IT’S A DREAM!
A nightmare.
It’s CRAZY to even THINK that Alex did that.
You are wired, McCrae. You are crazed and disturbed. And you watch too many horror films.
First of all, even if Alex had CONSIDERED what you were dreaming about, he would have just run the BATHWATER. What’s the point of putting the shower on? Besides, HE COULDN’T EVEN TURN THE DOORKNOB when you first found him. How could he have closed the drain ON PURPOSE?
Forget it.
Put it out of your mind.
2:15Still.
Still, it doesn’t hang together.
Why did Alex say “What are you doing?” when he woke up in the bathroom? As if we were stopping him from DOING something?
Why was he SO UPSET? So ASHAMED? Apologizing SO MUCH? Insisting on keeping this all a secret?
It doesn’t make sense.
I want to talk to him, but he’s out like a light.
Okay. He couldn’t have been THAT desperate. If he was, he would have told me.
He said I’m the only one he talks to.
Me and Dr. Welsch.
Dr. Welsch might know what’s going on in Alex’s mind.
He DEFINITELY should know about what happened tonight.
But I can’t call him.
I TOLD Alex I’d keep his secret.
I promised.
He trusts me. He says I’m an EXTENSION of himself. I have to live up to that.
2:23
Thought:
Dr. Welsch is an extension too.
So telling him would NOT be breaking the promise.
Would it?
Think, McCrae.
Do what you have to do.
DO
THE
RIGHT
THING
What seems like a lifetime later
Did you?
Did you do the right thing?
Who knows?
You’re in no shape to decide that now. It’s still dark out, and you can barely stand up, but you can’t sleep, you can’t THINK of sleeping yet. Your mind is screaming at you, your thoughts are slamming against the sides of your brain, and you have to find RELIEF somehow.
Now.
Here.
Write.
See what happened. Step by step.
You called Dr. Welsch on the kitchen phone. His answering machine picked up—WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? It was after two in the morning!—and you left a whispered message that probably didn’t make much sense but you left your number and tried to make it clear that Alex needed help.
Then you went back into the living room, figuring Dr. Welsch would call in the morning, hoping the FACT that you called would calm you down, make you sleep better.
And you might have fallen asleep, it was hard to tell—but when the phone rang and you jumped out of the armchair to answer it, you noticed only ten minutes had passed.
You picked up before the second ring, And it was Dr. Welsch, sounding groggy but calm, very calm, just the opposite of you, tripping over your own words, trying to tell the whole story but making NO SENSE—and Dr. Welsch just took over the conversation, in a soft but businesslike way, asking specific questions: Where is Alex now? Is he physically hurt? Does he need a doctor?
The sound of his voice was soothing. Reassuring. You wanted to visit him YOURSELF, to lie on his couch and have a good cry and do whatever you do in a therapist’s office. Your voice was choking up as you answered his questions, but you stuck with it, and soon you were telling him about the whole night, starting from the beginning, from the quiet ride in the car, to the arrival at the party, to your separation from Alex, to the bottle and the bathroom…
And Dr. Welsch was saying, “Mm-hm” and “That must have been hard for you,” and not much else, just letting you ramble on and on, until you came to the end and you were in tears, speaking and sobbing at the same time, asking for advice—which Dr. Welsch gave, telling you not to worry, that Alex was going to be all right, and you were a good friend for calling, and you were doing the right thing to let him sleep comfortably, but you HAD to make sure that Alex came to see him first thing tomorrow.
You felt much better after you hung up. But the feeling didn’t last long.
Because you turned to see Alex standing behind you. Leaning against the kitchen doorway.
You practically jumped out of your seat in surprise.
Alex had this tight, blank expression on his face. For a moment, you thought he was going to throw up again.
But he didn’t.
He spoke. His voice was choked and raspy. And very, very angry.
He called you a traitor.
He said he THOUGHT he could trust you, but he was wrong.
You tried to explain. You told him you were worried. You said you’d dreamed that he’d tried to kill himself.
So you called Welsch because of a dream? Alex spat out.
Well, DID you try to kill yourself? you asked.
But Alex didn’t answer. You know he heard you, but he ignored the question. You PROMISED, he said. Is that what a PROMISE means to you?
You reminded him about what HE’D said—about you and Dr. Welsch being extensions—but as the words came out of your mouth, they sounded so hollow, like an EXCUSE, like a kid saying nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.
Alex just let those words hang in the air, his face twisting with disgust.
That’s it, Ducky, he said. The friendship is over.
And he stomped away, toward the front door.
You ran after him. Asked where he was going. Told him to stay. Reminded him IT WAS LATE and MANIACS were out on the street at this hour and he couldn’t possibly walk all the way home—but he was acting like you weren’t there, just walking away and not looking over his shoulder, right through your front door.
So what can you do when your former friend walks out into the streets of Palo City at 3 A.M. and you have NO IDEA what he’s going to do, because everything he has done so far that day has been totally UNPREDICTABLE, and you know that if something happened to him, you could never forgive yourself?
You follow him.
You get into your car and tail him through the neighborhood. You roll down your window and call out to him, offering him a ride.
And even though he says nasty things to you and tells you to go away, even though he ducks into alleyways and behind strangers’ houses and through empty lots, you stay with him and you don’t let him out of your sight.
And soon he gives up and walks down the middle of the street, pretending you’re not there. And you feel relieved when he ends up at his house, and all the lights are out, which means his mom has gone back to sleep and won’t make a big scene.
And you don’t leave, even then, because in Alex’s state of mind he can do ANYTHING. He can wait for you to go and then sneak out again—you don’t even want to IMAGINE what else he could do—so you park halfway down the block, just beyond sight of the house, and you walk back along the sidewalk, hiding behind the tall juniper trees next door.
You squat there, looking at Alex’s house. You see the light go on in the downstairs bathroom, you hear the shower, and your heart starts to race. You scan the house for a way to sneak in—JUST IN CASE—but there’s an “instant armed response” sign in the front window, which will set off an alarm in some police station. Which, when you think about it, might be a useful thing—the “instant” and “response” parts—JUST IN CASE.
The shower runs on and on, and it’s driving you crazy, and you start looking for a rock to throw in the window—
Then the water noise stops.
You freeze.
A few moments later, the bathroom light goes out.
Then another light flicks on. Alex’s bedroom.
You see the silhouette of Alex’s head briefly, and then the shades roll down.
You do not move. Even after the light goes out, you stay there. Riveted. Eyes scanning the house. Ears listening for odd noises.
You
stay there—how long? It feels like hours, but you’re not watching the clock—and finally you’re ready to drop from fatigue and you don’t want to be found tomorrow morning sleeping under the neighbor’s juniper, so you stand up and stumble on creaky legs to your car.
And on the way home, questions nag you like mosquitoes.
DID you do the right thing?
Did you do ALL you could?
Did you HELP Alex?
And most important, WHAT NEXT?
While I was away, Ted came home. He’s snoring peacefully in his room. At least that’s ONE person I don’t have to worry about.
He’s lucky. His life is simple.
I wish I felt tired. It’s almost morning and I have to sleep. Tomorrow could be big.
I KNOW why I can’t sleep. I’m afraid of the morning. I have to do SOMETHING, but what? Call Alex? Talk to his mom? Call Dr. Welsch to see if Alex talked to him? Go over to his house and DRIVE him over to Dr. Welsch?
What if Alex denies what happened? What if he doesn’t remember?
And what about Jay? HE’S going to want to know how Alex is. Do I tell him? Should I bring him into this?
Maybe Alex needs his friends to rally around him. Or maybe he needs to be left alone.
Am I doing enough?
Am I doing too much?
Where exactly do I fit into all this?
I don’t know.
That’s the problem.
I SHOULD know, but I don’t.
I’m sitting here at 4:30 in the morning, so awake I could run a marathon, writing my brains out because I can’t talk to anybody—considering I’ve already broken a vow of silence, and Ted would be useless about stuff like this even if I COULD tell him, and Mom and Dad don’t like me to call Ghana—so all I CAN do is write, and that should be helping me, because PUTTING IT ON PAPER always makes thoughts clearer, and I’ve filled up a whole journal, wearing out my fingers, examining EVERY POSSIBILITY, dissecting, reasoning, spilling. And after all that, I should have an idea, I should know what path to take, I should have an UNDERSTANDING at least, and maybe a strategy.
I’m not a stupid guy. I should have all of that.
But I don’t.
I really don’t know what to do.
Except worry.
And hope.
A Personal History by Ann M. Martin
I was born on August 12, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey. I grew up there with my parents and my sister, Jane, who was born two years later. My mother was a preschool teacher and my father was an artist, a cartoonist for the New Yorker and other magazines.
When I was younger, my parents created an imaginative atmosphere for my sister and me. My dad liked circuses and carnivals and magic, and as a teenager, he had been an amateur magician. My father would often work at home, and I would stand behind his chair and watch him draw. When he wasn’t working, he enjoyed making greeting cards.
My parents were very interested in my sister’s and my artistic abilities, and our house was filled with art supplies—easels, paints, pastels, crayons, and stacks of paper. Coloring books were allowed, but only truly creative pursuits were encouraged, and I took lots of art classes.
Our house was as full of pets as it was of art supplies. We always had cats, and, except for the first two years of my life, we always had more than one. We also had fish, guinea pigs, and turtles, as well as mice and hamsters.
When I think about my childhood I think of pets and magic and painting and imaginary games with my sister. But there is another activity I remember just as clearly, and that’s reading. I loved to read. I woke up early so I could read in bed before I went to school. I went to bed early so I could read before I fell asleep. And from this love of books and reading came a love of writing.
In 1977 I graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts. I taught elementary school for a year, which is what I had wanted to do, and used children’s literature in the classroom. I loved teaching, but by the end of the school year I had decided that what I really wanted to do was work on children’s books. So I moved to New York City, entered the publishing field, and at the same time, began writing seriously. In 1983, my first book, Bummer Summer, was published.
In 1985, after the release of my first three books—Bummer Summer, Inside Out, and Stage Fright—an editor at Scholastic asked if I’d be interested in writing a series about babysitting. She had a title in mind—the Baby-Sitters Club—and she was thinking of a miniseries consisting of four books. So I created four characters: Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne, and planned to write one book featuring each girl. The series was supposed to start in 1986 and end in 1987. Instead, it ended fourteen years later in 2000, with over two hundred titles and four related series, including Dawn’s spinoff, California Diaries.
Saying good-bye to the Baby-Sitters Club was sad. It had been nice not to have to let go of the characters at the end of each book. But by 2000, I had found that I wanted more time to spend working on other kinds of stories (though I did return to the series to write a prequel, titled The Summer Before, in 2010).
I felt myself drawn to the 1960s, the most important decade of my childhood. I think this interest was due in large part to the fact that my mother’s diaries came into my possession, and I spent a good deal of time reading them, especially the ones that covered the 1960s. The next thing I knew, I had written three books set in that decade. The second, A Corner of the Universe, is the most personal of all the books I’ve written. It’s loosely based on my mother’s side of the family, and in a way, it started on a summer day in 1964 when I learned that my mother’s younger brother, Stephen, who had died shortly before my parents first met, had been mentally ill. Stephen was the basis for the character of Adam in A Corner of the Universe. The book won a Newbery Honor in 2003.
The life I lead now is not terribly different from the one I led as a child, except that I no longer live in Princeton. I moved to the Catskill Mountains in New York a number of years ago. Animals are still very important to me. Influenced by the many stray cats I’ve known, and inspired by my parents, who used to do volunteer work for Princeton’s animal shelter, I became a foster caregiver for an animal rescue group in my community. I also still have cats of my own, and only recently said good-bye to my dog, Sadie, the sweetest dog ever. She was the inspiration for my book A Dog’s Life.
Although I grew up to become a writer, my interest in art never left, except that now I’m more interested in crafts, and especially in sewing and needlework. I like to knit, but I most enjoy sewing, especially making smocked or embroidered dresses. And of course, I continue to write. In 2014, the fourth Doll People book, The Doll People Set Sail, will be published, as well as Rain Reign, a novel about a girl with Asperger’s syndrome and her beloved dog, Rain.
Here I am as a newborn in the hospital in August 1955.
Me at age two at my home in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1957.
This is the house where I grew up on Dodds Lane in Princeton.
My family always had cats—and except for when I was in college, I’ve always had at least one. This is a photo of Kiki, Sweetheart, Tigger, and Fluffy from my childhood home (Kiki is a little hard to see).
Reading at bedtime with my mother (and cats Sweetheart and Honey) when I was about seven, circa 1962.
On the left is my mother’s younger brother, Stephen, with my grandfather and my uncle Rick. Stephen was mentally ill and the basis for the character of Adam in A Corner of the Universe.
Graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts in 1977.
Here I am at home in New York City in 1989, surrounded by fan mail.
This is my house in New York, around 1993. It recently celebrated its one hundredth birthday.
Wildlife plays a larger role in my life now than when I was young. I will often find deer, wild turkeys, and garden toads in my backyard. Here is a black bear investigating my hose!
My dog, Sadie, one week after I brought her home in 1998.
At home in the c
ountry in 2000 with Peanut, one of the many kittens I’ve fostered.
This is the room where I do all of my sewing and card-making.
A few of my handmade greeting cards!
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dawn: Diary One Copyright © 1997 by Ann M. Martin
Sunny: Diary One Copyright © 1997 by Ann M. Martin
Maggie: Diary One Copyright © 1997 by Ann M. Martin
Amalia: Diary One Copyright © 1997 by Ann M. Martin
Ducky: Diary One Copyright © 1998 by Ann M. Martin
Cover design by Andrea Worthington
978-1-4804-6914-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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