Lakewood(28)

That night, no longer on a heavy dose of painkillers, Lena couldn’t fall asleep. In the dark, every shadow was a man she didn’t know. She would drift toward sleep, only to feel fingers wrapped around her throat, pain in her face. She turned the lights on. Still, sleep only arrived in short bursts. She kept waking up stroking the silk pillowcase, turning to look at the lamp on her nightstand. When she bought the owl lamp it looked cute, but now its stern white face was less than reassuring.

Lena wanted to text Tanya.

She was up late every night; Tanya would be thrilled if Lena called and asked if she wanted to watch a movie at the same time. Tanya coped with her insomnia by making things—art, desserts—and would have been happy to send Lena pictures of whatever project she was working on.

The next morning, Lena woke up at 9:30. She threw on a pair of leggings, started to pull on a dress, and got her bad wrist stuck in an arm hole. Tears welled up. She had to yank her arm hard to get it out. When Lena looked in the mirror, she hated how she looked but didn’t have time to change.

On the way to work, Lena fantasized about all the bad behavior she wanted to indulge in. Childish ideas like taking scissors off Dr. Lisa’s desk and cutting some of the doctor’s hair when her back was turned. Or stealing something small off her desk like a nice pen or a photo or the large geode, and then throwing it into the woods behind Great Lakes Shipping Company. Or she could tell the observers all the terrible nicknames she had for them: Crooked Nose, Haircut, Dad Jeans, Pancake Butt, Einstein Eyebrows. In the office, everyone was gathered in the conference room. Lena slipped into the room, stood at the back. Mariah was the only one who noticed her. She mouthed something that looked like You good? Lena nodded.

“Part 2 of this project is to see if intimacy increases thought receptivity,” Dr. Lisa said. She paused, as if she was fighting the urge to make a hand motion or some sort of joke. She took a deep breath and said there was a theory that sometimes, when you were bonded too closely with someone, you couldn’t truly hear or see them. Your impression of who they were and who you thought they should be was permanently in the way once intimacy was established. You see the people you don’t know well the clearest.

Dr. Lisa began pairing people off. “Lena and Charlie.” She handed them a sheet of paper with questions to ask each other. They were encouraged to go somewhere and talk without observation.

Charlie drove them to the meadow near the lake. They small-talked about her car, how the observers had her windshield fixed for her. He couldn’t stop glancing at her wrist.

“You should make sure to come here in August,” Charlie said as he parked. “It’s one of the prettiest places in Lakewood then. There are these tiny flowers. Purple and red. And you can eat them.”

“How do they taste?”

“Like flowers.”

They walked through the tall grass until they could see Long Lake and the woods bordering it. Although it was May, Lena could see some patches of purple flowers where the grass was shorter. Two squirrels were chasing each other through the meadow, up a large tree, back down, around the brown city-provided recycling bin. Chattering at each other in a way Lena thought could only mean If I get my paws on you, I’m going to waste you.

Lena and Charlie sat down and looked at the sheet. There were at least 50 bullet-pointed questions, the text small and close together.

“This is like speed-dating.” Lena ran her finger along the question WHAT THREE ITEMS WOULD YOU BRING TO A DESERT ISLAND?

Charlie tore some grass out, rubbed it between his fingers, let it flutter down to rest on his knees. “Miss Lena Johnson, if you could have a famous singer sing to you, who would you choose? Why?”

“I hate the idea of someone singing to me,” Lena said. “Just thinking about it gives me a somebody-stepped-on-my-grave feeling.”

“Isn’t there a special word for that feeling?”

“Probably not in English. English has no special words.”

“Why does singing make you think about death?”

“Someone looking in my eyes while singing doesn’t make me feel like dying. It makes me feel so embarrassed that I long for death.”

They paused. Charlie stared out in the distance. Lena looked again at the sheet. “These questions are stupid.”

“Maybe they’re stupid on purpose. I read once that army training officers are real assholes to give their cadets a common enemy. People do things better, like each other better, when they have something to fight against.”

“I doubt they want us united against them.”

Sunlight peeked out between white clouds passing overhead. Every negative feeling Lena felt over the past few days festered. It might make her feel better to vent about the cabin, her wrist, to tell someone about the video. Or how it pissed her off that her mother could text for hours with someone else and not notice it wasn’t Lena. Her mother was the one person in the world who was supposed to notice. But Lena didn’t know if she could trust Charlie. And besides, they probably weren’t alone.

“What was it like to grow up here?”

“Do you mean in general? Or.” Charlie gestured at himself.

In the distance, she could hear what sounded like a speedboat. Birds. Wind. Lena was still used to her neighborhood at home, and school, where it was rare not to feel like you were in a constant cloud of conversations. Sounds of people walking around, half-heard televisions.