Suddenly the only sound I hear is the falling rain and the rushing of the river a hundred yards beyond our backyard.
That was almost a month ago. Now I stand in my room, shoving everything I care about into my backpack, making sure I leave room for Magoo. I don’t let Mom and Dad know what I’m doing. I can’t let them know, or they would stop me.
In the rec room, which has been painted, carpeted, and furnished, Mom makes up the sofa bed. “Uncle Barry and Aunt Alice won’t mind sleeping on this,” says Mom, patting the bed. “The twins can sleep in your room,” she tells me. “You can stay with us. It’s only a week—I don’t want to hear you complaining.”
But I’m not complaining.
“Isn’t it wonderful that they’re coming all the way from Michigan to spend time with us?” says Mom. “After all these years!”
“I just wish we had better weather. I’ve never seen it rain this much,” says Dad, coming into the room. “It can’t be good for the soil.”
That night, I give Mom and Dad a powerful hug and kiss good night, holding them like I’ll never let them go. Then, after everyone’s asleep, I go into Grandma’s room. She lies in bed, as she has for a whole month now. Not moving, barely even breathing.
I give her a hug also, and then I climb out of the window into the rain.
It is raining so hard that in moments I am drenched from head to toe. I am cold and uncomfortable, but I’ll be all right.
Tonight I will run away. I don’t know where I will go; all I know is that I have to leave. Even now, I can hear the river churning in its bed, roaring with a powerful current ready to spill over its banks.
Tomorrow, after Uncle Barry’s family arrives, there will be a disaster. It will be all over the news. There will be special reports about how the river overflowed and flooded the whole valley. The reports will tell how dozens of homes were washed away, and how hundreds of people were killed.
I can’t change any of that, because Grandma already saw it. She saw my mom, my dad, my uncle, my aunt, and my cousins taken away by the flood. Then, finally, the waters took her as well. She saw it more than a month ago.
But on that day when we watched her in her bedroom, holding on to her bedpost, torn by waters that we could not see, there was one name she didn’t mention. She didn’t mention me. And if I wasn’t there, then at least one member of my family will have a future.
So tonight I take the high road out of town. And tomorrow I won’t watch the news.
GROWING PAINS
I have no clue how I got the idea for this one. And maybe it’s better that way. . . .
GROWING PAINS
The scream stabbed into Cody Fenchurch’s sleep, tearing a jagged hold in his dream. He had been dreaming he was tall—the tallest kid in school—towering over all the other kids who always teased him about his height. But great dreams like that never last, and Cody was dragged away from that happy fantasy, into the cold darkness of his room. He sat up, blinking in the moonlight, wondering who had screamed—and why.
Suddenly a second scream rattled his half-opened window, and Cody knew that both screams had come from next door. That’s where his best friend, Warren Burke, lived.
Cody stared through his large window and could see right into Warren’s room. He could see his friend sitting in bed and wailing. What was happening in there? It sounded like Warren was being torn to pieces.
Cody watched as the lights came on next door, and Warren’s parents raced into his room. By then, Warren was running around, waving and thrashing his arms at empty air.
Soon Cody realized that his own parents were awake, too. He heard them whispering down the hall, talking about what was going on at the neighbors’ house, and wondering what to do. Then his dad poked his head into Cody’s room. “You okay, sport?” he asked.
Cody assured his dad that he was, then he tried to go back to sleep. That’s when Warren screamed again, and this time Cody heard him say something, too.
“Don’t let them come back!” Warren shrieked. “Don’t let them take me again! It’s horrible! Horrible!”
Cody listened to Warren’s mad ravings, and then he listened to Mr. and Mrs. Burke trying to calm him down. “It’s only a dream,” they kept telling him over and over again.
But that didn’t seem to calm Warren down in the least. In fact, he continued to scream the rest of that awful, endless night, and Cody slept—or tried to sleep—with a pillow over his head.
In the morning, Warren was still screaming. And he was still screaming that next afternoon . . . when he was taken off to the hospital. As far as Cody knew, Warren never did stop screaming.
And that’s how Cody Fenchurch lost his best friend.
“But you have to tryto sleep,” Cody’s mom insisted. It had been three weeks since Warren Burke had been taken away, and once again, here Cody was, lying on his bed, his eyes wide open.
“You know what they say,” his mother offered. “You grow when you sleep.”
“I’m trying,” said Cody, rolling over restlessly. “I always try.”
His mother raised an eyebrow. “You’re thinking about Warren, aren’t you?”
“No,” Cody said flatly. It was a lie, of course. How could he not think about Warren? He thought about him every time he looked out his window and saw his friend’s empty room across the way. He thought about him every time he walked home from school—alone.
“Would you like to visit Warren?” Cody’s mom asked.
Cody sat up in bed. “You mean they let kids visit other kids in the asylum?”
She wrinkled her nose, as if the word “asylum” had a stench to it. “They don’t call those places asylums anymore, Cody,” she informed him. “They’re just hospitals—special hospitals.”
Cody thought about that and looked out the window toward Warren’s dark, empty room. For years he and Warren had talked to each other at night across the narrow pathway between their two houses, about all sorts of things—school, girls, sports—and growing up.
Growing up.
That had been a sore point with Cody. He and Warren had always been about the same height until fifth grade. But then Warren had started having what they called “growth spurts.” One summer he even grew two whole inches.
But Cody didn’t have any growth spurts. In fact, he hadn’t grown a fraction of an inch in two years. While all the other kids in school were sprouting long, clumsy arms and legs, Cody remained unchanged.
Now, in the middle of seventh grade, Cody was the shortest kid in class, and Warren, if he hadn’t been locked away somewhere, would have been the tallest. Cody remembered how ridiculous he used to feel walking home next to Warren. But Warren had never made fun of Cody’s size—not like the other kids. That’s why they had been able to stay best friends.
So now that his best friend went insane and was taken away, did Cody want to visit him? Did he reallywant to visit Warren after he had seen him scream for twelve straight hours?
Cody looked at his mom, who was standing at the edge of his bed. “Is it true that Warren’s hair turned white that night?” he blurted out.
His mother offered him a slim smile and said wistfully, “That happens sometimes.”
Harmony Home for Children did its best to be pleasant and inviting, but the disinfectant-scented linoleum couldn’t hide the smell of decay, and the music pumped into the air couldn’t hide the sounds of madness.
Warren was in a room at the end of a long hallway papered with balloons and teddy bears. It was the type of wallpaper that would have made Warren gag in his old, real life, Cody mused as he stepped into the barely furnished room with his mother. A nurse, who was required to stay during all visits, sat in the corner.
All that was in the room was a bed, a dresser with baby-proof latches, and Warren, crouched in his bed, staring at the wall across from him. He cowered as if there were a monster across the room, but there was nothing there but the same balloons and teddy bears that had invaded the hall.
The nurse smiled, as if it were her job to smile. “Stimulation is important for Warren,” she said. “He needs to know people still remember him—that his old life is still out there when he’s ready to go back to it.”
Cody cleared his throat and held on to his mother like a small child. “What’s up, Warren?” he asked.
But Warren didn’t turn to look at him. Instead he just hummed to himself.
Cody tentatively let go of the death grip he had on his mother’s arm and took a few steps closer.
Warren still didn’t look at him, but he did speak.
“They let you in here?” he asked. “Why did they let you in here?”
Warren’s voice sounded empty and far away. Cody noticed that his hair wasn’t quite white but ashen gray, standing on end, and hopelessly tangled. This was not the Warren Burke that Cody knew.
“Yeah, sure, they let me in,” Cody said, offering a lopsided smile. “You doin’ okay?”
Warren shook his head and backed farther into the corner of his bed as Cody approached. “Don’t let them get you!” he shrieked, his voice a wild warble. “Stay awake all night! Run when you see them coming! Don’t let them take you to that place.”
Cody could feel his own hair start to stand on end, but he had to ask. “Who? Who’s going to get me? And where am I supposed to keep them from taking me?”
Warren could only stare at Cody in horror.
The nurse, who didn’t seem pleased with the direction of the conversation, pulled open the curtains. “Maybe we could all take a look at the view,” she said. And then she turned to Warren. “Why don’t you tell your little friend all about the walks we’ve been taking around the lake, Warren? Tell him how they help your nerves.”
Cody looked out the window. The view might have been beautiful elsewhere, but not for the people here. The bars on the window could never let them forget where they were.
But Warren didn’t seem interested in the view anyway. He just kept staring over at the wall as if waiting for something to happen.
Suddenly Cody’s mother, who had been sitting quietly by the door, turned to the nurse and asked, “Is Warren getting any . . . better?”
“Oh, yes!” chimed the nurse, as if it were her job to chime.
“He’s growing stronger every day!”
“Growing!” said Warren, with a sneer in his voice. Then he snapped his eyes to Cody. “You’re lucky,” he said. “You’re lucky you’re so small. Growing as fast as I did was the worst thing that ever happened to me!”
“Now, Warren,” said the nurse in her practiced, soothing voice. “Remember, we have to think positive thoughts.” And she cast her eyes down to the little paper cup on the dresser to make sure he had taken his medication.
“I’ll never have a positive thought again,” said Warren. “Not after what I saw—not after what I felt.”
Cody couldn’t resist. “What did you feel?” he asked.
Warren’s eyes went wide and his lips stretched back in a grimace, as if he were feeling it all over again.
“Growing pains,” he hissed.
The nurse was beginning to act a little nervous. “Warren, why don’t you take your little friend out to the rec room,” she suggested. “You could play Ping-Pong, or a nice game of Scrabble.”
But Warren wasn’t interested in games. He reached out, grabbed Cody by the shirt, and pulled him close.
“We grow when we sleep. . . .” Warren whispered desperately in Cody’s ear. And then, out of nowhere, he began to scream the way he had that first night—emptying his lungs, then gasping for air, and emptying his lungs over and over again.
Cody turned and ran, bursting out the door and racing down the long hallway. He didn’t stop until he was outside, where Warren’s screams blended in with the screams of all the other children who had gone mad.
A few days later, with the memory of the hospital still fresh in his mind, Cody visited the auto shop where his father worked. It was a restless place, where exhausted mechanics created automotive wonders. There were engines torn apart into a thousand small greasy pieces that would somehow fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. There were whole cars gutted to make room for bigger engines that nature never intended. But strangest of all was the department his father managed, where they took big Cadillacs and made them even bigger.
As Cody stepped into the shop, his father was supervising one such procedure. A blue sedan, already stripped of its doors, was practically being sawed in half because the owner wanted five more feet of legroom. But today Cody hadn’t come to watch them build a limo. He had come to talk to his dad.
“Did you ever know anyone who . . . uh, snapped . . . the way Warren did?” Cody asked when he had finally gotten his father alone in his small office.
“No,” his father replied, but he had hesitated long enough for Cody to know that he was lying. His dad walked over and closed the door of his office, muffling the noise of the shop, then he looked Cody straight in the eyes.
“Don’t tell your mother I told you this,” he said, “or she’ll blame me for giving you nightmares.” He cleared his throat and began to pace. “I had this friend once, when I was about your age. Anyway, he went nuts, kind of the way Warren did. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it—everyone heard about it, and there were lots of rumors.”
He paused for a moment, then went on. “Some people said my friend got hit in the head too hard—his dad was a mean son of a gun. Others said he was never right in the head to begin with. Anyway, the story his parents gave was that he woke up screaming in the middle of the night, saying that the angels had come to take him. He kept on screaming, so they sent him away, and no one ever heard from him again.”
“What do you think happened to your friend that night, Dad?” Cody asked.
His father scratched his neck and shrugged. “Probably nothing,” he said. “And as for the things he said—well, it was just something made up by a mind that was about to go crazy . . . or already had.”
Cody squirmed and felt his skin begin to crawl. “Maybe what happened to your friend is what happened to Warren,” he suggested. “You see, after I ran out of Warren’s room at the hospital, I sat out there on the porch of that Harmony Home place where they’re keeping him, and I heard other kids screaming, too. I couldn’t tell for sure, but they all seemed to be screaming about something that came in the middle of the night to take them away. Angels . . . monsters . . . aliens . . . whatever.”
Cody’s Dad looked at him for a moment, and then laughed, slapping him on the back. “You sure have some imagination,” he said. “Not bad for a little guy.”
Cody gave him a cold stare. “I’m not so little.”
“Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” said his dad. “You’ll grow soon—I can feel it in my bones.”
They came at three in the morning.
It had been another sleepless night for Cody. He had counted about a thousand sheep and still hadn’t so much as drifted off. He was about to start counting a new, larger flock of sheep . . . when they came. It began as a breeze he felt on the tip of his nose—but he remembered that his window was closed. Cody snapped his eyes open and looked across to the opposite wall.
A line had appeared—a thin black line—and it ran from ceiling to floor, spreading like a fissure or some kind of hole in space. Then, hands started to reach out of the hole—dozens of hands. And then, suddenly, there were people in the room! Cody tried to scream, but one large, heavy hand, cold and antiseptic-smelling, covered his mouth. Then several others grabbed Cody’s arms and legs. He struggled wildly, but the hands were strong, and with little effort, they dragged him toward the hole, drawing him through the cold, dark fissure and into a bright white light.
All at once Cody felt himself being lifted onto something . . . then he was rolling, flat on his back, and suddenly he knew he was in . . . a hospital.
He was strapped down to a gurney and being rolled through clean white hallways. He kept his eyes fixed on a man w
ith a clipboard, running alongside him. The man was clean-cut, clean shaven, and had spotless white teeth.
“I’m Farnsworth, public relations,” said the man with a perfect smile. “It’s good to see you again, Cody. It’s been a while.”
“I’ve never seen you before!” wailed Cody, fighting to get free from the tight bonds around him.
“Of course you have,” said Farnsworth reassuringly. “You just don’t remember.”
“Take me back home!”
“In time, Cody.”
The four hospital workers who had pulled him out of bed and through the hole in space now wheeled him down the impossibly long hallway like pallbearers with a casket. Farnsworth jogged alongside, making sure that everything went smoothly.
“Are you . . . an angel?” asked Cody.
Farnsworth laughed. “Heavens, no,” he said. “None of us are. We’re just the medical staff.”
Farnsworth looked at his clipboard. “Things have been busy around here lately,” he said. “We’re backed up—almost a year behind—and you’re way overdue.”
“F-for what?” Cody stammered.
“A growth spurt, of course,” answered Farnsworth.
They pushed Cody through a set of double doors and into a huge room that seemed to be the size of a stadium.
“Welcome to the Growth Ward!” Farnsworth announced.
In the room were thousands of surgeons, huddled together over patients . . . all of whom were kids.
Cody couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was like his father’s auto shop, but instead of cars it was kids being taken apart and being put back together again—piece by piece. But what was most amazing of all was that these kids, in various stages of repair, were all alive!
And they were also awake.
Some screamed, others just groaned, and the ones who no longer had the strength to even groan just watched in terror as the “medical staff” dismantled them, then rebuilt them before their own horrified eyes.