Maddie
The TV set in the emergency room was mounted on the wall and covered in a mesh cage. Every channel played Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention and Maddie wanted to scream at the nurses and doctors surrounding the sets (just like the moths flocking to porch lights across the island), beg them to do their job and refill her friend’s morphine drip.
Penny had come to screaming in the back of the ambulance as the gurney rocked side to side with every swerve. Maddie hadn’t known a person could make those sounds. It reminded her of the raccoon her dad had trapped in the shed behind the cottage. How it wailed as the poison it had eaten killed it slowly. A scream that had cracked Maddie open and changed her. Made her understand there was no peace in death. Only after.
Penny was awake after three hours in surgery. The doctors had pinned her right leg in three places. Her femur was shattered. Her hip broken in two places. When they’d arrived at the ER, the nurses had cut away Penny’s clothes and Maddie saw the bone sticking out of Penny’s torn skin. She’d rushed to the bathroom just in time to puke into the sink.
Now Penny was crying. She sounded like Dom when he was trapped in a night terror. It hurts. It hurts so bad. Again and again. Maddie tried to calm her. Rang the bell for the nurse until the blue light stayed lit but, still, no one came. Brooks was hunched over in a chair, dragging his fingers through his hair so it stood up straight. Maddie found herself wishing, for the first time in a long time, for a grown-up. Penny’s parents were talking with the doctor who’d performed the surgery. It was bad. There’d be no more lacrosse championships.
Brooks stood, his chair slamming into the wall behind him. He walked out of the room, the curtain rattling on its rings, and Maddie heard him yelling in the hall. A pink-cheeked nurse gave Penny a shot of something.
Brooks’s mom had stayed back at the Castle with Eva. His dad was waiting in the ER lobby. They’d sat together in silence during the surgery. Brooks’s dad had spoken only once. Telling them they’d done the right thing calling the ambulance. Penny could’ve died from blood loss or infection.
Maddie watched a smiling Bill Clinton talk about growing up fatherless in a place called Hope. Listened to him play his gleaming saxophone as the crowd cheered.
*
Maddie knew something was wrong when she saw Brooks’s mom on the white marble steps of the Castle’s entrance holding a sleeping Eva in her arms.
“The police are here,” Leslie said to Jules, nodding toward the house. Her voice fell to a whisper. “In the ballroom.” Maddie thought she saw the woman’s lower lip tremble before she bit down so hard she left a dent.
“They want to talk to us.” Leslie looked at Brooks. “To all of us. Down at the station.” She swallowed and the tendons in her long swan neck tensed.
Maddie’s first thought when she walked into the ballroom was, What have they done to Neverland?
“My lights,” she heard Brooks’s dad whisper.
Five tall lamps on tripods lit up the paint-spattered walls so the letters glistened. As if, Maddie thought, they were still wet. Officer Hardy took photos of the wall with a Polaroid camera.
LOVE ME
FUCK ME
SAVE ME
SUMMER OF ’92 4EVER
ROLO IS A TOOL GOD
PW + RB
GRUDDER IS CANCER
GRUDDER KILLS
Officer Hardy escorted them, one by one, to the little room at the back of the police station. Maddie had known him all her life, had been in the same class as his son Scott since kindergarten, and when he saw her he said, “Hey-ya, Maddie,” and she felt a little better. Not as scared as she’d been during the long ride from the Castle to the station—Brooks and his dad squished in the back of one cop car; Maddie, Leslie, and Eva in another. Leslie had refused to look at Maddie and stared out the window as she rocked sleeping Eva in her arms. But as Maddie sat on the hard wooden bench in front of the station’s front desk, waiting for her turn—first Brooks, then Jules, then Leslie, disappearing and returning—she began to panic. Would they call her father? Would he slap her in front of everyone and then take her home and … She tugged at the sleeve of her Wildcats sweatshirt so it covered the bandage.
She remembered she and Brooks and Penny joking about the police station that first night in the ballroom. What was it Brooks had said? That it looked like the setting for a Disney movie. A thatched cottage fit for gnomes and dwarfs and talking animals. She thought of mentioning it now and realized how dumb that was. Reached for his hand instead. He pulled away.
Leslie hummed to Eva. A song that sounded familiar. Eva woke crying, squinting in the fluorescent light. Leslie unbuttoned her shirt, pulled out a pale breast, and Eva took her mother’s nipple into her mouth and settled down. Maddie couldn’t look away. She’d never seen a baby nurse. Didn’t know that big little kids like Eva could. Leslie caught her staring and gave Maddie a cold, hard look that made Maddie’s stomach flip. Like Leslie was blaming her for all that had happened.
Officer Hardy led Maddie to the tiny back room that smelled like old bologna sandwiches and overheated coffee. Sheriff Stroh was sitting on one side of a table looking tired. A button over his big gut had popped open.
“Maddie LaRosa,” he said with a sigh. “Surprised to see you here.” And she knew he was blaming her too. He was disappointed, just like her mother and father would be, and maybe even Veronica. And what if Veronica wouldn’t help her and Brooks escape the island, now that it was even more urgent they get away?
He asked her who had been partying at the Castle.
She named everyone, making sure not to miss even one kid. The more kids, she thought, the more people to blame. Less of a chance it would fall on Brooks’s shoulders.
No, she said, she didn’t know who brought the drugs.
No, she said, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall (Simmons, the sheriff corrected) had never ever given them any drugs or alcohol. They had no idea what was going on in the ballroom each night.
No, no one had helped Penny climb up to the balcony. She had done it herself.
Yes, they had tried to stop her.
“I did everything I could. I begged her,” Maddie said as tears blurred the room.
No, she didn’t know anything about the graffiti on the walls. No, she didn’t know anything about the vandalism. No, no, no.
“Are we going to jail?” she asked, and a sob broke free and then she was crying so she got the hiccups.
Sheriff Stroh chuckled. “No, darling.”
She asked if she could go back to the hospital. To be with Penny.
“Someone’s coming to pick you up,” Sheriff Stroh said. “Bring you home so you can get some rest. Then you can be at the hospital bright and early to visit your friend.”
Please let it be Mom, Maddie thought. Not Dad.