SIX
(IS PURPLE)
My second week at Pine Hills blurred into the third, and my fellow patients came and went. I’d just managed to talk myself into forgiving Kirk for the chocolate incident when he plummeted into a depressive phase, and started spending most of his free time in bed. Around the same time, Micheline came back to Yellow Ward, but then she found a paper clip in Mr. Lamoreux’s classroom and sliced up her wrist so badly she needed stitches. And a couple of days later, Sanjay sneaked out and got half a kilometer up the highway before anyone realized he was gone.
But even with all of that going on, I managed to stay out of trouble. Soon I was allowed to walk the halls without supervision and even enjoy courtyard privileges. I was still cutting back on my meds, but carefully—for the first few days I even broke the pills and took half, just to make sure the withdrawal symptoms didn’t get too much for me. Little by little the fog over my senses began to lift, and the world regained its proper shapes and colors. During my sessions with Dr. Minta, I kept my eyes down and said little, but every day I felt a little more alive.
Meanwhile my father came back to see me as promised, but not my mother, and the Family Counseling part of my schedule remained mercifully free. I had an uncomfortable feeling that Dr. Minta was working on that, though. He’d asked me to write a short essay about my childhood and turn it in by next week, so that we could talk about it at a future session.
Later that week, I was on my way to the cafeteria when I noticed a stranger standing by the nurses’ station. From the back, he looked so ordinary that I almost passed by without a second glance. But then he turned and I stopped dead, my heart colliding with my ribcage.
His eyes were violet.
I’m not exaggerating. They weren’t just blue or blue-gray. They were that deep bluish purple you only see when refracting light through a prism—or when someone is wearing tinted contact lenses.
And yet the man in front of me didn’t look like he cared about fashion, or had even bothered to make its acquaintance. Not only was his shirt wrinkled and partly untucked, but he’d paired it with a shapeless cotton sweater vest and slacks in exciting shades like Old Filing Cabinet and Dryer Lint. His hair was the color of a thunderstorm reflected in a mud puddle, and looked like he’d cut it himself with blunt scissors several weeks ago.
And yet he was clean shaven, and the apple-green tang of his scent told me he’d showered recently as well. His face was full of angles and wry humor, and he was younger than I’d thought at first—I guessed mid-twenties, though there was something ageless about him that made it hard to be sure. His gaze met mine directly, and as a smile deepened the corners of his long mouth I surprised myself by smiling back.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” panted a familiar voice, and the man and I turned in unison as Dr. Minta hurried toward us. I braced myself for the inevitable hearty greeting, but for once my psychiatrist didn’t even seem to notice my presence. “Konrad Minta,” he said, gripping the visitor’s hand. “Welcome to Pine Hills. Would you like a tour, or shall we go straight to my office?”
This obviously had nothing to do with me, so I gave the two men a wide berth and walked on. But I could feel those violet eyes on me all the way to the cafeteria, and as I picked up my tray I couldn’t help wondering who the stranger was, and what had brought him here. To o old for a patient, too young for a parent, too sloppily dressed to be interviewing for a place on staff . . . a journalist, maybe?
“Hallo, bay-bee,” murmured a lecherous voice in my ear, and I jerked back, spilling iced tea all over my tray.
“Kirk, I swear—”
He gave me a look of wide-eyed innocence. “What? I didn’t say anything. It was him.” He pointed to Roberto, who was laboriously tweezing carrot sticks onto his plate. “I know he looks innocent, but when it comes to women, he’s the devil.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And he can throw his voice, too.”
“A man of many talents,” agreed Kirk. “So where you gonna sit?”
I shrugged, and headed for the nearest empty table. I was glad to see Kirk acting more like his old self again, but I didn’t want to encourage him too much in case he started bouncing off the walls. “How was Red Ward?” I asked, as we sat down.
“Suuuuuuucked,” said Kirk in a tone so low it was half belch, and then in his normal voice, “But Ray told me to say hi.”
No wonder everybody loved Ray. I’d only been in Red Ward for two days, more than three weeks ago, and he still hadn’t forgotten me. How did he do that? Not just remembering the names of all the patients he’d worked with, but the faces and personalities that went with them. It made me feel guilty that I wasn’t more like that myself.
“So what’ve you been up to?” asked Kirk.
“Exams, mostly,” I said. Now that my mind was clearer, it hadn’t taken me long to catch up on the schoolwork I’d missed. “Today was World History.”
“Oh, yeah? How’d that go?”
“I think I did okay,” I replied, and took a quick sip of my iced tea. Truth was, I knew exactly how I’d done. Seeing everything I read in color made it easier to remember, and if I’d thought about it hard enough I could probably have quoted the textbook word for word. But I didn’t want to be that obvious, so I’d thrown in a few deliberate mistakes. The last thing I wanted was to be singled out as a prodigy—or worse, a cheater.
“There’s no way you wrote that poem,” said Tori.
I turned, startled. Floating out of class on the lilac-scented cloud of my teacher’s praise, I hadn’t even heard the Noise until Tori was right behind me. “What?” I said.
“You copied it from somewhere,” she told me, her voice barely audible above the familiar drone. “I don’t know exactly where, but I bet it won’t be hard to find out. So if you don’t want everybody to know you cheated—”
“I didn’t cheat!”
Tori put her hands on her hips, which made her look annoyingly like an ad for designer jeans. “This isn’t just about you, you know. Lara’s pretty upset that her poem didn’t get picked for the competition, and I don’t blame her.”
Until now I’d avoided Tori as much as I could, not even looking at her if I could help it—it was the only way I could stop her Noise from driving me crazy. At times I’d felt guilty for treating her so rudely, but now that Tori had finally lived up to her ugly burnt-umber name, I felt justified. “It’s not my fault your friend’s jealous,” I said. “And how do you know I didn’t write the poem myself?”
“All that stuff about ‘martyred leaves whispering out their souls,’ or whatever? Please.”
This year, Champlain Secondary was participating in a province-wide poetry contest, and only the best poem from each school could be submitted. The prize for the winning student was two hundred dollars—just what I needed to finally buy the new keyboard I’d been saving for. So of course, I was determined to win.
I’d worked incredibly hard on that poem. I’d spent a whole Saturday afternoon hunched over my desk, scribbling and erasing one word after another, then crumpling up the page in frustration and starting again. I’d been almost ready to give up, convinced that nothing I wrote would ever be good enough—but the next morning I’d woken up with one perfect phrase in my head, and after that the rest of it came together like magic.
The poem I ended up with wasn’t long, but it was the most emotional thing I’d ever written, and it had taken all my courage to turn it in. How was I to know my teacher would read it out loud in front of everybody? But once my embarrassment subsided I’d felt a shimmer of pride, especially when Mrs. Mailloux said she and the other judges had chosen it to represent our school in the competition. And now Tori was trying to take that away.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “That poem is all mine, and if Mrs. Mailloux thinks it’s good enough to enter in the contest, that’s her call. Not yours.”
Tori’s lips flattened. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then she strode away, leaving me wondering whether I’d just called her bluff or made a very big mistake.
But a few days later Mrs. Mailloux took me aside, and told me she had some bad news.
“There have been some concerns about the originality of your entry,” she said. “And after looking at it again, the judges agreed that the language and imagery do seem a little too sophisticated for a student your age. I’m afraid we’re going to have to pull it from the contest.”
I’d never forgotten the humiliation of that moment, when I realized that not only my good reputation but the prize I wanted so desperately had been stolen from me. Until then, I’d had no personal grudge against Tori. But from that day onward, I hated her almost as much as Melissa did. . . .
“Oh, hey,” said Kirk, jolting me from the memory. “Got something for you.” He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket and dropped it onto my tray. “Picture of your boyfriend.”
I unfolded the page and found a printed photograph of a grizzled, elderly Gregory Peck, wearing thick glasses and a baseball cap. “Very handsome,” I said, forcing my voice to lightness. “Nice to know you’ve made good use of your computer time. But aren’t you worried Mr. Lamoreux’s going to notice you fooling around online and kick you off?”
“For what? I didn’t even have to hack through the nanny software to get it, and it’s not like I’m printing off porn. Unless . . .” He grabbed the picture and turned it sideways. “Ooh! I never saw
that
before.”
“What, in his beard?”
“I’ll never tell,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows as he licked the last crumb from his fingers. “So . . . you going to eat the rest of that sandwich, or what?”
I pushed my plate toward him. “Go crazy.”
“Too late,” he said. “But seriously, what are you waiting for, caviar? This is a nuthouse. Tuna salad’s about as good as it gets.”
To me, the sandwich had tasted like moldy green zigzags. But supper would be blue and round. “I’ll hold out for the macaroni,” I said.
“You
are
nuts,” said Kirk.
. . .
As I walked out of the cafeteria, I barely noticed the police officer standing across the corridor. But when I took a second glance and realized who it was, I stifled a gasp.
It was Constable Deckard.
And he was talking to Dr. Minta.
Hastily I backed into the girls’ washroom, hoping that neither of them had seen me. If I put my ear to the door and listened hard, maybe I could make out what they were saying—
But all I heard was the dull clatter of trays and cutlery from the cafeteria, and the maddeningly loud laughter of two nurses in the hall. And when I dared to look out again, both Deckard and Dr. Minta were gone.
They could have met by coincidence, I told myself. Police officers came in and out of Pine Hills all the time. They’d probably just been discussing the weather or last night’s hockey game.
But deep down I was certain they’d been talking about me.
. . .
I was sitting in the library a couple of days later, gazing out the window at the steel-wool clouds and the pine trees dripping with rain, when Dr. Minta appeared in the doorway and beckoned me over.
“I’d like to introduce you to someone,” he said.
My gaze slid past him to a pair of tranquil blue-violet eyes, and my heart did a little somersault in my chest. “Uh . . . sure,” I said.
“This is Dr. Sebastian Faraday, a graduate student in neuropsychology from the University of South Africa. He’s here for a couple of months while he works on his thesis.”
Dr. Faraday stepped forward, offering me the strong square palm and long fingers of a surgeon. “Hello,” he said.
Just one word, yet it resonated through my bones like a cello. My muscles slackened, and my tongue felt thick and heavy. I couldn’t speak.
Dr. Minta gave a little cough. He murmured, “Perhaps it isn’t the best time . . . ?”
“Sorry,” I said, collecting myself and thrusting my hand into Faraday’s. “Hello.”
He shook it once, in a professional but friendly sort of way, as Dr. Minta continued, “Dr. Faraday is conducting a study, and he’s looking for volunteers. I thought you might like to participate.”
If it involved listening to Dr. Faraday talk, I thought I might too. “What would I have to do?” I asked.
“Nothing difficult or uncomfortable,” said Faraday. “Just a simple visual test, where I show you a few pictures and you tell me what you see.”
Dark chocolate, poured over velvet: that was how his voice tasted. I wanted him to follow me around and narrate the rest of my life. “That’s all?”
“For now, yes,” said Faraday. “At this point I’m just looking for patients who might qualify for further testing. I’m sorry I can’t pay you for your time, but at least it would be something different?”
His eyes crinkled as he spoke, as though he’d guessed how tedious I found my daily schedule and how glad I’d be for a chance to escape it. He was right, but still I hesitated. If I passed his test—or failed it—what would that mean? What if it proved there was something wrong with me?
On the other hand, it might also prove that there wasn’t. And if I was going to convince Dr. Minta to let me go, I needed all the support I could get.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
. . .
Dr. Minta showed us into an empty meeting room, excusing himself to attend to other business but leaving the door pointedly open. Nervous and excited at the same time, I pulled out a chair and sat down as Faraday hefted a battered leather briefcase onto the table. He snapped it open and rummaged through it, emerging at last with a pen, a digital timer, and a notepad.
“Right,” he said, taking out a stack of laminated pages and laying them facedown between us. “Let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll begin.”
“I’m ready.”
“Alison Jeffries, correct? Age sixteen?”
“Seventeen.” Well, close enough. I hardly even tasted the lie.
“Sorry.” He scribbled a correction. “Now, have a look at this.” He picked up the timer in one hand, then lifted the first sheet and turned it toward me. “Here’s a diagram made of number symbols, with a shape hidden in it—”
