montgomery, the psychic, the only one who really knows the truth about Priss.

The blue Scout heads north on the FDR, taking Fatboy back home to The Hollows.

•  •  •

When I came to myself, I was in the Scout, parked illegally on Lispenard Street. The sketch pad was balanced on my legs, leaning against the dash, my box of pencils open on the passenger seat beside me. How long had I been there? Why was I working in my car? It was dark again. I was disoriented and confused; was it a dream, that meeting with Megan? Had the detective really come to see me with that video?

No, none of it seemed real. I looked in the backseat. There was a duffel bag, the one I used for traveling, and it was stuffed. My folded drafting table and my large portfolio as well as my full art-supply box were packed and secured in the back of the Scout. What was that smell? Gasoline.

In the distance I heard the approach of sirens. And I looked through the windshield up to the windows of my apartment. I saw an orange glow within, a dancing, moving bloodred light. Oh God, I thought. Oh, no.

I put the key in the ignition and pulled slowly away from the curb. There was no panic now, no wondering where I was headed or what I was going to do. There was only one way to drive and one place to go. And I realized, finally, that I couldn't have gone anyplace else if I'd tried.

And When She Was Bad, She Was Awful

About a week after I'd started the community-service part of my sentence for the art room fire, Eloise Montgomery came to see me at Second Hand Knowledge again. I don't know why Old Brian hadn't fired me. I guess he figured misfits had to stick together. So, as usual, I was boarding and bagging some books in the back room, when that small, spindly woman pushed her way through the curtain for the second time.

She looked me up and down with an assessing but not unkind gaze.

“Can I help you?” I asked. I had promised my father that I wouldn't talk to her again. Maybe she just wanted another comic book.

“Do you know who I am, Ian?”

According to my dad, everybody (except for me) knew who Eloise Montgomery was. She was a bigger freak show than even I had become. She was a psychic, someone who talked to the dead—among other things.

Once upon a time, she'd been a normal lady. But one day, she and her family got into a horrific car accident that killed one of her daughters and her husband, and left her in a coma. When she recovered, she found that she'd been gifted with visions of missing and murdered women and girls—of things that might happen, of things that had happened hundreds of years ago, of things that were happening right now.

Since then, working with a local detective, she had been responsible for solving hundreds of cold cases, the rescue of abducted women and girls, and the retrieval of bodies long lost. She'd been on
Oprah
.

I found I couldn't answer. I just stood and nodded my head.

“I think you have a problem,” she said. She looked around at the comic books then back at me. “Do you?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. What do you mean?”

I had lots of problems. She needed to be more specific.

“Can you take a break?” she asked. “I'll buy you lunch.”

I wasn't at all sure I wanted to have lunch with Eloise Montgomery. Especially since direction from my dad on this matter went something like:
Don't you ever go near that goddamn crazy woman.
But I found myself asking Old Brian if I could take my lunch break and following her to the pizza place a few doors down.

We sat toward the back but still managed to attract a few curious stares from customers. I can only imagine what they were thinking. And if my father found out that I was with her, he was going to kill me.
Aren't you in enough trouble? Don't people hate you enough without your associating with the town crackpot?
Some people thought Eloise was a hero, others thought she was a witch, still others like my dad thought she was just plain crazy. I didn't know what to think. But I was curious enough to sit across from her in the red vinyl booth and order two slices of pepperoni and a large Coke.

“I'm sorry about what happened to your family,” she said.

I nodded, didn't say anything. I'd heard that a lot and I never knew how to respond. I found if I was quiet, people either went quiet as well or just walked away.

“I shouldn't be talking to you,” she said. “But I tried to talk to your father and he didn't want anything to do with me. He shut the door in my face.”

She didn't look like a psychic. She looked more like a church lady, erect and stern-faced. Plainly dressed in a white button-down shirt and black pants, she wore no adornment at all—no makeup or jewelry, no nail polish on her short square nails. She was so thin that I could see the tendons on her arm dance beneath her skin when she moved her fingers. But I couldn't take my eyes off her. There was something magnetic about her, something fascinating.

“But I don't have much choice in these things,” she went on.

Finally, curiosity got the better of me. “You talk to ghosts?”

She bowed her head, and when she looked up she wore something that might have been a smile.

“Not exactly.”

I was disappointed. I took a bite of pizza, a swallow of soda. I remember thinking that nothing was ever as cool as you imagined it to be. Even sitting face-to-face with a real-life psychic . . . it was the same as being with any other adult. Boring.

“Are you familiar with the law of the conservation of energy?” she asked.

It was the first law of thermodynamics. And I was familiar with it because I was in an advanced-placement physics class. In spite of all my many problems, I was pretty smart. Except for PE—and who can believe you even got a grade for that?—I had straight A's.

“Energy can be changed from one form or another, but it cannot be created or destroyed?”

Again the smile that wasn't quite a smile. “I'm impressed. Yes, that's right.”

I shrugged. “So?”

“So this is what I believe. I believe that we are all energy fields, and that we are connected by an infinite cosmic net. Each of us, every living thing, every person, plant, and animal is a point of light upon this net. When our physical body dies, our energy remains in the web.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I'm like a receiver, just more tuned in than most others to these energies. I receive transmissions. They are not always clear or understandable, or even truthful. Sometimes I never know why I received them and can't do anything about them. Other times it's very clear what I have to do, who I have to warn, or call, or just go visit.”

She had leaned into me, was speaking with a whispered intensity that reminded me of the way my mother talked to me in the psychiatric hospital. Maybe my father was right. Maybe Eloise Montgomery was crazy, too. There seemed to be a lot of that going around The Hollows.

“I have to get back to work.” I suddenly felt uncomfortable, wanted badly to leave. I started sliding out of the booth.

She seemed to realize she was making me nervous, pulled back a bit. “Some spiritual energy is negative.”

The pizzeria had emptied out and only the old man who owned the place remained. I watched as he used an enormous wooden spatula to slide a pizza in the blazing oven. When he opened the door, I saw and heard the flames inside and I thought of Priss being devoured before my eyes. I didn't say anything.

“Those negative energies are attracted to other negativity—like rage, despair, or grief. They can attach themselves to our own energy fields and intertwine.”

I stared down at my empty plate and wished for another piece, but I was too polite, too embarrassed, to ask. If left to my own devices I would have eaten a whole pie. I already knew that I ate way more than others, and tried to keep my appetite in check when people were around.

“Do you understand?” she asked.

I didn't have the first idea what she was talking about.

“I should go,” I said again. I made to get up, but she put a hand on my arm.

“Your friend,” she said.

I slid back into the seat and leaned closer. “Priss?” I whispered. “She's real.”

“Of course she is,” she said. “She's real and she's dangerous.”

With a twist of dread, I saw my father. Old Brian must have called him. He came marching past the big picture window of the pizza shop and banged through the door, causing the bell to ring loudly. He scanned the restaurant and then came toward us.

“My dad's here,” I said.

She turned to look, then turned back at me. “You have to stop talking to her. Get away from her and stay away.”