One Year After Pine Cottage

Tina was among the last to go. She sat on her squeaky bed, staring blankly at the one on the other side of the room, most recently occupied by a stringy-haired pyromaniac named Heather. It had been stripped of sheets, leaving only a lumpy mattress with an oblong urine stain. On the wall beside it, not quite hidden under a coat of paint, were the curse words scrawled in lipstick by Heather’s predecessor, May. When she got transferred, she bequeathed her stash of lipstick to Tina.

All told, Tina had spent more than three years in that room. The longest time she had spent in any one place. Not that she had a choice. The state decided that for her.

But now it was time to go. Nurse Hattie shouted it from the hallway in that grating hick accent of hers. “Closin’ time, folks! Everybody out!”

Tina lifted the knapsack that leaned against her bed. It used to be Joe’s. His parents left it behind when they cleaned out his room after he was killed. Now it was hers, and everything she owned was inside, which wasn’t much. Its lightness astonished her.

As Tina left the room, she didn’t look back. She had moved around enough to know that long, last looks didn’t make leaving any easier. Even if you had been dying to leave since the moment you arrived.

In the hallway, Tina took her place with the other stragglers, lining up for one last head count. Instead of seeing that everyone was there, the orderlies were making sure no one stayed behind. At noon, Blackthorn’s doors were closing for good.

The majority of Blackthorn’s patients were still too crazy to be let loose upon the world. They had already been transferred to other state facilities, Heather among them. Tina was one of the few deemed mentally fit to be released. She had served her time. Now she was free to go.

After head count, she and the others were shuffled through the wide and drafty rec room, which was already being cleared of furniture. Tina saw that the TV had been dismantled from the wall and that most of the chairs had been stacked in a corner. But her table was still there. The table beside the grated window where she and Joe would sit and peer out at the woods on the other side of Blackthorn’s scrubby patch of lawn, naming all the places they would go once they got out.

Tina did allow one last look at that, instantly regretting it, for it made her think about Joe. She had been ordered not to think about him.

Yet she did. All the time. Leaving wouldn’t change that.

She had also been ordered not to think about that night. About the terrible things that happened. All those dead kids. But how could she not? It was the reason the place was closing. The very reason she and the others were being marched out.

Some of the orderlies came by to watch them go. Matt Cromley was there, that perm-headed prick. He had put his hand down Tina’s pants so many times she lost count. She glared at him as she passed. He gave her a wink and licked his lips.

Parked outside was a van that would take them to the bus station. After that, no one gave a damn where they went as long as it wasn’t there.

As Tina climbed aboard, Nurse Hattie handed her a large envelope. Inside was the name of a social service agency that would help her find employment, her medical records, all necessary prescriptions and cash that Tina knew would only last about a measly two weeks.

Nurse Hattie put a hand on her shoulder and smiled. “Have a great life, Tina. Go make somethin’ of yourself.”

Two Years After Pine Cottage

There was no one home. Tina kept telling herself that as she knocked again on the sun-bleached door. There was no one home and she should just leave.

But she couldn’t leave. She was down to her last dollar.

Tina tried to make a go of it, and for a while she had. Thanks to that nice lady at social services she had a job, even though it was bagging groceries at a gritty-floored supermarket, and a place to live at a boardinghouse built for people like her. But all those health code violations killed the store, which meant she couldn’t pay for the boardinghouse. Those unemployment checks barely covered food and bus fare.

So now she was back in Hazleton, still knocking on the door of a duplex she hadn’t seen in four years, praying no one would answer it. When someone did, she almost ran away. She’d rather die of starvation than be there. But she willed her legs to remain on that worn welcome mat.

The woman who opened the door was fatter than when Tina last saw her. An ass as wide as a loveseat. She held a baby on her hip—a writhing, crying, red-faced little shit in a drooping diaper. Tina took one look at it and her heart sank. Another kid. That poor, doomed thing.

“Hi, momma,” Tina said. “I’m home.”

Her mother looked at her as if she were a stranger. She sucked in her fat cheeks, lips puckering.

“This ain’t your home,” she said. “You made sure of that.”

Tina’s heart seized up, even though this was exactly what she had expected. Her mother never believed that Earl did those things to her. The touching and the fondling and the sliding under her covers at three in the morning. Shh, he’d say with beer stench on his breath. Don’t tell your momma.

“Please, momma,” Tina said. “I need help.”

The baby fussed even more. Tina wondered if the kid had been told about his half-sister. She wondered if she’ll ever be mentioned.

A man’s voice cut through the cries, coming from the living room. Tina had no idea who he was. “Who’s at the door?”