“It looks like you were kneeling in the middle of the street, waiting for the car to hit you,” Officer Rowley said the first day I met her. “There are generally only two explanations for that kind of behavior.”
But she was wrong. There was a third. You might kneel in the street without moving if you knew the person driving the car and had every reason to believe they’d stop.
Chapter 31
I knew I should call for help. Reach out and push any of the buttons on the phone in the middle of the conference table and ask for Officer Rowley or Loretta or anyone. The news about David’s car—no wonder he’d come with Ollie that first day—made the whole convenience store theory impossible. And the other thing Scott had said, about me being outside with one of the girls I’d come with. “Girls with wings.” That could only be Langley or Kate.
If Scott saw me come out of the house with one of them, it meant that Ollie had lied. He didn’t follow me out of the house. But someone else did.
The harder something is for you to handle, the more deeply it will be buried, Dr. Tan had said.
I’m at the door of the bedroom. It’s blocked by someone, someone is standing in front of it.
But not blocking it. Holding it open. It’s Kate, Kate who is holding it open, Kate who says, “You want to find your precious David? Look, there he is.” Kate who points to David and Sloan on the bed.
I’m stunned. “How could you do this?” I ask.
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“Like this? Really?”
I take off the friendship ring she’d given me and throw it in her face.
The floor of the hallway writhes beneath me. Somehow I make it outside.
“Jane, wait.”
Kate is following me. She has mascara in streaks down her face like she’s been crying and there is a rip at the neck of her fairy costume. Kate is now saying, “I’m sorry. That was brutal. I shouldn’t have done that. You’re not the only one who got hurt tonight.”
“Don’t lie.” I’m furious. Furious with David. Furious with myself. But I blame her. “You’ve been trying to break us up all along. Well, you succeeded. Nice work.”
“That’s not what I—”
I kiss her, hard on the mouth, biting her lip with my teeth. When I pull away, she is rigid. “Is that what you wanted?” I demand. “Are you happy now?”
Her fingers go to her lip. It’s bleeding.
“Do you want me to do it again? Is that what all of this is about?”
The fury in her eyes is searing. “I hate you, you bitch. You’ll pay for that.” She spins around and runs back into the party.
That’s when Ollie had shown up. That’s why I listened to him. Because I’d been too stunned to move.
“I should have stopped,” Kate had said. Did she run me over? And then retrieve the friendship ring to put on my finger so no one would know we’d had a fight? And when she told David to leave me alone, was that so he wouldn’t ask any more questions and stir up my memory?
“You’ll pay for that,” Kate had said. And she’d had every right to be angry, I realized. At the beach, last summer, I’d used her. I’d thought I was going along with what she wanted, but it wasn’t that simple. I was taking what I needed. Love. A sense of being important to someone. I thought it was okay—it was her idea after all. But it wasn’t okay. Because I’d known it meant more to her than it did to me and I took it anyway. I owed her an apology.
If I lived.
The hospital phone on the table was ringing. Without thinking, I reached for it. “Hello?”
“Does she haunt you?”
“Who?”
“Bonnie, of course. The girl you killed.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Would she be dead if it wasn’t for you?”
No one except the people who had been in my room with me the night before could have known about that.
“It’s time for you to pay for what you’ve done, Jane. Or what you didn’t do.”
And me. I knew.
Which meant I had to be hallucinating. This was all in my head. It was all—
“I hope you’re ready to die.”
I slammed the receiver down.
No.
It wasn’t possible. I didn’t want to die. It wasn’t a hallucination—
Was it?
—which meant someone was on their way to kill me.
But no one could have found you. No one except Scott and Loretta even knew where you were.
I didn’t make this up. I didn’t—
Are you sure?
—want to die.
Stop!
I put my hands over my ears to stop all the voices. It was too hard; I couldn’t take any more. I picked up the phone and started pushing buttons wildly until Loretta’s voice said, “What are you doing, sweetheart?” next to me.
“Oh, thank God.” I put the phone down. “How did you get here?”
“Scott came up to your room to tell me you’d had a bit of a falling-out, but he was worried about leaving you down here alone, so—”
If Scott had been with Loretta, then he couldn’t have been the caller.
If there was a caller.
“We have to get out of here, Loretta.” I used my arms to move the chair toward the door, but I got stuck between the dining table and the wall. “Get this furniture out of my way.”
“Calm down, sweetheart.”
I gripped her wrist. “He called again, Loretta. The killer.”
She put a hand on my forehead. “You’re feverish.”
I ducked my head away. “That doesn’t matter. Someone is coming to kill me. I have to get out of here. Loretta, you have to help me.”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
I turned myself toward the edge of the table. If she wasn’t going to help, I’d find a way out myself. Palms pressed on the surface, I tried to stand. “There was no face. In the bathroom mirror I had no face. There were just hands.”
“Sit down, angel.”
My arms were shaking with the effort. “Don’t you see what that means, Loretta? Just an empty place. I know what they did.”
“Let’s get you back into the chair.”
“Kate. Kate said I would pay for what I’ve done. And David’s car hit a post.”
“Sit, sweetheart.”
“I’m not crazy. I’m not hallucinating. There’s no time. This is it. That’s what the killer said. It’s time to die.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
“We have to leave. The killer is coming for me. No place is safe. I didn’t drink anything, but I got drugged anyway. Don’t touch anything. Anything could be poison. Don’t you see?”
“I see. Sit down and I’ll wheel you out of here.”
A wave of relief swept over me. I’d gotten through to her. “Yes. Thank you.” I collapsed into the chair, so happy I was sobbing. “Thank you, Loretta.”
Out of the corner of my eye I was vaguely aware of her doing something with her hand, and then I heard her voice into the phone, “This is Loretta Bonner in the West Executive dining room. I have a code four.”
“No.” I tried to hang up the phone. “He’ll find us first. We have to go.”
She pushed my hand aside. “Get me security and Dr. Tan stat.”
She didn’t believe me. Because of the medicine. She thought the medicine was making me hallucinate.
That’s when I saw what had been the solution to all of this, all the uncertainty all along. I could know! I could know if I was mad or not. I started clawing at the IV in my arm. “Take this out. Then we can be sure.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure. Don’t you see? We can know.” I was so excited to have thought of it I was laughing.
“Know what?”
“If the calls are real or if it’s just this, this poison, that’s been going into my veins.” I smiled at her and kept pulling on the IV. “It’s so obvious.”
She wrappe
d a strong hand around my wrist to stop me. “You need to calm down, sweetheart.”
“No. This is what I need to do. Help me, Loretta. I want to know what’s real and what isn’t. Get it out of me.”
Loretta was leaning over me holding my arms down. “Stay still, sweetheart.”
“It’s got to go. It’s got to end. It’s time for this to end.” If she was going to hold my hands down, I’d bite the IV out. “I’m done. I want it to go.” I twisted my neck to get it near my arm.
Loretta pushed my head back. “You have to stop this, sweetheart. Stop it and it will all be okay.”
“You’re lying!” I twisted away from her grip, my hand suddenly strong, and tried to raise myself out of my chair. “You’re against me. You’re all against me.”
I didn’t see the needle until she’d already plunged it into my arm.
Chapter 32
Whatever Loretta gave me knocked me out cold. Opening myeyes, I didn’t recognize anything around me. I was in a completely different room. There were no windows, so instead of resting on the windowsill all my tokens of popularity had been moved from room 403 and placed on a shelf across from my bed. My face itched and when I went to scratch it, I couldn’t move my arms. At first I thought I was paralyzed again, but then I realized it was worse. I was in restraints.
I tugged at them, but they held. “Hello?” I called out. The door to my room was closed and the window had louvers on the outside. “Is anyone there? Hello?”
A key turned in a lock and my mother and Dr. Tan came in.
“Oh, Jane.” My mother was weeping openly. The entire pretense of perfection was gone. “Oh, darling, baby. What is going on tell me what to do I’m so sorry we didn’t come this morning first thing Annie was sick oh darling just—”
“Mrs. Freeman, if you wouldn’t mind.” Dr. Tan tried to step in front of her, but she shot him a look.
“In a moment, doctor. Right now I need to talk to my daughter.” She turned back to me. “Baby, I am so sorry. I feel like I failed you.”
She put her arms around me and hugged me tight. I had the sensation of falling I’d had before, but this time it was good. Great. “Mommy,” I said, trying to lift my arms to hug her back.
She pulled away. Her face was so full of love and trust and kindness for me. I wanted to brush the tears away. “Don’t cry, Mommy.”
“I love you so much, Jane.”
“I love you too.” I tried to move my arms again. “Where am I? Why am I tied down?”
Her smile was still there, but it faltered for a moment. She brushed hair off my forehead and rested her hand on my cheek. “We had you moved to the eighth floor.”
“I’m in the psych ward? Why? I’m not crazy.”
Dr. Tan came and stood next to her now. “If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Freeman?” he said, and she moved slightly but didn’t let go of my hand. She squeezed it, and I squeezed hers back. We were in this together. I was so happy I almost didn’t pay attention when Dr. Tan said, “You had a rather severe psychotic episode, Jane. You tried to pull out your IVs and started talking about ending it all.”
“No.” I shook my head. My mother’s hand in mine soothed me. I smiled at her. This was going to be fine, I just needed to explain. “You have it all wrong. I wanted to stop the medication so I could prove to all of you I wasn’t hallucinating, that someone was trying to kill me. Or to prove to myself that they were hallucinations.” I kept my voice even, rational. “One way or another, removing the medicine would clear it up. That’s what I wanted to stop, the medicine. The poison. I want my mind back, my life back.”
“And we’re here to help you with that,” Dr. Tan assured me.
“Good,” I said. “Then can we start with removing the arm restraints?”
“Maybe in a little while.”
Hadn’t he been listening? I tried again. “But if I’m right and someone is trying to kill me”—I said, pronouncing each word carefully—“having me strapped in place will make it very easy for them.”
Dr. Tan’s eyes burrowed into mine. “Who is trying to kill you? Can you tell us someone specific?”
I looked at my mother, but her eyes were on the psychologist, not me. That was when I realized this wasn’t going how I expected. “I don’t know. We’ve been over this. I think it must be a friend of mine. Someone very close.”
Dr. Tan patted my arm. “Until you figure it out, you’ll be safe in here. There are guards on your door now and no one can get in or out without appropriate authorization.”
“That won’t stop this killer. I have to get out of here.” I was trying to wriggle out of the leather cuff around the hand my mother wasn’t holding. If I could just get that free—
“Why would someone want to kill you?” Dr. Tan asked in his maddeningly even voice.
“I. Don’t. Know,” I said, gritting my teeth. We were wasting time. “But this must all be part of their master plan.”
“They’re omnipotent?”
I didn’t even have to see his face to know how insane that sounded. “Yes. No. God.” I started to cry.
He addressed my mother. “This is normal after a psychic strain. The best thing we can do right now is let her rest.”
She nodded and gave me a smile. The same smile as before, filled with love. Only this time she said, “This is a good place for you, Jane. No one can hurt you in here. And you can’t hurt—anyone.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said, but I realized that hadn’t been what she meant. She meant hurt myself.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Mommy,” I said, pleading with her. “You have to believe me.”
She looked at me with the saddest face I’d ever seen. “Dr. Tan says that dredging up everything about Bonnie yesterday might have—” Tears rolled down her face. She bent down and held my hand against her cheek. “Oh, Janey, I’m so sorry we weren’t here this morning. I’m not leaving, not going anywhere until you’re better. Sweetheart, you have so much to live for. So many people who love you.”
“Please have them move me back to my room. I don’t like it here.”
“It’s just for a little while, darling. Until—until we’re sure you’re past this.”
“Don’t leave me. Please.”
“I won’t.”
“Mrs. Freeman, I really recommend—” Dr. Tan began, but my mother shut him down.
She stood up, squared her shoulders and announced, “My daughter needs me and I’m going to stay with her.”
They must have given me a strong sedative because I don’t remember much after that. Falling asleep with my hand in my mother’s, even if my wrist was manacled, was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
When I woke up again, she was gone, but the feeling of well-being persisted. This waking up was totally different than it had been four days ago.
God, had it really been only four days?
I thought about everything that had happened, the writing on the mirror when no one was there, the paranoia about my room being bugged when there was no bug, the phone calls that no one but me ever even heard ringing, the secret-admirer presents that everyone but me thought were nice. The weird looks and innuendos between my friends, which all seemed sinister but all had completely innocuous explanations. The only thing wrong, the only thing that made it weird in every example was me.
How did I get here? Four days ago I’d been a perfectly normal girl and now—I stared at my wrist, held to the bed by a thick leather strap. It looked like something out of a bad movie. My hands were fists and as I unflexed them, I saw the friendship ring on my right hand.
There. That was one thing—the only thing—I could be sure I hadn’t made up. My ring. Not only had it moved, but at one point it had vanished.
That sounded impossible, but it was true. And if that was true, everything else could be true as well.
Which meant someone was coming to kill me.
Don’t worry, Jane, our destinies are linked. I’ll take care of
you anywhere you go, my secret admirer had said.
“Mom!” I shouted. “Mommy!”
No answer. Given the eerie silence in the room, I had to imagine it was completely soundproofed.
I pulled against the arm restraints, arching to get out of them, but there was nothing I could do. I was looking around to see if there was anything I could grab when I noticed the glassine envelope on the table next to my bed. Looking closely, I saw that Officer Rowley had come through with the crime-scene photo.
It was stark yet beautiful.
That was the first thing I noticed about it. It showed that moment just before dawn, when the world turned monochrome and everything was subsumed under a blanket of blue-gray light. The streetlights had gone off, making the street a still gray ribbon scarred with two black marks trailing from the upper left of the picture to the lower right. In the background, blurry, large houses hunkered down, streaked dark from rain. In the foreground and slightly to the right, set in blue-gray grass, was a fantastic bush. It looked like something from a fairy tale, a witch cursed into an alternate form, gnarled fingers reaching for the sky. At the center lay a girl.
I looked at the photo as though it wasn’t me, searching for clues. Shreds of tulle skirt were tangled among the branches blowing in the morning breeze like tiny flags. A ceramic rabbit, a mother duck followed by five tiny ducklings, and a squirrel playing the flute stood silent guard around the girl. One of her legs was bent up; the other jutted out of the bush dangling a Prada platform shoe. Her left hand was under her and the right one, with a friendship ring on the index finger, reached up as though to pluck the single deep-red rose that hung above her—the only spot of color in the image. There was dark hair feathering over half her face. Her body was covered with angry gashes and a magenta river of blood trickled from her head. Her lips were parted, as though she was about to say something, share a secret.
“Hello, princess,” said a cheery voice from the door of my room. I raised my eyes to see an unfamiliar guy in scrubs walking in. I missed Loretta.
The new guy said, “I’m Ruben. And from the looks of this room, you’re Little Miss Popular.”
He fingered each of the bouquets that had been moved to the shelf opposite my bed, ending up with the two-dozen red roses. “This must have set someone back plenty. I wish I could find a boyfriend as generous.”
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