Before I Wake (6 page)

He drove beside her. “Come on. Get in.”

The rain got louder. It came down hard and cold and stinging. Her shirt was soaked. Her hair was dripping. Rain ran in her eyes, burning, blinding.

The car was suddenly looking pretty good, but she was already wet to the skin, so what was the point?

A flash of lightning lit up the sky, followed by a crash of thunder. That was the point.

Arden jumped in and slammed the door behind her. From the driver’s-door control panel, Fury raised the electric window.

Classical music played. The defroster blasted away, shooting tepid air in her face.

She didn’t like classical music. It sounded frantic to her, always building, building, building. Was broken glass soothing? Were splinters soothing? Classical music was sharp and jagged and tense. It made her nervous, ready to jump out of her skin. If the present music were a soundtrack, the scene it was embellishing would be of a woman being chased through a maze by a madman with an ax.

With the flick of her wrist, she turned off the music.

“Sure,” Fury said dryly. “I don’t mind.”

“You can’t tell me you actually like that.”

He stepped on the gas pedal and the car lumbered up the steep hill.

“Did you know that Mozart is the cutting edge of music therapy?” he asked conversationally. “Rats that listen to Mozart have increased brain function. And Alzheimer’s patients perform better on spatial and social tasks after listening to Mozart.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I feel like getting social.”

He laughed.

At the top of the hill, Fury stopped the car under the overhang next to the pillars and wide marble steps.

Home sweet home.

He pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “Here’s my cell phone number. If you need anything, I’m staying around the corner, past the old blacksmith shop in one of the private doctors’ cottages.”

She got out of the car.

“Eight thirty tomorrow morning you meet with Dr. Harris.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Nobody said you did.”

“That’s exactly what you’ve been saying.”

She slammed the door and he drove away.

For a few hours, she’d almost been able to forget about the Hill. Forget about Cottage 25, and an inexplicable fear that kept creeping up on her, causing her stomach to plummet and her heart to pound.

She almost wished Fury hadn’t left.

Arden rechecked the digital clock by her bed. It seemed to be stuck on three a.m. Too bad the room didn’t have a TV. You could come across some weird shit at three in the morning.

From outside in the hall came something that sounded like a light footfall—almost like running. The sound increased in volume as it approached her door, then faded into the distance.

She tossed back the covers, swung her feet to the floor, and grabbed the jeans from the nearby chair.

She always slept in a stripped-down version of whatever she’d worn that day. Now she quickly stepped into the jeans, buttoning them under the hem of the dry, white T-shirt she’d changed into when she’d gotten back to her room. She felt around the dark floor until her fingers came into contact with her sneakers, which were still wet and cold from the rain.

It was a struggle to get her bare feet into them. Once they were tied, she moved to the door and listened.

The silence and the late hour made her begin to wonder if she’d imagined the noise. Had she actually fallen asleep and dreamed the footfalls?

Then the flurry of movement returned.

And stopped directly in front of her door.

Vera’s shadow people?

There was no peephole. She swung to the side, back pressed to the wall, eyes and ears straining.

A tiny rap sounded on the door, followed by a whispered, “
Ar-den!”

Harley?

She pivoted and opened the door.

Curly blond hair.

Eli. Backlit by wall sconces.

He looked at her clothes. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

“What are you doing here?” And in pajamas? Striped pajamas.

“We’re having trouble sleeping.”

“We?”

“Me and my friends.”

The friends he’d told her about in the car.

“We’re playing cards. Wanna come up?”

Since she couldn’t sleep and was curious to hear more about what they were doing on the Hill, she thought,
Why not
?

She locked her door and pocketed the heavy key. “What was that noise I heard?”

“This?”

He shot away, cantering down the hall, taking long strides while his bare feet landed softly.

Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.

Then he came back, skidding to a stop in front of her.

“Yeah,” she said dryly. That explained Vera Thompson’s shadow people.

“Sometimes we time each other. See how long it takes to run the floors of this wing. My best time is seven minutes. But we have to do it quietly; otherwise the guard will chew us out.”

They took the stairs to the fifth floor, then down a hall that hadn’t yet been restored. It smelled of moldy, crumbling wallpaper.

“We asked for this room,” Eli explained. “So we could hang out. So we could stay up late and play music without bothering anybody. Plus, it’s just cool.”

He pushed open the door.

Somewhere, Nag Champa incense burned, the overpoweringly sweet scent covering up anything that may have been unpleasant. Repetitious, hypnotic music drifted from a boom box on the floor against the wall. CD jewel cases were scattered nearby.

“I quit counting at twelve minutes,” said a girl in a black tank top and gray flannel pajama bottoms. She sat cross-legged on the floor, cards fanned out in her hand. “We were about to send a search party.”

She had short, unnaturally jet-black hair, choppy bangs, and a gold lip ring. “I’m out.” She put down a run of face cards, then discarded.

Her playing partner, a young man with wavy, not-so-black hair, weakly dropped his cards, rolled to his back, and put an arm across his eyes. “I have a headache.”

Eli introduced them as Franny Young and Noah Viola.

Franny said hi. Noah waved without lifting his head or uncovering his face.

The room had massive windows on all four sides. A cathedral ceiling stretched skyward like a bell tower. It was a nice space for the claustrophobic and light deprived. Not a nice space if you had vertigo.

Eli offered Arden something to drink. “We have Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew, or Mountain Dew.”

No wonder they couldn’t sleep. All that sugar and caffeine. “I’ll have Mountain Dew.”

He unscrewed the top of a green plastic quart bottle, splashed some yellow liquid in a blue plastic cup, and handed it to her.

The room had very little furniture. Two twin beds, neatly made up with beige spreads, and a rollaway shoved into the corner. A low, modular couch was positioned against one wall, with a plastic coffee table on a rug in front of it.

It looked thrown-together, as if the administration hadn’t foreseen using the room.

Franny poured herself some soda. “Sorry we don’t have any ice. There’s an ice machine in the basement, but they lock it up at seven.” She plopped down on the couch. “This whole place closes up when the sun goes down.”

Arden took a long swallow of the tepid drink. Not as bad as she’d expected.

The windows were low and deeply set, with wide stone ledges like something in a castle. She settled herself in one, her back supported by the stone frame, knees bent.

Eli grabbed a plastic outdoor chair and pulled it close so the three of them formed the points of a triangle, Noah quiet and lying outside.

“People from town talk so much garbage about the Hill.” Franny picked up a pillow in a white case and hugged it to her. “They say they used to perform lobotomies here. Not that long ago, either.”

A lobotomy. Was that a twisted version of the truth? Arden wondered. Was she really a walking vegetable and nobody had told her?

“You are so full of shit,” Noah mumbled from the shadows. “Who said that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. It’s just something I heard.”

“What are you doing here?” Arden asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from lobotomies.

“Easy money,” all three said in unison.

“We were in college,” Franny explained. “And we read in a campus paper about how they were looking for study subjects. I needed some time off anyway. And my student loans were freaking me out. This will pay for almost a year of school. Seemed perfect.”

Arden remembered those ads in college papers, seeking students to participate in research. She’d never known anyone who’d actually done it.

“What kind of studies?” Arden asked.

Eli glanced at Franny, then back to Arden. “Right now we’re testing the Mozart effect. Doing things to see if listening to Mozart improves our memory. Later, we’re going to do some sleep-deprivation stuff.”

Was everyone here listening to Mozart?

“I considered selling my eggs,” Franny said, “but then I read about all the dangerous drugs you have to take, and how it can really mess you up…”

“They can have my eggs,” Noah piped in.

Franny tossed her pillow at him. “Easy for you to say.”

“Hey, if I had something somebody wanted, I’d sell it.”

“Then become a prostitute, why don’t you?”

Noah sat up, legs crossed. “That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?” He grabbed the pillow Franny had tossed at him.

“We’re participating in a scientific study,” she said.

Noah fluffed up the pillow. “You are so delusional.”

“You’re such an elitist.”

Franny looked at Arden. “Eli and I are doing this for tuition. Noah doesn’t even need to be here.”

“What are you talking about?” Noah asked, his voice rising.

“His parents are filthy rich,” Franny explained, ignoring Noah. “They’ll pay for undergraduate and graduate school.”

“Only if I major in some business field. You know that.”

“Your dad would cave.” Franny swung around. “Just take a bunch of core stuff, then pull a switch on him.”

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

“You just want to pretend to be like the rest of us. You want to
play
poverty. Of course, that kind of thing is more fun when you know you can go back.”

Noah tossed the pillow on the couch and crawled to the boom box. He shut it off, removed the CD, and held it up. “This Boards of Canada CD? Mine.” He put it in a case and stuck it in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. “Fuck you, Franny. I didn’t ask for your psychoanalysis.”

He left, slamming the door behind him.

Franny crossed her arms and sank deeper into the couch. “Baby.”

“Should somebody go after him?” Arden asked. “He was pretty upset.”

“He’ll be back,” Eli said. “Noah’s always going off about something. It used to freak me out whenever he did that. I’d get all worried and concerned and replay everything in my head. Think about what I should have said, then what I’d say next time I saw him. Then he’d come strolling back, acting like nothing happened.”

“Just la-la-la,” Franny said. “He’s such a piece of shit.”

Arden had seen the dynamic before. One of those all-too-common situations of two guys liking the same girl.

Eli had been a little subdued since entering the room. Gone was the gregarious person who’d given her a ride from the airport, and the bouncing boy in the hall. This version of Eli was choosing to remain in the background while the drama played out around him.

Arden looked at Franny. “So, how long have you and Noah been dating?” she asked, vocalizing her assumption.

“Two years,” Franny said. “Part of his hang-up is that I come from a poor family. We’re talking plastic-bags-over-our-shoes-in-the-winter poor. Food-stamps poor and homeless-shelter poor. Noah’s family is rich. Filthy rich. Which shouldn’t be a problem, right? But it is. Noah’s ashamed of how easy his life has been, how easy he’s had it. And he doesn’t completely trust me. In the back of his mind, he worries that I might be playing him for his daddy’s money. That is so
gross
! And so not who I am.”

“You did just tell him he could get his whole education paid for,” Eli reminded her.

“Why shouldn’t he? Why should he deliberately make things harder for himself just because he doesn’t think it’s cool to be born into money?” She jumped to her feet, putting up both hands in a double talk-to-the-hand pose. “Okay. I’m not talking about this anymore.”

Arden finished her soda, unfolded herself from the window ledge, and presented her empty cup to Eli. “I’d better get back to my room, try to get some sleep.”

From somewhere came muffled musical notes. Franny dug under a pile of clothes and pulled out a cell phone.

“You’re where?” she asked the caller in disbelief.

She paused for a response, then relayed the information to Eli and Arden. “Noah’s in Cottage 25.”

Arden’s heart thudded the way it always did whenever she heard or thought about Cottage 25.

“He can’t find his way out,” Franny told them. She got back to Noah. “Okay, okay. We’re coming. Leave your cell phone on and I’ll call you when we’re in the building.”