I turn to address whoever’s speaking and lose my balance, falling into a pile of yellow pajamas to my left. I’m wearing these yellow pajamas, too, I realize: yellow flannel, decorated in pink dogs. My fingers grab hold of a bag of warm sand draped in cloth.
“Hey,” the pile of clothes says, turning toward me, coming slowly into focus. It’s an enormous girl, maybe three hundred pounds, whose face and neck are dripping with burn scars. Her red hair is matted in places, singed looking, and she’s eating ravenously off my plate. I’m holding on to her thigh. “Sorry,” I mutter, but she clamps a large hand down on mine before I can remove it.
“We’re wearing the same pajamas,” she says in a low monotone.
“That’s Jefferca,” the first voice chirps.
Jefferca pats my hand and goes back to eating off my plate. I turn to my right and see a small, pale girl with freckles and light-brown hair, the one who’s been talking to me in the British accent. She looks young—twelve maybe, or else a really young-looking teenager. Her pajamas are blue, with hippos on them. “Don’t mind her,” she says, and I can tell now that the British accent is fake. “Jefferca’s helping in her own way. You should give her a hug! But watch out because she bites.”
I have no idea what’s going on. “Jefferca or Jessica?” I hear myself asking, because I think maybe I’ve gotten it wrong.
“Jefferca,” Jefferca commands, and I can tell she’d be yelling if she had the strength to raise her voice. She looks at me through half-shut lids.
“And why are you helping me?” I ask Jefferca.
Jefferca shrugs. “Hungry.”
The food smells nasty, but my mouth is watering. I reach up and feel how damp my chin is, and spongy, too, like maybe I’ve been drooling on it for days.
“Jefferca’s on her own team,” the freckled girl interjects, pinching my waist. “Hey, at least push your food around and pretend you’re eating or Felicity and Barb will see you. It took you skipping breakfast and lunch to wake up this much. Keep fasting through dinner and we might be able to have a conversation. No more futzing around.” She scoops up some potatoes with her spoon and dumps it back onto her plate just before it touches her lips. “See? Jolly-ho!”
I cradle a fork with both hands and try to navigate it around my tray. It’s like trying to eat with a small shovel.
Here’s something: they took Ruth’s diary away, first thing, after Dom alluded to the fact that it might be some kind of trigger. I remember that. I also remember realizing pretty quickly that if I fought with them about it—like, begged to keep it, or whatever—I’d only make them look more right. At Cloudy Meadows, I’m figuring out that the more you try and tell them you aren’t crazy, the crazier you look. That’s a thing I would write down if they let me have a pencil.
“You don’t understand, this is what they want. Everybody just wants me to be in trouble so that I’ll stop my investigation!” I pleaded at first. And these two almost identical nurses murmured, “Delusional, Barb,” and, “Oh ja, Felicity, superparanoid,” nodding to each other until someone barged in with a gigantic needle, and they had to hold me down. The nurses here dress like something out of a World War II movie: light blue women’s dress suits with puffy sleeves under long white aprons.
That’s basically one of the last things I remember clearly, though I’m pretty sure it happened more than once, judging by the track marks on my arms. I’m not even certain how long I’ve been here. I sleep a lot, and see everything through a kind of frosted glass. I’ve heard Dom’s voice a couple times, so I guess he’s come to see me—though based on how far away he sounded, I could have just been talking to him on the phone.
“That’s it,” the small, freckled brunette says, pretending to feed me a mouthful of corned beef before smearing it across my face. She reminds me that her name is Sir Albus—she’s told me before, apparently. “Yes, like the guy from Harry Potter, one of your typical British names, obviously. Okay so just sort of scoop it onto your lap, if you have to. Lots of girls miss, so it doesn’t look suspicious to be covered with food. Don’t put it in your mouth, though! You and I’ll be able to have a strategizing session in no time.”
“I killed Ruth,” I hear myself say. I try to remember but my mind is a wet tunnel clogged with bricks and fog. “Wait no . . .”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” whispers Albus. “Quit saying that—you’re a detective, for God’s sake.”
“But how do you know?”
Albus puts her little hands on my face and stares at me. “Because I’m not crazy, Corporal, and neither are you.”
“Davey . . .”
“Shh. Don’t worry about that, we’ll fix that.” Albus gives me a quick hug. All around us, drunk-looking girls cram glop into their faces. I’m reminded of the cow pasture that Dom and I saw on our way into Cloudy Meadows. Animals gnawing cud. I reach down and finger the snaps on the pajama pants, remembering how there aren’t any drawstrings so that we can’t hang ourselves. How they even took away my bra because of the straps. I reach up and instinctively cross my arms across my chest, trying to hide the outline of my nipples.
“Your elbow’s in my mashed potatoes,” Jefferca says gloomily. She looks like one of those melted clocks by Salvador Dalí, who we learned about at school before they got rid of art class because of the budget cuts.
“Sorry,” I say, and move my arm.
Sir Albus pokes me in the ribs, reminding me to put some food on my face. Three tables over, a girl is squeezing her hands into a pair of powder-blue gloves and looking down her nose at those across from her.
“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing. My tongue feels like it’s wrapped in cotton.
Albus swats my fingers. “That’s Brenda,” she whispers. “She thinks she’s the queen.”
“What grade are you even in?”
“You and I are simpatico,” she says, ignoring me, and tickles my knee under the table. “Luckily I’m the only sane person in here, and I’m your roommate, and I know all about your thing with that friend of yours, and I’m going to help you get out. Jefferca, well”—she reaches across my plate and taps Jefferca, who’s in the middle of lapping up my gravy—“Jefferca’s just ravenous.”
“Won’t they be mad that she’s eating my meds?” I look nervously across the cafeteria. No nurses in sight, just Queen Brenda buttoning her giraffe-print pajamas all the way up to her throat.
“Oh, Jefferca’s always stealing someone’s food. They stopped trying with her. She’s surprisingly lucid for someone so medicated—then again, she’s so big she could eat all our meds and probably still survive. The only way they’ll care is if they catch you fake ingesting.” Sir Albus rubs some mashed potatoes on her cheeks and raises her eyebrows at me to do the same. “If you’re on drugs, this is what you’d look like after lunch anyway.”
I vaguely recall some sort of deal made through a haze of downers, Albus and I pawing around in our individual fogs before we could find each other’s fingers and finally shake hands.
“What’s our plan again?” I say.
“We’ll talk about that part in our room with the door shut,” she says, cocking her head at Jefferca. “This one’s not exactly a flight risk, but she might decide to copy us. Luckily, you’ve got an actual British police officer for a roommate. I’m the head bloke in district three hundred fifty-seven, and we all know how bad US cops are at their jobs. I totally believe everything you said about that Steak character.” She winks. “I can’t come with, mind you. The younger lads will be coming back to claim me soon. But you’ve got to get back there and fix things for the town! That’s for certain, Lieutenant.”