Thorne and Varla had their reservations about certain things, but Reyes? Reyes had paranoia like no one else. I guess that’s what happens when you try to kidnap your ex-girlfriend? According to Reyes, he didn’t even get her into his trunk before seeing the blue and red lights coming toward him. What he had thought were fireworks turned out to be Charlotte’s finest coming to haul his crazy ass downtown.
Reyes never spoke much about what had become known as the incident, but over the years I’d managed to glean a few things from our late-night conversations and pieced it together:
Reyes was in love with her.
They had picked out china patterns, so shit was serious.
Said girlfriend was unaware of his feelings, or that he even existed.
The stalking charges were dropped in exchange for being committed.
“Hey, no one said anything about rollin’ out the welcome wagon.” I said, tapping my palm against the table to rein in my crew. Reyes scoffed. “So she’s a fuckin snitch, alright? I’m not denying that. But Dr. Young has done a lot for our asses,” I paused, glancing at Thorne pointedly, “especially you.”
Thorne rolled his eyes.
It was the same shit every time we elected to bring someone into our group. Most patients at Hawthorne were like loose rats chasing their next meal; they couldn’t figure out left or right, where the hell they were going or what they were doing—which was part of the appeal and punishment of being in a psych ward.
None of us knew what it was like to be a scared rat roaming the halls because we’d been rescued early on before shit got real.
Outside of Hawthorne’s walls we were known for the newspaper clippings, Nancy Grace interviews, or magazine articles that had been written about us. Everyone in the world thought we were a waste of DNA. Crazy.
But inside Hawthorne we were legends. The patients here didn’t associate us with our symptoms or mental stability, unlike the judge or our parents. No. Here they envied us. They wanted to be us.
They wanted to fuck us.
To the patients at Hawthorne, we were royalty.
My eyes drifted to the oversized black hoodie that seemed to swallow Varla’s tiny frame. The word LEGENDS was embroidered across the center in white bold letters. Varla wore it like a crown, as did the rest of us.
We were untouchable.
Five
Gambrielle
"You're allowed five minutes a day, mmmkay? Other patients at Hawthorne need a turn too. Wouldn't want to show favoritism, would we? No." The charge nurse on afternoon duty, Mrs. Davis, treated me as though I had a mental handicap. Her bright eyes were sympathetic as she passed the corded phone across the marble white counter that served as the nurses’ station. She was old, well into her sixties, and her strangled, southern voice was oddly comforting. "Now you go ahead and tell me who you want to call and I'll put it right in for ya, okay?"
I offered her the kindest smile I could muster, given the circumstances. It wasn't her fault I was here, after all, it was Joe's, and I had to keep reminding myself of that little fact as I leaned forward and slowly whispered, "I don't know my attorney's number. Do you have that on file somewhere?" Yes, I needed to speak with him. ASAP. Being confined to a room all day and force fed meds was one thing; Getting demonic sketches from Hannibal Sketcher was another thing altogether.
Nurse Davis fell back into her chair and shot me a pitiful look, "Oh honey. You'll have to forgive Laces. He's not well."
I blinked twice. “Laces?”
“The room you ran into yesterday? That was Laces’ room.” She confided and then admitted, “I heard you mentioning something about a sketch to Nurse Kline.”
“Maybe I was referring to someone else?”
“That’s not likely.” she said, smiling. “Laces is the only patient that sketches on this floor.”
All I could do was force a tight smile and nod. Word clearly traveled fast around Hawthorne.
Nurse Davis leaned forward and whisper-shouted, "He once drew a photo of me hanging from the Eiffel Tower. I had no clothes on and my insides were spilling out into the Paris sky." Her voice was so uppity, like this was the biggest piece of gossip she would get to share all year. Seeing my stunned expression, she cleared her throat and bared her set of white dentures, "You have to find the beauty in the ugly. That's what my momma always used to say. Poo on the fact that my guts were hanging out. But the Eiffel Tower was sketched to perfection." As if recalling a memory, she closed her eyes and nodded, rocking back and forth in her chair, "Oh, it sure was."
“I don’t doubt it one bit, BUT—your guts were hanging out—”
“—had a beautiful sky.” She rambled on, “Laces was even nice enough to put me in my favorite polka dot dress. It was torn, of course, but I still smiled at them rags.”
I looked to my left, then right, no one was around to witness this atrocity, thank God. My head snapped back to her, “about that phone call. Do you um…have my attorney’s phone number—or is there someone I could speak to?”
Nurse Davis reeled herself back in from her musings and I was back to being treated like a mentally handicapped being. “You’re only allowed to call the people you put on your approved list. Did you put your attorney on your list?”
Did I? I bit my lip as I thought back to yesterday and to the paperwork Malcolm had given me after we accepted the plea deal. Everything had happened so fast.
“Let me check in the computer, okay?”
I nodded and whispered a prayer at about the same time a thin, blue-haired pixie girl bounced past me, laughing like a clown on speed. Our eyes briefly met and there was something behind them, an unspoken secret as she skipped away in her oversized black hoodie and black scrub pants, chanting “He’s coming for youuu...” in a perky, songstress voice.
“Excuse me?” I prompted. A shiver coursed through my spine as she continued to repeat the same phrase over and over, the words bouncing off of the walls and into my ears, taunting me. Who was coming? Had my stepfather sent someone? My heart had picked up a little speed and I could feel the beads of sweat breaking out across my forehead as pixie waved at me.
“Oh, don’t worry about her. The jury is still out on that one.” Nurse Davis said, squinting at her computer screen. “Ah! Here we go! You approved Claudette Evans and Stacey Hargrove.” Shit. No Malcolm.
Claudette Evans was my mother/Joe’s bitch, and had testified against me at trial. She was Joe’s faithful minion, an abuse victim suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Any conversation with her this early after my plea deal would’ve resulted in another argument, and possibly Joe hanging up the phone for her. Something he had been known to do in the past…
Stacey Hargrove had been my best friend since I was three. We were like twins, always finishing each other’s sentences and knowing what the other would say before she said it. Her parents had treated me like I was their own daughter, and we often vacationed in Charleston together during the summer. But since the allegations were made public there hadn’t been much conversation. Like my stepfather, Stacey came from blue-blood roots, and blue-bloods were known to take pride in their reputations almost as much as their bank accounts.