Wishful Thinking (24 page)

By six o’clock I hadn’t received a call back from my dad, or anyone else. Summer was still at the hospital. I wasn’t ready to talk to Nate. Him and Emily together? To weird to think about. And Claudia had failed to answer the text I sent her an hour ago.
 

After looking out our living room window across the street to Dean’s house and still not seeing his green Prius, I let go of the curtains letting them fall back across the window. Where in the world was he? I was going out of my mind and needed Dean’s sanity.
 

As I turned to head upstairs to my room and my computer, the little girl with the brown pigtails halted me in my tracks. She stood in the doorway that led from the living room into the hallway. She twirled one pigtail around her finger while her other hand rubbed the top layer of her yellow dress between her fingers.
 

Another hallucination?
 

They were supposed to be over. I rubbed my temples and opened my eyes but she was still there. Her big blue eyes stared at me, unflinching. I opened my mouth to say something and she pressed a finger to her lips, a silent shush. She raised her other hand waving me to her, then turned her back to me and headed down the hallway. She wanted me to follow. If I did, would it confirm I was crazy?
 

Oh well, I could argue my sanity later and got up to follow the little girl. When I reached the hallway she was standing outside my dad’s office. She put a finger to her lips before stepping through the doorway and disappearing into my dad’s office.
 

By the time I reached the door to my dad’s office my head was throbbing, and it felt like my brain wanted to pop out of my skull. I put my hand on the doorknob and took a shaky breath (damn I needed some Tylenol) I swallowed, and stepped into my dad’s office. The little girl was standing in front of my dad’s desk holding a photo frame. She waved me over to her again. With every step, the pain in my head worsened. She handed me the frame when I reached her.

The picture in the frame was an outside shot, of my dad, a three year old looking me, and the pigtailed little girl. What. The …

I looked back to pigtails but she was gone and in her absence came my dad’s voice, hollering, “Junior,” over and over.
 

I blinked several times.

The picture disappeared. My dad’s office disappeared. And when I blinked a final time I was staring up into the face of my dad, concern reading across his features.

“Junior, what happened?"

“Huh,” I said. Looking around me, I was lying in the doorway between the hallway and living room, and my head was pounding.
 

"Dad?" I rubbed my head, "When did you get home?" Dad helped me sit up, he was here and he was real. I blinked rapidly trying to figure out what happened.
 

"Junior, are you okay? Was somebody here? What happened?"

“I-I, don’t know exactly," and I didn’t.
 

Nobody was here unless you counted hallucinations which I didn’t. "No, nobody was here, I just got a really bad headache and I must have blacked out." That sounded plausible, didn’t it?

Dad scanned my eyes.
 

“I’m fine," I said and stood up. He stood up with me. I swayed slightly but didn’t fall back down, "I’ve got a really bad headache."

“I told you to take it easy," dad said, but he still looked nervous. He put his hands on hips pushing back the flaps of his suit jacket, and that’s when I saw the gun, right there on his hip. He was carrying it during the day now?

“It’s late why don’t you go upstairs and go to bed,” dad said.
 

"What time is it?" I rubbed my head.

Dad finally removed his hands from his hips, letting his jacket slip back over and conceal his gun, "It’s a little after nine."

I’d been out for three hours, but it only felt like seconds. "I think I will," I said and headed upstairs to my room. Inside my room I plopped down on my bed and tried to understand what happened. Beyond a raging headache nothing else hurt. Whatever happened, figuring it out, could wait until tomorrow. I popped a few painkillers, shucked off my shirt and pants and climbed under the covers.
 

I fell into a deep sleep for all of three hours. By one a.m. my eyes were open and I was staring at my bedroom window. At least my headache was mostly gone, there was still a dull throb at my right temple but it was tolerable. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. My phone was beeping on my nightstand—Claudia had texted about ten minutes ago.

U UP?-C

After the weird day I had I wanted to talk.
 

YEAH,
I texted back and waited. Minutes passed and no response.
 

Whatever.
 

I turned over to try and go back to sleep and heard a familiar rapping at my bedroom window. I looked up to see Claudia crouched outside. Thank god my bedroom window was at the back of the house and faced an alley instead of the street. Instantly, my mind went to my dad’s gun. If he heard her, well, I didn’t want to think what he might do so I hurried to my window and opened it.
 

"What the fuck?" I hissed, "You couldn’t text me to meet you outside or something, like a normal person?"

"What’s the big deal, your dad’s gone." And without an invite she pushed the window all the way open and climbed inside my room. I didn’t even bother with a sarcastic comment and closed the window behind her.
 

"How the hell do you know everything and why are you—"

"Your dad’s at my house talking to my father."

I had a hundred questions for Claudia like why wasn’t she at school today, what was the deal with the charger, and what the hell did my dad need to talk to her father about at one o’clock in the morning, and why didn’t it bother her like it did me.
 

"What—" I started but stopped, because I noticed then that she was crying. I sat down next to her on my bed, put an arm around her, and kind of squeezed her towards me. She seemed like such a tough girl, I figured my comfort would get a one arm brush off, but it didn’t. Instead, she wrapped both her arms around my waist and cried, like really cried.
 

Today had to be the weirdest day ever for me, like Guinness-World-Record weird. Maybe I bonked my head at some point today and was still unconscious somewhere and this was all a bizarre dream. After a minute or so, Claudia pulled away and wiped at her eyes and nose with the sleeve of her hoodie.
 

"Sorry," she said and sucked in a breath. "There’s something I
 
found out, and I don’t know if it’s true, but, but—I need to know …” she stood up, “… in my, well it doesn’t matter where, but is it … is this …" she dug into her jeans pocket and pulled out a newspaper clipping, looked at it for a minute, “do you know about this story? Is it about …” She didn’t finish her thought just handed me the newspaper clipping.
 

HIT AND RUN VICTIMS, STILL IN CRITICAL CONDITION

The unidentified four-year old boy and girl found unconscious on Broadway Boulevard Thursday night are still in critical condition. Samantha Dickens, a nurse at Fifth General Hospital found the children on her way home from work. Police are still canvassing the neighborhood, hoping to find a witness to the accident. In an attempt to identify the toddlers we have attached their pictures, if you or anyone you know can identify or know who they are, you are asked to call 55-CRIME.
 

My head started to spin when my eyes reached the picture of a four-year-old with tubes, coming out of his nose and mouth. It was most definitely me. And the other picture was a four-year old girl with brown pigtails and an oxygen tube coming out of her nose. It was the same little girl who I was seeing everywhere, from Ms. Perry’s class to the hallway in my house.

Oh shit.

My hand trembled as I reached up to the scar on the back of my head. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t process this.
 

“It’s you isn’t it? You’re the unidentified boy … because … I’m the girl,” Claudia said, but her voice sounded far away.
 

Claudia and pigtails girl were the same person. The little girl who haunted me while awake and asleep was Claudia.
 

“Where did you get this?" My heart pounded in my chest, while my brain pounded in my head.
 

She sat down next to me and started chewing on her nails, “In a scrapbook among my mother’s things. In a box my dad had hidden up in the attic. There were other articles and you and I were the subject of all of them.”

None of it made sense. “You need to go," I whispered. I didn’t want to hear another word from her mouth.

"James—"

"Get out," I yelled this time.

She didn’t argue, but got up and went to the window. She looked back at me for a minute. "I’m sorry," she said again before climbing out. I crinkled up the article and threw it in the trash-can next to my desk but quickly picked it back out. Why didn’t my dad ever tell me? How did I not know this, remember it? My awful dream, the one I’d been having lately of headlights, the one Dr. Patterson claimed wasn’t real, was. Was she part of the conspiracy too? How many of my friends, my family, were keeping this from me?
 

I slid off the side of my bed to the floor, my legs bent at the knees and my arms resting on them. I sighed and tipped my head so it rested on my nightstand. I could do one of two things 1) pretend Claudia never gave me this story, forget about it and focus on something else or 2) I could find out everything I possibly could about this accident and me and her.
 

Right now, I couldn’t decide.

At school the next day I was completely out of it. My friends talked to me but I didn’t hear a word they said. Claudia was absent again, and I was glad. I didn’t want to see or talk to her right now. Summer was gone to, which was good because I wasn’t forced to endure pestering of what was bothering me.
 

I avoided lunch and spent the hour in the library staring at the wall. The rest of my day wasn’t much better. I hadn’t seen my father since Claudia showed me the article. He was gone before I got up and I don’t even know when he got home. It’s like my dad knew and was afraid to come home. Since I couldn’t confront him about it, which wasn’t my style anyway, I reverted to my usual behavior, get mad, shut everyone out.
 

 
And that’s how it went. Tuesday, shifted to Wednesday then Thursday. By Friday I was angry with everyone, even Summer. Part of me knew I was overreacting. An accident that happened so young shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t affect my relationships, but I didn’t care. Rationality flew out the window. My anger warped my friendships in my mind. I fingered everyone as being part of the coverup. Sure, it was idiotic to think my friends had any clue, but I didn’t care I just couldn't handle anything.
 

During third period on Friday I told Summer to fuck-off when she asked me to borrow a pencil. She turned my words back on me, then called me an asshole. Of course Summer also stopped speaking to me after that. Apologizing to her wouldn’t work and if I didn’t explain to her what was going on, and soon. Although if she were smart she’d end up dumping me and never looking back.

When fourth period bell rang, I collected my things got up and instead of heading to lunch I skipped out and headed to my Jeep. There was one person I could talk to about this. Hopefully, she had time for me, scratch that, I’d make her find time for me.

☆

I paced the reception area of Dr. Patterson’s office. Every time I made eyes at Roberta, the receptionist, she shook her head and went back to her computer. She swore Dr. Patterson’s schedule was full, but I begged, like down on my knees begged and she squeezed me in. Dr. Patterson had thirty minutes before her lunch, that she kept open for moments like this. Someone else claimed the appointment but I refused to leave.

Dr. Patterson came out of her office following a short, fat, balding man with a bad case of psoriasis. He scratched anxiously at his neck and Dr. Patterson shook her head no, and tapped her watch. Fatty, nodded his head and dropped his hand back to his side and gave a weak smile. He said thanks, scheduled his next appointment with Roberta and left.
 

When Dr. Patterson saw me, walking holes in the carpet she closed her eyes and pulled at the collar of her turtleneck. Her bangs blew up as she exhaled and said, “Come on back.”
 

She knew too, didn’t she? Of course she did. We remained silent all the way to her office. She was slow closing the door behind her, jaunty, good natured Dr. Patterson wasn’t here today.
 

She pressed her hands against the door for a minute before finally turning to face me, “Let’s cut to the chase James, why are you here?"

I plopped down on the couch, my head dropped into my hands. "I know," I murmured into my hands.

“Know what?" Dr. Patterson asked slipping into her chair and crossing her legs.