My Soul to Lose

by Rachel Vincent

  My laceless sneakers squeaked in the empty hallway, and I walked slowly toward the clinking of silverware, acutely aware that while I did hear a couple of soft voices, there was no actual conversation. Most of the doors I passed were open, revealing room after identical room. The only differences between those and the room I’d been assigned to were the personal possessions. Clothes stacked on open shelves and pictures taped to walls.

  Halfway down the hall, a girl a couple of years younger than me sat alone on a bed in a room almost as bare as mine, talking to herself. Not whispering under her breath, or reminding herself not to forget something important. Actually talking to herself, at full volume.

  When I turned the corner, I found the source of the other voice, as well as what passed for the cafeteria. Five round tables were set up in a large room occupied with normal-looking people in jeans and T-shirts. Mounted on the far wall above their heads was a small television tuned to SpongeBob.

  “The trays are on the cart.”

  I jumped, then whirled around to see another woman—this one in cranberry-colored scrubs—sitting in a hospital waiting-room-type chair near the doorway. Her name tag read: Judy Sullivan, Mental Health Technician. “Find the one with your name on it and take a seat.”

  I took a covered tray labeled Kaylee Cavanaugh from the second shelf of the cart, then glanced around for somewhere to sit. There were no empty tables—most had two or three occupants—yet everyone ate in silence, but for the sounds of chewing and silverware scraping plastic trays.

  The edges of the room were lined in more stiff-looking waiting-room chairs and small couches with pale green vinyl cushions, and one girl sat alone on one of these with her tray on her lap. She picked at the edge of a slice of meat loaf with her fork, but seemed more interested in whatever patterns she was creating than in actually eating.

  I found a table and ate in silence, suffering through half of the dry meat loaf and a stale roll before I looked up from my tray—and directly into the eyes of the girl sitting alone on the edge of the room. She watched me with a creepy sort of detached curiosity, as if I were a bug crawling across the sidewalk in front of her. I wondered briefly if she was the ant-stomper type. Then I wondered why she was at Lakeside.

  But I purged that thought quickly—I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know why any of them were there. As far as I was concerned, they were all locked up for the same reason: they were crazy.

  Oh, and you’re the shining exception, right? some traitorous voice asked from deep inside my head. The girl who sees things that aren’t there and can’t stop screaming. Who tries to rip her own throat out in the middle of the mall. Yeah, you’re sane.

  And suddenly my appetite was gone. But Meat Loaf Girl—Lydia Trainer, according to her tray cover—was still staring at me, limp black hair falling over half of her face, revealing only one pale green eye. My return stare didn’t faze her, nor did it force her to acknowledge me. She just watched me, as if the moment she looked away I might jump up and dance the cha-cha.

  But then someone else walked between us and caught her attention like a ball of yarn rolled in front of a cat. Lydia’s gaze followed a tall, heavyset girl as she carried an empty tray toward the cart.

  “Mandy, where’s your fork?” Judy the mental health tech asked, standing so she could see the girl’s tray. The tense way she held herself made me nervous. Like she expected Mandy to lean forward and take a bite out of her.

  Mandy dropped her tray on the cart with a clatter of silverware, then stuck one hand into the waistband of her jeans and pulled out a fork. If I’d had any appetite left, that would have killed it. Mandy tossed the fork onto her tray, spared a contemptuous glance at the aide, then shuffled in sock feet into another large common area across the hall.

  Lydia still watched Mandy, but now her features were scrunched into a tense grimace and one hand clutched her stomach.

  I glanced at her tray to count her utensils. Had she swallowed her knife, or something stupid like that, while Judy’s attention was occupied with Miss Fork-in-Drawers? No, all of the silverware was there, and I could see no obvious reason for Lydia’s pained look.

  Creeped out now, I stood and turned in my tray—all utensils accounted for—then rushed back to my room without looking up until I’d closed the door behind me.

  “Hello?”

  “Aunt Val?” I wound the old-fashioned, curly phone cord around my index finger and twisted on the hard plastic chair to face the wall. That was all the privacy I’d get in the middle of the hallway.

  My kingdom for a cell phone.

  “Kaylee!” My aunt sounded bright and cheery, and I knew even without seeing her that her hair would be perfectly arranged and her makeup expertly applied, even though she didn’t have to be anywhere on the weekend.

  Unless she was coming to get me. Please let her be coming to get me…

  “How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Aunt Val continued, a sliver of concern denting her otherwise impenetrable armor of good cheer.

  “Fine. I feel good. Come get me. I’m ready to come home.”

  How could you let them bring me here? How could you leave me? She would never have left her own daughter in a place like this. No matter what Sophie had done, Aunt Val would have taken her home, made a pot of hot tea, and dealt with the issue privately.

  But I couldn’t say that. My mother was dead, and I’d had no one but Aunt Val and Uncle Brendon since my father moved to Ireland when I was three, so I couldn’t vocalize the soul-bruising betrayal twisting through me like a vine choking me from the inside. At least, not without crying, and crying might make me look unstable, which would give them a reason to keep me there. And give Aunt Val a reason to drop off my clothes and run.

  “Um…I was actually just about to head your way. Have you seen the doctor yet? Do you think I’ll be able to talk to him?”

  “Yeah, sure. I mean, that’s what he’s here for, right?”

  According to Nurse Nancy, the doctor didn’t do his rounds on weekends, but if I told Aunt Val that, she might wait for official visiting hours. Doctor or not, I was sure she would take me home once she saw me. Once she’d had a look at this place, and at me in it. We might not share the same blood, but she’d raised me. Surely she couldn’t walk away twice, right?

  From somewhere near the common area, a booming male voice announced that the anger management group was about to start, then specifically suggested that someone named Brent should attend.

  I leaned my forehead against the cold cinder blocks and tried to block it all out, but every time I opened my eyes—every time I even took a cold, sterile-scented breath—I remembered exactly where I was. And that I couldn’t leave.

  “Okay. I’m bringing some things for you,” my aunt said softly into my ear.

  What? I wanted to cry. “No. Aunt Val, I don’t need things. I need out.”

  She sighed, sounding almost as frustrated as I was. “I know, but that’s up to your doctor, and if he gets delayed…or something, wouldn’t you feel better with a fresh change of clothes?”

  “I guess.” But the truth was that I wasn’t going to feel any better until Lakeside was a distant, unpleasant memory, instead of my current waking nightmare.

  “They won’t let you have anything but clothes and books. Do you want something to read?”

  All I wanted to read was the exit sign on the other side of the locked door by the nurse’s station. The one you had to be buzzed through.

  “Um…I have a paper due next week. Could you grab Brave New World from my nightstand?” See? I’m not crazy. I’m responsible and focused on schoolwork. Don’t you want to take me home so I can live up to my true potential?

  Aunt Val was silent for a moment, and that uncomfortable feeling in the bottom of my stomach swelled. “Kaylee, I don’t think you should worry about homework right now. We can tell the school you have the flu.”

  Footsteps shuffled past me, headed toward the group session. I stuck a finger in m
y ear, trying to block it all out. “The flu? Doesn’t it take, like, a week to get over the flu?” I wouldn’t miss that much school. I wouldn’t miss any, if she’d take me home today!

  My aunt sighed, and my gut twisted around the lump of dread anchoring me to the chair. “I’m just trying to buy you some time to rest. And it’s not really a lie. You can’t tell me you’re feeling one hundred percent right now…”

  “Because they shot me full of enough crap to put an elephant to sleep!” And I had the cotton mouth to prove it.

  “And for all we know, you might actually be coming down with a bit of the flu. I heard you sneeze the other day,” she finished, and I rolled my eyes.

  “They don’t lock up people with the flu, Aunt Val.” Not unless it’s the bird flu or Stephen King’s end-of-the-world flu.

  “I know. Listen, I’ll be there in a bit, and we can talk about this then.”

  “What about Uncle Brendon?”

  Another pause. Sometimes there was less meaning in what Aunt Val said than in what she didn’t say. “He took Sophie out to lunch to explain all this to her. This has been really hard on them both, Kaylee.”

  Like it’s easy on me?

  “But we’re both coming to see you tonight.”

  Except I would be out by then, even if I had to get down on my knees and beg her to take me home. If I had to wake up here again, I’d lose my mind. Assuming I hadn’t already.

  “Promise?” I hadn’t asked her to promise me anything since I was nine.

  “Of course. We just want to help you, Kaylee.”

  Yet somehow, I didn’t feel very comforted.

  I waited in the common area, stubbornly resisting the jigsaw puzzles and crossword books stacked on a shelf in the corner. I wouldn’t be here long enough to finish one anyway. Instead, I stared at the TV, wishing they’d at least show some good cartoons. But if there was a remote available, I had no idea where to find it.

  A commercial came on and my attention wandered, in spite of my best efforts to ignore my fellow patients. Lydia sat across the room from me, not even pretending to watch the television. She was watching me.

  I stared back at her. She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. She just watched, and not with an unfocused stare, which was obviously all some of the residents were capable of. Lydia actually seemed to be observing me, like she was looking for something in particular. What, I had no idea.

  “Weird, isn’t it?” Mandy dropped into the chair on my left, and air whooshed from the cushion. “The way she stares.”

  I glanced up to find her looking across the room at Lydia. “No weirder than anything else here.” And frankly, I wasn’t looking to make conversation—or friends—with someone who stuffed forks down her pants.

  “She’s a ward of the court.” Mandy bit into a half-eaten chocolate bar, then continued with her mouth full. “Never talks. You ask me, she’s the strangest one here.”

  I had serious doubts about that.

  “What’re you here for?” Her gaze traveled south of my face, then back up. “Let me guess. You’re either manic depressive, or anorexic.”

  Inside, my temper boiled, but I was proud by how calm my reply sounded. “I don’t talk either.”

  She stared at me for a second, then burst into a harsh, barking laugh.

  “Mandy, why don’t you find something constructive to do?” A familiar voice said, and I glanced up to find Paul standing in the wide doorway, holding…

  My suitcase!

  I sprang from the couch, and he held the rolling bag out to me. “I thought that might make you smile.”

  In fact, I was oddly excited and relieved. If I had to be locked up, at least I could be miserable in my own clothes. But then my enthusiasm flashed out like a burned-up bulb when I realized what that suitcase meant. Aunt Val had dropped off my clothes without coming in to see me.

  She’d left me again.

  I took the bag and headed back to my room, where I dropped the suitcase on the floor beside the bed, unopened. Paul followed me, but stopped in the doorway. I sank onto the bed, battling tears, my suitcase forgotten in spite of the rough scrub bottoms chaffing me in all the wrong places.

  “She couldn’t stay,” Paul said. Apparently my emotions were as transparent as the tempered glass windows. Wouldn’t my therapist be pleased? “Visiting hours don’t start until seven.”

  “Whatever.” If she’d wanted to see me, she would have, even if it was just for a few minutes. My aunt’s tenacity was a thing of legends.

  “Hey, don’t let this place get to you, okay? I’ve seen a lot of kids lose their souls in here, and I’d hate to see that happen to you.” He ducked his head, trying to draw eye contact, but I only nodded, staring at the floor. “Your aunt and uncle will be back tonight.”

  Yeah, but that didn’t mean they’d take me home. It didn’t mean anything at all.

  When Paul left, I heaved my suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it, eager to wear, see, and smell something familiar. After just a few hours at Lakeside, I was already terrified of losing myself. Of fading into the glazed eyes, slow steps, and empty stares all around me. I needed something from real life—from my world outside this room—that would help me hold on to me. So I was completely unprepared for the contents of my bag.

  Nothing in it was mine. The clothes still had price tags dangling from waistbands and collars.

  Fighting back fresh tears, I lifted the first piece from the suitcase: a pair of soft pink jogging pants with a wide, gathered waistband and a complicated arrangement of flowers embroidered over one hip. At the front were two holes where the drawstring should have been. It’d been snipped and removed so I couldn’t hang myself with it. The suitcase held a matching top, along with an entire collection of clothes I’d never even seen. They were all expensive, and comfortable, and perfectly coordinated.

  What is this, psycho chic? What was wrong with my own jeans and tees?

  The truth was that, in her own twisted way, Aunt Val was probably trying to cheer me up with new clothes. That might have worked for Sophie, but how could she not understand that it wouldn’t work for me?

  Suddenly pissed beyond words, I stripped and tossed the borrowed scrubs into a pile in the corner of the room, then ripped open a five-pack of underwear and stepped into the first pair. Then I dug through my bag for anything that didn’t look like something Martha Stewart would wear on house arrest. The best I found was a plainish purple jogging suit at the bottom of the pile. Only once I had it on did I realize the fabric glittered beneath the light over my bed.

  Great. I’m psychotic and sparkly. And there was nothing else in the bag. No books, and no puzzles. Not even any of Sophie’s useless fashion magazines. With an angry sigh, I stomped down the hall in search of reading material and a quiet corner, silently daring Paul or any of the aides to comment on my epic wardrobe disaster.

  After supper, Aunt Val and Uncle Brendon walked through the door next to the nurses’ station, both empty-handed; they’d had to empty their pockets and turn over Aunt Val’s purse to the security guard. That way, I wouldn’t be tempted to try to kill anyone with her lip gloss and travel-size pack of tissues.

  Seeing them standing there was like seeing my dad every time he came home for Christmas. Part of me was so mad at them both for leaving me there that I wanted to shout until I went hoarse, or ignore them completely. Whichever would come closest to hurting them like they’d hurt me. I wanted them to feel scared, and alone, and without even basic comforts like their own clothing.

  But the other part of me wanted a hug so bad I could practically feel arms around me already. I wanted to smell the outside world on them both. Soap that didn’t come in tiny, unscented, paper-wrapped packets. Food that didn’t come on labeled, hard plastic trays. Shampoo that didn’t have to be checked out from the nurses’ station, then turned in along with my dignity.

  In the end, I could only stand there staring, waiting for them to make the first move.

  Uncle Br
endon came first. Maybe he couldn’t resist our actual blood bond; my bond to Aunt Val was by virtue of her wedding vows. Either way, Uncle Brendon hugged me like he might never see me again, and my heart raced a bit in panic at that thought. Then I pushed it aside and buried my face in his shirt, smelling his aftershave, and Aunt Val’s favorite spring-scented dryer sheets.

  “How you holding up, hon?” he asked, when I finally pulled back far enough to see his face, rough with evening stubble.

  “If I’m not crazy yet, I will be after one more day in this place. You have to take me home. Please.”

  My aunt and uncle exchanged a dark glance, and my stomach seemed to settle somewhere around my knees. “What?”

  “Let’s sit.” Aunt Val’s heels clacked all the way into the common area, where she glanced around and looked like she wanted to take her suggestion back. Several other patients sat staring up at the TV, most with glazed looks of half-comprehension. Two more worked on puzzles, and one thin boy I’d hardly seen was arguing with his parents in the far corner.

  “Come on.” I turned toward the girls’ hall, leaving them to follow. “I don’t have a roommate.” In my room, I sank onto my bed with my feet tucked beneath me, and Uncle Brendon sat next to me. Aunt Val perched stiffly on the edge of the only chair. “What’s wrong?” I demanded, when all eyes turned toward me. “Other than the obvious.”

  Uncle Brendon spoke first. “Kaylee, you haven’t been released. We can’t take you home before the doctor has even seen you.”

  “Why not?” My jaws were clenched so hard they ached. My hands curled around fistfuls of the blanket. I felt freedom slipping away like water through my fingers.

  “Because you tried to rip your own throat out in the middle of Sears.” Aunt Val frowned, like it should have been obvious.

  “That’s not…” I stopped, swallowing back tears. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just trying to make the screaming stop.”