Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
“How do you think it happened?”
“How what happened?”
Shuffling of clothes and a muffled, “Shh! Don’t look at him!”
I grinned into my off-brand cereal, slurping my watery milk from the bowl before dropping it onto my plastic tray.
Not everyone could handle the crappy hospital food but I had an iron stomach.
It came with growing up the way I did with the sort of people I did.
You weren’t allowed to leave the table without clearing your plate, else you would be having the same thing for dinner.
Or breakfast. Or lunch, and then dinner again.
Wasting food was a luxury and there was nothing luxurious about the Markov household.
“Who? Oh, him?” A pause. “I don’t know. No one does.”
“I heard he was some sort of kid gymnast. His whole family was set on him making it to the Olympics. But then, one day, a stunt went wrong. He landed funny and broke his back. And he just lost it after that. Killed his coach and everything. They found the guy cut up and stuffed into a gym mat. Got all of him but his dick. Cops think he ate it.”
“That’s ridiculous. How does a cripple kill someone anyways? And why would he eat the guy’s dick for breaking his back? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Crazy people do crazy shit. It’s not supposed to make sense.”
“Well, I heard he’s a Russian spy—I’m serious!” A third voice. “Marcy says they planted him here to keep an eye on us.”
“Marcy also thinks they’re putting listening devices into her Jell-O cups.” And her pills. And her clothes. And her room vents. Although that last one might have been true. There were some creepy fuckers around here, and I didn’t mean the patients. “Besides, kids can’t be Russian spies.”
More shuffling. “If kids can be killers, they can definitely be spies.” He’s got you there, Georgie Boy. “You can’t know for sure.”
Jerry was right. It was dumb to underestimate someone just ?cause of their age.
Dr. Winters knew that. She insisted kids were worse than adults most times.
Mentioned how our frontal lobes were squishy and underdeveloped.
More prone to impulsivity and violence—direct quotes from her doctor notes—and considering the current company, she might have hit that one on the head with a knee-knocker.
Then again, that was coming from one of the worst adults I knew, so you could also take whatever the Nutcracker said with a grain of Clozapine. I didn’t give her the nickname. Didn’t mean it wasn’t earned.
“Yeah, and what kinda secrets do you think the Russians are trying to get from a buncha nuts in a looney bin?” See? We were the nuts. Dr. Winters was the cracker.
“Hey! I’m not a nut… I just… I mean—” He just tried to gouge his own eyeball out during a psychotic break brought on by the Adderall he’d stolen out of his older sister’s medicine cabinet.
Do you know what Adderall can do to someone who’s already displaying obsessive-compulsive tendencies?
Yeah, neither did I until Tommy showed up.
But apparently it could amplify that shit.
Make those little “quirks” like excessive hand washing and cleaning door knobs ten times worse.
He also had an aversion to dirt so bad that he tried to drink a cup of bleach he stole out of the janitor’s closet.
Ended up burning his esophagus and spitting most of it out.
Tommy was new here. Still feeling his way around and clueless when it came to knowing when to keep his mouth shut.
Whatever he didn’t blab to everyone else I’d gotten off his chart when one of the nurses was distracted by a fire alarm I might have or might not have bumped into… accidentally on purpose.
“Exactly.” George wasn’t so new.
He was also slightly more fucked up. Killed his baby brother by drowning him in the bathtub.
Then went on with his day like nothing had ever happened.
Got dressed, threw his backpack on, and skipped off to school.
By the time lunch had rolled around, his mother had grabbed him from his classroom and dropped him off here.
Insisted her son was the state’s problem now because she didn’t raise no psycho.
My guess was that most parents felt the same way. Some were probably right. Not all of ?em were.
“It could have something to do with the basement.” The basement was one of those urban myths everyone talked about. Never seen the place for myself so I couldn’t speak on what went on down there.
The voice, though? That was Jerry. Boring. Just another kid who sometimes heard people talking to him. Those people weren’t real, of course.
Jerry was one of the lucky ones. His parents actually liked him. They visited every Saturday, promising they would take him home soon. Everyone knew it was a lie… except Jerry.
“See!”
I pushed out from the cafeteria table, pulled my lunch onto my lap, and maneuvered my chair across the room.
Ensuring they could hear the knocking of my dishes and the thumping of my wheels when I passed where the three muskrat-eteers were huddled together gossiping about me.
When I reached the large metal cart, I slammed my tray into one of the empty slots, watching them all jump before offering a small smirk over my shoulder.
“Hey…” George’s voice cracked. He quickly cleared his throat. “Hey, Casper.”
I waited until they thought they were in the clear. Then I paused and spun my chair around. “It’s true, you know,” I hummed.
“Which part?” Tommy asked. Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, like he’d just heard they were giving out Clorox wipes for Christmas. George smacked him with the back of a hand, and Tommy closed his mouth. But his eyes remained just as wide.
“All of it.” I shrugged. Tommy gasped, and I added, “None of it.”
George grumbled something about me being an asshole. I didn’t correct him. Because he was right. I was an asshole. I was also too smart to tell any of these dumb fucks anything I didn’t want someone else to know.