Chapter Three

April 2018

‘’Five.’’ Cody announces, placing a card from his hand face down on the growing pile.

I give a quick scan of the cards in my own hand. Seeing the absence of any sixes, I grab the nine of hearts, and place it down as inconspicuously as I can, declaring it as a six. Cody hesitates, as though he’s debating calling me out on it, but then decides against it and focuses his attention on his own cards.

‘’Seven.’’ He says. I pick up on the way he shifts his attention straight back at his cards, avoiding my gaze. Cody B has a different set of tells, but I’m playing against Cody A, and Cody A can’t look people in the eyes when he’s lying.

‘’Bullshit.’’ I call. Cody groans and scoops up the whole pile, adding it to his hand.

Neither Cody or I know very many card games, but my older brother Alex taught me to play Bullshit when I was little. It was back at the old house in Sydney, before we moved to the flat in Melbourne. That house was quite big – five bedrooms spacing across two stories. Alex and I had our own rooms, then there was mum and dad’s room, the play room and the study.

Despite having my own space, I usually ended up in my brother’s room, seeking out his comfort when the house became a warzone. It was a Friday night, and dad had just arrived home from the pub. At seven years old, I had a strict bedtime of 7.30pm, and definitely wasn’t supposed to be awake at 1am. So, I stayed in my room, even when I heard the front door open, followed by dad’s heavy footsteps in the hallway and his grumpy comments to himself under his breathe about dishes that hadn’t been done or toys that had been left on the floor. I stayed where I was, tucked in bed, even when I heard mum come out of her room and trudge down the stairs. I never slept when dad went out – I stayed awake, fearing the moment he would come home. As I heard mum walk downstairs, I had already started crying, pressing my face against the pillow and waiting for the screaming.

I didn’t understand the way drinking affected my father when I was seven. All I knew was the pattern and the links – dad went out, he came home hours later, when mum would go down to greet him, and what would follow was hours of yelling and screaming. Things were broken, and mum got hurt. Dad’s smacks were harsh and often left red marks on me, but Alex always said that was different. Alex said dad didn’t hit us, not really. He said he only hit mum, but that was just for now, and mum needed to take us away before he started hitting us too. I was too little to understand – looking back now, I think Alex often got carried away with his rants and forgot he was talking to me.

When a figure appeared in my bedroom door, I was startled at first before I realised it was just Alex. His auburn hair was unkempt, like he’d just woken up. Alex and I look startlingly alike, and if it wasn’t for the eight-year age gap, we could probably be mistaken for twins. We both have chestnut coloured hair, deep brown eyes and pale skin that burns very easily in the sun.

‘’Come on, Lin.’’ He’d whispered after tiptoeing over to my bed. Alex has always called me Lin. Rosaline had been shortened to Rosie when I started school because it was easier for the other kids to remember, and it stuck. Alex, though, had shortened Rosaline to Lin pretty much the day I was born, and didn’t plan on changing it just because everyone else had taken to Rosie.

I hadn’t questioned it. I was frightened and upset and wanted my big brother’s comfort. I took his hand and allowed him to lead me out of my room, through the hallway where the screaming was twice as loud, and into his room. I felt naughty, being awake when I knew I shouldn’t have, and even worse when Alex put a CD into his stereo and turned the music up, drowning out our parents. I felt safe with Alex, though, like he would protect me if mum or dad got mad.

‘’I’m gonna teach you how to play a game.’’ Alex had declared, sifting through his disorganised desk drawers until he’d found a pack of cards. ‘’It’s called Bullshit.’’

I’d giggled through my tears, in that way seven-year old’s do when someone cusses.

Alex sat opposite me on his unmade bed and began sorting through the cards. He took out all the aces, jacks, queens and kings, as so not to confuse me, leaving only numbers. Then, he began going through the rules. We were going to count from two through to ten, and when it was my turn, I had to put down a card with the next number in the sequence. If I didn’t have the number I needed, I could put down any random card and pretend it was the right card. If Alex thought I was lying, he’d say bullshit, and I’d have to pick up all the cards, which was bad. I could do the same for him.

We played for half an hour. Before long, my feelings of distraught had morphed into giddy laughter. I loved the novelty of being allowed to swear and not being told off for it. Alex encouraged it, promising not to tell mum and dad, and I adored the idea of a little secret between me and my big brother. I won by a mile, though looking back I’m almost certain I was a terrible liar and Alex simply chose not to call me out. He, on the other hand, was obvious about putting down the wrong card, making it very easy for me to guess when he was lying. Faithful to the code the best big brothers follow, Alex let me win.

We stopped playing only when my sentences became broken with yawns and my eyelids grew heavy. I protested the idea of going back to my room, not wanting to be alone in the darkness with the fight still very much alive downstairs in the kitchen. And so, Alex had tucked me in his bed, cocooning me in the jumble of blankets tangled on his mattress. His pillow smelled like deodorant. He’d laid beside me and stroked my hair, turning the music down just enough for me to fall asleep while still keeping it louder than mum and dad.

‘’Okay, you start.’’ Cody says, fanning out his now much thicker hand of cards.

My fingers trace the outlines of my cards, searching for an ace to start the round off. This is how Cody and I pass the time – we sit on the floor of one of our rooms, playing card games. If it isn’t Bullshit, it’s something childish like Snap or Memory, which we’ve figured out ways to play even with no picture cards at our disposal. All patients have a curfew – in their own rooms by 8pm sharp – but during the day, the nurses don’t care who’s room you’re in. Hiding away instead of spending time out in the common room means less chance of getting under their feet and less chance of stirring up trouble for ourselves.

I place my card down and so the next round begins. This round it’s harder to catch Cody out, because rather than avoiding my eye contact only when he’s lying, he hardly looks at me at all. It’s rather obvious that his mind is somewhere far away from this room. I wonder if perhaps my opponent is about to change over to Cody B. Sometimes the switches in Cody’s personality happen in an instant, and sometimes he becomes a little withdrawn and distracted for a few minutes, almost like he’s been wiped clean of any personality before a new one takes the light.

‘’Eight.’’ He says half-heartedly, dropping his card on the pile. His eyes are on the open door, watching the traffic of patients in the hallway.

I place my cards down on the floor.

’’Babe?”

‘’Huh?’’ Cody jolts, and then blinks at me. ‘’Sorry, is it my turn?’’

I shake my head.

‘’Nope, you just put an eight down. Which was probably bullshit, by the way.’’

‘’Guilty.’’ Cody admits, tossing his cards to the side and indicating we’re done playing.

‘’What are you thinking about?’’ I ask, as I begin to gather all the cards up. ‘’You’re a million miles away.’’

Cody stands up and closes the door, then walks over to his bed and drops himself on it. The frame creaks under his weight and the mattress rebounds a little. He pats the spot beside him, beckoning me over.

This is how we have our more serious conversations. We lie in bed, always on our sides, always facing each other. Fingers link together, run through hair and trace down hips in smooth, comforting gestures. Sometimes our ankles cross, our feet tangled together like our thoughts and confessions. The world is different when we lay like this. I find an inability to lie, and grant Cody access to every corner of my mind. We were in this position when I told him about how my old therapist thought my schizophrenia came about because of my traumatic childhood, the abuse I had watched my mother and eventually my older brother go through, which I narrowly avoided myself. We laid like this the night he told me about his mum, when I saw him cry for the first time, when I held his hand as he trembled, physically shaken by the memories. I wiped his tears with the back of my palm and then kissed him until they stopped flowing.

I don’t lie like this with Cody B. If Cody B and I are on the bed, our tongues are as interweaved as much as our limbs. Fingers don’t run through hair, they grip fistfuls of it. Articles of clothing find their ways off our bodies and on to the floor, our faith concealed in the wardrobe or chest of draws that’s been pushed against the door to fend off the nurses. If they ever actually tried to come in, the furniture would give us thirty seconds at the most to scramble for our stripped apparel and make ourselves decent before they managed to force their way in. The sentence for locking them out wouldn’t be kind, I imagine. It’s worth the risk though, every time.

Cody B and I don’t talk, not like this, anyway. Cody B is passionate and intense and physical, while Cody A handles the emotional side of the relationship. It’s like the sweetheart and the bad boy from the typical teen romance novel, and I’m the one caught in the middle, completing the love triangle.

I join him on the bed, snuggling in to his well-worn pillow. I come close enough to nuzzle my head into the curve of his neck, and his open palm comes to a natural rest on my hip.

‘’Another patient went missing.’’ He says softly.

I don’t look up at him. I don’t even flinch, despite the way my chest clenches. It’s like looking in Jacinta’s room and finding it empty– it’s not surprising, but it is heart wrenching.

’’That girl, Lexi?” Cody says. ‘’Damn it, what’s her last name? She’s tall, super skinny, I think she was in here for anorexia? Brown hair- ‘’

‘’Hart.’’ I interrupt. ‘’Lexi Hart.’’

‘’That’s it.’’ I feel him nod. ‘’Yeah. She’s gone.’’

There’s silence for a moment, like a pause for mourning.

‘’We were scheduled on kitchen duty together this morning.’’ Cody continues. ‘’She wasn’t there, and her name was crossed out on the list. I saw her last night at dinner though. Maggie said she’d been discharged and her mum came and picked her up first thing in the morning. But Jayden used to be friends with her and she said Lexi’s mum is dead.’’

‘’Idiots.’’ I mumble. It makes me feel a little better, insulting the nurses for their lack of ability to even check the facts before they come up with alibis full of holes. It makes me feel a little worse, knowing they don’t need to check the facts because there’s nobody to question their stories but us, and there’s nothing we can do.

Quiet swallows up the space between us again. I can feel a certain energy from Cody, like he wants to say something but he’s trying to figure out how to word it, or perhaps is over-thinking whether he should say it at all.

‘’Where do you think she takes them?’’ He asks eventually. I understand his hesitation – it’s a dangerous question, given that ‘’them’’ now includes one of us. I appreciate his effort to keep Jacinta’s name out of it though.

‘’I don’t know.’’ I answer, like I haven’t given any thought to it myself.

Cody doesn’t clarify which nurse he means by ‘’she’’. He doesn’t need too. I know exactly who he’s talking about.

‘’It can only be Naomi.’’ Jayden had said to me, that first morning after I’d seen it. ‘’All three of them live here, but Maggie and Heaven take days off, go home now and then. Naomi’s the only one that’s here all the time, yet at the same time, she’s the one we see the least. She’s also the one calling the shots. We think Maggie and Heaven might help but we’re not sure. There’s no doubt they know about it, though.’’

The five of us – Giselle wouldn’t be admitted to Highwaters for another two months, and Taylor was somewhere on his own, dealing with the previous night’s events- were gathered in the ‘’meeting’’ place that I had been shown too for the first time. At the end of the hallway that separates the girls living quarters from the boys, there’s a sad looking bench with a plastic cushion cover, built into the wall. It’s like a window seat, just without the window part. Highwaters has a talent for taking the small spots of happiness in life, like sitting and looking out the window, and sending them through a filter that strips away the joyous elements until you’re left with a bleak outline of it. This is where we meet up for most of our secretive discussions. It’s much less suspicious then all of us hiding in one of our rooms, but we have a much smaller chance of being overheard then in the common room. Plus, as it’s the dead end of a straight up and down hallway, it’s impossible to miss any approaching nurses.

Jayden and I had been seated, as Ellie, Jacinta and Cody hovered around us.

‘’I don’t understand.’’ I’d said back then, looking around at all the others, though I think it was more likely that I just didn’t want to understand. ‘’You can’t honestly be implying that the nurses kidnap people?’’

‘’Not the nurses.’’ Jacinta had clarified. ‘’The head nurse. Naomi.’’

‘’We don’t have total proof.’’ Jayden furrowed her brows, like the fact was merely frustrating. ‘’But we know enough.’’

‘’I know this is a lot to take in.’’ Ellie stroked my hair. Jayden had called Ellie ‘’the mother of the group’’, and already I could see why. Not only was she the oldest, but she had that vibe about her like she was gentle and loving but could also be fiercely protective. ‘’But you’ll get used to it.’’

‘’You’ll get used to it’’, said with as much indifference as someone might say you’ll get used to middle school. My body went rigid.

‘’I’m not…look, I can’t…’’ I fumbled over my words, not sure how to say what it was I needed to say. ‘’I can’t be involved in conspiracies. I… I’m not good with stuff like that. I’ll… it’s too hard for me not to get caught up and if there’s no facts I… it’s just- ‘’

‘’We get it kid, you’re a wanderer.’’ Jacinta cut me off.

‘’What the hell is a wanderer?’’ I snapped back, with a little more attitude then intended. In all honesty, these people were starting to scare me, and I was beginning to wonder what they were all locked up for.

‘’Its what people call schizophrenics in here.’’ Ellie explained, still petting my head.

‘’Why?’’ I shrugged a little, trying to edge away from her hand. She got the hint and stopped her movements. ‘’That doesn’t even make sense.’’

‘’It’s just a nickname.’’ Cody said. ‘’We won’t call you that if you don’t want us too.’’

‘’Yeah, I don’t want you too.’’ I replied in an ice-cold voice.

’’Whatever, we won’t then. Can we move on?” Jayden seemed frustrated with the change of topic. The few things I knew about these people so far included that Jayden, at nearly a full two years younger than me, was the youngest in the group. Cody was close to twenty, Ellie was close to thirty, and Taylor and Jacinta were somewhere in the middle. Still, Jayden somehow seemed to be the boss, the one that held everyone’s focus.

Another thought crossed my mind.

‘’How do you know I have schizophrenia?’’ I narrowed my eyes. I definitely hadn’t said anything to them. I hardly knew them.

Jayden ignored the question.

‘’Right now, you’re not a target.’’ She continued. There was something chilling about the nonchalance in her voice. She sounded like an English teacher explaining the metaphors and stylistic features of a Jane Austen novel. ‘’You have a family. We try to find out as much as possible about the people in this place and everyone that has disappeared was abandoned by their family. You’d be surprised how common that is in an asylum. If you still have loved ones that will ask questions, you won’t be taken. But…’’

Jayden glanced at the others, like she wanted to palm the responsibility of explaining the next part off to someone else.

Ellie crouched in front of me, the same way you get down to the height of a pre-school kid, so they understand you better.

‘’Just because you won’t be taken, it doesn’t mean you’re safe, especially not now.’’ She said gently. ‘’You saw what happened to Taylor last night. Taylor has parents, siblings, even a girlfriend. That’s why he’s still here, but he’s not safe, clearly. If you tell anyone what we know, you’re next.’’

‘’Taylor tried to speak up.’’ My words were so quiet even I was struggling to hear them as it dawned on me. The others heard just fine, though. ‘’That’s why she did that too him.’’

‘’It was our fault.’’ Jayden said, looking down at the off-putting pink colour of the seat cushion. It isn’t a hot pink, or a baby pink, but rather the colour of raw meat. ‘’We had this crazy idea that if we confronted Maggie or Heaven about what was going on, we could get an edge on them. We weren’t going to mess with Naomi, but we thought maybe we could like, blackmail one of her accomplices or something. It was a dumb idea. We get that now, I don’t know what we were thinking.’’

‘’Taylor was the brave one.’’ Cody gave a meek smile. ‘’He always is. He made a subtle comment to Maggie that tipped her off we were on to them.’’

Silence. Thick, heavy, silence. My hands trembled, my mouth began to dry rapidly, my stomach plummeted.

‘’Holy fuck.’’ Each time I spoke it got quieter, and this time, I all but mouthed the words. ‘’If Taylor… oh god… if they did that to Taylor because he… that means- ‘’

‘’It means we’re right.’’ Jacinta said bluntly. It was almost like she was bored with this whole conversation. I knew already that Jacinta had been here for over two years. This must just be her reality. I couldn’t imagine ever reaching a point where this wasn’t horrifying. ‘’And that we have to shut up about it. They wouldn’t have gone to those measures to make Taylor quiet if we weren’t right.’’

‘’Originally, we formed this group because we thought once we got proof, we could somehow stop it.’’ Jayden shook her head. ‘’Now, that’s out, clearly. I think we just need to focus on protecting each other.’’

’’It’s out for now.’’ Jacinta took on a correctional tone in her voice. ‘’Yeah, this means we can’t stop the nurses right now, but it doesn’t mean we won’t be able to ever. I thought that was our whole deal.’’

‘’I think our whole deal is staying alive.’’ Cody said. ‘’Particularly us.’’ He nodded in the direction of both Ellie and Jacinta. ’’We are targets, remember? We don’t have anyone left.’’

‘’Which is even more reason why we should be focusing on tripping these bitches up.’’ Jacinta’s tone was pissed off but still very hushed. ’’What, are we just supposed to sit around until they cut us up too?”

‘’Just drop it, Jacinta.’’ Jayden said. ‘’We’re not overthrowing anyone after what happened to Taylor last night.’’

Jacinta rolled her eyes but did as she was told, reinforcing my theory that the blonde sixteen-year-old was the leader.

’’What do you mean, ‘cut you up’?’’ I demanded.

‘’That’s what we think she does to them.’’ Jayden shrugged, again with a frightening calmness about her. ‘’Remember how I told you we’ve all seen things, like what you saw last night? Ellie’s version of last night was a conversation she overheard between Maggie and Naomi.’’

‘’They were outside my room in the middle of the night.’’ Ellie said. ‘’They must have thought I was sleeping. The night time meds here are supposed to knock you out cold but they’ve never really worked for me. I didn’t get it all, but they were talking about the easiest ways to cut limbs off a body.’’

I felt I was at serious risk of vomiting all over Ellie, splashing her bleached hair and dousing the front of her grey tracksuit.

‘’We reckon she’s a full blown psycho.’’ Jacinta added. ‘’We think she’s got some kind of fascination with cutting people up and experimenting on them.’’

‘’This can’t be real.’’ I shook my head violently, like if I convinced myself it wasn’t true it would just go away. ‘’It just can’t be. There has to be some mistake.’’

‘’Huh, let’s play spot the new kid.’’ Jayden remarked. Jacinta chuckled. I’d thought Jayden’s humour was completely inappropriate, but later came to learn that’s just the way Jayden is. ‘’Humour helps trauma’’ is her favourite expression, and I’m yet to encounter a bad situation of any magnitude where Jayden is incapable of making a joke. ’’It is real. Let me break it down for you, plain and simple. Around here, people disappear without explanation. Ask the nurses, and they’ll say they were discharged. A lot of the time, they’ll also claim a family member picked them up, even though no one saw anyone arrive at the asylum, and even though none of them even have any family as far as we know. Once we worked this out, we started getting suspicious, and that’s when we started to pick up on the other things. Like the conversation Ellie heard. Like the things the rest of us saw. Like what you saw. And so now, we have theories, and we’re pretty damn sure of them. You can call us crazy if you like, but our crazy conspiracies could be the only thing standing between you and what happened to Taylor last night.’’

‘’Look kid, are you in or not?’’ Jacinta glared at me.

‘’In… this group?’’ I asked, looking around at each of them. They all nodded, almost in unison.

My eyes caught on Cody. He was looking straight back at me. Even with his blonde curls falling in his face, I could see the hazel shade of his eyes. It reminded me of the greenish-blue colour of sea foam that crashes against rocks on a windy day. He gave me a small smile, bringing out two perfectly formed dimples. Then he looked away, a blush creeping along his cheek bones.

I looked back at Jayden, who was staring at me expectantly, awaiting an answer.

‘’I… I guess.’’ I said, very unsure of how you were supposed to agree to something like this. ‘’I mean, if you’ll have me."

                                          --------------

I shut the door behind me on my way out of Cody’s room. For some reason, the news about Lexi has rattled me and I feel the need to spend some time alone. She’s the first patient to disappear since Jacinta and I suppose losing Jacinta has undone eight months of becoming desensitised to these things.

I’m halfway to my own room when it starts. Someone is screaming. It’s spine-chilling and deafening, and it bounces from wall to cold brick wall.

The noise startles me so greatly that my feet come off the floor. I’m almost certain it’s in my head, since the other patients in the hall seem unaffected. Still, my initial instinct is to run, and so that’s exactly what I do.

I take off and begin sprinting as fast as I can, flying around corners, like I can out run my own mind. I all but dive into my room, as though it offers any kind of safety at all.

My gaze catches on my reflection in the window above the bed. I look only for a second, but it’s long enough to see the way it’s distorted. My eyes are hollow, my lips are cracked. The skin on my face is tight against cheek and jaw bones that jut out in a grotesque, skeletal manner. I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s typical, when the Roamers are harassing me, for flickers of ghastly visions to appear.

I sit down on my bed, eyes still stubbornly closed, and put my fingers in my ears. It’s pointless – the Roamers are limitless in their capabilities and can’t be stopped by something like fingers in ears. It’s a natural reaction, though. It has been for the last three years, since they started.

‘’Rosie… help.’’ It’s whispered straight into my ear, my attempt at blocking them out just as futile as I predicted it would be. The voice is the verbal equivalent of an icicle – freezing cold with the ability to cut deeply. A shiver comes over my whole body.

‘’Rosie… Rosie...’’ More voices join in. Three, four, maybe five, hissing my name, and before long, making morbid requests.

‘’Pull out your hair.’’

‘’Drag your nails across your wrist.’’

‘’Bite your tongue until it bleeds.’’

‘’Rosie… kill me before she takes me.’’

‘’You’re going to die in this place anyway, Rosie. Do it yourself, make it quick.’’

‘’Shut up!’’ I don’t know if I say it out loud or just in my head. Either way, the words quake with anxiety I cannot conceal. ‘’Go away! Go away! Go away!’’

The noises and voices I hear are endless. I hear clicking and screeching and nails scratching across chalkboards. People mutter things under their breath and I’m left unsure if they actually spoke or not. There are knocks on my window in the middle of the night and doors slam in the hallways, even when none were open.

This set of voices, this recurring episode of gruesome ideas planted in my head from imaginary, faceless figures, I have come to nickname ‘’The Roamers’’. I got the idea from the pointlessness that seems attached to them. They don’t have names, or any kind of story. Often, they come bearing suggestions for ways I can harm myself, but occasionally, just like ‘’kill me before she takes me’’, they make some obscure reference to wanting me to hurt them. I’ll never know why, though. They’ll never elaborate or repeat an idea once they’ve made it known to me. They come and go, with no real purpose other than to scare the living daylights out of me.

The Roamers. It just seemed fitting.

Shadows move beyond my closed eyelids, changing the light. I try to take deep breathes, knowing from experience that if I can keep myself, calm, they’ll go away faster.

The sensation of someone hovering above me causes goose bumps to run up my forearm. I exhale, ignoring the repeated shouts of my name and the way I feel almost certain that if I open my eyes someone will be there.

Suddenly, a hand grips my shoulder. It feels as cold as the voices sound. Fingernails get caught in the loose threads of material hanging off my shirt. I’m so startled that I fall off the bed, complimentary to the high-pitched squeal that echoes through my throat.

I hit the ground with a thud. My eyes finally spring open, only to find a very alarmed looking Giselle.

‘’It’s just me, darlin’.’’ She says, with her hands out in front of her in defence, as though I might attack. She takes a wary step towards me while I struggle to catch my breath and slow my pounding heart. ‘’Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare ya. I heard you yellin’ and I-‘’

‘’It’s okay.’’ I cut her off. I stumble clumsily to my feet and run to her. She holds out her arms and I fall into them, burying my head in the crook of her shoulder, relaxing with the comfort.

Looking up at Giselle, I can see the deer-caught-in-headlights type quality in her eyes, which they always have when she’s edging dangerously close to a panic attack. It’s a look I’ve grown very accustomed too.

Giselle Livingston, admitted to Highwaters two months after myself, with an official diagnosis of Panic Disorder. Giselle seemed like a rather lively person in general, (though naturally, after six months here, that’s changed quite significantly), but as we were to learn was prone to snapping at a moment’s notice and dissolving into a mess of hyper-ventilation and quivering limbs.

She’d been here nearly a month when her ‘’incident’’ happened – the incident that bought her to us. In a hysterical state, she’d broken the window in her door and managed to reach the latch on the outside of it used to bolt patients into their rooms overnight. Giselle is long and lanky, almost gangly, and although most people wouldn’t have been able to reach she managed. She’d then taken off in a sprint, banging on every door she passed and screaming frantically about how she’d just seen a nurse drag a blood drenched sake from an empty room. Heaven had eventually caught up to her, sedated her with a quick stab to the bicep, then taken back to her room. The situation was brushed off, rationalised away – ‘’she’s in here for extreme panic attacks, it was just an episode, nothing but hysteria, she doesn’t know what she saw.’’ It had been Jacinta that had found Giselle the next day, and had said almost exactly what Jayden had said to me – ‘’I have something to show you’’.

We, of course, were that something.

‘’It happened while I was drivin’.’’ Giselle had told us a few days later, after being officially welcomed to our little party of people that are terrified for their life. ‘’It just came out of nowhere. A panic attack, I mean. I lost control of the vehicle, hit another car. I went into a coma, the other driver died. Then they locked me up here. Spose’ they think I’m a danger to society. They’re probably right.’’

My stomach clenched at her words. Someone else was in here for a fatal car accident as well.

In that moment, I almost told them, but then I didn’t. It hadn’t been long enough, and I still hadn’t made peace with the accident. I remember the way the others had glanced at me, like they’d been able to tell just how close I was to telling them everything, but they’d never pushed it when I swallowed my words down.

‘’I was just hearing things again.’’ I assure Giselle, slowly pulling away from her embrace. ‘’I’m fine.’’

Giselle sighs, a heavy, relieved sigh.

‘’Sorry again for scarin’ ya.’’ She drawls, brushing her wavy red hair out of her face. Giselle has a funny way of talking – she cuts her words short but drags the syllables out at the same time.

‘’No, it’s fine, you actually snapped me out of it.’’ I say. ‘’So, thank you.’’

She smiles.

I bite my lip, wondering how to proceed without sounding rude.

‘’Elle… I appreciate you coming and checking up on me, I really do, but…’’

I look beyond her to the door. She’s left it open on the way in. It’s too risky to bring up the missing patient Cody told me about without shutting it first, but shutting the door might indicate a long, serious conversation, which I don’t have the energy for.

‘’… I kind of just need some alone time right now.’’ I finish, deciding just to leave it at that. If it isn’t me or Cody, someone would inform Giselle about Lexi’s disappearance at some point. It doesn’t have to happen right now.

Giselle nods in understanding. She kisses my forehead like an affectionate older sister, then leaves.

The door clicks shut behind her and I collapse back against my bed. The high levels of adrenaline that kick in when The Roamers taunt me leave me feeling exhausted.

I crawl across the thin linen and bury my head in the pillow, and become frustrated when I feel my eyes fill. I’ve been crying a lot lately. I try not to cry too much in front of Cody – both Cody A and B are troubled by my tears. Crying makes me feel helpless, like my life is a shit show and there’s nothing I can do but sob. Which honestly, is true.

I can’t help it though. Finding out another patient went missing stirs up a new wave of grief for Jacinta. I miss her. I miss all the different braids and plaits she wore her mousey brown hair in, a stab at individuality in a place where everyone wears the same bland uniform. I miss the way she used to flip the nurses off when their backs were turned, I miss her eye rolls and hearing her call me ‘’kid’’. I miss how tough she was. When I was with Jacinta, her unwavering belief that we would one day manage to prove all our theories, escape the asylum and save everyone gave me hope. Even long after the rest of us had given up on any sort of plan to take the nurses down and were just trying to get through each day, she never gave up.

Jacinta thought she was invincible. We all thought she was too.

‘’Jacinta’s gone.’’ Taylor had made the announcement that morning. His eyes were lined with unshed tears that he was sternly fighting off. The blotches on his face gave away that he’d already wept over this and was now trying to be strong. His voice was even and still, but his hands were shaking.

‘’Gone?’’ Giselle echoed, like she didn’t know exactly what Taylor was implying.

‘’Bullshit.’’ Jayden had nearly lunged at Taylor, like she was ready to brawl him just for suggesting such a thing. ‘’You don’t know that.’’

‘’She’s not here, Jayden.’’ Taylor swallowed hard. ‘’Not in her room, not in the dining room, not in the common room, not- ‘’

‘’Don’t list of all of the fucking places in this hell hole to me.’’ Jayden had covered her ears, like if she couldn’t hear Taylor talk it made the words he said invalid. ‘’Move your asses, all of you. We have to find her.’’

I reached out and firmly clasped Cody’s arm, a clear signal to everyone else that if we were splitting up, Cody and I counted as one. Deep down, I already knew we weren’t going to find her. I think everyone did. I needed Cody to be there when we confirmed it.

Jayden gave everyone a part of the asylum to search. Cody and I were told to man the door to Jacinta’s room in case she came back.

We waited there for fifteen minutes. The blind above the window of Jacinta’s room was drawn, so we couldn’t see that patronising, tidy emptiness that now taunts me every day. At the time, Cody was Cody B, but even he understood the seriousness of the situation. There were no sexual innuendos or sarcastic jokes or attempts at flirting. He just stood with me in silence out the front of Jacinta’s room, holding my hand but not looking at me.

Then Heaven had walked passed us. She hardly even looked at us, but she must have known why we were there.

‘’Discharged.’’ It rolled so easily off her tongue, that one word that broke me.

She must have heard the strangled noise that escaped my throat, somewhere between a squeal and a cry. My knees buckled, and Cody scrambled to catch me before I hit the floor. I was a deadweight in his arms. The tears flowed freely, loud sobs filling the hall that Heaven continued to stroll casually, until she’d turned a corner and disappeared, completely unbothered.

We didn’t speak for the rest of the day. Grief and shock consumed us, and no one could think of a single thing to say. It wasn’t until dinner that Jayden broke our nine-hour silence by saying ‘’hey, on the bright side, I just about guarantee which ever nurse grabbed her got punched in the tit. That girl didn’t go down without a fight.’’

We laughed. There is no bad situation of any magnitude where Jayden is incapable of making a joke.

I roll over in bed and face the wall. I pull my shirt towards my face and wipe away some of my tears. It is as I’m doing this that I see it.

I narrow my eyes at it, perplexed. Poking out from the far-left corner of my pillow is a small square of white paper. It almost blends in with the sheets, save for the fact that it is a pristine white, while the sheets have been darkened to off-white with dirt and dust.

I lift my pillow to find what looks like a neatly folded note.

I reach out for it slowly, like it can somehow hurt me. A mixture of confusion and curiosity course through me as I grab it.

I unfold it carefully, and that’s when my breathing stops.

The handwriting is so unique. It’s pristine and pretty while still being messy. Like illegible calligraphy. We used to laugh about that all the time. Jacinta’s handwriting, which I’d seen when she wrote her name on the sign-in roster for kitchen duty or when we’d play hangman on notebook paper from the common room, was one of a kind.

I didn’t think I’d ever see that handwriting again. In fact, the morning after her disappearance, I threw all our old games of hangman in the bin. Her script is so unique that it was too painful to look at.

And yet here I am, looking at it, on a note hidden under my pillow.

COME FIND ME ROSIE

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