Chapter Six

By lunchtime on Monday there wasn’t a student in my class that didn’t know about my trip to Weston. They didn’t know why I was there, or that the doctor said I was perfectly fine, all they knew was that only strange people got sent to Weston, and that I was one of them. Rodger Kettering, Mrs. Kettering’s son, made sure everyone knew. He was the type of person who teased everyone for something, and my trip to Weston was endless ammunition.

He started the second Howard and I made our way through the classroom door.

“Where are your friends, Mollie?” he said as I sat at my desk right behind his. My two best friends were Howard and Helena, and they were both sitting on either side of me.

“Not them, stupid,” he said, glancing at Howard and Helena, “I mean your other friends. Or did you leave them at Weston?”

His best friend Gil sat to his right and turned around immediately.

“Mollie has friends at Weston?” he said, loudly.

Howard looked at me, puzzled, along with everyone else who heard. I looked down at the book on my desk and ignored them all, unable to face Howard or Helena and just hoping that Rodger would shut up.

But he didn’t, and for the rest of the day he was relentless. His friend Gil stuck by his side, feeding off everything he said. It was one of the first times I couldn’t wait to leave school, and as soon as we were dismissed from class I ran out of the doors as fast as I could. I didn’t want anyone else to talk to me, not even Howard or Helena, I just wanted to be alone. What I really wanted was for the dreams to be real, and to live a life where my family was good to me, where I didn’t need to be taken to a psychiatric hospital, and I didn’t need dreams to be happy. The thought of knowing that would never be possible was crushing. I stopped right there on the side of the gravel road and cried, and eventually Howard caught up to me.

“Mollie! What are you doing?” he shouted as he ran up behind me.

I didn’t answer, I couldn’t answer. Between running and crying, I barely had breath left to speak.

“Mollie, what’s wrong? What was Rodger talking about Weston for?”

He knelt down next to me and waited.

“Because it’s true,” I finally said.

“My mother thinks something is wrong with me. She tried to take me there.”

“Why?!”

“I don’t know. Can you just go away?”

I didn’t even have these answers for myself, so I couldn’t answer them for him.

“I’m not going to make fun of you, I promise,” he said, “I’m not like Rodger.”

I stood up and brushed the dirt off my dress. “I know. I just want to be alone.” And I started off towards the lonely tree, happy to see Howard didn’t follow. When I got there I pulled out my leather backpack and my journal and wrote down the dream from the night before. It wasn’t an extraordinary dream, but it was better than anything in my real life at that moment, and it calmed me down.

October 1, 1929

Ma, Pa, me and baby Charlie spent the day at the lake. It was sunny and warm, even the fish were jumping out of the water to feel it. Ma made sandwiches for us to eat when we got hungry. After we swam for a while, Pa climbed a tree next to the lake, as high as he could go, and tied a rope around the branch. It was so long it touched the water! When he was done we took turns swinging on the rope and splashing into the lake, but not baby Charlie. He’s too little. It was the best day.

When I was done writing I put my journal and backpack back in the nook of the trunk and climbed the lonely tree. I wished I could live there, up in the branches, away from everything else. Eventually the sun began to set and my stomach growled. I knew the Flynns would always feed me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to see Howard yet. I knew he was being honest, that he wouldn’t make fun of me, but if I told him why I went to Weston then I would be breaking my promise to Ann.

Since I wasn’t sure I was going to get supper, I planned on leaving the lonely tree just after sunset. It wouldn’t matter if I was late, but I wanted to wait until I was so tired I could barely stand, that way it would be easier to fall asleep without my empty stomach keeping me up. Just as I was thinking about climbing down, Howard walked up to the tree.

“Supper?” he said, holding a plate full on food in front of him.

Without saying anything I climbed down the tree. He handed me the plate.

“Thank you.”

“Ma asked about you at supper,” he said.

“Why?” I asked defensively, thinking he was talking about Weston again.

“Because you weren’t there. She was worried,”

“Oh. Well, tell her I’m fine,” I said, walking to the tree’s trunk to sit and eat, and Howard followed. He let me eat in silence for a minute until he finally brought up the day again like I figured he would.

“Why didn’t you tell me you went to Weston?”

“Because I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Well, how did Rodger know?” he asked, sounding offended.

“Someone was over my house Saturday night, my mother must have told them.”

“I’m sorry, Mollie. You know that if he knows, his mom knows. If she knows, the whole town is gonna know.”

I nodded. I knew this, but I didn’t want to think about it.

“You know my uncle Kern went to Weston once,” he said.

“Really?” Howard’s uncle Kern was always at his house, helping on the farm.

“Yup. Ma said it was a long time ago, but look at him, he’s fine. And no one even knows.”

I didn’t doubt that Howard was being honest, but I knew he was just trying to make me feel better. We both knew that the whole town had the same opinion of people who went to Weston, and it had nothing to do with being fine.

“Thanks, Howard,” I said, “and thanks for bringing me supper.”

“You’re welcome, Mollie.”

The next day at school was even worse. Rodger Kettering wasn’t over the fact that I went to Weston. He brought it up every chance he got, even went as far as entirely making up what actually went on while I was there. He told everyone they dug around in my brain until it was mush. Of course when the other students heard, they joined in on the teasing and went home and told their parents all about it.

So the girls and boys who used to be my friends began laughing at me. Most of my schoolmates were told to keep their distance from me at school, including Helena, as if the mental illness they thought I had was somehow contagious. I was the laughing stock of my schoolmates. It only took a few days for my mother to catch wind of the fact that the entire town thought her daughter was crazy, and with this she was given yet another reason to hate me. My mother couldn’t express her disappointment enough, and made sure I understood how poorly this made her look, as if it were my idea to go to Weston.

My brother Cristopher was born a month before Christmas. Essentially he was my mother’s way of starting over as a parent. His birth started a new form of abuse: my mother acted as though I didn’t exist at all. For comfort, I turned to the very thing that caused this turmoil in the first place: the dreams. The events taking place in the dreams were far more pleasant than those happening when I was awake, and they brought me a happiness I just couldn’t find in real life. After I realized the wrath of the teasing, I quickly learned how important it was to separate the dreams from reality. A simple solution was to avoid talking to anyone, but my schoolmates and my family made that decision for me. The dreams and reality were so incredibly different that it eventually became effortless to distinguish them: the memories of my dreams were happy and the memories of my real life were hell.

As time passed, the dreams became even more vivid, though I didn’t think it was possible. The people I dreamt about were always the same, but they changed with time just as we all do. Along with their changes, I began to notice details I hadn’t before; the pattern of the wallpaper, the unique shape of the table lamp, and particular features of a person’s face. It didn’t matter if I was awake for a minute or if I looked back on a dream a week or a month later, the memory of the details never deteriorated.

Besides Howard and his family, my dreams were the only thing in my life worth remembering, the only thing making my life worth living.