“Did you know that this hall is the oldest building on campus?” added Melanie, “I heard that it used to be an insane asylum.”
“Pssssssshhht!” hissed Sam, “Now I’ve heard everything.”
“I wouldn’t go up in the bell tower,” said Jen adamantly, “You couldn’t pay me enough!”
“I would,” Sam said, as if issuing a challenge.
The room fell silent. Chloe cringed in expectation.
“Okay, if you spend the night up there, I’ll-” began Jen. Sam sat bolt upright on the bed and shook her head.
“Me and Chloe, we’ll go up there at, let’s say eleven o’clock, and stay all night-”
“We have Psych tomorrow morning,” Chloe insisted.
“We’ll stay up there until four in the morning, so we can get a few hours of sleep before class,” Sam amended, “but, if we do, we get your other bottle of vodka and you guys have to swear that you’re not going to fuck around and come up there and try to scare us or anything.”
“And if you get scared and come down before four?” asked Jen.
“Then Chloe and I will buy all your’s and Melanie’s drinks at the Eat Friday,” Sam vowed. Jen and Melanie exchanged a long, calculating glance.
“Deal,” agreed Jen.
Around the room, conversations resumed. The subject turned back to drinking games. Sam leaned forward to take the vodka bottle from Chloe and shot her a quick wink. Chloe tried to smile back, but what came out was probably more of a grimace. Inside, her stomach began to twist itself into a small, defensive ball.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It’s so c-c-cold up here,” Chloe said through chattering teeth.
Her breath formed steamy clouds in the crisp night air. They sat across from each other in the open bell tower, on the cold, hard cement slab, each with their back to a pillar. Six carved pillars supported a tall, rounded cupola roofed by dark slate tiles. A two foot high wrought iron fence circled the entire perimeter; it was obviously not part of the original design. It didn’t make Chloe feel any safer.
“Stop being so melodramatic,” laughed Sam, “it’s not that cold.”
“How cold is cold to you? I can see my breath,” Chloe exhaled a long hot breath and pointed at the cloud it formed.
“Cold is when it’s so far below zero that when you step outside you feel like your eyeballs are freezing,” Sam said.
“Crazy Yooper,” Chloe said half-admiringly.
“Thin-blooded troll,” Sam countered, “Here, take a blanket then.” Sam threw a quilt she had snatched off her bed at Chloe. Chloe wrapped it tightly around herself, and huddled down again, miserably against her post.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she complained, “we have class tomorrow, we should be in bed, and I’m sure this is against some sort of rules. I mean, the stairs had a chain over them and a sign. You saw the sign, right? The one that said: maintenance only?”
Sam didn’t seem to be listening. In the middle of the cement floor was the trap door they had come through earlier. Sam had dropped her “supplies” next to it, and now she stared at it thoughtfully.
“You don’t suppose it locked behind us, do you?” Sam wondered. Chloe’s panic dug spurs into her. She lunged forward and grasped the metal ring, giving it a hard pull. The trapdoor screeched open, exposing the shadowy staircase beneath.
“No,” she confirmed, lowering it down gently.
Sam giggled. “Geez Chloe, freak out why don’t you?”
Chloe winced. Looking around for some way to change the subject, her eyes fell on the “supplies” Sam had gathered. They consisted of a few blankets that the girls’ had stripped off their beds, a mug and a pint glass with BHC logos on them, four bags of snack-size chips (that Sam had gotten out of the lobby vending machine) a flashlight, a two liter of Faygo Redpop, a Ouija board (generously donated by Jen and Melanie) and the all important bottle of vodka, which was their reward for the whole stupid undertaking.
“You ever done this Ouija board thing before?” Chloe asked.
“Yeah, sure, but it never actually works, somebody always pushes it,” Sam said.
“You don’t believe in like…ghosts or anything?” Chloe asked in her best off-hand manner.
“I believe it’s time for a drink.” Sam placed the mug and pint glass side by side and twisted the top off the vodka. “I’ve never had vodka with redpop before, but that’s all I had to mix it with, and what I’m thinking is, vodka is really good and redpop is really good, so vodka and redpop should be super good, right?”
“By that logic, bacon-flavored ice cream should be a best seller,” Chloe snorted.
Sam passed her the mug. Chloe took a sip and grimaced. Sam made it strong, it tasted like it was half vodka. The girls sat silently, sipping on their drinks. From far below, the streetlights over the parking lot gave off just enough light for Chloe to discern the pensive look on Sam’s face.
“So why BHC?” Sam asked after what seemed like an hour.
“What do you mean?” Chloe replied dully.
“I mean, it’s like I said earlier, kids either end up here because their grades sucked or because their parents can’t afford a better school. It’s pretty obvious that I’m here because I spent a lot more time partying than I did studying, and well, my folks aren’t exactly oil barons or anything either. Now you, on the other hand, I would guess your grades were pretty good.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh I dunno…we have class tomorrow, Sam. You can’t turn this in to Willard, Sam, it’s not eloquent enough,” Sam mimicked in a high-pitched voice.
“Shut-up,” Chloe grinned.
“So your grades were probably pretty good,” Sam continued.
“Decent,” Chloe admitted.
“So what are you doing here?” Sam repeated.
“Maybe I’m the other type. Maybe my parents are poor and I’m just going with what I can afford.”
“Maybe,” Sam shrugged.
The uncomfortable silence returned. Chloe took a nervous gulp from her mug, and then tried to stifle her gag reflex. It turned into a cough.
“It’s just that, BHC is a long way to go. I’m sure there’s a lot of community colleges and small schools below the bridge you could have gone to. Why come all this way?” Sam wondered aloud.
Chloe took another long sip instead of answering. Her mind raced furiously to think up a good explanation while she tried to appear calm. Nothing, there was nothing she could think of to say. Her mug was already empty.
“More?” Sam asked lightly.
Chloe nodded and passed her the mug back. She watched as Sam threw back the rest of her drink and then set the cups side by side to pour again. Sam’s face was a study of complete unconcern. She handed Chloe back a mug of fizzing red liquid.
“I have a guess,” Sam offered. When Chloe didn’t reply, Sam seemed to take it as permission to continue. “I think you had some kind of falling out with your parents.”
“Why?” Chloe’s voice cracked.
“Well, it just seems funny that they didn’t drop you off and they haven’t even called that I’ve noticed and you haven’t called them. You’ve also never said anything about them. I think you had a fight with them, and you decided to go to school as far away from home as you could, and still not have to pay out-of-state tuition. Am I close?” Sam prodded.
“Close enough,” Chloe agreed. Sam watched her expectantly. How much, Chloe wondered, how much can I really tell her? The old venomous voice that usually had an answer for everything wasn’t saying anything just then, but it was there. Chloe could feel it, holding its breath. Waiting for her to expose them both.
“I don’t have a dad,” Chloe began, “just, just my mom, and my sisters. I have two sisters, I’m the youngest.”
Sam was watching her avidly, huddled up with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her chin propped on top of one, and her pint glass within reach on the ground next to her.
“My Dad--he… well, I don’t really know what his deal was. My parents got divorced when I was a baby, and I’ve never even seen him. He lived in like Germany or somewhere, I don’t even know, but my mom, she…she’s a real bitch.” Chloe forced the words out. It felt good to say.
Sam giggled.
“She is, really. She’s on the school board, and she owns a book store. She thinks she’s like the most important person in the whole dumbass town. She has this belief that everyone is watching us, judging us, all the time. Like, everything we do has to be perfect or everyone in the world will talk about us. My sisters, they’re just like her, and so, of course, she totally loves them. My oldest sister went to Michigan State and now she’s going to grad school there for her MBA, and my other sister is at U of M, and she’s planning on going to law school. She’s like a super genius, so she’ll probably end up at like Harvard or somewhere. So, she had the two of them that she just bragged about to everybody like Oh-look-what-a-great-mother-I-am, my-girls-are- sooooooo-smart-and-successful… and then, there’s me.”
“And then there’s you,” echoed Sam, “cheers, fellow loser!” Sam lifted her pint glass in salute.
Chloe chuckled and took another sip off her own mug. She was starting to feel light-headed.
“So what was it that made you the black sheep? Your grades weren’t as good as your sisters or something?” Sam asked.
“No, it wasn’t that, I…” Chloe trailed off. Her fingers rubbed nervously against her mug as she took a deep breath.
“I’m-I’ve got other…problems,” she admitted. Sam continued to watch her, as Chloe tried to find the courage to keep talking. “I’m not…I’ve got some crap wrong in my head. Ummm…like, I used to hear things that weren’t really there, and once in awhile see things too.”
“Like schizophrenia?” Sam offered.
“Yeah…well, sort of, no…actually that’s pretty much it, schizophrenia, I guess,” Chloe reluctantly agreed, “Look, it’s not as bad as it sounds, really. I mean, a couple of years ago, I just started thinking when I was alone that I could hear voices whispering sometimes, and I never told anyone, because I knew it was crazy, and they weren’t real, so I just ignored them. Then, I started seeing things.”
“What kind of things?” Sam’s voice was almost a whisper.
“I don’t know, Sam. It wasn’t like pink elephants marching around or anything. Just sometimes, it seemed like I could see something that always moved away really quick when I tried to look at it. Something that I would just barely catch out of the corner of my eye. I thought I could just ignore it, but it started happening so much and the whispering all the time…I got to a point where I knew I couldn’t handle it by myself anymore, because I was starting to think it was real. So I told my mom about it.”
“And what did she do?” asked Sam.
“She thought I was making it up for attention, and she wouldn’t even listen, and then…then, this one day I was home alone…” Chloe choked up. She could hear a distant rumbling in her ears that usually preceded tears. She cleared her throat and blinked rapidly.
“This one day… the voices just got really loud and they were all telling me the same thing. They were all telling me that this guy…this guy who was a friend of my mom’s, was bad, that he was going to try and hurt me. So I-I…called the police. I told them he was trying to hurt me”
“Bet she loved that,” Sam guessed. Chloe smirked and took another long drink from her mug.
“Yeah. First she had me tested for drugs, and I came up clean. Then she sent me to a… a…well, they called it a rest home, but it was basically a psych hospital. She was so embarrassed that she wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. Then she finally visits and right away she was all like: ‘You did this on purpose! You did this just to hurt me!’”
Sam snorted in disgust.
“So my transcript got all messed up, because I had to leave school for awhile. I ended up having to take summer classes, I almost didn’t have enough credits to graduate on time, and no, my grades were not actually that good. Once I actually had to go back to school…well, that was pretty bad. Somehow, everyone knew. It is a small town, after all. Everyone was always pointing and whispering, cracking jokes. Just asinine stuff. Some big, stupid, jock guy even tripped me in the hallway and kicked my books one time. I never understood why. I just hated my life, just hated it. I thought, if I went really far, maybe…maybe I wouldn’t run into anyone that knew. I could get away from my mom and my sisters always thinking that I was faking it. I could just start over and be…normal.”
“Fuck normal!” Sam insisted. “You’re going to be better than normal!”
Chloe let out a long sigh. It felt like she had been holding it in since the first day she arrived.
“So now you know. Your roommate is a psycho,” Chloe confessed.
“Well, you’re not the only one,” Sam laughed.
“Don’t tell me. You’re a serial killer?” Chloe smiled.
“Serial slut, actually,” Sam’s voice sounded bitter. “My high school experience was kind of similar to yours. See, there was this guy. He was really hot. Kind of built and just a gorgeous butt on him. He was super popular, of course, but so was I. He seemed really nice, and smart. I mean, he was the total package. I had a huge, huge crush on him. It wasn’t just an I-want-to-sleep-with-him kind of thing. I wanted to be his girlfriend, I wanted to write ‘I luv Evan’ all over my notebooks with little pink hearts like I was in grade school or something. He finally asked me out. We went to a movie, and then instead of taking me home, we drove around on these deserted back roads until he found a place to pull over. I thought…I don’t know what I thought, I should have known what was going to happen, but I thought at least he was going to be romantic about it. I thought he would…I thought….he just….I just…I couldn‘t push him away, and he grabbed my hair…and…and...”
“You were raped?” gasped Chloe.
Sam winced.
“God, I hate that word. Just hate it. It sounds so melodramatic. I told him to just wait a minute, to hold on, and he said that he knew I did it with everybody. Started naming guys left and right that I supposedly had sex with. Really, I had only ever slept with two guys, and I tried to tell him so, but he started saying how everyone knew I was a slut.”
Sam made a fist and pounded her knee absentmindedly. Chloe stared at the ground.
“So I tried to push him away, he was stronger, and he grabbed me by my hair and…that was that. It sounds like one of those movies on Lifetime, doesn’t it?” Sam asked.
“It sounds like it was awful,” Chloe replied truthfully.
“What was awful was going to school Monday. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know. I just kept thinking about how he said everyone already thought I was a slut, and if I made a big deal out of it, people might think it was my fault. I should have gone to the police the second he dropped me off. I know that now, because when I went in to school he had told a bunch of people. All my friends knew, the whole school knew. He had a bunch of the guys chanting “slut, slut, slut” at me every time I walked by them. Someone keyed the word ‘slut’ into my car. People I didn’t even know would walk by me in the hallway and just say ‘skank’ or ‘slut’. I just had enough at one point. I thought, my reputation is already in the toilet, who cares now? So I went down to the guidance counselor, damn helpful people those guidance counselors-” Sam rolled her eyes.
Chloe snorted.
“And I told him what had happened to me, and how this guy had everybody calling me a slut, and instead of doing anything about it, he called Evan down to the office and asked to hear his side of it.” Sam pursed her lips in disgust.
“He didn’t!” Chloe was dumbfounded.
“He did. And sure enough, Evan tells him that I was the one who had pursued him, and that I was just angry because he didn’t want to have a relationship with me. Then he gets all his friends to come down to the office and back him up, saying how they had all s
lept with me. So this brilliant guidance counselor starts asking my friends all about it. Brilliant. Because this is just what I want, for everyone in the world to know everything that happened, and of course I had never told any of my friends what had actually happened, so Sherlock Guidance Counselor deduced that I was the one lying.”
“Oh, that sucks!” Chloe steamed.
“Yup. It really sucked, Chloe. Because after that, I still had another year of high school left, and the whole time I was the slutty girl who had tried to say a guy raped me, because he didn’t want to be my boyfriend. I even had girls coming up to me and saying that I was scum because I was the type of girl that made it harder for all the poor girls who actually were victims to come forward.”
“I’m so sorry, Sam.”
“For what? I learned a lesson, don’t trust anyone! That shit is all behind me now. We’re in the same boat, we’re both starting over. I need a refill, how bout you?”
Chloe handed over her mug, and watched Sam divide the last of the two liter between their glasses. In the parking lot below, an engine roared to life and a pair of headlights snapped on. For a minute, Sam and every tiny thing under the cupola were thrown into sharp relief, casting long, black shadows across the roof. Chloe watched the car back out and speed away.
It seemed to her that there was a strange sort of rawness between her and Sam. Everything was out on the table, and neither of them had anything else to say at the moment. They could each hurt the other now. We can each help the other, she immediately corrected. She wasn’t sure how to start conversation again.
“We’re out of pop,” she ventured.
“I know, and we still have vodka, I would almost go down and get some 20 ouncers out of the machine, but if one of the girls catches us-”
“We’re stuck buying all Jen and Melanie’s drinks,” Chloe finished. “Wish there was somebody walking around down there. We could flag them down.”
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