CHAPTER
17
The Garden
THE JAPANESE BOTANICAL GARDEN IS LIKE A SYMPHONY FOR THE EYES. Even though it’s winter, bright colors are everywhere. They layer and bleed into each other, creating a rich palate of every shade of green, red, yellow, brown, and gray you can imagine. The clouds above us are heavy with rain, but for the moment it’s dry. A docent meets us at the gate. She’s old and seems happily oblivious to the fact that the kids in front of her are from Savage Isle. She leads us on a tour, pointing out plants and the importance of balance and symmetry in Japanese gardens. The techs, nurses, and Dr. Goodman fan out, corralling our group between them. Chase and I hang to the back, closest to Donny.
The rain has touched everything in the garden. Little droplets rest on the leaves and glisten on the gravel path. The docent stops the group to point out something. I stare into a puddle at my reflection. I push the sweatshirt hood off my head. I think about how Jason had loved my hair, loved running his fingers through it. He said it reminded him of dark wood, of the soil in a dense forest. Who’d ever heard of dirt being beautiful?
Outside the garden, beyond the wall, a truck zooms by, a big one, so big you can feel its two-ton weight in the shaking concrete.
“I might be a killer,” I say.
Chase cocks a brow at me, but he doesn’t look surprised, only mildly interested. He’s used to me now, my offhanded comments, the moments when I space out, my dirty mouth.
“Might be?”
We’ve been given twenty minutes of semi-unsupervised time in the garden. The techs, nurses, and Dr. Goodman carefully walk the walled perimeter.
I secure my hood on my head. “Yeah. I’m not sure.”
Chase veers right, leads us over an arched bridge and into a separate garden with a shoji screened pagoda and koi pond. “Well, it would probably be something you’d remember, don’t you think? Like getting a tattoo on your face or riding a bike. You never forget shit like that.”
I chuckle and don’t tell him that I never learned how to ride a bike. I walk toward the pagoda, run my fingers over the fragile shoji screen paper. The pagoda was built over the koi pond, and fish the color of orange and red poppies dart in and out of view. As the fish move through the water, their bodies make tinkling noises that are like the softest lullaby. “They pinned Jason’s death on me. They offered me a plea bargain—not guilty by reason of insanity.”
Chase screws up his face. “Jesus,” he says, and steps into the pagoda.
“I took it.” I watch his reaction carefully, waiting for the horror, for the judgment to wash over him.
The shoji screen makes a shadow and plays with his face, so that I can’t see how he reacts. “Why?”
I step into the enclosure with him. The pagoda smells of freshly cut cedar, of lemon oil and rainwater. It is blissful, heavenly. “We would’ve had to go to court, to trial, and Cellie would be there. And I could go to jail. With the NGRI plea, I stay in Savage Isle, and I might be able to get out sooner.” Or get to Cellie sooner.
“You think you’re crazy?” He takes off his hat and runs his fingers through his hair.
Images flash before my eyes: black-and-white snapshots that bleed color—Earl’s still body, purple and mashed. Cellie’s wicked smile. Jason smoking a bloody cigarette. “I don’t know.” A shudder runs through me. “I don’t think I’m crazy. But I think there’s something wrong with me. I think there’s something dark inside of me that attracts the wrong people and then makes me care about them.” A tear slips down my cheek. God, how many times have I cried in front of Chase?
“So what does that say about me?” Chase stands still in the middle of the pagoda, hands jammed in his pockets, hat back on. His face is shadowed again, this time by the bill of his hat, so that I can’t see what he means, what he’s really asking.
“You?”
“Yeah, me. You said there’s something wrong with you—and with who you choose to care about. What does that say about me? About you and me?” He’s mad. I’ve seen him angry before, once, in the field when I thought he was Jason, all lit up and electric. He was mad then because he was confused and scared. But this is a different kind of anger, one that is born from hurt.
Voices drift over us, over the plants and through the shoji screen, but they’re far away. We’re still alone. I back up a step until I’m pressed against one of the wood columns that frame the screens. “I don’t know.”
He steps closer, into my space. He tilts his head. “Am I the wrong people?”
My nose fills with the sweet scent of fabric softener and something else, something that is uniquely Chase. I think of all the faces of Chase—his calm mask when he came to my room and gave me an awful eighties mix to listen to. His lighthearted expression when he tells the world’s worst jokes. I compare them to Jason’s faces, his look of desire when he watched Roman’s house burn. His hard features that never bent to guilt or sorrow when he almost killed Earl. Is Chase the wrong people? “No,” I whisper. Definitely not.
He gives me a half smile, one made of happiness and something else I can’t place—guilt, maybe regret, but that doesn’t seem right. There are muffled voices a few feet away, the sound of patients talking, a tech’s or nurse’s confident laugh. But we’re shielded in here. No one can see us.
I study Chase’s face. His too-white scar, his light eyes, the curve of his cheek, and the line of his lips. We’re standing close, so close that I can feel his body heat radiating off him. It’s been so long since I’ve felt warm.
“Tell me about him.” He’s asking about Jason. “Tell me about how he was the wrong people. Did you love him?”
I lick my suddenly dry lips. I close my eyes, think of Jason, his green eyes and his hair. Try to remember running my hands through his curls. I loved Jason, but the love I cradled for him for so long has worn thin. I always thought he was my knight, keeping me away from a dark path, but now I know—he was just leading me down another, much darker road. Still, I answer the question truthfully. “Yes, I loved him.” A part of me might even always love him.
“Do you think you could ever love someone like that again?”
I open my eyes. I don’t know if I want to love someone like that again, like a fever, hot and bright. “I don’t think anyone could replace him.” But Chase is here. Jason is dead and Chase is here. “I also don’t think that there’s one great love, or that we only get one chance at happiness.” I say this because if I believed that—that there is only one great love for each of us—it means I’d probably never love again. Circumstances have forced my hand. I touch Chase’s face, trail my fingers over his scar where it is smooth and deep. And finally I ask the one question I’ve wanted to for so long. “Why are you here? Why are you at Savage Isle?”
His eyes close, in pleasure or pain, I can’t tell, maybe both. “I did something to someone. I hurt someone . . . I love. I let someone down.” He swallows, closes his eyes tighter. He still hasn’t answered my question. He’s being evasive. Why so many secrets? He takes a step back and to me, that is all but an admission of guilt.
I step into him and continue to touch his face like a blind person. “Is that how you got this?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Did someone do this to you?” I brush the pad of my thumb over his eyelashes and am surprised to feel moisture gathering there.
He sniffles, darts his head away. “Yeah . . .” He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, so hard I think he may have hurt himself.
“The person you hurt?”
He nods his head. It’s what I thought: he hurt someone, someone who hurt him. And for some reason I am relieved. Chase is broken, like me, but not like Jason. Not like Cellie.
“Where are they now?”
“I’m not sure.” He looks at me. Looks at me like I have answers, like I know a secret and he’d do anything for me to tell.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say, and it seems like I sh
ould say something.
He reaches out, touches my cheek, traces my jawline. His hand cups my head, slowly removing my hood. “My little bird with a broken wing.”
I close my eyes and try to shut him out, guard myself against his gentle assault. But something is creeping in, maybe it has been creeping in this whole time and I was too blind to notice. It blossoms inside of me like ink through water or blood in snow. Chase moves through me, into the part of my soul that is stained, where there is something wicked and dark. Like Jason, he’s not afraid to touch it.
Wetness forms in my eyes and they flutter shut, either to keep the tears in or to force them out. I can’t tell. One tear escapes, makes a soft trail down my cheek. Chase brushes it away, first with a finger and then with his mouth.
“Based on the way you ate that mango, I bet you’re a terrible kisser, huh?” He lets out a low laugh and touches my lower lip with his thumb. “Yeah, I bet you kiss like an angry Velociraptor.” He mock sighs. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
I smile because he’s funny and sweet and I appreciate him breaking the tension. Our lips meet, and instead of cinnamon I taste salt and mint. It’s refreshing and filled with hope. A light blooms bright behind my eyes. Chase is kissing me like I’m the rain and he’s lost in the desert. Like we were always meant for each other, one half calling to the other.
There’s a shout followed by the short burst of a whistle. Dr. Goodman’s voice trails closely behind, calling us back. It’s time to go.
Chase presses his forehead against mine. His heavy breath fans my face.
“We should go,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, but neither of us moves for a long moment.
When we finally walk out of the garden, we’re hand in hand, but when we come into view of the group, we drift away from each other. We sit next to each other on the bus. Chase plays the Eagles, makes us listen to “Desperado” four whole times. And despite his shitty taste in music, I like him. I like him more than I ever thought possible.
When we’ve been driving for a while, he pauses the song, turns to me, and says, “You know you can trust me, right?”
I roll my eyes. “Uh, okay.”
“No. I’m being serious.” He touches my knee. “No matter what, you can trust me. You do trust me, right?”
This question seems vastly important to him, so I consider it. “Yes,” I say eventually. “Yes, I do.” What Chase doesn’t know, what he can never know, is that saying this means even more to me than saying I love you.
…
FROM THE JOURNAL OF ALICE MONROE
We checked into a motel to clean up. Or rather we slipped into a room after a maid got done servicing it. The room was cheap, the blankets threadbare, and rats or insects or something crawled inside the walls. We holed up in there for a while. Cellie sat down and smoked cigarettes. Jason took a shower. He came out of the bathroom, jeans hanging loosely from his hips. I didn’t want to look at him, standing there half naked, drops of water making trails over his tattoos. And I didn’t want to watch Cellie light matches and put them out on her tongue. I grabbed for the TV remote, hoping for distraction in cartoons or some reality show, but as I did, I caught my reflection in the black square screen. My face was streaked in blood. How had I not noticed this before? My eyes stood out among all that red—bright white orbs that glowed from hollow shells.
I clicked the power button, changed the channel. But there was no escape. My face was there again, caught in that square screen, now abuzz with electricity and color. Jason, Cellie, and I were all over the news.
“Holy fucking Christ, we’re famous!” Cellie cackled.
Surveillance cameras at the truck stop had captured the whole thing: Cellie flirting with Earl; Earl grabbing me; Jason jumping Earl. It played on a continuous loop as an anchorwoman did a voice-over. “No one knows what precipitated such a vicious attack. The alleged perpetrators seemed to have been robbing the convenience store when it all went wrong. The victim’s name is Earl Sanders. Early reports state that he was flown by helicopter after such a brutal beating. Earl is listed in critical condition—his wife and two kids hope he will make it through the night.”
Jason leaned over to block my view of the television and then clicked it off. “Don’t watch that shit.”
I turned to him as if he were a stranger. “He might die,” I choked out.
“He’s not going to die. C’mon. I’ll help you clean up.”
“No.” I scooted back so that I was pressed up against the wall, and then I began to pace. “We need to call the cops, turn ourselves in.” I closed the distance between us, grabbed Jason by his shoulders, and tried to shake him. But it was like trying to move a boulder. “Maybe if we tell the truth, how he was going to hurt me and Cellie, and that you saved us.” I nodded and kept pacing, burning a trail in the carpet. “Yeah, if we tell them the truth.” I kept going on and didn’t notice how still Jason and Cellie had become, how they looked at me as if I’d gone mad, caught some sort of highly contagious flesh-eating virus.
Cellie brought her knees to her chest and put her hands over her ears and started to hum.
“Stop,” Jason said to Cellie. She didn’t stop. She got louder, and I kept talking, trying to reason over her humming.
Jason stepped in front of me. “Stop.” He shook me. “Both of you, just let me think.”
I stopped, so did Cellie; our eyes went wide. “We can’t go to the cops,” he said.
I opened my mouth but he pressed a finger to my lips.
His voice and eyes softened. “We can’t go to the cops. They’ll lock you and Cellie up again. I don’t care about myself, but you know what they’ll do to you. They’ll put Cellie in a padded room. And you, too.” He put a hand on my head. “Think about it,” he pleaded.
I knew then that Jason was right. If we surrendered, we wouldn’t be sent back to Pleasant Oaks. We were too old. We’d be sent to Savage Isle, and according to the rumors, it made Pleasant Oaks seem like a day spa.
“Don’t let them lock me up, Alice.” Cellie’s voice was childlike, and something inside of me reached out to protect her.
I straightened and wiped away my tears. “So what do we do?”
Jason smiled, relieved. “Just leave it up to me.” He kissed me, slow and steady. I melted into him like snow in a rain puddle. “C’mon. Let’s get you cleaned up.” He led me to the bathroom and turned on the water in the shower. I got in with my clothes on and watched the blood slide down the drain like a warm red tide.
We couldn’t go back to Candy’s. It was only a matter of time before the cops figured out our names. We thought we had a couple days to get out of town, start a new life. But we were wrong. It wasn’t days. It was hours.
CHAPTER
18
Mates for Life
AFTER THE FIELD TRIP, WE RETURN TO OUR ROOMS TO AWAIT GROUP THERAPY. It has started raining again, a light mist that makes me feel as though we’re living inside a cloud—or maybe it’s just the floaty afterglow of Chase’s kiss.
I find Amelia standing by our barred window, gazing out onto the wet, misty world. She turns as the door clicks shut behind me, as soft as a whisper.
She smiles hesitantly. “My parents finally came.”
My eyes drift over to her bed and the shiny new duffel bag sitting in the middle of it. “Oh,” I say. She links her hands together, making a show of the fact that her red wristband has been removed. I bite my cheek. “Oh,” I say again, this time more faintly.
All of a sudden my throat feels itchy and my chest aches. It’s like my heart has tripled in size and it’s struggling to beat normally inside a too-small cage.
“They’re moving me to Green Lake.” Green Lake is a private mental health facility where patients are assigned private rooms, designer hospital scrubs, and their choice of gourmet cafeteria food. “It’s good, right?” She looks at me hopefully. She needs me to tell her it’s okay. That I’ll be okay.
“That’
s good. I hear it’s nice there,” I manage to say, even though something akin to grief is snaking up my airway.
Suddenly Amelia throws herself on me, and I’m enveloped in another one of her tight embraces. She squeezes and squeezes until I tentatively wrap my arms around her. “We’ll keep in touch,” she says.
Keep in touch. That’s what Jason’s mother muttered through wine-soaked lips.
“Of course,” I say as we separate.
“I wrote my contact information down.” Amelia gestures to a blue square of origami paper on the dresser. “You can call me anytime. They allow cell phones at Green Lake.” She bites her thumb and rocks up on the balls of her feet. “My parents are waiting for me. They came a couple hours ago, but I insisted on staying till you got back.”
“You should go, then.” I glance at the clock. “I should get going, too. Group therapy, you know?”
“Yeah,” she says.
The seconds on the clock tick by, but neither of us moves.
“Okay, I’ll go first.” Amelia slings her bag over her shoulder and squeezes my arm as she walks to the door. “Don’t let Monica give you too much shit, okay? And about Chase . . . be careful. I know you’re into him. Just make sure he’s as into you.”
I force the corners of my mouth into something resembling a smile. “Don’t worry. Chicks before dicks, right?”
“Always!” Amelia shows me her pearly-white teeth in a smile that’s as real as love. I used to smile like that. I smiled like that all the time when I was with Jason. But now, I can’t.
I can’t even manage to watch Amelia walk out the door.
“Tonight I’d like to discuss relationships,” Dr. Goodman says during evening group therapy.
Chase sits next to me. He’s not paying attention. The big headphones looped around his neck emit a soft beat, just low enough so that no one can hear it but us. Every once in a while he shifts in his seat and brushes his leg against mine. My body hums, pulses at his light touches. It’s been hours since our kiss in the pagoda, but I can still feel him, his lips and body pressing into mine.