Lakewood(56)

Three of their flyers were taped to the lamppost next to me. Another flyer taped above that: IF YOU’RE A SUBJECT IN A RESEARCH STUDY, YOU CAN BE RESCUED. Around campus last semester, some kids had done—I guess I would call it an art project? A prank?—where they put up posters claiming squirrels weren’t real. ALL SQUIRRELS YOU SEE ARE ROBOTS! You probably remember seeing one. The website said they were vehicles for tiny aliens from a distant galaxy. I told myself it could be the same style thing. The protesters I ran past were a little too old, though, to be doing fake internet hoaxes.

I threw my flyer on the ground and ran on to the closest donut shop. Sweaty and tired and gross, I sat in a booth, ordered a glass of water and a chocolate donut. How long have you been in research studies? a woman’s voice asked. I shook my head, sure that paranoia and anxiety were making me hear things. A man said that he wasn’t in them, he just was sure they were happening in this town. He had been hearing rumors for years. I know I should’ve left immediately. But I was too curious. I wanted to know what he meant by years.

The average person is most interested in someone who might give them attention. They would notice me if I turned my head or was obviously eavesdropping. I pulled out my phone, opened the notes section. The man said he had heard stories since he was a boy: You don’t ever go to the basement of the old hospital. He said colored people were always coming and going. The woman said Colored? in an I-beg-your-pardon way. It made me like her. I always like anyone who hears something racist and can immediately react, not get caught in the processing loop of what-the-fuck-did-I-just-hear. I wanted to see who they were, so I posed and took a selfie. Took another.

The woman was wearing a black blazer and small red reading glasses. The back of the man’s head was balding, a little sunburned. He could’ve been anyone. The woman looked like a television show’s idea of a reporter: a cute white woman with dark hair that was a little messy, like she was too busy hunting down stories to get a trim.

In the past, they’ve always told me whether or not I was in an experiment. But when I was in the facility, I saw notecards that sketched out things we would do outside of work. Things that had happened, like Charlie’s party. The woman could have easily been an actress. The whole situation could have been engineered for me to open up to her. I could see the neon-pink notecard: Lena acts as an anonymous source for a reporter, violates her NDA.

The man rambled about other things: the illness going around town, a man found dead in a car. His hands were blue. He still hadn’t been identified by anyone. The protesters, huge bats in the woods, ones that looked even bigger than fox bats. He said they were an evil corporation using people as slaves for these studies. I ate my donut quickly, got frosting on my lips, crumbs stuck in the corners of my mouth. The restaurant smelled like fryer grease and sugar, nothing-special coffee. The booths still stunk from the thousands of cigarettes people had once smoked there. I thought about how we used to stay up late studying, how I would take a hit off your vape pen, and for a few minutes after each puff my thoughts would run so clear. I could figure everything out, know the right path, if I could walk and talk with you honestly for an entire night.

I hate being alone.

The only thing the man said that made me think he was on to something was the bats. So much else was wrong. I’m getting paid, I’m getting excellent health care. The splatter of blood on Madison’s cheek. Mess on a wall. Her eyes blank. How much did she, her family, get paid to be in a study that made her do that? They’ve said I could leave.

So, this morning, I took one of the flyers in to work. I got Haircut to take me upstairs to Dr. Lisa’s office. There was a new plant hanging above her desk, its leaves neon-green. She was talking to the old man I had seen before, the one who had asked me about my grandma. When they saw me in the doorway, they stopped talking. When I showed them the flyer, Dr. Lisa raised her eyebrows, but the old man laughed.

He said people say small towns are boring, then told us about how, when he was in college, someone was sure Stephen King was the Zodiac Killer. They put up flyers all over the city with how the killer’s crimes lined up with things in his novels. He said the weird thing was that Stephen King didn’t live there. I couldn’t figure out who he was or what he was doing there. It was as if a well-liked college professor had stumbled into the observers. He had to be someone important. Dr. Lisa let the old man talk, listened to him attentively.

They asked me how this flyer made me feel. Scared, anxious, mostly, and parts of it were kind of funny but I couldn’t think of the right word for that. Then I asked them what would happen to all this if people found out. They asked me what makes me think people don’t already know about this, and then laughed. I wanted to ask them, Since when do you all have a sense of humor? Instead, I went back downstairs.

There was a Get Well Soon! card on my keyboard, though I had been back for so long already, and a new person in the cubicle next to mine. Taped over the STRESSED IS JUST DESSERTS SPELLED BACKWARD! poster was a new one. This one had a photo of a pineapple upside-down cake, with a bright-green background and words in all caps: STRESSED IS JUST DESSERTS SPELLED BACKWARD! I could still see the purple edge of the other poster.

The woman was probably in her fifties. Green eyes. Hair dyed a static dark blonde, so you knew it wasn’t completely real. But she was short and in good shape, like the last Judy. I introduced myself and she laughed as if I was joking. Then stopped, looked concerned.