Asylum (6 page)

“That’s Joe,” Jordan said, nodding toward the stocky, red-headed student. “He’s a hall monitor on my floor.”

“Kinda cute.”

“A hall monitor? No way, Abs, that’s forbidden fruit. Ha ha,
fruit
, get it?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Abby muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Ahhh, I crack me up,” Jordan added, wiping away a nonexistent tear.

“That makes one of us.”

The dark-haired girl sitting ahead of them turned and glared, silencing Abby and Jordan with a look. Behind her back, Jordan stuck out his tongue as the professor finally started talking.

“This is Joe McMullan, and I’m Professor Reyes. I know you’re all probably very bored with orientation stuff, but this will be quick and painless, I promise.”

Her name sounded familiar. Dan reached quietly into his pocket and pulled out his schedule. Scanning the list, he found that she was his History of Psychiatry professor. He tucked the schedule away, fixing his attention to the front of the room again. She was shorter than Joe by at least a head, and looked approachable enough, with ruddy cheeks and a gap in her teeth. She wore all black accented by a chunky necklace of turquoise stones.

“First, a few words on dorm safety …”

Dan let his eyes wander around the room. A few seats down he saw Felix sitting bolt upright in his chair. He sighed, thinking he really ought to include his roommate more, and maybe see if an hour or two kicking back as a group would bring Felix out of his shell. But he genuinely liked what he had going with Abby and Jordan, and if Felix made things weird, Dan would be blamed for forcing him into the dynamic.

“Brookline has a rich and complex past,” Professor Reyes was saying. “So if you have any questions, ask anytime! History is nothing to be afraid of.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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CHAPTER

N
o
 7 

It was wrong, all wrong. Dan was in the wrong place. There must have been some mistake. He didn’t deserve to be here. He wasn’t crazy, he wasn’t. So why was he chained to the wall? He struggled until there was blood on his wrists from where the shackles held him.

“Help!” he screamed, but his voice came out in a whisper.

The room changed. Now Dan was lying on a table in a robe. A key clicked in the door and a waiter wearing glasses and a white serving uniform came in, rolling a tray in front of him. There was a big silver dome on the tray, and Dan could hear something under it tinkling and rattling like silverware. “Your dinner, sir,” the waiter said, removing the dome. Underneath were surgical instruments: a scalpel, a clamp, and a hypodermic needle.

Dan looked up, and the waiter’s face had changed. Now he was wearing a white doctor’s coat and a surgical mask. Worst of all, where his eyes had been there were only black sockets, as if his eyes had been scratched out.

As he reached for the instruments, the doctor said in a gentle voice, “Don’t worry, Daniel Crawford. I’m here to take care of you.”

D
an startled awake. Sweat was pouring down his face, and he had grabbed the sheet so tightly that his fingers were cramping. He was still muttering, “No, no, don’t hurt me!”

Heart pounding, he sat up. His eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly. He was in his room. There was no waiter, no doctor. There was only Felix, stock-still, standing beside the bed watching him.

“Ah!” He sank down into the pillows again and yanked the sheet up to his chin. “What … what are you doing?”

“You were speaking in your sleep, Daniel,” Felix replied calmly. He took a tiny step away from the bed. “Are you feeling all right? The noise was … Well, it woke me, as you can see.…”

“S-sorry,” Dan mumbled. “Just a nightmare. I’m … I’m fine, really.”

But I’d be better if you backed the hell away.

“I need some air,” he added, rolling out of bed. The sheets were damp with sweat.

“That should help,” Felix said with a sad smile. “Fresh air always clears my thoughts. I hope it does the same for you.”

Dan grabbed his hoodie and raced out the door, wondering if he was fleeing his roommate, the room, or both. He tried to slow down his breathing.
It was just a dream, that’s all it was
. He wiped sweat from the bridge of his nose with one knuckle. The photographs had clearly disturbed him more than he’d realized. For the second night in a row, sleep was a lost cause. The hallway was dimly lit and quiet. No one was there, but Dan shivered. What was it about this place that made him feel like he was being watched?

It felt good to get downstairs. But when he got to the entrance hall, the main door was already propped open. Someone had gone out before him and was now sitting on the steps.

“Funny meeting you here,” he said.

Abby yelped, surprised. Dan only just managed to dodge the pebble she picked up and chucked in his direction. “Dan!
Ugh
. You scared me half to death.”

It probably didn’t help that his bad dream and sudden waking had left his voice hoarse. “Sorry,” he said, sitting down next to her. “Didn’t mean to make you jump.”

Abby sat with her knees drawn up and her phone in one hand, her arms wrapped tight around her shins. Little fat clouds with smiles decorated her pajama pants.

“You’re up late,” she said. Her voice sounded ragged, too.

“Couldn’t sleep. You?”

Abby looked at him, as if weighing how to respond. Finally, she said, “I got a text from my sister. Well, several texts. Things at home are … They could be better.” She paused. Dan might not have been a social wizard, but he knew that asking questions was not the right thing to do just now. So he waited for Abby to go on. “My parents don’t see eye to eye on much. Pops does corporate jingles and he hates it, but the money’s good. Mom thinks he should go back to making real music.
His
music. But it doesn’t pay.”

“No easy answers there.”

“They go back and forth, and every time I get so freaked out thinking that they’ll … Anyway, Jessy thinks it’s for real this time. She thinks they’ll really do it.” Abby sighed.

“What? Divorce?”
Sensitive, Dan, real sensitive
.

“Yeah.” She sighed again, and this time he heard a catch in her breath. He had no idea what to do if she started crying, and he hoped like hell it wouldn’t come to that, because he wouldn’t know the right way to handle it. “It would kill my sister. Sometimes I think it would kill me, too.”

“That really sucks. I’m sorry.” He was flubbing this. Epically. Not that it was an appropriate time to be acting all smooth and seductive or whatever, but surely something deeper was required here?

“I wish they could just keep it together for a few more years until Jessy and I are both in college.”

Dan sat in what he hoped came off as sympathetic silence.

“So what about you?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Me? What about me?”

“Why couldn’t you sleep?”

“Oh.” Dan could feel that familiar instinct to shut down coming on. And he didn’t want to darken the mood even more with a detailed retelling of his dream. Still, Abby had shared something private with him, and her eyes looked so big and sad.… A fair trade seemed only right. “I had a nightmare.”

“Like falling or drowning?”

“Sort of.”
No, not really
. But he decided he couldn’t tell her about the dream after all. Not that dream, and not the ones he usually had either. She would think he was too strange, and her opinion mattered a lot to him. So all he said was “It was just the kind where you feel so … so …”

“Powerless?”

“Yeah.”

“I know the feeling. That’s how it is with my parents, too. Nothing I can do and it totally
blows
.” She took a breath and then said, “You know, weird as it sounds, I feel kind of better now. I don’t usually talk about this stuff.”

“What about Jordan? I thought you two were tight.”

“No. I mean yes. Well, sure, but I’m more
his
confidant. His situation is so screwed up.… I don’t want to burden him with my problems too much. It doesn’t seem right, piling more on top of him.”

They sat in companionable silence. The grass at the foot of the trees was tall, and pale tendrils of mist wove through the overgrown tufts before fanning out across the lawn. The darkness was lifting slowly as dawn came. “You’re a good listener, Dan. You’ve got this whole wise vibe going on.”

“Thank you.” Dan smiled. “Wait, this isn’t that Buddha stuff again, is it? Because that seriously did not feel like a compliment.”

Abby laughed, and for a second Dan really did feel like he had helped. “Jordan definitely could have phrased that better, but I think he was on to something.” Still smiling, she scooted closer to him on the stoop. The feathers in her hair were gone, leaving her mass of black curls falling unevenly over one shoulder. For a moment, he thought she was about to kiss him, and he knew then and there he would ask her out on a date.

“So,” she said. “You want to know my trick for getting to sleep?”

“Go for it.”

“So I close my eyes, right? I mean, that’s a given. But I close my eyes and relax, and I pretend I’m a tree—”

Dan snorted, shrugging away when Abby smacked him on his shoulder.

“A
tree
?”

“Shut
up
! It works!”

“Uh-huh.
Sure
it does …”

“Fine, smarty-pants. I’m not going to tell you my secret then.” Abby crossed her arms and made a
hmph
sound.

“No, please, continue. Come on, I want to know more about … about … being a tree.” Laughter bubbled up through his words no matter how hard he tried to clamp down on it.

“I’m not telling you now.”

“Abby, please …”

“Ugh. Okay, but only because I like you.”

Dan missed part of her next sentence, because she had said she liked him.

“ … you picture your individual roots, picture them moving down through the soil, going deeper and deeper, focusing on each one, one after another, down, down, cool and safe and surrounded …”

Just listening to her describe it was relaxing. Then she reached over and gently pressed her thumbs to his temples. “Every root moving through the earth, shifting the dirt, getting stronger.…” He stretched, enjoying the feeling that he could fall asleep.

“Ha. See? I told you it works.”

“Not bad, Branches.”

“We should probably get back inside,” she said, getting slowly to her feet and stretching. “And don’t call me Branches.”

“Acorn?”

“Not. Funny.”

“Whatever you say, Branches.” He covered a yawn.

“I’m serious.” She glared. “You call me Branches and I’ll call you Buddha.”

“All right, fine. Truce.” Dan followed her inside and closed the door behind them. It automatically locked. They walked to Abby’s floor.

“Well, night,” Dan said, rocking on his heels.

“Night. And remember …” Abby closed her eyes and struck a pose. “Be the tree.”

“I’ll try,” Dan said, watching her back as she headed off to her room.

And alone in his room, Dan did try. But when he closed his eyes, the tree became a vine and the vine became a shackle, and then it was the same nightmare all over again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER

N
o
 8 

T
he next morning, Dan hardly said two words to his friends. They wouldn’t have class together until later in the afternoon, and his restless night meant his alarm had gone to snooze half a dozen times. Breakfast consisted of wolfing down Cheerios and orange juice too fast, and watching Abby put cold spoons on her eyelids. She insisted it would help her wake up and get rid of her sleepless puffiness.

No time to myth bust that. Instead, Dan ran, course list in hand, to his first class, thinking that History of Psychiatry would get him off to a good start. When he got there he saw Jordan’s roommate, Yi, and was glad for the friendly face in a room full of strangers. Ignoring the familiar voice that told him it’d be easier to sit alone, Dan went over to Yi and introduced himself.

“How’s it going?” he said to Yi as he sat down.

“Eh.” Yi shrugged. “Jordan won’t stop texting people when we’re supposed to be sleeping. I could hear his little clicky-clacky fingers going until like four in the morning.”