Going Away

Leanna Kelly
Senior Thesis RD
Prof. David Grand
Week 2
The nightmares were back.
Ryan couldn’t shut his eyes, but he refused to look down next to his bed, where the old crazy woman had been digging. A breeze floated through the window, rippling the ghostlike curtains and rattling the posters above his head. It was freezing in his bedroom, and the comforter was on the floor. His arms prickled in the cold November air, and he wrapped the sheet closer around his legs. The clock on the wall glared at him with eyes as red as his own. 5:00. Ryan felt the heaviness of sleep pushing his eyelids back down, forcing him to drift back into the darkness of his dream…No. He snapped his eyes open again, and pushed the pillows up behind his head.
The nightmares started when he was just a little kid. They weren’t just stupid little kid nightmares about monsters under his bed, or some kind of Boogeyman kidnaps defenseless children. His nightmares were so horrible, so terrible—so mind-blowingly awful, that he couldn’t tell anyone. The doctors had tried everything. Nasty sticky syrups, tiny purple pills (you could never be sure you had actually swallowed those), pulpy vegetable juice just before bedtime, and finally, hypnosis. Nothing worked. The doctors just shook their heads and told him to stop watching “violent shows.” “He’s got quite the imagination,” they would say to his parents, like he had some incurable disease. “Quite the imagination, for such a young boy.”
“What in the world are you scared of?” they would ask Ryan, as they pushed their glasses up their nose. “Where are you getting all of this dream material?”
“Nothing,” Ryan would say.
And it was true. He wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies, although he sneaked them sometimes, when his mom and dad weren’t looking. But those never really scared him. He didn’t dream about the things he saw on TV. Nothing could scare him in real life. Even as a baby, he didn’t get startled and cry. In fact, for a little while, his mom thought he was deaf, because she dropped a big pot full of spaghetti onto the floor one night when he was in his high chair. He just kept on eating, like there was nothing more interesting in the world than mashed up “pears n’ turkey.” No one could figure him out—and no one could stop the nightmares.
Except dad.
One night, after an especially horrible nightmare (involving flesh-eating spacemen), his dad came up with the most genius idea Ryan had ever heard.
“Scare yourself,” he said. “Do it on purpose. You can’t control your dreams if you can’t control real life.” Dad was always giving out advice. It was his specialty. His mom always said that dad was a little “out there.”
But when Ryan heard that, even as a seven year old, he knew his dad had gone crazy. Still, he couldn’t handle another visit from those oozing, starving, fork-wielding spacemen. So he decided to try it out. The real problem was figuring out a way to actually scare himself. He tried reading horror stories (the most gruesome ones, not the ones he read for fun). He turned off all the lights in the house, so it was pitch black, and tried to walk from one end to the other (ouch). He pretended there were murderous robbers hiding in the basement.
Even his mom tried to help. She leapt out from behind the curtains in the living room when he got home from school, wearing one of her green pasty beauty masks. Nothing worked. Then one night, he finally did it. Ryan scared himself beyond belief.
If he stared long enough in a mirror, he wouldn’t recognize himself. It took a while, and it made his eyes sting and water, but it was worth it—Ryan’s face would morph into something sinister and horrible, something that he knew was him, but wasn’t at the same time. It was watching the worst horror movie in the world, times ten. After all, you can hide from a horror movie. You can dive under your covers to hide from monsters. You can jump out of your window if a murderer leaps into your doorway.
But you can’t run from yourself.

******
The thing about having a mom who “cooks” is, you can never find anything to eat for breakfast. No Pop Tarts, no Fruity Pebbles, nothing easy. You have to wait for “mealtime,” a.k.a. “whenever mom’s in the mood to cook something.” Which is totally pointless, because by the time you realize you’re starving, you want to eat something right then, before your stomach eats itself. And Ryan was starving to death. He went straight for the fridge. A carton of eggs, bottom shelf. One lonely half gallon of milk. Pickles. Horrible pickles. Ketchup. Mustard. A greasy looking jar of mayo in the door. There was one box of Wheatie Bits, way up on the top shelf in the pantry. Wheatie Bits are the worst.
“I haven’t been out to the market yet,” his mom yelled from the laundry room down the hall. The washing machine sloshed. Slursh, slursh, slursh. Mom walked into the kitchen. Just then, Ryan was reaching for the box. He had one leg up on a lower shelf. Almost there…
“Ryan!”
Ryan froze, right leg dangling from his perch.
“Don’t you dare climb on my new shelves, young man.” She picked up a stool from near the sink, and carefully propped it up next to the dog food bin. “Well,” she sighed, “there’s another thing my mother didn’t pass down. Her height.”
Ryan’s mom always talked about grandma. She could find any opportunity—a lost set of keys (Grandma was the queen of disorganization); a rotten dinner (Grandma could cook, but never taught the kids)—anything. Ryan had never met Grandma Jean. She had passed away last summer, somewhere down in Arizona, and Ryan had only received one gift from her in his entire life—not even a gift, really. She sent it to him three weeks before they found out she died—just a small-ish wooden box that wouldn’t open. Ryan’s mom tried to send it back. It was an accident, she insisted. Grandma’s losing it. But dad let him keep it, and dad always had the final say in things like that. So it sat in the corner of Ryan’s closet, on the top shelf, because it didn’t really go with the blue and white color “scheme” his mom had just done. Besides, it looked kind of girly, with roses and stuff etched on the cover.
“Ryan,” his mom grabbed his chin and peered into his face. “Did you sleep last night? You look like death.”
“Did you?”
Mom dropped her hand, sighed, and walked to the fridge.
“I’ll make you something.”
Ryan’s mom never slept. You couldn’t tell by the way she acted. She was almost never grumpy. But you could tell by the way her shoulders always slumped, and the twin dark crescents carved under her blue eyes. She had paint in her hair; light brown mousey paint that now covered the living room. If you peeled off that layer of the wall, you’d find another layer—a light green-ish one. And under that, a light sky blue. And under that, a horrible dark brown. Who knows what was before that—probably some boring “antique white” like the paint job in the kitchen.
“Never mind,” Ryan blurted out, as he glanced at the blinking microwave.
“Never mind what?” Her voice was strained as she reached inside the freezer.
“I’m gonna be late. No time to eat.” He raced for the front door, socks sliding dangerously on the waxy wood floor. Shoes on the shoe rack, sweatshirt on the top of the couch—he was halfway down the tree-lined street when he realized that he forgot his backpack. And his lunch. And his homework.

****
Mrs. Grotelmyer was not happy. She looked OK today, Ryan thought. Well, good for Mrs. Grotelmyer, anyway. She had done her hair up in kind of a spiky way. He glanced at her face. Long spidery eyelashes, fire-engine-red nail polish—must be a special day. As she talked, all he could watch were those nails—they clawed the air with a ferocious life of their own. They were dangerously close to her mouth, now, looking as though they wanted to attack her fluorescently white teeth. The creepiest thing about Mrs. Grotelmyer wasn’t the fact that she always touched your shoulder when she was helping you with a math problem, or that she sometimes played guitar for no reason. It was that she smiled all the time. Ryan had seen her smile as she’d send kids to the principal’s office, with the same smile she’d hand you a grade “A” paper. She reserved her creepiest smile of all, however, for only one man. Von Cleever, the nerdy principal would stalk in once a week, with his head bobbing, to check out how “how the students were progressing.” He’d always take a seat in Mrs. Grotelmyer’s desk, and she’d flash him her toothy, lipstick-smeared chops. Today, she was especially full of joy, because nobody had done last Friday’s math assignment. Not one person.
“Class, this is not the kind of situation any teacher wants to be in.” Mrs. Grotelmyer was grinning from ear to ear.
Ryan’s chair squeaked in the front row. That’s what happens when you get to class late. You always get the worst seat in the house. Teachers love grilling the front row. It’s their second favorite thing. Their first favorite is giving out homework assignments—and in the case of Mrs. Grotelmyer, eating apples. Tons of apples, just like all the teachers in TV shows and movies and books.
“Now, I know you’re busy kids.” Her hands were still now. Folded like chained animals under her flabby arms. His mother complained about her arms all the time (Grandma had the same ones), but she always wore long sleeves to hide them.
“You’ve got a lot of responsibilities, as you get older…” She blabbed on….
“Ryan.” Mrs. Grotelmyer was speaking to him. Or did she mean the other Ryan, Ryan B? Ryan turned around to look at Ryan B. He was staring intently at something on the floor under his desk. There was nothing there.
“Yea…hi...here,” Ryan blurted.
“I’m not taking attendance.” One kid laughed. Snyder. Mrs. Grotelmyer shot him a lovely, horrible grin. Then she picked up one of the apples on her desk, and crunched into it with her fluorescent teeth.
“Did you finish your work this time, Ryan?”
“No.”
She raised her eyebrows so high; you could see the tops of her sunken-in eyelids. “I mean…” Excuses flitted through his brain.
But all he could focus on were her eyelids. Purple, veiny, and paper thin.“I mean…I left my backpack at home.”
She wheeled around on her short heels, nodding her head methodically. Heels tapping ominously across the gray and white tiles, all the way to the chalkboard. Congress, She wrote on the board. “I want this chapter read by tonight, so that next week”—here, she wheeled around on the cold tile—“You’ll be starting a four-page essay on the subject.”
Everyone was silent. Four pages? That was unheard of in a 5th grade classroom. That was the kind of work that 8th graders groaned about.
Ryan B. raised his hand. “Double-spaced?”
Mrs. Grotelmyer grinned again. Her mouth had to be tired by now, Ryan thought. Her cheek twitched.
“Single.” She set down her apple, and reached behind her desk, lifting up her guitar case. “Now. Something fun, to lighten the mood.”  A fly buzzed down from the ceiling, and landed on her apple. Ryan didn’t say a word.
****
Three hours had gone by, and not a single word had been typed. Not one single word. Ryan stared at his computer screen, blurring his eyes. A little black line, blinking its way through a snowstorm.
He leaned back into the cracked black vinyl chair, squeaking it up and back on its rusty hinge; daring it to dump him backwards onto the floor (which it had done, many times). There was always a moment right before that fall: the sheer terror of knowing you’re going to drop, and the weird satisfaction in knowing that you brought it upon yourself.
In the darkness of the office, the green lights of a cordless phone sprang to life, and alerted the three others placed throughout the house. They echoed each other’s song. 
         Doo-dee-do-dee-do-dee-do… Nearly together in unison. Mom thought it was classy to have phones that didn’t ring. They played a little tune instead.
         “Mom!” Ryan yelled.
         Doo-dee-do-dee-do…
         Ryan never picked up the phone. Ever. For one thing, he couldn’t speak into the phone without sounding like an idiot and mixing all his words up. It was something about trying to talk without knowing when the person on the other end was going to try to say something.
For another thing, people always called him “Ma’am.”
         Doo-dee--
         In one swift motion, Ryan leapt out of his chair and pressed the “talk” button. He hesitated a moment, then started to put it down—and what he heard on the other end of the line, in that moment, chilled him completely.
         “Hello, Mr. Ryan Hogan.”
         It was the creepiest voice he had ever heard.
“Ryan isn’t here.” Now he was choking on his own saliva. What a pathetic way to die. You don’t even know who this is. It’s probably one of mom’s friends from Arizona…
“Excuse me?” She sounded disappointed. “Whom am I speaking to?”
“Well, who is this?”
“I’m Mrs. Absalom. I live right down the street…just a few doors down.”
He could almost hear a smile cracking over her decayed face.
“Wrong number,” Ryan said, before hanging up.

*****
         The next day, the rain just kept coming down. It made everything on Sycamore Street look and smell like a wet dirty mutt. Mom wasn’t up yet, so he just made himself a peanut butter sandwich and went out to catch the bus. On the way out the front door, his foot connected with something solid, and he just barely saved his sandwich from a certain death in the rose bushes.
         The box (that had nearly killed him) was about one foot tall, and was wrapped tightly in tape. In fact, it was so tightly entwined in tape, that it hardly looked like a cardboard box. It looked like a brown plastic bin, slightly dented in the corners, and bulged suspiciously around the sides. Little beads of rain dripped from a small label, which read:
         From:
A.M. Jugan
         2355 Sundale Lane
         Benchon, AZ 84573
It was addressed “To:” in sharp letters, the “Hogan Household.” That could be anyone, Ryan thought. That could mean me. Ryan reread the label. “A.M. Jugan” wasn’t anyone he’d ever heard of. And mom never mentioned anyone from Arizona besides her friend Julie Halward, from high school, or Grandma Jean. He picked up the box and shook it, like a Christmas present. He was always good at figuring out Christmas presents this way, which is why mom hid them well every year until early Christmas morning.
But this one must have been packed by a pro. Not one sound came from the box. Not a crinkle, not a slight jingle, not even a slight whisper of movement. And man, was it heavy. He was just starting to pry open a corner when the bus rolled past, on its way to the stop. He shoved it to the side, under the living room window.
A.M. Jugan. A.M. Jugan. The name rolled through his mind in a continuous loop, as he raced down to the stop, where one last kid was getting on.
The package couldn’t be for mom. She rarely talked to anyone, but she was OK that way. She was busy, always painting, always cutting tree limbs, baking, picking flowers…she didn’t need other people. He had figured that out a long time ago, when everyone stopped inviting them over, when the birthday parties and the ski trips and the RollerTowne invitations stopped. He didn’t even have birthday parties any  more, at least not the kind with balloons and people and giant cakes with fluffy frosting that makes you sick.
The last time he saw birthday balloons in his house (the annoying kind that fall off the wall where they’re taped and get under everyone’s feet), was about four months after his 8th birthday party. He found a shriveled up yellow balloon hiding behind the couch in the basement. How it got there, he had no clue. But it survived.
Ryan liked to think he and his mom were like that balloon. They didn’t need people to bounce them around, or worse, to pop them. But it would be nice if dad might suddenly show up again, on their crummy street in their crummy house, and take care of everything again. To make mom stop cleaning, to mow the lawn, to make breakfast.
He stepped on the bus, and the doors whooshed shut behind him.
         “Ryan.” A voice piped behind him.
         A small-ish kid, about 7 or 8 years old, sat there in one of the first seats, his hands deep in his pockets. His plaid shirt hung off his shoulders like a tablecloth.
         “What do you want?” Ryan said. You weren’t supposed to pretend like you liked hanging out with little kids, even if you didn’t have friends in fifth grade. It was the kiss of death for anyone’s social life. But the doors closed, and the bus driver was glaring at him to sit down. Everyone on the bus was staring at him, waiting for him to do something. So he sat next to the kid.
         “Aren’t you gonna ask how I knew your name?” The kid asked, and grinned. On either side of his front teeth, he had the sharpest teeth. Like a tiny vampire, wearing a backpack and a too-big shirt.
         “I don’t know…from the yearbook?” Ryan leaned away from him, sticking his feet out into the aisle.
         “I’ll tell you later,” the kid said. And the rest of the way there, the kid looked out of the window, and didn’t say a word.
*****
         The kid didn’t show up after school, after all. Ryan stood around for a while, waiting, while the buses pulled out, only because he didn’t really have anything else to do. Then he walked behind some of the buildings so other kids parents wouldn’t ask if he needed a ride home. They didn’t really want to, but they would do it because they thought maybe your family couldn’t afford car or your parents didn’t really care about you. The teachers were still in their classrooms, cleaning blackboards and stuff, so Ryan walked out toward the baseball diamond. Guys were out there starting practice, so he headed off to the right, trying to look like he had somewhere to go. That was the trick—look like you’re supposed to be doing something, and you won’t be bothered. Some kids didn’t get that. They’d leave class, then panic, and start to wander around, only to get found by some teacher and sent back five minutes later. Adults can spot the scared ones a mile away. He couldn’t believe he waited for the kid.
And then he remembered the package. There was no way mom hadn’t seen it yet. She probably had already opened it, like it belonged to her, even though it might have been his. He glanced back at the field, just to make sure no one was following him. But the coaches were facing the long trail of boys that snaked around the field, yelling at some kid, who kept dropping his glove. Before he realized, he had reached the edge of Blackout Woods.
The teachers called it the “grove,” because after all, it was only an apple orchard. But everyone else called it Blackout Woods, because some kid in sixth grade had gone out there one year and never came out. That was the story everyone told, at least. If you went in the forest, just a few feet in, you wouldn’t be able to find your way out again, it was so dark. If a bully really wanted to mess with a kid, they would threaten to take them out there—but they never really did, they just threatened it. They were just as freaked out by Blackout Woods as anyone else.  Ryan was probably the only one who didn’t find the woods scary.
         Ryan didn’t wear a watch (he “lost” the last Power Rangers one his mom gave him when he was 7), but it was probably about five. At least it sure felt like five, by the way his stomach was growling. Usually, he’d get home around four forty-five. He was always the last one on the bus to be dropped off. The bus driver would say, “Here we are,” or something like that, and he’d smile at Ryan, because he was probably thinking about getting home to a nice warm home with a dog and a fireplace and a three-car garage. Even if he didn’t have any of those other things, a dog would be nice.
Ryan had a dog, but he didn’t feel about his dog the way you were supposed to. Dogs are supposed to be your best friend, and Noodle wasn’t his. He was white, so he always looked dirty, because he lived outside. He left puddles of drool all over the place, including your feet if you stood around long enough. And you couldn’t even see his eyes, because mountains of fur hid them. He kind of looked like the white floor mop in the garage. His mom thought Noodle was adorable, but she’d always run inside after throwing food in his dish, and then slide the door shut with a sharp whoosh, because she “didn’t want to get her nice clothes messed up.”
He picked up one of the small gray rocks next to his feet, and put it into his pocket. He knew the way home, but he also knew it would be dark—and he didn’t want to take any chances.
By the time he got to his street, Ryan was freezing, and his nose was dripping like the kitchen faucet. Nighttime was the one time when his street actually looked pretty nice. You couldn’t see any of the cracked driveways with weeds poking through, or peeling paint, or even broken drainpipes leaning against houses. Lights coming through the windows made the homes look warm and friendly, even if they were just dusty old lamps on nightstands. He passed by Mr. Doppler’s house, which didn’t have lights on. It didn’t matter if it was day or night—Mr. Doppler’s house looked sad. He didn’t have grass or weeds or trees or flowers or anything in his front yard. He took it all out one day, the week after Mrs. Doppler “passed away.”
Ryan sat and watched that day from his front window, because his mom was worried about his “lungs sucking in all that rock dust.” The trucks rolled down the road and backed up slowly to Mr. Doppler’s yard. Then the back ends lifted up, and the rocks came falling out like a silent dusty grey waterfall. The bottom layer crashed into the dark brown earth below, and pounded it flat. Layer upon layer; one on the other; again and again. Nothing could grow through those rocks, not ever again. And Mr. Doppler just stood on his front step in a straw hat, and his stomach coming out of the bottom of his shirt, and his sunglasses pushed back into his eyes, and an iced tea in his hand, and a smile on his face, like he was happy he didn’t have to see the ground again.