Inside Out (9 page)

I hear Joey's voice somewhere, calling Alan's name. Joey sounds afraid.

“Zach.” Alan's lips move, and I hear my name again. “Are you okay?”

I try to answer, but words won't come.

Joey keeps calling to Alan over and over. But Alan keeps asking, “Zach, are you all right?” He looks scared and pale.

I manage to say, “Okay,” softly.

Alan says, “You're okay? You're okay?”

I nod and realize that I'm telling the truth. As fast as they came, Dirtbag and Rat are gone now.

I feel a cold wet spot on my chin where I've been drooling. The top of my shirt is wet from drool too. My armpits and chest and the back of my shirt are soaked through with sweat. I feel like I might puke. My eyes sting, like hot needles are being pulled out of them. My skin feels raw.

Alan yells at me, “What the hell were you doing, Zach? You kept yelling ‘Die, die, die!' Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

I shake my head. I can't explain. I never can.

Joey stares at me from across the room.

Now Alan, who has been kneeling in front of me, sits back in a chair and closes his eyes. When he opens them, he looks down at the floor.

As I follow his eyes, at first I think I'm still seeing things, but now I realize why Joey is so scared. There is blood everywhere—bright, red blood splattered all across the floor.

“It got me through the hand. Straight through,” Alan says, his left hand wrapped in a white towel, which is already soaked in blood and dripping onto the linoleum. I notice the streak of drops, some large, some smaller, that lead from the closet door, all the way across the room to where we're sitting.

“Oh, god,” Joey says, tears in his eyes.

Alan says, very calmly, “It's okay, Joey, we're just back to plan one, waiting for Zach's shrink.”

Joey starts, “But your hand, your—”

Alan interrupts, standing up as he talks. “It doesn't even hurt that much. It did at first, but it's kind of numb now, I can barely feel—”

The phone rings.

Alan picks it up with his good hand and says, “Hello?” He listens, then says, “What the hell do you
think
we were doing? Trying to go home!”

There's another pause, a longer one. Then Alan answers, “Yeah, I got it.... You've made your point.”

After another pause Alan says, “Put him on.” Alan waits a few seconds, then says, “Hi, Dr. Curt.”

Alan looks down at the phone and says, “Yeah, there is, there's a button right here for Speaker.”

Alan pushes the button, and the next thing I hear is, “Can everybody hear me?” It's Dr. Curt's voice coming out over this tiny speaker in the phone. He sounds crackly and loud.

Joey and Alan both say, at the same time, “Yeah, we hear you.”

I nod my head yes.

Alan looks at me and says, “He can't see you nod, Zach, you gotta say something.”

Dr. Curt says, “Hi, Zach, how are you?”

I answer him, “I'm okay. Hungry. Kind of sleepy. Dirtbag and Rat have gone.”

He asks, “They visited you?”

I say, “Yes.”

Alan says, “Wait a minute, what're you talking about, Zach? No one's visited anybody—”

“Just a moment, Alan,” Dr. Curt says, then, “Zach, they're gone now?”

I answer, “Yeah, they're gone.”

“Good riddance, huh?” Dr. Curt says.

I think I smile as I answer, “Yeah.”

I know I should say something about Alan's hand, about all the blood everywhere, but I can't think of the words.

Dr. Curt says, “The police won't let us go in there, Zach, but we're gonna get you out and get you your medicine as soon as we can, okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

Alan says, “Dr. Curtis, if you'd just look at the promises they've made, we want to get Zach out of here, too. We all wanna get out of here.”

Alan's voice sounds weak; he's breathing fast, and his words sound more like little grunts.

Dr. Curt says, “I'll read their agreement right away. Then give me a few minutes to talk to the police and I'll call you right back, all right?”

“Okay,” Alan says.

Before Alan hangs up, I ask, “Does he know about the guns, Alan?”

Dr. Curt hears what I'm saying over the speakerphone and asks, “What about the guns?”

I start to answer, “Do you know about the bullets and—”

Alan interrupts me. “We'll tell him everything in a few minutes, okay, Zach?” While he's talking he puts the pointer finger of his good hand up to his lips in a signal for me to be quiet.

You know how people always do that, put that finger up in front of their lips like they could stop the words from coming out of their mouths? This never makes any sense to me, because it's always the other person they want to stop from talking, so how does putting their own finger in front of their own mouth do that? Still, since I know what the signal means, I shut up. I glance at Alan's other hand, the one wrapped in the bloody towel. It's lying on his lap, and now his jeans are bloody, too.

Alan turns back toward the phone speaker. “Call us when you're ready, okay, Dr. Curtis?”

“Okay,” Dr. Curt says, and the phone goes dead.

“Jeez, Zach!” Joey immediately snaps at me. “What were you gonna do, tell 'em we didn't have any ammunition?”

I answer, “Just Dr. Curt.”

“Damn!” Joey says, rushing over to me. He grabs the front of my shirt and pushes my face, hard, with the side of his gun. He doesn't really hit me with the gun, but the metal bumps hard against my lip and it hurts. He screams, “You idiot, don't you think the cops are listening?”

“Are they?” I ask. I mean it. I never thought of it.

“You're so stupid!” he yells, spit flying out of his mouth and into my face. He pulls his hand back to hit me, the hand with the gun in it, and starts to swing at my head.

I close my eyes and wait for the gun to smack me. After a few long seconds of waiting to get hit, it doesn't happen. I open my eyes and see Alan pulling Joey away.

Joey yells, “I'm sick of this retard! All day he's messed us up. He should have killed himself back when he had the chance.”

Alan says, “Shut up, Joey, just shut your goddamned mouth!”

The two brothers stand frozen, staring at each other. After a few seconds Joey lowers his arm and Alan lets go of Joey's wrist.

The towel around Alan's hand slips down suddenly, almost falling off. Alan winces as he grabs it, cradling his hurt hand in his good one. I can see, for just a second, the place where the bullet has gone through Alan's palm. It looks terrible. The hole looks red and sore and like hamburger before it's cooked.

Alan looks at me and says, his voice tired, “It's okay, Zach.” He glances at my lip. “Are you hurt?”

I reach up and touch my mouth with my finger. It's bleeding a little. I answer, “My lip hurts.”

Joey yells, “If you'd learn to shut your stupid mouth …” His face is almost as red as Alan's hand. He turns away and just stares at the wall.

Alan looks at me and says, “Joey's right about the cops listening when we talk to Dr. Curtis. You need to just be quiet when we're talking, okay?”

I nod.

Alan is still looking at me. “Zach, who are Dirtbag and Rat?”

I don't answer.

“No one was here before except us.”

I say nothing.

Alan doesn't say anything for a second either. Then he asks, “You can't tell what's real, can you, Zach?”

I ask Alan, “But you're real, right?”

Joey yells, “Look at his hand, moron! He got that saving you!” Joey makes a mumbled, angry sound and says, “I'd have let 'em blow your head off!”

Alan ignores Joey and says to me, “Yeah, Zach, I'm real.” As he talks, he carefully rewraps the bloody towel around his hand, squinching his face each time the towel goes across the wound. When he's done, he looks over at me. “This is all real.”

I ask Alan, “Your guns are real, too, right? Only they won't shoot except for when Joey shot the drawer.”

Alan says, “Yeah, the guns are real, all of this is real. But what if I'm lying? You're never sure about anything, are you?”

I think about it for a second, then answer honestly, “I guess not really, nope.”

Joey says to Alan, “What's Zach being an idiot have to do with us? He's a retard!”

Alan says, “No, he's not a retard, Joey; that's just it.” Alan pauses a second, thinking, then says, “Zach's brain is all upside down and inside out, but he's not a retard—”

Joey interrupts, “Retard. Crazy. What's the difference? He's messed us up all day.”

Alan sighs. He looks at me as he walks over to Joey.

“Listen,” Alan says to him. “We're in trouble here, I know that, but we'll get out of it sooner or later—Zach is
never
going to get out of what's happening to him. Man, I'd rather be us any day.”

The phone rings.

Alan picks it up. “Hello,” he says, then “Okay.” He presses the phone's speaker button again.

I hear Dr. Curt's voice. “Can you all hear me?” he asks.

Alan and Joey both say yes.

I nod my head again. I'm not supposed to talk 'cause the cops are listening.

Alan says, “Zach's all right, we can all hear you.”

Dr. Curt explains that he has read the cops' agreement and that it looks all right.

Alan asks Dr. Curt, “You sure?”

Dr. Curt answers, “Well, I'm not a lawyer, Alan, but even if they wanted to lie, we have everything in writing. They can't go back on it.”

Alan takes a deep breath. He looks around the coffee shop. I follow his eyes. There's the stack of tablecloths in a cupboard in the corner and some boxes of plastic and Styrofoam cups. I hear the hum of the freezer from the little closet room. Below where Alan is standing there's a puddle of blood from his towel bandage, and there's the other blood splattered in different-sized drops all across the floor.

Finally Alan turns to Joey and says. “That's it, Joey, it's over.”

Joey shrugs. “Okay.”

Alan turns and says to the speakerphone, “Okay, Dr. Curtis, tell the police we're coming out; we give up. Also, tell them, please, that our guns aren't loaded.” Alan pauses a second and looks down at his hand. “We're coming out now, we give up, but I'm gonna need a doctor.”

My lip has stopped bleeding but is kind of puffy. It feels weird.

I'm walking in front as the three of us move across the coffee shop to the front door. The windows of the coffee shop are all sparkly with the big spotlights the police are shining in on us. When I reach the front door of the coffee shop, I pull it toward me and the little bell goes
tingaling
. We walk out.

Alan and Joey are crouching down right behind me. I guess they're still not sure the police won't shoot them. We move slowly. It's dark out, but all the police cars are lined up next to each other, their lights flashing, and cops squat down behind the cars with shotguns and handguns pointed right at us.

Some people are standing way back, behind some yellow tape. I wonder if my mom is back there. I guess she's worried for me, 'cause that's what moms do.

“JUST STEP FORWARD SLOWLY, BOYS, AND NOBODY WILL GET HURT!” the big microphone voice booms out.

“Okay!” I yell back, and I notice several of the cops jerk at the sound of my voice. I'm used to having guns pointed at me by now, so I don't care. But I wonder if the cops' guns have bullets in them.