Gateway (The Gateway Trilogy, Book 1) (5 page)

After dinner I went back to our room in hopes of avoiding more of Lauren's less than scintillating company, but she followed me and prattled on. I opened the book I had pocketed from the rec room and began reading, a hint that was hard for even her to ignore. She left in a huff. I became absorbed in the yellowing pages of the novel, grateful for something to read even if it was mindless fluff.

Sometime later I heard a rustling, which brought me out of the light sleep I had drifted into. The room was pitch black, but when my eyes adjusted I vaguely made out Lauren getting ready for bed.

“Ember? You awake?” Her voice was soft.

The room was too dark for her to realize my eyes were open, so I feigned sleep, continuing to breathe deeply. Instead of crawling under her covers, Lauren began rooting around under her bed. I watched with interest, careful not to move. Once she'd found what she was looking for, she sat atop her bed and began opening packages. A familiar smell filled the room. Peanut butter cups. I closed my eyes and felt bad for even listening. It seemed like an intrusion. Shouldn't someone even as vapid as Lauren be allowed to indulge her illness without witness?

As the packages kept opening I grew surprised at their number. How many quarters had she plunked into that machine just for one binge? Is it wrong to say I was impressed?

After a time she was silent, and I thought she might have fallen asleep. I was about to get up and change into my pajamas when her bed creaked and the bathroom door latched behind her. Over the loud whirring of the bathroom fan I heard her purge. I covered my ears and thought about the word purge. Who couldn't use a good purging? Before she left the bathroom, I had fallen to sleep.

***

It was the breath I noticed first. It was warm on my cheek and smelled of mint. I wondered if my conscious awareness meant I was having a lucid dream or hallucinating. Pondering this made me smile. Or maybe I was smiling because I knew it was him. Something warm and soft settled on my lips. I realized I'd been wondering what it would be like to kiss him since we'd first met. I parted my lips slightly. I wondered if dream/hallucination Taren would kiss anything like the real Taren would. As I thought of his name, I heard his voice.

“Ember,” he whispered softly, urgently. His lips were so close to me I felt them flutter against my ear.
 

But that wasn't right—he couldn't be whispering in my ear, or what was I kiss—
 

My eyes flew open to see Taren kneeling beside my bed, his face inches from mine, his hand covering my mouth. I froze, my tongue in mid caress against his palm. To say I blushed would not adequately describe my mortification. His lips twitched, obviously holding back a smile, which made it that much worse. My tongue retreated and I closed my mouth, all the while his eyes held mine.

“Hi,” was all he said, removing his hand from my mouth.
 
He had the manners not to wipe it on my bedspread.

“Hi,” I whispered back, as if this were the most natural circumstance for having a conversation.

“I didn't mean to scare you.”

“You didn't,” I said.

Was he going to tell me what he was doing here? It seemed ridiculous to have to ask.

“It's time to go see Callie.”

My eyebrows must have climbed three inches up my forehead.

“What?” I said too loudly.

Taren tensed and looked back at Lauren who continued to snore softly. Satisfied that she hadn't woken, he turned back to me.

“You said you would come if I could arrange it.”

“You can't seriously mean now. It's the middle of the night.”

“That's why it has to be now. There are too many people around during the day.”

“And this is what you meant when you said you could arrange it?” I asked.

“Yeah. Look, I promise we won't get caught, but we have to go now.”

I considered his request. It was insane, of course. The last thing I wanted was to get in trouble and find out how much worse life could get in a nuthouse, but my interest was more than piqued. 

“Then I guess it's a good thing I'm already dressed,” I said. 

I followed Taren to the door. He peered out, made a beckoning motion and then darted off. I hesitated for only a second, a rush of adrenaline propelling me down the deserted hallway. We paused in the recessed doorway where meds were handed out. The sound of a late night talk show drifted out from behind the nurses' station a few feet away. Taren crouched low and dashed past, motioning for me to do the same. My heartbeat drummed in my ears and I questioned the intelligence of what I was doing.

I crept toward the nurses' station, my breath held tight in my chest. I ignored the look of impatience Taren was shooting me, and edged close enough to peek around the doorjamb. A male nurse reclined in a chair, his back to me. Two steps and I would be once again hidden from view. Just two steps, yet I couldn't make myself take them.

Keep going
.

It was the push I needed. I reached Taren and exhaled as quietly as I could. Now out of view, we both stood and padded farther down the hall to the double doors that separated our wing from the others. Taren slipped his hand beneath the shielded keypad. How had he gotten the code?

The doors opened with a soft hiss and we slipped through. I remembered this corridor from when I had met with Dr. Shaw, and I wasn't surprised to see it deserted at this late hour. A moment later we were at the end of the hallway and reached a door marked, “Stairwell.” Again, Taren's fingers moved deftly behind the plate that hid the keypad. With a click, the door unlatched and I found myself climbing a set of stairs. At the next landing he paused, and for a moment seemed unsure of himself.

“What is it?”

Him being nervous made me even more nervous.

“Nothing,” he said. “It just gets a little tricky from here.”

I would have laughed if a shred of self-preservation hadn't prevented it.
Now
 
it would get tricky?
 

It didn't take long to see what he meant. The door opened easily enough, but immediately I could tell we were in a different world. Instead of the tomb-like quiet of downstairs, this floor echoed with strange sounds. As we stood pressed against the doorway of the stairwell, I heard a low moaning drift down the hall. It mingled with a metallic tapping sound and a woman singing a lullaby in a disturbing monotone. And there were footsteps—multiple footsteps. They would stop for a second and then resume, thankfully getting quieter as they moved farther down the hall.
 

This is the part where he will make sure I want to go through with this, I told myself. What seemed like an adventure a few minutes ago—had it really been only a few minutes?—now seemed colossally stupid. As I tried to formulate a polite way to tell him he'd have to calm his friend, age-inappropriate girlfriend, whatever, down himself, Taren took off down the hall. In my shock I froze. I couldn't breathe, let alone move. Seconds ticked by and necessity forced me to inhale. I tilted my head a few inches, peering down the corridor.
 

Taren crouched in a doorway about ten feet away. Fifty feet away, a nurse and an orderly made their rounds, stopping at each door and making checks on a clipboard. Taren motioned for me to join him. I gave a slight, but firm shake of my head. He nodded, still beckoning. My jaw clenched.
No
, I mouthed. He pressed his hands together in front of himself, as if in prayer, and mouthed,
please
.
 

I watched as the pair made their way to the last door and realized the hallway was a dead end. They wouldn't be rounding a corner, they would be turning back around to face me. I cursed under my breath. Taren's eyes were pleading. He held up a key and pointed to the door he crouched in front of.

I sprang from my hiding place.
 
The nurse and orderly began to turn. I would have slid right past the door but Taren grabbed me, hauling me through the now open door. It shut with a soft click behind us.
 

My heart felt like it might leap from my chest. I took small sips of air, afraid that if I indulged them, my gasps would drown out the other noises.
 

My eyes adjusted quickly, and the first thing I did was fix Taren with a hard stare. The rational part of my brain reasoned that I hadn't exactly asked him how he had planned to get us here before I agreed to come, but the part of me that was panicked needed someone to blame.

“What the hell is the matter with you?”
 
I said.

But he wasn't looking at me. I followed his gaze to the corner. Curled into a tight ball, rocking back and forth, was Callie. Taren moved closer and I followed cautiously behind.
 

“Callie.” His voice was more than soft, it was tender.

Callie didn't respond, didn't even seem to be aware we were present.

“She wasn't like this earlier,” he said.

He was worried, and with good reason. Callie looked terrible. In less than a day she'd gone from looking mousey to feral. Her eyes remained vacant even when Taren passed his hand before them.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

At the sound of my voice, Callie growled. Without thinking, I stepped back. As frail as she looked, I remembered her strength when she was on top of me.
 

“This might not have been a good idea.” Taren spoke what I was thinking, leaving out a few expletives.
 

Under normal circumstances, I'd have had a sarcastic retort, but these weren't normal circumstances and I felt fairly certain that the sound of my voice would set Callie off and cause a chain of events I'd rather not experience. I took careful steps backward until I ran out of floor space, my back pressed against the door.

Taren sat next to Callie, cradling her in his arms. “Callie, find your way back. Everything is OK. Find your way back. Remember what I taught you. Look for the pinpoint of light and follow it.”

There was nothing romantic in what I was seeing, and yet it seemed so intimate. It felt uncomfortable to witness. Listening to Lauren binge and purge might have given me a perverse pleasure, but this felt wrong. I was watching a psyche that had come unraveled and Taren was trying desperately to will it back together. I stared at the floor.

“Taren?” Callie's voice was bewildered and shaky. I looked up in surprise. “I got lost in the dark place again, Taren.”
 

“I know you did, kiddo. But you made it back. That's the important thing.”
 
Taren's voice was reassuring, big brother to kid sister.
 

“I still can't do it on my own, though. I need you.”

“That's why I'm here,” he said.

“But then you go away, and I'm lost again.” She clung to him as though her life, or apparently her sanity, depended on it.

“I know, I'm sorry. That's why Monday is really important. Your doctor will be back then and he's going to decide whether you need to stay here or can come back downstairs where I am.”

“I want to come back downstairs, please. I'll be good. I didn't mean to hurt anyone. Did you tell her? Did you tell Ember I didn't mean it?”

“I did, and she knows you didn't mean it. She forgives you.”

“You're just saying that,” she said. “I was awful, she'd never forgive me.”

Taren lifted his head to look at me. I took a hesitant step forward.

“I - I do forgive you, Callie. And I'm fine. See?” I stepped into a small pool of light that cascaded in from a high window.
 

Callie looked up, disbelieving. She stared at me for a moment and then her whole body relaxed as she slumped against Taren's chest, her eyes closed.

“Thank you.” It was barely a murmur. Her chest began to rise and fall in a rhythmic pattern almost immediately.

“She's asleep?” My head spun. I had no context for what was happening.

“Yeah,” Taren replied, “for the first time in a few days I'd imagine.”
 

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” It came out more forcefully than I had planned, but was a valid question nonetheless.

Taren leaned his head against the wall and sighed. He studied me for a long moment. He looked exhausted, but it seemed natural that he would be holding someone, watching over them.

“I'm not sure how much to tell you,” he said finally.

“I'm not sure how much I'll believe.”

He gave the tiniest of smiles and it made me want to think of ways to see it more often.

“Fair enough,” he said.

I came to sit across from him, Callie still snuggled into his chest.

“Callie hears… voices.”

Who doesn't? I kept my sarcasm to myself and let him continue.

“Usually they want her to do things to herself.”

He carefully lifted one of her sleeves, revealing a line of scars, some old, some fresh, made by a blade.
 
I winced.