Paranoia Read online

  He looked up.

  Daniels had her arms crossed. Ware was looking at him doubtfully, almost pityingly. Whatever reaction Ned had expected, this wasn’t it.

  Daniels spoke first. “If this is your idea of a joke, Ned, it isn’t funny.”

  Ned blinked.

  Ware took over, assuming his most avuncular pose.

  “Ned,” he said, in that patronizing tone that made Ned’s skin crawl, “you’ve been having a hard time lately. We all know the situation with your dad was hard, and I, for one, can’t imagine how lonely you must be. But if you want attention, Ned, this isn’t the way to get it.”

  Ned finally turned toward the table.

  The note was gone.

  “But it was right there! I swear to God, I left it here not ten seconds ago when I ran to get you—it was here, goddamn it!” Ned realized he was babbling, but he couldn’t stop. “You have to believe me! I’m telling the truth! Someone chased me down the hall, I felt his breath on the back of my neck, but I outran him, I thought I outran him but when I got back to the reading room I saw the paper and I knew, I knew he was telling the truth—”

  “Telling the truth about what, Ned?”

  Ware’s look was actually—what? Pitying? This pervert felt sorry for him?

  Ned felt the words shrivel in his throat, whatever he’d been about to say lost in a wash of realization. He can get to me any time. He means it. He can. He must have slipped in and taken the note back, right after Ned left. He honestly hadn’t been gone for more than a few seconds. A minute, at most. It had been right there. This had happened.

  He was not crazy.

  “It…it was right there.” He repeated. “I promise, it was right there.”

  “Ned, enough. We’re on to you now, so stop. It’s not acceptable to lie about something so serious.” Ware tried to lead him out of the reading room, but Ned twisted away. Burning hot shame flamed his cheeks. He’d made a fool of himself again. He was alone again.

  Ware laid a hand on his shoulder. “I think, Ned, that it’s time for you to speak with someone. A…professional someone. Someone who can help you work through these issues.”

  Ned just shook his head.

  “You know, I had something of a tough childhood, myself, and—”

  Ned glared. He resented the intrusion of this man’s hand on his shoulder. This man who knew nothing. Who, minutes before, had been staring at that cheap shit librarian’s tits. He presumed to lecture Ned on what Ned had and had not experienced?

  How the fuck did he know? Him, with his fucking tough childhood. What did that give him? Fucking magic powers?

  White-hot rage spiked through his temples. Everything hurt. He wanted to bash those simpering, faux-sympathetic expressions right off their lying, cheating, worthless faces. Oh, they pretended they cared, these adults, but all they cared about was conformity. Anyone who saw anything out of the ordinary, anything at all, was “abnormal” and “needed treatment.” The fact that they might be wrong never even occurred to any of them.

  The jokes, the casual dismissals, that look in the hallway—he’d had enough. He turned the force of his glare on the older man, throwing off the dead weight of the too-manicured hand as he did so. “Now listen to me, you fucking—”

  6.

  “Turd. I was calling him a fucking turd.”

  Dan Bigelow, Eisenhower’s supposed commander in chief, blinked. “Well now,” he said, “that’s quite something.” And then, “Ned, if you were willing to go that far, why not go all out and call him a yellow-bellied, lily-livered, cock-sucking excuse for a pair of pants?”

  He and Ned had had these meetings before.

  Dan Bigelow prided himself on being able to insult people without swearing. Or, at least, not very much. And, having held his current post for about ten years, he was an old hand at being a frumpy old fuddy duddy. Like most truly wholesome people, he felt slightly naughty when he said words like cock. Ned could just picture him preening in the mirror, repeating his affirmations or whatever the fuck he did when he got ready in the morning and telling himself that today would be the day when he really connected with those kids.

  Heck, he probably thought he was connecting with Ned right now.

  “Have you been storing that line up?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “Well it’s pretty lame, Dan.”

  “That’s Principal Bigelow to you,” the older man replied, without rancor.

  Principal Fucktard.

  He steepled his fingers. “Listen, Ned.” He was being sincere, now. Ned wanted to vomit. “You can’t just go around swearing at teachers.”

  Oh, really? I didn’t know that.

  “They don’t like it much.”

  Well paint me purple and call me a Jolly Rancher.

  “Besides, as you well know, you’re mere months from graduation.” He paused. “Ned, do you have any plans for college?” He checked the file in front of him, scanning the transcript it contained. “I mean, with your grades….” He let that thought die unfinished. Ned’s grades weren’t a selling point. Bigelow looked up. “But you’re so smart, Ned.”

  Ned said nothing.

  “A 2.0? Really? How could you have let this happen?”

  How could you? I thought you were supposed to be the educator, Dan.

  “I bet you just loved high school, Dan.”

  Bigelow paused to consider the question. “I try to remember my own high school experience as little and as rarely as possible.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Well, foolish idiot that I am, I thought I could help kids like me—like you.”

  “We have nothing in common.”

  “If you don’t want sympathy, then, Ned, do you perhaps want to offer some sort of explanation for your behavior? Say anything at all in your own defense? Or would you prefer to just sit here, arms crossed, glaring at me and doing your best to antagonize me?”

  Ned just glared. He knew Bigelow wouldn’t believe him, either.

  Mythomania is a distressing condition involving a fixed pattern of compulsive dishonesty with no obvious motivation. The affected person might even believe his lies to be the truth.

  “These are serious accusations, Ned. Do you understand that?”

  In certain extreme cases, the patient may even be compelled to create elaborate myths, in order to reconcile their lies with real world situations. Cases of patients inventing jobs, significant others, even entire families have been recorded. In one California case, the patient in question sent himself love letters over a period of seven months.

  He dropped his gaze to his lap.

  Bigelow leaned forward. “Believe it or not, Ned, everybody here is on your side.”

  No obvious motivation.

  Everybody blamed his dad. Or his mom. Or hormones. Ned must be crazy, Ned must be imagining things, because of his dad. It was okay to have no friends, and be the laughing stock of the entire town, because of his dad. These days, nobody had any expectations of him at all…all because of his dad. And before the thing with his dad, they’d blamed his age, his interests—Marilyn Manson had been clinically proven to subvert youth—and America’s moral decline, in general.

  Funny how nobody had ever asked what was really wrong.

  And they hadn’t believed him when he’d tried to tell them.

  Ned’s father had died ten days before that less-than-great man’s forty-fifth birthday.

  It had begun the previous March, just about six months ago now. Edward Wells, former Marine, had gone in for a full physical in February. As always, he’d emerged with a clean bill of health. Edward, who ran five miles every morning, rain or shine, and refused to touch refined sugar, prided himself on his health. But, by the middle of March, he’d developed a persistent runny nose—his first, he was pretty sure. Three weeks later, it still hadn’t gone away, and Edward returned to his doctor. That good and wise man gave him a prescription, and sent him on his way. Allergies, h
e’d said. Edward waited to feel better.

  But he didn’t. In fact, as the weeks wore on, he kept feeling worse. Finally, at the beginning of June, as his son began the last days of his junior year, Edward Wells checked himself into the hospital. When Ned came home, his mother was waiting for him in the living room.

  Your father has cancer. The doctors say it’s very bad, but we’re going to fight it. In fact, it turned out that Edward Wells had been given a death sentence. Despite all the efforts of modern medicine, he’d just withered away. The doctors had no explanation; they kept telling Camilla we don’t understand why it’s progressing this fast. They didn’t tell Ned anything at all. Ignored him entirely, in fact, left him standing in the corner of the room like a cigar store Indian.

  Edward Wells found out he had cancer on June sixth; he died three weeks before Ned started his senior year of high school. When Ned returned to school, right on time despite having been offered a leave of absence, it was to an almost unbearable chorus of advice, commentary and, of course, sorrow of the mostly ambulance-chasing variety. All the fun of a tragedy, none of the actual emotional impact. Too bad that the one thing he needed was the one thing nobody seemed to feel like offering: actual interest.

  Within two weeks, Ned was pretty sure he’d heard it all.

  I know just how you feel; my cat died.

  Damn, I wish my dad would die. If he did, I’d totally throw a party. He’s such a stupid, fat bastard.

  Now, sitting in Bigelow’s office, a sterile space that smelled vaguely of vomit, Ned felt nothing at all. He hadn’t even really had a chance to feel anything, yet; if he did, the fact was, he didn’t know exactly what he would feel. The space behind his ribs was just numb.

  7.

  “Well, I think people are concerned about you, Ned.”

  I am Dr. Baker’s “concerned” face.

  “Yeah, they’re so concerned they won’t listen to me. Nobody believes a word I say.” And, after his experiences over the past couple of days, Ned had absolutely no intention of trying again. He’d thought the thing with the note was bad, but, oh boy, he’d learned his lesson.

  “Do you want to talk about your father?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why? What am I supposed to say? That he’s gone, and I miss him?”

  “Say whatever you want.”

  “Or maybe I’m supposed to say I’m angry at the cancer for eating him alive, or I’m angry at this mean, cruel world, because little boys aren’t supposed to grow up alone with no role models, or I’m angry at the Celtics for always punking out in the last quarter?”

  I am Dr. Baker’s “confused” face.

  “Well, Ned, are you angry about those things?”

  “Of course not! It’s not his fault he’s dead, and it’s not mine, either. There’s a lot of people a lot worse off in this country than I am right now. I’ve got everything I need, basically.”

  “It sounds like you have a lot of anger, Ned.”

  “But that’s just what I’m saying—I don’t! I’m sad, sure, but I’m not angry.”

  “You have a lot of anger at your father for dying, Ned. In fact, you’re so angry that you can’t even admit how much you’re hurting inside. You’re tossing it off like, ‘oh, that happens all the time.’”

  “I absolutely am not! I’m saying I miss him, and I’m sad he’s dead, but at the same time, it’s not like I’m the worst off person in the world—there are people right now having their hands cut off, because they happened to be starving, and dying of AIDS, in the wrong village in Sudan at the wrong time. I recognize my place in the world, is all.”

  Ned sat back in his chair. This was going absolutely nowhere. Why the fuck did he bother?

  “You don’t have many male role models, do you.” It wasn’t a question. “Why don’t you join the soccer team? You’d make lots of new friends that way. I think it’s a great idea.”

  Dr. Baker smiled encouragingly.

  I am Dr. Baker’s misguided attempt at charity.

  He could’ve told Baker what was going on, and Baker might even have listened. For a few minutes, at least. Until he stopped listening to Ned and started listening for indicators of whatever diagnosis he’d started formulating. But Ned didn’t want to go too hard on the guy, even so. He was well meaning, or enough. Like most adults, he’d quite clearly forgotten what it was like to be a teenager. They remembered everything as being so easy; no actual teenager’s explanation seemed adequate. It just wasn’t possible that trivial issues like grades, or friends, or prom, could cause such pain. So, instead, they turned to their books, and their seminars, and each other for the real explanation.

  First, he’d tried to tell his mother. Mom, someone tried to kill me today on the way home from school.

  Oh, that’s nice, dear, is that for one of your stories? A little too dramatic, don’t you think?

  He couldn’t make her understand that this, that anything, was real. No, mom—

  Camilla put her magazine down. Now she meant business. I told you not to call me that; it ages me. I also wish you’d stop telling people how old you are; I’m sure nobody thinks I’m old enough to have a teenager. Camilla fanned herself with a Clay Aiken commemorative fan. She was a grossly fat woman with tiny hands who chose to blame her size on heredity rather than on the two or three Entenmann’s coffee cakes she plowed through each day. There was nothing in her pantry that couldn’t survive a nuclear apocalypse. Ned couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her eat a vegetable.

  Can’t you call me mummy, like all the other children?

  Mom, I’m 18 years old—

  Somehow, their conversations always ended up getting sidetracked. Ned was never quite sure how it happened. One minute he was trying to convey something really important—like that somebody had tried to kill him—and the next, they were bickering over what to call her, or something bad he’d done when he was six, or she was telling him about Clay Aiken.

  Like that guy, Sisyphus, from the Greek myths: he’d been sentenced to an eternity of pushing a huge rock up a steep hill. Just when he’d almost gotten it to the top, it’d roll back down. It didn’t matter how he labored, it’d always roll back down. Life was like that with Camilla. It always had been. Only now there wasn’t his father around for her to be afraid of, so she was letting it all hang out. Literally and figuratively.

  Camilla hadn’t bathed much before; she didn’t at all, now. She’d spent what money was in his and his sister’s college funds on what she described as “having fun.” Fun for her, she meant. A positive martyr, she’d been denied “having fun” her whole life by a husband who demanded irrational things like clean underpants and children who demanded attention. Attention they never got, but whatever. Camilla had suffered.

  At some point, she’d found Clay Aiken and started throwing money at him, writing poetry in her copious free time about how he was as fulsome and sexy as a radish. When she wasn’t working her way through puzzle books, that was. Or drinking cheap red wine.

  Or, you know, mouthwash.

  And then, of course, he’d tried to tell his friends. They hadn’t believed him, either. Finally, he’d tried to tell his sister. Compared to what’d happened with William and Brad, how much worse could she be?

  Famous last words, right?

  Ned, brother mine, I think your imagination has finally gotten the better of you.

  Eve, I’m telling the truth.

  I hope not. Because if you are—if you think you are, I mean—you’ve finally gone and lost it. I mean, I can understand your desire to escape; the world pretty much sucks. And mom pretty much sucks. I get that, I do. But Ned, stuff like this just doesn’t happen in real life—and, whether you like it or not, this is real life, not one of your Edgar Allen Poe stories.

  Well, at least she’d blamed it on Poe this time and not Lovecraft.

  Finally, he’d tried to tell Peter. His neighbor up the hill, the single and possibly homosexua
l man who was the only one who ever talked to him. And that infrequently.

  Peter, as usual, had been philosophical. Evil only exists, because we think it does. Like the Shadow—who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The truth is, nobody really does. Oh, we think we do, but our hearts, those most sacred spaces, are the true Dark Continent.

  He’d offered Ned a scotch; Ned had declined.

  I’m telling the truth, Peter, but not a single person believes me! Ned slapped his hands down on his thighs. You can’t even imagine how frustrating that is. And, equally frustrating, Ned found that, for the first time in his life, he didn’t have close to the right words.

  It’s not that I don’t believe you, Ned. I do. Believe me, I do. It’s just that, well, there’s no proof—and you can’t go forward with no proof. You don’t even have a suspect…do you?

  Peter had watched Ned closely, gauging his response.

  Ned knew that his friend was concerned for him. No, of course not…but stuff like what happened with the car, I can’t just wish that away, can I? And the fact is, I saw the note—even if nobody else did. I know it was there. If I start questioning whether this stuff happened, just because I’m the only one who saw it, well then, I have to question my own perceptions—my own sanity. For the first time, Ned had put voice to his most pressing concern.

  What if I really am crazy?

  But Peter had only sipped his scotch.

  Dr. Baker favored Ned with what was meant to be an encouraging smile. Mercifully, after about a month, Ned’s involuntary visits to his school’s resident psychologist were over.

  “And Ned, it’s really very important to eat breakfast. Eat a good breakfast every morning, and make sure you get a good night’s sleep. Also, you might want to try exercise—Hippocrates called walking ‘our greatest medicine’, you know!”

  Dr. Baker smiled again, his spectacles flashing, and Ned was dismissed.