If I Die

She shook her head without looking up. “Real people don’t talk to Lydia. She can’t hear them, ’cause she’s not real.”

“You’re not real either, right?” I said, hating myself a little for stepping into her psychosis. “But you hear real people. It’s the same for Lydia.”

Farrah seemed to think about that for a minute, her hand frozen in the act of turning a page. Then she looked up and met my gaze. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Since I’m real, just like David, do you think you could tell me a little more about him?” I held my breath, sure she wouldn’t fall for that one. But then…

“He’s beautiful,” she said, her gaze losing focus, as if she could see him in her mind.

“Yes, he is.” Blanket policy when talking to the insane victim of incubus procreation: agree with everything she says. “But I was hoping for a little more than that. Do you know if any of your friends know him? Like you know him? Are any of them having babies, too?”

“Erica tried,” Farrah said. “But she got sick, and her baby died. It must have been real.”

“How awful,” I said, as she flipped more pages. “Anyone else?”

“Tiffany. But I haven’t seen her in a long time. She’s not real. But her baby is. It’s a girl.”

“How do you know it’s a girl?” I asked, as chills broke out on my arms. I hoped Tod would be back soon.

“David told me. He was sad.”

“Do you know where David lives?” I asked, and Farrah shook her head.

“He doesn’t take students to his house. That would be inappropriate.”

“Of course.” But evidently sleeping with them wasn’t. “So you only saw him at school?”

“Except when he came to my house.”

I sat straighter in surprise. “Mr. B—I mean David came to your house? Were your parents okay with that?”

“My dad wasn’t home. But my mom didn’t mind. She liked David.”

Uh-oh. I closed my eyes and swallowed the sick feeling creeping up from my stomach. “Farrah, Lydia said your mother died. Was that after David started coming to your house?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t matter, though, because she wasn’t real. So she didn’t really die. I won’t, either.”

“Because you’re not real?”

“Right. You’re going to die, though,” she said, looking right into my eyes, and my chill bumps doubled in size.

“How do you know that?”

Farrah shrugged. “Because you’re real. Everything real dies.”

Thoroughly creeped out, I stood and backed away from her bed, and Farrah went back to her book, like I’d never been there at all. And for a moment, I envied her effortless ability to simply move on, like nothing she’d heard mattered. At first, I’d thought facing death would do that for me, but somehow, the less time I had left, the more there seemed to be to do. And it all mattered.

Nervous now, I crossed the room and opened the door enough to peek into the hall. It was empty. I glanced at my watch to see that nearly five minutes had passed. How long did it take to blink into the parking lot, then blink back? Was something wrong?

Tod would never leave me there. Not if he had any choice.

Five minutes later, I’d gone through most of Farrah’s stuff without learning anything new, and I had to get out of that room. Every passing second brought the next nurse check closer, and I could not be found at Lakeside, in the room of a missing resident.

Finally desperate, I took off my shoes and put on the plain white bathrobe Lydia had left behind. Then I pulled the ponytail holder from my hair and shook my head, leaving my hair down to half-hide my face, and knelt by Farrah’s bed one last time.

“Do you know Scott Carter?” I asked, and she nodded.

“How…um…?” Turns out there’s no polite way to ask exactly how crazy someone is. “How is he?”

She looked up at me slowly, eyes wide, expression more coherent than I’d seen from her so far. “He’s real, but he doesn’t know it. So don’t tell him. He might not wanna know he’s going to die.”

That made two of us.

“Thank you, Farrah.” I stood and took one last look at her, wishing there was something I could do to help her. Then I sucked in a deep breath and stepped into the blessedly empty hallway.

I’d gone four steps when a door opened at my back and soft-soled shoes squeaked on the floor. I didn’t turn. Unless she got a good look at my face, whoever was behind me wouldn’t know I didn’t belong. I could have been any brunette mental patient in a bathrobe—a fact which unnerved me enough to make my hands shake. So I shoved them into Lydia’s pockets.

My heart pounded with every step, and when I stepped into the open common area at the center of the ward, agoraphobia crashed into me like a hit from Eastlake’s defensive line. The light felt too bright and the tile floor seemed to go on forever. People milled around like living land mines I had to avoid, without looking like I was avoiding them.

When I passed the TV room, my fists unclenched in my pockets. When I passed the dining area, I exhaled slowly. But I didn’t dare look up from my feet until I’d passed the nurse’s station without triggering any alarms. And even then, I could still hear my pulse rush in my ears, each surge counting down the seconds until I might be caught.

I leaned against the wall next to the visitor’s bathroom and snuck several furtive glances around to make sure no one was watching me. No one was, but my luck wouldn’t hold out forever, and Tod had yet to make an appearance. If I wanted to talk to Scott, I was on my own, at least until then. So in my head I began a countdown, starting with three, trying to slow my racing heartbeat with each number.

When I got to zero, I glanced up one more time, then stepped around the corner into the boys’ hall. Scott’s room was open, and I could hear him talking, but I couldn’t see him, or whoever he was talking to. In a sudden burst of courage—or desperation—I dashed across the hall and into his room, then eased the door shut and stood with my back against it, sagging with relief.

“What’s she doing here?” Scott’s room was a single. He sat sideways in his desk chair, staring at me, and if I didn’t already know where he was, I might have thought nothing was wrong with him. He wore his usual jeans and a T-shirt displaying the logo of some band I’d never heard of. He looked the same, if a little thinner. And maybe he was a little paler than the last time I’d seen him—no more football practice in the sun.

But if not for the fact that he was in Lakeside and that he was talking to himself—or maybe to no one—I might have thought he was…sane.

“You see her?” Scott said, still staring at me, but clearly talking to someone else. He looked confused, but not really surprised, and I wondered how often girls appeared in his room without explanation. “She’s not real!” He closed his eyes and punctuated the last word with a blow to the side of his own head, and I sucked in a sharp breath. “If she’s not real, but I see her, does that mean I belong here?” Another self-inflicted punch, and I jumped, but didn’t know what to do. “No, no, no. It’s not seeing things that makes you crazy—it’s hearing things. So don’t talk to me!” he hissed, opening his eyes to glare at a spot near the right-hand wall.

“Scott?” I said, and his head swiveled so fast I was afraid he’d hurt his neck.

“Nononono, you can’t talk because you’re not here, and I can’t see you, and I can’t hear you, ’cause if I can then I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy. Right?” he demanded, looking at that same spot again. Whatever he heard must have made him happy because he nodded decisively, then turned to stare down at his desktop.

And my heart broke for him.

Scott Carter and I had never been close. In fact, before too much frost had cracked his sanity, I’d thought him shallow, rude, arrogant, spoiled and selfish. But he’d been my boyfriend’s best friend and my cousin’s boyfriend, so our paths had crossed fairly often.

But now, watching him try to convince himself that I was no more real than whoever else he was seeing and hearing, it was hard to feel anything other than pity and sympathy for the boy who’d been one-third of the social power trifecta at Eastlake High.