One last chance.
“Ellen, please keep my secret. You don’t know how important it is.”
“Oh, I know you’re scared, honey, but don’t you see? What about all of the people this can help? You don’t want to be selfish, do you? This is so important. Please trust me in this, Andy, and you’ll see.
“Ellen, I don’t want to be made into a freak.”
“Oh, Andy, you’re no freak. You’re special.”
“I’ve been special before.”
“You’re not even six years old, Andy. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’ll see to that.”
Andy nodded his head in discouragement. He saw that Ellen was halfway through her sandwich. “Ellen, do you want an apple juice?”
“That would hit the spot. This peanut butter has me just a little stuck up.”
She giggled and held up her right hand while she held onto the sandwich with the thumb, index and middle fingers of her left hand, holding onto the steering wheel with the ring finger and little finger. Andy handed her a carton of juice, the pointed straw still stuck to the carton’s side. Ellen raised her knees until the tops of her thighs pressed against the steering wheel, keeping it from turning. Still holding the steering wheel and sandwich with one hand, she pulled the straw loose with her teeth and began maneuvering the carton so that she could push the straw into the carton. As she did so, Andy reached around her head with both hands and ground a handful of animal cracker crumbs into each of her eyes.
She screamed, dropped everything, and grabbed for her eyes as the car veered into the oncoming lane of traffic. As it did so, Andy fell to the floor of the car, pulled the blankets and pillow down on top of himself, and began screaming. He didn’t know if he’d remember to scream after the collision. On the floor, under the blankets and pillows, they might miss him. He didn’t think he’d want to burn.
He heard a squeal of air brakes, the blast of an air horn, then everything went dark as he felt his body slam into the back of the front seat.
Andy suffered only a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder and was home the next day. The truck Ellen’s car plowed into suffered a bent grill and crumpled left fender. The truck driver, a long time white line veteran named Donald Washington, was not injured at all. In fact it was he who was responsible for dragging Andy and Ellen’s dead body out of the vehicle before the leaking gasoline caught and the car went up in flames. He and his cargo of plumbing fixtures continued on their way two and a half hours later. Ellen Draper was killed as she took a header through the windshield before she was thrown back into her seat. It was mentioned on the news that Mrs. Draper had lost control of her car while she was trying to drive and eat at the same time. It was also mentioned that she was speeding and hadn’t had her seatbelt buckled.
For the next two days Andy kept to his crib and stared at the nightlight on the dresser. It’s face would fade into other faces; Ellen, the faces who had made him suffer, the faces of those he had killed, imaginary faces of those who he might become if only he were allowed to be a little boy.
In another two days he was up. For breakfast his mother made him blueberry pancakes. Later, when his father asked him if he wanted to talk to another counselor, he said no. He desperately wanted to talk to someone, but those he could talk to would either believe him or they would not believe him. If they did not believe him they would be useless. If they did believe him, well, that would be a kind of death in itself. However he would manage, he decided, he would have to manage it on his own.
A month later, on the thirteenth day of November, things in the house were somehow different. At breakfast his parents seemed uneasy. That made him uneasy. He wanted to ask if something was wrong, but he was afraid of the answer. He didn’t eat much breakfast. He tried to talk to his mother after his father drove off to work, but she was baking something and almost ordered him to his room.
What was it?
For an hour or two he tried to kid himself out of his feelings, but then he noticed strange things going on outside. At nine-thirty in the morning Andy noticed a state police cruiser pulling up in front of the house. He hid behind the curtain, his back against the wall, his mind racing to arrive at answers to questions yet unasked, his eyes searching frantically for a route of escape as hushed conversations took place downstairs. By ten o’clock he glanced again from his room’s window, and there was another state police cruiser and a city police cruiser parked behind the first.
Across the street was parked a brown and yellow cruiser from the county sheriff’s department, and behind it was parked a plain gray no frills Plymouth. Behind the wheel of the Plymouth was retired Detective Sergeant John Draper. He opened the car’s door, stood, and leaned one elbow on the roof of the car and the other on the top of the still open door. The man was looking at the house; at Andy’s window; at Andy.
Andy continued to stand in the window and look at the man who was looking at him. John Draper closed the door of his Plymouth and began walking toward the door of the house. He lifted a hand, waved at Andy, and the boy waved back. He watched until the man walked out of view and the doorbell rang.
There seemed to be something in the back of Andy’s throat, choking him.
Fear.
Things were so much simpler when he could feel nothing. Deadly barren, but simple. No joy, but no fear. No happiness, no love, but no fear.
Andy went to his closet, opened the door, and seated himself on the floor in the back where it was quiet, dark, and smelled of mothballs. He wrapped his arms around his knees and closed his eyes.
What could they do? What could they really do?
They couldn’t prove anything. Even if they did believe he was Billy Stark, what could they do? He was a little boy. A child. They couldn’t put him in prison, or even in a reformatory. Maybe they could lock him up in a psycho ward. But it wouldn’t be anything like that for Andy Rain. No hospitals, no prisons. He was just a little kid. If he believed that and acted like that, no one could believe anything else. He couldn’t talk like he talked to Ellen. Almost six years old. That’s what he needed to remember. Almost six.
Maybe they were just there to follow up on Ellen Draper’s death. Something didn’t fit. There was always something that didn’t fit. The cracker crumbs. An easy explanation for that: They got mashed, and when the accident happened, they flew everywhere—
“Andy?” called his mommy’s voice. “Andy, please come down to the living room.”
Cracker crumbs. But how did Ellen wind up with so many of them in her eyes? The crackers were in the back seat. The impact might have thrown some of them into the front seat, but they had to be going in the other direction to get in Ellen’s eyes. Even if they could have gotten into her eyes, why not her mouth or nose? There was no explanation for the cracker crumbs. There hadn’t been time to wipe his hands in the car. Did the police see if he had crumbs on his palms? There must have been some residue.
His throat closed and he held his breath as he rubbed his hands together to remove the imaginary evidence; the blood pounded in his temples. What was it? What could it be? What else could it be?
He stood, entered the nursery, his eyes searching frantically for a weapon, a disguise, a route of escape, a place to hide forever.
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then again and again. Panic would kill him, if he let it. He looked again at the nursery. On the top of the dresser. There was a disguise, something with which he could hide himself. He reached up with both hands, picked up the little brown teddy bear, and held it by one arm as he left the room and walked to the head of the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, waiting for him, were his mommy and daddy and a state police lieutenant, a man.