Still, just being Paul’s closest relatives guaranteed us all a place on, you guessed it, Nightline, and anyone else who could get a hold of us. At least after a couple of weeks the interest in us faded, revived only a little by the lawsuit. (I still remember a letter that described Mom and Dad as “tawdry money-grubbers trying to cash in on a genuine tragedy.” How can people write such things about someone they don’t even know?)
I did have to stay home from school for a while. I even had to stay off the street. People would recognize me from TV and think that that entitled them to come up and talk to me. Usually, they gave me the “poor dear child” routine, but a couple of people ran away or made hand signs of protection against me. One woman started screaming at me. Apparently she thought I had summoned the Malignant Ones to attack Paul and now would do the same thing to her. That same day, a woman in the supermarket recognized my mother and actually pronounced the Standard Formula against her.
But even that kind of craziness died down and we went back more or less to our normal lives. I was a big deal in school for a while. I noticed that a lot of the kids, and the teachers too, couldn’t seem to decide whether they wanted to hang around with me or get as far away from me as possible. Some parents tried to ban me from the school as a danger to their own kids. Nothing personal, they assured everyone, but what would happen if Lisa Black Dust 7 sent her snakes at me in the school cafeteria? But when everything stayed safe over a couple of months, and I stopped showing up on their evening news, everyone lost interest. I could go back to being a kid again.
The lawsuit just seemed to get stuck in technicalities. Ms Birkett assured me it was moving along, but it looked to me more like a legal video game between her and the government. Outside the suit, the scandal bogged down in debates about special prosecutors versus congressional hearings. A lot of lawyers and constitutional experts worked themselves into a frenzy arguing about whether the Bill of Rights covered “non-human entities” and whether Ms Birkett, or Congress, could legally compel Bright Beings to testify. That’s where it looked like things would stay for a long time.
And then I started seeing Paul.
The first time was on a billboard near my school. It was lunchtime and I’d gone for a walk after eating by myself. I’d been doing a lot of stuff by myself. It wasn’t that people were shunning me. They’d mostly gotten over that. I just felt, I don’t know, kind of strange around my friends. Anyway, after lunch I went for a walk to a candy store. I had to pass this cutesy billboard which shows a guy in a sports car waving his hand. They’ve got it rigged so the metal hand actually moves back and forth. Now, I’ve seen this thing hundreds of times. I never look at it any more. But that day I looked up as I came towards it—and the man in the car was Paul.
He didn’t look like Paul, he was Paul. The waving hand even wore Paul’s initiation ring from college. “Paul!” I shouted.
A car jerked to a stop. A man about sixty leaned his head out. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t think I know you.”
I stared at him. “Huh?” I said, or something equally clear.
He sighed. “You called me. I’m Paul, right?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t mean you. I meant him.” I pointed up at the billboard. The man next to me shook his head, muttered something and drove off. I just stood there, squinting up at the billboard. Because when I’d looked again, the face had returned to its normal bland nothing, with the hand empty of rings or marks of any kind.
I went back to school and somehow got through the afternoon. On the way home, I wondered if I should tell my folks, or Ms Birkett. I don’t think I made an actual decision not to tell them. I just didn’t.
Just as I didn’t think about it. Or tried not to. For a week, whenever it came into my mind, I did my best to push it away. Somewhere in my head, I was wondering why the monitor teams hadn’t picked up anything and if their precautions would turn out as useless with me as they did with Paul. Then one night I was lying in bed, watching the little television my folks had given me to replace the one I smashed throwing Alison’s picture at it. I should have been sleeping, with school the next day, but I felt so awake. So I watched some soap about a bunch of pilgrims on their way to the Beach of Marvels in Northern California, and then the news. And then came one of those talk shows where everybody’s lively and no one’s ever depressed or suffering. And you know how they always start with the announcer blaring the name of the host and the audience goes wild? Well, this time the announcer shouted out the usual stuff about live from Hollywood and all the wonderful guests, and then suddenly he said, “And here comes…Paul!” And sure enough, there came my cousin, dancing out from behind the curtains, waving his hands, bowing and grinning in mock embarrassment at the adulation of his fans.
Well, I screamed. I screamed so loud I don’t know how the windows stayed in the walls. Seconds later, my folks came tumbling into the room like circus clowns, shouting “What’s wrong” and “What is it?” and other clever remarks. Nothing, I told them. Bad dream. Because by then the host had turned back into his usual obsequious self.
Are you sure? they asked. My Mom gave me a searching look, and my Dad suggested maybe I should “see someone”. Oh no, I told them. Nothing to worry about. Just fine, thanks. I hated the thought I might have to go back to that damn hospital. More important, I was scared. Too scared to talk about it or get help. Because seeing Paul on network TV did not strike me as all that different from strange sounds on the telephone or a shower that smelled of perfume. I could have called the emergency number the protection team had given me, but what would I do if they said they hadn’t detected anything? I went to bed that night holding on tight to my protection and saying my formula over and over.
Paul didn’t go away. Two days later I was walking on the old shopping street of our town when I saw a meter maid giving a ticket to a blue Mercedes. As I walked past her she glanced up from her pad—and Paul was looking right at me. I ran. I didn’t wait for the meter maid to change back from my dead cousin in drag, I took off down the block, nearly knocking down an old lady who shouted after me. I didn’t stop to help her or apologize. I was scared she’d turn into Paul.
That time I got as far as standing by the telephone, taking deep breaths and reciting Alison Birkett’s home phone number over and over in my mind, like some deep meditation release chant. When I finally walked away without calling I almost had to laugh. At one time I would have loved an excuse to call her at home. But not that excuse.
The next day I had a date with my friend Barb to go to the park. The last thing I needed, I thought, was Barb going on about her latest catalogue of cute boys who’d asked her to some school ritual or something. I thought of cancelling, but I didn’t want Barb attacking me. We’d been friends since second grade, and she’d been getting upset that since I became “famous” I’d stopped seeing her.
We were walking down by the pond, with Barb doing all the talking and me nervously looking at everyone who passed, even dogs and squirrels, when a skateboarder spun by us. I didn’t even notice him. I was looking the other way at a baby carriage. Suddenly Barb grabbed my arm. “Ellen,” she said. “That kid on that skateboard? He looked just like your cousin Paul.”
Barb will probably never know why I hugged her and kissed her and then ran off as fast as I could. “Alison,” I shouted into the phone by the park restaurant. “He’s alive!”
Ms Birkett met my parents and me at the SDA headquarters in Manhattan. The protection team came too; it was the first time I’d seen them in weeks. I don’t know what I expected, really. Maybe some great enactment to bring Paul back from the dead. What I got was tests. Though my folks made a weak protest, and I didn’t like the idea at all, we let Ms Birkett convince us we had to get some scientific basis for what was going on. At least it wasn’t like the hospital. They didn’t strap me down or anything, and they did all the testing in a large open room with a carpet and couches.