Straightjacket (2 page)

“Oh really? So how
should
I spend my time? Doing what you do?”

Samuel slapped the top of his thigh. “There you go! A little golf would do you some good.”

“No thanks.” Caleb laughed. “Last time I checked, we were in heaven, not the town of sucksville.”

Just then, an angel sat down on the bench on the other side of the fountain. Caleb grabbed his sketchpad as fast as he could manage and yanked the pencil out of his pocket. He’d never seen an angel like this before. She was nude, but many angels walked around the commons without a stitch of clothing. This angel looked exactly like Botticelli’s Venus. She had the same porcelain skin, gentle features, and hair that fell down to her knees. It blew around and behind her even though the air was still. She stood maybe ten feet tall, enormous compared to the other angels. And she was sipping a coffee.

Samuel rolled his eyes as he watched Caleb work. “Hey.”

Caleb didn’t answer.

“Hey!”

Caleb ignored the fact that the coolness had spread into his shoulder. “What? I’m working here.”

“And I’m talking here. You rushed me outta my golf game so I could sit here and watch you do this?”

Caleb sighed. “Inspiration hits when it hits. I’ve got to sketch this before I go. You can talk while I do this.”

“Fine. I guess you’ll just tolerate me while I go over the details.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Caleb mumbled as he formed thick strands of hair with long, heavy pencil strokes.

“So you think you’re ready? Gotten the lay of the land?”

“I’ve been watching her, if that’s what you mean.” Caleb’s eyes stayed glued to the drawing.

“Good. This is an important mission, and it’s probably not gonna be easy. Better you than me.”

“All right, all right. Just tell me what I have to do already.”

“This girl…she’s broken…she’s…”

Caleb wasn’t used to hearing Samuel struggle for the right words.

“She’s had a hard time. Her parents aren’t good to her, and it’s just about killed her. You gotta do three things. First, get her away from her parents. That’ll be the easy part,” he muttered under his breath.

Caleb tried to cut him off and ask him what he meant, but Samuel powered through.

“Then you have to convince her that she’s worth something, make her see that she’s important, that she has something to say. And then get her to write the book.”

“What book? What’s it about?”

“She’s the only one who can know what it’s about. She has to write it. All I know is that it’s a book that’ll change things.”

“All right. Parents, special, book. Got it.” The coolness, which had pooled in his shoulder, burst out of the socket and trickled down into his chest. The chill made him shiver. It was almost time to go.

“Good luck. Keep your wits about you. Before you know it, we’ll be matching up on the links.”

“That’s never gonna happen.” Caleb laughed, forming the dimple above Venus’s lip. The coolness rushed down through his pelvis and then his legs. The drawing in front of him flickered. After a few seconds, it disappeared completely and he was blinded. He blinked, and when his eyes adjusted and he could see again, the drawing of Venus had been replaced by the figure of a middle-aged man.

But before he could focus on the face, a flash of light blinded him in his right eye. The tiny veins at the back of his eyeball glowed. Tears pooled in the outer corner as he tried to snap his lid shut, but a finger held it firmly up and in place. Then the light was gone, but in seconds it reappeared in his left eye. Now he realized what was happening, how the penlight was sweeping back and forth in front of his pupils. His hand came up off the arm of the chair, but a painful tug stopped it. He’d forgotten that the IV was buried in his vein. A hand pushed his own down onto his lap.

His eyes focused.

He knew who the man was.

“Looks like we found the right dose. Welcome back, Caleb.”

Chapter Two

Anna sat at a table on the other side of the common area. She had an open book in her hands, but she wasn’t reading. Instead she was watching Caleb. He sat rigidly with one hand resting on the arm of the couch. He suspended his right arm vertically in the air. Only his fingers seemed relaxed, bending lightly at the joints. He hadn’t moved once in the half hour she’d been sitting there. Even though his eyes were open and staring at the window, it looked as if he wasn’t seeing anything. People came and went around him, sitting beside him on the couch for a bit, even walking in between him and the window. He was unaffected. Not a muscle moved. His eyes stayed fixed on the window.

She liked watching him. He was a good distraction, even if his eerie stillness came off as freaky. Her head was filled with questions about him—did he notice the fine steel mesh that covered the glass panes he was staring at? What was he thinking about? Did his body hurt from sitting like that for so long? Was he suffering? It was amazing to her how he could remain so still, almost like he wasn’t breathing. His shaggy black hair, falling slightly over his ears, was unaffected by the steady stream of cold air shooting out from the vent in the ceiling. She thought it would strain him to sit like that, but his face wasn’t tense. Even the sharp angles of his cheekbones and his square jaw seemed relaxed.

She tried to make out the words on his T-shirt. The letters were on their side and climbed up instead of across the big yellow box that surrounded them. She could make out
Vampire Weekend
, but what were the other two words? Then she realized their letters were mirror images of the others. Dark jeans and black Converse All Stars rounded out the rest of his outfit.
He must still care a little.
Some of the others stayed in their pajamas all the time and wore slippers.

He looked like any other nineteen-year-old. Actually, he looked much cooler than a typical nineteen-year-old. He could easily be a dead ringer for the tortured lead singer of an indie rock band.

One of the younger ones—he was maybe twenty—walked up to where Caleb was sitting. He was tall, redheaded, and painfully skinny. His thick-lensed, tortoiseshell glasses seemed almost too heavy for him; they kept sliding down the bony bridge of his nose. Two of his friends stood behind him, and they were all laughing. As the leader moved closer to Caleb, the laughter grew louder and frenzied. As uneasy as this made her feel, Anna wouldn’t dare do anything to interfere in case they decided to set their mischievous sights on her.

The leader stood right in front of Caleb and took hold of the arm that was suspended in the air. He easily moved the index finger so that it pointed firmly upward. Then he bent the arm and shoved the finger up into Caleb’s nostril. The laughter was furious now. Caleb sat as still as before, holding the pose that had been arranged for him. The empty expression on his face didn’t change.

Anna’s eyes darted around the room, searching for someone in charge who could do something. Carlene stood by the door, glaring fiercely in the direction of the laughter, trying to figure out what was going on. Even though Anna didn’t like Carlene—she was tough, a little too tough—she felt relieved that at least
someone
was coming to the rescue.

All 220 pounds of Carlene thundered toward the couch. The boys didn’t notice at first.

“What the hell’s goin’ on over there?” she yelled.

A few heads around the common area popped up in response, but most of the torsos remained slumped over. As she came up behind Caleb, Carlene shooed the boys away with her hand. They kept laughing, but they were nervous now and retreated back to the corner as they slapped each other high fives. She came around the front of the couch and saw what they had done.

“What are ya doin’ now?” she shouted. She was out of breath from the walk but managed to shake her finger angrily toward the guys in the corner. “Lord,” she muttered to herself as she took Caleb’s finger out of his nose. Her scrubs stretched defiantly against her body as she moved. They were white with small pink and red hearts.

“I shouldn’t have to deal with these fools,” she mumbled. “Babysittin’ a bunch of rich lunatics day in and day out. And why I bother to get all done up…” She bent Caleb’s index finger back down to join the others and laid both arms down on his lap. After all the activity, she reached one hand up to the top of her head and felt around, surveying the position of each section of hair—the short, dark pieces at the crown were still sticking straight up while the longer, bright red sections cascading down and over her forehead hadn’t budged. Satisfied that each hair was still cemented into place, she walked toward the door. The blend of polyester and cotton rubbed together between her thighs.

The laughter of the boys had died down to a few snickers. Anna didn’t laugh. She wanted to cry, but she would save that for later. Gripping her book tightly, she started reading the words without understanding what they meant. She didn’t want to look at Caleb anymore. He was a reminder that dignity didn’t exist here.

The words. Just focus on the words
.

She’d been admitted only a few days ago, but she was already a quarter of the way through
An American Tragedy
. At this rate it would take her only a couple of days to read all 856 pages. She read it last year as a senior but liked it so much she didn’t mind reading it again. It filled the empty minutes and hours that dragged on, sitting in this place just waiting for nothing to happen. She read so she couldn’t notice what was around her—the dull white walls, the linoleum floor that made a sucking noise when you walked on it, the windows that let in filtered light and nothing else, the door locks that clicked loudly every time someone came or went.

I don’t belong here
became her mantra. She was so angry with her parents for throwing her in this place that she didn’t know what to do with herself. Sure, she wasn’t perfect, but this wasn’t what she needed. They were just punishing her in the cruelest way they knew how.

It wasn’t normal to have crying fits every day, not being able to come up with a reason why. She was sad, deeply sad. For months, it had taken everything she had to make it out of bed and get through the day. Her only goal was to exist, maybe even function. Every hour brought her closer to the end of the day, when she could lie in bed and fall asleep, which was her only escape. But she had to get through every minute, every second leading up to it. The hardest part was dealing with the sick feeling in her stomach. It nagged at her constantly. It was like the sadness collected in her belly and would sit there content to torture her for the rest of her life. Even if she had to live with her parents at home, at least there were distractions there—school, television, music. Here there was nothing to distract her from herself.

So she read.

As for the other patients, she had nothing in common with them. It looked like most of them were out of their minds. Some were parked in front of the television all day. Others sat in a corner, drooling in a daze, unnoticed by anyone except when it was time to take their drugs. But the scariest ones would run around in a panicked terror. Yesterday afternoon an old man was screaming that he had no head.

“Pretty hot, huh?”

Anna flinched. Chrissy had snuck up on her. She was leaning over a nearby table with her elbows resting on the surface, her arms set close together, squeezing her massive cleavage for the benefit of the redheaded agitator and his group of flunkies.

“Uh, what?” Anna said, trying to focus her eyes up toward her face.

“Over there. You were staring at him.” Chrissy nudged her head at Caleb, who’d become reanimated. His body was rounded over a big sketchbook as his hand scribbled furiously.

“What are you talking about?” she snapped. “I wasn’t staring at anyone.”

“Right. You’re such a liar.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Think what you want.” She went back to her book and pretended to read.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Chrissy said as she flipped her long brown hair back behind her shoulder. “He’s
delicious
. What I wouldn’t do to get him alone in a room for five minutes. Mmm. The things I would do to that boy.” She let a moan escape. “Anyway,” she carried on, regaining some composure, “God knows it would do you good to be interested in something else besides that book you plant your nose in.”

Chrissy was trying to be nice to her in the only way she knew how—showing Anna the ropes, since she had been in and out of places like this since she was fifteen. Chrissy’s parents had put her in whenever they couldn’t deal with her. But Anna couldn’t stand listening to her talk about how many guys she had slept with. She made it sound like hundreds, and she was only twenty-three.

“What am I supposed to be doing? Talking to myself, drooling in a corner like the rest of them?” Anna was being mean and knew it, but she couldn’t help herself. All of it was just too much.

Chrissy took a snottier tone. “Calm down. Not everyone is like that.” She relaxed slightly and started examining her nails. She was always complaining how they wouldn’t let her give herself a proper manicure. The doctors were afraid that if she got ahold of a pair of cuticle nippers she might get suicidally creative. “If you’re good, I’ll let you come and hang out with me and the girls.”

The
girls
were all in their twenties. Like Chrissy, one of them was a bipolar recovering addict. The other had tried to kill herself a couple of times. And they all dressed as slutty as possible. Anna didn’t want anything to do with them. She had seen firsthand how they treated the girls who weren’t cool enough by their standards—the snotty remarks, the eye rolls, the way they could make someone feel like a zero. Even in this place, there were cliques that decided for you if you were in or out.

“I’ll pass.”

“Come on.” Her tone softened now, to Anna’s surprise. “I know how hard it can be. The first time I was in I wouldn’t even go into the common area. I just sat in my room by myself, and it made everything worse.”

Regardless of Chrissy’s attempt at being genuine, it only intensified Anna’s anger. “Yeah, well, maybe in a few days when I’m so drugged up I can’t focus my eyes enough to read I’ll stop on over.”