The Dollhouse Asylum

by Mary Gray

  A ring of sweat on the front of Marc’s T-shirt has a funny way of making him blend in. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t chosen to wear this yellow dress. One of the green ones would have camouflaged much better. All I know is I can’t think of anyone I would like to see more.

  As I step into the forest, the trees I once thought of as giants seem to shrink in size. When I look up, they tower high above my head, but they’re maybe only two or three times my height. I reach out to touch the knobby warts on the trunk when Marcus stops me.

  “Careful. They’re sharper than you’d think.”

  I glance up at him, then back at the knobby trees, thinking they stand for Teo in some small way. They lure you in, if just for curiosity’s sake, but once you trust them, they’ll only cause you pain. I’m suddenly not so surprised these are the trees Teo’s chosen to surround his community with.

  Glancing away from the tree trunk, I look up to Marcus to see what he thinks, and smile a little because it’s impossible not to smile when looking at him. I don’t know if it’s how he never intimidates me, or because I know it’s just a matter of time before he will make me laugh. Either reason is fine with me.

  “You caught me,” Marcus says, mischief playing on his face, and it’s the face I remember from the math meets, always plotting something trivial but fun. Like when he tied two of the contestants’ ponytails together. You wouldn’t think it possible with the moderators close by, but both the girls’ hair ran all the way down their backs and peeked out the backs of their chairs. He was sitting right behind them, and I watched him tie the knot before he disappeared. Naturally, when the girls stood up the ponytails went taut, and everyone burst out laughing.

  Eager to help, but not wanting to risk Teo finding out, I find myself asking, “Do you really think we should be out here during the day?”

  Marcus shrugs, and it’s such a comfortable look, like the last thing on his mind right now is Teo. “Better than at night. I think that’s when the infected come out.”

  My arms and chest freeze. “You mean—you saw them?” I don’t know if I can stand to look at them with their blood-dripping teeth.

  But Marcus shakes his head, a quick, jerky movement, so very opposite from Teo. “I think I heard them, though.”

  I imagine the sounds of their moans. That low rumble in their throats, like they are breaking out of a coma. That was the sound of the Living Rot on the TV. Suddenly my ears are pricking, tensing for the moment I hear that low moan. I look past Marcus into the dense woods. “Do you think they saw you?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugs that carefree shrug again. “I was dumb the first night—too loud. But then I figured no one would think I was stupid enough to crawl around here in the middle of the day.”

  Good point. I’m not sure whether he’s brilliant or really, really careless. I might be considered careless the way I’m planning to run from Teo, but I’m trying to be discreet. And I’ve found Marcus, who can help me forget about this ring. “I don’t suppose you’ve found the exit?” I ask, gesturing through the trees with the hand that doesn’t wear the ring.

  Marcus shakes his head. “That’s the thing. I thought it would be behind the albino’s house, but there aren’t any breaks in the fence.” Naturally.

  It does make sense that Teo brought us through a discreet gate. The blindfolds were in case we woke up. “How about behind Ramus’s place?” I ask. “Where Teo moved in?”

  Marcus shakes his head again, and my chest tightens—I need some sort of hope, some escape route from Teo’s clutch. “I don’t think so. I covered that ground pretty fast, but I didn’t see anything that looked like it could open up.”

  I glance through the trees—no squirrels, no birds. It’s like everything’s dead. Either that or these trees have only arrived, which with what I’ve seen from the rest of Teo’s little compound, could be true.

  “What about Teo’s SUV?” I try. “You said he packed everyone inside when you first got here.”

  “Yeah, but then he and the albino asked us to blindfold ourselves ‘for our own safety’ before drugging us.” Marcus scuffs his Doc Martens in the dirt. “Wish I never listened to that.”

  My chest deflates as he crushes my last hope. And that’s not to mention his limited supply of insulin. How many days does he have left? Three? Four? I start to ask, but Marcus is already clicking something on his pump. He’s well aware of his insulin depletion. He doesn’t need me making it worse.

  Deciding that searching the perimeter is our best option for escape, I finally ask, “Which way were you heading?”

  “Well…”

  “What?” I ask, annoyed, “Don’t you trust me?” I thought we were beyond that. I don’t know, ever since he visited and we had that talk in the dining room, I thought we were on the same page.

  “I just don’t want you to get caught.” He’s studying the strips of fabric that make up my skirt and I blush, because now I feel dumb, like I look like Tinkerbell.

  But I can’t let him see me looking self-conscious, so I spout off, “You haven’t been caught.” Because he hasn’t. Gosh, Cheyenne, you’re showing your smart genes today.

  “That’s because I have mad skills,” Marcus plays along.

  “Seriously?” I groan. “And you think I don’t?”

  Marcus grabs my wrist, raises it high in the air, then drops it, as if that’s the way to assess my potential. He shakes his head, regretful, a smile on his lips. “Sorry, Cheyenne. Not so much as a spark.”

  “What did you expect?” I huff. “For my hand to hover magically in the air?”

  “Actually,” Marc’s face grows serious, “there is another way.”

  I don’t know what he means until he stares at my lips. My throat constricts, and my heart pauses between beats. “And what is that?” I ask, unable to resist staring at his lips, too. I hate that I’m suddenly desperate to know whether or not Cleo knows what they’re like.

  “It goes like this.” Marcus moves toward me and his face is suddenly inches from mine, his lips maybe three inches away. He’s going to kiss me. My heart’s thrashing because I really want him to. I thought he was going to kiss me when we were in my dining room, and like an idiot, I stopped him. But now it’s going to happen. He’s really going to place his lips on mine.

  He leans in minutely, and my eyes flutter shut, my pulse thrashing inside my neck. Because he’s going to kiss me, and I’m going to get to know how those lips feel on mine. I’ll bet they’re soft, but not too cushy. Just as I think his lips are going to connect, a breeze washes over my face.

  He’s laughing.

  I open my eyes to find him staring at me, but now he’s more like a solid foot away. His lips are smirking in a crooked line and his eyes are darting all over my face, as if saying, What? You thought I was going to kiss you? There’s no way.

  Now I feel like a complete idiot—I was positive that’s what he meant. I’m pretty sure he was inches away from me before because that was his intent. So I decide to go for clueless and shoot him the most puzzled look I can. To which Marcus shrugs like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. But I can tell he’s disappointed I’m not begging for that kiss, because his eyes dart back to me when he thinks I’ve looked away, and our eyes lock for a split second before we both become so flustered that we look away.

  Teo has never tried something like that. Playful isn’t quite Teo’s style. Erratic mood swings, anger, obsession. Those are the personality traits Teo knows best. Not smiling just because, and never little touches meant simply to buoy me up.

  Marc weaves his fingers through my own, and I immediately tighten my hand against his. I love the strength he gives—the hard callouses, the large, wide hands that make me feel safer just having him around. Plus, he’s holding my hand.

  We walk side-by-side in the woods, and he watches the ground, probably to walk quietly. I watch the ground, too—all the little twigs and roots and groundcover masking the dirt—when I stop watching closely enough and my
foot crunches a pile of leaves.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, glancing up at him in time to hook the front of my shoe under a tree branch. I try catching my balance by dropping his hand, but that only makes me succeed in swiping at the air like a lunatic before falling on a hard tree branch, right on my knees.

  Marc’s voice is soft. “Mad skills, indeed.”

  I glare up at him. Really? He’s joking about that now? But he’s staring lower, and when I look down to see at what, I find blood smeared across my knees. Beautiful.

  Marc crouches down and gingerly presses his palm to my bare skin. “So, what other talents do you possess?” he asks with only a flicker of laughter now.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I roll my eyes. “Prostitution, gambling.” There’s no use in trying to come up with something real, because now I’m staring into Marc’s eyes and my brain’s sort of turning into slush.

  His eyes are sparkling at me, and I hate to be the girl who says the boy’s eyes are sparkling, but they are. He looks happy. And I feel the same, like I’ve just chugged two Red Bulls and am ready to ride on a rollercoaster at Six Flags before buying a funnel cake and stuffing my face. I really can’t look away, because his eyes are so blue, like the indigo mushrooms in my mom’s garden—the exact shade she says mine are.

  Marcus is studying me as much as I’m studying him. He lifts his finger and traces my jawline. “You’re really pretty, Cheyenne.” I try not to blush, but I know I’m failing as he rests the tip of his finger in the dimple of my cheek.

  My heart becomes a Ping-Pong ball in my chest, and standing with him now, I feel like I’m pretty. I don’t know what it is, but when I’m with Marcus, I feel pretty inside and out. Not that I’m going to say that out loud.

  Marc’s fingers trail down my shoulder, my arm, until they find their way into mine. Finger, by finger, by finger, by finger. I never imagined I could shiver in the hot sun, but I’m trembling, happy.

  I think he’s going to trail his fingers up my arm and shoulder again, but then he does something absolutely unforgiveable. He squeezes my hand.

  I pull my hand from his and move away to a mass of thistles. Hand squeezing is one of my biggest pet peeves ever since I saw Mayor Tydal do it to my mom. Ugh. “You did not just do that.”

  Marc’s eyes widen, like he hasn’t got a clue. “What? I thought you would, uh,” he clears his throat, “like it.”

  He doesn’t get it, so I decide to spell it out for him. “You squeezed my hand. That’s what old people do.”

  “So?” His dark eyebrows perk up.

  “So, there are plenty of other ways to get my attention. Hand squeezing is just so…” I can’t find the right word. Blasé. Cliché. There has to be a word for both, but worse.

  Marcus folds his arms over his chest, that sparkle dances in his eyes. “So, you’ll never squeeze my hand?” He reaches up and breaks off a gnarled tree branch.

  Not in a million years. I shake my head.

  “Even if you really want to?”

  I shake again.

  “Huh.” He thinks for a moment, then smiles, a wide grin cracking open his face. “You will,” he says before chucking the branch he broke off into the woods.

  He may think I will, but he’s inexperienced with the Laurent family stamina. My mom’s so stubborn she forbids the guys she dates from opening doors for her. And not just after they’re in a relationship. She bites their heads off on the first date.

  Something crunches in the woods, maybe twenty, thirty feet from us. They have broken through. Or Teo has found us. I drop to the ground, and Marcus does the same, though I catch myself with the palms of my hands, which land right on a twig of thorns. Crap—I grit my teeth, force myself to swallow the pain.

  Gingerly, I pick up the twig with my other hand and toss it to the side before catching Marc’s eye. He winces too.

  We’re shoulder to shoulder, Marcus’s body heat pulling goose bumps from my skin. My heart thump-thumps, and I’m afraid he can hear how much he affects me. I want to be closer, am sort of glad to have this excuse not to pull away. He makes me feel so safe and warm, and it’s not a feeling I have by myself.

  Someone trudges through the trees, the sound of breaking twigs and rustling leaves cracking through the woods. I think they’re coming from the fence. But no. The footsteps are going farther away, away from Teo’s compound. A slight clinking sound—the gate?—someone grunts and the clinking sounds again. My legs twitch to follow, to jump up to the sound, but Marcus’s steady arm has me planted to the ground. I yearn to shift, because even though Marc’s here, it’s hard to find a comfortable position with thistles and thorns digging into my hands and feet.

  We wait for what feels like hours; the brown-green seeds littered about me give the illusion of grenades ready to explode. Some already have—the casings split open wide—and I tense, jittery, waiting.

  Eventually, the crunching grows softer before silencing completely. My instinct is to run, but I force myself to stay on the ground and count slowly to twenty. One, three, six, eleven. I’ve just hit nineteen when my mouth flies open. “What do you think—?”

  “Come on.” Marc grabs my hand and pulls me up. It’s nice to stand again after lying so long on the ground. Pulling me past a cluster of thorny spikes jutting out from a handful of trunks, we tread past rocks that threaten to trip me. But Marc’s directing me. We weave in and out of the trees, and I’m so glad to be with him.

  And then I see it. A multilayered, barbed-wired fence cuts us off from the outside. The barbs are so close together that nothing much bigger than a toothpick could fit through. It’s twelve feet high. There’s no way we can hop the fence, and at the bottom where we might dig a hole, the barbs scratch the surface of a three-foot high stretch of cement. I stare at the wires, trying to detect a break in the fence, when something black and human-sized launches my heart into my mouth.

  Body bags.

  Two of them.

  I try not to look, but I can’t help it. I cover my mouth with my hands to stifle a shriek. Bee. And Ramus. Ramus and Bee. Deposited like rotten produce or sardines. I saw the body bags that first morning, knew what Teo said, but I never really thought I would see them again, never believed real bodies would be sewn up inside.

  Marcus looks away, his face turning the color of the beige carpet in Bee’s room, and I step to the fence and stick out my hand, but he catches it. “It’s electric, remember?” he chokes out. Of course I remember, but I have to feel closer to Bee.

  I shudder; the body bags don’t look all that filled—there wouldn’t be much of a body left after that lion. But it’s like if I can reach my hand through that barbed wire I can reconnect, bring them back to life.

  I feel like a ninety-volt battery has already been in direct contact with my chest, but I lower my hand a few inches, know electrocuting myself won’t do any good. I stare at that three-foot stretch of cement below the fence and wish I could turn myself into a jackhammer to break through.

  “Didn’t you say they come out at night?” I ask, the little girl in the orange dress from Cleo’s TV flashing in my mind.

  Marc pushes my hand further down. “When the sun goes down,” he says, and my hand tingles where he touched, long after he moves away.

  I can’t stop staring at the body bags. “How well did you know them?” All I can hear are Ramus’s and Bee’s screams.

  “Ramus and I—we went to preschool together,” Marcus answers, and the idea of watching someone you’ve known your entire life die becomes a new pain. Sharp and biting and dull at once.

  Here Marc’s been joking around in the woods with me when, really, he’s been grieving over the loss of his friend. But that’s what Marc does. He jokes to forget the pain. That’s what he did when his father died. He screwed around at the math meets when he should have been seeing a counselor instead.

  I turn to him, study the lines running under his eyes. Did he have them before Elysian Fields, or did watching his friends get murdered do
that to him? Where there was once a faint outline of a bruise, his skin has healed completely to a fair brown, but a bruise seems like nothing compared with the death of our friends. If we’re going to move their bodies before the sun goes down, before they can get them, we’ll need to leave before the party at Izzy’s ends.

  Marcus doesn’t look at me, merely studies the intricate wires of the fence for what feels like an eternity. I wish he would say something. I may technically be engaged to his brother, but it was only to earn the vaccine. My connection to Teo is being replaced by Marcus, which is scary in about a hundred different ways. Am I really one of those girls who needs to have a boy? I never thought I was that way. Before Teo, I was content with my books. Sure, I wanted more than anything to be loved like the heroines were loved in them, but I was okay by myself. Maybe I need Marcus right now to help me know what unselfish love is all about.

  But I’m not about to bring all this up with Marcus. He’ll laugh. So I decide to join him—study the fence and its interlocking gnarls of wire, the silver metal glinting from the sun. There has to be a break. Jonas opened it up. “Do you think it’s controlled by another remote?” I ask.

  But Marcus isn’t listening to me, he’s too busy crouching down so that he’s eye level with the fence. He scans the close-knit wires, though it’s impossible to follow them all. There might be fifty that intersect, just in this small section.

  “Even without the electrocution,” I say, examining the twisted gnarls of the wire, “it looks like it hurts.”

  Marc shifts, crouching lower so that he’s nearly to his knees. “Do you see any changes in color?” He peers closer at the fence. “Any places where the wires don’t look aligned?”

  I crouch down next to him, scan the sharp barbs, and study the angles at which the wire flows. Up, right, down, left. They’re a labyrinth without any real pattern. It’s impossible to tell if there’s a break because the wires bunch so closely together. The cement at the bottom of the fence makes me feel trapped, like we’ll never break out.