“Hurry!”
I skidded to a halt and almost slammed into the gate.
“They’ve got me surrounded. Look, go call your dad and tell him you have a dumbass for a friend who thought it would be funny if he—”
“Give me your foot.”
I looked down. Meghan was reaching through the bars, fingers intertwined, making a little step for me.
“No way. I’m too heavy. And I’ve only got one functioning arm.”
“Will you just give me your foot? I’ll push you over the fence.”
I didn’t have the chance to have a talk with my father about women; he died before I’d reached puberty. But even I knew that when a beautiful woman is standing in the pouring rain, offering to help lift you over the black metal fence outside an insane asylum, you take her up on the offer.
I stepped into Meghan’s hands, then reached up for the top of the fence. I could tell immediately that she’d grossly underestimated my weight. Her hands felt like they were attached to rubber cables, ready to snap at any moment. I wanted to stop and apologize—
I held on as tightly as I could, then swung my left foot up to the top of the fence. The rubber soles of my shoes clung to the metal for a fraction of a second, and it was enough time for Meghan to give me another superhuman push, and for me to pull myself up and over.
I was over the fence.
And then I was falling.
The good news was that I’d managed to not land on top of Meghan—she’d scurried out of the way the moment my foot left her hands. But as I landed, my right foot twisted. I had a fleeting moment of
Meghan helped me up, asked if I could put any weight on it. I tried. I told her no. She told me to stop being a pansy, and then helped me limp back to her passenger seat. The water ran down through my hair and onto my face. I eased back into the seat, used my good hand to pull my bad leg into the car, then we took off, rocketing down Adams Avenue.
“Thank God you were by that fence.”
I looked over at Meghan. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly, and her arms were shaking. Probably from the exertion, the worry, the adrenaline.
She looked at me.
“I presume that was you, shouting the name ‘Billy Derace’?”
“The doors were locked. What else could I do?”
She didn’t respond. By the time we’d cleared about three blocks, there were no sirens, no pursing vehicles, no spotlights. We’d gotten away clean.
Which is what probably emboldened me to suggest something really stupid.
“Slow down and go back around.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Go back and park on the other side of the grounds. I’ve got an idea.”
“You can barely walk.”
“I don’t plan on walking.”
I reached into my overcoat pocket and pulled out a single white pill. I’d tucked one in there, just in case.
Meghan got it right away—there are no dull forks in her silverware drawer. Still, she thought it was a really stupid idea.
“What good is it for you to sneak into that place back in 1972? Billy Derace’s only twelve years old, and he’s living at home. He’s not going to be placed here until years later.”
“The Papiro Center is the place listed on DeMeo’s letterhead. His office might be on Frankford Avenue, but he works out of this building, too. Maybe we couldn’t find any notes about his experiments because he kept them all here.”
“So you’re just going to pass out on the front seat on my car. What am I supposed to say to the cops when they pull over to check out what I’m doing here? And you
“Keep driving, then. Just don’t go too far.”
We used her car key to cut the pill in half. I figured that dosage should give me enough time to slip through the gates, through the front door and into that building.
At first I wasn’t even sure it worked—the place looked exactly the same now as it did back in 1972. This was a well-maintained loony bin, and always had been. But then I realized I was sitting in the middle of the street on a cold dark night, and the cars around me were all vintage models. Meghan’s Prius was nowhere to be seen.
I slipped right through the asylum gates—which weren’t locked now. Guess security wasn’t a big concern back in 1972.
There were sodium lights dotting the grounds, casting wide ovals of yellow light on the lawn. I stuck to the dark patches.
When I reached the front door I grit my teeth and closed my eyes and just went for it.
Then I was inside.
Past the reception area, the doctors’ offices and up a narrow row of concrete stairs and into the main quarters…
Which were empty.
Nothing. Just gurneys, completely stripped of everything except their thin mattresses.
Wasn’t this where the experiments were supposed to be happening right about now? Did I miss them? Did I have the wrong building, after all?
I spent time back downstairs in the offices, rooting through filing cabinets, but they were empty, too.
By the time I thought to slip across the grounds and try another building, I could feel the dizziness starting again, and my grip on everything slipping away.
I woke up groggy. Throbbing. Taste of sour metal in my mouth. Sweat all over my face, and nostrils full of a gamey scent that I quickly realized was
Meghan was next to me, driving.
“Did you find anything?”
“No.”
I insisted on parking at the hospital garage again, even though it meant a five-block walk for me on a bad ankle. Climbing up to the third floor wasn’t fun either. Meghan tried to hide it, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face as we slowly made our way up.
“I still can’t believe you just shouted his name.”
“Fine. Next time we break into a mental hospital, you go over the fence.”
And then we reached my apartment door.
But it was already open.
We could see the torn-up wood where the burglar had used the crowbar. Probably took him less than five seconds—jam the steel into the wedge between door and frame, pull once, maybe twice, and presto, you’re breaking and entering.
