'Like you'd ever get to find out,' Deke said. His face was redder now, the color of the sun on the lake. He was breathing hard.
'I'm curious,' Vicky said.
Freeman wondered how far she was willing to go. It was one thing to run intellectual circles around Deke, but if you started hitting below the belt, he might turn dangerous.
'Show her, man,' said Army Jacket.
'Unzip,' said another of the goons. A couple of others took up the chant.
Deke looked over at the counselors again, this time in desperation. Suddenly the bell rang, and the shouts from the playground turned into disappointed groans and then silence.
Deke tugged at his waistband. 'You got lucky, baby,' he said to Vicky.
She rolled her eyes and said nothing.
'Let's get out of here before she pukes or something,' Deke said. The goons followed their leader off the rocks and toward the main building. A couple of the goons glanced back at Vicky with looks of veiled appraisal.
'Well-played,' Freeman said.
'You could have been more clever.'
'I ran out of big words.'
'Maybe I'll loan you a few, next time. My name's Vicky.'
'I know. Did I mention I'm perceptive?'
'Perceptive enough to know how I figured out your name?'
'Let me guess. You read my mind.'
Vicky stood and touched him on the forehead. 'Nah. That's one place I don't think I want to go again.'
She skipped down the slope of the boulder and headed across the grounds. Freeman was going to have to change his opinion of her: as slight and skinny as she was, she definitely wasn't one of the Weak.
TEN
Nah, can't be him.
Starlene was on the ground floor, headed for the offices in the central entrance, her arms full of reports. Bondurant had given her copies of Freeman's case history, and since the new boy would be in Group with her, she planned to stay one step ahead of him. She had been mulling something Bondurant had said, about the boy 'knowing too much,' when she'd seen the strange man in the gown again.
The man's shoulders slumped, his posture one of weary defeat. He gave a slow turn of his head and Starlene looked into the saddest, most empty eyes she had ever seen. The man nodded at her, then shuffled around the corner toward the west wing.
'Hey, wait!' Starlene hurried after him, her heels loud on the tiled floor. She'd lost him before, but now he had nowhere to disappear. She would drag the man down to Bondurant's office and then make Randy see she hadn't imagined the incident at the lake.
They were entering the section where Dr. Kracowski conducted his therapy sessions. Kracowski insisted on silence. Or, rather, Bondurant had, on the doctor's orders. Starlene had never met the doctor herself, and he seemed as elusive and mythical as the old man she was chasing. She reached the corner and turned anxious and breathless. The hall before her was empty.
No. Not again. He was REAL.
Something glistened on the dreary tiles. Starlene knelt and wiped with her finger. Water. Behind her stretched a trail of bare, wet footprints.
'Hey,' she called again, uncertain.
A door opened. A tall, dark-haired man came out, his clipboard loose in his fingers. He wore a white lab coat, the pockets frayed. His cheeks were blue with stubble. He looked as if he'd been napping in his office. 'Lose something?' he asked.
'Did somebody just come by?'
'Somebody?'
'A man. Dressed in a gown, hunched over, no shoes.'
The tall man smiled. 'My dear, are you new here?'
Dear? He was talking like somebody from a 1950s sitcom. 'I've been working here for eleven weeks.'
'That explains it.'
'What explains what?'
'Look-Out Larry. Our resident specter.'
'Specter? You mean-?'
'Do you always ask so many questions?'
'Only when I think I've lost my mind.'
'We don't lose minds around here, we find them. Look-Out Larry is a ghost, I assume. I've never seen him myself, since I don't believe in ghosts.'
'This water is real,' Starlene said though most of the footprints had now evaporated.
'I see no water,' the man said.
'Oh, you don't believe in water, either?'
The man smiled. 'If I could make something disappear just by no longer believing in it, then I'm afraid God would have died ages ago. Excuse my manners. I'm Dr. Richard Kracowski.'
He said his name with the air of one who knew his reputation had preceded him.
'Hello, Doctor. Glad to finally meet you. I'm Starlene Rogers, counselor.'
'Ah, yes, Bondurant warned me about you.'
' 'Warned?' Sheesh. Tell me about Look-Out Larry, because that makes twice I've seen him today, and I've never had any reason to doubt my eyes before. And I don't believe in ghosts, either. But I do believe in God.'
'Oh, so you've seen God?' Kracowski looked toward the ceiling. 'Actually, I have this theory that Look-Out Larry is God.'
'Sir, I'd love to debate religion with you sometime, but right now I'd rather figure out if I'm going crazy or not.'
'Miss Rogers, the word 'crazy' is not in the lexicon anymore. Hallucinations are one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia, or, in certain diagnoses with which I don't agree, delusional disorders.'
The footprints had evaporated completely now, and Starlene was no longer sure they had even been there. 'So I'm schizophrenic because I thought I saw somebody who doesn't exist?' 'Either that or you're a religious visionary.'
'But you said yourself that others have seen him. He even has a name.'
The doctor leaned forward, conspiratorially. 'Hate to tell you, but all the other people who claimed to have seen Look-Out Larry were patients'
Starlene looked both ways down the hall. 'So more than one person has the same hallucination? I would think a man of science would take that as corroborating evidence.'
Kracowski held up the clipboard, showing her the charts and graphs fastened to it. 'Evidence is something that can be measured, quantified, proven. Surely you studied research methods in college, even if you ended up being a counselor.'
Starlene didn't like the sarcastic bite that the doctor put on that last word. It was bad enough to get strange stares from the members of her church and neighborhood, but to have to endure this from someone in the same profession 'Maybe it was a trick of the light,' she said. 'These halls are dark. I mean, if it was a ghost, and I don't believe in ghosts, then I wouldn't have seen him. Right?'
'You're sounding cured already.'
'Do me a favor?'
The doctor smiled again, his eyes half-closed. 'For you, anything.'
'Don't mention this to Mr. Bondurant? I wouldn't want him to think his hiring me was a mistake.'
'Oh, I'm sure Bondurant knew exactly what he was doing. For the good of the children, right?'
