Free Dark Eden by Patrick Carman Page B

my hand, hoping Davis wouldn’t search Mrs. Goring’s basement anytime soon.
     
    I’ll visit Dr. Stevens when everyone is asleep. That’s how you’ll know. Come see me then, okay? Marisa.
    The last time I’d gotten a note like Marisa’s was in the fourth grade. I even remember what it said.
    Meet me downstairs by the water fountain after school. I have something for you. Jennifer
     
    Jennifer never showed up, but Marisa would. She didn’t have anyplace else to go, and she’d be awake. I wasn’t a night owl like she was, and I definitely didn’t have insomnia. I slept just fine, and as often as possible. But my biggest worry wasn’t that I’d fall asleep; I was more concerned that the system would fail again. I’d miss her signal when the time came and stand her up, like Jennifer had stood me up at the water fountain.
    Looks like someone’s got a date. Keith’s voice rattled in my head, and I imagined him leaning against the doorjamb in my room wearing that goofy green baseball cap. Don’t blow it.
    Don’t worry, Keith, I won’t , I thought. But I was nervous just the same, and reminded myself to read some of The Pearl so Marisa and I would have something to talk about. I turned off the monitor in case it was on a timer and only stayed on for so many hours a day. If that was true, how was I going to keep an eye on the room where Marisa would give me the signal? The whole situation was starting to stress me out big-time, so I reclined on the cot and started reading. I’d heard The Pearl on tape a long time ago, in my parent’s car, I think, but I couldn’t really remember it.
    An hour later I’d turned the monitor back on and saw that the main room at Fort Eden was empty.
    “Weird,” I said. “Where is everyone?”
    I looked at my watch—nearly 11:00 AM —then back at the monitor, cycling through the three rooms I had access to. The whole place felt deserted, until Mrs. Goring came into view. She was on the farthest end of the main room, walking into the girls’ quarters.
    “What’s she doing in there?” I wondered. The door to the girls’ quarters closed, and she was gone. For a few seconds I thought nothing of it. She was in there changing the sheets or something. What else would she be doing in there? But then I had a hunch, a sort of cold feeling up the back of my neck, and I clicked the white G button, bringing up the room where the girls went to talk to Dr. Stevens.
    The chair sat empty. The stencils of 2 , 5 , and 7 still there on the wall. I wasn’t prepared for Mrs. Goring to sit down, and even less prepared because of the way she did it: fast and close. She sat right up next to the monitor screen, creating a fish-eye effect in the lens. It was as if she didn’t understand how it worked, staring grotesquely into the monitor, her eyes darting back and forth, a fist of knuckles banging on the screen. And she was yelling. If I had to guess, I would have said she was yelling for Dr. Stevens to come out, as if Dr. Stevens lived in the monitor itself and needed to be woken up.
    How old was Mrs. Goring, that she couldn’t grasp such things? Seventy-five? Eighty-five? Older still? Maybe she’d just lived in the woods too long, losing touch with reality.
    Mrs. Goring settled back and began talking in short bursts. I’d have gladly given up my air hockey table and my Atari and my little brother, Keith, in exchange for audio. What was she saying, and why was she saying it? What possible reason could there be for Mrs. Goring to talk with Dr. Stevens?
    I cycled back to the main room in Fort Eden, which remained empty. Everyone was gone, and it was starting to really bother me. Were they in the basement of the fort, having a round of shock therapy? I’m not sure what caused me to think what I thought next. It could have been that I was sick and tired of the oppressive silence of the basement. Or maybe I’d come to feel so alone and afraid that something deep inside finally snapped. Could have