hall, one hand pressed to her stomach. A minute later, her door closed softly.
The rest of the day was a blur of half-eaten meals, unfocused stares, and too many jigsaw puzzle pieces to count. After breakfast, Nurse Nancy was back on duty, standing in my doorway to ask a series of pointless, invasive questions. But by then I was annoyed with the fifteen-minute checkups, and beyond frustrated by the lack of privacy.
Nurse Nancy: “Have you had a bowel movement today?”
Me: “No comment.”
Nurse Nancy: “Do you still feel like hurting yourself?”
Me: “I never did. I’m really more of a self-pamperer.”
Next, a therapist named Charity Stevens escorted me into a room with a long window overlooking the nurses’ station to ask me why I’d tried to claw open my own throat, and why I screamed loud enough to wake the dead.
I was virtually certain my screaming would not, in fact, wake the dead, but she seemed unamused when I said so. And unconvinced when I insisted that I hadn’t been trying to hurt myself.
Stevens settled her thin frame into a chair across from me. “Kaylee, do you know why you’re here?”
“Yeah. Because the doors are locked.”
No smile. “Why were you screaming?”
I folded my feet beneath me in the chair, exercising my right to remain silent. There was no way to answer that question without sounding crazy.
“Kaylee … ?” Stevens sat with her hands folded in her lap, waiting. I had her undivided attention, whether I wanted it or not.
“I … I thought I saw something. But it was nothing. Just normal shadows.”
“You saw shadows.” But her statement sounded more like a question.
“Yeah. You know, places where light doesn’t shine?” Much like a psychiatric hospital itself …
Wide-eyed, I watched as Lydia hauled herself up, using an end table for balance. One arm wrapped around her stomach, she held her free hand out to me, tears standing in her eyes. “Come on,” she whispered, then swallowed thickly. “If you want out, come with me now.”
If I weren’t busy holding back my scream, I might have choked on surprise. She could talk?
I sucked in a deep breath through my nose, then let go of the chair and slid my hand into hers. Lydia pulled me up with surprising strength, and I followed her across the room, through a gap in the cluster of patients, and down the girls’ hall, while everyone else stared in the opposite direction. She stopped once, halfway down, bent over in pain again as a horrifying screech ripped through the air from the other side of the unit.
“It’s Tyler,” she gasped as I pulled her up and pressed my free fist against my sealed lips, physically holding back my screams. “The new guy. He hurts so bad, but I can only take so much …”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and I couldn’t ask. I could only pull her forward, moving as much for her benefit now as for mine. Whatever was wrong with her was somehow connected to Tyler, so surely distance from the commotion would be as good for her as it was for me.
At the end of the hall, we stumbled into my room as the shouting grew louder. Lydia kicked the door shut. My eyes watered. A deep keening had started at the back of my throat, and I couldn’t make it stop. All I could do was hold my mouth closed and hope for the best.
Lydia dropped onto my bed and held her hands out to me, her face pale now, and damp with sweat in spite of the over-air-conditioned room. “Hurry,” she said, but as I stepped forward, that terrible grayness swept into the room from nowhere. From everywhere. It was just suddenly there, leaching color from everything, thickening with each second that high-pitched squeal leaked from my throat.
I scrambled onto the bed with her and used my shirt to wipe tears from my face. It was real! The fog was real! But that realization brought with it a bolt of true terror. If I wasn’t hallucinating, what the hell was going on?
“Give me your hands.” Lydia gasped and doubled over in pain. When she looked up again, I took her hand in my empty one, but kept my mouth covered with the other. “Normally I try to block it,” she whispered, pushing limp black hair from her face. “But I don’t have the strength for that right now. This place is so full of pain …”
Block what? What the hell was going on? Uncertainty pitched in my stomach, almost strong enough to rival the dark fear fueling my uncontrollable keening. What was she talking about? No wonder she’d quit speaking.
Lydia closed her eyes, riding a wave of pain, then she opened them and her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear it. “I can let the pain flow naturally—that’s easiest on both of us. Or I can take it from you. That way’s faster, but sometimes I take too much. More than just pain.” She flinched again, and her gaze shifted to something over my shoulder, as if she could see through all the walls separating us from Tyler. “And I can’t give it back. But either way, it’s easier if I touch you.”
She waited expectantly, but I could only shrug and shake my head to demonstrate confusion, my lips still sealed firmly against the scream battering me from the inside.
“Close your eyes and let the pain flow,” she said, and I obeyed, because I didn’t know what else to do.
Suddenly my hand felt both hot and cold, like I had a fever and chills at the same time. Lydia’s fingers shook in mine, and I opened my eyes to find her shuddering all over. I tried to pull my hand away, but she slapped her other palm over it, holding me tight even as her teeth began to chatter. “K-keep your eyes cl-closed,” she stuttered. “No m-matter what.”
Terrified now, I closed my eyes and concentrated on holding my jaw shut. On not seeing the fog things in the back of my mind. On not feeling the thick current of agony and despair stirring through me.
And slowly, very slowly, the panic began to ebb. It was gradual at first, but then the discordant ribbon of sound leaking from me thinned into a strand as fragile as a human hair. Though the panic still built inside me, it was weaker now, and blessedly manageable thanks to whatever she was doing.
I dared a peek at Lydia to find her eyes closed, her face scrunched in pain, her forehead again shiny with sweat. Her free hand clutched a handful of her baggy T-shirt, pressing it into her stomach like she was hurt. But there was no blood, or any other sign of a wound; I looked closely to make sure.
She was funneling the panic from me somehow, and it was making her sick. And as badly as I wanted out of Lakeside, I would not take my freedom at her expense.
I still couldn’t talk, so I tried to pull my hand away, but Lydia’s eyes popped open at the first tug. “No!” She clung to my fingers, tears standing in her eyes. “I can’t stop it, and fighting only makes it hurt worse.”
The pain wouldn’t kill me, but from the looks of it, whatever she was doing might kill her. I tugged again and she swallowed thickly, then shook her head sharply.
“It hurts me, Kaylee. If you let go, I hurt worse.”
She was lying. I could see it in her eyes. She’d heard my aunt and uncle and knew that if I had another screaming fit, Uncle Brendon wouldn’t be able to get me out. Lydia was lying so I wouldn’t pull away, even though she was hurting herself worse—maybe killing herself—with every bit of panic she took from me.
At first I let her, because she seemed determined to do it. She obviously had her reasons, even if I didn’t understand them. But when the guilt became too much and I tried to pull away again, she squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.
“He’s cresting …” she whispered, and I searched her eyes in vain for a translation. I still had no idea what she was talking about. “It’s going to shift. Tyler’s pain will end, and yours will begin.”
Begin? Because it’s all been fun and games