The Dream Where the Losers Go (20 page)

She understood then. They hadn’t come to play the usual Night Games. They hadn’t even come to get at a feast of sleeping girls, torture and mutilate them in their beds. They had come hunting for her. She had betrayed them, turned on her own kind, and they could feel it—they were the same blood and heartbeat, weren’t they? The Dragons were going to pick the lock, open the door, pull her out into the night, and take her away.

Forever free,
she remembered Jigger saying, sad and soft.
Free as the moon and the stars.
Whatever he planned to do with her, she wouldn’t be coming back.

Electric fear surged through Skey, and her empty hands came together into fists. Desperately she began pounding on the door, the dark sound of her hands echoing beneath her high bright voice. No words, but enough sound—endless, terrified sound.

In the distance, she could hear night staff coming, calling out to her as they descended the stairs. With a moan, Skey slumped to the floor, her head filling with the sound of running feet, panting, the slam of a car door and an engine starting up. On the other side of the locked door, wheels spun and squealed down the street, taking seven Dragons away from what might have been, what they would have done to her, the fate the dragon’s claw had reserved for each one of them that night.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

S
KEY WOKE IN A TINY ROOM
with a single bed and a small wire-crossed window. Daylight poured through the glass. As she rolled over to look at it, exhaustion lapped at her body like an inner ocean. Through the wall beside the bed, she could hear muffled voices—staff joking with Monica, who had come to the office to ask for a tampon. So, thought Skey, looking around herself, she had finally made it into the Back Room, where they kept the crazy girls. Skey Mitchell had finally lost it so bad, they didn’t even trust her in her own bed.

Every fifteen minutes, staff checked in on her. When they saw that she was awake, they brought her some clothing and she got dressed. Mid-morning, Larry came to see her. He brought a gray-cushioned chair with him, nothing his weird fashion sense could argue with. Mrs. Mitchell would have been pleased.

“I hear you took a walk last night,” he said, sitting down. “You want to tell me about it?”

Seated on the bed, Skey closed her eyes and worked her way through the possibilities. Staff must suspect that she
had been waiting for someone at the side entrance, but they wouldn’t have any proof. The Dragons probably hadn’t left any noticeable tracks last night—it hadn’t snowed recently, and a zillion people walked in and out of that door every day.

“I was sleepwalking,” she said, flashing Larry a glance. “I had a nightmare.”

Larry gazed back at her as if he had time on hold. “Do you remember your nightmare?” he asked finally.

The first thought that came to her was the tunnel of light. “I was in a hallway where it was too bright,” she said quickly. “I couldn’t see anything, because my head was filled with this burning light. I was trying to get out.”

She thought it sounded like the right kind of nightmare, but Larry’s eyes weren’t buying it. “You timed it well,” he commented. “Not a single night staff spotted you. How did you get down all those creaky steps without a sound?”

“I dunno,” said Skey. “I was sleepwalking, remember?”

Larry leaned forward, his eyes intent. “Skey,” he said, “something terrible happened to you last night. You were very frightened when staff found you. Screaming. You wouldn’t let anyone touch you. We can help you if you let us know what’s going on.”

The faces of seven Dragons appeared in Skey’s mind, lit up and hissing like the tunnel of light. “I feel sick,” she mumbled, hugging herself. “I think I might throw up.”

Larry backed off immediately. “Okay,” he said, picking up his chair. “I’ll let you rest now and come back later.”

After he left, Skey sat on the bed, staring at a line of trees outside the window. In the late morning wind, they were bending and swaying, rowing into the wind and the sky.
Keep going, keep going,
she thought, the words heavy and old
in her head. Staff continued to check her at fifteen-minute intervals. At noon, she heard the girls return to the unit for lunch, then leave again for school. The afternoon shift came on. Muffled scraps of conversation leaked through the wall, something about Ann and her birthday tomorrow.

“...probably the reason for her acting out,” said someone, and Skey stiffened. What did staff think was the reason for Skey Mitchell’s “acting out”?

She had left the rock in her jeans, which were hanging in her room. It was no longer necessary for her to be touching it before connecting with the dark tunnel, but all she could seem to manage was sitting on this bed, staring out at the empty swaying trees, while she kept her heart beating and her lungs taking in air. It was so much work just to stare.

A
FTER SUPPER
, staff moved her back to her own room. Every half hour or so, one of them would knock on the door, poke in a head, and try for a bit of chitchat. Seated on her bed, Skey simply stared out the window. Over the past hour, the sky had grown noticeably darker and the trees quieter. The stars were beginning to show.
As free as the moon and the stars,
she remembered, watching them. What Jigger had meant, she now realized, was dead, her soul gone out to sing with the stars. Well, even without the Dragons’s help, her soul was out there singing with the stars, because she was empty, a blank staring shell. The Dragons were gone, and so was she.

She left the rock in her jeans, hanging in the closet.

On the other side of her door, the unit was unusually quiet. There had been a party for Ann, with a few girls from Units A and C attending, but they had left a half hour ago. Contrary to what staff had predicted, Ann seemed to be
behaving for her fifteenth birthday—no yelling, no door slamming, no “acting out.” Staff must be relieved.

O
UTSIDE
S
KEY’S WINDOW
, the sky grew darker, the stars brighter. Her soul shone farther and farther away.
I’m with my mother now,
she thought dully.
Nothing and no one can reach us.

Through the wall, she heard Ann go into her room and close the door. Then it was quiet, not even the squeak of bedsprings, as if the birthday girl was standing in the middle of that small narrow space, deciding what to do. How to do it. After a bit, Skey heard the muffled sound of a large object being pushed across the floor, slowly, so no one would hear. Only one thing in Ann’s room was that large—the bed. She was pushing her bed across her door to block it.

Skey came alive as if her brain hadn’t functioned for a long time. Thinking without words, without language or eyes. Instinctively, the lower, darker part of her brain began sniffing out the silence in Ann’s room. In Ann. Without seeing, that part of Skey’s brain understood the soft sound of a dresser drawer sliding open, and the subsequent silence as Ann’s hand fumbled for something among her clothing. Something hidden. Something small with a sharp edge. She had it. The birthday girl had the tiny weapon in her hand, the weapon that would cut her open and call out the blood.

Ann was silent, but Skey was screaming. Grabbing the chair next to her desk, she dragged it onto her bed. She had learned from last night and the riot—the walls and doors of this place were illusions. With another scream, Skey swung the chair at the wall and saw it buckle slightly. She swung again, and a large hole appeared. Dropping the chair, she
pulled aside a dangling piece of plaster, then dove through the hole and onto Ann’s bed. Without pausing, she scrambled to her feet and lunged at the girl standing two feet away and holding a small piece of broken glass to her throat. The first small cut was already bleeding.

“No,” sobbed Skey, wrapping her arms around Ann. “No, baby, put that ugly thing down. Don’t do that, baby, you don’t deserve that, baby.”

With an answering sob, Ann began to shake, and the two of them sank together to the floor. Taking the glass from Ann’s hand, Skey threw it across the room.

“No, no, no,” they whispered brokenly to each other.
No, baby, don’t do that, baby, you want your skin to live free.

W
HEN STAFF CAME
crawling through the hole in the wall, Skey started screaming again. Mindless white-hot panic erupted in her, so heated, it blurred her vision and shut out external sound. On the other side of her fear, vague gray shapes tried to calm her, but she backed into a corner, trying to fend them off. Quickly Ann’s bed was shoved aside, and two of the blurred shapes took hold of Skey’s arms. Suddenly hands seemed to be everywhere, grabbing and pushing her toward the now open door. Trapped in the high bright terror of her mind, she bit and kicked, dimly aware that she was being taken down stairs, then carried along the long indoor passageway that led to the school. A door was unlocked, then another, and another. Abruptly, she was pushed into a small quiet space. The hands let go. She was released.

B
UT THE SCREAMS
wouldn’t release her. Unabated, terror continued to pour its high bright light into Skey’s mind.
Trying to get rid of it, to somehow reduce it to human size, she ran herself repeatedly against the padded walls of the room into which she had been placed. Even though staff had retreated and locked the door behind them, hands still seemed to be reaching out to grab her—invisible hands, hands that weren’t really there, hands coming out of nowhere.

There is no one here
, she thought, knowing that she was alone in a small locked room with staff monitoring her through a wire-crossed window in the door, but she continued to feel invisible hands grabbing her arms and pushing her down, and then a single hand, pressed over her mouth. Screaming and sobbing, Skey slid to the floor. Now she felt her legs being shoved apart and heard voices speaking—Jigger telling someone to be gentle, Trevor telling her to calm down and Balfour laughing. Then Pedro, saying something she couldn’t make out.

Skey’s vision began to clear, and she saw that she was descending through a thick white light. Then the thick light faded, and she found herself in the master bedroom at Jigger’s cabin. Immediately she realized that she was back in the May long weekend, six months previous. Music pounded through the walls—everyone was partying in the living room, except her and Jigger. When the rest of the gang had started taking off their clothes, she had panicked, and he had brought her in here. Like he said, he always made an exception for her, he was so good to her, didn’t make her do what the other girls had to do. She was special, his and his alone, and they were making love on the bed, it was so wonderful to have a bed instead of a backseat, the soft sheets encasing them, their bodies moving gently against each other.

The bedroom door opened, and Trevor, Pedro and Balfour walked in naked. “Jigger,” Skey whispered, shrinking down under him, trying to cover herself. But instead of protecting her, Jigger did the unthinkable, lifted himself up and kicked off the sheets.

“This is your true initiation,” he said, holding her down by the shoulders. “We’re together in this gang. Everyone is one. This is the way you show you’re part of the Dragons.”

“No,” Skey whispered, staring up at him. “No.” But Jigger didn’t listen. Turning to the others, he told them to be gentle, just hold her down, she was already wet and ready, they wouldn’t have any problems getting in. Someone held Skey’s arms, someone else pushed apart her legs. When she started to scream, a hand covered her mouth.

Jigger was right. They slid in easily, and then they moved slowly. It wasn’t
wham bam, thank you ma’am
, it was worse. Each Dragon raped her as gently as true love, slow and easy, swearing ecstasy in her face. “You like it, baby, you like it, don’t you?” they whispered, watching as her body responded, as her screams became different cries. “See, you like it, Skey,” they said, grinning. “You like it, baby, you like it.” Time after time, she came and they came. They rotated on her, took turns, kept going. After a while she stopped coming; a while after that, waves of nausea took her into blackout.

When she came to, she was alone. Someone had covered her with a sheet. Through the wall, she could hear the party still going in the next room. Her first movement sent a raw pain tearing through her groin. She whimpered and felt her throat burn. Bewildered, she looked around herself. What was she doing here? She couldn’t remember. Where was Jigger? Was he...?

Vague memories swung through her head: Jigger, Balfour and Trevor, close and leering. Pedro, panting above her.
No, it couldn’t be
, she thought, panicking.
It couldn’t.

Sitting up, she dragged her legs over the edge of the bed. Waves of pain seared her groin, then gradually began to fade, taking the memories with them. When Skey finally stood up, her body felt as pain-free and numb as rubber. Step by step, her pain-free rubber legs took pain-free rubber steps to the bedroom door. Opening it, she walked her pain-free rubber walk down the hall and into the kitchen, ignoring the party to her left.

As soon as she entered the room, her eyes zeroed in on the bottle of gin on the counter. One quick smash, and she had all the sharp edges a girl could want. Stretching out a pain-free rubber arm, she jabbed at it, deep twisting jabs. Blood poured down her arm, and she felt nothing. Each jab pushed the pain farther away. Each gash sent the vague memories deeper, into a place where she would never find them, where they could be forgotten, where they had never happened, had never been real.

After she switched arms, someone came into the kitchen. Suddenly Dragons were everywhere, yelling and running as Skey stood silently in their midst, letting them wrap her arms, dress her in her clothes, put her in a car and drive her to a hospital, where her arms were sewn up. In the middle of all that medical equipment and expertise, no one thought to check for a wound between her legs. Skey didn’t mention it. She had forgotten it. She had become the still quiet eye at the center of the storm.