Going inside Brookside is like pushing through a secret revolving door. On one side there’s daylight and trees and cars and movement.

On the other there’s Death.

They try to cover that up with soft music playing and a big lobby that looks like it’s straight out of a magazine. I never sit there myself, and nobody else seems to use it, either. It’s like a big, fancy family room missin’ its family, and if you hold still in it for even just a minute, you can feel Death lurking nearby.

Even so, I was glad to step inside. Kandi might have been long gone, but her following me still had me jittery.

“Good afternoon, Lincoln! Isn’t it a lovely day?” the receptionist said, shooing Death away. She’s told me lots of times to call her Geri, but I was still having trouble doing that.

“Yes, ma’am. It sure is,” I said as I went up to her desk.

She smiled as I signed in. “You have got to be the politest boy I’ve ever met.”

“Ma’am?”

She stood. “We’re not used to being ma’am’d around here, but I must say, I do enjoy it.” Her heels clicked on the tile floor as she led the way across the lobby to the East Wing, which is the side where Ma works. She raised an eyebrow in my direction. “My grandson calls me dude.”

Being reminded that I talk different from other folks around here had me feelin’ all self-conscious. Ma says I just need to start putting the g’s on my words—something she’s been working hard at since her sister told her, “You sound like a hick,” when we were staying with her and Cheyenne. Ma fumed about it for days, but now she’s correctin’ my speech. At supper the other day she even told me that sayin’ “ma’am” was “regional” and that I should maybe go easy on it. I dropped my fork. After years of drillin’ it into my head, she wants me to go easy on it?

But back to being walked across the lobby.

Anyone can come into the lobby. But if you want to get to the rooms where the oldies roam, you have to sign in and someone has to let you in.

Someone also has to let you out.

Mounted on both sides of every main doorway is an entry keypad, and the folks who work at Brookside are sly about shielding the pad with one hand as they type in the secret code with the other. They’re chatty while they do it, so it feels like they’re playing a shell game—sly shuffling moves mixed with small talk to trick you into forgetting what’s where.

I usually look away from the keypad because I know it’s the polite thing to do, and I always go along with the small talk, but I never forget that once you’ve been shuffled in, you can’t come out without the secret code.

Even Ma won’t tell me the combination. “I’m not about to jeopardize my job,” she said when I asked. “And you’re never there without me, so you have nothing to worry about.”

It still made me feel trapped. So I asked, “What if there’s a fire and everyone but me’s in Activities?”

“Hush, Lincoln.”

“But what if—”

“Lincoln, I’m not telling you!”

So one time while Geri was letting me in, I did the sly-eye and got the combination myself. I’ve felt safer ever since.

But back to Geri walking me across the lobby.

She was thumbing in the code, talking about the weather, when an oldie’s face popped up in the East Wing’s door window.

“Oh, dear,” Geri said, because it was Suzie York, looking like a pitiful dog begging to get out. “We’d better go through Activities.”

I used to think you could talk your way past Suzie York, but it’s tough ’cause she’s stuck in an endless loop of finding a way out. So when Geri did a U-turn back across the lobby, I was all for it, even though it was the long way around.

Activities is a really big room between the East and West Wings. Everything from exercise classes to movies to crafts happens in Activities. You can get to it from the lobby, the courtyard, or either of the wings, but from any direction you need the secret code to get inside.

So Geri keyed us in and detoured me through Activities, past the tables and chairs, which were all shoved to one side so a man with a big roll-around bucket could mop the floor. “Enjoy your afternoon,” she told me as she let me into the East Wing through a side door.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, then went down a corridor, past a side hallway with a fake street sign saying DOVE LANE, and to the Clubhouse, which is what they call the big room where the East Wing oldies eat or hang out when they’re not sleeping.

It’s also the place I spend my afters.

Before I could make it to my usual table, though, Suzie York cornered me with sad puppy-dog eyes and said, “Where’d you come from? How’d you get in? Can you get me out?”

“Sorry, Mrs. York,” I told her. “Only your family can get you out.”

She gave me a puzzled look. “How do you know my name?”

“Oh, we’ve met before.”

She glossed right over that and got back to what she really wanted to know. “Where’d you come in?”

“Down the hall,” I said, keepin’ it vague.

“Which hall? Where? Does it lead outside?”

Just then another lady, Debbie Rucker, shouted, “What is your name?” from across the room.

I knew she was talking to me.

She does the same thing every single solid day.

“Don’t yell!” Suzie yelled, which only made Debbie yell it louder. “What is your name?!”

Debbie doesn’t remember Suzie’s name, either, but I still knew Debbie was talking to me. The sad thing is, Debbie’s not even gray yet. And she wouldn’t belong in an old-folks’ home, only Brookside isn’t just for oldies.

It’s for crazies.

Ma gets mad when I call them that, and everyone else working there would probably hate me if they heard me say it, because Brookside’s motto is “Distinguished Memory Care.” But that’s just a fancy way of saying Crazy Town. The fact is, everyone living there has lost their mind. Or at least part of it. They can’t remember stuff. Not from one day to the next and, for some of them, not from one minute to the next. There’s one oldie named Stu who seems completely gone. He just sits in a corner and drools.

At least he’s quiet. Debbie? Now, that’s a different story. I used to try and ignore Debbie, but it just made things worse. She got angry and kept asking the same question louder and louder until she was throwing stuff and screaming, “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”

“It’s not her fault,” Ma told me. “Her brain’s damaged. Just answer her straightaway and be done with it.”

So when she shouted it this time, I called over, “It’s Lincoln.”

“Lincoln.” She said it all breathless. Like I’d just given her a beautiful gift. “Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States, you know. My favorite.”

That right there is a good example of why crazy is something I can’t figure out. How can someone not remember your name after you’ve told it to them every single day for over a month but can remember that Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president?

I was relieved when Ma came out of one of the bedrooms and gave me her sweet smile. “Have a good day?” she asked.

Before I could even recall, Debbie turned to her and said, “Are you his mother?”

“I am,” Ma answered, like it was a brand-new question instead of the same one she answered nearly every day.

Then Suzie York pointed at me and called out, “That boy knows how to get out of here!”

The crazies who’d been watching the action perked up a little, and the ones who were half asleep in their chairs sputtered awake and turned to stare at me.

Except for Droolin’ Stu, who just sat there, drooling.

“He’s just here to do his homework,” Ma announced, and shooed me over to my table. Then she smiled around the room and asked, “Who wants a snack?”

Which was the end of anyone’s interest in me.