The Murmurings (5 page)

Like a ritual, I hold the journal in my lap for a second. I don’t know if I’m sending up a prayer, and if so, to whom, but it just feels like the respectful thing to do. I doubt she ever shared this with anyone.

Well, almost anyone.

The marbled cardboard cover stares up at me, and like I always do, I think about the first day I laid eyes on it almost six months ago. I still can’t understand Nell’s reasons for fleeing to Jerome, with its dust and thin air. When I went to see where they’d found her, the notebook had been left for me on the driver’s seat in my unlocked car. I nearly collapsed when I first saw her handwriting. I actually expected her to be there, alive, waiting for me under the nearby tree. Waiting there under the tree where the police found her hanging in a way no one should ever hang from anything. Like a mistake of nature.

I ease the journal open as carefully as I can. The cheap binding is already beginning to release its grip on the thin pages. The book automatically opens to the middle, where someone pried a page from it. I trace my finger along the soft tear marks, willing the page back into place. Then I flip back to the place where I left off. I know all her entries practically by heart, but each time I read them, the pain feels fresh and alive.

Nell David

November 1

Anger is the worst thing to feel in this place. And even though no one tells you it’s dangerous, you’d have to be . . . well . . . crazy not to know the trouble that anger can get you into here. They put angry people in restraints and dope them up with brightly colored pills. And there are tons of pills—Dixie cups overflowing with them, it seems. And they’re huge, those pills. I can’t believe you’re actually supposed to swallow them.

There’s a guy. I call him LM. He seems really tall to me, but I saw his chart once—the orderlies leave them around like gum wrappers—and he’s only five foot ten. I guess he seems taller because he’s built like a cube. His stomach hangs over his pants, and his shirt is tight around his shoulders, too. He’s older than me. Maybe even in his thirties or forties.
It’s hard to say. Everyone looks old around here. For some reason, the orderlies shave LM’s head every three days or so like clockwork. They won’t let even a half inch grow before they take a razor to it. I’d bet it’s because he pulls it out. He has deep grooves along the sides of his head. They look like trenches made by nails. But it’s his eyes that I notice the most about him. They’re bright and blue, and they’re always darting from one end of the room to the other. He never looks content. Maybe that’s why I decided he and I were going to be friends.

I get the sense he wants to talk to me, too. When other people stare at him, he hurls a wad of spit at them. But when he catches me watching him, he just nods slightly, or blinks really slowly, like a cat. But he never says a single word. Not to me.

Whenever he has a major freak-out, Dr. Keller or one of the other people in white take him down the same hall they took me down last week. The one with the room of mirrors.

I close the journal with a trembling breath. Because I know that even though I’m not the reason she ended up in Oakside, I could have done something to stop it. I could have said something. To my mom. To Aunt Becca. Instead I did the worst thing possible: nothing.

I ease the journal back between the mattress and the mattress pad.

“G’night,” I say to no one in particular, but for some reason, it feels good to say it aloud.

I’
M NOT
J
UST LATE FOR
school today. I’m so late that I’ve actually missed first period, and I’m close to missing second. I considered ditching school altogether, but it’s Friday—Aunt Becca’s day off—and sometimes she does a drive-by to check on my mom. I learned that one the hard way. At least in a few hours I can go home and forget how totally screwed I am in the grades department. Of course, whenever I’m home, I remember how totally screwed I am in the family-and-everything-else department.

I slept like crap last night. I had a dream about Nell, as usual. The one where I see her in the middle of a clearing, a single, impossibly tall pine tree beside her. She looks over one shoulder, then the other, like she’s being hunted. I woke
up sweating and scrunched in a ball under my bedspread, wondering, as I do every time I have this nightmare, if that same terror is the last emotion Nell felt before she died.

Then I had a dream about Evan. That was new. In the dream he kissed me, which was so incredible it makes my skin hot just thinking about it. But then he pulled away and looked at me with so much disgust. He said something after that, or at least he tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear him. He was moving his mouth, but instead of words coming out, it was that horrible murmuring.

“Sophie D.,” says a voice that brings sweat rushing through my pores.

Evan’s at the end of the nearly empty hall, leaning against a locker by a window. The sun casts a harsh glare over him so I have to squint to make out even the outline of his face.

“Oh, hey,” I chirp back, trying for a casual tone, as if last night wasn’t the most awkward evening ever. Let’s see. Uncomfortable phone conversation: check. Abandonment in a parked car while I disappear into a loony bin for what must have felt like years: check. Retreat back to his car as fast as he possibly can once we’re within sight of my house: check.

“What’s up?” I finish.
One profound response after the next. God,
c
ould I be any lamer?

Evan looks at an imaginary watch on his wrist, then shakes his head slowly, or at least I think he does. Staring into that glare is starting to give me a headache.

“Forty-five minutes late is what’s up,” he says, a mocking tone of disapproval coating his words. I put my head down to hide the smile I can’t keep from my lips. Does that mean he was waiting for me to get here?

“Yeah, kinda got a slow start this morning.”

“Well, you’re going to need to know what you missed in chemistry,” he says, still pretending to scold me.

“Aren’t you in physics first period?” I ask, genuinely confused.

“Is that your way of telling me you don’t want to hang out with me tomorrow?” He’s still leaning against the lockers like he doesn’t have a care in the world, but something’s shifted in his tone.

“Er, no. I mean, yes. I mean, sure,” I stumble through every possible answer.

“So, does that mean we’re hanging out, or . . . ?”

My heart starts racing so fast that I’m afraid to say anything for fear it’ll jump out my throat and fall onto the floor.
Is he seriously asking me out?
And then reality strikes: What if he wants to come over again, and this time actually come inside?

I picture my mom all boozed up in her bathrobe, swirling
ice in her glass, rattling a bottle of Ambien in her pocket like a hidden maraca.

“We can’t go to my house,” I blurt.

“Good!” he says a little too quickly (not that I blame him), then follows with, “I mean, I already had something else in mind. Meet me in front of my house tomorrow? Around eleven?”

“All right.”

The creak of a metal door opening at the end of the hall breaks the echo between our voices.

“Gold!”

Evan’s hand slips from the locker, and I can see his silhouette stiffen like a soldier coming to attention. The door momentarily blocks the sun’s glare, and I can make out Evan’s adorable profile, even with Coach Tarza’s stubby neck competing for space.

“You planning on joining us for class today, Rookie, or spending the whole period flirting in the hall?”

“Just on my way in, Coach,” he says, breezing past Coach Tarza with only a glance back at me. And it was probably my imagination, but I swear I saw him flash me a wink.

“How ’bout you, Ms. David? Trying to set a record for most Sweeps in one semester?”

“Nope!”

I spin toward Mrs. Dodd’s classroom, practically tripping over my own ankle. When I get there, I swing open the door, slamming it into its doorstop and shocking the entire class—including Mrs. Dodd—into rapt attention. All eyes are on me sweating with God-knows-what expression all over my face.

“Sophie, just in time,” Mrs. Dodd practically sings.

I slide into the closest chair and crack open my copy of
As I Lay Dying
, wanting desperately to lose myself in the strange poetics of William Faulkner.

“Now, we were just about to get into the mother’s role in the lives of her sons,” Mrs. Dodd recaps for the class, but really I know it’s for my benefit since I’m late. “Who can tell me why the kids continue on this journey to bury their mother?”

“Because it’s their mom,” someone speaks up.

“But what about that relationship keeps them going?” Mrs. Dodd presses.

“Because love isn’t always about sparks and tears and all that,” I find myself saying.

“Go on, Sophie,” Mrs. Dodd encourages me in her quiet, motherly voice, a voice that I shouldn’t be hearing in the classroom, but at home.

“Because sometimes things happen in your family that are out of your control. They happen to you or around you, and
sometimes you just do things your family needs you to do, like keeping your mouth shut instead of saying something that’ll only start a fight, because if you actually stopped to think about it, you’d realize how pointless life is.”

Mrs. Dodd says something about what I just said, something that I’m sure would be encouraging if I were in any frame of mind to listen. But I don’t want to think about family and obligation and keeping my shit together right now. I want to think about whatever Evan Gold is planning for tomorrow, and why the hell he’d want to plan it for me.

Nell David

November 12

I met someone today. It’s not often that I can say that. This place isn’t exactly known for its social scene. Dr. Keller says making sarcastic remarks is a defense mechanism. I imagine he’ll read this at some point. It’s not like I have any expectation of privacy in here. I hope he reads this and understands it’s not a defense mechanism, it’s me giving him the finger. I can’t really see how journaling is much different from talking to myself, and isn’t that exactly the kind of behavior that lands a person in a place like this? Whatever. The orderlies say a lot of things that are supposed to explain away questions like that, but mostly, they provide
gelcap answers in little white Dixie cups. And no, Dr. Keller, if you’re reading this, I haven’t been hiding the teal ones. And if I was, good luck finding them. I totally feel like I’m channeling Sophie’s rebelliousness right now.

But this guy. This guy is different. He doesn’t act like the other orderlies or smoke like some do. Especially the man-child. That one sweats and smokes more than any of them. This new guy, he said he’s been working here forever, but today’s the first time I saw him. He brought my lunch (dry turkey on white with a banana—delish). He has to be the tallest person I’ve ever met in my life. So of course that’s the first question I asked him: How tall are you? What is it with me? I can’t seem to filter anything when I get embarrassed or nervous. It’s like whatever is in my head just falls out of my mouth. Only Sophie would understand. But the guy barely flinched. Six foot nine. Then he told me his name is Adam. A good name. So nice it doesn’t need a nickname.

Most orderlies set the tray down and leave without a word. Occasionally, the old one tells me to “eat up, dear” (“dear” . . . seriously). But this guy sat with me for practically ten minutes. He asked me what my name was, and how long I’d been here. It was weird having a normal conversation with someone. We talked about poetry, about T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and Sylvia Plath. He caught
me with my journal open and saw a poem. And he asked me if I write those a lot. I have no idea why, but I started crying. Just sat there bawling like a two-year-old.

And that was that. He might have left quicker if I’d lit him on fire. It’s hard to say who was more embarrassed.

I can’t imagine he’ll be back after the way I fell apart. But if he does come back, I’d talk with him again.

E
VAN’S LEANING INTO HIS CAR
when I pull up to the front of his house, which was as easy to find as he promised. He lives a couple of neighborhoods over in one of the “newer” developments, which means his house was built in the eighties not the seventies. His front yard is sparse but manicured. That’s more than I can say for ours.

He doesn’t hear me as I pull up—remarkable considering I’m driving my mom’s rumbling old Buick. He’s holding an armful of what look to be empty Gatorade bottles and take-out bags from every fast-food restaurant within a five-mile radius. I’m out of the car before he looks up, startled, embarrassment overtaking his face.

“Just cleaning up a little,” he says, depositing the trash
into the recycling bin at the curb and wiping his hands on his jeans.

“You kinda have a thing for Gatorade,” I observe, trying not to sound like I’m making fun of him. I’m not good at that, though, and everything comes out sounding snide. At least that’s what Mom says. Mom has charm, or at least she used to. So did Nell. I have sarcasm.

“I have a thing for whatever keeps me hydrated so I don’t heave up my lunch during practice,” Evan says, wiping the sweat from his upper lip with his forearm. Then he licks his lips absently to rewet them. I look down at my shoes to keep myself from wishing he’d do that a hundred more times.

“So where are we going?” I ask, trying to sound like it doesn’t really matter to me.

“It’s a surprise.” As I reach for the door handle, he’s at my side in an instant, pushing away my hand gently, then letting his fingers linger on my skin. A cool rush surges through me.

“Here, lemme get that,” he says, drawing his shirt up from the bottom to cover his fingers and open the passenger door. “It gets kinda hot.”

I catch a glimpse of his stomach and the seam of his gray boxer shorts poking above the waist of his pants. Once again, I find my shoes to be the most interesting thing in the universe.