A Danger to Herself and Others(62)
I’m tired. I want to go home. Not back to New York, but back to the institution, back to my room with the magnetic lock on the door.
As soon as Mom turns her back, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, removing the last traces of her lipstick. Lightfoot says my name again, gesturing to the sedan. “I know this has been an overwhelming day for you.” There’s a slight edge to her voice, a warning that if I stand out here much longer, Stephen will force me into the back seat and a syringe filled with sedative will miraculously appear from the pockets of the coat she had to remove to go through the metal detector earlier.
They think I might make a run for it. They think now that I’ve had a taste of freedom, I won’t go back to the institute without a fight.
Don’t they understand that this—standing in this parking lot—isn’t freedom? With Lightfoot and Stephen at my side, with this medication coursing through my body, I may as well still be locked up.
Maybe I’ll be in some kind of cage forever.
forty-two
The room—our room, my room—feels empty without Lucy in it. Without her stray hairs gathering dust on the floor, without her second tray of food waiting to be picked up, without her bed, her pillow, her wrinkled sheets. It feels bigger now that there’s only one bed in here. (There was always only one bed in here.) I pace, trying to make myself believe the room is the same size it’s always been: Seven steps. Eight steps. Seven steps. Eight steps.
I’m back in my paper clothes. I kick off my slippers and my bare feet slap against the linoleum. It’s the only sound without Lucy’s footsteps echoing my own—without her laughing, whispering, complaining. I wonder if she got into the San Francisco Dance Academy, but then I remember she never really auditioned.
She never really danced.
She never really breathed.
It’s like she died, except she was never actually alive. I shouldn’t miss her. The only thing crazier than imagining a person who isn’t real is mourning that person once reality kicks in.
It’s different with Jonah. He didn’t break up with Agnes for me, he never came here to rescue me, he never called or wrote. (Of course, he couldn’t have done any of those things because he wasn’t real, but that seems beside the point.) I only missed him when Lucy brought up Joaquin, reminding me that she had a boyfriend waiting for her and I didn’t.
Unlike Lucy, Jonah was already gone by the time I learned he was a hallucination.
The overhead lights flicker, then go out entirely. Lightfoot said I didn’t need to take a sleeping pill tonight. She said I must be exhausted from my ordeal today. But I can’t sleep. If Lucy were here, my tossing and turning would keep her awake.
But then again, if Lucy were here, I probably wouldn’t have trouble sleeping.
Second grade. I was in second grade the first time I played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. At Mary Masters’s eighth birthday party. Alexandra—Alex—was my best friend then. I’d picked her out on the first day of school, the smallest girl in the class, her glasses so thick you could hardly make out her brown eyes behind them. Another friend I could mother and mentor. She wouldn’t have been invited to Mary Masters’s party if she hadn’t been friends with me.
It was Alex’s first night away from home and she was frightened, nothing like the other girls who were so excited for their first sleepover party. She stayed glued to my side the whole night: When Mary’s parents served us pizza and cake. When they put on a movie for us to watch. When they pushed the coffee table to the side so all nine girls could unroll our sleeping bags in the living room one right next to another.
Alex’s bag was next to mine, and I could hear her whimpering when Mary’s parents turned off the lights and left us alone.
Mary Masters suggested we play Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.
“What’s that?” Alex asked dumbly. I didn’t know what the game was either, but I knew better than to admit it.
Mary explained the rules: one girl would lie down on her back in the center of the group, and the rest of us would put our fingers beneath her. We’d chant light as a feather, stiff as a board over and over until the girl in the middle started to rise.
“My big sister taught me how to play,” Mary added. Mary’s sister was fourteen, and we were young enough that we thought having “teen” as part of your age meant you knew what you were talking about. For the first time ever, I truly wished I had a sibling. But I wanted an older sister, not a baby.
“But what’s the point?” Alex asked. “We just pick one of us up?”
Mary shook her head. “It’s more magical than that.”
“I think we should play,” I said. I turned to Alex. “It’ll take your mind off your homesickness.” I could tell Alex was embarrassed I’d said that in front of everyone, but we both knew she couldn’t be mad at me because I was trying to help her.
Since she was the smallest, Alex was selected to lie in the center of the room. Mary showed us how to slide our fingers under Alex, who giggled when my fingers slipped beneath her arm. Her glasses were inside her sleeping bag, but I told her she didn’t need them because her eyes were supposed to be closed anyway.
Even without a big sister, I’d learn about all the other games eventually: Truth or Dare, Never Have I Ever, Spin the Bottle, Seven Minutes in Heaven. I played them all. But none of those games involved magic the way Light as a Feather did. (Unless you considered that fate played a hand in whom the bottle landed on in Spin the Bottle, and I always gave more credit to momentum and gravity.) And sure, it wasn’t really magic when we lifted Alex off the floor that first time, any more than it was magic when we lifted Rebekah years later. But somehow, with the lights out and our voices chorusing light as a feather, stiff as a board, it felt like magic.