We'll Never Be Apart (5 page)

A piece is dropped in front of me, and immediately I am sick. “I don't want it,” I say.

“Throw it away, then,” the tech says over his shoulder as he continues to dole out the cake.

I frown and inadvertently make eye contact with Chase at a nearby table. “I don't want it,” I say a little louder, which gains the attention of the other nurses and techs scattered around the perimeter of the room.

“Christ, Allie, cool it,” Amelia whispers harshly. I forgot she was beside me. “You're going to get yourself a stay in the Quiet Room. Give it to me. I'll eat it.”

“Have at it,” I say, sliding the paper plate toward her. The smell of cake is overtaking the still air. Even though it's chocolate, there are notes of vanilla and almond underneath. A fine sheen of sweat breaks out on my brow. I need to get out of here. Fast. I hightail it down the aisle. The sticky sweetness is starting to coat my skin. When I make it to the cafeteria doors, they're locked. I jiggle the handle, trying to jerk them open.

“Whoa, Alice.” Donny the Mullet steps in. “Everybody stays in the cafeteria until it's class time.”

“I have to . . .” But the words are lost under a sour, acidic taste. Heart pounding in my chest, I give Donny a weak smile when his palm hovers over the radio hooked to his belt.
It's nothing,
I try to convey silently, but all the patients suddenly have gray skin, and the hum of the fluorescent lights is replaced by black flies buzzing. My head throbs, and the white of Donny's uniform hurts my eyes.

Then everything shifts. Without warning, I'm back in the barn. Now all I smell is smoke, kerosene, and smoldering hay. The burns on my hand and shoulders ignite in a flurry of pain, as if the skin is still on fire. I'm lying with Jason while everything blazes around us. Jason touches my hip, then my cheek, and opens his mouth to speak. Finally, the words that wouldn't compute the other day come back to me in an uneven rush.
Shit, baby. I'm burning up.

F
ROM THE
J
OURNAL OF
A
LICE
M
ONROE

 

After somebody dies, people spend a lot of time dwelling on the
what if
s.
What if I'd treated her differently?
What if he'd never gotten in the car that day?
But those
what if
thoughts never occurred to me. When I found out that Grandpa had died, I didn't even cry. Neither did Cellie. It's not that we were heartless. Far from it. We just didn't understand what “death” meant—and how it would change our lives forever.

But there it sat in the room with us. Amid the Chans' embroidered sofa and dark wood furniture. Words floated around us—
Died. Dead. Body.
—spoken in hushed tones by the policemen who swarmed the house. Mrs. Chan answered their questions in a short and direct manner even though her hands shook and her eyes watered.

“And when was the last time you saw him?” a police officer inquired. The cop was clean-cut, his uniform neatly pressed and his hair closely shaved. He was cold and efficient, and for some reason, this created an aura of instant distrust.

She told him Friday. They'd walked together to get the mail. She called Grandpa devoted. “His daughter, the mother, just showed up one day, her belly so big, and just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“she took off, left him alone . . .” Her voice trailed off, lost in a sniffle and full-body tremor. “When I think about how cold it's been outside,” she mumbled. “My husband said all there was to eat was cake.”

The police officer said we were lucky someone found us. Another couple of days and who knows what would have happened. There were teeth marks on some of the cans. He asked if we had any relatives in the area. Mrs. Chan shook her head and said we were alone.

Once, Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chan had a daughter. She died on her way home from university. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel, drifted into her lane, and just like that, she was gone. Grandpa attended the funeral, leaving us at home with a bubblegum-chewing babysitter. Mrs. Chan related the tragic story of her lost daughter to the police officer and then looked at Cellie and me meaningfully. I imagine she thought we could fill each other's voids. That our separate losses could, like a double negative, negate each other and become something positive.

 

Soon Shawna came, a social worker, the first in a line of three. Shawna sat across from Cellie and me in the living room, but just before she did, she squeezed my shoulder. It was one of the few times I remember being offered physical comfort. Her fingers brushed Cellie's back, but I don't think Cellie felt it. Years later she would throw this in my face—the comfort Shawna had offered me and then withheld from her. She would tell me how it made her feel empty inside, half as loved.

“Hello.” Shawna smiled, but the smile didn't quite touch every part of her face, and that made it seem fake, almost painful. Her teeth were a little crooked, and she had the kind of eyes that seemed not the right shape for her face. They opened a little too widely and made you feel uncomfortable, as if she were staring at you. “Do you know what's happened?”

I thought of Grandpa lying in the middle of the living room, his cold cheek that turned a darker shade of gray every day. When neither of us answered, Shawna went on, “You were very brave.” She leaned in and told us that Grandpa had died. “Do you know what that means? Do you understand?”

We didn't, not really. The only other time we'd heard of death was when Grandpa told us stories about Nam. Once, he told us about the time he'd dragged a wounded soldier from the jungle. Sometimes he would lift his shirtsleeve and show us the jagged shrapnel scar. Then he would weep and tell us to go play outside.

But it seemed important to Shawna for us to know, so we nodded
yes
. And when she smiled, I felt just like DeeDee the dog must have felt right after she pulled off Mr. Chan's sock.

 

We stayed with the Chans that night. Mr. Chan retrieved clothes from our house. The room had a double bed, but Mrs. Chan promised she would get us a bunk bed just like we were used to. Lickety-split. We were given a bath and clean pajamas, and when Cellie asked for extra blankets, Mrs. Chan patted our heads and told us we'd never be cold again. Now I think about how wrong she was. This was only the beginning, the first turn of an unstoppable storm. Mrs. Chan kissed each of our cheeks, and her breath smelled musty but clean.

The next morning Cellie woke early, and her excitement was even greater than the night before our birthday. She bounced around on the bed and clapped her hands together, chanting, “Come see! Come see!”

I followed her to the Chans' kitchen, and Cellie twirled on the linoleum floor, gliding like an ice skater in her socked feet. I smiled and we joined hands, spinning together until we were dizzy and fell to the ground, our laughter bouncing off the walls.

Mrs. Chan came into the kitchen and smiled, but then her look fell. “Oh my,” she said. Her hand moved to her heart, and she patted her chest like she was trying to keep something from fluttering away. “Oh my.” Her eyes locked just above my right shoulder.

On the counter, gleaming under the bright kitchen lights, were perfect rows of canned food. Sometime during the night Cellie had crept from our bed and removed every single one from the pantry, shiny cylinders of peaches, black beans, and chicken noodle soup, all arranged in perfect aisles, one after the other, each can slightly off center, so the label faced the right, just like little soldiers marching off to war with their heads turned toward the sun.

 

Cellie and I both attended therapy. Our therapist was a kind, bearded man who asked us to paint pictures and build families out of clay. While I only had to visit him once a week, Cellie had to go twice. As the months passed and she didn't improve, she began to go three times a week—I would stay with Mrs. Chan in the waiting room, eating almonds and reading
Highlights
magazine. I hoped against hope Cellie would be better, but she never got the chance; the Chans began to withdraw, to watch us with a different set of eyes.

“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Mrs. Chan said to her husband one night. I paused in the hallway and pressed myself into a dark corner, nightly glass of water forgotten. She stood by the sink and wrung out a sponge.

Mr. Chan shook his head. “This morning I found the leftover chicken in the bathroom. When I asked her about it, she just stared at me and shrugged her shoulders.” They were talking about Cellie. She'd been taking food—leftovers, pieces of fruit, loaves of bread—ferreting them away and showing me where she'd hidden them. Just in case.

Mrs. Chan's lips parted in the way people's do when they're not sure what to say. I liked Mrs. Chan. She was teaching me how to fold origami. Cellie didn't like it; her fingers were too clumsy, always shaking, as if the cold from Grandpa's house had settled into her bones for good. But Mrs. Chan said I was a natural, that I had the hands of a surgeon and the patience of a tree in winter.

Mr. Chan sighed. “I didn't want to tell you this, but she's been sneaking over to the house at night.” He walked over and touched Mrs. Chan's hip. “Darla.” He lowered his voice. “We're too old. The therapy isn't working. We can't give her the support she needs.”

An icy hand touched my shoulder, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Cellie. She'd crept up behind me, her head tilted in a question mark. I pressed a finger to my lips, folded myself deeper into the shadows, and invited her to join me. Quieter than a whisper she came, laced her fingers through mine, and pressed her cheek into my flannel nightgown.

“Do you think it's possible for us to separate them? Has the doctor talked to Alice about it? Maybe we can make her understand how sick she is? That she needs help?” Mrs. Chan said. Cellie's grip became painfully tight around my hand. “If it was just Alice . . .”

Mr. Chan bowed his head and kissed his wife on the cheek. He sighed as if it was useless. “I'll call Shawna tomorrow.”

We went back to our room, jumped into the bed, and huddled under the covers, our heads making a tent. “They're going to try to split us up.” Cellie's voice trembled. She wept, and her tears were a siren's cry—beautiful, haunting, impossible to ignore.
Go on, Alice. You can have the last of it.
I found her hand in the dark and rested mine over it. “Don't worry. I won't let them take you away. Wherever you go, I'll go too.”

“Do you promise?” she asked.

My answer was easy and automatic. Because blood was blood and it was thicker than any sickness. “I promise,” I said. “We'll never be apart.”

CHAPTER

I
FALL TO MY KNEES. MY HANDS GRIP THE COLD LINOLEUM FLOOR,
trying to find purchase.
I'm burning up.
Donny reaches for the walkie-talkie on his belt.
No.
I tremble.

“I'm okay,” I say, rolling back so my butt rests on the floor. Donny's thumb hovers over the call button. “No, please.” Ignoring the hungry looks of the other patients, my eyes lock with Chase's across the cafeteria. “No Quiet Room.” I don't mean to say that last part out loud, but it just kind of tumbles into the world.
No Quiet Room.
Chase straightens in his seat, and I know he's heard my whispered plea. I wait, breathless, for his smirk or for some other indication of his patronizing superiority, but it doesn't come. Instead, sympathy rolls through his body and lights up his eyes. He stands, as if to move toward me.

Static comes over the radio, drawing my attention back to Donny. “This is the nurses' station. Donny, do you need assistance?”

Donny studies me, and then, after an eternal moment, he puts the walkie-talkie up to his mouth. I smile at him, but I imagine it comes across as creepy and strained. “No assistance needed. I accidentally hit the call button. Thanks for checking-in.” The terror in me releases and everything relaxes. Even the fluorescent lights seem less harsh. Still, my stomach clenches and the smell of hay and kerosene persists. I swallow hard and will myself not to puke. I fail. One: I turn away from Donny. Two: I wrap my arms around my stomach. Three: I spew the contents of my lunch (chicken fried steak) all over the floor.

I spend the rest of the afternoon in my room, napping, thanking all that's holy that I didn't have to go to the Quiet Room. Nurse Dummel mumbled something about new medications upsetting my stomach, then gave me a few more pills, this time a “Valentine's Day” combo—a purple and two small pink capsules. I'm grateful that the episode earned me some time alone, even if I'm locked up. Now I get to skip the second round of afternoon group therapy. Double bonus.

Dinnertime rolls around and Nurse Dummel comes to fetch me. By this time I've been awake for a little bit and have already folded two more origami animals, a lion and a bear.

When I've gotten my dinner (spaghetti and meatballs), I spy Amelia sitting at the table where we ate breakfast. I smile and wave, but I don't move toward her. Instead I hunt down Chase. He's in a corner, sitting alone with his giant headphones on.

I make my way over to him and drop my tray on the table. He looks up at me and immediately goes back to eating.

I sit down across from him and clear my throat, but he deliberately ignores me. When he's devoured everything on his plate (I'm wondering if he's going to pick it up and lick it clean), our stalemate ends.
I win.

“Can I help you?” he finally asks. His voice is deep and strong. Annoyed.

This is the closest I've been to him so far. He's got a five o'clock shadow on his cheeks and looks weirdly old, older than eighteen, which is the maximum age you can be in here. The scar on his face twitches and seems almost too white for his tanned skin. Again, I wonder what it's from. “Hello,” he says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Are you retarded or something?”