by Laura Preble
I keep gulping. Some of it comes back up, but I don’t care. She sits on a table top opposite me, just watching as I heave.
She sighs, shakes her head as if disappointed, and then comes over with her knife, swiftly cutting the ties on my legs. “First thing is a shower. You stink.” Quick as anything, she has a long metal pole with a loop attached to it, the kind they use on dangerous animals, and the loop’s around my neck. “Nice and slow. Walk toward the back of the room, toward that green door.” She nods in the direction she wants me to go. I do what she says.
My legs wobble, and I barely get to the door without falling over. How long have I been sitting there? The woman keeps her distance, the length of the metal pole between us.
“Open the door.”
I do.
It’s a cubicle of white tile with a disc-shaped showerhead the size of a Frisbee. She pushes me in, leaves the door open, and stamps a button on the floor with her foot. A stream of ice-cold water gushes from the fixture, and I yelp. “Take off the clothes,” she commands. It’s tough to do with the loop collar around my neck, but I manage. I shiver, naked under the icy stream, but it beats sitting in piss on the metal chair.
After a couple of minutes, she pushes the pedal with her foot again and the water stops. “Forward,” she says. I move forward slowly, out of the shower stall. “There’s a towel on the table. Dry off and put on the jumpsuit.” She steers me toward the table where I dry off, pick up the orange coverall, pull it up, zip it. It’s rough and scratchy, but clean.
“We’re going to an intake room,” she tells me. “We’re walking toward that metal door, and on the other side, two guards will escort us to another room down the hall. Just walk normally and nothing bad will happen.”
“Can I—” I start to ask. A sharp, biting electric pain stabs me behind the ear, makes me stumble.
“No talking. Just follow directions.” She drags me by the collar toward the metal door. Jesus, the pain throbs, blurring edges, almost blinding me. “That pain’ll pass. But don’t talk.”
I shuffle, barefoot, through the door. There are guards, just as she said. They wear these black storm-trooper type outfits, and look so serious I want to laugh, but I’m afraid I’ll get shot or shocked.
“Keep moving,” the woman yelps. I do. When we get to the third door down the corridor, she yanks the collar, and I stop. “Good. Now, just stay still.” She goes around me as if I might have a contagious disease, then raps on the door quickly, just one forceful knock.
The door opens, and she shove me in. There’s an exam table, like in a doctor’s office, and charts on the wall, a glass cabinet full of bottles and swabs. “Wait here.”
“But—” I croak, but the door’s already shut. I wish I had more water.
I’m ridiculously tired, so I curl up on the exam table, my feet up under the cloth of the orange jumpsuit. Cold, too. White rooms always seem colder. I must fall asleep because the next thing I know, the metal door slams shut, the overhead lights are off, and a single glaring spotlight shines into my face from above, blocking out everything else. I’m flat on my back, arms strapped to my sides, head strapped down, and the orange jumpsuit is pulled down to my waist.
“Chris Bryant.” A man’s voice. Not familiar. A shuffling of papers. “David Bryant’s son?”
“Yes,” I whisper. A shock stabs my chest, takes my breath away. Electrodes are wired to my neck and chest and head.
“Louder, please. We’re recording everything you’re saying.” I hear a whisper…must be more than one person in here with me. I can’t turn my head. “Now, again. Are you Chris Bryant, son of David Bryant?”
I try to answer more loudly. “Yes.” No shock. Good.
“We’re going to ask some questions. Please answer honestly.”
“Where am—” Shock, bigger than the first, like an electric knife to my heart.
“No questions. Just answers.” The voices whisper again, and I’m panting, trying to stifle a scream. “What happened to Mr. McFarland?”
I wet my lips, dry as sand. “I don’t know.” Electric teeth bite into my skin, rip it from my bones, Jesus! Make it stop! “I don’t know!”
Footsteps click on the floor, slowly, coming toward me. A face looms over me, a woman in a surgical mask, blocking the light above. Her eyes are cruel and brightly blue. “We know that you were part of a plan to get rid of him,” she says calmly, soothingly. “You don’t need to hide it. We already know.”
Do they know? Are they guessing? What is the right answer? Maybe some part of the truth? “He went out to get the bags and didn’t come back,” I rasp. She stares into my eyes.
“Why were you out in the woods?” She asks it as if she’s inquiring about some shopping trip.
“I was looking for him.” No shock. I guess the woman is the one who decides. If I can convince her that I was looking for him, maybe…maybe they’ll stop.
“Why would you think he was in the woods?” She tilts her head, arches her eyebrows. Current rips through my chest again—pain, pain, electric pain, red, white, sparks, darkness flooding…
“Stop.”
Tears. Piss. My breath is trapped in my chest, afraid to come out.
“Now, Chris,” the woman whispers, crouching near my face. “We both want the same thing. You want me to make this stop. I want to stop it. All you have to do is help me. Do you want to help me?”
I nod. Yes. Yes. I want to help.
“Doctor Castleman,” a voice from behind her says, then a man clears his throat. “A word.”
She stares at me, touches my nose with her latex-gloved finger. “Be right back,” she says, as if we’re playing a game of checkers.
This cannot be worth whatever they are going to do to me. I am not a hero. I am the wrong person for this. I will tell them everything they want to know…I’ll make things up if I have to. Would they know? I have to get out. Maybe Dad. If they know who I am, who he is, that might help me. I could make up a story that I didn’t know anything about it, that I saw some guy in the woods and I’d never seen him before, and—
Carmen.
Oh, if it was just me. Just me. I could do all of this, get out, beg, plead. I can’t leave her here …what if she’s here? The thought of them doing this to her…or worse…my stomach hurts. Jesus. How can I save both of us? I can’t even acknowledge that I know her.
The doctor is back. She blocks the light again, her giant face hovering above me. “Well, Chris. Seems you come from a very important family, hmm? You father is coming to pick you up.” The metal bands at my head and feet and hands snap open. To one of the other people, she says, “Get him fresh clothes. Not the jumpsuit. Put him in the waiting room.” She turns to me again, pulls the mask down, and smiles. She doesn’t look evil at all. “I’m still not sure I believe you, dear, but eventually I’ll find out. And don’t worry…if you’ve been doing things against God and nature, eventually, it catches up to you. It’s just God’s way.”
I’m numb. They march me out, put me in a room without tying me up or having a lasso around my neck. Suddenly I’m not a criminal, I’m a guest. A set of clothes (my clothes! clean!) sits on a chair. I put them on, look in a chipped mirror. I’m pale, sick-looking, tired. What will I tell David?
Lying on the chair is my bracelet, still wrapped in red yarn. They took it off with my clothes. I pick it up delicately, as if it might crumble like sand in my fingers, and fasten it around my wrist.
I sit and wait.
Chapter 14
I’m in what they call “the waiting room.” It’s nice, like a dentist’s office or something, muted blues and greens, soft, practical furniture. I’ve been sitting in here for what seems like hours, with no human contact at all. I try the door once, but it’s locked.
I wait for something to happen—a shock, poison gas, something. But nothing. I thought David was coming. I tap my feet. Pace. Count the magazines on the wooden coffee table. Mostly Parallel-based evangelical stuff.
; I pick up a kid’s book: Bible Stories. We had one like this when I was little. I flip to David and Goliath, my favorite. I loved how David married Goliath, and then when Goliath got too powerful and turned away from God, David smited him. Smote him? The story of Daniel and the lions is here too…how Daniel refused to deny his belief in the Parallel God, and he was killed for it, tossed to hungry lions while everyone watched.
God was so present then. Where is God now? And why does he hate Perpendiculars? I can’t find anything in here that talks about it. Now that I think of it, it’s just something we were told…and when you’re a kid, you just believe what you’re told. These people all just believe what they’re told.
Carmen crosses my mind again. My heart feels like it’s ripping in two. I’m not strong, not like David in the bible story, not like David my father, not like Carmen.
“Chris Bryant?” A pretty woman in a green dress opens the door and smiles at me. “Your visitors are here. Come with me, please.” I follow her down a long hallway, very industrial-looking, into a larger, prettier area carpeted and painted more like the waiting room. “Conference room two,” the woman says, gesturing toward a door. I notice that guards stand at the entrance to this area, wearing gray security uniforms. Maybe they don’t want anyone to know what they’re doing here.
David and Warren are sitting in the conference room, in two big swivel chairs behind a long black table. “Chris!’ Warren jumps up, runs over and squeezes me so tight I think I might break. It sends shooting pains through my chest where the electric shocks burnt the skin, but I don’t let go.
After a long hug, he lets go, holds my face in his hands, and stares into my eyes. “What happened?” He shakes his head, and tears well up in his eyes. “I knew we shouldn’t have let you go with him. I swear, I knew he was—”
“Warren.” David’s icy voice kills the moment. “Sit down.” Warren frowns apologetically, then lets go and takes his seat.
“Now, Chris,” David says, tapping the table with his fingers. “Sit down. We got a call from someone who said you’d been detained in connection with the disappearance of Jim McFarland. What do you know about it?”
“Where is this place?” I ask.
“I’m asking the questions,” David says evenly.
“It’s the Kettering Sheriff’s Station,” Warren answers. David shoots him a dirty look, but Warren continues. “We got a call in the middle of the night that you were being held here, that you’d been arrested. We were frantic, of course, and we got here as fast as we could. Why are you all the way out in Kettering? Weren’t you at Indian Lake?”
“Yes.” I answer carefully. I have no idea where Kettering is, or how far it is from where I was. So the sheriffs are in on this too? I can’t tell my parents anything. They won’t believe it anyway.
David clears his throat, annoyed. “So, you made it to Indian Lake. You were in the cabin…and then what?”
A flick of motion catches my eye. There’s a black bug-eyed camera in the corner of the ceiling, very small, recording everything I say. “He went out to get the bags, he didn’t come back. It was raining, so I thought maybe he fell down or something, so I went out to see if he was there, and I couldn’t find him.”
“And then you were in the woods shooting at people?” David says, his voice tightening.
“I never shot anyone. I didn’t even have a gun!”
Warren grimaces. “They found one in your pocket, Chris.”
“What?”
David shakes his head. “Don’t act like you don’t know what we’re talking about. It’s insulting.”
“No!” I stand up, slap my hands on the table. “I didn’t have a gun. They must have planted that on me.”
“Sure they did.” David shakes his head and turns to Warren. “We should just leave him here if he’s going to lie to us too.”
“Now wait a minute.” Warren stares at me intently. “You say you didn’t have a gun?”
“Warren, when have I ever even fired a gun? Why would I have one?”
“Maybe you wanted to get rid of someone,” David replies frostily.
“McFarland? Why would I want to get rid of him?” I know I must sound almost hysterical, but this is even worse than I thought. Now I’m a murderer? “Why would I have gone with him if that’s what I wanted? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I thought your change of heart was pretty sudden,” David hisses. “Now I know why you were so eager to go. But I still don’t know why you’d want him dead. All he ever wanted to do was help you. Why did you do it?”
“Jesus, David!” Warren shouts. “Whose side are you on?”
A polite knock at the door. The green-dress lady pokes her head in. “Minister Bryant? The sheriff would like a word. Alone.” She grins apologetically at me and Warren, sorry we’re not included in the conversation.
David stands up, sighs heavily, and shakes a finger at me. “I want you to know that whatever you did, we’re going to get to the bottom of it. And being my son is not going to save you.” He glides out of the room without looking back.
I put my head down on the cool tabletop. Could I go back to my old life? Is that even possible? But no…I couldn’t. Not knowing what I know and feeling how I feel about her. How can I even explain it to anyone?
“Chris.” Warren’s rubbing my head. “Talk to me.”
I don’t move.
“Please.” He sits down next to me, pulls his chair close, and whispers in my ear. “Whatever you did, I’ll get you out of here. You just have to trust me.”
I don’t even know if I should believe him. I want to. But…they’re recording everything, and who knows what they’re telling David? Would Warren stand by me if he knew what really happened? I can’t think he would.
“How’s Jana?” I croak.
“What?”
“How’s Jana? Is she okay?” I lift my face from the table and look at him.
“I guess so. We woke her to tell her we were coming here, but we left her alone.” He leans in again. “Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t.” I point to the camera in the corner. “Nobody would understand.”
Warren glances at the unblinking eye, and turns back to me. “I would understand.” He taps my wrist, my bracelet.
I freeze. Does he mean what I think he means? How could he know? Jana could have told him, I guess. Would she compromise everything just to get me out?
Warren clears his throat, then puts an arm around my shoulder, huddles up close, and leans so his head is next to mine. “I’m so sorry,” he says aloud. But he whispers, “I know about Carmen.”
I look him in the eye. All I see is love there.
I lean on his shoulder like a baby, weeping for all the injustice and the wrongness and the love of someone understanding me. He holds me tight, and he cries too.
“What am I going to do?” I ask him in a small voice.
“I don’t know.” He eyes the door. “Wait for David. He’ll know what to do.”
“David?” My voice squeaks. “He’ll leave me here to rot.”
“You’re still his son, Chris.” Warren shakes his head. “No matter what, that comes first.”
“You’re wrong,” I say. I realize that now that I’ve told Warren, or he’s guessed, he won’t keep it from David, and that’s the horror of it. He really believes that David loves me more than he loves his church and his religion, and I know that’s not true. “You can’t say anything.”
Warren grimaces. “I know it’s hard, but telling the truth is the only way. We can help you.”
“You can…help me?”
The door opens and David walks in, flanked by two security guards in gray. His eyes are softer now, almost forgiving. “Chris, we know all about what you’ve been going through, how this girl corrupted you and used you.”
“She never—”
“She’ll pay for what she’s done, believe me.” He sits on the other side of me and puts an arm around my shoulder. �
�We know what she’s done to you. They found her and the other conspirators near some drop point at the river. They’ve all but confessed what they…what you…were going to do. I wanted you to admit to it. That’s the first step in helping you overcome it.”
Warren blows his nose into a large white handkerchief, and David links arms with him. “I know this McFarland thing has been very tough on you, and I pushed you too far with it.” He smiles at me grudgingly. “I pushed you to this path. I ask forgiveness for that.”
Warren cups my face in his large hand. “We’re here for you. We want to help you.” One of the gray security guards clears his throat. “We’re taking you to a hospital near home, somewhere you can work on recovery. You just have to sign a paper admitting your guilt, and—”
Guilt.
That’s when I realize it: nothing will ever change. Nothing.
“We also realize that Mr. McFarland’s disappearance may have been linked to your…aberration, but that you had nothing to do with it.” David smiles at me as if this is the most wonderful piece of news in the world. “The authorities know that too. If something unfortunate happened to him, we’ll certainly work with them to find out who’s responsible. I know you’ll help with that also.”
Something in my head is ringing, and all I can do it rub at the red yarn bracelet with my finger and thumb.
“Chris?” Warren grabs my hand. His palm is warm and damp. “I’d really like to get you out of here. If you’ll just sign, we can go.”
“Do you know what this place is?” My voice sounds calm even though inside, I’m screaming.
Warren looks at David, puzzled. “A sheriff’s station, I already told you. It’s—”
“It’s a rehabilitation camp.” I pull up my shirt and show them the burn marks. “This is what they did to me before they knew you were my parents. I don’t know what else would’ve happened if they hadn’t found out.”
David’s face is stone again. “That’s all just a myth.” He pulls my shirt down over my chest. “You could have gotten those injuries in the woods. It was raining and dark, you fell a number of times, I’m sure.”
