The Orchard by Charles L. Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

conclusions to be drawn obvious, and I was one of the first to turn my work in.
    As planned, Stick met me at the student union. We found an empty lounge and dropped onto one of the couches, doing our act about misery and woe and how God Himself would have to grade the papers with divine compassion before we could pass. And when that was done, we matched schedules for the rest of the week. My next test was Wednesday morning, the first of a string of three in a row. Stick had one a day, the fortunes of war.
    Then he told me about Mike.
    “Jackass wrapped his old man’s car around a telephone pole, can you believe it? He must have been doing ninety, the cops said.” He shook his head, took off his baseball cap, and slapped his knee with it. “I don’t get it, y’know? He just doesn’t do stuff like that, speeding and crap.”
    I was cold in that room, and I couldn’t meet his eyes.
    “You go see him?”
    I nodded. “I tried, anyway. Snuck up when they weren’t looking, but they caught me.”
    “Yeah. He looks—”
    I glared, and he didn’t say it, and whatever we were going to do that afternoon was instantly replaced by a trip to the hospital, he on his new moped and me riding behind. It was a tight squeeze, and he laughed most of the way because our combined weights held us down to barely a walk.
    “Damn good thing you’re dropping some tonnage,” he told me as we walked into the building. “Christ, the way you used to be, you would have squashed it flat.”
    I shoved him hard through the revolving doors, sneered at his protest, then composed myself as I approached the receptionist and asked about Mike Buller. She looked at me kind of funny, looked at Stick until he took off his cap, and looked pointedly between us into the waiting room. I half turned and saw a group of people gathered around Mike’s parents—his mother was crying, his father looked ready to tear the place apart.
    “Shit,” Stick said, grabbed a tissue from a box on the desk, and blew his nose.
    “I’m going,” I told him when he started to walk over.
    “What?” He stopped and slapped his cap back on. “But you can’t, Herb! You gotta … you gotta say something, don’t you think?”
    I shrugged. I supposed I did, but I didn’t know what, and I wasn’t going to get myself into that mess over there, standing around with my hands in my pockets while I watched the Bullers’ world fall apart.
    “C’mon,” Stick said, reaching for my arm.
    I stepped away and told him no with a look.
    “Sometimes,” he said then, “you are really a shit, Herb, you know?”
    I ignored him and left, walked up to the luncheonette and ordered a chocolate shake. It tasted lousy, but I sat at the counter anyway, like I was in a bar and nursing a drink. I stayed for an hour and had a sandwich I didn’t finish, took a walk through the park and watched some kids playing ball, then wandered again until I passed Station Motors and saw myself in the window.
     
    The first thing I thought was, there was someone standing behind me, that damned guy again— but when I looked, I was alone. And when I looked back, I saw this almost skinny guy, this blond-haired guy wearing baggy pants and a baggy shirt, with eyes, because of the dark car in the front of the showroom, that looked like empty holes.
    I put a hand to the plate glass as if I could touch myself, backed away to the curb, and looked down at myself. My hands began to tremble. My stomach felt ready to get rid of the shake and sandwich. I must have stood there for nearly five minutes, pulling at my shirt, pulling my waistband away from my gut, acting like I’d never seen myself before.
    I knew I hadn’t been eating right for a while; I knew that I’d been swearing to go on a real, honest-to-god diet if that’s what it would take to be human again; and I knew that the last time I’d said that was only Friday afternoon. When we were all at the orchard.
    But you can’t lose fifty pounds in three