We'll Never Be Apart (8 page)

I nod, trying to read his face, but he dodges eye contact. I hold the door open as he starts to walk away.

“Hey, Chase?” I whisper when he's just a few feet from me. “Don't call me Sparky anymore, okay?”

He sucks in an uneasy breath. “What do you want me to call you, then?”

“Alice,” I say. “Just Alice.”

He gives a quick, almost imperceptible nod. “Okay, Just Alice.”

Back in the sheltered darkness of my room, I allow myself a few deep breaths, a few unwatched minutes to sort through my feelings. The smell of damp earth and fabric softener drifts up, and I realize I'm still wearing Chase's sweatshirt. Tugging down a sleeve so it covers my hand, I bring it up and place it against my nose. I decide I want to keep his sweatshirt. I slip off my shoes, go to my dresser, and stuff it in the top drawer. I make my way to my bed and kneel beside it, reaching one hand under the mattress. I feel around until my fist closes around one of the tiny white tablets. I pop it in my mouth and swallow it dry. It's bitter and I almost choke, but in the end it goes down the rabbit hole. I curl up in my bed and count the raindrops that hit the window. The silhouettes of the swaying black treetops outside tease me. Somewhere in those trees is the charred ruin of a barn.

F
ROM THE
J
OURNAL OF
A
LICE
M
ONROE

 

After Cellie set the doll on fire and glued the girl's eyes shut, our names were marked with an asterisk. A tiny star that said without words or writing that there was a darkness inside us, as dense and thick as any bone, yet harder to break. Soon we became lost puzzle pieces swept under a rug. We got used to the feel of cheap sheets and the plastic trash bags we hauled our clothes around in.

By that time Shawna had moved on. So Rebecca stepped in. She wore her hair slicked back in a tight bun that showed off the big gold hoop earrings she seemed to never take off. I remember watching those earrings glinting in the sunlight as we drove in the car. The way the light reflected off them made something in my chest balloon.
Hope.
She took us downtown and placed us in a group therapy home, where all the kids slept in tidy rows of metal beds and the fridge was padlocked at night. Our days were rigidly structured, and Cellie told me to make a game of it. We played as if we were invincible soldiers. Prisoners of war, just like Grandpa. At night, from our steel beds with thin mattresses, we'd whisper to each other and wonder if we'd ever have a family again. We dreamed of escape.

 

At age nine we graduated from the group home. Rebecca was proud of our improvement and took us out for ice-cream sundaes. Over maraschino cherries and sprinkles drowning in melted chocolate sauce, she announced that we would be shuffled again to a big foster family, ten kids in all.

She took us through neighborhoods we knew from before. We drove past the transition home where Cellie set the girl's doll on fire and glued the girl's eyes shut, and then we turned down a street and stopped in front of a house with a sad-looking tire swing hanging from a gnarled tree.

Our new foster parents, Roman and Susan, met us at the door, their arms open, inviting us in from the cold. Rebecca squeezed our shoulders (a distant type of affection that kept her from ever getting too close) and said she would return the following week to check in.

Roman worked as a janitor at the local high school. In the evenings he'd come home with a feral gleam in his eye, crack a beer, and threaten us with a fist he called God's Will. He'd yell at Susan to fetch him things or change the TV channel. During this time, Cellie and I wished we could become ghosts, sweeping through the house undetected. I suspect that Susan also yearned for invisibility, especially when confronted with her husband's fists.

When social workers came on Sundays, Susan would dress, bake, and make us bathe, and Roman read to us from the Bible. His favorite passages were from the book of Luke. I remember he'd stand in the middle of the living room, his own personal pulpit, and preach. “‘John answered, saying unto all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.'” Cellie and I pretended
that we were good children, happy children.

It was the worst home yet, but it was also the best because it was there that we met Jason. He was tall for his age but skinny, an electric wire topped with curly brown hair and bright green eyes. A year older than us, he'd been in and out of the system since he was three, when his younger brother had overdosed and died on the prescription pills their mother had left out.

Jason's real name was Valentine. His mom thought it was romantic. But he hated it, so he pinched it in between his fingers and rechristened himself Jason. He picked the name from a Greek mythology book he always carried with him. He had checked it out from the school library and decided he liked it so much he'd keep it.

We took to one another like mosquitoes to blood. I'm not sure what drew us together. Maybe it was because out of the ten kids in that home we were the only three around the same age. Or maybe it was because we knew what it meant to lose someone on a much deeper, more permanent level than the rest of the foster kids. Or maybe it was because Cellie and I refused to make fun of his real name and would only call him by his chosen one.

At night we hid from the heavy footsteps of Roman. Jason would lean over us, his ten-year-old body holding our quaking nine-year-old frames. Deep in the corner of a closet, he'd wrap his arms around us like a comforting blanket. He
smelled of clean laundry, a smell that still makes me feel loved and protected. Cherished.

With every boot step, every squeak of an opening door, he would assure us. “It's only the wind. It's only the weather outside. It's only the sound of your grandfather. It's my mother coming to take us home.” It worked. Cellie and I would close our eyes and breathe in the smell of clean laundry, and our fears drifted away like a wooden boat in water.

During the day, Jason would tell us about his mom. Whenever social workers came to take him away, his mother would tap her index finger against his, and together they would say, “Keep in touch.” Sometimes her words were a little slurred or her eyes a little hazy, but she still said it.

We made the closet our space, and most nights we slept in there. Jason stole a flashlight and held it while I practiced folding origami. Then Cellie got worse. While we all feared Roman, Cellie had trouble containing her fear. Often she would rock back and forth in the closet. I tried to help her, to distract her by making paper lions and pressing them against her chest. But I was helpless, and so was Jason. And the more hopeless we became, the angrier Jason got. Finally his pent-up rage boiled over one night.

Usually Roman picked on the younger kids, the five- and six-year-olds, but that night he was inexhaustible. He trolled the hallway, his work boots shuffling on the hardwood. Back and forth he went, opening a door, then slamming it shut, like playing Russian roulette.

“My tummy hurts,” Cellie mumbled. She shook a little and flinched as a door opened and slammed shut. Roman's low laugh echoed down the hallway and filtered in through the wooden slats of the closet.

“I'm going out there.” Jason stood, his hands clenched into fists, his head lost in a maze of hangers and clothes.

I reached up and closed my hand around his fist, tried to untangle his fingers, tried to unravel his anger. “Don't. He'll get tired soon and pass out.”

But Jason was adamant. Maybe he wanted to live up to his namesake, transform into the ancient leader of the Argonauts and become a hero, a conqueror. Our savior. He marched right out of that closet, out the door, and directly into Roman's path.

The walls shook and voices yelled, and it did sound like something out of Greek mythology. An epic battle with a beast. The whole time Cellie shook and wept, as if the tremors in the walls were originating within her. And me, all I could do was keep folding in the dark, making one paper lion after another, until I had a whole pride, until the walls stopped moving and Jason stumbled back into the closet, broken and bleeding.

The hero had lost. That night I held Jason and whispered in his ear that the pain he felt was that of a warrior. I told him he was brave and strong and his mother would come soon. When he went to sleep in a tight ball, Cellie traded places with me. She stroked the bloody curls from his forehead while I placed the lions in a circle around us. Sometime during the night I woke to Jason moving around the closet. One of his eyes was swollen over, but the other was focused on the lions. He fingered one, picked it up, and held it in the palm of his hand. He looked at me, and I'll never forget the intensity in his one good eye. How bright it burned with pain and anger. “Someday,” he said to me, soft and low and very matter-of-fact, “I'm going to burn this place to the ground.”

CHAPTER

T
HE SLAMMING OF A DOOR JOLTS ME AWAKE.
Amelia stirs in her bed as Nurse Dummel enters our room. Once she sees that we're decent, she calls for the techs and tells us to wait outside.

Together Amelia and I stand with our backs pressed against the wall. A string of curse words scrolls through my head, and heat rushes to my skin. I look guilty. Could I look any more guilty? I've broken a lot of rules since my return to Savage Isle: hiding pills, sneaking out of my room after bed check, acting as an accomplice while another patient stole a staff keycard. Ugh. My rap sheet could go on and on, and on.

But there's no possible way Nurse Dummel could know about the pills. Unless, maybe, Amelia ratted me out. But I don't think she would, and even if she did, the evidence is gone; I've now swallowed every last one of those little white capsules.

As for sneaking around the hospital after hours, there's no way the staff could know. Chase wouldn't give me up. If we're discovered, he stands to lose just as much as I do.

So they must be looking for the keycard. This has to be about the card. I hope to hell Chase got rid of it.

The door to our room gapes open like a yawning mouth, and in my peripheral vision I can see the techs as they lift our mattresses, open our drawers, and sift through our clothing, running their hands along the back sides of dressers and nightstands. Obviously they're looking for something—which only confirms my belief that they're hunting for the keycard. When they're satisfied, one yells, “All clear.” They shuffle out like a tight military unit. Before Amelia and I can even blink, they've invaded the next room.

“Holy hell,” Amelia whispers. We stand in the doorway, a unified front, taking in the damage. It's actually not too bad. Our beds are a little messier than when we bolted out of them, and some of my paper animals have fallen from the dresser onto the floor, but other than that, the techs were surprisingly respectful.

“That was intense,” Amelia says.

“Yeah,” I agree softly.

After our night in the rain and my mini meltdown, Chase apparently decides he is my super-special friend. At breakfast he plops down next to Amelia so he's sitting directly across from me (Amelia's mouth drops open, as if she's scandalized). He seems his general annoying, happy self—a goofy smile on his face as he silently digs into his eggs and toast. I wonder if his room was searched. It must have been. They searched every room in the girls' wing. Based on Chase's attitude, he's in the clear.

Chase also sits by me during morning group and at lunch. Still we do not speak. Later he follows me into the computer lab, where we're all required to do one hour a day of online classes, and ever the faithful companion, he takes up residence by my side. Amelia, who sits on my other side, is baffled.

Finally, when we're supposed to be writing expository essays, he speaks, leaning over so far that I can feel his breath on my face. “I'm writing about procrastination, get it?” I glance at the blank screen in front of him. “What are you writing about?”

“Girls and their periods,” I say, enjoying the surprise and disgust that wash over his face. See, I can be funny too. He leaves me alone for the next hour.

Dr. Goodman opens group therapy with a poem about acceptance. He then asks us to partner up and talk about acceptance and what that means to us. Of course Chase, my new bestie, turns his chair toward mine, leans back, and crosses his arms. Our knees brush. He assumes we're going to be partners. He assumes wrong.

“I don't feel like talking today.” I pull out a piece of origami paper and begin to fold.

“And I accept that,” Chase says. “I knew we'd make a good team.” A couple of minutes pass, and Chase watches me make a starfish. Monica cries in the corner, and her partner awkwardly pats her on the shoulder. Chase drums his fingers on his thighs and yawns, saying, “I'm bored.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. Not really, though.

He makes a face at me. “Is that all you do?”

I take out another piece of paper and fold the square in half. “I like it. It makes me feel . . . peaceful.”

“Teach me how to make something.”

“No.”

“No?”

I picture patterned paper crumpling in Cellie's fist. “It's really hard and frustrating.”

“Let me try,” he insists.

I sigh and level my gaze at him. “What is it you want, Chase?”

His lips twitch. I wait patiently, feeling both expectant and wary while he searches for the answer. Finally he says, “I'm not sure anymore.” Cue awkward silence.

I don't think he's going to leave me alone. Across the room Dr. Goodman watches us. I know he'll step in if we refuse to talk to each other. I focus on Chase, the lesser of two evils and all that, and sigh heavily. “Did they find the keycard?” I ask.