Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

Katy seemed to come out of nowhere. One moment, the grounds were the same as always, patients shuffling about or staring at their feet, the nurses looking bored, the next, there she was, sauntering down the path heading right for me.

  I'll admit that the first thing I felt was pure panic. I'd been in here long enough that I'd pretty much started to accept that she really was only something I'd made up. The fact that no one else noticed her didn't help. No surprise with the other patients, but the nurses were oblivious to her as well, which didn't help my peace of mind. What I wanted to do was go back inside and ask for more medication. What I did was sit there, pulse too quick, feeling a little dizzy, and wait to see what would happen next.

  "Oh, Kerry," she said.

  It was a voice filled with heartbreak and despair. I looked around to see if anyone was watching me before I dared speak.

  "What … what are you doing here?" I asked.

  She looked at me so sadly. "I come here all the time. You just can't see me because they fill you up with drugs."

  "They say you're not real."

  She sat down beside me and put her arm around my shoulders, leaned her head against mine. I couldn't move. I sat there stiffly, staring straight ahead. She felt real.

  "What do you think?" she asked.

  "I … I don't know."

  She took my chin in her hand and turned my face so that I was looking at her.

  "Don't let them win," she said. "If you truly don't believe I exist, I think it'll come true."

  She dropped her hand and I looked straight ahead again. Megan, one of the girls on my floor, was sitting cross-legged beside the flower bed in front of us. Not close, not so she could hear. She was here because she'd tried to kill her father. She was so sweet, it was hard to believe. But then people probably said the same things about me.

  "I wouldn't be here if there weren't something wrong with me," I said.

  "That is such bullshit. You're here because our loving parents are paying off one of the doctors to make sure you stay locked up and out of the way."

  I turned to look at her. "That's not true. I'm here because I … because they think I imagine things."

  "Like me?"

  I had to look away again. Katy took my hand like she had in the hospital all that long time ago. She held my fingers between her own.

  "Kerry," she said softly. "Just because something seems impossible doesn't mean it's not real."

  "I don't know … it's all too confusing. …"

  "It wouldn't be if you were out of this place. If they let you out."

  "You just hate our parents," I told her. "That's why you're saying they're having me kept here."

  "I've heard them talking. I've seen the checks our dear daddy writes—one to the institution and one to Dr. Elizabeth Stiles. Every month, regular as clockwork."

  "But why?"

  "Money."

  I shook my head, not understanding. "But Daddy's rich." That wasn't entirely true. He wasn't rich by California standards. But compared to the people back home in Hazard, he was rolling in dough. "He sells all those houses, works all those deals."

  "Oh, yeah. But the thing about some people is that no matter how much they have, it's never enough."

  "I don't see how keeping me in here makes him any money."

  Katy sighed. "They were expecting to get the farm when Granny died. That's a serious piece of real estate. The logging rights alone are worth a small fortune. But she screwed them out of it and had it deeded to one of those environmental groups she belonged to on the condition it be kept as a nature preserve. Everything else she left to you."

  "Everything else of what?"

  "The royalties from her books. Her paintings. Everything."

  I hadn't known anything about that. "I didn't know."

  "And you're never supposed to because the money goes into a trust fund managed by our dear daddy. He's sold everything else. All of it. The paintings, the sketchbooks, everything. And that's why he's rich."

  "But that doesn't explain why they'd want to keep me in here."

  Katy shook her head sadly. "Because everything's supposed to go to you when you turn twenty-one, except there's nothing left except for what's in the trust fund and that's what's keeping you in here. There'd have to be a reckoning when you turned twenty-one and took over your own affairs, and then there'd be all hell to pay, wouldn't there? Except if you're in here, that reckoning is never going to come.

  "But I won't be twenty-one for years. Why would they do this to me now?"

  "So that you don't have to be around. They don't love you, Kerry, any more than they'd love me, if they thought I was real. Any more than they loved our granny."

  I knew that much was true. They'd always hated Grandma. But when we still lived in Hazard, they'd let me see her. Sometimes I even got to stay overnight. But then we had to move here and she died …

  But I couldn't accept that they didn't love me.

  "They do love me," I said.

  "Then why don't they ever come see you here?"

  I didn't have to answer. She already knew. And now I did, too.

  I kind of fell apart after that. Started crying. Katy tried to comfort me, but then a nurse approached and took me back inside, called the doctor. I tried to explain to him that I was okay, that I was just sad, but I couldn't mention Katy, so I couldn't explain why I was sad, and in the end he upped my dosage again and put me back in the zone where Katy was lost to me. I lost my grounds privileges and went back on group, but I kept my half-hour checks and didn't have to go into seclusion like I would if Dr. Stiles had been there.

  I guess it was a few weeks later that the books came. Two of them, both illustrated with the author's own pen-and-ink and watercolor sketches. One was a collection of nature essays called Writing the Hills, the other a journal of one summer's rambling through the wooded hills outside of Hazard. It was called Fieldsong. The author's name was Annette Bean. They were from Katy. She'd inscribed each of them, "for Kerry, love Katy," and included a letter with the package that made it sound as though she'd been one of my friends in school and that she'd found these in a secondhand bookstore and thought I might like them because they were set in and around my old hometown of Hazard. I'd never had any friends in school, but I suppose that, for all their expertise, no one in the institution knew that.

  Dr. Stiles decided they were harmless and let me have them, which was both a blessing and a curse. I loved having these reminders of my grandma, getting another peek into her mind. But they also reminded me that Katy wasn't something I'd made up—which was probably half the reason she'd sent them to me.

  I guess I could go on about the time I spent there, but I think you get the picture. I did get to see Katy a few times when I managed to not take my medication for a while, but I always got caught and put back on, dropped back into the zone. One time Katy had us write letters to myself and we hid them in one of Grandma's books so that I could find them when I was zoned, and they'd remind me that being zoned wasn't normal—that wasn't who I am. I was the girl who wrote the letters. But they found those letters one time.

  This was a real setback, Dr. Stiles told me. She made me tear them up in front of her in the office, though luckily she let me keep the books. They were all I had from who I was before I got trapped in here. Those and two plush toys I've had since I was a kid that I also got from my grandma—Dog and Cowslip. When things'd get really bad, I'd bundle them all up together and lie on my bed, hugging them. I'd do that for hours—at night, when I was less likely to get caught.

  They were so strict with my medication after the business with the letters that I never saw Katy again. And finally I came to believe them about her, though not entirely. I believed that she'd existed once, that she had been real. But that she was gone now. I guess that's because the last time I saw her, she told me she was going away. They'd given me an extra dosage of my medication after Dr. Stiles made me tear up the letters and then put me back in my room.

  Katy w
as waiting for me there.

  "I'm going away," she told me, "because all I do is cause you trouble."

  I didn't say anything because it was true. I didn't want her to go, but I was tired. So very tired. Of being here. Of everything. I tell myself now it was the drugs, but I'm not entirely positive about that.

  "I'll miss you," she said. "But I guess it's better this way."

  I think she was hoping that I'd ask her to stay, but she was already fading away on me. I hardly looked at her. Just gathered up my talismans—two books, two toys—and crawled into bed with them.

  "Better this way," I mumbled.

  I was in the institution for another three years and then my parents died in a car crash. I didn't feel anything when I found out, but then, the medication kept me on such an even keel I hardly ever felt anything. No real downs, but no real ups either. I just was. Day to day, I was.

  But when I was told that they were dead I remembered what Katy had told me. I started hoarding my pills again, taking them, but coughing them up again as soon as I could get away from the nurse's station. I'd walk real casually into the TV room and then bring them up. The TV audience was the worst of us—the catatonics and depressives—so it wasn't like they were going to tell on me.

  I didn't get completely clear of the gauze, but I managed to unwrap enough of it to be able to work out a deal with Dr. Stiles. See, my trust fund would continue to pay my hospital bills for a while—how short a while I didn't realize then—but there'd be no more extra monthly checks coming Dr. Stiles's way because my father wasn't there to write them anymore.

  I remember being so scared when I went into Dr. Stiles's office that day. I thought she'd put me on mega-doses, or maybe shock therapy like Megan had undergone. But Dr. Stiles just looked at me from across her desk for a long time before she finally spoke.

  "Not that I'm admitting anything," she said, "but what exactly is it that you're proposing?"

  By that I knew she'd already been thinking about it. The deal was, I got out and I'd sign over the trust fund to her, but the joke was on her because once I got out and saw the family lawyer, my father's debts had pretty well swallowed up all his assets and the trust fund. For all the cars and real estate and stuff they'd had, my parents had died broke. All that was left when all the bills were paid was about four thousand dollars and I kept that for myself.

  Only maybe Dr. Stiles knew that as well, that there'd be no more money. She was never a stupid woman. Maybe she just wanted to be rid of the situation.

  Of course, once I was out, all I wanted was to be back inside again.

  The world's a funny place. When I used to look at it from inside, sometimes it was this huge, overwhelming presence, vaguely menacing and all sort of quivery. Other times it was this perfect jewel, tiny and palm-sized, and all I wanted to do was cup my hands around it and experience it. It was the same when I was out in it, except I couldn't ignore it anymore and there was just too much of it, with no respite. Inside, in my old world, you could turn it off, but you can't do that in this world, in the real world.

  I stayed for a couple of weeks with Mindy, this girl who'd been in Baumert with me a few years ago. She tried to help me fit in, look for a job and stuff, but it didn't take me long to know I couldn't stay on the coast. She'd ask me what I wanted to do and I'd say, I want to be like my grandma. I want to write and paint. It was like a kid's fantasy because I didn't know much about either. But she suggested I take some courses, or even go back to school, and then I realized that if I was going to do that, I wanted to do it at home. I was still thinking of Hazard as my home, even though I'd been away from it for half my life.

  I remembered the name of a friend of my grandma's who lived in Newford and I took a chance in calling her up and seeing if she'd help. That was Chloë. I dialed information and got her number and then before I could lose my nerve, I phoned her. She was so nice. She's the one who set me up in the apartment, got me registered at Butler even though I don't have regular high school credentials.

  And here I am.

  8.

  "Jesus," Rory said. "That's all so horrible. Your parents kept you in there for ten years?"

  Kerry nodded. Once she'd started, the old history had gushed out of her. At first it had given her a great sense of release, but now she was feeling embarrassed by the shared intimacy, Rory's sympathy notwithstanding. She'd never told anybody the whole story and while she was gratified that someone else could finally see the injustice of what had happened to her, at the same time it left her feeling so pathetic. By her age, most people had done and experienced all sorts of things. All she had to show for her life to date was ten years locked in a zombie zone.

  "I mean, you can sort of understand their wanting you to get help with the invisible-sister business," he went on, "but what they did to you was no way to deal with the problem."

  Kerry's heart sank. He didn't believe her either. But why should he be any different? Even she knew that a sister who'd never been born couldn't be real. Not really. All that had been real was the small fossilized fetus, and the doctors had removed that from her side twelve years ago. But there were so many times when logic wouldn't take hold in her, when it slipped and slid away, and instead she saw her twin, heard her voice …

  I want it to be true, she thought. She folded her hands on her lap and looked across the stretch of lawn that lay between them and the river. That was why she couldn't let it go. She wanted to have a sister, even if nobody else could see her.

  "You believe she was real, don't you?" Rory said.

  She turned to find him looking at her. She couldn't read his expression at all. Not wary, exactly, but worried maybe. A dash of pity. She couldn't blame him.

  "Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't," she said. "Mostly I don't know. But there's so much that can't be explained otherwise."

  "Was that you playing the piano in your apartment the other night?" Rory asked.

  "You heard that?"

  He nodded. "It was beautiful."

  "Katy always played beautifully. She learned everything by ear. All she had to do was hear it once."

  Rory looked uncomfortable.

  "Go ahead," Kerry said. "Tell me what you're thinking."

  "Well, I'm just wondering … is it possible that you were the one at the piano but you just don't … remember it?"

  "You think I'm one of those multiple personalities."

  "I'm no psychiatrist."

  "Well, I wouldn't know, would I?" Kerry said. "I mean, if another personality was to take over, I wouldn't be aware that it was happening."

  She'd seen it at Baumert with a girl named Wendy. Sometimes the personalities went flickering through her so fast it was like someone was holding a remote and surfing through the channels. Wendy never knew it was happening at all. She just lost time, like the epileptics did when they had a seizure.

  "I guess not," Rory said.

  Kerry sighed. "Except, I'm me when it happens. Katy manifests externally. I mean, if she exists. If I'm not just making her up."

  "I didn't say—"

  "You don't have to. Nothing else makes sense."

  An awkward silence fell between them. Kerry looked for the crow girls, but they seemed to have wandered off. Unless that pale-skinned punk with the wild black hair sitting a few benches down was one of them in a new disguise. She couldn't tell if the androgynous figure was a boy or girl. Her gaze moved on.

  "I guess they got bored and left," Kerry said.

  Rory nodded. "They don't exactly have the longest attention spans."

  He shaded his eyes as he searched the lawn for the pair, but Kerry had already stopped looking. Her attention was now on the gray stone buildings of Butler University on the far side of the river. Weird to think she'd be going there tomorrow morning. One thing she vowed. She wouldn't tell anyone anything about Baumert or Katy when she was on campus. She was going to pretend she was normal and just hope that if she pretended hard enough, it would come true

 
"What happened this morning with Maida?" Rory asked.

  Kerry turned back to him. She had to think for a moment before she remembered what it was that had started this whole sorry monologue of hers This morning already felt like weeks ago. She knew she could let it slide. While Rory might not believe in Katy, he seemed like a nice guy and she didn't think he'd press her. But she figured she might as well finish it now. Closure and all, as Dr. Stiles would have put it.

  "I fall to pieces really easily," she said, letting her gaze drift back to Butler U. "Anything can set me off because I'm so unsure of myself. It's like I walk this narrow balancing act between being crazy and being normal, only being normal's like a really thin wire and it's so easy to fall off."

  She could feel his gaze on her, but she couldn't look at him because her story was wandering back into the territory that on old maps would carry the legend "Here there be dragons."

  "That's what happened to me this morning," she said. "I fell off the wire, only this time Maida was there to catch me. She licked her fingers and put them against my forehead and just like that, everything was clear."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know how to explain it better than that. I guess, it's just that I walk around scared all the time and I don't feel that way anymore—not after this morning. What happened with that red-haired man … any other time and I'd have been back in bed for the rest of the week, just trying to deal with it."

  "I hate it when people sell themselves short," Rory said.

  "I'm not. But I know my limitations. I've lived with them for long enough. Maida did something to me. She worked a piece of magic. That's all I can call it."

  "Magic."

  Kerry smiled. "You're uncomfortable with the idea, aren't you?"

  "You're not?"

  She shook her head. "No. I find it kind of liberating, actually."

  "But—"

  "And it makes me feel better about Katy, too. Because while we both know that logically she can't have existed, how do you explain the things she told me that I couldn't have known otherwise? Like how my parents were paying Dr. Stiles to keep me doped up in Baumert so that they could blow my inheritance? An inheritance I didn't even know I had."