Be in the Real (11 page)

“Do you have predictive skills too?” she asked.

Derrick’s expression remained smooth, as if he had expected the question, as though he had been waiting patiently all along for that very query to be posed.
 

“Maybe,” he said with a smirk that showed a sliver of his white teeth. Then he shrugged indifferently. “Maybe not.”

 
Kaila felt the ire rise in her at his cavalier dismissal of a question that was beyond reproach. Never in her life had she asked anyone about their ability to predict. Even Trillian was abhor to the discussion of precognition and such. After the risk she had taken, the man-boy was poo-pooing her as if she were an infant or a half-wit.

Her hands found his throat and she was squeezing before she even knew what she was doing. A part of her wondered if it was Trillian taking over, making her presence known, but Kaila knew the truth; Trillian had no part in this. Derrick’s smug expression fell away and as Kaila’s huge hands tightened around his neck, his eyes popped wide like a pond frogs. Pauline’s voice urged her to cease and desist. Derrick’s face was a deep shade of puce as he pulled at her hands, attempting in futility to free himself from her grip. She almost laughed out loud that in his skewed perception he would in fact believe that he had any dominion over her. Spiders skittered up and across her arms and hands, but for a change her fury trumped all of that. It was a blissful moment knowing that even though the world around her had been shredded into tiny pieces she was still focused and aware.
 

 
By the time she felt the needle poke her skin he had stopped struggling. Utter quiet followed soon after.

CHAPTER 12

Kaila spent another indeterminate amount of time in the White Room, where higher doses of medications, more poking, prodding, and such, ensued until one day they deemed her fit to return to her world, and she did.

CHAPTER 13

“He had quite a bit of bruising around his neck, and he’s still all gravelly voiced when he talks, but I say it serves him right. He’s a prick. I know that now,” Pauline said, filling in the details about Derrick to both Kaila and Janelle.
 

She paused in her diatribe long enough to lean forward and plant a sensual kiss on Janelle’s parted lips. As the kiss deepened, Pauline tugged the girl’s doughy body closer until they were chest to chest, something that looked quite absurd given the vast differences in their body structures, and of course their breast sizes.

Pauline worked a hand through Janelle’s stringy hair. It was marginally less oily than normal. Obviously the two had mended their relationship in Kaila’s absence. Though normally she would never have cared about such a thing, Kaila found that she was inexplicably pleased at seeing the two girls together again. Love was still a foreign word and concept to her, but if there was any meaning in it all, it might have been found somewhere in Janelle and Pauline’s relationship.
 

Both girls were flushed and breathless when they finally broke apart. Pauline gazed at Janelle as if she was the most beautiful being in the universe. Seeing her glazed expression made Kaila’s stomach flip a little. She couldn’t help but imagine Norm staring at her in that very same way.

Kaila stretched out on the bed, frustrated that even after what seemed like years, she still thought, dreamt, and fantasized about Norm. She remembered how it had felt to hold him, and not for the first time she wished that they’d had a chance to have sex like they had planned. Though at times she was relieved that they had been interrupted because if they had completed their task it might have been that much more difficult to shake Norm from her being. She wasn’t sure if she would ever forget Norm. He was like a hard-covered book that was shelved in a space too high for her to reach; she would remember his story but would never ever read the words again.

“I heard he’s a med student who got kicked out for stealing drugs from the hospital,” Janelle said when she had regained her ability to speak. Kaila rolled onto her side, listening. She had absolutely nothing to add to the conversation since she knew little to nothing about Derrick, but for some strange reason she was eager to learn all she could about the man-boy.

Pauline nodded. “Yeah, that’s true, I had a chance to read his file when I was in the office helping with the paper work the other day,” she said.
 

For patients who would eventually be released back into the world, work experience was an option and was offered; Kaila had never been offered anything other than her daily routines of Wildwind.
 

Janelle made a ridiculous tittering sound that was intended to be a giggle.
 

“I love how sneaky and devious you are Paul,” she said. She threaded her thick fingers through Pauline’s fingers. Another passionate kiss followed.

“What else was in his file?” Kaila asked, surprised that she actually cared. She knew there was a deep loathing for Derrick within her, still there was something…

Pauline brought her gaze to Kaila as if she had just been made aware of her presence. She smiled, showing half of her perfect teeth.

“Well he’s a child genius, got an IQ of about 220 plus. He finished an undergrad in Biochemistry by the time he was just fifteen. He’s had a lot of social issues since he’s always been younger than everyone else…”

“How old is he?” Janelle said, cutting Pauline off mid-sentence.

“Twenty-two,” Pauline said. “He was almost done with med school when he got caught stealing pain killers, at which point he decided that he was going to kill himself. He jumped off a train trestle that was about thirty feet high. Obviously he’s a lot like me, failure to achieve, because he only got a broken leg for his troubles and a lovely all expenses paid stay in Hotel California, AKA, this dump.”

“A genius,” Kaila mused.
 

This fact in itself far surpassed anything else that Pauline had said. Kaila now questioned if her unusual interest in Derrick was based on her ability to read the intelligence that he held, she wondered if she had divined the magnitude of his brainpower. Her heart sped at just the notion that there might have been more to her odd connection to Derrick then just passing interest. Before that exact moment she had perceived her interest in Derrick much as if he was a beautiful flower or piece of art, something that was visually appealing that drew your eye then your intrigue. Yet this notion didn’t add up.
 

The man-boy would never have graced the cover of the GQ magazines that a girl named Darla Sinclair studied day in and day out. Every time Kaila laid eyes on Darla, who like Kaila, had resided in the confines of Wildwind for the better part of her life, she had a magazine a few inches in front of her bespectacled face. Darla had been diagnosed early on with a mental malady that Kaila refused to acknowledge, or even name. Kaila had never aspired to the diagnosis labels that followed every patient in Wildwind. She reasoned that if she did accept these labels, she would be agreeing to the concept that once an individual was brought inside, they ceased to be a human and became a diagnosis. Even so, she understood the rationale behind the labels. A diagnosis could be healed, fixed even, but a human was something entirely different.
 

But understanding the process didn’t mean that she could slip into the mindset that those who ran the facility aspired to. For them, Wildwind was like any other business. Only this business wasn’t a business at all, it was an attempt to fit all the square pegs of society into round slots. With enough effort and time, a carving knife, lots of medications, and a will to change the shape, a square peg might eventually be forced into a round slot, but it would never be a perfect fit.

Darla’s mental differences rendered her completely out of touch with most parts of the world around her. In Darla’s narrowed reality anything that didn’t fall into two distinct categories, handsome men and luxury cars, was ignored as though it were an illusion. For this fact alone, Darla’s days were spent carefully turning the pages of magazines that contained the images that she was drawn to, photos that somehow calmed and soothed her. No matter how many people surrounded her she was always alone; Darla was in her own personal space and time, never daring to step outside its familiarity.
 

“That must be it,” Kaila said to no one in particular.

“Must be what?”
 

Suddenly both Janelle and Pauline were keenly interested in what Kaila had to say. With just a few words she had stepped out of the grey into the light. Not willing to divulge her secret musings about Derrick she shook her head definitively.

“Nothing.”

 
Knowing that nothing more would be given to them in the way of explanation, Pauline and Janelle went back to their conversation. They had smoothly shifted to what the activities for the impending Easter holiday would be this year. Despite Easter being a Christian celebration, Wildwind usually did an egg hunt on Easter morning. Wildwind owners reasoned that any occasion that broke up the monotony of the routine at the facility was welcome. To this end they celebrated the most obscure events, like Ground hog day, Earth Day, Songkran, a Thai holiday where people apparently threw colorful water at each other, and many other events that Kaila mostly ignored.
 

Without comment Kaila got to her feet, snatched her laptop off the top of her dresser and left the two girls. As always, neither Pauline nor Janelle acknowledged her exit, none of the three felt slighted by the other, and were connected in understanding. Relationships like that were not the custom, but somehow Kaila and Pauline had fallen into this pattern of mutual understanding, each reading the others cues perfectly.

Kaila made her way to her writing space. Before she sat down to write, she drifted over to the huge window that looked out onto the Wildwind grounds. Beyond the chain link fence signs of spring were beginning to show themselves: a shimmer of new green leaves, dirty snow receding that revealed yellowed grass that had been asleep for the winter. And in the midst of it all was a promise that once again everything would wake up and be rejuvenated.
 

Kaila loved spring for this reason. In truth she loved all the seasons for different details. Spring, for the hope of renewed life that the buds on the trees brought with them. Summer was a time to see the full on color and beauty of the grass and flowers, when trees were clad in there best finery, when sultry days made a thin film of sweat form on your exposed skin, and where clothes could be reduced to the barest minimum. Fall was when the world was lit with the most brilliant colors of gold, red and pumpkin orange, when the crisp air was welcomed after the warmth that summer had brought with it. Fall was a time of harvest when all the summer fruits and produce could be plucked and stored, and the magic of it all was truly revealed. When winter brought the ice and cold, there was the thrill of the first snow. Eagerness for the fluffy flakes that fell from the heavens, coating everything in a sprinkling of icing sugar that would soon become thick, covering all the life that had fallen into slumber again, so they could one day soon awaken, and realize that the sleep was as essential as the waking.
 

The words that felt poetic and not of her, flowed through Kaila as she allowed Trillian to move to the front of her psyche ever so slightly. Lately Trillian could always be counted on to be waiting in the wings, ready to let the words flow, to take over the controls, except however, when Kaila had been in the White Room.

 
She wasn’t quite ready for Trillian to say her piece, as the business of perusing the comments and queries of her blog followers had to take precedence for the time being. Knowing that her time was short Kaila rapidly skimmed the comments.
 

But Trillian had been sequestered to the recesses of her mind for the duration of Kaila’s stay in the White Room and was literally bursting at the seams with all she needed to say and reveal.
 

In her lucid times, in the breaks between the steady stream of drugs that dripped into her veins, Kaila felt the absence, as though a part of her body had been excised. Trillian despised the White Room; Kaila could feel that sentiment loud and clear. In fact somehow Trillian went somewhere else, where that was Kaila wasn’t sure, only that Trillian wasn’t there anymore. But as soon as the gatekeepers opened the doors of her prison and allowed Kaila to return to the freedom that was hers, Trillian was back, impatient and determined to take the controls once again.
 

Kaila expertly scanned the comments that once again had taken a surge upwards in the time she had been absent. At the rate it was going she would soon be well into epic and unimagined numbers. Kaila had never expected anyone to read and be interested in Trillian’s tirades. The beginning of the blog had been more about necessity than desire. Trillian had always been present, in fact Kaila was hard-pressed to remember a time when she had been alone, but what had started as a slight nudge for a voice at the back of her mind had increased over time until Trillian had become unmanageable. At her worst, Trillian had spoken in Kaila’s head so much and so often, that it had been near impossible to live through the voices or in this case one voice. As a concession Kaila had promised Trillian that if Trillian agreed to limit her infiltration to the allotted time, she would document all the stories that Trillian cared to write.
 

At first Kaila had offered Trillian a space in a journal, handwritten words on paper, but Trillian’s ego wasn’t satisfied by what she deemed the
small time
. She had wanted bigger, better, for her words to spread across the galaxy, the Milky Way, but in lieu of those grandiose wants, she had settled on the World Wide Web. Trillian was nothing if not specific about her desires.

Kaila’s breath hitched for a microsecond when she caught sight of the infinity symbol. The fanciful part of her believed in coincidences and synchronicity. This meant that everything that happened meant something and was somehow interconnected. The realistic side of her knew that everything that happened in the world could somehow be explained scientifically. Though science normally had dominion in her mind, Kaila also had a rule about the number three. Anything that showed itself three times was to be looked at a little more closely, and since the infinity symbol had surfaced three times now, she paused and studied the ∞, that was solitarily in a comment block. Kaila glanced at the users name and saw immediately that it was the infinity symbol too.