Unlocked (22 page)

But even having done the right thing was hardly satisfying. Almost certainly nothing would happen to the football players, and life for the Michaels and Holdens would only get harder. Bullying was a tough thing to police because the victims never talked about what happened. If they talked, they ran the risk that next time the attack would be worse.

So they stayed silent.

Ella pictured Michael again. He looked so shocked to see her, and what he said would stay with her always:
“I’m fine … I can handle it.”
But that wasn’t true. One of these days someone was going to get really hurt, all because of some peer pressure or gang mentality, and under the guise of having fun. But it wasn’t fun—it was bullying and it was cruel. No, it was downright evil.

As Ella walked to class she fought tears. She couldn’t control the way kids were picked on at Fulton, and she couldn’t make administrators find a way to eliminate attacks like the ones on the orchestra kids this morning. She thought about Holden’s mother, praying for her son every day. So why didn’t she herself try praying? She didn’t know how, of course, but she’d heard Mrs. Harris pray. It seemed a lot like talking. She walked slower and let her words ring silently—for her heart and God’s alone.

Hi, God, this is me—Ella Reynolds. I’ve never talked to you before—at least not since I can remember. But we need Your help down here at Fulton. The kids are awful. You see that, right?
She waited but there was no loud answer.
I want to take a stand or make a difference, but I don’t know where to start. There are so many people walking around here afraid of other kids. So give me the chance to turn things around, please. God, if You’re listening, show me how to stop the meanness on our campus. And help Holden keep coming out of his private world. Thanks for listening, amen.

Something about praying made her feel good. Like she was floating or safe or something. Ella couldn’t do much about the sad kids at Fulton, the ones picked on and teased. Kids like Michael. But she could keep doing what she’d been doing—being a friend to Holden Harris. She could report the bullies, and she could do this.

She could pray.

T
HE FACADE WAS CRUMBLING
. S
UZANNE COULD SENSE THAT
the same old lies weren’t working anymore. It wasn’t enough to have an investment plan and a BMW and a ski boat in their three-car garage. It wasn’t enough to be Randy Reynolds’ wife. Her life was meaningless, empty, and mechanical. She woke up wanting to scream, and she couldn’t fall asleep at night without a handful of pills. Something had to give, or she’d wind up in a mental institution, strapped to a chair.

It was Sunday morning after another sleepless night. Randy hadn’t been home since Tuesday. The season was over, but private training camps were in session. Randy wanted to be as ready as possible when they discussed his contract.

She stretched and felt the familiar burning in her stomach muscles. Lately she’d been taking her anger out on her ab workout, although that didn’t give her life meaning any more than anything did. She walked to the window and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. Their front lawn was an acre, pretty and manicured even now, heading into winter. As she stood there, she remembered an old movie she and Tracy watched once when they were in high school.

The original
Stepford Wives.

Scenes from the movie flashed in her mind. Creepy plot, the sort of story that at the time had stayed with her on dark nights and left her unsettled when she was alone in the shower. Now, the storyline consumed her again. Gradually over time, the women of Stepford had been replaced by robots, replicas of their former
selves. The two women lead characters were friends, and they swore they’d never become like the others. Then one day one of them paid the other a visit looking entirely different —her dress neatly pressed, hair perfectly combed. Her face fresh and made up.

Cue the scary music, and a frantic series of questions from the unchanged woman, until finally, while chopping an onion, she accidentally stabbed her now perfect-looking friend in the hand. But there was no blood—only wires and clockwork. The friend was nothing more than a robot, a mere machine-like shell of her former self.

Suzanne blinked, and the memory lifted. That’s how she felt lately. She remembered that she and Tracy had covered their teenage eyes at that scary part of the movie. Later that night they agreed they’d never be perfect, consumed with how they looked, desperate to uphold a certain image.

But that’s exactly what Suzanne had become. Nothing more than a Stepford wife. No heart, no soul, no emotions. She turned from the window and headed absently into her walk-in closet. So many clothes. Every shirt and sweater and tight pair of pants a desperate attempt at… what? To hold onto an image? To keep up the act?

She slipped into a T-shirt and tight black dance pants, but as she did she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. What was she doing? The dance pants were something she wore when Ella’s guy friends were at the house. Her way of proving she still had it, she could still turn the head of an eighteen-year-old.

The truth disgusted her. She yanked off the dance pants and shoved them back in the drawer. Sweats. Those would be better. Comfortable clothes were more appropriate for Sunday mornings. She found a pair, and when she was dressed she wandered into the upstairs hallway and a thought occurred to her. There was a time when church—not sweats—had been—more
appropriate for Sunday mornings. The years when she and Tracy Harris were friends.

She walked quietly past the kids’ rooms and peered in at them, first Ella, then the boys. It was only eight o’clock, which meant at least an hour before they would be up. She thought about her husband, how he hadn’t been home. Training, he told the kids. But the kids could see through his lies. There was no way to avoid the truth: he didn’t want to be home.

By now the kids probably all pitied her. She was a sad joke, and in time they would learn to look the other way. Then what? She’d grow old alone without the respect of the very people who were supposed to love her most? One day, Randy would leave her. He had one foot out the door already. The thought sent a shot of fear through her veins and doubled her anxiety.

The title of Randy Reynolds’ wife was the only one Suzanne had ever known.

She steadied her breathing and continued down the hall to the other end, the place where a custom bookcase was built into the wall. She stared at it, half full and covered with dust. When they’d built this house, the plan was to fill the case with photo albums and scrapbooks. They would have so many happy memories one bookcase would never be enough.

A quick count told her there were twelve volumes in all—ten before Ella was four, two since then. Suzanne felt her eyes well up. The message was so loud it was deafening. All the good times, nearly every happy memory, had taken place before Ella hit kindergarten.

She came closer, studying the titles on the spines of the books. One was from high school, and another from the summer after graduation. There was a scrapbook of Randy’s early baseball adventures and one titled simply “Engagement Year.” The wedding took up its own book and so did their honeymoon. After that there was a fat photo book for each year until Ella was four.
The next one had a three-year span written on the edge of the book, and the last one still wasn’t filled.

The glue that made them a family had lost its power somewhere along the way—whether that glue was the love they’d stopped sharing or the laughter that never happened anymore. Whatever it was, Suzanne didn’t see any way to make it work again.

The photo album from their second married year was the one closest to her. She pulled it out and took it across the hall into her office. With a quick turn, she shifted the office chair so she was facing the enormous picture window and their backyard. Their perfectly manicured backyard.
Best house on the block,
she told herself.
Everyone must think you really have it all.
But the truth was something different. Except for the kids, she could have walked away from it all. The idea was tempting.

She opened the photo album and there on the front page was a photo of herself with Tracy, the two of them pushing their baby strollers down the same sidewalk, iced-tea glasses raised to Dan, most likely. He was the picture-taker in the group. Certainly not Randy. When he was around, people took pictures of him, not the other way around.

There were more photos, and suddenly she wanted to see every one of them. Not just brush past them, but really look at them. She turned the page and there they were again, she and Tracy side by side on the swings, Holden in Tracy’s arms, and Ella in hers. Suzanne brought the album a little closer and studied the images.

I remember that day.
It was one of the first times she’d told Tracy her fears about Randy, how a good-looking pro-baseball player would struggle to be faithful.

“But you have your faith,” Tracy had told her. “Stay close to Jesus, and you’ll survive.”

Suzanne wasn’t convinced. “What about the people who say they’re Christians, but they mess up anyway?”

She could still see Tracy’s smile, the way she kissed the top of Holden’s head, and how her voice became very gentle. “Everyone makes mistakes. It’s not how we fall that defines us as Christians. It’s how we get up again.”

The answer grated at Suzanne. “So there’s no guarantee for a happy life. Not even with God?”

Tracy thought about that for awhile. “I guess it depends how you define
happy.”
She gave her swing a slight push. “With Jesus you have the guarantee of heaven … and the guarantee that God is with you, that He loves you.” She slowed down, and her answer seemed to come from someplace deep within her soul. “The closer you are to Jesus, the fewer the falls.” She smiled. “But when you really live for God, He helps you catch yourself before things get out of hand.”

That part made sense—enough so that Suzanne had remembered her friend’s words every year since then. A thick wall of Jesus around their lives and maybe they really could get through anything. But that had stopped being the case more than a decade ago. Suzanne looked intently at her face in the picture, at her eyes. They were alive and shining, full of trust. Looking into them now she could almost remember what it felt like to believe.

Her eyes moved to Tracy’s, the joy and hope, the carefree way her smile shone through the photograph, as if time couldn’t touch whatever happiness lived inside her. A different memory came to mind. The last time Suzanne saw Tracy, a week before spring training that year. The conversation had been short and stilted, too awkward for a long visit. By then Tracy’s look was very different, closed off and protective, angry even.

The problem was Holden.

None of them had ever watched a perfectly healthy, normal child slip into some other world. How were they supposed to
handle it? Suzanne turned a few more pages until she came to a close-up of Holden and Ella. He was vibrantly alive and completely with them back then, perfect eye contact, direct interaction. Of course Suzanne asked questions when the child started to change. The loss was devastating, and all Suzanne could think, all she was consumed by every time they were together after Holden’s change, was one crippling question. What if it happened to Ella?

It wasn’t contagious, Suzanne understood that. But what if Ella tried to mimic Holden’s behavior, or what if it was something in the air in the Harris house? The thought seemed ridiculous now, but it hadn’t back then. If Holden Harris could withdraw into his own world, and leave only the shell of his body behind, then it could happen to any child.

The trouble was Tracy started taking the questions personally. Suzanne could feel the change, but she couldn’t stop asking, couldn’t stop being drawn to Holden and the dramatic change in him. One of the last times they were together, Suzanne and Tracy had been sitting on the sofa in Tracy’s living room, silent, sipping coffee and watching the kids. At that time, Tracy was having Holden tested, but no diagnosis had been made.

Ella had a baby doll in her arms and she was talking to it, singing to it, and rocking it, chattering away in her little-girl voice. It took a few minutes to understand what Ella was saying, what she was pretending. But then they watched her set the doll down and walk over to Holden.

Holden, who was her very best friend, the one close enough to be her twin brother.

“Ho’den,” that’s what Ella called him back then. It was always so sweet the way she dropped the
l
whenever she said his name. Before he withdrew, Holden would know Ella’s voice and the way she said his name and he would run to her. Wherever he was he would run.

But that day he was lining up his toy Hot Wheels cars near the living room window, his face pointed outward. Holden must’ve had three buckets of Hot Wheels cars. As Ella walked up, he didn’t turn to her or look at her or acknowledge her the way he always had.

“Ho’den!” Ella touched his shoulder, desperate for him to turn around. “Play with me, Ho’den.”

Nothing. No response. Holden didn’t see anything but the cars in the box, or the car in his hand, for that matter. Meticulously, almost trancelike, he reached for another car and added it to the long line. Bumper to bumper in the wildest, uncanny pattern. Green car, red car, blue car, yellow car, truck … green car, red car, blue car, yellow car, truck … green car —

The sameness of his pattern was astonishing. Ella watched him for a few seconds then she laughed, but it sounded more like a cry, like she would do anything to get him to join her. The way he used to.

“Why doesn’t he talk to her?” Suzanne couldn’t understand. Holden’s hearing worked. He loved Ella … but he was ignoring her. She turned to Tracy. “Have you tried forcing him to respond? I mean, maybe this is a late case of the Terrible Twos. You know, like he’s trying to exert his independence.”

Suzanne remembered her words and she winced at the way they sounded replayed this many years later. But again, what could she possibly have known or understood about autism. Holden did seem rebellious or defiant, like if one of them had walked up and turned him around and ordered him to respond, then maybe he might’ve obeyed.