I grab my bag from my room and ditch the old lady dance shoes. I slide on my snow boots and pull the bottoms of my jeans down over the top of them. I tuck my white blouse into my jeans and pull on a dark brown V-neck sweater and then my winter jacket. I hurry downstairs to the lobby. After flashing the bus pass hanging around my neck, I line up behind four other patients from the addiction floor, none of whom I know. It’s five minutes before noon and the bus is already idling in front of the institute. I loathe it.
It’s a short yellow bus, with the words L IFE H OUSE printed along the side in large block letters. They might as well have written N UT H OUSE, just to be sure that everyone who saw us in town knew who we were. We all walk onto the bus like the medicated zombies we are, eyes looking anywhere but at each other. An attendant checks our names off and the bus slides into gear.
I check my watch: three hours, fifty-seven minutes till takeoff. I close my eyes and imagine that milky blue sky above the earth. Almost there, Jane.
• • •
As I step off the bus, I check my watch. It’s only 12:20 p.m., so I’ve got a good forty minutes before the airport bus departs. So far so good-in the time department, that is.
The good townspeople of Powder River stare at us like we’re losers. Who wouldn’t? A busload of adolescent nut jobs pulls into your town for a little Yuletide shopping and cheer and your jaw isn’t hitting the floor?
I stand there for a few seconds, momentarily unsure of myself. The attendant, her name is May, notices my indecision.
“Jane, your bus picks you up right here in just about thirty minutes. Are you okay? Do you want me to stand here with you?”
“No,” I say. Then, “I want to buy my mother a gift, from Powder River.”
“Would you like me to come with you?”
I shake my head no. “That’s okay. Do I have time?”
“I think so; you should be back here in twenty minutes to be safe.” She pauses, then continues, “You look very worried, Jane. Are you sure everything is all right? I think your mom will understand if you don’t have something.”
“I’m fine,” I mumble. “I want to buy a tie for my father, too.” She is just an outsourced attendant; she doesn’t know my father put a hole in his head on Christmas Eve, so the lie doesn’t register. But what if she tells Old Doctor or one of the nurses who know me? Note to self: You are becoming self-destructive. Stick to the Plan.
“Well, there’s Lila’s Vintage a few blocks up on the corner,” she says. “They should have ties. I’ll come with you.”
“Thank you, but I’m really fine.”
She looks at me, and her mind is calculating all that could go wrong and weighing it against what is the good and right thing to do at Christmas.
“Okay, but you don’t have a lot of time. To be safe, be back in fifteen minutes.”
I nod and turn, walking into a whipping cold wind. Slush, salt, and sand cover the sidewalk and the freezing temperatures have made everything slick. Despite the cold, there are people milling about, looking in shop windows, and a dozen or so kids from a local choir are assembled outside Town Hall singing carols. An old-fashioned black pot hangs from a stand in front of the choir and little kids take turns tossing in their mothers’ coins.
I still feel the attendant’s eyes on my back, so I turn around, but she has disappeared. Where has she gone? She’s not calling the institute. Don’t be paranoid. I look carefully on the far corners of each side of the street. Nothing. She’s shopping, like everyone else. Don’t be crazy, Jane.
I push into the wind, past the door to Lila’s Vintage and into Dowden’s Drugstore on the far corner. An old man with a short white pharmacist’s jacket looks up from his perch and gives me a cursory smile before returning to his business, counting pills.
From the back entrance to the store, a FedEx man walks in carrying a handful of packages and brings them to the counter.
As the two men chat, I examine a display of hand-knitted mittens and hats. Candy canes dance in a pattern on the woven yarn: red and white, green and red, black and pink. It’s not as much a part of the Plan as the cold medicines and sleeping pills, but the more items I bring to the counter, the less likely the pharmacist might be to question why a teenage girl needs such a weird combination of over-the-counter medications. I pull a hat and a pair of mittens off the rack, tucking my old ones into my pockets. I slip the mittens on. They’re warm and fuzzy. I grab a couple pairs of each: one for Mom and one for Dad, just in case the attendant asks.
I walk down one of the aisles and nab a pair of sunglasses, large and black. I put them on and look in the mirror. I look like a bug. I like it.
In the next aisle, I find the cold medicines and sleeping pills. I pull down the bottles needed for the specific combination I researched online. I walk toward the pharmacist and place all of my items on the counter. He rings me up, and I hand him cash.
“Thank you, dear. Come again.”
He hands me a bag with my “medicine” and a separate bag with my new sunglasses and the extra mittens and hat. I put on my glasses and drop the drug bag into my travel bag. I walk to the door and disappear onto the street.
I check the time. It is twelve forty-five. Fifteen minutes to spare. Three hours and fifteen minutes until takeoff.