The movies brought on the headaches, and the headaches lasted longer and got worse after each one. George was fine when he arrived, just scared, according to Kalisha, but after four or five days of exposure to the dots, and the movies, and the hurty shots, he also began to have headaches.
The movies were in a small screening room with plushy comfortable seats. They started with old-time cartoons—sometimes Road Runner, sometimes Bugs Bunny, sometimes Goofy and Mickey. Then, after the warm-up, came the real show. Kalisha thought the films were short, half an hour at most, but it was hard to tell because she was woozy during and headachey afterward. They all were.
Her first two times in the screening room, the Back Half kids got a double feature. The star of the first one was a man with thinning red hair. He wore a black suit and drove a shiny black car. Avery tried to show this car to Luke, but Luke got only a vague image, maybe because that was all Kalisha could send. Still, he thought it must be a limousine or a Town Car, because Avery said the red-haired man’s passengers always rode in the back. Also, the guy opened the doors for the passengers when they got in and out. On most days he had the same ones, mostly old white guys, but one was a younger guy with a scar on his cheek.
“Sha says he has regulars,” Avery whispered as he and Luke lay in bed together. “She says it’s Washington, D.C., because the man drives past the Capitol and the White House and sometimes she sees that big stone needle.”
“The Washington Monument.”
“Yeah, that.”
Toward the end of this movie, the redhead swapped the black suit for regular clothes. They saw him riding a horse, then pushing a little girl on a swing, then eating ice cream with the little girl on a park bench. After that Dr. Hendricks came on the screen, holding up an unlit Fourth of July sparkler.
The second feature was of a man in what Kalisha called an Arab headdress, which probably meant a keffiyeh. He was in a street, then he was in an outdoor café drinking tea or coffee from a glass, then he was making a speech, then he was swinging a little boy by the hands. Once he was on television. The movie ended with Dr. Hendricks holding up the unlit sparkler.
The following morning, Sha and the others got a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon followed by fifteen or twenty minutes of the red-haired car driver. Then lunch in the Back Half cafeteria, where there were free cigarettes. That afternoon it was Porky Pig followed by the Arab. Each film ended with Dr. Hendricks and the unlit sparkler. That night they were given hurty shots and a fresh dose of the flashing lights. Then they were taken back to the screening room, where they watched twenty minutes of car crash movies. After each crash, Dr. Hendricks came on the screen, holding up the unlit sparkler.
Luke, grief-stricken but not stupid, began to understand. It was crazy, but no crazier than occasionally being able to know what was going on in other peoples’ heads. Also, it explained a great deal.
“Kalisha says she thinks she blacked out and had a dream while the crashes were going on,” Avery whispered in Luke’s ear. “Only she’s not sure it was a dream. She says the kids—her, Nicky, Iris, Donna, Len, some others—were standing in those dots with their arms around each other and their heads together. She says Dr. Hendricks was there, and this time he lit the sparkler, and that was scary. But as long as they stayed together, holding each other, their heads didn’t ache no more. But she says maybe it was a dream, because she woke up in her room. The rooms in Back Half aren’t like ours. They get locked up at night.” Avery paused. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore tonight, Lukey.”
“Fine. Go to sleep.”
Avery did, but Luke lay awake for a long time.
The next day, he finally used his laptop for something more than checking the date, IMing with Helen, or watching BoJack Horseman. He went to Mr. Griffin, and from Mr. Griffin to the New York Times, which informed him he could read ten free articles before he hit a pay wall. Luke didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but was sure he’d know it when he saw it. And he did. A headline on the front page of the July 15th issue read REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ SUCCUMBS TO INJURIES.
Rather than reading the article, Luke went to the day before. This headline read PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL MARK BERKOWITZ CRITICALLY INJURED IN CAR ACCIDENT. There was a picture. Berkowitz, a US Representative from Ohio, had black hair and a scar on his cheek from a wound suffered in Afghanistan. Luke read the story quickly. It said that the Lincoln Town Car in which Berkowitz had been riding while on his way to a meeting with foreign dignitaries from Poland and Yugoslavia had veered out of control and hit a concrete bridge stanchion. The driver had been killed instantly; unnamed MedStar Hospital sources described Berkowitz’s injuries as “extremely grave.” The article didn’t say if the driver was a redhead, but Luke knew he had been, and he was pretty sure that some guy in one of the Arab countries was going to die soon, if he hadn’t already. Or maybe he was going to murder somebody important.
Luke’s growing certainty that he and the other kids were being prepped for use as psychic drones—yes, even inoffensive Avery Dixon, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose—began to rouse Luke, but it took the horror show with Harry Cross to bring him fully out of his sleep of grief.
5
The following evening there were fourteen or fifteen kids in the caff at dinner, some talking, some laughing, some of the new ones crying or shouting. In a way, Luke thought, being in the Institute was like being in an old-time mental asylum where the crazy people were just kept and never cured.
Harry wasn’t there at first, and he hadn’t been at lunch. The big galoot wasn’t much of a blip on Luke’s radar, but he was hard to miss at meals because Gerda and Greta always sat with him, one on either side in their identical outfits, watching him with shining eyes as he blathered away about NASCAR, wrestling, his favorite shows, and life “down Selma.” If someone told him to pipe down, the little Gs would turn killing looks on the interrupting someone.
This evening the Gs were eating on their own, and looking unhappy about it. They had saved Harry a seat between them, though, and when he came walking slowly in, belly swinging and glowing with sunburn, they rushed to him with shouts of greeting. For once he barely seemed to notice them. There was a vacant look in his eyes, and they didn’t seem to be tracking together the way eyes are supposed to. His chin was shiny with drool, and there was a wet spot on the crotch of his pants. Conversation died. The newest arrivals looked puzzled and horrified; those who had been around long enough to get a run of tests threw worried glances at each other.
Luke and Helen exchanged a look. “He’ll be okay,” she said. “It’s just worse for some kids than it is for—”
Avery was sitting beside her. Now he took one of her hands in both of his. He spoke with eerie calmness. “He’s not okay. He’ll never be okay.”
Harry let out a cry, dropped to his knees, then hit the floor face-first. His nose and lips sprayed blood on the linoleum. He first began to shake, then to spasm, legs pulling up and shooting out in a Y shape, arms flailing. He started to make a growling noise—not like an animal but like an engine stuck in low gear and being revved too hard. He flopped onto his back, still growling and spraying bloody foam from between his blabbering lips. His teeth chomped up and down.