Night Owls (19 page)

“She might get overly excited,” Jack explained as we walked into a well-lit corridor on a surprisingly modern, pleasantly designed floor. Bright artwork filled the walls, and plants
stretched in front of long windows. “Or she might withdraw. Don’t be offended, either way. It’s not personal.”

She, she, she. Who was this
she?
He hadn’t said a word about the gossip he’d overheard on the night of the party, and I’d been too embarrassed to admit that the person
I’d oh-so-wrongly assumed to be his mother was, clearly, not. I greatly regretted my earlier cowardice and wished I’d just asked him. Too late now.

“Does she know I’m coming?” I asked, a slow panic brewing in my stomach.

“Yes. But she gets confused about time, so she might not be expecting you.”

“She’s expecting,” Rupert said. “She’s been talking nonstop about it since dinner. You tell her all the rules?” he said, motioning his head toward me.

“What rules?” I asked.

“Don’t give her anything,” Jack said. “And don’t let her take anything, either. No cords, no electronics, no shoelaces, no metal or glass.”

“Anything can be a weapon,” Rupert said. A weapon she’d use on me? Shoelaces? Would she try to strangle me?

“And don’t try to shake her hand or anything,” Jack added. “She sometimes gets freaked about touching.”

We passed a set of double doors marked
DAY ROOM ONE
and headed to a patient wing, passing a couple of nurses along the way. Other than that, it was quiet, which seemed bizarre—no screaming
and wailing like the psych wards on TV. Midway down the corridor, a door cracked open and a head poked out, just for a moment. And all my slow panic speeded up significantly.

“Fifteen minutes,” Rupert said. “I’ll be at the end of the hall when you’re ready.”

Jack took a deep breath and knocked on the door before opening it. “It’s just me.”

No reply came. I followed him into a small private room that smelled of cigarette smoke. A darkened bathroom sat to the left of the entrance, and further in, the rest matched my mental image of
a college dorm room: white walls, tiled floor, chunky wooden table, and some built-in shelves. A single bed sat under a window, and on the bed was a chubby girl who had short, dark hair and wore
pink pajamas.

“Yo, Jillie,” Jack said. “I brought someone to meet you, just like I promised.”

Jillie. Jillian.

His sister was definitely not at a European boarding school.

The girl appeared to be our age. She looked relatively normal. No crazy eyes. Well, at least not that I could tell, because she wouldn’t look at me directly. She blinked a lot and tugged
on a curling lock of hair at the back of her neck.

“Jillie, this is my friend Beatrix. Bex, this is Jillian, my twin sister.”

Twins.

I didn’t know what to say, but she still wasn’t looking at me, and things were getting uncomfortable. So I just said, “Hi there.”

It was enough to warm her up. She flicked a couple of furtive glances my way. Then she surprised me. “Jack told me about you. It’s your birthday.”

“
Was
her birthday,” Jack corrected. “A few weeks ago.”

“Oh, that’s right. I’m allergic to dairy, so I can’t have cake,” she said, picking up a pack of cigarettes hidden beneath a stuffed frog on her windowsill.

“You got your lighter back?” Jack asked.

“Out of pity,” she said. “Dr. Kapoor will eventually take it away. He always does.”

The window opened only partially, allowing a few inches of fresh air before a set of chains went taut. With shaking hands, Jillian lit up a cigarette and blew smoke through the cracked window.
“They don’t want you to jump,” she said, catching me staring at the chains. “On the fifth floor, you can’t even open the windows.”

“The fifth floor blows,” Jack said, pulling out a chair from her table and gesturing for me to sit. He then perched on the bed next to Jillian. “You okay today?”

She drew her knees up to her chest. “Not really. Well, I guess I am. Pretty good. Yeah. Sort of.” She floundered as if she truly wasn’t sure how to answer, and took a long drag
off her cigarette. “It’s not a bad day.”

“Excellent. I’m glad to hear it.”

“You’re really tiny,” Jillian said to me. “What’s your shoe size?”

I thought about the shoestring warning. Was she angling for my shoes? I fought the urge to hide my feet behind my sketchbook satchel. “Uh, five?”

“That’s small. I miss buying shoes. We only get the slip-ons,” she said, nodding toward a pair of Vans that were decorated with painted zigzags on the flaps. Then she tapped
Jack on the shoulder. “Remember those purple heels Mom told me I couldn’t have? She said they looked like porn star shoes.”

“I remember,” Jack said.

“They had the bows on the straps. I loved those bows. Why do bows make everything cuter? If you have a shitty present you want to give someone, you can slap on bow on it, and then
it’s okay. Doesn’t really matter what’s inside. If it’s wrapped nicely, no one is going to complain. And really, anyone who complains about a present is a dick. Unless
it’s an inten—” She grimaced, sucking in a sharp breath, then tried again. “An in-ten-tionally bad present. Like, maybe if you hate someone, but you’re forced to give
them a gift in one of those white elephant tiger safari exchanges.”

“Like at Christmas,” Jack supplied. “White elephant.”

“White elephant,” she repeated. “But not us. You already know what I’m getting you for Christmas. Another lame portrait.”

My gaze jumped to the wall at the foot of her bed. A collection of things was taped there: a green felt-tip marker, a packet of sugar, a rubber duck, and six paintings of faces. One was an alien
man who matched the alien woman in Jack’s room.

“Shut up. I love your portraits,” he said.

Jillian ducked her head and beamed.
“You
shut up,” she said affectionately, squinting at him from the crook of her arm. Not crazy eyes, no. But there was something different
about them, a weird, glassy look, as if she were drunk or high. The trembling hands and chain-smoking didn’t help.

“I remember seeing the”—crap. What if it wasn’t an alien?—“uh, the green one hanging on your brother’s wall.”

“You’ve been to his room?” She said this like it was an accusation.

I looked at Jack.
Help me out here.

“That’s right, she has,” he said smoothly. “Not my old room. The guesthouse.”

“I remember,” she said irritably, flicking her cigarette butt out the window and lighting up another. The girl was a machine.

“Rupert said you need to go to sleep soon. Maybe you should make that one the last of the night.”

She ignored him and spoke to me. “I see why Jack likes you.”

“Oh?”

“You’re a lake.”

“A lake,” I repeated.

“What do you mean?” Jack said.

She tugged the curl at her neck. “Calm like a lake. Still water.”

If only she knew how crazy my life actually was under the surface, what with my sneaking around behind my mom’s back to draw dead bodies, being questioned by the police for romantic crimes
committed by my felonious boyfriend, and having my cheating, gift-giving father trying to woo his way back into my heart.

“He’s got enough craziness in his life, so you’re the opposite,” she said, fanning smoke away. “And by craziness, yeah, I mean me. Did he tell you why I’m
here?”

“Jillie,” he cautioned.

“It’s better to talk about it openly—that’s what Dr. Kapoor says. And it’s not like I’m here because I’m on vacation. I’m schizoid. I hear voices
in my head. Sometimes I see things that make me feel like I’m dreaming while I’m awake. And I’m not dreaming. I’m just screwed up, and they can’t fix me.”

“They can, and they are,” Jack said.

“Okay, maybe I’m a little better.”

“A lot,” Jack said.

“Yeah, a lot,” she said dreamily. “Sometimes I’m a lot better. I really thought I was going to come home this summer until they nearly killed me with meds.”

“But they straightened it out.”

She laughed loudly and then spoke in a low, singsong voice. “ ‘Doctor, she hasn’t tried to kill herself lately. Better fill her full of poison to stay on track.’ ”
She made a gurgling sound effect and pantomimed swallowing a bottleful of pills.

“Not funny,” Jack said, pulling down her arm.

“I didn’t say it was.” She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “But it’s all good now, because these old meds are the best. They make me feel pro . . . um,
pro-duc-tive, and the doctors had to up my dose, so now I get a little buzz off them.”

“Jillie—”

“You want to know what it’s like,” she said to me in a flat voice. She was looking in my direction, but I wasn’t sure if she really saw me. “Everyone wants to know.
It’s better to talk about it when I can, because sometimes I can’t, so I’ll tell you. It’s like when someone offers you candy, and you think, ‘I want that,’ but
then another part of you says, ‘Sugar is bad for you.’ And for a moment you’re torn, because you’re not sure if you should eat the candy, and a little war goes on inside
your brain. That’s what happens to me all day long. A little war in my head. And it stresses me out. And the more I get stressed out, the more soldiers join the war, and sometimes a few of
those soldiers will start talking to me. Then it’s like a running commentary playing in the background, judging every move I make.”

“That sounds frustrating,” I said.

“That’s a nice way of putting it.” She made a grunting noise and closed her eyes. “What was I saying? God. The rambling. It’s enough to drive me crazy.” She
gave me a quick smile before turning to Jack and smacking herself on the forehead. “Oh, yeah! Hey, I have a new puzzle for you. Can I show it? I know it’s our secret, but she’s
been inside your room, so she can see it, right?”

“Yes,” Jack said, smiling at me from the bed. “She’s a good secret keeper.”

Jillian mumbled something to herself and furtively glanced over both her shoulders before tossing the second cigarette out the window. Then she ducked her head below the bed and whipped out a
manila folder overflowing with wrinkled papers. “I lost the new one. . . . Oh, wait. Here it is.”

Jack bent over it with her, studying whatever was written on the paper. And I did some studying of my own, using the opportunity to really look at Jillian. She was pretty. Heartbreakingly so.
And though she didn’t have Jack’s dark double lashes, she shared his terrific bones and height.

But when I looked closer, what stood out the most wasn’t genetic: Thick, shiny scars ran up both her inner forearms and across one side of her neck. The scars were shocking, and once
I’d noticed them, I couldn’t see anything else. A dozen questions raced through my head. It took everything I had not to gawk.

“This is a tough one,” Jack said. “I’m not sure if I can use any of these.”

“I thought there were a couple. ‘Screw’ is always good.”

“I’m not using ‘screw,’ Jillian.”

“Okay, okay. What about this one.”

Jack twisted the page and smiled. “Yeah. That’ll work great. Here, let’s see if Beatrix can find it.”

“It’s a test,” Jillian said excitedly while handing the paper to Jack, who handed it to me; I guessed she really didn’t like touching.

When I took the wrinkled page, I caught a glimpse of the other “puzzles.” They were all basically the same: homemade word searches. A grid of letters, most of them legible, some not
so much. I sat back down and studied the one in my hand.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to find. Nothing had been circled, but one word was bolded in the center of the grid: “Charlie.” It looked like she’d started with that
and built words off it. And seeing how quite a few of those words were things like
kissing
and
licker
and the previously discussed
screw
, I didn’t really want to
get into exactly who Charlie was, but she told me anyway.

“Charlie’s one of the orderlies. It was just a joke because he’s too mean.”

“He’s tough, not mean,” Jack said.

“No, I meant he’s straight, or, um . . . what’s the word?”

“Stoic.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She pointed at Jack and nodded. “Stoic.”

I studied the puzzle, searching for the word they’d found. The marker she’d used wasn’t the same metallic gold that Jack used for his pieces. But it could definitely be called
golden. And at the bottom of the grid, I spotted four letters that shook something loose in my brain. I could already envision it written in glittering spray paint.

“
Rise
?” I guessed.

Brother and sister shot me dueling grins.

And that was the exact moment I fell in love with Jack Vincent.

I’VE NEVER REALLY MINDED THE SCENT OF HOSPITALS.
Maybe it’s because my mom’s a nurse. It’s familiar. Comfortable. Sure, I
understand why some people might associate the scent with bad things, like tears and pain and death. But it should be associated with good things, too, like healing and hope and second chances.

And as I exited the psych building with Jack, I associated the scent with other positive things, like admiration. Understanding. And a strange sort of tenderness that melted the right ventricle
of my heart.

“You’re painting all the words for her,” I said, looping the handles of my sketch bag over my shoulders and clamping it between my elbow and ribs. Chilly night air gusted
through my open jacket.

“She feels trapped. She loves the city, but she’s been terrified of it ever since she got sick. Too much noise, too many people. And you saw her on a good night—a really good
one. Some days, she shuts down completely and won’t talk. She’s lost all her friends, and she hasn’t been out in public doing normal things for so long. I just wanted to show her
that the walls aren’t closing in and that there’s something out there. Something that’s hers.”

“Something to give her a reason to keep going.”

“Yeah.”

We strolled down the sidewalk, both quiet, until we ended up at a bench near the back parking garage entrance. Jack stopped and sat me down. “I need to tell you the rest before I lose my
nerve.”