younger. In fact, he had sometimes been mistaken for a girl until a year or so ago, when he
had made such a fuss about having his hair cut short that his mother had finally relented
and allowed it. With his father, of course, there had been no problem about the haircut. His
father had just grinned his hard, stainless steel grin and said, The kid wants to look like a
Marine, Laurie. Good for him.
To his father, he was never Jake and rarely John. To his father, he was usually just “the
kid.”
The Piper School, his father had explained to him the summer before (the Bicentennial
Summer, that had been—all bunting and flags and New York Harbor filled with Tall Ships),
was, quite simply, The Best Damned School In The Country For A Boy Your Age. The fact
that Jake had been accepted there had nothing to do with money, Elmer Chambers
explained . . . almost insisted. He had been savagely proud of this fact, although, even at
ten, Jake had suspected it might not be a true fact, that it might really be a bunch of bullshit his father had turned into a fact so he could casually drop it into the conversation at lunch or over cocktails: My kid? Oh, he’s going to Piper. Best Damned School In The Country For
A Boy His Age. Money won’t buy you into that school, you know; for Piper, it’s brains or
nothing.
Jake was perfectly aware that in the fierce furnace of Elmer Cham- bers’s mind, the gross
carbon of wish and opinion was often blasted into the hard diamonds which he called
facts. … or, in more informal circumstances, “factoids.” His favorite phrase, spoken often and with rev- erence, was the fact is, and he usedit every chance he got.
The fact is, money doesn’t get anyone into The Piper School, his father had told him during
that Bicentennial Summer, the summer of blue skies and bunting and Tall Ships, a summer
which seemed golden in Jake’s mem- ory because he had not yet begun to lose his mind and
all he had to worry about was whether or not he could cut the mustard at The Piper School,
which sounded like a nest for newly hatched geniuses. The only thing that gets you into a
place like Piper is what you’ve got up here. Elmer Chambers had reached over his desk and
tapped the center of his son’s forehead with a hard, nicotine-stained finger. Get me, kid?
Jake had nodded. It wasn’t necessary to talk to his father, because his father treated
everyone—including his wife—the way he treated his underlings at the TV network where he was in charge of programming and an acknowledged master of The Kill. All you had to
do was listen, nod in the right places, and after a while he let you go.
Good, his father said, lighting one of the eighty Camel cigarettes he smoked each and
every day. We understand each other, then. You’re going to have to work your buttsky off,
but you can cut it. They never would have sent us this if you couldn’t. He picked up the
letter of acceptance from The Piper School and rattled it. There was a kind of savage
triumph in the gesture, as if the letter was an animal he had killed in the jungle, an animal
he would now skin and eat. So work hard. Make your grades. Make your mother and me
proud of you. If you end the year with an A average in your courses. there’s a trip to Disney
World in it for you. That’s something to shoot for, right, kiddo?
Jake had made his grades—A’s in everything (until the last three weeks, that was). He had,
presumably, made his mother and father proud of him, although they were around so little
that it was hard to tell. Usually there was nobody around when he came home from school
except for Greta Shaw—the housekeeper—and so he ended up showing his A papers to her.
After that, they migrated to a dark corner of his room. Sometimes Jake looked through
them and wondered if they meant any- thing. He wanted them to, but he had serious doubts.
Jake didn’t think he would be going to Disney World this summer, A average or no A
average.
He thought the nuthouse was a much better possibility.
As he walked in through the double doors of The Piper School at 8:45 on the morning of
May 31st, a terrible vision came to him. He saw his father in his office at 70 Rockefeller
Plaza, leaning over his desk with a Camel jutting from the corner of his mouth, talking to
one of his underlings as blue smoke wreathed his head. All of New York was spread out
behind and below his father, its thump and hustle silenced by two layers of Thermopane
glass.
The fact is, money doesn’t get anyone into Sunnyvale Sanitarium, his father was telling the
underling in a tone of grim satisfaction. He reached out and tapped the underling’s forehead.
The only thing that gets you into a place like that is when something big-time goes wrong
up here in the attic. That’s what happened to the kid. But he’s working his goddam buttsky
off. Makes the best fucking baskets in the place, they tell me. And when they let him
out—if they ever do—there’s a trip in it for him. A trip to—
“—the way station,” Jake muttered, then touched his forehead with a hand that wanted to tremble. The voices were coming back. The yelling, conflicting voices which were driving
him mad.
You’re dead, Jake. You were run over by a car and you’re dead.
Don’t be stupid! Look—see that poster? REMEMBER THE CLASS ONE PICNIC, it says.
Do you think they have Class Picnics in the afterlife?
I don’t know. But I know you were run over by a car.
No!
Yes. It happened on May 9th, at 8:25 AM You died less than a minute later.
No! No! No!
“John?”
He looked around, badly startled. Mr. Bissette, his French teacher, was standing there,
looking a little concerned. Behind him, the rest of the student body was streaming into the
Common Room for the morning assembly. There was very little skylarking, and no yelling
at all. Presumably these other students, like Jake himself, had been told by their parents
how lucky they were to be attending Piper, where money didn’t matter (although tuition
was $22,000 a year), only your brains. Presumably many of them had been promised trips
this summer if their grades were good enough. Presumably the parents of the lucky
trip-winners would even go along in some cases. Presumably—
“John, are you okay?” Mr. Bissette asked.
“Sure,” Jake said. “Fine. I overslept a little this morning. Not awake yet, I guess.”
Mr. Bissette’s face relaxed and he smiled. “Happens to the best of us.”
Not to my dad. The master of The Kill never oversleeps.
“Are you ready for your French final?” Mr. Bissette asked. “Voulez-vous faire I’examen cet apres-midi?”
“I think so,” Jake said. In truth he didn’t know if he was ready for the exam or not. He couldn’t even remember if he had studied for the French final or not. These days nothing
seemed to matter much except for the voices in his head.
“I want to tell you again how much I enjoyed having you this year, John. I wanted to tell
your folks, too, but they missed Parents’ Night—”
“They’re pretty busy,” Jake said.
Mr. Bissette nodded. “Well, I have enjoyed you. I just wanted to say so … and that I’m
looking forward to having you back for French II next year.”
“Thanks,” Jake said, and wondered what Mr. Bissette would say if he added, But I don’t think I’ll be taking French II next year, unless I can get a correspondence course delivered
to my postal box at good old Sunnyvale.
Joanne Franks, the school secretary, appeared in the doorway of the Common Room with
her small silver-plated bell in her hand. At The Piper School, all bells were rung by hand.
Jake supposed that if you were a parent, that was one of its charms. Memories of the Little
Red Schoolhouse and all that. He hated it himself. The sound of that bell seemed to go right
through his head—
I can’t hold on much longer, he thought despairingly. I’m sorry, but I’m losing it. I’m really,
really losing it.
Mr. Bissette had caught sight of Ms. Franks. He turned away, then turned back again. “Is
everything all right, John? You’ve seemed preoccupied these last few weeks. Troubled. Is
something on your mind?”
Jake was almost undone by the kindness in Mr. Bissette’s voice, but then he imagined how
Mr. Bissette would look if he said: Yes. Something is on my mind. One hell of a nasty little
factoid. I died, you see, and I went into another world. And then I died again. You’re going