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  “No.”

  “Nate, you’re stressed out. You think you killed your dad. I mean hearing things, nightmares, not sleeping, and what happened to Dustin . . . why don’t you go talk to someone, a counselor?”

  “I don’t want to wind up like Dustin.”

  “That’s what this is all about isn’t it?” Kyle asked. “You think you’re turning into Dustin? Listen, Nate, that doesn’t make you crazy. If you were crazy, I would know. You’re a little strange, actually a lot of strange, but not crazy. Besides, you’re worse than crazy: you’re a teenager.”

  “Does your mom know what’s going on?” Linh asked.

  “She suspects, but I can’t trust her.”

  “Why?”

  “Mom’s the one who did it.”

  “Wow. I thought it was a court-ordered thing,” Linh said.

  “Yeah, she got the court order.”

  “That must have been so hard for her.”

  “Hard. How does a mother even do that? All I know is every time I’ve tried to bring it up she cries and refuses to talk.

  “Why?” Linh asked.

  “For the same reason she won’t let me see my dad’s sister. Because she only cares about herself.” I paced the length of the room. “I mean, she hears me waking up in the night screaming. Even in daytime you know how I get, zoned out, freaked out. She’s gotta be thinking I’m going crazy like Dustin did, but she pretends nothing is happening.”

  “Your mom must be terrified it’s going to happen to you,” Linh said.

  “I am too. But she’s never even around. She only cares about the restaurant.”

  “Bad dreams and your subconscious mind talking to you,” Kyle interrupted, “I think you need to start meditating.” Although Kyle occasionally talked about how important meditation was, this was the first time he suggested it. “I’ll show you how. It’s a challenge at first but becomes easier. It’s a beautiful thing, and it will help clear these troubles, I promise.”

  “Anything is worth a shot. But they’re not just bad dreams.”

  “What then?” Linh asked.

  “It’s like Death is bullying me.”

  “That’s just your guilt talking,” Linh said. “Don’t you get that?”

  “Sure I do. My dad is dead, it’s my fault, and you’re the only two who don’t believe it.”

  “Meditation is better than counseling. It keeps me sane in this crazy world,” Kyle said.

  The “troubles” I told them about were only a sliver of the horror, but this wasn’t the time for full disclosure. If Kyle and Linh became as overwhelmed as I was, there might be no way to escape the madness.

  5

  Kyle raised his voice an octave and said, “It’s a scandal.”

  Linh rolled her eyes.

  Starting in eighth grade, Kyle and I began making fun of all the gossip in school by talking like two girls, in high voices, “It’s a scandal. John broke up with Cathy, then went out with Carol, but Cathy was kissing John’s friend Brad. It’s such a scandal . . . ” We’d crack each other up.

  We were both giggling when Linh said, “You two should grow up! There’s nothing funny about this.” That of course sent us into a fit, but eventually we calmed down.

  “I told you my secret. Now you said you’d help me.”

  “Nate wants us to do something dangerous and illegal,” Kyle told Linh.

  “Potentially illegal and dangerous,” I corrected.

  “So I’m going to wind up in jail for hanging out with a couple of nine-year-olds.”

  “Tell us,” Kyle urged. I was sure he sensed there was more going on, but he was patient—Zen patient. He knew the rest would come in time.

  “I want to go see Dustin.”

  “That’s illegal?”

  “I want to get him out.”

  “Oh.”

  Kyle looked at Linh.

  “It’s understandable you want to see your brother, but you’re sixteen. They aren’t going to let you take him home. Do you actually want to break him out?” Linh asked.

  “Yes. He doesn’t belong in an institution.”

  “How do you know?” Kyle challenged. “Why’s he in there?”

  “Awhile after my dad died, Dustin started getting paranoid. He was smoking a bunch of pot at the time, so I thought it was all about that. But it got real bad, and my mother was very worried. He’d have conversations with himself—more like arguments—and heard voices.” I glanced at Linh and saw it register in her eyes. She knew where I was coming from. “He stopped sleeping, started blurting things like ‘they won’t leave me alone,’ and was always talking about coded messages and secret meanings in everything.”

  “How old was he when it started?” Kyle asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  “And you started seeing things and hearing voices at fifteen, too?”

  “Yes.”

  They both stared.

  “I remember what he was like. And it’s been increasing a lot since I turned sixteen.”

  “But he smoked tons of weed and who knows what else. You won’t even take aspirin.”

  “Yeah, he’s the main reason I don’t. Maybe drugs and alcohol made everything more intense for him, or he might have been using them to numb himself or to escape the voices and visions.”

  “You’re not Dustin.”

  “Not yet, but he was fine, too.” I paused to hold in the emotion. “Then at some point he lost touch with the real world, or at least my mom thought he did. I need to talk to him. I need my brother. We have to get him out.”

  Linh saw me fighting tears.

  “What was the final straw that got him committed?” Kyle asked.

  “He freaked out, said he had to go back and take care of some things. The only way he believed he could get ‘there’ was to kill himself.”

  “He tried?”

  “The day after he turned sixteen he drove to Mount Shasta, did some coke and started hiking higher and higher in just a t-shirt and shorts.”

  “Was he going to jump?”

  “No, he was going to freeze himself to death. He said that’s the way the Incas did it.”

  “Wow, that’s almost cool if it wasn’t so tragic,” Kyle said. “So what happened?”

  “The coke kept him up so he continued hiking and climbing almost all night. There was only a crescent moon, so mostly he was stumbling around in the dark, but he kept heading up. Sometime before dawn, he finally collapsed and fell asleep. And he would have gotten his wish and froze to death if it hadn’t been for two hikers who found him a few hours later.”

  “How’d he get to the institution?”

  “He told my mother the whole story and said he was going to find another way to get back. She didn’t know what to do, so she had him committed.”

  “Putting her own son in a mental institution. That’s totally cold,” Kyle said. “Even so, tough lady.”

  “I heard her on the phone right after it happened, when she didn’t know I was listening, telling her friend about how terrible it had been. Mom said Dustin kept screaming for her to help him while they worked to get the straitjacket on. He flung the orderlies and doctors off like blankets, crying ‘Mom, Mom, I’m not crazy. Don’t let them do this.’ Mom told her friend that it was worse than the day our dad died.”

  “That’s so sad,” Linh said.

  “For Dustin.”

  “For all three of you.”

  “She said it was only temporary, but every month I asked her when Dustin is coming home.”

  “And?”

  “After twenty-four evasive answers, it’s pretty clear his ‘temporary’ hospitalization is permanent.”

  “And she won’t allow you to visit? You’ve haven’t seen him in all this time?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll take you to Dustin, but why do we have to break him out?” Kyle asked.

  “Because my brother might be the only one who can understand. I need to know exactly what happened to him. H
e’ll never reveal his secrets while medicated in an institution.”

  “What secrets? It sounds like he may have really needed professional help.”

  “Whatever. Don’t you get it? He’s my only brother. He was my great protector, and I watched him twist into a desperate, hollow, angry stranger. We need to help him.” I raised my voice, hands shaking, “We need to save him.”

  “Don’t you mean help you and save you?” Kyle asked.

  “Yes!” I shouted. “If he’s crazy then that means I am, too.” I smeared my eyes before tears could escape. “You guys gotta help me, please!”

  “Where is he?” Kyle asked. “Why don’t we go visit him and then decide what to do after we know what we’re dealing with? I mean, you haven’t seen him in two years. He could be a raging lunatic.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Seriously?”

  “She won’t tell me where he is. She’s afraid I’ll try to find him, and it’s true. I would have run away but there was nowhere to go.”

  “How are we supposed to find Dustin?”

  “Whenever my mom goes, it’s always a day-trip. So how many mental institutions could there be within a half-day’s drive from Ashland?”

  It turned out there were four. After a few minutes on the Internet, we narrowed it down to a private facility in Roseburg, the most obvious choice, and about a two-hour drive.

  “Mountain View Psychiatric Hospital, Providing Quality Care Since 1957. Inpatient psychiatric services for children, adolescents, adults, and geriatric patients, providing a safe place where compassionate, quality care supports recovery from mental illness and addiction,” the description read.

  “Sounds like a great place. Maybe they’re helping him,” Kyle said.

  “Two years? It doesn’t take two years,” I said.

  “Kyle, Nate’s our best friend, Dustin’s his brother. It’s family. We have to go,” Linh said.

  “Road trip!” Kyle shouted. A three-day weekend was coming up at school; it would be the perfect time. Early in the summer we’d all gone camping and were sure our parents would let us go again.

  “Visiting hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week,” Linh said, looking up from her iPad. “Shouldn’t we call to make sure he’s there?”

  “Yes, you should.” I dialed the number and handed my cell phone to her. “Tell them you’re Jennifer Ryder and you’d like to speak to your son, Dustin Ryder.”

  “What if they put me through to him?”

  “Not a chance,” I said. It took less than three minutes to prove me wrong, as she shoved the phone at me and I said hello to my brother for the first time in more than two years. “Dustin, it’s Nate.”

  “Long time, Dude. How’s it going, brother? Is something wrong with Mom?”

  “No, Mom’s fine. She doesn’t know I’m calling. Hey, you sound normal.”

  “You caught me at the right time of day. I’m at my clearest in the morning but they’re gonna hit me with a round of meds in a few minutes. Why doesn’t Mom know?”

  “She won’t let me visit or contact you. It’s like she’s afraid I’m going to catch what you have.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re calling?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean; you’re seeing things all the time now, aren’t you?”

  I was too surprised to answer.

  “And you hear the voices?”

  “How did you know?” I whispered.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, brother. How are you handling it? Better than me, I hope.”

  “It’s gotten kind of crazy lately.”

  “Hey, don’t say that word around me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nate, I’m kidding.”

  “I’m coming to see you next weekend.”

  “It might be a rough trip.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wish I had time to explain, but I hear the nurse coming to drug me up right now. Just be extra careful. I won’t be in any condition to help.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “And Nate, whenever it get’s really bad, you have to let go and trust yourself. That’s where the good is. If you feel it inside and it soothes you, then you know it’s okay. Trusting anything else gets tricky.” I heard something in the background and then he said, “Bye, Mom, see you next weekend.”

  “What do you think he meant?” I asked after filling them in.

  “He may not have meant anything real. He is in a mental hospital.” Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Not to be rude, but he could actually be crazy.”

  “I know my brother, and he sounded totally sane. He shouldn’t be in there.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  I did, too.

  Our parents agreed to our camping trip. All I had to do was keep my head together for another week.

  Talking to Dustin had made me feel much better. Maybe he really wasn’t crazy, which meant maybe I wasn’t. But his warnings worried me. What did he mean by “it could be a rough trip?”

  6

  The Outviews came almost nightly, but they had begun invading my waking hours, too. Linh and Kyle didn’t understand they weren’t nightmares. I hadn’t either, but that hope shattered on a beautiful morning last July. Digging a hole in the backyard for a new fence post, I was suddenly standing over a freshly dug grave in the rain. I turned trying to figure out what was happening. It was still a sunny day; the backyard and our house were normal. I looked back at the ground, and there, instead of my posthole, was the grave and a muddy puddle at the bottom as the rain grew heavier. It was a nightmare in broad daylight. Both scenes were happening simultaneously. Which one did I belong in? When I focused on the grave, the backyard faded away. Looking back at my house, the grave receded. I had an eerie feeling that the “me” standing by the grave wasn’t really me. I mean, it was, but not Nathan Ryder. It was another time. There were three horses tied to nearby trees and two men with rifles a little farther back. A third with a pistol was yelling at me.

  “Jump on down there, Wesley,” he said motioning to the grave.

  “Hell no! You ain’t burying me alive, Brett,” I shouted back. The voice startled me because it vibrated inside my body, but I heard it as clearly as my neighbor’s radio at the same time.

  “Yes, I am,” he yelled angrily. Water dripped from the brim of his cowboy hat.

  I started shouting at him louder. “If you’ve got to kill me then I reckon that’s what you’re gonna do, but have some decency, man.” The rain picked up.

  “How dare you talk about decency!” He pulled the trigger. The “me” by the grave and the “me” in the backyard both went down when the bullet tore into my knee. I looked back toward the house and up at the blue sunny sky, but my references were blurring because, at the same time, I was wet from the rain. Brett shot my other knee. I screamed out in both the past and the present, and then he pushed me down into the grave. Crashing hard in two inches of muddy water, one of my arms snapped under my weight. A scraping sound competed with the falling rain while dirt came from above as they dumped in shovels full in a slow steady rhythm. My agony gave way to the terror of being buried alive. Once the earth covered my face I stopped screaming, unable to tell what was up or down. The pressure from the mud numbed all pain, as the crushing force stole my breath and finished me off.

  Kyle found me passed out next to the fence. I lied to him and said something about the post hitting my head. It took almost two days to stop favoring my right arm and walk without a limp. I still haven’t gotten over the emotional impact. That was the day the Outviews invaded my real life, and being awake hadn’t felt safe since.

  I wasn’t just being vague about the Outviews. I hadn’t told Kyle and Linh many other things. No matter how close we were, if they knew everything, the only way they’d agree to go to Mountain View Psychiatric Hospital would be if I stayed as a patient. I’d seen “pops” over people’s heads all the
time—sudden bursts of color the size of a pencil eraser would go off like a tiny firework display, bright and vivid, highly saturated. They even occurred when I was alone and just thinking about things. I was figuring out if there was a pattern to the colors: red pops seemed to be a warning or happen around anger, while hanging out with Linh usually brought clear or bright aqua pops. I wanted to keep a list, but there was too much going on.

  I sat in my room feeling guilty for not being completely open with my friends. I often thought out my problems while cropping and enhancing photos on the computer. Everyone knew me as a photographer because I always had a camera with me. The summer after sixth grade I started selling photos online and in a few shops around town, making enough money for regular upgrades to my cameras and laptop, plus some savings for a car.

  Staring at a recent photo of several deer reminded me of shapeshifting. We studied it in eighth-grade history class. Shapeshifting was a big deal in Native American song and dance ceremonies, hunting, healing, and warfare. With me it was different; hallucinations were attacking my sanity. Out of the corner of my eye, there’d be a large deer with a full rack of antlers, but then looking again, it turned out to be simply a brown bush. An eagle in a tree would really be an old trash bag caught in branches. A running lion was actually corn stalks rippling in the wind. The first look was fleeting but crystal clear—no question I’d just seen a giant tortoise, but it was really a small dumpster. When it started happening twenty times a day, every day, I knew there was more to it. Either I was crazy or I really did see a coyote in the school cafeteria or a giraffe in my front yard. If no one else saw those animals, then I had to face the explanation: insanity was closing in.

  I was unable to concentrate on the photo. My thoughts continued to seek meaning in the shapeshifting episodes. I got up from the computer and paced the room.

  The rushing sound of a tornado sent me to the floor. But as usual, nothing happened, no air moved and it didn’t last long, it was just the “wind noise.” The first time I heard it was about two years earlier and maybe a week before Dustin went up Shasta to kill himself. He and I were hiking together. We did it less and less as he became more estranged, but this had been one of his rare clear days. We were about two miles into a three-mile hike when I heard the sound, a strong wind whizzing past my ear. My hair even moved, but other than an inch around my head, the air was still. After the third time, Dustin noticed me rubbing my ears.