Asylum

by Kristen Selleck

  “No,” Chloe said quickly.

  “No…?” Seth asked suspiciously.

  “No,” Chloe shook her head for emphasis.

  “But Sam on the other hand…you seem to trust Sam more than you do anyone else. Why?”

  “Because she doesn’t make me feel like you do!” Chloe snapped.

  “I see. I make you feel bad,” he said calmly.

  “No! No, not bad! The opposite. I feel…” she looked up to see him watching her face intently. She turned her back to him. “It wouldn’t rip my heart out if all of a sudden Sam decided she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. It would hurt, sure…but I could deal with it. I’m used to it…to people hating me. Everyone hates me. That’s just how it is. My mom, my sisters, all the kids at school. The nice ones would just pretend I wasn’t there, the other ones…the way they’d look at me…like I was a piece of shit. You get used to it. Then I came here and I met you, and you look at me like maybe I’m…like I’m…I don’t know, special or something. I don‘t want to lose that.”

  Chloe clenched and unclenched her fists. She felt stupid and awkward. Behind her, she could hear Seth stand up, the scrunching sound of the snow under his boots.

  “Clo, look at me,” his voice was low and gentle. “Look at me.”

  Slowly, unwillingly she did. His eyes still reflected that strange greenish hue.

  “Clo, I…” he stopped. For a moment he seemed to consider something. Then he came to a decision and continued carefully, “I’m always worried that I’m going to say or do something that’ll scare you off. Sometimes I get this vibe that maybe I’m coming on too strong, or that you’re keeping me at arms length, because you’re waiting for me to mess up, or to hurt you somehow. There are days when I think you’re melting, when you seem more trusting, more comfortable, and then immediately afterwards you’ll freeze up and not talk to me or shove Sam like a privacy fence between us. I dragged you out here for Christmas thinking that if we were together all the time, and you didn’t have Sam, then you might…you might see me differently.”

  “I see you fine,” Chloe shrugged. “I already think very highly of you.”

  “You think very highly of me,” Seth repeated in a mock professional voice. “That sounds like a recommendation or something.”

  “I would recommend you,” Chloe said honestly, “to anyone.”

  Seth cracked a smile and then rubbed his face in a tired way.

  “Alright, I’m letting it drop. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” As if to emphasize his point, he sat down on the rock and patted the cold stone next to him. Taking the hint, Chloe sat down beside him. Together they went back to watching the sheets of colored light roll slowly and softly across the north sky. Her gloved fingers found his without looking and squeezed. He squeezed back.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!” Bea screamed at the top of her lungs. “GET UP!! GET UP, IT’S CHRISTMAS!!! SANTA’S COME!!!”

  “Oh my God, somebody needs to shut her up,” Rachel groaned from the floor. “Go back to bed, Bea!”

  Chloe rolled over and checked the red digital numbers on Rachel’s alarm clock. Quarter to six in the morning? The child had to be on drugs.

  The overhead light snapped on. Bea came in dragging her favorite blanket, a grubby pink quilt, and body-slammed Rachel. Rachel yelped in pain and shoved Bea off. The child bounced back to her feet excitedly.

  “Get up! Get up! Get up!” she chanted encouragingly. With one hand she began tugging the blanket off of Chloe.

  “Get out! Get out! Get out!” Rachel chanted back, she snatched her pillow and launched it at the little girl.

  Bea caught it. She smiled tauntingly at Rachel before leaping over her body and running for the door with her only pillow.

  “She can not be serious!” Rachel complained, wadding up Bea’s forgotten quilt and stuffing it under her head. “You should tell her there’s no Santa Claus, Chloe. Mom can’t yell at you because you’re company.”

  “But Seth can,” Chloe added sleepily, “and he would. We’re not really getting up right now are we? We can go back to sleep, right?”

  “Probably not,” Rachel said with her eyes tightly shut. “I feel like I just closed my eyes. Every year Mom says we’re going to go to an earlier service, and every year we can never get ready on time and always end up at midnight mass, which as you probably noticed, Bea slept through. So of course she’s raring to go.”

  “You’re not getting up,” Chloe observed.

  “Someone will be along to make me soon enough,” Rachel sighed.

  Chloe decided not to wait for another wake-up call from Bea. Fighting the stronger than average force of gravity from Rachel’s bed, she sat up, and slid her feet out and over the edge. It was even harder to stand than to sit up, but somehow she managed. Rachel didn’t say anything as Chloe stepped over her, grabbed her toiletry bag and headed for the bathroom.

  While brushing her teeth, she could hear the sounds of other people in the house beginning to wake up. Muffled voices and the sounds of Bea’s footsteps flying back up the stairs and down again came through the door. Chloe spat her toothpaste in the sink and ran a brush through her hair a couple of times. She could hear a heavier, slower tread come up the stairs, and then the tones of Seth’s mom’s voice saying something to Rachel. Chloe couldn’t tell if she answered or not.

  Over the past week, she had slowly lost her anxiety over Seth’s mom not liking her. Agnes Maird liked everyone. She ran her own pastie shop in downtown Marquette that seemed to be frequented by all the locals. Sitting at the lunch counter with Seth, drinking coffee and eating pasties, which tasted very familiar, she had seen Agnes chat non-stop for over an hour. The conversation in the pastie store never seemed to end. By the time one customer was ready to leave with their order, another was sitting down at the counter or waiting for an order and had already joined in. Chloe wasn’t sure how Agnes had any voice left by the end of the day.

  Seth’s mom had even let Chloe try her hand at pastie making. A few years back, Rachel had helped her to set up a website where people from out-of-state could order frozen pasties and have them shipped overnight. That part of the business was now out-selling the little shop downtown. All of the girls, and Seth, took turns helping out in the kitchen to fill the orders. The second day of her visit, Agnes had already enlisted Chloe’s help in the venture. She rolled up her sleeves and began dropping neat cups of meat and veggies on the white circles of dough Agnes cut and handed to her. Crimping the edges artfully was a trick she still hadn’t mastered. Standing on a step stool, mixing the filling, five-year-old Bea had laughed watching Chloe try to position her thumb and fingers and seal the dough the way she had seen Agnes do. Her pasties always came out looking mutated. Agnes had assured her they would taste just the same regardless.

  Back in the hall she could hear Maggie up and moving about in her room, her bedroom light stretched across the hallway from under her door. The light was still on in Rachel’s room, and Agnes was standing in the door in a long flannel nightgown, her hands on her hips.

  “…and you were just as excited when you were her age!” Chloe heard as she approached.

  Chloe tapped her gently on the back and Agnes turned sideways to let her sidle by.

  “Chloe’s up!” Agnes chided Rachel. Chloe could see that Rachel was still on the floor, but now had the blanket pulled up over her head.

  “I’m getting up!” Rachel’s muffled voice assured her from under the covers.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” her mother snapped.

  “I’ll get up when you go away,” came the voice again.

  “You have five minutes,” Agnes decided.

  “Mom!” Bea called from downstairs, “Where’s the big frying pan?”

  “You are not making breakfast!” Agnes shouted back. Rachel groaned.

  “I told her that we couldn’t open presents until after breakfast,” Agnes explained apologetically to Chloe.
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br />   “Mom! I need help!” Bea called up the stairs again.

  “I’ve got to…she’s going to burn the house down!” Agnes whirled in the doorway and headed for the stairs. “One of you go wake up Seth.”

  “She means you,” Rachel said, still under the covers, “hit the light on your way out, would you?”

  Chloe did. Keeping her hand on the wall, she navigated the hallway to Seth’s door. She knocked lightly, held her breath and listened. Not a sound. Creaking the door open she peeked in. He must have covered the windows, his room was pitch black.

  “Don’t turn the light on yet,” his voice, scratchy with sleep called from the dark. “I’ll get up. I’ll-” a yawn broke in on his assurance, “I’ll get up in a minute,” he finished.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” Chloe asked in a whisper.

  “Clo?” he croaked.

  “If I gotta get up, you’re getting up,” Chloe answered him.

  “Make me,” he whispered back and yawned again.

  She groped her way forward in the dark, stubbed her toe against something hard and tripped over something else. Finally, her knee smashed against the footboard of his bed. She ran her hands over the wood, and across the covers. Her fingers scrabbled against the quilt and found purchase. Stifling a giggle, she prepared to yank the covers back. The bed creaked. In the dark, Seth lunged forward, grabbed her with both arms and yanked her down and across the bed. Chloe yelped in surprise.

  “Gotcha,” he whispered next to her ear.

  She jabbed her fingers into his side, causing him to let go and jolt away laughing. Quickly, she sat up and pinned his shoulders.

  “I got you!” she whispered back.

  He laughed under his breath. Her eyes accustomed to the dark and in the dim light that found it’s way under the door, she could just make out the lines of his face.

  “You got me,” he conceded, his hands sliding up her arms and across her back. Chloe dropped onto her side, laying her head on the pillow next to his, Seth turned his face to her, his nose brushed against hers.

  “Good morning,” he said under his breath.

  “Merry Christmas,” she whispered back.

  She closed her eyes as she felt his hand brush against her cheek. His lips touched hers…softly…lightly, then moved lower, her chin, under her jaw, her neck.

  “Your mom…Rachel says…I think there’s a no hanky-panky rule…I…ummm,” Chloe stuttered. He stopped with his lips against her throat.

  “I have morning breath, don’t I?” he whispered. The words tickled against her skin.

  “That too,” she agreed neutrally.

  When he laughed it tickled more.

  Downstairs, the Christmas lights twinkled merrily on the tree. The family, having finished a hasty breakfast, and being constantly urged on by Bea, were finding seats on the couch and the floor. All but Bea, who was standing close to the pile of presents under the tree, her fingers twitching, her body straining against an invisible leash, held by Seth’s mom.

  “Stockings first,” Seth’s mom reminded them.

  Bea needed no further encouragement. She leapt toward the fireplace and snatched hers off the mantel. Maggie and Agnes took the others down and distributed them. There was even one for Chloe. Not a quick dollar store pick-up either, but a gold and silver patterned stocking that matched the rest of the family. She thanked Seth’s mom shyly and found in hers chocolates, hair accessories, lotions, a toothbrush, school supplies, and a tiny sewing packet for quick fixes. While the older children were tiredly sorting through their stocking, Bea had already shoved her goods back in, and with chocolate staining her lips, made for the tree and found the first package with her name on it. While she ripped open a pink Barbie car, Rachel grabbed up a load and began distributing them to the others. Seth’s mom stood nearby, camera in hand.

  Chloe opened a red knit scarf and mittens from Seth’s mom (to match her hat, Agnes informed her), a painting of Lake Superior as seen from Presque Isle (which Rachel had painted herself, down in the basement where Chloe wouldn’t see it), a book entitled The Master and Margarita from Maggie (which, she was informed, was the best book ever written and Seth had told Maggie that he was pretty sure Chloe hadn’t read it), a framed stick-figure drawing of the Maird family plus one standing in front of a yellow block, (You see? Bea had pointed out the two stick figures at the end of the row that looked like they shared one arm, That’s you and that’s Seth. You’re holding hands.), a Maird Pasty Shoppe Employee t-shirt in bright red (you earned it! Agnes had informed her), and finally a beautiful, long, green summer dress from Seth‘s parents (picked it out myself, James lied solemnly while Agnes rolled her eyes and the girls snickered.).

  Luckily, Seth and Rachel took her shopping earlier in the week and Chloe turned out to be a good guesser. Rachel told her that she had needed a new pencil set for her sketching and that she loved the book on Van Gogh. Agnes pulled her new robe on over her nightgown and assured Chloe that it fit perfectly. Maggie nodded her head thoughtfully and even graced her with a rare smile when she opened a set of leather bound blank books for her writing. James, an avid military history buff, thanked her twice for the set of DVD’s on World War I, and Bea shrieked and clapped her hands when she opened her holiday Barbie doll in it’s beautiful silver ball gown. Seth opened his Velma doll first and held it up to her with a smirk.

  “Thanks,” he mouthed over the sounds of ripping paper and Bea’s excited cries, and rolled his eyes.

  He did seem to like the sweater, however, and Chloe felt that overall, she had done a good job. She wasn’t the only one to notice something missing, however. After nothing was left of the beautifully wrapped presents but a battlefield of ripped and balled paper, Rachel glanced between the two of them and raised an eyebrow.

  “I didn’t see…what did Seth get you Chloe?” she asked innocently.

  The family stopped talking and turned to see.

  “Ummm…” Chloe said, turning deep red.

  “A big pile of none of your business!” Seth snapped at Rachel.

  “Uh-oh, you didn’t remember to buy your girlfriend a Christmas present? You are a TERRIBLE boyfriend,” Rachel grinned evilly at him.

  “Terrible,” Bea repeated shaking her head at him.

  “Maybe I’d just like her to open it in private,” Seth said through his teeth.

  “Why?” Rachel pushed, trying not to laugh, “Is it something dirty?”

  “What? Did you get her trashy lingerie or something?” Maggie giggled.

  “What’s longray mean?” Bea asked.

  Seth cringed and rubbed his face, in the same tired way he did when he was trying to think, or was really frustrated.

  “Oh no! Really? How embarrassing,” his Dad said, though Chloe could see the teasing glint that always seemed to be in the man’s eyes.

  “No! No, I did not buy her trashy lingerie for Christmas, okay?” Seth defended himself. “I know you guys don’t understand the concept but maybe…maybe I’m trying to be romantic or something, and keep it between us.”

  “I wanna see,” Bea declared.

  “Oh I think we all want to see now,” Seth’s dad said, breaking his poker face to grin tauntingly.

  “Now you guys, if he wants it to be special…” Seth’s mom began in her lecturing tones.

  “Okay, okay, never mind,” he pulled a small wrapped package out of his pajama pants’ pocket and tossed it at Chloe, “you guys gotta ruin everything.”

  With everyone’s eyes on her, Chloe smiled weakly and quickly ripped the paper off. It was a small suede box. She snapped it open and caught her breath. Around her, the family leaned in for a better look.

  On a soft grey cushion, a deep blue stone set above a smaller green stone in a silver setting was suspended from a delicate silver chain.

  “It’s a necklace,” he explained unnecessarily.

  “It’s beautiful,” Chloe whispered, touching the chain gently with one finger.

  “The blue
is supposed to be like the water and the green for the woods,” he said shamefacedly. “You remember what I said about how the outdoors…”

  “I remember,” she said sparing him from the family.

  “He’s so romantic!” Agnes said, trying to keep the pride out of her voice, but failing none-the-less.

  “Oh my God, Mom!” Seth said rubbing his face again.

  “Gets it from me,” James vowed, returning to his poker face. The girls all laughed.

  “Put it on,” Rachel urged.

  “I want a necklace like that one,” Bea pouted.

  A knock at the front door called the attention away from the small grey box.

  “GRANDMA! GRANPA!” Bea shrieked, rushing to the door in expectation of more presents.

  As everyone stood and kicked aside paper or stacked opened presents in piles under the tree, Chloe found her opportunity. Squeezing Seth’s hand, she stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear.

  “I love it. It’s the best present I’ve ever gotten, from anybody.”

  He nodded and squeezed her hand back. For the rest of the vacation, she never took it off.

  * * *

  Sam glanced at Chloe stretched out on her bed, reading her new Chemistry text book, and dropped her suitcase with a thud.

  “You will not BELIEVE what happened to me over vacation,” Sam declared.

  “Try me,” Chloe disagreed, closing her book and sitting up.

  Sam kicked her shoes off and fell backwards onto her bed with her arms outstretched.

  “They staged an intervention,” Sam said dramatically.

  “Who did? What kind of intervention?” Chloe asked, opening her book again.

  “My family! Said I was drinking too much and they were worried about me. They all had letters that they read, it was beyond awful!” Sam complained.

  “So this wouldn’t be a good time for me to read my letter to you about your drinking problem?” Chloe deadpanned, sounding for the world like Seth’s dad.