Ultraviolet (5 page)

“Alison,” said Kirk. “She’s new. Hey, want a space?” He nudged out one of the empty chairs with his foot.

“Space,” echoed Sanjay.

“The final frontier,” said Kirk helpfully. “Or a place to sit, whatever. You gonna join us?”

The other boy didn’t take his eyes off me. “Don’t know her.”

“Crap,” muttered Kirk. “I thought we were over this,” and then more loudly, “Go ahead and quiz her if you want, ’Jay, but can you get out of the aisle first? C’mon, grab a seat.”

Sanjay’s eyes widened, white showing around the brown. “Don’t
know
her—”

With a sigh Kirk pushed his tray aside, ducked under the table, and came up beside me, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “There, take my spot. Cherie’s okay, right? You know Cherie.”

Reluctantly, Sanjay sat.

“Can I do the questions this time?” asked Kirk. “You tell me if I miss anything.” He turned to face me, sticking up his thumb in the manner of a fake microphone. “All right, stranger, what’s your name? First, middle, and last.”

This was the weirdest dinner conversation I’d ever had. “Alison Marie Jeffries.”

“Age?”

“Sixteen. Well, seventeen next month.”

“Ooh, I love an older woman,” said Kirk, mock-leering. “Favorite color?”

The color of serenity, of feeling safe and confident and whole. On the piano, it was the B-flat an octave below middle C; in the alphabet, the first letter of my name. “Violet,” I said.

“So what’s your psychosis?”

I hesitated.

“Oh, come on, like we’re not all screwed up here,” Kirk said. “You wanna know my special brand of crazy? I’m bi. And I light stuff on fire.”

Cherie rolled her eyes. “He means bi-
polar
,” she told me. “Heavy on the manic, in case you hadn’t guessed. He’s in and out of this place like it’s his personal cuckoo clock.”

Kirk didn’t even pause. “Roberto’s got major depression, Sanjay thinks his parents were brainwashed by aliens, and Cherie—”

“—wouldn’t even be here if my doctor wasn’t an idiot,” interrupted Cherie. “I have a tumor in my stomach. That’s why I can’t eat.”

“Yeah, sure. Like we can’t tell what your issues are, Skinny.” Kirk tipped his chair back on two legs and teetered there a second before thumping down again. “That leaves you, new girl. You want me to guess? Bet I can get it in one try.”

“The doctors aren’t really sure yet,” I said hastily, not wanting to know how crazy Kirk thought I was. “I was fine until—”
until I killed Tori
—“a couple of weeks ago, and then I had this big . . . panic attack, or breakdown, or something like that. They’re still trying to figure it out.”

Kirk gave me a skeptical look, but he didn’t question me further. He turned to Sanjay. “So what do you say? Is she legit?”

Sanjay hunched his shoulders, which made him look like a cartoon vulture, and shook his head.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” Kirk tapped the back of my hand. “Show him your arms.”

Until now, Sanjay’s behavior had struck me as simultaneously sad and funny. This, however, hit all too close to home. Feeling like I’d swallowed an icicle sideways, I stretched both my arms across the table, turning them palms up, then down again.

“See?” said Kirk. “She’s good.”

Sanjay relaxed. “Okay.”

“What was that about?” I asked.

I expected Kirk to answer, but to my surprise, Sanjay did. “They look like us,” he said, “but they’re not really human. They’re here to spy on us and use us in their experiments.”

“You haven’t seen any of Them around here lately, though, right?” said Kirk. “It’s just Dr. Wart.”

“It’s War
d
,” said Cherie, with an exasperated glance at Kirk. “You think you’re so cute.”

“I’m not?” asked Kirk, adding “Ow!” as she kicked him under the table.

It took me a minute to realize who they were talking about, but then I remembered. He’d given me pills for my migraine when I first came in. “The medical doctor, you mean?” I said. “The one with the mustache like a dead mouse?”

Kirk hiccuped with laughter.

“It’s not funny,” interrupted Sanjay, agitated. “He’s got the mark. He’s one of them.”

My mouth went dry. “Mark? What kind of mark?”

“Here.” He tapped the inside of his forearm. “They all have it. But only I can see it. That’s why they put me in here.”

I slid back in my chair, more disturbed than ever. Sanjay was paranoid, anyone could see that. And yet his delusions and my experiences had at least one detail in common . . .

“I am so sick of Tori Beaugrand,” said Melissa bitterly, as we left the auditions for our eighth-grade musical. “She can’t even sing, so how is it fair to make her Alice? I had that part wrapped.”

In the corridor behind us the custodian was running his floor polisher, filling my head with a wobbly green noise that tasted like mouthwash. “I know,” I said distractedly. “You did really well.”

And she had, though I’d found it hard to concentrate on her audition with Tori sitting just a few chairs away, buzzing at me. What I didn’t say was that Tori was by far the better actress, much as I hated to admit it. Melissa delivered her lines like a talented thirteen-year-old girl pretending to be Alice in Wonderland; but when Tori opened her mouth she’d not only convinced me that she was Alice, she’d made me believe that I was in Wonderland, too.

“As if she needs another chance to show off,” Mel muttered, fumbling with the combination on her locker. “She’s already in the paper every other week for hockey, and I heard her tell Lara that her mom wants to get her into modeling—like I want to see her smug face every time I flip open a magazine? Ech.”

I wished I could assure her it would never happen, but I couldn’t. Ron and Gisele Beaugrand were local celebrities in their own right, with plenty of media connections. Between their influence and Tori’s looks, it’d be surprising if she
didn’t
become a supermodel.

“And there was Brendan staring at her with his tongue practically on the floor.” Mel’s running shoes hit the back of the locker, filling my vision with expanding rings of bronze. “He didn’t even look at me once.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Sure, Tori gets noticed, but have you heard the way the guys talk about her? It’s not like they’re interested in her personality.”

“Yeah, but that makes the whole thing suck even more,” said Mel, stomping into her winter boots and yanking a hat down over her curly brown hair. “ ’Cause right now they don’t care about
anybody’s
personality, as far as I can tell. And if they ever start caring—well, I can’t exactly compete with Princess Victoria there either, can I?”

I couldn’t disagree with that either, unfortunately. It would have been nice to dismiss Tori as a spoiled rich girl with nothing but looks to recommend her, but she’d learned people skills at her mother’s knee, and even the bottom-feeders in the school’s popularity fishbowl found her hard to dislike. If it hadn’t been for the Noise and my loyalty to Melissa, I would probably have been charmed into liking her, too.

“You never know,” I said, grimacing as I zipped up the new jacket my mother had just bought me for Christmas. There was nothing wrong with the fit or the color so I’d had no excuse to make her take it back, but I hated the ugly bile-yellow rasp of those metal teeth coming together. “Maybe she’ll end up going to a different high school.”

“Yeah,” said Mel slowly, savoring the idea. “Really different. Like, on another planet.”

And then I’d never have to hear the Noise again. “I wish.”

“Speaking of alien life-forms, did you see Jenna’s got blonde highlights now? She wants to be Tori so bad, she’s turning into a clone.” Mel snorted. “What’s next, blue contacts?”

“And a pink tattoo,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Tattoo,” I repeated. “Or whatever it is. That thing on her arm, you know.”

Melissa’s eyes lit with unholy glee. “Tori got a
tattoo
? Are you kidding me? Where did you hear this? Whoa, her mom is going to flip when she finds out—”

“No, I mean the same one she’s always had. How could you not notice? Looks like a sun with zigzag rays coming out of it. Kind of Aztec.”

“Um, Ali . . . I don’t think so,” said Melissa. “I was in the same swimming class as Tori last year, remember? I’ve seen her arm about a billion times. There’s nothing on it.”

Her words hit me like a backhanded slap. I went rigid, the blood roaring in my ears. How could I have made such a stupid mistake?

Fortunately for me, Melissa hadn’t stopped talking yet. “She doesn’t even get zits, for crap’s sake. She’s like some kind of walking Barbie.” She frowned up at me. “When did you see this tattoo-thing on her?”

For one sickening moment I still had no idea what to say. Then I forced my face into a smile and smacked Mel on the shoulder. “Psych! Had you going.”

“Uh, sure,” she replied. “Ha ha. Except for the part where it wasn’t funny.”

“I know,” I said. “I blame the floor polish.” I shoved my hands into my gloves, to hide their trembling. “Let’s get some fresh air before I lose any more brain cells.”

Mel shuddered. “Ugh, it’s like minus thirty out there. Where’s a hot Mountie and a team of sled dogs when you need them?” She pulled her scarf up over her face, shoved the door open with her shoulder and vanished out into the snow.

I followed more slowly, arms wrapped around my aching stomach. Mel seemed to have already forgotten my lapse, so she probably wouldn’t bring it up again. But it shook me to realize how close I’d come to betraying myself.

I’d figured out a long time ago that I was the only one at Diefenbaker Public who could hear Tori’s Noise. I figured it was just another case of my senses doing strange things, or at least things that would seem strange to other people if they knew. But the mark on Tori’s arm was different. It didn’t come and go, or change shape or color—it was just
there
, and had been from the first day I saw her.

So what did it mean that nobody but me could see it?

“Ew!” burst out Cherie, startling me back to the present. She flung her just-bitten peach down onto the tray, spattering juice in all directions. “It’s rotten.”

Kirk’s brows shot up. He looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“The Force is strong with this one,” he intoned. He picked up the mangled peach and turned it over, exposing the soggy brown spot close to its core. “Seriously, the x-ray vision’s a neat trick. You’ll have to show me how you do that some time.”

Nausea roiled inside me. I shoved back my chair. “I have to go,” I blurted, and rushed for the door. Out the corner of my eye I saw Jennifer leap up to intercept me, but I didn’t slow down. I flung myself into the girls’ washroom, grabbed the toilet with both hands, and threw up.

“You’re not supposed to go anywhere without an escort,” said Jennifer sternly from the door.

“Sorry,” I panted, pushing my hair back out of my face. “Bad stomach.”

Scowling, she took hold of my hand and turned it over, inspecting my fingers. I knew what she was looking for; I also knew she’d be disappointed. I might be thin and a picky eater, but nothing could convince me to make myself throw up on
purpose
.

“You okay?” she asked as she let me go.

I sniffed, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. “I think so. But . . . it would help if I could lie down.”

She nodded. “I’ll show you to your room.” She led me down the corridor to a wing I’d never seen before, a broad, airy hallway with windows at the far end and several widely spaced doors on either side. The room she showed me was half occupied already, with an open suitcase spilling its contents out across the bed and a stuffed cow flopped against the headboard, and I could only hope my roommate would be someone quiet and not too scary. I crawled onto the empty bed, taking deep breaths to calm my churning stomach, while Jennifer adjusted the cordless blinds.

“I’m leaving the door open,” she said. “I’d like you to keep it that way.” Then she left.

I closed my eyes and let my head fall back onto the pillow.
Get a grip, Alison
, I told myself.
What happened in the cafeteria is no big deal
. After all, it was hardly the first time I’d seen things that nobody else could see. Wasn’t that the whole point of the conversation I’d had with Mel, that day back in eighth grade?

And yet this time, it hadn’t been just a hallucination. Kirk thought I was crazy for telling him not to take that peach, and Cherie hadn’t seen anything wrong with it either—until she bit into it and found the brown decay inside.

So what did that tell me about the mark I’d seen on Tori’s arm? Had it just been my imagination conjuring up another excuse to dislike her, like the mark Sanjay thought he’d seen on Dr. Ward?

Or had there really been something sinister lurking there, in the darkness beneath her skin?

“Group therapy starts in five minutes,” she said. “Jennifer says unless you’re still throwing up, you have to go. Which had better not give you any ideas, by the way. I hate the smell of barf.”

She gazed around the circle of bored, vacant, and sullen faces, then continued, “One of the ways we can deal with anger responsibly is to share our frustrations with trusted friends who will listen, and not judge. I hope we can all be friends here, and give that gift of open listening to each other. So Kirk, why don’t you start? What makes you angry?”

“Anger’s a waste,” said Kirk. “I’m past that negative stuff. All you need to do is open your arms—” he flung them out so enthusiastically that he knocked Sanjay’s glasses off his face— “and embrace the oneness of us all.”

Sharon sighed as she bent to pick up the glasses from the floor. “Kirk, if you’re not going to take this group seriously—”

“I’m absolutely dead serious,” he insisted, and launched into an explanation of how modern psychoanalysis was just reinforcing people’s negative emotions and what the world needed was a radical new form of therapy that would make everybody feel good. I lost the thread of his logic at that point, but his grand scheme for reforming the mental health care system seemed to involve regular sex for all patients, unlimited access to energy drinks, and a giant outdoor rock concert featuring all his favorite bands. If Sharon hadn’t cut him off after a couple of minutes, he would probably have talked the entire half hour.

“Thank you, Kirk, that’s very interesting,” she said. “But I think it’s time for us to give some of the others a chance. Sanjay, why don’t you tell us what makes you angry?”

“I’m angry about being here,” said Sanjay softly.

Sharon leaned forward. “Yes? Why is that?”

“Because I tried to warn my parents about the aliens, but they wouldn’t listen. So the aliens injected them with mind control serum and put their mark on them. And then they sent me here, because—”

“You know why I’m angry?” interrupted Micheline in her rasping voice. “I’m angry because I have to sit here listening to this crap, and all I want is a frickin’ cigarette.”

“Let’s use respectful language, Micheline,” said Sharon placidly. And then, to my discomfort, she turned to me. “We’re so glad to have you join us, Alison. Would you like to tell us about something that makes you angry?”

The last time I remembered being angry, Tori Beaugrand had died. “I’d rather not,” I said.

“It doesn’t have to be a big thing,” she encouraged. “It’s okay to start small.”

“I know, but I don’t really . . . do anger. It never makes anything better. So I try not to get into it.” Or any other intense emotion, for that matter. Like grief, because there was no use wallowing in misery; you just had to accept that bad things happened and keep going. And love, because caring about anything too deeply was just asking to have it taken away.

Sharon crooked a finger in front of her lips. I could see she wanted to correct me, and yet it went against her therapeutic creed to tell a patient that anything he or she said was actually
wrong
. “Well,” she said at last, “we all have different personalities, and different ways of dealing with conflict. But I think it’s possible for all of us to find ways to express our anger without it becoming unhealthy.”

Micheline spat out a bitter laugh, but Sharon ignored it. She turned to the patient on my left—a girl with drooping eyelids who looked about as full of buried rage as Eeyore—and began coaxing her to participate. And so the session dragged on, until I almost wished I could disintegrate myself and everyone else in the circle just to put us all out of our misery.

But Anger Management was just the beginning. Next came an educational session called “Understanding Your Medication,” in which a nurse came in and talked about the various antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers we were on, and how important it was for us to keep taking them consistently. She was running down a list of common side effects—dry mouth, drowsiness, blurred vision, and so on—when Kirk suddenly leaped to his feet and began doing a spasmodic song-and-dance routine to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

“I’ve got tardive dyskinesia,

I’ve got tardive dyskinesia,

I’ve got tardive dyskinesia,

And now I can’t sit still!”

“Kirk,” snapped the nurse, “sit down, or you’re going to have to leave.” But the Eeyore-faced girl put up a tentative hand. “What’s tardive . . . whatever?”

“Dyskinesia,” said Kirk helpfully.

The nurse looked exasperated, but she could hardly refuse to answer. “It’s one of the
possible
side effects that
occasionally
happens when a patient has been on one of the
older
forms of antipsychotic drugs for a
considerable
period of time.” Her emphases left no doubt of how unlikely she thought this was to happen to any of us. “It causes involuntary, repetitive movements—”

Kirk contorted his face into a grimace and poked out his tongue, blinking exaggeratedly all the while. “This could happen to you, kids! So whatever you do, don’t stop taking your happy pills!”

“That’s it,” said the nurse. “You’re gone.”

Unfazed, Kirk got up and sauntered out the door. But by then the damage had been done. I thought about the medications I was on, the side effects I’d already experienced, and a chill settled into the pit of my stomach. Tardive dyskinesia sounded like the kind of thing that could ruin the rest of your life. What if taking Dr. Minta’s pills did that—or worse— to me?

The visitors’ lounge was tucked into a corner by the cafeteria, a low-walled triangle of glass blocks that offered little privacy to anyone sitting there. Especially not if he was standing, like my father; I could see his stooped shoulders and graying red hair from thirty feet away. As I approached, he turned, and I expected my mom—slight, brunette, and fifteen years younger—to stand up and show herself as well. But she didn’t. She wasn’t there.

“Here we are,” said the aide. “I’ll be across the hall if you need me,” and with that she retreated, leaving my father and me alone.

“Hello, Alison.” He sounded hesitant, but then he usually did. His gaze wandered around the lounge, stuttering over the frayed upholstery, the dusty fake plants, the windows cloudy with fingerprints. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” I replied, and it only made me feel a little queasy to say it. Maybe I was finally getting used to the taste of my own lies.

“Really?”

His faded blue eyes were creased with anxiety. I could taste tears in the back of my throat, but I swallowed them. My dad had never been good at handling emotional outbursts, and I didn’t want to scare him away. “Yeah.”

“Well.” He let out his breath. “That’s good. For a while, you were . . . in pretty bad shape.”

“I know.” It must have been so hard for him, seeing me like that. I’d always been his nice quiet daughter, the one who could sit with him in his study while he worked on an article or graded papers, and not disturb him at all. “But I’m better now.”

He patted my shoulder, then ambled over to one of the cleaner chairs and sat down. I followed. “Your mother was hoping to come,” he said, “but . . . it didn’t work out this time. She’s going to come another day.”

So either my dad had done something to upset her and she’d decided she couldn’t stand to be near him, or else she’d simply chickened out. Maybe watching me thrash around in panic or lie there in a drugged stupor had been easy, compared to facing a daughter who might actually have something to say.

“What about Chris?” I asked. “Is he going to come and see me, too?”

“Oh. Er. Well, your mother thinks it wouldn’t be such a good idea to bring Christopher here. He’s still young. . . .”

Eleven wasn’t that young, and my brother was hardly a sensitive child, but I got the message. My mother wanted to keep her screwed-up daughter and her normal son as far apart as possible. “Right.”

“So, Alison . . .”

“Yes?”

“When do you think you’ll be coming home?”

So my mother hadn’t told him about Dr. Minta’s decision, or my appeal. She’d kept him in the dark so he wouldn’t interfere.
Oh, Dad
. I wanted to throw my arms around him and bury my face in his shoulder. I wanted to tell him everything, and beg him to help. But it wouldn’t be fair to put him through that. If I pitted my parents against each other, all of us would lose.

“I don’t know,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. “They’ve got me on some medication, and I think they want to make sure it works out. I’m trying to appeal the decision, but . . .”

He made a melancholy noise of assent, and went quiet again. Then he said, “Your friend Melissa’s been asking about you. She wants to know if she can come and see you, now you’re feeling better.”

Warmth spread through my chest. So Mel hadn’t given up on me after all. She was a true friend, no matter what Tori— what anyone else said. “I’d love that,” I told him. “Tell her to come anytime.”

My dad nodded, his big hands twisting in his lap. “May I ask you something, Alison?”

Uh-oh.

“The police said you were the last person to see that girl, Tori Beaugrand, before she disappeared. And that you’d claimed . . . you’d said . . .”

“I said I’d made her disintegrate. I know. That’s impossible. I’m not saying that anymore.” Lying to him without actually lying was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I just hoped he wouldn’t force me to do it again.

“So . . . do you remember what really happened, then?”

Of course I remembered. No matter how many times I tried to push Tori’s death to the back of my mind, the memory of that day still haunted me. But I could taste my father’s hopefulness like powdered sugar on my tongue, and I knew that deep down, he still believed I was his good little girl. Maybe even believed, in spite of everything, that I was sane.

I couldn’t bear to let him down.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I’ve tried to make sense of it all, to think of something that would help the police find her, but . . . I can’t.”

He didn’t seem disappointed. If anything, he looked relieved. “That’s all right,” he said.

We talked about safer things then, like the hideous pink-and-green bungalow my mother was trying to sell for one of her clients, and my brother Chris’s plans to go to hockey camp that summer. My father had never been good with small talk, and he kept forgetting details and having to correct himself. But the fuzzy blue shape of his voice was such a comfort that I could have listened to him ramble on forever.

Not that I got the chance. It wasn’t long before he ran out of words, and when he stood to leave, the room seemed to shrink around me. It was all I could do not to grab his arm and beg him not to go. “When are you coming again?” I asked, as we walked to the exit.

“Next Tuesday, I think. Would you like me to bring you anything from home?”

I wanted to say
my keyboard
, and hope that when it showed up Dr. Minta would let me keep it. But that was too much like open rebellion, and I couldn’t risk that kind of black mark on my record. Not before I’d had my appeal, at any rate.

“Nothing right now, thanks,” I said.

The next morning when I lined up for my pills, a nurse handed me an activity chart that looked like my high school schedule. I couldn’t take in all that information right away, so I took the chart with me to breakfast. Cherie was already there, prodding unenthusiastically at her scrambled eggs, and I glimpsed Kirk talking to a silent Roberto in the corner. I didn’t see Micheline, but then I hadn’t expected to—last night at dinner she’d started yelling at one of the voices in her head, and they’d sent her back to Red Ward again.

I chose a table at the back of the cafeteria, where it was quieter, and looked over my new schedule. Dr. Minta had arranged for me to finish my eleventh-grade coursework, so I’d be spending three mornings a week in the education room under the supervision of the part-time teacher, Mr. Lamoreux. In the afternoons, I’d be attending four different kinds of group therapy, plus something called “Family Counseling” on Fridays—though there was a question mark beside that entry, and I hoped it would stay there forever. . . .

“You have to be careful,” said a low, familiar voice from the aisle. Sanjay glanced around furtively, then set down his tray and slid into the seat across from me.

“Careful about what?” I asked.

“Them.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “They know you can see the mark, too. Don’t let them get you alone.”

My throat went dry. I’d never said anything to Sanjay about the mark I’d seen on Tori’s arm. How did he know?