“Maybe it’s something simple,” Betty said. “Like a brain tumor.”
“Listen to you: ‘Something simple like a brain tumor’! I say we send him back to Human Services. I didn’t sign up to be a foster parent to a lunatic!”
Every day I palmed the pill and slipped it into my pocket. Then, after dinner, I flushed it down the toilet. I thought about that a lot—if I was crazy. If everyone around you thinks you’re crazy, does that make you crazy, even though you might not be?
I thought about proving to Dr. Benderhall I wasn’t making it up by putting him on the phone with Abigail Smith, the field operative with OIPEP, who had given me her number and told me to call anytime.
And I did call her about six months ago, after I got home from England. She asked how school was going and I told her not very good, and she said working for OIPEP was more like a calling than a job. I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that.
“Normally we won’t consider anyone under twenty,” she told me, which made me wonder why she gave me her card in the first place. “And, of course, the training is quite rigorous.”
I guessed she meant I was too young and too out of shape.
“So what should I do?” I asked.
“Alfred, I know it’s difficult for you now, trying to return to a normal life after what you’ve experienced. I told you we were interested in your development and we are. Very much so.” Then she told me to stay in school, work on my grades, and maybe they’d be in touch after I graduated.
I never called back after that and she didn’t contact me. I guessed my jet-setting, world-saving days were over, and in a way I was glad and not glad at the same time.
I was wrong about that too.
2
On the way home from school, I saw the bald baby-faced man from the video store again, this time through the back window of the school bus. I always sat in the last row, because if I sat anywhere else I inevitably got popped in the back of the head with a paper wad or spitball. One time somebody even threw their dirty gym shorts at me. I bet that Kropping earned them at least four points.
Mr. Baby-Face was driving a silver Lexus ES, so clean and polished, you could see the sky and clouds and trees reflected in the hood.
After I got off the bus, I waited to see what Mr. Baby-Face would do. He just kept driving; he didn’t even glance in my direction.
You’re losing it, Kropp, I told myself. Maybe Dr. Benderhall was right. Maybe I was delusional.
I walked two blocks up Broadway to the Tuttles’ house. Neither of them had a job: they were professional foster parents. At any given time there were six or seven kids stuffed into their little old house.
My current roomie was a skinny kid named Kenny, with a face that looked like it had been shoved into a vise and squeezed. His eyes were very close together and sort of crossed, so he always looked angry or confused or both. I didn’t know his background but, like most of the Tuttles’ foster kids, it couldn’t have been very pleasant.
Kenny was a mutterer. He made little noises under his breath and repeated the same words over and over. When I was around, the word was “Kropp,” and he muttered it as he followed me from room to room: “Kropp, Kropp, Kropp, Alfred Kropp, Kropp, Kropp, Kropp.”
It got worse at night. “Kropp, Kropp, Alfred Kropp, it’s dark, it’s very dark, oh, and I’m thirsty, I’m so thirsty, Kropp, Alfred Kropp, Kropp, Kropp, Kropp.” Most nights he was positive someone evil lurked right outside the window, and he badgered me until I got out of bed to che
ck the latch.
But his jabbering never bothered me much. It was soft and steady, like raindrops against a windowpane, and sometimes it helped me go to sleep.
It bothered some of the other kids in the house, though, and they were pretty rough on Kenny until I took them aside and told them if they didn’t stop teasing him, I was going to chop off their heads and stuff their headless corpses into the crawlspace. I wasn’t exactly a knight, but I was descended from one, and defending the weak is pretty high on the list of knightly virtues.
I hesitated before going inside. I could hear the TV blaring at full volume through the thin walls, probably one of the soap operas Betty Tuttle was hooked on. Horace was usually sprawled in his La-Z-Boy, shouting over the TV at his wife, “Why do you waste your time with these silly soap operas! Bunch of kooks and nuts getting kidnapped or killed or falling in love with their own brother!” While he watched the whole episode, Betty scrambled around making after-school snacks and folding laundry and picking up toys.
But Horace wasn’t in the La-Z-Boy when I came in. He was prancing around the living room wearing an apron and wielding a feather duster, his round face shining with sweat, while Betty worked the corners with a broom. She saw me at the door, gave a little cry, and turned off the TV.
“Dear,” she whispered to Horace, who had stopped prancing and was standing very still, staring at me. “Alfred is home.”
“I know he’s home,” he hissed back. “These two things over my nose, they’re called ‘eyes,’ Betty.”
Then Horace Tuttle came toward me, his short arms flung wide, and I stood there in the entryway, stunned, as he threw those little arms around me. Dust flew from the feathers and I sneezed.
“How ya doin’, Al?” he said into my chest. “Good Lord of mercy, you’re getting bigger and stronger every day!”
He pulled back, grinning. The smile on his face would give new meaning to the word “creepy.”