If I Die (13 page)

I leaned against the wall next to the visitor’s bathroom and snuck several furtive glances around to make sure no one was watching me. No one was, but my luck wouldn’t hold out forever, and Tod had yet to make an appearance. If I wanted to talk to Scott, I was on my own, at least until then. So in
my head I began a countdown, starting with three, trying to slow my racing heartbeat with each number.

When I got to zero, I glanced up one more time, then stepped around the corner into the boys’ hall. Scott’s room was open, and I could hear him talking, but I couldn’t see him, or whoever he was talking to. In a sudden burst of courage—or desperation—I dashed across the hall and into his room, then eased the door shut and stood with my back against it, sagging with relief.

“What’s she doing here?” Scott’s room was a single. He sat sideways in his desk chair, staring at me, and if I didn’t already know where he was, I might have thought nothing was wrong with him. He wore his usual jeans and a T-shirt displaying the logo of some band I’d never heard of. He looked the same, if a little thinner. And maybe he was a little paler than the last time I’d seen him—no more football practice in the sun.

But if not for the fact that he was in Lakeside and that he was talking to himself—or maybe to no one—I might have thought he was…sane.

“You see her?” Scott said, still staring at me, but clearly talking to someone else. He looked confused, but not really surprised, and I wondered how often girls appeared in his room without explanation. “She’s not real!” He closed his eyes and punctuated the last word with a blow to the side of his own head, and I sucked in a sharp breath. “If she’s not real, but I see her, does that mean I belong here?” Another self-inflicted punch, and I jumped, but didn’t know what to do. “No, no, no. It’s not
seeing
things that makes you crazy—it’s
hearing
things. So
don’t talk to me!
” he hissed, opening his eyes to glare at a spot near the right-hand wall.

“Scott?” I said, and his head swiveled so fast I was afraid he’d hurt his neck.

“Nononono, you can’t talk because you’re not here, and
I can’t see you, and I can’t hear you, ’cause if I can then I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy. Right?” he demanded, looking at that same spot again. Whatever he heard must have made him happy because he nodded decisively, then turned to stare down at his desktop.

And my heart broke for him.

Scott Carter and I had never been close. In fact, before too much frost had cracked his sanity, I’d thought him shallow, rude, arrogant, spoiled and selfish. But he’d been my boyfriend’s best friend and my cousin’s boyfriend, so our paths had crossed fairly often.

But now, watching him try to convince himself that I was no more real than whoever else he was seeing and hearing, it was hard to feel anything other than pity and sympathy for the boy who’d been one-third of the social power trifecta at Eastlake High.

“I’m real, Scott. And I’m really here.”

He shook his head again and this time covered his ears with both hands, like a stubborn toddler. “That’s exactly what a hallucination would say. You think I’m gonna fall for that just because you look like Kaylee and sound like Kaylee? I see Kaylee Cavanaugh every day, and she’s not real, and you’re not real, either. You’re just another one of his tricks. So why are you talking?”

What?
He saw me every day?

I wasn’t sure how to feel about being a regularly featured guest star in Scott Carter’s hallucinogenic existence. But it wasn’t his fault. Because of their hardwired connection, Avari could make Scott see or hear whatever he wanted, and the more Scott suffered, the better Avari fed.

And considering how messed up Lakeside’s newest resident obviously was, the psychotic hellion bastard was probably glutted on his energy alone.

“Shut up,” Scott said to the wall. “How can I freak her out if she’s not really here?” He moved one finger over the surface of his empty desk, like he was finger painting. Or trying to write something. And suddenly I realized why he had no pens, pencils, or anything else that could be used as a weapon—he’d tried to stab me the day he was arrested and he was later declared mentally incompetent. But surely they’d keep him somewhere else—somewhere more secure—if he was still considered dangerous. Would he try to hurt a hallucination?

Maybe I shouldn’t have come without Tod….

“I don’t
know
why,” he said without looking up, and I was starting to feel like a Peeping Tom, watching uninvited as he spoke to himself. Or Avari. “Her cousin’s hotter, but it’s always Kaylee Cavanaugh.” Scott stopped for a second, listening to something I couldn’t hear, his fingertip still on the desktop. Then he shook his head. “Nothin’. She doesn’t do a damn thing but stand there and watch me. Or she’ll sit on the toilet when I need to go. Or lie on the bed when I’m tired, knowin’ I’m not gonna lay down next to some ghost, or hallucination, or whatever the hell she is. Kept me up till three in the morning last time. But she never says a damn word.” And suddenly he turned to me. “You’re not supposed to talk!”

I could only stare at him. I don’t know what I expected, knowing some of what he’d been through, but this wasn’t it. And I didn’t know what to say to him. So I started with the most basic question, and one he was probably tired of hearing. “Scott? Are you okay?” I asked, my palms pressed against the door at my back. I wished I could melt through it, like Tod could, then wander around, invisible, until he came back.

“I’m crazy, how do you think I am?” Scott snapped. “Were you this crazy when you were in here? Did I come and stare at you all day, watching you sleep, and eat, and piss?”

I shook my head, and he stood, shoving his chair out with the backs of his legs.

“No. Because that wouldn’t make any sense, would it? So why the hell are you always here? Why does he put you here day…after…day? Because I couldn’t take you to him? That’s it, right? He wanted you, and I couldn’t deliver you, so now he rubs my face in you all…damn…day.” His words ended in a whimper, punctuated by three more blows to his own head, and when he came closer, fists still clenched, I inched away, desperately wishing I’d stayed with Farrah.

Then he glanced at the wall again, and his eyes narrowed.

“I can’t hurt her. She’s not here.” I stared at the wall, trying to see what he saw. Avari had messed with the shadows before, making Scott see and hear things in them, until he’d started screaming and cowering away from at the slightest shade. But the only shadows here were beneath the bed and dresser. Just like in the hospital, the staff at Lakeside kept his room lit from all four corners to chase away as many shadows as possible. Just to keep him functional.

He was staring at the wall again, his head slightly tilted. Like he was listening. “Why should he?” Scott asked no one. “He wants to know what’s in it for him.”

“For who?” I asked, and Scott glanced at me.

“For
Avari
. Pay attention!”

Crap!
Did Avari know I was there? Could he see what Scott saw? Is that who Scott was talking to?

No, it couldn’t be. He was talking
about
Avari. Or maybe
for
him. But who was he talking to? Or was he completely imagining the other half of the conversation—not beyond the realm of possibility for someone who regularly saw people who weren’t there.

“Scott, I can’t hear whatever you’re hearing. I can’t see your hallucinations.”

He laughed out loud, and the bitter cackle caught me completely off guard. “
You’re
the hallucination. The rest of us are real.”

The weird parallel between his psychosis and Farrah’s chilled me from the inside out, but arguing with him would do no good.

“No way.” Scott shook his head, talking to the wall again. “He wants more. Something bigger.” He paused as the wall presumably answered, and the smile that crawled over Scott’s face then made me want to hold my breath and throw salt over my shoulder. “Now you’re talkin’.”

“Scott, who are you talking to?” I asked, creeped out to realize that whatever he was talking about was starting to make a weird kind of sense. Nothing I could quite understand, but definitely not lunacy.

“I don’t know!” he shouted, and I jumped, then glanced at the door, worried it would fly open and the room would be overrun with needle-bearing aides. “I’m not talking to you,” he insisted, a little quieter. “Because you’re
not supposed to talk!
Go away! Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway!”

I opened my mouth, but before I could think of what to say, the door flew open and a large male aide—Charles, according to his name tag—burst into the room. I stood frozen, pulse racing so fast my vision was starting to blur. I’d been caught. I’d be arrested, and handcuffed, and driven to the police station in the back of the car.

“Okay, Scott, calm down…” Charles started, both hands outstretched, and I realized this was a familiar performance for them both. But when he saw me, the aide’s voice faltered, and I was pretty sure he was doubting his own sanity in the brief silence. Then, “Who are you? You’re not a resident.”

They never called us—er,
them
—patients. Always residents, like people resided at Lakeside by choice.

My hands opened and closed. I was starting to sweat, and my chest ached until I realized I wasn’t breathing. I opened my mouth and sucked in a deep breath, but that didn’t fix anything. Tod wasn’t back. I was still trapped.

“She’s not real,” Scott whispered, glancing from me to the aide, then back. “Make her go away.”

Charles scowled at me, part confusion, part anger. “You can’t be here. How did you even get
in
here?”

“I…” But that’s where my words ran out.

I could run, but I’d never get past Charles. He was big, and part of his job was restraining residents, when the need arose. And even if I got past him, I couldn’t get out of the locked ward.

Each breath came faster than the last, but I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t even slow them. There was only one way out, and I desperately didn’t want to take it. If hellions and assorted monsters hung out across the world barrier from the high school, I didn’t want to know what was lurking in the Netherworld version of a mental health facility.
Insane
hellions? Was there any other kind?

I closed my eyes, trying to block out the entire room and both of the other occupants. Pulse racing, I tried to think about death. To remember those I’d witnessed so that my wail for them would help me cross into the Netherworld.

But the only death I could think about was my own, and I can’t wail for myself.

“Security!” Charles shouted, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, still trying.

A warm hand took a strong grip on mine, and I screamed and tried to jerk away. But he held tight. An instant later,
the hum of the air conditioner faded into silence and my ears popped.

Then, suddenly the world felt warm and humid. Cicadas chirruped all around me, and that hand still held mine, its grip confident, but looser now.

“You okay?” Tod asked, and I opened my eyes to find him watching me, dark blond brows drawn low over blue eyes still brilliant in the setting sun. We were in the parking lot, by the trash bins, almost exactly where we’d stood half an hour earlier.

“That was… What
was
that?” I demanded, as my pulse finally began to slow.

“That was me taking some of the tarnish off this old armor.” He pretended to brush dust off the front of his shirt.

“You call that a rescue?”

Tod frowned. “You don’t?”

“That aide was about to haul me out of the room!” I pulled Lydia’s robe off in several angry movements, surprised to see that my hands were still shaking from the close call.

“It’s more fun when you’re almost caught.”

“That’s not almost. I
was
caught.” As evidenced by the remnants of panicked adrenaline still burning in my veins.

“Well, now you’re
un
-caught. And for the record, you’re the second chick I’ve snatched from the jaws of the mental health industry tonight.” His eyes shined in the dying light, and I couldn’t resist a small smile. Yes, I’d been caught and nearly suffered a fatal aneurysm from the shock—several days early, by my count—but it was over now, and I’d gotten what I needed.

“So, you what? Just blinked us both out of there? So that aide saw us disappear?”

Tod’s brows rose. “What kind of amateur do you think I am? He only saw
you
disappear. He never saw me at all.”

“That makes two of us. I was starting to worry about you.” I dropped Lydia’s robe on the sidewalk and headed for my car.

“Sorry.” Tod fell into step beside me. “It was a little more complicated than I expected.”

“But she’s okay?” I asked.

“She…? Oh, Lydia.” Tod brushed one stubborn blond curl from his forehead. “Yeah. I mean, she’s scared to be on her own, but anything’s better than that place.” He glanced over his shoulder at Lakeside. “And she has your number, right?”

“Yeah.” As I drove home, I played with the idea of inviting her to stay at my house. In a perfect world, that would have been…perfect. My dad needed someone to take care of, and he was about to lose me. Lydia needed to be taken care of, and she couldn’t go back to her own parents.

But if we lived in a perfect world, I wouldn’t be days from death and Lydia wouldn’t have been locked up in the first place. The reality was that she could never take my place, and my dad would probably be in no shape to take care of anyone for a while after his grand scheming failed and I died.

How could there possibly be so many things left to fix, and so little time in which to fix them?

“You wanna come in?” I asked, as I pulled my key from the engine.

Tod looked at me in the light shining through the windshield from the porch light. “Don’t you need to do some homework, or get a good night’s sleep, or something equally wholesome?”

I pushed open my car door. “I am no longer attending school for the purpose of education. At this point, I’m only showing up to keep an eye on Mr. Beck. And speaking of evil demon sires, I have a theory I need to verify. Interested in helping?”