Nothing Bad Is Going to Happen (9 page)

“I understand that Ralph Johnston has been phoning you—the Green Bay Correctional Facility has informed me,” he says carefully, readjusting his weight in the little
chair. “An officer overheard him on the pay phone and thought that I should know.”

I sigh. First Sheriff Staake calls Dr. Ferguson, then Ralph's frigging prison. You'd think he was my animal handler, or something.

“Like you, Ralph is also one of my patients.”

“What?” My voice is surprisingly quiet, but my mouth is open so wide that I can feel my tongue drying up. “What. The. Fu—”

“Wait,” he says, holding up a hand before I can fully respond to this bomb he's dropped. “I started treating him before you and I began working together. The correctional facilities often call me to work with inmates. Up until very recently, as you know, I was a psychiatrist for a state-run sanatorium, so it's only natural—”

“But you're helping me prepare to testify against him,” I sputter. “What are you, like, a double agent? Isn't this illegal? Does he get to hear about me, too?”

“Of course not—please just let me finish.” He licks his lips, looking pained. “I didn't have to tell you this, Kippy—I shouldn't be telling it to you. But I think that you're wise enough to—”

“I'm sick of all these men in my life telling me how smart I am like it's some sort of prize,” I snap. “As if I didn't already know, when really you are the ones who are
only just now picking up on it.”

“Okay,” he says carefully, like I might bite. “May I finish? There's nothing wrong with working with Ralph and you simultaneously. What's unethical is actually the fact that I'm mining my sessions with him for information about how to put him away for as long as possible.”

“But—”

The ringing in my ears abates a little. So this is what Jim Steele meant about Dr. Ferguson taking big swings on our behalf. “But why?” I ask. “What's in it for you?” Dr. Ferguson already left Cloudy Meadows. Now he relies on private-practice-type jobs. If anyone in a position to do something about it finds out that he's compromising his confidentiality clause with Ralph to help
me
, he could get disbarred, or whatever the medical equivalent is. He'd never be able to get a client ever again.

He examines his hands. “I'm a doctor and I believe in science. But I also believe in God.” He glances at me warily.

I think of Libby, and her moments of weird grace. Like how she'll make a face about my hair, but then drop everything to help me on behalf of some higher power. Faith is inherently irrational, but it's also one of the only ways to have really firm principles. It's often a marker of kindness, too.

“I could have handled it,” I say, “knowing about Ralph being your patient and everything—and personally I think that acting like I can't handle the truth is just another way of saying that I'm batshit crazy and unstable, which is honestly offensive.” Still, it's true that he didn't have to tell me. I never would have found out. If Ralph was going to tell me, he would have done so right away instead of writing to me about
Chad
, or whatever fake name he fed me.

“We didn't want you to have to lie—on the off chance that the defense asked you about it, we wanted you to be able to answer truthfully.”

“You mean Dom and Jim Steele knew about this?” I mumble. “You guys treat me like a little kid.”

“There are people whom you see on a semiregular basis who are also my patients,” he says, sounding defensive now. “The number isn't incredibly high, but you'd be surprised.”

“So now you're coming clean about Ralph so that you can lecture me about accepting his calls.”

“
No.
It's so that I can reassure you that I've lectured him about making such calls. Ralph is not supposed to get in touch with you, and the fact that he did has landed him in lots of trouble. I am so sorry for that, Kippy. He's just
trying to manipulate you. It's classic sociopathy.”

I play with the coverlet on my bed. It's too frilly. “Does he ask about me?”

“Kippy—”

“I just want to know what he says.”

Dr. Ferguson laces his fingers over one knee. “Let's talk about the fact that he called you, and how he made you feel. Tell me more about that.”

“I feel nothing.”

“What did we decide about triggers?”

“To avoid them, but—”

“Ralph Johnston gets energy from controlling people,” Dr. Ferguson says, starting to sound impatient. “If you let him hear even a smidge of reluctance or pain or complexity or rage in your voice it will make him indescribably happy. Do you understand? Is that what you want? For him to reach nirvana in there?”

“No.”

He nods, apparently satisfied. “Was his phone call today the extent of your interaction with him?”

I think about the letter in the desk drawer ten inches from where Dr. Ferguson is sitting.

“I've been thinking a lot about Albus,” I say, trying to change the subject.

“Adele Botkins?” he asks, smiling.

“She calls herself Albus,” I say defensively. “I believe in calling people what they want to be called.”

“Are you still having the hallucinations?”

“Sometimes,” I admit.

“Remember what I said: It's normal to think you see the people you miss most—it's because you want to see them so badly.”

“Right. Seeing things that aren't there is totally normal.” I roll my eyes.

“This is hard enough as it is without you being hard on yourself, too,” he says gently. “Have you been trying those affirmations we talked about?” He wants me to put Post-its on my mirror that say,
You are beautiful. You are enough.
He wants me to tell myself every day that I am powerful.

“They're too embarrassing.” As far as I'm concerned, the only thing more pathetic than seeing things that aren't there, having nightmares that occasionally make me cry like a baby, and sweating through my clothes every time I think I smell blood, would be sauntering around talking to myself, saying shit like,
I'm Kippy Fucking Bushman.

“Okay.” He nods. “Do you want to talk about Adele—sorry, Albus?”

I smile a little. “Kinda.”

He leans back in the pink desk chair, smiling. “Personally I thought she was incredible.
She
thought she was a British police officer. That was the only problem.” He laughs. “She helped you escape, if I'm not mistaken. She was secretly my favorite patient.”

“Mine, too.” I can't believe it's taken me so long to follow up about her. “You're already breaking so many rules. It probably wouldn't hurt for you to tell me about her—or at least, like, how she was doing the last time you saw her, before you retired from Cloudy Meadows.”

“She actually went home.”

“Oh, cool!”

“Very cool.”

“Why didn't you tell me that?”

“Didn't I?” He looks surprised. “Her family moved to England—well, back. They lived there for a period, hence her fascination with Scotland Yard.”

“That's so great.” I force a smile, wondering why she didn't call me when she got out. “That's great for her.”

“Are you ready to talk about Davey now?” Dr. Ferguson asks gently.

I shake my head. “Not to someone who doesn't believe me.”

“You're still sure he didn't hurt himself?”

“Yes.”

“How are things with your father?”

I tell him about Dom's blowup after I came home from the hospital and about spending the night at Miss Rosa's. I leave out the part about the knife throwing. If I've learned anything about well-intentioned adults, it's that no matter how much you trust them, you still can't spill your guts entirely.

“He called me a
szmata.
Or . . . that was Miss Rosa's translation. It means slut.”

“That's very hurtful.”

“At first he thought Davey had pressured me and when he found out that I hadn't gotten raped, he was mad.”

“How upsetting.”

“I know. Especially because it's like . . . I didn't even get to . . . you know. So now I'm paying for this crime I didn't even commit—not that having sex is even a crime to begin with.” I rake my fingers through my hair and glance at him. “So? Go ahead, do what you do, analyze it.”

“You're right when you say you've done nothing wrong. Your father is overreacting to certain inevitable changes—”

“Oof, please don't call them changes. It reminds me of puberty.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Are you kidding? It was the worst. When I got my period, Dom never talked to me about it. All he did was leave all these books out, and he was totally frazzled. I ended up getting so embarrassed that I went and sat in the empty tub with all my clothes on—including, you know, the stained polka-dot stretch pants—and then Dom came in wearing dishwashing gloves, being like, ‘What do you need me to do?' Like it was a joke or something.

“It really freaked me out, him standing there with those gloves, like some kind of . . . fake doctor. I ended up slamming the door in his face and staying in there for hours trying to flush my pants down the toilet until the whole thing overflowed—which, I mean, obviously I was old enough to know that would cause problems with the plumbing.” I take a deep breath. “I just didn't want him involved anymore. He's always so involved.”

“Thank you for sharing it with me.” Dr. Ferguson leans back. “Kippy, in what ways do you think his overinvolvement has affected your behavior?”

“Well, it's just that . . . I guess after that I dealt with everything myself.” I shrug. “I mean, with certain things. He still takes care of me. But I don't even like the idea of him changing the wastebaskets in my bathroom. I wrap
up all my tampons in tissues, put them in my pockets, and throw them out in the bathroom at school.”

My phone buzzes.

I make a face. Is Dollar Dan's text something I talk about in therapy now or should I wait ten years?

“So you sublimate your sexuality in order to appease your father,” Ferguson is saying. Seems like we have a lot to discuss before we get to sexual harassment.

“I don't like
father
and
sexuality
in the same sentence,” I say, turning off my phone.

“Sublimate . . . appease . . .”
He flicks his wrist. “Fancy words that simply mean you've gone out of your way to protect him. You've guarded him from everything, and now he realizes how much you've grown up. I'm not defending him, just trying to emphasize the shock he must have felt once the blinders came off.”

“Yeah. But he's still being a weirdo.”

“Occasionally a father may behave strangely when he senses his daughter is becoming sexual. In certain cases, he may temporarily rescind his love in an effort to
reinfantilize her—to bring her crawling back to him as the child he once knew.”

“I guess,” I say. “He just needs to get off my nuts. He stresses me out.” The words untighten my chest a bit. This seems to be the gist of weekly therapy: I sort of squirm but then I always leave feeling a little lighter.

“You could tell him that,” Dr. Ferguson says quietly. “I think it would be entirely fair for you to say that to him.”

I hear Rosa's car crunch on the snowy driveway outside. It's already been an hour or so since they left. The minutes with Ferguson fly by. Maybe I will say it to Dom—just, you know,
I'd love it if you could react less strongly to the stuff I'm going through, because it's my life, and it's hard enough going through it myself without dealing with your feelings on top of everything else.

The back door slams and I hear the fire extinguisher farting endless white foam.

“Kippy,” Dom calls, and the way he says it fills the whole house even though he isn't shouting. “What the heck is this contraption? What's this stuff on me? Dr. Ferguson, if you're here I'd like an explanation of my daughter's behavior, please.” I hear him curse a little to himself, stomping around.

Another trap goes off and he screams.

Dr. Ferguson bites his lip like he's trying not to laugh. “Sounds like he got caught in a few of your booby traps. We should probably go give him a towel, and then I should probably go.”

The next morning Mildred
calls and says she needs to chat. In person.

“About what?” I ask warily, thinking of the texts and voice mail messages and Facebook posts I've gotten. Late last night McKetta wrote on my wall,
RIP Davey—he's with the angels, babe
, to which I commented:
HE'S NOT DEAD MCKETTA AND IF HE WERE THIS WOULD STILL NOT BE APPROPRIATE.
Apparently that made her mad because she started a group called “Kippy, Ugh.” And now I've lost 120 Facebook friends. Also she may or may not have called the Teen Tip Line on me because Sheriff Staake showed up at our door in the wee hours to see if I was there, safe and sound in my bed, or out huffing paint like somebody said I was.

“I just want to talk,” Mildred says.

“If it's about my boyfriend, I'd rather not talk about it,” I tell her, trying to sound polite. “I'm sick of people telling me how sorry they are about his so-called suicide attempt—”

“That's what I want to talk to you about,” she says. “I think something else happened. And I have proof—come over when you can.”

I immediately hang up, grab the list I started making, and phone Libby, who agrees to give me a ride.

From where we're sitting in Mildred's sunroom, you can see Davey's whole house.

“Here we go, an entire wall of my biggest gingerbread architecture, cut into portions,” Mildred says, placing a tray of crumbled cookie on the coffee table. “So glad you ladies stopped by. I don't usually have guests, so it's either this or venison, which I would need to defrost.” She chuckles loudly. “You can't exactly fit a full leg in the microwave, if you know what I mean!”

“Oh, you really didn't have to demolish a whole gingerbread house for us,” I tell her, politely scooping up a handful and shoveling it into my mouth. I motion for Libby to do the same but she shakes her head at me. Some crumbs fall onto my lap and two cats immediately jump
up onto my thighs to eat the scraps.

Mildred shoos them off. “Off Dancer, off Prancer! I change their names depending on the holiday. Last Easter they were Jesus and the Bunny.”

She plops down between us on the couch and reaches over Libby to turn on the space heater. “Pretty nippy in here with all the windows, but I like the sunshine. Keeps me sane. Otherwise I get a little kooky. Vitamin D cures the crazy, I've read.”

Libby finally chimes in. “Oh my Gah, yeah, so welcoming.”

“So what's up, Mildred?” I ask her.

“I know I don't . . . come off so great,” she says. “I see how people look at me. But I just thought—well, it made sense, see, I thought,
Enough has happened to that boy
—and . . . Well, I kept thinking maybe if I kept an eye on him, I could help. I could protect him.” She flops her hands helplessly. “Ever since Marion left to be an alligator farmer I've been a mess, to tell the truth.”

I glance at Libby. “Marion's her ex-boyfriend,” I explain. “We were all in Rosa's Non-Violent Communication Group together. Before she was my bus driver.”

“I didn't want to say anything at first because, you know, I mind my own beeswax. I might be a little off-kilter, I'm the first to admit it, but I keep my trap shut,
which isn't easy around here. Folks were gossiping about my Davey everywhere yesterday—the grocery store, the liquor store, the bowling alley, saying that he swallowed all those pills.” She wipes her eyes and then pats my thigh. “Nice legs, by the way. We're going to miss you on the bus.”

“Mildred,” I say gently, removing her heavy, calloused hand from my knee. “You said you wanted to talk about Davey. You said you had proof that—”

“I've got the video if you want to see it,” she says. “I'll show it to you if you promise not to get me in trouble. I really don't want to go back to Cloudy Meadows.”

“I know,” I tell her, putting her hand back on my knee.

“I saw a car drive up,” Mildred says. “And there were people running out of the house, if I was seeing correctly—though I'm the first to admit I see things funny sometimes. Bad eyes, for starters. And they did a bunch of shock therapy when I was at Cloudy Meadows, so sometimes my brain feels dumb.”

She pops the VHS tape into her old-fashioned VCR, and starts to fast-forward. The first two hours are just of her in her underwear, painstakingly building the gingerbread house.

“You filmed yourself building a gingerbread house?” Libby asks.

“So?” Mildred roars. She presses Play. “Here's where I decided to add button candies for the windows, see? Isn't that great?”

Libby and I nod in unison, mumbling a patchwork of lies: “Great”—“Really exciting stuff”—“Like watching an action movie.”

Satisfied, she speeds ahead through more gingerbread-house building. “There,” she says at last, pushing Play on the video to reveal a triumphant-looking Mildred alongside one of the largest gingerbread mansions I have ever seen. It basically looks like a giant mound of frosting with little army men on top of it, and Lego trees all along the periphery. “The guesthouse kind of got lost in the artistic process,” she says.

In the video, Mildred looks up like she's heard something and approaches the camera. The footage goes sloppy as she drags the camera off the mount and tries to focus it through the window on Davey's house.

Libby and I lean in to see better.

“And there's the car,” Mildred says, pointing.

“Where?” Libby asks.

“There.” She taps a finger on the dark TV screen, between the leafless skeletons of trees at the edge of her lawn.

“I don't see anything,” Libby says. “It looks like a glare or something.”

“Me neither,” I admit, squinting. “Well, sort of, maybe.” Framed between the trees, you can just make out something that kind of looks like a car.

“Watch for headlights,” Mildred says.

Sure enough, a pair of lights flash like someone's unlocking the car. A figure running across the lawn is illuminated by the quick burst.

“There he is!” I say.

“I still don't see anything,” says Libby.

Mildred rewinds. “Whoever it is, there's someone with 'em.”

She pauses the footage and points to what
might
be a figure on-screen.

“I still don't see anything,” Libby says, her voice apologetic.

“Right there, see? He bends to grab somebody and scoops 'em up into his arms.”

“Have you shown this to anyone?” I ask.

“Of course I ain't shown nobody!” Mildred makes a face. “I figured Davey was having a party or something, and when the cops showed up, I didn't want to get him in trouble. Then I heard what really happened, but I didn't want to change my story.”

I pat her arm reassuringly. “They wouldn't have listened to you anyway.”

“Listened to her about what?” Libby presses on. “I'm bored of this, you guys. There's nothing here. It's like I'm staring at one of those magic eye posters.”

“It's an old model,” Mildred says. “It's blurry on the close-ups.”

My phone buzzes in my hand. It's Dollar Dan again, asking if I want to hang out. Well, that's being euphemistic: specifically he wants to know if I want to “ride mini Dan like a cowgirl.” He repulses me.

“Hey, Mildred,” I say, staring at my phone. “How tall would you say the bigger guy was? Maybe five-ten?”

“Maybe,” she says uncertainly.

When are you going to get rid of that boyfriend of yours? Or do you want me to get rid of him?
“Kind of big? Like a football player?” Dollar Dan was always obsessed with Ralph, too. Maybe obsessed enough to write him some fan mail. And Ralph's smart—he would have been able to identify Dollar Dan as a potential puppet.

Libby rolls her eyes. “What are you getting at, Kippy?”

I tap my list. “Money or no money, Dollar Dan is batshit insane.”

“What in the glory heck are you talking about?”

“Can you give me one more ride?”

She throws her head back. “Uggghhh.”

“Thank you, Libby.”

I look again at my phone and text back:
Hey, Dollar Dan, what's your address?

The icicles hanging from Dollar Dan's gutters are more than three feet long—as big as the stalactites we learned about in middle school. They're also sharp enough to kill someone. The front porch resembles a throat surrounded by fangs.

“It doesn't even look like anybody lives here,” I mutter. The driveway and walkway aren't shoveled. In the middle
of the yard, there's a rusted tractor, or something, sticking up through the snow.

“We'll park behind those trees so we can stake it out for a few seconds,” Libby says, easing the truck behind some heavy foliage at the end of Dan's lawn.

Just then a screen door bangs shut and we duck down in our seats.

“Is it him?” I ask softly, scrambling for the binoculars Mildred lent us.

Dollar Dan leads a small white terrier toward the end of the unplowed driveway. The snow is so deep that the dog looks like it's swimming in it. Dollar Dan keeps tugging on its leash.

“He's just taking his dog out to pee,” I whisper. “Maybe we should get out now and say hi. I like dogs.”

“Then he'll know we were spying on him,” Libby says, sinking lower in her seat. She yanks the binoculars. “Here, let me see.”

“We'll share,” I say, giving her one eye.

Dollar Dan pulls the skittering dog farther down the icy driveway to where the trash bins are lined up.

“Good boy, Stewart,” he shouts, glancing around as if to see if anyone is watching. Then he yanks Stewart up into the air by the leash and holds him there. The dog
spins slowly in circles, its feet twitching off the ground.

Libby grips my arm hard as the dog rotates in midair. It's barely making any noise now.

“Oh my Gah,” she says. “I'm not bored of this anymore.”

“We should do something,” I mutter, but we're frozen.

Dollar Dan smiles at the spinning dog for another agonizing beat, and then drops him back on the ground. He says something, and the dog wags his tail, trembling.

The dog continues shaking while the snow beneath him turns bright yellow. After he's finished, Dan drags Stewart back up the driveway through the snow.

“Well, now I really don't want to go in,” Libby says, handing me the binoculars and wriggling to create more space between our hips. “Did you see that? He just hanged his dog.”

“We have to talk to him,” I say, climbing back into the passenger seat. “Who knows, maybe he even has Ralph's Chewbacca head in there.” I nod at the house. I explained the collectibles/auction thing to Libby on the way over.

“You're right.” She reaches over me to check her reflection in the rearview mirror. “We've gotta get our heads on straight—we'll get him to show us around somehow and just . . . see what we see. Now remember.” She fixes me
with a look. “Change of plans this time. Dan's obsessed with you so I want you to play it dumb and pretty.”

She pats my cheek. “The stupider they are, the stupider they want. Meanwhile I'll get the whole thing on tape.” She flips through the apps on her phone until she finds a voice recorder.

“Dang,” Dollar Dan says, sucking what looks like barbecue sauce off his chubby fingers. He's around five-ten, with a round face and small, dark eyes. I wouldn't call him ugly, per se. It's just that I haven't been so physically repulsed by a human body since our ninety-year-old neighbor Mr. Jenkins forgot to take his dementia medication and rang our doorbell in the nude. (He was a very nice man, but that doesn't change the fact that his balls sagged to his knees. RIP.) There's something about Dan that makes me want to run in the other direction.

Libby elbows me in the side.

Oh yeah. I'm supposed to flirt.

“Can we, like, come in, Dan?” I ask, batting my eyelashes. “It's sort of . . .” I glance down at my own chest. “Nipply out here.” We rehearsed that line in the car. It sickens me.

“Oooh, a tit bit nipply?” He raises his eyebrows and
swings the door wide, leading us to a dimly lit room that smells like Buffalo wings and kitty litter. A TV is blaring in one corner—some kind of dirt bike contest. The trembling terrier is sprawled out on the dingy carpet, averting his eyes as the first bike crashes into sand.

“They hardly ever die,” Dollar Dan says, staring at the TV. “Mostly they break their necks or their backs. It's lame.”

Libby nods at me.

“Oh my Gah, yeahhhhhh,” I say. “I wish it were cooler.” I force myself to smile. “That would be so . . .
cool
.”

He takes a step toward me, narrowing his eyes. I try to keep smiling, but it probably looks ridiculous. He smells like that sludge-green cologne that Davey used to wear in middle school, and my mouth is dry and acidic. I'm afraid I might barf.