Fracture

You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy.

It’s a song I can’t get out of my head – You’re Crazy by Marilyn Leggett, best friend.

I’m starting to believe that maybe Marilyn was right. There’s no other explanation for what happened last week, and yet, there has to be because I am a lot of things, but I never thought crazy was one of them. Yet here I am, standing at the front gate of The Brewster Hospital for the Mentally Damaged – that’s not its real name, but I figure why should I call it anything different?

That’s what everybody who I know calls it.

What Marilyn calls – called it.

You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy.

My hand shakes as I reach for the intercom button, and it takes everything in me not to press it more than once, repeatedly, over and over and over and....

My nails dig painfully into the sensitive skin on the palm oy my hand. Don’t press it again, don’t press it again, don’t…

I press it again, three times, and just as I’m about to go for the fourth time, the gates are opening up for me, open sesame.

Time to be committed.

~*~

I found out in second grade that I needed a heart transplant because my own was failing. My mother hadn’t wanted to waste her money on me. She’d never wanted me anyway. Good riddance, she figured. If my grandfather hadn’t paid for the medications I needed after surgery…hell if he hadn’t paid for the surgery itself, I’d have died.

Maybe you’ll forgive me for the reaction I had when I checked Marilyn’s heart rate in Biology only to find that it was almost two times the normal resting heart rate.

“You’re crazy,” she told me, eyes wide, a sheen of sweat breaking out on her forehead as if I’d just told her I shot her puppy. “Check again,” she instructed.

No matter how hard I checked, I still got the same result, and Marilyn became so irrationally mad at me that I was frightened of her for a moment. I’d never been scared of my best friend, not since we met three years earlier when I’d started at Brewster Prep.

I can still remember the sound of her mechanical pencil snapping as she broke it, before hopping down from the counter, where she was supposed to be relaxing, demanding I check again for the fifth time.

“I’m telling you, it’s super fast!” I remember whisper-shouting, my own frustration showing. “I’m sorry! I swear to God. I don’t know what’s up but I can’t find a normal pulse. Lyn, is there some illness you have that you’re keeping from me?”

And Marilyn, she was shaking. She was shaking. “You’re crazy,” she repeated, “everybody has a fast pulse sometimes. I’d be dead if it was going as fast as you say,” and I knew that, I know that. I’ve never been stupid.

I just kept nodding my head, liking the way it felt, something constant in the chaos of my thoughts. “M-maybe there’s something wrong with me,” I said, still nodding. Up and down, up and down, up and down…

Marilyn placed her hand on my shoulder, eyes conflicted. “We’ll switch partners,” she suggested. “Maybe mine is just hard to read.”

So, we did.

We switched partners, on the DL, before the teacher came back into the room, as she’d stepped out when we were choosing our partners. Marilyn’s pulse was recorded as exactly seventy beats per minute. Normal, even though her eyes were red-rimmed, as if we’d just had a huge fight or something, instead of…whatever that was.

My pulse sent me to the nurse’s office. I don’t even know what my heart rate was, because my new partner, Linda Turiq, freaked out, causing a scene.

“Holy shit,” she shouted, “Miss Brooke! Hailey needs to go to the nurse! Her heart is going way too fast, I think her condition is acting up!”

And by the way, my condition hadn’t been acting up, because I’ve been fine ever since the transplant. I was just in the middle of a panic attack, and how could I explain that it wasn’t my heart rate that was the problem, here!

But whatever.

It doesn’t matter now.

That was the beginning of the end.

Tick,

Tick,

Boom.

Later that day, Marilyn pushed open the door to our suite, an iced mocha with my name on it – literally – and a lemon and poppy seed muffin in her hand. Apology foods, based off the expression of her face.

“Hey,” she said, handing me my spoils. “Sorry about earlier. It just freaked me out, you know?”

I nodded, and shoved a very un-ladylike amount of the muffin into my mouth. Lemon and poppy seed muffins should be outlawed for being so damned good, I thought to myself.

Marilyn was on the edge of my bed. I remember telling her once that for somebody who must have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, she was a heavy little thing. She stuck her tongue out at me, and then flashed me a wicked grin.

Her smile was my favourite, out of all the smiles I’d ever seen. It was always genuine, all of her perfect teeth on display, making her look a bit manic. She hated her smile, saying it was too creepy, too predatory; I never really understood why.

At least not until that day. When she smiled at me, I noticed the sharp edges of her canine teeth, and the way she looked a bit wild.

I wasn’t scared of her, exactly. I knew logically that she’d never hurt me, but instinct had my hair standing on end, that day.

My heart sped up, and her smile faltered as if she’d heard it. “What’s wrong,” she asked. “You’re not still upset, are you? It’s okay. You don’t need to worry; we all make mistakes. I think all of the caffeine in my system had my pule a bit fuckey, so you probably just couldn’t get a good read on it. That, or the stopwatch was broken.”

I blinked, confused. Had my expression changed? “I’m okay,” I lied, and as if to prove my words true, I took a huge gulp of my coffee.

Marilyn frowned, her eyes narrowing. “I know you enough to know that that’s not the truth,” she said. “You’re nervous right now. I’m making you nervous. Why?”

I sighed. “Well, you broke a mechanical pencil, Lyn. You were really…”

“Scary,” she finished for me, eyes wide, almost offended. Again, she looked as if I’d kicked her damn non-existent puppy. “You were scared of me? I mean, you know I have a temper.”

I shrugged. “You were kinda scary, you know, objectively.”

The silence she exuded in that moment was deafening. I counted about ten seconds before she let out a breath, and placed her head in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and she sounded genuine. “God, Darren was right. I never should have let you get this close...”

“Darren?” I asked, confused as to why her brother should have any say in who she gets close to. “Why would he tell you not to get close to me? That’s offensive.”

She stood up, and walked the few paces to her own bed, where the contents of her book bag was strewn about, reaching out to grab a particular piece of paper, which I realized was a printed photo of her brother. Speak of the devil.

“Lynn,” I said, as she sat back down onto my bed. I patted the space next to me, and she scooted up the bed to lie next to me. “What was he right about?”

Marilyn sighed again. “He told me not to get too close to you. That it was only a matter of time until…”

“Until what, I noticed that your heart beat is ridiculously fast?” I tried to laugh it off as a joke, but I was legitimately asking.

She sounded so sad. “Well, something like that. That I’m different. Scary. Wrong.” The last word was whispered.

In three years, I’d never seen her actually cry, so I didn’t expect to see her eyes filling up with tears. “You’re going to hate me,” she whispered. “When you find out.”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t hate you when you’re probably the only person that I genuinely like.”

Her smile was shaky. “You and Darren would get along. You both hate everybody.”

She just started crying then, words that I didn’t understand flowing from her. “I’m sorry. It was reckless of me to think that I could ever be normal, to let it get this far.”

I didn’t understand what she was saying, what she was implying. I thought she was coming out to me or something for a second time, which made no sense, but I was like, okay. That’s cool.

I remember how warm her body was next to mine that night, as we both slept in my bed because she insisted that she didn’t want to sleep alone. She held on to me as if she was scared I’d disappear into thin air.

I had no idea that she’d be the one to disappear.

You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy.

~*~

“Welcome, Haylie! My name is Janet Barress, head coordinator here at the Brewster Foundation for Troubled Youth. I’m glad you decided to join us.”

Janet looks like she hates her job and is anything but glad to be greeting me at the door. Or maybe I’m projecting. Her pantsuit is too small for her, and she smells like old lady perfume, which is sad because she must only be, what, thirty at most? She looks like a Janet, though. White skin, brown hair, the freaking pant suit. Marilyn would have laughed at that observation…

I still haven’t said a word, but she’s smiling a fake smile at me, and oh, right, I should probably reciprocate. My mouth puts on something like a smile and I guess it passes, because Janet’s handed me the forms, and I’m alone in the expansive foyer.

Damnit, I hate filling out forms, because there’s no spell check, and without Marilyn, I’m a lost cause. Today, thankfully, I think I spell mostly everything right. I mean, my name and the date have to be correct…

After the initial intake form, there are about six others I have to fill. Janet comes to check on me about fifteen minutes after I’ve already finished filling them out. I’ve just been sitting here, awkwardly looking around for a potential escape route, but the burly security guard who’s sitting by the door I just came through is staring at me with great interest. Looks like he’s correctly guessed that I regret coming here.

Not that I wanted to come here, mind you. It was the school who sent me, saying it’d give me the tools to cope with Marilyn’s “unfortunate accident.”

It wasn’t an accident. She went missing, and according to everybody else, I went crazy in response. When you already have mental illness, people seem to think the worst about you. My anxiety, depression and OCD all lead them to mislabel me as having lost it.

I didn’t. I just know that there’s something very wrong with how my friend just disappeared into thin air.

“You forgot to list your um…” Janet breaks me from my thoughts. Rude.

“My what?”

Janet hands me back my intake form. “Your er, mental…conditions.”

Oh. Oops.

“Uh, I have anxiety and depression.” I bite my lip. “And obsessive tendencies. Not that I’ve ever been diagnosed with OCD per se. I just have…” what did the school counselor call it? “tendencies. Oh! Dyslexia too…obviously,” I shake the papers at her, my spelling mistakes on full display. “Do you think you could write that all down for me?”

Janet nods. “We have a psychiatrist here who’ll be working with you. I think you spoke to him over the phone the other day, right?”

I nod. “Bruce, right?” I wonder if that’s his first name, or his surname. I don’t really care, but I wonder nonetheless.

She smiles that fake smile. “Yeah, that’d be him!” I bet she’s sucking his –

“Right this way,” Janet interrupts my thoughts as if she’s psychic. “I’ll take you to your quarters, where you can unpack your belongings.”

I wonder if I have a cellmate.

Janet leads me across the room, to the big double stair case. “The boy’s ward is on the left, girl’s on the right,” she explains. “You’re lucky, actually, because you filled the last spot. The house is completely full, thanks to you!”

Ah, good old Brewster Prep, securing me the last place. I wonder how much this is costing Gramps.

“Cool,” I mutter. “How long do I have to stay here again?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Janet replies, sounding agitated. “That’s up to Bruce. Come along, now, let’s get you to your quarters. You must be tired. A nap might do you good, Miss.”

It’s ten in the morning, but sure why not?

We turn down the right wing and walk past two other doors on the way to my room. This place is nothing but a big mansion that’s been converted into place for crazy – sorry, troubled – rich kids. Mostly white, I’m sure, since this area is sort of…well, let’s just say, out of fifty students at Brewster Prep, there are literally ten people of colour, and that’s including me, even though I can pass for white when the lighting is right.

I’m an odd mix of Chinese and Israeli on my mother’s side, and Irish and Moroccan on my father’s side, or so I’ve been told. Reddish-brown hair, olive skin with golden undertones, one eye blue-green and the other half blue, half hazel – you can thank my mother for that gem. People think it looks cool, until they realize that my mother had an STD that likely caused it, or at least, that’s Google tells me. My mother has certainly had her share of unprotected sex – I mean, I’m her greatest example.

“This is it,” Janet gestures at my door. It even has my name on it, written on a white board in flowery handwriting.

“Did you write that?” I ask, pretending to believe that Janet would dot her i’s with hearts.

Janet looks offended I’d even ask. “No, one of your house mates did. Her name is Susan, I think you’ll get along well. She attended Brewster Prep a grade above you, you may remember her?”

I don’t. My only real friend is – was, was, was – Marilyn, and even though she was the people loving half of our duo, I remained her favourite and best friend. She’d probably have remembered Susan, though. She was awesome like that.

“Maybe,” I acquiesce. “So, what do I do until lunch?”

Janet shrugs. “Whatever you want. There’s a television in your room, and the latest gaming consoles. The bathroom is stocked with everything you need, if you wish to bathe.” Jesus, she talks like she’s a lot older than she is – the hazards of working with rich kids I guess. If you don’t sound like Batman’s butler, they question your every move.

“Um, cool. Guess I’ll just chill. Thanks for showing me to my room.” She blinks at me, looking as if the language is foreign to her, and a chuckle bubbles out of me before I can stop it. “Come, on, Alfred, I’ll be okay, I’m not gonna off myself.”

Janet actually cracks a real smile, this sort of half-smirk that lights up her whole face. “I might actually like you,” she says, conspiratorially. “I’ll give you a tip. The kitchen is free reign, so if you’re hungry, you can make whatever you want. I have a feeling you won’t be ordering any food to your,” she pauses, and chuckles, “quarters.”

I decide that maybe I judged Janet too harshly before. I also decide to take a nap.

Marilyn didn’t like dogs – well, that’s not true, really, she liked them just fine, but they always reacted to her strangely. I remember one time last year, the school took us to the zoo, and the lone male wolf was looking at her as if she was a female in heat if you get my drift. He was down to smash, do the do, make her his lucky lady.

She was mortified, and vowed to never go to the zoo again. I bought her a stuffed wolf just to tease her not long after, joking that it looked just like her because its fur was light brown, bordering on blonde. She hadn’t reacted how I’d expected; she’d hugged me and said it was cute, then put it on her bed with the other stuffed animals she’d collected in her time at Brewster Prep.

It was that stupid wolf stuffed animal that alerted me to the fact that something was wrong in our suite when I walked in, the day I found Darren sitting on my bed. It was on the floor just outside our room.

I picked it up, confused. She never took that thing off her bed, and if she did it was because she’d insisted on bringing it with her on a visit to her family estate.

“Um,” I said, as I noticed Darren recognizing him from the picture I’d seen the other day. “Hey, I’m Haylie.” I waved, awkwardly. “You’re Marilyn’s brother Darren, right?”

His theme seemed to be black. His shirt, pants, docs, and even the frames of his glasses were black, and his hair wasn’t that far off. His amber eyes, so much like his sister’s, made for a gorgeous contrast.

“That’s me. You’re the roommate?” His voice was detached. Cold. I saw right the fuck through it, though. It was a forced coldness.

“She’s my best friend,” I explained, and he shrugged.

“I’m just here to…pick up her things.”

“Is she leaving?”

He looked at me, then, and for a brief moment, his expression softened. “Cute stuffie,” he nodded towards the wolf I was holding. “Reminds me of her.”

“Got it for her after we went to the zoo,” I said slowly. “Darren, what’s happened. Is Marilyn alright?”

Just like that, his expression hardened again. “No. She’s gone missing.”

I wasn’t sure I understood him correctly; sometimes that happens, you know? I mishear people a lot and have to ask them to repeat themselves.

I’m not slow, I just need a few seconds, quite often.

“She’s gone, Haylie. Missing. Disappeared.” He stood up, walked over to where I stood, towering above me by at least a foot and a half. “You can keep the wolf, if you want. I’m sure she’d want you to.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t heard anything about me. How’d you know my name?” I remarked, confused.

He sighed, and the way he looked at me, nostrils flaring as if he were taking in my scent…I realized that it was something that I’d seen Marilyn do all the time. She was always covertly sniffing the air, claiming that she just had a good sense of smell…but the way he was sniffing the air, so blatantly…it reminded me of a wolf.

“Something about me she may not have told you is that I’m an exceptional liar,” he whispered, as if talking to himself.

Darren reached out a finger, and wiped a tear I hadn’t realized was falling down my cheek. “Don’t worry,” he said, and I could tell he was affecting an air of uncaring, because his eyes had lost that cold look, and had taken on a sad one instead. “You’ll be alright.”

This angered me. “I don’t care about myself,” I said, “I’m worried about Lyn. Is she really gone?”

Unbelievably, he smirked. “Yeah, well, don’t worry about her. It’s better to forget she ever existed and move on with your life. You’re never going to see her again.”

There was something seriously wrong with the situation I was in.

“I don’t believe you,” I told him, as he walked out of the room and into the hallway of our dorm. I followed him all the way outside, and for some reason he didn’t tell me to go away. It’s like he wanted me to see what happened next. “I think you know where she is.”

Brewster Prep is surrounded by forest, like every self-respecting preparatory school. Instead of heading to the parking lot, Darren headed towards the woods, turning to see if I was still following.

“You should go back,” he said. “Go back to your life, pretend you never knew Marilyn. It’s better that way. Maybe I do know where she is; it doesn’t matter.”

“How could you say that?” I yelled. “I don’t understand! How could she go missing just like that, no police involved or anything, and you just expect me to believe you? What does the school think? What was she supposedly doing when she went missing? Is it my fault, for getting her pulse wrong?”

He sighed. “Listen, Haylie.”

And it was like time stood still. He stalked over to me, and I was caught in his stare, like I was looking into the eyes of an animal and not a teenage boy. “Go back to the school.”

I couldn’t move. I was so…transfixed by how wolf like this boy was, amazed at how he wasn’t even trying to hide it from me, but was using it to try and scare me off.

“She wouldn’t go missing without a fight.” I wasn’t asking him, so much as letting him know I was calling him on his bullshit. “I know she’d beat the shit out of whoever tried to overpower her. She’s little, but stronger than most grown men.”

Darren smiled, showing all of his teeth, just like his sister, but with more of an edge to it. “That’s true,” he admitted, “she’s very strong. But have you considered this; maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she left willingly.”

“So, you’re agreeing with me that she wasn’t abducted or anything. She’s gone out of her own volition.” I challenged.

His smile turned into something predatory. “My sister is strong but the laws we live by are stronger. If she left willingly, don’t you think it’s for the best?” he growled at me. “Now, go back to the school. You’re lucky I even let you see me. I could have been in and out of there in seconds.” His nostrils flared, as if taking in my scent.

“What are you?” I asked, despite the adrenaline pumping through my veins from the sheer terror I was experiencing.

“Nobody you want to mess with, Haylie. And anyway, who’s going to believe you if you tell them? Do you really want to expose Lyn like that?”

“That’s not an answer!” I stomped my foot. “What is there to expose besides the fact that she ran away?”

It was then that I realized, I was still holding that stupid stuffed wolf. I looked at it, and my eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “Oh,” I whispered. “This can’t be happening. You are not werewolves. This isn’t happening.”

He chuckles. “You’re smart. So, you understand now,” Darren said solemnly, “why she had to leave? Why it’s better to live your life like she ever even existed?” I couldn’t look at him, my eyes focusing on the stuffed animal in my hands, instead. “She was only allowed to attend school as long as she didn’t reveal what she is. What we are.”

Tears came out of nowhere, and I quickly wiped at them, embarrassed. “But why would you tell me any of this? You mentioned laws…”

When I looked up, he was gone.

I was like a terrified rabbit taking the only means of escape available; I’m not proud of how fast I ran away from the scene. It was only when I reached the edge of the parking lot, close to the doors that lead into the school, that I heard the long and mournful howl and then a slightly deeper howl joining in – a human voice responding to the call of a wolf. Darren and his sister, singing their goodbyes.

I know what I heard. I know what I saw, and what he told me. But if I tell anybody, I risk looking exposing my best friend…and I can’t do that to Lyn.

You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy.

I don’t know that I am, but Darren was right; who would believe me?