Asleep

by Krystal Wade

  Laughing, Phillip crawled to a kneeling position and held a hand out for her. “Come on, Rose. It looks like fun.”

  “Hmm?” she murmured, humming along to the song.

  “Dance with me,” Phillip said, the bold, white moon casting a glow around his head.

  Crazy as it was, Rose took his hand. Phillip helped her up and held her waist, firm and strong, and pressed his palm against hers, then they danced under the stars to the sound of a sick woman singing a children’s song. He twirled her and then pulled her close, over and over, two-stepping around all the others. The older man who always wore his dinner down the front of his scrubs clapped and started dancing too. He reached for Rose, and she let him lead while Phillip moved on and twirled one of the scraggly-haired women. All the while, the other woman kept up her singing, her high-pitched, cat-like wail grating but somehow wonderful, until Rose and Phillip found each other again.

  She laughed at the absurdity of it all, and Phillip stared at her with a hint of a smile lifting the corner of his mouth, like maybe he was having just as much fun as Rose was, like maybe, for a moment, nothing that went on inside The Shepperd Institute mattered. It was just the two of them, two teens, doing something completely normal.

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” Phillip said, never taking his eyes from hers.

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Try to kill yourself.”

  Rose stopped smiling at the people around her, and she almost stopped breathing. She hadn’t tried to kill herself that night, but the thought had occurred to her on more than one occasion. How easy it would be to slit her wrists and slip away into nothing, where her mother’s admonishing ways would no longer be burdensome. Though Rose had never admitted that to anyone. Not to her parents, not to Megan or Josh. No one, barely even herself.

  If she had, maybe her friends wouldn’t have played that prank.

  Maybe her mother wouldn’t have pushed as hard.

  Would he still dance with me if he knew?

  If Phillip thought Rose was like his mother?

  But Rose wasn’t like his mother, and she would never attempt to take her life because she loved it too much. She loved the way the sun splashed its rays over the mountaintops well before it rose to greet a new day. She loved hiking the trails through the Smoky Mountains and finding secluded spots near streams of water coming from higher points. She loved sitting near those brisk streams and just listening. And more than anything, Rose loved when her parents joined her out on those adventures, when they were a family, before things like successful careers and bad friends got in the way.

  No, Rose definitely wasn’t like Phillip’s mother, but she understood her. How the darkness in the world could consume her and make her want to step away from it all, forever.

  “Rose?” Phillip blinked hard, as if he were blinking himself out of a memory. “Did I lose you in there somewhere?”

  Biting her lip, she shook her head. They were so close she felt each of his breaths as they whooshed past her cheek. She felt his chest rise and fall. His heart beating against his chest, buh-bump, buh-bump, buh-bump. When she looked into his eyes, she could almost see the little boy who was alone in the woods, listening to his mother scream as she jumped to her death. Maybe that’s what he had to blink away, the pain, the grief. “Yes. No.”

  “In all the years I’ve been coming to see Dr. Underwood, I’ve never felt like I could trust anyone. I never felt like anyone knew me or could understand what I was going through. And then you showed up and saw me, and we’re so different, yet we’re not. I want to trust you. I feel as if my life depends on it.”

  His words were a punch to her gut, and Rose couldn’t let him feel that way without knowing the truth, without knowing her deepest, darkest secret. “I’ve thought about it before.”

  Phillip’s hands tensed, and she felt a distance build between them, a space that wasn’t there a second ago. “About what?”

  “Suicide,” Rose said, stumbling over his foot. “Not like I’ve ever planned to do it. I’ve just thought about what it would be like if I didn’t have to hear my mother tell me the stories of her dead best friend over and over, or what a piece of shit I was. I’ve never told anyone that, at all, but I figure out of anyone, you have the right to know.” He said nothing and stood there like he couldn’t even see her, like maybe he saw his mother the way Mrs. Briar had seen Heather, so Rose kept talking, trying to explain it to him, to get him back. “I guess I just mean to say I could understand what your mother must have been feeling in order to do that, in order to leave her child behind. Do you know why she did it?”

  A tear streamed down his cheek, and Phillip’s fingers dug into her back. He spun her around slower, his movements rigid. When their palms touched once more, he shook his head. “No. I remember her singing to me before bed every night. I remember her cutting the crust off my sandwiches. I remember her hugs. And I remember her tears. She always cried. Every night.”

  “Depression?”

  “Maybe. Maybe my father destroyed her the way he did me. He wasn’t ever home, and when he was, she was different. She’d take me out of the house if he was in it. We’d go to parks, movies, the mall, anywhere but home.”

  “Maybe you’re not supposed to know. Maybe you’re destined for something your father and mother couldn’t handle.”

  “Maybe.”

  And with that, the distance between them vanished. Phillip pulled Rose as close as she could possibly get just as one of the Flip the Channel ladies jumped up and screamed, “I saw a shooting star. I saw a shooting star!”

  “I thought about what you said,” he went on, as two orderlies subdued the woman with a needle to the arm and dragged her back toward the institution. The singing became weaker, as did all the dancing, like everyone was suddenly unsure if what they were doing was okay, but Phillip didn’t stop moving his feet. He didn’t stop leading Rose. “About my name. You were right. Phillip is who I am. No one or nothing can change that.”

  “Nice name.”

  Phillip grinned. “You think so? There’s this girl I know who loves calling me by it.”

  Heat flooded Rose’s cheeks.

  Before she could spend too much time being embarrassed, the woman’s faint song died on her lips, and everyone shuffled to their seats. Most of the patients, still edgy from the disappearance of one of their friends, rocked back and forth or shook or cast their gaze around the yard. And really, why did they take her away? So what if she was excited? Wasn’t that the point?

  Shivering, Rose pulled up the corner of the afghan and scooted closer to Phillip. “Why’d they take her away?”

  “She has a tendency to get violent when she gets excited,” he said, his attention caught by something high up on the building.

  She followed his gaze, higher and higher she looked, squinting her eyes against the darkness. A grim glow rested upon the institute, muting the bricks of their redness. Grays and blacks made up the walls. And the moss that grew up one side of the building looked more like a ghoulish slime, a warning: stay away. A gust of wind lifted debris into a swirling devil that stretched almost to the roofline, and then everything fell, as if the building killed even what nature cooked up.

  Rose shuddered, and Phillip wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. “Underwood’s light went off about five minutes ago, and word has it he doesn’t lock his door. You ready?”

  Rose had been ready all night, but the direction her mind had just wandered made her question whether they really should go in tonight. What if Underwood and the police were still in there, just waiting for someone to break in? Just waiting for her and Phillip to make a mistake so that they’d never escape?

  “Change your mind?” Phillip asked.

  “No.” She had to go, and it had to be now. “I’m ready.”

  16

  “Do you think they’ll notice us missing?” Adrenaline rushed through Rose and raised the temperature on the lawn by at least thirty degrees. If
any snow were still on the ground, she could surely melt it. Gone were the fuzzy feelings of connecting with Phillip, of enjoying a night under the stars and dancing to badly-sung tunes.

  “Judy and Gordon clock off in thirty.” Phillip drew back and looked at Rose without an ounce of fear in his expression, like he knew everything would be okay, and that gave her all the courage she needed to get up when he tugged her and follow behind. “You said it yourself that he looks exhausted; she will be too. But we have to move fast.”

  “Everything all right here?” Mr. Gordon asked as they reached the door. He fought off a yawn, a shadow of a beard darkening the skin along his round chin and jaw line.

  “Just fine,” Phillip replied.

  Mr. Gordon asked the same question, looking directly at Rose as if Phillip didn’t just provide him with an answer.

  “I’m just cold.”

  The man nodded and rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “Going to be a frigid winter, I hear. Guess I believe it for once.” Mr. Gordon reached back and opened the steel door. Soft light spilled through the opening and cut a rectangle across the concrete steps, and warm air billowed out and greeted their skin. “Run along now. I’m not going to force you to stay out tonight.”

  “Last chance to back out, Rose.” Phillip reached for Rose’s hand when they arrived at the top of the stairs, and she slipped her fingers between his and squeezed, needing a reminder that this was real, that he wasn’t some screwed up part of her imagination. He squeezed hers in return. Maybe Phillip needed the same confirmation of Rose’s existence. That they were really about to do something that could provide them with answers and get them in trouble at the same time.

  “I’m not backing out, but if we get caught, we’re . . . .” She didn’t finish that sentence because she didn’t want to think about what would happen if they got caught.

  They entered Hall A, warmth working its way into Rose’s fingers and toes and setting them ablaze, Phillip on alert. He checked over his shoulder, glanced up at the ceiling, peered into their rooms, then trailed Rose to Dr. Underwood’s office.

  She tested the doorknob and almost cried when it turned all the way. Some small part of her had hoped it would be locked. “It’s open.”

  Phillip grinned. “Didn’t believe me?”

  “I did. It’s just . . . odd.”

  With one more quick glance over his shoulder into the lifeless, empty corridor, Phillip asked, “You going inside?”

  “Give me a minute.” Might be the only chance, Rose thought, and she pushed open the door and stepped into Dr. Underwood’s office.

  Everything sat in perfect order. Papers were stacked neatly at the center of his desk, a solid metal weight on top. His green accountant lamp was off and dark, its little gold chain glittering in the soft moonlight filtering through the window. His purple stone was aligned with the edge of his desk. Rose wanted to pick the stone up and rub it in between her fingers just to see what made it so special, but she dared not risk moving it. Dr. Underwood would know.

  “Where do you think he keeps our files?” she asked, holding back the urge to tear apart the room, to uplift chairs and toss folders onto the floor and throw his chair through the glass and into the lawn.

  Phillip ran to the other side of the office and stopped at the metal cabinet where Dr. Underwood had kept her art supplies. Above him, the giant, gold-framed piece of art seemed to stare at Rose. The girl’s face was serene between the wispy teal feathers, but something about seeing this image in the dark unsettled her. Why would Dr. Underwood put a sleeping, peaceful piece of artwork in his office when everything else was dark and formal? Was it the one item meant to soothe her and the other patients, or was it meant to drive Rose, and only Rose, insane?

  “Did you hear me?” Phillip rested the back of his fingers against her cheek. “Rose?”

  She had no idea when she crossed the room to stand beside him, or when she reached out to touch the painting to look for the name of the artist. But there she was, staring at the bottom, where in black paint and small cursive an S hugged the second line of an H. Rose had seen this before. Several times. In the trunk of old things her mother kept from her childhood.

  Heather Shepperd painted this.

  No matter where Rose went or what she did, she couldn’t escape her mother’s best friend, the reason Mrs. Briar hovered over her daughter.

  Shaking herself, Rose said, “What did you say?”

  “The drawer, it’s locked.” He yanked on the handle, his eyes hard, just to prove his point.

  Of course, she thought, scanning the room in hopes something else would jump out at her. “What about the drawers on the actual desk?”

  Rose tried the one in the center, but it, too, was locked, and so were all three running down the side. “Guess we know why he leaves his office unlocked.”

  She approached the window, sure they weren’t going to find anything, and sighed, steaming up the glass as she peered into the lawn. Mr. Gordon and Thomas were talking while standing next to patients lined up single file to come back inside. The site of the burly security guard sent shivers racing across her arms. “Who replaces Gordon at night?”

  “Come on. Something’s gotta be here. It just has to.” Phillip lay on the floor beneath the wide desk, kicking his socked foot against the cabinet at the back of the room.

  “Would you be quiet? You’re going to get us caught.”

  Rose ran over and dragged him up, but Phillip didn’t stop. He moved every picture frame from the wall, every piece of furniture too, lifted rugs, cursing each time he came up empty-handed, everything Rose had wanted to do but decided against.

  “Seriously. They’re going to come back inside and find us in here.”

  “Tonight it’s Thomas,” Phillip said, thumbing through a book with gold-foil lettering from the shelf along the back wall. “And this was your idea. Why aren’t you looking harder?”

  “Thomas what?” Some of Phillip’s crazy was coming out. Neither one of them could claim they were one hundred percent, without a doubt sane, and the tension wouldn’t help either of them.

  He stared at Rose like she was dumb, tossed the book on the floor, and then picked up another. “Gordon’s replacement tonight is Thomas.”

  “What about other nights?”

  Phillip shrugged. “Randoms. Thomas works a swing shift, covers for people as needed.”

  If Thomas replaced Gordon some nights, then that meant Nurse Vicki had lied. Not that that should be surprising. And at the moment, Thomas was the least of Rose’s worries. She hurriedly picked up the book Phillip dropped and returned it to its spot. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “We have to find something,” Phillip said. “We have to. I can’t keep going through this. And I won’t let you go through this for as long as I have. We have to get out of this place. We need proof.”

  Phillip ran his fingers along the leather spines of the remaining books lining the shelves, squinting in the dim light to read the titles. One book stood out amongst them, one book without even the slightest film of dust on it, one Dr. Underwood always, always touched. The title read Fear, and Rose moved toward it without thinking. She tipped the spine back and carefully lifted the book from the shelf so as not disturb the surrounding dust, then took a seat at his desk, scanning through pages.

  “Find something?” Phillip asked, trying to pry the shelf from the wall.

  Rose couldn’t respond. She was too busy trying to keep dinner in her stomach, swallowing the salty fluids as they rushed up her esophagus. Most of the printed text was generic gibberish about how fear and the human body’s response to it are coordinated by the amygdala, a mass about the size of an almond located in the temporal lobe. That part didn’t bother Rose. The notes in the margin, however, the ones written in chicken scratch, did. Fingers shaking, she tried to make out the words, read them again and again to make sure she was interpreting them correctly: To cure fear, you must use fear.

  Under that, H
eather Shepperd’s name was printed several times with different words surrounding it: Project Heather Shepperd, The Heather Shepperd Cure, The Heather Shepperd Institute, Fear and Heather Shepperd. Finally, at the very bottom of the page, Project HS was underlined like the person had finally found the right one.

  A light touch on Rose’s shoulder made her jump.

  “Just me,” Phillip said. He held a brown folder in front of him. “Found this in a trap door behind that book. Your name’s on it.”

  “That’s it!” Rose grabbed the file and tore into it. The first several pages were forms she and her mother had filled out that first day. After that, there were pages noting Rose had chronic depression bordering on mania, obsessive compulsive tendencies for art, and a need to have people understand her. The file noted her behavior, her social interactions, and her daily functions, like how often she used the restroom and ate. They really did monitor everything, and the knowledge of that ramped up her heart rate. What if they were watching now?

  She checked over her shoulder, eyes wide and panicked.

  “Don’t worry,” Phillip said. “I’ll keep watch. Not like I have a file to read.” He went over to the window and looked out. “Patients are in. Thomas and Gordon are chatting. We have a few minutes.”

  Taking a deep breath to quell her nervous shaking, Rose searched through more of the file and found a section marked Treatment with notes detailing her response to medication. How she was highly susceptible to the effects of something called Ketalar. The meds gave her hallucinations, lack of awareness and passage of time, and somehow the doctor wrote that down as if it were a good thing. Her sweating, anger, vomiting, and supposed flight syndrome, however, were not. He treated her with Diazepam as she awoke, which made her calm and relaxed.

  She needed some of that right now, because she had no clue what these medicines were.

  Each turned page brought on a new wave of frustration. The file documented her fear and attempts to escape—and the doctor’s use of tranquilizers to subdue her—withdrawal from peers, the outburst at Megan’s visitation and subsequent intentionally missed dosage of medications. But nothing outright stated: I’m dragging Rose Briar to the bowels of the building, strapping her to a chair, and occasionally beating her up.