Page 27 of In a Haze

“Has anything strange happened after lights out?”

Aside from my own personal activity? “No.”

“Anyone breaking in your room after doors are closed?”

Now he has my attention. “No. Who would do that?”

“Well, the staff have keys—but it’s not that hard to break in if you know what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?”

With a sly grin, he picks up his coffee. “It’s not that hard. I could break into your room any time I wanted.”

“What? How? Do you have a key?”

Lowering his voice, he leans close, and that reminds me that I probably need to watch my volume, too. “I have two paperclips. That’s all I need.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Easy.”

My mind goes wild now, and again I wonder if we really are in some sort of prison. There are a lot of bad people here. Joe doesn’t seem bad to me, but breaking and entering is a crime, right? Good people don’t go around picking locks. “Why haven’t you done it then?”

“What? Break into your room?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t ask.” Well, that weighs against him being a bad guy. Bad people don’t ask for permission. “Do you want me to?”

Something inside my brain lights up as if it’s on the halftime stage at the Super Bowl. Do I want Joe to break into my room? “When?”

“After lights out.”

I hear someone’s voice inside my head, someone I once knew and loved and trusted, telling me that good girls wait until marriage.

My grandma?

Whoa. Closing my eyes, I try to grab hold of an already tenuous memory that is once more fading fast. I can almost see her kind face but what I really see is her thin, wrinkly, veiny hand dotted with age spots holding mine. It’s cool to the touch, but it warms my heart just the same.

I hear Joe’s voice. “Anna?Anna? Are you okay?”

I open my eyes then. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Shit. You had me worried. I thought maybe you were having a seizure or something. I was getting ready to holler for a nurse.” I’m shaking my head now. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I say, hoping to reassure him, but I’m still trying to hang onto that photo in my mind, and I wonder how to get it back.

“Maybe the medswerehelping you.”

“Are you kidding, Joe? No, what just happened was good. I remembered my grandma.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“You think it’s a real memory and not something—”

I hadn’t even considered the possibility that my brain might just start making stuff up to fill the void—but it felt so real. It couldn’t be imaginary. “Yes, it’s real. It has to be. It was just a small glimpse, but it felt just as real to me as the two of us talking right now.”

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