Ricky still had no idea what the warden’s aim for him was.
“It wasn’t like I enjoyed it,” he said, a little defensive. “He took me down into the basement.”
“And?” Kay pressed. “What was there?”
“It was like the dream, but not as scary, I guess. There were orderlies there and someone was banging themselves against a door. The warden was going to show me the room—the one with the girl—and then Nurse Ash showed up and pulled me out of there.” God, it sounded completely insane when he said it aloud. It was insane. All the same, it felt good to tell someone and to have that someone nod and take him at his word. Even with the light as harsh as it was, there was a kind of angelic glow around Kay; it gave the conversation an air of holiness. Of confession. Unlike any priest Ricky had met, however, Kay’s presence put him at ease.
“I swear it’s all true,” Ricky added softly.
“So what then?”
“She dragged me back to my room, but the warden was mad. I mean, he looked furious. She told me he was bad news, that I shouldn’t listen to him or go to the basement with him again. A monster. That’s what she called him. A butcher and a monster. She made me promise I wouldn’t go to the basement with him again.” Yeah. Insane. “Then today it was like none of it ever happened. She acted like I made the whole thing up! It’s like they’re doing everything they possibly can to make me feel crazy.”
Kay fell silent and stayed that way for a long time. Ah. Great. He should’ve guessed this would happen—the story sounded bizarre even to him, and he had lived it. That momentary confession-like calm would be broken any second. She chewed over his story for a minute or two, twirling her grass-green crayon in her fingers. The fingernails were down to the quick, he could see, and cracked, as if they had been chewed off nervously, as worn as her lower lip.
“What did you stuff down your pants just now?” she asked.
“I wanted to write down everything Nurse Ash told me yesterday. It’s all true, Kay, I promise. Why would I make it up?”
“I don’t think you would, Ricky. But then again I don’t know you all that well. Making friends in here is . . . You know, it’s not always easy. Or smart. You get to know someone—like someone—then one day they’re gone. They get taken away, get better, or hurt themselves so badly they can’t be saved. Which one are you?”
“Taken away,” he said flatly. “But because I’m already fine. Because I don’t belong here. You know you and I are just different. Different isn’t sick.”
She let out a huge breath and teetered back toward the table, her sigh winding on and on until she was out of air completely. Then she chewed her fingernail again. She really ought to conquer that bad habit. “So what are you going to do?” she asked.
“You believe me?”
She bounced her head slowly back and forth until it eventually turned into something like a nod. He felt suddenly guilty again—here she had spent the morning in agony and he was unloading all of these heavy stories on her. And she listened. And she believed. Someone that strong was an ally you wanted.
“It’s too much to be made up,” she said. “Even for you.”
“And I don’t even take exception to that.” They shared a smile, but it was brief. His heart dropped to his stomach and then to the floor: There was a commotion at the door to the multipurpose room, and when the nurses parted, Warden Crawford eased between them and smiled a slow smile. It took him just an instant to find the patient he wanted.
“You still didn’t answer my question,” Kay prodded.
“What am I going to do? What else would I do? I’m going to get out of here one way or another, and I’m not going alone.”
“You want us to do what?”
Ricky trailed along behind the warden, trying not to walk too quickly and step on the man’s heels. They traveled, or maybe ambled, along the corridor outside the multipurpose room, the warden with his hands tucked behind his back.
“It’s a kind of therapy,” the warden told him. His voice wasn’t deep. It commanded a certain amount of attention, but it was also thin, like the first film of frost over a lake. Floaty and almost light one second, darker and more dangerous the next. Ricky had heard the switch when the warden lost his temper at his brother and later at Nurse Ash, and now Ricky wondered if he would hear it again. But the warden was content to wander and pause, wander and pause, stopping in front of photographs that hung in the hall.
“Some institutions do their utmost to separate patients from one another,” he told Ricky. He leaned in close to one of the framed pictures, examining it before reaching over to remove the tiniest speck of dirt from the glass. “I find that approach counterproductive. A functioning member of society can interact with his fellow man. We run that test in miniature here from time to time—marking progress by allowing patients a degree of socialization and cooperation. My entire career has been about finding a kinder, gentler solution to the more barbaric practices of my predecessors.”
Kinder. Gentler. That sounded fine with him, especially if it meant never undergoing shock therapy again.
“I guess the others don’t seem so bad,” Ricky admitted. “Angela and Patty, I mean, they have their moments, but I’ve never had a problem with them.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Desmond, thank you.”
It wasn’t actually a compliment, but sure.
“Yeah,” he said, adding the sarcastic edge only in his head. “Anytime.”
“Accordingly, you should have no problem organizing a brief tableau for the gala. A skit. Nothing too elaborate. Just a small demonstration of the good work we do here, proof that our patients are stable and improving, and capable of working together.”
Being put in charge of the “tableau” felt like another “privilege,” and Ricky didn’t like it. He didn’t know how to respond, and he suspected he would be forced to comply no matter what anyway, but he was saved the trouble when something on the wall caught the warden’s eye.
“This. This I love,” the warden practically cooed at the photo hanging in the hall.
Ricky stared. He didn’t see what there was to love. It was a patient lying down in profile, staring up at the ceiling, with what looked like a pair of scissors held over him.
“Uh . . .”
Run. Hide.
Ricky shivered. Now more than ever he wanted to take that disembodied voice’s advice.
“Not your fate, I would imagine,” the warden said with a humorless half chuckle. “This isn’t my own work, obviously. This doctor was incredibly prolific. He would do dozens of treatments in a day, dozens . . .” He sighed and it sounded almost wistful. “Those days are gone. We’ve replaced them with more sophisticated methods, but even I can admit there was something admirable about Freeman’s enthusiasm. I still hope to meet him someday.”
They lapsed into silence, and Warden Crawford didn’t look like he was going to stop mooning over the pictures anytime soon. Ricky, still slightly behind him, glanced down at the ever-present clipboard tucked against the doctor’s side. The man was just distracted enough . . . Slowly, Ricky shifted to the right, trying to bring himself into a decent sight line with the papers secured to the board. The warden’s forearm and wrist covered most of the writing, but Ricky could make out the header above it.
He didn’t plan on staying at Brookline, and he would find a way out soon, but his curiosity nagged. What did the warden really think of him? What did they all think of him?
It was Ricky’s name and patient information in block letters. Nothing unexpected. His eyes scanned downward and he squinted, trying to make out the cramped handwriting that filled line after line. Most of it was in a shorthand he couldn’t decipher, but a few bits and pieces were legible.
Smug. Arrogant. All as predicted. Move to P2 soon & 1st dose
Ricky swallowed hard, then snapped his eyes away from the clipboard and took a hasty step back, finding that the warden had, silently and without him noticing, twisted just
enough to watch him. It was unsettling, eerie, the way the man’s head was the only part of him facing Ricky’s direction, as if he were a doll with its head wrenched too far to the side.
Well, if he was so smug and arrogant then they wouldn’t miss him when he hightailed it out of there.
“About this play.” Ricky spoke just a little too loudly, hoping the warden hadn’t been observing him for too long. He had no idea how to interpret what he had read, but none of it sounded particularly encouraging. Leaving was the only option, and he wanted out now. He had to get that phone call home somehow, before P2 and the first dose, whatever that was, happened.
“So . . . Did, um, did you want me to write it myself?”
The warden pulled himself back from the photo distractedly and resolved the odd position of his head, continuing down the hall, a far-off smile on his face. “No, Nurse Ash will give you something to use. I’m confident you’ll put on an impressive show.”
The script was as self-serving and boring as Ricky expected. The only upside was that it gave him an excuse to spend time with Kay, even if it was closely supervised.
“You have four days until the gala,” Nurse Ash had said, handing him a stack of small pamphlets. They were the scripts, hand-typed. He noticed a few typos even on the title page.
“Who wrote this?” he asked, disgusted. He and the other patients expected to participate had been corralled in the recreation room. Angela and Patty were busy digging through the provided prop and costume boxes.
“The warden,” she said with a thin smile. Then softly she winked and added, “I don’t think he should quit his day job.”
Ricky cracked a smile at that. His company would consist of himself, Kay, Angela, Patty, Dennis, and Tanner. He was relieved Sloane wouldn’t be involved—the old man gave him the creeps, and after he’d avoided Ricky for so long, his new staring and grimacing was that much creepier. They congregated around the prop and costume boxes while Ricky looked over the script. It was worse than he’d expected, especially when it came to the dialogue. The characters sounded like talking ads for a psych ward.
“We have to say this stuff in front of actual people?” Kay murmured, frowning down at one of the scripts. “Give me a small part. I don’t care if they’re strangers watching us. This is just embarrassing.”
“You can be Girl Two,” Ricky said with a snort. “Such creativity.”
“This is ridiculous,” Tanner agreed. He had shut his script pamphlet, glaring at the doors to the multipurpose room. Nurse Ash was there, placidly observing them. She didn’t notice or else didn’t acknowledge the tall silhouette behind her—the warden. Watching. Even from this distance, Ricky could feel the man’s gaze on him.
Better not waste time then. He clapped his hands, mimicking the weird theater arts teacher from his high school. Miss Calloway was constantly the butt of jokes, with her huge, dated hairstyle and cat-eye glasses. She looked more like an insect buzzing down the hallways than a theater director. It was the one after-school activity he had tried out for and promptly quit, tired of Butch calling it a “fairy freak show” whenever he returned from rehearsal.
“Joke’s on you, Butch, it’s fairy freak showtime and you put me here,” he said to himself. Which gave him an idea. They were being watched, sure, but he could add a bit of excitement to the skit if he was careful. He leaned in close to Kay, watching Angela and Patty pull on oversized doctors’ coats and laugh at each other over it. “Up for breaking the rules one more time?” he asked.
“What did you have in mind?”
“I saw something on the warden’s clipboard,” he said. “Something about me. I know I said we would get out of here, and I know we have to do it soon, Kay. But I need to get a better look at what they were writing about me, and I’ll need your help to do it.”
“Why not just leave?” she asked.
“We will.” It had the deliberateness of a promise. But he couldn’t avoid the sense that the warden was toying with him. Why be so nice and permissive if he really thought Ricky was a smug, arrogant brat? Something was off about that man, about Brookline, and he needed to know just how he figured into it before he left it forever.
“Is this what you were looking for?”
Nurse Ash paused in the doorway in front of him, reluctant to go in. Ricky didn’t blame her—the room was pitch-black.
The last couple days had gone by with surprising swiftness for Ricky. Directing the skit had kept him busy and even amused him. He really had liked those drama classes before Butch, he remembered now. And it was nice to have an activity where they weren’t just allowed but encouraged to talk, even if the words they were saying weren’t their own, but the warden’s.
It had also given him more leeway with the staff. He still didn’t have a concrete plan—more like a lot of little ideas, one of which might work—but he wasn’t giving up quite yet on his phone call home. With the gala looming, he hoped the flurry of activity and the relaxed scrutiny on him would afford him a good opportunity, and he wanted to be ready for whatever the opportunity might be.
In the meantime, he made his way through rehearsals, meals, and cold nights, always with a jittery feeling in the back of his head. When would P2 come? What was the warden planning to dose him with?
“Hard to tell without any light,” Ricky said, and Nurse Ash hurried ahead and reached for a string that hung from the ceiling. Even with that light on, it was a dark, cavernous expanse, one he hadn’t known existed. Attached to the all-purpose room by a damp hallway, it looked more like a shadowy cave than a storage room. Nurse Ash turned on another light farther in, and it flickered, coming gradually to life. He could see now the extra tables and chairs, banquet services, lamps, all veiled in shadows. A few medical practice dummies rose up on stands, lining the only cluttered path through the room. One dummy leaned precariously forward, its head tilted in a way that reminded him of the warden.
Always watched. Always observed.
He shivered and picked his way through the junk littering the floor.
“Do you see anything in here that might work?” the nurse asked. “I know you said you wanted more costumes, but the skit doesn’t need to be overly elaborate.”
“I thought the warden wanted us to impress,” Ricky countered. He was surprised she had allowed him the chance to look through this old storage area. Maybe it was time to reassess his chances of winning her over.
“I’m trying my best here,” he added, and he meant it. “You told me to keep my head down and follow the rules. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Nurse’s orders.”
“You’re right,” Nurse Ash replied. “And I think it’s a good sign that you’re taking this responsibility so seriously. You have a tendency to be, well . . .”
“Smug?” he ventured, testing. “Arrogant?”
“Hm, those aren’t the words I was going to use.”
Maybe she hadn’t seen the warden’s notes then, or they hadn’t stuck with her the way they’d stuck with him. “Why don’t we say, ‘brash’?”
Nurse Ash trailed behind him, her heels clicking softly as she navigated the debris-ridden floor. “I think there could be some old wigs and coats toward the back there. Nurse Kramer told me the staff used to put on a Christmas pageant for the patients in past years.”
“Why did they stop?” Ricky asked, dodging under one of the listing medical dummies. It had been labeled and divided into sections, and it reminded him of the way a butcher would carve up an animal.
“One incident or another, I’m sure,” she said. “I never did get the whole story.”
“Bingo! Here we go.” He spied a row of boxes about knee-high, a dark wig visible just below the edge of one. One of his ideas, the one that had led him here, was to cobble together a costume from the available junk that could pass for an orderly’s uniform in a pinch. He could use it to slip outside during the gala and run (difficult) or at least get to the reception area to use the phone (still difficult, but not impossible). The
appealing bonus in that second option was that he could also track down the warden’s notes about him—and hopefully more information about this other Desmond.
(If it looked like neither of those options was going to work, his next idea was to sidle up to the most sympathetic-looking rube at the gala and give his sob story. He really was just a good, misunderstood boy, and would they have a heart and get in touch with Mrs. Desmond on Boylston Street and let her know how dearly her loving boy wanted to come home?)
His stomach turned as he thought of Kay’s chances in any of those ideas. How would he manage to get her out of Brookline? He kept telling himself that if he could get out, then he would have the time, resources, and freedom to engineer a more daring escape plan for her.
For now, he was looking for anything resembling the crisp, white uniform shirts the male orderlies wore. A wig would help, too, if he wanted to dash out the door and down the driveway unmolested.
The lightbulb behind him sputtered, crackling as it gave another surge and managed to stay on. Nurse Ash tripped on something and swore under her breath. He could hear footsteps through the ceiling above him, slow, shuffling, like someone was wandering back and forth, a muffled staccato that penetrated the thick walls and even thicker dance of dust motes in the storage area. He wondered how many places like this there were in Brookline, darker, dirtier rooms that belied the sanitized white exterior.
He climbed over a closed cardboard box, nearing the little tuft of hair visible a few yards away. It was darker here, beyond the reach of the dying light. That scratchy, choking feeling of dust clogging his throat set in, reminding him of the almost unbreathable air in the file closet. But he was near his goal and he went to it quickly, eager to get back to the light with whatever he found.