The Masked Truth (14 page)

“Aimee took it from him,” I say, “and she said she put it in the therapy room or up here. But we couldn’t find it downstairs.”

I’m searching as I talk. Even if the phone isn’t here, we should look for anything useful before we check Aimee’s room. Max and Brienne join in, as Brienne says, “Aimee’s still alive too? Good. I thought she’d come with us, but she must have stayed behind with Gideon. Where is she now?”

Brains splattered on the wall
.

I don’t answer. I can’t. Max says, “No,” and that’s all he says, and Brienne says, “What?” Then, “Oh.” And, “Are you sure?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to remember
how
sure we are, but of course I do. I see Aimee there and open my eyes fast, dispelling the memory. I take Lorenzo’s knapsack and dump it onto the floor as Max says, “We’re sure.”

“And Lorenzo?”

“He … was holding on,” I manage. “I … I don’t know if he’s still …”

“Gideon?”

“No.”

“Th-they’re both dead? Plus Maria? I thought you said even injuries in hostage situations are rare.”

“Hey,” Aaron says.

Brienne presses her palms to her eyes. “Sorry, sorry. I just … I don’t understand how it went so wrong.”

“Ask Gideon,” Aaron says. “Oh, wait, you can’t. And, yeah, that’s a shitty thing to say about a dead guy, but I’ll say it anyway. He set them off, and once Maria was dead, everything changed. They can’t walk away after that.”

Brienne shakes her head vehemently. “I know guys like them. Well, not exactly like that. But guys who’ve been in jail or should be. My brother—” She swallows hard. “I know people who’ve made mistakes, and that’s what this is.”

“So they kidnapped us by mistake?” Max says.

“I don’t mean that. I mean that shooting Maria was a mistake. Then with Gideon, it was because he shot their partner. It was panic. That’s all. Once they calm down, it’ll be fine.”

“No,” I say, as gently as I can. “It won’t. I heard them when they shot Aimee. This is all about cleanup. No loose ends. No witnesses.”

Her hands are shaking and I put down Lorenzo’s knapsack and pull her into a hug.

“The only way we get out alive is to get ourselves out,” Aaron says. “Focus on that. Finish up here fast and then check Aimee’s room.”

He opens the side pocket on Lorenzo’s backpack. As I sift through what I dumped, Brienne and Max look elsewhere. Aaron tosses the bag aside, and I hear an odd crinkling noise. I start going through the pockets again. He says nothing, just moves to the door to stand guard.

I find what made the noise. It’s a piece of paper shoved up against the side of an inner pocket, easy to miss. I take it out. It’s a photocopied blueprint of the building we’re in. A bunch of rooms are labeled in marker. Therapy. Aimee. Mine. Girls A. Girls B. Boys A. Boys B. Bathroom A. Bathroom B. Storage A. Storage B. Kitchen. Rec Room.

Max is looking over my shoulder. “Well, that’s handy in this maze,” he says.

“You’d think he’d have kept it with him.”

Max shrugs. “Memorized it, put it away. That’s what I’d do.”

Brienne is beside me now, looking. “Kitchen.” She smiles. “Where there’s a kitchen, there are knives. We’ll search Aimee’s room for that cell and then see if we can find a weapon.”

Maria’s cell phone isn’t in Aimee’s room. Nor are Max’s meds in his jeans. The moment he opens his bag, he stops and looks at Aaron and Brienne.

“Did you search my things?” he asks.

Aaron bristles. “No, asshole. I didn’t rifle through your crap hoping you’ve got something worth stealing.”

“I’m not asking if you nicked anything. I’m asking if you searched for a mobile or a weapon, which would be understandable.
Someone
has been in my bag.”

He pulls out his jeans and checks the pockets. I can tell by his expression they’re empty. He shakes the jeans upside down to double-check.

“They might have fallen out in your bag,” I say.

He empties it as I whisper for Brienne and Aaron to go check for weapons or anything useful in the other rooms. Once they’re gone, I squeeze Max’s arm. It’s shaking.

“I need them, Riley,” he says. “I really need them. Like”—a glance at his watch—“thirty minutes ago.”

“Do you feel okay?” I ask. “Do you need to lie down?”

“It’s not …” He shakes his head sharply. “I just need them. Now.”

I help him search his bag. We take out everything and shake it. Then we do it all a second time.

“Why would someone go through my bag?” He turns to me. “Check yours.”

I do, but it’s exactly as I packed it. Maybe one of the counselors went through Max’s, suspecting he’d smuggled in contraband—a phone or a game player or a bottle of booze. If the pills fell out, they could have mistaken them for a very different kind of drug.

I suggest this to Max.

“I did make a smart comment to Lorenzo when I arrived,” he says.

I sigh.

“He reminded me that all medications had to be turned in, even aspirin. I said I had some pot, but it wasn’t medicinal, so that was all right.”

I sigh again.

“Let this be a lesson to me about my smart mouth, right?” he says.

“I never said it.”

“You’re thinking it loud enough that you don’t have to.”

The English language, one might argue, has far too many words. Sometimes, though, it simply doesn’t have enough. Anxiety is what one feels when walking into a test. That is, it’s what a normal boy feels walking into an academic test. Max never had that problem. A year ago, though, he discovered his own special brand of test anxiety, the one where he walked into yet another doctor’s or specialist’s office, searching for answers that never came.

Your son has schizophrenia, Mrs. Cross
.

That can’t be. He’s too young.

Typical onset is young adulthood. Late teens is early, but not unduly so
.

I’m precocious, Mum. Aren’t you proud of me? No? Right-i-o, then. Onward and upward. Or downward, because there’s really nowhere to go from here but down
.

Stop saying that.

I’m being honest. You raised me to be honest, you and Dad. Face facts, son. And that fact is that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men …

Stop. Just stop. We just need to get you a proper diagnosis. Max can’t have schizophrenia, doctor. He’s not paranoid.
He doesn’t suffer from delusions of persecution. He was confused with his friend, but he never thought he was in danger personally. Therefore, it can’t be paranoid schizophrenia.

We don’t use that term anymore. We now recognize schizophrenia as a spectrum of disorders, which often doesn’t include paranoia for someone Max’s age
.

But he doesn’t have all the other symptoms either. His speech is clear. His personal hygiene is just fine. There’s no flattened affect. No social withdrawal …

That’s why it’s a spectrum, Mrs. Cross. Think of it as a buffet, not a set table
.

A buffet. Ah, that helps. Yes, indeed. I’ll have the delusions and the visual hallucinations with a small side of audio hallucinations and disorganized thought. And hold the lack of bathing, please, because I’m not ever going to lead an ordinary life with that one. No bathing, no friends, no girlfriends.

Umm, wait. Better strike the friends and girlfriends anyway. Delusions and hallucinations really aren’t conducive to a proper social life.

Another doctor. Another failed test.

Fail, fail, fail. That’s all you do these days, isn’t it, Maximus? Make a mockery of your name. Greatest, indeed. Greatest disappointment ever
.

Then his father …

Stop fighting the diagnosis, Alice
.

But he’s not
—

Yes, he is, damn it. Stop fighting and just get him fixed up
.

Fixed up. Yes, sir, Dad. Stop messing around, Mum, and fix me up. That’s your job, isn’t it? Fix the mess that is your son. Get him on the proper meds, and it’ll all be fine. Right as rain, old chap. You’ll be right as rain. Just as soon as we get these meds sorted. Well, except for the side effects and the fact that you can never stop taking the medications and that at any point they might lose their effectiveness and
you won’t know it because it’ll seem normal to you. Crazy is your normal, Max. Live with it. Or don’t. Your choice.

Your choice.

He remembers when he agreed with his mother and fought the diagnosis and the meds, convinced they didn’t understand, he was fine, better than fine, more alive than ever, everything brighter, sharper, clearer. The world had snapped into focus. It made sense in a way it rarely did to a boy still a month from his seventeenth birthday. The meds muted that world, crushed his creativity, doused his spirit. Why were they trying to control him when he was so much better now?

What saved Max, as much as he hated to think it, was attacking Justin. Once the medication stabilized him enough that he realized what he’d done, the horror of that memory kept him taking those meds, would always keep him taking them. What if that hadn’t happened? If it had been a slow build to a violent break? Or no violent break at all? Would he have refused the meds once he turned eighteen? Left home if his parents tried to force them on him? Ended up like the untreated schizophrenics you see in the streets, homeless and filthy, muttering and ranting to himself? He can’t think of that. It terrifies him almost as much as the memory of what he tried to do to his best friend.

Terrified: caused to feel extreme fear
.

He will admit he’s a little terrified right now, following Riley down the hall. He’s overdue for his meds. Thirty minutes and ticking, and he’s starting to sweat, catching a whiff of …

“Just a moment,” he whispers, and he slips into the room, grabs his deodorant and slathers it on.

Yes, oh, yes, wouldn’t want to smell bad around a pretty girl. Can’t blow your shot, Max. Even if you don’t have a chance in hell
.

That’s not it.

Oh, I know. It’s not about the girl. It’s about the symptoms. Ignore a faint whiff of body odor during a life-threatening situation and it might be that “lack of attention to hygiene” sign you’re so worried about
.

Or maybe the fact he worried about it was a sign of something else. Paranoia.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
.

He’s back to Riley now, and they catch up with Brienne and Aaron, who confirm they’ve found nothing useful. On to the kitchen, then.

Anxiety is not what he feels, walking down that hall and then the steps, every creak and shadow making him jump, certain he’s not seeing actual dangers but those that exist only in his mind. Certain the meds have worn off already.

No, “anxiety” is too weak a word.

Panic: sudden, uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior
.

Also not correct, because it is, for now, controllable. He tells himself it’s not possible for the meds to wear off so fast. He’s asked the doctors about that, as he asks about every possible detail, trying to make sense of it, to bring order to the chaos.

Not order. Control. That’s what he needed. That’s what he’d always had. It’s why he’d never felt those so-called butterflies before an exam. Because he knew he had studied to the best of his ability, and he’d considered and managed all variables and therefore he would get the top mark in the class, because he always did. It was simply a matter of control.

Likewise, schizophrenia could be controlled. Or that was the theory. After months of changing medications, they finally seemed to find a cocktail that worked.

Cocktail: an alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or
several spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice, lemonade or cream
.

Mmm, not quite right, old chap, though it’d be lovely, really. But no. Sadly, no.

Cocktail: a mixture of substances or factors, especially when dangerous or unpleasant in its effects
.

Now that,
that
, was the proper definition. Terrifyingly accurate, though Max suspected his doctor’s vocabulary was not quite as advanced as his own, and when he called it a cocktail, the man simply meant a mixture, not realizing his word choice had an added nuance.

One thing about attempting to find order—no,
control
—was that Max had asked how long he could go without the pills before he risked ill effects. The first doctor, back in Jolly Old England, had refused to answer, apparently suspecting Max was trying to stave off side effects by stretching his meds as far as possible. Which was not the case at all, so when he’d come over—crossed the pond, as they say … does anyone actually say that?—he’d been much more specific in his questions and backed them up with explanations. Which had still not worked with Yankee doctor number one, but his mother had recognized the problem and found him another psychiatrist, one more capable of treating her precious—and precocious—son with the respect he deserved.

The answer … ah, yes, there was a point here, wasn’t there? The answer was that while he should endeavor to always take his pills on time, if some emergency prevented him from doing so, it would be hours before they began to lose effectiveness, and even then it was only that—a loss of effectiveness, not a complete and sudden crash into the depths of schizophrenia.

Which meant he was not panicked. Yet he was beyond anxious.

More than anxious. Less than panicked. Is there a word for that?

There didn’t seem to be. They ran on a scale. Apprehensive, nervous, dismayed, frightened, anxious, panicked. There was a step missing there, the stage past stomach-clenching anxiety and before full-blown panic.

Alarm, perhaps?

Alarm: an anxious awareness of danger
.

Yes, perhaps that was it.

“Is everything okay?” Riley whispers.

“Right as rain.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s a small smile there too. Yes, right as rain. Just playing with words. Keeps my mind occupied. One has to find the proper term. Exactly the proper one.