The Murmurings (23 page)

She stops as her voice breaks. I want so badly to comfort her, but she looks too fragile to touch. And while I know it’s not my fault that Kenny’s dead, a part of me can’t help but feel like he might still be alive if I’d just stayed away.

“I never should have come back,” are the only words I can manage to eke out. And for more reasons than she knows.

But the girl shakes her head.

“He’d already made up his mind. Kenny is . . .
was
the most stubborn person I know. I think he figured you’d either die with him, or you’d find a way to stop it. Either way, the cycle would end.”

We let the ghost of our conversation float between us for another minute, the chill of the morning finally starting to burn off.

“I guess he was wrong about both,” I say, the hopelessness of the situation pressing down on me with suffocating force.

The girl with the blond hair searches me with her huge eyes. “Then why did you come back?”

Her question is without malice or accusation. She sounds more defeated than I feel, and that makes me feel even worse. That is, until I remember the answer to her question.

“You’re MM, aren’t you?”

A watery smile spreads across the girl’s face, and tears well in her eyes all over again. “She had a knack for nicknames,
didn’t she? M&M’s were my favorite candy. Until they started using them to bribe me.”

My confusion must be pretty obvious because she tries to clarify.

“That’s how they used to get me into The Room. They’d promise me all the M&M’s I could eat if I’d just stare into the mirror and think about all the sad things Dr. Keller and I talked about in our sessions. They knew that would make the thing appear in the mirror. Then they’d shoo me out of the room, and in Dr. Keller would go, looking all crazy and hopeful and carrying a long, thin velvet box. And every time, I’d have a session with him the next day, and it was more of the same. Except he kept getting sadder and sadder, then crazier and crazier. People like me came and went, sometimes because their parents would pull them out, sometimes because they’d . . . well, you saw what Kenny did.”

“And Oakside gets away with it?” I ask, forgetting to check my volume. Her eyes shift to the orderlies, then she nods almost imperceptibly.

“You don’t understand,” she says. “Most of the time, people like me end up here because nobody else wants to deal with them. That’s why . . . ” Her voice cracks again, like an enormous weight has dropped on her all at once.

“That’s why my parents never came back for me.”

I finally find the nerve to put a hand on hers. Her fingers are small and impossibly cold. And it’s the only thing that’s brought me anything close to comfort since I’ve been lucid enough to realize exactly how deep I am in this mess.

“Are you Deb?”

Her eyes reach mine, and something shifts in them, like a fire igniting.

“You are, aren’t you?”

She nods, her jaw moving up and down like a fish blowing air bubbles underwater.

Just then, a shadow casts a chill over me, and I hear the crunch of gravel underfoot.

“All right, girls. Enough chatting for one day. There’ll be plenty more time for that after your individual sessions with Dr. Keller.”

The Pigeon is standing so close to me, I can feel the heat radiating from her recently sunned self. She circles one of her talons around my elbow, her thumb pressing on the bruised patch of skin where the IV left its mark. She pulls me from my sitting position with a smart jerk of her arm.

“It was nice meeting you,” I say over my shoulder. “I’m Sophie.”

She nods once, her face still alight with that spark, and I hope she sees all I’m trying to convey with my eyes. Maybe Kenny was right. Maybe what I told Adam in Jerome was right. Maybe I can be the one to put a stop to all of this.

S
LEEP ISN’T COMING EASILY TONIGHT,
and I’m ashamed to admit that I miss the drugs. The bend in my arm is only just beginning to turn purplish-blue, and I’m finally able to think in coherent sentences, but that also means I can’t stop my mind from racing. My conversation with Deb in the courtyard keeps coming back to me in snippets, like I’m the unwilling star of my own movie trailer.

More disturbing—and exciting—is knowing that I was right. MM, Nell’s friend and confidante from her journal, is Deb, Evan’s long-missing cousin. It brings a shiver to my insides every time I think about how close he was to her this whole time. All the while, she’s been right here at Oakside, no more than ten miles from his home. He’d even visited here
looking for Dr. Keller because of Adam’s blog. He never knew she was here, and she never knew he was looking for her.

I’m just starting to doze into a restless sleep when I hear a familiar hiss.

“Hey, Nell’s—I mean, Sophie. You awake?”

“Deb?” I’m so relieved to hear a trusted voice, I nearly cry right there on my pillow.

“Listen up, okay? No juice for you tomorrow. You’re going to have your first one-on-one session with Dr. Keller, and you’re going to need to be on your best pretend behavior when you see him. You need to act like you’re ready to cooperate. It’s the only way to keep him out of your head. Which means you’ll be able to keep the
thing
from the mirror away. Got it?”

I nod from my pillow, then remember she can’t see me. “Hey, Deb? Where the hell are you anyway?”

For the first time, she giggles. It sounds strangely grown-up considering her tiny stature. “I’ve learned a lot about sneaking around this place over the last few years. There’s an air vent and a super lazy nighttime orderly. After our one-on-ones tomorrow, we’ll see each other in the rec room. We can talk more then. I have to get back to my room before bed checks. G’night.”

I can hear a tiny shuffling sound, and before it fades, I whisper “Deb?”

“Yeah? Make it quick.”

“He’s never stopped looking for you, you know.”

Never has a silence sounded more crowded with unspoken words.

“Evan,” I finish, and I hear a tiny gasp before the shuffling resumes, then fades to nothing. And then I’m left to slide into a sleep so shallow it’s barely worth the effort.

•  •  •

Days are long at Oakside. At least in my drug-induced haze, I wasn’t so achingly aware of the passage of time. Nell’s journal probably saved her life. They’ve offered me no such perks, so I’m left to my thoughts. At least I’m thinking in complete sentences. If I could just have one book to read in between breakfast (the most exhausting part of which is finding a place to dump my orange juice), the daily shower overseen by the orderly with the puckered lips, the morning courtyard visits with Deb, and the afternoon rec center “social time,” I might just feel like I could get this itch off of my skin.

Deb is my only saving grace. We have to be careful how much she shares with me, though; it seems there’s always someone watching. But I’ve managed to get some information from her when the inevitable distraction grips our supervising orderly. She knows about the Takers, or at least enough to know that we attract them. And she knows about
Dr. Keller’s obsession with the one that used to be Susan.

Mostly I’ve come to learn that, as alone as I feel in this place, and as empty as it seems to be aside from Deb and myself, we are apparently not alone. The echoing hallways of Oakside are only a phenomenon in our wing. On the other side, the rooms remain full of the neglected patients Adam wrote about in his blog.

Deb sneaked to “the other side” a few times, a phrasing I couldn’t help but find absurdly funny (in that sad, not-so-funny way). What she found were rooms packed with two to three patients, all in green scrubs (distinguishing them from our blue ones), and the smell of neglect. There was hardly any risk of Deb getting caught on that side of the facility, mostly, she said, because no orderlies roam those halls. Deb went back only once, mostly for something to do, but she decided it was too depressing to continue after one patient called to her after hearing her in the ducts. The patient told Deb she was cold. Deb said the woman’s voice sounded so old, so needy, that it made Deb shake. She went back to her room for the rest of the day, refusing food when it was offered, knowing that if she told the orderlies about the woman, they’d know she had left her room. And it’s pretty hard to pass a blanket through a vent in the wall.

•  •  •

Dr. Keller’s clinical office is different from his office-office. The office-office I saw the day I came to collect Nell’s box is apparently where all the paperwork is done. This office, he tells me with a conspiratorial wink, is where the
real
work gets done.

“We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of your psyche, Sophie,” he tells me.

It’s my first one-on-one session with him. Deb says these happen weekly. He’s wearing the Dr. Keller mask I remember from our initial meetings, and I’m glad for it. It makes it easier to loathe him.

“I’ve been consulting with Gladys. I rely on her for nearly every aspect of my practice. I trust in her judgment explicitly. She used to manage this facility before I took over, you know. It was a necessary evolution for Oakside. One might say a certified doctor has a bit more . . . finesse,” he says with a smile that sours my stomach. “And from what she tells me, you’re off to a very good start. A very good start indeed,” he says to the clipboard in front of him rather than to me.

The more I think about what the Pigeon might have told him—what might be written about me on the clipboard in front of him—the more panicked I become. I can only imagine what I must have revealed during my initial drug haze.

“What, er, what does that mean? A very good start?” I ask,
kicking myself for sounding so skeptical. Deb warned me to be on my best good-patient behavior. The key is to pretend to take my medicine so he can’t get inside my head.

He tilts the clipboard, gray eyes sparkling, and looks at me like I’m some sort of delicacy.

“Try not to worry yourself too much with that. Keep doing what you’re doing, and we’re going to get along just fine,” he says, his smooth features easing into a smile that could send me into sugar shock.

Dr. Keller’s clinical office is almost entirely white, an anomaly in the all-gray Oakside. The chair he sits in is white mesh with a white base, the table he sits behind is a white sort of Formica. The couch I’m perched on is padded with unforgiving white cushions. The walls, the carpeted floors, even this side of the metal door are all white. In fact, the only non-white part of the whole room is a silk plant standing sentinel-like in the corner across from me. I feel a little like that plant, my blue scrubs and my dyed-red hair subject to acute scrutiny and out of place.

Dr. Keller stands from his chair and walks around his desk, his white lab coat flapping behind his easy strides. To my surprise, he sits on the couch beside me, keeping a respectable distance while leaning toward me.

“Now I want you to relax, Sophie, okay? I’m going to talk
for a little while, and all you have to do is listen. You don’t need to say a word. Your only job is to listen to what I say. How does that sound?”

“Sounds pretty easy, I guess.” I can’t decide where he’s going with this, but whatever he’s doing, it seems harmless enough. It’s not like I really have a choice in the matter, anyway.

“All right, then,” he says, sneaking one last glance at the clipboard. “I’m going to tell you a little story. It’s not about anyone in particular. It’s just a story. Okay?”

“Sure.” I shrug.

“The story is of a young woman, about eighteen. She was kind, beautiful. She believed everyone deserved a good life.”

“She sounds like a champ,” I say, sucking in a tiny breath as I realize what a horrible job I’m doing playing along. But to my surprise, Dr. Keller only agrees.

“She was an extraordinarily good person,” he says, his voice taking on a softer tone as affection creeps in. “Wouldn’t you think this would make boys flock to be by her side and to call her their girlfriend?”

I nod. Why not? It’s a little far-fetched that anyone could be that great, but I’m sort of intrigued to hear the story.

He smiles, and suddenly, his face crumples under the pressure of unexpected emotion.

“Against all reason, she allowed one very unworthy boy to
call her his. He promised her he would always listen, that he would always be there to hold her hand, to appreciate her exquisiteness. That was the day this boy knew he would never be happy unless he could make this perfect girl his wife.”

I watch Dr. Keller’s manicured hands grip the clipboard that tells
my
story, then go lax, letting it slide to the plush carpet. His hands tremble and shake, his shoulders hunch. His mouth, smiling only moments before, grimaces as if it’s taking every last reserve of strength to keep his composure. Pity spills over this man, who’s so clearly at odds with himself.

“They planned to go to college together. The boy, he thought he might die of happiness knowing that he had won the heart of this girl. The day before they were to leave for their studies, he prepared a special evening for the two of them. He’d planned to give her a gift, something symbolic that would remind her how much he loved her.”

I can feel my chest tightening uncomfortably as he talks. Even though I know what comes next, this story sounds different coming from Dr. Keller than it did coming from Adam. From Adam’s lips, Dr. Keller’s loss was acknowledged, but that’s all. From Dr. Keller, the pain is searing. I can’t seem to do anything but listen and feel my insides twist as if someone is ringing them out like a soaked rag.

“She was killed that night,” he says.

A gasp escapes me before I can capture it.

“And he knew that he would never be whole again, Sophie.”

I shake my head. He’s right. How could he ever be the same after that?

Dr. Keller takes my hand so gently, I can barely feel his fingers. “I think you understand me better than anyone, Sophie. You know how lonely it is when you recognize you should have done something to save someone. You know the sting of regret every time your memory replays that moment when you failed them.”