“Here’s lunch,” the attendant said, summoning up a cheeriness she knew sounded false, but not really worrying about it, since she wasn’t at all certain the woman even heard her.
Stroke victim, was what Dr. Moreland called her.
Just plain old senile, the woman thought.
Still, she had a job to do. She set the tray on the rolling table, then pushed the table around so it swung over the chair in which the woman sat. Finally she eased the patient around so she was no longer staring blankly out the window, and shoved an extra pillow behind her back.
Lifting the cover off the single dish on the luncheon tray, the attendant plunged a spoon into the soft grayish mush, then brought it close to the patient’s lips.
“Come on, Mrs. Tucker,” she crooned. “We have to eat, don’t we? We don’t want to starve to death.”
The spoon touched Reba Tucker’s lips, and, as always, they parted just enough for the attendant to slide the pablum into her mouth.
The woman waited a moment, until she felt Mrs. Tucker’s tongue wrap itself around the spoon, removing the food from it so that it could slip down her throat. Then she scooped up a second serving …
Slowly, concentrating the small part of her mind that still functioned on the task at hand, Reba Tucker managed to swallow the gruel.
Sometimes, as she did now, she wished she could bring herself to speak. Indeed, when she was alone, she sometimes practiced it, moving her tongue slowly, struggling to form the sounds that had once been so natural to her.
She knew the attendant didn’t think she could talk, didn’t even think she could hear.
And that was fine with Reba.
Let them all think she couldn’t hear, and couldn’t talk.
She still didn’t know who they were, or even where she was.
All she remembered was waking up and finding herself here.
Except she didn’t know where “here” was or what had happened to her.
Panic had set in, and she’d screamed and screamed, but mercifully, she didn’t know how long the screaming had lasted, for she no longer had any more sense of time than of place.
There was darkness, and there was light.
And there were the nightmares.
Perhaps, she thought in that tiny corner of her mind that still seemed to work now and then, she should stop eating and let herself starve to death.
She wasn’t sure, because sometimes, in those fleeting moments when she could think at all, she thought she must already have died and gone to Hell.
But there wasn’t any point to dying again, and besides, if she wasn’t dead already, she knew they wouldn’t let her die.
If they let her die, they couldn’t give her the nightmares anymore.
For Reba Tucker, that was what life had become.
Waiting for the nightmares.
Chapter 9
“Will you please hurry?” Gina Alvarez pleaded, though she knew her words would fall on deaf ears. As far as Jed Arnold was concerned, it was definitely not cool to hurry on the way to a class. The whole idea, in fact, was to look as though you didn’t care whether you got there or not. Now she looked up at Jed’s face to see his incredible blue eyes twinkling happily at her. She knew he was testing her, knew he was waiting to see if she’d wait for him or hurry off by herself so she wouldn’t be late to class. She wrestled with herself, part of her wanting to leave him standing there lounging against his locker, idly passing time with his friends. She didn’t even like his friends—they seemed to her like a bunch of jerks who didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives.
Gina knew perfectly well what she was going to do with her own. She was going to graduate with honors from Borrego High, then win a full scholarship to Vassar. Her mother had told her she was wasting her time, that girls from Borrego didn’t go to Vassar—they didn’t go to college at all, especially when their father was a drunk who had abandoned them, and their mother had raised them by working as a waitress in a rundown café. But Gina didn’t care what other girls did She just didn’t want to wind up like her mother, getting married right away, having a couple of kids, and wondering what happened when her husband suddenly took off and she was left to raise her children on whatever she could earn waiting tables.
So Gina went her own way, ignoring the flickering television while she studied every night, and still finding time to be a cheerleader for the football team, serve on the student council, look after her little sister, and maintain her relationship with Jed Arnold.
But sometimes, like now, she wondered why she bothered with Jed. Partly, of course, it was his dark good looks—there wasn’t any question that Jed was the handsomest boy in town. But it was something else too. She’d always had a feeling that there was more to Jed than what he showed to the world, that his tough-guy image was only that—an image. In fact, sometimes when they were alone together, hiking out by the canyon, he changed. He’d sprawl on his back, looking up at the clouds, and show her things he saw in them—fantastic cities in the air, whole circuses of animals and acrobats. Once he’d even told her stories he’d heard from his Indian grandfather, about the gods who lived on the mesas and in the canyon itself, looking after the Kokatí. “It means ‘the People,’ ” he’d explained. But his voice had taken on an almost scornful edge as he continued. “That’s what they call themselves, as if nobody else in the world is real. Grandpa says the gods are all waiting right now, but someday soon something is going to happen, and all the land is going to be given back to the Kokatí.” She’d tried to get him to explain what he meant, but he’d only shrugged. “How should I know? You know how the Kokatí are—they never tell everything, and they don’t trust white people.”
“But you’re one of them,” Gina had protested, and immediately a dark curtain had dropped behind Jed’s eyes.
“No, I’m not,” he’d protested. “I’m not anything, remember? I’m not white, and I’m not Kokatí.”
Ever since that day she’d realized there was a part of Jed Arnold that she barely knew. And so, in spite of his sometimes infuriating manner, she still went out with him, and tried to find a way to uncover what was really going on inside him.
As the final bell for the first class rang, breaking her reverie, she made up her mind. “Maybe you don’t care if you’re late, but I do,” she said. She turned away from Jed and started down the hall.
“We’re already late,” she heard him say as he caught up to her. “But so what? The teacher’s Jude Sheffield, and you know how crazy she is about me. I could walk in thirty minutes late and she wouldn’t say a word.” Sweeping Gina an exaggerated bow, he held the door to the classroom open and gestured her inside. The rest of the class, already in their seats, giggled appreciatively.
Judith, standing at the blackboard outlining the study program for the semester, turned to see what had caused the ripple of laughter in the room Gina Alvarez, her face red with embarrassment, avoided Judith’s eyes as she slid quickly into an empty seat in the back row. But Jed Arnold, his startlingly blue eyes fixed on her with the same cocksure expression she had seen all too often in East Los Angeles, was strolling nonchalantly toward a desk at the front.
“I’m terribly sorry, Jed,” Judith said evenly. “I’m afraid I don’t accept tardiness. If I can be here on time, so can you.”
Jed stopped in his tracks, then grinned crookedly at the teacher. “Hey, what’s the big deal? A couple of lousy minutes?”
Judith nodded. “They’re my lousy minutes, Jed, and I don’t like to waste them. If you’ll come back during the next break, I’ll give you the homework assignment.”
Jed’s mouth dropped open. Recovering himself, he asked: “What do you mean, come back? I’m not going anywhere.” He made another move toward the empty desk.
Judith’s expression hardened. “If you mean you’re not going to that desk, you’re right,” she agreed. “I don’t really care where you go or what you do, but please don’t expect to come wandering in here a
ny time the mood strikes you.”
A tense silence fell over the room, but Judith kept her eyes firmly fixed on Jed. He still stood in the aisle next to the wall, but she already knew she’d won. If he intended to defy her, he’d have taken the seat and challenged her to remove him. But he didn’t. Instead, his brows furrowed into an uncertain frown, which he quickly deepened into a deliberate scowl.
But the scowl didn’t come quickly enough to hide from Judith the hurt that had come into his eyes. Ducking his head, he turned and strode out of the room.
For a split second Judith felt an urge to go after him, to bring him back into the room, but she put the urge aside, determined that her friendship with Jed was not going to interfere with the discipline of her classroom. As if nothing at all had happened, she turned back to the blackboard. But the silence she’d commanded lingered on, and as the chalk continued to scratch across the board, she heard none of the whispering that had preceded her confrontation with Jed.
She smiled to herself. Now that she had their attention, she could begin the process of teaching them. She reminded herself to find a way of thanking Jed for the opportunity he’d offered her. Unless she’d hurt him too badly. Unless he now felt that she too had betrayed him.
As the bell signaling lunch period rang and Judith watched her last morning class stream out of the room, she smiled to herself—obviously the word was getting around already that Miss Sheffield was not to be messed with. She’d sensed it at the start of the third period, when she’d spotted two potential troublemakers ambling in at precisely the moment the bell rang. They were Randy Sparks and Jeff Hankins—friends of Jed’s. So as they grinned insolently at her, she called them by name and told them to sit by the door. “That way there’ll be less disruption when I throw you out,” she’d explained with deliberate blandness. The rest of the class had snickered appreciatively, and both Randy and Jeff had reddened. But for the rest of the hour they’d sat quietly watching her, as if trying to figure her out. Since then there’d been no trouble at all.
Her door opened and a face appeared. “You have a date for lunch, or may I escort you to the lounge myself?” Judith’s brow rose questioningly, and the man stepped inside. About the same age as Judith, he could have been handsome with his sandy hair and soft gray eyes, except for a tired cast to his face that Judith had seen before. Here, she thought immediately, is a man who shouldn’t be teaching. Already, before he was thirty, he seemed to be worn out. “I’m Elliott Halvorson,” he said, thrusting a hand toward her. “I thought you might like to meet some of your colleagues.”
Judith took the proffered hand, then withdrew it when Halvorson seemed to hold it a little too long. You mean you thought you might make a pass at the new teacher, she thought to herself, more amused than offended. “Fine,” she said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. She followed Halvorson out of the room, then turned right, toward the cafeteria. Halvorson reached out and took her arm. “Not that way,” he said. “That direction leads only to the zoo.”
“The zoo?” Judith repeated.
“That’s what we call the cafeteria,” Halvorson replied, grinning sourly. “All of us steer pretty clear of it. If you want to enjoy your lunch, the teachers’ lounge is the only place.”
Judith shook her head. “You go ahead,” she said. “I think for at least today I’d like to see what’s going on in the cafeteria.”
Halvorson stared at her for a moment as if he thought she’d lost her marbles, but then he shrugged. “This,” he said, “is going to be worth seeing.” He fell in beside her, then paused when they were outside the cafeteria itself. “Tell you what,” he offered. “If you last out the hour, I’ll pay for your lunch.”
Judith smiled. “You’re on,” she said. “And you might as well pay for it while we go through the line. It’ll make the bookkeeping easier.” She pulled open the door and was immediately assaulted by the blare of rock music, which almost drowned out the babble of voices as some of the kids tried to talk over the roar of heavy metal.
She glanced around and immediately saw the source of the din. At a table in the far corner, Jed Arnold sat with Randy Sparks, Jeff Hankins, Gina Alvarez, and a couple of other kids whom Judith didn’t recognize. As the ghetto-blaster on their table continued to fill the room with the roar of heavy metal, Jed leaned back in his chair and, using a knife as a catapult, flicked a pat of butter up to the ceiling, where it stuck, one more yellow blob in the midst of an already thick layer of previous shots. She watched in silence as Randy Sparks repeatedly tried to match Jed’s achievement, raining butter down onto the surrounding tables. She began threading her way through the tables until she stood over Randy.
Reaching down, she pressed a button on the ghetto-blaster, cutting off the tape. In the sudden silence Randy looked up at her angrily.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“Turning off the music,” Judith replied. “In case you hadn’t noticed, some of the people in here are trying to talk to each other.”
Randy pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, spinning around to tower over Judith. But even as he turned, she expertly grasped his wrist, then twisted his arm back and up into a tight hammerlock. Randy winced with pain.
“Don’t ever try to hit me,” she told him so quietly only he could hear her words. “I threw Jed out of my class this morning, and I can throw you out of the cafeteria right now. So just sit down and be quiet and let everyone enjoy his lunch. All right?”
Randy, his arm hurting too much for him to speak, managed to nod, and Judith released him, easing him back down into his chair as her eyes shifted to Jed. “Good trick with the butter,” she observed, then gazed up at the ceiling. “If we say two and a half cents a pat, how much do you think all that’s worth up there? And don’t forget the cost of paint, at six dollars a gallon.” All the kids at the table were silent now, glancing nervously at each other.
Judith, knowing she had their full attention, went on talking, keeping her tone almost conversational. “Of course, to get a good match, we’ll have to paint the whole ceiling, and I think you can figure about two hundred square feet per gallon. Figure the price of the painter at $12.75 an hour, for, let’s say, three and a quarter hours.” She smiled at the six kids at the table who were in one or another of her classes. “Any of you who come within ten dollars of the total value of the damage and the repairs gets an automatic A on tomorrow morning’s quiz, and I’ll be back in five minutes to answer questions.” Then, leaving all of the kids at the table except Jed staring at her in dumbfounded silence, she headed toward the cafeteria line, where Elliott Halvorson was waiting for her.
Jed, she noticed, was looking almost smug, as if she’d just done exactly what he’d expected her to do.
Elliott Halvorson, on the other hand, was anything but smug. “Are you out of your mind?” he asked as they started through the line. “Randy Sparks could sue the school for what you just did.”
Judith nodded in agreement. “But he won’t,” she said. “In order for him to do that, he’s going to have to own up to exactly what happened. And what’s going to happen to his image when he has to admit to everyone in town that a teacher—a woman teacher, no less—took him?”
“But everybody already saw it,” Halvorson pointed out.
“Ah, but that’s different. If he tells them all he let me twist his arm on purpose because he didn’t want to hurt me, he saves face.” She loaded up her tray, then, after Halvorson had paid for both of them, started back toward the table.
Randy Sparks refused to meet her eyes, and Jed was no longer at the table at all. For a moment Judith wondered if perhaps she’d been wrong and he’d simply taken off, but then she spotted him.
He was walking along the far wall, carefully pacing off the dimensions of the cafeteria. Saying nothing, Judith sat down at the table and began eating, at the same time beginning her count of the butter pats that were stuck to the ceiling above her. Finally, as she began to wor
k out the formula that would solve the problem she’d set for the kids, she reached over and turned the tape player back on, but with the volume turned so low that only the students at that table could hear it.
Five minutes before the end of the hour, she began collecting the napkins on which the kids had scribbled their solutions to the problem.
At last she looked up, not surprised to find all six of the kids at the table watching her warily. “Okay,” she said. “It’s not bad at all. It’s good enough so everyone except Jed gets an A tomorrow.” Her eyes met Jed’s. “You want to tell me why your price is so high?”
Jed shrugged. “You forgot something,” he said. “You didn’t figure in how much it was going to cost for someone to clean up the mess before the painting could start. Paint won’t stick to grease.”
Judith was silent for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Touché,” she said, as she marked Jed’s napkin with an A+, then handed it back to him.
As she left the cafeteria a few minutes later with a very quiet Elliott Halvorson at her side, she could feel not only Jed’s eyes, but the eyes of all the students, staring speculatively at her.
Greg Moreland glanced up at the clock, surprised to see that the day was half over Already this morning he’d been out to The Cottonwoods, where he’d examined Reba Tucker once more. Her condition had deteriorated—she’d been through yet another series of tiny strokes the night before—but still she hung on. Her vital signs were almost as strong as ever, and so far her heart and lungs seemed totally unaffected by what was happening to her brain.
Her brain, Greg knew, was being slowly destroyed, and he couldn’t help but wonder how much longer Reba would be able to hang on.
One more massive stroke—the kind she’d had the day she collapsed in her classroom—would do it. Indeed, Greg wasn’t sure that such a thing wouldn’t be a blessing for the woman now.
Her eyes, as she’d stared up at him that morning, had been terrified, and her mouth had worked almost as if she was trying to speak. But speech had long since become impossible for her; all she was capable of now was a stream of incoherent screams that occasionally erupted from her, screams generated by pain or by terror.