The Fall of Never(49)

She knew where he was headed. And no, she didn’t fault him for his curiosity. He’d been her friend once, or at least tried to be, and he was owed something, wasn’t he? In his own small way, he’d been affected by what happened to her back then too.

“When I went away,” she said. “You’re talking about the institution?”

“When you left, I wanted to say something to you, to see if there was something that maybe I could have done. I don’t know.”

“There was nothing you could have done.”

“And then after that—well, you never came back, Kelly.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. There was just too much bullshit, you understand?”

He shook his head. “Yes and no,” he said. “I mean, I don’t understand. Not all of it. I didn’t then, and I still don’t even now. And I don’t mean about the institution. Back then—sometimes it was like we were the best of friends—”

“You were my only friend.”

“But then other times it seemed like you wanted nothing to do with me. And then that day I came over, and what happened down in the woods, and that’s when you closed up. Just like that. Never said anything to anyone after that. You scared me and I missed you.” He tried to laugh but it came out too jittery. “Shit, kid, I’m sorry. You didn’t come back home to hear any of this.”

“No. It’s all right.”

“So what happened to you? Why’d you go away? And do I even have the right to ask that of you? I mean, we’re really just two strangers sitting here…”

“It was a nervous breakdown,” she said.

“You were fifteen.” As if this was proof against her own reasoning.

“It was a head-thing, a mental thing. I just broke down.”

“What did it to you? Did something happen?”

Again, she thought about meeting little Gabriel Farmer in the forest that day. She’d watched him blot blood from his knees, then also wipe it off her own forehead (although she could not recall what had happened to her). They’d talked, and he had sketched her face in the dirt with a stick, and that had made her laugh. Gabriel Farmer, falling off the damned rope swing and cutting both his knees. Had he ever made it to the top of the tree that year? She didn’t think she ever saw him climb so high. Was it possible that he’d made it to the top sometime after she’d gone away? Maybe one day by himself, maybe even angry with her for leaving him, he’d gone back down into the forest and climbed that towering tree straight to the top, or as high as his weight would allow. And he’d been a twig of a thing, so that would have been pretty high. My God, did he go back and climb it all by himself? What if he’d fallen? He could’ve been killed.

“I don’t know what set it off,” she said and it was the truth. “I mean, I can’t remember now. And that’s why I stayed at that institution so long—they wanted me to remember, but I couldn’t remember. Christ, I didn’t even know if there was anything to remember.”

“How long did you stay in there?”

“Three years. I signed out when I was eighteen.”

“Was it bad?”

“The hospital?”

“Was it cruel? I just have this image of barred windows and people screaming crazy behind locked doors. I couldn’t shake that image for a long time after you went away.”

Went away, she thought. My God, it makes me sound like a certified psychopath.

“It wasn’t too bad, but I don’t remember it very well,” she said, but could easily summon the institution in her mind: peeling walls and dried vomit on the communal sofa in the TV room. Loose-leaf pages taped to the hallway walls: crude drawings done in crayon and watercolor. The regiment of nurses was unrelenting. They were everywhere. And then that breaking point—that key point in time when she felt like she suddenly opened her eyes, really opened them, and realized where she was and why she was here. And thought, What if I never get out of here? What if I’m locked up in this place for the rest of my life? What if I die in here? And she thought maybe that was a very real possibility, that maybe a great number of these young girls in here would simply grow old and die while locked away like broken dolls in a trunk. And then what? What did they do with the bodies, the corpses? Did they chop them up and serve them on those steel lunch pallets, serve them with those rock-hard biscuits and half-frozen slaw? There was no shaking the initial suffocation. The rooms were too small, and two, sometimes three to a room. The beds were white and sterile. The sheets were tissue paper, the pillows hard. She’d seen girls cut themselves and bleed there, but that was usually the worst of it. No one died. At least, to her knowledge. Though there were screams—mostly at night, and muffled through the walls and echoing down the hallways. Screams of pain and the unrelenting sobs of the frightened. She’d been a sobber, too, on more than one occasion. Futile sobs: no one came running, no one listened, no one cared in that cold, cold place. And in many ways, it was very much like home.

Kelly thought: I remember Mouse and the two dead girls on the third floor. The thought shook her and initially made no sense.

“You look sad,” Gabriel said.

She looked at him, then looked down again, feigning interest in the creases of her hands, the label on the bottle of beer. “I was in there for three years,” she half-whispered. “And maybe that was what I needed, but three years? How do parents send their children away to places like that? Send them away and just forget about them? In three years, my parents never came, never stopped by to see if I was even still alive.”