The Dollhouse Asylum (31 page)

I’m shrieking. My mouth is open and screams are ripping out, but mostly what I’m seeing doesn’t make sense. She’s a paper doll, fluttering in the wind. But that isn’t quite right because she’s real, and there’s an awful noise when her body hits the ground. Like hundreds of bones crunching.

When I look down, Juliet’s neck is bent backward like someone’s snapped her head right off—it’s too much. Too much. I lean over and retch. The fluids rush from my mouth, narrowly missing Teo’s black shoes, but they keep coming, and Teo pulls my hair out of my face like he’s here for me, like he’s helping. Fire ants swim in my veins. I could reach up and spew right in his face.

My stomach settles, and I manage to stand up straight when blue lights flash—Cleo’s connecting the stun gun to Jonas’s chest. But he just stands there, smiling this apathetic grin, because those shocks didn’t do a thing. He must be wearing a bulletproof vest or something similar that can block it. Jonas leaps away from Cleo, sprints for the trap door, and jumps straight down into Ramus’s house to get away. Cleo’s eyes glint like she wants to follow, but she grits her teeth and glances back at Marcus, who’s just sitting there, like clay.

Teo, standing right beside me, is staring at Juliet’s form on the ground. He’s frowning, like he’s sad. Shaking his head slowly, he says, “I was going to let her live.” But he was willing to push her off just before I made him stop. It’s like her death is now a minor inconvenience to him, like the simple idea of letting her live would have been something nice.

I glance over to Sal and Ana, whose gazes are fixed on that trap door. I don’t imagine we have much time since Jonas has probably run off to find other weapons—another stun gun or perhaps a sword. Sal and Ana must be thinking the same thing, because they’re rising to their feet and moving for that trap door. Geese scrambling for a foothold.

Sighing deeply, Teo turns to that clay form of Marcus perched on the roof. I wish I could transport him to a hospital in Austin this very moment. Get the insulin he needs flowing into him through an IV.

Teo’s eyes droop downward, taking in Marc’s sight. “Cleo?” he asks, glancing at the girl who now wields the stun gun. “Be a doll and patch Marcus up?”

Wait—he’s giving Marc his insulin now? But how’s she going to get through the fence? Cleo stares at Teo when he gestures at his suit coat. “There’s a vial of insulin in there.”

There’s—what? I grabbed a faulty remote, and he had a vial of insulin right there all along. I could gouge my own eyes out; I’ve made a horrific mess of helping us escape. My only solace is that Marcus will have his insulin now.

Cleo’s eyes spring open as she leaps for the coat, and a twinge of jealousy crawls through me when I see that she’s the one that gets to help him out. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Because Marcus is getting his insulin now.

Teo’s ebony eyes lock on me, flickering. I shudder beneath his gaze as he whispers, “Let us, you and I, go for a walk, Persephone.”

Without waiting for a response, Teo tugs me through the trapdoor and steers me through Ramus’s beige-colored house out onto the street. The stars blink at us, shining. We march around Bee’s house, toward the gnarled trees. I’m not sure why, but I think he’s taking me to the fence. I’m not sure what that means for me now. The Living Rot is fake, so he’s letting me out?

I’d like to ask about the others, see if they’re coming, too. Or maybe his plan is to push only me out. If that’s the case, maybe I can run for help. Hop in the SUV and drive straight through the fence. That should make it open up.

But Marc’s getting his insulin, and now I need to set things with Teo right. I need him to know there’s no way in hell things can be the way he wants them to be.

Dropping my hand like it’s scalding him or something, Teo moves two or three steps away from me as we hit the woods. Turning toward me, his voice hitches when he says, “You do not appreciate what I have built.”

Is that what the French rebels said to the nobles after building the guillotine? I could laugh right now out loud, or cry. I could pull on the stubble of his head, but he’s waiting, and I need to sound collected, so I say it as simply as I can, “You say we’re broken when we’re not.”

Teo barks a pained, hollow laugh, and it’s unbelievable to me that the pain somehow rips through me, too. “And that is your reproof?” he asks.

I square my shoulders, because he
needs
to see what I mean. Killing is killing. There’s no way around that. “Yes,” I say.

Teo moves inside the clutches of the trees, and I follow him, but not because I must. He doesn’t have that power over me anymore. He needs to know I can’t be with him now. I won’t go along with his lies. Everything about his world is wrong. Elysian Fields is a prison of hate. “How could you think I ever wanted this?” I have to ask.

The muscles flicker along his jaw, echoing a slight movement of the leaves. “Perhaps you choose not to know,” he says.
Choose not to know
—I’m over the cryptic answers. I hate how he always holds the answers very close, just like he did in class.
Anyone remember my favorite function?
he’d ask, and I’d pull my hair out trying to guess.

His eyes wander over my face, and I don’t want to look at him, but I do—the sideburns running down his olive cheeks, the yellowing cavities around his eyes. I loved him once, and he’s waiting for some sort of feedback from me. I don’t want to touch him, but there’s something I must do. So I step to him and take his hand. “Close your eyes,” I say, and it surprises me, but he listens. “What do you see?”

Teo’s long lashes kiss the bottoms of his eyes. “I see us together, you and I.”

“Do you?” Because I don’t.

His eyes snap open, obviously shocked by my tone. His voice is low, pained, as he says, “Of course I do.”

I think of the years between us, how I’m eighteen and he’s twenty-four. How if the school board knew of our relationship, he would be banned from my school. But he is not the only one to be blamed. He is not the only one who felt that way. Teo is disillusioned and selfish and dark, but he is not the only one who’s been all of these things.

Teo turns away from me, his hands and shoulders shaking. In a low moan, he cries, “You are not listening to me!”

But he has to feel how our connection is gone. We can’t be together now. I won’t allow it.

Turning his face to me again, Teo’s eyes flicker with fire, only this time it’s like the fire’s about to go out. “You visited me…” he prompts, and I’m not so sure I know what he means.

He licks his lips, darting his eyes to the ground cover and the knobby tree roots. Closing his eyes, he moans, “Remember our last day together? Before we came here?”

And I can see his classroom door open up. I know what he’s talking about, because it’s the moment I can never forget.

In my mind, I see that day perfectly. How I lingered outside Teo’s classroom when all the students had left. The windows were always open—he seemed to welcome anyone and everything. Especially the breeze. Teo’s classroom was made up of sunspots, a few stray insects, the natural heat. So when I trickled inside his classroom, I felt like another one of the elements looking for rest. That’s what I told myself, anyway. The truth was, the draw to him was infinitely stronger, like a hummingbird’s attraction to red. But Teo was more than a color. He was much more than a person or a place.

I remember making my way into his classroom, thinking about how he let us call him by his first name. Around the other teachers and our parents, he instructed us to refer to him by his proper title. “They get sensitive about things like that,” he had said. Naïve, we all agreed.

When I saw him gathering textbooks, I swooped in to help, eager to please. Neither of us said anything, but I knew his every movement, could detect his every step. We were tethered together, he and I, and I wondered if he might be as conscious of the connection as me.

When we finished with the textbooks and moved on to straightening the chairs, he asked, “Are you enjoying my class?”

I was relieved I could answer with a yes.

“And what of your future?” he asked, suddenly turning toward me as I reached for a stray graphing calculator.

Bashful, I handed it to him. Our fingers touched; currents of electricity jolted through our skin. We didn’t move.

“College,” I managed to say. He was so close I thought I could hear the heartbeats beneath his skin.

“And what do you know of the arts?” I could detect the Listerine on his breath, count the individual whiskers of five o’clock shadow.

“I’m taking AP English.” I was barely aware of the words falling from my mouth; I was too busy studying his swelling lips. They formed the vowels and consonants seamlessly. It was always so obvious my math teacher was schooled in the arts.

What happened after that is the moment I relived every night for six days when I went to bed, for Teo kissed me just then, precisely as I’d always hoped. He held me, so adult-like, unlike the lustfulness of boys my own age. He tipped up my chin, read my trembling face, and said, “I do believe you are the most beautiful creation I have ever seen.”

Some say words shouldn’t mean so much—our actions take precedence over them. But the words Teo Richardson said that day reached inside of me. The impossibilities welled up inside of me—I knew of the restrictions regarding teachers and students. But it didn’t make sense, was somehow the wrong law. So I trembled and shattered, felt my ribcage contract. I couldn’t breathe. All the air bubbles were trapped, so I forced them all out, exhaled, and said, “I wish you and I could be.”

And that’s when I felt my ribcage expand, that impractical hope starting to take root. Before, I had trembled and shattered, but then I regrew because Teo held my face, told me he would make it happen, and I
knew
. I knew he would do something about my wish. I knew it wasn’t a futile dream lamely spent. Teo was the type of man who accomplished things. That’s why I loved him. That’s why I said it.

Teo’s looking at me now. I breathe on my fingers, the tips oddly cold despite the Texas heat. I have a new kind of frostbite where my flesh hardens from the inside, and I remember the question I asked him before:
How could you think I ever wanted this?

Teo cups my face, breathes the fresh Listerine into my face, and says what I already know. “You told me you did.”

They are gone, all gone because of a futile wish I should never have made. What possessed me to make a wish like that?
I wish you and I could be
.

But this isn’t what I had in mind. This is never what I wanted. Though I loved Teo, I can’t look past what he’s done. What I’ve done. And I don’t want it to happen. I do everything I can to harden my face. Water gathers in my eyes, but I won’t cry over him again. I won’t. I won’t. So I force them back.

“It makes you sad.” Teo’s jaw quivers, and fear splits open his eyes like he knows he’s losing me. He grips my hand tightly, almost so tight that it hurts, but his eyes droop down when he says, “We belong together, you and I.” Like it will change something.

“But you’re killing people!” I cry.

Teo’s eyes brighten before he looks away. I’m not entirely sure why his eyes look so bright until the light of the moon shows me—there’s water spilling down his cheeks. He’s weeping for me.

The water behind my own eyes trembles, begs to overflow, which is so soft of me, but I’ve never seen Teo cry. It’s like his tears are contagious or something. But I’ve shed more than enough tears for him—he
cut out
Abe’s and Eloise’s tongues, shoved Romeo and Juliet off the roof. He doesn’t deserve a single tear shed, so again I blink them back.

With shaking hands, Teo reaches into his pants pocket, and I can’t think what he’s moving to retrieve. He already gave me the ring, and then that bug, but when he pulls his hand out of his pocket, I find a book—red and black—my copy of
Jane Eyre
. The one with the torn cover, the one I gave to him when the secretary tried confiscating my books. I’d forgotten about it.

Handing it to me, he says, voice pained, “I couldn’t fix it. Somehow, it was better off ripped.”

I stare at the torn book in my hands. The entire book is now damaged and bent. When I look up again, Teo’s walking away, stumbling farther and farther into the trees.

“Teo?” I run toward him, clutching the book to my chest, ducking in and around the crocodile teeth, the scratching branches, the stinging leaves. I need to understand his plan now. Maybe he’s going to let us out.

“Teo!” I cry again, but he’s too far ahead. So I run faster as tree branches rip at my skirt and snag my hair.

Teo doesn’t answer; he merely continues on. Tree after tree. Droning on like someone has reprogrammed him, and I don’t understand why he isn’t turning around for me.

When he reaches the fence line, he stops, and I’m only a breath behind him, so I touch his arm. “Will you let us out now?” Why else would he move for the fence?

But he doesn’t turn. I study his eyes, his hair, slightly longer than a week before, and realize I have never seen a face so devoid of emotion in my life.

“Teo?” I reach for his face, but something stops me. I’m not sure what it is until I see the expression on his face. Gradually turning his head, his dark eyes bore into mine. And when he smiles at me faintly, I cry out, because I know what he’s about to do. He’s leaning toward the barbed wires, and I’m reaching my hands out to make him stop, but I’m slow. Much too slow. He’s falling, face first, into the electric fence.

Teo’s body jolts; his head takes the brunt of the shock. I move to cover my eyes, but there’s this part of me that wants to look. His entire body is vibrating so madly, it’s like he’s not human, but a plastic toy shaken violently in a toddler’s fist. And the smell—burnt flesh. Like someone’s barbecuing. And then there’s this
click
, precisely the sound Jonas made before. A portion of the fence opens up and swings wide like a normal door, and I see why. Teo’s head hit the bottom wire, which clicks again when he slumps to the ground. He’s dead. He’s really dead. He’s opened the fence for me. I don’t know if he meant to open the fence for me. And I don’t care.