“You hardly mention it. Not even in group. Unless they make you.”
“You must be special, then.”
I felt Milo smile, a loosening of tension in his skinny body. “What happened?”
“I was freezing,” I said. “We all were, huddled on the floor of an old cabin, no fire and the wind blowing in through the cracks. I’d never been more miserable or alone as I was in that moment. Then one of the other boys brought his shitty blanket to where I was lying under my shitty blanket. He hugged me like I’m hugging you.”
“What was his name?”
“Silas. His name was Silas.”
“Do you still talk to him?”
“No.”
“Why not? Did you lose touch? What’s his last name?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
It did matter. It mattered a whole fucking lot, but as much as I cared about making Milo feel better, Silas Marsh was off-limits. If I shared too much of him, he wouldn’t be mine anymore. He existed mostly in my journals. Stories. My endless writing where I tried to purge myself of Alaska until my hand cramped and tears blurred the ink on the page.
But there was always more.
My parents had sent me to Alaska in the name of “fixing” their broken son, but it’d nearly destroyed my already tentative hold on sanity. They knew their mistake the instant I came back, bruised and hysterical. A year in Sanitarium du lac Léman was their way of trying to put me back together, but it was too late. What happened in Alaska was now woven into my marrow. My cells and bones. A cold that would never let me go.
I tightened my arm around Milo. “It was forbidden for us to touch, but Silas had laid down with me to try to keep me warm anyway. It only happened that one night, but he saved my life.”
And I never told him. I should have told him…
“Why just the one night?” Milo asked.
“We got caught. They beat the hell out of us. Him, mostly. They beat the hell out of him…”
Another shiver wracked me, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory: a ramshackle cabin and a dozen boys huddled under thin blankets. Silas—big and tall with gold hair; an Adonis—being yanked away from me, the counselors wailing on him for the sin of comforting another human being.
“Did Silas tell you that you were going to be okay?”
“No,” I said. “That would’ve been a lie. We didn’t lie to each other in Alaska. Alaska wasn’t like this place. Here, you get good food and exercise, and instead of people telling you that you’re worthless and have to change who you are, they try to make you better.”
“You’re not better, so how come you get to leave?”
“I feel the institution no longer has anything to offer me.”
“You don’t get to say. The doctors do.”
“The doctors agree.”
“That’s a lie.”
“My parents pay the doctors,” I said. “I told my parents it’s time to go, so they stopped paying.”
“Your mom and dad just do whatever you want?”
“Since I came back from Alaska, they do. They’re afraid of me. And they should be.”
Milo gasped at my sinister tone. “Are you going to hurt them when you get out?”
I pretended to be affronted. “Do I look like a violent psychopath to you? Never mind, don’t answer that.”
He sniffed a laugh.
“No, I can hurt them where it counts,” I said. “If I tell the press about my Alaskan field trip—or worse, if I spill it on Twitter—my parents’ empire of money could come crashing down in shame and infamy. That scares the crap out of them.”
“So you’ll get out and become a famous writer someday, while I’m stuck here forever,” Milo said, sounding petulant again.
“Not forever. And you’re going to be okay. Take it from your Uncle Cassie.”
“You’re so weird.”
But I heard the smile in his voice. His back pushed against my chest in a big sigh, and I felt him settle deeper in the bed, closer to sleep.
“Holden?”
“That’s me.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Constantly.”
“I mean, aren’t you scared of getting out of here? When you’re not better yet?”
I thought long and hard about how to answer, sorting through the voices in my head clamoring and shouting, banging their cymbals like toy monkeys. I wasn’t better. I was never going to be better. No matter what the counselors and doctors and pills and therapy tried to do, the cold would always find me. Alaska had broken something inside me forever.
“Are you kidding?” I said, making my voice light. “I’m going to live in sunny California. I’ll live in a new town where I don’t know anyone and be the new kid in school and…yeah, no. Now that I’m hearing it out loud, it sounds terrible.”
Milo laughed and the good feeling came back a little. Truthfully, I didn’t give two shits about being the new kid at a school. The universe had bequeathed unto me a tortured mind, but that mind also happened to be firing on all cylinders. An IQ of 153 meant a year of high school was more of an attempt at normalcy, not something I actually needed.
“I’m going to miss you, Holden,” Milo said, his voice heavy with sleep.
“Nah. You’ll forget me by dawn.”
He hugged my arm tighter. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk like you don’t matter. You do matter. To me.”
I clenched my teeth. Milo’s care and concern were perplexing and made my heart feel strange. Tears even tried to spring to my eyes, for crying out loud.
“It’s late,” I said thickly. “Get some sleep.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Holden. See you tomorrow.”
I didn’t trust my voice, so I held very still as the dimness in the room softened and grew darker. Milo’s breathing became even and regular. Carefully, I slipped
