It was like a glass smashing against a wall.
“Who do they think they are? They won’t allow you to have a photo of your dead parents? That’s sick!”
“I don’t want one,” Jaime said in a little voice, her eyes already swollen with tears.
I. Don’t. Want. One.
A sledgehammer couldn’t have hit me as hard.
I whispered my reply. “What?”
“I don’t like to remember.”
“Remember them?”
“Remember what happened.”
It was like an electric shock to my head. “You remember the accident?”
She looked away, and although she didn’t nod, I saw the answer in her haunted eyes.
“Jaime… tell me. I can’t remember. Tell me—”
“Dr. Lasny said not to talk about it.”
“Dr.—Dr. Lansing?”
Jaime nodded.
Betrayal. Betrayed. I was betrayed. Dr. Lansing is in this whole thing with the Baileys—working to make Jaime forget me and to never come see me! She only caved when I threw a tantrum and made things hard for her! They want Jaime to forget me!
I grabbed Jaime by the shoulders. “I’m your sister! I’m the oldest now they’re dead, and you have to listen to what I say! You will not forget me!”
She cried out—a small, piercing shriek—and began to weep. I dropped her arms, instantly sorry, and gave her a big hug. She sobbed until she fell asleep, her head padded on my chest. I lay on my bed with her, taking in her little-girl smell (it had changed since living with the fake parents, but not so much that I couldn’t smell the real her underneath).
“Don’t forget me,” I whispered in her ear, holding her hand—a tiny version of my own.
We lay together for an hour or so, and I thought about how things used to be. Carly discarding me in our room, always the same. Cuddling up with Jaime in her bed for a while, reading her a bedtime story—always “The Frog Prince”—and then going out into the night after (maybe) a brief chat with Mum. Looking down at Jaime sleeping beside me now, I felt the loss of that normal all over my body like an ache. I could have stayed like that forever, but she jolted awake, dizzy and confused.
“Where am I?” she asked. She was shivering.
“With me in my room, silly,” I told her.
She gave a couple of sleepy grunts. “It’s too cold in here. I don’t like it.”
I glanced at the window—it was shut firmly. And Jaime was still in her fluffy coat.
“It’s not cold,” I said, touching her cheeks, which were warm.
“And it smells funny.”
I sniffed the air. Nothing.
“I don’t like it,” she said, eyes shadowed.
It was weird. Jaime loves everything, and when she doesn’t, she doesn’t moan about it. Those Bailey shits have got into her head.
“Come on, Jaime. It’s just a room!”
“There’s something bad in here.”
What could I say? The Baileys have been turning her against me for months. Not in an obvious way, of course, but in subtle ways. And there’s nothing I can do about it. It makes me crazy.
“I have to go,” she said, climbing off my bed. There were duvet lines across her cheek, and sleep was still heavy in her eyes. “Mrs. Bailey said she would wait for me at the end of the corridor.”
“Jaime?” I said, as she turned to go. “Don’t let those dickballs tell you things about me.”
“Okay.”
“You know me better than they do,” I added.
She nodded. “Okay.”
As the door was closing behind her, I thought of something.
“Wait—Jaime?”
Her little head popped back. “Yeah?”
“Have you heard from Carly lately?”
“Yes.”
“She sound… normal? I mean, did she sound okay?”
She just shrugged. “I have to go now.”
“Okay, Beanette.”
The door closed. I didn’t get a chance to say “I love you,” so I said it to the closed door. The words, spoken but unheard, fell to the floor, where they shattered like glass. Everything so fragile, and I love her so much. That, I think, is fragile too.
I sniffed the air, and still I didn’t smell a thing.
I should have asked what it smelled like.
Later, Dorm
Kaitlyn is:
1. A prophet
2. Demonstrably insane
3. An incredible force
4. Bipolar
5. A ghost
6. A big dog in a little cage
Which of these seems likely, Dr. Lansing?
So sick of her. Sick of her ideas. Sick of it all. I am not a symptom! She’s the symptom. She’s sick.
Sick!
Sick!
Sick!
Sick!
Sick!
SICK!
From: RealxChick
To: AriHait558
Date: 19 Sept 2004
Subject: A Disgrace to My Gender
So I finally caved and emailed you. What a crappy night so far.
Grumpy.
From: AriHait558
To: RealxChick
Date: 19 Sept 2004
Subject: Re: A Disgrace to My Gender
It never ceases to amaze me the rules girls put on their lives.
I saw you near the art block the other day, and you looked right through me. Hence my silence. I suppose I’m a little too weird to acknowledge during school? Maybe your friends will disown you if they find out you’re secretly befriending the weird guy in the bowler hat.
A.
[There is no reply from Kaitlyn on the server.]
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Sunday, 19 September 2004, 10:00 pm
Basement
You have dark hair. (I’ve always wanted dark hair.) Your eyes will be brown, a color that holds secrets well. Isn’t that fitting? You’re tall, because I’m not. You have three tattoos—an asp on your left wrist, a sparrow on your right ankle, and a dagger on your thigh. You have plump lips that are for kissing, not talking, and your eyes sparkle with inner light. You like to listen.
What do you think, Dee? Have I described you accurately? Do you need a more distinctive feature to tell you apart from the rabble of the world? How about this: You have one brown eye and one green eye. You take in through the green and cage with the brown. You have a nose stud too, and you always wear black.
Welcome to my head, Dee. Please, look around.
I’m in the bowels of the main building, exploring the basement. It’s so cold.
I swear, Dee, this place is as big as the entire main building. Chairs, tables, boxes, uniforms, equipment, netting, the old (and new) hall curtains, mannequins, old mattresses from the boardinghouse, skeletal teaching props—you name it. Not only did I reach a point where I thought I’d never find an exit, but I also lost track of the window that gave me entry. Just my luck, being trapped down there with useless things. Maybe, I thought, I’ll die down here. It got me thinking about whether I’m a prop in Carly’s life, or she’s one in mine.
There’s another room down there, Dee. Totally cut off from everything else. A tiny little box of a room with its own staircase—grimy and moist—up to a secret servants’ corridor that leads between walls and out into the kitchen. This room is the only part of this building not cluttered with stuff. The only thing in there is a big Victorian cupboard—an armoire. It gave me the chills. Even though it’s just an empty room, it felt as if someone was in there with me. Maybe more than one person. At any rate, I felt watched.