and ride to the neighborhood school, where he would meet his three closest friends and play whatever game they were into. Bernie Hughes always preferred box ball because he had a curveball you couldn’t help but chase out of the strike zone. Alf Deacon liked Checkers because he was fat and lazy and you didn’t have to run playing Checkers. Chris Throssell always picked basketball because he was taller than the rest of them and could get most of the rebounds.
Jeff, on the other hand, never cared which game they chose. He was equally good at all of them. He hit the most home runs in box ball. He was always one move ahead of them in Checkers. And despite being a few inches shorter than Chris, he scored the most baskets in basketball, zipping around the beanpole, layup after layup.
Jeff didn’t know why he excelled so naturally at sports. He didn’t have the ideal build for them, not then at least. He’d been one of the shortest kids in all his classes up until grade eight when his growth spurt kicked in. It was true he’d always been coordinated. That helped, he supposed. But it wasn’t only athletics he’d excelled at. It was everything. Schoolwork, conversation, visual arts—it all came naturally to him. And being coordinated surely didn’t help with math problems or vocabulary quizzes. So it was something else.
Ironically enough, he got off to a slow start in life. He didn’t start walking until he was well into his first year, and he didn’t start speaking until he was nearly three. Originally his mother feared this might be indicative of some intellectual disability. But their pediatrician assured her that Jeff was in perfect health. And he was right. In his fourth year Jeff was not only speaking but reading fluently. When he entered school at five and a half he found the games and activities of his age-peers babyish and showed little interest in their company. His teacher recommended he skip grade two, though his mother didn’t allow this, fearing it might cause him emotional difficulties down the road.
Nevertheless, in the following years Jeff continued to impress his teachers with his mature questioning, intense curiosity, desire to learn, and advanced sense of humor. In grade five his physical precocity kicked in, and he was constantly picked first for teams during recess or gym. In grade six he was the runner-up for the state’s science fair competition. In grade seven he won first place in the same competition. Whenever his teachers told the class to pair up, everyone wanted to be his partner. Part of this was because he was popular, but it was also because he’d do all the work himself, or at least figure it out, then explain it to the others.
He never paid much attention to when his parents and teachers called him “gifted.” He simply took for granted he was smart and talented and athletic. That was his life, it was easy, and it would always be easy.
Yet now, drifting in the void, Jeff understood how foolish and naïve his worldview had been. Because life was never easy, not for anybody. It threw you curveballs much more devious than Bernie’s had ever been. Models were disfigured in freak accidents, millionaires lost their millions in bad investments, celebrities had their deepest secrets exposed in the tabloids. People like Jeff, who’d won the genetic lottery, lost the ability of their legs and were fed to grotesque-sized snakes.
If Jeff could have, he would have laughed at the absurdity of it all, and by “all” he meant life. But he couldn’t, his lungs were just about crushed to nothing, and as the blackness of unconsciousness and death closed around him, these last thoughts faded from his mind, and he let himself float and be.
CHAPTER 22
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
The Shining (1980)
Boston Mills Psychiatric Hospital was an imposing Victorian structure composed of staggered wings, pointed roofs, and a bevy of turrets. When Spencer Pratt first began working there, doctors were performing lobotomies and electroshock therapy on a whim and sending the unruliest patients into comas with large doses of insulin and metrozol. Today, of course, that no longer occurred. Today, in the great and noble year of 1987, you were held accountable for your actions, and accountable people didn’t perform sadism and torture on others—at least not in public anyway.
Spencer parked the Volvo in his reserved parking spot and shut off the engine. He climbed