Outside the grimy bus windows, apartment buildings and storefronts rushed by, tucked behind car after car parked end to end to end. Trucks and other vehicles whooshed past, throwing up sheets of dirty slush. Then came a strip mall with a beauty salon, a carpet retailer, a bakery, and a hardware store. A group of boys in matching jackets stood under the awning outside a grocery market, watching traffic and looking bored. They looked like the Bay Boys, a gang that wasn’t much of a gang; they didn’t have a turf and never fought with any of the other gangs, but they attacked prostitutes in the West Village. Some people said Cropsey attacked prostitutes too.
People still search the woods for the remains of lost children.
Her stomach twisted in on itself. She had to stop thinking about Cropsey. It was a waste of time and energy. Setting her purse on the empty seat beside her, she leaned against the window and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the sway of the vehicle and the awful smells. What she wouldn’t give to be at the mall hanging out with Heather and Dawn, laughing and making fun of people and being bored. Instead, she was alone and scared, thanks to the thoughts they’d planted in her head. But there was no time for pity parties. She needed to figure out what to say to the people at Willowbrook so they’d let her help with the search. Convincing them that she was Rosemary’s sister would be the easy part—they were identical twins, with matching strawberry-blond hair, high cheekbones, and silver-blue eyes flecked with touches of violet. Unless Rosemary had changed. Unless six years locked in an institution had washed her out and used her up.
Every time the bus stopped to let off a passenger or pick someone up, Sage startled upright and looked out the window to see where they were, her heart racing. Watching the people get off the bus and walk along the snowy sidewalks, all of them ready to begin another normal day—shopping or meeting friends for brunch and mimosas, going home after pulling an all-nighter, checking in on a sick aunt—filled her with envy. Even if they lived alone with an old cat, she longed to be one of them instead of who she was: a grieving, unloved girl on her way to a mental institution to look for her lost sister.
She closed her eyes again so she wouldn’t see anything or anyone, and tried not to think too far ahead. The best way to deal with whatever was going to happen next was by taking it minute by minute instead of imagining all the things that could go wrong. But the more often the bus stopped and the closer they got to Willowbrook, the deeper her unease grew. Maybe she should have waited until she’d found someone to come with her. Maybe she should have asked Noah to come, even though he’d cheated with Yvette. No, he would have talked her out of it—and she couldn’t trust him anyway. She didn’t trust herself not to take him back either, especially now when she was feeling so vulnerable. She would do this on her own; she had no other choice. It was too late to turn back anyway.
After several more stops, the only people left on the bus were the driver and an Asian couple, both husband and wife staring sullenly out the window. Before pulling away from the last stop before Willowbrook, the driver closed the door and glanced in the long mirror above his head.
“You goin’ to Willowbrook?” he shouted, looking at Sage.
The Asian couple turned to gaze back at her, their pale faces devoid of emotion.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I am.”
“All right,” the driver said. “Just checkin’.” He closed the door and pulled away from the curb.
She sat up to watch out the window, alert and shaking with nerves. After traveling a few more blocks, the bus turned and lumbered down a long, single-lane drive, past a brown, billboard-size sign that read: WILLOWBROOK STATE SCHOOL. Then they went through a pillared gate, which was held open by padlocked chains secured to thick posts. Next to the gate, a uniformed guard sat in a closet-size guardhouse reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette. After a brief glance at the bus, he waved it onto the Willowbrook campus.
Sage closed her hands into fists, her knuckles turning white. Between the gate and the guard, Willowbrook seemed more like a prison than a school. Maybe it was a good thing she’d come alone. She wouldn’t have been able to cope with anyone else’s anxiety or apprehension. She could barely contain her own.
For what seemed like forever, the bus traveled along a narrow entrance road passing scraggly, snow-covered meadows and thick woods with frozen creeks. The storm had finally let up, but piles of heavy snow weighed down the evergreens and coated the bare limbs of maple and oak trees. A trio of deer lifted their heads to watch the bus pass, flicking their tails, then went back to pawing through drifts to find grass. The scene reminded Sage of a Christmas card, like something you’d see on your way to your grandparents’ house on a winter holiday—everything light and peaceful and calm, a stark contrast to the dark chaos inside her head. It reminded her of her father too, how he used to talk about building a log cabin in the wilderness someday. If only he were here with her now. If only he knew how much she and Rosemary needed him. Surely he would help. Unless his dream had come true, and he’d built that cabin in the woods somewhere. Unless he had a whole new life.
Desperate, she tried a crazy trick she and Rosemary used to attempt when they were young: straining to send thoughts to each other and reading each other’s minds. It had never worked, but she tried it now anyway, concentrating as hard as she could to send a message to her father, praying he would hear, or somehow sense, her despair.
We need you, Daddy. We need you now more than ever. Please look for us.
It was foolish, but she didn’t care.
After the tangle of woods thinned out, vast snow-covered lawns appeared with perfectly spaced trees and landscaped bushes. In the distance, a stand of willows grew along the bank of an ice-covered stream, their long, bare branches sweeping the ground. Then came a row of four-story brick buildings on each side of the road, low-slung and U-shaped, with black numbers stenciled in white circles on each wing. In front of the buildings, gaily painted benches, swing sets, carousels, and monkey bars dotted the yards, all capped with tufts of snow. But no children played outside. No teachers watched over recess or led groups of students on walks. A man shoveling a sidewalk—oddly without a coat or gloves—stopped to watch the bus go by. Otherwise, the entire place looked deserted.
Sage wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected or what she’d hoped to find. Maybe a search team in orange vests with a search and rescue dog, squad cars and helicopters, and volunteers on horseback heading into the woods. Definitely she’d imagined decrepit buildings with barred windows and overgrown yards. Even barbed-wire-topped fences and uniformed guards. But Willowbrook looked more like a college campus than a prison, where things were cared for and a person could find peace and quiet. Maybe Rosemary had been treated well there. Maybe she’d made friends and found someone to love and care for her. Maybe she’d even been happy—or as happy as a person locked in an institution could be, anyway. Hopefully when Sage walked in, she’d be informed that Rosemary had already been found, no harm done. That her sister had gotten lost in the woods or tried running away, and now she was safely back in her room enjoying a bowl of her favorite ice cream, vanilla. Sitting back in the bus seat, Sage breathed a sigh of relief. No matter what happened next, at least Willowbrook wasn’t as horrible as she feared.