“Child, I know Magpie has a way of starting things, and I’m not telling you to just ignore her. But sometimes you got to fight quieter. Sometimes you got to pretend a little.”
“You’re not going to tell me not to fight?”
“Don’t quote me on this, or I’ll deny it. But I’d be worried if you stopped fighting. That isn’t to say you should go around pulling Magpie by the hair. Even if she said something that deserved it.”
Vern took me back to my room after that. Tomorrow would be filled with recriminations. Probably a new drug protocol and another visit from my mother. If my parents thought this was serious enough, maybe even my father, too. But since Magpie still breathed in and out and had regained the use of her limbs, there would be no real consequences. Vern knew it and I knew it. But for the hour that we watched The End of Almost, Vern thought that my anger had taken another victim. And that I had changed everything.
6
I was in my room at Whittaker. It was dark, and I was staring into a hand mirror encircled with metal and decorated in symbols and strange writing along the sides. A giant, silver-looking tree covered in carvings took up the entire reflection. And in front of the tree, there was me.
“Bale?” I whispered. He was usually in my dreams, but lately he’d been missing. It was a cruel insult to injury that I didn’t get to see him even in my subconscious.
“I’m here, Snow!” he called, his voice hoarse like he’d been crying. Or screaming. “Behind the tree.”
My reflection in the glass smirked at me even though my face hadn’t moved a muscle. The “me” in the mirror raised her arms even though my own remained at my sides. The arms reached for me, then suddenly one of them pulled back to punch.
“No! Snow, don’t!” Bale cried out, but I couldn’t see him, and I couldn’t stop what happened next as my reflection’s fist collided with the mirror.
I covered my face as glass fell into the room, landing on the tile floor all around me. I examined myself for scratches, but somehow none of the shards had touched me. Then, almost against my will, I picked up the pieces and began assembling them into something, despite the fact that my hands stung and every movement drew blood. I placed my handiwork on top of my head, ignoring the pain. I had made a crown that shimmered like ice. A line of blood dripped down its surface.
I woke to the sound of a knock on my door. No one ever knocked at Whittaker.
Then the door opened. It was Dr. Harris.
This had to be bad. The good doctor didn’t make room visits. Did Vern get in trouble for letting me watch TV after I hurt Magpie? I wondered. I mentally patted myself on the back for thinking of someone else first. There was no seven-dwarf pill for empathy; my concern for Vern was genuine. Dr. Harris had said empathy was good. Little did he know I was already putting what I did to Magpie in my rearview. She had come after me in the visitors’ lounge. She had given Bale matches. She had added to Bale’s fire. That girl was a bitch, and everyone knew it. She deserved what she got.
“I heard Magpie’s fine,” I said preemptively.
Dr. Harris wore glasses and a perpetual crease between his stark green eyes that seemed to always stare a little bit too long. Not in a lascivious way, but in an “I want to find out how you tick” kind of way.
I wasn’t used to his being in my space or standing upright. He was supposed to be in his office behind a desk, not moving much more than an eyebrow.
“I am here to check on you,” Dr. Harris said curtly. “Tell me about what happened.”
“Magpie came at me. And I gave it right back. I barely touched her. There’s no way I pushed her hard enough for her to be paralyzed, even temporarily. She must have been faking it.”
“The doctor says she’s fine. Ophelia does tend toward the dramatic. But I am more concerned about you. You were angry. We’ve talked about this. You have to gain control and learn to express your anger without making it a physical thing.”
He waited for me to say something. But I had nothing to add. This was exactly the conversation I was expecting. I just didn’t expect to be having it in my room.
“I’m going to try something new with your therapy. You know that we could not keep you in this ward if you had actually …” He trailed off, which was unlike him.
Killed Magpie, I thought. That’s what he was going to say.
“There isn’t anything beyond Ward D,” I reminded him. What more could they do to me?
“If something had actually happened tonight, the state would have taken you away from me … away from Whittaker. Criminal charges would have been pressed. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Don’t worry, Snow. We will keep you here, where you belong.” He almost looked sincere. “I’m going to start you on a new protocol tomorrow.”
I gritted my teeth. Another cocktail.
He walked farther into the room, holding out a white cup to me. I hadn’t even seen it in his hand. “In the meantime, you need rest. Good rest.”
I noticed two White Coats just outside the door, watching, waiting. Just in case things got out of hand. I guess Dr. Harris was more worried about what I did to Magpie than I thought.
“Go on,” he said, rattling the pill inside the cup.
I snatched it from his hand and looked inside. The little blue-and-yellow powdered pill I called Sleepy stared up at me. Just looking at it drained all the anger right out of me. And I kind of wanted that pill. I really was tired.
“Thatta girl,” said Dr. Harris as I swallowed it down and lay back on my pillow. I was already starting to fade out by the time he closed my door. But before I fell asleep, I couldn’t help but hear Dr. Harris’s voice resonating through my brain. We will keep you here, where you belong.
He was wrong. Whittaker wasn’t my home. No one deserved to be locked up forever. What was the point of life, then? Didn’t he want me to get better?
I didn’t know where I belonged, but it wasn’t there.
Later, the door to my room opened in the middle of the night, pulling me out of a deep sleep. At first I thought it was Vern doing spot checks. It wasn’t. Even through the cloudy, drug-induced haze I could see the boy standing by my bed. He had light-brown hair that fell partly over his eyes and dusted his shoulders, curling slightly at the edges. His features were soft, light eyebrows, small nose, full lips. But I could see a sharp jawline as his face jutted out into a moonbeam that had fallen like a spotlight. His eyes glowed a silvery gray in the near dark.
“You’re awake,” he said. I noticed then he was wearing an orderly’s white coat that looked a size too big for him. We made eye contact. “It’s really you.”
Though I felt my heartbeat pick up, my body still felt heavy and sluggish. I didn’t move. There were a million things wrong with the fact that someone other than Vern was in my room at night. First and foremost, he was not an adult; he was a boy. He looked near my age, give or take a few months. Plus, White Coat night checks were strictly matched by gender to cut down on the chance for impropriety. Some inmates didn’t have boundaries in that department.
Some White Coats didn’t, either.
I watched the boy take a step closer. The hairs on my arms stood up, and everything in my body told me to be on guard. There was something about him, something more about him that demanded attention—period. He looked like he had stepped out of The End of Almost. How was it possible that someone who looked like this was in my room? This boy was almost aerodynamic, like a shiny sports car. Even wearing that oversize white coat, I could tell that there was no amount of flesh or muscle misused. He was just as thin as Bale, who had grown out of the skeleton boy he was as a child into something else entirely. But Bale’s lines were softer because he was locked in his room most of the time.
I looked down and caught a peek at the boy’s shoes. They were shiny and black, the kind you wear for an interview or to a party or a wedding—not to a crazy girl’s room in the middle of the night.
I finally pushed mys
elf up in bed.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said in a whisper. “When I got a signal that magic was being used here, I had no idea it would lead me to you of all people.”
Magic? Had he just said magic?
His hair fell over one of his eyes as he leaned into my personal space.
Most people at Whittaker—if they knew anything—knew not to get that close to me after the Hannibal incident with Vern.
But Sleepy had made my wits slow, and instead of biting him, I closed my eyes in a drawn-out blink.
“There you are. I see you under all those drugs. Don’t you want to come out and play, Snow?”
Who was this guy? I stared off toward the wall and refocused, trying to shake off the drugs.
“Fine, just listen. The pills that Dr. Harris is giving you aren’t helping you. They’re hiding you from who you really are and what you’re meant to be. They’re hiding you from your destiny. Stop taking them. Start feeling everything. And when you are clean, come to me. I’ll be waiting on the other side of the Tree.” He stood up straight and crossed his arms. The room was still cloudy around him.
This guy I’ve never met wants me to leave and go where?
Bale used to talk about running away, and sometimes I would indulge the idea. But the truth was, deep down I was always worried that I would end up face-first in a mirror again. And Bale would burn down whatever house we were in. Now I regret never trying, for him. For us. If I were going to escape, it would be with Bale. Not for this stranger.
My lips and voice finally decided to work. “I could yell right now, and the White Coats would be here in sixty seconds,” I said, thinking about the panic button behind my bed. There was one in every patient’s room. I had never pushed it for a real emergency. I’d only used it once as a joke and asked for room service when Dr. Harris had briefly assigned me another orderly. Vern was back in a week.
The boy was undaunted by my challenge. He did not move a muscle.
“You could have called for help, but you haven’t. Besides, I am the help.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Who you are is what matters, Princess.”
I had been called a lot of names at Whittaker. “Princess” was never one of them.
He saw that he had my full attention. A smile spread across his face. He was pleased. Then he bent down, closer. “You need to leave this place, Princess. It’s breaking your spirit. The gate on the north corner will open for you. Head north until you see the Tree.”
“The Tree?” I asked. I thought of the tree from my dreams. This had to be another dream. It was too coincidental.
“You’ll know it when you see it. I promise. When you get to the other side of the Tree, I’ll be waiting. And they will kneel for you.”
“What are you talking about? And why do you keep calling me Princess? I am no one’s princess.”
“You really don’t know, do you?” he said solemnly. “They’ve dulled your magic and your wits.”
“What the hell?” I snapped. Sleepy’s effects were starting to wane, and this guy’s riddles were starting to piss me off. He clearly was a new patient off his meds.
“Just remember the Tree…”
I started to sit up farther, ready to show this guy just what kind of princess I really was. Then the boy abruptly turned around and walked toward the plastic mirror on my closet. And he did something that stopped me cold.
He stepped right through it.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my palms into them. This was a dream. Yes, it would be my weirdest one yet, but still. A dream. Had to be.
I opened my eyes again. They adjusted to the dark quickly this time. The room looked normal. No strange boy to be seen. But when I stared into the mirror next to my desk, I swear I could see the silhouette of a boy in an oversize white coat, growing smaller and smaller … receding in the reflection. And in the background was the faint outline of a large tree, the Tree.
When I blinked again, the Tree and the boy were gone.
7
Even though I could barely see in the dark, I grabbed my sketchbook and began to draw the boy’s face. I wanted to get it all down, every detail. Whether it was all in my head or not, I didn’t want to forget him.
As the line of his jaw emerged from beneath my fingers, I shuddered. He called me “Princess.” Whatever the reason why, I didn’t like it.
I had been called worse, and I had earned every nickname with my words and my teeth. I looked down at the sketch again. Recording my dreams on paper was my own personal exorcism. Afterward, I always felt free of whatever it was that had haunted me the night before. But this time when I looked at the picture of the boy, I almost felt like his eyes were staring back at me.
I must have fallen asleep like that, gazing at my own handiwork, because the next thing I knew I was waking again to the sound of the door opening. Daylight was streaming through the barred windows. Vern was holding the pill tray. The boy from last night rushed to my mind, and I snapped the sketch pad shut. I had fallen asleep with the charcoal clutched in my hand. I didn’t know if he was a patient or an orderly, or if Sleepy concocted him out of my imagination and put him into my dreams. Either way, I wasn’t ready for Vern or anyone else to see the sketches of him.
“You’re already up? That’s a first.”
“It was Grand Central Station in here last night,” I said, thinking about the orderly again.
She raised an eyebrow.
“Dr. Harris stopped by. And a guy who dubbed me a princess.”
“Princess, huh?” Vern snorted. “Yardley, you’re as much royalty as I am.” She said it almost affectionately, but then she held out the tray with the day’s pills, and I thought about what the boy had said. Even if he was just a figment of my imagination, maybe my subconscious was telling me that enough was enough.
I knew each pill did something different. But eventually the effects wore off, and Dr. Harris would start something new. My medication changed more than most. We patients would compare sometimes. Chord and Wing were almost always on Sleepy. It kept them in place. For Wing, it kept her from flying. And for Chord, it kept him from blinking through time. Sometimes Dr. Harris added Happy, because there was a lot of depression involved with not getting to be exactly where he wanted to be.
I assumed that Dr. Harris was trying really hard to get the right combination that would level me off. Make me normal. Stop all the anger. Put my monster to sleep.
But what if what the boy said was true? What if the drugs were masking everything and not solving anything? The idea of giving up all the drugs terrified me. I hadn’t been completely clean—not for as long as I could remember.
“Which of the seven dwarfs is it today?” I asked, assuming the answer had to be Dopey. Given my behavior yesterday, my mom’s visit, and my Sleepy dose last night, I was sure rest was the continuing prescription of the day.
But this pill was new. It was black with little tiny dots. I wanted to recoil, to ask Vern what was in it, to refuse to take it. But if I did that, they would make me take it, or worse—they would give me a shot of it straight to my veins instead. So I hid my reaction and pretended everything was normal—well, at least normal for me. Instead of swallowing, I slipped the pill under my tongue and felt it threatening to melt. The plastic casing softened as I waited for Vern to check my mouth. She barely looked, either because she trusted me or because I had never skipped a pill before.
When she glanced out the window to exclaim, “Look at that! We weren’t supposed to have snow today,” I spit the pill into my palm. She looked back at me, expecting a response about the weather.
I just shrugged and felt a twinge of something—not guilt—but a shift in our dynamic. I had a secret. I hadn’t said a word, but it was the first lie between me and Vern in a long time—maybe ever.
Hiding the pill in my pocket, I took my sketch pad, and we silently marched to the common room. It was time for The End of Almost.
Vern
turned on the television and took a seat next to me.
We settled into watching her story, and I realized at some point it had become part of mine, too. The lives on-screen were a window to another world where anything could happen—even the impossible. Today the show was focused on the family’s matriarch, Rebecca Gershon. She was like a chameleon and could make herself whoever she needed to be to get what she wanted. She had had as many careers as husbands, and she was currently working on Love #7. The characters vacillated between good and bad and back again. It was a world that wasn’t real, but also one filled with forgiveness and second chances. By comparison, I hadn’t even had my first job or been on an actual date.
“Why doesn’t Rebecca just tell the soldier guy how she feels?”
I knew his name was Lucas. I liked to pretend that the stories meant more to Vern than they did to me. But I knew every detail, every subplot and history and twist and turn from Rebecca’s first husband to her tenth, and I was pretty sure that Lucas was the one true love for Rebecca. He wasn’t as handsome as her other lovers over the years. But he was the first to love her unconditionally. Only he could not actually say what was so completely obvious to me and to Vern.
“Sometimes saying something is harder than not saying it. You wouldn’t know because you have no filter, but out there in the world people spend most of their lives afraid to say what’s really on their minds.”
It sounded like Vern was calling me brave … or crazy. Maybe they were the same thing.
I wondered about Vern’s life outside this place. I knew she had a husband and a kid who smiled at me from her smartphone. Tall, but not Vern tall. And the way Vern looked at Lucas and Rebecca on TV made me wonder if there was a lost love in her past—someone who would have altered the course of her everything. And just as the idea floated through my brain, another thought popped up: the boy. Not that he was going to really alter the course of my everything. He was just a new shade of crazy that I hadn’t seen before.