I knew this was going to come up eventually. ‘Yeah,’ I admit, grimacing. ‘But I stopped her before she really kissed me. I definitely didn’t kiss her back.’
‘Why not?’ he asks. ‘You like girls, too, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but boy or girl doesn’t matter. I don’t want to kiss anyone but you,’ I say, like it’s obvious. He looks up the trail, embarrassed, but pleased with my answer. Then his expression falls.
‘This way,’ he says.
Bo slides into the underbrush, lithe and sure. I follow in his footsteps.
A million possibilities unwrap in my mind.
Mila could be hurt. Fallen. Broken leg or bleeding wound.
Or she could be secluding herself so she can detox – purposely out in the woods all by herself so she can sweat it out without temptation.
She could already be back home, and I just don’t know it because I don’t have my phone on me. There’s no point t
aking it into the woods. The coverage is non-existent where we’re going.
Bo moves quickly. He sees Mila’s tracks clearly, and he rarely has to pause to make sure. He points down at the ground and mumbles briefly about turned moss and scraped logs.
He’s still trying to teach me, which is adorable. He tells me that her trail is easy to follow. It’s purposeful. Straight. Like she knew exactly where she was going.
The most unlikely possibility is the one I entertain last. Mila could be leading me right to Dr Goodnight.
1 AUGUST. AFTERNOON
Had it been a conscious choice, I would have felt more responsible. Guilty, even. But that’s not how it happened. I didn’t set out for revenge. I didn’t make a plan and execute it – not at first.
I was angry, yes, and who wouldn’t be? After David killed himself, I wanted out of the hospital. I would have done anything. And even though I was talking again, and apparently responding to therapy, I was no closer to getting out of there than I was the day I’d arrived.
The doctors had to want to let me go, and with my growing body count, they definitely didn’t want to. I guess I made one choice, vague though it was when I began. I made the choice to use my journal as a tool. Or weapon, depending on your point of view. But after how horribly they’d handled David, they had it coming. Every single one of them.
The truth. I was going to give them nothing but the truth as I saw it, and watch what happened.
I started with the new leader of our group therapy, Dr Weinbach.
There were a dozen better ways to deliver the news about Dr Holt being moved to another floor, but he wanted to impose his leadership over our group. He wanted to show everyone how amazing he was. He wasn’t thinking about David when he told us Dr Holt wasn’t coming back. He was thinking about his career, about his promotion from the state cases downstairs up to our floor with the rich kids whose parents he could rope into expensive private therapy sessions when their kid got out. He was happy Dr Holt was gone, and he wanted to keep it that way.
He went down first.
It’s easy to create a character that readers hate. You don’t even have to make it obvious. No moustache-twirling required. All you have to do is show a character make a very big mistake that they cover up with a bunch of excuses and finger-pointing so they can hold on to a potentially lucrative position.
And then you just let that character get away with it.
After several weeks of reading a story about a doctor who occasionally bullied his more suggestible patients into saying things they weren’t ready to say so he could manufacture yet another ‘brilliant breakthrough’, the hospital board took a second look at the video surveillance footage of how Dr Weinbach broke the news to David.
Like meeting an actor who always plays the bad guy, they couldn’t watch that footage of Dr Weinbach glibly telling David that Dr Holt wouldn’t be returning and see it as anything but the reckless mismanagement of a tender soul by a man engaged in a pissing contest with his predecessor.
They fired Dr Weinbach. We got Dr Jacobi for group leader.
Which worked for me because she was next on my list.
Bo and I track Mila for hours.
We’re moving fast, even though it’s unbearably hot, and travelling deep into the forest far from any path. I’m glad I’ve had a few weeks to toughen up out here or I’d never be able to keep up with Bo. He’s a machine.
Despite that, I’m keeping close tabs on where we’re going. I’m still no tracker, but I have learned a few things about finding my way through the woods. We’re going north-east. I’ve never been this way before. It’s steep. It’s dense. In places, it’s nearly impassable.