He took Missy’s hand and pulled. She flew up from the couch, her hair streaming out behind her and her eyes wide. He caught her to keep her from crashing into him, lifted her, set her down, and stepped back. Her knees flexed when his hands left her and weight came back into her body. Then she stood, staring at him in amazement.
“You… I… Jesus!”
“What was it like?” Doctor Bob asked. He was sitting forward in his chair, eyes bright. “Tell me!”
“It was… well… I don’t think I can.”
“Try,” he urged.
“It was a little like being on a rollercoaster when it goes over the top of the first steep hill and starts down. My stomach went up…” She laughed shakily, still staring at Scott. “Everything went up!”
“I tried it with Bill,” Scott said, and nodded to where his cat was currently stretched out on the brick hearth. “He freaked out. Laddered scratches up my arm in his hurry to jump down, and Bill never scratches.”
“Anything you take hold of has no weight?” Deirdre said. “Is that really true?”
Scott thought about this. He had thought about it often, and sometimes it seemed to him that what was happening to him wasn’t a phenomenon but something like a germ, or a virus.
“Living things have no weight. To them, at least, but—”
“They have weight to you.”
“Yes.”
“But other things? Inanimate objects?”
“Once I pick them up… or wear them… no. No weight.” He shrugged.
“How can that be?” Myra asked. “How can that possibly be?” She looked at her husband. “Do you know?”
He shook his head.
“How did it start?” Deirdre asked. “What caused it?”
“No idea. I don’t even know when it started, because I wasn’t in the habit of weighing myself until the process was already under way.”
“In the kitchen you said it wasn’t safe.”
“I said it might not be. I don’t know for sure, but that sort of sudden weightlessness might screw up your heart… your blood-pressure… your brain function… who knows?”
“Astronauts are weightless,” Missy objected. “Or almost. I guess those circling the earth must still be subject to at least some gravitational pull. And the ones who walked on the moon, as well.”
“It isn’t just that, is it?” Deirdre said. “You’re afraid it might be contagious.”
Scott nodded. “The idea has crossed my mind.”
There was a moment of silence, while all of them tried to digest the indigestible. Then Missy said, “You have to go to a clinic! You have to be examined! Let the doctors who… who know about this sort of thing…”
She trailed off, recognizing the obvious: there were no doctors who knew about this sort of thing.
“They might be able to find a way to reverse it,” she said eventually. She turned to Ellis. “You’re a doctor. Tell him!”
“I have,” Doctor Bob said. “Many times. Scott refuses. At first I thought that was wrong of him—wrongheaded—but I’ve changed my mind. I doubt very much if this is something that can be scientifically investigated. It may stop on its own… even reverse itself… but I don’t think the best doctors in the world could understand it, let alone affect it in any way, positive or negative.”
“And I have no desire to spend the remainder of my weight-loss program in a hospital room or a government facility, being examined,” Scott said.
“Or as a public curiosity, I suppose,” Deirdre said. “I get that. Perfectly.”
Scott nodded. “So you’ll understand when I ask you to promise that what’s been said in this room has to stay in this room.”
“But what will happen to you?” Missy burst out. “What will happen to you when you have no weight left?”
“I don’t know.”
“How will you live? You can’t just… just…” She looked around wildly, as if hoping for someone to finish her thought. No one did. “You can’t just float along the ceiling!”
Scott, who had already thought of a life like that, only shrugged again.
Myra Ellis leaned forward, her hands so tightly clasped the knuckles were white. “Are you very frightened? I suppose you must be.”
“That’s the thing,” Scott said. “I’m not. I was at the very beginning, but now… I don’t know… it seems sort of okay.”
There were tears in Deirdre’s eyes, but she smiled. “I think I get that, too,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I believe you do.”
He thought that if any of them found it impossible to keep his secret, it would be Myra Ellis, with her church groups and committees. But she did keep it. All of them did. They became a kind of cabal, getting together once a week at Holy Frijole, where Deirdre always kept a table reserved for them, with a little placard on it that said Dr. Ellis Party. The place was always full, or nearly, and Deirdre said that after the new year, if things didn’t slow down, they would have to open earlier and institute a second sitting. Missy had indeed hired a sous chef to help her in the kitchen, and on Scott’s advice, she hired someone local—Milly Jacobs’s oldest daughter.
“She’s a little slow,” Missy said, “but she’s willing to learn, and by the time the summer people come back, she’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Then she blushed and looked down at her hands, realizing Scott might not be around when the summer people came back.
On December 10th, Deirdre McComb lit the big Christmas tree in the Castle Rock town square. Almost a thousand people turned out for the evening ceremony, which included the high school chorus singing seasonal songs. Mayor Coughlin, dressed as Santa Claus, arrived by helicopter.
There was applause when Deirdre mounted the podium, and a roar of approval when she proclaimed the thirty-foot spruce as “the best Christmas tree in the best town in New England.”
The lights came on, the neon angel at the top twirled and curtseyed, and the crowd sang along with the high schoolers: Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches. Scott was amused to see Trevor Yount singing and applauding along with everyone else.
On that day, Scott Carey weighed 114 pounds.
CHAPTER 6
The Incredible Lightness of Being
There were limits to what Scott had come to think of as “the weightless effect.” His clothes did not float up from his body. Chairs did not levitate when he sat in them, although if he carried one into the bathroom and stood on the scale with it, its weight didn’t register. If there were rules to what was going on, he didn’t understand them, or care to. His outlook remained optimistic, and he slept through the night. Those were the things he cared about.
He called Mike Badalamente on New Year’s Day, passed on the appropriate good wishes, and then said he was thinking about making a trip to California in a few weeks, to see his only surviving aunt. If he made the trip, would Mike take his cat?
“Well, I don’t know,” Mike said. “Maybe. Does he do his business in a litter box?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why me?”
“Because I believe every bookstore should have a resident cat, which you are currently lacking.”
“How long are you planning to be gone?”
“Don’t know. It sort of depends on how Aunt Harriet is doing.” There was no Aunt Harriet, of course, and he would have to have Doctor Bob or Myra take the cat to Mike’s. Deirdre and Missy both smelled of dog, and Scott could no longer even stroke his old friend; Bill ran away if he came too near.