“Then why?”
His cell rings and he answers it quickly. “Dr. Stone speaking.” He pauses, listening. “Order a CBC and terbutaline for Helen. Insist Ana start the intravenous iron therapy. I can be there in fifteen minutes.” He hangs up and smiles. “I’ve got an idea. How about you come with me to work? My office is across the street from the hospital. You can hang out.”
I cringe at the thought of being near a hospital again. “I need to start unpacking my boxes and look over my class schedule and all that boring stuff.”
“Don’t look so sad, Tiffany. I promise things aren’t usually this busy. We’ll have lots of time together.”
“It’s okay. No big deal,” I mumble. Even though it’s not okay and it is sort of a big deal. Because what Anthony Stone doesn’t know is that it’s very possible he and I won’t have lots of time together.
It might even be just the seven days.
7
Stone House Rule Number 1: Nothing negative or inappropriate is to be posted online. All social media accounts will be closely monitored.
I refold the already crumpled and worn typed list of rules Anthony Stone slipped under my door before he left this morning and stuff it deep into the pocket of my pants, pulling on my seat belt for the fiftieth time, just to make sure it’s secure. A list of typed rules. Who does that?
London’s sitting in the front seat of the fancy Porsche SUV doing an incredible job of ignoring me. Not that I’m taking it personally; she’s ignoring Heaven and Nevaeh, too, earbuds tucked tightly in her ears, reading a schoolbook. Pumpkin doesn’t handle long car rides too well, so when Anthony’s not home, which apparently is quite often, a driver drives everyone to school.
We’re traveling up a long, winding road into the mountains. This particular driver, whose name is Darryl, seems to take his job way too seriously, which is fine by me. Hands constantly at ten and two, eyes always firmly planted on the road. Also, I think he likes sappy love songs because a radio station called the Waves has been playing the entire ride, a station where the DJs speak in whispery voices and only play heart-wrenching ballads. Mariah Carey’s currently crooning out a tune about not wanting to cry, which, ironically, is sort of what I feel like doing. It’s October and insanely hot. Everybody always talks about how amazing the weather is here. Maybe the people who talk about how awesome the weather is in Southern California have never been to Southern California.
“Curington was originally an estate owned by a Swedish billionaire,” Darryl explains to me. He’s a middle-aged man, dressed in all black with light brown hair that’s starting to gray around the hairline. He pulls up behind a line of expensive cars at a check-in gate. “He had these grounds secretly built for his fiancée as a wedding present. It was to be their new home. The day he gifted her the property, she died.”
My eyes bulge. “She...died?”
“Yup,” Nevaeh says. “Dropped on-site. Like blam! Dead. They say if you listen carefully, you can hear her crying in some of the girls’ bathrooms. Like Moaning Myrtle!”
Heaven yawns. “No, they don’t. Don’t listen to her, Tiffany. Nevaeh’s trying to scare you.”
Nevaeh shakes her head. “Do listen to me, Tiffany. If you hear a crying girl...run for your life.”
Darryl chuckles and continues. “It was too painful for him to be anywhere near this development, so it was sold and eventually turned into a private school.”
Fan-freaking-tastic. I’m going to a school that’s probably haunted by the ghost of the original owner’s dead fiancée. I unzip my backpack and grab my small bottle of pills and, with my hands hidden inside the bag, quietly untwist the cap.
Stone House Rule Number 2: In the Stone home, absolutely no drugs or alcohol of any kind are permitted.
I discreetly stick the pill on the back of my tongue and swallow.
It was six weeks into Mom’s chemo when I had my first appointment with a psychiatrist. Mom came with me, but waited in the reception area while I made the sojourn into Dr. Sylvain’s cramped office all by myself. Dr. Sylvain wore a black yarmulke, had soft curly side locks tucked behind his ears and a short untrimmed beard. He calmly sipped coffee while we chatted, as if having a half-crazy teenager in his office wasn’t going to keep him from enjoying his morning cup of caffeine.
“Tell me, Tif-phonie,” he said at our first meeting, in his thick French accent, legs crossed casually. “What is going on?”
Right away I decided Dr. Sylvain was going to be a safe zone. Not because I trusted him, but because I needed to tell someone all the things I kept bottled up inside. Bottled up so tight it made my palms sweaty and my cheeks twitch just dying to get out.
“I feel like if I don’t capitalize people’s names they’ll die. In text messages and emails and stuff. I have to capitalize their names. It’s important. I feel like if I forget, they’ll die.”
He nodded and took another sip of his coffee. “Anything else?”
“If I’m too happy, I have to suffer sadness right after to keep the yin and yang of life balanced.”
Sip. Sip. Slurp. “Go on.”
“If I don’t stare at the white divider lines on the street when we’re driving, then we’ll get into a car crash, and if I don’t grip the side of the door we’ll get into a car crash, too.”
Another nod. Another sip. He adjusted his yarmulke and I continued.
“If I don’t memorize lists something bad will happen. One bad thing for each item on the list. If I don’t practice my guitar for at least one hour per day, God will take away my gift of playing as punishment. If I don’t turn the lights off and on exactly eleven times right before bed, I’ll have nightmares—Freddy Krueger–type nightmares where you can die in your sleep. If I don’t turn off my cell phone at night, then someone will call me to tell me someone’s died. If I’m up high...like at the mall on a top floor, I’ll trip and fall through the glass railing.”
He stood and moved toward his desk, said, “I see,” and rummaged through a drawer. I decided he was probably looking for a pad and pen to take notes, but after a minute he found two tiny containers of cream, pulled off the thin plastic lids and poured them into his cup of coffee. He took another satisfied sip. “What happens if you should fall through the glass railing at the mall, Tif-phonie?”
“Oh... I’ll die, I guess. Or be, like...permanently disfigured.”
Mom joined us for the second half of the meeting, and by the time we finished our hour-long session and Dr. Sylvain his two cups of Keurig-brewed coffee, I’d been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Though I thought being diagnosed with anything involved a blood test or a full body scan with multiple doctors at a computer looking at a digital image of your brain, pointing out the blue blob next to the yellow blob on the screen and saying that the blue blob should be yellow, too, and yep...that’s why there’s a problem.
“Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. SSRI,” Dr. Sylvain explained.
“Come again?” Mom replied.
“Two per day. It is a low dose. One in the morning. One before bed.” He scribbled something onto a small pad of paper, tore off a sheet and handed it to Mom.
“How long’s she gotta take this?” Mom asked.
“With the help of a good family therapist, perhaps not too long. I would like to see you again, Tif-phonie. In six weeks? Yes? Good.”
Mom grabbed her purse and stood.
“Are you mad at me?” I whispered as we left Dr. Sylvain’s office, reading her body language: brow furrowed, jaw clenched, clutching her purse tightly.
Mom stopped in the hallway. “Not at you, Tiffany. Just...mad. You ever feel mad and not at anyone in particular?”
I nod. “On the daily.”
Mom grabbed my hand. “We’ll try this out, okay. If at any point these drugs make you feel worse, we stop. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Dr. Sylvain must not have needed a brain scan to know how to help me, because within a month of taking my new medication, I stopped thinking every single thing was going to lead to my imminent death. And slowly...very slowly, I started to feel better.
The security guard at the gate waves us through and Darryl continues up the road, now lined with beautiful palm trees. A moment later and we pull into Curington’s parking lot at last.
“There’s Krissy!” Nevaeh says excitedly. “D-Dawg, can you let us out here?”
“Absolutely,” Darryl replies, and Heaven and Nevaeh jump out of the SUV.
“’Bye, Tiffany!” they both say in unison, and I watch their bobbing ponytails disappear into the sea of students in matching green polos and turd-brown khakis.
There is another line of fancy, expensive cars waiting to drop students off at the base of a wide set of stone stairs, while other cars are maneuvering into parking spaces. I take a moment to scope out this new school, this secret, magical kingdom tucked away in the mountains of Simi Valley. It’s like we’ve driven to the edges of a national state park.
In addition to the main school building, there are smaller buildings scattered about the campus, too. The pristine stone structures are a stark contrast to the one run-down redbrick building surrounded by a chain-link fence that was my old public school. Everything here looks just as nice as the pictures from the brochures Anthony sent Mom and the website I’ve been trolling for the past few weeks. It sort of reminds me of a villa, standing alone in the Italian countryside. Cascading water flows to the right of the staircase into a beautiful water fountain and at the top of the stairs you can see scenic cobblestone paths leading from one building to the other with pretty benches strategically scattered about on the green patches of lawn and perfectly placed trees with a strange symmetry to them, as if they were all engineered in a tree factory. Lastly, a tall American flag waves high above on a silver flagpole. The perfect salutation! Like...welcome, welcome, one and all, to the greatest show on Earth—forty-thousand-dollars-a-year private school for your kids.
“We’ll get out here.” London yanks on her earbuds and tucks them into her backpack along with the schoolbook she’s been reading the entire ride.
“You sure, miss? I can pull up. I don’t mind waiting.”
London pushes open her door and slides onto the pavement. “The line’s too long.”
Darryl scrambles out of his seat so that he can open my door. “Would you like me to walk you to the front, miss?”
“I’ll walk her.” London’s eyes sparkle like blue diamonds in the bright morning sun. “She’s with me. She’ll be fine. Tiffany, are you ready?”
Before I have a chance to respond, she slams her door shut and moves through the traffic in the busy parking lot.
I grab my own backpack and quickly slide onto the pavement. “’Bye! Thank you for the ride, Darryl. You’re an amazing driver. Not once did I think we were going to crash.”
He smiles. “You’re very welcome, miss.”
I follow after London. “London, wait!”
She steps onto the sidewalk and I race to catch up to her, but within a few seconds, she’s disappeared into the mass of students. I jog up the stairs, panic rising, hoping her long black hair and crimson-red backpack stands out in the crowd, but I can’t seem to spot her anywhere.
She left me? What a bitch!
Stone House Rule Number 3: Words in the Stone home should be kept clean and holy. Swear words are never allowed.
I stop to gather my thoughts, which, at this point, are a stream of curse words meant specifically for London, but it appears that the number of happy, chatting students and parents lingering about is growing by the second, and I need to be on a serious hunt for my first class—AP Geography—so I continue on alone.
Stone House Rule Number 4: Until the age of eighteen, boys are only allowed as friends.
I push through the double doors of the front entrance to behold even more magnificence. Curington clearly spares no expense. Dark wood floors, the walls covered in beautiful paintings and the superhigh, domed ceilings covered with hundreds of tiny green mosaic tiles so it looks like the view inside a kaleidoscope.
“Good morning.”
I turn to see him. Marcus McKinney. The white-faced mystery boy with a high risk for instantaneous obliteration. He looks even scarier up close. There are bits of the makeup staining his Curington polo and his green eyes look creepy and catlike, making him look a little like one of the demons from Evil Dead. Without his signature hoodie, I see he’s bald and the makeup is thickly coated everywhere: face, neck and head. In addition, he wears a white, long-sleeved T-shirt under his Curington polo with white gloves so that a small sliver of brown skin around his eyes is the only skin showing. Supercreepy.
“Are you lost? Would you like help finding your first class?”
And he speaks! He’s got a smooth, gentle voice. Deep and sweet, like he’s a professional hypnotist. Like he should be saying, You’re getting sleepy, Tiffany Sly. Very, very sleeeeeeepy.
“I, uh, thought you were half-mute,” I blurt out awkwardly.
“Aren’t we all?” he replies simply, tightening the straps on his backpack, the white makeup on his face almost glowing under the soft hallway lighting.
“Huh?”
“Considering we sleep eight hours per day, a person will sleep approximately two hundred thousand hours in a lifetime. That’s essentially a third of your life. So really, we’re not half-mute. We’re all a third mute.” I blink. His green, catlike demon eyes blink back. “So? Would you like help finding your first class?”
It’s not like anybody else is talking to me. I could actually use some help. Plus, don’t I have to talk to him, anyway? “Sure. Yeah. Can you help me find my locker, too?”
“I could. But no one uses them.”
“They don’t?”
“There’s only three minutes between classes.”
“Three minutes?” I shift, the weight of my backpack already making my shoulders burn. “You mean, I have to carry these books in my bag all day long?”
“You can put them in your locker. But it’ll probably make you late for class. There’s a one-minute grace, but if you’re late, they take points off your grade. You strike me as the kind of girl who cares about her grades.”
“I am that type.”
A group of students move past us; they stare at Marcus, eyes wide with horror. Then they stare at me like, What the hell is wrong with you, girl?
“What’s your first class?”
“AP Human Geography.”
“With Mr. Mills?”
“Yes! That’s the one. You know it?”
“I know it well. That’s my first class, too. Follow me.”
What are the odds? I gratefully follow Marcus down the hallway; he turns up a flight of stairs to the second floor to another dimly lit, narrow hallway lined with more beautiful paintings and classrooms on both sides, but not a locker in sight.
“Where are all the lockers?”
“Second house. No lockers in the main house.”
“House?”
“That’s what the buildings are called here. Seven houses on the campus. All lockers are in House Two.”
We walk down a new hallway with more dim, soft lighting. There are lots of students moving through the hallways, but I’m missing the roar of excitement that filled the halls at West. Here, everyone seems calm, subdued and, aside from horrified glances in the direction of Marcus as he moves past them, very much in their own world. There is a strange sensation rising up from the pit of my stomach. Not exactly like someone kicked me and I need to hurl, more like a knot has formed deep within my belly comprised completely of essential organs, and the only thing that will shake it free so that I don’t die is to curl into a ball i
n the fetal position and cry. I sigh. Yes, a blanket, a bed, endless tears and the fetal position sounds like the only thing that could save me from the horror that is this situation. What if Anthony’s not my dad? What if this isn’t my school? What if I have to leave? What if Marcus McKinney drops dead before we make it to Geography?
We finally stop in front of a classroom and Marcus motions to the door. “AP Geography. Looks like we made it.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thanks for helping me. See you around.” I quickly move inside the class before Marcus has a chance to reply.
I take a seat near the back. Across the room, Marcus has taken a seat at a desk near the back, too. He turns and catches me staring at him and I look away.
The class is small; only about ten of the large desks in the room are occupied, which is probably the smallest class I’ve ever been in. Someone slides into the seat beside me.
“Oh, snap. Looks like we got a new girl.”
I turn to see a boy prettier than most girls sitting beside me. He’s got blond hair with extralong bangs that he keeps shaking out of his eyes. Paired with tan skin and electric-blue eyes, he looks like Brad Pitt and Superman had a baby.
He extends his hand. “I’m Aric with an A.”
“Aric with an A?” I shake his hand.
“We got mad Erics at this school, but no Arics with an A. That’s me.”
He pulls out his cell phone and starts scrolling through Facebook without so much as a second glance at me. In fact, the class has filled up and pretty much every student is doing the same thing, sitting in their seats, pencil, pens and books ready, quietly fiddling with their phones.
The teacher rushes in and tosses his leather briefcase onto his desk. He’s an amazing-looking guy, maybe thirty, in dress pants and a crisp white shirt, with a very thick head of dark, wavy hair. He checks the time on his watch just as a bell chimes sweetly.
“Phones away,” he orders.
Right away, every student respectfully puts their phone in their bag or pocket and sits attentively.
“Grrrr! Good morning, Wildcats!” A girl’s voice booms through the speakers as morning announcements begin.
Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now Page 8
