Melody

When my boots hit the platform, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. A weight I didn't truly understand.

I had nothing to feel guilty for other than causing Annabelle to be displaced from her family, but it was as if stepping into Chicago gave me a sense of newness.

No more running. No more medication and electroshock therapy. None of the sounds of screams and medical drills erupting through the chipped, stained walls. Just me, Anna, and the others.

I tilted my head back and let the breeze sweep across my face like it was wiping away signs of my being from Bullworth. I need it -- the fresh air and the fresh start.

"All aboard," the conductor yelled, extending both words like lyrics in a song. He all but unhinged his jaw as he hollered the next destination with a wide mouth while walking the length of the platform from signpost to signpost.

Anna stood near the front of the steam engine, close enough for the gray to cloud around her skinny legs up to her covered head. She wore an ascot and a bandana just below her eyes that roamed the tall machine.

I don't think she'd ever seen, moreless traveled by, one in all her seven years. She marveled at the rumbling engine, the bellowing whistle that rushed dalliers closer lest they be forgotten, the smoke puffing out thicker than the ones hanging to the blue sky.

Even her reflection in the silver thing that resembled a knight's visored faceplate.

She finally turned on her heels to me and smiled. My heart skipped. I smiled back without hesitation, blinking profusely as if it were to wake me from a dream. Then she raised her hand and flailed her arm excitedly, and though I tried to keep the glee on my face, I couldn't help it when the corners of my lips faltered.

I slowly raised my hand to meet her with a similar -- though stiff and awkward -- gesture, but I couldn't curl my fingers in time. Someone bumped their shoulder into mine. I whipped around at the hips, halfway turned before my gaze traveled up the tall man's body.

It was the man who let Anna sit with him and his family. They were even walking with him -- his wife striding beside him and their kids sprinting to Anna.

"Annabelle!" I looked at the boy through slits, then at Anna when she reacted with the same overflow of joy.

"Samuel," she greeted the boy back like they weren't sitting together for hours into the night.

The girl hugged her as tightly as a snake around its prey, but my fists balled up at my sides even tighter. I didn't understand why it angered me to see her around anyone but me, but I blamed it on her misdirected resentment that I felt should've been moreso on her folks.

I apologized. Didn't I?

That boy -- Samuel -- pulled her into an embrace as well and my nostrils flared involuntarily. I shook right then and there, inhaling coal fumes dancing in the wind.

I apologized. I apologized so much in so many ways that my conscious was almost clear. The only thing that made me feel guilty was seeing her cry. I hated seeing her cry. I hated anyone who hurt her. I hated myself for hurting her.

I killed for her. I would've been willing to succumb to electroshock therapy for killing in her honor, but Austin saved me. I showered her when she was crippled. I fed her at times.

I was there for her. I was her friend.

But after one mistake -- all it took was one little mistake for her to discard me like a used handkerchief.

I looked down my nose at the skittering rocks and pebbles, my fingers itching to wrap around one.

My heart rate picked up speed like the chugging wheels preparing to continue down the tracks.

I was left there while the adults searched for the man who was to be waiting for us at the time that we arrived. Mary-Sue was pensive on the bench last I checked. It was just me, those rocks, and the ungrateful child I would've done anything for.

"All aboard!" There was a ghastly whine emanating from a distant steam engine like the voices in the asylum that, for a while, kept me up at night. It was low and pained between the sounds of steam hissing from ours.

Though it was as dark as midnight despite merely being eight p.m., orange cones of light cut through. As men, women, and children filed onto the machine, I knelt without breaking my gaze off her. A stabbing pain shot through my rib, but I didn't let my eyes remain closed too long. I winced, groaned, and lifted the rock into my fist.

My fingers flexed around it. It was jagged with grooves that fit a few of my fingers. It was solid and gray with specs of purple, black, and white.

I didn't wanna do it, but seeing her move on hurt me. I couldn't let her hurt me.

I trekked the distance between us, my eyes trained and squinted. I swallowed and licked my lips. My heart thunked but it was drowned out by the growing sound of voices coming back to haunt me. Those voices that I hadn't heard in so long.

I cleared my throat.

Anna looked up at me. Our eyes met and I froze right there on the platform like someone caught stealing. Then her face went sour and she ripped her gaze from mine to force a smile at the two kids blabbering on about the trip.

The voices stopped.

It felt like my heart did too, but I knew I was still alive. My peripherals swirled into a blur before dimming. I took one step closer and my body was yanked back. Mary-Sue hooked her arm around mine and began walking with me to the other end.

We skirted through foot traffic, but I stared at Anna over my shoulder. She refused to look at me again.

"What're you doing," I asked Mary-Sue through gritted teeth.

"Saving you from yourself," she so casually answered like it was as simple as telling the time or checking the weather. My grip loosened around the rock. I almost dropped it in passing like discarded evidence but opted not to entirely. She brought us where we started but with my back to Annabelle. "You've really gone mad, haven't you, Hopkins?"

"I've never been anything but. Sanity, to me, is about as real as Saint Nick." When I turned my head to look at my old friend far behind us, that scowl stained my face, Mary-Sue gripped my chin. As she nudged my attention to her, I swatted her hand like a pesky mosquito. "Let go of me -- now!" I dragged my hand down my mouth and jaw like it would wipe away her touch, then veered my gaze to the adults approaching from the arches leading to the road. I mumbled, "I'm not loony."

"Then why'd you try to kill her?" I whipped my head to her, then around at the passersby. I wasn't ashamed of doing what I had to for myself or those I cared for, but we worked too hard to escape that place. I hated the idea of us being caught.

"She's pretending to care about those people to spite me," I answered, not caring how it sounded.

"Really?" She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head like I was stranger than words could describe. "You ever think that maybe she's genuinely enjoying another person's company? A person who isn't bound to the same facility as she?"

I'll admit, her rhetorical question was like ice on a burning skillet. She almost made me drop the rock. Almost.

Not wanting to give her the satisfaction of thinking she calmed me, I shook my head and mumbled, "You don't get it." I crossed my arms, watching the conductor herd passengers onto the steam engine with the wave of his gloved hand. "I didn't mean to cause her to be separated from her mom and dad. She talked about them all the time, and maybe -- I don't know, I was green."

"Wait, how're you the reason her folks left?" The adults abruptly stopped walking when someone grabbed Rachel's hand. They turned to face the culprit -- a stout man in a black suit -- who was berating her with sharp jabs of his finger to her chest.

"Technically, I'm not. They left on their own accord," I said matter-of-factly, and she crossed her arms with stretched lips like a parent scolding their child with just their eyes. She didn't scare me. It didn't even phase me, really. "But when I attacked her the time her grandma came to pick her up, I guess the orderlies must've told her to leave until Anna got better. It was so long before she did. By then, no one came back."

"You attacked her," she repeated, but I couldn't tell if it was a shocked statement or her seeking confirmation. I told her everything. From the fire burning in my chest which Betty happily stoked, my plan to hide Anna's body, to her being in a wheelchair for the remainder of her recovery. "So, you bashed her head in with a rock and she forgave you, but with me --"

"Forgave me? Are you listening? Are you not seeing how she's treating me?" I started yelling. I couldn't control it. My stomach tightened along with my fist around the rock. I didn't need Betty to plant the seed in my mind to attack Mary-Sue; it was there and growing bigger and stronger the more she spoke.

"Like an angry sibling instead of someone who genuinely hates your guts. She wouldn't talk to me because she hated me for letting you get hurt and letting Cody," she trailed off. Her eyes watered, so she directed them to the ground. Mary-Sue licked, then bit her lips and shook away whatever thoughts were eating at her. "I don't know her the way that you do, but she's not finished with you. I think she just needs time."

"Get on the ground!" That command was like a gunshot into the air. It figuratively sent away woodland creatures. We all watched passersby slow to a crawl until they joined the onlookers around the scene.

I couldn't see through or over the crowd. They stood shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip.

Then a black baton went into the air like a bat preparing to swing forward. I saw the caucasian hand from earlier holding the baton this time instead of jabbing Rachel's chest, and my eyes widened.

"It's the police," Mary-Sue muttered, and I only spared her a glance before redirecting my slack-jaw to the scene.