by Emiko Jean
Chase stiffens a little in his seat and avoids eye contact. “Asshole,” he mutters under his breath. I wonder what Chase’s deal is with Dr. Goodman. He’s got a serious case of the hates for him.
“I’m sorry, Chase. I didn’t catch that.”
“I said, swell.”
Doc turns toward me, effectively walling Chase out. The reflection of my collage glints in his glasses. “Alice, we’re not going to be having our regular one-on-one this evening. We will be meeting, but Sara and your attorney are coming to visit, and they want to go over some things with us. Donny will be able to show you the way. But since we aren’t going to be able to talk one-on-one today, I wanted to check-in and see if you’d like to chat about anything beforehand.”
I shake my head, careful to avoid Dr. Goodman’s eyes. I tell him I’ll see him later. He gives my collage one more lingering look before moving on to someone else.
Chase watches Dr. Goodman’s retreating back. “What do you think that’s about?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
Chase looks like he wants to ask more questions, but since I’m in no mood to discuss the good doctor, I decide to distract Chase instead. “Tell me a secret,” I say.
His eyes flicker with surprise, but then warmth seeps into them. He uncurls his fists. All the curiosity seems zapped from him. It worked. He gives me half a smile. “A secret?”
For some reason my palms start to sweat a little. I rub them on my scrubs. “Yeah, tell me something nobody here knows.”
He contemplates this for a minute, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows meditatively. “I’m, like, really awesome at baseball.”
“You’re humble, too.” I instantly regret my sarcasm. “I’m sorry,” I say.
He nods, seemingly appeased. “I could’ve gone pro.”
“What happened?”
He spins his finger, indicating the hospital around us.
I chew the inside of my cheek, unsure what to say. “I’m sure plenty of baseball players have criminal records.” I meant to offer the statement as comfort, but it comes out all wrong. Instead, it sounds as if I’m fishing for information. Which maybe I was, on some subconscious level.
His mouth opens and then shuts. He thought I didn’t know. I’m ashamed at my lack of tact, even more so when he looks sad and bows his head. “Yeah, I guess they do,” he says in the faintest of voices. He shakes off his sadness and gives me another trademark smile. “Now you. You tell me a secret.”
It seems unfair to deny him. “I’ve never seen the ocean.”
He snorts in disbelief. “We’re, like, two hours from the coast. You’ve never been to the beach?”
I shake my head at him. Once, Jason, Cellie, and I skipped school to go, but we didn’t make it all the way there. I can’t help thinking how things might have been different if we’d made it to the coast that day. I ask him to tell me another secret, but this time I’m more specific. I want to know what he’s most afraid of.
He fingers the scraps on the table. “I fear . . .” He swallows and then clears his throat. When he speaks, it sounds like his mouth is full of paste. “I fear never being able to forgive myself.”
We keep going like this. Listing our fears to each other. But we don’t prod, ask why or what makes it so. Which makes it more comfortable. We share things on the surface and dance around the darker parts. Carefully we avoid things like the exact reason why Chase is at Savage Isle and my true plan to exact revenge on Cellie.
The intern social worker claps her hands and starts to speak. She applauds us for all the work we’ve done and says she hopes we’ve found our time with her helpful.
When we start to clean up, Chase’s hand stops mine. “You going to let me keep that, or what?” His eyes drift to my horrific collage.
I look down at the piece of paper, at the small face of the woman and her too-large eyes—eyes that originally belonged to a different face. I shake my head at him. “It’s ugly.”
He looks at me like I’ve disappointed him. “Haven’t you ever heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”
I want to tell him he’s an even worse poet than he is a comedian. But he seems sincere, so I bite my tongue; still, I don’t give Chase the collage. Instead I crumple it up and bury it in the trash.
Despite what he said, I know better. The collage is ugly. And there’s enough ugliness in this world.
…
FROM THE JOURNAL OF ALICE MONROE
“You’re never going to find it.” On the shore Cellie laughed, mocking me. Through every ripple in the river I could feel her sick joy. Waves lapped against my face as I tried to stay afloat. Overhead, the sun was just beginning to rise, etching the gray sky with hazy bursts of pink and orange.
Jason stood next to Cellie on the shore. “What did you fucking do?” he said. He was mad, as mad as I’d ever seen him. The chords in his neck stood out, and a muscle ticked along his jaw.
I held my breath and went back under the water. It was cold, so cold that my teeth hurt from banging against one another, and I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. Still, I propelled my body down and furiously searched the sandy bottom. Cellie was getting worse, and lately her rage, her chaos, her madness had been directed at me. I pretended I didn’t know why, but I did. She was angry that Jason and I were becoming a couple. The closer Jason and I got, the more volatile Cellie became.
I couldn’t tell what hurt more, my body from the physical exertion of swimming and diving—or my heart.
I stayed under for as long as possible. My eyes stung from the dirty water, but I kept them open, scanning the bottom for something that didn’t belong there. My lungs burned and the carbon dioxide in them begged for release. I was forced to the top. My body broke the surface and I inhaled a huge breath. Jason shook his head and crouched by the river, his combat boots meeting the waves. He lit a cigarette and watched me carefully.
“Please help me,” I yelled, sucking in a mouthful of water, almost choking. My body was getting tired, and the special blue dress I’d worn that day, the first day of our sophomore year, kept getting tangled in my legs, threatening to take me under.
“This is ridiculous. You’re not going to find it,” Jason said. Still, he put out his cigarette, slipped off his shoes and shirt, and joined me in the water.
“He’s right, Alice. You’re never going to find it,” Cellie taunted. She made no move to help, just sat on the shore, sifting sand through her pale toes.
While Jason swam toward me, I dived back down. I couldn’t afford the time it would take to wait for him. It was hard to see in the murky water, so I relied on my hands to do most of the exploring. I reached for another rock, but instead of cold granite my hand met a soft burlap sack. The relief was instant but fleeting. It had been too long. Too many minutes had passed. Still, I reached for the sack, my fingers searching, just to make sure this was what I’d been looking for.
I swam to the surface and held up the sack. It was sickeningly heavy. “I found it,” I yelled. It had been cinched with a thin piece of rope. My numb hands fumbled with the knots, trying to get them undone, but it was impossible to tread water and work at the knot at the same time. Once or twice my head slipped under as I continued to hold the sack aloft.
“You’re going to drown yourself.” Jason grabbed the tops of my thighs and wrapped my legs around him. “I got you.” I worked at the knot, my teeth chattering as he swam us back to the shore. When we got to a place where he could stand, he began to walk. I tried to slip off of him but he held me tight. “No,” he said. “Just hold on, baby.”
By the time he set me down on land, I’d untied two of the three knots. My hands shook as I undid the final one. I couldn’t tell if the tremor was a reaction to the cold water or a response to what I knew I’d find inside that burlap sack. The knot unraveled easily.
Jason picked up his pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his discarded shirt. He tapped one out and lit it.
I opened the sack and reached inside. My fingers met sodden fur. There was no movement, no subtle sign of life. It was too late. I pulled out the ball of fur. The soft, long-haired cat I’d found and secretly kept in Candy’s toolshed for almost a year seemed small in my hands.
“No.” I brought the cat to my chest and pressed my cheek to its head. A sob racked my body. I didn’t expect to find it alive, but I had hoped.
Cellie snickered behind me. “Poor Alice. It struggled a lot.”
Jason shrugged his shirt back on. “This is really fucking sick, Cellie. You couldn’t just let her have the cat?”
Cellie’s face changed, crumbled like old paper in a book. Her lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry. It was supposed to be a joke. I’m sorry.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Please don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry.”
I rocked back and forth. I held the cat close with one hand and with the other dug into the soft, sandy earth. Cellie grazed my shoulder. “Don’t touch me,” I yelled, throwing a handful of sand at her face. She was surprised because I’d never done something like that before. Her shocked expression was enough to break me. But something inside of me had cracked open and I felt wild. I scrambled to my feet. I picked up handful after handful of sand and threw them at her. All the while I clutched the cat to my breast, wishing I could pump the life from my own heart into its body. “You ruin everything. I hate you. You’re ruining me,” I cried, hurtling handfuls of sand in her direction.
Covering her eyes with her hands, Cellie backed away. “I said I was sorry, Allie.” But she wasn’t. I knew her words were hollow. Meaningless. Empty air.
Jason grabbed me around the waist. For a moment I struggled against his hold, but then I turned into him and sobbed into his shoulder. “She’s ruining me!”
“Shhh,” Jason said, running a hand through my soaked hair. “Cellie, you should go.”
“Don’t make me leave. Allie?” She tried touching my shoulder again but I recoiled, pressed myself farther into Jason’s body.
“I’ll find you another cat,” he whispered.
There was a crunch of sand and Cellie was running down the beach, into the woods, and out of sight.
Sand and sorrow clung to my body. Jason sat and cradled me on his lap, rocked me back and forth while I cried. The whole time he ran his fingers through my hair, ran his thumb over my pulse, tried to smooth away all my rough edges. He licked the water from my face and sucked droplets of the dirty river from my lower lip.
We buried the cat in the forest next to the riverbed. Our drenched clothing made our movements stiff, but we managed. My blue dress was ruined. It didn’t matter. I’d never wear it again, anyway. It would always serve as a bitter reminder of the day.
When it was done, Jason and I walked from the woods, hands intertwined. I didn’t know where he began and I ended. It was then I realized three very important things. One: I loved him like a fever—hot, bright, and maybe a little dangerous. Two: I loved him more than I loved Cellie. Three: someday Cellie might try to kill me like she had killed that cat.
CHAPTER
15
Complicity
RIGHT AFTER DINNER, AT EXACTLY SIX THIRTY, DONNY COMES FOR ME. We walk down the hallway, past Dr. Goodman’s office, all the way to the end, where there is a meeting room. I haven’t been in this room before. It’s small and windowless. A radiator hisses and gurgles on the far wall. Donny follows me inside and takes up residence by the door.
Sara and Dr. Goodman are already here. With them is a man I don’t recognize, a man who is the embodiment of messiness, from his wrinkled suit to his unkempt hair. All three of them sit on one side of the table. On the other side there’s a solitary chair, which I assume is for me. Nurse Dummel stands in the corner. A capped syringe peeks out from her front scrub pocket and she holds a radio in her hand, thumb hovering over the call button. All in all it’s pretty crowded. I feel their stares on me like a noose around my neck.
“Alice.” Sara stands and smiles. She opens her arms to me and I move toward her, but Dr. Goodman motions for her to sit down and she obeys. I frown at him. Sara seems anxious, even more worried than usual.
“Have a seat, Alice,” Dr. Goodman says.
The chair scrapes across the floor as I pull it out and take a seat.
“Before we begin, I’d like to go over some rules for our meeting. For the safety and security of our guests, there will be no touching. If at any time I feel that this meeting is becoming unsafe for any of us, it will end, and we will postpone until another time, when you’re more fit. I’d also like to say, for the record, that I believe it’s too soon to discuss this matter. But your attorney, Alice”—Dr. Goodman nods to the man sitting beside Sara—“is convinced this matter is of some urgency, so I’ve allowed it. Do you understand the rules of the meeting?”
I nod and so does everyone else, even Nurse Dummel.
“Excellent.” Dr. Goodman steeples his fingers. “Alice, do you remember Robert Cohen, your court-appointed attorney?”
I give Cohen a small smile. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember you.”
Cohen extends a hand for me to shake. My eyes flick to Dr. Goodman, and Cohen withdraws his hand, runs it through his hair. “We met in the hospital,” he prompts, as if that’ll jog my memory.
Dr. Goodman answers for me. “Alice doesn’t remember very much from her hospital stay. Part of her therapy here is helping her to regain that memory.”
Cohen nods in understanding. “Yes, well, it looks as if you’re recovering quite nicely.” Unbidden, the burns on my shoulders start to itch, and I resist the urge to scratch them beneath my shirt. The radiator kicks on and a small bead of sweat forms on Cohen’s upper lip. He pops open the gold clasps of the briefcase that rests in front of him on the table. “Anyway, I guess we should get down to business.” He pulls out a thick pile of bound papers. “The district attorney has made a very generous offer regarding your case.” He slides the papers over to me.
I take the papers and move them in front of me. I give him a puzzled look. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes, well.” Cohen shifts in his seat. He takes a stained handkerchief from his pocket and wipes perspiration from his forehead. “I apologize. I’m doing a crummy job of explaining this . . .”
Dr. Goodman cuts him off. “What Mr. Cohen means, Alice, is that there have been some recent developments in your case. Mr. Cohen has been working with the district attorney on a plea bargain for you, and today they were able to reach an agreement.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Unfortunately, the agreement is time-sensitive and expires quite soon. That’s why we had to meet this evening.”
“Right, thank you,” Cohen says. “Yes, the plea bargain. I believe this is a great opportunity for you, Alice. What’s so great about this is that you won’t serve any jail time. Your sentence will be here at Savage Isle and will be determined by your doctors rather than a judge or jury.”
I trace the words on the paper. They blend together in a jumble of legal jargon I don’t understand. My fingers land on an acronym. “What does NGRI mean?”
More sweat gathers on Cohen’s upper lip, and his mouth fumbles over the words. “NGRI is a legal term and it means that the defendant, you, isn’t responsible for their actions due to a mental or psychological condition. And, well, since you can’t remember your actions that night—we’ve got a solid NGRI case.”
I suck in an uneasy breath. Why is he dancing around the words? “What does NGRI stand for, though, exactly?” I lick my lips and stare at Cohen.
Cohen shrinks a little before he speaks. “NGRI stands for ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’”
I push the papers away from me like they’re going to burn my hand.
Cohen stops the stack from sliding farther, his hand landing on the sheets like a paperweight.
“I am not insane.”
Cohen stutters and his face goes red and blotchy.
“Alice, I think you should
consider the plea bargain,” Dr. Goodman interjects.
Consider it? How can I? My freshman year in English class we read The Crucible. Well, I didn’t read it. I watched the movie, the one with Winona Ryder. In one of the final scenes, John Proctor is convicted of witchcraft and contemplates signing a confession. He makes a big speech about his name, about how he’s been stripped of everything, and he cries, “Leave me my name!” I am so John Proctor right now.
“No,” I say matter-of-factly.
“No?” Dr. Goodman furrows his brow.
“I’m not pleading insanity and I’m not signing the plea bargain.”
“Alice, I really believe this is in your best interest,” Dr. Goodman continues.
“I don’t think it is.” I stand.
Cohen looks anxiously around the room. Donny takes a step forward, but Dr. Goodman waves him off.
“Please, Alice.” Sara speaks, soft and low, and her voice slices through me. I slump back into my chair. Sara slides the papers over to me. Just before I take them from her, she lays her hand on top of mine. I examine her hands, hands that hold the life I could have had. Her nails are clean and her skin is smooth, totally unblemished. Dr. Goodman sits straighter in his seat, but he doesn’t draw Sara’s hand away like before. “Read them,” she says. And I do, because it’s Sara who’s asked. Because I could have been her in another life.
It takes me twenty minutes to read through the whole plea bargain, and most of it I don’t understand. Of course Cellie’s named in it. Words like accomplice, accidental, and unaware float up at me. Cohen sweats so much I think he might be getting dehydrated. Once in a while I look up. Sara and Dr. Goodman are watching me closely. I get to the last page, where there is an empty line waiting for my signature. The DA has already signed. I stare at it until my eyes water and everything blurs.
Sara squeezes my hand. “I think it’s for the best,” she says. “You can put all this behind you, focus on getting better. You’ll be eighteen soon, and you can grow so much in a year. It’s not too late to start looking at colleges, thinking about your future.”