“You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m not joking.” Stephen kept talking to me like he knew this was going to happen.
“You knew that the shooting was going to happen?”
“No, I didn’t know that, but can’t you see what I am trying to say? We can’t stay here. It is too dangerous. It is too dangerous to be out here.”
I looked out at the darkened streets and thought about how bright they looked with the sirens wailing. “The hospital is our home. We have no connections, nothing.” He swung his head up and slapped it.
“Oh come on, if we go back, we’ll probably get punished. Who knows what the doctors will probably do to us.” You’re probably right, I thought.
I hated everything that had just happened. I hated the fact that I had lost the band. The shooting continued to etch its way into my skull. I wasn’t sure if he even was alive, but wherever he was, I could not entertain the fact that he could possibly be dead. I just could not.
Fear ran through my veins. He had been everything that I had put my own crutch on, and now I am here to see that he no longer exists? Am I just to assume that he no longer carries any of the weight that he had before?
“Can we keep walking?” asked Stephen. He seemed like somebody else. Not the same autistic boy that everyone else had once known him as. Weird how the name “Slanky” had een become really associated with him.
“I don’t think I can make it any farther,” Stephen said. I watched as his body collapsed to the ground. His hands grasped his stomach. Hunger. Stephen really was hungry. I looked through my purse. No food.
I sighed as I stared off into the rest of the path. It was rudded with stones and rocks. “I’m not going to fucking carry you,” I told him and prepared to walk down myself, but I placed my shoulder over his and carried him with whatever strength I had left.
“To be honest, I’m kind of hungry too,” I said. Hunger. It was the only subject that either of us could talk about.
“You’ve gotta start thinking positive,” Stephen said before he wandered off to sleep. I carried his limp body over the street. A couple cars rolled by. No sign of any police or patrol cars. I never knew that this area of the street could be so quiet.
Maybe it was wrong to leave.
***
I reached for the women’s purse while I tried to pull out money. Please find a twenty. Please find a twenty.
Remember that stealing is wrong. You should never steal. The voice echoed inside my ears; however, it wasn’t the doctors that were telling me to not do it. It was another voice, perhaps one that I had heard long ago.
With a stick, I pulled out a twenty dollar bill. Phew! I got lucky. I don’t have a choice, I tried telling the voice inside my head.
A couple hours later I was standing in the middle of line at Tesco with a bag of Lay chips at my side. Went through all this—and not a single person had caught me.
The cashier looked at me. “Does there seem to be a problem, ma’m?” he asked. I realized that I had been standing there this whole time.
“Yes,” I said, handing the twenty as well as the bag of chips.
“Here you go, and your change?” he said, holding out his hand. I grabbed the money from his hand and placed it inside my own pocket. I opened the bag of chips and ate from it. I too was hungry. I stuffed several chips into my mouth. Why did I have to be the one that fed Stephen? If I wanted this, then I got it.
I’ll be your friend if you want me to. I lowered the bag of chips.
“Here,” I said. Surprised, he rushed forward and gobbled down the rest of the bag like the cookie monster on Sesame street.
“Thanks,” he said. Then he lowered the bag from his mouth, realizing the scarfing he was doing. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. He opened the chip bag for me. I ate the last quarter of what was left of the chips.
“I’m really sorry. I feel like—“
“No, it’s fine,” I said again, for I saw no reason to get upset at him.
***
“So why do so many people think you’re a murderer?” I asked.
“It’s because I don’t really like to disclose too much about myself,” he replied without a single degree of hesitation. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it, but you know that I’m not like that?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but why do you let them do that to you?” He paused for some time.
“It’s just that I feel so trapped.”
***
“So where to now?” I asked. I turned around to realize that he had fallen asleep. I lay down on the grass next to him. I had no idea what time it was. I just lay my head on the ground, but wait, this was no place to sleep.
I could not sleep. We could not get caught. What if they caught us? Then what? We could always go back, I thought, but I could not turn back. My eyes remained wide open. I couldn’t sleep.
***
Maybe I could just pick myself up and just leave him, I thought. But I knew that I couldn’t go back. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. I fell asleep, exhausted by what everything was going on.
“Lexi,” I heard a murmur say. I turned around. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I replied, but how far were we really going to make it. He looked up from his sleep. “You know, I honestly have a lot of trouble myself trying to go to sleep,” he said.
“Do you ever wonder if there is some kind of special meaning behind the stars?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, my mother always said that the stars could predict the future.”
“Your mother believed in some pretty crazy stuff,” I said.
“Maybe she did,” he said, lowering his head. “I like to believe that my mother was wise—that she always knew where everything was. If only I could just remember what it was like…”
“Don’t kill yourself over that,” I said. “I can’t remember much about my parents.”
“Yeah, that’s what I notice about a lot of the other patients. Taken away from their parents. Pretty brutal.”
“More the reason to leave,” I said. His eyes widened.
“Wait, you believe in what I’m doing?!” But I was already starting to fall asleep.
***
“Do you think the people inside the hospital know that we’re gone.”
“They probably do.”
“Do you think they give much of a shit?” I paused considering I really didn’t know the answer.
“Who knows? Maybe we were nothing more than outcasts to all of them,” I said.
“Nah, they’re probably looking for us right now,” he said. “I bet most of the nurses are probably going to lose their jobs if they figure out we’re even missing.” I sighed. I didn’t feel like talking much. I was probably going to die out here, and so was he.
“Were you able to write to your parents?” he asked. “I think I tried writing to mine before I left.”
“I thought I told you—I don’t remember anything about my parents,” I said. “Would you please shut up!”
Silence.
“Ok, I’m sorry, sorry,” I said. It took me a moment to realize that he was crying. Usually a lot of people never saw Stephen cry. For that matter, I had never really considered that he had any emotion. Now here he was, acting like a little brother.
“There, there,” I said as I pat him on the head. He embraced me.
“You’re probably the only person with an amount of decency at that wretched place!” he said.
“I highly doubt that,” I said. “There are people like Rachel who are not so bad.”
“Rachel?”
“She’s my friend, but you know what, never mind. We could sit here all day long, but I think it is about high time that we start our way forward. After all, neither of us want to go back there.”
“So you admit that you hate that place?”
“Yeah,” I said. Slowly he got up, and the two of us started making our way through the rest of the path.
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