'Changes with the weather.'
'So what are you?' Isaac asked. 'Manic D? Plain D? Schizo? Socio?'
'Manic D with a cherry on top. At least that's what my case file says. What's got you?'
'Demons. Ugly little Jewish demons with hooks for fingers. Can't shake the bastards loose.' Isaac shuddered as if one of the invisible demons had just landed on his back.
'You should see a doctor about that.'
'Nah. They tell me that all I have to do is accept Jesus as my own personal savior and I'll be cured. I'd just as soon put up with the demons. A lot lower maintenance.'
They were quiet for a moment. Deke's snoring cut through the still air, halted as he rolled over, then picked up again, the rhythm crippled now. One of the guys in a nearby bunk broke wind in his sleep, and Freeman stifled a giggle.
'On nights we have pinto beans, it gets really rough in here,' Isaac said.
'There's more than one way to gas a Jew.'
They shared a hushed snicker, then Isaac said, 'That was a pretty clever trick, what you did with the book today. I've been here for two years, and that's the first time anybody's stood up to Deke.'
'I didn't stand up to him so much as just confuse him a little.'
'That's easy to do, I admit. But you could have got your face broken. Keep an eye on him. He'll be out to show the others you're not so hot.'
'It burns me up that he picks on the little kids. What's the deal with Dipes?'
'It's not a good thing when you're old enough to change your own diapers. Somebody or something must have screwed him up bad. He won't talk about it.'
'Join the club,' Freeman said. 'We're all people of difference, exceptional children. The troubled. The little bumblefucks that society likes to keep out of sight and out of mind.'
The door to the Blue Room opened again, spilling a shaft of light from the hallway. A house parent entered the room, following his flashlight beam between the rows of cots. Isaac slid under the bed beside Freeman's, then flipped onto his own cot. Isaac was under the blankets by the time the light settled on him.
'Were you sleepwalking again, Isaac?' said the house parent, Phil.
Isaac sat up and rubbed at his eyes. 'They've got pointy fingers,' he murmured.
Freeman had to chew the hem of his blanket to keep from laughing out loud.
'Well, try to keep quiet,' Phil said. He was thin, with styled hair and cologne that was so strong Freeman could smell it over the lingering odor of flatulence. The man's voice was girlish and whiny. 'The other boys need their sleep.'
'Sure thing, Phil,' Isaac said rolling his face into the pillow. He said something else which was lost in the bedding.
The light played across the room, resting for a moment on Freeman. He squeezed his eyes tight and concentrated on breathing evenly. The light moved on, and Freeman listened until the footsteps receded and the door closed.
'Nar-nar-narcolepsy,' Isaac said out loud imitating a snore.
'Fake sleep disorder,' Freeman said. 'Good one. If you hadn't already taken it, I might have added it to my repertoire.'
'Yeah, I can pretend to fall asleep whenever some shrink is droning on about my learned helplessness. But if you're manic depressive, you got all the outs you need. Nothing like swinging both ways.'
'And then there are the in-between days. Or even hours. I'm a rapid cycler. Up and down faster than a damned elevator.'
'Shut the hell up,' came a brusque voice from the end of the room.
Freeman flipped his middle finger into the semidark-ness and settled into the covers. At least he'd made an ally. One thing he'd learned in group homes, you needed a few allies if you were going to pull through, as long as they didn't become baggage. Even a loner couldn't always make it alone, and sometimes a sidekick took a bullet for you. True in the movies, maybe true in the outside world. Maybe someday Freeman would find out.
But first there was a night to live through, and the dreams that sleep brought.
Dreams.
Which one would come next?
Dad as a giant whale, with Freeman in a tiny boat on a calm sea? In that one, a storm always blew up as Dad surfaced, the sky became a red hell of bloody lightning, the wind screamed like a thousand dying gulls, the waves rose up in monstrous hands of foam. And the whale opened its mouth, a mouth that swelled until it became a great black chasm and beyond that an everlasting night No, not that one. Freeman hoped he would never have that one again. He'd rather Dad be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, with nothing under his black cloak but bones and disease. Dad with fluorescent yellow eyes glowing inside the hood. Dad with long claws clutching a gleaming scythe, come to harvest Freeman, who ran through the knee-high meadow until even the grass became his enemy, pulling at him, sucking him down No. Not that.
Think of something else.
He thought of Mom, but every time he thought of Mom, he saw only one thing: the bathtub with the red streaks on the shower curtain and NO SECOND CHANCES. THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE.
He mentally shuffled through all of the possible distractions. A mental film fest, Pacino and De Niro facing off in Heat. Do-it-yourself cartoons, the ones you make in your head, where the clowns are jolly and the painted smiles have no teeth behind them. Imaginary music, where the notes hang fat in the air and you can bob them around like balloons.
In his manic state, he could conduct entire symphonies, break down each piece in his mental orchestra, build to throbbing crescendos of air and color. Which was good, because when he was manic, he couldn't sleep. And when he slid down the brain tunnel into depression, he couldn't sleep, either.
Right now, in his in-between state, all he had to do was avoid the nightmares and he could shut his brain off for a while. His medication made his head itch, and the blanket was rough against his skin. They'd put him on some new stuff, Depakote, it was better than the lithium in some ways, but also brought a whole new group of side effects. Though none of the side effects were worse than the ones caused by Dad's experiments.
Like the triptrapping.
It was bad enough when Dad put him in the closet and made him read the cards, kept them hidden while Freeman guessed stars or triangles or wavy lines. Except Freeman didn't have to guess, he could see the cards as if he were looking through Dad's eyes.
And that scary first time when the words 'Billy Goat Gruff' popped into his brain for no reason at all, with Dad sitting across from him in the garage that he'd turned into a workroom.
'Goat Gruff?' Freeman had said aloud. 'Like in the story?'
'Sure. What we're doing, Freeman, is like when the goats triptrap over the troll's bridge. I'm on one end of the bridge and you're on the other, and you go trip-trap, trip-trap, trip-trap straight across and don't let the ugly old troll know what you're thinking. Because you know what will happen if he hears you?'
Freeman shook his head, and Dad jumped up, yanked Freeman by the hair, and pressed his mouth against Freeman's ear. His words spat like hot bullets. 'Because… he… will… GOBBLE… your…fucking BRAIN?'
Then he let go of Freeman's hair, patted him on the head, and said, 'This is our little secret, okay, Trooper? I've got some people breathing down my neck that would make the troll look like Little Red Riding Hood. You've got to work with me on this one. It's going to hurt a little, but I promise it will be okay in the end.'
Dad had gotten more bizarre from then on, zapping him with electricity, telling Freeman the pain was for his own good because it made his mind more pure and open. Dad stuck him with needles and applied the tip of the blowtorch and locked him away in the closet for longer and longer periods of time, and he must have played games on Mom because she didn't do anything to stop the experiments.
In the closet, with Dad's weird machines humming, Freeman would triptrap into Dad's mind and scream and scream and scream because Dad's thoughts weren't nice at all. And Dad was trying to put thoughts back into Freeman's head, things he didn't understand and that made no sense. That was how he learned about the Trust and why Dad was so scared.
But then Mom was dead and all those strange people from the Trust showed up, took Dad's equipment away, and hauled Dad down to the police station. And Freeman went into protective custody and entered the foster
