Chapter 14
“DR. BLAKE!” KAYA EXCLAIMED, RISING from her bed on weak legs. “What are you doing here?”
Dr. Blake welcomed Kaya’s embrace. “Reed told me what happened,” he said. “I came to check in on you, to make sure you’re being treated well and such.”
“It’s Graham,” Graham said. “Last name Reed.”
“Very well, young man,” Dr. Blake said. He sat on the bed, patting the mattress so Kaya would sit beside him.
Graham was blatantly aware of the fact that there were no chairs in the room. He wondered what a psychotic or suicidal person would do with a chair if they had the chance.
Dr. Blake took Kaya’s hand. “Tell me, young lady, how are you holding up?”
Kaya’s face went slack. “I want to go home,” she said. “Either home. My dorm room or back to Wisteria. I don’t even care which one. I want to go to dinner and a movie with Grayson. I want to take a shower using my own shampoo.”
“Have you even taken a shower since you’ve been here?” Graham asked. “You’re looking kind of ripe.”
Kaya glared at him. She looked back at Dr. Blake. “You’re the first person who totally believes me. I can hear it. You think I need to be released, and to be left alone to my own devices. Thank you for that.”
Dr. Blake glanced at Graham and then back at Kaya. “Kaya,” he said softly. “We need to talk about something.”
Kaya nodded. “Something’s changed. You think there’s something going on that you don’t understand.” She looked at Graham. “That’s what his voice is telling me, anyway.”
She turned back to Dr. Blake.
“Maybe I’m just seeing that in your face.”
“Kaya,” Graham said, getting down on the floor in front of her and sitting cross legged. “We need to talk to you about something you said when I was here with Mom yesterday.”
Kaya’s eyes widened. “What was it? I said a lot of things.”
“It was about Halloween.”
Kaya laughed. “Brother, I’m stuck in a looney bin, and you want to talk about Halloween? You’re weird. You wanted to talk about that yesterday too, remember? I thought that was bizarre, too.”
Graham squinted at her. “Yesterday? You mean, you thought I said that out loud?”
Kaya’s mouth opened slightly. “What? You didn’t? That stuff about me and Grayson being able to have Halloween? I could have sworn you really said that.”
Dr. Blake’s forehead furrowed. “You didn’t notice that his lips weren’t moving at the time?”
Kaya shook her head. “We were hugging goodbye.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Now I can’t even tell the difference.” She looked at her feet. “Maybe I am losing touch with reality.”
Graham shook his head. “No, Kaya, you don’t understand.” He looked at Dr. Blake, and the professor nodded. “Kaya, when you said that, I didn’t think anything of it either. It wasn’t until I left and got to the car that it hit me. And now, I’m starting to second-guess everything that’s happened in the last four years. I was up most of the night running it through my brain and I can’t make any sense of it. That’s why I asked Dr. Blake to come with me today.”
Kaya shook her head. “Graham, you’re not making any sense at all. What kept you up all night? Trying to decide what Halloween costumes you and Gina would wear this year?”
Graham chuckled despite the gravity of the conversation. Kaya was incorrigible. Even while locked in a psychiatric ward with the threat of commitment hanging over her head, she was making jokes.
“No, Kaya,” he said with a small roll of his eyes. “Although if Halloween isn’t canceled this year for us due to circumstances, I guess we have to start thinking about it. No. What kept me up is this: I didn’t say anything out loud to you about SpongeBob and Patrick.”
Kaya shrugged. “So maybe I made that up.” She looked at her hands. “But it would be a weird thing for me to make up, seeing as I have no idea who Patrick is. I mean, I’ve heard of SpongeBob, of course, but I guess I just assumed that Patrick was another character in the show.”
“That’s just the thing, Kaya,” Graham said. He took a slow breath and then blew it out. “I know who Patrick is. I watch SpongeBob sometimes on the weekend when Gina’s sleeping in and I’m eating my cereal. It’s funny. And I heard that it was gonna be a popular pairs costume this year.”
“And?” Kaya asked, circling her hand to move him along.
“And,” Graham went on. “And I was thinking that it would be a cute couple’s costume for you and Grayson. You could be SpongeBob, and he could be Patrick.”
“Okay?” Kaya said, still not picking up on what he was telling her.
“Kaya,” Graham said quietly. “I was thinking that. Don’t you see? I was thinking it when I was hugging you. But I didn’t say it out loud.”
Kaya stared at him. “You must have.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t looking at your face, and I couldn’t have just pulled that thought out of thin air. Maybe you thought that you didn’t say it, but you did.”
“No. Like I said, it hit me after we left last night. When I got in the car, I asked Mom about it. I had to check myself. I knew I hadn’t said it out loud, but I was second-guessing myself. But Mom swears I didn’t say it. She was wondering what you were talking about when you were going on about it, and she was going to ask me about it. So she and I got to talking about it, and we talked for a long time. The things you said yesterday, about how Mom and I were feeling about you being in the hospital, and about your symptoms. Kaya, they were right on the nose. You seemed to know exactly how we were feeling, and it couldn’t just be because you were looking at our faces. The more we thought about it, the more we realized that sometimes when you were telling us what the voices were saying to you yesterday, you were using some of the exact words from our own thoughts.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “Kaya, you know that people don’t really think in sentences most of the time, unless they’re very focused on something in particular, or rehearsing something they want to say. Thoughts are fragmented, more like ideas, and images. But we associate them with words when we convey our thoughts to others.”
Kaya nodded. “Okay,” she said. “So what is it that you’re both trying to say to me then?”
“Kaya,” Graham said softly, reaching up to take her hand. “We’re trying to say that there’s more going on here than we originally thought. It seems that maybe, and I don’t know how or why, but you’re actually able to hear, or interpret, thoughts.”
Kaya stared at him and then burst out laughing. “Oh my God,” she said, shaking her head. “Guys, I’m the one on a five-day psychiatric hold, right? You two are supposed to be the voices, no pun intended, of reason. Now after four years of everyone telling me that I’ve been hallucinating the voices of people around me, you’re trying to tell me that I’m not nuts at all, right? That I am hearing voices, but that I’m not making them up myself in my brain. Is that what you’re saying?”
Graham thought carefully of how to go forward. “I don’t know. I mean, there are a lot of coincidences. I’ve read enough in my life to know that after a while, if there are a lot of coincidences, they stop being coincidences, and we need to start looking for a connection.”
He paused.
“For instance, the whole thing with Jill. You were always talking about her telling you all the bad things she wanted to do to you. I was worried about you, because I thought you were making it all up in your head at the time. That was before we really knew about the whole voices thing. But I can clearly remember you giving me the details of her wanting to put laxative in your milk. That’s pretty specific, right? I thought your brain was being really creative with that one. But then later you told me that she tried to do the exact same thing to Bailey, and she was caught.”
Kaya looked out the window, appearing to be deep in thought.
“I guess I kind of forgot about that,” she said. “I got so wrapped up in the whole thing with the voices that I didn’t even think about that. Yeah, that’s kind of weird, huh? How come you didn’t say anything back then?”
Graham shrugged. “I guess I just assumed that you had overheard something and you’d forgotten about it. But when you really think about it, would Jill have even said anything like that out loud?” He sighed. “But then I would have also had to accept that maybe all the things you said about Jill were true, that she thought about you being dead. And that was probably too much for my fragile little brain to handle.”
He squeezed Kaya’s hand.
“And now I have to come to terms with the fact that you might have been right. Jill might have been responsible for your fall from the pyramid. And if that’s the case, Kaya, I can’t even begin to apologize to you for not believing you.”
Kaya’s eyes were open quite wide as she stared at her hand in Graham’s.
“You really believe all this,” she said with disbelief. “You really think that I can tell what people are thinking.” She looked into his eyes. “Just now, I could hear your voice telling me that you can’t even begin to make it up to me, all the years that this has been going on, and you doubted me. That you might have contributed to me doubting myself.”
Graham nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.” He smiled slightly. “Like Dr. Blake said, it’s more like a conglomeration of thoughts, but when you say it, it’s like you take the words right out of my head. If I was going to describe my thoughts, that’s how I would describe them.”
Kaya sat for a long time in silence. The two men sat silently with her. Finally, Kaya freed her hand from Graham’s grasp and stood. She started to pace the room.
“Oh my God,” she said softly. “I feel like now I have to go back, all the way back for the whole four years and review everything. Everything I heard, and see it in a new way.”
She fingered the frame of the picture over her bed.
“Everything. I have to come to terms with the fact that I’ve been seeing all of this wrong.”
She turned back to Graham. “So Grayson, when he said, ‘Wow’ . . .”
Graham smiled. “He was really saying, ‘Wow,’” he said.
Kaya nodded, her eyes fixed on a spot on the blank wall.
“And when Jill said she wanted me dead . . .” She shivered. “I’m not sure that Jill did cause the fall,” she said. “I think—I think she said something. Something like, ‘I’m really gonna do it this time,’ and I heard it, and I yelled, and I panicked, and I lost my balance.”
She shook her head.
“So in a way, it was a self-fulfilled prophecy, and she got what she wanted.” She laughed. “But she didn’t, because what she wanted was the top of the pyramid, and Miss Green gave that to Bailey.”
She sat back down.
“So that also means that the guy, the one I ran into the other day—what’s his name?”
Graham hesitated, but then remembered that his sister wasn’t a homicidal maniac after all. “Ted Stratton.”
Kaya nodded. “That means that what I heard him say . . .”
“It was true,” Graham said, noticing that his voice sounded rough. His heart was pounding with the thought. The guy had really thought those things about Kaya. But would he have acted on them? “Kaya, they were his thoughts,” he said. “He didn’t say them out loud. It’s possible he was thinking them but wouldn’t have acted on them.”
Kaya nodded automatically. “Do most guys have thoughts about raping women behind dumpsters, and then possibly leaving them for dead?”
Graham felt chills down his spine. “No,” he admitted. “No. They don’t. At least I hope they don’t.”
Dr. Blake shifted on the bed.
“Kaya,” he said. “I think we need to talk a little more about the functionality of your, well, gift, I guess we can call it. It seems that these voices, or thoughts, that you hear only happen sometimes, from what you’ve told me.”
“Right,” Kaya said. “They only happen when I’m close to someone. Like standing near them. And I only hear one voice at a time.” She thought about it. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. I could be in a classroom with thirty other students, but only hear my friend Bailey singing.”
She laughed.
“Oh my God. That means that Bailey was really only singing in her head all this time, not out loud! That’s hysterical.” She paused. “Or maybe not. Maybe it’s really distracting to hear music in your head all the time.”
“I would think that it would be distracting for you to hear voices in your head,” Dr. Blake said. “But it doesn’t seem that it is. You seem to be selective in what you hear. So you have some sort of focus. I wonder what causes you to focus on one person when several are in the room.”
Kaya shrugged. “I have no idea. I would think maybe it would have something to do with them being people I know, but sometimes it would happen in the lunch line in high school, and some of the kids I didn’t even know.”
Dr. Blake scratched his balding head. “Okay, so this is a quandary. Let’s take it case by case. What’s the first voice you ever remember hearing?”
Kaya’s eyes turned up toward the ceiling. “I’m not entirely sure,” she said. “For a long time, I just thought people were saying weird things to me, and I didn’t know they were voices.”
Her mouth clamped shut.
“Wait. I do remember something that was weird.”
She thought for a moment.
“It was a few months before everything started with Jill. No, wait. It was longer than that.”
She turned to Graham.
“It was before Dad left. Something had happened that day, I don’t remember what, but I was upset. Something at school. I think maybe Cat had said something that upset me. I was talking to Dad about it, and he was comforting me. Then suddenly he said something weird. What was it? It was something like, ‘I wish I could take all of your pain away. If I could make it different for you, I would. But I just don’t have control over it.’ I remember thinking it was a strange thing to say, so I questioned him about it.”
Graham felt cold. “What did you say to him?”
Kaya closed her eyes in thought. “I said ‘control over what?’ And then he pulled away and gave me this scary look. Like he was scared. I’d never seen him look like that before. But then he smiled and said it was nothing. I forgot about it pretty quickly.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “So at the time, you thought he had said that out loud to you. Why didn’t you notice that his lips weren’t moving?”
Kaya thought and then shrugged. “He was hugging me. I couldn’t see his lips.”
Dr. Blake nodded again. “Okay. Now let’s go forward to the events with the cheerleader girl. You heard her make threats to you, but again, you didn’t notice that her lips weren’t moving.”
Kaya nodded. “We were in pyramid formation. She was on the second tier, and I was on her back. Her head was pointed away from me. I thought it was strange that she would say something so horrible in front of everyone.”
Graham paid close attention to Kaya’s words. “What about Bailey? Why couldn’t you tell that her lips weren’t moving?”
“She was sitting behind me,” Kaya said. “Remember I told you the classroom was really crowded? We were all right on top of each other. Sometimes, her legs were stretched out under the desk and her feet were touching mine.” She laughed. “Sometimes we would actually foot wrestle under the desk!”
Graham felt the anticipation of a breakthrough coming. “What about Cat?” he asked. “Remember that time in your room when you said that she told me she loved me right in front of me?”
Kaya nodded. “Yeah,” she said. She smiled. “I guess she really did! But let me see. We were in my room, practicing cheers. We were next to each other. You came into the room. I guess I just wasn’t looking at her?”
Graham shook his head. “Maybe. You were both looking at me. But let me think for a second.” He looked at the floor. “When I came into the room, you were showing her some steps. You were right next to each other. And you were holding hands.”
Kaya nodded. “Yeah. I remember that cheer. It was called the chain.”
Dr. Blake nodded, seeming to catch on to what Graham was getting at. “Kaya, I’d like to try something right now if that’s okay with you. A small experiment.”
Kaya nodded.
“I want you to look at me, look into my eyes. And I want you to concentrate and try to hear my thoughts.”
Kaya looked at Dr. Blake. “I’ve never done it like this before,” she said. “I’m not sure if there’s something I need to do to make it happen.”
She sat quietly for several seconds. Then she shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing. I guess I can’t just make it happen.”
Dr. Blake reached out and put his hand on her arm. “That’s okay, Kaya. You can try again later.”
Kaya suddenly looked up at Dr. Blake. “Oh my God,” she said in a whisper. “Yes.”
Graham tilted his head. “What just happened?”
Dr. Blake smiled. “I just thought something toward Kaya. I told her that if she could hear my thoughts, to say yes out loud. I did that before, too, but it didn’t work.”
Kaya shook her head. “What’s the difference?”
Dr. Blake looked at Graham. “Now you try, Reed.”
Graham tried to send a thought toward Kaya. She shook her head after several seconds. “I’m not getting anything.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “Now, Graham, take Kaya’s hand.”
Graham did as he was told and again directed a thought at his sister. She laughed and turned to Dr. Blake. “He said to tell you that it’s Graham. Last name Reed.”
Graham felt the light had just started shining into the room.
“It’s touch,” he said. “You have to be touching someone to know what they’re thinking. You were hugging Dad. You were on Jill’s back. You were holding hands with Cat.”
He felt a dark wave come over him. “And Ted Stratton was pulling you up by your hand.”
Kaya nodded. “That makes so much sense. Bailey’s foot touching my foot. Grayson touching me in the lunch line when we both reached for the same pudding.”
She turned toward Dr. Blake. “They want to commit me. If I tell them that I can read minds, that will seal the deal! How can I convince them that I’m not crazy?”
They all sat with that thought for a while and then something occurred to Graham.
“Kaya, you told me that when you met Dr. Franklin, you got bad vibes off of him about your insurance. And then there was some other stuff that you heard, but you didn’t go into detail. You said that you told him about it, and he played it off like you were crazy. What exactly was it that you heard?”
Kaya thought about it. “It was really brief, because he was shaking my hand after he introduced himself to me. First I could just tell that he was chomping at the bit to assess me and find a reason to keep me here because my insurance is so good. But then I picked up quick bits and pieces of stuff about Medicare. Huh. Medicare. That should have been my first clue that I was reading his mind. I know nothing about Medicare. He was thinking about some paperwork, and having to get it done, and how he could do it convincingly. Something about reconciling the books or something.”
Graham nodded. “And you told him what you heard?”
Kaya nodded.
“And if you were reading his mind . . .”
Realization came to Kaya’s eyes. “Then he would see me as a threat,” she said. “I know his dirty little secret. So if I’m really, really crazy, no one will believe me.”
“And if he keeps you in the hospital, he can continue to document how crazy you are,” Graham went on. “Crazy enough to threaten some poor innocent boy on campus for no reason.”
“Crazy enough to be committed,” Kaya said. “The girl who got committed for hearing voices that were bad enough to drive her to violence. Who would believe that girl when she started to talk about the hospital administrator committing fraud? It’s just another part of her delusional system.”
Dr. Blake smiled. “Maybe this is your ticket out of here,” he said. “I don’t want you to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, Kaya, or could put you in danger, but how would you feel about possibly laying hands on Dr. Franklin one more time?”