Page 8 of Good Half Gone

“Where’s Dupont?” I asked, looking around.

“He’s seen this movie, so he’s not coming,” Colby said over his shoulder. His hoodie—bright even in the color panic of the mall—guided me forward.

Ahead was the escalator that led to the theater. Angel and RJ had drifted a bit behind me, which made me feel like I was being herded. But Dupont’s sudden absence bothered me. He treated these guys like celebrities, so why would he bail at the last minute?

I glanced back at Angel, who was staring at me again—it was creepy. I cleared my throat. “Wasn’t this his idea?”

“Dupont has a lot of ideas.” Colby’s laugh was as annoying as his face. My sister, who had seemed revolted by the idea of him three minutes ago, was showing more than her usual number of teeth, dimples blaring. You’d think they were old friends.

Piper and Colby stepped on the escalator together, and I had a moment of panic as I stepped forward to take the stair beneath them. Sandwiched between my sister and Colby’s goons,I closed my eyes until it was time to get off. Something wasn’t right. This was all off.

The movie was a comedy that had been out for weeks and was getting terrible reviews, and the theater was empty aside from us. Colby led the way up the stairs to the back of the theater and into the last row.

“You said this movie looked stupid.” I slid into the seat next to Piper, putting her to my right. RJ sat on my left, and Colby and Angel took the end nearest the stairs—Colby right next to Piper, of course.

“Will you just relax?” she said between her teeth. “You ruin everything if you can’t get your way.”

I looked at her in shock. Did she really just say that to me? Her—the one who—

“What’s the problem, preppy? You need some snacks?” Colby leaned forward to look at me. I stared back without saying anything until he broke eye contact and looked at RJ. “You guys good?”

RJ nodded, then both he and Angel stood up. “Snacks coming up,” he said to me. His eyes were comically large like he was talking to a dog.

God, Piper was going to hear it later! Was she really giving this idiot the time of day after he tricked her into coming? I glared at them, but they were oblivious. Colby was showing her something on his phone, and she was squealing in either horror or delight. It didn’t even matter that he wasn’t Matt; he was a Crimball, and that’s all my sister cared about.

“I’m going to the bathroom.” I stood up, waiting for her to say she was coming with me. But when she didn’t look up from Colby’s phone, I huffed off on my own. It was what Colby shouted to me as I reached the bottom of the stairs that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“We don’t need you to come back if you don’t want to. We have what we need!”

Chapter3Present

Shoal Island Hospital:a private facility for the criminally insane. I’d been chosen to enter their internship program, it was like winning the grad school lottery. My advisor, along with two of my professors, wrote letters of recommendation. Two days after receiving the acceptance letter, an email pings into my inbox from a woman named Jordyn Whyte, who introduces herself as the hospital coordinator. The packet, as she called it, holds all the information I’ll need for my first day: I would need to catch the ferry from Seattle to Anacortes, from Anacortes a water taxi would take us to Shoal Island. Jordyn included the ferry schedule and the name of the water taxi: The Sea Glass. I print the vague map of the island, an even vaguer map of the hospital, and the rule handbook. I will need a badge to board the water taxi, but I won’t get it until my first day of work. She explains that she’ll call ahead to let the captain know that a new hire would be boarding his vessel. I’d have to take a ferry to reach the dock where the water taxi would pick me up: a watery quiet bus route.

It all seems so quaint—the upside of taking a boat to work, is the down time. Being a mom is a noisy task. Quiet thoughts were a luxury, I was my kid’s personal assistant. I was … am … a nurturing tour guide, and my little tourist asked a lot of questions: Why do we have to go? What is beach sand made of? What time are we leaving? Why do I have to eat that? Gran asked as many questions as Cal, but hers were about my personal life: Who are your friends? Why aren’t you dating? Why have you stopped drinking milk?

“Of course, I want to see where you’re working…” Her voice drops off, and I know what she’s thinking.

On Friday morning, we float by Shoal Island on the 9:20 a.m. ferry. The place is unreal—like it’s filtered. I snap a few photos from my phone, extending my arms over the side of the railing to get a better shot.

I’m studying the photos when Gran speaks close to my ear. “Manmade things can’t capture that type of beauty. Look with your eyes…”

I almost drop my phone in the water. “Gran, why?” She was forever sneaking up on me with her librarian stealth.

She smiles. “So jumpy!”

I hold my smart-ass retort on the tip of my tongue before swallowing it down. I am twenty-four years old and still frightened of my teeny-weeny grandmother. But in my defense, before Gran was a librarian, she was a prison guard. And before that, she stripped at the Emerald City Gentleman’s Club. Back then her stage name was Emele Dickinson, and she danced during the busiest hours of the night. Resourceful, tough, smart—and one hundred percent unapologetic. My hero.

Gran smirks at me and looks back at the water, smug. I tuck my phone away and look with myeyesat the oversaturated greenery of Shoal Island. One hundred thirteen acres of rock,beach, and forest, the island juts grandly from the Salish Sea like a wine cork. There is no public ferry service to Shoal. Access is by water taxi or private ferry only.

We lean over the railing, letting the wind hit our faces and breathing in the smell of the sound. In front of us, a sheer cliffside gives way to a rocky beach; a hundred yards more, and the beach gives to a dock. A water taxi bobs in the water as people in green scrubs make their way off. From the dock, there is a pathway that leads up an incline, disappearing over the other side. The island is hilly, and for a minute I worry that we won’t be able to see the hospital from the water. But as the ferry hustles north alongside the shoreline, the view opens up briefly, giving us a look at the rear of the building perched atop a rock cliff and staring toward the ocean. It is three stories high, and dozens of windows dot the brick, giving their occupants an endless view of the water.

“Those are the patients’ rooms,” I tell her. She stares tight-lipped as the rock cliff curves and dips down. We see trees tightly packed into a forest, and then through a clearing we’re given our first glimpse of the front side of the building nestled between two forests on a huge expanse of green lawn.

In the center of all that green is the fog, thick as clouds and holding a hulking structure in her fist: Shoal Island Hospital for the criminally insane.

“That’s the scariest place I’ve ever laid eyes on, and my eyes areold.” Gran, aggressive about her disapproval, turns her back to me, her shoulders stiff. But it doesn’t look scary to me; it looks like a building that has gone through dozens of renovations. A Victorian house in the front, a lodge house to the side, and to the rear is the hulking brick structure that sits on the cliff.

If I’m being honest, Gran has a right to be worried. She’s already lost a granddaughter, and she is great-grandmother to a eight-year-old boy. If something were to happen to me, she is too old to take care of Cal by herself.She’d do it, of course, but what would happen when she—

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