Ultraviolet

by R. J. Anderson

  Theoretically was good; I liked that. It made it easier to pretend I wasn’t really talking about myself. “Like . . . seeing colors that aren’t on the regular spectrum. Or knowing a piece of fruit’s rotten inside, when nobody else can see anything wrong with it. Or . . .” I braced myself, and took the plunge—“being able to taste when somebody’s lying.”

  His brows rocketed up. “Really?”

  “Sort of,” I said, heat blooming in my face. “I don’t mean like mind reading or anything. You might be able to tell that someone isn’t telling the truth, but not what they were lying about. Or why.” And it had to be a deliberate deception, not just a joke or a mistake. But I’d said enough already.

  Faraday frowned, and anxiety flickered inside me. But when he spoke, his voice was mild. “I can’t say I’ve heard of anyone who could do those things before,” he said, “but there is a certain logic to it. We know, for instance, that some birds and insects perceive a far greater range of colors than we do, including the ultraviolet spectrum. That kind of vision might make it possible to perceive slight differences in hue that others miss. And it’s also been demonstrated that when a person lies they give out subtle bodily cues, and their heart rate and blood pressure are affected. So, if someone happened to have unusually well-developed vision and a high degree of sensory overlap . . .” He ran a finger beneath his lower lip, looking thoughtful. “Then yes, perhaps they would be able to sense those kinds of things.”

  I sat rigid, afraid to move in case the whole scene vanished and I woke up in Red Ward. A certain logic to it, he’d said, and yes, perhaps. And he’d meant it.

  “Alison?” Faraday reached across the table, fingers hovering over mine. “What is it?”

  “You,” I said hoarsely. “You . . . you don’t think I’m crazy. You don’t think I’m making this up.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “Of course it does!” Where the anger came from I didn’t know, but it was better than tears. “You’re a psychologist—”

  “Neuropsychologist.”

  “—and I’m a patient in a mental hospital. You’re supposed to think I’m crazy. You’re even supposed to be worried that I’m dangerous. How do you think I ended up here—that I just got off at the wrong bus stop? I killed someone.”

  An enormous silence crashed down between us. I sat immobile, appalled at my own self-betrayal. But Faraday didn’t jump to his feet and shout for help, or even look alarmed. He just regarded me steadily for a moment, and then he said, “How?”

  Surprise blanked my senses. “What?”

  “How did you do it? The killing, I mean.”

  “Wh—why are you asking me this?”

  His eyes met mine, serene as a trusting child’s. “Because, to be quite honest, I’m finding it difficult to imagine you hurting anyone. So you’re going to have to explain to me how it happened.”

  I couldn’t look at him any longer. I got up and walked to the window. The clouds outside were the color of bone, the birch trees delicate as nerve fibers. I leaned against the glass and closed my eyes.

  “I couldn’t stand to be around her,” I said hollowly. “Nearly everybody I knew thought she was perfect, but right from the beginning I sensed there was something wrong about her. . . .”

  “You don’t tell anyone about this,” Tori hissed at me. “Get it? I swear, if you even say one word, I’ll make you sorry.”

  It was the night of our high school’s Spring Cabaret—our last chance to raise money for the big year-end trip to Toronto. The stage band, drama club, and choir had been practicing for weeks, and everyone had pitched in to help—from the art students who’d spent hours decorating the gym, to the mysterious technical wizard who had fixed our aging sound equipment and set it up with professional skill last night.

  I was especially glad for that last one, because it made my job easier. Mr. Adams, the music director, had asked me to play audience during the dress rehearsal and help make sure every microphone and every speaker sounded right. I’d taken that task so seriously that I’d drawn up a whole chart for our sound technician Dave—how the main mike had to be at four when Tori was introducing the numbers and eight when Lara sang her solo because her voice was so much softer, that kind of thing. And I’d made especially sure that the microphones for the jazz choir worked, because the medley they were singing was one I’d arranged myself.

  The gym was filling up, the backstage crowded with nervous performers, and the Cabaret was about to start when Dave came running up to Mr. Adams in a panic. He’d taken a last-minute trip to the washroom, only to find when he came back that somebody had taken his sound board and cut all the cords for the microphones too.

  I didn’t even wait to be asked. I sprinted upstairs to the music department and flung open the door of the equipment room—only to find Tori crouching on the floor, surrounded by smashed-in speakers and tangled wires. Her upswept hair had tumbled out of its pins, the hem of her angel-white dress was gray with dust, and she clutched the two halves of a broken microphone as though she’d just pulled it apart.

  I was so shocked that for a few seconds I couldn’t even hear the Noise. All I could do was stare, unable to comprehend why Tori would do such a thing. Not just because she’d been on the committee that put the Cabaret together in the first place, but because Lara Mackey’s solo was the opening act, and Lara had been Tori’s best friend since seventh grade. Sure, they’d had a bit of a quarrel when Tori started dating Brendan, but—

  She didn’t give me time to finish the thought. “Don’t tell anyone,” she snapped. Then she flung the ruined microphone aside and stormed out.

  I knew what would happen next. Tori would brush off her gown, fix her hair and glide backstage, ready for her role as emcee. I’d be left to report to Mr. Adams that we had no sound equipment. The Cabaret would go on, because it was too late to cancel, but when Lara came out for her solo, the jazz band would play right over her. She’d be humiliated, and once again, Tori Beaugrand would be the star of the show.

  I’d had enough of this. I grabbed the microphone Tori had dropped, and went to find Mr. Adams. He didn’t believe me when I told him Tori was the one who’d destroyed the equipment—in fact he snapped at me to stop wasting his time with my ridiculous accusations. But Lara overheard us talking, burst into hysterical sobs and fled out the side door, leaving the band to play without her. Everyone was flustered, and the Cabaret was a disaster.

  I managed to avoid Tori all the rest of that night and the weekend that followed. But as soon as I walked into school the next Monday, she grabbed me by the arm and breathed in my ear, “You are so dead.”

  And by the end of that day, as I lay shuddering on the asphalt with Tori’s blood on my hands and her dying screams still tearing at my ears, I almost wished she’d been right. . . .

  “She started the fight,” I said to Faraday. “Pushing me around and shouting at me, telling me things—things I didn’t want to hear. And at first, all I wanted was to get away. But she wouldn’t let me go, and the more she pushed me the angrier I got—”

  I was in the moment now, the library around me fading into the parking lot outside Champlain Secondary as my merciless memory supplied every detail. I’d struck out at Tori with both hands, not even knowing or caring where I hit. It was sheer bad luck that she’d ducked away from my left fist as it came down, and ended up taking a solid hit to the face with my right. I’d felt her nose crack, there’d been a sickening gush of blood, and when I panicked and tried to stop the flow with my hands she’d shoved me away—

  “Alison,” said Faraday softly. “Stay with me. What did you do?”

  “I don’t . . .” The lie made my stomach heave, but it was my last chance to escape. “I can’t remember.”

  “Yes, you do. Otherwise, why would you think you killed her?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Try me.”

  “You’ll think I’m crazy.” Maybe I am.

  Farad
ay didn’t reply. But I could feel his eyes on my back, and the silence between us stretched thinner and thinner until finally, I broke.

  “She . . . disintegrated.” I turned around and sank onto the windowsill. “The Noise—it got so loud I felt like my head was splitting open, and I could feel it . . . her . . . everything, all at once, and she screamed as she came apart but I couldn’t make it stop, and I could still hear her screaming even after there was nothing left of her—”

  I couldn’t go on. I hunched over, and buried my face in my hands.

  “No wonder,” Faraday said, with a tremor in his voice that might have been shock, or revulsion, or excitement, or all three. “No wonder they thought you were insane.”

  And now he thought so, too. I’d ruined everything—but the pain of reliving what I’d done to Tori was even worse. I clenched my teeth, willing myself to think of Bach concertos, old movie clips, lines from Shakespeare, radio commercials. Anything but the memory of Tori Beaugrand with her bloodied face and her body twisted in anguish, shrieking—

  Faraday crouched in front of me, so close I could feel his warmth. “But I don’t,” he said. “Alison, do you hear me? I believe you.”

  NINE (IS BLACK)

  I believe you.

  If it hadn’t been for the gentle weight of Faraday’s hand on my shoulder, I’d have thought I was hallucinating. I’d dreamed of hearing those words so long, it was almost too much to accept that I was really hearing them. “You do? But . . . why?”

  “I can’t explain,” he said. “Not in any way that would make sense to you, not yet. But I believe that what you’ve told me about Tori is the truth, and that it happened exactly the way you remember it.” His fingers tightened briefly, reassuring. “Now. Do you believe me?”

  I licked my dry lips and nodded.

  “Good,” he said, and let me go.

  Dazed, I watched him walk back to his chair and sit down. I expected him to say something else, but he didn’t. He just sat there, waiting, until my chest filled up with words and I felt like I’d explode if I didn’t let them out.

  “It was my fault,” I said. “I didn’t mean to kill her, but somehow I did. And I knew it wouldn’t be right to deny it. I was in so much pain I could barely think straight, but I tried to tell my mother, and then the police, what I’d done. They didn’t believe me.”

  “Even though they knew that Tori had disappeared?” asked Faraday. “And that you were the last one to have seen her? I’m surprised the police didn’t question you more closely, once you were lucid again.”

  “They tried,” I said, “or at least Constable Deckard did. But by then I’d blanked it all out, and I couldn’t remember anything. And when I did remember, I knew there was no point in telling the same story over again. So I just let them go on thinking that I’d forgotten.” I got up from the windowsill and walked back to my chair. “But I don’t know how much longer I can do that. The police have been looking for Tori for weeks now without finding anything, and I’m sure they suspect that I killed her, even if they can’t figure out—”

  “Alison,” said Faraday, “you didn’t kill her.”

  The words speared through me, and my head whipped around. He regarded me with an expression at once grave and compassionate, like Jesus on a Sunday School poster, and I stared into his impossible eyes until I felt my own beginning to burn. “But you said . . . you told me you believed . . .”

  “I said I believed that Tori had disintegrated. I never said I believed you were responsible.” He leaned forward, pinning me with his gaze. “You might be able to sense some things that ordinary people can’t—that’s a logical application of synesthesia, at least in theory. But blasting someone to atoms simply by thinking about it? Where would you get an ability like that?”

  “But people don’t just disintegrate—”

  “No, but people don’t just make other people disintegrate, either. What made you believe that you could? Have you ever disintegrated anything else?”

  “No!”

  “Well, then,” he said, “perhaps it’s time you tried. Let’s do an experiment, shall we? How about this wastebasket?” He picked it up from beside the sofa and set it on the table between us. “You can stare at it or shout at it or do whatever you think you did to Tori, and—”

  I recoiled. “I can’t.”

  “Why not? Do you need to be more frightened? More angry?”

  Couldn’t he see that I was terrified already? I shook my head.

  “Think about it,” Faraday said. “It would take an incredible amount of energy to disintegrate even the tiniest object, let alone a human being. Where would all that energy come from? It can’t have been inside of you, or you of all people would have sensed it. And besides, that much energy would have destroyed you long before it got to anyone else.” He set the wastebasket down, his violet eyes sober. “I’m sorry, Alison.”

  “Sorry.” It was a struggle to push the word past the tightening noose in my throat. “What for?”

  “Because you’ve been treated like a criminal, you’ve treated yourself like one, and it should never have happened. After hearing your story, there’s no doubt in my mind that you are not only sane . . . but innocent.”

  I couldn’t take any more. I jumped up, ignoring Faraday’s protest, and fled. Blindly I stumbled up the hallway toward the courtyard exit, desperate to find a place where I could cry and not be seen.

  The sob that burst from my lips was streaked with orange, as though it had cracked a rib on the way out. I shoved the door with my shoulder, pummelled the glass with my fists, slammed a hip into the bar, but it refused to open.

  “What’s going on?” asked Jennifer sharply. I spun around and she stepped back, palms up in a careful nonthreatening gesture. “Easy, Alison. I just want to help.”

  How many weeks had I been here without causing the staff even the slightest trouble? And yet all I had to do was rattle a door to make them nervous. “I want outside,” I choked. “I want to be alone.”

  Jennifer glanced back at Marilyn, sitting behind the nurses’ station, and an unspoken message passed between them. “Okay, look,” she said. “There’s some work being done on the courtyard right now, so how about I take you back to your room, and we’ll get you lying down.”

  “I can’t. Cherie—” She’d be packing, getting ready to leave. I couldn’t stand to look at her, not when she was going home and I couldn’t.

  “It’s okay,” Jennifer assured me. “She’s gone. It’ll be just you and me for now, all right?”

  Miserably, I nodded. She took my elbow as though I were ninety, and together we shuffled back toward the residential wing. As we passed the library I stiffened, but Faraday was no longer there.

  “Try to relax,” said Jennifer when we reached my bedside. She punched the pillow into shape, lifted my feet onto the bed as I slumped sideways, and drew the blanket around my shoulders. “Would you like me to call Dr. Minta?”

  “No,” I mumbled into the pillow. All he’d be able to offer me was fake sympathy or antidepressants, and I didn’t want either.

  Jennifer hesitated, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “I know it must be hard,” she said, “starting all over with a new roommate. Especially—well. Anyway. But I know you’ll do fine.”

  It was the longest speech I’d ever heard her make, and the kindest. If she hadn’t been so wrong about the reason I was upset, I might have felt grateful. As it was, I ignored her.

  “Fine,” said Jennifer, her usual briskness returning. “You can rest until lunchtime. But after that they’ll be coming in to inspect the room, so—”

  I rolled over. “What?”

  “For Micheline,” she said. “She’s been doing a lot better lately, but we have to check the room carefully to make sure she can’t hurt herself.”

  “Micheline?” I sat up, my stomach convulsing. “You’re moving her? You’re putting her in here?”

  Jennifer was taken aback. “I thought Marilyn had told you
. I thought—” She left the sentence unfinished, but I could see the rest of it clearly as if it had been written across her forehead: I thought that was why you were upset.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned, not sure if it was a curse or a prayer. “I’m going to throw up.”

  And I did.

  . . .

  Jennifer must have requested a lunch tray for me, because it showed up an hour later in the hands of Simone, a middle-aged aide with a face like a basset hound. She thumped it down on the desk beside the bed, said, “Fifteen minutes,” and left.

  Even now that my stomach had settled, I didn’t feel much like eating, but I managed to nibble a corner off the sandwich and force down a few crackers. Then I lay down again, but I couldn’t sleep—not now that I knew Micheline might show up at any moment. And especially not with Faraday’s last words still seared across the back of my mind.

  Not only sane . . . but innocent.

  I should have been happy, or at least relieved, to hear him say it. But right now all I could think was how stupid I’d been. For six weeks now, I’d blamed myself for Tori’s death, and lived in fear of the terrible power inside me. I’d told myself I had to get out of Pine Hills, for everyone’s sake—but all my attempts to regain my freedom had failed, and now I knew why.

  First I’d appealed Dr. Minta’s decision prematurely, with hardly any evidence to back up my case. Then when my appeal failed I’d turned my back on my mother, the only one with the power to overrule Dr. Minta, and told her I didn’t want to talk to her again. After that I’d decided to take myself off my meds, which wasn’t a bad idea in itself; but what I’d done with my pills was more than just risky, it was reckless. It was the kind of thing people did when they wanted to be caught.

  It had taken Faraday to make me realize the truth, but I saw it clearly now. All along I’d been sabotaging myself, because deep down I still thought of myself as a murderer, the kind of person who didn’t deserve to be free.