Haley had colored a page of chickens all red. Was that because of all the blood she must have seen the night she and her mother were attacked? Or did she just like the color red? Or had there been red chickens at her home out in the country?
“Why are your chickens red?” she asked.
Haley just shrugged and turned the page to a picture of kittens.
“I have kitties,” she said. “At my house.”
“You do?”
“When can I go home?”
“You’re going to come and stay with Vince and me for a while.”
“My mommy will miss me. Can my kitties come and stay too?”
“Hmmm ... I don’t know,” Anne said. “We’ll have to see about that.”
“When Mommy says that she means no.”
Anne smiled and stroked a hand over the little girl’s unruly mop of curls.
“Hey, would you draw a picture for me?” Anne asked, reaching for the tablet of blank paper. “Would you draw me a picture of your house and your kitties?”
“Okay. I like to draw.”
She chose a brown crayon and started her rendition of a mamma cat and her babies. In the background she drew her house. Far off to one side of the page she drew a large black figure with red eyes.
“Who is that?” Anne asked, holding her breath for the answer.
Haley shrugged and colored the grass yellow.
“Is this a person?” Anne asked, tapping a finger below the imposing character looming off to the side.
Haley nodded.
“Does this person have a name?”
“Bad Monster,” she said, and then looked up at Anne. “Are there kids at your house?”
“No. Do you have other kids for friends?”
“Sometimes Wendy comes. She’s eleven. That’s more than four. That’s more than seven. When I’m seven I’m gonna ride a bike.”
“Good for you.”
“Big kids ride bikes.”
“Does your friend Wendy ride a bike?”
“Uh-huh. Her mommy is Sara.”
“Sara Morgan?” Anne asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“I know Wendy,” Anne said. “Does Bad Monster have a name?”
“
“Maybe,” Anne said. “We’ll see.”
“Uh-oh.”
Anne chuckled.
Haley paused in her coloring to take a drink from the crazy purple bendable straw Franny had brought.
“It feels funny,” she complained, frowning, tears welling up seemingly out of nowhere.
Anne rubbed her back. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
“No! No!” she cried, curling her fingers against her throat as if she were trying to pull something away.
Anne could see the hysteria building. She knew exactly how it felt—like an avalanche coming down, like a tsunami wave crashing.
“You’re okay, Haley. I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” she said as the little girl fell against her, sobbing. “It’s okay. You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re safe.”
Anne didn’t tell her not to cry. She knew that sometimes crying was like opening the valve on a pressure cooker, and once the steam was released the worst of the panic passed with it. She did what she would have wanted someone to do for her: She was a rock, an anchor, a sponge to absorb the tears and wring them out until they were spent.
After a few minutes she felt Haley’s body relax against her. Asleep.
Without moving the sleeping girl, Anne looked at the drawing she had left on the bedside tray and studied Bad Monster. Was Bad Monster black or had Bad Monster worn black clothing? Or was the color associated with fear? Maybe Bad Monster
The answers were only easy after you had them, Anne thought. Until then there were only puzzle pieces.
35
Dennis was angry. Miss Navarre hadn’t shown up all day. He had waited for her, looked for her, asked the stupid nurses where she was and when she was coming. And she never showed up or called or anything.
He had even done his stupid reading assignment and everything. How could she just not show up?
Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was in a car accident and ran her car into the back of a tractor-trailer and cut her stupid head off. That would be funny. He could picture her decapitated head still lecturing him as it lay on the pavement.
That made him laugh.
She would have asked him why he thought that was funny.
He imagined running up and kicking her head like a soccer ball, and her head flying through the air. He wouldn’t have to listen to her then.
He laughed harder, but held his pillow up to cover his face so no one would hear him.
The hospital was quiet now. All the crazies were drugged and in bed asleep instead of babbling to themselves in the halls and in the common rooms. The lights in the rooms were off. The lights in the halls were low.
Dennis liked this time of night. He knew what time the nurse would come by. Sometimes he would pretend to be asleep, then a few minutes later he would sneak out of his room and roam around in the dark. He liked the idea that just about everyone else was asleep and he could pretend he had the place to himself and could do anything he wanted.
Sometimes he would sneak into other people’s rooms and just stand there watching them sleep, imagining the things he could do to them if he still had his knife.
Sometimes he would hide in the lounge near the nurses’ station, waiting. Arlene, the skinny head nurse on the night shift, smoked, and she would go outside to do it because smoking wasn’t allowed in the building. The short, fat nurse, Betty, would go with her, and then no one was at the desk.
They were never gone for more than ten minutes, but in ten minutes Dennis could sneak behind the desk and steal stuff. He never took big things. He would steal a pen or some paperclips or candy the nurses kept stashed. Or he would go into the trash and steal a newspaper someone had already thrown away.
He had never been a very good reader, but now it was the only way he could find out what was going on in the world outside the hospital—other than his preferred method of eavesdropping. He always looked for articles about Peter Crane or the Dodgers.
Nowadays the stories with Crane in them were about the trial that would happen sometime soon. There had been all kinds of delays already, and pretrial motions—which Dennis really didn’t understand. But there would always be a paragraph about Dr. Crane and what he had
He imagined now what it would be like to glue Miss Navarre’s eyes and mouth shut so she couldn’t look at
