Nate Kenyon - The Reach

“Aren’t there others here who want to help you?”

She shook her head. “They give me pills and shots and the gray comes and swallows me up.” She put the book down on the table and went over to the window again, hooking her little fingers into the wire mesh. “It’s pretty out there. I like it.”

“We’ll go out and play on the lawn sometime.”

“Can we?” Turning back excitedly.

“As soon as Dr. Wasserman says it’s okay.”

Immediately Sarah’s smile vanished. “He’ll never let us.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. He might surprise you.”

“No way,” she said. “But I could leave if I wanted, right now. I could just… break out.”

“Just walk out the door?”

She shrugged. “If I wanted.”

“But they’re locked.”

“I can break them.”

They were silent for a moment. Jess hesitated. “Why don’t you, then? Just open those doors and walk out.”

“I’m not supposed to.” Sarah turned to stare at the large wooden doors. She narrowed her eyes into squints, her forehead wrinkling, mouth tightening into a pucker of concentration. Jess waited, held her breath as if breathing would break the spell. What am I expecting? The doors to go blasting off their hinges?

“I can’t,” Sarah said finally. “I told you. I’m not supposed to do that here.”

“All right,” Jess said. “That’s fine. I’d rather have you stay here with me. Now I want to ask you something. A while back when I was here you had a seizure. Do you know what that is?”

“Not a see… see-sure. I only fainted. I do that sometimes when I get really upset.”

“Well, maybe that’s one of the reasons the doctors want to keep an eye on you. To make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

“I wouldn’t hurt myself. I just didn’t want any more shots.”

“You wanted them to leave you alone?”

“That’s right.” Sarah smiled. “I’m glad you came here. Before you came I didn’t care about anything.”

“So I make you care again. I’m happy about that.”

“Are you really my friend?”

“Of course.”

“And you won’t tell them what we talk about? You’ll keep everything a secret?”

“I promise. Is there anything you want to talk about now?”

“Sometimes I wish… I wish I didn’t do bad things. So I wouldn’t get punished. But I can’t help it. It’s scary sometimes when it happens.”

“Like you lose control?”

“Yeah. It’s like my head gets full and I… empty it.”

“Like a bowl full of gray mush. You just dump it out.”

“Yeah!” Sarah walked quickly across the carpet to stand close to her. She lowered her voice in a conspiratorial whisper. “You know what I did yesterday? When they brought me my pills? I pretended to swallow them, only I didn’t. I hid ’em under my tongue. Then when they leave I spitted ’em out on the floor and ground ’em up and rubbed the paste under my bed.”

“You spit them out. You didn’t swallow them.”

“That’s right.” She nodded. “That way my head doesn’t get all… fuzzy. Only the shots, I can’t do anything about those, see? That’s why I hate them.”

Sensing she was being tested, Jess said only, “I see. That’s very clever. You’re a clever little girl, grinding up your pills like that.”

“No, I’m not. I’m dumb. See, I told you about it, and now you’ll tell them. You won’t tell, will you? You promised.”

“I won’t tell. Sarah, can I ask you something? Why do you think they give you the pills and the shots?”

“It’s a game, see, a big mean game, they’re trying to get something from me and I won’t let them have it. And they don’t really want it anyway because they’re scared.”

“Do you know what this thing is?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”

“Hmmm. I like secrets. Maybe you’ll share yours with me sometime.”

“You wouldn’t like this secret. And anyway, maybe you’re just part of the game. Maybe you’re on their side and it’s all a big trick. You’re gonna put me in the bad room!”

“No, Sarah, I would never do that. I would never make you do something you don’t want to do, or put you someplace you don’t want to be. We’re friends, remember?”

But Sarah wasn’t listening. “They want to get rid of me. They’re trying to kill me.” She walked to the table and picked up her bear, clutching it to her chest. Then she went back to the window.

“I’m going to break out of here soon,” she said, looking into the sunshine. She was trembling. “Then they all better watch out. Oh boy, they better.”

The Fingertip Bar and Grill is located just outside of downtown, directly off the C subway line. Barely visible from the street, unmarked and “long and thin as the tip of a finger,” it is a favorite of local students looking for someplace a little off the beaten path. Road signs interspersed with the grilles of classic cars decorate the walls like some kind of automotive graveyard. A traffic light mounted over the door flashes green, yellow, and red.

Saturday evening, Jess stepped though into that smoky, alien place, and paused to let her eyes adjust, searching for Charlie. A moment later she spotted the smiling, chocolate-brown face moving toward her from the bar, as jazz swelled and throbbed from somewhere in back. The bar was narrow and deep; drunk students would sometimes confess to getting lost in the depths, and the rumor was that on particular dark nights you could just keep going, that the bar never ended.

“Hey there, girlfriend. Thought you might be thinking about standing me up.”

“Never, Charlie. I haven’t been out on the town in a while. I forgot how long it takes to get anywhere.”

The woman appeared concerned, her powerful features managing to seem exotic and warm at the same time. “You look like death. Come on over here and tell me all about it. We’ll get some food into you and you’ll feel better. It’s not man trouble, is it?”

Jess shook her head and smiled. She followed the swish of Charlie’s silk skirt to a small booth against the wall, amazed as always how the crowd seemed to part for her as if by magic. Charlie was a large woman, but lithe and quick on her feet. At twenty-seven, she had a beauty that transcended her size, a breathtaking nobility that others often found intimidating. But she could be refreshingly blunt. They had met in a shared lab class a year earlier, and since then had become fast friends. Jess admired the way nothing ever seemed to get to Charlie.

“If it’s not a man,” the woman continued, after they settled into the booth and ordered a plate of nachos and two Blue Moon beers from the tap, “then it must be family. I can’t think of anything else that would make a girl look the way you do.”

Jess wondered how on earth to respond. Normally she was fiercely independent, proud of her ability to thrive on her own. But since she’d returned from Gilbertsville, her evenings had been endless and too quiet. Something fundamental to her own nature had been changed. She felt like a caterpillar that had crawled into a cocoon—though she had no idea what kind of shape she would find herself in when the metamorphosis was over.

She was pleased with the sudden progress Sarah had been making. The girl seemed to be getting comfortable with her and opening up. They were bonding. And she and Shelley had been meeting regularly for coffee to discuss the case. But she was still uncertain about the experience of meeting Sarah’s family, and what it all meant. The image of Annie Voorsanger standing up in that dusty, forgotten room, the sound she had made, the sudden, wild look in her eyes, remained with Jess no matter how hard she tried to shake it.