The Vault of Dreamers (6 page)

“I was wondering if Linus is okay,” I said.

“How’s that?” the chef said, turning an ear toward me.

“Linus,” I said, louder. “I wondered if Linus’s eye is okay. From when you punched
him this morning.”

Linus didn’t stop working, but another one of the kitchen helpers, a frizzy-haired
woman with a potato peeler, looked my way. A young man behind her set down a big tub
of applesauce to watch, too.

“Pitts!” Chef Ted called.

Linus turned, and I saw the discoloration around his eye was worse.

“I told you to get that checked out,” Chef Ted called.

“I’m going to. Right after—”

“Go now,” Chef Ted said. “And go to the infirmary, not the clinic in town.”

Linus glanced toward me, his expression unreadable. He turned the hot water off. He
started peeling off his gloves.

“We appreciate your concern,” Chef Ted said to me. “You have a nice day now, hear?
Good luck with the cuts.”

Linus turned his back to me. From the angle of his elbows, it looked like he was untying
his apron. I hesitated, waiting for another look from him, but it didn’t come. Why
did I feel like I’d made a mistake? I’d only used my leverage, such as it was, on
his behalf. He stepped out of view. I waited a bit longer, expecting him to come out
of the kitchen and join me. Then finally I realized he must have gone out the back
door.

We were both going to the infirmary, but we were each going alone.

5

THE INFIRMARY

THE INFIRMARY WAS
an older, ivy-covered building with shiny wooden floors and a clock on the mantel.
No one was manning the receptionist’s desk, but I could hear voices down the hall.
I stood patiently, noting the retro phone next to the computer, and a few of the usual
camera buttons inconspicuously mounted on the window frames of the waiting area.

“Hello?” I called.

No one answered.

I wondered how long it would take someone to react if I started down the hallway,
so I did. I wasn’t exactly sneaking around if thousands of viewers knew where I was.

The first door showed an empty bedroom with a high ceiling and a heavy, old-fashioned
radiator. In the next two rooms, I heard voices and I glimpsed patients lying half-concealed
behind curtains. The next door was ajar, and a familiar voice came from inside. I
tapped to announce myself.

“Hello?” I asked, and pushed the door open.

Books crammed shelves from ceiling to floor, and a red cardigan was draped over the
back of a desk chair. I paused on the threshold, inhaling a trace of perfume. An old
desk piled with papers was tucked between two tall windows. When the voice came again,
I recognized the woman who had been in my dorm the night before, but she wasn’t in
the room. The sound came from the computer, from a speaker. Linus’s voice came next.

“Once before,” he said. “Same eye.”

“And how did that happen?” asked the woman. The doctor.

“Same way.”

I was eavesdropping, wicked little me. The computer had to be wired to a microphone
system in the building, apart from
The Forge Show
, because Linus wasn’t a student on the show. I looked over my shoulder, but the hallway
was still empty. A camera on the hallway ceiling was aimed toward me, but inside the
office, I couldn’t see any.

“A fight? When was this?” asked the doctor.

“Three years ago, in St. Louis,” Linus said.

“You could have mentioned it.”

“I didn’t see that it would make any difference,” Linus said.

“When I think I know everything about a patient and then it turns out I don’t, it’s
disconcerting,” she said. “You don’t want to go around collecting hyphemas. Your eye
hasn’t given you any trouble since that time?”

“No.”

I gave the door another nudge and took a step in. A large screen covered most of the
third wall. It was divided into a grid much like the viewing setup of
The Forge Show
, but the squares did not show live feeds. Instead, they were filled with pictures:
a brown castle teetering as it melted into the sea, a green caterpillar eating a sky
scraper, a blindfolded child with red curls standing on top of a Ferris wheel. A dozen
fantastic, impossible images created a kaleidoscope of color.

“How long has it been since Otis tapped you?” the doctor asked.

“What’s that have to do with my eye?” Linus said.

“Just answer me.”

“Only two weeks,” he said. “I’m not due again for a month.”

“And you’re not selling your blood to anyone else?”

“No.”

“Linus,” she said gently. “You don’t have to let them tap you. You know that, right?
I’m sorry for Parker, but I can’t see that it’s making any difference for him. I’ve
told Otis that many times.”

“Are we done here?”

“We’re not,” she said. “Hold on. I’ll be back in five minutes. Here, tip your head
back again. Right.”

The conversation puzzled me. It sounded like Linus was selling his blood to someone
who was getting no benefit from it, and Otis, the cameraman from the tower, was involved.
Waiting to hear more, I peered again at the grid of pictures. One was a black-and-white
Hamlet in a red scarf. The next showed a black boy who looked like a younger Burnham.
He was sitting by a campfire, staring into the flames.

A voice startled me from behind.

“For goodness’s sake. What are you doing here?” she said.

I spun to see the dark-haired woman who had tended Janice the night before. I backed
up nervously as she stepped around me. She swiped her hand briskly across the touch
screen to turn the monitors dark.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“You’re off-limits,” she said. “Come back on camera. Did Mr. Ferenze let you back
here? Where is he?”

“No one was at the desk,” I said. “What were those images?”

“Oh, those,” she said, with a self-effacing wave. She was slender, of Asian heritage,
and up close, she seemed younger than she had in the dorm. “It’s just my hobby. I’m
experimenting with photography. It’s hard to work here without getting inspired.”
She laughed, but she also kept crowding me back toward the hallway until she could
close the door. “I’m Dr. Glyde Ash. Thanks for coming in. Right this way.”

She led me down the hall and gestured me into an examining room.

“What am I here for?” I asked.

“It’s nothing serious. Have a seat.” She patted a paper-covered bench. “One sec. I’m
with another patient, but I’ll be with you shortly.” She stepped out, and I listened
as her high heels clicked down the hallway. “Ferenze?” she called.

I hitched up onto the bench to sit and let my feet hang. A button camera on the windowsill
aimed at my face. Another was on the ceiling. Out the window, I could see Otis’s lookout
tower. I hung my head and knocked my boots together a few times. Then I flopped back
and covered my eyes with one arm, trying to look bored.

Inside, I was dying of curiosity. What was Linus’s connection to Otis? And Dr. Ash’s
pictures were definitely weird. I didn’t buy that they were just a photography project.
These glimpses off the edges of the show were baffling. Worst of all, I dreaded having
the doctor ask me point-blank about last night, when I’d been out of bed. If only
I knew how to play this.

Dr. Ash returned a few minutes later and washed her hands at a little sink. “Sorry
to keep you waiting. Busy day here. Lots of stress-related issues.”

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked.

“Nothing serious, I’m sure,” she said, ripping a paper towel from the dispenser. “I
just want to follow up on some readings we had the last couple nights.”

Here it comes
, I thought.

She took out a penlight. “Look up,” she said, and shone it in my right eye, and then
my left. The glare half blinded me. “Good. Now down.”

“What kind of readings?” I asked. I would play dumb as long as I could.

She looked in my ears next. “Elevated heart rate and breathing. Just because you go
to sleep at six o’clock doesn’t mean we stop caring. Some of our new students have
a mild reaction to the sleeping pills. We monitor you all very carefully, and at the
first sign of an irregularity, we’re right there.”

“So I had a problem?” I asked. “Does that mean you have to send me home?”

“No, no. I wouldn’t say it’s a real problem,” she said, with a smile. She rolled a
temperature gauge along my forehead. “You were very restless. Having a bad dream,
no doubt. It happens, but it doesn’t mean you aren’t fit to stay, provided you make
the cuts. Finger, please.”

I held out my finger, and she put a white clamp around it. It sounded like she was
giving me a warning. Maybe that was all this was.

“I don’t have any dreams here,” I said.

“You do. You just don’t remember them.” She lifted the back of my shirt. “Take a deep
breath.”

I did. The cold disk of her stethoscope on my back made me flinch.

“Again,” she said.

I took a few more breaths, as directed. She pulled my shirt down and took the stethoscope
out of her ears to loop it around her neck. Then she took a small, triangular hammer
and beat it against my knee. My leg jerked. She did the other knee, too, and then
took the clamp off my finger to inspect it. She backed up to tap into her tablet.

“Have you had any dizziness? Nausea? Headaches?” she asked.

“No.”

“Appetite normal?”

“Yes.”

“Déjà vus?”

I laughed.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Have you had any déjà vus recently?”

“No. I haven’t had any déjà vus,” I said.

She took my blood pressure, and the cuff made a little hiss in the silence. The scab
on my arm was visible, like a secret test between us, but the doctor didn’t touch
it or mention it. She released the rest of the blood pressure cuff with a whoosh of
air.

“You’re fine. Totally fine,” she said. “A little stressed, but nothing to be concerned
about. That’s perfectly natural.”

I looked directly at her. We both knew Janice had had a seizure in the night. That
shouldn’t be hushed up. Then again, the doctor wasn’t saying on camera that I’d broken
the rules, and mutual silence made for an odd form of trust. I decided to take a chance.

“I have a question, actually,” I said. “What’s this?”

She brought her face close to inspect the crook of my elbow, and ran a finger over
my track mark. “That’s from an IV,” she said. “Most students never even notice. It’s
a standard precaution to put one in. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we don’t even
have to use it, but I like it ready.”

“What happens the other one percent of the time?” I asked.

“You know, sleeping medication is just not something we take chances with,” she said.
“If someone’s in trouble and we need to bring them around, we can.”

“So you have an antidote to wake someone up from the sleeping meds?”

“Yes,” she said. “But like I said, we almost never need to use it.”

“You could have warned us about this,” I said.

“We did. It’s in the fine print. You and your parents signed the contract before you
came,” she said. She wrapped up the cord of the blood pressure cuff. “Honestly, Rosie.
This is about the safest place you could ever be, and you’re perfectly fine.”

I got it. This was definitely a warning disguised as a reassurance. I had read my
contract, of course. It stated clearly that I was supposed to take my pill each night,
and it contained all sorts of cover-their-butts legalese about risks and potential
death. I had never thought any of that was a real possibility, though. Now I wasn’t
so sure.

A tap came on the door, and a man in a white coat looked in.

“Doctor? We’re ready for you,” he said.

Dr. Ash looked toward me. “Any last questions?”

“Why did you need to check me out? I could be gone in a few hours,” I said.

“That’s true,” she said. “But I’m a stickler for following up, and while you’re here,
you’re under my care, no matter how short or long that is. Good luck with the cuts.”

*   *   *

I had Practicum for two hours next, followed by an original one-act play some older
students put on, and afterward, around 3:30, I went back to the girls’ dorm to pack.

All first-year students were supposed to pack and have their belongings piled at the
ends of their sleep shells before the fifty cuts. In theory, this was to make the
removal of half the students quick and easy after the cuts. In practice, it made the
fourth floor of the girls’ dorm a miserable place to be. The big room was hushed when
I arrived. Some girls had come and gone already, leaving their mute, tidy piles behind.
I passed several other girls who were quietly folding their things and tucking them
in suitcases. A few were passing around their phones to exchange numbers, with big
tears and promises to keep in touch. Looked fake to me, but whatever.

It took me five minutes, total, to drop everything in my duffel bag and zip it closed.
No way was I going to wait around and swap daisy chains with the other contestants.

“This is decidedly unfun up here,” I said to Janice, pausing by her sleep shell. “I’m
going for a run. Want to come?”

She shook her head. “I told my parents I’d call them.”

“Where’s Paige?” I asked, scanning the room.

“She went to dance,” Janice said. “You know. Art and guts.”

“And niceness,” I added. “Thanks again for the spike at lunchtime.”

“No problem. Actually, I’ve been remembering Camp Pewter, from when I knew Burnham
before,” she said. “He was kind of a chubby do-gooder back then.”

“He’s not chubby now,” I said, leaning a hip into the end of her sleep shell.

Janice laughed. “No. He’s not.”

“Were you friends?”

“Not exactly. But I definitely remember him.” Janice folded a yellow sweater, adding
it to her suitcase. “On the last night of camp, everyone went down for the last campfire
out on the point. It was this special tradition, right? With all these nice songs
and prayers and readings? It was great until I got some ash or something in my eye.
It wouldn’t come out, so I started back to my cabin to get a mirror, and one of counselors
saw me going.” Janice slowed down. “I thought, you know, he was coming along to look
after me.”