Imaginary Friend (ARC) Page 16

  But this time it was different.

  Bad Cat didn’t say those lines. Instead, as Christopher watched, Bad Cat kept looking at the camera. Finally, Bad Cat stopped and looked at the screen.

  “Oh…hi, Christopher. Enjoying the show?”

  Christopher looked around the empty house. His mother was still asleep upstairs. He was all alone.

  “Don’t worry about your mom. It’s just us. Don’t be afraid. How ya doing, buddy?” Bad Cat asked him, all friendly.

  “How do you know my name?” Christopher finally whispered.

  “Are you kidding? You’re my number one fan. How could I not know your name? I heard that my TV show is your favorite ever. Gosh, that’s so nice. Thank you!” Bad Cat bellowed.

  “Shhh. You’ll wake my mom up.”

  “Now, that’s just a pile of whiskers. Your mom talked to the sheriff on the phone for a couple of hours last night after you fell asleep. Gosh, he’s super nice. Much better than Jerry, don’t you think?”

  The hair stood up on Christopher’s neck.

  “How do you know about Jerry?”

  “I know everything about you, buddy. I know Jerry is looking for your mother. Gosh, he would hurt her if he ever found her. So, we can’t let that happen, can we?”

  “No,” Christopher said.

  “Gosh, you’re brave. Your mother raised you well. She must be so proud of you. So, don’t be afraid. I promise we’ll keep your mother safe. No fuss. No muss.”

  “How?” Christopher said.

  Bad Cat looked left and right. Trying to see out of the TV like looking around a blind corner.

  “Oh, gosh. Christopher, I’m afraid we’re almost out of time. I’ll tell you how to keep your mother safe, but I need to ask you one question first, okay?”

  Christopher nodded. Bad Cat narrowed his eyes.

  “How did you find the skeleton, buddy?”

  Christopher’s heart began to pound.

  “What?” he said.

  “Somebody showed you where the skeleton was, right? Who’s helping you? Oh, gosh, we need to know.”

  “Nobody,” Christopher lied.

  “I don’t think that’s altogether true. I think somebody told you about that old skeleton. I need to know who told you, buddy. Oh, gosh, I do. Because it’s getting bad in here. She’s so mad right now. My gosh…is she ever mad.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry. We’re not allowed to tell you that, buddy, or we’ll get in trouble. She keeps giving people boo-boos to find out who’s helping you. All that screaming really hurts my ears. So, it would sure make things a lot nicer in here if you’d just tell us how you found the skeleton. You can tell old Bad Cat. It’ll be our little secret.”

  “Nobody told me. I was digging for treasure.”

  “Gee whiz, that is fucking disappointing, buddy. That’s the same lie you told to the sheriff and your mom. You don’t want to be like Pinocchio, do you? Lies made his nose grow. Do you want to know what your lies will do?”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t tell me who is helping you, something bad will happen to your mother.”

  Christopher’s throat closed like the time he tried to swallow a marble and almost choked. His face turned red.

  “What will happen to her?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you, but if you turn up the TV, I can show you. Would you mind turning up the volume on the TV?”

  Christopher held the remote and turned the volume up.

  “Gosh, no, Christopher. Not on the remote. On the actual TV. Or else it doesn’t work.”

  Christopher hesitated, but he had to know what would happen to his mother. He slowly walked to the television.

  “That’s it, buddy. It’s okay. I won’t bite.”

  Christopher reached out his hand to the volume button. Bad Cat’s eyes glowed. He licked his lips.

  “Gosh, we can’t wait to meet you, buddy. She’s going to show you everything.”

  Bad Cat started to reach his paw across the screen. Closer to the volume button. Closer to Christopher.

  “All you have to do is touch the screen, and we’ll save your mother together. Cross my heart. Hope to dieeeeee.”

  He reached out his hand as Bad Cat reached out his paw. They were centimeters away. Their fingers almost touching. The headache began to go away. And Christopher could feel the Zzzz.

  “Christopher!” his mother yelled. “What did I tell you about sitting so close to the TV?”

  Christopher opened his eyes and turned around. It was his mother. Dressed in her bathrobe. She looked confused. His nose was literally an inch from the television.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said.

  “All right. Well, finish breakfast at the table like a normal person. I didn’t raise an ape.”

  Christopher nodded and turned back to the TV. Bad Cat was no longer staring at him. He was being chased by the butler.

  “Come back here, Gato!”

  “That’s Mr. Gato to you, Raoul,” Bad Cat said. Then, he ran into the sewer, bringing the delicious fish with him.

  Christopher sat at the kitchen table and ate his cereal while his mom made herself scrambled eggs. He looked at her, terrified as to what would happen to her. He would have said something, but now he knew something was watching him.

  Either that, or he was completely insane.

  Christopher wanted to believe that all of this was just a figment—not a Fig Newton—of his imagination. Especially Bad Cat. He hoped that he was just a crazy person like his father. And the blinding headache was just the lightning that used to make “Daddy dance funny.” That’s what Mom used to call Dad’s seizures. Dad took pills for them, and sometimes the pills would make it so he wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks. Mom took care of him, but she had to work late at the restaurant.

  That’s when he died in the bathtub.

  Late that night, after his mother turned off Saturday Night Live, Christopher snuck out of the house and went to the Mission Street Woods. He ignored the breath that played hide-and-seek with the wind and sprinted to the tree.

  “Are you there?” he asked the white plastic bag.

  There was no response.

  “Please answer me. I’m afraid,” he said. “What was that? Who is she? What is Bad Cat going to do to my mom?”

  In that moment, Christopher stepped outside himself and looked back like a spectator. What he saw was a little boy on his knees begging a white plastic bag for answers to things that no one could possibly explain. If given the choice of having this be real or crazy, Christopher would pick crazy. Because even though his mom would be sad that she had a crazy son like her crazy late husband, at least nothing bad would happen to her.

  “Am I insane?” he asked the white plastic bag.

  Nothing.

  “Please, tell me I’m insane.”

  Silence.

  Christopher sat there all night, begging the white plastic bag for an answer that would not come. The nice man seemed to have disappeared. Christopher didn’t know where he went. Maybe he was in hiding. Maybe he was running from Bad Cat. Or maybe he was just a white plastic bag.

  Whatever it was, Christopher was alone.

  As dawn streaked the sky, he ran back to his bed, lay under the covers, and stared at the picture of his father framed in silver. The more he looked at his father smiling near the Christmas tree, the more the question echoed in his mind like an old record stuck in a groove. Am I insane? Am I insane? Am I insane? Twenty minutes before his mother’s alarm clock woke them up for church, Christopher finally closed his eyes. And just before he fell asleep, he thought he could hear the vaguest whisper. It could have been a thought. It could have been a voice. It could have been neither. All it said was…

  Finish the tree house and you’ll know.

  Chapter 31

  Are you nuts? My dad almost took the HBO out of my room,” Special Ed whispered.

  Christopher followed Special Ed through the church parking lo
t as their parents shouted their greetings.

  “You don’t understand. We have to finish it,” Christopher said.

  “Do you have HBO money?” Special Ed asked.

  “No.”

  “Then finish it yourself.”

  They went into church, and after being grounded all Thanksgiving weekend (and the week after that for good measure), the boys sat through an especially long mass. Father Tom talked about how Jesus loves the refugees in the Middle East. But all Christopher could notice were the people staring at him. And their whispers.

  “That’s the little boy who found the skeleton.”

  “Those were the boys on the news.”

  “They were in the paper.”

  “He won the lottery a couple of months ago.”

  Christopher’s head ached with their voices. Every minute he spent away from the tree house only made his head worse. At one point, Father Tom switched from English to Latin. The language swirled around in Christopher’s head. And “diem” was “day.” And the words made sense. But they brought with them a terrible wave of pain.

  O Deus Ego Amo Te

  O God I Love You, Christopher knew.

  When church ended, Special Ed’s mother went out to the parking lot and lit a cigarette. She took a deep breath in and exhaled a cloud.

  “Jesus Christ, that was a long mass,” she said. “Doesn’t Father Tom know we all have Christmas shopping to do?”

  She said it without a hint of irony, which Christopher’s mother admitted made her love her Betty all the more. Then, after Betty cleaned the bake sale out of snickerdoodles, she offered to take everyone out for pizza to celebrate the good news.

  “What good news?” Christopher’s mother asked.

  “Eddie was promoted out of the dumb class!” she said.

  “Hey!” Special Ed sulked.

  “Sorry, honey. But it’s true. You were in the dumb class,” she said, patting his hair. “But that Mrs. Henderson is a genius because you’re reading at a fourth-grade level now. We’re so proud. Right, Big Eddie?”

  “So proud. So proud,” Special Ed’s father said, watching the Steelers highlights on his phone.

  Christopher saw his mother lock the information about Special Ed away in her mind. Then, the two families joined Matt and Mike and their two moms, who had just finished doing what Betty referred to as “whatever it is that Lutherans do” at their church off Route 19.

  They may have had their religious differences, but hey…same God. Same pizza.

  As the adults plowed through a pitcher of Iron City Beer, the boys played video games.

  “I just need help with the windows and roof,” Christopher offered. “I’ll do the rest myself.”

  “Sorry, Chris. Our moms grounded us,” Matt said.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, wanting their dessert privileges restored.

  But Christopher wouldn’t let it go. The headache wouldn’t let him. After his mother went to sleep that night, he tried to carry the windows up the ladder by himself. But they were too heavy. So, Christopher stashed them away and tried to fit the roof, but it was impossible with only one person. He had reached the limit of what one kid could do. The minute he stopped building, his headache returned with a vengeance.

  And the nice man was nowhere to be seen.

  The next day in school, Christopher found his friends in homeroom.

  “The roof is a four-man job. I can’t finish alone,” he begged.

  “Dude, we told you. We’re grounded,” Mike said, exasperated.

  “Yeah, Chris. Leave us alone. You’re being crazy,” Special Ed said. “And you look terrible. Get some sleep.”

  Christopher looked over at Matt, the one person he knew he could count on. Matt quietly looked down at his desk.

  “Matt?” he said.

  “Leave my brother alone,” Mike said.

  “Let him answer for himself,” Christopher said to Mike.

  Mike had twenty pounds on him, but Christopher didn’t care. The two boys squared off. Matt didn’t want a fight to break out.

  “Sit down, guys. We’re already in trouble,” Matt said.

  Christopher turned to Matt. He looked him dead in the eye.

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  Matt was silent. He looked up at his brother.

  “No, Chris. I’m sorry.”

  The headache forced the words out of his mouth before he even thought them.

  “Fuck you then,” Christopher said.

  The minute he said it, he felt ashamed. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore. By the end of the day, Christopher’s head was screaming. It didn’t matter that he snuck his mother’s Excedrin into school and ate them all day like candy. It didn’t even matter that the final period of the day was canceled so all the kids could go outside to the playground for the special event. Christopher’s head would not stop hurting.

  Not even for Balloon Derby.

  He looked around the playground at all the kids in their winter coats and hats. Each of them held a different-colored balloon with a little card attached to the end of a string. Mrs. Henderson told them all to write their names on the card with the school’s contact information. Whoever’s balloon traveled the farthest got the prize. The kids would find out the last day of school before Christmas break. He suddenly remembered Mrs. Keizer sneaking up on him in the hospital, screaming, “Death is coming. Death is here. We’ll die on Christmas Day!”

  Don’t cry.

  The pain in his head was so terrible. He was never going to finish the tree house. So, either Bad Cat was going to hurt his mother, or he was completely insane.

  Don’t cry.

  Christopher tried to shake off the pain and just write his name. But the first tear hit the card and smudged the pencil.

  Stop crying, you baby.

  But he couldn’t. He just hid himself behind the slide, put his throbbing head in his hands, and began to sob. After a moment, he felt a shadow cut across his eyelids. He looked up and saw Matt put a hand on his shoulder.

  “What’s wrong, Chris?”

  Christopher couldn’t speak. He just kept crying. Mike and Special Ed ran up next.

  “What happened?” Mike asked. “Was it Brady? I’ll kill him.”

  Christopher shook his head. No, it wasn’t Brady. Special Ed looked around. A little paranoid.

  “Well, stand up. You don’t want Brady to see you crying, right?”

  The boys helped him to his feet. Then, he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket.

  “I’m sorry,” Christopher said. “I didn’t mean to swear at you. I didn’t mean to get you guys in trouble.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Matt said.

  “Yeah. Our moms aren’t so mad anymore,” Mike added.

  “Yeah, my mom thinks I’m a genius now,” Special Ed exclaimed. “Plus, we got to spend a whole night camping out by ourselves. Win win.”

  “So, will you guys help me finish it?”

  “Why is it so important to you?” Matt asked.

  “Because it’s our place. Because we’re the Avengers,” Christopher said, knowing they would never believe the truth.

  The blacktop got quiet. The boys thought a minute.

  “Okay, Chris,” Special Ed said. “We’ll help you.”

  “Of course,” Matt agreed. “But we have to figure out how. We’re still grounded.”

  “What if we skipped school?” Mike proposed.

  “I can’t skip,” Special Ed said, quickly embracing his new academic success. “If I get an A on a test this year, my dad said he’d get me Showtime in my room. Showtime has a lot of naked ladies.”

  “What if we all pretend to be sick?” Matt offered.

  “Too suspicious,” Special Ed said.

  The more the boys thought, the more they realized that there was no plan that worked. Christopher was the only one who lived close enough to the woods to sneak away at night. Their moms were with them every day after school and on
weekends, and they would never allow another sleepover.

  “Boys and girls, get ready with your balloons!” Mrs. Henderson called out.

  “Come on, guys,” Special Ed said. “We’ve got a Balloon Derby to win.”

  The boys held their balloons for Christopher. He tied his balloon to theirs. The four looked over at Brady Collins and Jenny Hertzog, whose popular friends had so many balloons tied together, it looked like the movie Up! But Christopher and the Avengers didn’t care. They were best friends again.

  “One. Two. Three! Go!” Mrs. Henderson cheered.

  All of the children let their balloons go. The white sky was filled with little dots of color like a painting. The sky was beautiful and vast and quiet as a prayer. Christopher looked up at the floating cloud. White like the plastic bag. The words came to him in an instant.

  A snow day.

  The headache stopped with the answer. Christopher hadn’t realized how much pain he was in until it was gone.

  “What if we had a snow day, guys?” Christopher asked.

  “That would work!” Special Ed said. “Too bad you don’t control the weather, Chris.”

  That night, after his mother fell asleep, Christopher marched out to the woods. He walked right up to the white plastic bag.

  “I don’t know if you’re real or not. But if you exist, you have to help me finish the tree house. And if you don’t exist, then I will stop building it. I don’t care if my head explodes. Because I am not doing this alone anymore. I need proof. So, talk to me. Please, talk to me.”

  In the silence that followed, he stared at the white plastic bag, floating silently on the low-hanging branch. Christopher’s voice rose.

  “This is your last chance. I need a snow day to finish the tree house. So, you better make it snow, or I swear I will never believe in you again.”

  Chapter 32

  A blizzard.

  God dammit, the sheriff thought. The last thing I need now is a blizzard.

  The weatherman predicted two inches of snow. He was off by a foot. The schools had already been closed for the day. Mill Grove Elementary. Both middle schools. The high school. The snow was so bad that even the Mt. Lebanon School District closed down as opposed to saddling its youth with one of their legendary “three-hour delays (no morning kindergarten).”