The videos cycle quickly, one into another, cutting on and off at the very beginning and end of each session. Except one.
I sit up straighter in bed. I vaguely remember this day, when Ryan had tried to strengthen his telepathy and mind-control powers. He was still developing them—he was much better at telekinesis then, but not all the mind stuff. The screen shows Ryan in full meltdown mode as he stands and screams at everyone, but in real life he just lost control of his power. We were all sitting there as he was experimenting, trying to implant an idea inside of us. The Doctor had started with something innocuous: Make us all think about wanting to eat an apple. At first it worked. In fact, the Doctor had a basket of apples, and we all stood up to get one, even though we’d just had breakfast. But as we ate the apples under Ryan’s influence, they turned bitter in our mouths. He lost control not just of his own mind but of ours as well.
I gag thinking about it now. For me, the apple turned to dust. Sofía said hers became slimy and filled with worms, so soft she could squish the rotten insides in her hand. Whatever Harold saw of his apple made him scream and throw it across the room, nearly breaking the office window.
It got worse after that. It wasn’t just the apple inside our heads, twisted and gross, it was Ryan’s entire mind. His whole mentality poured into our brains, taking over, erasing us, flashing us with memories we didn’t want to see, things Ryan had experienced that none of us knew: his mother, an actress, who could barely remember his name; his father, a director, who hated his mother for cheating on him and took it out on his son. A parade of nannies, each increasingly incompetent, except for one when he was twelve, who hurt him in ways none of us could ever have imagined.
It was too much. To have ourselves in our bodies but also Ryan, to feel everything he felt coating our brains like black mold. By the end of the session, we were all clutching our heads and crying, and the Doctor had to use his healing power on each of us just to get us off the floor.
Except Ryan. The Doctor couldn’t heal Ryan, because the memories he lived with, the thoughts inside his head—those were all his own. The Doctor couldn’t take them away.
Maybe that’s why Ryan worked so hard to advance his telepathy and control his own mind. Maybe with that control, he could block part of himself off, the part that poisoned us all when we touched it.
In the video, though, that whole session plays out much differently. Basically, we all just talk, and then Ryan breaks down, crying—actually crying, I’d never seen him do that before—and spends the rest of the session confessing his darkest secrets, telling us about a nanny who abused him, parents who neglected him. We’re disturbed, obviously, even the Doctor, but we didn’t have those feelings literally pressed into our brains, and at the end of the session, we all leave.
Except Ryan. The Doc calls his name.
“Yeah?” Ryan asks sullenly.
“Come on back in, buddy,” he says. “I want to ask you some things.”
Ryan plops back down in one of the blue plastic chairs, and the Doc pulls up another one so he can face him.
“What?” Ryan asks, an edge to his voice.
“I wanted to thank you for opening up to us today,” Dr. Franklin says.
Ryan shrugs.
“And I also want to say that when you’re ready, we could go to the police with some of this information. It’s not right, the way the adults in your life have treated you. You understand that, yes? In fact, it’s criminal, particularly what your nanny did. We could press charges . . .”
He stops when he notices Ryan laughing.
“Oh my God, really? Really?” Ryan says, his eyes lighting up with glee. “I thought I laid it on too thick, honestly, but you really bought all that, didn’t you? Hook, line, and sinker.”
The Doctor leans away, his eyes narrowing. “You made all that up today?” he asks. “Ryan, I’m deeply disappointed in you.”
Ryan shrugs. “I just wanted to see if I could make you guys believe me. And I could. Good to know.”
“Trust, once broken, is hard to establish again,” Dr. Franklin says.
Ryan slumps in his chair. “I just wanted to have a little fun.”
“Making up a story about being abused as a child is not ‘fun,’ Ryan.”
“It is for me.”
The Doctor glowers, but Ryan continues. “Look, I’m bored, okay? Bored. I don’t belong here. Locked up with these crazies.”
“No one here is ‘crazy,’” Dr. Franklin says. “Berkshire Academy is for the emotionally and behaviorally disturbed.”
“Whatever. They don’t tell you everything. They’re crazy. Which, to be fair, is sometimes amusing. I wonder if I can use that for my benefit. It’d be neat to make Harold believe his ‘ghosts’ are real. Or maybe make Gwen burn this whole place down.”
“Gwen’s been responding very well to her therapy,” Dr. Franklin says.