“Strange like what? Stranger than a bunch of crazy people?” she asked, tilting her head to the side and making a face.
“Very funny,” I said, laughing and throwing a green bean at her. I had no real way of talking about this that didn’t make me sound crazy myself. Still, I needed to know. “I mean, have you ever seen any strange shadows?”
Nora raised an eyebrow and took a bite of her mashed potatoes. “What in the world is going on with you?” she asked. “What kind of shadows?”
I shook my head and shrugged. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
Nora twirled her finger next to her ear. “Cuckoo,” she said, laughing. “You’re losing it, Harper. Maybe you need a few extra therapy sessions.”
“Therapy?” Judith asked, sitting down next to me, her eyebrows cinched together. “Why? What happened? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
I looked at Nora, begging her with my eyes to not say anything. But Nora says whatever she pleases.
“Harper thinks she saw some kind of weird shadow,” Nora said. “I was just telling her she might want to ask for extra therapy to deal with that level of crazy.”
“What kind of shadow?” Judith asked, her hand trembling. “Like a ghost or something?”
“Just drop it, okay?” I said. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Then why did you say you did?” Nora asked.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I asked if you had seen it.”
“Well, you’ve been acting strange ever since we went outside today,” Nora said. “And why are you always going off by yourself to sit against the wall, anyway? We had a lot of fun today playing cards. You should join us sometime.”
I simply shrugged and looked down at my food.
I didn’t want to make friends and become a part of this place like she had. I didn’t want to accept it as my fate that I would spend the rest of my years here or in some other asylum. I didn’t belong here, and as soon as I got my memories back, I would find a way to prove it. I would find a way to go home.
Images of a burning house pushed into my mind. I saw myself sitting on the ground, watching flames as green as emeralds tear through a beautiful old Southern home. In my arms, a girl with dark blonde hair lay limp against my body, the life gone from her eyes. I clutched her close, screaming as the fire raged on in front of me.
I closed my eyes and brought my hands up to my head, trying to shut the images out.
“Harper?” Judith touched my arm, and I shook her away.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, speaking more harshly than I’d intended.
Judith pulled back, tears in her eyes. She picked up her tray and ran, nearly knocking over her chair.
Shit. I hadn’t meant to upset her. I grabbed my tray and followed her, but tripped over something and fell hard against the floor. The tray flew forward, and I lifted my hands just in time to protect my head from hitting the ground.
Several of the girls sitting nearby laughed, but I didn’t look at them. Instead, I looked for the nurses on duty. I didn’t want to draw their attention, and I most certainly didn’t want them asking why Judith was upset. If she told them anything about the shadows, it could get me into real trouble. I was trying to convince them I wasn’t crazy, and talking about shadows wasn’t going to help my case.
But there was some kind of disturbance in the back of the room, and none of the nurses were paying any attention to me. I quickly scrambled to pick up the food that had fallen off of my tray, crawling on hands and knees on the floor.
I reached for a slice of bread, but someone’s hand reached it just as I did, her skin touching mine for an instant and sending an electric shock through my body.
I pulled away and looked up, my breath catching in my throat.
It was her. The girl from outside.
“Thanks,” I said, searching her face.
She smiled and something tugged at my memories. Something about dropping a tray and being in a cafeteria very different from this one.
“Do I know you?” I whispered.
She handed me the bread, and when I took it, placed her hands around mine for a brief moment.
“Tonight,” she whispered, so softly I almost couldn’t hear her. “After lights-out. Follow the shadows.”
She stood and walked away, her head down so that her hair hid most of her face.
“Wait,” I said, nearly tripping over the food still piled on the floor at my feet.
When I looked up, she was gone.
Do You Remember Me?
I couldn’t sleep.
I tossed and turned in my small bed, hearing those words over and over again, waiting for something to happen and having no idea how I would get out of this room even if it did.
Follow the shadows.
I hadn’t been crazy. There was something going on with this girl, and even if I couldn’t explain it, I needed to at least try to find out what it was.
What I didn’t understand was how this girl expected me to get out of a locked room and follow her to wherever she was going.
I looked around, checking to see if my roommates were asleep. Judith was snoring louder than usual, which tomorrow she would blame on all the crying she’d done after I’d yelled at her at dinner. I’d tried to apologize, but she had refused to even talk to me. She’d come back to the room and covered her ears with her pillow, completely shutting me out.
It had been hours since lights-out, and the nurse had just made her second round of the night. That meant it was close to three in the morning, and no one would be by to check on us again until breakfast at seven.
So I waited, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen. Anything.
My eyes began to close with sleep when a shadow passed in front of the door to my room.
There was only a small square window of light coming from the hallway, but my skin pricked when the light dimmed from movement just beyond. I sat up and stared at that window, listening for the nurse’s footsteps or any way to explain that movement.
For a moment I just lay there, frozen. Unsure what to do. Should I follow?
It was crazy. I couldn’t get out of here, and even if I could, there was no telling what kind of trouble I’d be in if anyone found me.
Taking a deep breath, I carefully slipped out of bed, my nightgown nothing more than a whisper against the sheets.
I lifted onto my toes and looked out the tiny window, watching for any sign of the nurses who roamed the halls during the night. Out of the corner of my eye, the shadow of a horse galloped along the wall and out of sight.
My heart pounded in my chest. I couldn’t be imagining this.
The girl had said to follow the shadow, but we were under very strict orders not to leave our rooms. I’d seen girls come back from therapy sessions with lesions on their arms and bruises along their back. I’d heard rumors of shock treatments being handed down to anyone who broke the rules. Of course, those things had to be just rumors, right?
Still, my hand trembled as I reached for the doorknob. What if the rumors were true? What if there was something very wrong with this place? If they still practiced archaic forms of mental health therapies, who was going to complain to the authorities?
A criminally insane teenager who saw shadows of horses in a perfectly quiet building? I didn’t think so.
I bit my lower lip and stared into the hallway, my hand gripping the cool knob of the door.
If I didn’t at least try, I would regret it. There were so many things I didn’t have an answer to, and if this strange shadow could lead me to even one of them, I had no choice but to follow it.
I took a deep breath and carefully turned the handle of the door. It was locked, just like I knew it would be.
So how was I supposed to leave?
I looked out the window again, searching for the shadow. It was long gone, and if I didn’t go now, I would miss my chance.
What if that girl knew me? What if she could tell me something importan
t about my past? About the guy with the green eyes?
I rested my head against the door, pushing back tears. I didn’t want to be locked away like this, trapped here in this room.
Please open.
The moment I thought the words, something inside the door clicked.
I jumped back, gasping. What the hell was that?
I trembled as I walked back toward the door and searched the hallway. There was no one there. I tried the knob again, and this time it opened.
My lips parted, and I glanced around at my roommates, making sure I hadn’t woken them up when I jumped. How was this possible? It was almost as if the lock had opened simply because I’d asked it to.
I pulled as gently as I could, wincing at the slight squeak the door made as it opened. I stopped and stood as still as a statue, waiting to see if anyone had noticed. None of my roommates moved, and there was no sign of anyone in the hall.
I pulled the door open just enough to squeeze through and stepped outside.
A dim light shone from the nurse’s station at the other end, but there were no voices or sounds other than Judith’s snoring. I closed the door and walked in the direction of the shadow, following the hallway all the way to the end.
When I reached a crossroads, a slight movement to my left drew my eye. The horse galloped along the wall, and I followed it, keeping my back against the concrete and ducking any time I passed the window of another room full of sleeping patients.
Barefoot, I followed the shadow through several turns and into corridors I’d never seen before, finally stopping in front of a solid metal door that read “Basement.”
I looked both ways down the hall, my heart ticking like a bomb in my chest. This was stupid. I was going to get caught. I had no idea what I might find on the other side of that door, but I had not come this far and taken this big of a risk just to turn back now.
I turned the knob and pulled the door open, following the shadow down the steps and into the freezing cold basement of the Evers Institute.
My lips parted as my breath quickened, turning to cool mist as it left my warm body. My feet froze with each step planted on the bare concrete floor. It was dusty and dirty down here, and the only light was coming from a room on the left just a few feet away.
I walked toward that light, praying I wouldn’t find some nurse taking a break down here. Or worse. I took a deep breath and turned the corner, entering the room.
I stared, openmouthed, at the dark-haired girl sitting on the floor of the basement room. Her legs were crossed under her body. She held one hand out, palm-up, in front of her face. A glowing orb of light sat atop her hand, as if it had been created out of thin air. There was no flame, no candle. Just light.
“You made it,” she said with a smile. “I wasn’t sure you’d figure out the lock. Sit down. We don’t have much time.”
“How did you do that?” I asked, nodding toward the light in her hand. I sat down across from her on a small square of carpet, mimicking her by crossing my legs under my body.
“The light?” she asked. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”
“A few things,” I said, not willing to trust her enough to give details.
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
I studied her face, her long, brown hair pulled back in the middle. I looked into her eyes, trying desperately to remember how I knew her.
A memory opened to me suddenly, like an envelope opening to reveal a photograph inside. I closed my eyes, trying to hold onto it. I could see her walking into a cafeteria, leading a group of girls through as everyone in the room turned to watch. She held her head high, looking down on the others as if she were royalty.
“I remember you walking through a room that looks like a high school lunchroom, maybe?”
She nodded, encouraging me to keep going.
“There are others with you,” I said, closing my eyes again to grasp the memory more tightly. “A beautiful Asian girl with black hair and eyes. Two blondes. Everyone is watching you.”
“That’s the first time you ever saw me, I think,” she says. “Do you remember anything else?”
I shake my head, the memory not going any further than that. “Not about you,” I said. “Did we go to high school together?”
She smiled again. “Yes. For a little while,” she said. “You came to my birthday party, too. Do you remember that night at all?”
I struggled to bring up any visions of a party, but only a fleeting image of a guy sitting on motorcycle in a field came to my mind. It was him, I just knew it.
“I remember a boy. A man,” I said, correcting myself. Some part of me knew that even though he looked my age, he was much, much older. Could that be right? “He was on a motorcycle in the field.”
“Across from my house,” she said. “Watching you. Making sure you were okay.”
“Who is he?” I asked, looking at her. “He’s important to me. He’s the only one I can remember, but I don’t know his name. Do you know?”
“Jackson,” she said, and the name pierced my heart like a dagger.
Tears flowed from my eyes, and I brought my hand to my mouth to stifle a sob.
“Yes. Jackson,” I said, needing to hear the word on my tongue. To taste it. I’d been trying to remember for so long, and now that I knew his name, I wondered how I had ever forgotten.
I studied her, knowing now she was telling me the truth. How was it possible that someone I’d gone to high school with had ended up with me here in this place? It couldn’t be coincidence. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
I had so many questions, but my mind couldn’t put words to them all.
“That’s not important,” she said. “What’s important is that you keep remembering. I can’t stay much longer. If they find me here with you, they’ll kill me.”
I swallowed. “Kill you? Just for leaving your room?”
“No. There’s a lot more on the line here than you realize, Harper,” she said. She put her hand down, but the orb of light stayed in its place, hovering in the air between us. “And you are far more important than I am. The only reason they’ve allowed me to walk the same halls as you is because they think they have me under control. They believe they’ve successfully wiped my mind of everything that happened before they brought me here. And you should let them believe the same thing about you. It will be much easier for you if they think they’ve broken you, Harper. Don’t tell them you remember anything.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why am I important? I don’t understand.”
“You will,” she said. “Keep pushing. Keep trying to remember, but be careful. Stop taking your medicine.”
“My medicine?”
“They’re giving you pills, right?” she asked. “Small green pills?”
I nodded. “I stopped taking the sleeping pills, but they told me the green pills are supposed to help with memory loss.”
“Make them believe you’ve swallowed them, and then when you have a moment to yourself spit them out and destroy them. They’re poisoning your mind, holding your memories at bay. But don’t let them find out or they’ll start injections. And those are much worse,” she said. “The injections are much harder to resist.”
She held her arms out, and I gasped. She had bruises and track marks up her entire arm from where they had pierced her skin with hundreds of needles. Dear God, what torture had this girl been through?
“I have to go,” she said. “But I’ll try to meet you here again soon. If you see the shadow, that means it should be a safe night to find me here.”
She stood, the light dimming as she walked toward the door.
“Wait,” I cried out, standing and touching her arm.
She turned to me, her eyes searching mine. “There isn’t time,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“But I have so many questions,” I said. “How did I open the lock on my door tonight? How did you create that light?”
She smiled, but I could see th
e tears gathering on her lashes. She swiped at them. “I think you know how you opened the lock,” she said. “I used the same thing to create this orb of light. The answers you’re looking for are all inside of you, locked away—just like you are locked away in your room every night. The doctors and nurses are doing everything they can to make sure you never unlock the doors to your mind, but you have the power to free yourself, Harper. I have to go now. Wait two minutes and then follow me out.”
She walked away, but I stumbled forward, following her to the steps. I clutched her dress, forcing her to turn and look at me.
“The horse,” I said. “How did you make that shadow? I need to know. I need to know who you are. Please, at least tell me your name.”
The light went out, leaving us in complete darkness. At first, I thought she would walk away without another word, but before she disappeared through the next door, she grabbed my hand.
“Brooke,” she said, squeezing once before letting go. There were tears in her voice as she spoke. “My name is Brooke.”
The Worst Lie Of All
By the time I reached my room, I was out of breath from dashing under windows and into corners where there was less light. It took me awhile to remember the right turns, and I didn’t have long before the nurses would start making their morning rounds. If Brooke was to be believed, the punishment for being discovered might be far worse than anything I’d imagined.
Were the doctors and nurses here really capable of murder? Would they kill a patient for simply not following the rules?
If so, there was a lot more on the line here than just my sanity.
I carefully opened the door to my room and slipped inside. I leaned against the wall, letting out a long sigh of relief.
I had made it.
But when I opened my eyes and started to walk toward my bed, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prick up. I looked around, suddenly realizing that the room was silent. No snoring.
My eyes darted to Judith’s bed. Her eyes were wide open, her covers tucked tight under her chin. She was staring right at me.
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