Hey, girl. Hey! Hello? Hannnnnnnah!”
No, don’t wake me no no no
Joachim! Where did you go?
Take me
Take me
Someone’s palm was going patpatpatpat on my cheek. I pushed it away. “Stop it!”
“Sorry! But, girl, you’ve really got to come back to us now.”
I dragged my eyes open. Saw white fluorescent light, that hideous tile ceiling, and the looming face of my friend Indy. He was perched on the edge of my bed with his dark hair flopped over one eye, and he was wrinkling his nose at me. “You were moaning,” he said. “Hot dreams, babe?”
“Ugh, shut up,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush as I pushed myself up to sitting.
It wasn’t a dream. It was real.
Indy grabbed my foot and squeezed it. “Come on, upsy-daisy,” he said.
I want to go back.
I tried to shake him off. “Leave me alone. You’re not supposed to be in my room.”
I want to go back. Let me go back.
“I know that,” Indy said. “But I don’t care. You’ve been doing that thing too much—you know, where you’re here but you’re not here? And it sucks. It’s spooky. But you’re really here now, aren’t you?” He unfolded a piece of paper and held it out to me. “Look, I made you this.”
I stared down at it, waiting for the drawing to come into focus. Waiting to come all the way back into this world, even though I didn’t want to.
Joachim—
“Hello?” Indy said, stabbing at the page. “I’m awaiting your words of praise, Hannah.”
The paper was almost entirely covered with blue ink marking out lines, words, and shapes. I saw two towers, a wide gatehouse. There were staircases and banners and horses. A border of swords and stones.
“It’s a castle,” I said, wonderingly. I squinted at it, turning it this way and that, as if I’d be able to see the baron in one of the doorways.
“A hundred points for the girl in the hand-me-down sweats,” Indy said. “It probably doesn’t look anything like where you go, but I thought of you when I was making it.”
It was beautiful, and so intricate it made my eyes swim. “It’s like a maze,” I said.
“Every picture I make is a maze,” said Indy matter-of-factly. “I draw what it feels like to be inside my head.”
“You want to get out, but you never can,” I said. “I know the feeling.”
“It’s like a funhouse, except that nothing is fun. It’s a sadhouse. A madhouse. A very, very badhouse. God, listen to me, I’m like Dr. Goddamn Seuss over here.”
I squinted at the impossibly tiny handwriting. “What does all that say?”
“Oh, just lunatic ravings,” Indy said dismissively.
“Is that my name right there?”
“Maybe.”
“I can’t read anything else,” I said.
“You’re not supposed to be able to. It’s a secret.” He was already drawing a new picture in his notebook.
“It’s Olivia Rodrigo lyrics,” I said, goading him.
“Very funny.”
“Is it nice? Or are you cursing me or something?”
“I would never curse you,” Indy said, his expression suddenly serious. “You’re the best person here. If I liked girls, I would like you so much.”
“Thanks,” I said. I pushed the thin covers off my legs. One of my socks was missing. “Did breakfast already happen?”
“Lucky for you, it did not, and it’s all thanks to me. Are you ready for sausage surprise? The surprise is that nobody knows what the sausage is made of! Personally I think it’s horse testi—”
“Stop right there!” I said.
“Sorry. Just hurry up and get dressed.”
“Why?” Almost everyone at Belman went to breakfast in their pajamas. Some people never changed out of them.
“I can’t escort you to the cafeteria with you looking like that. Not on my last day here.”
The words hit me like a sucker punch to the stomach. “You’re leaving?”
Indy nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m totally cured.” Then he laughed—but it was a bitter one. “Just kidding. My insurance won’t pay anymore.”
“Indy, they can’t—”
“Of course they can,” he said. “Hello, capitalism? But I had a long talk with Dr. Ager yesterday. She thinks that if I keep taking my meds and whatever, I’m going to do okay out there.”
My mind struggled to process what Indy was telling me. He’s going home. They say he’s going to be all right. Why is this happening so quickly? Why didn’t anyone warn me? “Do you want to go?” I asked. “Are you ready?”
He rubbed his eyebrows. They’d grown almost all the way back in. “You know what Hunter S. Thompson said?”
“I’m sure he said a lot of things,” I replied. “He was a famous writer.”
“Very funny. He said that the only difference between the sane and the insane was that the sane had the power to lock up the insane. Which means if Dr. Ager doesn’t have the power to lock me up, then there’s no difference between me and her, which means that if she’s sane, I’m sane.”
“That’s some… interesting reasoning.”
“Oh, it’s all bullshit!” Indy cried. “But I think I’m ready. I mean—I have to be, right? So I am. I definitely am.”
What am I going to do without you? That was the question I couldn’t ask him.
When I looked down at Indy’s drawing again, a big, fat tear fell on it. The ink bled, distorting a careful blue line, and a hole bloomed inside the castle wall like a flower.
“I’m so happy for you,” I whispered.