Kirk snorted. “Those pseudos at Regional, they think they’re so hard-core. They’re just jealous ’cause we’ve got all the prime chicks. Like Micheline.” He raised his voice on the last couple of words, leaning back in his chair for a better view. “Right, Mish baby?”
I’d thought he must be joking, but there she was at the next table, all inky hair and sneering mouth, giving Kirk the finger. I hadn’t seen Micheline at breakfast back in Red Ward, but assumed she’d just been too sick or stubborn to get up. I’d never imagined she was well enough to be transferred here.
“She loves me really,” confided Kirk. “Oh, this is Cherie, by the way,” and with that he picked up his bagel and took an enormous bite.
“Hi,” said the blonde girl. She gave me a wan smile and began pushing her salad around her plate.
As we ate, the tables around us filled up with patients. Some were animated, chatting easily with those around them. Others sat with slumped shoulders and eyes on their plates. One boy stared across the room with burning eyes, his fingers tapping out a persistent rhythm: ratta-ta-tat, ratta-ta-tat.
“Hey, Sanjay!” called Kirk, as a boy in glasses stumbled down the aisle toward us. “Where you been?”
Sanjay lurched to a stop at the head of our table, his gaze wandering over Cherie, Kirk, and Roberto before riveting itself to me. “Who’s she?”
“Alison,” said Kirk. “She’s new. Hey, want a space?” He nudged out one of the empty chairs with his foot.
“Space,” echoed Sanjay.
“The final frontier,” said Kirk helpfully. “Or a place to sit, whatever. You gonna join us?”
The other boy didn’t take his eyes off me. “Don’t know her.”
“Crap,” muttered Kirk. “I thought we were over this,” and then more loudly, “Go ahead and quiz her if you want, ’Jay, but can you get out of the aisle first? C’mon, grab a seat.”
Sanjay’s eyes widened, white showing around the brown. “Don’t know her—”
With a sigh Kirk pushed his tray aside, ducked under the table, and came up beside me, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “There, take my spot. Cherie’s okay, right? You know Cherie.”
Reluctantly, Sanjay sat.
“Can I do the questions this time?” asked Kirk. “You tell me if I miss anything.” He turned to face me, sticking up his thumb in the manner of a fake microphone. “All right, stranger, what’s your name? First, middle, and last.”
This was the weirdest dinner conversation I’d ever had. “Alison Marie Jeffries.”
“Age?”
“Sixteen. Well, seventeen next month.”
“Ooh, I love an older woman,” said Kirk, mock-leering. “Favorite color?”
The color of serenity, of feeling safe and confident and whole. On the piano, it was the B-flat an octave below middle C; in the alphabet, the first letter of my name. “Violet,” I said.
“So what’s your psychosis?”
I hesitated.
“Oh, come on, like we’re not all screwed up here,” Kirk said. “You wanna know my special brand of crazy? I’m bi. And I light stuff on fire.”
Cherie rolled her eyes. “He means bi-polar,” she told me. “Heavy on the manic, in case you hadn’t guessed. He’s in and out of this place like it’s his personal cuckoo clock.”
Kirk didn’t even pause. “Roberto’s got major depression, Sanjay thinks his parents were brainwashed by aliens, and Cherie—”
“—wouldn’t even be here if my doctor wasn’t an idiot,” interrupted Cherie. “I have a tumor in my stomach. That’s why I can’t eat.”
“Yeah, sure. Like we can’t tell what your issues are, Skinny.” Kirk tipped his chair back on two legs and teetered there a second before thumping down again. “That leaves you, new girl. You want me to guess? Bet I can get it in one try.”
“The doctors aren’t really sure yet,” I said hastily, not wanting to know how crazy Kirk thought I was. “I was fine until—” until I killed Tori—“a couple of weeks ago, and then I had this big . . . panic attack, or breakdown, or something like that. They’re still trying to figure it out.”
Kirk gave me a skeptical look, but he didn’t question me further. He turned to Sanjay. “So what do you say? Is she legit?”
Sanjay hunched his shoulders, which made him look like a cartoon vulture, and shook his head.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” Kirk tapped the back of my hand. “Show him your arms.”
Until now, Sanjay’s behavior had struck me as simultaneously sad and funny. This, however, hit all too close to home. Feeling like I’d swallowed an icicle sideways, I stretched both my arms across the table, turning them palms up, then down again.
“See?” said Kirk. “She’s good.”
Sanjay relaxed. “Okay.”
“What was that about?” I asked.
I expected Kirk to answer, but to my surprise, Sanjay did. “They look like us,” he said, “but they’re not really human. They’re here to spy on us and use us in their experiments.”
“You haven’t seen any of Them around here lately, though, right?” said Kirk. “It’s just Dr. Wart.”
“It’s Ward,” said Cherie, with an exasperated glance at Kirk. “You think you’re so cute.”
“I’m not?” asked Kirk, adding “Ow!” as she kicked him under the table.
It took me a minute to realize who they were talking about, but then I remembered. He’d given me pills for my migraine when I first came in. “The medical doctor, you mean?” I said. “The one with the mustache like a dead mouse?”
Kirk hiccuped with laughter.
“It’s not funny,” interrupted Sanjay, agitated. “He’s got the mark. He’s one of them.”
My mouth went dry. “Mark? What kind of mark?”
“Here.” He tapped the inside of his forearm. “They all have it. But only I can see it. That’s why they put me in here.”
I slid back in my chair, more disturbed than ever. Sanjay was paranoid, anyone could see that. And yet his delusions and my experiences had at least one detail in common . . .
“I am so sick of Tori Beaugrand,” said Melissa bitterly, as we left the auditions for our eighth-grade musical. “She can’t even sing, so how is it fair to make her Alice? I had that part wrapped.”
In the corridor behind us the custodian was running his floor polisher, filling my head with a wobbly green noise that tasted like mouthwash. “I know,” I said distractedly. “You did really well.”
And she had, though I’d found it hard to concentrate on her audition with Tori sitting just a few chairs away, buzzing at me. What I didn’t say was that Tori was by far the better actress, much as I hated to admit it. Melissa delivered her lines like a talented thirteen-year-old girl pretending to be Alice in Wonderland; but when Tori opened her mouth she’d not only convinced me that she was Alice, she’d made me believe that I was in Wonderland, too.
“As if she needs another chance to show off,” Mel muttered, fumbling with the combination on her locker. “She’s already in the paper every other week for hockey, and I heard her tell Lara that her mom wants to get her into modeling—like I want to see her smug face every time I flip open a magazine? Ech.”
I wished I could assure her it would never happen, but I couldn’t. Ron and Gisele Beaugrand were local celebrities in their own right, with plenty of media connections. Between their influence and Tori’s looks, it’d be surprising if she didn’t become a supermodel.
“And there was Brendan staring at her with his tongue practically on the floor.” Mel’s running shoes hit the back of the locker, filling my vision with expanding rings of bronze. “He didn’t even look at me once.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Sure, Tori gets noticed, but have you heard the way the guys talk about her? It’s not like they’re interested in her personality.”
“Yeah, but that makes the whole thing suck even more,” said Mel, stomping into her winter boots and yanking a hat down over her cu
rly brown hair. “ ’Cause right now they don’t care about anybody’s personality, as far as I can tell. And if they ever start caring—well, I can’t exactly compete with Princess Victoria there either, can I?”
I couldn’t disagree with that either, unfortunately. It would have been nice to dismiss Tori as a spoiled rich girl with nothing but looks to recommend her, but she’d learned people skills at her mother’s knee, and even the bottom-feeders in the school’s popularity fishbowl found her hard to dislike. If it hadn’t been for the Noise and my loyalty to Melissa, I would probably have been charmed into liking her, too.
“You never know,” I said, grimacing as I zipped up the new jacket my mother had just bought me for Christmas. There was nothing wrong with the fit or the color so I’d had no excuse to make her take it back, but I hated the ugly bile-yellow rasp of those metal teeth coming together. “Maybe she’ll end up going to a different high school.”
“Yeah,” said Mel slowly, savoring the idea. “Really different. Like, on another planet.”
And then I’d never have to hear the Noise again. “I wish.”
“Speaking of alien life-forms, did you see Jenna’s got blonde highlights now? She wants to be Tori so bad, she’s turning into a clone.” Mel snorted. “What’s next, blue contacts?”
“And a pink tattoo,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Tattoo,” I repeated. “Or whatever it is. That thing on her arm, you know.”
Melissa’s eyes lit with unholy glee. “Tori got a tattoo? Are you kidding me? Where did you hear this? Whoa, her mom is going to flip when she finds out—”
“No, I mean the same one she’s always had. How could you not notice? Looks like a sun with zigzag rays coming out of it. Kind of Aztec.”
“Um, Ali . . . I don’t think so,” said Melissa. “I was in the same swimming class as Tori last year, remember? I’ve seen her arm about a billion times. There’s nothing on it.”
Her words hit me like a backhanded slap. I went rigid, the blood roaring in my ears. How could I have made such a stupid mistake?
Fortunately for me, Melissa hadn’t stopped talking yet. “She doesn’t even get zits, for crap’s sake. She’s like some kind of walking Barbie.” She frowned up at me. “When did you see this tattoo-thing on her?”
For one sickening moment I still had no idea what to say. Then I forced my face into a smile and smacked Mel on the shoulder. “Psych! Had you going.”
“Uh, sure,” she replied. “Ha ha. Except for the part where it wasn’t funny.”
“I know,” I said. “I blame the floor polish.” I shoved my hands into my gloves, to hide their trembling. “Let’s get some fresh air before I lose any more brain cells.”
Mel shuddered. “Ugh, it’s like minus thirty out there. Where’s a hot Mountie and a team of sled dogs when you need them?” She pulled her scarf up over her face, shoved the door open with her shoulder and vanished out into the snow.
I followed more slowly, arms wrapped around my aching stomach. Mel seemed to have already forgotten my lapse, so she probably wouldn’t bring it up again. But it shook me to realize how close I’d come to betraying myself.
I’d figured out a long time ago that I was the only one at Diefenbaker Public who could hear Tori’s Noise. I figured it was just another case of my senses doing strange things, or at least things that would seem strange to other people if they knew. But the mark on Tori’s arm was different. It didn’t come and go, or change shape or color—it was just there, and had been from the first day I saw her.
So what did it mean that nobody but me could see it?
“Ew!” burst out Cherie, startling me back to the present. She flung her just-bitten peach down onto the tray, spattering juice in all directions. “It’s rotten.”
Kirk’s brows shot up. He looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“The Force is strong with this one,” he intoned. He picked up the mangled peach and turned it over, exposing the soggy brown spot close to its core. “Seriously, the x-ray vision’s a neat trick. You’ll have to show me how you do that some time.”
Nausea roiled inside me. I shoved back my chair. “I have to go,” I blurted, and rushed for the door. Out the corner of my eye I saw Jennifer leap up to intercept me, but I didn’t slow down. I flung myself into the girls’ washroom, grabbed the toilet with both hands, and threw up.
“You’re not supposed to go anywhere without an escort,” said Jennifer sternly from the door.
“Sorry,” I panted, pushing my hair back out of my face. “Bad stomach.”
Scowling, she took hold of my hand and turned it over, inspecting my fingers. I knew what she was looking for; I also knew she’d be disappointed. I might be thin and a picky eater, but nothing could convince me to make myself throw up on purpose.
“You okay?” she asked as she let me go.
I sniffed, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. “I think so. But . . . it would help if I could lie down.”
She nodded. “I’ll show you to your room.” She led me down the corridor to a wing I’d never seen before, a broad, airy hallway with windows at the far end and several widely spaced doors on either side. The room she showed me was half occupied already, with an open suitcase spilling its contents out across the bed and a stuffed cow flopped against the headboard, and I could only hope my roommate would be someone quiet and not too scary. I crawled onto the empty bed, taking deep breaths to calm my churning stomach, while Jennifer adjusted the cordless blinds.
“I’m leaving the door open,” she said. “I’d like you to keep it that way.” Then she left.
I closed my eyes and let my head fall back onto the pillow. Get a grip, Alison, I told myself. What happened in the cafeteria is no big deal. After all, it was hardly the first time I’d seen things that nobody else could see. Wasn’t that the whole point of the conversation I’d had with Mel, that day back in eighth grade?
And yet this time, it hadn’t been just a hallucination. Kirk thought I was crazy for telling him not to take that peach, and Cherie hadn’t seen anything wrong with it either—until she bit into it and found the brown decay inside.
So what did that tell me about the mark I’d seen on Tori’s arm? Had it just been my imagination conjuring up another excuse to dislike her, like the mark Sanjay thought he’d seen on Dr. Ward?
Or had there really been something sinister lurking there, in the darkness beneath her skin?
FOUR (IS BLUE)
I’d been lying down for about half an hour, my mind churning with new uncertainties, when my roommate came barging in. Fortunately it wasn’t Micheline, as I’d feared. It was Cherie.
“Group therapy starts in five minutes,” she said. “Jennifer says unless you’re still throwing up, you have to go. Which had better not give you any ideas, by the way. I hate the smell of barf.”
. . .
“We all experience anger,” explained our therapist, a round, earnest woman who’d urged me to call her Sharon. “It’s a natural response to stressful situations, to personal hurts and disappointments, to the wrongs and injustices we see in the world around us. In this group, we try to help everyone find ways to express their anger without letting it become destructive.”
She gazed around the circle of bored, vacant, and sullen faces, then continued, “One of the ways we can deal with anger responsibly is to share our frustrations with trusted friends who will listen, and not judge. I hope we can all be friends here, and give that gift of open listening to each other. So Kirk, why don’t you start? What makes you angry?”
“Anger’s a waste,” said Kirk. “I’m past that negative stuff. All you need to do is open your arms—” he flung them out so enthusiastically that he knocked Sanjay’s glasses off his face— “and embrace the oneness of us all.”
Sharon sighed as she bent to pick up the glasses from the floor. “Kirk, if you’re not going to take this group seriously—”
“I’m absolutely dead serious,?
?? he insisted, and launched into an explanation of how modern psychoanalysis was just reinforcing people’s negative emotions and what the world needed was a radical new form of therapy that would make everybody feel good. I lost the thread of his logic at that point, but his grand scheme for reforming the mental health care system seemed to involve regular sex for all patients, unlimited access to energy drinks, and a giant outdoor rock concert featuring all his favorite bands. If Sharon hadn’t cut him off after a couple of minutes, he would probably have talked the entire half hour.
“Thank you, Kirk, that’s very interesting,” she said. “But I think it’s time for us to give some of the others a chance. Sanjay, why don’t you tell us what makes you angry?”
“I’m angry about being here,” said Sanjay softly.
Sharon leaned forward. “Yes? Why is that?”
“Because I tried to warn my parents about the aliens, but they wouldn’t listen. So the aliens injected them with mind control serum and put their mark on them. And then they sent me here, because—”
“You know why I’m angry?” interrupted Micheline in her rasping voice. “I’m angry because I have to sit here listening to this crap, and all I want is a frickin’ cigarette.”
“Let’s use respectful language, Micheline,” said Sharon placidly. And then, to my discomfort, she turned to me. “We’re so glad to have you join us, Alison. Would you like to tell us about something that makes you angry?”
The last time I remembered being angry, Tori Beaugrand had died. “I’d rather not,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be a big thing,” she encouraged. “It’s okay to start small.”
“I know, but I don’t really . . . do anger. It never makes anything better. So I try not to get into it.” Or any other intense emotion, for that matter. Like grief, because there was no use wallowing in misery; you just had to accept that bad things happened and keep going. And love, because caring about anything too deeply was just asking to have it taken away.