Tales from the Gateway

by E. E. Holmes

  I groaned. Over the last few years, I’d decided that there were four kinds of kids in these places. And screw medical terminology, I guarantee you that any doctor would agree with me, even if he didn’t admit it out loud; in his head, he’d be saying, “Well, shit. I spent a small fortune on my medical degree and this kid has gone and nailed it without a single day of med school.” Seriously. Here’s how it breaks down. First, you’ve got the Fixer-Uppers. These are kids like me, whose families are unhappy with something about them. A lot of these kids don’t even realize there’s anything wrong with them until other people start pointing it out. “Oh, that’s not normal. Should he be doing that?” “Oh, that really isn’t typical behavior. You should really have that looked at.” The Fixer-Uppers are hardly crazy. They’re just dealing with the repercussions of being told that they’re wrong in some way. In fact, if people would just accept them, or at least leave them the fuck alone, they could go pretty happily through life. But no one ever leaves them alone. The world bullies and harasses and beats their square little selves into the socially acceptable round holes, and when they don’t fit, they end up in places like this.

  Then, you’ve got the Look-At-Mes. The Look-At-Mes need attention as badly as the Fixer-Uppers DON’T need it. They thrive on drama, and will do just about any crazy shit they can think of to get someone’s sympathy. Their behavior escalates and escalates with each new level of attention until they wind up someplace like this. And they’re actually proud of themselves for making it in, like this place is some kind of reward. They see it as validation. “See? I told you I was crazy! Look at how crazy I am!” They’re the ones the rest of us want to bitch slap. Repeatedly.

  Next, you’ve got the Periodics. As in Table. Chemistry. These kids aren’t crazy either. They’ve just got to find the right cocktail to keep their chemistry balanced, and then stay on that cocktail long enough to function normally. These are the depressives, the bi-polars, the kids who can do just fine on the outside if they play by the meds. Of course, a lot of the time they don’t. Sometimes they convince themselves they’re better and don’t need the meds anymore. Sometimes they just don’t like the side-effects or the way the meds make them feel. Sometimes they just want to flip-off their doctors or their parents, or the world, and won’t take them on rebellious principle. Either way, they are usually in and out a lot- periodically, in fact. I’ve flirted with Periodic status, but so far, I maintain my Fixer-Upper label.

  Finally, you’ve got the Foxes. As in, “crazy as a.” These are the lifers, with no chance of functioning outside the walls. They start in places like New Beginnings, but that’s usually just a stop on the way to someplace that makes New Beginnings look like a spa getaway. I hadn’t met many of them, but the few I had met scared the crap out of me.

  One look through that window and I knew that girl was the craziest Fox I’d ever seen.

  And she was in my room. Of course. Because that was just my freaking luck.

  I hovered on the spot for a minute, trying to convince myself to go find a nurse, but also weirdly fascinated by what the girl was doing. The conversation, if that’s what it was, was escalating quickly. The girl’s hands were gesticulating wildly now, and she kept pointing to the door, where I stood gaping at her. Finally, she stood up, stamping her foot in frustration, and said, loudly enough so that I could actually understand her, “It’s not your room anymore! You have to leave!”

  She looked towards the door this time and froze. We stared at each other, neither of us moving a muscle, neither of us sure what to do. I was fighting an impulse to run. She looked like she would have jumped out the window if it hadn’t been barred. Finally, after a long, tense moment, she dropped the hand she had been pointing with. Her face fell into a perfectly serene expression, and she walked calmly towards me.

  I backed away until the opposite wall bumped gently against my shoulder blades. There was the sound of the bed being pulled away from the door, and then it opened. The girl turned and closed it carefully behind her before she spun around to look at me again.

  She was tiny and frail-looking, with long, thick brown hair, a pale face, and enormous eyes; the kind of eyes you could fall into and not find your way back out of again. Her hands were clasped demurely in front of her, and her voice, when she spoke, was a fluttery thing.

  “I’m sorry about that. I think you should ask the nurses for another room,” she said. Then she walked away down the hall without another word of explanation and disappeared around the corner.

  §

  She was there an hour later, in my first group therapy session, or as I fondly called them, the feelings circle. Group therapy is probably the most awkward thing you can imagine; a dozen kids who don’t know each other being prodded and coerced into a forced conversation, each trying to say as little as possible while still getting credit for participation, with the exception of one or two over-sharers who can’t shut up. The good part about being the new kid on the block was that I could usually get away with telling them nothing but my name and a few bland getting-to-know-you details, unless the therapist on duty was a real prick. Luckily, Dr. Mulligan was the bleeding heart type, and I launched into my well-rehearsed introduction.

  Hi, my name is Milo Chang. My favorite subject in school is math. In my free time, I like to read fashion magazines and sketch. My favorite snack food is barbeque potato chips. My favorite color should probably be pink, but actually it’s the dreary black of my misunderstood soul.

  Once my intro was out of the way, I could size up my fellow inmates as they did the obligatory round robin introductions for my benefit. I had a bad habit of inventing names and backstories for them instead of actually listening to what they were saying, purely for my own amusement, but that day I didn’t even do that. I couldn’t seem to force my focus onto anyone but the creepy little Fox I’d found in my room. She didn’t look up at all as the others spoke, but examined with a detached sort of interest the pattern of scars on her forearms. When it was her turn to speak, I had to lean forward to hear her.

  “My name is Hannah. I like to read and listen to music. I haven’t been to school in a while, so I don’t have a favorite subject anymore.”

  I looked around the circle. None of the other kids seemed to want to look at Hannah. One boy had actually gotten up and moved his seat away from her when she sat down. She couldn’t have been paying them less attention, though. Her eyes, when not fixed on her own hands, had a strange tendency to dart suddenly one way or another, like she was reacting to sounds that only she could hear. At one point she jumped as though startled, her face twisted into a knot of annoyance, but I didn’t see or hear anything that could have brought on such a reaction. Yes, this girl wasn’t just on the crazy train: she was driving it.

  A sudden scraping of chairs against the linoleum signaled the end of the session, to which I had been paying zero attention. I vacated my seat just in time for a large, surly-looking girl to pull it out from under me and carry it to the stack in the corner.

  “So Milo, that’s the general format of our group sessions,” Dr. Mulligan said with a smile that made her look like she had twice as many teeth as a normal person. “Topics are fairly patient-led, and you should feel free to jump in any time that you have something you would like to add. Do you have any questions that I can answer for you?”

  “Uh, no, thanks,” I said, attempting to smile back. “It seems pretty straightforward. I’ve been to my fair share of these before. It was pretty much what I expected.”

  “Very good,” she said, smiling again, and then bounced off to oversee the stacking of the chairs.

  “Hey. It’s Milo, right?”

  The girl had approached me so quietly that I had no idea she was there, and took an involuntary step back from her.

  “Yeah. Hannah?”

  She smiled at me too, a small and slightly rueful expression. “I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I didn’t mean to be in your room when you got there. It was just a misun
derstanding.”

  “Yeah, whatever. No harm, no foul,” I said.

  “Have they found you another one yet?”

  “Another what?”

  She blinked. “Another room.”

  I laughed. “Why would they find me another room?” Was it my imagination, or did she actually turn even paler as I watched her?

  “I told you to ask the nurses for another room,” she said, and there was definitely a slightly panicked edge to her voice.

  I laughed again, though it was only my nerves doing the laughing. “I don’t even know who you are. And I doubt the nurses would give me another room just because you told me I needed one. Besides, what’s wrong with the one I have? You know, besides the fact that it’s here in this godforsaken hellhole?”

  I’d meant the last bit as a joke, but she didn’t even crack a smile. She opened her mouth and closed it again, picking at a stray thread dangling from the tattered cuff of her oversized sweater. She dropped her eyes to the floor.

  “I just… I really think you might be… more comfortable in another room, that’s all,” Hannah said quietly.

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  She looked me in the eyes just long enough to take my breath away with something nebulous and desperate in her expression, but then she turned and left without another word.

  “You’ve got the Ballard girl onto you, huh?” A scrawny pimpled kid with Coke-bottle glasses right out of a cartoon sidled up to me as I watched her walk away.

  “Onto me? What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “That chick is scary. Messed up.” the kid shook his head. “I know you just got here, but I’d keep my distance if I were you.”

  “Great, I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, is there any particular reason I should take your advice, seeing as you could just as easily be the messed up one around here?”

  The kid shrugged. “Guess not. Just thought I’d warn you, since she’s taken an interest. I wouldn’t want her interested in me.”

  He walked away. His words didn’t make me any more nervous than I already was. He hadn’t told me anything I hadn’t guessed about Hannah the second I’d laid eyes on her. Besides, from what little I caught of his brief, almost bragging little monologue during the group session, I had him pegged as a Look-At-Me, and so I pretty much dismissed anything that came out of his mouth as attention-seeking bullshit.

  Back in the doorway of my room, I looked around. It was small, nondescript, and slightly depressing. There was a bed, a desk, and a closet, all empty. The sight of the bars through the dusty window panes was disturbing, but I’d known they’d be there. Even though the sunlight streamed in between them, they pulled a trigger in my head, a sort of mild claustrophobia, but I shook it off. My own stuff was still packed away in two bags where I’d tossed them into the middle of the floor. I tried to find something—anything—that might explain why I would want a different room, and then laughed out loud at myself. After all this time, I couldn’t believe I was actually taking a Fox seriously.

  §

  Okay, so even the best of us have to eat our words at some point or another, and mine became a not-so-tasty midnight snack that evening—well, at 12:27, to be exact. There I was, in the middle of some deep and glorious beauty sleep, and then suddenly, without understanding why, I was sitting straight up in my bed, heart pounding, palms sweating, and with a panic of unknown origin coursing through my body.

  I stared wildly around the room. Nothing. There was nothing out of place. For good measure, even though I knew it was childish, I looked under the bed, in the closet, and through the bars of the window, down onto the pitch-black yard below. No proverbial monsters. Everything was quiet and still. I slumped back onto my pillow, which smelled slightly mildewy, and took a deep, shaky breath. I must have been having a dream I couldn’t remember, or else some noise had woken me. This place was one big mystery, full of unfamiliar sounds and smells and sights that were bound to be unsettling until I got used to them. And usually, I was out the door again before that could even happen. I reasoned that it had nothing to do with the fact that a strange girl with strange eyes thought there was something wrong with my room. Yeah, that wasn’t it.

  A small sound echoed in the hallway outside. I slid back off of my bed and pressed my face to the tiny window in my door. Hannah was there, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chin, nodding off with her back pressed to the wall directly opposite my door. The sight of her made my pulse race again. What the hell was she doing here, sitting outside my room like some sort of stalker?

  I reached down and checked my door, but it was locked, so I didn’t think there was any way she could have gotten inside. At the little clicking sound of the jiggling handle, her head jerked up and her eyes flew open. Before I could pull away from the window, she caught sight of my face. We stared at each other for a long, tense moment. Then she just raised a hand and flicked it in a casual wave, before cupping it back over her knee and resuming her silent vigil. Her expression betrayed not a bit of embarrassment or any other emotion that should have accompanied being caught on such a creepy little stakeout; she appeared totally at ease.

  I knew there was a button near my bed that I could activate to alert a staff member, but for some reason, I felt no desire to push it. Instead, returning her wave awkwardly, I shuffled over to my bed and lay back down. I never heard anything else from the hallway, and I never got back up to check if she was still there; somehow, I knew she was. It was a long time before I fell asleep again.

  The next morning when I woke up, I ran to the window like a kid at Christmas to see if Hannah was still there, but she was gone. I felt weirdly sad about it, though I couldn’t begin to explain to myself why that might be. It didn’t actually make any sense. Shouldn’t I be relieved that she was gone?

  I spent way too much time picking out what to wear, but something about the process made me feel like myself; after all, if I didn’t care, then what the hell was the point of it all anyway? No one else would appreciate that I looked fabulous, but at least I would, and that was something I could hold onto in a place where they just keep ripping shit away from you.

  It took two tries to find the cafeteria, a hideous blend of ‘70’s linoleum floors, fluorescent lighting, and burnt orange plastic furniture that made me wish I’d stayed lost. I checked in with the unsmiling woman by the door, signing in and putting on a nametag, the final touch of indignity to my carefully chosen ensemble. I searched the sign-in sheet for Hannah’s name, but it wasn’t on the page I could see. By the time I emerged from the buffet line with my tray of tasteless cafeteria food, there were no empty tables. I started scanning the room for the emptiest one I could find, but stopped when I saw I was being flagged down.

  The kid with the coke-bottle glasses was waving energetically at me from a table he was sharing with three other kids. I considered ignoring him, but quite honestly, I was intrigued. I mean, it’s always nice not to be the kid in the corner eating by yourself, even if it meant sharing your table with a bunch of freaks in a mental facility. As the new kid, I could easily be considered the freak among freaks, so rather than encourage that image, I headed for the table and sat down.

  “Milo, right?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, I don’t actually remember…”

  “Trevor,” the kid with the glasses said. Then he pointed everyone out in turn. “Jacob, Colleen, and Meghan.”

  “Hey,” I said in a general vague greeting. They all nodded back, saying nothing.

  “So, we wanted to know what happened last night,” Trevor said, leaning towards me conspiratorially.

  “Sorry, Trevor, you’re going to have to be a little more specific,” I said, mutilating the top of a little cardboard carton of milk so that I could pour it onto my corn flakes. “It was a pretty wild and crazy night. Can you narrow it down?”

  Trevor shared an excited look with the others. “Really?”

  I snorted. “No, not really. Are y
ou kidding me? What the hell is there to do in here? I read some magazines and fell asleep.”

  I watched all four eager faces deflate around me. “Oh,” Trevor said. “We’d heard you were the reason Hannah was back in solitary.”

  My spoon paused en route to my mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “Hannah Ballard was moved out of the girls’ hall in the middle of the night,” the girl named Meghan said. She had bleached blonde hair grown out at the dark roots and had drawn an elaborate design of hearts, stars, and flowers all over her own left hand with a black pen. “We heard her yelling and screaming down the hallway when the nurses dragged her out at like, three in the morning.”

  “Her roommate Carley said she was caught sneaking back in, and that she’d been down on the boys’ floor to see you, and she got caught in your room,” said the other girl, named Colleen. She had a very round, freckled face that was lit with the manic sort of glow only a really juicy rumor could ignite in some people.

  The boy named Jacob laughed quietly. “You are such an idiot.”

  Colleen turned an affronted look on Jacob. “What? It could be true! Why would Carley say it if it wasn’t true?”

  Jacob just shook his head and smirked at me with an appraising glance. He’d clearly taken one look at me and decided there was no way I was the type who would sneak girls into my room. I took one look at him and decided he was a hideous bitch.

  Colleen was still eyeing me suspiciously, with a half-smile. “Are you saying that she wasn’t down in your room last night?”

  I shook my head. “No, she wasn’t in my room,” I said, which was technically true. “So where is Hannah now?”

  “Well, we call it solitary, you know, like in prison movies,” Trevor said. “The staff calls it re-entry therapy. Basically she’s had all of her privileges and social activities revoked until they decide she’s learned her lesson. And they took her out of her regular room and put her in one of the rooms on the behavioral floor.”