Jack leans back on his garden chair and stretches his arms out. “So? How’s it been?”
I blink into the sun, wishing it would go behind the tree. “Not bad. Actually, it’s been better than I expected.”
“Seriously?”
“The fact that you look so surprised doesn’t bode well for you, considering you were the one who tossed me in here like a piece of rotten fruit.”
Jack laughs. “As I recall, you tossed yourself in. I just found the place.” He looks so happy, I’m worried he might cry. “Hey, I think this place is great. I’m only surprised because I didn’t expect you to … adjust to it … so soon.”
We both drop our eyes. By “so soon,” he means before I started to really lose it. Before I forgot that he, or any of them, existed.
“Eric says you’ve started to get into the swing of things,” he tries again. “That you’ve come out of your room a few times—”
“More than a few,” I tell him. “I’ve even made some friends. That lady over there”—I nod at Southern Lady, who is surrounded by a cluster of little children and teenagers— “and him.” I point at Young Guy, whose eyes lift at that exact moment to meet mine. Quickly I point to another couple of residents that I’ve never seen before in my life. “Her and him, too.” Since I don’t remember anyone’s names, I might as well include them all.
“Good!” Jack’s enthusiasm is tragic. It reminds me of the way he used to cheer when Ethan finally went on the potty. “That’s … great.”
“Yep. There are lots of things to do. There’s a bus that we can take to town, as long as we have a … a person that goes with us … and there’s bingo on Friday nights.”
At this, Jack’s enthusiasm is replaced by suspicion. “Bingo?”
“I mean … I didn’t play or anything, but they have it, so that’s good.”
I need to backpedal, fast. I want Jack to think I’m happy, not crazy. But I get the feeling that, with bingo, I took it too far.
Helen and the boys run up, saving me at the eleventh hour. “Anna do you have one of those beds that goes up and down?” Hank asks.
“Bed goes up, bed goes down. Bed goes up, bed goes down,” Brayden and Ethan chant.
“Why don’t you go have a look?” I suggest, because I have no idea if I have one of those beds. For all I know, I’ve been sleeping on a lump of clay since I arrived—beds have not been at the top of my mind.
They jog toward the house, trailed by Helen, and I watch them go. There’s a floor-to-ceiling window, I notice, way at the top of the building, directly above the paved courtyard. I zero in on it.
Back when I was a paramedic, I’d once been the first to reach a woman who’d leapt in front of a train. Her right leg had landed over the track and had been sheared off at the knee. On the way to the hospital, she slipped into a coma.
Tyrone sat beside her, shaking his head. “You gotta feel sorry for this one. This wasn’t no cry for help. She wanted out.”
I nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“She needed height.”
“What?”
“Height,” he repeated. “You fall from a certain height, you’re dead. You don’t need to be worryin’ about the speed of the train or the amount of pills or the strength of the rope. You just need a bridge or a tall building. It’s foolproof.”
I stare at the window and think about what he told me. All of a sudden, I have my plan.
“Anna?” someone is shouting. “Do you have any gum?”
I look away from the window at Ethan. “What?”
“Gum,” he says. “Do you have any?”
I blink. Gum? Do I have gum? The sun is still pounding down on me like an unrelenting beast, and I can’t think. I close my eyes, but it just continues to beam, turning my eyelids red.
“Can someone turn off that damn sun?”
There’s a silence. I feel my chair being dragged along the grass, and a second later, blissfully, the sun is gone. “Well,” I say. “Praise be to God.”
I open my eyes. Ethan is staring. “What? What are you staring at?”
“You’re being weird,” Ethan says. “Isn’t she, Dad?”
Jack looks at Ethan and slowly back to me. Typical attorney—when you don’t know what to say, say nothing.
“Is it because you’re in this place?” Ethan asks. “With these old people?”
Jack touches Ethan’s shoulder. “Buddy—”
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” he says, ignoring Jack. “Because I got burned?”
His eyes get shiny.
“Eath,” I say. “Nothing is your fault.”
“Of course not,” Jack says, finding his tongue. “Anyway, this place hasn’t made Anna weird. Anna has always been weird.”
“He’s right,” I say. “In seventh grade, I was voted Weirdest in the Whole School.”
This isn’t true, but I figure, it doesn’t matter. Ethan lowers his hands and sniffs. A tiny pathetic-excuse-for-a-smile appears on his face.
“How’s this for weird?” I lean in toward him, bulging my eyes as wide as they go and waggling my eyebrows.
His smile swells. “Pretty weird.”