Shock Point, Page 3

  Cassie had a moment of panic. She certainly couldn’t have her mom pick her up at Thatcher’s house, but she also realized she had no idea how far away he lived. “No, that’s okay. I’m going to walk home with somebody.”

  Another sigh. “Call me if you change your mind.”

  After school, Cassie found Thatcher waiting across the street. He was smoking a cigarette, and had a skateboard tucked under one arm. Cassie walked over to him, and without speaking they fell into step. Cassie wondered if anyone was watching them, two losers walking off together. Then she wondered why she cared.

  He held the cigarette out to her. She took a quick drag. She didn’t really like to smoke—she just liked feeling like an outlaw for a second. That, and the look on Rick’s face if she passed him in the hall and he caught the faint scent. It was so easy to bug him that sometimes Cassie surrendered to temptation.

  “Do your folks care about you smoking?” she asked as she handed the cigarette back.

  He shrugged. “These are my mom’s cigarettes. I try not to smoke too much. For one thing, it’s expensive. And before you say it, I know smoking causes cancer, and that it’s ironic,” he stressed the word ironic, “that we both smoke when my sister died of cancer. But after my sister got sick, my mom started smoking again, because of all the stress. Plus there’s a lot of time to kill when someone’s at the hospital. But my mom’s going to a hypnotist next week, and if it works, I guess I won’t be smoking anymore, either.” He took one last drag on his cigarette and ground it out beneath his Adidas with the laces tied under the tongue. “So, what’s up?”

  Cassie took a deep breath. “Okay. My stepfather, Rick, is a therapist. He specializes in adolescents who need behavior modification.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, you know, kids who skip school or start getting bad grades, who drink, who use drugs, who shoplift, who”—she was about to say “have sex,” but that would be just too embarrassing—“who do other stuff.”

  “So he—what? Fixes them by talking to them?”

  Cassie shrugged. “I thought that at first, but it seems like he just gives most of them drugs. He’s been testing this one drug, Socom. That’s how he and my mom met—he hired her to be his study coordinator. They only got married a few months ago.”

  “Socom? I’ve never heard of it.” They were walking about three feet apart, taking turns glancing at one another.

  “That’s because it’s not on the market yet. It’s supposed to help kids concentrate in school, have a better attitude, and stop acting out.”

  “So it’s like Ritalin, Prozac, and a mother’s prayers combined?”

  “Kind of, I guess. Rick says it makes you compliant.”

  “Compliant!” Thatcher stopped and stared at her. “That sounds heinous! You’d better not tell my mom about it or she’ll have me on it in a minute.” But he smiled as he said it, so Cassie was pretty sure he was joking. “Do you really think it could be that easy? Just give everyone a pill and they won’t do bad stuff?”

  “Rick says it works. He thought it was so great that he bought into the start-up company that makes the stuff. That’s partly why we moved up here—to meet more investors. It’s being submitted to the FDA. Rick thinks first-year sales would be over ten million dollars.” They were walking past some run-down-looking apartments.

  “Ten million dollars!” Thatcher said as he walked down a narrow driveway that ran next to an old, gray, two-story house. He let out a low whistle. “Some people would do almost anything for that kind of money.”

  seven

  April 14

  “Where are you taking me, anyway?” Cassie asked the two men.

  “It’s great. You get to go to the beach, work on your tan!” JJ sniggered, then held up a brochure. She recognized the starfish on the front. It was the same brochure her mom had been holding when they grabbed her.

  He opened it and slid it through the bars until it was next to her knee. She leaned closer to read it. It began with a series of questions.

  • Does your teen struggle with basic family rules and expectations?

  • Has your teen ever been suspended, expelled, skipped school, or had a drop in grades?

  • Does your teen associate with a bad peer group?

  • Has your teen lost interest in former hobbies or sports?

  • Do you have difficulty getting your teen to do simple household chores or homework?

  • Is your teen depressed and/or withdrawn?

  • Does your teen have problems with authority?

  • Do you think your teen is experimenting with drugs or alcohol?

  • Are you concerned that your teen may be sexually active?

  • Are your having doubts about your teen’s future success and well-being?

  She found herself shaking her head.

  “What’s the matter?” JJ asked.

  It was stupid to answer. Cassie knew she shouldn’t. Still, she couldn’t help it.

  “I’m not like that. I don’t ever get in trouble. I’ve never gotten anything lower than a C, and I never skip class. And I don’t drink or anything like that.”

  Marty shook his head. “What about the drugs, Cassie? Is that part of the game plan, too? Becoming an addict?”

  She straightened up, forgetting her handcuffs were fastened to a chain until it whapped her painfully in the shoulder blade. “I told you that’s a lie! I don’t use drugs. I certainly don’t use crystal meth. I don’t even know what it looks like. My stepfather must have planted something in my room to get my mom to go along with this.”

  Marty’s expression was smug. “Every kid we take says that. It’s all lies. They never did anything.”

  But I didn’t do anything, Cassie thought. And it is all lies. Out loud, she said, “So is this what you guys do all day—kidnap kids?”

  “It’s not kidnapping if your parents arrange for us to transport you to a new school. We’ve got signed permission and everything. Who are we kidnapping you from?”

  Cassie ignored his question. A school? That sounded more permanent. She looked down at the brochure again.

  At Peaceful Cove, students are effectively influenced by Mexico’s warm and simple atmosphere. Being in a foreign country is more impactful on your child, expands horizons, and creates greater appreciation for home and family than any American-based program ever could.

  Mexico? They were taking her to Mexico? Once they got down there, what chance would she ever have for getting back?

  eight

  April 12

  The outside of Thatcher’s house reminded Cassie of a “before” picture in one of the home fix-up magazines her mom liked. The paint was peeling, the porch was canted, and the hanging planter next to the door held nothing but a dead yellow spider plant.

  Thatcher took a key ring from his pocket and opened the front door. Inside, it was crowded but cozy. A half-empty bottle of Coke sat on the wooden arm of the worn brown leather couch. An Elvis painted on black velvet sneered down at them from over an old Morris chair heaped with laundry. On the dining room table, Cassie saw scattered newspapers, two unmatched cereal bowls, half-empty coffee cups, and an open box of Apple Jacks.

  Thatcher looked embarrassed. “Guess we were in kind of a hurry when we left this morning.”

  “Is it just you and your mom?”

  “Yeah. My folks broke up after my sister died.”

  Cassie tried to think of something to say. “What was her name?”

  “Who?”

  “Your sister.”

  “Oh. Celeste. Short for Celestial Blue. Her eyes were darker than mine.” He sighed. “Celeste’s eyes were the color of the sky.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” Cassie said. “Do you have an unusual middle name, too?”

  “No. Thatcher’s enough. My middle name is John, same as my dad’s first name. I haven’t seen him since I was ten, but I still get stuck carrying around his name.” He picked up a black cordless pho
ne from its cradle. “I have to check in with my mom at work. So don’t say anything. I’m not allowed to have friends over when she’s not here.” He didn’t look at Cassie when he said this last part.

  “Okay, sure.” It made her feel oddly happy to hear Thatcher imply that she counted as a friend.

  He dialed a phone number. “Hi, it’s me. I’m home. I’m going to start on my homework now.” He listened for a second. “Okay, I can do that. Do I set it on hot or warm?” There was a pause. He cleared his throat and turned his back to Cassie. “Yeah. Me, too.” Cassie was pretty sure his last sentence had been in answer to his mom’s saying, “I love you.”

  When he hung up, Cassie said, “Where does your mom work?”

  “She’s a supervisor at Goodwill. Sometimes she brings home the coolest stuff.”

  “I can see that,” Cassie said. The tops of the bookshelves and windowsills were lined with unusual vases, Depression glass, pieces of wax fruit, old hats made of feathers. “It sounded like there was stuff you were supposed to do before she gets home. Am I going to be in your way?”

  He shook his head. “I’m just supposed to start some wash.” He stood on his tiptoes, reached into a cupboard over the refrigerator, and emerged with a can of barbecue Pringles. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah!” Other than the kid-size ice cream cones he grudgingly allowed, Rick had banned all junk food. Now their cupboards were filled with things that Cassie wasn’t even sure how to pronounce, like amaranth.

  Thatcher popped the top on the Pringles can, set it in front of Cassie, then went to the freezer. “You know what barbecue chips taste best with? Chocolate ice cream.” He took out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream.

  Cassie made a face. “Chocolate and barbecue? That doesn’t sound good at all.”

  “You’d eat them both separately, wouldn’t you? You should try them together. It’s crunchy, soft, cold, sweet, salty, fatty, and chocolatey—all seven of the essential food groups.”

  “If you say so.”

  Thatcher took the lid off the ice cream and set it next to the can of chips. “You gotta use it kind of like a dip.” He demonstrated by scraping a Pringle across the surface of the ice cream, then popped the whole thing in his mouth. “Now them’s good eatin’!”

  Hesitantly, Cassie followed suit. Her chip broke in two, but she persevered with the two halves until each had an edge of chocolate, then gingerly took a bite. A smile broke on her face. “You’re right. That is good!” For the first time in months she felt relaxed, even happy.

  Thatcher straddled a chair and Cassie sat down, too, moving a coffee cup out of the way.

  He said, “About that Socom stuff. It sounds really messed up. I don’t think it’s right to give kids drugs just to make their parents happy.”

  His words echoed Cassie’s thoughts. “Rick has even been bugging my mom to put me on Socom.”

  “So is that what you wanted to talk to me about? To see if I had any ideas about how to get out of it? I guess you could stick the pill in the side of your mouth and spit it out later.”

  “No, my mom keeps saying she doesn’t want me on it, and Rick has backed off. Besides, it’s not a pill. It’s an injection. You only need one every couple of weeks or something.” She took a deep breath. “The reason I want to talk to you is that last night I found something strange in Rick’s files.”

  “Are you even supposed to be looking through them?” Thatcher raised the eyebrow with the ring through it.

  “I wasn’t really.” Cassie felt herself blush, and hoped it didn’t show. “Our regular computer died, so I went into Rick’s office to use the Internet. I just happened to see the names on the top of a couple of his files while I waited for his computer to boot up. Three of them were kids at my old school, kids who killed themselves. I didn’t even know he was their therapist.”

  “Then he must not be a very good one. Isn’t that why you send your kid to a shrink—to stop them from doing something that drastic?”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s not really what bugged me. I know I shouldn’t have—but I looked in their charts. All three of them were on Socom.”

  “Maybe these were the kind of kids who would have killed themselves anyway.” Thatcher scraped another chip across the ice cream. “I mean, there must have been a reason why they were seeing a therapist.”

  “Maybe. But in all three of their charts Rick had notes about how they were starting to have delusions—and that he was taking them off Socom. The thing is, none of the stories in the paper about them ever said they were on it. And they killed themselves in weird ways—but they make sense if you know what was going on in their heads.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Darren—he was the kid I knew best. He jumped from the tallest building in Minor, where we used to live.”

  Thatcher shrugged one shoulder. “People kill themselves like that all the time.”

  “Yeah, but Rick’s note said that Darren had started thinking he could fly. And Ben couldn’t stop thinking about purity, and he killed himself by drinking silver cleaner. And Carmen thought she was pregnant by Satan. But I don’t think she was pregnant at all. She stabbed herself in the stomach. Her mom didn’t find her until eight o’clock that night, after she had bled to death on her bedroom floor.”

  Thatcher made a face and put down the Pringle he had been about to eat. Cassie was glad to see that she was getting through to him. “I think the first thing we should do is look Socom up on the Internet,” he said, then hesitated. “Except the computer is in my room.”

  Her mother would never, ever have let Cassie go into a boy’s bedroom. “That’s okay,” she said. “It’s not like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend or anything.” She could feel her face flaming.

  Thatcher ran his hand through his hair, looking uncertain. “Um, can you wait a second? I need to clean up. My room’s kind of a pit.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  He disappeared down the hall. Cassie listened to muffled thuds and doors slamming while she looked around. The kitchen counter was lined with cookie jars, all of them old looking: a hen on a nest, a carousel, a bear, a pumpkin, a mushroom, a bulldog. One wall of the dining room held long wooden plate racks filled with kitschy plates from different states.

  Thatcher appeared, looking slightly out of breath. “Okay. Just promise you won’t open the closet door.”

  Cassie drew an X over her chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  She followed him down the hall and into his room. There were posters on the wall of bands, only one of which she had heard of. Dresser drawers had been slammed closed, but sleeves dangled out. A cloth hamper bulged suspiciously. The bed was just sitting there, the sheets and blankets roughly pulled up.

  She didn’t notice the computer until Thatcher sat down at a small wooden desk.

  “Wow! That’s your computer? It’s sleek!” It was a Macintosh with a flat screen no deeper than an inch. It looked more expensive than everything else she had seen in the house put together.

  “I’ve been doing some part-time work at The Mac Store. They gave me a pretty good discount.”

  He sat down, pulled out the keyboard tray, and pressed the space bar. The screen came to life.

  Thatcher went to Google, typed in Socom, and hit return. The first half dozen hits had something to do with Navy SEALS. But number seven read Socom—the answer for troubled adolescents? Thatcher clicked on the blue-underlined link, and Cassie leaned in to read over his shoulder.

  SOCOM—THE ANSWER FOR TROUBLED ADOLESCENTS?

  Although we have a number of products in different stages of development, after extensive research, Socom, a peptide administered by injection, has emerged as our lead product candidate. Socom is one of a new class of synthetic brain chemicals that we believe will provide a powerful new therapeutic tool in the treatment of adolescent central nervous system disorders, such as behavioral disturbances, oppositional defiant disorder, depr
ession, “acting out,” hostility, anxiety, anorexia, bulimia, and addiction.

  Early preclinical animal studies demonstrated the powerful potential of Socom as a treatment for patients suffering from behavioral issues. These results have been supported by the clinical studies we have conducted on over 350 individuals to date.

  As measured by standardized testing (Symptom Check List- 90), after receiving three treatments, patient’s test scores improved, as did their ability to concentrate and their mood as ranked both subjectively and objectively. Patients using Socom markedly lessen their participation in high-risk behavior such as smoking, drinking, premarital sex, and drug use.

  Extensive testing on both animals and human patients over the last three years has demonstrated that Socom has distinct advantages: ➤ Rapid onset of action and symptomatic relief. The initial effects of Socom are observable in the first three to five days of treatment. Peak effects occur within two to four weeks, versus four to eight weeks for currently available antidepressants (which only treat some of the symptoms for which Socom is efficacious).

  ➤ Little or no side effects. Nausea has been reported by about 5% of patients, but for most it is transient. Socom, to date, has been administered to over 350 patients, with only one patient discontinuing treatment due to side effects. This is in marked contrast to all other currently available medications, which often cause short and long-term side effects, frequently resulting in the premature discontinuation of treatment.

  We believe Socom has the potential to revolutionize the adolescent behavioral disorder market, which in 2001 was estimated to be $12.5 billion in the United States alone. We believe that Socom, properly marketed, has the potential to become the treatment of choice for adolescent behavioral issues and to capture a substantial portion of the worldwide market after commercialization.

  “All this and it mows your lawn, too?” Thatcher turned his head to look at Cassie.

  “It’s too good to be true, isn’t it?”