“You must be special, then.”
I felt Milo smile, a loosening of tension in his skinny body. “What happened?”
“I was freezing,” I said. “We all were, huddled on the floor of an old cabin, no fire and the wind blowing in through the cracks. I’d never been more miserable or alone as I was in that moment. Then one of the other boys brought his shitty blanket to where I was lying under my shitty blanket. He hugged me like I’m hugging you.”
“What was his name?”
“Silas. His name was Silas.”
“Do you still talk to him?”
“No.”
“Why not? Did you lose touch? What’s his last name?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
It did matter. It mattered a whole fucking lot, but as much as I cared about making Milo feel better, Silas Marsh was off-limits. If I shared too much of him, he wouldn’t be mine anymore. He existed mostly in my journals. Stories. My endless writing where I tried to purge myself of Alaska until my hand cramped and tears blurred the ink on the page.
But there was always more.
My parents had sent me to Alaska in the name of “fixing” their broken son, but it’d nearly destroyed my already tentative hold on sanity. They knew their mistake the instant I came back, bruised and hysterical. A year in Sanitarium du lac Léman was their way of trying to put me back together, but it was too late. What happened in Alaska was now woven into my marrow. My cells and bones. A cold that would never let me go.
I tightened my arm around Milo. “It was forbidden for us to touch, but Silas had laid down with me to try to keep me warm anyway. It only happened that one night, but he saved my life.”
And I never told him. I should have told him…
“Why just the one night?” Milo asked.
“We got caught. They beat the hell out of us. Him, mostly. They beat the hell out of him…”
Another shiver wracked me, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory: a ramshackle cabin and a dozen boys huddled under thin blankets. Silas—big and tall with gold hair; an Adonis—being yanked away from me, the counselors wailing on him for the sin of comforting another human being.
“Did Silas tell you that you were going to be okay?”
“No,” I said. “That would’ve been a lie. We didn’t lie to each other in
Alaska. Alaska wasn’t like this place. Here, you get good food and exercise, and instead of people telling you that you’re worthless and have to change who you are, they try to make you better.”
“You’re not better, so how come you get to leave?”
“I feel the institution no longer has anything to offer me.”
“You don’t get to say. The doctors do.”
“The doctors agree.”
“That’s a lie.”
“My parents pay the doctors,” I said. “I told my parents it’s time to go, so they stopped paying.”
“Your mom and dad just do whatever you want?”
“Since I came back from Alaska, they do. They’re afraid of me. And they should be.”
Milo gasped at my sinister tone. “Are you going to hurt them when you get out?”
I pretended to be affronted. “Do I look like a violent psychopath to you? Never mind, don’t answer that.”