The Murmurings (22 page)

Something flickers at the back of my mind, like a projector trying to play a movie that’s gotten stuck in the reel.

“Juice,” I mutter to the tray of food.

My head is starting to pound harder, and I suspect it’s because I need to eat something. I’m also so thirsty I feel like I’m going to turn into a prune. The juice is looking better and better.

But for some reason, my hand—feeling lightweight and not quite my own in the absence of the restraints—reaches for the blackened piece of toast instead. I eat it fast, almost choking on the charred crumbs. Then I turn to the eggs, which taste excessively salty, and shovel them into my mouth with the spoon they gave me (no sharp objects, I suppose). I move on to the syrupy cocktail before I’ve even finished chewing the eggs. I drink the syrup, and wouldn’t you know it, my headache really does start to subside. The only things left untouched are the cup of pills and the juice.

My mouth has a vaguely metallic taste, and I would give anything to kill that with a little bit of juice. And I’m thirstier than I was before I ate. I feel like my tongue is going to shrivel up and fall out of my mouth.

But I reach for the pills instead. I swallow the first one dry, then the second, producing meager amounts of saliva to slide them to my stomach, a sensation I unfortunately feel due to the ridiculous size of the capsules.

I eye the orange juice again, warily, as if I expect it to do something.

I could leave it untouched, pretend I just didn’t want it. But the same feeling that’s been propelling me all morning tells me that I need to conceal it. I need to look like I’m playing along.

Let them know you’re not going to fight them anymore.

I search the small gray room for convenient hiding places. There are no drains, no potted plants, no holes to pour it down that I can see. It’s liquid, and it’ll smell if I don’t pour it someplace where it’ll get absorbed easily. The cot I’m sitting on doesn’t have thick enough material. The only other thing in the room is the cart the Pigeon rolled in with breakfast.

A few minutes pass while I hold the giant glass of juice in my hand and contemplate what to do. The longer it takes me to find a hiding place for it, the heavier it seems to get. Before long, I can hear squeaking from what I’m assuming is the far end of the hallway. A swipe and the ping of the releasing lock announce my visitor.

Without much thought, I dump the entire contents of the juice on my chest and lap, the sticky, pulpy liquid soaking my cheap cotton scrubs.

“Oh!” the orderly fails to contain his shock. I guess I can’t blame him. I can’t even begin to imagine how ridiculous I look right about now.

“I spilled,” I say, deciding to go with the obvious.

“Uh,” he says, looking around, then behind him, then back at me, then behind him again.

“You got a towel or something?” I ask him, for once feeling like I have the upper hand in this place. It’s sad that it took me being on this side of its doors to feel that way. I’ve never seen this orderly before, and it’s a shame that I haven’t. I get the sense that I could have gotten a lot more information from this guy than from the likes of the Pigeon.

“I don’t . . . you were supposed to drink that,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s typically the idea with juice,” I shoot back, then try smiling. To my surprise, he smiles back, then catches himself.

“Can I get cleaned up somewhere?” I ask, and he looks behind him again.

“You’re supposed to be in the courtyard in ten minutes,” he says, like I’m supposed to know what that means. He seems to catch himself again, and his face screws in on itself like a button sewn to a shirt too tightly.

They want to see what happens when they put the two of us together.

“Well, I can’t go outside like this,” I say, then try smiling again. “And honestly, I don’t know when I’ve last showered. I can’t really remember how long I’ve been here, you know?”

He sighs impatiently, then signals for me to follow him.

He looks to his left and his right, his left again, then points
a nicotine-stained finger toward the end of a long, gray corridor, and I quickly locate the sign that says
WOMEN
.

“There are showers in there,” he says. “I’ll find a female worker to go in there with you.”

“I think I can figure it out on my own,” I say, a little taken aback.

“Rules,” he says.

I start to head down the hallway, then turn back to the orderly. “Can I get a clean set of clothes?”

“I’ll find some new ones,” he says, looking more agitated now that he’s taken a peek at his watch.

“Shit,” he mumbles. “Just hurry up.”

He scurries down the hall in the opposite direction, and my heart races the moment he leaves my sight.

Because I’m alone.

I know there’s no way I’ll make it very far unattended. But I creep after the jittery orderly just the same. Sadly, all I find when I round the corner is another gray, nondescript hallway with its own set of unmarked gray doors. I jiggle one handle, then another. None budge.

“Come on,” I whisper. “Isn’t there anything here that isn’t locked?”

But I already know the answer to that.

I’m just about to retreat back to the showers when I hear the
familiar swipe of a keycard and ping of a lock undoing itself. It sounds like it’s coming from several doors down, but I’m too far away from the corner to duck around it without notice.

“Come on, let’s get you out to the courtyard,” a woman says impatiently.

An orderly emerges from one of the rooms, and I immediately recognize her as the woman who was operating the admittance doors the day I came to pick up Nell’s box of things. She’s a pucker-lipped lady roughly my mom’s age, and she’s pulling a thin arm in her tight grasp. On the other end of that arm is a petite blonde with enormous eyes whom I also recognize; she’s the girl who shot down the hallway screaming and had to be restrained by the Pigeon when I came to see Kenny—the day he gave me Nell’s poem.

“What are you doing out here?” the pucker-lipped orderly asks. “And where’s Robbie?”

“I don’t know who Robbie is, but I can’t take a shower before I have new clothes to change into,” I say, knowing instinctively that my defiance isn’t going to go over well with this one.

She has a similar huff to Robbie’s. Then she turns to the blond girl whose arm she’s still grasping.

“Courtyard,” she commands with a look that conveys the consequences for not following directions. “You know the drill. Ring the bell and someone will meet you on the other side of the door.

The blond girl responds by blinking her giant eyes and turns to go.

The orderly ducks into a room to our right and, with one foot propping open the door behind her, leans toward a shelf stacked with blue scrubs, sorted in piles labeled small, medium, large, and extra-large.

While the orderly is busying herself with choosing the right size for me, I hear a hissing whisper at the end of the hallway.

“That’s one way to get rid of it,” the girl says, then winks one of her giant eyes at me.

The orderly emerges with a folded pair of pants, shirt, and towel.

“Make it quick,” she says, giving me a slight push toward the bathroom.

But I barely register the orderly’s command. Because my memory has suddenly awoken from its drugged haze. I haven’t been imagining that whispering voice. And now I have a face to go with it.

T
HE “COURTYARD” IS ANYTHING BUT.
It’s essentially a rock garden, and really not even that considering it’s composed of maybe two types of gravel—one red and one brown. The yard spans half the length of the building’s back wall, probably the length of three houses squished side by side in a typical Phoenix neighborhood. And the courtyard is longer than it is deep. It reaches maybe twenty yards back before it’s stopped short by a forbiddingly high cinderblock retaining wall. Concrete sidewalks weave through the garden, and weeds and cacti sprinkle the empty spaces in between. I can’t help but wonder how dangerous a place like this might be for someone with actual psychological problems. So many sharp objects.

It’s chilly out. Winter has finally arrived. Goose bumps prick my arms, but I’m not about to ask for anything warmer to wear. Something tells me the Pigeon would be more than happy to fit me with a straitjacket to keep my arms warm.

There’s a fog of cigarette smoke in the air. A cluster of about five orderlies stand around chuckling and grumbling, some smoking. They’re all in matching white uniforms, which are creased at bellies and knees—all except for the Pigeon’s. She looks perfectly in order, not a single hair unpinned, not a wrinkle marring her uniform. There’s no sign of Dr. Keller.

I scan the rest of the “courtyard” and almost miss the blond girl altogether. She’s at the corner farthest from the orderlies, the shadow of Oakside’s exterior wall swallowing her in its shade. She sits on a backless concrete bench, her knees making a shelf under her chin. Her wide eyes find me and signal for me to come and sit beside her. After another look at the distracted orderlies, I do—but not without first noticing the Pigeon noticing us. She stays where she is, but her eyes never leave me. I angle myself on the bench so I can talk to the girl while keeping one eye on the cluster of orderlies in the distance.

“You’re going to have to find a better way of getting rid of your juice,” the blond girl says in a voice so low, I almost can’t hear her. Up close, I see her giant eyes are a brown so light,
they’re almost yellowish. “They’re going to catch on if you keep spilling on yourself. Nobody’s that clumsy.”

“What are you talking about? Exactly how long do you think I’m going to be stuck in this place?!”

“Shhh!” she scolds, shifting her gaze toward the orderlies. The Pigeon’s got her laser-tight focus on me.

“You’re going to be here as long as they want you to be here, and it’s best if you just get used to that right away,” she says, her voice even more hushed than before. “Unless of course you have someone on the outside who wants to get you out.”

My stomach twists into a tight knot. The girl’s implication is unmistakable. What she doesn’t say is what I’ve been trying to deny since my mind has been lucid: No one is coming for me. Mom and Aunt Becca have given me up. What can Evan do for me now? Even if he wanted to get me out, how could he without Mom’s permission?

I catch the Pigeon’s unforgiving stare. My eyes find the retaining wall behind her. I know it has to be my imagination, but it looks as if the wall is moving. As if it’s crawling toward me at a steady pace, pressing the courtyard into a tighter and tighter strip of concrete. My palms are cold, and when I look down at my hands, I realize they’re shaking.

“How long have I been here?” I demand of this girl I don’t
even know. But for some reason, she seems to have answers.

“Two days,” she says.

My hands cease their trembling for just a moment. Two days. My mind has only been clouded and prodded for two days. Maybe two days is not enough time to admit I’ve been abandoned. Maybe.

“Do you know how they convinced my mom to sign me away?” I ask, the trembling returning, this time all over my body. If Oakside could convince my own mother to give up on me, what hope did I have?

And for the first time since seeing her, the blond girl’s eyes lower to the ground.

“What? What is it?” The knot in my stomach cinches tighter.

“Kenny,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes closed, her mouth twitching into a frown.

It’s as though a locked door has unlatched in my brain. Heavy fog dissipates to a fine mist, and the mist parts to reveal a blur of pictures.

Coal-black eyes and giant hands gripping at stale coffee and stale air.

Shouting in a car.

Evan’s pleading, calloused hands.

Nell’s finely curled writing across pale blue lines.

Flattened, primary-colored pine needles with
MM
stamped on their backs.

Kenny’s wide red face, hanging upside down.

Now it’s just the two of you.

I pull my knees to my chest like the girl next to me, feeling colder than before. I can’t stop my body from shaking, and I’m fooling myself to think it’s just the weather. My throat is so dry, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to swallow again.

By the time I finally glance up at the blond girl, she’s opened her enormous orbs to reveal small puddles.

I want to ask her more, but I feel utterly paralyzed.

“Kenny knew what he was doing,” she begins. “He’d had enough. When they saw you pull into the parking lot the other night, they knew you were coming to talk to him again. They just didn’t know what about. That’s what they bribed Kenny to find out. Dr. Keller knew that once he got you to talk, they’d find a way to keep you here.”

She pauses, shifting her eyes back to the orderlies. I don’t follow her gaze this time. I’m too afraid. When her eyes return, they shift downward again, seeking solace in her knees.

“Kenny told me earlier that he wouldn’t let it continue, that if you came back, he’d end it. I didn’t know what he meant. Kenny’s been . . . he’s been gone, you know, men
tally, for a long time now. He’s been here longer than anyone, since before Dr. Keller even arrived, when Gladys was more than just his sidekick. She was in charge—some sort of administrator. I think Kenny’s been in and out of institutions for most of his life. Anyway, when you came back, he just snapped. They promised him all the green Legos he wanted if he got you talking about how you’ve been hearing things. They said they’d take it from there. But Kenny had other plans.”

Now she looks up at me, an urgency filling her face. I have never seen a person so young look so old. From far away, I would have bet money she was my age, maybe a year or two younger. But close up, I wonder.

“He got his hands on a syringe. He knocked you out. And before the orderlies could get to him, he brought you to The Room, then busted the exterior keypad.”

“The room with the mirrors,” I whisper.

The girl with blond hair blinks in response. “I guess Kenny decided he was going to try to stop what they’re doing here. He was going to let it get him. I guess he figured he’d show them what would happen if he unleashed that . . .
thing
. If they were willing to play with fire, he’d give them fire. I don’t think he thought about what would happen to you, honestly. I think he just . . . wanted it all to end.”