“I don’t want you to do anything that could hurt you,” Scarlet said, feeling guilt and hope in equal measure at the thought of finally having a solution. “Just point the way, and I’ll go on my own.”
“No. Our job is to help troubled teens, isn’t it?” Charlotte said confidently, looking at Maddy. “You are a troubled teen and I am going to help you.”
“Don’t you remember all those conversations we had about good deeds?” Maddy scowled, grabbing Charlotte by her scrawny shoulders in a last-ditch effort to talk sense into her. “How pointless they are? What a waste of time they turn out to be?”
“I also told you that I would do anything for Scarlet,” Charlotte said firmly, staring straight into Maddy’s eyes. “Scarlet needs me to go.”
“And I need you to stay,” Maddy slipped.
The “need” bit was a little jarring for Charlotte to process, and off-putting too. Normally she would have been charmed by Maddy’s admitting her vulnerability, her apparent jealousy over Scarlet’s visit, like that, but that’s not how it came out. It wasn’t “need” in the sense of “want” that Maddy was expressing; rather it seemed to be need in the sense of must.
“And I need you to mind your own business,” Scarlet jabbed.
Charlotte was increasingly pissed that Maddy was sticking her nose in, but she had been a really good friend since they’d arrived, and it was totally understandable that Maddy would feel threatened by her relationship with Scarlet.
“Why don’t you come with?” Charlotte suggested. “We could use your help.”
“Sorry, Charlotte,” Maddy said, “but I’m not going to jeopardize everything by leaving, and you shouldn’t either.”
Scarlet just frowned knowingly. Maddy didn’t appear to her to be someone who would make a sacrifice for any reason.
“No one ever said we can’t leave,” Charlotte shot back. “Technically, anyway.”
Just then, the phone in their apartment rang, and Maddy, using her phone bank skills, jumped to get it.
Maddy turned her back to the girls and nodded a few times, but neither Charlotte nor Scarlet could hear a word she was saying. The girls only knew the chat had ended when Maddy put down the receiver, a much cheerier expression plastered across her face than before.
“Hey, Charlotte, can I borrow you for a minute?” Maddy asked, grabbing her by her waif-like wrist and leading her to another corner of the room.
“You know, at first I thought this might have been a bad idea, with all your work-load and stuff,” Maddy chirped, “but I know how unhappy you’ve been, and going back might, you know, make sense for you,” Maddy continued. “I mean, Scarlet’s perfect, popular sister is lying there, vulnerable and empty, and you are probably the only one who can help her right now.”
“So you’re really going to help me?” Charlotte asked.
“That’s what friends are for, right?” Maddy affirmed, turning and beaming at Scarlet.
Chapter
13
Shadow of Doubt
Behind every cloud is another cloud.
—Judy Garland
Never trust a person who says trust me.
Trust is not a given. In any relationship, it is the hardest thing to earn and the easiest to lose. In fact, the only words harsher than “I don’t love you anymore” are “I don’t trust you anymore.” The former has everything to do with someone else. There is nothing you can do about a change of heart. The latter has everything to do with you.
Charlotte, Scarlet, and Maddy arrived at the fenced-in perimeter of the campus as first light fought to break through the overcast sky above them. Up close, the barrier was a bit higher than they expected, but not particularly formidable. There were no guards to avoid or checkpoints to navigate; just a lone video camera like the two at the office.
Charlotte made a kind of climbing motion with her hands, and Scarlet and Maddy caught her drift. Getting up, and even over, was the easy part, Charlotte thought. The backside was a different matter. It was impossible to see much past the fence, even from their apartment. Also, none of them had come in this way, so what really lay on the other side was, at the very least, unknown. At worst, well, nobody wanted to speculate.
“We’re off to see Petula … ,” Charlotte sang nervously.
“I hope you’re not betting on a friggin’ yellow brick road to lead us there,” Maddy said ominously.
Charlotte turned to them, pressed her bony finger to her lips in the universal sign for “shut up,” and began climbing stealthily. Scarlet and Maddy followed. The climb down was a lot farther than up, and before long, the dank environs of the campus gave way to the even danker and drearier forest that descended beneath them.
There was no obvious path through mist and the mucky undergrowth, but there was just enough turf wear and light for the girls to see the way.
“Doesn’t look like anyone has come this way … ,” Charlotte noted, and paused at the thought of how best to describe the undefined path. “… Lately.”
“That’s an understatement,” Maddy interjected snidely, surveying the little-traveled wood before them.
Scarlet took the lead, stomping over the damp carpet of leaves and dirt. It was invigorating, thrilling even, for Charlotte to be out there with her friends. She imagined that this was what it might be like to go off to college or start an actual life filled with expectations and hope.
At first, the girls all shared a sense of excitement, even Maddy, as they drifted through the forest, blazing a path directly through the Unknown, all three of them together with no one around to tell them what to do or how to do it. It felt like sneaking out in the middle of the night when your parents had gone to bed and having the whole world — and the whole night — to explore.
Scarlet trudged forward, thinking what an amazing game of hide-and-seek she and Petula could’ve played here as kids. Come to think of it, maybe that is exactly what they were doing now. The stakes were higher though, and the enormity of what they were trying to do began to hit her too.
They trod carefully through the thicket, which sprouted thorns like pimples on an oily face. The little pricks on their legs and arms were getting irritating, and it was getting harder to see. They couldn’t really be sure whether they were lost or not.
“This really sucks,” Maddy whined to Charlotte so that Scarlet could hear. “Maybe we should turn around.”
“Not me,” Scarlet retorted, fending off the doubt creeping through her own brain as well. “You can if you want.”
“We don’t know where we’re going,” Maddy argued, “or if we can get back.”
“I have my own problems.” Scarlet grimaced impatiently, reminding Maddy both of her mission and the fact that she wasn’t planning on returning anyway. “Besides, you invited yourself.”
“I came to help you guys, but if you don’t want me here …”
“Stop,” Charlotte said, nipping the squabble in the bud. “Let’s not fight.”
Charlotte was playing uniter for Scarlet’s sake but was increasingly of a divided mind about this expedition too, and becoming more conflicted with each footstep. There was something about this wasteland surrounding them that was gradually draining her enthusiasm and souring her mood.
It was more than just the physical difficulty of the journey. Her psyche was growing evermore fragile as well, her confidence was shrinking like a cheap sweater in a hot dryer. As unhappy as she’d been lately, this little adventure was proof that things could always get worse. She’d been missing Scarlet and was nostalgic for the good old days of being the resident ghost at Hawthorne High, but maybe it was the idea of Scarlet, of their friendship, that she’d been missing more than the actual person. Perhaps she’d romanticized their relationship to the point where it bore absolutely no resemblance to reality.
She and Maddy were risking a lot to help Scarlet, and Scarlet didn’t seem too appreciative. In fact, she had barely looked back to check on them. The other interns’ reunions didn??
?t have nearly this kind of downside either. Maybe Charlotte had just gotten sucked in again by all the Damen and Petula talk and made a bad choice.
Maddy reached from behind and put her hand gently on Charlotte’s shoulder, as if she’d read her mind.
Scarlet felt herself weakening too, both mind and body, as their progress became slower and slower. She could tell her companions felt the same, and felt them wordlessly blaming her for their plight with each painful stride. The wood had been thickening ever since they left campus, unlike their skins, which were getting thinner by the step. It wasn’t that any of these girls was particularly sensitive, it’s that their nerves had become almost unbearably frayed, rubbed raw by both the harsh landscape and each other. In fact, the girls had barley spoken a word among them since their stressful tiff earlier, and Scarlet was starting to feel like the odd soul out in this spectral threesome.
That Scarlet didn’t like Maddy, and vice versa, was a massive understatement, Scarlet thought, and it was clearly making Charlotte uncomfortable. In her own defense, Scarlet reasoned, it wasn’t really that she didn’t like her, it was just that Maddy’s even being with them felt intrusive.
This was the only time she might ever have with Charlotte again, and she didn’t want to share it with some pushy stranger. As far as Scarlet was concerned, Maddy had totally earjacked their most private conversations and hacked into their friendship. How, Scarlet thought, after all they’d been through, could Charlotte let that happen?
Just as things were at their grimmest, between the travelers, and the foliage, and their nerve endings, Scarlet spied a clearing.
A few steps farther and they emerged from the thicket, right at the fork of two clearly marked roads, one overgrown and little-trod, the other manicured and worn.
“Here we are,” Scarlet observed sarcastically, “at the proverbial fork in the road.” She walked up to the fork and closed her eyes, trying desperately to channel her gut. She was waiting for her intuition to kick in, but it must have been on a coffee break, because all she felt was paralyzed.
“I have no idea,” Scarlet admitted, in a rare show of insecurity. “You guys make the decision.”
“We need to go left,” Maddy chirped decisively, signaling the direction.
“I agree,” Charlotte said just as self-assuredly. She really had no idea and simply mustered whatever faith remained in her own judgment to support Maddy’s choice.
“How do you know?” Scarlet asked Charlotte, questioning not just Maddy’s suggestion but Charlotte’s deference as well.
This kind of confrontation was new territory for them both. Trust had always been the strongest bond between them.
“I just do,” Charlotte trumpeted suspiciously. “I feel it.”
Scarlet tried to keep her cool, but with Petula’s life, and her own, at stake, it was getting harder by the second. Doubt was flooding her mind like water in a sinking ship. She had nothing to base a decision on but her faith in Charlotte, and that was being sorely tested right now. She walked over to Charlotte and took it up a notch.
“When was the last time you were right about your instinct?” Scarlet asked.
“I was right about you,” Charlotte said calmly. “I knew you were special, and I knew you belonged with Damen.” It still hurt her just a little to speak those words. But Scarlet heard something entirely different in her head. Scarlet heard, “You owe me.”
“Yeah, well, looks like you just might have been wrong on both accounts,” Scarlet said.
Charlotte was stung but tried hard to let it slide. The two of them bickering was unnatural, sort of like a comedian heckling himself. She got that Scarlet needed, and deserved, a more independent opinion from her right now, but she was at a loss. Maddy seemed much more certain than she was, Charlotte thought, and the path to the left definitely seemed the easier and more popular route.
“I guess there’s no way to know until we actually make the choice,” Charlotte said, acquiescing. “I think we should go left.”
“You think?” Scarlet said dryly.
Scarlet saw the hurt look on Charlotte’s face and wondered if she was just being unreasonable. None of them knew which road to take. How could they? Wasn’t her resistance simply due to the fact that Maddy had suggested it? Regardless, she thought, Charlotte’s uncertainty was not very much help to her at this critical time, and she was more than a little disappointed that her friend seemed so easily bullied by her and influenced by Maddy.
“What are we waiting for?” Maddy asked, challenging Scarlet for a decision.
“Follow me,” Maddy instructed, grabbing Charlotte’s arm and heading left.
Scarlet went right. Alone.
Chapter
14
Magical Thinking
A paranoid is someone who
knows a little of what’s going on.
—William S. Burroughs
What doesn’t kill you makes you paranoid.
Trapped in your own head, without an exit strategy, conflicted by doubt and with only your obsessions to guide you, reality takes a backseat to anxiety, changing shape faster than a Coney Island contortionist. Charlotte and Scarlet both were realizing that the worst place to be lost was in your own head.
Phones were ringing off the hook at the call center and everyone was pretty distracted by the fact that Charlotte hadn’t shown up. They tried to keep it down so that Mr. Markov wouldn’t hear.
“Did she really try to call in sick?” Pam asked, astonished.
“Yep,” Prue signaled, covering the receiver on her conversation.
“Is Maddy with her?” Suzy Scratcher mouthed to Kim.
“She’s not here,” Kim said hurriedly, working two phone lines at once.
As the expression on Prue’s face changed from disbelief to worry all the chatter in the room quieted. She hung up the phone and looked over at Pam.
“We have to go.”
Charlotte watched helplessly as Scarlet’s bouncing black bob disappeared down the right-hand path and back into the forest.
“Scarlet,” Charlotte called several times without a response.
Maddy held Charlotte’s arm tightly, stopping her from chasing after Scarlet.
“I wanted to go right,” Charlotte mumbled apologetically. “But I hesitated. I just couldn’t be sure.”
“Don’t stress. She’ll be all right.”
“You don’t know that,” Charlotte agonized. “She’s out there by herself. Probably scared half to death.”
“She’s more than half dead already.”
“That’s not funny,” Charlotte said. “I think we should go after her before she gets in too deep.”
“If we really want to help Scarlet, we should get to that hospital.”
Charlotte knew that leaving Scarlet on her own was not something a best friend would do, but not leaving might mean an even worse fate for Petula. Scarlet was tough, Charlotte thought, and street smart. She’d find her way if anyone could.
Charlotte nodded at Maddy, looked down the right side of the path, made a wish for Scarlet to travel safely, and walked to the left to find Petula.
“Someone is coming!” Virginia shrieked as if they were game show castaways waiting to be whisked off the island to a five-star hotel where they could bathe and eat to their hearts’ content.
“No, there isn’t,” Petula said, peering through the glass windows of the office and down the hallway.
She didn’t see anyone. Not a discharge nurse, doctor, or orderly. No one. Still, having no reason to doubt Virginia, she put her ear to the ground and began to hear the faint echo of footsteps as well.
“I didn’t say I heard buffalo.”
“Shhh … ,” Petula said, hushing Virginia and backing her into a little closet nook. “I have a weird feeling.”
Blazing a rough path through the trees and bushes that surrounded her, Scarlet felt as if she were in a modern art museum with impressionist portraits all around her. She could tell the subjec
t from a distance, but up close, it all just looked like spilled, splattered paint.
She couldn’t be sure if it was fear in her mind or if her eyes were playing tricks on her, but it didn’t really matter. She was all alone and totally unsure of anything: where she was, where she was going, and how she was going to get there.
This wasn’t the old Scarlet, and she knew it. She hadn’t been since she’d become so insecure about Damen, and those doubts had infected her thoughts, her decisions, and her other relationships.
“Make decisions for yourself, not because of a guy,” her mother had warned her over and over again.
Petula would never listen, not that it mattered. When she looked into a guy’s eyes, she was only looking for her own reflection anyway. But Scarlet had listened. At least until recently. There was no point in kidding herself any longer though. Saving Petula was important, but that was really the doctors’ job. Saving her relationship was what she was after, and she was ashamed by the realization. Had all this drama just been her way of getting his attention after all or …keeping it?
She thought about how she stormed away from her one true friend, and how she was not only lost now but had been lost for quite some time. She was alienating the people that she loved, consumed with the insecurities that came a la carte with her relationship with Damen.
She could only trust his word that he wanted to be with one person and one person alone — her. He never gave her reason to believe otherwise, but considering he left Petula for her, she could never really be sure. He would argue that he never loved Petula, but to Scarlet, that might have even been worse.
“How are they doing, doctor?” Damen asked hopefully.