“No talking,” barks an orderly who’s patrolling the next table over, which is filled with boys who must be in the same age range Patricia mentioned. I take note that my table has only girls. Each of the girls is wearing the same uniform as me. The boys’ uniform is grey, and they each wear a matching canvas ballcap. I search the girls’ faces, trying to find my friend. Is she here? How many of these facilities do they have? Or did someone buy her?
I shiver in horror at the thought and take a bite of the overcooked, salty but otherwise flavorless food. It tastes like heaven.
“Ten minutes,” says a woman in teddy bear scrubs, checking her watch as she walks along our table. “More eating, less staring.”
A lot of the girls are still darting looks my way, but I don’t need another warning. I start shoveling mushy green beans and gluey potatoes into my mouth even though my stomach twists in pain at being given anything after days of starvation.
“Manners,” warns the teddy bear lady, stopping behind my chair.
I cower, chewing quickly before swallowing and trying to cut the slice of reconstituted chicken with my plastic spoon, the only utensil provided.
“Miss Sarah,” says a skinny Latina girl across from me, sitting up straight and raising her hand. “I need to use the restroom.”
“It can wait.”
“It can’t,” the girl whines. “You know I can’t hold my bladder.”
A chorus of agreement goes around, along with some disgusted looks indicating that she’s failed to hold it before.
Miss Sarah slaps a thick strip of rubber against the end of the table next to me, and everyone jumps in their seats, and the room goes quiet again. That’s the sound I heard in the hallway. From the reaction, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t just hit the table with that thing. Only the sound of chewing and breathing and the whisper of plastic spoons can be heard after her warning.
“I’ll watch them,” says the guy patrolling the boys.
Miss Sarah nods, her lips tight. “Let’s go, Chelsea. But you don’t get extra time to finish when we get back.”
Chelsea casts a quick, sneaky smile to the other girls like she got away with something, then leaves her half-empty plate and heads for a restroom off the side of the dining room, Miss Sarah right behind her.
The moment they’re past the last table, an Asian girl who looks about my age leans forward across the table. “What are you in for?” she whispers.
“I…” I glance around, not sure what to say. Can I tell her I was kidnapped? “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s an asylum,” she says, like I’m stupid. “Why’d you get committed? Like, Chelsea’s here because she wouldn’t stop starving herself. That’s why they go to the bathroom with her, so she doesn’t stick her finger down her throat. I went off my meds and drove off a bridge.” She lowers her voice to the quietest whisper and cuts her eyes to the girl beside me, who’s trying to have a conversation using only gestures with the boy across the aisle. “Emily burned down her house with her parents inside, but they got out alive, and I guess they didn’t want her in jail, though if you ask me, she’d be better off. What about you?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Frankenstein’s the doctor and the monster,” yells a boy at the end of the next table, his voice surprisingly high. I thought a girl had yelled the thing about honey and flies, but I recognize the voice came from him when I hear it again. He’s sitting catty-corner from the girl next to me, and when I look up, he’s staring straight at me. My heart jolts. His eyes are wide and wild, but he’s pretty nonetheless, though his delicate features are shaded by his hat being pulled low over his eyes.
“That’s Grayson,” the girl across from me says. “I think he’s schizophrenic or something.”
I do a doubletake, since that’s the name of one of the Sincero boys, but this is definitely not the same person.
“I heard he gets electroshock,” says another girl, a pretty blonde who looks like the youngest in our category. “That’s why they pull him out so much.”
“I heard he’s Dr. Augustine’s son,” says a tall Black girl with a scar on her chin, nodding sagely. “And he was born here.”
“I think he’s a spy,” whispers the girl beside me, the one with freckles and reddish-brown hair named Emily. “He reports back to the doctors.”
“Frankenstein is the doctorandthe monster,” he yells again, slamming his fist down on the table.
Everyone jumps again.
“That’s enough, Grayson,” says the male orderly.
“Frankenstein—”
“Shut up, Freakenstein,” yells a blond boy with a deep voice, lobbing a slice of chicken in Grayson’s direction. It hits the dark-haired scowling boy beside him, and the boy shoots to his feet like a Jack-in-a-Box and hurls his full plate back down the table in one motion, like he’s been waiting for his cue all along. Pandemonium erupts. In seconds, food is flying from every direction, people are screaming and shrieking with rage and glee. The girls are throwing handfuls of mashed potatoes,soggy green beans, slices of white bread and gummy chicken, their faces twisted into masks of demented joy or blazing rage.
I know that feeling all too well.
