NINE
(IS BLACK)
I believe you.
If it hadn’t been for the gentle weight of Faraday’s hand on my shoulder, I’d have thought I was hallucinating. I’d dreamed of hearing those words so long, it was almost too much to accept that I was really hearing them. “You do? But . . . why?”
“I can’t explain,” he said. “Not in any way that would make sense to you, not yet. But I believe that what you’ve told me about Tori is the truth, and that it happened exactly the way you remember it.” His fingers tightened briefly, reassuring. “Now. Do you believe me?”
I licked my dry lips and nodded.
“Good,” he said, and let me go.
Dazed, I watched him walk back to his chair and sit down. I expected him to say something else, but he didn’t. He just sat there, waiting, until my chest filled up with words and I felt like I’d explode if I didn’t let them out.
“It was my fault,” I said. “I didn’t mean to kill her, but somehow I did. And I knew it wouldn’t be right to deny it. I was in so much pain I could barely think straight, but I tried to tell my mother, and then the police, what I’d done. They didn’t believe me.”
“Even though they knew that Tori had disappeared?” asked Faraday. “And that you were the last one to have seen her? I’m surprised the police didn’t question you more closely, once you were lucid again.”
“They tried,” I said, “or at least Constable Deckard did. But by then I’d blanked it all out, and I couldn’t remember anything. And when I did remember, I knew there was no point in telling the same story over again. So I just let them go on thinking that I’d forgotten.” I got up from the windowsill and walked back to my chair. “But I don’t know how much longer I can do that. The police have been looking for Tori for weeks now without finding anything, and I’m sure they suspect that I killed her, even if they can’t figure out—”
“Alison,” said Faraday, “you didn’t kill her.”
The words speared through me, and my head whipped around. He regarded me with an expression at once grave and compassionate, like Jesus on a Sunday School poster, and I stared into his impossible eyes until I felt my own beginning to burn. “But you said . . . you told me you believed . . .”
“I said I believed that Tori had disintegrated. I never said I believed you were responsible.” He leaned forward, pinning me with his gaze. “You might be able to sense some things that ordinary people can’t—that’s a logical application of synesthesia, at least in theory. But blasting someone to atoms simply by thinking about it? Where would you get an ability like that?”
“But people don’t just disintegrate—”
“No, but people don’t just make other people disintegrate, either. What made you believe that you could? Have you ever disintegrated anything else?”
“No!”
“Well, then,” he said, “perhaps it’s time you tried. Let’s do an experiment, shall we? How about this wastebasket?” He picked it up from beside the sofa and set it on the table between us. “You can stare at it or shout at it or do whatever you think you did to Tori, and—”
I recoiled. “I can’t.”
“Why not? Do you need to be more frightened? More angry?”
Couldn’t he see that I was terrified already? I shook my head.
“Think about it,” Faraday said. “It would take an incredible amount of energy to disintegrate even the tiniest object, let alone a human being. Where would all that energy come from? It can’t have been inside of you, or you of all people would have sensed it. And besides, that much energy would have destroyed you long before it got to anyone else.” He set the wastebasket down, his violet eyes sober. “I’m sorry, Alison.”
“Sorry.” It was a struggle to push the word past the tightening noose in my throat. “What for?”
“Because you’ve been treated like a criminal, you’ve treated yourself like one, and it should never have happened. After hearing your story, there’s no doubt in my mind that you are not only sane . . . but innocent.”
I couldn’t take any more. I jumped up, ignoring Faraday’s protest, and fled. Blindly I stumbled up the hallway toward the courtyard exit, desperate to find a place where I could cry and not be seen.
The sob that burst from my lips was streaked with orange, as though it had cracked a rib on the way out. I shoved the door with my shoulder, pummelled the glass with my fists, slammed a hip into the bar, but it refused to open.
“What’s going on?” asked Jennifer sharply. I spun around and she stepped back, palms up in a careful nonthreatening gesture. “Easy, Alison. I just want to help.”
How many weeks had I been here without causing the staff even the slightest trouble? And yet all I had to do was rattle a door to make them nervous. “I want outside,” I choked. “I want to be alone.”
Jennifer glanced back at Marilyn, sitting behind the nurses’ station, and an unspoken message passed between them. “Okay, look,” she said. “There’s some work being done on the courtyard right now, so how about I take you back to your room, and we’ll get you lying down.”
“I can’t. Cherie—” She’d be packing, getting ready to leave. I couldn’t stand to look at her, not when she was going home and I couldn’t.
“It’s okay,” Jennifer assured me. “She’s gone. It’ll be just you and me for now, all right?”
Miserably, I nodded. She took my elbow as though I were ninety, and together we shuffled back toward the residential wing. As we passed the library I stiffened, but Faraday was no longer there.
“Try to relax,” said Jennifer when we reached my bedside. She punched the pillow into shape, lifted my feet onto the bed as I slumped sideways, and drew the blanket around my shoulders. “Would you like me to call Dr. Minta?”
“No,” I mumbled into the pillow. All he’d be able to offer me was fake sympathy or antidepressants, and I didn’t want either.
Jennifer hesitated, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “I know it must be hard,” she said, “starting all over with a new roommate. Especially—well. Anyway. But I know you’ll do fine.”
It was the longest speech I’d ever heard her make, and the kindest. If she hadn’t been so wrong about the reason I was upset, I might have felt grateful. As it was, I ignored her.
“Fine,” said Jennifer, her usual briskness returning. “You can rest until lunchtime. But after that they’ll be coming in to inspect the room, so—”
I rolled over. “What?”
“For Micheline,” she said. “She’s been doing a lot better lately, but we have to check the room carefully to make sure she can’t hurt herself.”
“Micheline?” I sat up, my stomach convulsing. “You’re moving her? You’re putting her in here?”
Jennifer was taken aback. “I thought Marilyn had told you. I thought—” She left the sentence unfinished, but I could see the rest of it clearly as if it had been written across her forehead:
I thought that was why you were upset
.
“Oh, God,” I moaned, not sure if it was a curse or a prayer. “I’m going to throw up.”
And I did.
. . .
Jennifer must have requested a lunch tray for me, because it showed up an hour later in the hands of Simone, a middle-aged aide with a face like a basset hound. She thumped it down on the desk beside the bed, said, “Fifteen minutes,” and left.
Even now that my stomach had settled, I didn’t feel much like eating, but I managed to nibble a corner off the sandwich and force down a few crackers. Then I lay down again, but I couldn’t sleep—not now that I knew Micheline might show up at any moment. And especially not with Faraday’s last words still seared across the back of my mind.
Not only sane . . . but innocent.
I should have been happy, or at least relieved, to hear him say it. But right now all I could think was how stupid I’d been. For six weeks now, I’d blamed myself for Tori’s death, and lived in fear of the terrible power inside me. I’d told myself I had to get out of Pine Hills, for everyone’s sake—but all my attempts to regain my freedom had failed, and now I knew why.
First I’d appealed Dr. Minta’s decision prematurely, with hardly any evidence to back up my case. Then when my appeal failed I’d turned my back on my mother, the only one with the power to overrule Dr. Minta, and told her I didn’t want to talk to her again. After that I’d decided to take myself off my meds, which wasn’t a bad idea in itself; but what I’d done with my pills was more than just risky, it was reckless. It was the kind of thing people did when they
wanted
to be caught.
It had taken Faraday to make me realize the truth, but I saw it clearly now. All along I’d been sabotaging myself, because deep down I still thought of myself as a murderer, the kind of person who didn’t deserve to be free.
Yet painful as it was to realize the extent of my own self-delusion, there was another thought that disturbed me even more. If I hadn’t disintegrated Tori . . . then who or what had?
Faraday seemed to think there was an explanation that didn’t involve me, but I couldn’t think of any. And just because he believed in my innocence didn’t necessarily mean he was right. What if I had killed Tori after all, and then hallucinated her disappearance because I was just that crazy?
I was still brooding over that question when the door opened and the cleaning staff came in. They pulled out the empty bed that had once been Cherie’s and took off the mattress, examining every corner and cranny of the frame. They inspected every inch of the room, and the bathroom as well. Then they made me get up so they could go over my bed, and last of all they searched my suitcase so they could make sure I wasn’t hiding any sharp objects. It was humiliating that they wouldn’t take my word for it, but I knew that protesting would only make them suspicious. So I stood back and watched as they tossed all my clothes into a pile and dumped my toiletries all over the floor.
At last the two of them left and Simone returned, bringing Micheline with her. Her head was down and her black hair hung limp over her forehead, but her mouth was as sullen as ever.
“Meet your new roommate,” Simone told her. “And you better get along with this one.” Then her mournful brown gaze swiveled to me, and she said, “You gonna stay here?”
It was then that I realized why the staff had decided to move Micheline in with me. I’d established myself as a calm, responsible patient, unlikely to provoke Micheline or otherwise add to the nurses’ worries. In a way, it was a vote of confidence.
That didn’t mean I had to like it, though. And judging by the glare she gave me, Micheline didn’t think much of the arrangement either.
“I was just leaving,” I said.
. . .
“Alison, may I speak to you for a moment, please?”
I turned at the sound of Dr. Minta’s voice—and my stomach flipped. Standing beside him was Constable Deckard.
“I . . . I’m supposed to be in group therapy,” I said.
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” said Dr. Minta. He beckoned me into his office, and I followed. We all sat down, and the constable took off his hat—as though that could make him any less intimidating.
“Ms. Jeffries,” he said in his soft but unnerving voice, full of blue shadows and glints of hidden steel. “I’ve been hearing from Dr. Minta that you’ve made very good progress over the past few weeks. Since you’re starting to feel better, I’m wondering if you might have remembered anything that could help us in our investigation.”
I swallowed. What was I going to say?
“But before I go any further, Ms. Jeffries,” the policeman went on, taking out his notebook, “it’s my duty to let you know that you are under no obligation to make a statement, and that if you do make a statement it could be used against you in court. You have the right to ask that a lawyer be present, and to call a parent or guardian to be present as well, before you answer any questions. . . .”
“Wait,” I said. “Are you arresting me?”
“Not at this time,” said Deckard. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re fully aware of your rights before we talk any further.” He flipped a page in his notebook. “And I have about eight pages to go, so if you don’t mind . . .”
The wry note in his voice disarmed me, and for a minute I almost liked him. But I had nothing to say that he would want to hear, especially not on the record. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but there’s no point. I don’t know what happened to Tori.”
“You mean you still don’t remember?”
“I can’t help you,” I said. That much at least was true.
Constable Deckard regarded me narrowly a moment. Then he pushed back his chair and rose. “I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Jeffries,” he said. “But perhaps it will help you to hear about a couple of things we’ve learned in the course of our investigation. One is that we’ve just received the DNA test results from the blood we found on your fingers and in your ring shortly after you came home on June seventh. I think you can guess what those results are. The second is that we have two witnesses who say they saw you and Ms. Beaugrand fighting just outside the northwest door of Champlain Secondary School, shortly before she was reported missing. And we also have part of that fight on videotape.”
My muscles dissolved into water. I stared at him, too shaken to speak.
“I’d advise you to think about this some more, Ms. Jeffries,” the constable said. “And the next time we talk, maybe you’ll have decided that you do remember something about what happened to Ms. Beaugrand, after all.” He closed his notebook, picked up his hat, and with a nod to Dr. Minta, walked out.
I sat frozen in my chair. So the police had enough evidence now to confirm that I’d hurt Tori badly, if not killed her. For some reason they still weren’t ready to press charges against me yet, but that could change very quickly—all it might take is one more piece of evidence. And the bitter irony was that even though I now knew I was innocent, I was no closer to clearing my name than I had been before.
“I apologize, Alison,” said Dr. Minta. “I didn’t expect him to speak to you quite so, er, strongly. Are you all right?”
Anger flared inside me. I wanted to shout
how dare you
, to tell him that he had no excuse for springing Constable Deckard on me that way. But I couldn’t, because I needed him to believe that I wasn’t dangerous.