The Wisherman (13 page)

Oliver shook his head. “I’m pretty hungry.”

“Got you covered.” Gabriel threw a bag of chips at Oliver’s lap, which he opened gratefully.

“So, what’s this club thing about?” Malachi lounged vertically across Owen’s bed, and he propped himself up with his elbow. His eyes were as red as the glowing fire on the first floor and when he saw Oliver staring he smiled a dopy smile.

“What was it, the Disciples?”
Malachi asked.

“Aww, that’s just the name Gabriel g
ave it. He considers himself a god around here, if you haven’t noticed by now.” Alex supplied.

“That’s not true
, it’s the name of this band—“Gabriel protested, but he burst into giggles before he could finish his sentence.

“It’s just a little club. You know, we have to stick together.” Owen said and he placed his finished cigarette in the ash tray besides him.

“We?” Oliver asked.

Owen nodded. “You know, the troubled boys of Delafontaine.” He said, rolling his eyes. “Hey Alex, throw me a bag.”

“
Isn’t everybody troubled or some shit? That’s what my foster mom always said.” Gabriel said, shrugging.

“I think she was just trying to make you feel better, Gabs.” Alex replied, with a laugh.

“My pops told me that there wasn’t anybody else in the entire world as troubled as me. I think he told the rest of my family that I’m studying abroad in Europe. I guess I’m just glad that he didn’t send me straight to military school.” Alex mouthed a thank you to the ceiling and laughed.

“You think
this isn’t exactly like military school?” Malachi said, abruptly. Oliver looked around the room, uneasily. He knew that tone, of course. He wasn’t as sensitive as Paul by any means, but damn if Malachi couldn’t go more than one day without mentioning his theories. Owen took his cigarette out of his mouth and blew a smoke ring in Malachi’s direction.

“Do you?”
Owen asked, casually.

Oliver felt the mood in the room shift rapidly. Alex looked down at his jeans, as if they were the most interesting thing in the world, and Gabriel looked back and forth between Owen and Malachi, his face unreadable.  Oliver wondered what answer Owen was looking for, and whether or not Malachi was going to give the right one.

“I do.” Malachi said, although more timidly than Oliver had ever heard him sound before. Owen studied him, and then took another drag from his cigarette.

“You’re wrong. It’s worse.” He said.

Without warning, Malachi clapped his hand and whooped. “See, I told Paul. I’m not crazy. There’s something weird about this school.” If it was physically possible, Malachi looked like he would have slapped himself on the back for a job well done.

“What do you think, Oliver?” Owen looked over at him. Oliver shrugged.

“They are pretty strict here.”

Owen laughed harshly. “Good boys become good men, am I right boys? You don’t know the half of it.”

Oliver leaned forward, his curiosity having got the best of him. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Gabriel laughed out loud. “Do you have five years?”

Alex nodded in agreement. “It would take too long. Just let it be. Enjoy the delicacies we have here.
” He gestured at a box of beer in the corner. “Enjoy the view of the bud-lier. It’s one of a kind, you know.”

Oliver could just sense Malachi itching to speak
, and he jumped ahead.

“Come on. You can’t lead with that and expect us to not ask. We want to know what we’re in for. And you’re leaving anyway soon enough. It’s not forever.”
Oliver complained. He started to shrug, but froze when he saw the thousand yard stare in Owen’s blue eyes. Alex whistled a low whistle, and Oliver realized with creeping dread that he had stumbled across something taboo.

             
Owen flicked his gaze towards Malachi, as if he had asked the question. “You should know, then, that people don’t exactly graduate from Delafontaine.” He spoke casually, but his blue eyes still had the same, unsettling gaze.

“Why not?”

“That’s what the fortune teller said!”

Malachi and Oliver spoke at the same time. Owen looked wearily between the two of them, as if he were trying to decide whom to answer, but with a secret preference for neither.

After a moment, he sighed. “If I tell you, will you promise to drop it?”

“Drop it?” Oliver asked.

“I’ll tell you our secret, and then we’ll keep drinking. It’s easier that way.” Owen stared at Oliver, and in that moment, Oliver imagined that he looked wearier than the oldest man on earth. When Oliver had arrived at Delafontaine, he had pictured Owen and his friends as invincible, sitting at the center table and defying Matron Charlie behind her back. As he stared into Owen’s hollow eyes, it occurred to Oliver that it might well all be a carefully constructed facade.

             
“Pour me a drink, Alex.” Owen said as he stubbed his third cigarette. He received his drink with shaking hands. He took a sip and then leaned back in his chair. “When I first came to Delafontaine, I was just like you, kind of. I didn’t really have a choice. I came home one day, my suitcase was packed for me, and a cop was waiting with handcuffs. My mom was saying something about how she wished things could have gone differently and how sorry she was.” Owen laughed harshly. “It’s not true, you know. She wasn’t sorry at all. I couldn’t help it that I was different. It was something that followed me all my life. I got kicked out of every preschool from here to Los Angeles. Difficult. Ill-mannered. Whatever.” Owen took a swig of his drink and lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Truthfully, I was kind of glad to come here. You know, to turn my life around. I just couldn’t shake that feeling that there was something wrong with me. I was happy for a while here, before I found out what this place really was.” Owen paused. “You.” He pointed at Oliver with a shaky finger. “What is it about you?” Oliver raised his eyebrows in confusion. “Don’t play dumb.” Owen said, sharply. “What’s your thing?” Oliver felt his heart begin to thud.

“I mean, I got bullied a lo
t at school….” He started.

“No!” Owen slammed his drink down on the nightstand beside his bed, instantly shattering the tumbler.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Your gift, your curse, the thing that fucking brought you here. You know what I’m talking about! I can tell.” Owen’s face began turning red, and his voice climbed an octave. “Tell me!”

Oliver’s heart thudded in his ears. He supposed that were his life a movie, this scene would be the climax of the film.
He liked to imagine his life as a movie, because then it seemed less real. There would probably be some slow motion, and a perfectly timed camera zoom right onto his face. It was time for the monologue.

“Tell me!”
Owen repeated.

But this wasn’t the movies
, he reminded himself. Despite the unbelievable words that he was about to say, this was every bit of real life---Oliver’s real life. He opened his mouth, and the words that came out sounded so strange, so unreal.  And before he knew it, he was weaving a tale so grand that he almost didn’t believe it himself. But it was true, all of it course.  He started with Clarence, detailing every encounter he’d had with the unpleasant boy, to cheers of “Yeah, get him!” from Alex in the background. As he moved into the terrible part of the story, the room grew quiet, and it was clear that everyone was sitting on pins and needles. When he delivered the terrible final blow, Gabriel gasped. Then, with a rush that felt strangely like power, Oliver stood up and looked around the room at his audience. They were hanging on to his every word. No one had ever listened to him so intently in his life before. It was as if he were writing their very stories, that they could not finish their own lives until Oliver told them how. This new feeling flooded every inch of Oliver’s body, and he realized what it was. He was feeling alive. As alive as a new seedling on the first day of spring, awakened by the spring showers and the squawks of baby birds.

“And?” Owen hadn’t smoked a cigarette in
nearly an hour. His last attempt lay unlit in the ashtray and he made no motion to touch it. Malachi was glued to his chair, having not moved one muscle other than those in his face, which he used liberally at any plot twist.

“Finish the story!”
Malachi said.

Oliver puffed up hi
s chest. And a story, it was, but it was not finished yet. It couldn’t be. He looked around the room once more to gauge his audience. They were still holding on for dear life. With a shrug, Oliver finished coolly, “And, then I came here. Same as you all.”

It was if the room itself exhaled and shook the boys from their positi
ons. For the first time in hours, Owen reached towards his lighter. Gabriel put his head back down on the pillow.

“But that’s just it?” Alex yelled, and Malachi nodded his head in fierce agreement.

Owen shrugged. “Cool story. Welcome to the club.” He lit his cigarette again, and it was clear that he had already checked back out.

“I mean, it’s not over yet.” Oliver stuttered.

Owen raised an eyebrow and laughed. “What else is there to say? You’re trapped here with the rest of us. Did you think you were special? We all have stories.” Oliver opened his mouth, but no words came out. “Most kids at this school got something. Doesn’t change a thing once we get here. Gabriel here is quite the lover, you know. Even he can’t create love where it doesn’t exist. Tell ‘em, Gabs. Tell ‘em your story, since we’re all sitting around the campfire now.” Owen said in a bored voice.

             
Gabriel’s story was neither exciting nor heartwarming. In fact, it was downright disturbing. Oliver had looked over at Malachi who was wearing his signature frown, and it grew deeper with each word Gabriel spoke. Gabriel had been raised in a group home. He had, unlike Oliver, come into his gift much earlier. At first, it was a blessing of sorts, and Oliver’s heart hurt at how familiar that sounded. How Gabriel’s eyes lit up when he recounted how he thought he’d found his own saving grace. And how his eyes fell again when he remembered the catch---because there always was one.

“I was about six years old when they fell out of love with me for the first time.” Gabriel then detailed how his first adoptive parents had fallen in love with him instantly. “Presents everywhere, presents all the time.” Gabriel said, with a look in his eyes that said he was r
emembering the best time of his life. “And then nothing. It was like they didn’t even know who I was. I woke up one day, and they were standing over my bed asking me why I was here.” He shook his head sadly. “Then it happened again. I was eight this time. I went to the grocery store---I always hung out there. People are really generous after they’ve just bought things for themselves, you know. They feel like they’ve got their own affairs in order, so they’ll toss you a few pennies if you’re good. I was there with my pennies. And then this woman just comes out of nowhere, saying she’ll adopt me. We had ice-cream that day, as much as I wanted. The home was glad to give me up. I went home with her that following week. Six months later, she called the cops and told them I was an intruder.” Gabriel shrugged. “My foster mother liked to call me ‘the boy who everybody and nobody loved’. He smiled wryly.

Oliver felt Owen looking at him with a look that was partly smug and partly resigned. Oliver supposed that if this had been a simple pissing contest, Owen would have whooped and gl
eefully yelled “I told you so!” But in the aftermath of Gabriel’s story, no one felt like celebrating. Oliver in particular wished he could take it all back. He wished he had never asked. Now, it would be burned into his brain forever, and if there was one thing Oliver was certain of, it was that he didn’t need any more tragedy.

             
“I guess it’s my turn.” Alex piped up, in an unusually subdued voice. Oliver’s muscles ached from sitting so tensely. Alex’s tale was no different from the rest. As he dove deeper in, sharing a story that was more darkness than light, more yin than yang, Oliver felt his heart drop through the floor. Owen had been right of course. Who was he to waltz in like some kind of special case, as if he had the copyright on heartbreak and disappointment? As if he were misfortune’s sole client? The shame came on hard and fast as Alex continued talking.

Alex was far away now
, though. His eyes stared at the ceiling, but he---he was gone, somewhere far, far away.

“My parents were so proud you know. I was their little prodigy. I could play piano by
age three. I was getting everything right on Jeopardy by age five. I was going to be the one, you know. I was going to win the million dollars, and we were going to move into a bigger house, man. I could do it. I knew the million dollar question. Then, shit hit the fan of course.” Alex looked around the room as if suddenly realizing where he was. “I went on Jeopardy. I got it. I got the million dollar question. And they told me I cheated, that I
stole the answer card
. How would I do that?” Alex cried, as if he were talking to the host of Jeopardy himself. “My dad, man. He knew I knew. He saw it all. He was going to retire. On this nice little house by the beach. He always wanted to open up a little restaurant and sell his food right there to all the tourists. The American Dream, you know. He saw it, the whole thing and lost it all, right there. And it was all because of me.” Alex smiled sadly, tipped his head back and funneled some beer. “And here we are. I’ve got PBR. It was tough, but I got it.” He cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Malachi jumped in shortly thereafter to tell his story. The fact that Oliver had already heard it didn’t lessen the pain.

Barely realizing what had happened
, Oliver found himself clutching a beer. He threw it back and grimaced at the toilet bowl taste, though he was thankful to have something else to focus his senses on, if only for that moment. Owen swirled the beer in a new glass, and began to speak. His voice was monotone, and it was clear that he had made this speech many times before. “And so there we have it, Oliver. In last place we’ve got the boy who knew too much. I think that about wraps up our little brigade here. Really now, have a beer. That’s the only thing that’ll make all this go away.” Owen took a huge swig of his own. “Are you satisfied now?” He asked, his voice slightly slurred. Oliver froze. He was the furthest thing from satisfied. He was….nothing. He felt strangely numb. He’d once imagined this before of course, coming across a bunch of people just like him. For some reason, he imagined it to be a happy reunion. But as he looked around the room, at Gabriel who was nearly passed out on the bed, Alex who nursed several beers at once, and Owen, who had clearly checked out years before this conversation, this was nothing like what he’d imagined. There was nothing about this that was happy. He looked over at Malachi, who had been quiet for an astonishingly long time. He too had taken on the thousand yard stare, his mind far away from this room.

Oliver suddenly felt as if he were the only person in the room that was actually alive.
He wondered if this was exactly what Delafontaine wanted. “But, this Disciples thing, you have to stick together, right?”

Alex perked up. “Yeah, we get together.”

Oliver’s anger flared. “So do something!”

He had pictured in his
mind that this would go over as a rousing call to arms, but the words fell flat. Owen got up, and Oliver watched him and held his breath. He shuffled over to the closet and removed a small broom and dust pan, and began sweeping up the remains of his old tumbler.  Oliver’s heart sank.

“So that’s just it then?
We’ve all got these things---he shuddered at calling them powers. Powers were for superheroes, people who saved lives and did good things for the world. With a fresh helping of guilt that he realized he hadn’t felt in quite some time, Oliver remembered that he was not that at all.

“…
and we’re not even going to use them?” He continued anyway.

Owen shrugged as if Oliver had just asked him the time, and he simply didn’t know. “Are you going to do something about it
, wisher man?” Gabriel lifted his head, appearing mildly interested. Alex stared into his empty beer bottle and hiccupped.  Oliver opened his mouth to answer, but Owen cut him off. “There’s no way out of here. We don’t graduate. No one ever does. It’s cursed, you know.”

“Where do people go, then?” Oliver asked, exasperatedly.

“People just don’t. They get sick. They disappear. I don’t know.” Gabriel said, and he lifted his shoulders into a shrug.

“Maybe if you stood up for yourselves for once in your lives!” Oliver looked around the room desperately. “You’re going to let them decide what’s going to happen to you? Are
you
just going to disappear in six months?” The room was silent once again, and at that moment Oliver realized that it was true. The Delafontaine School wasn’t trying to turn good boys into good young men, it was trying to stamp the very life out of them. It was almost too clever, really, and if he hadn’t been so horrified, Oliver might have saluted the school. It was the perfect crime, to kill a young soul. Realizing that not a single word he said would fall upon receptive ears today, Oliver stood up and left the room.

             
He returned to his own room, feeling worse than the day his father died. Oliver didn’t think he would ever be able to forget Owen’s stare, and that it was apparently contagious. As he watched each boy in the room adopt the same stare, he wondered if he too would get it someday. If he would wish on beer cans instead of stars. Oliver fell asleep that night to terrible dreams and an uneasy stomach. All the while, Owen’s stare occupied his unconscious, reminding him of the lost dreams of many.

Chapter 8

The next day, Oliver popped up with considerably less enthusiasm than he’d had the first day. “You forgot your tie.” Robert noted, looking at him through his own mirror. 

Oliver looked down and shrugged. “Who cares?”

He sat down at his usual table for breakfast, giving Paul a solemn hello. He spotted Robert walk through the bagel line, but he darted off without sitting down. Paul, as animated as ever quickly launched into a discussion of the day’s history lesson. He made sure to nod at the appropriate times, but Paul’s discussion had long become white noise to him. He looked over to the center table, and with a sudden flash of anger, he noticed a fourth person who he realized was Malachi. Malachi, Owen, Alex, and Gabriel had their heads together in deep discussion. Oliver’s nostrils flared. So that was it then? They were going to just kick him out of their pity party club? He hadn’t wanted to be a part of it anyway. It wasn’t like it was exclusive. Oliver thought back to Owen’s mocking comment from the day before: “Did you think you were special?” Did
they
think they were special? If they wanted to wallow and disappear, then that was on them. Oliver had no intention to do anything similar. He hadn’t escaped hell, just to land in purgatory.

Oliver stared at the center table, while he shoveled mashed potatoes in his mouth in a way that he hoped seemed aggressive.

“Whoa.” Paul had finally stopped droning about history class---or was it math?—and had turned his attention to Oliver’s eating habits. “You don’t want to hang around them anyway, you know.” Oliver cocked his eyebrow. “Everyone knows what they do after class. You really don’t want that in your life, do you? You’re welcome to study with me and some friends after class instead.” Oliver smiled bitterly, though he hoped it looked genuine to Paul.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass for now.”
Oliver said.

Paul looked at him, then turned up his nose.  “Suit yourself. There’s a history test on Friday, at any rate. I’m going to be prepared for it, even if you’re not.” With that,
Paul gathered his books and tray and left the table in a flurry. Oliver looked up at the clock and rolled his eyes. Class didn’t start for another twenty minutes.

             
When Oliver felt that he had sufficiently burned a large enough hole in the back of Malachi’s head with his staring, he turned back to his own tray resigned to finishing his meal alone. As he was finishing the last of his eggs, someone cleared their throat. Oliver looked up to see Malachi, Owen, Gabriel and Alex standing around the table.