Across the Universe

27 AMY

“WHAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” I SAY, “IS WHY YOU’RE ALL HERE.”

“What ya mean?” one of the men says. He has a guitar on his lap, an old acoustic relic.

“Harley said you all were crazy. He said this was a mental hospital.”

“Ah, we’re not crazy,” the guitar player says. His accent is thicker than the others; I can barely understand him.

“We are.” This is the woman who had originally scooted away from me. Harley called her Victria, said she wrote stories. She has an ancient-looking book in her hand — a real book bound in leather, not an electronic thing. I wonder where she got it. “The only thing keeping us close to sane is the mental meds,” Victria adds.

“You might be crazy,” says the guitar player in a joking tone, “but I’m not.”

“You are,” says Harley. “She is. I am. We all are here.”

“But you’re not,” I insist.

“Speak for yourself.”

“No, I mean it! You’re not. You don’t act crazy. None of you do.”

Harley smiles. “I’ll count that as a compliment. After all—” he starts, but then he cocks his head to the left, as if he’s listening to something.

“What?” I ask.

“Shh,” says Victria.

I look around the room. All of them, they’ve all got their heads tilted, each appearing to listen deeply to something.

“An all-call,” the guitar player says under his breath. “Eldest hasn’t done one since our Elder died.”

“Shh!” Victria hisses.

My eyes bounce from person to person. Each one in the psych ward, patient or nurse, is listening intensely.

It’s eerie, the way they’ve all stopped to listen to something I can’t hear. Everyone around me is still and silent, but I jump up and pace around the crowded room, waiting for the spell to break, waiting for everyone else to return to my world.

“Load of shite,” Harley says in an offhand manner. They all start to straighten up, readjust their focus. Whatever they’d been listening to is gone now.

“What is?” I ask.

Harley looks at me, and for the first time, there is no smile in his eyes.

“Nothing,” he says.

Victria mutters a word, a single syllable, but I can’t hear it.

“What?” I say, an unbidden edge to my voice.

She looks me square in the eyes. “Freak.”

“Victria!” the guitar player says.

She whirls around on him. “You heard Eldest! She is a freak! And here she’s been lying to us all this whole time, lying. Saying she’s from Sol-Earth! Telling us of wide spans of land, of an unending sky! She’s madder than all of us — why do you think Eldest brought her here? With her lies.” She spits the word out. “Telling us she’s seen Sol-Earth! How dare she? How dare you!” She turns on me, cold hatred in her eyes.

“Calm down, Victria. She’s simple. Damaged. She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” says the guitar player.

“What are you talking about?” I back away.

“Don’t tell me about a sky that never ends,” she says, her voice low. “Don’t ever tell me about that sort of thing. Don’t even talk about it. There is no sky. Only a metal roof.”

I flinch at the harshness of her words, but just before she whirls away from me and runs down the hall, I see that there are tears glistening in her eyes.

“What is going on?” I ask. I turn in a circle around the room. With the exception of Harley, they all stare at me with the same contempt and bitter anger that Victria spewed forth.

“Come on,” Harley says, standing up. “Let’s go back to your room.”

“Why? I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“Come on,” Harley says, and he leads me through the silent stares and out of the hostile room.