We all look at each other, one of those rare moments when three or four people are hit by the same thought at exactly the same time. I look at Robert, and then Max, who says:
“Emmy was with me,” just as Robert says:
“I was with Alice.”
“It wasn’t one of us,” Emmy says. “It can’t have been one of us four.”
There’s an added weight to the final word.
“Tone.”
It’s Max who says it.
I stare at him, fear and surprise forming a sickening whirlpool in my belly.
“Max…” I start.
“Come on, Alice. They have a right to know.”
“Know what?” Emmy asks sharply.
Max gives me a lingering look. His lips are narrowed, his asymmetrical features tense. When he turns to Emmy, I already know what he’s going to say.
“Tone’s mom is the baby they found in the school,” he says. “That’s how she and Alice first met. Alice found her two years ago while she was doing research for the film.”
“Is that true?” Emmy asks, her voice subdued but sharp.
“You didn’t need to know,” I say. “Tone didn’t want to say anything, and I respected that. It was up to her to tell you, not me.”
“But that wasn’t the only thing you didn’t tell us, Alice,” Max says.
The smell of fire, soot, and burning steel still hangs in the air; a sharp, piercing odor that makes my eyes water. We’ve carried it with us, haven’t made it far enough to lose it. It clings to our clothes and makes my nose itch.
“Max, please,” I say. Like a prayer.
“I saw the pills, Alice,” he says.
I don’t even recognize him. Max, my Max, my friend. The guy who’s always put a smile on my face, who’s always up for getting a beer, listening, shooting the breeze. Who always has my back, in every situation.
He doesn’t look like he’s enjoying this. He looks like I feel: about to burst into tears. Maybe he really means it when he says he thinks they have a right to know.
Maybe he’s right.
“I saw them in your tent,” he goes on. “In the toiletry bag, when I was borrowing your toothpaste. Abilify.” He pauses. When he goes on, his voice is heavy. “Abilify is an antipsychotic. Right? That’s what it said on the packaging.”
I don’t reply, so he says, both clarifying and aggravating:
“Tone has a psychotic disorder.”
I shake my head.
“No, it’s not like that,” I say, blinking frenetically against the tears that are about to brim over. “She’s just had one episode, and that was over a year ago. She’s not psychotic and she’s not dangerous! She’s depressed, and she’s had one psychotic break, once, it’s not like she experiences it the whole time. And she’s feeling much better now. She didn’t want anyone to know—and no, I didn’t think it was my place to tell. So long as she takes her medication she’s…”
I want to finish my sentence, but can’t.
The silence expands.
“But is she taking her meds?” Emmy asks slowly.
My throat contracts.
Maybe you should take some painkillers anyway?
I see the small packet of Advil in her hands. That staring, inscrutable look in her eyes as she swallowed two pills and then pursed her lips.
I knew why she didn’t want to take any painkillers—that she didn’t want to take anything that might interact with her medication. But I didn’t get it. I didn’t know what might happen.
Tone’s an adult. She knows what she’s doing.
But she was in pain. So much pain. And she knew I didn’t want to leave, knew how much this meant to me. She could see it in my eyes whenever I asked if she wanted to go to hospital.
“When did she stop taking her meds, Alice?” Emmy asks, her voice thin and clear.
And then it dawns on me, light and brittle and clear, like day-old ice.
This is my fault.
I visited her at the hospital. Once a week. In the run-up to the break, Tone had stopped responding to my calls and messages. I never dropped by her place to check in on her, as I took her silence as a sign she just didn’t want to talk to me. It hadn’t even occurred to me that something might be wrong, even though I, of all people, should have known. I, who knew how impossible it can feel to so much as open an email when anxiety has its spindly black fingers around your neck.
At the hospital Tone was quiet, even quieter than normal. She hardly even responded to my chatter. Which of course made me talk even faster than normal, trying to fill every second to avoid hearing the silence. At times I wondered if she even wanted me there.
But then whenever I left she would always hug me tightly, as though I were a lifebuoy and she were drowning. So I kept on coming back, until one day she called me on her cell and said she was home. Like nothing had ever happened.
I never saw her during the episode itself, and she never said much about it. The few times it did come up she just said she had felt “… confused. And scared. Sometimes I thought I was my mom and I was in Silvertjärn. Sometimes I heard voices, voices trying to tell me secrets.”
But she hadn’t mentioned it in forever—other than to check I wasn’t going to tell anyone, that is.
I mean, she felt better. She was doing well.
So long as she just took her meds.
The image of Tone at Birgitta’s table lumps in my throat, forcing those nasty, unwanted tears back to my eyes. I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to understand what it might mean.
She said she was OK.
She said it.
Why didn’t I listen to her?
No one says anything for a while. I try to bite back my tears and find my voice, wishing one of them would say something, fill the space.
“We need to get out of here,” says Emmy. Her voice is flat. “We can’t stay here, we need help.”
“How?” Max asks. “You saw the
