The Dollhouse Asylum

by Mary Gray

  I stood in that hot parking lot, torn as to how to get them in, when I saw Teo approaching from the other side. His car was only parked three spaces past mine, so he’d have to pass me to leave. This was one of my favorite strategies—park next to his car and linger as long as I could after school if I couldn’t find the guts or opportunity to make it inside his classroom.

  Teo was two or three cars off when he said, “It looks like we may need to revisit simple mathematics.”

  I groaned as he approached, my heart racing, floating. I had to stay calm. “Why did I offer to help with this dance?” I asked.

  “Because you know the other students would be miserable without you.”

  Heat trickled up the back of my neck. These little comments sustained me through senior year. Some people lived on three square meals a day, others snacked away at vending machines, but my sustenance was comprised almost entirely of the kind things Teo might or might not say. Today looked like one of those very good days. Even the sun was gleaming.

  “Here’s what we shall do.” Teo started taking balloons away from me. “We will pretend I am the one who volunteered and I asked you to get the other half.”

  He stood there just looking at me, with fifteen balloons in one hand, and my little girl barometer went crazy knowing I was more attracted to him right then than when he played his violin. His face was almost entirely devoid of shadows, almost light. The ebony in his eyes looked lighter than usual, and all of his facial muscles relaxed. He was smiling.

  “That would be great,” I managed, wishing I could take a picture of Teo. To have something to keep of him. With that expression he looked to be nearly my age.

  Part of me was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to fit the remaining balloons when Teo said, “Wait a moment,” and strode away to put his balloons inside his car. He drove a full-size Infiniti—one with back seats. I watched as he methodically placed each and every balloon in the back seat. Once his hands were free, he turned and strode toward me. I know I am fulfilling every cliché in the book when I say my heart was thrashing, my stomach twisting, and the wind tousled the hair around my face, but they all did happen. There may have even been music playing.

  Taking the balloon strings from my hand, Teo asked, “Shall we?”

  I nodded as we placed each of the remaining balloons in the back of my car. Watching his cornflower tie flap sideways away from his white shirt, I appreciated how he matched what I wore, too—a cornflower plaid skirt. We may only have been wearing Khabela’s school colors, but it was one more comparison that helped me feel like we were together. Teo looked young for his age, and thinking of the idea of us going together to a dance was captivating. If we went to another town where no one knew us, we could go somewhere neutral, like a club. They would think we were dating—college students, maybe.

  Teo reached over and brushed the top of my hand. “Follow me over?” he asked as a car lumbered past.

  I wished we didn’t have to drive separately, but I could watch him through the windshield, and maybe he would glance at me through his rearview mirror. And that was better than nothing.

  “When we get there,” I asked, “will you help me again? I don’t want them to blow away.”

  Teo’s hand moved from the back of my hand to my face. The movement was quick, as if it hadn’t taken place. But I felt it, relished its searing mark. When he dropped his hand again, he said quietly, “I would do anything for you.”

  He stepped away. To the other students and teachers in the parking lot, we must have looked like a teacher chatting with his student. There was now a full foot between us and I longed to close it, to know what it felt like to have his words seep into my skin again.

  Teo’s eyes were all over me. My eyes, my mouth, my chin. He looked down farther, and I knew I should have been blushing, but I liked the idea of Teo’s eyes devouring me. We were two lone candles, burning in exactly the wrong place, for it was daytime, and we were at my high school and no one could see the flames.

  “Hey Mr.—Teo.” A student waved.

  I felt like someone had grabbed my tongue, held it in place, and stuck it in cement. There was so much I wanted to say, to express how I felt. But Teo broke the connection and walked a few paces back.

  “Follow me?” he asked.

  I felt my eyes well up—which was ridiculous, because the way he said it, which no doubt had to be in my head, was like he was asking me to follow him beyond our helium balloon delivery. But that was impossible. There was no place for two candles like us to light the room.

  21

  There is no way to track time in isolation. Three hours. Seven. Twenty. Whether my eyes are open or closed, the darkness remains the same.

  I try again to speak with Ana, but she won’t respond. I explain why I had believed there was a remote for the fence in the first place, that I should be stuck in front of a firing squad for forgetting about the vaccine. I tell her about the pressure I felt to find a way out, the desperation to find more insulin. But she doesn’t respond to anything, so I claw at the bricks with my hands and feet.

  * * *

  A sprinkle of light grows overhead. The bricks are moving! I start to reach for them, but recoil because maybe I’ll get stunned for trying. My stomach rolls. We’re moving up—the ground’s rising below my feet. We inch upward, upward, and I know who will stand at the top. I crouch, unsure how fast the blow will come, one arm over my face, trembling.

  When the ground stops rising, still no one hits me, but instead a soft breeze teases my hair. I ready myself for Teo’s wrath, but it doesn’t come, so I drop my arm.

  I look up. Teo’s looming over me. His lips are turned downward, and his eyes look like lightning. He’s not happy I tried to escape. I wonder if this will make him ask Jonas to do away with me.

  I contemplate standing, but I don’t want to move without Ana; maybe I should wait for her to stand first. But she’s sitting down, clutching her knees tightly to her chest, dirt caked on her face. She looks so defeated, crouched down low like that.

  The other couples stand behind Teo, two by two, forming a circle like they never left. Cleo holds onto Marcus, though he staggers like he’s about to pass out. Marcus needs to be in a hospital. I should be able to help him, to give him the insulin.

  “You do realize you disappointed me,” Teo says, his words running over me like a semi. He takes in my quivering eyes, trembling cheeks. My shaking becomes so uncontrollable that I look away to the yellowed grass.

  “I gave you the vaccine, and how did you repay me? You—” he grabs my chin so that I’m forced to look at his face—“who have pledged to be with me?”

  Yes, I pledged it, but only because he made me. I try dropping my gaze, but he’s lifting my chin so high it makes it almost impossible not to see his face without closing my eyes completely. I now know why I didn’t want to look up before. Not because he would hit me, but because I didn’t want to see him scarred, emotionally damaged. And when I look into those ebony eyes, that’s what I see—scarring. They’re bright and sad and longing and torn. Like he very much wants to hit me.

  Flexing his jaw, the muscles along Teo’s stubble flicker. He looks sad. I hate how it hurts me to see him so miserable and questioning. He opens his mouth, but his words don’t flow like they normally do. He clamps his jaw shut once before his mouth is open again, and the words are tumbling: “What happened to ‘my only’?”

  I don’t want to answer—I’ve spent so much time thinking we’d be together that it’s much too difficult to express why we should be apart. Liquid simmers in my eyes, but I look away and blink them back. I won’t cry for him again.

  Teo releases my chin, and when my eyes drop, I find that his hands are twitching. But I’m the one who’s always had the twitching hands. I’ve always been the one grappling for something. I look out at the street, and it feels wrong that the brick-made homes look exactly like they did in the beginning. The bricks should be falling apart, everything should be unra
veling.

  “Do you realize I have given you the ultimate gift?” Teo whispers so intensely, it feels like he shouts. “A world fulfilling all your fantasies, and you pretend to like it just so you can leave?” I have to blink again, because even now I feel bad that I’m hurting him, but it’s the way it has to be. Teo is perfectly silent now. It’s like he’s reached his pinnacle, and the only direction for him is down, loud to quiet, like the decrescendos he played on his violin. It’s as if he can see the change in me. With one footstep, he moves toward me. His words are quiet. “I was going to save you.”

  He needs me to love him, and I have always loved him. But he doesn’t know, because I never told him. I need to tell him so he can eventually understand why I need to leave. Fighting back the tears, I cry, “I have always loved you.” And it’s true. From the first moment he said my name, I knew. “You have always saved me.”

  He saved me from the isolation at school, listened to me talk about literature, and urged me to try new paths in math. And the CD. And the balloons. Teo was my everything.

  The distance between us now makes me realize we are so far from that—we’re simply going through the motions. I feel it, and I know Teo must, too. But he’s not ready to. He can’t let go, perhaps will never let go.

  Someone sobs loudly; Juliet is crying into Romeo’s shirt. Here Teo and I are talking, but something’s off. Someone’s missing. Next to Romeo and Juliet stands Sal, toying with that block of wood again, and on the other side Cleo is holding Marcus up. Where are Abe and Eloise? They should be with us now. Eloise should be wrapped up in Abe’s strong arms—

  Four different spots inside my chest feel like they’re going to burst. Teo didn’t hurt them—he couldn’t have hurt them—but my mouth is hanging open. “Where are Eloise and Abe?”

  Teo smiles crookedly. “You missed an amusing night.”

  I do not like the idea of the word “amusing” coming from Teo at this time.

  “Abelard and Eloise put up a nice little front,” he tells me. “Inside, the only noise that could be heard was Gregorian chants—all the guests were required to meditate in prayer. I was given the spot of honor.” Teo’s eyes open up out of awe and respect.

  But something’s wrong. “Teo, where are they?”

  “Aren’t you curious about their tale?” He closes his eyes, revealing purpling eyelids like he hasn’t gotten any sleep. “Literature,” he says. “Now that is a topic I could relish all night.”

  There’s a goodness to Teo—the stories are what drew us together—but he needs to get to the point, to tell me where Abe and Eloise are.

  Teo pats my hand again, like I’m a child—and he so needs to learn that I’m not. “Abelard was a monk, Eloise his student. They began an imprudent relationship, and when Eloise became pregnant, her rash uncle castrated the poor monk and sent Eloise away. She became a nun.”

  I flinch. How could Teo relive a tale like this? Castration. Please, God, don’t tell me Teo did that to Abe.

  “Of course, I am not barbaric,” Teo says as if reading my thoughts. “In the end, when they did not please me, I simply cut out their tongues.”

  The blood rushes from my cheeks. I’m so dizzy and cold. He didn’t. How could he? He is nothing good. I have to fight back the violent urge to wrench myself away from him, scream at his battered face. He cut out their tongues. We should do that to him. I look over at the other couples, where Juliet sobs more loudly into Romeo’s shirt. Marcus’s ghost-white face is twitching, and lasers seem to be sprouting from Cleo’s eyes. Ana, next to me, shakes silently.

  Teo is poison and darkness. How could I ever love him now? There’s no innate goodness in him, no flickering light. He is worse than death.

  “But they’re okay,” I say, because my mouth is opening. Not that I expect them to be okay, but I can’t accept that they’re not.

  Teo’s rolling his eyes. “This isn’t a hospital, Persephone. People who choose to get their tongues cut out without seeking medical attention typically do not live.”

  The muscles constrict in my throat. Someone should rip out his tongue. Watch him choke on his own blood. When I speak again, my voice is not my own. “How could you do this?”

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  I throw my hands in the air. “How could you bring us to this place?”

  Teo’s deathly eyes lock on me like he can see right through me. “Why, you asked me to.”

  It’s like someone’s ripped my head off my body and I’m staring at us talking from far above. He can’t honestly believe what he’s saying. Or maybe he gets off on lying. What does he mean?

  “The good news is,” Teo says as he eyes the other couples in the group, “we only need to dismiss one more couple. Romeo and Juliet or Sal and Ana do not need to live.” My stomach squeezes. “But let us not get too far ahead of ourselves.” He smiles, actually opens his mouth and shows his teeth, which are white and mouthwatering, yet yellowing closer to his cheeks. “We have a much better stage.”

  Teo turns for the street and waves his hand forward, beckoning. “To the roof!” he cries, but what roof? Why would we want to go there? He’s walking away from Sal’s yard and down the street, I’m guessing toward Ramus’s old house, but I don’t want to follow him now.

  I look around at the other couples, how Cleo’s clenching her jaw, when Jonas steps out, stun gun flashing. “Listen to him,” he says, scowling.

  I could scream that I’m done. Done following his bidding, done being his Persephone. But Marcus staggers after Teo, and Cleo has to catch up so that he doesn’t fall over when he walks. Romeo and Juliet and Sal and Ana are coming, too, so I follow them, because I don’t have a choice.

  22

  “Unbearable moment, isn’t it?” Teo studies the smattering of yellows and reds smudging across the evening sky, with dark cavities under his eyes. Teo has always breathed shadows and darkness, but there’s been a hint of something else, too, and that something is missing. Teo is losing his footing. I have always been his anchor, and for the first time he is floating without me. I’m glad he’s floating without me.

  He knows it, can detect it. Why else would I try to leave? I glance at the other couples on the rooftop, and my stupid mind conjures up Abe and Eloise, sitting in the very center, kissing each other’s ears, but they’re not there because Teo cut out their tongues and let them bleed to death. Instead, there stands Jonas rapping his stun gun in his hands, smiling at me, inches from the trap door we crawled up. Oh, to rap that stun gun on him.

  Marc and Cleo sit to the left, Marc’s entire body trembling. We shouldn’t be sitting on this rooftop waiting for Teo to speak—we should be demanding that he hand over that insulin—but Jonas would stun us immediately. We have to do something.

  Romeo and Juliet, on the other side of Jonas, huddle closely together, like making themselves small might make it harder for Teo and Jonas to see them. I remember that trick. I did it often at Khabela last year, but that’s not who I am anymore.

  Ana and Sal sit together near the back, but for the first time it looks like they’re actually getting along. Ana’s whispering something to Sal and he actually nods back somewhat civilly. For Ana, I feel relieved.

  Teo prowls around the roof, circling his couples like he’s trying to hang on to control, but that’s long past now. Murderers aren’t allowed to have friends. “Let me tell you a story,” he says, frowning. “Something you need to know. Something everyone here needs to find out.”

  Marcus locks his jaw, and Romeo pulls Juliet tight against his chest, but all I can do is stare at that stun gun in Jonas’s hands. One wrong move and he’ll zap us, and there is nothing to keep us from falling off this roof.

  “There was once an instructor,” Teo walks inside the perimeter of the group, up the slight incline of the roof, “who was the most stifled man in all the land. He sought to impart wisdom, but his students’ brains were forever stuck in boxes. They took their notes, blandly accepted classes, never stre
tching.” These would be my classmates. I hadn’t any idea he felt like that.

  “But then a new girl arrived,” Teo turns his hollow face to me, “and she was different from the others.”

  Different. Different could be good or bad.

  “She rarely spoke, hid behind her unblemished hair, but it was plain to see she adored math.”

  He didn’t need to spell that out. Something like a chuckle murmurs from Cleo’s throat, and I hate that she’s seeing this side of me. I hate that everyone can see.

  “The girl’s mind had a flexibility,” Teo continues as he rests a hand on Romeo’s shoulder. “She tried things the other students did not, but she questioned herself, and it was apparent she was searching.”

  For friends, but only the type of friends who play nicely.

  “Knowing she needed guidance,” Teo says, “the math teacher soon fell for the girl; her fragility combined with his pride was far too tempting. So he courted her, wooed the girl—the best he could within the confines of their society—and when the timing was right, he took her.”

  To think I was glad to be taken. I need to be shot. Trampled to death by a wildebeest stampede.

  “But that is not the only person he took,” Teo moves away from Romeo and walks to the center of the group, stopping right next to Jonas, “for the man knew the woman needed friends.” He gazes at the neighborhood right below him. “Neighbors, to share what they would have. But not just any neighbors—ones whose brains didn’t quite fit in boxes.” So this is why he chose Marc’s classmates from Griffin, the artsy school.