“I didn’t try to kill myself.” Partial lie.
An indulgent twitch of her lips.
“I just partied a little too hard.” Total lie.
A lean of her head. Her hair never moved.
“Lockland’s pretty high stress. I needed a break.” Truth.
Ms. Pierce sighed. “I believe you,” she said. Lie. “But when we release you—”
“When is when?”
She pursed her lips. “We are obligated to keep you here for seventy-two hours.”
“I have class.”
“You need time.”
“I need to go to class.”
“It’s not up for discussion.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”
Her voice had tightened into something less friendly, more honest, impatient, normal.
“Then why don’t you tell me what you were doing.”
“Making a mistake,” said Victor.
“We all make mistakes,” she said, and he felt ill. He didn’t know if it was an aftereffect of the overdose, or just her prepackaged therapy. His head fell back against the pillow. He closed his eyes but she kept talking. “When we release you, I’m going to recommend that you meet with Lockland’s counselor.”
Victor groaned. Counselor Peter Mark. A man with two first names, no sense of humor, and a sweat gland issue.
“That’s really not necessary,” he mumbled. Between his parents, he’d had enough involuntary therapy to last several lifetimes.
Ms. Pierce’s patronizing look returned. “I feel it is.”
“If I agree to it, will you release me now?”
“If you don’t agree to it, Lockland will not welcome you back. You’ll be here for seventy-two hours, and during that time you’ll be meeting with me.”
He spent the next several hours planning how to kill someone else—Ms. Pierce, specifically—instead of himself. Maybe, if he told her, she’d see that as progress, but he doubted it.
XIV
TWO DAYS AGO
THE ESQUIRE HOTEL
THE drink dangled precariously from Victor’s freshly bandaged hand as he paced. No matter how many times he made it from one wall of the hotel room to the other and back, the restlessness refused to ebb. Instead, it seemed to charge him, a mental static crackling in his head as he moved. The urge to scream or thrash or pitch his new drink against the wall came on suddenly, and he closed his eyes, and forced his legs to do the one thing they didn’t want to do: stop.
Victor stood perfectly still, trying to swallow the energy and chaos and electricity and find in its place stillness.
In prison, he’d had moments like this, this same shade of panic peaking like a wave before crashing over him. End this, the darkness had hissed, tempted. How many days had he resisted the urge to reach out, not with his hands but with this thing inside him, and ruin everything? Everyone?
But he couldn’t afford to. Not then, not now. The only way he’d even made it out of isolation was by convincing the staff, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was normal, powerless, no threat, or at least no more of a threat than the other 463 inmates. But in those cell-locked moments of darkness, the urge to break everyone around him became crippling. Break them all, and just walk out.
Now, just as then, he folded in, doing his best to forget he even had a power to wield against others, a whim as sharp as glass. Now, just as then, he ordered his body and mind to still, to calm. And now, just as then, when he closed his eyes and searched for silence, a word rose up to meet him, a reminder of why he couldn’t afford to break, a challenge, a name.
Eli.
XV
TEN YEARS AGO
LOCKLAND MEDICAL CENTER
ELI slumped into the hospital chair beside Victor’s bed, dropping a backpack to the laminate floor beside him. Victor himself had just finished his last session with the resident psych, Ms. Pierce, in which they had explored his relationship with his parents, of whom Ms. Pierce was—unsurprisingly—a fan. Pierce left the session with the promise of a signed book and the sense that they’d made serious progress. Victor left the session with a headache and a note to meet with Lockland’s counselor a minimum of three times. He’d negotiated his seventy-two-hour sentence down to forty in exchange for that signed book. Now he was waging battle with the hospital bracelet, unable to pry it off. Eli leaned forward, produced a pocket knife, and snapped the strange paper-plastic-hybrid material. Victor rubbed his wrist and stood, then winced. Nearly dying, it turned out, had not been pleasant. Everything hurt in a dull, constant way.
“Ready to get out of here?” asked Eli, shouldering his backpack.
“God yes,” said Victor. “What’s in the bag?”
Eli smiled. “I’ve been thinking,” he said as they wound through the sterile halls, “about my turn.”
Victor’s chest tightened. “Hmm?”
“This was indeed a learning experience,” said Eli. Victor muttered something unkind, but Eli continued. “Booze was a bad idea. As were painkillers. Pain and fear are inextricable from panic, and panic aids in the production of adrenaline and other fight or flight chemicals. As you know.”