Stealing Snow (4 page)

All of us at Whittaker learned things from television, because that was the closest thing we had to school and boys and prom
and friends. But we didn’t know what happened between the commercial breaks or after things faded to black. I knew there was a difference between reel life and real life, but the television taught me everything I knew about kisses and dates and broken hearts and family dramas—sometimes all wrapped up in a bow within half-hour or hourly segments.

Kayla Blue had just said “yes” when Vern got a text on her phone. I couldn’t read her expression.
Was it about Magpie?

“Is she … ?” I asked, not quite sure how I felt about hearing the answer. I had wanted to hurt her but not badly, and I certainly didn’t want her dead.

“Now you care, Yardley?”

I didn’t have a defense, exactly, so I shrugged. I was a master at shrugging.

“Looks like Magpie is going to make a full recovery. She was paralyzed temporarily. But she seems to have regained the full use of her extremities. Toes wiggling. Eyes rolling. She’s back to herself.”

I can’t say that I felt relief. But a wave of something came over me just the same.

“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.

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 myself 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.”