Chapter Six: September
Laurie is not okay. She tries to console herself. In the end, she dissolves into a blubbering mess. She's fearful of her friend's life.
Police Police. Call the police. I need to— I need to—
Her hand slams the receiver into the cradle, but before she can start the call, the phone shatters her concentration. She picks it up and on the other end Annie's laughter is hysterical.
Laurie flushes with anger, quick and quiet.
Surprisingly, she banishes the quiver creeping into her voice.
"It's not funny, Annie."
"I thought it was priceless," Annie says breathlessly. "Were you scared?"
Laurie withholds the urge to scream though it takes much of her resolve.
"No," she lies.
But, Annie knows better and Laurie knows that too.
"Alright." Laurie says tired, weary— what one would sound like when they're quite fed up with their friend's cruel antics, "Can you hang up now? I have to check up on Michael."
"C'mon Laurie," Annie assuages with an arc in her voice. "Please don't be angry."
"I'm not." The lie doesn't sound any more convincing, but Laurie insists on keeping up the facade. "I really have to. I can't seem to find him anywhere in the house."
"Ugh, seriously...isn't he like, older than us?" Annie sighs. "Why'd your folks tell you you have to take care of him?"
Laurie doesn't feel like explaining much to Annie. She's not in the mood. In fact, she'd rather just give her the silent treatment, until she can get over the harmless joke or until she hears an apology. But, Annie is insistent and Laurie is easily forgiving, and it's become second nature for her to recite her brother's situation to others as her parents scripted to her.
"Because…Ever since he was six, he's been in Smith's Grove." Laurie says, and her chest becomes tight, because she can't help the pang of sympathy she has for Michael. The trauma he sustained from that night so long ago. What a haze. "He can't really seem to...function after all that lost time."
"What for?"
"He was…" Usually, people don't ask for further explanation, but Annie's curiosity forces from Laurie an impromptu. "...Traumatized...and he needed therapy." She hopes there was a telling in her voice, because she can't bear to tell Annie the story without the guarantee of nightmares later tonight.
"Oh…" Annie replies, "Well, then I'll let you go. Hey, mind if we hang out tomorrow?"
Laurie is relieved that Annie has dropped the matter. The Bracketts moved in several years after the incident. Of course, her friend wouldn't know. Not many new families in Haddonfield do. The town keeps it under wraps. Some dark histories are better laid to rest when forgotten.
"I don't know."
If her mother discovers she left Michael unattended...
"You can bring your brother if it makes you feel better."
"Yeah? And what is he going to do?"
"I don't know." She imagines Annie has shrugged. "By him a hotdog or something while we go shop for a homecoming dress. "
Laurie suspects this is Annie's way of apologizing for the earlier call, but she'd much rather prefer a straightforward admission of fault. But, that's not Annie and it would be asking for too much. So, Laurie acquiesces and hangs up in the middle of Annie saying "Goodnight."
She holds her head in her hands. Takes a moment to compose. Thinks. And then, worries. She scours upstairs again, calls for Michael. After every recitation of his name, hesitation trickles onto her chords, and it's clear if it isn't on her face that the panic is settling in, laying its foundation brick by brick.
That's when she stills as she comes down the staircase. Spots the shape in the gloom of the living room. Seated at the couch.
Then, she sighs.
"Michael," she says approaching him.
Once she is close enough, she sits beside him, thigh to thigh. He doesn't give an acknowledgement of her presence and Laurie feels sad. Incredibly so. Because when her mother had told her when she was very young that she had a brother, Laurie imagined someone else. Someone who could fill the lonely moments in her life with his warm presence. But, Michael is all cold though he may be living.
And, Laurie thinks of his captivity at Smith's Grove. Could someone like that, looked at all his life by clinical stares from nurses and wardens and doctors, develop the same kind of warmth Laurie yearned?
Perhaps, she's being selfish. Perhaps, he needs her. Not the other way around. Is that what her mother was trying to convey? Maybe, God sent him to her as a test on her character.
Not to just provide him with the necessities of physical nourishment, but to provide those that were denied to him within his concrete cell.
Laurie reaches out and smoothes her hand down his arm.
He is very much a warm body.
And, she is content Michael does not recoil from her touch.
Laurie looks at the side of his face, the angular corner of his jaw which is clenched tight, and whispers:
"Where do you go in that head of yours?"