Soul Screamers, Volume 1

All I wanted to read was the exit sign on the other side of the locked door by the nurses’ station. The one you had to be buzzed through.

“Um…I have a paper due next week. Could you grab Brave New World from my nightstand?” See? I’m not crazy. I’m responsible and focused on schoolwork. Don’t you want to take me home so I can live up to my true potential?

Aunt Val was silent for a moment, and that uncomfortable feeling in the bottom of my stomach swelled. “Kaylee, I don’t think you should worry about homework right now. We can tell the school you have the flu.”

Footsteps shuffled past me, headed toward the group session. I stuck a finger in my ear, trying to block it all out. “The flu? Doesn’t it take, like, a week to get over the flu?” I wouldn’t miss that much school. I wouldn’t miss any, if she’d take me home today!

My aunt sighed, and my gut twisted around the lump of dread anchoring me to the chair. “I’m just trying to buy you some time to rest. And it’s not really a lie. You can’t tell me you’re feeling one hundred percent right now…”

“Because they shot me full of enough crap to put an elephant to sleep!” And I had the cotton mouth to prove it.

“And for all we know, you might actually be coming down with a bit of the flu. I heard you sneeze the other day,” she finished, and I rolled my eyes.

“They don’t lock up people with the flu, Aunt Val.” Not unless it’s the bird flu or Stephen King’s end-of-the-world flu.

“I know. Listen, I’ll be there in a bit, and we can talk about this then.”

“What about Uncle Brendon?”

Another pause. Sometimes there was less meaning in what Aunt Val said than in what she didn’t say. “He took Sophie out to lunch to explain all this to her. This has been really hard on them both, Kaylee.”

Like it’s easy on me?

“But we’re both coming to see you tonight.”

Except I would be out by then, even if I had to get down on my knees and beg her to take me home. If I had to wake up here again, I’d lose my mind. Assuming I hadn’t already.

“Promise?” I hadn’t asked her to promise me anything since I was nine.

“Of course. We just want to help you, Kaylee.”

Yet somehow, I didn’t feel very comforted.





I waited in the common area, stubbornly resisting the jigsaw puzzles and crossword books stacked on a shelf in the corner. I wouldn’t be here long enough to finish one anyway. Instead, I stared at the TV, wishing they’d at least show some good cartoons. But if there was a remote available, I had no idea where to find it.

A commercial came on and my attention wandered, in spite of my best efforts to ignore my fellow patients. Lydia sat across the room from me, not even pretending to watch the television. She was watching me.

I stared back at her. She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. She just watched, and not with an unfocused stare, which was obviously all some of the residents were capable of. Lydia actually seemed to be observing me, like she was looking for something in particular. What, I had no idea.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Mandy dropped into the chair on my left, and air whooshed from the cushion. “The way she stares.”

I glanced up to find her looking across the room at Lydia. “No weirder than anything else here.” And frankly, I wasn’t looking to make conversation—or friends—with someone who stuffed forks down her pants.

“She’s a ward of the court.” Mandy bit into a half-eaten chocolate bar, then continued with her mouth full. “Never talks. You ask me, she’s the strangest one here.”

I had serious doubts about that.

“What’re you here for?” Her gaze traveled south of my face, then back up. “Let me guess. You’re either manic depressive, or anorexic.”

Inside, my temper boiled, but I was proud by how calm my reply sounded. “I don’t talk either.”

She stared at me for a second, then burst into a harsh, barking laugh.

“Mandy, why don’t you find something constructive to do?” A familiar voice said, and I glanced up to find Paul standing in the wide doorway, holding…

My suitcase!

I sprang from the couch, and he held the rolling bag out to me. “I thought that might make you smile.”

In fact, I was oddly excited and relieved. If I had to be locked up, at least I could be miserable in my own clothes. But then my enthusiasm flashed out like a burned-up bulb when I realized what that suitcase meant. Aunt Val had dropped off my clothes without coming in to see me.

She’d left me again.

I took the bag and headed back to my room, where I dropped the suitcase on the floor beside the bed, unopened. Paul followed me, but stopped in the doorway. I sank onto the bed, battling tears, my suitcase forgotten in spite of the rough scrub bottoms chaffing me in all the wrong places.