Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

since I was nine.

      “Of course. We just want to help you, Kaylee.”

      Yet somehow, I didn’t feel very comforted.

      I waited in the common area, stubbornly resisting the jigsaw puzzles and crossword books stacked on a shelf in the corner. I wouldn’t be here long enough to finish one anyway. Instead, I stared at the TV, wishing they’d at least show some good cartoons. But if there was a remote available, I had no idea where to find it.

      A commercial came on and my attention wandered, in spite of my best efforts to ignore my fellow patients. Lydia sat across the room from me, not even pretending to watch the television. She was watching me.

      I stared back at her. She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. She just watched, and not with an unfocused stare, which was obviously all some of the residents were capable of. Lydia actually seemed to be observing me, like she was looking for something in particular. What, I had no idea.

      “Weird, isn’t it?” Mandy dropped into the chair on my left, and air whooshed from the cushion. “The way she stares.”

      I glanced up to find her looking across the room at Lydia. “No weirder than anything else here.” And frankly, I wasn’t looking to make conversation—or friends—with someone who stuffed forks down her pants.

      “She’s a ward of the court.” Mandy bit into a half-eaten chocolate bar, then continued with her mouth full. “Never talks. You ask me, she’s the strangest one here.”

      I had serious doubts about that.

      “What’re you here for?” Her gaze traveled south of my face, then back up. “Let me guess. You’re either manic depressive, or anorexic.”

      Inside, my temper boiled, but I was proud by how calm my reply sounded. “I don’t talk either.”

      She stared at me for a second, then burst into a harsh, barking laugh.

      “Mandy, why don’t you find something constructive to do?” A familiar voice said, and I glanced up to find Paul standing in the wide doorway, holding.

      My suitcase!

      I sprang from the couch, and he held the rolling bag out to me. “I thought that might make you smile.”

      In fact, I was oddly excited and relieved. If I had to be locked up, at least I could be miserable in my own clothes. But then my enthusiasm flashed out like a burned-up bulb when I realized what that suitcase meant. Aunt Val had dropped off my clothes without coming in to see me.

      She’d left me again.

      I took the bag and headed back to my room, where I dropped the suitcase on the floor beside the bed, unopened. Paul followed me, but stopped in the doorway. I sank onto the bed, battling tears, my suitcase forgotten in spite of the rough scrub bottoms chaffing me in all the wrong places.

      “She couldn’t stay,” Paul said. Apparently my emotions were as transparent as the tempered glass windows. Wouldn’t my therapist be pleased? “Visiting hours don’t start until seven.”

      “Whatever.” If she’d wanted to see me, she would have, even if it was just for a few minutes. My aunt’s tenacity was a thing of legends.

      “Hey, don’t let this place get to you, okay? I’ve seen a lot of kids lose their souls in here, and I’d hate to see that happen to you.” He ducked his head, trying to draw eye contact, but I only nodded, staring at the floor. “Your aunt and uncle will be back tonight.”

      Yeah, but that didn’t mean they’d take me home. It didn’t mean anything at all.

      When Paul left, I heaved my suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it, eager to wear, see, and smell something familiar. After just a few hours at Lakeside, I was already terrified of losing myself. Of fading into the glazed eyes, slow steps, and empty stares all around me. I needed something from real life—from my world outside this room—that would help me hold on to me. So I was completely unprepared for the contents of my bag.

      Nothing in it was mine. The clothes still had price tags dangling from waistbands and collars.

      Fighting back fresh tears, I lifted the first piece from the suitcase: a pair of soft pink jogging pants with a wide, gathered waistband and a complicated arrangement of flowers embroidered over one hip. At the front were two holes where the drawstring should have been. It’d been snipped and removed so I couldn’t hang myself with it. The suitcase held a matching top, along with an entire collection of clothes I’d never even seen. They were all expensive, and comfortable, and perfectly coordinated.

      What is this, psycho chic? What was wrong with my own jeans and tees?

      The truth was that, in her own twisted way, Aunt Val was probably trying to cheer me up with new clothes. That might have worked for Sophie, but how could she not understand that it wouldn’t work for me?

      Suddenly pissed beyond words, I stripped and tossed the borrowed scrubs into a pile in the corner of the room, then ripped open a five-pack of underwear and stepped into the first pair. Then I dug through my bag for anything that didn’t look like something Martha Stewart would wear on house arrest. The best I found was a plainish purple jogging suit at the bottom of the pile. Only once I had it on did I realize the fabric glittered beneath the light over my bed.

      Great. I’m psychotic and sparkly. And there was nothing else in the bag. No books, and no puzzles. Not even any of Sophie’s useless fashion magazines. With an angry sigh, I stomped down the hall in search of reading material and a quiet corner, silently daring Paul or any of the aides to comment on my epic wardrobe disaster.

      After supper, Aunt Val and Uncle Brendon walked through the door next to the nurses’ station, both empty-handed; they’d had to empty their pockets and turn over Aunt Val’s purse to the security guard. That way, I wouldn’t be tempted to try to kill anyone with her lip gloss and travel-size pack of tissues.

      Seeing them standing there was like seeing my dad every time he came home for Christmas. Part of me was so mad at them both for leaving me there that I wanted to shout until I went hoarse, or ignore them completely. Whichever would come closest to hurting them like they’d hurt me. I wanted them to feel scared, and alone, and without even basic comforts like their own clothing.

      But the other part of me wanted a hug so bad I could practically feel arms around me already. I wanted to smell the outside world on them both. Soap that didn’t come in tiny, unscented, paper-wrapped packets. Food that didn’t come on labeled, hard plastic trays. Shampoo that didn’t have to be checked out from the nurses’ station, then turned in along with my dignity.

      In the end, I could only stand there staring, waiting for them to make the first move.

      Uncle Brendon came first. Maybe he couldn’t resist our actual blood bond; my bond to Aunt Val was by virtue of her wedding vows. Either way, Uncle Brendon hugged me like he might never see me again, and my heart raced a bit in panic at that thought. Then I pushed it aside and buried my face in his shirt, smelling his aftershave, and Aunt Val’s favorite spring-scented dryer sheets.

      “How you holding up, hon?” he asked, when I finally pulled back far enough to see his face, rough with evening stubble.

      “If I’m not crazy yet, I will be after one more day in this place. You have to take me home. Please.”

      My aunt and uncle exchanged a dark glance, and my stomach seemed to settle somewhere around my knees. “What?”

      “Let’s sit.” Aunt Val’s heels clacked all the way into the common area, where she glanced around and looked like she wanted to take her suggestion back. Several other patients sat staring up at the TV, most with glazed looks of half-comprehension. Two more worked on puzzles, and one thin boy I’d hardly seen was arguing with his parents in the far corner.

      “Come on.” I turned toward the girls’ hall, leaving them to follow. “I don’t have a roommate.” In my room, I sank onto my bed with my feet