In the Arms of Stone Angels

chapter three


Red Cliffs Hospital

As I walked toward the guy in the wheelchair, my stomach twisted into knots. I couldn’t catch my breath, but I kept walking anyway, unable to take my eyes off him. The sun, the trees and the people on the grounds of the mental hospital, they faded to nothing. All I saw was that boy slumped in the chair with his head too heavy to lift. He wore pale blue hospital scrubs and a white robe with slippers on his feet. And when I got close enough, I took off my sunglasses and knelt in front of him—crying.

It was White Bird.

He looked thinner, not like the strong boy I remembered. His golden skin that once looked like sweet caramel had turned pale. And someone had cut his long black hair to make him conform to what they thought he should be. If White Bird knew what they’d done, he would have fought them. And I would have given anything to see the fire in his eyes again. But in his condition, he had no fight left. His keen, dark eyes were glazed over and empty. Dead. With his arms limp in his lap, he stared into a world only he could see.

And it broke my heart to see him so lost.

“Oh, my God. What have they done to you?” I whispered, not recognizing my own voice. “What have I done?”

I reached out a trembling hand and pulled it back. I wanted to touch him, but I didn’t deserve to be comforted by that touch. I had played a part in putting him here. And if he could truly see, I knew he would glare in anger at my betrayal. Every time I looked in the mirror, I stared back at myself with the same blame.

“White Bird.” I said his name and lowered my head to meet his gaze. “It’s me, Brenna. Brenna Nash. Remember me?”

The words stuck in my throat. How the hell could he forget me? You’re an idiot, Bren! Tears stung my eyes. And I had no idea what to say.

Over the past two years, any suffering I had done wasn’t enough, not compared to what had happened to him. The life had drained from him. His body was nothing but an empty shell where my friend used to be. I clutched my hands tight on the armrests to his wheelchair until my fingers ached. And bile rose hot in my belly.

None of this was right!

“Please…look at me. I have to—” I stopped.

What did I have to do? I wanted to know what had happened. Why had this gentle boy killed Heather? It made no sense. And yet I couldn’t shake the images I saw that morning from my head. The reality of what I had seen blocked everything out.

“I have to know what happened. Why did you…?” I swallowed, hard. I couldn’t bring myself to ask why he’d killed Heather. Saying it aloud made it real. Saying it aloud meant I had accepted it.

But why did I have to know what happened? Did my reason have more to do with letting me off the guilt hook? I hated myself for even wondering that. If he were guilty of murder, that would justify what I had done by turning him in. But guilty or innocent, I should have stood by my friend. Why hadn’t I done that? Why had I skulked out of town with my tail between my legs like a damned coward? He was my friend and I abandoned him to a town full of strangers. He had no parents or anyone who believed in him. Not even the tribe he loved had lifted a finger. All anyone saw was a cold-blooded killer, a half-breed Native boy who was different.

I choked on my sobs and wiped away tears, but when I looked at him again, White Bird had lifted his head and stared straight into my eyes.

“White Bird? Can you see me?”

I touched his hand to make a connection after the years we’d been apart. But when I did, something strange happened.

In the blink of an eye, everything turned black and I lost sight of him. I couldn’t feel his hand in mine. Hell, I couldn’t feel anything. Even the ground under me had dropped away and left me floating weightless in a murky void as if I had spiraled into a dark bottomless pit.

My stomach pitched and rolled. And with a haunting thunder rumbling in the distance, streaks of lightning flashed in violent fury, casting images in a glimmer of bright light. A large bear erupted out of the darkness and gnashed its teeth at me, barely missing my arm. I screamed and the fierce animal roared so loud that the sound blocked out the thunder. When I tried to run from it, I only grasped at air, unable to move in the thick, inky black.

Between the bolts of lightning, I couldn’t see at all. And I had no way to stop it.

“Oh, my God. What is this?” I choked.

That’s when a strange memory rushed into my mind. The wounded bird that White Bird had healed when we first met flew into my line of sight. It came at me fast and scared me when its wings hit my face. I gasped as the tiny bird thrashed through the void in sheer panic with its beak gaping open.

“White Bird? Where are you?” I called out to him, but he didn’t answer.

At first, the memory of the wounded bird had been a comfort. It reminded me of White Bird, as if he’d sent a messenger to me so I wouldn’t be afraid. But when I reached for the little thing, to clutch it to my chest, I tumbled forward and the terrified bird got swallowed in the darkness. And a sound from my imagination that I couldn’t shake—from countless nightmares—smothered its frantic chirping.

A girl’s screams gripped my heart.

I couldn’t see her as I spun out of control, but I heard a torturous thud as she cried out in pain—the meaty sound of a knife striking her body. Warm blood splattered my face and I flinched. I could smell it. Taste it. And all I wanted to do was run. I careened through the blackness and toppled end over end, flailing my arms. Everything jumbled together—the bear, the knife, the blood and the gut-wrenching screams that usually invaded my own nightmares. Images and sounds pummeled me from every direction.

“Heather?” I called to her. I knew she was there. I felt her.

But when I yelled, White Bird finally cried out from far away. I heard him. I recognized his voice, but I didn’t understand what he said. I only knew—with dead certainty—that he was afraid. Did he know I was with him? Did he care?

His cry was the last thing I heard.

I was sucked out of the waking nightmare and thrust into the bright sunlight. Still gripping White Bird’s hand, I came to with a gasp. I shielded my eyes from the glare and squinted around me until I remembered where I was—the damned mental hospital.

“Shit! What the hell—” I muttered, panting out of control. “What’s happening to me?”

My heart was like a battering ram slamming against my ribs. And I was shaking all over. When I looked at White Bird again, he was slumped back into his wheelchair the way I had found him. It was as if I had never come. Seeing him like that made me deathly afraid that I had imagined the whole thing. Touching him had triggered everything, but maybe that dark nightmarish world had been inside of me. Me!

Maybe I was the one who deserved to be locked away in a straitjacket.

“I’m sorry. I gotta…get out of here.”

Like the coward that I was, I ran and didn’t look back. If I had, I never would have left him alone.

Minutes Later

“Did you see that girl?” Winded, Dr. Sam Ridgeway grabbed the arm of a startled nurse as he rushed from the ward into the outside courtyard. “She was with that patient over there. Isaac Henry.” He pointed to the boy in a wheelchair sitting under trees near the fence.

The nurse turned to where he pointed and shook her head, “No, Doctor. I didn’t see anyone with him. As far as I know, that boy doesn’t get visitors. The sheriff’s office calls to get his condition from time to time, but that’s it. Why?”

“Someone was with him, just now. I saw it from my office window upstairs. She left before I got down here.”

“I’ll check with visitor’s registration. If he had a visitor, they would have a name.”

“Yes, please do that. And let me know as soon as you can,” he called after the nurse as she headed inside.

Ridgeway raked a hand through his thinning blond hair and heaved a sigh as he stood on the main patio. He searched the faces of the visitors in the garden, but he didn’t see the strange girl with long reddish hair dressed in a scarf and hat. In the heat of Oklahoma, the girl had stood out in the way she dressed, but something much more had grabbed his attention.

What forced him to race outside was that the girl had gotten a reaction from the catatonic boy—something electroshock treatments and high doses of benzodiazepines hadn’t achieved since Isaac Henry had been admitted two years ago. Every line of treatment had been exhausted and every external stimulus had been tried, but nothing would bring the boy out of his constant, mute stupor. But with the girl in the courtyard, Isaac had raised his head and looked at her, a reaction the doctor had seen with his own eyes and found extraordinary, given the boy’s circumstances.

Isaac Henry’s case had been very puzzling from the start. And he’d begun to think that something more was at play—something he didn’t understand about the Native boy.

But for the first time since he’d taken over the case, he had seen another human being touch Isaac deeply enough for him to lift his head and make real eye contact. Given his condition, that was amazing. Ridgeway kept his focus on the boy as he headed toward him. When he stood beside him, he looked down and saw no change in Isaac, except something dark was on the ground next to his wheelchair.

A pair of sunglasses.

Ridgeway’s conviction that he had seen the girl was confirmed; she’d left something behind. He bent down to pick up the glasses and stared into the vacant eyes of the Native boy.

“Who’s your friend, Isaac?” he whispered, not expecting an answer. “You really looked at her, didn’t you?”

When the boy didn’t respond, the doctor pulled out his cell phone and made a call to the private number of Sheriff Matt Logan. When the call rolled into voice mail, he left a message.

“Hey, Matt, this is Sam. We had a break in the Isaac Henry case. I thought you’d want to know. Call me.”

Ridgeway had been a close family friend of the sheriff of Shawano since they were in high school together. And he had personally taken on the Native boy’s case at the request of Matt Logan. As he saw it, his first duty was to his patient and he had to be careful walking the fine line between being a friend to the sheriff and being the doctor in charge of Isaac’s case.

But, since the boy had been unfit to stand trial and had been sent to the hospital detention unit for allegedly killing a local girl, that line had blurred in his mind. What would be good for the patient could serve the needs of the town. That’s how he reconciled his involvement in a case he would have assigned to another staff member.

Locating the girl who had visited Isaac might put an end to his interminable balancing act.

If he finally broke through the kid’s catatonia, he’d do the right thing for his patient. And if that earned him favor with Sheriff Logan—so he could bring the kid’s case to trial and finally render justice for the grieving parents of the dead girl—then he’d reap those benefits, too. Some might even think he was a hero. Of course, the kid would have to pay the price for what he’d done, but at least he’d be fully cognizant of what was happening to him. It wasn’t a merciful conclusion, but it was one the kid probably deserved.

Only one thing stood in the way of justice now. With the help of the sheriff, he’d find the girl and convince her to cooperate with him for the good of the town.

How difficult would that be?



I can’t remember the first time I actually saw a dead person. I’ve thought about that tons of times, too. When I was a kid, they came to me as strangers, nothing more than faces crowding my sleep. At least, that’s how I figured it out later when I accidently read the obituaries and saw a familiar face staring back. And after I went to the library, I found more faces in the newspaper archives. They’d been with me for as long as I could remember and I didn’t even know it.

Hell, I thought I had imagined them, until I saw Frank Sullivan when I was ten. It was the first time I realized something wasn’t right—with me.

Mr. Sullivan used to work at the hardware store. He helped Mom whenever she needed to fix things at our house. She always said what a nice guy he was, but one day she quit saying that. Mr. Sullivan had died in a terrible car crash, she’d told me. Guess after he was drunk, he tried to beat a train to the railroad crossing and lost. After Mom told me all about how drinking can get anyone into trouble, even nice guys at hardware stores, we went to his church service.

But months after he’d died, I saw Mr. Sullivan again in broad daylight.

He was dressed only in blue boxer shorts and black socks and was using his severed arm to organize nuts and bolts at the hardware store. I’d thought it was his idea of casual Friday until I remembered hearing the town rumors about the scandal. Apparently Mr. Sullivan died without many clothes on. How he got that way, no one really knew, but plenty of folks had got off on the gossip.

Sure, I acted like seeing him didn’t bother me much now, but back then, I nearly peed in my pants. It was scary enough to see an old guy in his underwear, but the whole arm thing really got to me. I pinched myself until I was blue, but I wasn’t asleep. And when Mr. Sullivan saw me watching him from down the aisle, he followed me through the store, peeking at me between the shelves. The dead really get off on having an audience, especially when they get caught wearing nothing but underpants.

I stayed close to Mom and after we paid for our stuff, Mr. Sullivan followed us toward the exit. He kept his distance but stopped at the electronic doors and waved his bloody stump at me as we drove away.

I wanted to ask Mom if she’d seen him, but that seemed way too strange, even for me. And I might have to explain my fascination with the obituaries, something Mom had laughed about plenty of times. I quickly found out that nothing is too weird for the internet and the folks who posted stuff online didn’t make fun of me.

The day I saw Mr. Sullivan made me realize something more might be wrong with me, something not as harmless as dreaming about dead people. After that I Googled my way into a deep depression. The internet fed my paranoia until I broke down and admitted that seeing the dead had become part of me. I made the decision that it wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t good. It simply was. But as I drove home now, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened today. And I dredged up a horrifying question that I could no longer ignore.

Was I schizophrenic?

Had my obsession with graveyards and the dead spiraled into or masked something far worse? Schizophrenics were psychotics who saw their bent version of reality and deciphered the world through different filters. They had enhanced perceptions of sounds, colors and their environment, making their existence a puzzle with moving parts they couldn’t grasp. And they heard voices and saw things that weren’t real. Every day they walked a tightrope with meds as their only lifeline. But if they went untreated, they gradually withdrew into their delusions. That’s what I thought had happened to me. I’d taken the first step into becoming a full-on, certifiable whack job.

What had happened at the mental hospital—when I touched White Bird and my world erupted into a waking hallucination—had me terrified.

I wanted Mom to fix it. I wanted to be a kid and have my mother hold me and tell me everything would be okay. But I’d learned that my mother couldn’t protect me from everything. And if I were losing it like White Bird, my mom’s life would be easier if I was locked away. At least then she wouldn’t have to deal with the unleashed me. She’d been through too much already by having to move and rebuild her real estate business from scratch in a new town. How could I make things worse for her by tacking on a life sentence of caring for a defective kid?

At that moment, I’d never felt so alone.

And I couldn’t imagine what White Bird was going through. Maybe his being locked in his head and not knowing what was happening had been a good thing. I wanted to believe this, but if that were so, why did I feel physically sick with worry for him?

When I hit the outskirts of Shawano, I seriously needed an injection of happy. And while I looked for a gas station, my mind immediately shifted to my favorite time with White Bird, even though it made me ache to remember it.



It always made me happy to picture the little fort he had made near the creek. I thought of it as our special place even though he’d built it before he’d met me. It was a shelter made of tree branches that he had woven together. And on a bright day, the sun dappled light through the green leaves, a picture I still carry in my head.

From the outside, no one even knew his shelter was there, except for the medicine wheel he had made of stones, placed on the ground in a nearby clearing. The medicine wheel had a large center boulder with four rock spokes branching off from it, surrounded by a circle of stones. White Bird had told me the wheel was sacred and had the power to bring good medicine to his shelter.

He’d done a good job of making his fort look like part of the forest we both loved. And the ground inside his hut was soft, better than the mattress on my bed. Decaying leaves and tree limbs had made the ground spongy. And the rich smell of the earth and the trickling sound of the nearby creek made his hideaway my favorite place.

That’s where he kept the bird with the broken wing.

He’d made a simple cage for her out of branches that he’d carved with a small knife. Those days, when I’d come to see the bird, had always held a special place in my heart. Yes, I had marveled at the way the little bird improved. I thought for sure she would have died from shock, but White Bird had been so gentle with her that she grew stronger every day. And she no longer was afraid of us.

But the real reason I looked forward to coming was to see him, even though our days together would be numbered.

When he’d told me that the bird was healed, I had to admit that I was sad. The next day, we’d release her. He’d given me a day to get used to the idea and he wanted to make a ceremony of it. I had grown attached to the little thing. But the main reason I hated the idea of releasing her was that it meant I had no more reason to visit him every day.

“You should be happy. She’ll be free of her cage tomorrow.” Inside the hut, White Bird looked at me and smiled, lying stretched out near me. He expected me to be happy, but I wasn’t.

“Yeah, but I’ll miss her.” Sitting cross-legged, I scrunched my face into a pout as I stroked the cage he’d built for her. “Couldn’t we keep her? I’d help you take care of her.”

He shook his head and said, “It’s better to die free than live life in a cage. She must be free to fulfill her destiny. And thanks to you, she has one.”

He always reminded me of my part in rescuing the bird. Repairing her wing had been all him, but he always made me out to be the real hero. And I loved him for it.

“Then tomorrow it is. At dawn. I’ll be here.” I took a deep breath. “She should have a full day of freedom.”

“That’s the spirit.” He grinned and tapped my nose with his finger, a gesture I’d grown fond of.

The next day I showed up at his hideaway at dawn, as I had promised. And I tried to look happy, for his sake. He’d come earlier and had started a small fire in a stone pit in the clearing outside his shelter. He was hunched over the flames now and the burning wood smelled good. It made my stomach growl. Not even the big wad of chewing gum I had in my mouth stopped my hunger.

When he looked up from the fire, he smiled.

“Come here. You’ve got something in your hair.”

When I sat next to him, he leaned closer and pulled a small twig from my hair. I had brushed against a low tree limb on my hike in. But instead of throwing the twig away, White Bird put it into his pocket and grinned again.

Something sad and wonderful struck me. I remembered thinking that I wished I could freeze us both in that moment. And even though it made me sad to know I couldn’t, that didn’t stop me from wishing I could remember him like this forever. His smile always made me feel that way, like every moment of our being together was precious and important…and fragile.

I knelt beside him near the fire without saying a word. The crackling flame felt good against my clothes even though the drifting smoke stung my eyes.

“You ready to do this?” he asked.

“Yep. What do you need me to do?”

White Bird asked me to get the bird. I went into his hut and brought out the cage. He had removed her bandages and she looked as good as new. When I came out from the shelter, he stopped me to grab a small feather that had gotten stuck in a branch of the cage. He made a point to stuff it into a beaded leather pouch that had a drawstring—a part of the ritual he had planned—but that wasn’t the only thing he put into the bag. He took the twig from his pocket, the one he had taken from my hair minutes before, and placed it into the pouch, too.

“What’s that…that bag?”

“It’s my medicine bag.” He blushed and slid the pouch into his pocket. “I made it…myself.”

I could understand why he’d taken the feather, but the twig he’d taken from my hair was another story. I grinned.

“What do you keep in it?” I don’t know what I expected him to say, but when he looked into my eyes with a serious expression on his cute face, I stopped smiling.

“I keep things that are…special to me.”

Both of us blushed, but before I said anything else, White Bird pointed to a spot away from the fire.

“Set the cage over there, away from the smoke.”

I did what he told me, finding it hard to fight a grin. When I turned back, White Bird was on his knees, chanting words in Euchee with his eyes closed. The fire had mesmerized me until he chanted in his Native language. The words were foreign sounding and magical. And in English, he translated for me.

“The universe whispers to all of us, from the realm of the Great Creator, Gohantaney. Messages of wisdom are carried on the wind if we are open to hear them, even in the sweet song of a morning bird.” He opened his eyes to look at me. “Are you open to hear the Great Creator, Brenna?”

I blinked twice, surprised he’d used my name in his ceremony.

“Yes. I mean, I hope so. I’ll try.”

I rolled my eyes at how stupid I sounded. His words were so beautiful, but I acted like a moron. I should have swallowed my gum, but that would have been gross.

“She is healed and ready to fly free,” he said in English. “And the next time you hear a morning bird, you will remember her and be happy.”

His ritual had been for me, so I wouldn’t be sad to see the bird go. After he finished his chanting, he picked up the cage and held it out for me to open the door. At first, the bird stayed inside, scared to fly away. But eventually she perched at the open cage door and cocked her head at us before she flew away.

“Oh, my God. Look. She’s flying,” I whispered as he set down the cage.

We watched the bird fly into the glowing pink of early morning with the warmth of the sun on our faces. And when he quietly slipped his hand in mine, my heart nearly stopped. I couldn’t look at him. I was sure my eyes welled with tears and I wanted to cry. The moment was perfect and I didn’t want to spoil it. I was afraid that if I peeked at him, I would see he only thought of me as a friend.

If I didn’t look, I could imagine he loved me.

I didn’t think I could feel any better than I did in that instant we held hands, until he looked down at me with his dark eyes and stroked a strand of hair off my face. And I knew he wanted more.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

My eyes opened wide and my breath caught in my throat. I nearly choked.

“Ah, no.” My mouth said it before my brain knew what was happening.

“No?” He smiled and cocked his head.

I looked down at my watch. “In two minutes, okay?”

When he grinned and looked down at his watch to count down the time, I turned my head and spit out my gum. It shot out of my mouth like a pink cannonball.

I remembered my body was shaking all over. I was terrified and completely happy at the same time. I’d never kissed a boy before. What if I screwed it up? When was I supposed to close my eyes? What was I supposed to do with my tongue? Should I have spit on my lips or should they be dry? All my insecurities came rushing to the surface and my knees almost buckled.

When my two minutes were up, he lowered his lips to mine and kissed me for the first time.

In the pale light of morning, he pulled me into his arms with the same gentleness that had healed the bird with the broken wing. I felt his hand on my face and his lips were perfect on mine. It was as if we’d done this a hundred times, maybe in another lifetime. Kissing him sent a rush of emotions through me. I was no longer a little girl. I had crossed a line that made me feel different. And I wondered if it would show on my face.

When he pulled away, I opened my eyes to see him looking down at me. He grinned and didn’t say a word. He hugged me without an ounce of selfishness. And as we both gazed into the morning sun, I buried my head into his chest and found it hard to fight the smile on my face. And I wondered if he was smiling, too.

When I think of the single most important moment of my life, I always remember kissing White Bird. Even now I can feel his touch on my skin and the way his lips felt. That memory should have made me happy on a day like today, but it didn’t. All I could think about were the words he’d said about the bird.

“It’s better to die free than live life in a cage.”

A tear rolled down my cheek when I thought about him locked up, without knowing whether he’d ever be free again. What I had with him was gone now. And I had been the one who had killed it.

I had no one to blame except me.



By the time I pulled into the driveway at Grams’s house, I was feeling pretty low. And if Mom wanted to make a big deal about me taking my sweet time to run her errands, then she’d better be prepared for a fight. I was in no mood to play nice.

But when I saw a car parked on the curb in front of our walkway—a shiny red-and-white Mini-Cooper—I had a feeling my tardiness would take a back seat. I quickly unloaded my old bike and put it in the garage. And with shopping bags in hand, I opened the front door.

I found my mom sitting in the living room with Chloe Seaver.

“Hey, Brenna. I was hoping to catch you.” The thin blonde stood and smiled.

Like I remembered her, she had huge blue eyes smeared with smoky dark makeup. Her eyes always reminded me of those orphaned cat pictures that made you want to adopt every stray at the kennel, even if you were allergic.

Chloe had the same frail-looking face. Pale skin, a narrow chin and thin lips shining with pink gloss. It was like she was a little girl playing dress up. She wore her straggling blond hair with bangs these days, razor cut in layers to fall beneath her chin. When I realized that she looked like a pixie elf, I gazed down at her shoes and was disappointed not to see her wearing curly satin slippers with bells on her toes.

“You remember Chloe Seaver, don’t you, honey? You used to be good friends.” When my mom smiled, my mind lurched into conspiracy mode. Had Chloe come on her own or had Mom orchestrated the chance meeting? I set the shopping bags down near the door and went into the living room.

“Yeah, Mom. I remember. What’s up, Chloe?” I stuffed my hands in my jeans.

What’s up? I greeted her like nothing bad had ever happened between us. Like Chloe’s best friend hadn’t been brutally murdered and like I had nothing to do with the boy who had killed her.

In my screwed-up world, very little surprised me anymore. Chloe Seaver showing up on my doorstep was one more piece of crap piled on my WTF day. And since I was already under a heaping pile, what was one more smelly glob?

But there was something I had to know. Did my mom put Chloe up to this visit, or had she come for another reason?