Be Not Afraid (7 page)

“Yeah, you. She’s been begging us almost constantly, since this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know. She won’t tell us. She won’t say anything except that she wants to see you.” He paused, studying me, waiting. “Do
you
know why?”

“No.”
The answer came out like a bullet. “I have no idea.”

“Marin, listen.” He opened his door and stepped out of the car. “We don’t know what else to do here, okay?
Even the doctor suggested it. Bringing you to the hospital, I mean. She’s at Quiet Gardens now. They transferred her there after they finished stitching her up at General.”

“Quiet Gardens?” I repeated. “Isn’t that a mental hospital?”

“Yeah.” Dominic nodded. “And her doctor really … I mean, he said it might calm her down if you came. You know, since she keeps asking for you.” He hesitated, realizing the weight of his request, and shoved a hand inside the pocket of his cargo pants. “Will you come with me? I mean, can you? You can ride with me if you want. In my car.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. I told you, that’s why I’m here. That’s why I drove out.”

“But
I
don’t know what she wants.” I squeezed the rubber grips on the handlebars, felt the stiff ribbing twist against my skin. “I mean, I don’t know what I could do.”

“Maybe she just has to tell you something.” His fingers clutched the edge of the windowsill. “I don’t know. But she’s hysterical. She’s been hysterical for hours. They gave her something to calm her down a little while ago, so it’s not quite as bad right now, but I’m telling you, as soon as it wears off, she’s going to start asking for you again.”

I looked down at my Keds, squeezed my eyes tight behind my sunglasses. This could not actually be happening.

“Marin.” He took a step toward me. The movement brought him less than a foot closer to me, but I understood.
He was here to make a point, and he wanted to make sure I knew it. “I know you’re probably still a little freaked out after everything that happened between you two at our house, and you have every right to be, but you won’t be alone with her. She’s in a private room. There’s doctors and nurses and stuff, and my parents and I are right there too. Nothing will happen. I promise. I’m pretty sure all she wants to do is talk to you.”

A long, silent moment passed as I stared at the ground. My cheeks burned, remembering. Aside from Cassie and me, Dominic was the only other person who knew about the closet incident. He was the one who had heard my screams that day, the one who had flung open the door, only to stare down at me, horrified, as I cowered inside.

“Maybe she wants to apologize,” he said. “You know, for what she did that day.”

The ribbon of heat moved up my face, flushing out across my forehead. Cassie Jackson was the sort of girl who might apologize … if someone held a gun to her head. I chewed on the inside of my lip, tried not to think about what might happen if I went.

Or if I didn’t.

“Five minutes.” Dominic’s eyes were pleading. “I promise. Just so she can see you. And hopefully calm down a little. Please, Marin. I told my parents I’d drive over and try to get you to come. I’m on a mission here.” He laughed, waiting maybe for me to laugh, too, or at least smile. I did
neither. “We don’t know what else to do,” he said. “We’re desperate here. Please.”

I didn’t look up for at least another twenty seconds. And when I did, I could see the sun starting to set just behind Dominic’s shoulder. It hovered like a gold dinner plate in the horizon, watering the clouds beneath it in a milky hue. It was getting late. If I was gone too long, Nan or Dad would call my phone. Or worse, come looking for me.

“Okay,” I heard myself say. “Five minutes. But then I have to go.”

Dominic put my bike in the back of his Jeep and tossed at least fourteen empty Gatorade bottles onto the backseat to make room for me on the passenger side. I crawled in tentatively, trying not to touch anything, and held my helmet on my lap. The smell of deodorant, melting chocolate, and salty traces of sweat drifted up from the seat and then faded again. Crumpled peanut M&M wrappers littered the floor, and half an uneaten bag of Smartfood Popcorn was wedged into the driver’s-side pocket. A gold medal stamped with the imprint of a runner dangled from a green and yellow ribbon behind his rearview mirror, and between the seats was an opened CD case filled with rap music. Eminem. Run-DMC. Jay-Z. I wondered if his iPod was filled with tracks like these, if he had certain ones that he listened to when he trained for track season.

He got in and turned the car around with desperate, jerky movements, as if I might try to jump out if he didn’t move fast enough. I braced myself against the seat, buckled up, and reached out to grab hold of the leather armrest. It would be just my luck to get carsick and puke all over the inside of Dominic Jackson’s car. I steadied my gaze on a point in the distance, tried to focus behind my sunglasses. Between us, the track medal swung back and forth beneath the mirror, throwing small shadows across the dashboard, and the empty candy wrappers skittered along the floor. Dominic didn’t talk until we were on the street again, a safe distance from the dirt road and the farmhouse. Then he sighed once, heavily.

“Damn, Marin.” He turned his head to look at me. “I honestly didn’t know if I was going to be able to get you to come. Thanks. I mean, thank you, really. You have no idea. Maybe my sister will be able to get some sleep now.” He left the sentence hanging between us.

“She hasn’t been sleeping?” I asked.

“No.” He moved his eyes between the road and me. “Not for months.”

“Maybe because of the epilepsy.”

“Maybe.”

“That’s what they said she has, right?”

“That’s what they think so far.”

I looked out the window. The light was fading quickly, pale fingers of it draining behind the trees. A wedge of birds streamed in front of a slip of clouds. We were almost in
town, which meant that in less than five minutes we’d be at Quiet Gardens, which as far as I knew, was the only mental hospital in Fairfield. Behind my glasses, I closed my eyes again.

He’d been so kind that day after finding me in Cassie’s closet, trying to get me to calm down, asking question after question to find out what had happened—
What’s your name? How did you get in here? Did Cassie do this? On purpose? Where is she?
—and finally letting me go when I shrieked at him to just give me my clothes, that I had to get out of there, that I just wanted to
leave.
We’d never spoken another word since, had never even exchanged a wayward glance. Still, it would have been a lie to say that I didn’t look up when he swept by in the hall, engulfed by the other seniors, preoccupied with any number of things that had nothing to do with me, and wonder if he remembered.

I would never forget.

“I really like your bike,” he said. “It’s an Aggressor?”

“Yeah. A three-point-oh.”

“I’ve heard good things about them. They’re fast. You like it?”

“It’s okay. I could go faster.”

He smiled a little. “You like to ride?”

“Sometimes.”

“Me too.” He draped the inside of his wrist along the top of the steering wheel. The blue disk inside faded a bit as I looked at it.

“Do you ride?” I asked.

He nodded. “I have an Epic Twenty-Nine. I take it out every chance I get. I think it’s probably my favorite way to spend time.”

“An Epic Twenty-Nine?” I looked at him out of the corner of one eye. “Isn’t that what last year’s winner of the World Cup rode?”

Now it was his turn to look at me again. “Yeah, actually,” he said. “It was. You know your bikes, don’t you?”

I looked back out the window, flustered by the compliment. He would never know how the bottom of my stomach plummeted, like an elevator in free fall, whenever he came into my presence. Right now, I wasn’t sure my stomach even
had
a bottom anymore. “What about running?” I asked, struggling to sound nonchalant. “I thought running and track were more your thing.”

He shrugged. “Running’s cool. But it’s sort of my second speed. Like you said, I could go faster. Being on top of that bike sometimes can make me feel like I’m flying.” He paused. “I like that feeling, you know?”

“Yeah.” My heart pounded. “I know.”

The car slowed as he eased it along the curb in front of a low gray building. Thick hedges flanked the entrance, and small windows stared out at the night like empty eyes. He turned off the engine, ran his fingers through his hair. “All right. You ready?”

No.
I nodded.

He pointed to the hospital. “This way.”

Maybe I was still in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
mode, expecting to see patients slumped over in chairs muttering to themselves or tight-lipped nurses in starched uniforms handing out pink and blue pills. Still, even with my sunglasses on, I hadn’t expected things to look like this. Except for the woman sitting behind a wide desk at one end of the hallway, the entire first floor looked like someone’s living room. A
wealthy
someone’s living room. Plush red chairs with fat pillows were pressed up neatly against the walls. Two gigantic area rugs pictured flying cranes and gold-roofed pagodas. The windows were dressed with heavy brocade drapes that fastened in the middle with silk braided ties. The sound of classical music drifted down from somewhere by the ceiling, and I could smell wood polish in the air.

“This place is unreal,” I whispered, trotting to keep up with Dominic.

“This place has a lot of money,” he murmured back. “Treating mental illness is frigging expensive.”

He stopped in front of the desk, which, besides the pane of glass surrounding it like a moat, could have been any front desk. In any hospital.

“I’m back to see my sister, Cassie Jackson,” Dominic said to the receptionist. “She’s in special observance on the third floor? I have another visitor too.” He reached out and touched my arm lightly. “Right here.”

“Your names?” The woman, young, pretty, glanced at me and then back at Dominic. Beneath her hands, which were poised over the computer keyboard, I could see a copy
of
Twilight: New Moon
overturned in her lap. And except for a pale blue mark on the outside of her neck, her flawless skin had an alabaster quality to it. I looked at the blue spot on the woman’s neck again; at this distance, even with my dark glasses on, I could see the navy, cylindrical shape beneath it, one side of it darker than the other.

“I’m Dominic Jackson.” He stepped back, making room for me. “And this is Marin Winters.”

I slid a glance at him. He remembered my last name too?

“Have a seat, please.” The woman looked at the screen as she spoke, her fingers racing along the keys. “Someone will be with you in a moment.”

We sat down in the beautiful, silk-backed chairs. A trembling had started in my fingertips, and I slid my hands under my legs. I could feel the muscles in my arms quavering; the middle of my stomach felt light and dense at the same time. Across the room, the blue mass in the receptionist’s neck throbbed like a traffic light.
Please,
I thought.
Please let the inside of that hickey be the only thing I see in this place today.

Several silent moments passed. I stared at my red Keds, pressing the insoles together over and over again, as if the movement might realign everything else inside that felt off. When an attendant appeared and said, “Marin and Dominic?” I stood up too quickly.

The attendant, who was dressed all in white besides his black shoes, led us into an elevator that smelled like
Windex. I looked around, but there were no buttons to push, no panel to direct us where to go. Instead, the attendant inserted a small silver key into a keyhole near the doors and turned it to the right. The elevator jolted awake and began to move. I stared at the floor, then over at the attendant’s shoes, which were tied with big, loopy laces. I wondered what kinds of things he saw in a place like this, if he’d ever gotten hurt, wrestling someone to the ground. Had anyone ever spit on him or charged at him with some kind of sharp object? What made someone want to go into this line of work? What made someone keep coming
back
to work like this?

The doors opened again, and the attendant stepped out into a bare hallway. “She’s at the end of the hall,” he said, looking at Dominic. “You know where to go.”

By now my armpits were sweating, the tips of my fingers ice cold. I stared at the series of van Gogh prints on the wall
—Starry Night, Sunflowers, Sidewalk Café at Arles
—and wondered if the people who decorated this place knew that van Gogh had been out of his mind, too, or if it was just a sad coincidence. The hallway was nothing like the waiting room downstairs. Except for the paintings, it was almost bare. Vivid white walls, no greenery or plants. The linoleum, a smudged creamy color, was littered with footprints, and the absence of windows cast a gray tint over everything.

“Who’s with her?” I asked, my nerves getting the best of me. “I mean right now. Who’s back there with Cassie?”

Dominic slowed, falling back into step alongside me. “Just my parents.”

I nodded. I had never met Mr. or Mrs. Jackson. They had been out of the country in October when everything happened at their house, and I still wasn’t sure if they knew about any of it.

“They just got here this afternoon,” Dominic said. “They were in Florida at our time-share.” He lowered his voice. “They’re not very happy.”

I looked over at him curiously. They weren’t very happy about what, exactly? That their daughter was in a mental hospital? Or that they’d had to cut their vacation short? I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t any of my business what kind of parents they were. Although maybe, just maybe, it explained a few other things.

Cassie’s room was at the very end, a wing all its own, complete with a small waiting area in the front and a private bathroom. One of the pale blue walls had been decorated with a poster of a small kitten hanging from a rope. Beneath the kitten’s dangling feet was the adage,
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!
Two adults stood up from a couch against the other wall as Dominic and I approached. I could feel the suggestion of Dominic’s first two fingers against the small of my back as he moved me toward them, and I tried to breathe normally.