Schizo by Nic Sheff Read Free Book Online Page A

care.”
    He laughs then. “Sure.”
    â€œI don’t,” I tell him. “I’ve got more important things to do than worry about Eliza Lindberg.”
    â€œYeah? Like what?” he asks.
    â€œI just . . .”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI . . .”
    But I don’t try to explain. I can’t tell Preston what I’m planning to do—what I’ve been chosen to do. I can’t tell anyone. They wouldn’t understand. They’d tell me I was wasting my time, that I was getting in over my head, that I was being stupid, naive, and whatever else.
    And, hell, maybe I am.
    But it doesn’t matter.
    Preston smiles again as he says, “Well, anyway, that party I’m having Saturday night? Eliza told me she’s gonna be there. And, uh . . .” He pauses, looking back at Jackie, before continuing on. “She did say she wanted to see you.”
    My face goes flush then, and there’s this tightening in my stomach.
    â€œShe wants to see me?”
    Preston nods slowly. “So that means you’re coming then, huh?”
    I force myself to breathe. “No, man, I told you, I don’t care about Eliza.”
    â€œSo you’re
not
coming?”
    â€œI don’t know, man. I’ll see.”
    He leans over to Jackie. “He’s totally coming.”
    She laughs, her white teeth flashing. “Please come,” she says to me. “At least I’ll have someone to talk to. I hate his big parties.”
    â€œMe too,” I tell her.
    Preston sets his jaw, then click-clicks it back and forth. “Well, no one’s forcing you all.”
    Jackie kisses him quickly on the cheek. “No, I’ll be there. You should come, too, Miles. We can hide out in Pres’s room together.”
    I nod, suddenly distracted—listening to the mass of students talking at once, the sound like the steady vibrating hum of a working beehive, growing ever louder, as though someone has come along and shaken the thing up, the drones swarming, agitated, driven blindly by some unknown desire.
    And there is Eliza.
    She is sitting there, silently, in the very center.
    As if it were all for her.
    And so I tell myself, again, that finding Teddy is all that matters.
    Preston’s party.
    Jackie.
    Eliza.
    Goddamn school assemblies.
    The swarming hive.
    None of it matters.
    It is all meaningless.
    â€œAnyway,” Jackie continues, “there’ll be so many people, you probably won’t even see Eliza.”
    â€œYeah, that’s true.”
    Our school principal, Ms. Brizendine, steps up behind the podium on the stage.
    The noise of the swarm starts to quiet down around us.
    Eliza sits very still.
    And I try not to notice.

10.
    IF THERE’S ONE THING I’ve learned from watching all those film noirs with my mom, it’s that detectives always begin by interviewing the primary witness. And, in this instance, Dotty Peterson is not just the primary witness, she is the
only
witness—the one who told the police she saw Teddy getting into that truck.
    I’ve never actually met Dotty Peterson, myself—considering I was in the hospital the first seventy-two hours after Teddy’s disappearance—but her name, along with the town she lived in, was printed in pretty near every article there was on the kidnapping at that time.
    So finding her, these two years later, was actually super easy. All I had to do was call information. She was listed as D. Peterson of Burlingame, California. The operator connected me, and Dotty answered on the second ring.
    Of course, I was nervous as hell, calling her like that—my voice shaking all over the place as I tried to explain who I was and what I wanted—but she was very nice and very patient. She even agreed to let me go to her house to talk about Teddy and to have, as she put it, “a good chat.” She told me several times how sorry she was for me. She really was