Ultraviolet

by R. J. Anderson

  Dr. Minta looked thoughtful. “Would you say they have a good relationship?”

  I shrugged. Sure, they didn’t always get along, but it wasn’t anything serious. It was just that my father was permanently bemused by my mother’s emotional reaction to everything, and she was permanently frustrated that he was so laid-back. She worried constantly about her children’s health and safety, while my father probably wouldn’t have noticed if Chris and I had set the house on fire.

  “Would you say they were good parents?”

  I picked at a loose flake of leather on the sofa. “Why are you asking me about this?”

  “I’m just curious, Alison, because when I look at this essay, you mention how your parents met and had you, but after that you say almost nothing about them. Your father’s come to visit you a few times since you came to Pine Hills, but the only time I’ve seen you and your mother together was when she acted as a witness at your appeal. And I’ve never heard you say that you love your parents or that you think they love you.”

  “Of course I do,” I retorted, stung. “And of course they do. Just because we don’t say it with hearts and flowers—”

  Dr. Minta’s palms went up. “I’m not judging you, Alison. Only making an observation.”

  Stay calm, I reminded myself. Don’t let him get to you. “If you’re trying to find out if I’m an abused child,” I said, “the answer is no.”

  “Interesting,” said Dr. Minta.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t mention abuse or imply it. You were the one who raised the subject. Why?”

  I was getting sick of this. Why was he even pretending to be interested in my family life? After seeing him talking to Constable Deckard the other day, I was more convinced than ever that all he really wanted to know about was Tori.

  “Because it’s the kind of thing psychiatrists like to talk about,” I said flatly. “Can I go now? I have an appointment with Dr. Faraday.”

  SEVEN (IS OLIVE)

  I paced in front of the library, nervousness fizzing inside me as I waited for Dr. Faraday to arrive. Ever since supper last night, I’d been eavesdropping and asking questions, trying to find out if any of the others who’d taken Faraday’s odd little test had been invited to participate in the next stage. As far as I’d been able to tell, I was the only one.

  Seconds shaded into minutes, and the butterflies in my stomach had turned into biting horseflies, when a candy-pink squeal of delight rippled down the corridor toward me. Faraday had just walked in, and he’d come bearing doughnuts, which made him an instant hit with the nurses. They clustered around him like pigeons, dipping their hands into the box and cooing appreciation. Once they’d helped themselves, he crossed the hallway and offered the box to me.

  “I’m afraid there aren’t that many left to choose from,” he said.

  I picked out an apple fritter, so sweet it made my fingertips tingle. No wonder the nurses had been pleased: unlike the pastries in the cafeteria, these were fresh, and premium quality. I chewed the doughnut slowly, savoring its fruity blue taste, as I followed Faraday into the library.

  He pulled a stack of pages out of his briefcase and dropped them onto the table before piling himself into one of the chairs like an overgrown schoolboy, one long leg hooked over the arm and the other pulled up beneath him. “Well, this is comfortable,” he said cheerfully. “Better than that conference room, at any rate. Have a seat.”

  He gestured as he spoke, and automatically my eyes went to his hands. They were almost as beautiful as his voice; it was easy to get distracted, looking at those hands. And with his sleeves casually rolled up to the elbow, I could see he had nice forearms, too—corded with lean muscle and dusted with fine hairs that in the sunlight looked almost silver. . . .

  “Ms. Jeffries? Aren’t you going to sit down?”

  Embarrassed, I dropped onto the sofa. Then I recognized the papers scattered across the table between us, and frowned. “Aren’t these the same tests you gave me before?”

  “They are. And now we’re going to talk about what they mean.” He unfolded himself and reached for the first sheet. “As you’ve already seen, all these diagrams are made up of graphemes—letters and numbers. As the tests went on, the graphemes on each sheet became smaller, and the shapes they formed increasingly complex.”

  Complex? Maybe if you were in preschool. But I didn’t want to contradict him, so I nodded.

  “And yet,” he went on, excitement pinking his voice, “you correctly identified each of the hidden pictures in under three seconds. None of the other patients I tested came close to that speed, or that accuracy.”

  “Hidden pictures?” I asked. “They didn’t seem very well hidden to me.”

  “Of course not,” said Faraday, “because you saw the 5s and Ss, or the 8s and Bs, as different colors. But to the rest of the patients I tested, all those diagrams were simply black on white.”

  A tendril of fear coiled around my throat. “What are you saying?”

  “Ms. Jeffries . . .” He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees and one long hand clasping the other. “Have you ever heard of a condition known as synesthesia?”

  Panic snaked through me, squeezing the breath from my lungs. I’d never dared to investigate why my senses were different from other people’s—I’d been too afraid of what it might mean. Especially after the way my mother had reacted. But now Dr. Faraday and his kindergarten pictures had defeated me, and I couldn’t deny it any longer. I had a condition, and it had a name.

  Synesthesia.

  It sounded horribly similar to dyskinesia. Or maybe even, God help me, schizophrenia.

  I knew I ought to ask how serious it was, and whether it could be cured. But even now, I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up my colors: it would have been easier to ask Dr. Faraday to take his pen and put out my eyes. All I could do was hope that my condition wouldn’t get any worse . . . but I had a bad feeling that it was doing that already. Hadn’t my perceptions been getting stronger—and stranger—ever since Tori died?

  “Ms. Jeffries?” asked Faraday. “Are you all right?”

  I couldn’t speak. All I could do was look at him, helpless terror swimming in my eyes. Please don’t tell Dr. Minta, I begged him wordlessly.

  But before I could even finish the thought, Faraday jumped to his feet and strode to the door. “Nurse!”

  It was too much. The dread inside me burst open, spilling into my mouth, and I hurled myself to the end of the sofa and grabbed the wastebasket just in time. Through the roaring in my ears, I heard Faraday curse in a language I’d never tasted before, and then he was crouching beside me, his hand light and warm on my shoulder, saying, “Ms. Jeffries. Alison. It’s all right, I’m an idiot, I didn’t think—”

  “What is it?” asked Jennifer’s voice from outside.

  Faraday leaped up to meet her, planting his six feet plus of long limbs and broad shoulders in the doorway so she couldn’t see into the room. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “I thought I needed to borrow a pencil, but now I’ve found one. Never mind.”

  If I’d had to listen to anybody but Faraday lie at that point, I would have thrown up all over again. Fortunately, I could live with the taste of chocolate liqueurs. I sat up gingerly, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand.

  “Is everything all right in here?” Jennifer asked. She craned her neck to look past Faraday—but by then I’d kicked the waste-basket back behind the sofa, and there was nothing for her to see.

  “Yes, we’re fine,” said Faraday, and I managed to add with a weak smile, “Thanks.”

  She left, and I slid down in my seat, exhausted. “Why . . . ?”

  Faraday looked apologetic. “You seemed so tense, I thought it might help if I asked a nurse to bring us some tea. I didn’t realize how alarming it would be to you, when I shouted.”

  I slid my hands up my face and into my hair, dizzy with relief. For a moment I’d been convinced he was going to tell the nurses ab
out my condition, and they’d give me some horrible treatment and shut me up in Red Ward until all my colors and shapes went away forever. But he’d protected me, lied for me, instead. What did that mean?

  “I’ll get you some water,” he said. “Just wait. And try to relax.”

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing until Faraday reappeared and handed me a paper cup. I sipped the cold water gratefully, swishing it around my mouth to get rid of the sour, yellow taste of my own bile.

  Faraday sat down again, one foot on the chair seat and fingers laced around his ankle. It was as though he’d never had a mother to scold him for putting his shoes on the furniture—or indeed anyone to tell him how grown men were supposed to behave. “Do they treat you so badly here?” he asked.

  “Badly? No.” The staff could be clueless and insensitive at times, but on the whole, they meant well.

  “Then why . . . ?” He gestured to the wastebasket.

  “I don’t,” I faltered, and then, “I can’t,” and finally, “I’m sorry, I can’t explain it very well. It’s just . . . if the nurses think I need to calm down, they’ll give me drugs, and I don’t want that.”

  “You seem to be doing a fine job of calming yourself down,” he said. “Which is remarkable, considering how upset you were just a few minutes ago. But there’s really nothing to be worried about, Ms. Jeffries.” He shifted closer, his eyes holding mine. “Synesthesia may be somewhat unusual, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”

  “It . . . doesn’t?”

  “Not at all. About four percent of the population—one in twenty-three people—have some form of synesthesia, and it doesn’t keep them from living normal lives. All it means is that your senses are interconnected, or cross-wired, so that when one sense is stimulated one or more other senses respond at the same time.”

  “Like seeing letters as colored, even when they’re printed in black and white?”

  “Exactly. Associating numbers and letters with colors is one of the most common forms of synesthesia. But there are many other kinds as well. Seeing sounds, tasting words . . .”

  Up to that point I’d felt like I was lying on a morgue slab watching my own dissection. Now the blood came rushing back into my body. “So you can have all those things, and it doesn’t mean anything bad? It doesn’t mean that you’re . . . crazy?”

  “Well, some people with synesthesia do suffer from mental illness as well, but there’s no direct relationship between the two. Why, did someone tell you otherwise?”

  “Not exactly. Just that my . . . someone I know was really upset when I talked about the things I was seeing.”

  “Ah,” said Faraday. “Well, it is true that people who’ve never experienced synesthesia tend to be skeptical or suspicious of those who have it. Many synesthetes learn to keep their impressions to themselves for fear of being thought liars—or insane.”

  I nodded.

  “But there’s been a great deal of scientific research done into synesthesia in the past decade or so, and it’s become widely recognized as a legitimate neurological phenomenon. There’s no reason anyone should be afraid of you for having it—and certainly no reason for you to be afraid of having it yourself.”

  I wanted desperately to believe him. Not only because he knew a lot more about synesthesia than I did, at least in theory, but because he was the first person I’d met in weeks who talked to me as though I were sane.

  But what would he say if I told him what I’d done to Tori? Would he still think my synesthesia was harmless then?

  “Ms. Jeffries, I realize it may not be easy to talk openly about your sensory experiences, especially if you’ve been conditioned to keep them private. But I think your psychiatrist ought to know—”

  “No!”

  Faraday didn’t say anything, but his face was a question, and I had to explain. “It’s just . . . I’m still trying to get a handle on this synesthesia thing myself. There’s so much I don’t know yet, and I need more time.”

  “You mean,” said Faraday, “you’d like this to stay between the two of us?”

  “Could it?”

  “Certainly,” he said, with a smile that sent a ripple of golden warmth through my body. “But let me tell you what I’d like to do. If you’re willing, I’d like to keep meeting with you on a regular basis—say three times a week, as your schedule and mine allow. There are many different forms of synesthesia, and every synesthete’s sensory associations are unique, so recording all your impressions could take some time. But you’d be free to ask me whatever questions you like, and I’ll do my best to answer them. Would you like that?”

  Strange, how Faraday kept asking if I still wanted to cooperate. I’d said yes to him twice, I’d signed the forms, so what made him think I’d back out now? But it was nice to be reminded that I still had a choice, that he considered talking to me a privilege and not a right. It made me want to talk to him, open up to him, in a way I’d never done with Dr. Minta.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  . . .

  “So this Dr. Faraday guy wants to keep testing you?” Cherie asked as she, Kirk, and I sat down around the card table. “What for?”

  “He thinks there’s something unusual about the way my brain works,” I said, and then as Kirk opened his mouth, “Don’t say it.”

  Kirk smirked and began dealing out the cards. “Nice of you to save me the trouble.”

  Behind us, Sanjay and Roberto were playing Ping-Pong at about half normal speed, while most of the others had crowded around the TV to watch a sitcom. I was a little surprised that Cherie had agreed to play Cheat with the two of us—usually she would have been in front of the TV too.

  “You go first,” said Kirk.

  I picked up my hand, studied it, and suppressed a grimace. Two-thirds of the cards were red, which meant that everything except the king and the two of diamonds were labeled in the wrong color. “Ace of clubs,” I said, putting it down.

  Kirk pulled a couple of cards out of his hand. “Two twos.”

  I’d been trying to get over my habit of judging people by the color and taste of their names, but it was hard when my instincts were so often right. There seemed no point telling myself that the R in the middle of Kirk’s name didn’t make him untrustworthy when the game had just started and he was already cheating.

  Still, it wasn’t worth calling him on it yet. I looked at Cherie, who said, “Two threes,” and laid them facedown on top of the pile.

  “So,” I said to Kirk in what I hoped was a casual tone, “now you’ve seen Dr. Faraday’s idea of fashion, do you still think he’s gay?”

  “With that accent? Yeah, no question. Only now I think he’s gay and lonely.”

  Cherie giggled.

  “One four,” I said, then added, “But you do have to admit he’s got incredible eyes.” Kirk shrugged, and I looked at Cherie for support. “Don’t you think so?”

  “I dunno,” she said. “I didn’t really notice.”

  Disbelieving, I was about to ask how anybody could not notice—and then I realized. They didn’t see Faraday’s eyes as violet, any more than they’d seen the bruise on the surface of that peach. Once again, I was alone with my weird perceptions . . . but at least now I had a name for them, and reason to hope that they might not be a bad sign after all.

  Kirk tossed out another card. “One five. So how long is this guy going to keep picking your brains?”

  “I don’t know. Until he’s got all the information he needs for his study.” Or until Dr. Minta released me, whichever came first. After all, he couldn’t keep me here indefinitely . . . or at least, I hoped not.

  “Three sixes,” said Cherie.

  “You were in there with him for a long time today,” Kirk said to me, not even noticing her bluff. “You missed arts therapy.”

  “How do you know that?” I demanded. “You aren’t even in my arts group.”

  “Roberto told me. Two sevens.”

>   I glanced at the pile and decided that yes, it was worth it. “Cheat,” I said, and with a grunt of annoyance Kirk scooped up all the discards and added them to his hand. Which served him right, because Roberto wouldn’t have said anything if Kirk hadn’t asked him first. “Since when are you so interested in my schedule?” I asked. “Did Dr. Minta make us swim buddies when I wasn’t looking?”

  “Ha ha,” said Kirk, eyes fixed on his cards. But there was no humor in his face, and his laughter was all sharp points. Cherie touched his arm, but he shook her off. “Are you going to play or not?”

  She sighed. “One seven. Kirk, just let it go, all right?”

  There was something going on here I didn’t understand. “Do you know something about Dr. Faraday that I don’t?” I asked Kirk. “Because you’re acting . . . kind of weird.”

  “No, I don’t know anything. I—”

  “Kirk,” said a gruff voice, and we all looked up to see one of the male aides standing there. “Van’s here. Time to go.”

  “Van?” I said blankly.

  “Crap.” Kirk slapped his cards down on the table and shoved back his chair. “Guess I lose. See you around.”

  “Kirk, what’s—”

  But he was already gone.

  . . .

  “It’s no big deal about Kirk being discharged,” Cherie told me as we walked to the cafeteria for supper. “He’ll be back in a couple weeks anyway. They ship him out, he goes off his meds, and next thing you know he’s jumping up and down naked on top of the bus shelter, yelling that he can fly.”

  “So why doesn’t he keep taking the pills then?” I asked.

  Cherie shrugged. “He says they make him feel like a zombie. He’d rather ride the emo-coaster than be flat all the time.”

  I was silent, watching her out of the corner of my eye. How long would it be before Cherie was discharged as well? She’d put on a good fifteen pounds since I’d met her, and now she looked a lot more healthy. Scars still mapped her body, and I’d noticed her habit of biting her fingernails until they bled, but I’d never seen her try to seriously hurt herself in all the time I’d been here—unlike, say, Micheline.