Ultraviolet

by R. J. Anderson

  Sharon crooked a finger in front of her lips. I could see she wanted to correct me, and yet it went against her therapeutic creed to tell a patient that anything he or she said was actually wrong. “Well,” she said at last, “we all have different personalities, and different ways of dealing with conflict. But I think it’s possible for all of us to find ways to express our anger without it becoming unhealthy.”

  Micheline spat out a bitter laugh, but Sharon ignored it. She turned to the patient on my left—a girl with drooping eyelids who looked about as full of buried rage as Eeyore—and began coaxing her to participate. And so the session dragged on, until I almost wished I could disintegrate myself and everyone else in the circle just to put us all out of our misery.

  But Anger Management was just the beginning. Next came an educational session called “Understanding Your Medication,” in which a nurse came in and talked about the various antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers we were on, and how important it was for us to keep taking them consistently. She was running down a list of common side effects—dry mouth, drowsiness, blurred vision, and so on—when Kirk suddenly leaped to his feet and began doing a spasmodic song-and-dance routine to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

  “I’ve got tardive dyskinesia,

  I’ve got tardive dyskinesia,

  I’ve got tardive dyskinesia,

  And now I can’t sit still!”

  “Kirk,” snapped the nurse, “sit down, or you’re going to have to leave.” But the Eeyore-faced girl put up a tentative hand. “What’s tardive . . . whatever?”

  “Dyskinesia,” said Kirk helpfully.

  The nurse looked exasperated, but she could hardly refuse to answer. “It’s one of the possible side effects that occasionally happens when a patient has been on one of the older forms of antipsychotic drugs for a considerable period of time.” Her emphases left no doubt of how unlikely she thought this was to happen to any of us. “It causes involuntary, repetitive movements—”

  Kirk contorted his face into a grimace and poked out his tongue, blinking exaggeratedly all the while. “This could happen to you, kids! So whatever you do, don’t stop taking your happy pills!”

  “That’s it,” said the nurse. “You’re gone.”

  Unfazed, Kirk got up and sauntered out the door. But by then the damage had been done. I thought about the medications I was on, the side effects I’d already experienced, and a chill settled into the pit of my stomach. Tardive dyskinesia sounded like the kind of thing that could ruin the rest of your life. What if taking Dr. Minta’s pills did that—or worse— to me?

  . . .

  I was sitting in the library after supper, watching the setting sun cast its long rays through the pine forest, when an aide came to the door. “Alison? There’s someone here to see you.” I’d been expecting this, but I didn’t feel ready for it. Licking my dry lips, I got up and followed her out, silently reminding myself to stay calm.

  The visitors’ lounge was tucked into a corner by the cafeteria, a low-walled triangle of glass blocks that offered little privacy to anyone sitting there. Especially not if he was standing, like my father; I could see his stooped shoulders and graying red hair from thirty feet away. As I approached, he turned, and I expected my mom—slight, brunette, and fifteen years younger—to stand up and show herself as well. But she didn’t. She wasn’t there.

  “Here we are,” said the aide. “I’ll be across the hall if you need me,” and with that she retreated, leaving my father and me alone.

  “Hello, Alison.” He sounded hesitant, but then he usually did. His gaze wandered around the lounge, stuttering over the frayed upholstery, the dusty fake plants, the windows cloudy with fingerprints. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay,” I replied, and it only made me feel a little queasy to say it. Maybe I was finally getting used to the taste of my own lies.

  “Really?”

  His faded blue eyes were creased with anxiety. I could taste tears in the back of my throat, but I swallowed them. My dad had never been good at handling emotional outbursts, and I didn’t want to scare him away. “Yeah.”

  “Well.” He let out his breath. “That’s good. For a while, you were . . . in pretty bad shape.”

  “I know.” It must have been so hard for him, seeing me like that. I’d always been his nice quiet daughter, the one who could sit with him in his study while he worked on an article or graded papers, and not disturb him at all. “But I’m better now.”

  He patted my shoulder, then ambled over to one of the cleaner chairs and sat down. I followed. “Your mother was hoping to come,” he said, “but . . . it didn’t work out this time. She’s going to come another day.”

  So either my dad had done something to upset her and she’d decided she couldn’t stand to be near him, or else she’d simply chickened out. Maybe watching me thrash around in panic or lie there in a drugged stupor had been easy, compared to facing a daughter who might actually have something to say.

  “What about Chris?” I asked. “Is he going to come and see me, too?”

  “Oh. Er. Well, your mother thinks it wouldn’t be such a good idea to bring Christopher here. He’s still young. . . .”

  Eleven wasn’t that young, and my brother was hardly a sensitive child, but I got the message. My mother wanted to keep her screwed-up daughter and her normal son as far apart as possible. “Right.”

  “So, Alison . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “When do you think you’ll be coming home?”

  So my mother hadn’t told him about Dr. Minta’s decision, or my appeal. She’d kept him in the dark so he wouldn’t interfere. Oh, Dad. I wanted to throw my arms around him and bury my face in his shoulder. I wanted to tell him everything, and beg him to help. But it wouldn’t be fair to put him through that. If I pitted my parents against each other, all of us would lose.

  “I don’t know,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. “They’ve got me on some medication, and I think they want to make sure it works out. I’m trying to appeal the decision, but . . .”

  He made a melancholy noise of assent, and went quiet again. Then he said, “Your friend Melissa’s been asking about you. She wants to know if she can come and see you, now you’re feeling better.”

  Warmth spread through my chest. So Mel hadn’t given up on me after all. She was a true friend, no matter what Tori— what anyone else said. “I’d love that,” I told him. “Tell her to come anytime.”

  My dad nodded, his big hands twisting in his lap. “May I ask you something, Alison?”

  Uh-oh.

  “The police said you were the last person to see that girl, Tori Beaugrand, before she disappeared. And that you’d claimed . . . you’d said . . .”

  “I said I’d made her disintegrate. I know. That’s impossible. I’m not saying that anymore.” Lying to him without actually lying was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I just hoped he wouldn’t force me to do it again.

  “So . . . do you remember what really happened, then?”

  Of course I remembered. No matter how many times I tried to push Tori’s death to the back of my mind, the memory of that day still haunted me. But I could taste my father’s hopefulness like powdered sugar on my tongue, and I knew that deep down, he still believed I was his good little girl. Maybe even believed, in spite of everything, that I was sane.

  I couldn’t bear to let him down.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I’ve tried to make sense of it all, to think of something that would help the police find her, but . . . I can’t.”

  He didn’t seem disappointed. If anything, he looked relieved. “That’s all right,” he said.

  We talked about safer things then, like the hideous pink-and-green bungalow my mother was trying to sell for one of her clients, and my brother Chris’s plans to go to hockey camp that summer. My father had never been good with small talk, and he kept forgetting details and having to correct h
imself. But the fuzzy blue shape of his voice was such a comfort that I could have listened to him ramble on forever.

  Not that I got the chance. It wasn’t long before he ran out of words, and when he stood to leave, the room seemed to shrink around me. It was all I could do not to grab his arm and beg him not to go. “When are you coming again?” I asked, as we walked to the exit.

  “Next Tuesday, I think. Would you like me to bring you anything from home?”

  I wanted to say my keyboard, and hope that when it showed up Dr. Minta would let me keep it. But that was too much like open rebellion, and I couldn’t risk that kind of black mark on my record. Not before I’d had my appeal, at any rate.

  “Nothing right now, thanks,” I said.

  . . .

  My first night in Yellow Ward was peaceful enough—Cherie snored, but at least she slept soundly, and so far she hadn’t done anything to make me anxious about sharing a room with her. But my bed was next to the window, and even through the cordless blinds I could hear the stars crooning, sense those nameless, alien colors that refused to go away. I tossed and turned all night, and by morning I felt as though I hadn’t slept at all.

  The next morning when I lined up for my pills, a nurse handed me an activity chart that looked like my high school schedule. I couldn’t take in all that information right away, so I took the chart with me to breakfast. Cherie was already there, prodding unenthusiastically at her scrambled eggs, and I glimpsed Kirk talking to a silent Roberto in the corner. I didn’t see Micheline, but then I hadn’t expected to—last night at dinner she’d started yelling at one of the voices in her head, and they’d sent her back to Red Ward again.

  I chose a table at the back of the cafeteria, where it was quieter, and looked over my new schedule. Dr. Minta had arranged for me to finish my eleventh-grade coursework, so I’d be spending three mornings a week in the education room under the supervision of the part-time teacher, Mr. Lamoreux. In the afternoons, I’d be attending four different kinds of group therapy, plus something called “Family Counseling” on Fridays—though there was a question mark beside that entry, and I hoped it would stay there forever. . . .

  “You have to be careful,” said a low, familiar voice from the aisle. Sanjay glanced around furtively, then set down his tray and slid into the seat across from me.

  “Careful about what?” I asked.

  “Them.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “They know you can see the mark, too. Don’t let them get you alone.”

  My throat went dry. I’d never said anything to Sanjay about the mark I’d seen on Tori’s arm. How did he know?

  “I can hear people’s thoughts sometimes,” he said seriously, as though I’d spoken out loud. “And I can see the future. That’s why the aliens want me. Because I know their plan.”

  I looked at him helplessly. He seemed so earnest, so convinced of what he was saying. But even though I knew how lonely it felt to have a story that nobody else believed, I couldn’t bring myself to agree with him just yet.

  For one thing, his evil alien conspiracy theory didn’t really hold together. One minute the aliens were trying to kill him because he knew too much, the next they wanted to capture him and use him in their experiments. First he claimed that the aliens disguised themselves as humans, but later he’d said they put their mark on humans and brainwashed them into doing their bidding. I’d heard him telling Roberto that the aliens came from a planet in the Horsehead Nebula, but I’d also heard him tell Cherie that they came from another dimension. There seemed to be some new variation on the story every time Sanjay told it, and if anybody pointed out the inconsistencies, he’d just ignore them.

  And yet when I’d passed Dr. Ward in the corridor earlier this morning, the one Sanjay had accused of carrying the aliens’ mark, my gaze had dropped to his arm before I could help myself. He’d been wearing a lab coat, of course, so I couldn’t see anything. But when I raised my eyes again, he was giving me such a cold, probing look that my heart skipped, and I’d scurried into the library just to get away from him.

  So maybe I wasn’t quite as much of a skeptic as I’d thought.

  . . .

  After breakfast I went to the Education room, as my schedule instructed. Somehow Mr. Lamoreux had got hold of all my textbooks from Champlain Secondary, so I could finish up the few assignments that remained before final exams. The implication that I’d be here long enough to do that bothered me a little, but it was a lot better than sitting in Red Ward doing nothing at all, so I took my physics textbook off the top of the pile.

  I was still there an hour later, trying to wrap my brain around the principles of electromagnetism, when the message came. The Consent and Capacity Board had agreed to hear my appeal in five days, and in just a couple of hours my lawyer would be coming to meet with me.

  So this was it. My chance to prove that I could control my behavior without therapy or drugs, that I had enough clarity of mind to decide whether I needed those things or not. And if I made my case well enough, they might even let me go home.

  Home. Even whispered, the word spread like maple syrup over my dry tongue. I’d always been a little embarrassed by the old split-level house I’d grown up in, but now I missed it more than anything. I missed slipping into my father’s study and curling up in the armchair while he graded essays. I missed the taste of my mother’s pot roast, which always had the right shape to it even when everything else between us was wrong. I missed the scuffle and thump of my younger brother practicing his slap shot in the driveway. I even missed our fat, brainless cat jumping onto my chest in the middle of the night and breathing out amber waves of fisssssh.

  Maybe it was irrational, but I truly believed that if I could just go home, everything would be all right. Sure, my relationship with my mother wasn’t the greatest, but my bitterness toward her was an old ache that I’d lived with for years, nothing like the blind rage that had made me lash out at Tori. I couldn’t imagine disintegrating her, any more than I could imagine doing it to my father or Chris.

  Other people might be more of a problem. But even if my neighbors had seen the police taking me away to the hospital, even if my schoolmates knew I’d been the last one to see Tori on the afternoon of June seventh, they had no reason to accuse me of murder—especially since the police weren’t even calling Tori’s disappearance a murder yet. If I just kept quiet and stayed out of sight, they’d probably leave me alone. And maybe once I’d had a few days to rest and get the drugs out of my system, I’d be able to work out exactly what I’d done to Tori, and how to stop it from happening again.

  I just hoped the police wouldn’t arrest me before I had the chance.

  . . .

  My lawyer showed up at two-forty that afternoon, more than half an hour late. He was a stout man with thin hair and a harried expression that reminded me of the White Rabbit, and I got the feeling that I was one client too many for his busy schedule. But he seemed to know the details of my case, and he also had a copy of my patient chart and a few other reports I’d never seen before. I leafed slowly through them, blinking at phrases like flat affect and poverty of speech, while he explained what would happen at my appeal.

  It sounded similar to a court appearance, with both sides calling witnesses and presenting evidence to support their case. But the board would also consider some kinds of evidence that wouldn’t necessarily be allowed in a formal trial, such as hearsay. The whole process would take about an hour, and once all the witnesses had been cross-examined and final statements made, the board would dismiss us while they made their deliberations.

  “And within twenty-four hours, they’ll notify you of their decision,” he said. “Does all that make sense to you?”

  I nodded distractedly, my eyes still on the file. Until now, I hadn’t realized how many of the things I’d done and said, things that seemed perfectly innocent to me, had been taken down by Dr. Minta and the nurses as proof of my mental illness. My reluctance to interact with the other patients on Re
d Ward, for instance, was antisocial behavior. When I’d tried to stay calm, that showed a lack of emotional response. My short answers and poor math skills were evidence of disordered thought processes. I often seemed distracted, which suggested that I was experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations. And the one time I’d let my guard down enough to giggle in front of Dr. Minta, he’d marked it down as “inappropriate laughter”.

  There was more, but I’d seen enough. I closed the file.

  “So,” said my lawyer, “do you have any questions?”

  “I do, but . . . not about the appeal.” I took a deep breath, gathering courage. “You’ve read my file, right? So you know I told the police I’d killed Tori Beaugrand, when I . . . when I was crazy?”

  “Yes.” He paused, and I could tell he was trying to decide how fragile my mental state might be, and whether or not it was a good idea to ask if I’d actually killed her. But all he said was, “So what’s your question?”

  “Could they charge me with murder, based on that confession? Even though they haven’t found a body, or a weapon, or any other evidence that Tori’s . . . not alive?”

  “Ah.” He leaned back in his chair, lacing his hands together over his stomach. “Well, I can’t say for certain what the police will do, but I can tell you that the Youth Criminal Justice Act is very strict about what it takes to get a valid confession from anyone under seventeen. First, the police would have to take you into a comfortable interview room and read you a lengthy statement of your rights—including the right to consult a lawyer, the right to have a parent present, and the right not to make any kind of statement to the police at all. You’d have to confirm that you’d understood everything they’d just told you, and then clearly state that you had chosen to waive those rights, before making your confession on video and audio tape. Is that what happened?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then no matter how many times you said you’d killed Ms. Beaugrand, that statement would not be admissible in court. Especially in your case, because there are questions of mental health involved.”