Insanity Read Online Free Page B

sound sad for me as she wrote me up for being late from my meal break. “A whole hour, Forest!”
    Tears prickled in my eyes. I was still breathing hard from running from the clothing room all the way back to the geriatric ward. I didn’t think I was late—I just wanted to get away from ... whatever had happened. Get back to the real world.
    But I hadn’t found the real world at all. Just more craziness.
    No way was I late coming back, not one minute, not five minutes. I should have been early, but Arleen and the clock said I was an hour past my report time. I’d been working since I was fifteen—odd jobs, then fast food, then stocking shelves at a grocery store, then here, and I’d never been written up. I couldn’t comprehend why it was happening now.
    Arleen had her back to me as she filled out the disciplinary action slip, but Decker Greenway was facing me in his clean shirtand overalls, smelling like new denim, grinning and being friendly.
    Arleen couldn’t see him.
    “You’re losing time because of the thin spot,” he explained. “That’s what they call them, Levi and his grandmother. Lincoln ain’t nothing but a giant thin spot between our world and the other side, and places in this hospital get even thinner due to all the sadness it sees. Time can’t help moving funny around thin spots.”
    Arleen was talking about “youth” and “irresponsibility” and “maturity.” Decker Greenway was talking about madness.
    All-over shaking made my teeth chatter until I set my jaw. I didn’t want the tears to escape my eyes, but they did. I wiped them away quickly. “It was a mistake,” I told Arleen and my hallucination. “I—I guess I fell asleep. I won’t be careless again.”
    “If you were still on probation, you’d be fired for this.” She turned and waved the yellow slip at me. “Even as a full-time employee, a second time AWOL from assigned duty and you’ll be terminated.” She smiled, all teeth and no heart.
    I said nothing, because what could I say? I was due back at 2:00 a.m. It was now 3:15 a.m. How had an hour passed? It couldn’t have been that long.
    “It’s because you got too close to a thin spot,” Decker insisted. “You really don’t know what you are, do you?”
    I kept my eyes on Arleen. Maybe if I didn’t look at him, didn’t pay any attention to the weirdness, it would go away.
    Arleen made a few shaming noises, and heat rose to mycheeks as she deposited the yellow slip in the wall box, where the director of nursing would collect it tomorrow, dock my pay for the hour, and enter the disciplinary action on my record.
    “You’re distracted tonight,” Arleen said. Then her tone swapped to sickly sweet. “Doubles are hard. I know. I’ve worked a million of them.”
    “May I go back to the hall now?” My voice shook like the rest of me, which made me that much madder. I wasn’t one of those totally-scarred-from-foster-care people, but I didn’t bother much with friends or attachments, and I had learned to keep my emotions to myself. When I couldn’t, it scared me and made me want to be alone.
    Arleen dismissed me with a wave of her orange Halloween nails, and I all but ran out of the station, leaving her and Decker behind. When I got to the table where night shift sat to monitor patient doorways, Decker was somehow already there, two doors away, gazing in at Miss Sally.
    I sat at the table, grateful I was the only one assigned to the hall, and refused to look at him.
    After a few seconds, he said, “You need to see Miss Imogene over in records. In the cottage with the bell tower. You know the place?”
    My eyes darted up and down the hall to be sure nobody was around to hear before I shot him a look and whispered, “Whatever you are, go away.”
    Decker’s eyebrows shot up. His eyes flashed—literally—and his friendly expression gave way to a darkness I associated withfoster brothers who lit fires and stuck pins in kittens. The hairs on my arms stood up at