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“Do you think about it often?”
Numbness creeps into my body. Hands first, then up my arms like a line of fire ants.
“A lot. I think about him all the time.”
The laptop screen goes fuzzy, the interviewer’s face lurching out of focus. When I look away, I see the entire kitchen has turned into blurred streaks of color. I glance at the grape soda, which has brightened into a Wonka-esque neon purple. My hands are too numb to lift the bottle, so I bump it with an elbow, its dregs fizzing. Swirling along the bottom are powdery bits of Xanax that glow blue.
A voice rises behind me.
“I knew you’d be thirsty.”
I spin myself around to see her in the kitchen, dressed and dry. The shower still runs in the distance, as muffled as Interview Sam’s voice trickling from the laptop. It was a decoy. A trap.
“Wha—”
I can’t speak. My tongue has thickened, feeling like a fish flopping in my mouth.
“Shhhh,” she says.
She’s turned into a shadowy blur, just like her counterpart still talking on my laptop. Interview Sam come to life. Only she isn’t Sam. Even the pills wreaking havoc on my nervous system can’t suppress that. It’s a moment of clarity. My last one for God knows how long.
Maybe forever.
“Tina,” I say, fat tongue still flip-flopping. “Tina Stone.”
She makes a move toward me. I react by reaching for the woodblock knife holder on the counter, my arm moving in slow motion. I grab the biggest knife. In my hand, it weighs a hundred pounds.
I stumble forward, legs useless, feet as heavy as rocks. I manage one weak jab before the knife drops from my limp-noodle fingers. The kitchen tilts, only I know it’s really me who’s doing the tilting, falling sideways, everything a sickening blur as my skull smashes against the floor.
ONE YEAR AFTER PINE COTTAGE
Tina was among the last to go. She sat on her squeaky bed, staring blankly at the one on the other side of the room, most recently occupied by a stringy-haired pyromaniac named Heather. It had been stripped of sheets, leaving only a lumpy mattress with an oblong urine stain. On the wall beside it, not quite hidden under a coat of paint, were the curse words scrawled in lipstick by Heather’s predecessor, May. When she got transferred, she bequeathed her stash of lipstick to Tina.
All told, Tina had spent more than three years in that room. The longest time she had spent in any one place. Not that she had a choice. The state decided that for her.
But now it was time to go. Nurse Hattie shouted it from the hallway in that grating hick accent of hers. “Closin’ time, folks! Everybody out!”
Tina lifted the knapsack that leaned against her bed. It used to be Joe’s. His parents left it behind when they cleaned out his room after he was killed. Now it was hers, and everything she owned was inside, which wasn’t much. Its lightness astonished her.
As Tina left the room, she didn’t look back. She had moved around enough to know that long last looks didn’t make leaving any easier. Even if you had been dying to leave since the moment you arrived.
In the hallway, Tina took her place with the other stragglers, lining up for one last head count. Instead of seeing that everyone was there, the orderlies were making sure no one stayed behind. At noon, Blackthorn’s doors were closing for good.
The majority of Blackthorn’s patients were still too crazy to be let loose upon the world. They had already been transferred to other state facilities, Heather among them. Tina was one of the few deemed mentally fit to be released. She had served her time. Now she was free to go.
After head count, she and the others were shuffled through the wide and drafty rec room, which was already being cleared of furniture. Tina saw that the TV had been dismantled from the wall and that most of the chairs had been stacked in a corner. But her table was still there. The table beside the grated window where she and Joe would sit and peer out at the woods on the other side of Blackthorn’s scrubby patch of lawn, naming all the places they would go once they got out.
Tina did allow one last look at that, instantly regretting it, for it made her think about Joe. She had been ordered not to think about him.
Yet she did. All the time. Leaving wouldn’t change that.
She had also been ordered not to think about that night. About the terrible things that happened. All those dead kids. But how could she not? It was the reason the place was closing. The very reason she and the others were being marched out.
Some of the orderlies came by to watch them leave. Matt Cromley was there, that perm-headed prick. He had put his hand down Tina’s pants so many times she lost count. She glared at him as she passed. He gave her a wink and licked his lips.
Parked outside was a van that would take them to the bus station. After that, no one gave a damn where they went as long as it wasn’t there.
As Tina climbed aboard, Nurse Hattie handed her a large envelope. Inside was the name of a social-services agency that would help her find employment, her medical records, all necessary prescriptions, and cash that Tina knew would last only about a measly two weeks.