The Wish (Nightmare Hall) (13 page)

In a perverse, twisted way, Julie, Gabe, and Kyle had all got what they’d asked for. Not in the way they’d wanted it, of course. Maybe her grandmother had been right.

Crazy way to think…The Wizard had no power to grant wishes. He was just a mechanical figure, an old, fraying one at that.

The only thing I wished for, she thought uneasily, was to forget about The Wizard.

Then Alex heard in her head, the song,
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round, the wheels on the bus go round and round, all through the town.

No one
but she and her hijacker had known about the terrifying bus ride. So how did that card get into the fortune-telling booth? Unless…unless…

No! Crazy, crazy….Be careful, Alex, she warned, rolling over and thrusting her face into her pillow, or you’ll be the next one carted off to the hospital. The
mental
hospital.

She fell asleep and dreamed she had been fastened into a white straitjacket, her arms tied behind her.

When she awoke, both arms were hopelessly tangled in the sheets.

She tried to laugh, and found it impossible.

She didn’t want to go to class. The idea of staying in her room with the door locked made more sense than ever. And she could afford to miss a few classes.

But Marty was giving his speech today in sociology. She couldn’t miss that.

She quickly showered, and dressed in jeans and her favorite bright red blouse. Then she woke Jenny, who had come in late again, and waited while Jenny dressed. She grumbled crankily the entire time, but she didn’t want to miss Marty’s speech, either.

Grateful that they’d already delivered their own speeches, the two girls hurried across campus to the mixed media lecture hall in the communications building.

The big, square room was packed when they arrived. Bennett and Gabe were already seated on the far side of the room, Bennett’s legs propped up on an old radiator. He was enjoying hearty slaps on the back and shouted “congratulations” for his success in the game on Saturday. “He’s positively glowing with triumph,” Alex murmured to Jenny. “He certainly loves attention.” Alex quickly realized that Jenny, too, was “glowing.”

“I
know
what it’s like to go without that,” she told Alex, and sat down behind Bennett. Alex sat across the aisle, in front of Gabe.

Marty, in a blue V-necked sweater and jeans, was positioned behind the podium at the front of the hall. Although he didn’t seem at all nervous, Alex flashed him an encouraging smile.

Dr. Taylor-Guinn, a tall, thin woman with thick black hair, had seated herself in front of the massive oak desk behind the podium, her hands folded in her lap, an expectant look on her face.

That’s because, Alex thought, she knows Marty’s speech will be one of the better ones. Everyone in the room who knows Marty knows it’ll be a good speech. There was an air of relief in the room, a sense that while many of the recent speeches had been dry and painfully boring, there just might be a few good laughs in this one.

Marty waited patiently until all of the coughs, the clearing of throats, rattling of papers, and shuffling of feet had ended. Then he stood up very straight, shoulders back, head up, eyes focused on his audience in the stance that Dr. Taylor-Guinn had advised.

Watching him, Alex wished that she and Marty could get beyond whatever was between them lately. True, they’d all been on edge, and with good reason. But she and Marty were snapping each other’s heads off half the time, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t think
he
did, either.

A respectful silence finally descended upon the room.

Marty cleared his throat one last time, glanced down at his notes, lifted his head, looked at his audience, and opened his mouth.

No sound emerged.

Surprise widened Marty’s eyes. He had expected a sentence to come forth, and it hadn’t.

He tried again, forming his lips to create words.

But the words were stillborn.

Alex had helped him with the research on his speech. She knew what he was trying to say. The title of his speech was
Coming of Age with the Computer
. It was a lighthearted look at how technology had changed society. And Alex knew the first line by heart:
The most significant difference between man, that creature known as
homo sapiens,
and the computer is, if you can’t stand the way the computer is behaving, you can always unplug it. Don’t you wish we could sometimes do that with people?

But in that entire room, only Alex and Marty knew what he was trying to say. Because he couldn’t
say
it.

He tried. He tried again and again. His cheekbones flushed scarlet, the cords in his neck strained, and his eyes grew more and more bewildered as his mouth moved desperately to push forth words that refused to come.

Behind him, the communications professor shifted impatiently in her seat, and cleared her throat.

She can’t see his face, Alex thought, sitting up very straight in her chair, wanting passionately to help in some way. Dr. Taylor-Guinn thinks Marty’s stalling, that he’s unprepared. Or maybe she thinks he’s got stage fright. But he doesn’t. I know he doesn’t. Not Marty.

She saw Gabe and Bennett exchange embarrassed glances, and she wanted to slap them.
They
were embarrassed? It was
Marty
who was up there in front of the entire class, not them.

She watched in agony as Marty tried several more times, his face deepening in color, his fists clenching and unclenching with the effort.

Twice, his eyes sought Alex’s, as if to beg for help.

For one long moment, she thought about going up to the podium and giving the speech for him. She could do it. She knew enough about the material, and his notes would be well-organized.

But the teacher would never allow it. And, more important, Marty would be even more humiliated if she took over for him.

She stayed put. There was nothing she could do.

He had lost his voice.

People began coughing, clearing their throats, shuffling their feet in embarrassment for him. Alex was grateful that no one snickered.

When, finally giving up, Marty turned in misery to his professor, she took pity on him and coolly dismissed him.

Although he kept his head high and his back straight as he left the podium, Alex could feel his burning humiliation.

“Well,” Jenny whispered sympathetically as another student replaced Marty at the front of the room, “Marty wished he could get out of giving his speech, remember? At Vinnie’s, the night of the storm.”

And Alex
did
remember then. She turned her head to look at him. He was sitting off to her left, looking totally bewildered. One hand repeatedly rubbed his throat.

He had made that wish, that night at Vinnie’s, just as Julie, Gabe, and Kiki had made wishes.

And now Marty, like the others, had got what he wanted. He hadn’t had to give the speech, after all. Hadn’t been
able
to.

Then Alex remembered the fortune Marty had received from The Wizard, the same one she’d received.

She could see the small, crisp white card as it lay in Marty’s hand that night of the storm. The print jumped up to meet her eyes.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN.

A
LEX WAS WAITING IN
the infirmary waiting room for Marty when Shelley, the tall redhead Bennett had once dated, walked in. She was wearing her drum majorette’s outfit, and she was limping. “That stupid trombone player stepped on my foot,” she complained as she hopped over to the counter. “And I have to march Saturday! Of all the luck…”

Alex sat patiently while Shelley checked in and was told to wait. When she was seated opposite Alex, the temptation to ask a few questions was too strong to ignore. Nonchalantly thumbing through a magazine, Alex said, “Didn’t you used to date Bennett Stark?”

“Who are you?” Shelley asked rudely, rubbing her injured ankle.

“Alex Edgar. I’m a friend of Bennett’s.”

“Bennett…Bennett…oh, the rookie football player. Ex-football player, I should say. Yeah, I went out with him for a while. Why?” Her eyes narrowed. “He hasn’t been talking about me, has he?”

“No, of course not. I just wondered…Bennett’s been dating my roommate, and he wants to give her that little gold football of his,” Alex lied. “You know, the one all the freshmen players received? But he can’t find it. I just wondered if he might have given it to you and then forgotten about it.”

She expected Shelley to say she didn’t have it, that she’d never received it, that he really had taken it home and left it there.

But Shelley didn’t say that. “Yeah, he gave it to me,” she said instead. “It was cute. Not real gold, of course, but it didn’t look half-bad with my blue cashmere.”

Alex turned a page of her magazine. “Do you still have it?” Bennett
could
have forgotten that he’d given it to Shelley.

“It wasn’t
that
cute. I gave it back to Bennett, natch. I knew if I kept it, he’d think there was still hope, and there wasn’t.”

Bennett’s little gold football, identical to the one she’d found in the plant on the deck, wasn’t back home as Bennett had said. It never had been. Not too awfully long ago, he’d given it to Shelley. And she’d given it back.

He couldn’t have forgotten that.

Why had he lied?

Gabe, too, had lied…maybe. He was going to give
his
football to Julie, after telling Alex that he didn’t know where it was.

Neither one of those things means anything, Alex told herself sternly. Gabe could have simply found his, and maybe Bennett hadn’t wanted to tell her the embarrassing truth—that Shelley had handed his back.

She couldn’t believe either one of them would have hurt Kyle. They were all
friends
!

But…then she remembered, that boy in the stands had said at the game, “Gabe wouldn’t have played if Kyle was here.”

Oh, for pete’s sake, football couldn’t be a motive for what had happened to Kyle. That was totally ridiculous!

Wasn’t it?

Shelley was called in to be treated. Marty still hadn’t come back out, so Alex decided she’d ask about Kiki. She hadn’t seen her on campus. If she was still here, in the infirmary, she must be pretty sick.

“Yes, she’s here,” the nurse behind the reception desk told Alex. She clucked her tongue. “You kids and your crazy fad diets! That girl is
very
ill. We’re transferring her to the hospital today.” The middle-aged woman looked at Alex with disapproving eyes. “She
was
on a diet, am I right?”

Alex nodded. “But she
was
eating. I saw her eat.”

No reply.

“Could I see her, please?”

“I don’t see why not. She hasn’t had many visitors. Can’t help feeling sorry for her. But we don’t know how to treat eating disorders here. That girl is anorexic, you mark my words.”

Alex’s jaw dropped. Kiki? An eating disorder? She pictured Kiki helping herself to Julie’s cookies and candy. “It isn’t anything like that,” she protested.

The nurse arched a graying eyebrow. “They’re very good at hiding it, you know. Even their families seldom know until the problem is out of control. Go ahead in. Room four.”

Alex walked down the hall and entered the small white room. But the patient lying in the bed there bore no resemblance to healthy, stocky, ruddy-cheeked Kiki Duff, pride of Salem’s women’s soccer team.

The girl in the bed seemed shrunken. She was frail and gaunt. Her head turned listlessly from side to side on the white pillow. The face was without color except for purplish shadows under sunken eyes. The cheekbones were hollow, the hair dull and sparse. Above the neckline of a white hospital gown, a sharply etched collarbone jutted skyward.

Alex stood at the foot of the bed, paralyzed with horror. That couldn’t be Kiki in the bed. It was a mistake…had to be…

But when she reached out and picked up the chart hanging on the bed rail, there was Kiki’s name, plain as day:
DUFF, KIKI.

No…no.

Alex leaned against the bed rail, and heard Kiki’s voice in her head, saying, “I’m going to wish I were five pounds thinner.” She hadn’t made the wish that night. No one had had a quarter. But had she gone back later and made that same wish?

And…had it been
granted
?

I have to stop pretending all of this is just coincidence, Alex thought, her hands shaking as she replaced Kiki’s chart. It
can’t
be. Not
all
of it.

She walked over to stand beside Kiki’s bed. Kiki wouldn’t deliberately starve herself. Whatever was wrong with her, it was beyond her control.

Impulsively, Alex reached down to gently stroke the skeletal cheek.

The sunken eyes opened. Tears slid weakly down the gaunt cheekbones. The mouth opened. “Help me,” she whispered with great effort, “Alex, help me…”

But Alex didn’t know how.

Tears in her own eyes, she patted Kiki’s bony arm and hurried out of the room.

Something was very, very wrong here. Not wrong like someone attacking Kyle and throwing him off the deck…
that
was a criminal act. This was…this was different. Beyond ordinary…beyond criminal…what was happening to Kiki had no logical, reasonable explanation. Even if she
were
anorexic, she wouldn’t have lost that much weight that fast. Not possible.

Kiki had wished…had wished to lose weight. Julie had wished that her face wasn’t so “ordinary.” Gabe had wished he didn’t have to walk so much. And Marty had wished he didn’t have to give his speech. Kyle had wished for peace and quiet.

And all of their wishes had come true in a horrible, twisted way.

If only the doctor could find a logical, scientific explanation for Marty’s loss of speech. Then she would know that what she was thinking was totally crazy, that her imagination was running away with her.

If not, she knew where she had to go.

The doctor found nothing wrong with Marty’s throat. “Stage fright’s my guess,” he said when they emerged from the cubicle. “Shouldn’t last long.”

But Alex knew it wasn’t stage fright. And not just because Marty wasn’t the type…there was more to it than that. Kiki wasn’t the type to starve herself, either, but there she lay in that bed, a shrunken skeleton.