“I want her to hear it,” my brother snaps, his temporarily cool façade crumbling, as always, at the first sign of not getting what he wants.
But to my benefit, the director seems well versed in dealing with psychopaths. He doesn’t flinch at my brother’s tone, but rather, draws himself up. Any indecisiveness he felt before has vanished.
“I know what you’re here for, and I’ll be quite frank with you, Mr. Novak. I’ll not revoke Thalia’s right to have visitors,” the director says, some of his spite slipping into his words. “Now she’s agreed to treatment, she’ll have the same rights as all the other patients until I’m given good reason to believe otherwise.”
My heart leaps at the words. For the first time since arriving here at the asylum, I feel like something is finally going my way.
The effect it has on Kemper is equally delicious. His face screws up and his hand clenches at his side.
“But I told you before, they’re a negative influence on her.”
The director clears his throat again. “Thalia is a patient, not a prisoner, here. I think you’d do well to remember that.”
For one single second, I think Kemper is going to strike the director. I wish I could say I’ve never seen him this angry, but I’ve been on the receiving end of my brother’s temper too many times to pretend that’s the truth.
Kemper whirls back to me and I know he’d like to flay me here and now. He can’t hide that deep rage and hatred from his eyes, even if he can compose the muscles of his face to look composed. He can’t even hide it from Ives, who presses protectively against me again, the sinewy strength of his forearms brushing mine as if preparing to leap out in front of me when my brother attacks.
But there are too many people here. Too many witnesses. And even Kemper in his deepest rage knows better than to test this asylum. After all…I wasn’t the only one who feared ending up here.
“Very well then, Thalia,” he says, through teeth gritted so tight I can hear them crunching together. “Looks like I’ll have to pay you a little visit for the open house as well then. I guess if you can finally admit to needing help and getting treatment, then the least I can do is be here to support you with your friends.”
“No need,” I say, through my own gritted teeth. “I doubt they’ve missed you.”
“Oh, but I’ve missed them. Someone needs to be here when they see you like…this. It’ll probably come as quite a shock. Or rather…” his eyes rove me, faking pity, “maybe not. I think we all knew it would come to this. Eventually.”
Before I can spit back my own bitter words, he turns on his heel and storms out.
Hedgewood looks at me a moment, then back after my brother. He shakes his head and starts towards the door to his office, muttering to himself under his breath.
“Maybe we took in the wrong Novak.”
I wasn’t meant to hear it, but I’ve always been able to hear things I shouldn’t.
It’s a short-lived moment of triumph. Ives and I stand motionless, frozen, in the moments after Kemper is gone. The director finishes disappearing before I can try to stab him too, apparently. Suddenly it’s just me and Ives in the hall—with him standing conspicuously close behind.
Just as I feel it, he steps back and slumps out of his readied stance. In the moment I barely questioned it. But now, I fumble for words.
“What was that? Why d’you…” I don’t know how to describe what it was that he did. He didn’t exactly stop Kemper, but he was, in a way, protecting me. After what he did last night, after all the threats and the hate…it doesn’t make sense.
Ives whirls away and stalks off, but when I ask again, this time in a shout to reach him in his quick retreat, he stops. He doesn’t turn, and he only speaks two words…but it’s enough.
“My father.”
And then he’s gone too.
21
Thalia
My encounter with Kemper has thrown me off.
I promised Adelaide and Jane I would eat with them on the lawn, but I need a couple minutes to process everything that just happened. It’s not just Kemper, or the horrible flashback Mallory drew out of me, or even Ives’ strange behavior.
It’s that I should be happy to see my friends. This is what I wanted, what made me willing to sacrifice my last smidgeon of free-will and submit to unnecessary treatment. Why then do I feel so…dirty?
At least this time the lady behind the counter serves me actual food…and I’m so famished that I somehow manage to forget everything else but the food on my plate, if just for a minute. After double checking to see if Price or Ives is waiting to pounce on me, I squeeze into an empty seat at the end of a table and proceed to literally lick the tray clean.
It would be a lot weirder if the boy next to me wasn’t back to furiously sucking on his big toe while making intense eye contact with me every time I look up. I find solace in the fact that no matter how weird I look…there will always be someone here who makes me look boringly normal.
It’s this thought, the idea that one day I might actually be boringly normal again, that raises my spirits on my way out to greet Adelaide and Jane.
Stepping outside onto the front porch feels odd at first.
Aside from the short-lived Saturday morning jaunt, I’ve only been outside once since arriving, and only then in the middle of the night. It was appropriately dreary outside both times then, caught under an overcast sky.
Today the sunlight, so bright I have to squint my eyes and shield them with a hand salute to my forehead, contrasts against the wizened trees that line the outer corners of the yard.
No matter how green the grass, or how warm the late summer air is—it’s still an insane asylum when all is said and done. But even that cannot get me down.
Neither Jane nor Adelaide look as excited as I had hoped at the news that I’ll be allowed to have guests despite my brother’s visit. As soon as I say it, they exchange a knowing glance and then quickly look away.
I know that look.
“Stop it,” I snap. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing. What is it?”
Since Jane isn’t likely to tell me anything, I glare down at Adelaide sprawled across the grass in her now green-stained pants. She squints up at me innocently, though the image is somewhat ruined by the massive bandage on her left wrist—a clear indicator that she had a quick Adelaide snack earlier today.
“It’s just . . .” she glances at Jane again and then back up at me. “Visitors here . . . they aren’t as exciting as you expect.”
“But they might be able to help.”
She looks skeptical. “Help . . . how?”
I flop onto the grass beside her and dig my fingers into the soft blades. I hadn’t expected this reaction, and to be quite honest, it’s really bringing me down.
“Aren’t either of you excited? Or…if not excited, at least…well…thinking about it?”
They exchange another look.
“I’ve been here so long…I don’t know if there’s anyone left to come.”
“Surely there has to be someone!” I start, but even as I say it, I know I sound stupid. I look away and stare into my lap instead, pulling grass up by the roots to pull it apart in clumpy, shredded handfuls.
I must suddenly look like I’m about to try and bury myself in this grass, because Adelaide forces a smile on her face and leans over to pat me on the shoulder.
“It’ll be nice to see some friends. It can get a little . . . stale . . . in here after a while.”
I force myself to stop destroying the lawn and throw the mangled grass back down into the dirt. “I bet.”
Kemper first, now Adelaide too. They’re getting to me.
My friends . . . if I can even call them that any more . . . probably don’t even know I’m in here. I wasn’t exactly the best at keeping in touch over the last six months, and after my behavior at the funeral . . . they all probably just think I need space.
Even Kemper, with his inherent evilness, still has som
e family pride. I doubt he would tell anyone where I went, at least not until he’s certain I’m not getting out.
“Fuck.” I throw myself backward onto the ground so hard that stars sprout before my eyes. “I don’t want my friends to see me in here, like this.”
Adelaide’s forced smile turns genuinely sad. She keeps patting me, this time on my knee, and tries to reassure me in the least reassuring way possible.
“Don’t worry,” she says, “They don’t want to see you like this either.”
“Who doesn’t want to see you?”
Bentley’s shadow falls across my face the moment after his unwelcome voice greets my ears. “And whoever they are, they’re fools.”
I cover my face with my hands.
“Bentley…in case it wasn’t clear earlier, I don’t want to see you either.”
Out of the crack between my fingers, I see him feign injury. Or maybe not feign. I don’t know what to think of him.
It’s clear how Adelaide and Jane feel, however. Jane visibly shrinks back at the sight of him, and I can tell it doesn’t matter to her whether this is Bentley or his horrible alter-ego, Kingsley. To her, they’re one and the same.
And Bentley sees it too.
“Hello, Bentley,” Adelaide says, dryly. She doesn’t look up at him and keeps her jaw set.
He suddenly grows shy. He looks between me and them and takes a step back.
“Sorry, I can see now that I’m unwelcome.”
Part of me wants to reassure him, to reassure those wide puppy-dog eyes that it isn’t necessarily that we have a problem with him…it’s just…
Well, I guess we do have a problem with him.
“Look, I’m just trying to survive here,” I say, picking at the grass again. “I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
Bentley nods. “And being around me isn’t exactly making that any easier.”
“It’s not easy to trust people here,” Adelaide says, still staring forward. “But I think I know not to trust you.”
Bentley bites his lip, but he just nods again. “Adelaide’s right, Thalia. You shouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust anyone here.”
He glances my way once before leaving. There’s more he wanted to say, but he leaves it unsaid.
“I somehow doubt that’s the last you’ll be seeing of him,” Adelaide says, after Jane gives us both a look of her own. “That boy . . . he’s like a dog after a bone.”
“Well he did tell some truth, at least,” I say. “I can’t trust anyone here. So I’ve got to see someone who isn’t locked in here with us.”
If I want to get out anytime soon, I’m going to have to give up some of my pride.
After all, it’s a small price to pay for freedom. I’ve already paid so much, and yet, it still feels like I haven’t even begun to fathom the true cost.
I said I could handle eight weeks before. Eight weeks then, to my review. What’s two weeks, now? I just have to make it two weeks, and I’ll be able to see them, people from the outside world. Friends, even.
I’ve only been here a week, but already it feels like an impossible span of time. Now I have to survive twice that just to get a little reminder of what lays beyond.
Has it really only been a week?
Careful now, or you’ll slip away like the rest of them. Forgotten forever, even by yourself.
With Bentley’s warning still ringing in my ears, I make sure to give the secretary my friends’ contact information at the very first opportunity. I gave it to Dr. Silver before…but something tells me he might just ‘forget’ to get in touch with them in time.
It’s the same thing that tells me the sink-dyed color of the secretary’s locks means she might still have a tiny bit of fight left in her. Unlike the rest of the zombies here, she might have a smidgeon of humanity buried deep inside her.
I catch her just as she’s leaving at the end of the day. I promised to meet the girls upstairs in the billiards room—wherever that is—before slinking off into one of the tunnels Bentley showed me wraps around to the front hall.
I’ve taken to keeping an eye out for these tunnels. They’re very useful for staying out of reach of handsy orderlies or other guests who just like to look at me funny.
They’re also apparently very useful for when I want to scare the living daylights out of the staff.
I do feel guilty for that. The look on Natti’s face when I leapt out of the shadows to give her Mackenzie and Garret’s contact information…it was true terror. Well… at least she isn’t very likely to forget, not now.
I find the billiards room easily, a sign that I’ve already been in the asylum too long. I make a mental note to get myself lost again one of these days, just for the heck of it. Can’t get too comfortable. That’s when you get complacent.
The deep-ingrained scent of tobacco still lingers in the peeling wallpaper. The shelved walls are still marked with the shadows of the editions that once lined then, even though now they’re empty. As is much of the room, aside from sparse, heavy furniture probably meant to discourage the guests from hurling them at each other in a fit of rage.
Adelaide is watching for me like a nervous mother bird. As soon as I arrive, she nearly jumps out of her seat to wave me over to watch the chess game unfolding in front of her.
Two middle-aged women, probably close to my mother’s age before she . . . probably close to my mother’s age, are sitting and staring intently at an empty board. There are no chess pieces anywhere in sight, but even as I watch, the woman closest to me gets a gleeful look on her face, reaches down, and moves an imaginary rook.
Her competition stares at the empty board for a long moment, and then in one of those afore-mentioned sudden fits of rage, tucks her fingers up under the board and heaves it over. Or, at least, she attempts to heave it over. Nothing actually happens because, aside from the lack of playing pieces, the board has also been nailed down to the table.
Everyone else around me, however, makes a loud chorus of shouts and call for a re-do until the women agree and start crawling around on the ground, hunting down the imaginary chess pieces.
Adelaide must see my look of utter confusion, because she suggests we find a quieter activity and moves away from the chess tables to some lonely, worn-out chairs in the back beside Jane.
I’m surprised to find a tiny section of books shoved up into the corner . . . right up until I skim the first couple titles. They’re all self-help books on how to stop compulsively eating your own poop.
I just. I just can’t sometimes.
“What is it?” Adelaide asks, after a minute. I hadn’t realized it, but I’ve covered my face with my hands. A headache has blossomed at my temples that for once has nothing to do with hearing voices.
“I…I just need a minute,” I say.
I can’t complain to Adelaide. Not now. Not after what she said earlier. At least I have the hope, however fragile, of getting out of here. Out of a place where the only books on the shelves make me want to throw myself from the window.
But I can’t even do that. They’re all barred. I’ve checked.
“Should have known this is where we’d find you two losers,” Price’s voice pierces the quiet before I’ve had the chance to respond. “I knew you were full of shit, I just didn’t know you ate it, too.”
Ives is with him as well, standing just over his shoulder with that self-important look I’ve seen before in private-school boys plenty of times before. Bentley is noticeably absent.
“Move along,” I say, shifting in my seat so my back is pointed towards them. “We’re not interested in whatever little game it is you’re trying to play.”
Adelaide’s eyes grow wide, as do Jane’s.
Ives steps forward and slams his hands down on either arm of my chair. He leans forward so his face is inches away from mine.
It’s a far cry from the look he gave me earlier, and as much as I try not to show my surprise, a little fear tickles at the back of my throat. There’s
a crazed look there. A wild look.
Something happened today. Something you don’t know.
“Well, unless you’re going to tell me what that is, then shut up,” I whisper under my breath. I swear I hear the voice cackle. Jane’s eyes cut over to me, but I just pretend nothing happened.
She didn’t see anything. Besides…even if she did…who would she tell?
“It doesn’t matter if you’re interested,” Ives says, and at least I know he didn’t hear it too. “This is our territory, and you’re in it. That means when we say it’s time to play…you play.”
Price steps forward now, and with a single wave of his hand, Jane leaps out of her seat and runs from the room. He takes the seat she previously occupied, slowly, unhurriedly, and leans back in it and crosses one leg leisurely across the other knee.
“A little birdie told us you’re trying to leave already, greenie,” Price says.
“So?” I say. “What’s wrong with that?”
“That little birdie also told me you somehow got a review.”
Somehow, this is the phrase that makes silence fall. It’s not a friendly silence. Before, there were others glancing our way, but now every eye swivels to land on me.
Price mimics the posture of the psychiatrists here, pressing the tips of his fingers together to make a little triangle to observe me through. “But there’s a problem with that. Adelaide…would you remind your new friend of what that is?”
Adelaide’s gaze drops to the floor. She looks ashamed of herself even as she does as she’s told.
“No one leaves the asylum,” she says, so quietly she can barely be heard.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite hear that,” Price says. He doesn’t have to repeat himself. Ives half-lunges towards Adelaide, only stopped when her voice pipes up again, much louder this time.
“No one leaves. Never.”
I told you so.
No. I’ll not hear this from you too, stupid voice.
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