Treasure Island!!!

books and papers carelessly into a filthy canvas tote.
    “Actually, I’m curious about your set-up,” I said, ambling down an aisle, examining the desks’ innards. Crayons, markers, pencil boxes, glue sticks. I flipped through a spiral. “Are you
really
marking this girl down because she made bubble letters? Check minus? And she dotted her
i
’s with hearts!”
    “Put that back and let’s go. Mom is expecting us at exactly four-thirty.”
    “Mom’s not going anywhere. She’s probably still vacuuming.”
    “Yes, but the others . . . ”
    “What others?”
    When she tried to backtrack, I pretended to believe her story, partly to see what dumb thing she would say next.
    “No others. I mean, just Mom and Dad. We’re going to have pie with Mom and Dad. Mom called me. She made a cherry and cheese pie. Isn’t that your favorite?”
    “Yes.” I gave her a fake smile.
    “Good. Then let’s get out of here.”
    In the hallway she paused to find her keys. Then she decided not to lock her classroom; the janitor would clean it. No, she decided, she would lock it after all; the janitor had a key. I watched her sweaty hands fumble with the lock.
    “Adrianna,” I said after a careful pause, “you’re not still smarting about Richard’s death, are you?”
    “I’m not. Looking back over everything, I realize that whatever happened between you and Richard, you were seriously mixed up when it happened.” She glanced warily at me to see how I was taking her interpretation; was the sauce too rich? was the seasoning right? “Don’t take this wrong, but I think you may be struggling with a kind of addiction.”
    “I don’t take drugs, Adrianna.” I banished the memory of Richard’s final meal, which we had shared.
    “No,” she said slowly, as if humoring one of her third graders. “But you do have trouble distinguishing
your
reality from whatever happens on Skeleton Island, right?”
    “Not exactly,” I said, but she took my arm and ushered me through the hallway, telling me softly to never mind, nodding to various homely colleagues, pressing my arm, and gently guiding me into her car. By the time I was in the passenger seat, belted in, I had begun to feel oddly sedated. She wound my scarf around my neck and said a few yum-yums about my mother’s cherry and cheese pie. I wondered aloud if we needed to stop on the way home and get a pint of vanilla ice cream. Then I caught myself.
    “Now, look you here, Adrianna,” I said, staring unseeing through the windshield as the car bounced along. “I am not such a fool that I don’t see what you’re up to.”
    “I’m taking you home, where we’re going to have a nice piece of pie.”
    “Yeah, but why?”
    “What do you mean, why? Why . . . pie as opposed to cake? Do I need to explain that Mom’s done the apple cake way too many times?”
    “It smacks me as a little suspicious, me being shucked out of the house all day and now you rushing me off for an appointment with pastry. Did you know Mom gave me spending money today? A lot of it!”
    “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. Mom cleaned the house. And then she wanted to bake. Is that so hard to believe? She baked a pie and she asked me to hurry us home so we could eat it.”
    “Us and who else?”
    “Okay. Friends,” she admitted after a little sulk. “People who know and care about you.”
    “I can’t believe you!”
    I scoffed all the way to the house, which turned out to be about fifty yards, since we were already at the bottom of the drive. Adrianna parked her car, as usual, under a small stand of pines, lumpy with snow. When I opened my car door, the air was leaden.

CHAPTER 24
     
    T hey were in the living room, seated in a semi-circle across from two empty armchairs. They had teacups in their hands and folded papers in their laps. The overhead lights were off, and the table lamps emitted a feeble pink glow, so in the late afternoon light the expressions on their faces weren’t clear. But they were identifiable. They were my mother, my father, Rena, Lars, and my old boss from The Pet Library, Nancy Wang.
    They said hello and remained seated. Rena smiled at me and waggled her fingers. Adrianna sat down in one of the empty chairs and gravely thanked them all for coming.
    “This is a joke,” I said, stomping about behind her. “I know what you’re trying to do, and you’re not even doing it
right
. An intervention is supposed to have a special counselor. Where’s the