Harbinger Read Online Free Page B

off. “That doctor will explain it better,” he said. “And I’ll talk to them about the papers, I’ll do that. If it bothers you so much.”
    Suddenly I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want to be left in this dreadful, lonely place by myself. I touched his shoulder and he turned back to me.
    “Dad—”
    My tears started. Dad was never any good with tears. Fumbling in his back pocket he said, “I’ve got something for you. I’m not supposed to give you stuff like this, but the hell with it.”
    He handed me a square, white envelope, the kind that holds a greeting card. The only other thing he’d brought me in the last three months was my high school diploma, which he’d mounted in a cheap frame and propped on my bedside table. My name and home address were printed on the front of the square envelope in blue ink. It was from Nichole Roberts. The post date was more than a month old.
    “Why aren’t you supposed to give me my mail, Dad?” It was hard to keep the anger out of my voice.
    “We’ll talk tomorrow, with the doctor. I got to go.” He fussed with his cap, patted my shoulder, and left. I waited for the usual click of the lock being engaged, but it didn’t come.
    I tore the envelope open. From its shape I’d expected a Get Well card (and it would have been my first), but this was a Miss You card depicting a harlequin sitting cross-legged holding out a pair of ballet slippers by the laces, a forlorn expression under the white makeup. Inside it said:
    I guess this will be my last letter, Ellis. I’m not even sure why I bother, since you haven’t answered any of the others. I wish you’d at least tell me what’s going on. Your dad won’t talk to me. I’ve been to your house, and I know he’s in there sometimes, but he doesn’t answer the door. Am I such a pariah? (only Nichole could use a word like ‘pariah’ and not sound self-conscious). Anyway I hope you’re all right. I guess that’s all. I just hope you’re all right.
    Her signature appeared under a scribbled heart.
    So it was time to check out. I’d been thinking about it for weeks. What had stopped me, always, was the idea that there was nothing waiting for me. In retrospect that is exactly the way Langley Ulin had wanted me to feel. I’d thought obsessively about Nichole, but her silence finally wore me down to a lethargic nubbin. After reading her card I was suddenly restored to a number 7 Ticonderoga with a needle sharp point, and I was ready to pencil myself back into life.
    I had no street clothes. The staff provided me with flimsy tie-in-the-back “gowns” to sleep in plus one pair of baggy hospital greens and cotton slippers for my morning strolls, which is what I was wearing at the moment.
    I let myself out of the room. The corridor was empty, the other doors shut. A stainless steel caddy was parked by one of those shut doors, stacked with neatly folded towels. Down there at the far end of the corridor was an elevator. I started walking toward it. Before I got there it dinged and the doors slid open and disgorged an orderly type with a ring of keys in his fist.
    I quickly diverted to the stairs, trying to look purposeful as hell, like I was one of the staff. Maybe I could have pulled it off if I’d been older and dressed in real clothes.
    The orderly reached out and hooked my arm. He was big and round, with a flat-top crew cut. He smelled like some nasty cologne “Hold up,” he said, and I wrenched loose and ran for the stairs.
    He was big but I was fast. In the stairwell visions of every prison escape movie I’d ever seen flashed through my mind. Wailing sirens, search beams crisscrossing the “yard,” armed guards in the towers, and slobbering bloodhounds snarling and straining at their leashes.
    The stairwell was just as antiseptically clean as the rest of the hospital. I took the steps two and three at a leap, my good right hand sliding down the rail. The door above me banged open. The orderly’s big shoes