“Okay. Goodnight, Holden. See you tomorrow.”
I didn’t trust my voice, so I held very still as the dimness in the room softened and grew darker. Milo’s breathing became even and regular. Carefully, I slipped out of his bed and back into mine. For an hour, I watched the shadows creep across the ceiling like long black fingers.
When dawn’s first light started to color the sky, I quietly dressed and packed up the rest of my belongings in matching Louis Vuitton luggage. My journals, mostly. The sanitarium didn’t allow us to keep much of our own clothes; my wardrobe for the past year was criminally full of crew neck shirts and poly-blends.
At seven a.m., a key turned in the lock of our door. I was already there. I shushed the orderly with a nod at Milo. He nodded and wordlessly took my luggage for me. I glanced back at my roommate.
He wasn’t going to be sad I was gone. Or if he was, it’d last for a few minutes and he’d get over it.
I went out and shut the door behind me. It locked itself with an automatic click.
The family lawyer my parents had sent to facilitate my exit from Sanitarium du lac Léman looked adequately slimy and expensive. Monsieur Albert Bernard sat beside me in the Director’s Office, resplendent in an Armani suit. I felt pitiful in jeans and—God help me—a short-sleeved button down with little yellow pineapples all over it.
Dr. Lange, the sanitarium director, looked uncharacteristically unsettled. He nodded at me. “Good morning, Mr. Parish.”
Now that I cradled the sanitarium’s balls in my hand—to crush or massage them depending on how smooth my escape was this morning—I was Mr. Parish.
I smiled, showing all my teeth. “You look nervous, Dr. Lange. If all goes well, I’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes, and you won’t hear from me again.”
Dr. Lange shifted in his chair. “Yes, well, we consider what transpired between you and a physician here to be very serious business. We pride ourselves on giving only the very best of care—”
“Don’t sweat it, doc. Random pedos aside, you run a very fine establishment. The unpleasant business with Dr. Picour wasn’t entirely unpleasant anyway, if you know what I mean.” I shot him a wink and lounged back in my chair.
Dr. Lange’s pale face turned paler. His eyes glanced at Monsieur Bernard who lifted his hands as if to say I don’t know what to do with him either.
Lange cleared his throat. “Dr. Picour has been terminated and his license revoked, effective immediately. Your discharge papers are here, as per our agreement.” He pushed a file folder across his desk to Bernard. “And if I may offer my sincerest of apologies, Holden. I do hope that you continue to seek care when back in the States, so as not to lose the progress you made—”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said, my smile thinning.
I’d been telling the truth—lac Léman was a decent place. Dr. Picour had been a fledgling predator; rumors of him crossing lines with male patients in subtle ways had caught my attention. It had been a simple matter to push him over the edge, playing the role of a vulnerable-yet-horny patient (not much acting required) and Picour had folded like a lawn chair. Sanitarium du lac Léman didn’t want an international incident and I wanted to get the hell out of there. Not bad for ten minutes of action in a supply closet.
“All looks in order,” Monsieur Bernard said.
He signed my release papers along with a Non-Disclosure Agreement. He passed the pen and folder to me, I signed on the dotted line, and then I was free.
Out of one prison, on to the next.
I followed Bernard to the sanitarium drive, dragging my luggage. Two town cars with drivers waited—one for him, one for me. Mine came with an intimidating hulk of a man dressed in black.
“Is he my going away present?”
“Not quite. Antoine will escort you back to the States. Your parents are concerned for your safety.”
“Since when?”
The lawyer delicately cleared his throat. “To reiterate the terms of your release, your aunt and uncle have agreed to spend the year in their vacation home in Santa Cruz acting as your guardians,” Bernard said while Antoine loaded my luggage into the trunk. “Per your request, your parents will stay away—”
“Stay the fuck away.”
“I beg your pardon?”
I punctuated my words in the air with my hand like a conductor. “I want them to stay the fuck away from me.”
He sniffed. “They have agreed to not interfere or make contact of any kind on the condition that you reside with your aunt and uncle peaceably. You will have a generous allowance, but large withdrawals in cash are not permitted and all credit card transactions will be monitored. A chauffeured car will be provided as you will not be allowed to drive.”
“That’s probably for the best since I plan to do a lot of drinking.”
He rolled his eyes. “Your aunt and uncle are sainted people.”
“They can handle me for one year. Not even one year. I turn eighteen in February.”
“You must finish school, Mr. Parish, or no inheritance. Only with a high school diploma will the trust be released. It’s the very minimum of education required, though your parents—”
“Mr. and Mrs. Parish,” I corrected. “Parents are people who care for their children. Not sociopaths who torture their only son because he happens to be gay.”
I said it lightly enough. I always did. Made jokes. Pushed the pain down and hid it with a smile and a wink, and maybe a gallon or two of booze or a night with a stranger. No one got to see how bad I hurt.
Bernard bristled. “Mr. and Mrs. Parish extend their regards to you and hope that, given your extraordinary intelligence, you will pursue an advanced degree. I hear you are something of a writer?”
“With all due respect, the only thing I extend to those ghouls is my middle finger. Here it is.” I flipped him off and then climbed into the back seat of the town car. “And my writing is none of their fucking business. Come to think of it, nothing I do is their business ever again.” I slammed the door and then rolled down the window as the driver started the engine. “Thanks for your help, Bernie. You can go back to Paris now until my next scandal.”
He pursed his lips. “I can’t wait.”
My aunt and uncle met me at the baggage claim at San Francisco International. Antoine—whose entire method of communication during the sixteen-hour flight consisted of grunts and intimidating glares—followed behind me like a huge, epically muscular shadow.
Aunt Margaret and Uncle Reginald (my dad’s brother) looked like California-fied versions of my parents: middle-aged, impeccably dressed, sticks up their asses, but tan.
I looked nothing like them. After a year in captivity, my skin was pale, making my green eyes stand out in a way that may or may not help me get laid. No telling what the Santa Cruz guys were like. My dad called all Californians dirty tree-hugging hippies in that close-minded, prejudicial manner of his I’d grown to know well. Never mind that they’d invested much of our billions in the tech industry that was right up the road from Santa Cruz. But I’m pretty sure the Parish family motto was “Never let a little hypocrisy get in the way of profit.” It’s probably emblazoned on our family crest.