“My sister’s not here,” Walker says, not looking up from his bowl.
“She could be,” Heath says.
“She’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s as much a Sincero as I am,” Walker says, finally tearing his attention from his food and leveling Heathwith a look. “They may be criminals, but they don’t sell their own flesh. That’s one line even a Sincero won’t cross.”
“So that’s why you’re helping us,” Angel says. “Because your sister’s one of the missing girls from Faulkner.”
“My sister had the misfortune of being born to a mother with gang ties,” Walker says. “That’s dangerous blood to carry. Apparently it makes us enemies for something we had no fucking choice in.” He stares Angel down, daring him to contradict himself after all the things he’s said on this trip about Walker being a Disciple descendant.
Angel doesn’t, and after a second, Walker shakes his head and goes back to his chowder.
“But yeah, my sister’s gone too. So forgive me if I think all gangsters are pieces of shit, no matter their affiliation. You haven’t exactly changed my mind.”
“What about me?” Heath protests. “I even gave you some of the good pain pills.”
“You’re better than the rest of them,” Walker says, glancing at his phone when a notification pops up. “Fortunately for you, I’m not a gangster, and I’m not a piece of shit, so I’m going to do what I can to help. I won’t even make you pay unless we find her. Now, you want to see what Nate dug up on the dark web? Looks like we’ve got a hit on your girl.”
eleven
The Merciless
I’m not able to score another meeting with Dr. Augustine to make my case for a fight, but I find out that the asylum has a perfect location when the staff takes us out for exercise. They herd us around an indoor track in the small gym. Through the glass, we can see the level below, where a swimming pool sits empty.
“What’s that?” I ask, glancing around to make sure none of the orderlies are close enough to overhear. My heart is beating double-time with excitement.
“It’s a pool,” says Chelsea, giving me a funny look.
“I know that,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Do they ever fill it?”
“Not since I’ve been here,” says Kayla, the Black girl with the scar.
“Too many suicides,” says Anna, the girl who sits across from me at lunch.
“They called them suicides in the official report, anyway,” Chelsea whispers.
“I’m sure they made it look like it too,” Kayla says.
“We can all guess what really happened,” Chelsea says.
“It could be suicide,” Anna argues. “I’m sure plenty of people want to check out early.”
I want to ask about the men, but I’m hesitant to bring up something traumatic for them. If they deny it, I couldn’t be sure that they were hiding it out of fear or shame. I’m not even sure it’s happening to other people.
This place isn’t what I expected. It seems to be a legitimate asylum, with orderlies, nurses, a psychologist, and of course the doctor. Everyone I’ve talked to seems to be here voluntarily or under orders from their parents or a judge. And some of them seem genuinely disturbed, like the boy Grayson, who walks around muttering unhinged things in his sweet, high voice in the middle of meals or the hallway. Or the kid who bit the other one and was tranquilized before being taken away in a human muzzle. Or Emily, who manipulates the staff by ratting out the other girls.
I’m not even sure they’d believe me if I told them why I’m here. They’d probably think it’s a delusion and that’s why I was committed. Sometimes, I start to doubt my own mind, my own memories. Did I have a psychotic break? I couldn’t have really been kidnapped and drugged and driven across the country just because some guy didn’t like me asking questions. And if I was, the doctor wouldn’t just tell me about his illegal activities so casually. After all, I’m good at changing stories, pretending bad things didn’t happen. Like when I pretended I was fine at Aunt Lucy’s because I didn’t want to bother my parents, or when I pretend that Angel was my first, and that whoever found me over the railing on Christmas Eve was just a figment of my worst imagination.
When we’re being led back to our rooms, I turn to Miss Sarah just as we pass the room where I saw a lone occupant the first day. As far as I know, she’s never left the room. Every time we pass going in or out, she’s either in bed or sitting in a rocking chair in the center of the empty room in a white nightgown like a ghost out of a horror movie. Today her head hangs forward, her red hair obscuring her face, her hands gripped tightly on the arms of the chair as she rocks forward and back, forward and back.
“Can you give Dr. Augustine a message for me?” I ask the orderly.
She gives me a skeptical look. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I say. “I just need you to tell him we can use the pool. Can you tell him that for me?”
