As Dead as It Gets

by Katie Alender

  “Stop,” I said. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  The rumble of the garage door.

  “Mom’s home,” I said.

  Kasey ran to my window. “Lexi…”

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s not just Mom. It’s Dad, too.” She turned to look at me. Her face was white. “And Agent Hasan.”

  We stared at each other.

  “She’s going to take you to Harmony Valley,” Kasey said. “Like she took me.”

  Harmony Valley was a mental institution located in the middle of nowhere, about fifty miles outside of Surrey. It was where Kasey had spent almost her whole eighth grade year.

  “I know,” I said, because I did. The moment Kasey said her name, I knew why she had come. “I—I could run.”

  “You can’t run,” she said. “She’ll find you.”

  I guess I knew that, too. “But you can run. Don’t ever let them know we’ve talked about this.”

  “Tell her nothing,” my sister said. “Not a thing. She’ll act like she’s your friend, but she’s not.”

  “Go! Hide!” I snapped, steering my sister toward her bedroom.

  “No, I’ll leave,” she said. “I’ll go out through the backyard.”

  I followed her to the kitchen and opened the door for her, wanting to shove her out to safety. But she stopped on the threshold and hugged me.

  “Keep quiet, behave, and she’ll have to let you go,” she said. “Eventually.”

  “Don’t come see me. I don’t want her to think you know about any of this.” Suddenly, a cold line of fear went up my back. “And Kasey, don’t try to deal with Laina alone. Promise me.”

  “I promise.” She kissed my cheek and ran off through the backyard. She could hide in the side yard until everyone was inside, and then she could get out of the neighborhood.

  But me?

  I was stuck.

  Mom’s face was gray. She rubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands and stared down at the floor. Dad sat next to her, looking at me.

  I was across from them, and Agent Hasan stood over us all.

  She was oddly non-smug.

  “You can’t just take her,” Mom said.

  I saw the way Agent Hasan’s mouth opened to answer, and then she stopped herself.

  There was really no need to say it: she could. Just like when she’d hauled Kasey away.

  Two hours earlier, she’d come in the door bearing a file of official-looking legal papers that had silenced my parents. While I waited on the couch, she sat at the kitchen island with them, and occasional phrases rose above the murmur of their low voices: Danger to herself and others. Evaluation and treatment. Signed by the judge. But even if Agent Hasan hadn’t had her stack of papers, I would have believed that she could “just take” me. As far as I could see, that was her whole mode of operating: “just” doing things. And never facing the consequences.

  Dad leaned forward to straighten a stack of perfectly straight coasters on the coffee table. “How long are you thinking she might be…away?”

  Agent Hasan shook her head. “There’s no way of knowing. That information tends to reveal itself after the initial evaluation period.”

  Mom and Dad didn’t ask what kind of evaluations were included in that period. And I didn’t either. After all, Kasey had gone through them and survived.…Then again, for all her ill-advised ghost involvement, Kasey was just a regular girl; she didn’t have haunted eyes like mine.

  Maybe I’d end up as a taxidermied specimen in some top-secret government science lab.

  “Alexis, if there’s anything you want to tell us…” my mother said. “Maybe there’s another way to deal with—with whatever you’re going through.”

  But I wouldn’t tell them a thing. The less they knew, the better. I was positive about that. Ignorance is bliss, and the opposite of ignorance is the opposite of bliss.

  Agent Hasan’s presence implied that there was something supernatural going on. But my parents didn’t ask for details. Maybe, in the backs of their minds, they somehow connected me to the missing girls.

  Maybe they were afraid to ask.

  Because I hadn’t once claimed to be innocent of anything.

  Agent Hasan checked her watch. “We should probably get going. Alexis, if you want to pack some clothes, maybe some books…nothing electronic, please.”

  I nodded and walked to my bedroom, grateful to have orders to follow so I didn’t have to think. I pulled a bag out of my closet and started putting clothes in it—jeans, T-shirts, pajamas—the comfortable loungey stuff Kasey had worn during her ten months away.

  Would I be gone for ten months?

  Or longer?

  Like…forever?

  I SAT ALONE IN THE BACKSEAT of Agent Hasan’s car while she drove. About forty-five minutes later, we headed down a long twisting road that went through a small tree-lined canyon and past a couple of horse farms.

  A black iron gate opened to let us pass beyond the tall fence that bordered Harmony Valley. We parked at the back of the building.

  Would people at school—would Jared and Megan—even know what had happened to me, or would I just disappear like a political prisoner in some second-world country? Kasey might tell Megan, but I doubted she would call Jared.

  A man in gray pants and a lab coat came out the double doors, flanked by two massive orderlies. The man spoke to Agent Hasan, and then she came and opened my car door.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  I kept my arms folded in front of me and followed her inside.

  * * *

  Harmony Valley was a private facility. The main lobby and visitors’ lounge were nice, if a little generic—kind of like a hotel for business travelers. Visiting Kasey, we’d never crossed into the area where the patients spent their time living, eating, studying, watching TV, and attending therapy. So I’d always assumed the rest of the building was as nice as the parts we saw.

  Wrong.

  I followed Agent Hasan down a hallway painted in an ultraglossy shade of two-day-old oatmeal. The ceilings were striped with fluorescent lights, and the floor was an endless line of mismatched linoleum tiles. Every twenty feet or so we passed a solid-looking door with a small wire-reinforced window. Each one had a small numeric keypad instead of a lock. I slowed minutely to try to see inside some of the rooms.

  “Keep up,” Agent Hasan said over her shoulder.

  At the end of the hall was a windowless door with a sign on it that read privaTe. Agent Hasan shielded the keypad with her body and typed a series of numbers. The door opened with a mechanical click, and we walked in.

  The room was sparsely furnished, with a line of counters against one wall, a hospital-type bed in the center, and a table with two chairs on either side pushed back in the corner.

  Agent Hasan glanced at me. “On the bed.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Alexis.” Her tone was heavy with warning and impatience.

  “I’m not getting in the bed,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’ll sit in a chair like a normal person.”

  “Normal person?” She laughed humorlessly and gave me an exasperated look. “Go ahead, then. Sit.”

  So I did, edging myself into the chair in the corner—the one that faced the door.

  A second later, Agent Hasan came over and sat opposite me. “So. Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  I didn’t look up. Based on Kasey’s advice, I had a brilliant plan, which was to ignore her questions for all eternity, if necessary.

  “Did you know that the only signs of struggle on Elliot Quilimaco’s body are your handprints?”

  I flinched at the mention of Elliot’s name. “I believe it.”

  “Do you admit to manhandling her?”

  I raised my eyes. “I had no choice.”

  She leaned closer, coming in for the kill. “How’d you find her, Alexis? How did you know where she was?”

  “She liked Ma
xwell Canyon,” I said. “She hiked there all the time.”

  “What about Ashleen?” she said. “And Kendra?”

  “Same as Elliot,” I said. “They knew those trails.”

  Her lips turned down. “Kendra was found a mile and a half off the trail.”

  I channeled all my energy into counting the scratches on the table in front of me. If I let my attention waver for even a moment, I lost count and had to start again.

  “Look, I don’t care,” Agent Hasan said. “I’m trying to make this easier on you. But if you don’t want to accept my assistance, it’s no skin off my back.”

  I remembered what Kasey had said—She’ll act like she’s your friend, but she’s not—and looked up at her, on the verge of saying something snide.

  But when I saw the way her sharp eyes were pinned on me, I swallowed my words and went back to studying the tabletop.

  Agent Hasan stood up, the feet of her chair shrieking as she pushed it away from the table. “I think you need a little time to cool off. See you in a while.”

  “I hope you don’t mind sharing a room,” Nurse Jean said, pointing to an open door in the hallway.

  Inside were two twin beds, each with its own night-stand, and two sets of shelves. The bed farther from the door looked slept-in, and there were a few items on the shelves—some clothes, a couple of magazines, a few books. Everything large enough to hurt somebody was bolted down.

  I put my bag on one of the shelves and sat on the unoccupied bed, trying to bounce lightly. But the mattress was about as bouncy as a pile of warm sandwich meat.

  “Now, you just get settled. Free time ends in thirty minutes, so you might as well just get ready for bed. We’ll get your medication set up in the morning.”

  “Medication?” I repeated. “I don’t think I need any medication.”

  She peered at me over the top of her clipboard. “You can talk to your doctor about that tomorrow.”

  But I didn’t have a doctor. I wasn’t even sick.

  Or was this what Agent Hasan meant when she said she “takes care” of problems?

  Face it. If I tried to tell the truth—that I was only there because a top-secret government agent knew I was somehow involved with a ghost and a string of killings—people would just assume I’d come to the right place.

  Was this what Agent Hasan did so she didn’t have to justify putting people in jail? She dumped the offenders in a mental hospital and kept them too doped up to talk?

  “I see you’ve brought some of your own things, but I’ll have to take them and look through your bag before we can leave it with you. So you can just go ahead and sleep in these.” She handed me a hideous pair of loose, salmon-colored cotton pants and a matching V-neck shirt. Then she wished me good night and left, closing the door behind her.

  I flopped backward on the bed and stared at the ceiling until my roommate came in.

  She had brown hair cut bluntly to her chin and a thin, long face. She looked less than thrilled to be sharing a room. “I’m Haley,” she said, sounding like the basic act of talking to me required a huge sacrifice on her part.

  “Alexis,” I said.

  “So…do me a favor,” she said. “Just don’t try to stab me in the middle of the night, or anything, okay?”

  I didn’t know how to react to that. Was it a joke? Had her previous roommate tried to stab her?

  “You know…” she prompted, “if the voices say, ‘Stab your roomie,’ at least give me a head start. Maybe we should switch beds so I can be closer to the door.”

  “Voices?” I said. “What voices?”

  Now she looked alarmed.

  Then I remembered what our cover story had been when Kasey was locked up: that she had schizophrenia and heard voices in her head telling her what to do. That was probably what the kids here were being told about me.

  Don’t worry, I thought about saying. I’m not schizophrenic. I’m just being stalked by the ghost of my boyfriend’s dead girlfriend. Yeah—that would make me sound sane.

  “I mean…I don’t hear any right now,” I said. “I’m on a good run.”

  A few minutes later, as Haley and I were getting ready for bed, Nurse Jean came back with a tiny paper cup. “This just got called in for you,” she said, handing it to me.

  I caught Haley trying to get a glimpse at the contents of the cup.

  I gazed down at four pills—a blue one, a pink one, a black-and-white one, and a tiny white one. Quite a mix. “What are they?”

  “I don’t have that information,” Nurse Jean said, shaking her head. “But I’m sure your doctor discussed it, didn’t he? And you can always ask him about it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t have a doctor,” I said. I had a government agent who was trying to lock me away like a problematic mouse in a trap.

  Jean gave me a quick smile, and I realized she thought I was just being crazy. Of course everyone here had a doctor. That’s how you got here—if you were a regular person, that is.

  “But what if I don’t want to take any pills?” I asked.

  She sighed. “First, we have a little talk about what our shared goal is here at Harmony Valley. Which is healing, naturally.”

  Or shutting people up. “And then?”

  “Then I inform you that, as an involuntary patient, you are technically required to take any medication prescribed to you by your doctor.”

  It made my skin crawl to think that Agent Hasan had decided that I had to take these pills—and I didn’t even get to know what they were.

  “And then?”

  “And then we strap you down and deliver the medication by injection.” She said this last bit with the same unbending cheerfulness as the rest.

  I swallowed the pills.

  Haley seemed relieved.

  I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. By the time I got back to the room, my thoughts were turning fuzzy, and I was practically swaying on my feet. Nurse Jean saw me and came to help me into bed.

  “What was in those pills?” I asked. “What are they for?”

  “I imagine your doctor will discuss those details with you,” Jean said, checking the chart on the door. “Most likely just a little help getting to sleep.”

  I nodded. They were working, all right. My mind was loose and slow. “Feels like being drunk.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Jean smirked as she helped me lie down. “I guess it depends on what you’ve been drinking.”

  “Wine?”

  “Maybe if you take your wine with a shot of tranquilizers.” She pulled the covers over me and tucked them under my chin.

  The next few days were uneventful—or maybe they only seemed that way because the drug-induced lethargy never seemed to leave my system. I spent a lot of time feeling unmotivated and loopy. Apparently, whatever it took to be accepted by Haley and her friends, I wasn’t doing. So I ate, lounged, and watched TV alone. But it didn’t bother me.

  It also didn’t bother me that I could never quite get my mind to focus on Laina. Every time I tried to think about it, I got distracted. Usually by a TV show, which turned into a string of TV shows, which led to mealtime and bedtime and the usual succession of distrustful looks from Haley and then my cup of pills.

  Still no sign of Agent Hasan.

  My parents came for a visit, but it didn’t stand out in my memory. Pretty much a lot of sad-dog faces and apologies, even though they hadn’t done anything wrong. They brought me presents—a couple of books, raspberry-scented lotion, comfortable T-shirts, and yoga pants. Kasey sent her love, they said—looking disappointed in my sister’s apparent callousness at not showing up in person. But I was glad she’d stayed away.

  No therapy for me, group or otherwise. And while I was too drugged to be acutely worried, it did occur to me that if this went on much longer, I might really go crazy.

  But at least Laina seemed to be appeased. A week into my stay, there had been no new missing girls, and I hadn’t had any purple dress dreams. Maybe my being l
ocked away was just as good as my being dead.

  On the seventh or eighth day, I was sitting on the couch, dividing my attention (poorly) between a talk show and a game of checkers that was progressing a couple of feet away from me, when the nurse called my name. “Alexis?”

  I looked around, my eyes finally settling on her.

  “Visitor,” she said.

  My parents again? Maybe Kasey? I shot to my feet, glad to have a distraction from the endless lack of distractions.

  But it wasn’t my family. It was Jared.

  In spite of my loneliness and boredom, I stopped at the threshold of the visitors’ lounge and considered turning back. All I could think when I looked at him was that wherever he was, Laina would be too. And she would be waiting and watching for a chance to get rid of me—or somebody else.

  But his smile was so warm, his eyes so sweetly anxious—and I was so close to falling into a pit of loneliness—that I found myself disarmed. I walked toward the love seat where he was waiting. He stood up and moved to hug me.

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “No physical contact.”

  “Of course,” Jared said, like he was an old pro at this. “Sorry.”

  I was already sitting. I didn’t really like to be on my feet too long. My meds made me dizzy.

  Jared turned to me, his face etched with concern. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Who told you I was here?”

  “Your sister.”

  Right. Except…there was something wrong with that, wasn’t there?

  “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s fine here. Totally…fine.”

  I was a little light-headed and a lot confused. I had a pretty distinct memory of Jared booting me from his house when he thought I was defaming Laina’s memory, and yet here he was, acting as if we were right back to normal. And what exactly was “normal” for us, anyway?

  Did he know about Elliot? Yes, of course he did. Why didn’t he ask about her? Or tell me how sorry he was?

  Why didn’t he ask why I came to Harmony Valley?

  Ask me why I’m here, said the back-of-my-head voice.