Accelerated, Page 25

  Tears filled Ellie’s eyes. “I promise I won’t leave again like I did last time. Not ever. Your dad and I have to figure out how it’s going to work. But I’m going to see you very soon. Promise. And I’ll call you tonight.” She kissed him on the head. “Love you forever.”

  After she disappeared down the hallway, Toby kicked around the apartment morosely for half an hour.

  “It’s going to be better this time,” Sean said. “Way better. You’ll see.”

  “I miss her.”

  “I know.” All Sean had wanted was to be free from Ellie, but now that she was gone, he and Toby had to remember how to be here without her. They’d done it once. They could do it again. “Want to go to the park?”

  Toby shrugged. “Nah.”

  “Monopoly?”

  He shook his head.

  “Ice skating?”

  Toby must have smelled his desperation. “Video arcade?” A smile spread across his formerly glum face. How could Sean refuse that smile? The kid was a born negotiator.

  “Get your shoes.” Toby jumped up before Sean could change his mind.

  By that night, they were back in a groove. Just the two of them. He reclaimed his bedroom and lay back on the bed where he’d been with Ellie the night before. A younger version of himself would have considered last night a conquest, or at least a release. But now he only felt sad, guilty, and a little dirty. He changed the sheets and pillow cases—anything that still smelled like Ellie. Finally, he climbed into his bed alone and realized it was even more comfortable than he’d remembered. The only thing that would make it perfect would be to have Jess next to him. Or underneath. No, on top. He opened his laptop. Tell your mother’s voice she can stop worrying now.

  After he sent the email, he tried to figure out logistics for the next day. Maureen had said she wanted quality time with Toby. It looked like she was going to get it. On the phone, he explained that Ellie had to go out of town for a few days. She could tell her mother what she wanted. He wasn’t going to be the bearer of this news.

  When she came over the next morning, Maureen brought baking pans and flour. Did she really think he didn’t have any at the apartment? “We’re going to have a fun day,” she told Toby. “I’m so glad your dad called me.”

  “Thanks for being here, Maureen,” Sean said, meaning it. He scooped up Toby, suddenly hating the idea of leaving him. “Love you Tobe. I miss you already.”

  Toby rolled his eyes but continued to smile. “Have a good day at work, Dad.”

  Toby was fine. Things were good. So why did leaving for work make his heart ache?

  In the lobby, Manny was pointing madly at the mailboxes. “Mail!” he said. “Lots of mail!”

  He hadn’t checked his mail in days. Maybe a week. Mail had sunk to the bottom of his priority list. “Here you go.” Manny handed him a thick stack that had been rubber banded together.

  He plopped down on one of the red leather chairs no one ever sat on and pulled over the trashcan. He dumped every catalog and flyer and coupon packet and made a stack of bills. When he saw the envelope from Dr. Altherra, he froze. Time rewound to the moment he found her last envelope in the mail. The moment that had set the whole awful chain of events in motion. The moment he wished he could delete from his life. A sick feeling spread through him.

  He ripped it open and read the note, which was scrawled in loopy handwriting.

  Dear Sean,

  Please find two sets of Conners scales. One from before we administered medication, and one from the week before Toby went to the hospital. I hope this helps give you some peace as to the decision you made. I’m so glad Toby has pulled through this ordeal. He is such a lovely child.

  Warmly,

  Dr. Angela Altherra

  He scanned the pages, but none of it made sense. He forced himself to slow down and read every word. His head spun with the wrongness of it. The pages described another child, a boisterous troublemaker who couldn’t follow directions or give coherent answers to questions because he was so distracted. Worst of all, the most damning report had been written by Jess. Even Shineman wouldn’t write something as boldly false as this. Jess was just like the rest of them after all. She’d been lying to him this whole time. She’d done this to Toby. Less than twenty-four hours ago he’d been sponging off her breasts, thinking that he wanted to do this every day of his life. He was an idiot. She was a traitor, out for herself, her job.

  He fumbled for his phone and left a desperate message for Angela Altherra. She called him back less than a minute later.

  “This isn’t Toby,” he screamed at her, holding the pages lamely up to the phone. “It’s all untrue.”

  “It’s always a shock for parents of ADHD children to read a report by the child’s teachers,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times I get that reaction. I always make sure to get at least three separate teachers to fill out the forms, just to make sure I’m getting the full picture.”

  “Jess Harper, his teacher, told me she thought Toby was fine. That he might not have needed the drugs at all,” he said.

  “Well that’s not what her report says.”

  “What if the report is wrong?”

  “Sean, you have to stop thinking this way. It’s not helpful.”

  “If these reports are wrong, the diagnosis is wrong,” he was practically shouting. Manny raised his eyebrows from across the room. “True or false?”

  “Sean, the Conners scales are only part of the—”

  “Will you answer the goddamn question? If these reports didn’t show ADD behavior you would never have prescribed those drugs.”

  She hesitated. “In this case, I guess I’d say that was true, but—”

  He snapped the phone shut and ran to Broadway to hail a cab.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IF HE HADN’T BEEN SO FURIOUS WITH JESS, WALKING INTO BRADLEY again might have been more emotionally fraught. But now his vision blurred with rage. Why had he trusted her? She was a Bradley teacher. He should have known better. The more he knew about this place, the more he believed it was pure evil.

  He sprinted up the curved staircase two steps at a time until he reached Toby’s old classroom. He watched Jess for a moment through a rectangle of glass in the door. He barged in as she was writing equations on the board. “I need to talk to you.”

  Jess and the kids all turned to stare at him. Shock was the first thing he saw in her eyes. Then annoyance. “I’m teaching class,” she said, stating the obvious, but he didn’t budge. Then he saw fear. “Is everything okay? Did something happen?”

  “I need to talk to you. Now.” She tensed at the coldness in his voice.

  She turned to the kids. “Miss Bix will finish the lesson.” The assistant teacher took her place at the board and Jess came into the hallway, shutting the door behind her.

  “What happened? Is Toby okay?”

  “You tell me.” He shoved the papers in her face and she backed away from the force of it. “Did you really think I wasn’t going to find out?”

  “Shh. They can hear everything.” She led him to a dark classroom, flicked on the light and closed the door after them. “Find out what?” She was trying to keep her voice down, even in here. “Why are you acting so weird?”

  He shook the papers in front of her until she took them and started to read. “What is this?” She scanned the page and her eyes landed on her signature. “This is not …” She read on. “I never …” She flipped through to the end. “What is this? Where’d you get it?”

  Fear twisted through him. “From the doctor.”

  “I didn’t write this,” she said. The color had gone out of her face.

  “But … what do you mean? It’s your signature.”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  She wouldn’t lie to him. He knew it then. “Oh God,” he said. The wall of anger inside him cracked and the room started to reel.

  “Look, I’ll prove it.” She grabbed a pencil from a découpaged c
offee can on the desk.

  “No, you don’t need to—”

  But she was already signing her name on a scrap of red construction paper. She held it up against the signature on the bottom of the Conners scale.

  The one on the form was too careful, too studied. She hadn’t recommended medication for Toby. “So who signed this? And why?”

  “This is a nightmare,” she said, “Do I need a lawyer? I think I need a lawyer.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, trying to imagine all the ways something like this could implicate Jess. “Yeah, probably.”

  She clenched the forged document and raced out of the room. “Come on.” He ran to keep up as she sped down the stairs to the basement level. They passed the art room, the nurse’s office, and the gym.

  “Where are we going?” he asked. But she was already knocking on Shineman’s door.

  “Bev,” she said, banging. “Aunt Bev.” When there was no answer, she looked at her watch. “Everyone’s in assembly.”

  “So we’ll wait.”

  She shook her head. “No, you should go.” She pushed at his chest, but not hard. “It’ll be better.”

  “No way.” He wanted to see Shineman, wanted to shake her. Make her explain.

  “If I talk to her alone, she might tell me what’s going on. If you’re there …” She grimaced. “It’s not going to work.”

  He imagined seeing Shineman and his chest tightened. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. He let Jess walk him toward the staircase. “Call me as soon as you talk to her.”

  “Promise,” she said. “And then you can tell me why I should tell my mother’s voice to stop worrying. I got your email.”

  “A lot has changed in the past two days. Come over tonight and I’ll tell you everything.”

  But Jess was looking past him and he could see her wheels turning. “What’s the matter?” He turned and realized they were standing in front of the nurse’s office. The door was open.

  “The nurse,” she said, holding up the Conners scale. “I wonder if she keeps copies of these in her office.”

  “We have all the proof we need. It’s in your hand.”

  “But what if my signature is forged on other Conners scales, too? What if other parents put their kids on drugs because they thought I told them to?” She wrung her hands, then moved around him toward the nurse’s office. He followed her into the tidy room where Jess was already behind the desk opening and closing drawers.

  He looked around and saw an exam table, a few chairs, a desk—but no filing cabinets. “What about in there?” He gestured to the walk-in closet.

  She pushed open the door, peered in, and looked from left to right with a puzzled expression. As it hit her, her eyes and mouth opened in horror.

  “What,” he said. “What is it?” Standing next to her a moment later, he stared into the room, which was lined floor to ceiling with dozens and dozens of shelves filled with prescription bottles. He’d never seen so many pills. He reached for the light switch.

  Jess grabbed his hand and shook her head. She opened her cell phone and shined the blue light on the pill bottles. He opened his phone, too, for more light, and started reading the labels. “Ritalin 10 mg. Take two pills by mouth every four hours as needed.” He picked up another: “Metattent Junior, 10 mg.” He grabbed another handful. Almost every vial contained medication for Attention Deficit—Metattent Junior, but also Ritalin and Adderall, Adderall XR, generic methylphenidate and dexadrine. He even found a few bottles of Wellbutrin. “Jesus Christ,” he said. He did a rough count: ten, twenty, thirty, forty per shelf. “There are hundreds of bottles here.”

  “It’s way too many,” she said, staring. “I’ve been paying attention, looking for signs that my kids are on this stuff. And they’re there. In a few kids. But this … this makes it look like the entire student body is taking pills.”

  He thought he’d feel better knowing he’d been right about Bradley. But he felt sick. His hand trembled as he reached for the bottles on the shelf reserved for Jess’s class. He grabbed a handful and read the labels: they were prescribed for Dylan, Alexis, and Marcus, each by a different doctor. Cheryl had lied to him, but he knew that already. Like so many other parents here, she’d been pressured into giving her child an edge in the competitive arena of the Bradley lower school.

  Giving your child Ritalin wasn’t like signing him or her up for tutoring or occupational therapy or sight training. Of course parents would talk to their close friends about it, but for the most part, the topic was still taboo, something Bradley mothers were not going to chitchat about over soy lattes at Le Pain Quotidien. The school had counted on that. He was sure of it. He leaned against the door frame, hit by the enormity of what he was staring at. He reached for more bottles to see who else had been diagnosed.

  Jess was reading labels, too, as many as she could grab. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “This is a nightmare. All these kids … all their parents. And if they’re being diagnosed by forged questionnaires …” She had a wild look in her eyes as she started dialing her phone.

  “Whoa, wait,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “The police. I’m calling the police.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me think.”

  She glared at him. “Think about what? The school is … this is …” She was shaking, trying to find the words.

  “Let’s be smart,” he said. “Think about Debbie Martin. We need evidence.”

  “Evidence?” She held her arms open and took it all in again. “What do you call this?”

  “Do you know what kind of lawyers a place like Bradley has?”

  “We can take the bottles,” she said. “For proof.”

  He wondered how many bottles he could shove in his jeans pockets. It wasn’t an efficient plan. “Even if we take some of the pills, it’s still not going to—I’m not sure that will prove …” His mind raced. “The really creepy thing, the thing that will get people’s attention is the pharmacy we’re staring at right now.” He looked at the phone in his hand, switched it to camera mode and snapped a series of photos of the closet. When Jess caught on, she held a few of the bottles up close, so the labels would be legible.

  After they’d documented the discovery, she slumped against the wall. “What am I going to do? I can’t … I can’t keep working here.”

  “Get out of your contract. Come up with an excuse. Anything—a family crisis, an illness. And I’ll call Nicole, see if there’s anyone she trusts in Child Services. We’ll go through channels. We’ll do this right.”

  Footsteps clattered in the hallway and they swiveled toward the sound.

  “Assembly’s over,” Jess said, shoving the pills back on the shelf clumsily. He tried to straighten them as best he could. “Let’s get out of here.”

  His heart was pounding so loudly he wondered if Jess could hear it. They ducked out of the closet and Sean left the door slightly ajar, hoping it was close to the way they’d found it. Before they had a chance to escape, Astrid lumbered into the room and glared at them. “What are you doing in here?”

  Jess froze for what seemed like an eternity. There had to be a believable excuse. His mind was blank. He swallowed hard.

  Then he realized that not only was he still a parent at the school, he was the parent of a kid who’d been sick. Very sick. It suddenly occurred to him that it was weird that he hadn’t been in before. He turned to Jess as casually as he could. “Thanks for bringing me down here,” he said. “I always get lost in the basement.”

  Jess tried to smile. “Sure,” she said stiffly.

  “I know you probably need to get back to the kids.”

  “Right, I …” Jess turned to leave. “I hope … Toby feels better,” she said, and darted down the hall.

  He focused his attention on Astrid again. Her face was stone. “I wanted to talk to you about Toby,” he started. “You know, about his condition. And what I should do.”

  If Astrid was buying any of this, her exp
ression wasn’t showing it. All he could do was keep going. “So … the doctors say Toby should rest,” he said. “For now. They … they want to monitor his heart periodically.” He swallowed. He was not doing well. “I … value your professional opinion. I mean, you know kids … and the school … better than anyone at that hospital. You might know better … about, you know, when would be right for him to come back.” He would never in a million years let Toby set foot in this place again. He hoped she couldn’t see it in his eyes. He looked away.

  She looked him up and down suspiciously, and then, miraculously, softened. She nodded slowly, which made her chins jiggle. “You were smart to come by,” she said. “Parents don’t usually talk to me, and I do have insights to this place that the doctors don’t have.” She gestured for him to sit. He sat on a wooden chair and she waddled around behind her desk. “Here’s what I’d tell you. Give Toby some time. Don’t rush it. Once he comes back, it’s hard to take it easy. He’ll be swept up into the daily routine and he won’t want to slow down. I’d keep him home until after spring break, at the very least.”

  He pretended to listen, to care what this crazy drug-pushing nurse had to say.

  “Just make sure his teacher sends the homework home every week so he doesn’t fall behind.”

  “Okay,” he said, getting up. “Thanks. Thanks for your suggestion. I think it’s a good one.” He looked at his watch. “Wow, it’s late. I better … I better get to work.” He waved and made a quick exit.

  Outside, he raced down the street, his mind reeling, when his foot slid on a patch of ice. He flailed, frictionless, for what seemed like an eternity, before he finally, miraculously, regained his footing. Being out of control for a few moments had been terrifying, but, he realized, not at all unfamiliar. He startled at his phone vibrating in his back pocket.

  “Where the hell are you?” Rick shouted in his ear a moment later.

  “I’m … I had an emergency.”

  “Jesus,” he said, losing the bluster. “Is it Toby? What happened?

  “No, it’s … Toby’s okay. I’m just getting in the subway. I’ll be there in—”