Be Not Afraid Read online

  “Do you ride?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I have an Epic Twenty-Nine. I take it out every chance I get. I think it’s probably my favorite way to spend time.”

  “An Epic Twenty-Nine?” I looked at him out of the corner of one eye. “Isn’t that what last year’s winner of the World Cup rode?”

  Now it was his turn to look at me again. “Yeah, actually,” he said. “It was. You know your bikes, don’t you?”

  I looked back out the window, flustered by the compliment. He would never know how the bottom of my stomach plummeted, like an elevator in free fall, whenever he came into my presence. Right now, I wasn’t sure my stomach even had a bottom anymore. “What about running?” I asked, struggling to sound nonchalant. “I thought running and track were more your thing.”

  He shrugged. “Running’s cool. But it’s sort of my second speed. Like you said, I could go faster. Being on top of that bike sometimes can make me feel like I’m flying.” He paused. “I like that feeling, you know?”

  “Yeah.” My heart pounded. “I know.”

  The car slowed as he eased it along the curb in front of a low gray building. Thick hedges flanked the entrance, and small windows stared out at the night like empty eyes. He turned off the engine, ran his fingers through his hair. “All right. You ready?”

  No. I nodded.

  He pointed to the hospital. “This way.”

  Maybe I was still in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest mode, expecting to see patients slumped over in chairs muttering to themselves or tight-lipped nurses in starched uniforms handing out pink and blue pills. Still, even with my sunglasses on, I hadn’t expected things to look like this. Except for the woman sitting behind a wide desk at one end of the hallway, the entire first floor looked like someone’s living room. A wealthy someone’s living room. Plush red chairs with fat pillows were pressed up neatly against the walls. Two gigantic area rugs pictured flying cranes and gold-roofed pagodas. The windows were dressed with heavy brocade drapes that fastened in the middle with silk braided ties. The sound of classical music drifted down from somewhere by the ceiling, and I could smell wood polish in the air.

  “This place is unreal,” I whispered, trotting to keep up with Dominic.

  “This place has a lot of money,” he murmured back. “Treating mental illness is frigging expensive.”

  He stopped in front of the desk, which, besides the pane of glass surrounding it like a moat, could have been any front desk. In any hospital.

  “I’m back to see my sister, Cassie Jackson,” Dominic said to the receptionist. “She’s in special observance on the third floor? I have another visitor too.” He reached out and touched my arm lightly. “Right here.”

  “Your names?” The woman, young, pretty, glanced at me and then back at Dominic. Beneath her hands, which were poised over the computer keyboard, I could see a copy of Twilight: New Moon overturned in her lap. And except for a pale blue mark on the outside of her neck, her flawless skin had an alabaster quality to it. I looked at the blue spot on the woman’s neck again; at this distance, even with my dark glasses on, I could see the navy, cylindrical shape beneath it, one side of it darker than the other.

  “I’m Dominic Jackson.” He stepped back, making room for me. “And this is Marin Winters.”

  I slid a glance at him. He remembered my last name too?

  “Have a seat, please.” The woman looked at the screen as she spoke, her fingers racing along the keys. “Someone will be with you in a moment.”

  We sat down in the beautiful, silk-backed chairs. A trembling had started in my fingertips, and I slid my hands under my legs. I could feel the muscles in my arms quavering; the middle of my stomach felt light and dense at the same time. Across the room, the blue mass in the receptionist’s neck throbbed like a traffic light. Please, I thought. Please let the inside of that hickey be the only thing I see in this place today.

  Several silent moments passed. I stared at my red Keds, pressing the insoles together over and over again, as if the movement might realign everything else inside that felt off. When an attendant appeared and said, “Marin and Dominic?” I stood up too quickly.

  The attendant, who was dressed all in white besides his black shoes, led us into an elevator that smelled like Windex. I looked around, but there were no buttons to push, no panel to direct us where to go. Instead, the attendant inserted a small silver key into a keyhole near the doors and turned it to the right. The elevator jolted awake and began to move. I stared at the floor, then over at the attendant’s shoes, which were tied with big, loopy laces. I wondered what kinds of things he saw in a place like this, if he’d ever gotten hurt, wrestling someone to the ground. Had anyone ever spit on him or charged at him with some kind of sharp object? What made someone want to go into this line of work? What made someone keep coming back to work like this?

  The doors opened again, and the attendant stepped out into a bare hallway. “She’s at the end of the hall,” he said, looking at Dominic. “You know where to go.”

  By now my armpits were sweating, the tips of my fingers ice cold. I stared at the series of van Gogh prints on the wall—Starry Night, Sunflowers, Sidewalk Café at Arles—and wondered if the people who decorated this place knew that van Gogh had been out of his mind, too, or if it was just a sad coincidence. The hallway was nothing like the waiting room downstairs. Except for the paintings, it was almost bare. Vivid white walls, no greenery or plants. The linoleum, a smudged creamy color, was littered with footprints, and the absence of windows cast a gray tint over everything.

  “Who’s with her?” I asked, my nerves getting the best of me. “I mean right now. Who’s back there with Cassie?”

  Dominic slowed, falling back into step alongside me. “Just my parents.”

  I nodded. I had never met Mr. or Mrs. Jackson. They had been out of the country in October when everything happened at their house, and I still wasn’t sure if they knew about any of it.

  “They just got here this afternoon,” Dominic said. “They were in Florida at our time-share.” He lowered his voice. “They’re not very happy.”

  I looked over at him curiously. They weren’t very happy about what, exactly? That their daughter was in a mental hospital? Or that they’d had to cut their vacation short? I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t any of my business what kind of parents they were. Although maybe, just maybe, it explained a few other things.

  Cassie’s room was at the very end, a wing all its own, complete with a small waiting area in the front and a private bathroom. One of the pale blue walls had been decorated with a poster of a small kitten hanging from a rope. Beneath the kitten’s dangling feet was the adage, When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on! Two adults stood up from a couch against the other wall as Dominic and I approached. I could feel the suggestion of Dominic’s first two fingers against the small of my back as he moved me toward them, and I tried to breathe normally.

  “Mom, Dad, this is Marin.”

  “You’re Marin?” Mrs. Jackson spoke first, looking me up and down with a sweep of her eyes. She was expensively dressed: a yellow silk blouse, close-fitting black pants cinched with a leather belt, high black heels. She had beautiful auburn hair, which had been twisted up and anchored in the back, and her ears were adorned with large pearl studs.

  “Yes. Nice to meet you.” I tried not to stare at the orange ball beneath her blouse, which appeared to be moving up and down inside her stomach. I’d seen one like this before in a student at school, but it was nowhere near as big. This one was enormous, and the center was almost brown, as if it was starting to rot from the inside out. I was pretty sure it was an ulcer.

  “You as well.” Mrs. Jackson shook my hand stiffly. “Are you a new friend of Cassandra’s? I don’t know if I’ve ever heard your name before.”

  “Not really.” I shook my head. “I mean, we know each other from school. A little.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Jackson looked even more puzzled.
r />   “Thank you so much for coming.” Mr. Jackson stepped forward, his hand extended. “It means a lot.” I shook it, marveling at the enormity of his fingers, the width of his palm. Like his wife, Mr. Jackson was dressed well—navy blue pants, a white-and-blue-checkered dress shirt, and jacket. He looked like Dominic but older, with gray hair around his ears and deep lines in his cheeks. Handsome to a fault. “Ever since we got here, all she’s been saying is that she wants to talk to you.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Jackson tilted her head to one side. “What in the world is all that about?”

  “I don’t know.” I glanced away from the orange ball in her stomach. “I really don’t.”

  “Well, maybe it’s just part of everything else that no one seems able to make sense of today.” She crossed her thin arms over her chest and gazed around the room. “Although, they are ninety-nine percent sure it’s epilepsy, what she has. And that she had a grand mal seizure today. So that’s something at least. A diagnosis. And it’s an entirely treatable condition, too, thank God. With the right medication, she’s going to be just fine.” She pressed the fingers of one hand against her breastbone and winced. “They’re saying she might even be able to go home tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Dominic repeated. “Really?”

  “That’s what they’re saying,” Mrs. Jackson replied. “There’s no reason to keep her in a mental hospital if she has epilepsy. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know, but—”

  “I don’t want her here.” Mrs. Jackson caught herself, glancing at her husband. “We don’t want her here. She doesn’t belong in a place like this. I’d rather have a nurse come to the house and help me take care of her there.” She nodded once, the discussion finished.

  A pregnant pause filled the room. I bit my lip, stared down at my shoes.

  “They just gave her a little something to calm her down.” Mr. Jackson gestured toward a closed door behind him. “She’s in there resting now. I think it might be a good time, if you want to go in.”

  I could feel something sour pooling in the back of my throat as I looked at the door.

  “You want me to go in with you?” Dominic asked.

  Yes. I hesitated. “No. It’ll be all right.” I tried to smile. “I’ll yell if I need you.”

  “Yell?” Mrs. Jackson inquired. “Why would you need to yell?”

  Dominic and I exchanged a look. “She won’t,” he said. “Go ahead, Marin. Take your time.”

  The room was tinier than I expected, smaller even than my bedroom at home, with tan padded walls, a dark-green-carpeted floor, and a panel with three different colored buttons close to the door. Cassie was in the middle of the room, stretched flat on her back in a hospital bed. Both her eyes were closed and white blankets had been pulled up to her waist and then folded over again. A single pillow beneath her head looked as if it had just been fluffed, and someone had combed her long blond hair. Heavy straps secured both of her wrists, and her hands were positioned carefully on either side of her, as if someone had arranged them after she had gone to sleep.

  Her body told a different story. The purple orb inside her tongue had gotten darker. Beneath the lower half of her bare arms, I could see little blue and pink glimmers under the skin, darting this way and that way, like bright fish. And on the right side of her face, beneath the soft gauze taped to her cheek, was a deep, cavernous carving of the number eight. I stared at it for a moment, repulsed and horrified at the same time; the damaged nerves and severed vessels quivered with pink ribbons of pain, and the edges of it dripped blue.

  Would that be the worst of it? I flicked my eyes over her face, scanned the top of her head. I dropped them lower beneath her eyes and then over the top of her head one more time, just in case, but there was no sign of anything else. No dark suggestion of what I thought I’d seen before.

  Okay.

  Deep breath.

  Okay, then.

  I walked closer to the bed and rested my hands on the metal railings. “Cassie?” My voice was a whisper.

  Beneath the lids, I could see her eyeballs moving, first to one side, and then to the other. She blinked once and again and then stared up at the ceiling.

  “Cassie.” I said her name again, a little louder.

  She turned her head, looked at me, her eyes coming into focus. “Marin?” Her voice was hoarse; her lips quivered.

  I nodded.

  She tried to sit up, but the restraints around her wrists made it impossible. She yanked on them, an impatient grunt coming out of her mouth.

  “No, no, don’t.” I reached out and touched one of them. “Just stay still.” I paused as she searched my face, looking for something. Her gaze felt like an insect of some kind, crawling over my skin, getting ready to burrow under the topmost layer. “Your brother came to get me.” I swallowed. “He said you wanted to see me? To talk to me?”

  She nodded, her eyes glued to my face. “My head,” she whispered. “I think it’s in my head.”

  I stared at her, confused. “What’s in your head?”

  There was a long pause, as if she was trying to retrieve the answer from somewhere very far away. “She is,” she said finally. “Don’t you remember?”

  Her answer made me take a step back, as if she had swung at me.

  Cassie blinked at the movement, raised her head an inch or so off the pillow. “Marin? You remember, don’t you?”

  I took another step back as a small moan drifted out between her lips, and then another, until I was within arm’s reach of the door.

  “It hurts.” She turned her eyes away from me, moving her head from side to side. “Oh my God, it hurts so much, Marin. You have no idea.”

  “It’s ’cause you’re sick,” I said. “You had a seizure at school this morning, and you hit your head on the floor. The doctors think you have epilepsy. But there’s medicine you can take, and—”

  I stopped talking as Cassie’s hands curled into balls and then released. For a moment they seemed to freeze just above the metal frame of her bed, and then they curled up again. Her knuckles bulged beneath the skin, knobs of bone smooth as shells, and then her fingers relaxed once more. Slowly, she began to scratch the sides of the bed. Scritch scritch scritch. She dragged them across the thin metal, her nails making a low, rasping sound. The veins on the backs of her hands stood out as she scraped harder, and the edges of her nostrils turned white. The movements became more frenetic the harder she clawed, as if she were trying to flay a layer of skin with the top of the metal bar. A fingernail split and then broke, followed by another one on the other hand, but she didn’t seem to notice, did not even break her stride. The back of my throat tightened. Was this the beginning of another fit? Should I call for help? The horrific scraping sound continued, but now as I watched, the tips of her fingers began to turn a strange gray color. The color deepened and swelled, the gray morphing into a faded purple and then a violet, until, impossibly, all ten of her fingers were black. I squinted, as if my eyes were playing tricks on me. But these were not pain shapes inside her fingers. It was as though ink had leaked through her skin, staining her fingertips from the inside out. They looked dead, lifeless, as if she had suddenly gotten gangrene.

  By now, I had flattened myself against the door. My hands were over my ears, in a desperate attempt to block out the horrifying scraping sound. Without warning, Cassie turned her head and stared at me with the same awful intensity that she had in the auditorium, pleading, furious, demanding. The movement made me jump so spastically that my sunglasses fell to the floor, but I made no move to pick them up. Instead, I glimpsed the sudden swish of black again, a ribbon caressing the inner hollows of her head, slipping in among the wide space behind her eyes like a dark, fluid stream of water. There was no room for hesitation this time, no possibility of doubt. The blackness was as real as anything I’d ever seen; it moved slowly, deliberately through her head, as if on display this time, wanting to be seen.

  I opened my mouth to scream for D
ominic, but nothing came out. It was like something clutched at my vocal cords, was squeezing them into paralysis. My hand scrabbled for the doorknob behind me, even as I felt my legs giving way.

  Cassie struggled to sit up. Her long hair fell around the front of her shoulders, and a vein bulged along the side of her neck as she wrenched at the restraints around her wrists. A horrible tearing sound came from one of them as the Velcro began to give, but they stayed. Impossibly, they stayed.

  I became aware of a faint rattling sound. It was coming from my teeth, which had started chattering, clicking against each other like some kind of windup toy. Cassie strained against the cuffs again, leaning forward, grunting with increased deliberation. Her dead fingertips curled at the tips like black hooks, and the inky stream inside her head continued to flow in an endless, steady current.

  Runrunrun! my brain commanded. Runrunrun! But I could not make myself move. It was as if the blackness inside her head had somehow riveted me to the floor, some weird energy putting nails in my feet, stakes in my legs. The color was so dark that I could not see her pupils anymore—they had been swallowed into a mass of tar. Finally, I pounded on the door behind me with the sides of my fists, kicked at it with my heels.

  “Let me out!” My voice choked over the words. “Let me out!”

  I could hear the sound of someone pressed up behind it, the knob rattling in its slot. “Marin!” It was Dominic. “Marin, get away from the door!” Without taking my eyes off Cassie, I moved myself to the right. The door flew open, throwing me to the floor, and the attendant with the black shoes rushed in, followed by Dominic and Mr. and Mrs. Jackson. The attendant lunged for Cassie, grabbing at her flailing arms, his face tight with exertion, and shoved her back down against the bed.

  Cassie threw her head back and shrieked as he leaned over her, pinning her to the mattress with the weight of his body, and secured the loosened straps back around her arms.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Mrs. Jackson screamed. “Don’t you hurt her! She’s sick!”

  Dominic got down on one knee and helped me up. “Marin. Are you all right?”