The Break-Up Retreat(36)

“Of course you were,” she insists, her voice soothing, as though talking to an overtired toddler.

“Your brain might have made up an explanation for what happened, but that’s quite common. Especially in a new environment. You’d be surprised at how often it happens. About a month ago, we found a patient walking out of the woods in the morning. It scared the ever-living crap out of everyone, if you’ll excuse my language.”

“No.” I shake my head.

“Isobel.” She is patience personified. “Look at you. Why would you be running around this late, in the dark, with no jacket and no shoes?”

She leans over to take a look at my feet, and flinches.

“My goodness!” she exclaims. “Your feet. They’re all cut up. I can’t believe that didn’t wake you. I’m so sorry. Let me go get the first-aid kit.”

She begins to rise to her feet, but I reach out and grab her arm.

“Wait,” I say. “No. I wasn’t sleepwalking. There was someone there. Someone was staring in through my window. I went out to see who it was, but they were hiding. I heard them, and I decided to come here, and they were following me. Chasing me.” I swallow, hard, the iron taste of fear still lingering in the back of my throat.

Belinda blinks.

“What?” she asks.

“I know it sounds crazy. But there was someone there. It felt like they wanted to . . . like they were going to hurt me.” I wish I could explain it to her in a way she could understand; wish I could convince her I’m not lying, neither desperate for attention nor sleepwalking.

“We can make up a lot of things in our minds when we’re tired.” Belinda shakes her head, but her voice is wavering, just slightly. Something in my face or my voice must have gotten to her.

“I didn’t make it up,” I tell her. “I saw someone. There was someone there.”

“It might have been one of the other patients,” Belinda says. “We always recommend taking a walk if you have a hard time sleeping.”

“But what possible cause could they have had to just stare in through my window like that?” I try to reason. “Someone might have come through the woods. There are no fences in that direction.”

For a moment, I see something in her eyes. A flicker.

Not fear. But, perhaps, doubt. Doubt in what she, herself, is saying.

But then it’s gone.

“How about this,” Belinda says, rising into standing and holding out her hand. “I’ll go and have a look out the door, okay? And if there’s someone there, we’ll call the police.”

“No,” I protest, but she’s already up and walking, and I scramble to get to my feet. “Don’t do that—”

With a swift, efficient click, Belinda has unlocked the door and swung it open.

For a second, I’m so convinced that someone, the terror from my nightmares, will come swinging in through the door that I actually see it. I see something huge and dark and monstrous, bursting in with the cold wind.

But I blink, and it’s gone.

Belinda takes a couple of steps out on the first step of the low stairs and looks around. I see her shoulders falling, her spine straightening.

When she turns around, her eyes are mild, her tone secure, but I swear there’s something like relief in her posture.

“Come on, Isobel,” she urges me. “Come out here and take a look.”

I don’t want to. But I get up, my feet stinging so badly I hiss, and limp on over to the door.

I lean out.

It’s calm, and silent. I can see the parking lot from where we are standing, the gates like thin, metallic saplings in the distance.

“There’s no one here, Isobel,” Belinda assures me. “It was a nightmare. That was all.”

She walks back in and shuts the door again.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Like I said, it happens all the time.”

When she smiles, teeth exposed and eyes flat, I want to tell her that she’s wrong. I want to tell her that there was someone there, that I wasn’t the only person who saw them.

But I can’t.

Because in order to do that, I would have to tell her that Armin saw them, too. I’d have to tell her about the phone. And the note, left under my door.

And, as Belinda keeps smiling at me with what must surely be feigned gentle patience, another thought worms its way out through my mind.

Her cheeks are reddened. As though through exertion. Or cold.

And she is wearing shoes. Soft, sturdy sneakers. They aren’t making a sound against the floor.

Maybe no one was chasing me, after all. Maybe that part was all in my mind.

Maybe the person standing outside the window, watching me talk to Armin, instead snuck back to the main building on the other side, and waited there until I arrived, as though she had been there the whole time.

I won’t leave your side.

A different kind of chill floods my body.

“Come on,” Belinda says. “Let’s get some Band-Aids on those feet, huh? I have some wound cleaner in the first-aid kit. We don’t want you getting an infection.”

I follow her, wordlessly, into the lounge, let her clean my bleeding scrapes without making a sound, as I watch her calm, steady hands bandage up my feet. She gets me a pair of shoes from the lost and found, two sizes too big, so that I can “get back to my cabin without hurting my feet any worse than I already have,” and I thank her, eyes downcast, mouth set in a firm line, as though ashamed.