Page 6 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

“You goin’ to Willowbrook?” he shouted, looking at Sage.

The Asian couple turned to gaze back at her, their pale faces devoid of emotion.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I am.”

“All right,” the driver said. “Just checkin’.” He closed the door and pulled away from the curb.

She sat up to watch out the window, alert and shaking with nerves. After traveling a few more blocks, the bus turned and lumbered down a long, single-lane drive, past a brown, billboard-size sign that read:WILLOWBROOK STATE SCHOOL.Then they went through a pillared gate, which was held open by padlocked chains secured to thick posts. Next to the gate, a uniformed guard sat in a closet-size guardhouse reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette. After a brief glance at the bus, he waved it onto the Willowbrook campus.

Sage closed her hands into fists, her knuckles turning white. Between the gate and the guard, Willowbrook seemed more like a prison than a school. Maybe it was a good thing she’d come alone. She wouldn’t have been able to cope with anyone else’s anxiety or apprehension. She could barely contain her own.

For what seemed like forever, the bus traveled along a narrow entrance road passing scraggly, snow-covered meadows and thick woods with frozen creeks. The storm had finally let up, but piles of heavy snow weighed down the evergreens and coated the bare limbs of maple and oak trees. A trio of deer lifted their heads to watch the bus pass, flicking their tails, then went back to pawing through drifts to find grass. The scene reminded Sage of a Christmas card, like something you’d see on your way to your grandparents’ house on a winter holiday—everything light and peaceful and calm, a stark contrast to the dark chaos inside her head. It reminded her of her father too, how he used to talk about building a log cabin in the wilderness someday. If only he were here with her now. If only he knew how much she and Rosemary needed him. Surely he would help. Unless his dream had come true, and he’d built that cabin in the woods somewhere. Unless he had a whole new life.

Desperate, she tried a crazy trick she and Rosemary used to attempt when they were young: straining to send thoughts to each other and reading each other’s minds. It had never worked, but she tried it now anyway, concentrating as hard as she could to send a message to her father, praying he would hear, or somehow sense, her despair.

We need you, Daddy. We need you now more than ever. Please look for us.

It was foolish, but she didn’t care.

After the tangle of woods thinned out, vast snow-covered lawns appeared with perfectly spaced trees and landscaped bushes. In the distance, a stand of willows grew along the bank of an ice-covered stream, their long, bare branches sweeping the ground. Then came a row of four-story brick buildings on each side of the road, low-slung and U-shaped, with black numbers stenciled in white circles on each wing. In front of the buildings, gaily painted benches, swing sets, carousels, and monkey bars dotted the yards, all capped with tufts of snow. But no children played outside. No teachers watched over recess or led groups of students on walks. A man shoveling a sidewalk—oddly without a coat or gloves—stopped to watch the bus go by. Otherwise, the entire place looked deserted.

Sage wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected or what she’d hoped to find. Maybe a search team in orange vests with a search and rescue dog, squad cars and helicopters, and volunteers on horseback heading into the woods. Definitely she’d imagined decrepit buildings with barred windows and overgrown yards. Even barbed-wire-topped fences and uniformed guards. But Willowbrook looked more like a college campus than a prison, where things were cared for and a person could find peace and quiet. Maybe Rosemary had been treated well there. Maybe she’d made friends and found someone to love and care for her. Maybe she’d even been happy—or as happy as a person locked in an institution could be, anyway. Hopefully when Sage walked in, she’d be informed that Rosemary had already been found, no harm done. That her sister had gotten lost in the woods or tried running away, and now she was safely back in her room enjoying a bowl of her favorite ice cream, vanilla. Sitting back in the bus seat, Sage breathed a sigh of relief. No matter what happened next, at least Willowbrook wasn’t as horrible as she feared.

Then a six-story building came into view, appearing like an ancient ship out of an artic fog, with a black roof and brick wings on both sides of an octagonal rotunda, which was adorned with an impossibly tall white cupola that disappeared into the low gray clouds. When the bus made its way around the side of the building, she saw another wing even longer than the others, making the building look like a giant cross. Smokestacks—more of them than she could count—jutted from the multiple black roofs like building blocks scattered on a shelf. Then other buildings emerged like dark apparitions, many of which looked like shops or garages or storage sheds. And everywhere she looked there were more U-shaped, numbered buildings and additional turnoffs leading to other roads. High fences surrounded some of the buildings to keep people in—or out; it was impossible to say which. When the bus slowed, she noticed a lone shoe in the snow and something that looked like a pair of crumpled pants. Goose bumps prickled along her arms. Maybe, even when it came to a place like Willowbrook, appearances were deceiving.

Finally, the bus pulled around to what looked like the main entrance of the cross-shaped building and came to a stop, air brakes hissing. A sign above the double doors read:ADMINISTRATION.The Asian couple stood and moved toward the exit, the husband waiting patiently for the wife to go ahead. Sage took a deep breath and gathered her courage. It was now or never.

Still looking out the window, she reached for her purse, wondering if she should have another cigarette before she went in. But her hand landed on an empty seat. She gasped and looked down. Her purse was gone.Shit.She should have known better. She should have kept her eyes open, especially when the bus stopped in some of the seedier neighborhoods. Frantic, she scanned the floor, then got up to search under the other seats. Maybe it had slid off the cushion when they stopped. But it was nowhere to be found. She went down the aisle, looking in and under every chair.

“Is there a problem, miss?” the driver said.

“I think someone took my purse,” she said.

The driver rolled his eyes, put the bus in park, and got up to help.

They looked everywhere, over and under and in between every seat, and searched every inch of the floor. Her purse was not on the bus.

“Was there anything important in it?” the driver asked, out of breath and sweating. “Money? ID?”

“Just a few dollars and some makeup, a hairbrush, my cigarettes.” There was no point in mentioning her fake ID.

“No driver’s license?”

She shook her head. “I don’t have a license.”

“What’s the purse look like?”

“It’s a leather saddlebag, with blue flowers stamped on the front.”

He returned to his seat, took off his cap to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and grabbed a clipboard from a hook on the dash. “Give me your name and phone number. If it turns up, dispatch will give you a call, but don’t hold your breath.”

“It’s Sage Winters. 212-567-2345.”

He wrote the information down and put the clipboard back on the hook. “Okay, got it,” he said. “Sorry about that.” Then he looked up at her. “You okay?”

No. I’m not okay. Not even close.She nodded and tried to smile, touched by his compassion, and for the first time, noticed his kind eyes. She glanced out the window at the massive brick building. “Do you know anything about this place?”

He shrugged. “Not any more than you do, probably,” he said. “I just drop people off and pick them up, so I can’t tell you much. I remember Robert Kennedy called it a snake pit, though.” He pointed out the open bus door, in the direction the Asian couple had gone. “That couple, they come every other week, and every time I pick them up that poor woman is crying.”

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