Asylum (41 page)

            “Oh
my God, Clo,” he whispered.

            “I
just wanted to start over,” she continued.  “just wanted to be some place where
people wouldn’t look at me like I was a nut, because somehow, everyone knew.  I
thought…I thought if I came up here, I wouldn’t run into anyone…I could start
over.  I could be normal, but then…”

            “Clo,”
he said quietly, dropping to one knee in front of her and putting his hands on
her arms.  “I get it…okay?  He tried to hurt you, didn’t he?  He came over when
no one was home and he came into your room, and he was going to hurt you,
wasn’t he?”

            “He
knew.  After everything happened, he said I had just attacked him, out of the 
blue, but damn it, I know what I know!  He asked about the voices.  Nobody
believed me!  He asked what they were telling me.  Sam knows.  Sam knows what
it’s like when no one believes you, when everyone thinks it’s your fault.”

            “Jesus,
Clo.  I don’t even know what to say,” he admitted quietly.

            Looking
down at his hurt expression, at his wide hazel eyes, trying to express
something, maybe sympathy, she realized her error.  It sounded crazy, didn’t
it?  He was realizing the depth of her sickness, that she wasn’t a normal, shy
girl.  He was all compassion now, but soon…soon he would stop returning her
calls, soon he would find a reason to be busy when she wanted to do
something…and you couldn’t blame him, really.  Who wanted that in their life?

            “I
don’t feel good,” she said quickly.  “I gotta…I gotta go or something, I don’t-
I’m not okay, I need to-”

            “I
love you,” he said.

            “I
don’t understand,” she said, breathing through her nose, fighting nausea.

            “I
love you.  I know it’s not the best time, or the best place, or whatever.  I
wanted to tell you so many times.  I thought…I thought it would scare you off…
I thought I should wait until you said it first.  I wanted it to be special, I
wanted it to be perfect.  I wanted to know for sure, that you’d say it back…but
it doesn’t matter now.  I love you.  I’m not going anywhere.  We’re going to
fix this.  We’re going to get through this.  We’ll move.  We’ll go somewhere
else.  Clo, we can transfer, we can go to another dorm, we can go to another
college.  We can go home to Marquette and go to Northern, we can go south…we’ll
go out-of-state.  Tell me what you want to do, we’ll do it.”

            “No!”
she cut him off.  “No!  I’m not going to let you ruin your life.  You’ve got
your family, and you’re almost finished with school, and there’s the hockey
team, and all your friends, and…and…No!  I’m a fucking plague.  I ruin
everything I touch!  What’s wrong with you?? Don’t you know when to give up?”

            “Tell
me what to do then,” he demanded, tightening his grip on her shoulders,  “Tell
me how to help, what I should do.”

            “Why
now?” She asked raising her voice.  “You never once said you loved me, even on
the Isle, with the northern lights, when it was just us.  Why now?  Because,
like you said, you don’t know what else to say!  You can’t really love me,
Seth!  You’re just…just this really, really nice guy, and you’re worried about
me and I know you want to help, so you think…you think that if you say that, if
you say you love me, it’ll help me somehow.  You’d ruin yourself because you’re
too nice, and you’re going to tie yourself to something that’s…that’s sick. 
That‘s-”

            “I
love you,” he spoke over her.  He held her shoulders so tightly his grip seemed
to penetrate her skin, latch on to her very bones.

            “You
never said so before,” she mumbled, refusing to meet his eyes.  “I made you feel
sorry for me.”

            “Everything
I have ever done, has been to prove it to you,” he said.  “The way I’ve taken
everything so slow with you.  I never pushed, I never wanted to make you
uncomfortable.  Think about it, Clo.  You think I didn’t want to sleep with
you?  You think I didn’t want to be with you constantly?  I never said it,
because you didn’t.  Every time I took a step forward, you took a step back. 
So I waited.  You think what Sam said didn’t occur to me?  It did!  Sometimes I
felt like I was forcing you to be in a relationship you didn’t want to be in. 
I felt like an asshole sometimes, Clo, I swear to God, I did.  I felt like
there were times when, if given the choice, you’d ‘ve run…but you were too meek
to tell me to fuck off-”

            “You
thought I was weak?” Chloe did feel weak, like she had been slammed to the
ground.

           
“Meek
,
Chloe…meek.  And yes, I did, I do!” he let go of her abruptly and began
massaging his forehead.  “You never said you love me…Christ Clo, I’m pouring my
heart out here, and you still haven’t.”

            “I
love you,” she said mechanically.

            “Oh,
God…” he moaned.

            “What?”
she asked quickly.  “What else can I say?”

            “Nothing,”
he turned his back to her.  “Just…I’m done, Clo…okay?  I’m done talking right
now.  I’m tired. I’m angry.  I’m frustrated.  Just go.  I’m going to say a
bunch of shit I don’t mean, so go.”

            And
he meant it.  He stood up and kicked a stack of games cartridges angrily, they
flew across the room and hit the wall at different points, raining down
loudly.  Chloe sat frozen in her chair.  For a moment she thought he was going
to say something else, maybe that he was sorry, maybe that he didn’t mean it. 
But he was done.  He was done with her.  When he turned back to face her, she
almost didn’t recognize him.  His expression was pleading, his eyes seemed to
be asking her for something, but she didn’t know what.  He had asked her to
leave, hadn’t he?  He had asked her to ‘just go’.

            “Awww,
Clo…” he said, his voice breaking.

            “No,”
she said still frozen, forcing her face into the practiced mask.  “I get it. 
It’s better this way.  I’m going.  You’re done, I’m done.  We understand each
other, and I’m leaving.”

            She
stood up.  He looked crumpled…hurt.  What the hell?  She was doing what he
wanted, wasn’t she?  He was done.  He wanted her to go, she was going.  It had
to be guilt.  He was breaking up with her, the crazy girl, and he felt guilty
that he was hurting her more.  That had to be it!

            “I’m
fine,” she assured him briskly. 
I’m not fine!  I love you, I love you, I
love you! I love you a thousand times, I love you more than I love anything! 
Don’t break up with me!
A voice cried inside.  Chloe clenched her fists and
stood, biting her lip to keep the weak-voiced traitor mute.  She marched across
the floor and shut the door behind her as quietly as she could.  Shut the door
against Seth’s tired and hurt red-rimmed eyes and his crossed arms.  Shut the
door on the relationship that had meant more to her then she could ever
remember anything ever meaning before.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

           
Chloe balanced
on the last step of the bus stairwell for a moment before leaping over the pool
of grey slurry, hoping to hit the scraped and salted sidewalk.  But if there
was one centimeter of ice on the cement, she would find it, and find it she
did. The heel of one foot hit and slid, shooting upward, throwing her
completely off balance.  She stumbled forward, wind-milling her arms for
balance, while around her, other students on their way to and from class
snickered.  Chloe was able to run herself into a balanced position.

            “Smooth!”
an anonymous voice called after her.

            Chloe
shrugged and slowed back down to a walk, heading for the front doors of
Kirkbride Hall.  Her backpack was so heavy it was wearing a sore spot into her
shoulder.

            “Clo! 
Wait up,” Sam called.

            Chloe
turned and walked backwards a few steps.  Sam was crossing the parking lot,
leaping over slush puddles as she hurried to catch up.

            “Hey!”
she called, while still a few paces away.

            “Hey,”
Chloe answered.

            “How
was, ummm…?” Sam asked.

            “Freshman
Comp?  It sucked, thanks for asking,” Chloe replied.

            “Yeah,
inorganic chemistry is a joke too,” Sam said angrily.  “English is not the
professor’s first language, and I don’t think it’s even his second or third
because I can’t understand a word he’s saying!”

            Chloe
turned and kept on towards the main doors, Sam fell into step next to her.

            “So
listen,” Sam began.  “He called again this morning.”

            “What’d
he say?” Chloe asked without emotion.

            “Same
thing.  If you want to talk, he’s around,” Sam parroted.

            Chloe
didn’t say anything.

            “Truth
be told,” Sam continued.  “I’m surprised he’s not been down banging on the
door, and he’s only called what…twice?”

            “Three
times,” Chloe corrected.  “Not that I’m keeping count or anything.”

            “But
like I said, he lives a couple of doors down, how hard would it be for him to
get up, walk a few steps, and knock on the door?” Sam demanded, angry on
Chloe’s behalf.

            “I
don’t know, Sam.  I don’t know much about guys, to be honest, but I’m going to
guess that when I accused him of being a controlling, overbearing jerk, it may
have made him a bit reticent to come down and bang on my door like a
controlling, overbearing…jerk,” Chloe explained.

            “Yeah,
that’s probably true,” Sam admitted.  “I am starting to feel just a little bit
bad for him though.  I mean, you really need to talk to him, you need to figure
out where you guys stand.”

            Chloe
caught the door as another student exited and held it open for Sam.

            “Yeah,
I should, but I don’t want to deal with it right now.  So I’m not going to,”
Chloe said.

            “What
do you think he wants to do?” Sam pushed.

            “I
don’t know.  He either wants to make sure we have a clean break…or he wants to
patch things up,” Chloe answered.

            “Well
that narrows it down,” Sam said sarcastically.  “Don’t you want to know what he
wants to do about it?”

            “Not
really.  I don’t think either one is going to be a very good thing.  If he
wants to make sure we’re broken up, I think it’s going to hurt me real bad.  I
think I’m going to be a mess, for a long time.  And if he wants to stay
together?  Almost as bad, because I’ll know that I’m going to be a tumor on his
brain for as long as he wants to keep me there, which I can’t imagine will be
that long anyways,” Chloe said.

            “You’re
a right little ray of sunshine today,” Sam snorted.  “But I’m just going to say
this once, and not harp on it after this.  It’s not fair to him to keep him
dangling, while you sit around thinking about what you want to do.  And it’s
going to be worse for you in the long run.  Think about it.  How are you going
to feel if you don’t talk to him for another week, and then you see him making
out with some girl at a party, or better yet, see a girl coming out of his room
one morning?”

            “He’s
not that kind of guy,” Chloe said, trudging up the stairs behind Sam.

            “They’re
all
that kind of guy,” Sam muttered.  “Forget it!  What do you think
about getting some girls from the floor together and hitting the Eat tonight?”

            “I
think maybe your family needs to stage another intervention, because your first
one didn’t seem to take,” Chloe said in mock seriousness.

            “Hardy-har-har-har,”
Sam said and gave her the finger.

            “No,
I’m hitting the library tonight.  Willard emailed me last night to ask when to
set up our first meeting for the semester, and I get the feeling that he thinks
we’ve been plowing right along since he’s been gone.  I want to get another two
boxes down at least,” Chloe excused herself, digging in her pocket for the room
key.

            “Come
out, have a couple of drinks,” Sam pushed.  “You’ll feel better I promise.”

            “You
go,” Chloe said, “have one for me.”

            “You
want help?” Sam asked, cringing as she waited for the answer, probably afraid
the answer might be yes.  Chloe pushed open the door and swung the heavy bag
off her shoulder and onto the floor.

            “Nah.”

            “I
was kind of hoping we’d be able to weasel out of the TA thing this semester,”
Sam admitted.

            “I
thought you were all gung ho about figuring out the mystery of Abraham’s Men
and the Kirkbride Hall ghost,” Chloe smirked.

            “I
was.  I am…I mean.  It’s just…have you noticed that stuff seems to have stopped
happening?  Things aren’t disappearing and turning up other places, the lights
don’t go on and off, there’s nothing writing all over the walls anymore…kind of
like whatever was doing it just…gave up,” Sam said.