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“I am very much hoping you’ll enlighten me,” she said slowly, “as to why you found it necessary to attack your roommate in the middle of the night.”
I could tell her exactly what I’d told everyone else—that I didn’t know why I’d done it. Which was begi
Or I could tell her the truth.
I decided to try the middle ground. “I have a reason,” I said. “But you wouldn’t understand.”
Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward. “Try me.”
“I can’t.” My voice was stretched thin. “But it’s a good reason.”
She tapped her fingers against the table. “When I brought you here, that wasn’t supposed to be an invitation to earn yourself a permanent stay.”
“Well, maybe you brought me here for the wrong reason,” I said.
She gave a half laugh and looked at me. “I’m starting to think the same thing, believe it or not. That is, I’m glad you’re here—because you’re clearly dangerous. But I have a theory, Alexis.”
A theory?
“You called me to say there might have been some kind of supernatural activity involved in Kendra’s and Ashleen’s disappearances. At the time I thought you were being a little paranoid. Then I get a call from your boyfriend saying you’re going on about ghosts. So at that point, I think—maybe so. Maybe it is supernatural.”
My heart soared with hope.
“But it’s not, Alexis,” she said. “And I think you know it.”
My soaring heart did a tailspin. “What—what do you mean?”
“I mean that as far as my team and my equipment can tell, there is not and has never been a ghost involved in those girls’ deaths.” Her blank face transformed. Her half smile disappeared, and she was suddenly as serious as death. “So maybe there is no ghost, Alexis.…Maybe there’s just you.”
It took a second for me to comprehend what she was saying—
That she blamed me—not an evil spirit, but me—for what had happened to Kendra, Ashleen, and Elliot.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’m not a killer.”
“It’s ridiculous that since you’ve been here, the only new attack has been on your own roommate?”
I didn’t answer.
“It’s ridiculous that every one of the girls who’s been targeted has been linked to you in some way—after she’s gone missing? We know about the anonymous tip, Alexis. You left fingerprints all over the pay phone.”
“I’m telling you,” I said. “I’m trying to save them!”
“And I’m telling you—there is no ghost.” She sat back and gave me a coolly appraising glance. “So maybe what you’ve been trying to save them from is yourself.”
I got transferred to the blue ward, which meant the pajamas were blue instead of sickly pink. But there were other differences: one patient per room. Two nurses’ stations instead of one. Twice as many orderlies. And we didn’t get trays when we ate—we got paper plates.
I was falling down the rabbit hole of risk assessment. What came after blue, I wondered. Green? Yellow? And what was the final level? What color pajamas did you get when your room consisted of four padded walls and a mattress? When your days were spent in total isolation?
Gray, I thought. Then Lydia and I can both be in the gray void.
I could end up staying at Harmony Valley forever, locked away in some i
And as I sat and stared at the soap opera playing on TV (in the blue ward, the remote was kept at the nurses’ desk), I realized—why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I be locked away, kept isolated from the world and the outdoors and other people?
Just say Jared was right, and Laina wanted us to be together forever. Say she was attacking girls who tried to keep us apart. If I were stashed in some basement bunker, no more girls could try to keep us apart. So Laina would be happy. And Jared would be happy.
And I would be…safe. Safe from being the reason other people got hurt.
Suddenly it didn’t sound so awful. I mean, it sounded awful, but it sounded like the kind of awful I could learn to live with. Not nearly as bad as standing back and watching i
Now all I had to do was convince Agent Hasan to sink me deeper into the belly of Harmony Valley. And somehow I didn’t think that would be too hard to do.
“Alexis?” One of the nurses beckoned me over to the desk. She handed me a letter in an open envelope. “This was dropped off for you. We didn’t read it—we just had to check to make sure there weren’t any unauthorized items inside.”
I nodded and sat down, opening the letter.
It was from Jared.
Dear Alexis,
I know you’ll understand someday. Until then, I’ll keep loving you, and only you. And Laina will make sure no one comes between us.
Yours always,
J.
The nurses were used to my cooperation by now. So my night nurse didn’t notice when I tucked my four pills under my tongue and kept them there instead of swallowing. As soon as she was gone, I spat them out and tucked them under the side of my mattress.
No more twilight haze for me. I needed to be alert—so I could say the exact right things to Agent Hasan.
I tossed and turned all night, my body yearning for the forced relaxation of the medication. At one point I almost reached under the mattress for one of the pills.
But I resisted.
The next morning I was wide awake—wired, even. I jittered through breakfast and hurried to the nurses’ station to request a meeting with Agent Hasan.
I’d made up my mind—I was going to tell her that she needed to find a way for me to stay at Harmony Valley forever.
The nurse was on the phone, a deep frown on her face. She lifted her finger in a “just a sec” gesture. “Yes. Well, she’s actually right here—”
Who, me? I stared at her. I was the only patient near the desk.
Suddenly, the game show playing on the TV behind me was interrupted by a volley of trumpet music.
Feeling like I was moving in slow motion, I turned around and watched the breaking news ba
“Yet another Surrey teen is missing in what police are now calling the most bizarre series of deaths on record in De
How could I be so stupid?
Even if I was locked up…Laina wasn’t.
There were plenty of ways for girls to try to come between Jared and me—whether I was there or not.
And then two pieces of information stood out like framed photographs in my mind:
One, that Kasey had gone to talk to Jared.
Two, that she’d told him we weren’t meant to be together.
So I didn’t even have to wait for the picture to come up on the screen.
I knew Laina had taken my sister.
I SAT ON MY BED. LOCKED IN MY ROOM.
Which is what they do to you, I guess, if you start yelling about needing to talk to a woman whose name isn’t even on record with the hospital. Especially if the name is “Agent Hasan.” That really plays into the paranoiddelusional-conspiracy-theory reputation you’ve got going.
I’d only stopped yelling when they’d threatened to sedate me.
If I let that happen, Kasey’s odds of surviving went from slim to less than none. So I would behave. Even if it meant I was exploding inside.
My sister was in mortal danger. And I was beyond stuck.
I would fight Laina. I would fight her with every last hint of life in my body if I could save my sister. But that was impossible. I couldn’t even get to her.
Despite trying to hold myself together, I collapsed into jags of gasping sobs every few minutes.