"Where is she?" Greta shouts.
The reception room is empty now, all except for Mimi's circle of candles--still ignited on the floor.
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DERIK
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Mimi shouts. Her voice is coming from the D wing.
I tell Tony to stay with Greta and Liza and then I hurry down the hallway and around the corner--until I find Chet and Mimi.
They're standing in one of the rooms, facing one another. Nobody appears to be hurt, but Mimi looks pissed. "Get away from me!" she repeats, taking a step back from him.
"I'm sorry, okay?" Chet says. "It was stupid."
"What the hell happened here?" I ask.
But neither of them answers me.
"Hello?" I shout even louder. "What happened?"
"Chet's an asshole, that's what happened," Mimi says, finally looking up at me.
"What did you do?" I take a step toward him.
Chet turns to me. "It was just a joke. No big deal."
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"What was a joke?"
"I was just taking a leak down here," he explains, gesturing to the tub. "I heard Mimi heading this way, so I hid behind the door and jumped out at her when she came in. No big deal."
"For your information," Mimi cuts in, "this is not a bathroom. They used it for hydrotherapy."
"Hydro-what-apy?" Chet asks.
"They made patients sit in the tub water for hours," she explains. "A canvas strapped over them so they couldn't get out. It was some warped idea of therapy."
"So what does that have to do with me?" Chet asks.
"Why don't you have a little respect?" Mimi says.
"I'm sorry, okay? I had to go, and the tub worked just fine--drain and all."
But Mimi is still flipping out, accusing him of trying to scare her way before she even headed down here. "I could hear you whispering my name," she says.
"What are you talking about? I didn't whisper anything."
"Don't play dumb," she snaps. "You were whispering my name. And I could hear the sound of water running."
"Maybe what you heard was the sound of me taking a leak."
"What's going on?" Greta asks, inserting herself into the action. She practically elbows her way past me so she can stand dead center, taking full advantage of the camera.
Liza and Tony are here, too--Liza practically glued to my side. Not that I mind.
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"I'm not making this up," Mimi continues, rubbing her temples. "Someone was calling my name; someone even answered me. I said 'This isn't funny!' and someone answered, 'I'm not laughing.' It came through the walkie-talkie."
"Well, maybe that was one of us," I offer. "We could hear someone's voice coming through the speaker. Maybe you could hear us as well."
"Did one of you say that?" Mimi asks.
We all look at one another, but nobody seems to remember. I move even closet to Liza, sensing how freaked out she is. Her leg trembles against mine.
"I can't even remember what I said two seconds ago, never mind ten minutes," I say.
"Seriously," Chet says, turning to Mimi. "All joking aside; it wasn't me. I mean, aside from jumping out at you."
"Then who was it?" she asks.
"There's got to be some explanation," I say, giving Liza a reassuring squeeze, my arm wrapped around her shoulder. "It was probably just the talkie. You were probably either picking up on us, or maybe someone in the area. Those things probably have a killer radar."
"When they're actually working," Tony adds.
"Well, what about what happened to us?" Greta says, stating into the camera. "We were downstairs in the tunnel and the door closed and locked on us. We almost couldn't get back up here."
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"This place is more than a hundred years old," I say. "What do you expect with heavy doors and rusted hinges?"
Chet goes to say something but then sees the writing above the tub. Someone's painted the words "I've been waiting for you" in bright red letters, making him pause. "This place is wacko."
"Exactly," Liza says. "Which is why we shouldn't be here."
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LIZA
WHILE THE OTHERS sit around the circle of candles, taking a break, I sneak the journal again and read another entry, hoping that Mimi doesn't notice:
September 8, 1981
Last night I was punished. There's a woman here who murdered her husband. She got moved to my room, to the bed right next to mine.
And she scares me even more than Jessica.
I didn't want to sleep next to her, so I refused to go to bed. The next thing I know, four nurses came at me, ripped off my clothes, and threw me in one of the seclusion rooms in the back. I wouldn't stop kicking and screaming and punching the door, so they came back in, held me down, and injected me with something to make me sleep.
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I hate this place. I hate the smell here-a mix of urine and bleach. And I hate most of the nurses. Some of them are so unbelievably cruel, especially to the older patients. They make them walk around naked-for ease, I think, so they don't have to keep changing them. And then they hose them down for cleaning.
A couple days ago, Vicky, this one crazy nurse, toed naked Mrs. Delaney to a chair with a bedsheet. Vicky kept her there pretty much all day, but Mrs. Delaney didn't complain too much since she'd been all drugged up.
Did I mention that I hate the drugs here? The pills I take make me jumpy all the time. Everybody tell me that I'll get used to the medication, that soon I'll settle in and make this place my home.
But I'll never call this place anything else but hell. The only good thing is that I've become friends with this one girl, Becky, who's in here because she kept plucking out all her hair. She wears a wig now, and her dad visits her at least a couple times a week. We go out on the terrace together sometimes for a smoke and talk about what we'll do once we get out of this place. She has all these ideas, but I can't think of one, so I just listen, and she doesn't see to mind. She has a doll that she carries around all the time. It's made of cloth and year, so the nurses let her keep it. Plus, it's missing the button eyes, so there's nothing she can use to hurt herself. Yesterday, Becky asked me to draw eyes on the doll for her. I did using black
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and blue fine-point markets, giving her the biggest, longest eyelashes a girl could every have. Becky was so happy with the job I did, with the sparkly shade of blue I shoes, that she renamed the doll after me-calling her Christy.
More tomorrow.
P.S. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be seventeen. Happy Birthday to me.
I close the journal and take a deep breath, wishing this were all one big dream that I could wake up out of, wondering how a girl my age could end up here. I glance toward Christine's watercolor again, focusing a moment on all the missing pieces--an arm, a hip, her mouth, the feet, her heart--and then I flip it over to look at the date. She painted it almost one full year after her first journal entry, making me wonder if this place only made her worse.
"What do you think?" Mimi asks.
My heart jumps just hearing her voice--realizing that she's been watching me all this time. The shadow of a candle flame flickers against her chin and crawls up her face, cutting it in two.
"Are you okay?" Derik asks, sensing my anxiety.
I nod, grateful for his concern. Contrary to what I'd heard about him prior to coming here, he's been really sweet to me, asking me how I am at every ten-minute interval. And sticking close by me.
"I think she haunts this place," Mimi says. "I think
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she wanted someone to find her picture and journal."
"And I think you've been watching too many scary movies," Derik says, passing me an opened box of Cheez-Its.
I frown at it--at the idea of eating products that contain hydrogenated oils--but I take a handful anyway to be polite.
I go to pass the box to Tony, but he and Greta are way too busy arguing over some storyboards that he made up. Appar
ently Tony has his own ideas for how Derik's film should look.
"Who says this Christine chick is even dead?" Derik asks, distracting me from eavesdropping.
"That graffiti we saw on the wall," Mimi says. "Remember ... the writing that said her body is buried out in the garden."
"But who even knows if that was true?" I ask for my own benefit. "Maybe it was someone who saw her journal and decided to be funny."
"Maybe. Maybe not." Mimi arches her eyebrows, like she can sense my discomfort--and enjoys it.
"Speaking of graffiti," Chet begins, "You know what I think is really weird?"
"The writing in the hydrotherapy room?" Mimi answers.
Chet nods, totally in sync with her. "Nothing like taking a whiz in front of a sign that says 'I've been waiting for you.' Talk about pressure."
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"But it's true," Mimi says. "They have been waiting for us."
"Who?" I ask, somehow already knowing the answer.
"The spirits that linger here, the ones like Christine who can't move on."
"Do you think Christine's the one who wrote that graffiti?" Chet asks her.
"Are you kidding me, man?" Derik says, giving Chet's shoulder a push, "I can't believe you're getting sucked into this. I mean, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but last I heard, ghosts don't graffiti walls."
"How do you know?" Mimi asks. "Ever ask one?"
"Will you listen to yourself?" Derik aims his camera at her. "You're starting to sound a little weird, here--I mean, even weirder than usual."
"And that means so much coming from a stellar guy like you," Mimi says.
Derik peeks up at me, a bit embarrassed, maybe, because he quickly looks away. I can't help but wonder if the embarrassment is because of his reputation--if maybe he's afraid of my finding out about him.
Even though I already know.
"What do you think the spirits are waiting for?" Chet continues, obviously interested in all of Mimi's ghost talk.
Mimi takes a couple Cheez-Its and slides them into her mouth, over her stud-pierced lip. "I don't know," she says finally. "I mean, this place is going to be torn down next week. Maybe they need our help to tie up some unfinished
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business. Or maybe it's just a question of being heard ... of getting their stories told."
I look at Derik to catch his reaction, but he doesn't really have one. And so I have to ask him: "What do you think of that?"
"Of what?" he asks, looking back at me.
"Of being the one responsible for telling the story of this place?"
Derik's jaw tenses, as if the idea of it stresses him out. But he tries to make light of it: "You don't really believe all that stuff, do you?"
I shrug, honestly not knowing what to believe. I mean, logic would tell me that none of this paranormal stuff is true. But then why do I feel this compulsion to sink myself deeper into this place--to touch that noose, and feel that watercolor picture, and read from Christine Belle's journal?
And why do I feel like I'm being watched--like there are eyes in the walls, along the ceilings, and behind every doorway? I'm scared out of my mind, and yet I can't help but wonder what it would be like to wander down the hallway by myself, to go exploring in one of the wings, and to sit in one of the patient chairs. If the others weren't around, I'd probably be reading Christine Belle's journal right now--only stopping when I reached the very last word.
Derik looks back toward Greta and Tony, seeking a diversion maybe. It appears that she and Tony have made up. They've scooted away, into a corner of the room, sitting with their legs wrapped around each other. Greta whispers
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something into Tony's ear, and he responds by kissing her lips, not once but three times.
"At least we've got ourselves a little entertainment," Chet says, stuffing the last of the Cheez-Its into his mouth and topping it off with a swig of Yoo-hoo. (Yoo-hoo = a nauseating blend of overprocessed milk, high fructose corn syrup, and cocoa.)
"More like a freak show," Mimi corrects, just a tad bit too loud.
"You're one to talk," Greta says between smooches.
Derik laughs, but Mimi looks hurt. She shrugs it off and focuses down at her black-polished fingernails--obviously not as tough and resilient as she'd like us all to believe.
"Did you know that there are close to three hundred germs in the human mouth?" I ask, trying to lighten things up.
"That's gross," Mimi says.
"But sharing your mouth with someone--kissing," I continue, "does help to support the immune system. Because, even though most of the germs in our mouths are the same, there's a small percentage of exclusive germs in there. Sharing those helps boost our immunity."
"Sounds like you've done your homework," Derik says.
"I'd like to do some homework." Chet raises his hand.
"Honestly, hornboy," Mimi says, "do you ever quit?"
"They don't call me Chet, the Energizer Honey, for nothing."
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"Funny," she says. "I thought what they called you was Chet, the Energizer Dummy."
"You know you love me," Chet says, bumping her with his shoulder.
Oddly enough, Mimi doesn't object. She even has a quirky little smile curled across her lips. They end up moving away, into a faraway corner--peculiarly across from Greta and Tony--engrossed in conversation
"So," Derik says, sensing the sudden awkwardness. "Cracker Jack?" He holds the sailor-adorned box out to me as an offering. But even the promise of a prize inside doesn't tempt me.
"No thanks," I say, pulling a Balance Bar from my bag. "I think I've had my fill of food additives for the day."
"So you're a health freak?"
"Sort of." I shrug, tearing at the wrapper. "I'm going to be a doctor."
"For real?"
I shrug again, breaking off a piece of my bar for him. Derik pops it into his mouth. "It tastes like sandpaper," he says between chews.
"They call it Almond Brownie."
"Almond Sandpaper, maybe."
I smile and take a bite, noticing how, despite all this ghost talk, I'm feeling a bit more at ease--for the first time tonight.
"So how come you don't seem so excited?" he asks me. "About what?"
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"About working with drugs."
"Seriously?" I nearly choke on my Almond Brownie.
"No, I'm kidding." Derik smiles. "About getting to see people naked."
I can't help but laugh in response.
He grabs a bottle of water from his bag and passes it to me. "In all seriousness," he says, "how come you're not more excited about entering a profession with so many perks?"
"Because I'm scared that no colleges will accept me."
"Are you trying to be modest?" He positions the camera so that it points upward at us.
"I'm trying to be honest," I correct, following up with a sip of water. A trickle rolls down my chin.
"Well, I've heard about your grades," Derik continues. "I'm sure you'll get in wherever you applied."
"You'd be surprised."
Derik gives me a look--his eyebrows crinkling up like he just doesn't get it. I take another bite of my bar to avoid having to answer further probing, but now he's staring right at my mouth as I chew, waiting for some explanation. "Where are you going next year?" I ask, once I can swallow down.
"Red's Diner, ever hear of it? Best pancakes on the North Shore. And no food additives whatsoever."
"For real?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "Food additives are a cook's best friend."
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"No." I smile. "I mean, are you serious about working at your parents' place? Didn't you say before that you didn't want to work there?"
He nods. "But unless something better comes up, I have no choice."
I glance at the camera, suspecting that something better has a lot to do with this project. Derik leans forward to click the camera off, and for one disappointing moment I think our conv
ersation's ended.
But then I realize that things are just getting started.
"I want to be a filmmaker," he says, a shy little smile inching up his lip.
"Seriously? Like, for work?"
"Seriously," he says, staring at my mouth again. "For work."
"That's so exciting," I say, accidentally bumping my knee against his. He smells like citrus and candy--like something good enough to eat.
Derik goes on to tell me all about the contest he's entering, about how if he wins, his film will be shown on RTV. "It's just what I get really excited about," he says.
"That's great," I say, wondering what it feels like to be that excited about anything. Derik's pale blue eyes are wide, like I could jump right in. The feeling completely takes me aback--how close I feel to him, how excited I am just talking like this. It almost makes me forget where I am.
And who I'm with.
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I think back to that time during our freshman year, when we were both standing outside the school, waiting for the bus. He was staring at me then, too. I could feel his eyes, watching as I turned the pages of my book. I knew he wanted to say hello, but he didn't. Of course, it didn't help that I ended up walking away, leaving him there because I was too nervous to say something interesting-- or maybe I simply didn't feel I had anything interesting to say.
"Is it that way for you, too?" he asks, nudging in a little closer. The candle flame casts a shadow over his light brown hair. "I mean, what do you get excited about?"
I bite the corner of my lip, remembering how the guidance counselor had asked me almost the same thing. But the truth is, when you take away my goal of becoming a doctor, of going to Harvard, and studying my way to get there, there isn't much left--just a dull girl with an endless supply of health-nut trivia. A girl who doesn't have time for friends or boyfriends--whose last date was in the third grade, during a school field trip to the Museum of Science.