The Institute

Chapter Nine- Picture of Reece

When the cart started rolling, my pulse sped up and it felt like a sauna underneath all this laundry. I heard voices laughing and talking, but I was too nervous to understand what was being said.

I heard the sound of a door being open, then the sounds of the outdoors flooded my ears. I heard birds chirping and cars whizzing by a little ways away. I was so strange after not being outside for so long. All of a sudden, the cart came to an abrupt stop.

“Billy, load these carts up. I gotta go back and give ‘em the bill. Fer some reason, these carts were heavier today. I think they’re tryin’ to stuff more laundry in them carts and fool us,” a man said, with a southern twang.

“Nah, man, I loaded up last week. It’s yer turn this week. Don’t think you can try ‘n get out of it. ‘Sides, I ain’t stayin’ here by myself. You know I get creeped out by these lunatics,” another man said. I stifled a laugh that these “rough and tumble cowboys” were afraid of a few people that just had a few screws loose.

I heard the sound of a door slam shut, then silence. I wanted to stand and run as far and fast as I could, but Josh had told me to wait for him. I waited about two minutes when I heard someone lifting clothes off me. I breathed a sigh of relief. But when I looked up at the person who had uncovered me, instead of seeing Josh’s dark features and bright smile, I saw a girl looking at me curiously. If my first thought hadn’t been “Who on God’s green Earth is this?” it probably would’ve been “Wow, she is beautiful.”

Josh popped up beside her, grinning like the devil. “Reece, this is my brother Jeremy. Jer, this is Reece, or as you know her, GhostGrrl92.”

Reece was very pretty. She had brown hair that went a little past her shoulders in little curls. Her were dark too and she had applied a light layer of eye liner that made her eyes stand out even more.

“Reece can see ghosts just like you can,” Josh said, slinging an arm around her shoulder. It was very obvious that he more than a little crush on her. He didn’t, however, seem to notice when she scooted away from him the tiniest bit, and let his arm fall.

“I’ve heard so much about you, Jeremy, but it feels… strange to finally meet someone who actually understands,” Reece said, reaching out to touch my arm. Her touch was warm and her fingers soft.

“Hey, I understand perf—” Josh started to protest but got caught off by the sound of the door behind us opening. The excitement just never ends!

All three of us turned to fight those two men if it came down to it, but when the door swung open a familiar face was on the other side: Brady.

“Brady, what are you doing here?” I asked, taking a step towards him.

“Wait, you know him?” Josh asked.

“I want to come with you guys,” Brady said. I felt a mix of emotions just then: Surprise that Brady even knew what we had been planning, smug because I had been the one to hear Brady’s first words in who knew how long, but also guilt at not even trying to take anyone with me. No, I thought. There was no way you could’ve taken anyone. It was hard enough getting out with just you and Josh.

“Jer, I don’t know…” Josh said.

“No, let him come,” Reece said. “What do you want to do, send him back in there? We can’t do that. If he managed to get out on his own, he could be very valuable to us.”

Hold the phone,“us?” I hadn’t even given a thought as to why Reece was here in the first place but I hadn’t thought she would be coming with Josh and me. I figured it would be just me and him—and now Brady—running from the law, like one of those corny movies you always see on TV. Although I couldn’t say I would mind very much if she did come with us.

“Where are we going?” Brady asked. I had almost forgotten he was here.

“Hey, why didn’t you ever talk?” I asked.

“No reason to,” he answered like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“And how did you know what we were planning?”

“Can we save the questions for later, like maybe when we’re safe and far away from here?” Reece said.

“Speaking of, how are we getting out of here? And where are we going?” I asked. Reece held up a set of car keys and smiled.

We managed to get away from the hospital without an issue and into Reece’s little silver car. The car was so old I couldn’t even see the make and model. Her license plate read ICGHSTS. I thought it was clever. It seemed that, like my life, her life totally revolved around her ability to see ghosts. I realized that I had started to think of it as ability, instead of a defect. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

The area that the hospital was in, I wasn’t familiar with so I didn’t really have a clue where we were going. Wherever it was, the ride there was almost completely silent. I felt like I should be celebrating or at least acknowledge the fact that we had made it out of the hospital safe and sound, but no one seemed to want to talk about it.

Close to fifteen or twenty minutes later, we pulled into a driveway of a house I had never seen before. Reece turned around to direct her words at me in the back seat.

“Me and Josh are going in to get some stuff out of my room, and then we are going to drive to Stevensville and crash at a hotel. We’ll figure what to do from there tomorrow,” she said. Then, she and Josh got out of the car and disappeared through the front door of the house.

It was quiet for a few seconds before I decided to ask Brady my questions. “What were you in the hospital for?” I decided

“I think you already know,” Brady said, not looking at me. I thought back to the scars I had seen on his arms a few days ago. But that didn’t mean anything. I knew a few people who were cutters but none of them ever ended up in the mental hospital. I mean, sure, some of them went to therapy but in my opinion, everybody needed therapy.

I was about to answer but he continued before I could. “A few months ago, my best friend in the whole world shot himself in the head. Not a clue why. It felt bad enough that he killed himself, but add on the fact that I thought we were close enough that he could tell me anything; he could tell me what was bothering him so bad that he had to steal his father’s gun and shoot himself. I mean, we’d known each other since kindergarten—” He stopped to wipe a tear from his cheek. “Anyway, I fell deep into depression and I don’t know, one day I just picked up a knife and started cutting myself.

“At first it hurt. A lot. But eventually, I guess I got used to it because I had to cut deeper and deeper to feel anything. When I was cutting, it took my mind of him and everything that was going on. One day, I cut too far and my mom came home to find me lying on the bathroom floor, bleeding out.

“The doctors told me I made it just in time. I keep thinking what if my mom hadn’t come home when she did. Would I be here today? Everyone thought that I had tried to kill myself, like he did, but I would never do that. I hurt someone the way he hurt me. I tried to tell them that it really was an accident; I hadn’t meant for the knife to go that deep, but they didn’t believe me. I got shipped to Great Falls and the label “crazy” stamped on my forehead.” Brady finished and took a deep breath. When I had asked him why he was sent into the hospital, I hadn’t expected him to be so open and honest with me. Especially after he had never even spoken to me until today.

I waited a few minutes for his story to digest before I asked my next question. “Why didn’t you talk at all while you were there?”

“I didn’t see the need to. I just didn’t feel like it.” Brady shrugged. I didn’t know what to say to that so I just continued my interrogation with the question that had been tugging on my mind since Brady first appeared in the doorway of the laundry room.

“How did you know we were planning on breaking out?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “I’m psychic.”

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I honestly have NOOOO clue where I am going with this. I have a vague idea but definately nothing set in stone. PLEASE let me know what you think:)

Please leave comment if you have any comments or suggestions:):)