"Oh, sure."
Part of me felt irrationally justified, since she'd done the same to me, no matter what her reasons. I hated that part. I didn't want to move on, but it was like I couldn't help it. Part of me knew I couldn't stay in the basement with Jenna forever. I couldn't stop time from going forward, even if I broke all of the clocks in the world.
My one fear at the library was that Nurse Callie would see Henry and I up there together, and report to my parents that he was a bad influence, but that never happened. We always came separately and split before we left the stacks.
I saw Cheryl Rhodes a few more times, but she didn't scare me as much, because I knew she had no idea who I was.
I usually stopped to chat with Callie whenever I'd see her. She gave me recommendations on good romance novels, although I didn't have the stomach for the stuff. She always asked me if I usually spent so much time inside, but I could only be honest. She admitted she was a homebody, too.
When Henry and I were together, Lainey might as well not have existed. Always sitting on opposite sides of the table, we mostly talked about safe things. Like what we had been doing with our summers, although I made myself sound busier than I actually had been. Oh yeah, I had been going places every day, all right. I was super duper popular.
I'd tried talking about
Other Worlds
with Jenna, but she was having none of it.
"Please do not turn into your crazy aunt. Or I will have full rights to disown you," she'd said.
The subject was dropped, as swiftly as that. If I could only bring the book with me...but it was far too big to copy, and Jenna never set foot in the library, not once. I chalked it up to her human aversion to the written word.
When a Limbo essence attaches itself to a person whom they knew before death,
the book read, leaving off from earlier,
They can see into the world from which they came, our world. But when things change, they don't understand it, and they may pull away
.
And it felt like she was starting to do just that, like a sticker slowly curling up off a wall. But I didn't know how to pull her back.
One afternoon, I reached a more interesting chapter in the book. It was simply titled
Dark
.
Fear and pain — those are the constant emotions in Dark. It doesn't take long for an essence trapped in this ring to start tearing itself apart. The spirit becomes corrupted to survive, or risks being wiped out entirely.
A corrupted spirit is identifiable by its black eyes, their body beginning to decay as though malnourished. The world of Dark is grim and hellish, storms always above, fire down below. Very few living can see into Dark, not without the aide of supernatural help...
I felt funny all of a sudden, like all the blood in my body had rushed towards my head at once. The letters swam, words ceasing to make sense. My vision blackened and went out like a blown out match.
It wasn't until I felt some unfamiliar woman shaking me that I realized I'd fainted. I had landed gracelessly on the carpeted floor. The older woman was hovering over me. She had puppies with black button eyes on her sweater.
"Are you okay, honey?" she asked, concerned, still shaking me gently.
I wanted to tell her to stop shaking me. But it felt like my lungs were full of bricks, and I couldn't catch my breath to speak. I waited for the room to stop spinning, for her features to cease doubling and center back in her wrinkled face. Onlookers gathered as I was laying there.
Finally, I found my voice. "I'm fine. I promise."
I sat up to make it look more convincing.
"Do you have low blood sugar? My granddaughter is hypoglycemic," she babbled, obviously trying to be helpful.
"Yeah, that's it. I just didn't eat anything this morning."
She shook her head. The puppies' button eyes glared at me reproachfully. "You young girls and not eating. You don't take care of yourselves." She had a very large mole on her chin. Possibly with other moles trying to grow from it.
"Well, thanks. I have to be going."
I hurried out of the library. I was in no mood for a lecture about my eating habits, and I wanted to get somewhere where I could sit and think.
Jenna had been in Dark, I'd seen her there last year. She'd had black eyes, and just the description of it...I could have written those paragraphs myself.
Now, somehow, she was in Limbo. But why and how? I almost contemplated just stealing the book, cursing myself for my morals. Being a goody two shoes was a pain sometimes.
It had started after I went to the orphanage, and I had a feeling Jenna being back had something to do with the time I'd lost. But the harder I tried to recall what I'd blocked out, the less I could remember.
When I got home, I sat beneath a tree in the backyard. It gave me a good view of our brand spanking new sliding glass door. I just wanted to be alone. Some clouds above obscured the relentless sun, and beneath the tree was one of the few clinging patches of grass that had survived.
Jenna sat down beside me, cross-legged. Of course I couldn't be alone, not even with my thoughts.
"You're so frustrating," I said, sighing.
"Kisses and hugs, right back atcha," she said grumpily.
"You've avoided every question I've tried to ask you about that night," I said softly, but there was a lot of annoyance beneath my words.
"Not this again," Jenna said, rolling her eyes and slumping against the tree. Luckily the trunk was big enough we didn't touch. But the otherworldly buzz came off of her in waves, making my hair go staticky like I'd rubbed it with a balloon.
"Shut up," I said. Even though I felt mad at myself for treating her that way again, I pushed it away. "Shut up and just listen to me. I've been reading about a place, a place where dead spirits go that's like Hell on earth. And I think you may have been there."
The imagery of all of my Dark hallucinations kept running through my mind whenever I blinked or closed my eyes. I opened them and saw butterflies fluttering over Claire's small garden beside the back walkout.
"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Jenna said bitterly.
"What happened to you?" I asked, listening to the electrical lines sizzle, an airplane flying overhead and leaving white trails in the sky. "Not just you leaving that night, but for months before that. It's like you changed all of a sudden. I didn't even know you."
Jenna just looked at me. "There was a lot going on. We've already been over this."
"There's always something going on. That doesn't mean that you just abandon your best friend. Like I wasn't good enough for you."
We sat silently, staring ahead. I wondered what she was seeing, and I thought it probably wasn't the same as what my eyes were taking in.
I wondered if I'd ever get her to open up. Maybe it was so bad she didn't want to remember.
Since the check from her painting cleared, Lucy had softened. Theo and I drove out of town for a shopping trip. Included in that trip was a visit to Bernhardt. I'd convinced her to go, after mentioning how interesting its history had been. And it was an excuse to drive, which Theo snapped up since she loved her newfound freedom.
Claire had also loosened to cage over me, since Theo and I were together again. She was an approved friend, since my mother knew that Theo was not a troublemaker. Lucy and Claire often had chats over coffee together on our porch, trading recipes, although Claire probably tossed most of them in the garbage.
As we passed the NOW LEAVING HELL sign, it was as though the heat wave broke a little and we could actually roll down the windows without dying. It felt liberating to drive by all the malls and restaurants, the edges of woods and just be out in the world. Having spent so much time indoors and in our little town, it was as though I'd forgotten how big the real world was.
We sang along to radio songs and drank iced mochas we procured from a fast food place. "Coffee and sugar, the perfect combo," Theo said, as she put them in cupholders. "These'll do the trick nicely."
I'd never had one before, but from a few sips, it felt like I had to bounce in my seat.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like a regular teenage girl. Like a weight had been yanked off of my shoulders, and I no longer had the burdens that had been plaguing me. I didn't realize they'd been there until now that they were gone.
Every dollar store we saw on the way was a must-see. We tried on fabric leis and Cowboy hats and dug through garish party cups shaped like palm trees. Theo bought a gigantic pair of neon orange sunglasses.
"Probably shouldn't drive with those," I suggested as we got back in the car.
"I suppose your right," she took them off and folded them in her lap. She rubbed her hands together. "What do you say we make a trip to Briarwood Mall?"
"You hate the mall. I think you're getting too much fresh air," I said suspiciously.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Theo said, tapping her hand on the Tinkerbelle steering wheel cover. "But we could people-watch and make fun of all the idiots and huge assault strollers."
But we vetoed the mall idea, since most of the girls who hung out there were Laineys and Madisons in training.
"Let's check out this old asylum instead," Theo said. "It should be interesting. In the daylight, of course."
"There was just a tiny thumbnail online. I barely know what it looks like, just that it's big and was ready to be condemned."
"Why do you want to visit it so much?" she finally asked. "I mean, it does sound like a cool place, but there are other haunts around here, I'm sure. Does it have a sorted past? Sorted pasts are amusing."
"No real reason. Just that it won't be around in its current incarnation for long. The encyclopedia entry said a lot of TB patients lost their lives there. Lots of patients died from treatments or escaped over the walls, too," I told her. I'd done a little research the night before, trying to find out whatever info I could. Nothing really had to do with Eleanor, though.
Using my phone, we got directions to Bernhardt, and navigated through the cheery, tree-lined streets. I didn't have a map, though, so we got turned around. Ann Arbor is a college town, with lots of poorly marked one-way streets and towering apartment buildings and old houses converted into student housing. It was easy to get lost, and the streets seemed to loop on forever.
"Who needs GPS when we have crinkly old maps from the glove compartment? Oh wait, we don't even have those," Theo said grumpily.
Finally, we located the place, but only because of the trio of green Dumpsters out front. It was protected by huge weeping willows that drooped towards the ground. The hospital was dark brick with white trim, thick ivy crawling up one side to the roof and blooming across the gutters.
It was an intimidatingly huge structure, of which we could only see the front building. Two others jutted off in the back. The trees leaned in as if to protect it from onlookers.
Trucks, utility vehicles and old cars were clustered together in the parking lot. We parked and strode up the broken cement front walk, which rolled out like a twisted gray tongue. Most of the windows were boarded up, some tagged with spray paint.
Inside, it smelled like cedar and disinfectant, masking layers of dust. Through the crumbling facade were the remains of a reception area, with little signs that pointed to Ward 1a and Ward 1b.
An old admission counter was set up along the back of the room. There was a dirty spot on the wall above, with two holes where a sign used to hang.
A woman in a brown sweater, with a long, gray-streaked braid, stood behind the counter, like a remnant of the past. For a moment, I wondered if she was real or a mannequin. She seemed so still.
Upon noticing us, the wax work came to life. She looked extremely surprised to see us.
"Can I help you ladies?" she asked, a bemused expression on her face. She was probably over fifty, but she had a strange, timeless quality about her, and despite the gray hair she seemed very young, as well.
Theo cleared her throat, and adopted a posture like she was older, standing taller. The fact that she was so short kind of diminished the effect.
"Hi, my name's Tonya. This is uh, Shakira." She gestured to me, and I could only nod my head slightly and go along with whatever devious scheme was hatching in her mind.
"Nice to meet you girls," the woman said. "I'm Diane."
"We're here to research an article for our student paper," Theo continued.
"Isn't school still out for the summer?" the woman asked, lingering doubt clouding her features. There was a map behind her, faded and yellow with time, outlining the first floor of the building. It clearly showed the rooms in Ward 1a, one of which was labeled
Records Room
.
"It is, yes. But we're doing the summer break issue. And we thought a story on the history of this place would be interesting."
"I've been here for thirty years now," Diane told us. "Head Nurse. I'm your woman if you want to know about the history."