Spearwood Academy Volume Five by A.S. Oren Read Free Book Online Page B

wonder if normal people notice stuff like this. Do they appreciate their fancy ceilings?
    Elle lies down on her stomach and props her head up. “What are you thinking about?”
    “How lucky we are that Crystal’s at therapy. I’d hate to see you go after her in the snow. That is, if you could get her to go outside in the first place.”
    “Oh, please,” she says, rolling onto her side before twisting a strand of her choppy, black hair, “you’d cheer me on, and you know it.”
    I exhale through my nose. “I’d prefer my friends stay out of the hospital.”
    Elle laugh sarcastically. “Too late for that; we’re already in one.”
    “Not . . . technically,” I dispute. “We’re hospital adjacent.”
    She rolls her eyes. “A set of double doors to separate us isn’t much. I’d say we’re still a part of the hospital. We just happen to have a different name on the side of the building.”
    I shrug. “I guess you’re right. I just like thinking that we’re not. Before you came along, I used to have hallucinations. I was the girl on The Little Princess . Jeff would bring me fine linens and scones from Paris. I even had my sister with me, and we’d make forts and play games.”
    “What made the hallucinations stop?”
    I roll onto my side. “I told my therapist, and she upped my meds. I never had those hallucinations again.”
    She places her hand over mine. “You’d make a good princess. I wish you had a life like that—the good part of the movie, not the scrubbing floors and stuff.”
    My brows rise. “Feeling sorry for me again?”
    She bites her lip and rolls onto her back. “It’s hard not to, Miss Ward-of-the-State.”
    I sigh. “It’s not all bad. I get three meals a day, a place to rest my head, and toiletries.”
    “Oh, the toilet paper is divine,” Elle says in her best southern belle accent.
    “Sure, one-ply toilet paper that dissolves as you wipe is just what the doctor ordered.”
    She shakes her head. “That makes no sense.”
    I roll over and poke Elle in the side. “Made you laugh. That’s all that matters.”
    She scowls and pokes me back.
    “Ladies,” Jeff says, walking into our room.
    We jump up from the bed.
    “Did you wash your hands after taking a twenty-minute pump-a-dump?”
    I backhand her gut. “No class, Elle. No class.”
    She flips her hair over shoulders. “Well, duh, we did graduate.”
    We hip bump and high-five. Jeff rubs his forehead and exhales. He unlocks our closet, which is really more of a wardrobe/bookcase-looking thing. Elle grabs a coat and hands it to me before getting her own. Technically, they’re all hers. People stopped donating clothes to me years ago. If it weren’t for Elle, I’d be wearing a hospital gown.
    With all of her nice clothes hanging up, I’d think she has a nice family to go along with them. She doesn’t. She’s been in and out of this place for the past five years, and they’ve never visited—never.
    Every once in a while, they pull her out against the doctor’s wishes. She always comes back after a week or so, claiming to have severe depression. I think she likes the drugs and can’t stand her family. Why else would she want to stay here?
    Jeff locks the closet. When I step into the hallway, Zack looks me over. “Too many layers,” he says with a straight face.
    “Move along,” Elle says, stepping in front of me to block his eyes from mentally undressing me again.
    He spins on his heel. “So bossy.”
    “You betcha, Sasquatch.”
    “That is highly offensive to the Native American people,” Zack says.
    “Fine, Dragon Tooth. Keep it moving.”
    He looks over his shoulder. “That’s your comeback? I’m disappointed in you, Elle.”
    She huffs and walks up behind him. She pushes him forward with her hands pressing against his back.
    “I should just stop walking,” Zack says. He halts, and Elle’s feet slide out from behind her as she tries to push him forward.
    “Ugh! What do you eat?”
    “Same