“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.
O Deus Ego Amo Te
O God I Love You, Christopher knew.
When church ended, Special Ed’s mother went out to the parking lot and lit a cigarette. She took a deep breath in and exhaled a cloud.
“Jesus Christ, that was a long mass,” she said. “Doesn’t Father Tom know we all have Christmas shopping to do?”
She said it without a hint of irony, which Christopher’s mother admitted made her love Betty all the more. Then, after Betty cleaned the bake sale out of snickerdoodles, she offered to take everyone out for pizza to celebrate the good news.
“What good news?” Christopher’s mother asked.
“Eddie was promoted out of the dumb class!” she said.
“Hey!” Special Ed sulked.
“Sorry, honey. But it’s true. You were in the dumb class,” she said, patting his hair. “But that Mrs. Henderson is a genius because you’re reading at a fourth-grade level now. We’re so proud. Right, Big Eddie?”
“So proud. So proud,” Special Ed’s father said, watching the Steelers highlights on his phone.
Christopher saw his mother lock the information about Special Ed away in her mind. Then, the two families joined Matt and Mike and their two moms, who had just finished doing what Betty referred to as “whatever it is that Lutherans do” at their church off Route 19.
They may have had their religious differences, but hey…same God. Same pizza.
As the adults plowed through a pitcher of Iron City beer, the boys played video games.
“I just need help with the windows and roof,” Christopher offered. “I’ll do the rest myself.”
“Sorry, Chris. Our moms grounded us,” Matt said.
“Yeah,” Mike said, wanting their dessert privileges restored.
But Christopher wouldn’t let it go. The headache wouldn’t let