Alice is gone. Bone told us this morning over breakfast.
“They shipped her out to Morning View,” he said between bites of cereal. “I heard the nurses talking about it.”
“What’s Morning View?” I asked.
“It’s where they send all the nuts who are never going to get better,” Bone told me. “She’s a lifer now. I guess she wee-wee-weed herself all the way to a padded cell.”
“And then there were four,” said Sadie.
I looked at her. “What?”
“And then there were four,” she repeated. “You know, from the nursery rhyme.”
She started to recite in a singsong voice.
She stopped. “It goes on until they’re all dead,” she said, spreading butter on a piece of toast. “But right now we still have four.”
“What happens to the other four?” Bone asked her.
Sadie took a bite of toast and grinned. “We’ll have to see,” she said.
“You guys are sick.”
It was Juliet. She was sitting a few seats away, her eggs and bacon getting cold on her plate. She hadn’t touched them. She was looking at us, and all of a sudden she started to cry.
“Why do you have to be so horrible?” she said.
Sadie put her toast down and wiped her mouth on her napkin before answering her. “Maybe because that’s how we deal with it,” she told Juliet.
Juliet shook her head. “You’re all just afraid,” she said. “You’re afraid you’re going to end up like Alice.”
“I’m not,” I said before I even realized it. Everyone looked at me. “I’m not going to turn out like Alice,” I repeated.
“You already are like her,” Juliet said. She was staring at my hands, which were resting on the table. Actually, she was staring at my wrists, which were still bandaged. “You just don’t know it yet.”
I put my hands in my lap. “What I know is that nothing was going to stop Alice from being crazy,” I said.
“And what’s going to stop you?” Juliet asked me.
To tell the truth, I was getting a little creeped out by Juliet. At first I thought she was just delusional. You know, with the whole Sex and Violence thing, and her crush on Bone. But now I think there’s something even more wrong with her. It’s like she thinks she can see inside people. She just comes out with this weird stuff, and you can tell she really believes it.
Well, she’s wrong about me. She can stare all she wants, but she’s never going to see inside me, because there’s nothing in there. Everyone could tell that Alice was loony tunes. I’m not blaming her for that or anything, but she was. I, on the other hand, pretty much just had one bad day and now everyone is making me pay for it.
“Don’t listen to her,” Sadie said. “My guess is that she’s the next to go.” She gave Juliet a look. “How’s it going to happen, Juliet?” she asked. “How are you going to go?”
Juliet stood up and slammed her chair against the table. As she stormed off, Sadie and Bone laughed. After a second, I did too.
“That chick is out there,” said Bone.
“Seriously,” Sadie agreed. “I wonder what she’s in here for. That whole bulimia story was a crock.”
“She told me,” Bone said. “I guess she thought it might make me love her or something if she shared.” He rolled his eyes.
“So?” Sadie said. “Out with it already. What’s little Miss Juliet’s curse?”
“She’s a junkie,” said Bone.
“Get out,” Sadie exclaimed.
Bone nodded. “No, she is. She was all into heroin and stuff. I guess she ODed a couple of times.”
“Wow,” Sadie said. “I’m actually kind of impressed. I thought for sure she’d be into something really girly, like cutting herself.” Then she looked at me and said, “No offense.”
“I didn’t realize there was a ranking,” I said.
Sadie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“A ranking,” I said. “You know, what’s crazier than what.”
“Oh, sure there is,” Sadie said. She sat back in her chair. “First you have your generic depressives. They’re a dime a dozen and usually really boring. Then you’ve got the bulimics and the anorexics. They’re slightly more interesting, although usually they’re just girls with nothing better to do. Then you start getting into the good stuff: the arsonists, the schizophrenics, the manic-depressives. You can never quite tell what those will do. And then you’ve got the junkies. They’re completely tragic, because chances are they’re just going to go right back on the stuff when they get out of here.”
“So junkies are at the top of the crazy chain,” I said.
Sadie shook her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Suicides are.”
I looked at her. “Why?”
“Anyone can be crazy,” she answered. “That’s usually just because there’s something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to want to just wipe yourself out?”
“Maybe that’s just about wiring, too,” I suggested.
“I guess sometimes,” Sadie agreed. “But sometimes it’s more than that.”
“I don’t know,” Bone said. “I don’t see anything so special about wanting to kill yourself.” When we didn’t say anything, he looked up at us. “Not that I’ve ever tried it. I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying that because you’ve never tried it,” Sadie said. She was quiet for a minute, and her eyes got this faraway look in them, like she was remembering something wonderful. “You don’t know what it feels like,” she continued. “You don’t know what it’s like to make that decision—to go from thinking about it to doing it. Most people can’t do it.”
“So you’re saying you should get first prize because you did it?” Bone said. He laughed. “You’re crazy.”
Sadie looked at him. “That’s exactly what I am,” she said, then laughed. “But I’ll have to share that prize with Jeff.”
She looked at me. “What?” I said.
“You win, too,” she said. “You tried to kill yourself, too.”
I knew everyone had been thinking that. I mean, how could they not, what with the bandages and everything? But hearing Sadie say it out loud was kind of a shock. I shook my head. “I just did something stupid.”
Sadie turned away. “Sure you did,” she said.
I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of me or not. I sort of don’t think she was. And I don’t think she wants to share her prize with me. She wants to be Queen Whack-job around here. Or maybe she knows that I’m not like her and the rest of them.
I’m not one of her ten little soldier boys.