Читать книгу The Last Daughter - Thomas Mahon - Страница 3

Norman, Oklahoma Spring, 1979

Many of the diehard locals still remember it as the most horrific thunderstorm to ever hit Cleveland County. In fact, state weather records show the system slamming the county’s western edge at just after eight that morning, unleashing a frightening barrage of lightning and spawning three tornados. Warner High School was caught in the crosshairs. A twister came within a hundred feet of the baseball field, then retreated back into the sky as if yanked up by an angry and capricious god.

Karen Reynolds, who was teaching Honors English for the first time in her young career, witnessed the tail-end of the twister from her upstairs classroom. Fortunately, her students were facing in the opposite direction, so she did the smart thing by keeping her mouth shut. Why create total and complete pandemonium? Hell, these kids were already off the wall as it was. Stealing nervous glances out the window, she scrambled to pass out her class set of Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Today was the day, she thought to herself. The day they would finally cover the chapter all American high school students shamelessly anticipate. The chapter where—

“Piggy eats it today, doesn’t he?” inquired Phoebe Nichols.

Reynolds plopped down a stack of novels in front of the girl and asked her to pass them back. She regarded Nichols. “You mean dies?”

“Head cracks open like a fresh coconut,” added Mike Cochran, sitting in the next row over. “I heard green stuff oozes out of the fat kid’s head.”

“It’s yellow,” countered Jimmy Evans from across the room. “My sister read the book last year.”

Reynolds finished distributing the novels. “Yellow brains. Green brains.” She marched back to the front of the room. “Let’s read and find out, shall we?” She snapped her fingers and raised her voice, “Alright, find chapter eleven, people. I believe it’s page number…”

The PA speaker crackled.

“Mrs. Reynolds,” boomed the authoritative voice.

It was the principal. The first time he’d called in all year. Reynolds hesitated.

“Yes, sir.”

“Please send Alex down to Guidance immediately. They’re waiting for him.”

The teacher located the tall, thin boy in the back row. He rose slowly from his desk, and shuffled up the center aisle. Alex was new to the school. Withdrawn but certainly not lacking in confidence, she thought. True, he had yet to say a word since his transfer into her class, but Reynolds could tell he was on the verge of becoming comfortable enough to speak. He just hadn’t found his voice yet—not entirely surprising, given the fact that this was a new environment for the boy. “You’ll need… a pass,” she muttered, watching him curiously from the lectern. The rest of the class watched, too.

The boy paused, then turned and accepted the pass from Reynolds. “By the way, it’s red,” he mumbled.

My God, he speaks.

Karen Reynolds frowned. “Beg your pardon? What’s red?”

“The goop that spills out of Piggy’s head. The book describes it as red.” The class fell completely silent and still. “Hope you don’t mind me borrowing the book from the library and reading ahead.”

Alex dropped his gaze and turned to leave.

Reynolds watched him shuffle off. “No. I don’t…”

But the boy was already out the door and heading up the hallway.

Alex emerged from Quad A, sloshed across the empty courtyard and into the adjacent building. The door groaned and slammed shut behind him; the reverberating echo lingered for only a moment. He paused to shake the water from his hair, and he wiped his face with his sleeve.

A rotund figure, one of the two deans employed by the school, stepped from a nearby doorway. “Hall pass,” he grunted.

The young man relinquished his yellow slip of paper.

“Allan?” he said, squinting at the pass. “Can’t find my damn glasses.”

“Alex, sir. I’m looking for the guidance offices in Edwards Hall.”

“Well, this is Edwards.” The man’s stare lingered. He finally nodded to his left. “End of the hall, make a right. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Hey, Alex,” he said, returning the pass.

“Yes, sir?”

“Unlike most of the goons we have around here, you’ve got manners. I’m fairly impressed.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

Alex signed in at the front desk to Guidance. He nodded to the secretary as he took a seat in the small waiting area. Four wooden chairs faced an elongated table on which were arranged several college bulletins from various prestigious schools. At length, he stood and approached the secretary’s desk. He followed the petite woman’s fingers as she pecked away at the Selectric in front of her. “Excuse me,” he said, pulling a book from beneath his damp shirt.

The secretary glanced up. Her fingers curled back and hovered over the keyboard.

“I know your son plays for the local soccer club. I thought he’d enjoy this.”

She scrutinized the book’s cover. The Extraordinary Pelé it read. The secretary glanced up at Alex and then back to the book. She paused. “Thank you. It’s Alex, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How did you know my son played soccer?”

“I overheard you talking to one of the teachers in the hallway on Tuesday. Hope you don’t mind. Consider it a gift. This is just my way of thanking you for helping to make my transition here a smooth one.”

The secretary studied the young man, finally taking the book from him. “Kiddo, you are definitely not from around here.”

“Is that Alex?” a voice barked from the inner office. It was the campus psychologist. “Get in here, son.”

The boy turned, wrung his hands together, and inhaled deeply.

“Good luck,” whispered the secretary.

Thank you, he mouthed back to her.

Alex sat, staring at his hands, while the campus psychologist rifled through his file. He had been watching Alex, from a distance these past few weeks, to see how he was adjusting to his new environment. So far, he was pleased with the young man. The few grades that Alex had earned at Warner were solid. The boy appeared to be even-tempered, polite and comfortable. They could sure use more like him.

“We don’t have your transfer grades yet, but your teachers seem to like you. That’s a good start.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The psychologist regarded him. “Alex, I want you to take a short test for me.”

“Sure. Anything,” said the boy.

He slipped Alex a piece of paper and pencil. “This test involves just one question. Nothing too taxing, so don’t get flustered or anything. Students usually take no more than a couple of minutes to think about the question before committing to an answer. What do you say, son?”

“Sure. I’ll do my best.”

“Good man.”

He watched Alex exhale, grip the pencil and focus on the question.

Gretchen, a beautiful young woman, attended the funeral of her mother. While there, she met a man. Gretchen did not know him. He did not speak much about himself. Nevertheless, she fell in love with him during this brief encounter. A few days later Gretchen killed her sister. When the police asked her why she committed this heinous crime, she gave a shocking answer. What did she say?

The psychologist turned his attention back to the project he’d started that morning: analysis of the first semester grade distribution in the sophomore class. He slumped. The news wasn’t good. The number of F’s had edged up from 9.6% to 11.2%; D’s from 18.2% to a flat 21%. The area superintendent, who’d been riding Warner’s ass since the day they were granted that 4 million to build a new gymnasium adjacent to the baseball field, would blow a fuse for sure. The guy wanted Warner to be the flagship high school of Cleveland County. Student performance should be commensurate with the quality of the physical plant. In fact, student performance—

“Excuse me,” Alex muttered.

The psychologist looked up from the file and frowned. “You’re not finished already, are you?”

“There wasn’t much to think about,” the boy said, handing back the paper and pencil. “Will that be all?”

I guess so. “I’ll write you a pass back to class. You’re sure about your answer?”

“Absolutely sure. Thank you for your time.”

He watched Alexander leave the office. The psychologist sat back and read the boy’s answer, scribbled in an odd, spiky backhand. He digested the answer. At length, the psychologist set the paper down, stroked his chin, then grabbed the phone.

“Is it done?” snapped the principal’s raspy voice at the other end.

“He just left my office.”

“Gave the sociopathic answer, didn’t he? Well?”

The psychologist wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t find the words. Alex’s answer wasn’t exactly what he had expected. But should that upset him?

“Told you he was a sociopath, didn’t I?”

He refocused. “Just a minute. I have to disagree with you. Your so-called sociopathic answer is given by eleven percent of the kids I interview. There’s no way that many kids in this school are sociopaths. Besides, an answer like this one can mean creativity, enhanced imagination, or a kid who’ll make one heck of an FBI agent one day.”

“Sure, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. You shrinks are the most gullible people on the planet. I mean, do they teach you this crap in graduate school or do you guys come by it naturally? He’s a goddamn sociopath if I’ve ever seen one. The Gretchen Scenario proves it.”

He dismissed the insult, and stared at the ceiling. In a very short time at Warner, Alex had distinguished himself as a gentleman. He was intelligent, calm and confident. Just because he was a transfer, and the only kid in this school with manners, didn’t mean he was a potential menace to society. Were they even talking about the same kid?

“You’ve had me administering this Gretchen Scenario for the past three months, but I’ve yet to run across it in any of the literature. Are you sure it’s legit?”

“I’ve already told you—buddy of mine in the Boston public school system came up with the Gretchen, and he’s been using it for the past year. It’s kosher, trust me.” The principal continued, “Besides, you haven’t seen Alex’s psych eval, his personality inventory.”

Whoa. Wait a minute. The psychologist frowned and sat up. “I didn’t know he had one.”

“Mount Saint Mary’s just sent the eval along with his transfer grades. I’m looking at it now. It’s a thorough one, too. Somebody over there took an interest in him. That should tell you something.”

The psychologist frowned. “What did they use, the MMPI?”

“You got it.”

The Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory, originally published in 1942, and copyrighted by the University of Minnesota, was a favorite among those in the mental health field. Originally developed by Hathaway and McKinley, the exhaustive test searched for pathologies in an individual’s personality: hypochondriasis, depression, paranoia, schizophrenia and psychopathic deviation—just to name a few.

He could hear the principal chuckling at the other end. “You should see his Psychopathic Deviate score— it’s off the charts. There are fifty items on that scale and the kid hit on almost every one of them.”

The psychologist immediately thought of some of the more obvious psychopathic deviant statements in the test: I sometimes tease animals; If I could get into a movie without paying, and be sure I was not seen, I would probably do it;It doesn’t bother me particularly to see animals suffer;At times I feel like smashing things; and It would be better if almost all laws were thrown away. Nevertheless, any psychologist worth his weight would realize a high score on the psychopathic deviate scale did not necessarily mean the subject was, in fact, a psychopath. Far from it. In fact, most high scorers on Scale 4 tipped the scale due to their tendency toward anger, conflict, struggle, disobedience and rebellion. Only the uneducated and ignorant, present company on the phone included, of course, would reach the conclusion that Alex was a psychopath.

“Alex is a delightful young man who is—”

“I’m reading the MMPI numbers. They’re right in front of me!”

The psychologist exhaled, “I don’t care what you’re reading. He’s not a sociopath, psychopath or anything else for crying out loud. As a matter of fact, I don’t see, nor do I sense, any anger, rebellion or struggle with him.”

“How the hell do you know? You just met the kid,” snapped the principal. “You’ve read his answer to the Gretchen. Read the damn thing again.”

“Why don’t you check the other scales? What did the—”

“Cannot Say Scale is normal; the kid answered all test questions. Lie and Infrequency Scales are normal. He apparently gave no disingenuous or random answers that would have been picked up by the test’s embedded validity scales. Listen, I’ve been at this a long time. I can spot these kids a mile away. They’re smooth, calculating charmers.”

The scores had to be incorrect, thought the psychologist. They’d probably gotten crossed with another student’s. He needed to review the raw data to be sure; invalid and misleading profiles were fairly common among teens who felt the need to impress a counselor, even deny or exaggerate their problems. This was a known flaw of the MMPI and he’d have to explore that avenue. In the meantime, since he was qualified to give the MMPI, he’d have Alex retested first thing in the morning.

“The Mt. Saint Mary registrar wrote that all other information pertaining to this kid was sealed by an Oklahoma City court some time ago. Nobody knows why.”

The psychologist chewed the end of his pencil, “Any ideas?”

“Sure. The kid was adopted. Before that he probably spent some time in foster care. Wouldn’t be surprised to find out he was in serious trouble or abused. Probably both.”

Abused. He digested the word. Scale 4 measured anger, conflict and struggle. That could possibly describe Alex, especially if he had spent time in foster care. But he still had his doubts. Alex was—

“Did you hear what I said?”

He exhaled. “I did. But I still say my gut is never wrong. I’m re-testing Alex tomorrow. Maybe he was abused or unwanted. Perhaps he is angry, but deep down he’s a good kid.”

The principal said, “His answer to the Gretchen is right there in front of you. Look at the damn thing.”

“I have.”

“No you haven’t. Look at it.”

The principal hung up.

The psychologist sighed, and re-read Alex’s answer as to why Gretchen would have killed the sister after meeting a stranger at her mother’s funeral. The spiky letters stood out even more this time around.

Gretchen met her dream man at a funeral. To see him again, she must create a new need for a funeral. Killing her sister accomplishes that. Gretchen simply wants to see her love again. Her actions make perfect sense to me.

The psychologist rubbed his eyes. Seriously, was this the answer of a sociopath? When he originally read the scenario himself a few months back, he came up with a couple of reasons as to why the girl would have killed her sister. They were so far off the mark, he actually felt dumb. On the other hand, he was relieved his mind hadn’t moved in the direction Alex’s had taken. After all, to think of an answer like that… one had to have a pretty active imagination, or a twisted, dark side. Still. Alex a sociopath?

On impulse, he flipped over the piece of paper. He frowned, raising the paper to his face. There were small words printed very precisely at each corner of the paper, including one in the center. What the hell is this? He jotted them down but they made absolutely no sense. What was he supposed to do, arrange them into a sentence? Was there some kind of order? Some kind of meaning? He began jotting down the words.

Gretchen slit

The hope

Come on. None of this made any sense. This was a waste of time. He refocused, then quickly scribbled the only word sequence that made any sense to him—the one that literally jumped off the page.

Hope Gretchen slit that whore

He stared at what he’d written. “Shit,” he finally sighed and grabbed the phone.

Alex stood outside in the adjacent corridor, running parallel to Edwards. The rain continued to fall in drenching sheets. The boy watched the psychologist place a frantic phone call. No doubt to the principal, he thought. The poor man slumped forward, and spoke with his head buried in is hand. Then, as if he sensed something, the psychologist suddenly swiveled toward the window. The man lowered the phone. Their eyes locked. Through the deluge they stared at one another. At length Alex turned, took a sip of water from the fountain behind him, and began his trek back to Mrs. Reynolds’s classroom.