CHAPTER TWELVE
“KNOCK, KNOCK,” REALM SAID FROM the doorway of my facility room, not actually knocking. I looked up from my bed, my slipper socks tucked underneath me, my yellow scrubs scratchy at my neck. “Am I interrupting?” he asked.
I stared at him. I hadn’t seen him for the three days, not since he was pulled from the card game, but I hadn’t wondered where he was, not really. I was too busy being medicated to near-unconsciousness. But I’d finally figured how to get the pills out of my system before they could take hold. It left me with just a bit of fuzz clinging to my consciousness.
“You’re not interrupting,” I told him, more out of curiosity than actual want of interaction.
“I was gone,” he said. “Not sure if you noticed.” He offered me a smile, and unlike the other day, this seemed closer to real.
I moved back on the bed as a way of inviting him into the room. He seemed grateful, bowing his head, and came to sit in front of me.
“How’s it been?” he asked.
“Am I really supposed to answer that?” I replied, making him laugh.
“Guess not,” he said. He waited a moment or two, and then, when Michael Realm looked at me again, I got the sense that I was seeing him for the first time. Someone ravaged by the epidemic, his soul threadbare.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered, his dark eyes desperate. “Because if I don’t talk, I’ll die.”
I nodded that he could talk to me. He leaned in closer, and I didn’t mind his proximity. I didn’t mind when his leg touched mine, as if I’d suddenly solidified into a real person. For the last few weeks, I’d felt like an apparition.
“I don’t belong here,” Realm said in a small whisper. “Neither of us do. None of us do. But I especially don’t. Do you want to know why?”
And suddenly I did want to know. “Yes.”
Realm swallowed hard but didn’t break eye contact. He stared deeply into my eyes. “I’m a handler,” he said. “I gather information, and I give it to the doctors. If I don’t, they’ll lobotomize me. But I can’t stay here anymore, sweetness. I want to leave and go find my friends. I was thinking you should come with me.”
“Why me?” I asked. “We don’t even know each other.”
“Because you can tell. You can see this is fake, can’t you? Me, Tabby, Shep, and Derek—you know it’s all bullshit.”
He was right. I could see through their act. I didn’t even know how, but I figured it out pretty quickly. Even with all the drugs. “None of you were very good,” I said. “It seemed kind of obvious.”
Realm lifted up the side of his mouth in a smile. “Yeah, the doctors have already informed me that they’re not pleased with my performance as of late. But how could you tell? What did I do wrong?”
I shrugged. “It was your eyes,” I said. “Almost like you were looking at a different scene altogether.”
Realm seemed to ponder this, and he shifted, his knee sliding to my outer thigh as he got closer. “And the others?” he asked. “How did you know they were lying?”
“I could just . . . tell. It sort of reminded me of something. Something terrible that I can’t quite remember myself.”
Realm’s eyes widened, and he looked around the room, disturbed. When he turned back to me, he leaned in close enough to kiss me, although none of his intentions were romantic.
“Tatum,” he asked. “Do you know Dr. McKee?”
“No,” I said, not recognizing the name.
Realm didn’t seem deterred. “Have you ever met Arthur Pritchard?”
That name did hold a familiar ring, and I quickly sorted out that he was the creator of The Program. I must have heard his name on television. I told Realm that I didn’t know him.
“You’re different,” Realm said, and then laughed. “And that’s not a pickup line. I mean . . . you’re not here like the usual patients.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Dr. Warren told me you were being evasive, even with truth serum. The source on your file is doubling down on the assertion that you’re a danger. Dr. Warren assigned me because she wanted me to get the details you wouldn’t share with her.” He smiled a little. “But you’re not going to share them with me, either, are you? You’re shut off. You’ve turned it off. Your . . . emotions, or something.”
“It’s the medication,” I said, but Realm shook his head.
“No, it’s not. It doesn’t work that way.” He leaned back, his arms outstretched behind him, and studied me.
“Tatum . . .” He furrowed his brow. “Have you ever had a lobotomy?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“I don’t know what they did,” he said. “But now I definitely know you can’t be here. You can’t let The Program get too close.”
“Great idea,” I said. “Any plans on how I can achieve that?”
“Your grandfather’s a reporter, right?” Realm asked. “Can you give me his number?”
It occurred to me then that Michael Realm was a handler here to manipulate me. But since I’d been in this facility, I’d been able to see through the lies. And I believed that Realm was telling me the truth. I gave him my grandfather’s number, and he scrawled it down on a piece of paper and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Okay,” he said like he was about to deliver bad news. “I’ll do everything I can to get you out of here, but you have to give me something in return.”
“What?” I asked.
“A story. Something about you and Wes, something they can erase.”
I scoffed, and he quickly apologized. “I don’t want them to erase anything either,” he said. “But if we don’t give them something, they’ll realize you’ve been . . . tampered with. So, please. Let’s give them something. I’ll get it back to you when this is all over.”
Michael Realm could have spun this entire story to get at my secrets. And it probably wouldn’t have been the first time he’d done it. But I wanted to believe his sincerity; I wanted to believe he’d help me.
“Just stick with me, and we’ll get through this,” he said. “I promise.”
And so I lay back on the bed, Realm lying next to me, and I told him the greatest love story I knew. The story of me and Wes. And when I was done, I didn’t even feel bad for lying about most of it.
• • •
There’s a rustle of sounds, light seeping in from under my closed eyes. I feel a cloth pressed under my nose, making it harder to breath, as wetness slides down my neck.
“Tatum,” a voice says, and I realize it’s Sloane. “You’re having a crashback. You’ve got to stay with me. Do you understand? We need you.”
She pinches my nose, and I gasp out of my mouth, my eyelids fluttering open. I sit up, Sloane’s hand falling away as she stares at me, wide-eyed.
“Are you back?” she asks like I’m not really here.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to clear the blood in my throat. I look around the room, James standing in the doorway. Sloane next to the bed, terrified. I blot the blood under my nose, furrowing my brow.
“I told half-truths,” I murmur, turning toward Realm.
I find him lying there, staring at me. His every breath is a small gasp, followed by a rattle. He tries to smile, but he winces like it hurts.
Realm got me out of The Program. I remember now. I remember us.
Realm and I had planned it all, how he would present my memories to Dr. Warren. How I could call them up for erasure. He and I would lie in my hospital bed night after night and play card games during the day. We knew the system. Michael Realm told me all of his secrets, but I didn’t tell him all of mine. He was so lonely. He said he always had been. I wanted to take that loneliness away, and we grew close. I wanted to save him.
Eventually, a deal was struck—one where Dr. Warren would let me out but keep an eye on me afterward, looking for any signs of depression or suicidal thoughts. If they appeared, she’d put me back in The Program.
My grandfather came in and assured her that wouldn’t happen. Realm assured her that I was well, supplying my distorted memories of Wes as proof. I didn’t know then, but he had tracked Wes down, told him what had happened in the facility. He fed him my memories, even if he didn’t realize they were lies. It skewed Wes’s files.
We’re all liars, just like Michael Realm said. But in the end, he saved my life. And a tear drips onto my cheek, mixing with the blood from my nose, because I realize I don’t think I can save his life in return.
I lie down next to Realm, my head on his shoulder, just like how we’d lie some nights as he told me about Sloane. How he wished he could be good enough for her.
Realm continues to gasp in breaths, slowly, but he reaches to put his hand on my hair. “I’ve missed you,” he says.
I close my eyes, knowing that I’ve missed him too. Our relationship was never romantic; it was friendship. It was the closest thing we had to real in a place that demanded lies.
We did our best. We grew real enough to survive.
And so when there’s a sudden stillness next to me, and Realm’s breathing stops, I cover my face and I cry.