Read Milo's Story: Stories from The Gateway: Companion tales to The Gateway Trilogy Online
Authors: E.E. Holmes
Milo's Story: Stories from The Gateway: Companion tales to The Gateway Trilogy
MILO’S STORY
E.E. HOLMES
~~~
Lily Faire Publishing
Wakefield, MA
Copyright ©2015 by E.E. Holmes
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-9895080-5-6 (Digital edition)
Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Author photography by Cydney Scott Photography
Here’s the thing about human memories that most people will never find out for themselves; they fade. I don’t mean the kind of fading they naturally do while we’re alive—into the rosy colors and vague impressions of a past we don’t have room in our brains to remember in detail. I’m talking about the fading they do the instant we die. There’s a wall that goes up, between the life you had and the half-life you’ve chosen to cling to. The memories are there, but separate from you, on the other side of that wall, and no amount of thinking and feeling and dwelling can haul them over clearly to the other side. Dying is the equivalent of cutting the cords that link them to you, so that you seem to have no real connection to them anymore.
This is true of every memory I have—my childhood, my family, my school days and summer vacations—each one an image that means less and less with every passing day out of my body. But not the memories of I have with her. Every moment I spent with her is as sharp and clear as though it happened a moment ago. And I think that that must be what it means to be Bound; our story has become the only true part of my story.
And this is how it started.
~
“Welcome to Prison, You Screwed Up Little Fairy.” That’s what the sign said outside the building. Okay, that’s not what the sign said outside of the building. It said, “Welcome to New Beginnings.” But I maintain that that’s what I saw when I looked at it.
I glanced over at my mother, who was sitting in the driver’s seat. She was also staring at the sign as though it said terrible things. For a second, I thought about asking her what she was thinking, but then I remembered that I was pissed off at her and didn’t actually care. .
“Well, here we are,” she said after a few more seconds of listening to the engine run. It was exactly the same thing she’d said every time we pulled up to one of these places. It was the ultimate expression of the obvious except for one, glaring inaccuracy. She wasn’t really here. Neither was my sister, sitting in the back seat, sucking on her long shiny braid, so that the end of it looked like the tip of a paintbrush. Neither of them were really here. They were going to turn around and drive home in a few minutes, free from whatever lay on the other side of that sign. No, I was the only one who was here, and we all knew it.
When I didn’t reply, she plowed on through the sea of awkward silence now filling the car, handing me a large manila envelope as she talked. “We did all of your paperwork ahead of time, and faxed all of your records over. It should make everything nice and easy when you get in there.”
Translation: I did everything in my power to avoid walking into this place with you, because my crippling maternal guilt can’t handle the reality of where we’re sending you. Again.
“Nice and easy,” I repeated, looking at the envelope. “Yeah, right.”
“Now, Milo, don’t start. You know what I mean,” she said, wearily, like I was the one making this difficult.
“So what’s the cover story this time?” I asked, tucking the envelope into my bag.
She looked me in the face for the first time all day.
“Cover story?”
“I mean, what’s Dad telling everyone? It’s not as though he’s actually admitting that he’s locking me up to medicate the gay away.”
“Don’t talk like that in front of your sister,” she hissed through clenched teeth, the way that parents do, as though pressing your teeth together will render your children miraculously deaf. Seriously, you would have thought I’d dropped an f-bomb. But no, I’d dropped the g-bomb, and that was clearly much more damaging to a seven year old psyche.
I looked into the rearview mirror at my sister, who was watching us intently. I winked at her and she smiled. I turned back to my mother, who was not getting off the hook that easily.
“You still haven’t answered my question. What’s the lie this time? Math camp? Future Doctors of America Conference? You’re going to have to let me know so that I stick to the official line when I finally get paroled from the joint.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you right now,” she said, pinching the top of her nose as though my attitude was bringing on a spontaneous nosebleed.
“Now or never,” I muttered.
“Do you want us to come in with you?” she asked, because she had to.
“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t want Phoebe to see that place, and neither do you. That’s why you brought her, isn’t it? A sweet little ready-made excuse not to get out of the car.”
Without waiting for her lame protests, I opened my door and slid out of the car. I leaned into the back seat to pull out my bag, and kissed Phoebe on the nose. Her mouth was quivering at the corners.
“Stay cool, dancin’ fool,” I told her.
“Stay hot, tater-tot,” she said tremulously.
I shut the car door and turned my back on her quickly, before she could see that I was teetering on my own verge of tears.
~
I don’t recall much about the whole “Welcome to New Beginnings” bullshit, except for a few random details. The woman at the front desk had a mole on her lip that was like a whole other face sprouting under her nose, and I couldn’t concentrate on a single word she said because I was staring at it. The nurse gave me a welcome packet with, I shit you not, a smiling sunshine peeking over the top a hillside on the cover. Then she swiped an ID card to open the door from the lobby and pointed me in the direction of my room. She told me that she’d come and get me in an hour for my first group therapy session, but to “make myself at home” in the meantime. I may or may not have laughed in her face.
It was obviously a guys’ hall; it smelled like body odor poorly masked with cheap body spray. I put a hand on the door handle to my assigned room and pushed. It turned easily, but wouldn’t open. I leaned my shoulder against it and shoved, throwing my body into it. Still nothing. These places were always full of locked doors. The nurses had probably forgotten to get it ready for the new head case. I looked again at my ironic, sunshiny welcome packet and checked the room number. I was in the right place, according to the paperwork. I was about to turn and head back to the front desk to tell mole-lady when I heard something that made me stop in my tracks.
A voice was just audible on the other side of the threshold. It was speaking in low, urgent tones, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying. There was a small window near the top of the door, and I stood on tip-toe to peer through it. The bed had been pushed up against the inside of the door, which explained why it refused to open. But more interesting than that was the fact that a girl was sitting on the end of said bed, carrying on one hell of a conversation with absolutely no one.
I groaned. Over the last few years I’d decided that there were four kinds of kids in these places. And screw medical terminology, I guarantee you that any doctor would agree with me, even if he didn’t admit it out loud; in his head, he’d be saying, “Well, shit. I spent a small fortune on my medical degree and this kid has gone and nailed it without a single day of med school.” Seriously. Here’s how it breaks down. First, you’ve got the Fixer-Uppers. These are kids like me, whose families are unhappy with something about them. A lot of these kids don’t even realize there’s anything wrong with them until other people start pointing it out. “Oh, that’s not normal. Should he be doing that?” “Oh, that really isn’t typical behavior. You should really have that looked at.” The Fixer-Uppers are hardly crazy. They’re just dealing with the repercussions of being told that they’re wrong in some way. In fact, if people would just accept them, or at least leave them the fuck alone, they could go pretty happily through life. But no one ever leaves them alone. The world bullies and harasses and beats their square little selves into the socially acceptable round holes, and when they don’t fit, they end up in places like this.
Then, you’ve got the Look-At-Mes. The Look-At-Mes need attention as badly as the Fixer-Uppers DON’T need it. They thrive on drama, and will do just about any crazy shit they can think of to get someone’s sympathy. Their behavior escalates and escalates with each new level of attention until they wind up someplace like this. And they’re actually proud of themselves for making it in, like this place is some kind of reward. They see it as validation. “See? I told you I was crazy! Look at how crazy I am!” They’re the ones the rest of us want to bitch slap. Repeatedly.
Next, you’ve got the Periodics. As in Table. Chemistry. These kids aren’t crazy either. They’ve just got to find the right cocktail to keep their chemistry balanced, and then stay on that cocktail long enough to function normally. These are the depressives, the bi-polars, the kids who can do just fine on the outside if they play by the meds. Of course, a lot of the time they don’t. Sometimes they convince themselves they’re better and don’t need the meds anymore. Sometimes they just don’t like the side-effects or the way the meds make them feel. Sometimes they just want to flip-off their doctors or their parents, or the world, and won’t take them on rebellious principle. Either way, they are usually in and out a lot- periodically, in fact. I’ve flirted with Periodic status, but so far, I maintain my Fixer-Upper label.
Finally, you’ve got the Foxes. As in, “crazy as a.” These are the lifers, with no chance of functioning outside the walls. They start in places like New Beginnings, but that’s usually just a stop on the way to someplace that makes New Beginnings look like a spa getaway. I hadn’t met many of them, but the few I had met scared the crap out of me.
One look through that window, and I knew that girl was the craziest Fox I’d ever seen.
And she was in my room. Of course. Because that was just my friggin’ luck.
I hovered on the spot for a minute, trying to convince myself to go find a nurse, but also weirdly fascinated by what the girl was doing. The conversation, if that’s what it was, was escalating quickly. The girl’s hands were gesticulating wildly now, and she kept pointing to the door, where I stood gaping at her. Finally, she stood up, stamping her foot in frustration, and said, loudly enough so that I could actually understand her, “It’s not your room anymore! You have to leave!”
She looked towards the door this time and froze. We stared at each other, neither of us moving a muscle, neither of us sure what to do. I was fighting an impulse to run. She looked like she would have jumped out the window if it hadn’t been barred. Finally, after a long, tense moment, she dropped the hand she had been pointing with. Her face fell into a perfectly serene expression, and she walked calmly towards me.
I backed away until the opposite wall bumped gently against my shoulder blades. There was the sound of the bed being pulled away from the door, and then, it opened. The girl turned and closed it carefully behind her, before she turned to look at me again.
She was tiny and frail-looking, with long, thick brown hair, a pale face, and enormous eyes; the kind of eyes you could fall into and not find your way back out of again. Her hands were clasped demurely in front of her, and her voice, when she spoke, was a fluttery thing.
“I’m sorry about that. I think you should ask the nurses for another room,” she said. Then she walked away down the hall without another word of explanation and disappeared around the corner.
~
She was there an hour later, in my first group therapy session, or as I fondly called them, the feelings circle. Group therapy is probably the most awkward thing you can imagine; a dozen kids who don’t know each other being prodded and coerced into a forced conversation, each trying to say as little as possible while still getting credit for participation, with the exception of one or two over-sharers who can’t shut up. The good part about being the new kid on the block was that I could usually get away with telling them nothing but my name and a few bland getting-to-know-you details, unless the therapist on duty was a real prick. Luckily, Dr. Mulligan was the bleeding heart type, and I launched into my well-rehearsed introduction.
Hi, my name is Milo Chang. My favorite subject in school is math. In my free time I like to read fashion magazines and sketch. My favorite snack food is barbeque potato chips. My favorite color should probably be pink, but actually it’s the dreary black of my misunderstood soul.
Once my intro was out of the way, I could size up my fellow inmates as they did the obligatory round robin introductions for my benefit. I had a bad habit of inventing names and backstories for them instead of actually listening to what they were saying, purely for my own amusement, but that day I didn’t even do that. I couldn’t seem to force my focus onto anyone but the creepy little Fox I’d found in my room. She didn’t look up at all as the others spoke, but examined with a detached sort of interest the pattern of scars on her forearms. When it was her turn to speak, I had to lean forward to hear her.
“My name is Hannah. I like to read and listen to music. I haven’t been to school in a while, so I don’t have a favorite subject anymore.”
I looked around the circle. None of the other kids seemed to want to look at Hannah. One boy had actually gotten up and moved his seat away from her when she sat down. She couldn’t have been paying them less attention, though. Her eyes, when not fixed on her own hands, had a strange tendency to dart suddenly one way or another, like she was reacting to sounds that only she could hear. At one point she jumped as though startled, her face twisted into a knot of annoyance, but I didn’t see or hear anything that could have brought on such a reaction. Yes, this girl wasn’t just on the crazy train: she was driving it.