A voice calls out.
“Louise!”
Louise sighs, pulls her skirt down with a face like, Spoilsport, then turns and waves a hand in the counselor’s direction.
“Sorry.”
Simon sees the counselor staring at them. He waves as if to say, She did it. Not me. Unconsciously, he fingers the paper bag in his pocket. He has the impulse to show her the map of the compound he drew his first night here, marking the emergency exits and location of the smoke alarms. Every day he walks the exit route, memorizing the number of steps, in case he has to escape in a blackout during heavy smoke conditions. Before he’d even sat down, his eyes had found the door nearest to his seat, his mind measuring the distance.
It’s June. Around the country the suicide epidemic has already begun. There are whispers inside the facility. A noticeable bump in night terrors. A slight uptick in patients with suicidal ideation. A feeling of hopelessness in group sessions. The horses felt it before we did, Simon will realize later, watching them whinny and shy away from patients, as if the smell of death was already on us. After midnight, residents hear what sounds like screams coming from the stables, waking them from their sedation. Is this the rapture, the trumpets of St. Paul? But when the sound comes again, it’s clear they’re just the neighs of agitated equines.
“It’s so boring here,” says Louise. She takes the short straw from her orange juice, pretends to light it like a cigarette. She is the queen of exhausted pantomime, her eyes weary, the eyes of a sixty-year-old woman. What have they seen, those eyes, to wear her young soul out?
“I drank all my mouthwash last night,” she tells him. “Lefty Pete said it might give a buzz, but he’s full of shit. All I got was the runs.”
She is a party girl, fifteen going on forty. Simon knows her type, though those girls never paid him much attention. He is skinny and tall and looks younger than his age, like someone took a ten-year-old and stretched him out because they thought it was funny.
She pokes at her food for a moment, then pushes the plate away. If asked what she’s anxious about, Louise would say “Three things. Everything. Nothing. Myself.” If pressed, she would turn the question around on you, because though she’s desperate for attention, the one thing she really doesn’t like to discuss is herself.
“Are you a good kisser?” she asks.
“Medium,” he tells her. “But that’s not in the cards for us.”
“Says you.”
“I think we’re just gonna be friends.”
“Boring.”
“You say that because you’ve never had a friend before.”
“I’ve had friends.”
“A real friend.”
“And what’s that? A real friend.”
“Someone you can trust.”
She thinks about that, then looks at him with a challenge in her eyes.
“That’s a big word.”
“Stapler is bigger. Minivan.”
She makes a face.
“Be honest. You’d spend real American money for a blowjob.”
“Nope. Scout’s honor.”
She leans forward.
“I’m really good at them,” she says softly, licking her lips.
“I’m sure you are.”
“But you’re not interested.”
“Sorry.”
“Because—”
“You’re not my type.”
“You like blondes?”
“I like boys.”
A beat; then she raises a hairless eyebrow. “I’m flat chested. You could pretend.”
He puts his hand on hers. “Louise,” he says.
She lifts her eyes to his, but this time the look is cautious, scared. “What?”
“Trust me.”
*
A week later Simon meets the Prophet. He’d gone to bed late that night—working through all the checklists for his nighttime ritual took time—and was awakened an hour later by the sound of hushed voices in the hall, footsteps. Simon had always been a light sleeper. He felt no disorientation, sitting up, reaching for the light. The voices came again, moving down the hall. Under the door he sees the hallway overheads come on. He sits up slowly, goes to the window. It’s dark outside, maybe 1:00 a.m. There is an ambulance in the driveway. Its back doors are open, lit by an interior bulb. Simon turns and goes to his door. He turns the handle slowly, pulls the door open just enough to see out into the hall.
Two paramedics are wheeling a gurney out of the room next to his. There is a body on it with a sheet pulled over its face. It’s the new kid, Jeremy something. He moved in on Monday. A ginger someone shot in the face with a freckle gun. Simon watches as the orderlies rolled him down the hall and onto the elevator. Then a male counselor comes out of Jeremy’s room and sees Simon.