Counting by 7s(11)

If there is conflict in the group, the female lemurs are the ones who fight it out. Because of this, the female leader gets the best food and the preferred sleeping area.

I now looked at him hard.

Not everyone knows that a lemur is a primate found only on the island of Madagascar.

It was possible he was not the toadstool that he appeared to be.

He then ran both of his hands through his curly mop of hair, and that made it double in size.

That has happened to my hair before.

So I understood.

I left the meeting confused.

I knew that he knew that I was different.

Mr. Dell Duke wasn’t friend material because he was the wrong age and, female lemurs notwithstanding, we appeared to have absolutely nothing in common.

But as I walked away from the district headquarters parking lot, I decided I would come back and see him again.

Mr. Dell Duke was testing me.

But not in the way he thought.

I believed he somehow needed me.

I liked the feeling.



That night at the dinner table, my mom and dad asked me how it was going at Sequoia.

I said:

“The experience is evolving.”

My parents both smiled, but their eyes were still anxious. My mom’s voice was tighter than usual as she said: “Is there anyone special who you’ve enjoyed meeting?”

For the briefest moment, I questioned whether they knew about the aptitude test.

I took a bite of my artichoke soufflé and finished chewing before answering.

“I met someone who interests me.”

My parents perked up. This was big news for them.

Mom tried not to appear too eager.

“Can you tell us more?”

I had to be careful here. If I didn’t want a colossal stomachache, I had to use a version of the truth.

“This afternoon was my first encounter. Viewed as a clinical trial, I’m in Phase Zero, which is when microdosing takes place. I’ll let you know how it develops.”

And then I asked to be excused from the table.





Chapter 7





Dell didn’t see many girls.

Boys got into a lot more trouble in school.

He had assumed that “Willow” was some kind of nickname. He figured it was really “Will-Low,” which might have been gang slang.

Instead, seated across from him had been a twelve-year-old girl.

There was something not right about her.

He could see that from the beginning.

Her eyes darted around his small room and then came to rest on his stomach, which was rude.

He knew he was sweating, which was just part of who he was.

But he got the feeling that she was judging him.

That’s not what this place was about.

He was the judger.

He needed to put her in a category of Strange as soon as possible so that he could disconnect from whatever was happening in the room.

Dell had glanced over at his computer to reread the e-mail he’d been sent from Principal Rudin.

The message said that the girl was some kind of cheater. He didn’t get many of those.

So she was sneaky.

Well, so was he.

He’d get to the bottom of that.



She wasn’t a Weirdo or a Lone Wolf or an Oddball or a Misfit.

But she was Super-Strange, that much he could figure out.

He talked and talked and talked and she just sat there, mute, staring at him, but he could tell that she was listening.

He asked questions, but she didn’t answer them.

She was small, but also powerful.

She had some kind of energy or aura that was different.

None of his tricks, if he could even call them that, worked.

And then he remembered word association.

It was a technique that he knew the other counselors used because he’d heard them when the windows were open and the air conditioners weren’t rattling.



Dell fell asleep every night with the television on.

He had hours of recorded broadcasts, because the sound of other people’s voices, especially ones that weren’t yelling at him, was a comfort.

But nothing made him fall asleep faster than something educational.

And that is why as the hour got late and Dell was looking to pack it in, he often went to the most boring thing that he’d ever recorded: a wildlife documentary on the animals of Madagascar.

Scientists had made the show. It was filled with facts and feelings, two things that Dell could live without.

If he was going to actually watch a nature documentary, the only kind that he could suffer through was one where a fierce predator took down a wide-eyed furball.

But he liked it when the furball could see it coming.

A good chase with a few near misses added tension to the eventual crime scene.

A male narrator with a deep, husky (almost evil) voice set the stage for the slaughter. The music surged.

And then Bam!

Done.

The Madagascar show had nothing like that. It focused on a group of monkeys who looked like squirrels in raccoon costumes.

There was nothing in this program of interest and Dell had fallen asleep to it many times since he came to Bakersfield.

He would not, could not, recall a single thing from the program other than what he had uttered to Willow at the end of their first session: “Female lemurs are in charge of the troop.”