Project 17 (17 page)

171

"Come on, man," Derik pushes.

More shrugging from Chet, and so I'm half thinking this is all an act--just another one of his stupid jokes. But then when he finally
does
look up, his eyes are serious--sort of a faraway stare that tells me this is no joke, that he does mean business.

"Chet?" I scooch in closer to him and rest a hand on his back.

"My dad's an alcoholic," he says. "Seriously?" Derik asks.

He nods. "It's how I got my black eye. It's why I'm even here tonight."

"You're here because your father's an alcoholic?" Liza asks.

"It beats hanging out at home with a pissed-off drunk, believe me."

I continue to pat his back, noticing how sad he looks-- for the first time tonight--and knowing somehow that it's why he's always making jokes. "Does he want to get help?" I ask.

"Sure. He'll take a ride to the liquor store any time you want to give him one. You can even treat him to some Crown Royal."

"Have you ever thought about having an intervention?" I ask. "I mean, what does your mom think?"

"She got sick of the bullshit and left."

"That's really rough," Derik says.

"I'm sorry," I say, holding back from offering any more

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advice--for now, anyway--even though I feel like I have so much to say. After I learned about what happened to my grandmother, I did all this research on how to plan and execute a successful intervention, imagining how things could have been done differently. "I'm sorry, too," Liza says.

I move my hand down to squeeze Chet's palm, suddenly feeling the urge to tell a joke. Suddenly realizing how much he and I really do have in common.

173

DERIK

I WANT TO CHECK
out some more of my footage. We've been here for several hours, and so I'm thinking I've got some pretty decent shit, but I can't really concentrate.

Liza's just sitting there reading that journal Mimi found, avoiding eye contact. Or maybe I'm being paranoid.

"Anything good?" I ask, bumping her shoulder lightly against mine.

"Yeah," Mimi says. "You've been hoarding that thing for the past hour. Hand it over."

Liza does and Mimi takes the thing, opens it up to the middle, and is just about to read aloud one of the entries when Greta interrupts her: "Do I smell a monologue?"

"What are you talking about?" Mimi asks.

"Let
me
read it," Greta says.

"Why?" Mimi's face twists up.

"Let her," I say, inserting a new tape into the camera. "I think she'll do a good job."

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"She'll do an
amazing
job," Tony corrects.

Greta takes the journal and positions herself cross-legged on the floor right in front of me. I hit the record button, and she breaks into the role right away. She reads in a high-pitched voice that sends chills down the back of my neck:

February 20, 1982

I can't stop shaking inside-it's like my blood has morphed from liquid to mush, like it's crawling around inside my veins, looking for a way out.

Becky is gone. Her father came and got her.

And now I have no one.

And so I just want to do it. I've been trying to think up ways. I think the doctor knows, because he upped my meds again. I think he wants to make me crazy, to keep me here forever. He wants to make me his experiment. Everybody tell me it's true, including my grandfather. He keeps talking to me inside my head, telling me how I'll be here forever, how all the doctors and nurses think so, and how Vicky is out to get me.

Now that Becky's gone, I can't trust anyone here.

The nurses are working with the doctor-they're all conspiring to make me crazy. I think they're the ones who put my grandfather in my head. I just want to get him out. I don't want to hear his voice anymore.

At least Becky let me keep Christy, her doll, before

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Her father took her away. Christy talks to me, too. She has a voice like Julie's, my first foster mom, the one who died-the only one who loved me.

I want to join her in Heaven.

Soon, I think. I will.

C.B.

P.S. I've written a little lullaby for Christy. I like to sing it to her before bed. Rock-a-bye Christy on Witches' Hill. When the wind blows the patients will Kill. When the nurse comes. I'll pretend I'm asleep, then shoot her with needles so she won't make a peep.

Greta drops the journal to her lap, and we're all just staring, sort of taken aback by what she read, by how she made it sound.

"That was brilliant, baby," Tony tells her.

"More like disturbed," I say.

"What?" Chet asks. "Didn't your mommy used to sing that little ditty to you?"

"Well, it would certainly explain a lot if
your
mommy sang it to
you"
Greta says, turning to Chet.

"You did a really good job," Mimi tells Greta, getting to the point. "The voice was really fitting--not overdone, you know? Sort of delicate, like how I'd imagine Christine might sound."

"You think?" Greta smiles.

"Totally authentic, babycakes," Tony says. "No faking necessary."

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"No faking anything with you." She growls.

"Wait," Liza says, turning to me. "Didn't you say before that you saw a doll hanging from a noose?"

I nod. "The one with the recorder."

"Do you think it's the same one?"

"Negative," Mimi says, before I can answer. "Christine's doll is cloth and her eyes were inked on with fine-point markers when the originals fell out. Derik, didn't you say the one you saw was rubber with those freaky doll eyes that open and shut?"

I nod.

"It sounds like she's really going to do it," Chet cuts in. "To kill herself."

"That's why I haven't been able to read the end," Mimi says. "I almost don't want to know what happens to her."

"Well, I do." Chet breaks open another Yoo-hoo. "Let's hear it."

"No," Mimi says. "I'm not ready yet."

"Well, either get ready or block your ears," Greta says. "Because I have to know." She flips to the last entry in the journal and reads, her voice even more like a little girl's than before--a mix of softness and giggles that seriously creeps me out.

March 4
^th
, 1982

I love my doll Christy. She sleeps with me in bed.

Grumpy sleeps with me, took. He tells me I'm ready. So

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does the moth that flies by my bed. I jump on my bed. I fly through the sky. I eat fresh grass. I play on the swings.

I know a way out.

Tonight. After everyone's asleep.

Please, God, don't make it hurt. Take care of Christy. God tells me to hide Christy someplace safe, so they don't take her after I'm gone. Everyone want to take her. I know they'll take her. I know they'll give her the needles and put her to sleep and take her clothes and feed her much. I'm sorry, Christy. I'll always love you, but I can't take you with me. I have to hide you someplace safe now. In the auditorium. Under my chair tonight. Number seventeen. At the performance. I'll make sure I get that one. I'll fight for it. And bite for it. And go to packs or seclusion room for it. I don't care.

I'm going to hide this journal, too. I'll wrap it up in wax paper. If somebody nice finds it, please find Christy. Please take care of her and give her a home.

And help me rest in peace.

Love Christine

Greta finishes off with an evil little giggle that literally makes the hairs on my arms stand up. "Screw Greta Garbo," Mimi says. "You should be thinking Linda Blair."

"Who?"
Liza asks.

"The Exorcist,"
Tony explains. "The original 1973

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version, not the remake. Linda also starred in
Exorcist II, the Heretic,
and she's now the host of
The Scariest Places on Earth."

"Don't forget that she starred in
Stranger in Our House, Hell Night,
and that film where she plays the teenage alcoholic," Greta adds.

"Sarah T,"
Tony confirms. "Not that I'm some big Linda Blair cultie or anything. I just make it my business to know this stuff."

"Of course," Liza says, with an eye roll that makes me laugh.

"Wait," Chet interrupts, following with a Yoo-hoo belch. "What the hell is up with that journal entry? She can't just end her journal like
that?"

"Is it just me," I ask, "or are you guys missing the weirdest piece of that whole entry?"

"What are you talking about?" Mimi asks.

"The number seventeen," I answer, aiming my camera at her. "It's everywhere in this place. The graffiti angels going up the wall by the stairs, the patient artwork in the art therapy room--"

"The tombstone someone drew in the A wing," Chet adds.

"And now the chair," Mimi whispers. "Isn't Christine seventeen, too?" Liza asks. Mimi nods. "We need to look for the doll."

"And what'll that prove?" Chet asks. "We still won't know what happened to her."

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"Yes we will," Liza says. "If the doll's there, then she did it--she killed herself."

"Right," Mimi says. "And if it's gone, she didn't."

"How do you figure that?" I ask, still filming.

"Because let's just say, for the sake of argument, that she tried to off herself but then failed or had second thoughts," Mimi explains. "She would have gone back to retrieve the doll. I mean, just listen to her: the doll is her only friend. She can't live without it."

"Right," Chet says. "But maybe somebody else found the doll. I mean, how many people have broken in here over the years? What are the chances that it's still actually under chair seventeen?"

"Let's go check it out," I say, grabbing the map. "The auditorium is right upstairs."

180

LIZA

INSTEAD OF TAKING THE
stairwell by the cafeteria, Derik says he wants to explore a bit of the male wings. And so we move in that direction, despite all the debris in our path. It appears that pieces of the ceiling have collapsed to the floor, making me more than a little nervous about what awaits us upstairs. Derik's in the lead as we move farther down the G-wing, but he slows his pace every few steps so I can keep up. I think he wants to keep me close to him.

The thing is, I'm not really sure how I feel about that.

Prior to coming here tonight, I
had
heard little snippets about the infamous Derik
LaPlaya
LaPointe. How could I not have? I mean, I may not be Ms. Sally Social at school, but I do have ears.

And I've heard.

Like that time when I was in the bathroom at school and there was this blond girl crying, saying that Derik LaPointe totally broke her heart. She didn't even know

181

who I was, but she warned me to stay away from him, calling him a pimp, a liar, and not even worth the effort of her spit--she actually said that.

The time before that, it was second period of the day and Derik got paged down to the principal's office. The entire junior class was abuzz, saying that the reason he got suspended was because he'd ornamented his locker door with a pair of girl's lacy underwear.

I hated him for that. I didn't even know him, but I hated him, especially since hearing all this stuff sort of ruptured the romantic mystery-boy image that I had built up of him inside my head--after that day, freshman year, by the bus circle.

But now, here I am, totally
not hating
him--totally feeling something, like one of those stupid girls that Chet was talking about, the kind that goes after jerks. I mean, it goes without saying that I had no intention of falling for him. Because, the truth is, I'm
not
like those girls; I don't go after "bad boys." I don't go after anyone, for that matter. I don't have time. And I'm certainly not one of those girls who likes the challenge of trying to transform the "bad boy" into the "nice guy." I'm
way
smarter than that.

And I'm not here to make friends.

So how come these people feel more like my friends than those I've known my entire life?

How come I don't even seem to care about Harvard now?

And why does becoming a doctor seem nowhere near

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as exciting as getting to the bottom of this whole Christine Belle mystery?

Or having Derik hold my hand again?

The thing is, he's been nothing but nice to me this entire night, putting my needs way above his own, almost forfeiting his dreams just so I could feel safe.

And for some inexplicable reason that I can't figure out with any equation or look up in any book, I do feel safe with him--even safe enough to stay here, despite all the weird vibes I've been getting from this place; despite how random my behavior has been since I got here.

And despite all the jitters that have been stirring up my insides.

We climb to the top of a stairwell and move down the hallway, our headlights paving through the blackness. This part of the building is beyond dangerous. There are entire sections of flooring that have lost all their ground support, that have caved in on the level below. I keep moving forward, trying my best to watch my step, following Derik's lead as he warns us over and over and
over
again how we need to be careful.

His camera propped up on his shoulder, still filming our every move, he passes the map to Tony and then reaches back to take my hand and lead me over a pile of debris. I ignore it, but then see him grab for my hand anyway.

A moment later, I hear it. A quaking beneath my feet--like the entire floor is erupting.