Sinister - 5. Chapter 5

"What's going on in here?" Mr. Inram came in and headed straight for the radio. Faint music started to come from it.

Ruth stepped forward. "Just an experiment."

Glen reached for the dials on the radio. Mr. Inram stopped him. "Don't touch that. Leave the dial right where it is. You kids know that radios aren't allowed. You want to experiment with electricity, you experiment with something else."

Glen tried to improvise. "This is just an old piece of equipment my grandfather had. I don't even really know what it does."

"Why, it's a radio, Glen. And evidently you've figured it out well enough to set up an antenna somewhere. Let's turn up the volume a bit, shall we?" Mr. Inram turned a knob.

The music swelled, then faded as a voice said, "Stay tuned now for Celtic music hour, the best in Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Breton and Galician folk music. I'm your host, Denise Kurokawa, here on Radio KRFA."

"KRFA?" Mr. Inram looked at each of the students, who all avoided his gaze. "Isn't that a lefty station?" He turned the volume off. "I believe you kids asked me if you could set up a science club. I trusted you and you have violated that trust. We are all going to the school office. Now! And I'll be calling your parents and Reverend Farrow."

As they marched to the office, Glen said quietly to Sam, "Friday. Eight o'clock. North of town, at Main and Highland. No matter what." He repeated this to each of the others.

************

"Sam, how could you do this to us?" Mr. Swift seemed more hurt than angry. The screaming battle Sam feared was not materializing, not even here at home where no one could hear. The adults had left him almost entirely out of the tense discussions at the school office. Mr. Inram talked to Reverend Farrow, Reverend Farrow talked to all the parents, and the parents eyed each other suspiciously, but no one yelled.

Now he was seated downstairs, at home, with his mother and father. Lydia and Judy had been sent upstairs.

"I didn't to anything." Sam looked at the floor.

"What does this mean, Sammy?" his mother asked. "Is this all some horrible mistake? Did you get mixed up with these kids without knowing what was going on?"

"No, Ma, it's not a mistake. I'm left-handed. I'm sorry you had to find out this way. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

Mr. Swift put his hands on Sam's shoulders. "Sam, you're our son and we love you. We will do everything in our power to help you throw off this affliction. You'll have the prayers of everyone in the church to help you get well."

"I'm not sick. I'm just different."

Mr. Swift drew back a bit. "You know better than that. That's not how we raised you. You are sick, Sam -- sick in your soul. And you have to want to get better to get over this."

"Don't you want to get well, Sammy? Don't you want to be normal?" His mother searched Sam's face for some trace of the son she thought she knew.

"I'm not abnormal. Most people in the world have black hair, but I don't hear anybody calling blondes abnormal. Being left-handed is like -- it's like being gay. Most people are straight, but that doesn't mean homosexuality is abnormal."

Now Mrs. Swift's face set in anger. "How can you compare the two, Sammy? You know your aunt Cassie is a lesbian. How could you say such a hurtful thing about her, comparing her to a -- to a left-hander!"

"We're not some primitive tribe with arbitrary taboos." Mr. Swift's voice was stern. "We don't believe in some superstitious nonsense forbidding homosexuality, or eating shellfish, or any of those old rules about ritual purity. We're civilized, Christian people. We are people of faith. And that faith can help you if you'll let it. Please, Sam. Please let us help you turn away from this terrible choice."

The coffin has been nailed shut and lowered into the grave, shovelfuls of dirt are being heaped on it, and I'm still alive inside, screaming to be let out, running out of air. "I was born this way." Sam tried not to shout. "I could write with my right hand and eat with my right hand and do everything else with my right hand for the rest of my life, and I would still be left-handed. That's the only choice I have: to give up what is natural for me and do what other people expect."

"I don't believe that, Sammy," his mother said. "You're a kind, intelligent and talented boy, and there is so much good in you. We just want you to let the good win out."

"Do you know why I dropped art class?" Sam felt the rising edge of anger. "I was kicked out. I was painting and drawing all my homework with my left hand and Mr. Price saw that I couldn't draw that well in class. So he thought someone else was doing my homework. My right hand will never have the skill of my left hand. Never."

"Sam." The authority in Mr. Price's voice shut down the discussion. "You are going with us to church tomorrow. We're going to pray until this sickness is gone. Your mother will call the school tomorrow and say you're sick, and I will take the day off. I'm going to lock up your bike. We will drive you to and from school when we think you're ready to go back. We love you and we will not let the Devil have you. Now go upstairs to your room. We'll send your dinner up. I don't want you eating at the table with Lydia and Judy until you're cured."

************

The next three days were a blur. Sam was at the church all day, with half a dozen to twenty people gathered around him praying silently, praying loudly, condemning the demon which was possessing him. At night his parents brought him home and shut him in his room. Reverent Cooper visited the house at least twice. It was hard to remember.

Sam was too exhausted even to draw.

Thursday evening, sitting in his room, he heard light footsteps outside his door. A folded slip of paper slid underneath it. When he opened the note, he recognized Lydia's thin, neat handwriting. It read, "Just tell them what they want to hear."

He hadn't even thought about the effect all this was having on his sisters. Of course Lydia would know what was going on. She was too smart not to. And although she was three years younger, she was smart enough to know exactly what Sam should do.

Sam walked downstairs. He faced his parents squarely and lied. "I had a dream, except I wasn't asleep. An angel came and touched my right hand and made it well. I think I'm cured."

His parents embraced him with tears of joy in their eyes.

************

The family reunited at the table for breakfast Friday morning. Ma and Pa were beaming. Judy was confused, but glad to see Sam. Lydia was serene.

"Thanks, Lydia," Sam whispered.

"Any time."

"I'm going to need a diversion tonight after dinner."

"Did I ever tell you how I faked a fever to get out of a test?"

"Perfect." God bless Lydia, she loved subterfuge.

Sam's father drove him to school. The miracle cure wasn't certain enough for Sam to be trusted with his bike yet.

He met Glen and Ruth and Noah between classes. "Hey, they let us all out."

Glen nodded. "Heard you got the full treatment."

"I think it was three days. It all blended together."

Glen's smile was grim. "It was decided that I was just going through a phase."

Ruth adopted an angelic expression. "I was engaging in youthful experimentation."

Noah snorted. "I'm entering my curious and rebellious teenage years. I was let off with time served and forty hours of community service."

Glen looked serious. "Eight o'clock tonight. Main and Highland."

"You're still going through with it?" Sam looked around to see who might be listening.

"We're going through with it. Ruth, you'll confirm with Naomi?"

"Yep."

"See you all there."

************

After dinner, Lydia complained of a stomach ache and asked for some chamomile tea. She retreated to her room with it. A few minutes later she came downstairs and said, "Ma, I don't feel so good."

Mrs. Swift felt Lydia's forehead. "You're burning up."

"I feel dizzy. I think I'm going to throw up." She fell to her knees, then collapsed on the floor.

"Joe! Carry her upstairs!" Mrs. Swift was in a panic.

"All right, all right, Sarah. You get a bucket and some towels."

As soon as everyone was upstairs, Sam grabbed the backpack he had hidden and slipped out the front door.

************

Sam ran as much of the distance as he could and walked the rest. He arrived before seven-thirty. Glen was there and Naomi was just walking up to him.

Glen held up his left hand for a high-five. "You made it!"

Sam slapped Glen's hand in the unfamiliar gesture. "Yeah, I'm ready."

Noah and Ruth joined them a few minutes later.

The plan suddenly seemed very uncertain to Sam. "How do they know to come here?"

"I told you, it's the code Adam set up before he left. He had to leave in a hurry so there wasn't much time. We only set one pick-up location."

"Well, I would have set up more than that. We could have used the constellations for them. 'Mercury in Libra' for the truck scales west of town. 'Mercury in Aquarius' for where the highway crosses the river."

"I like those. Those are good. I'll have to remember them. But now we're all going to be out of here. We hope."

"Hey, they're early," Noah said. He pointed to approaching headlights. Everyone stood expectantly at the edge of the road.

"They're driving kind of fast," Ruth said.

Glen started to back away. "I don't think that's them."

The vehicle neared. They saw that it was a pickup truck. The driver was gunning the engine.

"That's not them," Naomi said.

They could see a hand swinging a baseball bat outside the window. From the truck came teenage whoops and a yell of "Fuckin' whaffos!"

"Run!" Ruth yelled. But it was too late.