WHITE WALLS (2 page)

Aurora moves quickly, snatching a knapsack from the floor and takes my hand. She pulls me down the darkened hallway, making a quick left at the fork between the rec room and infirmary. Smoke is suspended against the ceiling and I can feel the heat from the fire even though it's somewhere behind us. I can still hear it snapping and hissing as it rips through the rooms and causes devastating damage. Hunks of plasters fall behind us and crash into the wood floor. We need to get out of here and fast.

“Where are we going?” I shout. I don't know why I bother asking I know where we're going.

“The basement!”

Of course. We mapped this plan out weeks ago. We sat in the rec room during free time, and I’d said to Aurora in a voice barely above a whisper, “I’m going to try. I’m going to try and escape.”

She quirked me a devious grin and replied in a sing-song voice. “Not without me, you’re not.” She set down the red crayon she was coloring with at the time and went on. “And I know just the kind of diversion we’ll need to get us going.”

I knew she was planning something crazy, but a fire?

I never thought she’d actually start a fire.

“How’d you do it?” I ask, shouting over the snap and crackle of the roaring flames behind us.

She gives me another mischievous grin over her shoulder. “You know I have connections.” She’s been here so long that she’s started this barter system with some of the staff members. She must have traded something for a book of matches.

I don’t ask what she traded and I don’t want to know.

I’m the one who found the window in the basement for us to escape out of. The lone window in the entire asylum that doesn’t have bars on it. What I had to do to find that window…

That isn’t something I’ll ever want to talk about.

At the basement door, Aurora whips it open and heads down first. I hesitate for a second then follow, closing the door behind me. Aurora is already at the end of the stairs when I finally start down them myself. I’m moving much slower than she is, probably because my lungs have been bogged down with smoke.

The cement walls all blur together when I reach the last step and I inhale the musky, damp odor of wetness and mold. Walking swiftly, I walk straight down the narrow, pitch black hallway to the fruit cellar at the end of the hall. Aurora stands below the window, piling a few books on top of one another. The window is long, but wide and she already has it opened.

She motions me over with her right hand. “Here!” she yells. “You go first!”

I’m not going to argue. I’m the weaker of us both and if I go last I’ll slow us down.

I step onto the books and stick my arms out the opening of the window.

I tell my feet, don’t fail me now as I shimmy out the basement window onto the cold damp earth.

Aurora has her hands on my backside and she grunts, giving me one final shove. Once I'm all the way out, I bend down and reach for her. First she hands me the khaki burlap sack she packed for us with items she managed to steal without the staff noticing. Then she sticks both of her short arms out the open window. I clamp my fingers around her wrists.

I pull.

With force and fierce determination.

We're so close to freedom I can taste it like bittersweet chocolate melting on my tongue. “Use your feet,” I growl.

“Where would you like me to put them?” She huffs out in a sarcastic undertone.

“Scale the wall with them while I pull,” I force out breathless. Aurora isn't that heavy. In fact she isn't heavy at all. She has a petite build and can't possibly weigh more than one hundred pounds. But I've never been the strongest person and my tight grip on her wrists is slipping.

Stumbling backwards, using as much strength as I can, I dig my heels into the muddy ground to give myself some traction. That's when I hear the voices.

“Oh no!”

“Keep pulling!” Aurora shouts as the voices get louder and are followed by a door slamming.

I do. I pull so hard I'm worried that I might pull her dainty arms out of her sockets. By the time I've managed to get her partly out the window there are members of the staff filling up the small room. Frantic shouts seep out the window and I hear someone yell, “Get them!”

At that point Aurora looks at me sternly. “Go!”

“What?” I shake my head and refuse to let go of her. “No! We promised we'd do this together! I'm not going to leave you!”

“Damn it, Adelaide just go!”

I plant my feet firmly into the ground and Aurora glances over her shoulder. Marjorie is inches away from her. Guilt penetrates the walls of my stomach and brings on a bout of nausea. In a way it’s like I'm reliving Damien's death all over again. “I can't.”

Aurora grits her teeth. “Fine if you won't go on your own, I'll make you.”

I stare at her puzzled. I'm confused. “What do you mean you'll make me?”

Just when I least expect it Aurora opens her mouth, pulls herself up the slightest bit, clamps her teeth down on my skin, and bites me hard. Pain travels up my arm at lightning speed and I stumble backwards releasing Aurora's hands. My butt slams into the cold, wet ground and I scramble back to the window just in time to see Marjorie yanking Aurora away. Aurora thrashes beneath her grasp, but manages to meet my gaze. “Run, Adelaide! Run!”

I hear what she's telling me, but I can't react. It's like my hands and knees are cemented into the soil.

Dr. Morrow enters. The wicked leer on his lips chills me to the bone and I glance frantically between him and Aurora. I know he's got something sadistic planned for her, but Aurora doesn't seem fazed by it. She stares at him, a defiant scowl on her lips. She's taunting him. It's like she's telling him, do your best because it won't affect me.

Dr. Morrow shouts at one of the orderlies. “Go outside and get the other one!”

Then Aurora looks in my direction one final time. “Adelaide, run now!”

My feet don't start moving until I see the orderly dressed in white rounding the corner. He sprints toward me and I hop up forgetting the sack at my feet and take off. I pump my legs as hard as I can, staring at the forest in front of me. There are trees of all shapes and sizes.

I'll be safe in those trees.

I can climb them.

I can hide in them.

I used to climb the giant willow tree in my back yard. It was like a game for me and mommy because she'd always come looking for me. The funny thing is that she always knew where I was, but she played along anyway. I was perched above her head in the tree, trying to contain my laughter and she was below, her forearm positioned against her forehead. She squinted out into the field full of yellowed, dead grass. Then she said, “Little bird! Where did you fly to?”

The orderlies’ footsteps thunder in my ears and sound off in sync with my hammering heartbeat.

I've never pushed myself so hard in my entire life. I'm winded. Starting to feel exhausted.

Don't stop now.

Don't stop now.

It's just a few more feet.

I am almost there.

I feel the orderlies’ breath down the back of my neck and feel the tug as his fingertips grasp the edge of my hospital gown. I wrench away though, finding a second wind when I'm at the edge of the forest.

Busting through the thicket at the entrance to the forest, I hear Aurora's frantic shouts in my head.

Run, Adelaide! Run!

The sound of her voice is the only thing that keeps me going. Knowing that she wanted me to escape, and get out even if she couldn't is the only thing keeping the burning sensation inside of my lungs from spreading and dousing the rest of my body in flames.

Run, Adelaide! Run!

I will run, Aurora, I will.

I will run for you.

And me.

I won't stop.

I promise.

I'll keep going just like you wanted me to.

I'll keep running until I can't anymore.

Chapter Two

~Before~

I attacked Daddy.

After he was tried and convicted of killing Mommy and Damien, I attacked him.

I tried to stay calm.

Keep my composure.

Be the better person.

But I couldn't. I snapped, lunging for his neck with needy fingers.

And I hate myself for it.

I tried to choke the life out of him. I can't explain what came over me. Maybe it was the simple flashback of when I was on the stand and he drug his thumb across his throat as an obscene gesture toward me that made the last sound part of my mind float away.

Or maybe…

Maybe I am more like him than I thought.

And the possibility of that terrifies me.

It took four police men to pry me off of him. All the while Daddy wasn't even upset. He was cackling like a lunatic. Why? Because he won. He beat me up and broke me down in every physical, mental, and emotional way.

And I let him.

As I tightened my fingers around his neck and he choked out his laughter, I screamed.

Thrashed.

Anger blazed through my fingertips when I tightened my grip.

And when the police officers pulled me away, I was clawing at air, hoping that by some miracle my fingernails would scrape the skin on his face. To leave deeply rooted scratch marks.

So I could leave scars on him.

Just like he left scars on me.

After the guilty verdict had been read and I lost my wits, my mind, and all of my composure. The police officers secured me in a holding cell.

You've been through a lot, the cops told me.

We're sending you away to get the help you need, they told me.

But they told me they were going to get me help before and they didn't. Now I understand why. Because they were watching me.

Waiting.

Probably hoping that the last thread of sanity inside me would finally break. Then they'd be able to say haul her away, she's a lunatic.

I'm pretty sure they've got exactly what they've wanted.

Now, I am the canary I’ve always wanted to be.

Or at least the bright yellow bus I’m riding in makes me feel like one.

I'm flying.

Flying far, far away.

There's only one problem; I'm flying alone because Damien, the second person who was supposed to be on this journey with me, is dead.

He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.

It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself that he's really dead. It still doesn't sit right with me. Feel right. Or ease the never-ending pain I've felt stabbing at my insides since Daddy shot him.

My attention averts to the window as the wide, open plains and sporadic trees breeze by. Ahead there’s an empty wide stretch of road and the bus picks up speed. I look away from the window. All of the scenery is blurring together and it’s making me nauseous.

I scan the empty seats. They’re tan. Probably fake leather. I poke the seat in front of me, watching the indent from my finger as it slowly disappears. Frustrated, I roll my head back and begin tapping it against the soft head rest.

I wish there was someone to talk to.

Or look at.

I wish there was someone else on the bus to distract me.

But there isn’t. Aside from me and the driver the bus is empty.

“How much longer?” I call up from a seat three rows from the back on the right side.

The driver, a rotund man with a chubby face and a comb-over eyes me in the mirror. “About another hour.”

All the police said was that I was being sent to a place that was going to help me overcome my ‘issues’. The issues I’d accrued after Damien’s death. There was a brief moment; days after his death that I thought I might be okay. That I might be able to always remember our love, but be able to move on. But that changed the day of his funeral. When his mother threw me out of the church.