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Dad leaned forward to straighten a stack of perfectly straight coasters on the coffee table. “How long are you thinking she might be…away?”
Agent Hasan shook her head. “There’s no way of knowing. That information tends to reveal itself after the initial evaluation period.”
Mom and Dad didn’t ask what kind of evaluations were included in that period. And I didn’t either. After all, Kasey had gone through them and survived.…Then again, for all her ill-advised ghost involvement, Kasey was just a regular girl; she didn’t have haunted eyes like mine.
Maybe I’d end up as a taxidermied specimen in some top-secret government science lab.
“Alexis, if there’s anything you want to tell us…” my mother said. “Maybe there’s another way to deal with—with whatever you’re going through.”
But I wouldn’t tell them a thing. The less they knew, the better. I was positive about that. Ignorance is bliss, and the opposite of ignorance is the opposite of bliss.
Agent Hasan’s presence implied that there was something supernatural going on. But my parents didn’t ask for details. Maybe, in the backs of their minds, they somehow co
Maybe they were afraid to ask.
Because I hadn’t once claimed to be i
Agent Hasan checked her watch. “We should probably get going. Alexis, if you want to pack some clothes, maybe some books…nothing electronic, please.”
I nodded and walked to my bedroom, grateful to have orders to follow so I didn’t have to think. I pulled a bag out of my closet and started putting clothes in it—jeans, T-shirts, pajamas—the comfortable loungey stuff Kasey had worn during her ten months away.
Would I be gone for ten months?
Or longer?
Like…forever?
I SAT ALONE IN THE BACKSEAT of Agent Hasan’s car while she drove. About forty-five minutes later, we headed down a long twisting road that went through a small tree-lined canyon and past a couple of horse farms.
A black iron gate opened to let us pass beyond the tall fence that bordered Harmony Valley. We parked at the back of the building.
Would people at school—would Jared and Megan—even know what had happened to me, or would I just disappear like a political prisoner in some second-world country? Kasey might tell Megan, but I doubted she would call Jared.
A man in gray pants and a lab coat came out the double doors, flanked by two massive orderlies. The man spoke to Agent Hasan, and then she came and opened my car door.
“Let’s go,” she said.
I kept my arms folded in front of me and followed her inside.
* * *
Harmony Valley was a private facility. The main lobby and visitors’ lounge were nice, if a little generic—kind of like a hotel for business travelers. Visiting Kasey, we’d never crossed into the area where the patients spent their time living, eating, studying, watching TV, and attending therapy. So I’d always assumed the rest of the building was as nice as the parts we saw.
Wrong.
I followed Agent Hasan down a hallway painted in an ultraglossy shade of two-day-old oatmeal. The ceilings were striped with fluorescent lights, and the floor was an endless line of mismatched linoleum tiles. Every twenty feet or so we passed a solid-looking door with a small wire-reinforced window. Each one had a small numeric keypad instead of a lock. I slowed minutely to try to see inside some of the rooms.
“Keep up,” Agent Hasan said over her shoulder.
At the end of the hall was a windowless door with a sign on it that read privaTe. Agent Hasan shielded the keypad with her body and typed a series of numbers. The door opened with a mechanical click, and we walked in.
The room was sparsely furnished, with a line of counters against one wall, a hospital-type bed in the center, and a table with two chairs on either side pushed back in the corner.
Agent Hasan glanced at me. “On the bed.”
“No, thank you.”
“Alexis.” Her tone was heavy with warning and impatience.
“I’m not getting in the bed,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’ll sit in a chair like a normal person.”
“Normal person?” She laughed humorlessly and gave me an exasperated look. “Go ahead, then. Sit.”
So I did, edging myself into the chair in the corner—the one that faced the door.
A second later, Agent Hasan came over and sat opposite me. “So. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
I didn’t look up. Based on Kasey’s advice, I had a brilliant plan, which was to ignore her questions for all eternity, if necessary.
“Did you know that the only signs of struggle on Elliot Quilimaco’s body are your handprints?”
I flinched at the mention of Elliot’s name. “I believe it.”
“Do you admit to manhandling her?”
I raised my eyes. “I had no choice.”
She leaned closer, coming in for the kill. “How’d you find her, Alexis? How did you know where she was?”
“She liked Maxwell Canyon,” I said. “She hiked there all the time.”
“What about Ashleen?” she said. “And Kendra?”
“Same as Elliot,” I said. “They knew those trails.”
Her lips turned down. “Kendra was found a mile and a half off the trail.”
I cha
“Look, I don’t care,” Agent Hasan said. “I’m trying to make this easier on you. But if you don’t want to accept my assistance, it’s no skin off my back.”
I remembered what Kasey had said—She’ll act like she’s your friend, but she’s not—and looked up at her, on the verge of saying something snide.
But when I saw the way her sharp eyes were pi
Agent Hasan stood up, the feet of her chair shrieking as she pushed it away from the table. “I think you need a little time to cool off. See you in a while.”
“I hope you don’t mind sharing a room,” Nurse Jean said, pointing to an open door in the hallway.
Inside were two twin beds, each with its own night-stand, and two sets of shelves. The bed farther from the door looked slept-in, and there were a few items on the shelves—some clothes, a couple of magazines, a few books. Everything large enough to hurt somebody was bolted down.
I put my bag on one of the shelves and sat on the unoccupied bed, trying to bounce lightly. But the mattress was about as bouncy as a pile of warm sandwich meat.
“Now, you just get settled. Free time ends in thirty minutes, so you might as well just get ready for bed. We’ll get your medication set up in the morning.”
“Medication?” I repeated. “I don’t think I need any medication.”
She peered at me over the top of her clipboard. “You can talk to your doctor about that tomorrow.”
But I didn’t have a doctor. I wasn’t even sick.
Or was this what Agent Hasan meant when she said she “takes care” of problems?
Face it. If I tried to tell the truth—that I was only there because a top-secret government agent knew I was somehow involved with a ghost and a string of killings—people would just assume I’d come to the right place.
Was this what Agent Hasan did so she didn’t have to justify putting people in jail? She dumped the offenders in a mental hospital and kept them too doped up to talk?
“I see you’ve brought some of your own things, but I’ll have to take them and look through your bag before we can leave it with you. So you can just go ahead and sleep in these.” She handed me a hideous pair of loose, salmon-colored cotton pants and a matching V-neck shirt. Then she wished me good night and left, closing the door behind her.
I flopped backward on the bed and stared at the ceiling until my roommate came in.
She had brown hair cut bluntly to her chin and a thin, long face. She looked less than thrilled to be sharing a room. “I’m Haley,” she said, sounding like the basic act of talking to me required a huge sacrifice on her part.