him, and he didn’t slow his stride; moments later he emerged with his massive arms hugging a slight figure who, under the blanket that covered her head and chest, was wearing a shapeless black dress, ripped stockings, and pointy black ankle boots. I notice fashion touches.
The girl, I was glad to see, was putting up some resistance. She almost wriggled out of Happy’s embrace, and even as he used both arms to hold her, her feet inside their sharp-toed boots were kicking a quick beat on his shins. From inside the blanket I could make out a muffled stream of colorful complaining. He strapped her in with a yank on the seatbelt and slid the van door shut.
In a moment of inspiration, one of those impulses that rise like jewels from the brain’s primal core, I clicked shut all the door locks as Hansen was going around the van to the driver’s side. It was the loudest click I had ever made. Harley heard it, too. He tested the handle on the door, patted his pockets, then found himself peering in dismay at the keys dangling from the ignition slot. He met my eyes through the windshield with a cold stare.
The locking of the doors impressed Miss Entropia, who had shaken off the blanket to reveal a pale face crowned by a mop of black hair. She stared at me curiously out of her raccoon eyes. Our first meeting, and already there was a surge of energy between us. In an instant the three of us, Happy, Miss Entropia and I, understood that the power balance among us had shifted with a single click.
“You are so crazy,” she said, more in wonder than in praise.
“You were expecting someone normal?”
“I wasn’t expecting another patient.”
“We’re clients, actually.”
“Right. And that guy is not a goon, and Institute Loiseaux is not an insanitarium.”
“It’s not so bad. Most of us are really, really functional. ADD, ADHD, OCD. Take your pick,” I said, enjoying the status that came from experience. “The hardest period is the first ten weeks. No phone, no online, no TV, no games, no chats, no free time. They schedule you down to your toilet trips. Then you get used to having your life nicely arranged. Some of us are not good with decisions. I’ve been there off and on for a couple years.”
“And you’re glad to be going back, right?”
I hadn’t quite figured out glad, I wanted to tell her. I was not happy at home, certainly not with Tedious tormenting me, Iris betraying me, Dad retreating into his brown fedora, and Mother sweet but clueless. “Going back? That’s okay.”
Harley was pounding on the sides of the van, shaking it, jerking at door handles, as if his wrestler’s grip could intimidate the doors into opening.
“You are in so much trouble.” His shouting was muffled by the closed windows.
I shrugged and gave him a disarming smile, the one I use when I can’t explain myself and hope that circumstances will excuse me. In this case, I could just surrender and open the van and cut the damage. Ha, ha, just kidding.
Miss Entropia in the backseat had wriggled out of the belts and was trying to pry open the grill that separated the front from the back. “I don’t like it back here,” she said. “It feels like I’m in a cage already.”
Happy had stopped his yelling and pounding and was marching toward the house. He had clearly come up with an idea, and while I waited for the results of his brainstorm, I devoted my whole attention to Miss Entropia. Her eyes were squinting, her lips pressed tightly, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her fury was downright cosmic.
I told her to stop pounding on the grill while I figured out a way to take it off. The panel was latched to the door posts, and it was easy to unfasten them and then lower the grill to the floor.
“See?” I held out my hands to show how simple the operation was when you put mind over brawn.
“You are smug,” she said, her expression softening.
I moved over to the driver’s seat so the girl could clamber over the back and sit next to me. Placing my hands on the steering wheel, I could barely see out the windshield, but I thought it would be fun to drive the van, even if just around the circle.
“People really call you Miss Entropia?”
“Pia is fine,” she said. “Ms. Entropia is a formal name. I let some people call me Pia.”
“So I should be flattered?”
“Yeah. But don’t be a bonehead about it.”
“What does your family call you?”
“Francine.”
“You don’t look like a Francine.”
“Thanks. I don’t answer to it.”
“My name is Adam Webb.” I used a confidential tone of voice, as if afraid to be overheard. It was all for show because everyone knows my name is Adam. But since Pia and I were exchanging confidences, I wanted her to believe she was getting privileged info.
“Most people,” I added, “call me something else. Like my older brother, Ted, calls me Jerk-off. Iris, a kind of cousin, calls me Shorty. Mother and Father call me Problem Child.” It’s about then that I noticed that with her black look, from lip gloss and mascara to spiky black hair, Pia was as close to a living manifestation of the Goddess Kali as I had ever encountered. After all those nights praying to the deity, with her multiple arms, her earrings made of skulls, her belt of severed hands, here we were actually chatting.
Even as I pictured the goddess sowing chaos, a look of sadness clouded Pia’s features. The goddess was showing her vulnerable side. Nobody could be a full-time deity and still function in the world.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I can’t believe my parents would send me to a facility for nutcases.”
“That’s parents for you.”
“Honestly, I didn’t think I was ready to be institutionalized. If that’s the word.”
“It is,” I said. “The very word.” Still, I wanted to reassure her that things at the ’Tute wouldn’t be as bad as she feared. “Some of us get treated better than at home. The food is varied, the company is interesting, the schooling is good. You learn useful skills like how to shake hands without breaking someone’s bones, how to keep from screaming when that’s what you hear inside your head, how to talk without spitting, chew without smacking, sneeze without spraying.”
“I really, really don’t want to go.”
I started to tell her again that things would be better than she expected, that she might even grow to like the place, as some of us do, when I was startled by insistent pounding on the passengerside door.
“Are you just going to ignore him?” asked Pia as Harley’s pummeling shook the van.
“I don’t think it’s for us.”
“Ha!” She had a way of succinctly reacting to apparent absurdity. “Of course it’s for us. Or rather for you … Adam.” The sound of my name sent a shiver to the back of my neck.
Harley walked to the front of the van and held up a plaid coat for Pia to see.
“He brought your coat out,” I said. “That was thoughtful.”
“I hate that coat. My parents know that.”
He turned his back to us, but I could see that he was talking on a cell phone. I imagined he was calling the ’Tute for a second set of keys. That gave us at least an hour of fun inside the van. Good luck, Happy, I thought. Try to explain that the inmates have taken over the asylum’s wheels. “So,” I said, as if continuing a conversation that had been interrupted, “are you into entropy or misanthropy?”
She seemed amused for the first time. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”
“How about both? Chaos and hatred