Christopher nodded. Bad Cat narrowed his eyes.
“How did you find the skeleton, buddy?”
Christopher’s heart began to pound.
“What?” he said.
“Somebody showed you where the skeleton was, right? Who’s helping you? Oh, gosh, we need to know.”
“Nobody,” Christopher lied.
“I don’t think that’s altogether true. I think somebody told you about that old skeleton. I need to know who told you, buddy. Oh, gosh, I do. Because it’s getting bad in here. She’s so mad right now. My gosh…is she ever mad.”
“Who?”
“Sorry. We’re not allowed to tell you that, buddy, or we’ll get in trouble. She keeps giving people boo-boos to find out who’s helping you. All that screaming really hurts my ears. So, it would sure make things a lot nicer in here if you’d just tell us how you found the skeleton. You can tell old Bad Cat. It’ll be our little secret.”
“Nobody told me. I was digging for treasure.”
“Gee whiz, that is fucking disappointing, buddy. That’s the same lie you told to the sheriff and your mom. You don’t want to be like Pinocchio, do you? Lies made his nose grow. Do you want to know what your lies will do?”
“What?”
“If you don’t tell me who is helping you, something bad will happen to your mother.”
Christopher’s throat closed, like the time he tried to swallow a marble and almost choked. His face turned red.
“What will happen to her?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you, but if you turn up the TV, I can show you. Would you mind turning up the volume on the TV?”
Christopher held the remote and turned the volume up.
“Gosh, no, Christopher. Not on the remote. On the actual TV. Or else it doesn’t work.”
Christopher hesitated, but he had to know what would happen to his mother. He slowly walked to the television.
“That’s it, buddy. It’s okay. I won’t bite.”
Christopher reached out his hand to the volume button. Bad Cat’s eyes glowed. He licked his lips.
“Gosh, we can’t wait to meet you, buddy. She’s going to show you everything.”
Bad Cat started to reach his paw across the screen. Closer to the volume button. Closer to Christopher.
“All you have to do is touch the screen, and we’ll save your mother together. Cross my heart. Hope to dieeeeee.”
Christopher reached out his hand as Bad Cat reached out his paw. They were centimeters away. Their fingers almost touching. The headache began to go away. And Christopher could feel the Zzzz.
“Christopher!” his mother yelled. “What did I tell you about sitting so close to the TV?”
Christopher opened his eyes and turned around. It was his mother. Dressed in her bathrobe. She looked confused. His nose was literally an inch from the television.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said.
“All right. Well, finish breakfast at the table like a normal person. I didn’t raise an ape.”
Christopher nodded and turned back to the TV. Bad Cat was no longer staring at him. He was being chased by the butler.
“Come back here, Gato!”
“That’s Mr. Gato to you, Raoul,” Bad Cat said. Then, he ran into the sewer, bringing the delicious fish with him.
Christopher sat at the kitchen table and ate his cereal while his mom made herself scrambled eggs. He looked at her, terrified as to what would happen to her. He would have said something, but now he knew something was watching him.
Either that, or he was completely insane.
Christopher wanted to believe that all of this was just a figment—not a Fig Newton—of his imagination. Especially Bad Cat. He hoped that he was just a crazy person like his father. And the blinding headache was just the lightning that used to make “Daddy dance funny.” That’s what Mom used to call it when Dad had seizures. Dad took pills for them, and sometimes the pills would make it so he wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks. Mom took care of him, but she had to work late at the restaurant.
That’s when he died in the bathtub.
Late that night, after his mother turned off Saturday Night Live, Christopher snuck out of the house and went to the Mission Street Woods. He ignored the breath that played hide-and-seek with the wind and sprinted to the tree.
“Are you there?” he asked the white plastic bag.
There was no response.
“Please answer me. I’m afraid,” he said. “What was that? Who is she? What is Bad Cat going to do to my mom?”
In that moment, Christopher stepped outside himself and looked back like a spectator. What he saw was a little boy on his knees begging a white plastic bag for answers to things that no one could possibly explain. If given the choice of having this be real or crazy, Christopher would pick crazy. Because even though his mom would be sad that she had a crazy son like her crazy late husband, at least nothing bad would happen to her.
“Am I insane?” he asked the white plastic bag.
Nothing.
“Please, tell me I’m insane.”
Silence.
Christopher sat there all night, begging the white plastic bag for an answer that would not come. The nice man seemed to have disappeared. Christopher didn’t know where he went. Maybe he was in hiding. Maybe he was running from Bad Cat. Or maybe he was just a white plastic bag.
Whatever it was, Christopher was alone.
As dawn streaked the sky, he ran back to his bed, lay under the covers, and stared at the picture of his father framed in silver. The more he looked at his father smiling near the Christmas tree, the more the question echoed in his mind like an old record stuck in a groove. Am I insane? Am I insane? Am I insane? Twenty minutes before his mother’s alarm clock woke them up for church, Christopher finally closed his eyes. And just before he fell asleep, he thought he could hear the vaguest whisper. It could have been a thought. It could have been a voice. It could have been neither. All it said was…
Finish the tree house and you’ll know.
Chapter 31
Are you nuts? My dad almost took the HBO out of my room,” Special Ed whispered.
Christopher followed Special Ed through the church parking lot as their parents shouted their greetings.
“You don’t understand. We have to finish it,” Christopher said.
“Do you have HBO money?” Special Ed asked.
“No.”
“Then finish it yourself.”
They went into church, and after being grounded all Thanksgiving weekend (and the week after that for good measure), the boys sat through an especially long mass. Father Tom talked about how Jesus loves the refugees in the Middle East. But all Christopher could notice were the people staring at him. And their whispers.
“That’s the little boy who found the skeleton.”
“Those were the boys on the news.”
“They were in the paper.”
“He won the lottery a couple of months ago.”
Christopher’s head ached with their voices. Every minute he spent away from the tree house only made his head worse. At one point, Father Tom switched from English to Latin. The language swirled around in Christopher’s head. And “diem” was “day.” And the words made sense. But they brought with them a terrible wave of pain.