Elementary, My Dear Watkins (27 page)

From what Alexa could tell in the dark, the neighborhood was really nice, with huge lawns and pretty houses. The people around here weren’t as loaded as the old lady, of course, but they weren’t hurting, either. Alexa didn’t know why, but she had expected the Finches to be poor, like her.

She just hoped she had the right place. After dinner she had gone online, pretending to do her homework but really trying to find out more about the information on the pink Phone Message paper she had taken from Dr. Stebbins’ office. She knew there was a website where she could enter a phone number and it would respond with a name and an address. Sure enough, the number she typed in gave her the last name of Finch and an address in a town just over the state line in Connecticut.

With that information in hand, Alexa had looked up the bus schedules between there and here, a challenge made more complicated by the fact that not as many buses ran at night as they did during the day. Eventually, she figured out some connections that would work.

Now that she had made it this far, there wasn’t much more to go. As she walked, she tried to focus on how good it felt just to be
free
. Nobody on the whole planet knew where she was right now, which was a strange and exhilarating feeling. Before she went to live with the old lady, she was often out on her own, with nobody knowing or caring. But things were different now. She mattered now. In a way, she realized, maybe it was worth the trade-off.

Alexa finally reached the Finches’ house, disappointed to see that there were almost no lights on at all. She started up the front walk, wishing she could peek in the windows but knowing that in a nice area like this, if someone spotted her sneaking around, they would call the cops first and ask questions later.

Fortunately, as she neared the door, she spotted a flickering glow coming from a room off to the side, and she realized it must be a television. Taking her chances, she stepped off the walkway and crept over to the window, relieved that her actions didn’t turn on a motion-sensitive light or kick off some kind of security system. All was dark and quiet except for the television inside. The bottoms of several of the windows were open by a few inches, and the sounds of the show floated through.

Through the window, she could see two couches in an “L” facing a giant, flat screen TV. Looking at the backs of people’s heads, she counted three people lounging along the couches, one of them eating popcorn.

She just watched them for a few minutes until the one with the popcorn stood up and started to leave the room. It was a guy, about 16.

“Are you going in the kitchen?” a girl’s voice asked. “Get me a soda, would you?”

“Get your own soda, moron,” he replied, throwing a handful of popcorn at the girl’s hair.

She sat up, angry, shaking the kernels out of her long blond locks.

“Ethan!” she yelled. “You jerk!”

Ethan
. This was the right house. Alexa knew it in her very bones.

Summoning all of her nerve, she went to the front door and knocked, so lightly at first that she was sure no one had heard it. She knocked again, louder this time, until the girl yelled, “Ethan, get the door, would you? You’re right there.”

Alexa heard the click of several locks twisting, and then the heavy door swung open to reveal the boy. Through the window, he had looked kind of cute, but now, up close, she realized that there was something wrong with his face. Studying his features, she decided that one whole side sort of hung slack, not a lot, but enough to make his eye look droopy and his mouth a little crooked.

Just like a person who’d had a stroke.

“Yeah?” he said, not seeming at all surprised that there was a teenage stranger standing on his front step.

“Ethan Finch?”

“Uh-huh.”

“My name is Alexa. I think we need to talk.”

He opened the door further, but as she started to step inside, the girl came running, blocking her way.

“Don’t be stupid, Ethan. You don’t just let anybody in. Especially when Mom and Dad aren’t home.”

The girl stood there next to the boy, and Alexa realized that they were about the same age. They were also the same size and height, and they looked a lot alike, though the girl didn’t have the droopy face like the boy did. She wondered if they were twins.

“What do you want?” the girl asked, scowling.

“Are you Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“I came to talk to you guys. I’m a patient of Dr. Stebbins.”

She thought that might get a reaction out of them or something, but they didn’t even seem surprised. The girl just shook her head and said that they weren’t allowed to let anybody in when their parents weren’t home.

“When do you think they’ll be back?” Alexa asked, wishing they could have this entire conversation without any adults present.

“I don’t know,” the girl replied, shrugging. “A couple more hours, I guess. They went to a party.”

Suddenly, another girl appeared in the doorway as well, obviously a younger sister. Ethan shooed her away, telling her to go back and watch the movie.

“Maybe we could talk outside,” Alexa offered after the kid was gone. “Do your parents have a rule about that?”

The two of them looked at each other and then back at her.

“I guess not,” the girl said, shrugging.

Together, they both came out and hovered on the front stoop. Feeling awkward, Alexa stepped back down to the walkway, facing them.

“It’s kind of hard to explain why I’m here,” she said, wondering why she hadn’t thought about what she would say once she found herself in this hard-earned position. How could she put it?
I’m looking for people like me, people who are also medical freaksters?
She didn’t want to scare them off. “Just to make sure I’m at the right place, did you guys by any chance have a medical problem, in your brain?”

“I did,” the guy answered. “Last year. I fell off my horse and busted an aneurysm.”

“Was it in the circle of Willis?”

“No, it was near the barn.”

“In your brain, I mean,” Alexa said. “The circle of Willis.”

Both kids just stared at her blankly.

“Okay. You had a stroke, right?”

He nodded.

“Then, did you get an IV drip of a new drug, one that worked really well?”

“Yeah. Fiber-something. It had side effects.”

“Like what?”

“It made me nauseous and kind of jittery.”

“Don’t be stupid, Ethan,” Emma said, elbowing him in the ribs. “She’s talking about your ADHD.”

“Oh, yeah, it cured my ADHD.”

Alexa’s face lit up.

“Mine too!” she cried. “How about you, Emma?”

“I don’t have ADHD. Never did.” Alexa thought about the message that she had found,
Mrs. Finch called about the scan on Emma
. “But they thought I might have an aneurysm too,” the girl added, “just one that hadn’t busted yet. They made me get a brain scan. Our little sister too. Turns out, we were both fine. No problems at all.”

“How’s your recovery been, Ethan?” Alexa asked. “Do you get physical therapy?”

“Yeah, twice a week. Sometimes when my leg gets really tired I have to wear a brace on it or use a crutch. That helps.”

“Do you go horseback riding?”

He shook his head.

“Dr. Stebbins said not for another month, not until after the big symphony thing.”

“Symphony?” Alexa asked, her pulse surging. “What instrument do you play? Did it make you gifted too?”

“Gifted?”

“You know, music, art, all of that. The Fibrin-X made you really good at it now, right, even though you didn’t do any of that before?”

“If he’s good at art or music, I’m a rocket scientist,” Emma said.

“But what about the symphony? You said you had a symphony thing.”

“Not me,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Dr. Stebbins.”

Dr. Stebbins? Alexa considered for a moment and then spoke.

“You mean the
symposium?
”

“Yeah, that’s it. Symphony, symposium, one of those.”

Alexa nodded, a black sort of despair creeping heavily across her chest. This wasn’t what she had expected at all.

Why didn’t the drug make them smart, like it did me? Why didn’t it make them talented?

Alexa realized suddenly that she was done here.

“Hey, listen,” she said, “would you guys mind not telling anybody that I came here tonight? I kind of snuck out.”

“Sure,” the boy said.

“Why?” asked the girl. “I mean, why’d you come?”

How could she even reply?
Because I needed to know that I’m not the only medical miracle on the planet? Because I wanted to find like minds? Because I wanted to form the Circle of Willis?

“I guess ’cause I thought I was the only person, ever, who was cured of ADHD,” she said finally. “Then I found out today that there were others too. I just wanted…I just wanted to meet you. Sometimes I feel kind of isolated. Like a weirdo.”

“Yeah, well, Ethan was already a weirdo, so there’s nothing new there!” the girl cackled, poking her brother again in the ribs. “At least he’s not hyper anymore, but he’s still dumb.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who made straight D’s in eighth grade, moron,” he said to his sister.

“Yeah, just ’cause the teachers felt sorry for you so they threw in a few C’s, moron.”

They told Alexa goodbye and then continued to bicker all the way back into the house. She waited until they had shut the door. Then she turned and started running.

She ran all the way to the bus stop.

By the time the next bus came, it was almost midnight, and for some reason she couldn’t stop shaking, even though it wasn’t really all that cold outside. When she made the transfer at the big station, there was a bus leaving for Newark, and impulsively she got on that one instead. Maybe she would feel better if she went home for a while—to her real home.

It took another hour to get across the river, through Newark, and into her town. Despite how late it was, though, things were hopping. Almost as soon as she started walking down the main drag, she spotted a couple of the guys from the Grave Cave.

“Well, if it isn’t the magical disappearing act,” one of them called. “What happened to you, Trip?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, flashing her old smile. Alexa couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but she always had thought he was cute.

“I mean, where you been? It’s like you went into the hospital and you never came back.”

Alexa shrugged, trying to act cool about it.

“I’m livin’ with a guardian now, but I been back, once or twice.”

“Yeah, but not to stay.”

She took a few steps toward him, one hand on her hip.

“Why are you asking? You miss me?”

The other guys burst out laughing, poking him and whistling.

“We can use another runner, is all,” he said, his face flushing bright red. “Then again, we need a runner, not a tripper, Trip.”

His lip curled in a sneer, and Alexa realized he was making fun of her. Running was what she’d been doing the night she tripped on the railroad tracks, hit the ground, and ruptured the aneurysm.

Before she could think of a reply, someone else called her name from down the street. She turned to see three of her girls heading her way. They wouldn’t make fun of her. They were her friends.

After a lot of squealing and hugging, the four girls linked arms and set off. They walked toward the end of the street to an old, abandoned factory that had once upon a time manufactured caskets and coffins—hence the nickname, the “Grave Cave.” The building was huge and cavernous, and even though there were “Condemned” signs all over it, kids were in there almost every night. Most went to deal or make or buy drugs or get high, but some of them, like Alexa, just went to hang out, shoot the breeze, and sometimes pick up a little extra cash as a runner. Before her accident, the going rate was fifty bucks to make deliveries to the corner and a hundred and fifty to go the four blocks over to Creston Street.

Situated right along the old railroad yard, Creston Street was sort of the dividing line between the good part of town and the bad. That was as far as some of the rich people were willing to go to buy their drugs, since they didn’t want to risk taking their Corvettes and BMWs into the poorer areas. The night of her last delivery, Alexa had been told to look for an indigo blue Jaguar parked just across the tracks, near the rusted old caboose.

She had spotted it and was almost to the car when she tripped on an uneven metal rail and fell. Next thing she knew, she was in a hospital with the world’s worst headache and an IV stuck in her arm, her right side completely useless and numb. Of course, nothing in her life had been the same since. All they kept telling her over the next few days as she began to recover was how lucky she was: lucky to have gotten to the hospital so fast, lucky to be given a newly-approved medication, lucky that the neurologist treating her was working with an expert in the field of stroke recovery, the man most responsible for the new medication, the great Dr. Stebbins himself.

Yeah, they all thought she was lucky.

“Yo, you seen your mom lately? She’s messed up, girlfriend.”

“She’s always messed up,” Alexa replied nonchalantly, despite the shudder of fear that ran through her. “What’d she do now?”

“I heard she ran out of veins so she started injecting into her eye. Like right in her eyeballs.”

“Ewww,” the other girls squealed.

That set them off, talking about all the gross places a person could use to get drugs directly into their system. Alexa was quiet, glad when they reached the Grave Cave and had to stop talking as they went inside.

Even before she stepped into the building, Alexa could smell the familiar, acrid burning of pot, mixed with the stench of body odor and urine. They squeezed in through the busted doorway and made their way past the sleaziest part of the building, the area where there were always dark shapes on the floor. Some were kids who had passed out from drink or drugs, but most of them were just homeless people who were sleeping. No matter how many times Alexa walked through there, she always expected one of the lifeless forms to wake up, reach out a hand, and grab her by the ankles.