Luka, page 7
I raise my hand.
Lotsam frowns.
The last time I did so, I said slanderous things about fetal modification. I can tell he’s hesitant to call on me now. I don’t give him a choice.
“I need to go to the nurse,” I say, not sounding weak or sick, but commanding. In charge. It’s the tone my father uses with his employees. It’s the tone he uses with me.
Lotsam nods dumbly.
I grab my backpack and leave.
Outside, the hallway is empty. My mind rewinds to last night’s dream, when Tess confessed that she saw what I saw at the pep rally.
When Tess told me she was going to the Edward Brooks Facility.
13
An Utter Impossibility
The Edward Brooks Facility is a large, intimidating building that gives a legit impression of a haunted mansion—with turrets and thick columns and drafty hallways and live-in patients that moan like ghosts on the third and fourth floors.
It’s also nationally renowned.
If you have a mental illness and you don’t want the government tracking your rehabilitation, this is one of the last places you can go to ensure it.
I had such a strong dislike for my twice weekly appointments, I vowed to forever hide my abnormalities. I learned how to tell the difference between what everybody could see and what only I could see. I taught myself to ignore the latter. I stopped talking about my recurring dreams. My obsession with a girl I’d never met. Twice a week, I lied to Dr. Roth.
The world doesn’t really care if I’m normal; it only cares that I act like it. It’s a lesson I’m not sure Tess has learned yet. She certainly didn’t act normal at the pep rally in September, and she didn’t act normal today in class either. But then, not even I could remain cool and calm when that thing lunged. Why in the world did it come at her like that? And what was it to begin with, if not a deranged figment of my imagination?
I drag my hand down my face.
Is this the natural progression of my illness? Maybe Tess didn’t see anything in class. She looked sick when I arrived. She probably was sick. Her reaction wasn’t because of a skeletal-like being lunging at her, but because she was going to throw up and didn’t want to do so in the classroom. So, she pushed back her chair and fled to the bathroom. Only instead of checking the bathrooms or the nurse’s office like a normal person, I got in my car and sped here. All because of a dream I had last night.
The reality of the situation hits me hard.
Tess Eckhart has turned my world inside out. Nullified the vow I made to hide my abnormalities. I’ve told her things I shouldn’t have told her. I’m acting like a crazy person. Noticeably enough that it’s gotten back to my father. His warning couldn’t have been any clearer this morning. If he finds out that I ditched class today, that I came here of all places, he’ll make me resume my appointments with Dr. Roth. At night. After the facility is closed. Under the cover of darkness.
I stare hard at the front doors.
This is ridiculously far-fetched. An utter impossibility. And yet, I have to check. I have to know for sure that she’s not here, that last night’s dream was just a dream. I stride up the cement stairs and pull open the heavy door just as someone comes bolting outside, so fast they barrel into me.
Her hair smells like strawberries.
And my thoughts?
They scatter in a thousand different directions.
Tess is standing outside the doors of the Edward Brooks Facility, looking up at me in the same shocked way I must be looking down at her, her face devoid of all color except the bruise-like circles beneath her eyes.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
I take a step back, trying to process what this means. Trying to figure out what to say. I could tell her the truth—that I wanted—no, needed—to make sure she was okay after that thing came at us. I could tell her about last night’s dream. But I can’t bring myself to say any of it. I don’t think she’d believe me even if I could.
I don’t want to lie, though. Not to her. So I settle on a truth that isn’t the truth. “My dad owns the place.”
Her shoulders sink like she was hoping for a different answer. I find myself wishing I could take the one I gave her back. Her attention zips left, then right, reminding me of a bird I rescued when I was ten. It flew into our living room window so hard, it knocked itself unconscious. I put it inside a cage with plans to nurse it back to health. But when the bird came to, it panicked. That’s how Tess looks now—trapped. Caged. On the verge of hyperventilating. “I—I need to—I …”
“It’s okay, Tess. I won’t tell anyone.”
“I’m not crazy,” she says.
“I never said you were.”
She peers up at me with narrowed eyes. “Why aren’t you at school?”
“Why did you leave class so fast?”
She takes a small step back. “Did you follow me?”
“What upset you in class, Tess?”
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
“So you ran out?”
“I didn’t want to get sick all over Mr. Lotsam’s floor.”
It’s the same thing I told myself a minute ago, when I was staring up at this very building. Only it doesn’t make sense. Not anymore. “And you came here?”
Her cheeks turn red.
I want to grab her shoulders and rattle her until the walls she’s erecting crumble. I want her to trust me like I trusted her when I told her about my mother’s failed pregnancy screenings. “You seemed really scared of something.”
A current of emotion churns in her eyes, too fast and volatile to decipher. “I’m sorry. I—I have to go.” Before I can stop her, she skirts around me and hurries down the steps, leaving me all alone.
Just like I was in my dream on the beach.
14
Trespassing
I return to school hopeful Tess will return, too. When she doesn’t, I stay because I don’t have a choice. Not after my father’s warning. I go through the motions, ignoring the whispers about Tess’s odd behavior in first period. About my equally odd behavior when I took off after her. Our partnership in World History for the genocide project. The heated debate about fetal modification. I let all of it float around me until the final bell rings. Then I go home and get out my board.
But surfing doesn’t help.
And Tess isn’t out on her back deck.
Dad’s working late again. Thankfully, Mom doesn’t surprise me with dinner guests. She cooks shrimp puttanesca for the two of us, which we eat at the dining table over stilted conversation about school, about Newport, about the Halloween party and whether or not I’m going. I take care of cleanup, then excuse myself to my room where I pace, my mind spinning from one outlandish theory to the next.
Shared Psychosis doesn’t fit. But Tess and I saw the same thing in Lotsam’s class. Which means it had to exist on some level apart from either of us. But then, why couldn’t anyone else see it? I think about the span of time we went to church. In North Carolina, at the height of Mom’s crying jags. Places of worship are few and far between. The occasional person might identify as Muslim or Catholic, like Leela, but hardly anyone actively practices religion.
And yet, we went.
For nearly half a year.
I might have been young, but not so young that I don’t remember. The pastor was a large woman with a long nose and tiny eyes set too close together. She was animated with a gusty laugh that would echo through the sanctuary and she’d often talk about things society at large would condemn. Like the world being more than physical. Reality, bigger than what we can see and touch and quantify. Is this the reality Tess and I are seeing? One that can’t be touched or quantified? If so, why us? And how in the world do these dreams work?
When Dad comes home, he stops by my room to check in. He looks tired, like the day has taken a toll. For a second, I consider asking him about Tess Eckhart, the new girl who obviously goes to his facility. Why else was she there today? But I bite my tongue. Dad wouldn’t tell me anything even if he wanted to. And there’s no reason to draw attention to the fact that I’m obsessing over a girl who receives mental health services.
My parents go to sleep.
I would if I could.
Instead, I sit on the edge of my bed with my elbows on my knees, thumbing the stones inside the frayed hemp encircling my wrist. Protective stones. My knee begins to jiggle. My parents contradict themselves. In one breath, they want me to stay off the radar. They want us to blend in. In another, my mother buys me these stones. We went to an actual church.
I glance at the clock on my bedside table.
It’s a quarter past midnight.
I dig my hand into my hair, the dark strands twisting around my fingers. If Tess is going to the Edward Brooks Facility, then she’s seeing Dr. Roth. He’s the only psychiatrist there who treats out-patients. Or—as he prefers to call them—clients. Frustration and the insatiable need for answers tangle deep inside my gut. I’m not going to find them here. I shove my feet into a pair of shoes, grab the hoodie hanging on my desk chair, and creep out into the dark hallway and down the stairs.
The master key is easy to find. Dad keeps it on his keychain, hanging on the hook by the door. I remove it without making a sound, de-activate our alarm system as well as our front door surveillance camera, and slip outside.
My movement trips the sensor light. I cringe as it floods the night. If my parents catch me, I’m a dead man walking. I slink quickly away, across the lawn, my heart hammering as I hurry down the empty street toward the gates to Forest Grove.
I enter the code.
The hinges groan—extra loud in the quiet.
I slip through and move faster. Now that I’m this far—this committed—urgency propels me onward. By the time I reach the facility, my pulse is racing. I climb the stairs and punch in the code, hoping it hasn’t changed since I used to go—after hours, so the front desk administrator wouldn’t see. Despite my father’s privacy policy, there has and will always be extra precaution when it comes to his son.
The code works.
The lock clicks.
I fling the door wide and stride down the dark hallway toward Roth’s first floor office. When I reach it, I shove the master key into the lock and twist the handle.
The door creaks open.
I pause on the threshold, aware that what I’m about to do is against the law. My father might own this facility, but I am clearly trespassing. I am clearly about to violate patient confidentiality. But I can’t stop thinking about last night’s dream or Tess’s face when I ran into her outside or that greasy-haired man who lunged in Lotsam’s class. My need for answers has become a gnawing hunger. So I creep to Dr. Roth’s desk and find the key to the cabinet where he keeps his files.
I open the second drawer from the top and thumb through the E’s, not stopping until I reach the one I’m looking for. With shaky hands, I remove the file and open it.
Teresa Eckhart.
Age 17.
Birthdate—
“What are you doing?”
My heart slams into my throat as I spin around.
Teresa Eckhart—age 17—stands behind me in Dr. Roth’s doorway.
I stare at her with my mouth hanging open.
Her attention zips from the file in my hands to my face—back and forth, back and forth while I gape like an idiot. “Did you follow me?” I manage to ask.
She steps further inside the office, her eyes flashing as soon as they land on her name. “That’s my file.”
I pull it behind my back.
“What are you doing with my folder?” She scratches the inside of her wrist—the small patch of dry skin. “You have no right to read any of that. It’s private.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I drag my hand through my hair, then down my face, a frustrated growl building in my chest. “I had to know what you told Dr. Roth today.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I know. But I was … curious.” The word is so tame it feels like a lie. A man on fire insisting he’s just a little bit overheated and could we turn the thermostat down a couple degrees. I’m so much more than curious it’s laughable.
“This is not a normal response to curiosity.”
“No?”
“Breaking into a facility in the middle of the night and stealing private files? No.” Her voice trembles when she speaks, but her eyes are like navy steel.
“Is it any worse than spying?” I ask.
She juts her chin, her narrow shoulders squaring.
I take a step toward her. “Were you watching me or something?”
“I was sitting at my window when I saw your sensor light come on.”
“And you decided to follow me?”
“I’m not the one who’s been caught committing a crime.” Her eyes search mine—demanding. Yearning, too. For what, I don’t know. We’re both playing a game. Dancing around one another. Afraid to show our cards. “I don’t understand why you’d go through all this trouble.”
I shake my head and turn away—my mind jammed with so many thoughts, I can’t make any of them straight. I’m tired of tiptoeing. I want her to tell me the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. But can I really blame her for keeping her secrets hidden? Crazy isn’t safe. I should be relieved she’s not telling the world that she comes to this facility. But I’m not the world.
I turn around, my frustration melting into an ache that opens wide in my chest. I take another step closer. “Why did you leave class?”
“I already told you.”
“The truth?”
She turns into the caged bird again.
“You can tell me the truth, Tess,” I say, my voice a low rumble deep in my throat. “I promise to keep whatever secrets you have.”
“How can I know that?”
I take a deep breath, knowing full well that what I’m about to do could get me into serious trouble. If my father finds out, he will probably ship me off to military school. But at the moment, I don’t care about the repercussions. I need answers, and as far as I can tell, there’s only one way I’m going to get them.
I move to the filing cabinet and open the third drawer. Pull out another folder—one much thicker than Tess’s. Slowly, I take her wrist, turn over her hand, and place the folder flat against her palm. “Because I have secrets, too.”
Her eyes dip to the name on the file—Luka Williams.
“And I think we saw the same thing in Lotsam’s class today.”
15
Two Possible Theories
My muscles are primed, my body on high alert—vigilance on steroids as I walk beside Tess up the middle of a street in the dead of night. I keep reminding myself that this isn’t a dream. Tess isn’t leading an army. Tess isn’t in danger. I stretch my hand by my side. Our knuckles brush and my nerve endings catch fire—the touch so electric, I’m momentarily distracted from the shadows stretching long in the moonlight.
I have spent the better part of my life impervious to people. Keeping them at a safe distance. I’ve had friends, of course. I’ve even entertained the occasional attraction. But there’s never been anyone I’ve actively pursued or seriously preferred, despite having an array of options and opportunity.
This girl, however …
She has roused my desire in a way that undoes me. She makes me want to lay myself bare on the off chance that she might do the same. It’s a foreign feeling. One I must handle with care and restraint, especially as we wade into this peculiar conversation that has her fidgeting with the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
“Do you think it was real?” she asks.
She’s referring to the thing that lunged at her in class. The thing that showed up at the pep rally. Now that we’ve both admitted to seeing it, we’re grasping for an explanation. If we’ve been conditioned to believe anything, it’s that there’s always one to be found. Up until this point, mine has been a malfunctioning brain. But that explanation no longer works. How can our brains malfunction in the exact same way at the exact same time creating the exact same hallucination?
“I always used to think I was crazy. But now …”
“Now you don’t?”
“Now I don’t know what to think. I’ve never met anyone who sees what I see.”
“I don’t get it,” she says.
“Me neither.”
She waves off my agreement with visible impatience. “No, I mean, if you really saw what I saw, then why didn’t you react? That man came right at us and you just sat there.”
“I’ve trained myself not to react.” And in that particular situation, I did react. Just not on par with her reaction, which meant mine went unnoticed.
“Trained?”
“It’s not safe to be crazy.” She knows this, of course. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be going to my father’s facility. I rub my shoulder. “A few months before we moved to Thornsdale, I overheard a conversation between my parents. About that pregnancy screening. I had no idea mine came back abnormal or that my mom had terminated a previous pregnancy. Supposedly, my parents took a big risk when they went against the doctor’s orders. My dad had to pay a lot of money to cover things up. Make sure the records were erased from the system.”
“Wait a minute,” she says. “You mean women are required to proceed with treatment if the screenings come back with an abnormality? I always thought the decision was ultimately in the hands of the parents.”
“Almost everyone chooses to abort. Mothers rarely decide to have the child.”
Tess blinks hard. At my word choice, no doubt. “But your mom did.”
I nod. “At first, they assumed the test was wrong. I was a healthy baby. A healthy toddler. My dad considered suing. But then I started to see things nobody else could see and my parents reconsidered. Maybe the screening wasn’t so wrong after all.”
