Iain Reid: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Ms. Veal never said hello to me or even looked at me. I was still in my pajamas. I had a fever. I was eating toast. I didn’t want to be sitting at the table with that woman. And then, Mom left the room. I can’t remember why; maybe she went to the bathroom. I was alone with her, that woman, Ms. Veal. I could barely move. Ms. Veal stopped what she was doing and looked at me.

“Are you good or are you bad?” she asked. She was playing with a strand of her hair, curling it around her finger. “If you give up, you’re bad.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about or what to say. No adult, especially one I didn’t know, had ever talked to me like that before.

“If you’re good, you can have a cookie. If you’re bad, then maybe you’ll have to come live with me instead of living here in this house with your parents.”

I was petrified. I couldn’t answer her question.

“You shouldn’t be so shy. You have to get over that.”

Her voice was just like it had been on the phone — whiny, high-pitched, and flat. There was nothing put on, nothing friendly or gentle about her. She glared at me.

I could barely talk to a stranger at the best of times. I didn’t like strangers and often felt humiliated when having to explain something or discuss even the smallest trivialities. I had trouble meeting people. I had a hard time making eye contact. I put my crust down on the plate and looked past her.

“Good,” I said after a while. I felt my face blush. I didn’t understand why she asked me this, and it scared me. I would get hot when I was scared or nervous. How does a person know if they are good or bad? I didn’t want a cookie.

“And what am I? What does your mom tell you about me? What does she say about me?”

She smiled in a way I’d never seen before. It stretched across her face like a wound. Her fingers were shiny and greasy from handling the fat jar.

When my mom came back into the room, Ms. Veal began transferring more fat from Mom’s jar to her own. She gave no indication that we’d been talking.

That night, Mom had food poisoning. She was up all night, vomiting, crying. I couldn’t sleep and heard the whole thing. It was her. It was Ms. Veal’s cookies that made Mom sick. I know it. Mom later said it was a fluke stomach issue, but I know the truth.

Mom and I ate the same thing for dinner, and I wasn’t sick. And this was no flu. Mom was fine by morning. A little dehydrated, but back to herself. It was food poisoning. She’d eaten a cookie. I hadn’t.

We can’t and don’t know what others are thinking. We can’t and don’t know what motivations people have for doing the things they do. Ever. Not entirely. This was my terrifying, youthful epiphany. We just never really know anyone. I don’t. Neither do you.

It’s amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing. Never knowing for sure what the other person is thinking. Never knowing for sure who a person is. We can’t do whatever we want. There are ways we have to act. There are things we have to say.

But we can think whatever we want.

Anyone can think anything. Thoughts are the only reality. It’s true. I’m sure of it now. Thoughts are never faked or bluffed. This simple realization has stayed with me. It has bothered me for years and years. It still does.

“Are you good or are you bad?”

What scares me most now is that I don’t know the answer.

I STAYED BEHIND THE BENCHfor probably an hour. It could have been much longer. I’m not sure. How long is an hour? A minute? A year? My hip and knee went numb from the way I was positioned. I had to contort myself in an unnatural way. I’ve lost track of time. Of course you lose track of time when you’re alone. Time always passes.

That song kept replaying: “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” over and over and over. Twenty or thirty or a hundred times. It might have gotten louder, too. An hour is the same as two hours. An hour is forever. It’s hard to know. It’s only just stopped. It stopped halfway through a verse. I hate that song. I hate the way I had to listen to it. I didn’t want to listen. But now I know all the words by heart. When it stopped, it shocked me. It woke me up. I’d been lying down using Jake’s hat as a pillow.

I’ve decided I have to keep moving. No good lying down, hiding behind this bench. I’m a target. I’m too visible here. That’s the first thing Jake would tell me if he were here with me. But he’s not. My knee is really sore. My head is still aching, and spinning. I almost forgot about it. It’s just there. Jake would tell me to stop thinking about the pain, too.

You never think you’ll be in a situation like this. Being watched, stalked, held captive, alone. You hear about these things. You read about them from time to time. You feel sick about the possibility that someone would be capable of inflicting this kind of terror on another human. What’s wrong with people? Why do people do these things? Why do people end up in these situations? The possibility of evil shocks you. But you aren’t the target, so it’s okay. You forget about it. You move on. It’s not happening to you. It happened to someone else.

Until now. I stand up, trying to ignore my fear. I creep down the hall, silently, moving away from the bench, away from the stairwell I came up. I try a few doors. Everything’s locked. No exit from this place. These halls are bleak. There’s nothing on the walls, no sign of student existence. I’ve been down these same halls so many times. They repeat themselves, turn in upon themselves like an Escher drawing. When you think about it like this, it’s almost grotesque that some people spend so much time here.

All the garbage cans I’ve come across are clean and empty. Fresh bags. There’s no sitting waste. I look through them thinking there might be something I can use, something that might come in handy, something to help me move forward, to help me escape. They are all empty. Just empty black bags.

I’ve made my way to what must be the science wing. Have I been here before? I look in through the doors. Lab stations.

The doors are different in this hall. They’re heavier and blue, sky blue. There’s a large banner at the end of the hall, hand-painted. It’s an advertisement for the winter formal. A school dance. They’ll all be in here together, the students. So many of them. It’s the first sign of student existence that I’ve seen.

Dancing the night away. Tickets are $10. What are you waiting for? the banner reads.

I think I hear rubber boots. Footsteps somewhere.

It’s like I’ve been given a drug. I can’t move. I shouldn’t move. I’m incapacitated with fear. Frozen. I want to turn and scream and run, but I can’t. What if it’s Jake? What if he’s still here, locked in like me? If he were here, that would mean I’m not alone, that I would be safe.

I can get back to the stairwell. It’s just across the hall. I can get up to the third floor. Maybe Jake is there. I squeeze my eyes shut. I make fists with my hands. My heart is thumping. I hear the boots again. It’s him. He’s looking for me.

I exhale in a burst and feel sick. I’ve been in here too long.

I can feel my chest tightening. I’m going to vomit. I can’t do this.

I dart into the stairwell. He hasn’t seen me. I don’t think. I don’t know where he is. Upstairs, downstairs, over, under, somewhere else. I feel like he could be hiding, waiting, in my own shadow. I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

AN ART ROOM. UPSTAIRS. Adifferent hall. A door that isn’t locked. This could be anywhere. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt relief like I did when the door to this room opened. I close it behind me, very slowly, but don’t latch it. I listen. I can’t hear anything. I might be able to hide in here, at least for a while. The first thing I do is try the phone fastened to the wall, but as soon as I dial more than three digits it beeps at me. I tried dialing nine first and even 911. It’s hopeless. Nothing works.