Chapter 7: The Doctor and the Books

They had moved Laurel to a single cell on the medical wing, with a window the size of a paperback.

I came the next morning before my family woke up.

I told my mother I was going for a walk.

It was the second lie, and it came out smoother than the first.

The guard let me into the little visiting room and shut the door.

Laurel stood when I came in.

The stitched lip had gone purple, and she moved carefully around her ribs.

"You're early," she said.

"I have one question."

"I'll answer anything except the one."

"The doctor," I said.

She went very still.

"In my second year. I was burning up and I couldn't get air. A doctor came down with a bag and stayed three days."

I took a step toward her.

"Hank says he doesn't remember a doctor. Hank says you wanted me broken."

"Hank is a coward and a cheap one," she said. "He tells whoever's in the room what they want to hear."

"Who paid the doctor?"

Laurel looked at the little window.

"I did," she said. "I sat in a truck at the bottom of the hill for three days and three nights, with a thermos, because I wasn't allowed up."

"Why weren't you allowed?"

"Because Hank said if you saw me, you'd never stop shouting."

She turned back to me, and her eyes were wet and furious.

"Your fever broke on the third night. They told me you called for your mother, and then you called for me, and then you slept."

The room rocked.

I had called her name for five years.

I had hated myself for it.

"And the books?" I said, because my voice had gone rough.

"What books?"

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