I wake up completely confused. My parents are here. They’re here and they’ve got luggage and…Wait, where is here?
Oh, the hospital. I look around. I look at my leg. I look at my parents.
For a split second, I think I’m free, like this was all a big mistake, and my parents have come and fixed everything like parents are supposed to, and there will be no more talking to Dr. Roberts, who will be very apologetic. And she’ll take out some giant official-looking “all better” stamp and just like that I’ll be out, STAMP STAMP STAMP, over my folder, and off I’ll go, out to the car, and it’ll be like none of this ever happened.
Of course. that’s not how this works.
My parents flew in insanely early and came straight from the airport, so they actually look worse than I do. They have all their luggage with them from their trip—they were working a car show in Germany, selling the glory of classic American cars to rich German obsessives—and they are delirious from traveling and worrying about me. They left at like two the morning I crashed. They landed, got the phone call, and came back on the next flight.
And they are, needless to say, none too pleased about my accident.
My parents always kind of look like two sides of the same coin, or two halves of a whole. They both have the kind of brown hair that you know was blond when they were babies. They have brown eyes: “Mine are hazel, your dad’s are brown,” my mom always insists, but they’re the same color. Worst of all, they are for all practical purposes telepathic. And, like one of those Japanese fighting robots that is made up of smaller robots (like in one of Henry’s anime shows), they turn into an unstoppable force when they combine.
Regrettably, that unstoppable force is not seeing things my way at all.
“We’re just so glad you’re okay,” they keep saying, but I’m still half-asleep. Too asleep to even protest the grave injustice happening right before my eyes.
Not only do my parents not insist on taking me home, they actually help wheel me down to what might have at one time been called an asylum but is now called a “psychiatry center.” There are no bars, no crazies in straitjackets, just a bunch of way too friendly nurses.
They talk a lot with Dr. Roberts out in the hall. I pretend to busy myself with my notebook so I can eavesdrop more easily.
My dad is saying, “She’s never been in trouble, exactly, it’s just…,” and “Well, it’s hard to explain. She’s always been…,” then a bunch of stuff I can’t hear. My mom: “No, she would never…” and “What are you saying?” And finally Dr. Roberts says, “I assure you, Mr. and Mrs. Black, it’s only a few days,” and that I hear completely clearly, almost like she wants me to hear her so I know I’m completely screwed.
Traitors. Traitors. Traitors.
But I start to feel ridiculous staring at those words, because of course my parents can’t just spring me from this asylum; there’s probably some law against that anyway. So I scratch it all out again. But I’m still angry and I don’t know why.
My parents finally go home to get cleaned up, and I bury my mortification in sleep.
You know when you fall back asleep and your dreams are more intense? The second time I wake up today, I am in the middle of a dream about wizards and George. Even after my eyes are open I still have one foot in slumberland. I can’t help slipping back into my dream: the smell of soot, the long empty platform…just like in Harry Potter, the best adventures start with trains.
I’ve played this scene hundreds of times: George leaning out of the compartment, his arm outstretched to me, his white gloves stained with the blood of our enemies.
“You can make it!” he shouts over the roar of the wind. My fingers brush his hand—
“Sadie. Are you listening? I asked you if someone had been in here with you.”
I feel sick as the fingers that belong to George transfigure into a blue latex glove, and my arm that has all the scratches from the crash is not outstretched toward adventure but toward a too-cheery nurse who had been talking in my general direction since she woke me up to apply Muggle medicine over all my scrapes and bruises. Madame Pomfrey she is not.
Dr. Roberts is standing in the doorway talking in my general direction as well.
“No,” I say. “I mean, my parents. This nurse.”
“Maria,” the nurse adds without a glimmer of annoyance.
“Are you sure?” Dr. Roberts asks. “I heard you talking to someone.”
This is scary. I’ve gotten so good at talking with George inside my head that I’m pretty sure no one can tell. But the little cups of painkillers are making me stupid, transparent. Careless. I am leaking secrets everywhere because of whatever I am taking to feel none of this pain. I close the door on pain and open my fantasies to everyone.
“Yeah,” I mutter. Monosyllabic communication is usually an excellent strategy for containment. Dr. Roberts keeps at me like a Bond villain.
“Is this yours, then?” Roberts asks. She picks up a red notebook that looks a lot like mine off a chair near the door.
“No,” I say, but now she has my attention. “Mine’s green.” She flips through it, then tucks it into her briefcase.
“Have you seen a girl with hair that’s sort of red and blue and yellow? Is she in here?” Roberts is frustrated. Maria just laughs.
“Is she dangerous?” I ask. Her face softens.
“No, not at all. Maybe she’s a bit of a trickster. And very good at hiding.”
Roberts sizes me up in that clinical way doctors love to pretend makes them smarter than other people. Like they’ve got a monopoly on observation.
“Sadie, you’re very safe here,” she assures me.
“We haven’t seen her,” Maria says, and Roberts turns to leave.
“What’s her name?” I call out after her. She turns around, one eyebrow elevated by my sudden interest. She weighs her options and replies:
“She calls herself Eleanor.”
I admit, everything I know about psychiatry is from movies and books and Wikipedia, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of my research. It just shows: knowledge is power.
When the appointed hour for cross-examination arrives, Dr. Roberts settles herself into the plastic chair by my door. She likes to sit far away and very still, and I can draw a frame around her and evaluate her all at once.
She waits a long time to say anything, but I certainly am not going to talk first.
Finally, she speaks: “Sadie, I want to continue our conversation from last time. Do you remember what we were talking about?”
“George,” I grumble.
Then she gives me one of her long wait-you-out pauses. Beware of silence. It pulls out all your secrets.
While we are waiting, I take some mental notes on her, which I will record later because obviously even though she writes her notes about me right in front of me, I can’t exactly do the same.
Dr. Roberts is incredibly pretty. She’s black, with straight hair that goes to her shoulders and really big brown eyes. She wears high heels and has a perfect manicure every single day, but her nails are short. She doesn’t sound like she’s from St. Louis. She sounds like she’s from Boston maybe. She is always scribbling and it almost looks like she’s doodling. When she is thinking hard about a problem she taps her pen on her lips, which is okay because she doesn’t wear lipstick. Her smile is crooked but genuine.
All of that is in the frame, but then there’s what’s not in the frame too. Like, you wonder: how long does that manicure take? If she’s got a Boston accent, where is her family? There’s no way she can drive in those shoes, so what shoes did she wear into the office today?
Those are the questions a detective knows to ask. Maybe they help you figure out who the killer is.
“Sadie, let’s level,” Roberts says.
I win the round of silence, but I’ve gotten so distracted that I forgot it was even a contest.
“If there’s someone out there who’s injured, I need to know about it. I’m going to have to ask your parents. Is this someone your parents would know?” she asks.
“No,” I say. This is a pin, like in chess. A loss or a loss.
“Your boyfriend, Henry—would he know who George is?” I want to die.
See, I told her about Henry in an attempt to get out of this whole George conversation, and of course it comes back to bite me. In chess it’s called an oversight. I’m terrible at chess. Henry might be the only person worse than me. Whenever George and I play, waiting up on a stakeout on one of our Moscow missions, I always lose.
Losing is the most painful part, because you have to watch it happen so slowly. You watch your pieces die on the board in slow motion, watch the death throes of your own cleverness in all its pathetic complexity. In chess you’ve usually lost the game ten moves back and didn’t see it.
Roberts vs. Black was threatening to go this way.
In my head, I recap our previous match.
She asked me straight out: “Did you try to kill yourself?”
I countered: “No, why would I kill myself what with my awesome life and awesome boyfriend named Henry who is totally real and oh also I’m a straight-A student and am in honors English and math and I am a cross-country vice captain and I am so well rounded for serious my life is great.” Breathe.
Next move, she went for check: “Did you deliberately hit that tree with your truck?”
I took flight, but I knew right then that I was just racing against checkmate: “Statistically sixteen-year-olds are terrible drivers and I was texting and driving and singing really loud and haven’t you ever done something stupid and been really embarrassed and grounded for a really long time?”
But that’s how she knows about Henry. You give a little, you get taken to the cleaners.
I try to salvage my position: “No, Henry doesn’t know him.”
But this move is, again, beyond stupid. Him implies that there is a him to know. I truly need to get off these painkillers. But my leg hurts a lot.
“So who does know George?” she asks, having established the existence of an answer other than “No.”
“No one.”
“Sadie, we’re going to have to be a little more honest with each other—”
“Sadie, you’re awake,” my mom interrupts, shoving open the door, my dad a step behind. It wasn’t locked, of course, but I forgot entirely that it could open. We were in another world, Roberts and I. She turns, as startled as I am. She hops out of her seat.
“Mrs. Black! Mr. Black! We were just—”
“Sorry, are we interrupting?”
“Well, actually—”
“No,” I say. Roberts raises an eyebrow at me.
“We’ll continue this discussion later,” she says. And then she disappears, dissolving into nothing but the sharp click of her heels as she leaves with my unfinished story in her bag.
A shower and some breakfast have calmed my parents way down, but I know they are not happy with me. But the thing is, we don’t ever fight anymore. We just let silence and time do the work of forgetting.
My dad busies himself looking at all the TV channels, getting even more disappointed than me as he cycles through them.
“Sucks, right?” I offer.
“Seriously.” He turns it off. When I was homeschooled, my dad did most of the schooling part, because Mom was busy with car shows. He was obsessed with staying on track with all these tests, and he could be a real jerk about it because all I wanted to do was read and do literally zero math ever. But sometimes we’d be in a hotel room and Mom would be out and we’d watch hotel movie channels all day and keep it a secret.
I don’t mean to say that my parents were my only friends, exactly. I had other homeschooled friends: people I would see at these awkward game nights and book clubs and sports I had to go to so I wouldn’t turn out “under-socialized.” I had cousins, I had pen pals, I had teammates. I guess those are all friends.
But my parents were my best friends.
And now I can’t trust them at all. Not with this.
My mom starts redecorating. She moves the generic vase on the generic dresser and inspects the generic medical equipment. She folds generic blankets and rustles generic blinds. I hate it when people touch my things, but nothing of me is hidden in those places, and so it is safe territory for us both.
Finally, though, I have to speak.
“I’m sorry about the truck,” I begin.
“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Mom says. “We brought you some books, some clothes—”
My mom stops when she sees my face. I know I look mortified. It’s just that I feel my whole chest seize up when I think of them digging through my room. What could they have found? I think of my closet: a total disaster. I can just picture bits of adventures, completely meaningless to anyone else, tumbling across my floor: a broken cassette case, some white gloves, a map of Russia, textile and wallpaper catalogs, and travel magazines. An old attaché case from the Goodwill, its corners exposed under disintegrating leather. My secret world lying on the floor for anyone to see. If you know how to look, there are universes in that closet.
“We didn’t touch anything,” Mom assures me. She knows me too well in some ways. She opens the bag and starts putting my stuff out on the nightstand.
“Don’t unpack. I’m not going to be here that long.”
“Nonsense. We always unpack.”
It’s a Road Years tradition. Doesn’t that sound cool? The Road Years. That’s how I think of them, even though we never went that far. Anyway, even if we were only staying the night in nowhere Nebraska, all our suitcases got emptied, and the bathroom shelves got filled. Mom was fast: she could have us set up in ten minutes and strike camp in five, all while my dad was still getting his pants on.
“Anyone been to see you yet?” Dad asks.
“No, I don’t think anyone knows I’m here. I couldn’t call anyone. I don’t have my phone.”
“You know Henry’s number,” he says.
“Yeah, but he’s on the road.” Right after graduation, Henry got a crazy summer gig subbing for a guitarist on a national tour. He’s not even eighteen and he’s already a professional. He says it’ll pay enough to help fund a real album and maybe a tour for his band, Brother Raja, next year. But it sucks: he’s been on the road since June.
I know exactly where he is, down to the latitude and longitude. I made him a really cool guide to all the places he would see, with maps and local attractions and lots of notes to say I’d miss him. I printed it on my parents’ office printers and sewed it all up like a real book.
My parents glance at each other in that meaningful way they always do. They’re excellent at talking without saying anything. When they had their radio show, they could be having this whole dynamic conversation on air about the history of Pierce-Arrow hood ornaments and their eyes could be saying, “Did you remember to buy milk?” or “How about spaghetti for dinner?”
I’ve never been able to crack the code.
“It’d be fun to have your friends visit,” my dad says. “I mean…Lucie. And Henry.”
I try not to look hurt. They don’t want me to mess up my tiny little social group. Lucie is the best, the absolute coolest. They can see how even standing near her makes me less invisible. I’m happy to be her sidekick at school.
And Henry…My parents might love Henry more than me. He came over once and helped my mom sell one of her old guitars on the Internet, and he spent over an hour explaining Craigslist like he was talking to an alien. Henry said he was happy to do it because he got to be near me.
You don’t get to leave a boy like Henry. He’s literally perfect.
“Speaking of friends, how’s Old Charlotte?” I ask. My parents look aside. “She’s totaled, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. She just couldn’t be salvaged after a second accident,” my dad says. Old Charlotte was basically cursed: we’d been driving her when we had our accident five years ago. I sniffle a little bit because deep down I want to believe there isn’t a car on the road my parents can’t fix. But of course that isn’t true.
“We wanted to save Old Charlotte too,” Mom says, like wanting something is as good as doing it. “It’s okay. We’ll talk about getting a new car when you’re able to drive it.”
“I’m…not grounded or anything?”
“Well, no. It was an accident,” my dad says, but he says it like a question, or maybe that is in my head.
Then it’s like they’ve run out of lines. They look at each other and I realize I should say something, but what?
The minutes drag on and I know I should be focusing on what is going on. But I am drifting toward George.
And then, because I am thinking about him, I am lost in him. That’s the trouble with me and thinking.
“Sadie?” my mom calls softly, nervously, and I remember where I am. I’ve only been zoned out for a second, but she is staring at me like she’s been reading my mind and I feel so exposed and my whole face turns bright red.
“Sorry, I keep…fading. It must be the medication. You guys don’t have to stay here,” I say. “I’m totally fine.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom says. My dad looks at his shoes. He doesn’t like conflict. At the shop, Mom handles all customer-related awfulness, and my dad is responsible for vermin and anything involving scrubbing. They’re very happy with this arrangement.
“Well, someone has to keep the shop open. You guys can’t hang around here all day.”
“Those are called employees,” she says with a sass I have clearly inherited. “We can stay.”
“Why can’t I come home, then? It’s just a broken leg.”
“It’s not just a broken leg.”
“What, and some staples?”
“Sadie. Come on.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Why do you think you’re in here? It’s because…”
“Because they won’t believe me!”
“I knew we should have brought you with us, but you wanted to stay and we trusted you to be responsible enough to do that. You were supposed to be going to Lucie’s! What in the world were you doing?”
“I wasn’t doing anything! I just went for a drive! This is all a big misunderstanding! Why is everyone trying to turn this into a Lifetime movie?”
My dad raises his eyebrows and my mom replies with hers.
Then my dad does the thing he always did when I was little, where he talks very calmly and it makes me feel like I’m the one being ridiculous even if I’m completely right. He says very soothingly:
“Sadie, we’ll be here when you want us to be. The doctors say—”
“I don’t care what they say!” I shout.
“Okay,” he says. “But if you do want us to be here, we’re happy to stay.”
I settle down. That’s what we do. We don’t want conflict.
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
My parents hang around for an hour or so and we watch TV, like we do at home. We like TV. It’s easy to grow apart watching TV, so that’s our together time. Together is the biggest lie people tell each other: that being in the same house or in the same room means anything at all. You can be sitting all on the same couch and still be totally alone.
I won’t ask them to come back. But at least they brought some of my own clothes, so now I don’t have to wear those terrible hospital tie-up things. I felt like I was crawling out of my skin.
Now I have my favorite shirt, which is a Brother Raja T-shirt that Henry gave me. He has the same one, and it feels like holding him. It’s the same elephant design that he has on his ring, which does look amazing when he’s playing guitar. I have worn this shirt into an almost-nothingness. It is the perfect level of used: it has no holes but barely exists except as an extension of my skin.
I have my things from home. But I’m still alone.
Since I met George, I’ve never been alone. If I were at home, I would simply let myself go until I dip into that place of enchantment. In the summers I spent days there sometimes when Henry was away. I used to walk all the way to the art museum just to look at things I’d already seen and dream myself to George. I would pack a lunch and leave before dawn if I could, not coming home until after dark. I had beautiful days when I wasn’t a part of this world at all.
But without dreams, there’s only wakefulness and the blackness of sleep.
I wake up in the night and I feel chilled all the way through my broken leg. My head hurts in that after-nap way, where your body punishes you for having fallen asleep.
My journal is lying open across the bed. I must have dozed off with it in my arms. My words are there for anyone to see.
From what I know of being awake, I prefer to be asleep.
I snatch it up. I can’t let it fall into the wrong hands, obviously.
I go to put it in the drawer of the table next to my bed, which I can just barely reach without hurting myself, when I notice a little piece of paper tucked under the edge of the lamp on the table.
I am absolutely sure it was not there before.
I reach and reach for it, stretching every bruised and battered inch of my corporeal form, but it is too far. I move my whole body to the very edge of the bed, nearly crying from the strain, and try again. This time, my fingers brush the torn edges of the paper and, letting out a pathetic groan, I grab it.
I read the words written there.
I put the paper down, my heartbeat like a drumroll announcing my terror.
I look at it again. It is real.
I inspect the note. It is a crookedly torn piece of paper with blue lines, just like the pages out of my notebook. I line up the lines with a page from my journal to make sure: an exact match. Did someone rip this page out of my notebook while I was asleep? I can’t find any torn page to match the edges on the note, just my own redactions I’ve thoroughly torn to bits. But it could have been done while I was sleeping, and the page might have been torn cleanly and ripped later.
One thing is clear: someone has been in my room.
I look at the note again, trying to see clues. The handwriting is desperate, scribbled.
Watch out.
They will steal your dreams.
—Your Friend Eleanor